Death on a Starry Night

by Betsy Draine

  “Not at all. They’re beautiful—and different from Van Gogh’s, actually.”

  “Thank you. We all do these copies. We call them our ‘versions.’” “We” referred to the other patients. I’d seen their work in the gift shop, but not hers, I think. I would have noticed them. It came to me that the painting I’d admired most there was a portrait of her: the gaunt woman furiously painting herself out of her emotional prison.

  She spoke again. “I’m the one who suggested doing versions of Van Gogh. I’d been doing them all my life. Van Gogh means everything to me.”

  “Because of your grandfather?”

  “Yes. You see, I was his favorite. Yves—my brother—didn’t like that. Grandfather talked all the time about Van Gogh—Vincent, he called him. They were friends, but it was a sad story—I think that’s why he had to tell it over and over. It bored Yves and Isabelle. They walked away and left me there, listening to Grandfather. He showed me pictures of Vincent’s paintings, in a big book. Vincent became my imaginary friend. I would talk with him, and then I began drawing with him, and finally painting with him, just like him, or so I thought. Grandfather liked that. He rewarded me with more stories. I think I know what happened on every day of the summer that he spent with Vincent.”

  “Do you know what happened at the end, when Vincent died?” There was an awkward silence before she spoke again.

  “Did they tell you why I’m here? All my life I’ve had what they call periods of mania—hyperactivity, they call it now. I thought it was what artists do. I liked it. It made me more productive. Like Vincent. I read his letters and the biographies. I knew about his so-called illness, but I thought, and I still think, people didn’t understand his artistic mind. However, when I reached my thirties, the manias became different. I would work in a fury, glad to be in a flow of inspiration, but after weeks like that, I couldn’t sleep, I became irritable, I felt angry, and then worn out, vanquished, floored. Isabelle said I had to get treatment. I resisted, but Isabelle found this place, the place where Vincent came. I have to admit, it was perfect for me. Over the years, I’ve retreated here many times.”

  She looked up defiantly, as if she supposed I thought her crazy. I judged that I might not have much more time before she became agitated, so I’d better get to the questions Lieutenant Auclair wanted answered. “If it’s not too painful, can you tell me about your sister?”

  Juliette’s shoulders twitched. “What do you want to know?”

  “Some facts about her life. Her childhood, people who were important to her. Things like that will establish a context for the investigation.”

  “That’s all right, then. I see.” She turned and looked into the middle distance. “We were born in Sisteron, where my father grew up. My mother’s family were vintners from Cahors. Mama met my father when they were both in Paris for a time.”

  “You were the second family, I understand.”

  Juliette’s chest swelled and her lips clenched. “Yes. Yves came first, my half brother. But Papa wasn’t married to Yves’s mother. They had a difficult relationship. Yves is forever whining that Papa betrayed his mother, that he deserted both of them.”

  “When was that?”

  “It was during the Occupation. Papa left Vevette when she was pregnant with Yves. Papa said she was impossible to live with.”

  “Is Vevette still alive?”

  “No, she died a long time ago. My parents took in Yves when he was eleven. I was four. His mother was incompetent. She drank, and worse. She had no home for him.”

  “How did you all get along?”

  “I was young. I liked having a brother. He taught me things—how to set a fire, how to skin a fish, all kinds of boyish things.” I stayed quiet, waiting for her to elaborate.

  “It was hard on Isabelle, though. Yves bullied her. She was six, not much older than me. He treated me like a pet, but he took Isabelle as an enemy. He was small for his age, and she was tall for hers. They fought as equals. He wrestled with her, punched her, pulled her by the hair. Once he tied her to the stair rail and choked her with his belt. If I hadn’t heard her and made him stop, she would have died right then.” Juliette’s voice was changing to a sob. She covered her eyes with her hands. I gave her a moment and then followed up:

  “Did your parents do anything to stop the bullying?”

  “They never knew. Yves made us keep our mouths shut. We were afraid of him, by then. We spoke of it only to each other, and not till we were grown. Yves left the house when I was twelve, and when he came back into our lives, he was a grown man. He didn’t hit Isabelle anymore. He was just cruel, to both of us.”

  “What was life like for you and Isabelle after Yves left home?”

  Her face softened. She seemed to like the question.

