"Tony, help me identify a painting!" That day, Brian came to the door mysteriously and said.
"Have you started buying paintings too?" Tangning asked casually, a little surprised, because in his impression, Brian had no artistic talent at all, and he was not usually interested in paintings. Why did he suddenly think of buying paintings?
"Hey, Tony, this painting of mine is not simple!" With that said, Brian lifted the cloth covering the painting.
Tangning went over to take a look and found that it was a painting of Venus, but something was wrong. He reached out and touched it, and then asked, "Has this painting been cleaned recently?"
Brian praised: "Tony, you are indeed a master of appraisal. You discovered the problem at a glance. Yes, this painting has just been cleaned. Let me tell you, this matter is particularly legendary. I heard about the church a few days ago
There is a ghost painting to be purified.”
"Wait a minute, ghost painting? What does this mean?" Tangning asked curiously.
Brian explained: "It's like this. Blacksmith Hollier discovered that a painting passed down from his family's family started to grow hair inexplicably. That is, the woman's hair in the painting was slowly growing longer, and it still grew a little longer every day.
This frightened him, especially when some people said that there was a ghost in the painting. Now only the hair came out, and when the whole body came out, it would break out of the painting and start eating people! So he sent the painting to
Church, I hope the priest can help purify this ghost painting!"
Tangning snorted disapprovingly and said, "Humph, I think he was dazzled by drinking too much. You know, that Houllier is a famous drunkard!"
Brian said with some displeasure: "Tony, please wait until I finish speaking! Originally, I just wanted to go and watch the excitement, but when I was about to burn it, someone suddenly said that this painting was not a ghost painting, but two paintings.
Overlay painting means painting another painting on top of one painting, and now the hair of the character in the painting below is exposed because the paint peeled off!"
"Well, this explanation is very reasonable. Indeed, in order to protect a more valuable oil painting, some people will carefully paint another rough painting on it to cover it up, because this kind of painting only needs to serve as a cover-up.
, so the paint is not too thick, so it is normal for it to peel off over time!" Tang Ning nodded in agreement.
"Yes, yes, yes, that person said the same thing at the time, so I thought that there must be a very valuable painting underneath, otherwise there would be no need to do this kind of cover-up, so I spent a lot of effort to hide this
I bought the painting!" Brian said proudly.
"It took a lot of effort? Is there anyone still competing with you for this painting at that time?" Tang Ning said with a frown.
Brian nodded and replied: "Yes, there were several people, especially the guy who saw that this was not a ghost painting, but he was a poor man and couldn't afford much money, so he didn't rob me!"
"Then how much did you spend in the end?" Tangning had a bad feeling.
Brian shook his right hand and said, "Not much, only five hundred dollars!"
"Five hundred dollars?!" Tangning couldn't help but exclaimed, then she looked closely at the oil painting for a long time, and sighed: "You have been cheated!"
"I was cheated? What do you mean?" Brian asked in confusion.
Tangning sighed and said, "Because this painting is definitely not worth five hundred dollars! If I'm not wrong, you definitely don't know those people who are bidding against you, especially the guy who said that this painting was not a ghost painting.
,right?"
"Well, that guy is indeed an out-of-towner, but how could they know that I would go to the church that day to watch the fun? It was all a spur-of-the-moment idea!" Brian questioned.
Tangning explained: "Because they have not determined the target at all. As long as there are enough people watching the excitement at the time, after they reveal the secret of the painting and create an atmosphere of competition, then there will definitely be a target."
Someone will be fooled! Even if no one pays a high enough price at the time, they can choose to get the painting first and then slowly sell it. Anyway, the cleaning process of this kind of painting is very troublesome and cannot be cleaned in a short time.
Clean!"
"Well, Tony, you are right. I found someone to clean the painting with good turpentine and alcohol as they said for nearly two days before cleaning it out!" Brian said depressedly.
Then he speculated: "So the whole thing started as a conspiracy from the blacksmith Hollier. They first produced such a two-layer painting, then spread the word to attract everyone to the church to watch the fun, and then found a fool to sell the painting at a high price.
go out?"
"Yes, that's the idea!" Tangning nodded and confirmed.
"But I don't think Houllier is like this kind of person. Everyone has known him for so many years, and he is usually a nice person!" Brian said with a frown.
"Who can say for sure about this kind of thing? It could be that he is short of money recently or has been bewitched by someone!" Tang Ning analyzed.
Although being deceived made Brian very depressed, fortunately as a qualified businessman, his mentality was still good. After drinking a glass of wine, he almost adjusted it and said with emotion: "Hey, it seems that I won't understand in the future.
You really can’t do business casually!”
After Brian left, Jonathan ran over to Tangning with an excited look on his face and said, "Tony, the matter has been found out. Underwood is indeed dead. The person who killed Perry was a copycat!"
"Copycat crime? What copycat crime?" Tang Ning asked in confusion.
"A guy who had a grudge against Perry killed Perry and then forged evidence such as a letter to you to pin the blame on Underwood!" Jonathan explained.
"But how could he know Underwood's handwriting? Isn't this something only the police can know?" Tangning asked, bringing up old things.
"Because this guy has a good friend who is the police officer responsible for investigating this case, so he copied a letter that Underwood wrote to you in St. Paul, so the handwriting will be exactly the same! Fortunately, we also have people in the police station, otherwise
He really died unjustly because of this incident."
Just when Jonathan muttered that he was "vindicated", an idea suddenly flashed in Tangning's mind: "Oh, if that's the case, isn't the article "Serial Killers from New Orleans to Memphis" written true?
Could it be that this author is also related to the case?"
PS: In "Chicago 1990", after the protagonist is shot and comatose for a hundred days, some of his men, relatives and women fight for the inheritance. It is really contagious and ironic. I can refer to it when I write about similar plots in the future.