“Tilly, I hope you and the family are doing well.” The voice on the audio file crackles with warmth and age. It belongs to my mentor, Cecil Danby, a world-renowned art conservator. Among his many accolades is his conservation of Johannes Vermeer’sThe Concert, recovered years after it was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Cecil is pushing eighty and has mostly retired, though he still dabbles in the occasional project. It’s nice to hear his voice.
“A collector reached out to me about this piece and asked for you by name. It’s a complicated project, but one you’re uniquely skilled to tackle—you’ll understand when you open it. I’ve spoken to Raoul already”—Raoul Grady, the head of GIA and my boss—“and because this collector agreed to have this piece, and the entirety of the collection, included in the upcoming modern art exhibit, he said you can be a hundred percent on this project.”
I’m surprised to hear this, because Raoul rarely lets anyone be “a hundred percent” on any project. He believes that creates a stagnant conservator and prefers that his teams work more fluidly. Whatever is in the package must be of some value, or have historical significance,for it to be worthy of an exhibit. This makes me even more curious, beyond the collector asking for me specifically. I have plenty of experience but am not well-known like Cecil is or my mother was.
“You’ll need an air-lock room, as the fire damage is severe,” Cecil continues. “It’s going to require a high level of skill. I would have loved to take a crack at it, but you have much younger hands and eyes than I do.” As he laughs I picture him—a full head of white hair, knees nearly to his chest as he sits (he’s tall, six foot six). Gray slacks riding up his ankles, showcasing a pair of the brightly colored socks he wears, a bow tie at the neck of his button-up shirt. I smile, nostalgic for my younger self, when I worked with Cecil. Before Wyatt, before Clementine, before half my brain was constantly running a program trying to replicate her.
I glance at the shipment, now out of its crate and secured on a dolly. The packaging surrounding the piece is puffy, telling me the interior is filled with air to help protect the art. Fire damage is some of the hardest and most painstaking work.
“Another thing, Tilly.” Cecil pauses now, and I hear him take a breath. “This is highly sensitive, so please keep it between us.”
I immediately press stop on the recording. I slide earbuds in and then hit play again. “We believe this is a Charlotte Leclerc. Her final piece.”
I’m gobsmacked.Charlotte Leclerc?My heart rate increases enough that my watch—knowing I’m at rest and therefore shouldn’t have such a high rate—lets out a series of vibrations against my wrist. Shivers run through me, the hairs on my arms rising.
Charlotte Leclerc was an obscure American surgeon turned artist from the 1980s whose only child choked to death at the age of five. The details of this tragedy are scant, but it’s apparently what prompted her to leave medicine and turn to art. Leclerc was known for using natural materials, like fingernails, hair, insect parts, and even human blood, in her work. Her macabre methods remain mysterious to this day, as she never spoke publicly of them, or of her art in general. Famedin art circles, she was otherwise unknown. At least until her death, which caught the attention of the general public for a short time, giving Charlotte Leclerc and her art a name in mainstream media until the next news cycle took over.
There are three known Charlotte Leclerc paintings, owned by one anonymous collector. But a fourth? It’s only rumored to exist. There’s lore she was working on a fourth piece when she died tragically at the age of forty-one, in a fire. A neighbor, who was a shift worker and kept odd hours, told a reporter she saw Charlotte Leclerc through her attic’s studio window at five a.m.She had something in her hand, a paintbrush I’m guessing? I could see the easel through the window but couldn’t say if she was painting anything, the neighbor said when questioned.It was early…I was tired, coming home from my shift.
What was she like? As a neighbor?the reporter asked the middle-aged woman in the purple nursing scrubs, the burned-out top half of Charlotte Leclerc’s suburban house behind her.
Quiet. Keeps her lawn tidy, the woman replied, glancing down presumably at the grass.She’s a private person, and I respect that. No one likes a busybody.
The fire broke out around six a.m., fire marshals determined. Most everything in the studio was burned, Charlotte Leclerc’s charred bone fragments all that were left of the artist. No work in progress was found in the debris, however, and it was presumed Leclerc’s legacy consisted of only the three paintings.
Until now.
However, my increased heart rate and goose bumps have less to do with Cecil’s revelation, exciting as it is, and more with my personal connection to Charlotte Leclerc. It explains why a collector might ask for me by name, why I’m “uniquely skilled” to conserve such a project.
My mother worked on the third Charlotte Leclerc piece,The Child, surmised to be painted in remembrance of her dead daughter. Mom always saidThe Childconservation was the highlight of her career, but the experience changed her. I was sixteen and self-absorbed, so whileI noticed these changes in my mother, I didn’t really contemplate what they meant.
She became more withdrawn, muttering as she padded about our house, using conservator lingo I didn’t yet understand. Eyes glassy and red from lack of sleep, she spent so much time with the painting sometimes she didn’t get home from the museum until dawn. During those six months I often ate dinner alone. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at me across the room, and when I’d ask, “What?” in the way egotistic teens do, there was a lag before she’d blink, responding, “Nothing…just thinking.”
Then, there were the strange occurrences, the “bumps in the night” never explained, and, toward the end of the project, the nightmares. The panicked shouts from my mother’s room that woke me out of my own slumber. I never told her I too had nightmares around that time—dark, gauzy, hard to remember once I woke up. Eventually they stopped, Mom’s moxie returned, and after I left for university we never spoke about Charlotte Leclerc again. A year and a half later she was gone.
“It was found in a long-ignored storage locker when the police precinct was being refurbished,” Cecil continues, bringing me back. “Oddly, the piece isn’t mentioned in the evidence log. Likely overlooked because of the damage, no one realizing what it was. You’ll understand when you see it. It’s both intact and burned beyond recognition.”
I take shallow breaths as I listen, my watch buzzing along to my racing heart against my goose-bump-prickled skin. I’m captivated, though fighting to stay in the present. I can’t stop the mental drift toThe Child. To my mother.
“If this truly is the fourth Leclerc…well, I don’t need to tell you what this means, Tilly.” No, he doesn’t. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I’m so engrossed in Cecil’s message that I don’t notice Isla, my apprentice, sliding a cup of coffee onto my desk, like she does everymorning. It’s not part of her job, but Isla is the ambitious sort who looks for every opportunity to stay top of mind. However, today I’m startled by the mug’s sudden appearance and throw out my arms, sending it careening across my desk.
“Oh shoot!” I jump up, grabbing my tablet before the pool of dark, hot liquid reaches it. With my other hand I yank out one of the earbuds.
“Tilly—I’m so sorry! I thought you saw me there.”
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” I say, setting my tablet on my chair. The coffee drips onto the floor.
Isla races to the small kitchen halfway across the room, returning with an absorbent cloth. I’m the one who knocked the mug over and should be cleaning it up, but Isla resists my attempts to help. She makes quick work of it.
“That’s the talk of the lab,” Isla says after wiping up the spill, eyeing the package with curiosity. “Do you know what it is?”
“I do,” I reply, but add nothing further. Isla nods, professional enough to not ask any follow-up questions. The aroma of roasted coffee hangs in the air between us, the soaked cloth still in her hand. “Can you have it moved to Room D for me, please?”
She gives me a raised-eyebrow look—she knows Room D is our most secure work area, the place any original artwork goes. The room sits mostly empty these days. The video feed is protected, as is the door code. If you’re using it, you’re the only person who has access to both.
“You bet,” she says. She tosses the coffee-soaked rag into the laundry chute before typing into her phone. “Need any support on this one?” she asks, keeping her tone light and easy.
