Rembrandt's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

throat again, looking uncomfortable. “Mr. Boegart was of the opinion that there was some chance that he was in fact your father.” He sat back in his chair.
    “What?” Finn exclaimed.
    “Good Lord,” said Billy.
    “Um,” murmured the old lawyer around the stem of his pipe.
    “I don’t understand this at all,” said Finn, recovering a little. “I mean, it’s crazy. My father was Dr. Lyman Andrew Ryan, and he was a professor of archaeology at the University of Ohio.”
    Tulkinghorn fussed with his papers, muttering to himself. He resurfaced, nodding. “Yes, here we are,” he said. “According to my information, your father was a senior visiting fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge, which was in fact his alma mater.”
    “That’s right. He was there during World War Two. They asked him back to teach sometime in the sixties.”
    “Nineteen sixty-nine to be exact,” said Tulkinghorn. “He spent ten years there, off and on between digs. He returned to the University of Ohio in the summer of 1979 to head up their department of archaeology.”
    Finn nodded. “My mother wanted me to be born in the States.”
    “Indeed,” murmured Tulkinghorn. “Be that as it may, Pieter Boegart read archaeology at Magdalene from 1970 to 1973. Lyman Ryan was his tutor and thesis adviser. Between 1973 and June of 1979, he was a lecturing assistant to your father as well as field supervisor on several of his digs in Central America.”
    “He knew my father. That doesn’t make him my mother’s lover.”
    “No,” Tulkinghorn agreed. He put the pipe down on his desk and opened the center drawer. He withdrew a small package of letters held togetherby a thick rubber band. The letters looked old. The envelopes were pale green, her mother’s favorite color. “These make Pieter Boegart your mother’s lover.” He used one bony index finger to push the pile of letters across the desk toward Finn.
    She stared at them. “What are they?”
    “Love letters. Billets-doux as the French like to call them. From your mother to Mr. Boegart. They are all dated and they are quite explicit, I’m afraid.”
    “You’ve read them?”
    “Mr. Boegart insisted when I expressed concern at his bequest.”
    “Why would you express concern?” Finn asked sourly, her eyes still on the package in front of her.
    “Miss Ryan, Pieter Boegart is a majority heir to one of the largest shipping lines in the world. Netherlands-Boegart actually
is
the largest container corporation in the world. The fortune is immense. To consider paternity, let alone accept it, is a serious legal matter. You could well become what is commonly referred to, I believe, as a spanner in the works.”
    “A what?” Finn asked.
    “A monkey wrench in the gears,” Billy translated quietly.
    “A problem,” said Finn.
    “Indeed,” said Tulkinghorn, glancing at Pilgrim over his reading glasses.
    “Why did Boegart think I was his child?”
    “The timing,” replied the old man. “According to Mr. Boegart, his relationship with your mother ended in August of 1979, shortly before she left England with your father. You were born in May of 1980, some nine months later. You were, um, almost certainly conceived in this country. At Cambridge, presumably.”
    “That doesn’t mean it was him.”
    “The letters would indicate that your father, Lyman Ryan, was incapable of paternity.”
    “What is that supposed to mean?” Finn asked. “My father was infertile?”
    “No,” said Tulkinghorn. He looked excruciatingly uncomfortable now. “It would seem from the letters that he was incapable of the act”—he paused and raised a hand to the knot of his tie— “the act of coitus.”
    The word was so archaic and clinical that Finn would have laughed out loud if the whole thing wasn’t so awful and so bleakly intimate.
    The old man went on. “It would also appear that he tacitly condoned the relationship between Mr. Boegart and your mother.” He paused. “There was a difference