CHAPTER ELEVEN-A — THE LAST BUYER
After the interrupted auction, the woman who had asked about her deposit found Daniel on the pavement outside the hall.
Her name was Iris Calder, and she had travelled from Montreal because her father had collected Ada Venn’s early drawings.
She told Daniel she was not interested in purchasing another object that came with an argument she could not understand.
However, her father had once bought a limestone figure of a man carrying a stack of folded chairs.
He had died before explaining where the figure came from, and Iris had always assumed it was an anonymous carving.
Carol heard their conversation and approached cautiously.
She asked whether the man’s left shoe had a small square notch in the heel.
Iris stared at her.
“My father used to say the sculptor made a mistake in the shoe,
” she said.
“He always thought it was funny.”
Carol shook her head.
“Ada carved that notch because the man who posed wore a wooden insert after an injury at the factory.”
The statue belonged to the original Twelve Ordinary Days and had disappeared after Carol returned it to Bellweather’s men.
Iris took a slow breath and asked what it would mean if she brought the statue back to town.
Ruth joined the conversation and suggested that Iris first decide what she wanted, without pressure from the people hoping to reconstruct the walkway.
Daniel was struck by the answer because everybody seemed to have spent the week issuing demands in the name of art.
Iris admitted she had been planning to donate her father’s collection to a museum but had not chosen one.
Julian explained that temporary loans and public access were possible without requiring her to surrender ownership immediately.
Iris asked whether the other figures had survived.
Carol answered that several had, though some locations were still uncertain and one piece had been badly damaged years earlier.
Iris looked toward the dark hall where the fraudulent display was being dismantled.
“Then I’m relieved I didn’t buy a second one,” she said.
The following afternoon, she called from her hotel and invited the families to view photographs of the chair carrier in her father’s old apartment.
Carol identified the unusual position of his shoulders and the tiny cut beneath one elbow.
The carved figure had been based on a school caretaker named Samuel Pike, who set up chairs for concerts and never once attended a performance because somebody always needed to clean up afterward.
Iris listened with tears in her eyes and said her father had kept the carving beside his favorite reading chair.
She had never guessed that the quiet older working man with the chairs represented somebody who had a name and a job.
Ruth told her that people could value an object and still fail to know the person it represented.
Iris agreed to lend the figure for a year if an accredited conservator approved the transport and a suitable space could be found.
Carol offered to show her how Ada and Peter had protected the bases during ordinary moves.
Iris thanked her but asked that the conservator make the final decision.
Carol accepted the condition and surprised Daniel by looking pleased rather than offended.
Before Iris left, she asked Daniel about the damaged pear seller.
He described seeing Carol swing the hammer and thinking only of the money he might lose.
“And now?” Iris asked.
“Now I think the most expensive part was how long everybody stayed silent,” Daniel replied.
He watched Iris consider the answer, then laughed at himself.
“That sounded like something somebody would print on a museum wall,” he said.
“Please don’t let them.”
Iris smiled and promised to leave his words in the parking lot.
