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As Athena well knew, that was not how private sales worked—the approach was usually much more guarded, money the last subject broached.
“Ballpark, Patrick, come on,” she cajoled, suddenly switching back into her aren’t-we-old-friends voice again.
“Well, I would be surprised if the vendor would consider less than thirty million.”
I had suggested to Harry this might be a little ambitious for a painting that logically, technically, should not even exist. He had been insistent. The deal we shook on was that I would shoulder all the costs of restoring and marketing the painting—money I had to borrow—and would take a 30 percent commission, higher than my usual 10 on account of the level of risk. It was a gamble. If it paid off, the rewards would be extraordinary. What would happen if it did not sell, I did not like to think about as much.
“Thirty million pounds? The last time Self-Portrait as Sphinx sold on the open market—”
“The last time Self-Portrait as Sphinx sold was at a small provincial auction house in Ely. Before the discovery of Juliette’s journal was made public. Before Caroline’s book sold five million copies.”
I was pleased I had managed to slip that in. I hoped it did rankle just a little with Athena that long after she and I and her clients were forgotten, Caroline’s scholarship would endure.
“I’ll pass the message on,” said Athena, her tone once again cooler. “And I’ll be in touch. It will all depend on Caroline’s verdict, of course.”
“Experts revise their judgment when new evidence comes to light all the time, as you know.”
Under other circumstances I might have mentioned my father and his Raphael.
A waiter leaned a white-gloved hand over my shoulder to top up my champagne, and I put my palm over the top. “Actually, I’m just going to nip to the bathroom—please excuse me,” I said.
I could not find the loos in the VIP zone. Having made two conspicuous circles of the area, I exited it in the direction of the toilet sign I could see near the clubhouse.
Jerry, conspicuously flushed, was swaying at the urinal.
“There you are, Patrick! Enjoying yourself?” he said. He did not wait for a response. “And was that George Galanis’s daughter I saw you over there with? I should come over and say hello, perhaps.”
“I actually have to leave—lots to do back at the gallery.”
“Ah, shame. I knew George quite well. One of a kind he was. Tremendous energy. Wonderful polo player. Great raconteur. Always remember him with a brandy. Sort of person you imagine smoking a cigar in the bath. Who’d suddenly decide one day you were all going to fly to Paris for dinner that evening in his private jet.”
I did wonder if even Freddie had fully realized the scale of the Galanis family wealth. I could imagine him rather enjoying that sort of lifestyle, had not some weird Willoughby glitch always prevented him from taking Athena seriously as a potential partner. Perhaps it was the flashiness of the family that was part of the problem—a term like flashiness coming with a fairly hefty helping of associated snobbery and prejudice for a family like Freddie’s. I certainly knew exactly the kind of girl Freddie would have married, had he lived—blond, bland, blue-blooded. Exactly the same sort of woman, if the photographs on Facebook were anything to go by, that pretty much all the rest of the Osiris Society had settled down with.
“Of course, after George died,” Jerry said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “from what I hear, the family found out they had rather less money than they thought.”
He raised a knowing eyebrow, searching my face for a reaction before he continued. “In fact, I have heard that after his heart attack, they discovered they were completely broke. It was all just shell company within shell company within shell company. Offshore bank account after offshore bank account with nothing in it.”
“That’s just Dubai gossip, surely,” I countered, unable to believe it. “Athena certainly doesn’t look to me like she is struggling, cash-wise. I guess she must be earning it all herself now, unless there’s some rich boyfriend on the scene...?”
“Never been introduced to one,” Jerry said, shaking his head. “Shame, a beautiful woman like that. Still, I can see why she would want to keep it quiet, about her father. As we all know, in her line of business, and yours, it’s all about appearances, isn’t it?”
We were at the sinks now, and he met my eye in the mirror. “And perhaps that is even truer here than anywhere else in the world.”
CAROLINE, CAMBRIDGE, 2023, THREE DAYS BEFORE HARRY’S DEATH
I knew from the knock—a precise and familiar rat-tat-tat—that it was Sam Fadel at my office door.
I had hesitated about emailing him—not least because I knew he was likely to respond to my email with a personal visit like this—but if anyone could interpret the hieroglyphics on Harry’s painting and on the lintel at Longhurst and that Harry had shown me on Cyril’s pyramid, it was Dr. Sam Fadel, once the curator of the Willoughby Bequest, now the Archaeology Department’s Head of Archives.
“Come in,” I called.
“Is now a good time?” he asked, poking his head around the door with an uncertain smile.
Not really, was the honest answer, given that it was quarter past five and all afternoon I had been fielding calls about the Tate’s press release, explaining to reporters that I could not comment as I had yet to see the painting for myself, and was currently answering the last few urgent messages from students before I flew to Dubai tomorrow morning to do so.
On the other hand, Sam was doing me a favor, and he had every reason not to.
“Of course,” I nodded. “Thank you so much for this.”