Rare Traits (The Rare Traits Trilogy Book I) Read online

Chapter 15 : July 2009

  Ced’s run around the hills near Grasmere took longer than he’d anticipated, largely because he’d set off without a map. He eventually jogged back into Grasmere at seven in the evening, by which time even he was tired. He tucked into a large steak and three fried eggs at the Green Man, photographed the Andrews landscapes through the gallery window and left to negotiate a congested M6 motorway. Arriving home at midnight, he was asleep within seconds of climbing into bed.

  The next morning, he awoke with a start at eight. Saturday mornings were a time when he and Sally would pound the country lanes. That morning, Sally had left him to catch up on his sleep.

  He showered, made himself his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon and headed for his study to upload the images from his camera. As he finished, he heard Sally moving around downstairs.

  “Sal! Come and look at these!”

  Sally came upstairs with a towel draped over her shoulders.

  “That’s it, is it, marathon man? You disappear for the day, come home shattered at midnight and go straight to sleep, and now you’re buried in your computer without even a ‘Hi, good morning, Sal, my love, did you have a good day yesterday doing all my washing?’”

  He stood up and gave her a kiss. “Yeah, sorry, Sal. It was quite a day.”

  He sat down again, his eyes on the screen.

  Sally shook her head in resignation and put the cup of coffee and yoghurt she was carrying on the desk next to the monitor. Ced’s hand automatically reached out to the yoghurt, only to receive a slap.

  “Oy, Fisher, you’ve just had your breakfast, judging from the mess in the kitchen!”

  “Forgot about the yoghurt, Sal,” he said, swallowing a large spoonful.

  “Look at these. What do you think?”

  She bent to look at the three of the images he’d taken of John Andrews and the face of the shepherd in the Piero fresco.

  “‘The Awakening’ was painted when?”

  “Probably sometime in the 1470s. Certainly no later than 1485.”

  “Well, either John Andrews is very well preserved for his age or his gene line is surprisingly strong. The similarity is incredible. It’s a fifteenth century John Andrews.”

  Ced nodded. “Amazing, isn’t it? He said that people had commented on a similarity between his face and faces in Piero’s paintings – presumably he meant this one – and he was right. I wonder if he’s ever tried to trace his ancestry. He could easily be Italian, don’t you think?”

  “It’s the eyes that spook me, Ced,” replied Sally, looking from the painting to the photographs and back. “Eyes like that are pretty unusual. To see them in a Renaissance painting and on the face of a twenty-first century man whose other features are also identical is mind-blowing. But what does it mean?”

  “Dunno, really, other than ‘Genetics Rules!’”

  “Have you looked at any other Piero paintings to see if he used the same man? Perhaps this guy came from the local modelling agency.”

  Ced laughed. “I don’t think they had quite the same set-up in those days. He will have been a friend or a relative. I’ll have a look around the other Pieros I’ve got on file.”

  Sally kissed the top of his head and ambled off downstairs to continue her chores.

  Ten minutes later, she became aware of the sound of Ced’s fingers flying over the computer keys. He was normally fast, but this sounded frenetic. The sound was accompanied by grunts, oohs and gasps.

  “Sal! Come up here again!” he yelled.

  She put down the clothes she was folding and returned to the study.

  “Twelve, Sal! I’ve found twelve faces that could all be the man from ‘The Awakening’. Five of them are from the Legend of the True Cross cycle, mostly profiles, but one almost full face. Look! The similarity is incredible.”

  Sally looked over his shoulder at the screen.

  “Wow! Are these the five from the ‘Legend’? When was it painted?”

  “It was painted over a period of more than twenty years, so in some of these the model should have been quite a bit younger. But he looks much the same in all of them.”

  Ced paused to call up the shepherd again.

  “I’ve just realised. We’ve been studying the face and ignoring the hair. Here in ‘The Awakening’ it’s quite grey, unlike in the ‘Legend’. But if you ignore the hair, the age of the face appears to be no different from those in the ‘Legend’. Curious, huh?”

