as many as half a dozen at once, and they were of black silk. This lady’s single patch is red.”
“Because colored patches are a more recent trend,” Vera murmured. “But this is a signed painting.”
“Signatures are the easiest part of a painting to forge,” Mr. Dorning said, bending close enough to sniff at the canvas. “Brushwork is much harder to duplicate, and many artists have peculiarities of palette that come from the specific dyes available to them in their locality and period. This painting doesn’t smell fifty years old.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Take a sniff.”
Sniffing paintings was decidedly eccentric. Mr. Dorning apparently sniffed paintings as a matter of course, and thus Vera complied.
“It smells like a painting.”
“Exactly, like the oils and pigments used to create it. To lose that scent takes years, and during those years, the painting will acquire the odor of coal smoke if it hung over a fireplace, perhaps a hint of tobacco if the portrait graced a gentleman’s study. I’ve come across paintings that smelled of lavender or tallow, based on where they’d spent the previous twenty years. Then too, I’m almost certain this canvas is linen.”
“Dirk occasionally painted on linen.”
“But hemp was the preferred type of canvas in France for much of the last century, and most French artists still use it. I prefer hemp myself, finding the fibers less troublesome than linen.”
Vera stalked away, not in the mood for a discourse on the merits of hemp versus linen. “I can’t sell forgeries.”
“I’m delighted to hear it, Mrs. Channing, for I could not be associated with such an endeavor.” Mr. Dorning prowled after her, and though the gallery was flooded with late morning sunshine, he conveyed the sense of a thundercloud rolling across an unsuspecting landscape.
“I was under the impression,” he went on,” that my task here was to restore older paintings to better condition, not appraise forgeries or support their sale.”
Vera stood before a bow window that overlooked the side garden. Paddocks of lush summer grass stretched beyond the scythed lawn, and where the paddocks ended, the overgrown hedgerow shaded a stream and a walking path. On the far side of those trees, the ground turned into a mire for most of the year.
That progression—from garden to bog—was like this conversation.
“I do need to have a substantial number of paintings cleaned and restored,” Vera said, hoping to stick to the path of truth. “If I can sell some of the more valuable items, that’s all to the good.”
“Must you sell them?” Mr. Dorning asked, propping a shoulder against the window frame.
He had the rangy, muscular dimensions of a plowman, and yet, he knew art. The combination was disconcerting and intriguing. Dirk had been a compact, tidy man of economical movements, quicksilver emotions, and grand ideas. Mr. Dorning was lanky of frame, and his mind seemed to prowl along logical, even shrewd, paths.
Why else would he be asking about Vera’s finances within twenty-four hours of meeting her?
“My step-daughter, Catherine, is fourteen,” she said. “Her antecedents are irregular. Dirk never married her mother, though the lady lived with him here as his hostess. I suspect Catherine’s mother was married to somebody else, otherwise Dirk would have sanctified their union.”
“You suspect? You aren’t sure?”
That frown did not bode well for Mr. Dorning’s continued interest in working at Merlin Hall. “Catherine is not at fault for her parents being unable to marry, Mr. Dorning. She’s a perfectly lovely girl, and she needs a more-than-lovely dowry. Dirk promised me the Hall was full of treasures, but in several years of trying, I haven’t found those treasures. You give me cause to doubt they exist.”
Mr. Dorning was surrounded by art, and yet, he studied Vera. “And if I cannot find your treasures, will you expect me to clean up the forgeries so you can pass them off as part of Dirk Channing’s collection?”
Vera sank onto the bench before the window. Fine motes of dust danced in the slanting beams, and the warmth of the sunshine was pleasant.
While this discussion was most unpleasant. Why had she never pressed Dirk for specifics where his damned treasures were concerned?
“If I knew I could sell forgeries without risk of discovery, Mr. Dorning, I’d be tempted. Catherine needs generous settlements, and Alexander will require means to run this estate when he eventually controls it. Those who buy art are seldom pressed for coin. They can afford to pay for their pretty acquisitions.”
Mr. Dorning remained standing at the opposite end of the bench. “Is there a but,