Chapter 2 December

Twenty days have passed, "D1601" is still wrapped in sackcloth leaning against the wall of the underground storage room, and Trupington Gore is still waiting for news.The explanation given was simple: a huge backlog of work. Like all famous auction houses, more than 90% of the oil paintings, porcelain, jewelry, fine wines, shotguns and furniture auctioned by Darcy Building are all known and verified by them.Hints of provenance or provenance often appear in pre-sale catalogs. "A gentleman's property" is a common presentation for a rarity. "From the legacy of the deceased so-and-so" is also common.

The argument against opening free estimates to the public was that it would bring in too much time-wasting junk and too little of what Darcy really wanted to auction.But the business was conceived by its founder, Sir George Darcy, and has become a tradition that has been preserved.Occasionally, a few lucky people will find that an old silver snuff bottle left by their grandfather turns out to be a treasure of the Georgian era, but such things do not happen often. In the case of the Old Masters, the Appraisal Committee met every fortnight, chaired by Sebastian Mortlake, the bow-tie and fastidious head of department, and assisted by two deputies.With ten days until Christmas, Mortlake decided to clear all the identification work that had accumulated.

The cleanup resulted in five days of meetings in a row that ultimately exhausted them all. Mr. Mortlake valued the thick forms that were filled out when the paintings arrived.He likes works best where the artist's information has already been written, so that at least a name and approximate date can be provided for the eventual catalog writer, so that the information of the work is naturally clear. His selected auctionable works are set aside.The secretary will write to the owner of the work asking if he would like to sell it for the proposed estimate.If the answer is yes, then a condition is placed on the original form: the painting must not be moved to another home.

If the answer is no, then the owner of the work will take the work back without delay.It costs money to put it here.Once selected, and upon receipt of the owner's authorization to sell, Mortlake selects works for upcoming auctions and prepares the catalog accordingly. Those little-known works by little-known artists that Sebastian Mortlake considered barely passable would have the words "attractive," meaning "if you Like this kind of stuff"; or "unusual", meaning "must have had enough to eat and nothing to do to create this". After authenticating some three hundred paintings, Mortlake and his two appraiser assistants are more than halfway through the process of authenticating the lesser-known works.He chose only ten, among them an astonishing work by the Dutch School, not by Adrian himself, but by a student, but acceptable.

Sebastian Mortlake never chose anything for Darcy's House for less than £5,000.The famous auction houses in Knightsbridge do not deal with cheap goods, and the auctioneer's commission is negligible when they sell below this price.A small auction house might accept a painting starting at £1,000, but not Darcy House.And, the next auction, scheduled for late January, already has lots of lots. Near lunch on the fifth day, Sebastian Mortlake stretched and rubbed his eyes.He has already identified 290 pieces of junk, but he has not found any treasures.It appears that ten "acceptable" items is the limit."We have to like what we do, but we're not a charity," he told his staff.

"How many more, Benny?" He turned to a young assistant appraiser behind him. "Only forty-four, Sebe," answered young Benny.He used a name that was familiar to everyone.Mortlake is adamant that, in order to create an intimate and friendly working environment, everyone in his professional work group calls each other that.Even the secretary addressed him by his first name; only the porters were addressed by his last name, and they all called him "Boss." "Is there a baby?" "I'm afraid not. There is no attribution, period, year, school of painting, or provenance."

"In other words, they are all amateur family collections. Are you coming tomorrow?" "Come on, Sebe, I think I'll come. Gotta tidy up." "Okay, Benny. So, I'm off to the board lunch, and then I'm headed home to the suburbs. You help me with the rest, okay? You know the trick. Write a polite letter, a Let the female secretary Deirdre enter the computer, print it out, and mail all the letters." After saying cheerfully, "Merry Christmas, everyone," he left.A few minutes later, the two assistants who participated in the appraisal meeting also left.Benny returned the last batch of paintings that had been authenticated (and eliminated) to the storage room, and took the remaining forty-four to the more brightly lit appraisal room.He's coming in the afternoon to appraise a batch, leave the rest for the next day, and then go home for Christmas.After finishing this, he took out a few lunch coupons from his pocket and walked towards the staff canteen.

