Priceless (20 page)

“A monastery. Yes. A bit like that,” he said.

Carrie Klein couldn’t have cared less about Mathieu Randon’s newfound faith in Jesus, but all at once her own mission was very clear. If Randon wanted help in disposing of his assets, then she was the girl to help him.

“All mobile phones must be switched off,” came the cabin announcement.

“Rats,” said Carrie, as a flight attendant politely reiterated the message to her personally. Carrie grudgingly switched off her phone and made a note to ask Jessica to find out how she could get to Mathieu Randon the moment the plane touched down.

At his office on the Champs-Elysées, Randon read the six-page article about himself and his miraculous recovery from the coma and couldn’t help but wonder if he’d unwittingly committed the sin of pride. Was it true, as the interviewer had suggested, that he sounded smug when he spoke of the community of believers he hoped to create?
He was merely a conduit for God’s work. There was no room for smugness.

The best way to dispel that kind of ugly aspersion was for Randon to get on with building his utopia as soon as he possibly could. He must begin to liquidate his assets, as he had promised he would. Sitting at his desk, Randon surveyed the paintings that graced the office. In that single room hung art worth many millions of euros. There were yet more riches in the headquarters of Maison Randon Champagne in Epernay. And then there was Randon’s private collection, scattered among his apartment in Paris; his homes in New York, in Napa Valley, in Tuscany, Capri, and on the Côte d’Azur; and his eighty-five meter yacht,
The Grand Cru
, which was currently moored outside Monaco.

Randon buzzed through to his assistant.

“Bellette,” he said. “Would you be so kind as to come into my office for a moment.”

Bellette closed down her Internet connection—which was open to an online fashion site—and responded to his call. She stood in front of his desk, notebook at the ready. She was dressed in a plain gray shift that hit her legs at midcalf. It was the most unflattering garment she had ever worn but it had become the unofficial “uniform” of the women who worked at Domaine Randon since their boss had come back from the hospital. Lots of things had changed since Mathieu Randon had gotten caught in that earthquake.

Randon smiled at her beneficently and motioned that she should sit down. Bellette decided that she preferred the old days, when Randon had leered at her breasts straining the buttons of a tight blouse, as though he were a wolf watching a three-legged lamb stumble away from the flock.

“I have a very special project for you,” he said. “But I
want you to think very carefully about whether you’re willing to take it on.”

Bellette perked up a little. She was getting rather bored of typing up letters to the Pope.

“I need to prepare some of my art collection for auction.”

“I’d be happy to do that,” said Bellette.

“I want you to be sure,” said Randon. “Because, as you know, I have great respect for you and your personal integrity, and I must warn you that some of the paintings concerned are nudes. If you think that it would compromise your morality in any way, then you must feel free to refuse.”

Morality? Bellette looked at the man who had once bent her over his desk and fucked her hard while dictating a letter. Bellette had to bite down on the end of her pencil to stop a laugh from bursting out.

CHAPTER 25

B
ack at his apartment that evening, Randon felt much better for having taken steps to put the plan for his new community of believers into action. Bellette had been very mature about the whole thing, assuring him that she would be honored to catalog the more risqué of Randon’s artworks, knowing that it was all for a good cause. Jesus would have understood, she assured him. After all, hadn’t he associated with ladies of the night?
Randon was glad that Bellette had been paying attention to his sermons.

Alone in his bedroom, where once he had entertained supermodels and Oscar-winning actresses, Randon poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the coffee table. He no longer drank alcohol, though his family’s empire had been built on the foundation of one of the world’s finest champagne houses.

Sipping the water contemplatively, with one hand resting lightly on his late mother’s well-thumbed Bible, he gazed on the small
Madonna and Child
that stood on the mantelpiece. Around that small painting was an enormous patch of faded wallpaper that betrayed the fact that a larger painting, of a voluptuous nude with a lotus between her legs, had previously hung there for many years.

As Randon gazed at the Madonna, the feeling started to come again. It seemed to happen every time he looked at that painting. The harder he stared, the faster it came. His field of vision narrowed. There was a glitter of lights at its periphery, as if a sparkler were being held just out of view. Then came the headache. The searing pain that preceded every visitation. Oh God. The pain was so intense. Each time Randon thought he might die.

“Mother Mary preserve me,” Randon cried out before he lost consciousness and slid to the floor.

Coming round five minutes later, Randon scrambled for his pen and pad of paper. It was important to write down as much as he could remember as quickly as possible. These were, after all, messages directly from God.

Still sitting on the floor, Mathieu Randon began to scribble. This time he’d seen a riverbed. Tall reeds. Was it in Europe? Or in Egypt? Was God showing him the Nile? Then he saw the face of a woman. As beautiful as an angel. Her clear white face was framed by soft black hair. She had brown eyes edged by long dark lashes. Full pink
lips. Her eyebrows were arched in surprise. Or was it concentration? She was leaning forward toward him. Her smile looked uncertain. Who was she? She was wearing white. Her arms were bare. She held them out for him. Beckoning? Beseeching?