  Another thought occurred to Ced and he tapped manically on the keys. The image from ‘The Awakening’ filled the right half of the screen alongside a set of images on the left side from the ‘Legend’ that he’d placed one on top of the other. Keeping the image from ‘The Awakening’ visible, he flicked through the ‘Legend’ set, enlarging portions of each one and moving around them, studying the detail.

  Finally he sat back.

  “You know what, Sal? I think I’ve sussed it.”

  He stared at the images, concentrating hard. Nodding to himself, he then called up the remaining images from the twelve faces he’d found and ran his eyes over each of them. “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Well, genius, are you going to keep me in suspense much longer? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at and all that clicking is making me dizzy,” said Sally, bending over him and nuzzling his neck.

  He pressed his head against hers affectionately.

  “Look at the detail in the image on the right, Sal, and compare it with the others. They’re all good, but there is much more in the one from ‘The Awakening’. I reckon for that painting, Mr Andrews’ ancestor was present; he actually modelled for the painting. But for the others, I reckon Piero did them from memory.”

  He turned his head to her and grinned. “There could be a paper in this, Sal.”

  “Wow, marathon, man, I’m impressed! That’s quite a conclusion.”

  Ced spent the following two hours refining the images and comparing details from one image to the next. Then he stretched his arms above his head. A good morning’s work and it was still only eleven thirty. Time for a run.

  After two hours of pounding the country lanes near their house and racing each other on their bikes, Ced and Sally returned pleasantly weary and, in Ced’s case, ravenously hungry.

  Ced returned to his computer at around four in the afternoon and opened the hi-res image of Claudia’s painting, just to look at it and marvel at its detail and technique. Leaving the portrait on one side of the screen, he called up one of the landscapes from Andrews’ gallery window. It had reminded him of Francesco Moretti’s work and out of curiosity he wanted to run a Moretti against the Andrews to check the similarities and differences. From the online library, he retrieved a Moretti with a similar setting and placed it on the screen alongside the other two paintings. However, in his late afternoon weariness, he hit the wrong preset key and set the computer to work comparing all three images. The routine would take about ten minutes so he went to make a cup of green tea.

  Twenty minutes later, the program was still churning the numbers and Ced was drumming his fingers on the desktop, wondering what was taking it so long. A window finally appeared giving him a number of options. He hit ‘Cool’ – he had created his own buttons – and the screen filled with a complicated table of numerical results.

  He studied the data and frowned. They made no sense. Having accidentally included the portrait in the comparisons, he was expecting the results to indicate the same artist painted the Andrews landscape and portrait. They did – he couldn’t expect a complete match since the landscape image wasn’t hi-res and the two subjects were very different. What he hadn’t expected was that the data from the Moretti image indicated that it too was painted by the same artist as the other two, the match being stronger for the portrait than for the landscape.

  He entered the data into another statistical comparison program he had written to refine it further, and came up with the same answer. A cold feeling of panic crept over
him. He had been writing, refining, testing and rewriting his basic comparison program for over a year. It was now at a very sophisticated level and he had run a huge number of test comparisons with paintings of indisputable origin. Only in the very early days, when the programming was much cruder, had anomalous results such as these occurred. It could no longer happen. But it had.

  He stared at the screen. Something had gone wrong, a glitch in the programming. He decided to run the comparison again, but this time using only the two high-quality images – the Andrews old lady portrait and the Moretti landscape. He added a few extra parameters to highlight differences where they occurred and to place emphasis on brushstroke technique.

  This time he waited by the computer, willing it to hurry up, his fingers drumming impatiently on the desk. As he hit ‘Cool’, he wondered if it would be. It wasn’t. He ran his practised eye down the columns of data and saw immediately that the results indicated the level of certainty that the paintings were by the same artist was even higher than earlier.

  Absently tapping a thumbnail against his front teeth, he considered what to do next. An idea occurred. If the program was faulty or corrupted, a different comparison should show it. He called up the online library for the work of an English landscape artist, Philip Johnston, a contemporary of Moretti’s who had produced similar paintings. He located a scene similar to the Moretti and set the comparison program running, this time using the Andrews portrait and landscape, the Moretti and the Johnston. He paced the floor waiting for the result.