He managed to finish judging thirty “unknown” works that afternoon before returning to his flat on Bush Road, Radbroke, north London. Twenty-five-year-old Benny Evans was able to enter the Darcy Building to work, which in itself was the result of unremitting efforts.The front office workers, those who actually deal with the public, are well-dressed and well-spoken characters; Between them are the uniformed doormen, the hostesses, and the porters in overalls who are responsible for hanging up, taking off, and moving artworks. Behind these facades and vases are specialists, the elite of whom are appraisers, without whose expertise the whole building would collapse.With their keen eyesight and amazing memory, they can distinguish the best of the mediocre, the real of the fake, and the dross of the fine with just one glance.

In the senior management, Sebastian Mortlake and his group can be described as big shots, because they have accumulated thirty years of rich work experience and business skills, they have the right to make decisions.Benny Evans is different. The keen Mortlake discovered the shining point in him, so he recruited Benny into Darcy Mansion. He doesn't look like he's in the business.To be part of the London art scene, one has to first look like that.He had no degree, no temperament, and his hair was so messy and lopsided on his head that if he visited the barber shop in Jermyn Street, even a senior barber would not be able to do anything about it.

When he arrived at Darcy's House in Knightsbridge, his battered plastic glasses still had duct tape wrapped around them.There's no need for him to dress casually on Friday - that's what he usually does.He spoke with a thick Lancashire accent.Sebastian Mortlake had stared at him in disbelief during the interview.It wasn't until he finished taking Benny's knowledge about the Renaissance that he insisted on hiring him regardless of his appearance and the objections of his colleagues. Benny Evans came from a commoner family in a side street in Bootle, the son of a factory worker.He was not outstanding in elementary school, and his grades were mediocre when he graduated from junior high school, and he has not received higher education since then.But an incident when he was seven made all other circumstances seem less important.His teacher showed him a book.