After filling two pages with his fractured recollections, Randon could drag no more clues to the surface of his mind. As the light faded, he read through once more all the notes he had written since emerging from the coma whenever the vision had come to him. The river had featured often. And the woman. And sometimes a house. Almost a château in size and scale. It had to mean something significant. Was the woman a saint guiding him toward the perfect setting for his community? That made sense.

Randon called Bellette, who knew that she should always be ready to receive his call. No matter what time of day.

“Where are you?” he asked, when he got through to her mobile. “It sounds noisy.”

“At the station,” she lied. She was sitting in a bar.

“Tomorrow morning I want you to call someone at Sotheby’s real estate. I’m looking for a house next to a river. First thing. It’s very important. There must be a river.”

Bellette switched off her mobile phone. Her boyfriend, Olivier, leaned over and nibbled her neck.

“Got to get you into my room and out of this sack,” he said, regarding her horrible dress. “Was that Randon again?”

“Yes,” Bellette sighed.

“More work for the mission?”

Bellette nodded. “He wants me to start looking for a property.”

“Do you think if I got my head shaved and pretended to be a monk he might toss me a few hundred grand?” Olivier asked.

Bellette ran her hands through Olivier’s wavy dark hair. “Well, if you shave your head, you’ll definitely have one thing in common with a monk,” she said. “You won’t get laid.”

CHAPTER 26

L
ike Bellette, Lizzy had an early start the following day. She was to begin work on putting together Ludbrook’s sale of important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings. There had been a lot of interest. Like the old masters, the Victorians seemed to be riding out the recession rather well. Their inoffensive subject matter and pretty execution made them the artistic equivalent of a two-bedroom flat in Chelsea. Blue chip. Nat was expecting great things.

“May even put you up on the block if I get tired,” he said.

Lizzy paled, remembering her humiliation at the Trebarwen sale.

“Only joking,” said Nat. “Though, if you are going to be an auctioneer, you’re going to have to get back up there at some point.”

“I know that,” said Lizzy. “It’s just … give me time.”

“Whatever you want,” said Nat, dismissing her with a pat on the bum.

•          •          •

The staff at Ludbrook’s were not the only people looking forward to the Victorians’ sale with eager anticipation. From passing Serena’s work through small antiques shops up and down the country, Julian had decided that it was time to make the leap to selling through a proper auction house in preparation for off-loading her little Madonna. He took one of Serena’s larger works, a painting of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, up to London and requested a meeting with Nat Wilde.

Nat was only too pleased to meet Julian for lunch. The Trebarwen sale, although low-key, had been a highlight of the previous year’s calendar. Not only that, of late Nat had learned the importance of keeping your client relationships up to date. Nat didn’t think he would ever stop feeling bitter about the fact that, just before she finally got round to popping her clogs, Mrs. Kingly had changed her will so that it instructed that her estate be sold through Ehrenpreis. It was just too much. Carrie Klein had put up with only a few months of the old dear’s moaning. That bloody American woman had been siphoning off Nat’s clients left, right, and center.

Nat and Julian passed the lunch in small talk. Mostly slagging off Julian’s older brother Mark, whom they both agreed was a terrible prig who hadn’t changed a bit since prep school.

“All right,” said Nat. “I’m sure this isn’t just about catching up with an old friend. I assume you’ve got something to show me?”

“It’s in the back of the car,” Julian confirmed.

“Hmmm,” said Nat when Julian unwrapped the painting in his office. “Very nice. Who is it?”

Julian gave Nat the name of the relatively sought after early Victorian artist, Richard Delapole, to whom Nat’s
assistant Lizzy Duffy had attributed Serena’s painting of the greyhounds. Delapole was the perfect artist for Serena to fake, since he had Cornish connections and had died not fifteen miles from Trebarwen House.

“Another Delapole. Really?” Nat raised an eyebrow.

“Really.” Julian reminded himself that he had to stay cool. Nat was only trying it on. He didn’t really think the picture was a fake. Why should he? After all, everything in the Trebarwen sale, with the exception of Serena’s painting of the dogs, had been absolutely kosher. If Julian had form, it was as a source of real and important antiques, not as a faker.

“Where did you find it?” Nat asked.

“In the attic at the house,” Julian told him steadily.

“I thought my team went through the attic. Obviously didn’t do such a thorough job.”

“It was well hidden.”

Nat got out his spectacles and peered closely.

“Bit of foxing there.”

“I noticed that,” said Julian, thankful that the conversation was already moving on from provenance to condition. It was unlikely that a Victorian watercolor kept in an attic for any length of time would have escaped the experience unscathed, so damage was to be expected. Though of course the foxing was as fake as the painting itself. Serena had added the little brown mold marks as an authenticating touch, using a diluted solution of HP Sauce, the relish Julian loved to slather over his eggs at breakfast.

“Beautifully executed. In fact, I would say it’s unusually fine handiwork for this artist. His strokes are normally a bit more …” Nat pulled a face. “Naïve.”

He had a magnifying glass—a loupe—out now. Julian began to feel a little flushed. And not just because it was warm outside.

“So,” Julian said, eager to get some kind of agreement
to sell from Nat before he spent too much more time looking at the bloody thing.

“I think it could be just the thing for our nineteenth-century sale,” Nat told him. “I’m glad you brought it to me.”