  When it appeared, he slumped back in his chair. “Shit!”

  “Something wrong, hon?”

  Sally had noticed the long silences in between the frantic key pounding and come to investigate.

  “Yeah, there’s something seriously wrong with the program.”

  “That can’t be right, hon, you’ve tested and tested it a million times. It’s always come up trumps.”

  “I know. But while it can differentiate a contemporary of Moretti’s and Moretti, as you would expect, at the same time it says the Moretti and both the Andrews are painted by the same artist.”

  “It said that?”

  “Yeah, makes no sense at all.”

  “Have you run other Morettis against Andrews’ paintings?”

  “Good idea. I’ll dig some out.”

  An hour later, a despondent Ced appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Sally looked up from her book and saw him standing there, head and shoulders drooping. She rushed over to him and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.

  “Come on, hon, it can’t be that bad. It’s gone too far and been too successful to fail now. You’ll find what’s causing the problem.”

  He laid his head on her shoulder. “What if I can’t, Sal? This sort of program has to be bulletproof. If it can’t distinguish between the work of two painters whose lives only overlapped by a couple of years, then it’s no good.”

  “Tell me what you’ve done.”

  “Well, I’ve run the two Andrews paintings against all the Morettis I can find and I get the same ridiculous results, basically that Andrews painted the Morettis, or vice versa. I’ve also run the Johnstons, and other Moretti contemporaries, all landscape artists, and none of them compares with either Moretti or Andrews, which is what you’d expect. And, of course, they differ from each other.”

  “So the only anomalous result is when you run Moretti against Andrews; for everyone else, you can distinguish them?”

  There was a silence.

  “Hon?”

  Ced was shaking his head.

  “No. I thought that was the case, but then I went a bit further.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ced sighed wearily; he could feel his world collapsing around him.

  “You know the case I’ve been working on recently, the eighteenth century forgeries?”

  “Yes, but I thought they were portraits.”

  “They are, most of them. But some of the artists also produced landscapes with country houses, grand homes, that sort of thing. Well, I thought they might be a useful alternative control. They’ve all behaved as expected so far, so if the program’s suddenly become corrupted somewhere, running them again might show it. So I linked up with the computer at the lab and called up a selection. There were ten artists in all that I had been comparing with the alleged forgeries. I ran all the genuine eighteenth century paintings against the Andrews, the Morettis, the Johnstons, and a couple of others. All was fine, all very distinguishable except one, and that one I can’t distinguish from either Moretti or Andrews. It’s ridiculous, Sal. How can that be?”

  “Who’s the artist?”

  “Jean de la Place. He’s a fairly obscure French artist who worked in England for twenty years or so, mainly in London and then, apparently, just disappeared.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “No, well, he was hardly big time. But it gets worse. De la Place specialised mainly in portraits; landscapes were a bit of a sideline. So I looked for what I had in the libraries on his portraits and found one good hi-res image. It’s of a middle-aged woman, semi-profile, rather like the Andrews old lady of Claw’s. When I called it up, I couldn’t help noticing how similar it was in style and technique to Andrews’ portraits; it’s got that same Renaissance feel about it.”

  “How did it compare with Claw’s painting?”

  “That’s the crunch. The analysis says the two portraits are by the same artist.”

  “Christ.”

  “I really don’t know what to do, Sal. Well, that’s not true. I’m going to dissect the program line by line, look at all the assumptions, routines, algorithms, etc., to check them. But you know, in my gut, I don’t think the program’s corrupted. Why should it go wrong for only some artists?”

  Ced worked on through the evening and into the night, checking and re-checking the code.

  At four in the morning, a bleary-eyed Sally wandered into the study.

  “Hon, don’t you think you should give it a break? You need to get some rest.”

  “I know, Sal, but it’s driving me crazy, I can’t find anything. I’m convinced that all the underlying principles I’ve used are sound; the algorithms were all very carefully crafted.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the quality of the images,” said Sally. “How many of the images you’ve been using have you made with your top notch kit, and how many are images from the libraries?”

