The Paris Secret Read Online Free Page A

closed on private deals for them at Chatsworth
and in Dubai, and successfully bid in auctions in New York, Zurich and Los Angeles. Tonight, if she got it for the right price, the Warhol would fill the remaining blank wall above the bed in the
master suite. The client’s wife had already instructed her decorators to repaint the room in gold leaf in anticipation of its arrival.
    The auctioneer, Giles, whom Flora knew from a (very) brief fling at university – dubious taste in pants, predilection for spanking – shuffled his papers and raised his head. The room
fell into a hush again and Flora set to work.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we come now to lot twelve: one pink-and-black Marilyn print from the
Reversal
series, by Andy Warhol. Executed 1979 to 1986, the year before his untimely
death. This is an acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas.’ As he intoned venerably, his voice ringing crisp as a bell through the suspended crowd, Flora tried not to recall the sobbing messages
he’d left on her phone when she’d finished with him. ‘Unframed . . .’
    Flora listened like a teacher’s pet, even though she already knew what was coming next. She had fully examined the provenance and condition reports and was unperturbed by the hairline
craquelure at the pull margins.
    She was so absorbed that it took her a moment to realize Angus had taken his seat beside her, his tight strawberry blonde curls damp with sweat, round cheeks rosy, panting slightly as though
he’d actually sprinted here from the airport. He had barely made it in time and she could see he was stressed, his favourite thing to be.
    ‘How’s it going?’ he stage-whispered, loosening his tie slightly as the bidding started up.
    ‘Fine.’ She kept her eyes on the auctioneer, her back straight as she kept track – without moving her head – of who was throwing their hat in the ring, clocking who was
sitting with whom, representing whom, who was staying silent and still, who had turned down the corners of their catalogues to this lot, circled it with fountain-pen ink . . . It was no coincidence
that she was an exceptional high-stakes poker player.
    ‘I thought—’
    ‘Don’t talk,’ she murmured, her eyes sticking on a man in a grey suit in the opposite corner, sitting angled in his chair, one arm slung across the back of it. He had placed an
early bid but then fallen quiet; she could tell from his body language, though, that he wasn’t out of the game yet.
    She didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t a dealer, trader or collector that she was aware of and the fine-art world was a small one. Since graduating from St Andrews with her degree in
history of fine art six years earlier, Flora had worked in various roles at Phillips, Christie’s and the Saatchi Gallery before joining Angus’s eponymous agency, Beaumont’s Fine
Art Agents, last year as a junior partner; as such, she was exceptionally well connected. She could put a name to nearly every face in this room and had sipped Manhattans at one time or another
with most of them.
    ‘Sorry. Sorry, you do your thing,’ Angus whispered, sitting back and raking his fingers through his curls, as though loosening them.
    The phones were busy too. Flora watched the Sotheby’s staff, looking for who was talking most to their clients. Anyone who needed ‘talking up’ would be out early; it was the
quiet ones she was interested in. She calculated there were two serious buyers there.
    The guy in the grey suit was still sitting in his almost louche position but the sinews in his neck kept twitching and she could see the tension in his hands as he tried to keep from raising
them, to get back in the game.
    Flora looked again at the phone bank. They were down to one there, the paddles in the air growing fewer as the numbers increased and the painting steadily slipped out of reach of the majority,
like a yacht that had loosed her moorings and was heading for the horizon.
    The auctioneer was looking round the