At the Wainscott gala, two hundred and sixty people were looking at a painting of pears. Only one of them was looking at a glove.
I put my tray down on a pedestal, which I later learned held a bronze from 1890 and was not a tray stand. Then I crossed the hall.
Imogen hadn't moved. She was holding her right hand slightly away from her body, palm up, the way you hold something you don't want to spill.
"What is it?" I said quietly.
"Varnish."
"Is that bad?"
"Not by itself." She kept her eyes on the yellow smudge. "Varnish on a painting from 1911 is hard as glass. You could tap it with a spoon."
She looked up at the canvas. "This came off on cotton. With one touch. It's soft."
"Soft how?"
"Months old. Maybe weeks."
Her voice was very level. "Somebody varnished this painting this summer, Gideon. And it hasn't cured."
"Laszlo cleaned it. Maybe he re-varnished."
"Maybe," she said. "Look at the upper left corner."
I looked. I saw pears, and a corner, and a lot of very expensive gold frame.
"I don't see anything."
"Neither do I," said Imogen. "That's the problem. There's supposed to be a hole."
A good caterer can tell you, at any moment, where every person in a room is standing. It's the only way to keep the trays moving. So I knew without looking that Conrad Uxbridge was by the bar, laughing at a joke from a man who owned three car dealerships. I also knew that Laszlo Wendt was near the painting, accepting compliments like a man collecting rent.
Imogen went to Conrad. I went with her, carrying a fresh tray of crab puffs, because a man with a tray can go anywhere.
"Conrad," she said. "I need two minutes."
"Imogen! Did you hear the room?"
He turned to the car dealer. "Our conservator. She keeps everything pristine."
"Now, please," said Imogen.
He followed her into the service corridor behind the hall. I followed both of them. Conrad looked at me and the tray.
I offered him a crab puff. He took one, which bought me the right to stay.
Imogen held up her glove.
"The varnish on Pears in Winter Light is uncured," she said. "The tack hole from my intake report is gone. Either Laszlo filled it, which he had no reason to do, or that's not the painting I examined in July."
Conrad stopped chewing.
"Imogen," he said slowly. "Do you know what kind of sentence that is?"
"An accurate one."
"That's a two-million-dollar sentence."
He pressed his fingers to his forehead. "That's the insurance value. That's Mrs. Uttley's gift, the board, the press, and a reporter from the Westmere Bugle who is currently on her third glass of wine."
"So it's a two-million-dollar sentence," said Imogen. "It's still a sentence. I'd like to take the painting down tonight and examine it under UV."
"In the middle of the gala."
"After the gala."
"No," said Conrad. "Absolutely not. We'll discuss it Monday."
"Conrad, if it's a copy, the original is somewhere. Every day we wait, it's farther away."
"If it's a copy," Conrad said. "Laszlo Wendt has sold to half our board. He has a gallery on Vesper Street with a doorman."
He looked at her gloves the way people at Vellucci's had looked at her gloves. "You found a smudge, Imogen. On a glove. You find smudges on everything."
It was quiet in the corridor. Somewhere behind the door, the string quartet started something cheerful.
"I find them," said Imogen, "because they're there."
The door swung open. Laszlo Wendt came through it with his camel coat over his shoulders and a glass of champagne in his hand.
"Conrad, the Bugle wants a photo with the donor," he said. "Oh. The glove girl. Is there a problem with the gloves?"
"There's a problem with the varnish," said Imogen.
Something happened to Laszlo's face. It was very small. If I hadn't spent twenty-four years watching people decide whether to take a second canapé, I wouldn't have caught it. Then the smile came back, wider than before.
"I used a modern resin," he said. "Very clean, very reversible."
He leaned toward her slightly. "Or have you not kept up?"
"Modern resin cures in weeks," she said. "Not in an afternoon."
"Then it's a few weeks young." He waved the glass. "Conrad, honestly. I spend nine weeks lovingly cleaning this thing, and she's poking it at the party."
"Nine weeks," Imogen said. "Mrs. Uttley said you'd have it for two."
"Art doesn't keep a calendar, darling."
"Varnish does," said Imogen.
Conrad stepped between them, palms out, like a man separating two expensive vases.
"Nobody is accusing anybody of anything," he said. "Laszlo, the photo. Imogen, take the rest of the evening. Go have a crab puff."
Laszlo went back into the hall. As he passed me, he looked at my tray.
"Still provincial," he said.
"Still one bite," I said.
Imogen did not take the rest of the evening. She went back to the painting.
She didn't touch it again. She stood about a foot away with a pocket magnifier, the folding kind jewelers use, and looked at the upper left corner. Then the lower right. Then the signature: a small O.W. in dark green, tucked behind a pear stem.
When a woman in white gloves puts her nose six inches from a two-million-dollar painting, people notice.
A small half-circle formed behind her. Somebody whispered "Is she allowed?" Somebody else whispered, "She's the glove lady," as if that answered it.
And the reporter from the Bugle, on her third glass of wine, raised her camera and took a picture.
I was standing beside Philippa Uttley's chair at the time. I had been feeding her crab puffs. She had now eaten nine. I'd stopped counting at seven out of politeness and started again at eight out of professional interest.
"You're Imogen's young man," she said.
"I'm fifty-two, ma'am."
"Everyone's young from here."
She watched Imogen at the painting. "She's got her face on, the one she had in July, when she went over every inch of that thing at my dining room table. I made her tea and she didn't drink it. She didn't want to set the cup down near the canvas."
"That sounds like her."
"She found Abner's tack hole in about four minutes," said Mrs. Uttley. "Fifty-five years, and nobody ever noticed it but me."
Her eyes were bright and sharp. "What's she found now?"
Conrad had made it clear. Not tonight, not the donor, not with the Bugle here. I looked at Imogen, and then at the tiny woman with the cane she didn't need.
"I think," I said carefully, "you should ask her on Monday."
Philippa Uttley looked at me for a long moment. Then she took a tenth crab puff, without asking, which I respected.
"Monday," she said. "I'll hold you to that, young man."
We ran out of crab puffs at eight-nineteen. I was four minutes off. A board member went home with two in a napkin. Nobody said anything.
By ten the hall was empty. My staff were stacking chairs. Imogen sat on a folding chair near the service door with a small plastic bag on her knee. The right glove from the gala was already inside it.
She took a marker out of her purse and wrote on the label in neat block letters:
SATURDAY. GALA. WAINSCOTT, UPPER LEFT.
"Evidence," she said.
"Of what?"
"Of what was on my hands." She sealed the bag. "It's what I keep them for."
I sat down next to her. Otis Yancey was making his last round, signing the building closed in his paper book. He paused when he saw us.
"Good party," he said. "Nothing happened."
"Something happened," said Imogen.
Otis looked at her. He looked at the bag. He didn't ask. He just made a small note in his book, in pencil, and kept walking.
I drove her home. Neither of us said much.
At her door, she gave me the small nod. I gave it back. It was becoming, I realized, our version of something.
"Monday," I said.
"Monday," she said.
Monday came early.
At 7:02 a.m., the Westmere Bugle posted its gala coverage online. The top photo was not of the painting, or of Mrs. Uttley, or of Conrad. It was Imogen, nose six inches from the canvas, white gloves held up like a surgeon's.
The headline said: GLOVED GUEST GIVES MASTERPIECE THE SIDE-EYE.
At 9:15, Conrad sent an email to all staff. It was three sentences long.
Dr. Wardell was taking a short leave, effective immediately. And Mr. Wendt would be taking Pears in Winter Light back to his gallery for "a minor touch-up."
Up next: The Glove Lady
Continue to Part 4 →