Page 20 of All I Want for Christmas

‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ Darcy said. ‘I’m glad your work offers some distraction.’ She looked around the corner and saw the size of the tower of files on the small desk. She smiled back at him. ‘Especially when you have so much of it! I guess you like moving mountains.’

‘I do. Even though the old system works perfectly well. Everything has been logged by hand, and there’s a briefdescription of each artefact in the reference volume and its position in the stacks – so you don’t need to search through thirty boxes, for instance, to find one specific photograph. Look for it in here –’ he tapped the red leather ledger – ‘and it will tell you where to find it.’

‘Analogue. I like it. That must have been a mammoth task for whoever had to compile it originally.’

‘My predecessor, Harald Morgensen,’ Viggo nodded. ‘And yes, it was. When Frederik Madsen established the Foundation, Harald was tasked with archiving the family’s entire collection of art and artefacts. People think primarily of Johan Trier and the Modern Breakthrough masterpieces, but the Madsens were avid collectors of sculpture and furniture too.’

He pointed towards the shelves lining the walls behind her, opposite the stacks. They were laden with bowls and vases, some woodcut panels. Below them was a glass-shelved floor-standing cabinet filled with clay busts. Many appeared to be heads of fishermen in their sou’westers but one was bare-headed too, cropped curls caught in relief; their expressions were somehow captured and held behind blank eyes.

‘These are wonderful,’ Darcy murmured, crouching in front of the cabinet for a better look. ‘Who are they by?’ She could just make out some initials at the base of the neck on one piece:A.S.

‘We believe the initials stand for Anna Saalbach.’

‘Anna Saalbach,’ she echoed, interested. ‘Now, I’ve never heard of her.’ She could have sworn she saw a fleeting moment of surprise pass over Viggo’s face, quickly wiped away. It was like a rubber band pinging on her skin; she prided herself on her encyclopaedic knowledge of almost all the major – and many, many minor – female Danish artists working in this period.

‘A-Anna?’ He cleared his throat, pressing his hand to hislips for a moment. ‘No. Well, few have. The Madsens bought the entire collection. As I understand it, they’ve never been in any public exhibitions.’

Darcy looked over at him, puzzled. ‘So then, why is her work not on display upstairs?’

‘There’s no public appetite for it. She’s, uh, an unknown, clays are out of fashion, and there are so many other artists to exhibit. The Madsens were voracious collectors. We try to rotate the stock, but there’s still a lack of space. And Saalbach didn’t exactly embrace diversity in, uh, her content,’ he added, with a pointed look towards the row of fishermen’s heads.

‘True,’ Darcy agreed. There were some smaller pieces in the cabinet as well, but they were mainly gardener’s tools – a wheelbarrow, a spade, trowel...unremarkable, everyday items that would be lying around a garden. Hardly revolutionary. The heads too, although beautifully formed, were variations on a theme, she realized as she peered closer.

‘They’ve all got the same face,’ she remarked.

Viggo nodded. ‘Perhaps there was only one fisherman willing to sit for her?’

‘Or it was averysmall fishing village.’

He chuckled, starting to walk back up the gallery and crossing through the central chamber into the west wing. Darcy followed him. ‘As you can see, the set-up is mirrored in here. Artists M through Z in the stacks, and at the end there...’ He pointed towards a caged-off area at the very end of the room. ‘Surplus stock.’

Darcy walked towards it and peered in at canvases stored on wheeled racks across the width of the space. Each rack was a floor-to-ceiling metal grid with the paintings clipped on, still in their frames. Even from here, she could recognize a MarieSandholt, which, as far as she was aware, hadn’t been on public display since an exhibition in the 1970s.

‘We have over a hundred and eighty paintings in there. Mainly minor pieces and those earmarked for conservation work.’

Darcy looked at the locked gate into the caged area. It was the old-fashioned key type – no fancy digital access pad to navigate. She was pretty sure there’d be a TikTok tutorial out there showing how she could pick the lock with a hairpin in under a minute.

Viggo smiled, as if reading her mind. ‘Don’t worry, the security upstairs is state of the art. Anyone wanting to get down here would have to first navigate the infrared laser system; plus there’s a night security team with dogs that patrols seven till seven. And besides, for anyone planning to rob us, there’s nothing of interest or value down here. It’s all upstairs.’

‘Reassuring to know, if I’m working late!’ Darcy turned back to him as she sipped her coffee. Like everything else down here, it was old school but good. She looked at Viggo. ‘I’m so excited to be here. I feel like I’m in Aladdin’s cave.’

‘Well, consider me your genie. Your wish is my command. Whatever you need, I can find it for you...Is there anything specific you want to start with?’

‘To begin with, I just need all things Johan Trier, pre-1922. Whatever you’ve got, I need to see.’

Viggo nodded. ‘He’s got one and a half stacks to himself,’ he said, walking over to the middle of the racks and placing a hand on one. ‘He starts here: T(ii). Then he goes all the way to the end and comes halfway back on the other side of T(iii).’

Darcy peered at the thick storage boxes filed on their ends, floor to ceiling, all the way along. ‘Okay.’

‘The stacks are grouped alphabetically but sub-referencedA(i), A(ii), and so on. Each stack is divided into vertical blocks or cells, the shelf level is counted from the top, and then the files are numbered boxes on those shelves.’

‘Okay.’ Darcy’s eyes scanned the system as he talked. So far, so self-explanatory.

‘So, Trier was born in 1895 but the earliest letters and diaries we hold on him date to 1915, I believe.’ Darcy watched as he crossed to the table and checked the red leather reference volume. He flicked through the pages with practised ease before running his finger down the ledger. ‘Yes...Stack T(ii), block five, level three. Box nine.’

She walked into the T(ii) stack, following his instructions: block five, level three down from the top. Box...?

‘Box nine, that’s the one,’ Viggo said, coming to stand by her. He was holding the red leather book and a small pad of Post-its. ‘Peel off the top one and set it on the box so you’ve got a quick reference for your start point.’

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