The Mysterious Affair at the Met

'And until now it has been anybody’s guess who has the high-quality fakes and who has the genuine masterpieces.'The Mysterious Affair at the Met-the fifth installment in ’The Priscilla Series’ -begins in the middle of May 1990 in the city that never sleeps. Although New Yorkers are experiencing tempestuous weather of howling gales and torrential rains, people are still out and about, dressed in rain hats, trench coats, and other waterproof wear. Tourists are drifting in and out of myriads of shops and restaurants and showplaces such as museums and theatres, any place to escape the wind and the pouring rain.A favorite destination-even for New Yorkers-is the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art. On this particular day, 'the Met,' as generally known, experiences an unusually large number of visitors. Visitors can view over two million works of art spanning five millennia of cultures worldwide. But some among them are up to something more sinister.At one point, the Met’s surveillance cameras’ lenses capture 'a mysterious-looking couple' amid the many visitors strolling around the many galleries. The pair is dripping wet in their matching Burberry taupe trench coats. Just as the two of them walk past Soleil dans le Ciel de Saint-Paul, a masterpiece of Marc Chagall, a prominent tourist group-who, oddly enough, all are wearing distinctive red-and-white-striped vinyl raincoats-converges around them. But it is what happens next that baffles the museum’s surveillance crew. After 'the mysterious-looking couple' pulls off their prank, they and the large tourist group walk out of that particular camera’s range, becoming submerged elsewhere in the interminable galleries of the gigantic museum.But when a docent notices 'something strange' with Chagall’s Soleil dans le Ciel de Saint-Paul, in short order, the museum-goers inside the Chagall gallery hear 'High Alert!' and watch in horror as a heavy metal grille drops down from the ceiling to the floor, effectively locking them inside the gallery.Not long after word leaks about the Met’s 'high alert,' the Met’s board retains PR executive Priscilla J. 'PJ' Austin-Bernhardt to avert damage to the museum’s reputation. In so doing, Priscilla, her PR associates, and her not-so-secret secret agent colleagues uncover a global art fraud racket dating back some fifty-odd years that could easily become the scandal of the decade, if not the century.And thus began what later came to be called 'The Mysterious Affair at the Met.'