Deceptions by Anna Porter (pride and prejudice read .txt) 📕

steps, peered down the chute, and, finding nothing — the little girls were again waiting their turn — he straightened and looked around the playground, shouting “Sofi!” again. It was then that he noticed Anna laughing, her shoulders jiggling with the effort to keep it in. No, she would not be laughing like this if . . . And Sofi emerged from behind the trunk of a chestnut tree.

“It wasn’t my idea, Apu,” she said when Attila landed on his ass near the slide. “It wasn’t.”

Attila picked her up and hugged her, his back to Anna. He didn’t want to let her see the tears in his eyes. “Ice cream at the Ruszwurm,” he managed to say, as he grabbed Anna’s hand (no protests this time) and, carrying Sofi in the crook of his other arm, began the long ascent to the top of Castle Hill.

Helena had watched the slow procession of Attila and his girls but didn’t want to intercept them. She had agreed to meet him later and interrupting him while he was practising his paternal duties would be not only unwelcome but awkward. She adjusted her wide sunglasses, pulled her black hoodie over her hair, and took the winding path down to Fő Street.

Adam Biro didn’t respond to her persistent buzzing.

She waited under the winged lion, made a reasonable display of texting on her burner phone (it was not connected to the internet), rummaged absent-mindedly in her large bag, and waited until a chatting couple opened the door to let themselves and Helena into the courtyard — a big, paved open space with a few small trees in containers, some boxes of flowers, and a view all the way up to the top floor of the building, with doors opening onto the terraced walkway on each level. While talking and gesticulating excitedly in French, she indicated to the couple with an upraised palm that she was too engaged to find her own key. She continued the pantomime until the couple stepped into the elevator.

She took the steps up to the third floor and rang Adam Biro’s bell.

Again, no response.

She waited a few minutes, rang the bell again, and kept ringing it another couple of minutes for emphasis. When that didn’t elicit a response, she slipped the knife out of her sleeve and out of its sheath, inserted its point into the lock, and opened the door. She was delighted that it took less than a minute. The last time she had jimmied a lock, she had been worried that she had lost her touch. It had taken too long and left nasty marks on the paintwork. She had been trying to see a painting offered for sale online that had been purloined from a private collection. Fortunately, Toronto’s finest had set out to find a couple of young men and ignored the well-dressed woman sipping her juice on a porch. When asked whether she had seen anyone suspicious-looking in the neighbourhood, she was able to tell them that it had been a quiet evening. Rosedale liked quiet evenings.

No one would suspect that she had recovered a stolen Matisse from the lovely Georgian house with its porticoed veranda and crystal chandeliers — no one except the man who had paid the thief and the man for whom she had recovered a special gift.

The hallway was narrow and dark. She stood for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust to the general gloom of the apartment. She walked slowly into the living room, dank, airless, curtains drawn, tall windows shut. Smell of burnt toast. Bacon. Large pieces of furniture blocking her way, a wide table with something in the middle. She slipped by the chairs and the too-wide sofa, made her way into what had to be a darkened bedroom.

Still no sounds in the apartment. Dogs barking outside but far away. She felt her way along the wall and switched on the light. It was a blue stand-up with an elaborate tasselled lampshade that failed to do justice to the multicoloured woven silk carpet under her feet or to the jumble of drawings crowding the walls. She examined them with her flashlight. There were some precise pen-and-ink nudes, some sombre faces, a few bearded hunched figures, all signed, though she didn’t recognize the names. In the corner, surprisingly, a Matisse; two, maybe three Picassos over the bandy nightstand; a long horizontal etching that could have been a Rembrandt; a Renoir with orange ink shading; a Van Gogh sketch of a windmill, and another of a couple at a table with a bottle between them. What the hell?

The bed was a jumble of sheets and pillows, with discarded pyjamas on the art deco dresser. Flattened woollen slippers. A half-filled long-stemmed crystal glass on an ornate, perhaps Louis XV, marble-topped commode. She used her scarf to pick up the glass. It smelled of cheap, pungent brandy.

The wardrobe was of the same vintage as the commode. Two doors, curved gilt lines running around them, brass-handled drawers. There were several suits inside, dark blue, dark brown, black, and folded shirts and underwear, all white. One small pair of muddy, black lace-up shoes, worn down heels. Several large lace-up brogues; perhaps two men lived here.

A still damp towel in the bathroom. Gold fixtures, marble tub, bidet.

The living room was overfurnished, as if it were used to store pieces from another, much larger home. A bronze sculpture of a Hindu deity with four arms dancing on an old writing desk that was maybe a Napoleon III. Helena hadn’t paid much attention to furniture in her art history classes, but this one did seem to be genuine, even down to the thin line of gold filigree around the edges. The drawer came out reluctantly.

Inside, there were piles of thin paper with long lists of names and dates, an example being “Cardinal Borgia by Velázquez: Prince Rupert II 1788–?, Collection of Liechtenstein 1922–1940, Knoedler Gallery 1940–1957, Colnaghi Gallery 1957–1978, Predelict Gallery 1979–2005 . . .”