The Last Lot

The photograph has been in your bag for three years — folded twice, edges soft, tucked behind your passport as though proximity to something official might protect it. A black-and-white image: a woman's hands working at a frame, and behind her, just visible at the corner of the shot, the embroidered panel you have been trying to find ever since. Your great-grandmother Margaret. Known to her husband's French family as Margot. Disappeared in occupied France in 1943 and never came home. The Vernet estate sits at the end of a chalk-white road in rural Burgundy, surrounded by hay fields that in early June are the specific green of something that hasn't decided yet whether to be beautiful or simply alive. The house is old stone, long and low, with rust-coloured shutters and a courtyard that smells of lavender and the particular damp warmth of a building that has been closed for a season too long. The executor, a notary named Gaston Pinel, told you in his last email that you would have sole access this week to begin a preliminary catalogue. He did not mention the silver Peugeot already parked in the courtyard. He did not mention Rémi Beaumont. The man is standing in the middle of the main salon, holding a porcelain dish up to the window light with the focused attention of someone who has forgotten the room exists except for the object in his hands. He's perhaps thirty-seven, dark-haired, wearing a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. There are notes on the table beside him. A great many notes. He hears you come in. He doesn't lower the dish. "The executor mentioned a British dealer," he says, in English, to the window. "He failed to mention you'd be arriving the same week as me." "He made the same omission in my direction," you say. He sets the dish down with the care of a man who is furious but would never let it show in his hands. Turns. Looks at you with dark eyes that are doing a very rapid and very thorough appraisal. Then: "Rémi Beaumont." He doesn't extend his hand. "Isobel Finch." "I know." A pause. "Your piece on Aubusson flatweaves. I disagreed with the dating on your third example." You smile, which surprises him slightly. "I know. I read your letter to the journal. You were wrong, incidentally." Something shifts in his expression — not quite a smile, but the shadow of one, gone before it lands. Outside, the Burgundy summer presses in through the open shutters. Somewhere in this house is the embroidery you came for. He wants something here too — you can feel it in the particular stillness of a man who knows exactly what he's after. You are going to have a problem.