There were many colorful pictures in the book, and for some reason the child was fascinated by them.There are pictures of young women, each with a baby in their arms, with winged angels floating in mid-air behind them.The young boy from Bootle sees the Madonna and Child for the first time, by a Florentine school master.After that, his appetite became insatiable. He was a frequent visitor to the public library, where he spent his days studying the works of, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Tintoretto, and Tiepolo.He digested the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci like his friends munched on cheap hamburgers. As a teenager, he washed cars, delivered newspapers, and walked dogs for the rich. After he had saved up, he hitchhiked to tour the European continent.After visiting Italy, he went to study Spanish style, hitchhiked to Toledo, and spent two days studying the masterpiece in the cathedral and the Church of Santo Tomé.He then immersed himself in German, Dutch and Flemish schools of painting.At twenty-two, still penniless, he was a living dictionary of classical art.Sebastian Mortlake realized this when he showed the young job seeker around the gallery off the lobby.But even the flashy and brilliant Mortlake was missing something: intuition.You either have it or you don't.The ragged boy from Bootle Lane had an instinct for it, but no one knew it, not even himself. He came back to work the next day, and there were still fourteen paintings left to appraise, and the building was almost empty by this time.Technically, the auction house is still open to the public, and security guards are still on duty at the gates, but very few people are still on duty. Benny Ivans went into the appraisal room and began to appraise the last works of art.They come in a variety of sizes and packaging types.The penultimate painting is wrapped in sackcloth.He inadvertently saw that it was marked "D1601".When he saw the painting, he was taken aback by its condition: the original figures were covered in thick dirt.It is difficult to discern. He turned the painting over.Wood, a plank.Rarely, and even rarer, it's not oak.If the Nordics paint on wood, they mainly use oak.There is no oak on the Italian soil.Is this poplar? He put the small painting on the table, turned on a bright lamp, and tried to see through the stains from more than a century of soot and coal smoke.There is a seated woman in the painting, but no child.A man is bent over her, and she is looking up at him.The woman has a small cherry mouth, and the man has a round, bulging forehead. Benny's eyes hurt from the stimulation of the light.He changed the angle of the light to study the man.Something lightly touched his memory: the gesture, the body language... the man was talking and gesticulating with both hands, while the woman was motionless, listening intently. About the way the fingers were bent, hadn't he seen fingers bent like that before?But the most important thing is the face.Another small, tight mouth, and three fine vertical lines above the eyes.Where had he seen fine lines on his forehead that lined his forehead vertically instead of horizontally?He must have seen it before, but couldn't remember when or where.He glanced at the form he had filled out when he handed it in.A Mr. Te Gore, but no phone number.Damn.Having disposed of the last two paintings as worthless junk, he took the forms to Deirdre, the last female secretary left in the department.He dictated the general form letter of regret and handed her the form.Each form lists the estimated value of a painting that was submitted and rejected, along with the owner's name and address. Although there are thirty-four letters in total, only the title and estimated price of each work are different in the computer, and the rest of the content is the same.Benny watched for a moment with interest.He only knows superficially about computers, he can only turn on the computer and type on the keyboard, but he is not good at other specific operations.Ten minutes later, Deirdre was already typing the envelope, her slender fingers flying across the keyboard.Benny wishes her a Merry Christmas and leaves.As usual, he took a bus to the compound on Radbroke's Jungle Road.Looking at the sky, it seems to be raining and snowing. When he woke up, the little clock next to the bed told him that it was two o'clock in the morning.He could feel the sexy and warm body of his girlfriend Suzy sleeping next to him.They make love before bed, and that usually leads to a dreamless night.But this time he woke up, his mind was churning, as if something deep in his heart had kicked him out of sleep.He tried to think about what, other than Susie, he had thought about when he fell asleep three hours ago.The painting wrapped in sackcloth appeared in his mind. His head lifted off the pillow.Susie mumbled a few times in her sleep.He sat up and uttered a word into the dark bedroom. "Hate it, go to hell." The next day, December 23rd, he returned to Darcy's House in the morning.This time, the auction house was really closed.He went in through a side door. The place he is going to is the painting master reference room.There is an electronic keypad lock at the entrance, and he knows the combination.He stayed there for an hour and came out with three reference books in hand.He took the book to the identification room.The sackcloth-wrapped item was still on the high shelf where he had left it. He turned on the powerful spotlight again and fetched a magnifying glass from Sebastian Mortlake's drawer.With the help of books and a magnifying glass, he compared the face of the bowed man with other faces in the reference book under the artist's brush.One figure is a monk or saint: brown robed, clean-shaven, with a puffy forehead, just above the center of the brow, with three fine vertical lines of worry or brooding. After the appraisal was done, he sat alone in his world, like a man who stumbles over a stone only to discover King Solomon's treasure.He didn't know what to do.Nothing has been proven yet.He could be mistaken.The dirt on the painting is very serious.But he can at least remind his leadership. He rewrapped the painting in the sackcloth and left it on Mortlake's desk.Then he went to the typing room, turned on Deirdre's computer, and tried to figure out how to operate it.In less than an hour he was at work, typing letter by letter with his fingers, and typed a letter. When he was done, he asked the computer to print two copies.The computer fulfilled his request.In a drawer he found envelopes, one with Sebastian Mortlake's name on it and one addressed to Peregrine Slade, the board's vice chairman and chief executive.He put the first letter, along with the painting, on the desk of Mortlake, head of the department, and slipped the second letter under