Read Chapter 28: The Repair Slip Revisited

The testimonial draft lay in Clara’s lap, a neat stack of typewritten pages she’d been pretending to read for the past twenty minutes. The gallery’s reopening was scheduled for Monday, and the board wanted a statement from her—something warm and human that might overshadow the scandal. Sir Alistair’s name had been carefully excised from every paragraph. Julian’s arrest was to be referenced only obliquely, as “a procedural matter now resolved.”

She pushed the papers aside and reached for her bag, intending to dig out a pen. Her fingers brushed against something stiff, tucked into the inner pocket—something she’d forgotten entirely.

The repair slip.

She pulled it out, the paper creased and worn from weeks of being carried, read, and set aside. The front was ledger-dry: a dated entry for a gilded frame repair, the sort of administrative detail that belonged to another lifetime. But she flipped it over, as she had dozens of times, and looked at the faint handwriting on the back.

*J. Marchetti—LeFebvre chapel, 1944.*

She’d shown this to Adrian. They’d debated the name, the date, the connection to the estate. But in the chaos of the Zurich vault and Tomas’s confession and the flood of evidence she’d leaked to the press, the slip had slipped between the cracks. Now, with the morning light slanting through her office window, she read it again and felt the absence of a fuller answer.

She stood, crossed the corridor, and knocked on James’s door.

“The museum library,” she said. “Who manages the archive of conservation records?”

James looked up from a technical drawing. “Old Henderson, technically. But he’s been on leave since his hip went. We’ve had a temp in for three weeks. Why?”

“I need to look up a restorer. Last name Marchetti. Middle of the last century.”

James squinted. “Marchetti. There was a Francoise Marchetti—Italian restoration school, worked in London through the sixties. Did a cleaning of the *Rokeby Venus*, I think. But the one you’re after, if the slip is from during the war—that’s not a name we use much.”

“Why not?”

“Because he worked privately,” James said. “For families, mostly. The LeFebvres, the Rothschilds, a few others with country houses full of art they didn’t want anyone asking questions about. We have his diary, actually. Donated in 1987. I remember because the binding was red leather and the acquisition note said ‘personal papers, not for public display.’”

Clara didn’t wait for permission. She was already walking toward the stairs that led down to the library stacks.

---

The library at the National Gallery was a soft-lit cathedral of knowledge, its shelves rising two stories above a parquet floor worn smooth by decades of quiet footsteps. The temp at the desk blinked when Clara asked for the Marchetti diary.

“It’s in the restricted section,” the young man said. “Access requires approval from the director’s office.”

Clara took out her staff ID. “I’m the curator responsible for the LeFebvre acquisition. This diary is directly relevant to an active investigation involving that painting. You can call the director if you like, but I can also make one phone call to the Metropolitan Police's art crime unit and have someone here with a warrant within the hour.”

The temp’s eyes widened. He fetched a key from a locked drawer.

---

The diary was smaller than she’d expected, a pocket volume bound in cracked red leather, its pages thin as onion skin. Clara carried it to a reading table near the window and opened it with the practiced care her mentor Sylvia had drilled into her: gloves, flat pressure, never fold back the spine.

The entries began in 1940. Marchetti’s handwriting was a cramped, precise Italian script, but his French was clean, and his English—when he used it—was surprisingly fluid. He recorded repairs, travelled commissions, the names of servants who brought him tea in the houses where he worked.

Then, in September 1944, he wrote of the LeFebvre estate in Normandy.

Clara read the entry slowly, her finger tracing beneath each line.

*14 September. The chapel of Ste-Catherine, on the LeFebvre property, has been used by the family to conceal several paintings during the occupation. I have been asked to assess the condition of the large canvas—the one your grandfather called the Devotion of the Chapel, though no one who has seen it in years calls it anything but that cursed picture. The frame is warped from damp. I recommend removal for treatment, but the family refuses. They trust no one. The Germans took everything else they could transport.*

Clara turned the page.

*19 September. I have confirmed what I suspected. The painting is a copy. A good one—perhaps the best I have ever encountered—but the underdrawing is not consistent with what I know of the original artist’s technique. The family does not know. Or perhaps they do, and they do not care, so long as what hangs on the chapel wall looks the part.*

Her breath caught. She turned another page, nearly tearing the brittle sheet in her urgency.

*21 September. The original is hidden. I cannot write where—there are ears everywhere, and I have learned this war teaches caution better than any school. But I have noted it in the one place only I will remember. Should I not survive this business, I trust that God will forgive me for what I have done. The family believes I am helping them protect their heritage. I am, in my fashion. But I have also ensured that what is true will not be traded away for bribes or safe passage. I have hidden the truth where the truth belongs.*

The next entry was dated a week later, in Paris.

Clara flipped forward. She found more entries, about other commissions, but the LeFebvre job did not reappear until the entries of 1946.

*18 April. I return to the chapel. It has been a year since the war ended, but the family has not returned to the estate in full. The priest—a good man, loyal to the old ways—has kept the building intact. The painting hangs where it did. I do not disturb it. Some secrets are better left to gather dust.*

And then, a single line scrawled at the bottom of the final page, in a hand that trembled with age:

*The true painting rests where it has always rested, in the shadow of the saint who never left. The copy serves its purpose. Let it continue to do so.*

Clara stared at the words. The room around her vanished.

“Adrian,” she said, not looking up. She hadn’t heard him enter, but she felt him sit beside her.

“What did you find?”

She turned the diary toward him, pointing at the entry.

“Marchetti wrote that he hid the original. He says it’s ‘in the shadow of the saint who never left.’ The chapel on the LeFebvre estate is dedicated to Ste-Catherine. And I remember something from Sylvia’s notes—I never connected it before—but there was a crypt beneath that chapel. She mentioned it in an early draft of her provenance dossier, then cut it because she couldn’t verify the accounts.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened. “So the painting we found in Zurich was a copy. The one hanging in the gallery was a copy. The real one has been sitting in a crypt in the French countryside since 1944.”

“And the accomplice—the one who’s been selling and swapping all this time—probably has no idea,” Clara said. “Because Julian’s father orchestrated the theft, but he didn’t complete it. Marchetti got there first. He swapped the real painting out and left the copy for the looters to fight over.”

Adrian ran a hand through his hair. “How far is it to the estate?”

“A day’s drive, if we leave now.”

They were both silent for a moment. Then Clara carefully closed the diary and tucked it into her bag.

“Call the rental agency,” she said. “I’ll text the board that I need to visit a restorer in Normandy about a war-damaged panel. Given the circumstances, I don’t think anyone will question it.”

Adrian was already reaching for his phone. “And if the accomplice gets wind of where we’re going?”

Clara looked at him, and for the first time in weeks, she felt the sharp edge of something that was neither fear nor exhaustion—something closer to purpose.

“Then we’ll make sure they’re too late.”