  “The only one that I’ve made is the one of the portrait that Claw bought. All the others are from libraries, apart from the photo I took of the Andrews landscape, and I accept that that one is of limited quality. Why?”

  “So you have no control over their quality.”

  “No, but I allow for it. That’s one of the prime factors written into the program. I know that I won’t always be able to get direct access to an original painting to photograph it under controlled conditions with ideal lighting, so I’ve allowed for that in the programming. It affects the confidence factor of the result, but unless the image is total crap, you get something.”

  “Suppose there is something in the images that’s screwing the results, something you’re perhaps assuming is right that isn’t. Do you think it might be an idea to get access to some of these paintings and use your own kit? At least then you’d be comparing like with like; one potential variable would have been eliminated.”

  Ced rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose it could be worth a punt, but I really thought I’d got that one covered. There are several Morettis in the National Gallery, and some Johnstons. I could call Lawrence Forbes tomorrow – he owes me a favour – and go down to London.”

  Sal smiled at him as she saw his features relax. There was a glimmer of hope, a faint chance that the problem could be solved, and he had jumped at it.

  “Good, then I think it’s time you took your mind off computers and put your boundless energy to better use.”

  She took hold of his arm and
led him from his chair into the bedroom.

  Ced awoke with a start at seven-thirty, looked at the clock and started to get out of bed.

  “Where are you going, marathon man?” mumbled Sally sleepily. “I was on the podium accepting my Olympic gold medal for the pentathlon. You’ve ruined my moment of glory.”

  “It’s seven thirty, Sal, time for my run.”

  “Forget it, lover boy, it’s Sunday. Alternative sport day.” She yanked him back down and pulled the duvet over them.

  It was noon before Ced finally staggered out of bed, heading straight for the kitchen. He prepared them both some breakfast, put it on a tray and took it back to the bedroom.

  “Wow, breakfast in bed!” smiled Sally. “You must be feeling well relaxed this morning.”

  “It’s actually afternoon,” grinned Ced. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about the hi-res images. You could have a point.”

  “I have some of my best ideas at four in the morning,” smiled Sally.

  Lawrence Forbes was an old friend from Ced’s Cambridge days. They had studied fine art together and when Ced went on to study image analysis, Lawrence had taken a doctorate in European Art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now an assistant curator in the National Gallery’s European Art division, he was responsible for maintaining the Gallery’s extensive collection of works from that era.

  Forbes was one hundred per cent behind Ced’s project and had already used early versions of the program to confirm his doubts about several very good forgeries he’d been offered. He would be as devastated as Ced if it failed.

  Ced called him at home that afternoon and described the problem.

  “Gosh, Cedric,” replied Forbes in the clipped tones of his public school accent, “that’s jolly worrying news. There’s got to be some sensible explanation, you know. The fundamentals of your thesis are rock solid. Nevertheless, it’s a jolly good idea to get your own images. We’ve got plenty of Morettis stashed away and a few de la Place’s. Picked up one myself from a private sale not long ago. It’s a remarkable work too. De la Place was something of an enigmatic character. Not a lot known about him before or after his time in England. But from the little I’ve seen of his work, I’d say he’s very underrated.”

  “That’s brilliant, Lawrence, thanks,” replied Ced. “I knew you’d understand. Listen, I’m not going to be able to concentrate on anything else until I’ve got this sorted. D’you think I could come down in the morning?”

  “No problem, Cedric, old chap. I’ll dig around the store and get out the paintings you want. How’s the lovely Sally?”

  “She’s great, thanks, Lawrence; sends her love. Harriet and the kids OK?”

  “All wonderful, Cedric. Mind you, the kids can be a bit of a handful. Talking of which, old chap, got to dash. Little Algy’s yelling for something and Harri’s taken Jane to the park. Nanny’s day off too. Bit of a war zone in the sitting room.”

  With train delays, it was closer to noon by the time Ced arrived at Forbes’ office in the National Gallery the following day.

  Forbes looked pleased with himself. “Dug through the shelves for you, Cedric, and guess what? We have eighteen Morettis. Several are from his ‘Blitz’ series, but there are six sizeable landscapes with grand houses and so on. Found a similar bunch of Johnstons, too. Sort of stuff you’re after?”