  “We still had a year together in ballet school. We’d been taking lessons since I was five and she was seven. It was a way for us to play together. Isabelle had talent. She was expressive, you know, not simply competent. Unfortunately, I had the body for it and she didn’t, not after fifteen. She shot up in height and developed a woman’s figure. I stayed light and flat-chested.” Juliette smiled, recollecting. “So we started going our separate ways. At school she followed the academic track. She was the leader of her class, at least socially. Boys were constantly coming to the house. None of them became her boyfriend, though. She awed the boys. She was so beautiful, so elegant, so smart, smarter than them.” She paused, and her face was sober.

  “Did Isabelle ever have a boyfriend?”

  Juliette’s mouth went glum. “There was someone, in Bordeaux. Yves went there to meet him—he said he didn’t like him.”

  “Do you know the man’s name?”

  “Daniel. He was studying at Bordeaux. Later he became a professor.”

  Now I had to decide whether to reveal that I knew Daniel Didier. Better to be honest, I thought. “I’ve met him. He was at the conference where your sister was killed.”

  “Was he? I wonder if he was the one she meant.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Isabelle said that a professor at the conference was helping her write her paper.”

  “Did she mention a name?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did she mention whether this professor was French or some other nationality?”

  “She just said a professor. Didn’t she give him credit when she gave her paper?”

  “Juliette, it seems you don’t know. Your sister died on the night before the conference started. She never gave her paper.”

  Juliette stopped breathing.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Yes . . . I assumed she gave it.”

  “You know what the talk was about?”

  “Oh, yes. It was about Grandfather’s letter.” She spoke as if I should have known such an obvious—and relevant—fact.

  “What letter?” I asked.

  “The one Isabelle found when she went searching through Grand-father’s things. About a year ago. It was when she heard about a new biography of Van Gogh.”

  “The one written by Naifeh and Smith?”

  “Are they Americans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s the one. That’s when she went looking through the boxes and found the letter. It was sewn inside the cover of a photo album.”

  “Juliette, this is very important. What do you know about that letter and Isabelle’s paper? The police suspect that someone killed Isabelle to stop her from giving her talk. If we knew its contents, we would know whether anything in it threatened someone enough to murder her.” Juliette looked confused.

  “Well, there’s Yves of course. He didn’t want the paper to be delivered. He fought with Isabelle about it. He wanted her to give the letter to him. Isabelle made sure he wouldn’t get it.”

  “Do you know where that letter is now?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I haven’t finished telling you about Isabelle’s life. You see, Papa
had a stroke when Isabelle was in her first year of nursing school. Mama had died. There was no one to take care of Papa but me, and it got to be too much, and Yves didn’t help. So I asked Isabelle to take a semester off from school and help me with Papa.”

  I wanted Juliette to get back to the letter, but there was no interrupting her.

  “I guessed Papa would die in a few months, and I was right. After the funeral, she returned to Bordeaux, but she broke up with Daniel and came back home to Sisteron. That put an end to nursing school. She got a job as a receptionist in a medical clinic in town. At some point, she became involved with one of the doctors in her clinic. He was married, with grown children. They went on with each other for decades, until he died.”

  I said, “Juliette, just now when I asked you about your grandfather’s letter, you said you knew where it was. Can you tell me?”

  She gave a girlish grin. “I can do better than that.” She went to her bureau, opened the top drawer, rummaged in it, and took out a large manila envelope. “Isabelle asked me to keep this safe from Yves. He never comes here. She meant to publish it after the conference. You’ll see to that now, won’t you, Madame Professor? Now that Isabelle is gone?”

  Astonished, I reached into the envelope and withdrew a thick letter folded neatly in the middle. I looked at Juliette, silently asking permission to unfold the grayed sheets of paper.

  “Go ahead, read it,” she said, encouraging me.

  The document was written in the careful penmanship of an earlier era when pupils were taught how to write properly, yet the lines were shaky, suggesting an older hand.

  There was no salutation, no person addressed.

  I didn’t mean to shoot him, the letter began.

  I can still see him clutching his side and looking at me like a wounded animal. He kicked over his easel and stumbled to his knees. The painting he was working on fell to the ground. Later they said he shot himself, but that isn’t true. I did it. I wanted to help him but instead I killed him, and I’ve been sorry for it all my life.

