Free The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter Page B

four chairs leaned against it. You could see this hadn’t been their first winter outdoors.
    It was Frau Schär herself who opened the door. A plump woman who had clearly been to the hairdresser that day; her hair hadn’t suffered a night’s sleep yet. She was in her mid-sixties, dressed in black, widowed a few days ago.
    Taking this into consideration, Véronique had agreed that instead of Frau Schär coming to the office, on this occasion Dr. Weynfeldt would visit her.
    She owned a few mountain landscapes by Lugardon which she wanted valued. She was considering parting with them, hard as it would be.
    Weynfeldt shook Frau Schär’s small, soft hand and expressed his condolences. She smelled of a far too youthful perfume with a very dominant lily of the valley aroma.
    Lunch smells hung in the air inside. Something must have been fried on a very hot flame. Weynfeldt walked past the door behind which Susi was barking frantically, into a living room. A large window filled with flowers opened onto a back garden the same size as the front, with a chalet-style structure.
    Frau Schär offered him coffee. Weynfeldt declined. He didn’t have much time, he said, and suggested they got straight down to business.
    Four of the paintings were hanging above the sofa, two leaning against its cushions. One of these was obviously a Lugardon. It showed a perpetually snow-topped mountain range with an alpine meadow in the foreground, painted in painstaking detail, a herd of Braunvieh cattle and a cowherd snoozing with his Swiss mountain dog in the shade of a rough-hewn alpine hut. Albert Lugardon, born in 1827 to a portrait-, landscape- and history painter, was seen as the inventor of “high-alpine realism.” The paintings had recently become fashionable again. Not really Weynfeldt’s thing though.
    Two years ago a similar landscape to the one on the sofa had fetched twenty-two thousand francs at one of Murphy’s competitors’ auctions. But that painting had been larger and arguably better. Frau Schär wouldn’t make more than ten thousand from this.
    The others were simply imitations, painted in the style of Lugardon, and this with little feeling or talent. They were all signed A. L. on the bottom right with dates from the late nineteenth century. To the best of Weynfeldt’s knowledge Lugardon had never signed his work solely with his initials. Whoever painted these pictures had clearly created a loophole in case anyone came sniffing around. They were worth nothing. Not to a house such as Murphy’s.
    Frau Schär had been watching Weynfeldt triumphantly as he examined the paintings. Now she explained, “I don’t know much about them, but whenever my husband got fed up with work he’d say, “Let’s just sell our Lugardons and live off the interest.”
    â€œOur Lugardon,” Weynfeldt corrected her. x“That one is the only Lugardon; the others are …” He restrained himself, and said simply, “The others are not Lugardons.”
    Frau Schär was speechless for a few seconds. Then she said. “You are mistaken. They have always been Lugardons.”
    â€œThere were lots of people who painted in his style at the time.”
    â€œBut it says A. L. Albert Lugardon. A. L.”
    â€œLugardon always signed his works using his full name.”
    â€œYou know every single one of his paintings, do you?” The rouge on her cheeks deepened as her face reddened.
    â€œOf course not. But every one I’ve seen was signed Albert Lugardon. Like this one.” He pointed to the genuine Lugardon.
    â€œAnd what is it worth?” she asked, businesslike again.
    If she hadn’t forced Weynfeldt to pass up his first chance in years for an afternoon with a woman he fancied, he might have pitched higher. Instead he said, “Eight thousand francs.”
    Frau Schär wouldn’t even let him use her phone to order a taxi. He was