  “Brilliant, Lawrence! That should put the program through its paces, although I’m afraid the only Andrews landscape I’ve got is a photo taken on a point and shoot. However, I do have an excellent image of a portrait – the painting the program matches with the Morettis and the de la Place portrait.”

  “Well, the other good news, Cedric, is that I’ve unearthed seven de la Place portraits.”

  “That’s brilliant, Lawrence. Where are they?”

  “Over here,” replied Lawrence, pointing to a large table in the corner of his huge office. “Come and take a look.”

  He walked over to the paintings, picked up the first one and handed it to Ced. It was a half-profile of a young woman in her early twenties in mid-eighteenth century clothing. Her pale brown eyes were looking back at the artist and her lips slightly parted as if in conversation. Ced held the picture spellbound.

  “How come I’ve never seen this before; it’s truly amazing. She looks as if she’s about to walk off the canvas into the room.”

  “So many artists, so little time,” replied Lawrence.

  “You know, Lawrence, it’s incredibly like the Andrews portrait. Take a look on my laptop.”

  Ced hit a few keys and Forbes peered at the screen.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed Forbes. “How remarkable. Better get your stuff out and run some image comparisons.”

  Ced set up his equipment on the table. It comprised an impressively compact set of lights together with a high-resolution large-format camera boasting scores of megapixels.

  Once he’d recorded his images and transferred them to the computer, he set the comparison program running. While he was waiting, he studied the details of each of the paintings. He found himself spellbound by the de la Place portraits, most of them of aristocratic-looking women of various ages. He shook his head and wondered. Suddenly he no longer felt confident his program would distinguish these paintings from the Andrews portrait; he was certainly unable to do it by eye.

  An hour later, the analysis was finished. Now there was no flourish when Ced hit the ‘Cool’ button, only a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  A glance down the column of raw data was all that he needed to confirm his thoughts. The results were as before, but worse since there were more paintings. All the de la Place portraits showed a very close match to the Andrews portrait and the Morettis. By contrast, the Johnstons that Forbes had provided as controls showed no similarity.

  Ced was on his own when he reviewed the results, Forbes having excused himself to search out another painting the de la Place portrait reminded him of.

  When he came back into his office, Ced was despondently packing up his equipment.

  “How are the results, Cedric?” asked Forbes, not registering the look of despair on Ced’s face.

  Ced glanced up at him. “Shattering, Lawrence, completely shattering. I don’t know why, but I’d become convinced that if I took my own hi-res images and compared them, the problem would be solved. Well, it wasn’t. It’s got worse.”

  Forbes nodded sympathetically. “There’s got to be an explanation, Cedric, we’re just missing it. I absolutely do not believe your program is flawed.”

  “That’s as maybe, Lawrence, and I’m grateful for your confidence, but I can’t use the program any more for my work until I’ve solved the problem. God, if this lot all goes pear-shaped, I’ll be a laughing stock. I’ve put so much store by this work and I’ve convinced a lot of people of its capabilities. I don’t know what to do.”

  He turned and continued to pack his cases.

  “Oh, before you put all that away, Cedric, you might want to take a look at this. I’m not trying to add fuel to the fire, but I suddenly remembered it and I think you might find it interesting.”

  He handed Ced the small painting he was carrying.

  Unbeknown to him, it was a portrait of Beth Markham painted by Tommaso Perini some years after their arrival in Arezzo.

  “It’s exquisite, Lawrence, and you don’t need to point out the similarities. But it’s old, much older than the de la Place portraits. You can see that from the clothes this woman is wearing, and from the overall condition of the painting.”

  “Do you know who it’s by?” asked Forbes.

  Ced looked up at him with a bitter smile. “John Andrews?”

  Forbes laughed. “Come on, Cedric, we’ll sort this out. It’s Tommaso Perini. Heard of him?”

  Ced thought for a moment. “Sixteenth century. Italian. Rome wasn’t it? No, that was another Perini. Um, Piero, I think. Let me see, Tommaso. Tuscany somewhere.”