the door of Mr. Slade's locked office.Then he went home. It was unusual, but not impossible, for Peregrine Slade to be back in the office so close to Christmas.He lived just around the corner, and his wife Eleanor, who had lived almost all her life in Hampshire, must now be surrounded by her obnoxious relatives.He had told her he would not return to Hampshire until Christmas Eve.That would shorten the Christmas holidays and the host's time spent entertaining her troublesome relatives. In addition, it is necessary to inquire about some of the senior colleagues, which needs to be done in secret.He entered Darcy's House by the same side door that Benny Evans had left an hour before. The building was warm as spring—the heating would no doubt be switched off during the holidays, and some departments had sophisticated burglar alarms, including his office suite.He switched off the alarm system in his own office and walked through the now-empty outer office of Miss Priscilla Bates into his own inner sanctum. Here, he takes off his suit, grabs his laptop from his handbag, and connects to the main network.He sees two new emails, but he can wait until later.Before that, he wanted to drink some tea. Miss Bates, his secretary, usually did this for him, of course, but now that she wasn't at work he had to make the tea himself.He looked in her cupboard for the kettle, Earl Grey, bone china cups and lemons.He found the fruit and a knife he wanted.Then, while looking for a power socket for the kettle, he saw a letter on the rug behind the door.While boiling the water, he threw the letter on his desk. After making tea, he finally returned to his office and read the two emails.Both pieces of information are not important and can be dealt with after the new year.After entering a string of passwords, he began browsing the database files of department heads and other board members. After browsing through the information, his thoughts turned to his own personal problems.Although well paid, Peregrine Slade was not rich.As the son of an earl, what he inherited was only the title, and he didn't get any inheritance. He married a duke's daughter, but the woman had been spoiled and ill-tempered, and was convinced that she was entitled to a large estate in Hampshire, including a surrounding land, and a herd of expensive horses.Marrying Mrs. Slade was no easy feat, but she gave him a quick ticket to high society, which often helped his career. He has also added, as icing on the cake, a nice flat in Knightsbridge, which he justifies as being convenient for his commute to work at Darcy House.He got a job at Darcy through the influence of his father-in-law, and eventually climbed to the position of vice chairman, second only to the scathing chairman, the Duke of Gateshead. Smart investing may have brought him wealth, but he insisted on doing it himself, and it was the worst decision he ever made.The foreign exchange market is best left to geeks who know how to operate. Unaware of this, he invested heavily in the euro and watched the euro drop by thirty percent in less than two years.To make matters worse, he was heavily borrowed to invest, and his creditors had made it clear that they were going to foreclose.All in all, he was deeply in debt. Finally, there was his lover in London.It was the most shameful mistake he had ever made, a habit he could not get rid of, and it was costly.His eyes fell on the letter.It came in a Darcy Mansion envelope, so it was an inside letter.The letter was addressed to him, but the handwriting on the envelope was unknown to him.Doesn't the guy know how to use a computer or doesn't have a secretary?It must have appeared today, or Miss Bates would have seen it the night before.He was curious.Who is working all night?Who came before him?He tore open the envelope. The letter writer was obviously not very good at word processing software.Paragraphs are not formatted correctly.The letterhead "Dear Mr. Slade" was handwritten and signed by Benjamin Evans.He doesn't know this person.He glanced at the letterhead: Painting Master Appraisal Office. Some disgruntled employee must be whining.He began to read, and finally the third paragraph caught his attention. I believe it is not a broken fragment of a large altarpiece, since the shape and the edges of the panels do not seem to be detached from a larger picture. It may have been a single devotional painting, perhaps commissioned by a wealthy merchant for his private residence.Even after centuries of dust and pollution, it still seemed to bear some resemblance to a known work by a master painter... Peregrine Slade choked when he saw the name , spraying a mouthful of Earl Gray tea onto his Surka tie. Although it will cost some money, I think measures should be taken to clean up the painting and restore its original appearance. After the picture is clear, you can ask Professor Colenso to study it to increase its authority. Slade read the letter three more times.In the mansion next to Knightsbridge, with the lights of his office piercing the darkness alone, he kept thinking about what he could do.He used his computer to check the customer records to see who had sent it in.Te Gore.A man with no phone, no fax, no e-mail.There is only one real address for a cheap one-bedroom apartment in a ghetto.So, a pauper, and certainly an ignorant one.That leaves Benjamin Evans.Ok.The content of the letter is over, and there is such a line under the signature: Cc Sebastian Mortlake.Peregrine Slade rose to his feet. Ten minutes later, he came back from the painting master's appraisal office, holding the sackcloth package and the CC letter in his hand.The latter can be burned later.This is definitely what the vice chairman should do.At this time, his cell phone rang. "Perry?" He recognized the voice immediately.His mouth was dry and his voice was stiff and hoarse. "yes." "You know who I am, don't you?" "Yes, Marina." "What did you say?" "I'm sorry. Yes, Miss Marina." "That's pretty much it, Perry. I don't like it when you leave out my title. You'll pay for it." "I'm really sorry, Miss Marina." "It's been over a week since you last saw me. Huh?" "Work was busy on Christmas Eve." "You've been getting pretty naughty these days, haven't you, Perry?" "Yes, Miss Marina." His gastric juices seemed to be churning, and his palms were sweating. "So, I think we should do something about it, what do you say, Perry?" "Listen to you, Miss Marina." "Well, listen to me, Perry, listen to me. Seven o'clock sharp, boy. Don't be late. Waiting is the worst thing I can do when I'm impatient. You know that." The phone hangs up.His hands were shaking.She always scared him out of his wits, even the voice on the phone.And that voice, and what happened in the classroom afterwards, was the point.

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