“Right now?” Their estate was twenty-some miles east of here, among the mansions of Long Island’s north shore.
Mr. Moretti lit his own cigarette, and wispy curls of smoke snaked up to the ceiling, spreading throughout the car. “Well, we’re here, you’re here.... No time like the present.”
Lauren tried not to cough but failed.
“But do you have time, dear?” Christina asked. “We’re not going all the way to the country house. Just to the Fifth Avenue apartment.”
Fifth Avenue. She could manage a detour of a few blocks. With effort, Lauren steadied her breathing and agreed.
Minutes later, she stepped inside the most opulent penthouse apartment she’d ever seen. Larger-than-life oil paintings hung in ornate frames in the entryway. The space opened into a drawing room that had been styled to resemble a German hunting lodge, complete with dark wood beams on the ceiling, a chandelier fashioned of elk antlers, more wood paneling the walls, and a taxidermy bear standing at full height beside the massive stone fireplace.
“Don’t worry, Dr. Westlake, I have my own salon.” Holding her cigarette between two fingers, Christina beckoned Lauren through a set of double glass doors and into what appeared to be a salon right out of Versailles. Cream-colored furniture was gilded with gold leaf and upholstered in shades of blush and pink. A pug sat on a round tufted ottoman, eating undercooked steak from a silver tray while a servant stood ready to take the remains away. Toile wallpaper depicted scenes from the French countryside between floor-to-ceiling silk drapes.
And all this inside a stately-looking brownstone. Lauren had never seen anything like it.
“Over here, Dr. Westlake. Come take a look at this.” Mr. Moretti led the way into the dining room, and Lauren covered her gaping mouth. Life-sized hieroglyphs and vignettes covered the walls inbold colors that fairly leapt off the plaster. It was a landscape of stiffly posed Egyptians going about their daily tasks.
“Who painted this?” Lauren asked. It looked as though it could have been done by one of the restoration painters on the Met’s Egyptian department team.
Mr. Moretti waved the question away. “I hired the work out. I used lantern slides to project the images on the walls, and painters had no trouble tracing the forms and filling them in with color. But that’s not what I wanted you to see, although I’m gratified by your reaction. Look here.”
The dining room table had been customized so that a glass case was set into its surface. The case was three feet long, the perfect proportions to display a two-and-a-half-foot length of the Book of the Dead, which was a common collection of spells to help navigate the afterlife. What an odd choice of art to join the Morettis and their guests for meals.
“Isn’t it morbid?” Christina asked. “This is where we eat and entertain, for goodness’ sake.”
“That’s what makes it perfectly placed,” her husband countered. “It’s a reminder to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!”
Removing her hat and gloves, Lauren leaned over to inspect it with a magnifying glass Mr. Moretti supplied.
“Well?” he pressed.
“The fibers of the papyrus look authentic. The text, too, has been written with a steady, confident hand, which is a good sign. Forgers often wobble or make other mistakes.”
“Such as?” Christina asked.
She moved the magnifying glass over the figures. “The ancient Egyptians represent the human form in ways that don’t make sense to us, and if forgers aren’t careful, they’ll ‘fix’ part of the body without realizing what they’ve done.” She looked up and pointed to the wall where a woman had been painted with her hands outstretched. “You see the position of her thumbs? That’s not natural, but that’s how the Egyptians painted them. And the way the eyes face fronteven though they are on a profile. Some forgers don’t pick up on the fact that men are always painted red-brown, and women are always painted yellow. Furthermore, men are portrayed with one leg forward, as if in motion, whereas women are typically portrayed with feet together.”
Mr. Moretti looked from the wall to the papyrus, squinting at the figures drawn there. “I don’t see any of those mistakes here.”
Lauren smiled. “Neither do I. Your section here looks immaculate.”
“Really?” Christina frowned. “It looks a little tired to me.”
Lauren allowed herself a laugh. “If you were three thousand years old, you’d look a little tired, too. Honestly, if the ink was darker and easier to read, that would be another sign it was faked. But to my eye, this appears appropriately tired, as you say.”
Mr. Moretti squared his shoulders. “Well, you’ve set my mind at ease, Dr. Westlake. My habit is to make my purchases personally or through my buyer in Cairo or Luxor, but when I came across this opportunity, I couldn’t pass it up.”
Only half listening now, Lauren leaned in closer, studying the figures once more.
“You noticed something else.” Wariness edged his voice.
“It may be nothing to worry about,” she hedged.
“Too late for that.” Mr. Moretti’s smile looked more like a grimace. “What’s giving you pause?”
She straightened, gathering her wits about her. The last thing she wanted to do was cause alarm unnecessarily, especially since his relationship with the Met was already tenuous. But he was already agitated by her hesitation, so she drew a deep breath and forged ahead.
“It’s the coloring in the corner. Do you see this body of water? It would have been painted blue.”