  “Very good, Cedric
. He lived and worked in Arezzo. Although, like our friend de la Place, his life is shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. His early years, that is.”

  “It’s beautiful, Lawrence. Must be worth quite a bit. Where did you get it?”

  “Colleague of mine picked it up in Rome recently. Got it for a song. Quite a coup. The Italians would be hopping if they knew, even though it was a perfectly legitimate purchase.”

  “All’s fair in love and art, eh, Lawrence.”

  “Do you want to add it to your comparisons? When I saw the de la Places, they reminded me of it. It would be another good test for your program. It surely can’t match these others as well. When the program says it’s by a different artist, it will renew your confidence. Let’s do it.”

  “OK, Lawrence, if you insist, but I have a funny feeling about it.”

  Thirty minutes later, the program finished churning.

  “Moment of truth, Lawrence,” said Ced dryly as he clicked the ‘Cool’ button. He felt like a prisoner facing a firing squad.

  “Well?” asked Forbes as he watched Ced scan his eyes over the numbers. Ced scrolled down the screen to a results summary and the words: Match. Degree of confidence: 95%.

  Ced sat back, shook his head and uttered a brittle laugh. “You know what this means, Lawrence?”

  Forbes shook his head slowly, still stunned by the result he had been sure would be negative.

  “It means, my friend,” he said as he started to close the computer down, “that Tommaso Perini is alive and well and living in the Lake District.”

  Forbes smiled thoughtfully. He was silent for a few moments, and then a light seemed to switch on in his eyes.

  “There’s another explanation, Cedric, certainly with the Perini and I think with the de la Places,” he said slowly, his head nodding as he developed the idea in his mind.

  Ced waited.

  “You know, these paintings’ provenances aren’t really known too well. This Perini has appeared out of nowhere and while I was fetching it just now, I checked the records on the de la Places. They’ve all come out of private collections in the last ten years.”

  “Andrews,” whispered Ced.

  “Exactly. This John Andrews is a most accomplished artist, and consequently he could be a brilliant forger. We could have here the most remarkable set of forgeries discovered in modern times. And this could be the tip of the iceberg.”

  Ced’s mind raced with the possibilities. “What about the Morettis? Could he have produced those as well?”

  “It’s stretching things a bit. You’ve seen Andrews. How old would you say he is?”

  “Hard to say really. He could be a lived-in thirty, but he could also be a well-preserved forty-five.”

  “So let’s say he’s forty-five. That would mean he was born in nineteen sixty-four. The first of these Morettis came out of a private collection in nineteen eighty. He would have been sixteen.”

  “Mmm,” considered Ced. “Pushing it a bit, but not beyond the bounds of possibility. Child prodigy and all that.”

  “Well, let’s leave the Morettis aside for now; they’re too modern.” Forbes was now getting excited with his theory. “But we can certainly test the Perini and the de la Places. Andrews must have made a mistake somewhere. I’ll get our lab onto it. Sort of challenge they love.”

  Ced stood up and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “God, Lawrence, you’ve made me feel better. Listen, while your lab is doing that analysis, there’s something else I can do. You know Corrado Verdi in the Rome Art Academy, don’t you?”

  “Certainly. He’s the ultimate fount of all knowledge for Italian art from the Renaissance onwards; a mine of information. Name an Italian artist and he’ll list his works and tell you where they are, what condition they’re in and not only whether they’re available for sale, but also how much to pay for them.”

  “That’s Corrado. Well, it occurs to me that Andrews can’t have produced every Perini available everywhere, especially in the museums of Italy. Some of them must have been there since long before John Andrews was born. If I were to go to Italy, talk to Corrado, I’m sure he could arrange for me to make my own hi-res images of a number of Perinis that are one hundred per cent genuine. They must turn out to be different, even if the differences are subtle. That’s what this program’s designed to do: spot the subtleties to beat these buggers at their own game.”

  He slapped Lawrence on the back, nearly knocking him over.

  “Christ! No wonder Andrews was so reluctant to play ball. The man’s a master forger!”