  During the next four years I never knew a moment’s peace. I grieved over Vincent’s death. Try as I might, I couldn’t rid myself of guilt. I lost all interest in my studies and barely managed to graduate at the lycée. I took no pleasure in companionship and lost my friends. What girl would want a young man in such a state? My parents were at a loss, having no idea as to the cause of my unhappiness. They said I lacked an occupation, and so my father found me a position in a bank. I toiled at my desk but cared nothing about the work and had no ambition. I spent my evenings alone, drinking. I had no appetite. I was weak and fatigued.

  My only solace was in prayer. I had always attended church, but now I went every morning and returned at the end of the day when my duties at the bank were over. I prayed for forgiveness—yet hesitated to enter the confessional. That I couldn’t bring myself to do. The priest, a kindly man, noticed my comings and goings. He also respected my reticence. Soon we began to have long discussions about life, sin, and service to God. It was he who perceived my need for penance. He urged me to undertake a spiritual retreat when my summer holiday came, and he recommended a Franciscan monastery in the Alpes-Maritimes. His brother was a monk there and often spoke of its serenity. I was eager to go.

  So it was that I found myself at the monastery of Saorge at the age of twenty, in 1894. I had planned to stay a month. I stayed nine years. At the end of that summer I took my vows. And during those nine years I found peace. I loved working in the garden, looking out at the surrounding mountains and listening to the distant sound of the Roya River rushing in the valley below. I loved breathing the cool air. I treasured each hour I spent in the beautiful penance room, where I made amends to God for my crime. In time I even learned a trade, which stood me in good stead in later years: I became a baker. I would have stayed forever had it not been for the infamous law of 1901, when the government shut down the monasteries. It took them two years to get around to Saorge, but suddenly we were expelled, almost overnight.

  I barely had time to find a better hiding place for Vincent’s painting, which I kept rolled up in a trunk with my other things, stored in the attic above our cells. In the attic was an exposed chimney. Behind it was a panel in the wall that gave access to a space that once had been made for workers who had to repair the roof. There was room enough inside to conceal my trunk. I pushed it in and resealed the panel. My intention was to reclaim my possessions as soon as we were permitted to return, for we expected the closing to be temporary. About that, we were wrong.

  You may think you make a plan for life, but life makes a plan for you. I never did return. A year into my exile, while I was living in Sisteron, earning my bread by baking for others, I met a young woman and fell in love. A year after that we were married. In the beginning I often thought of finding some way to retrieve the painting. But gradually, as my new life took hold, I began to understand that it was better to let go of the past. I had a family now and new responsibilities. Nine years of penance— that was behind me.

  One day, I am sure, someone will discover Vincent’s painting of me where I left it hidden, but I will be gone by then and beyond the reach of earthly punishment or disgrace. God has forgiven me, that’s all that matters.

  As I write this, today is my eighty-fourth birthday. In all probability it will be my last. I leave behind this confession so the world will know how Vincent van Gogh died. I never had a better friend.

  Whoever finds this letter, I beg you, pray for our souls.

  Maurice La Font

  Sisteron

  October 9, 1958

  12

  THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING,” said Toby. We were back in our room. He was reading Maurice La Font’s letter over again, his back propped against the bolster, legs stretched in front of him on the bed. A Michelin map of Provence/Côte d’Azur was splayed across his thighs. Rain slapped against the shutters. “Not only do we know how Van Gogh died, we know the motive for Isabelle’s murder—to keep that hidden painting a secret. Have you any idea what it would be worth?”

  “Millions. Tens of millions probably.” Even unfinished, Van Gogh’s last work would be the find of the century.

  “Sure. That’s why Yves and Isabelle were quarreling. He didn’t care about their grandfather’s reputation. He was after the painting.”

  “That’s got to be it,” I said. “My guess is that Isabelle told Yves about the letter but refused to say where the painting was hidden. She was afraid he’d seize it for himself. That’s why he stole her handbag the night she was killed. He was looking for the letter or her paper, assuming it contained the information.”

  “Yes,” Toby agreed. “But Yves wasn’t the only one who could have known about the painting. Didn’t Juliette tell you that a professor at the conference was helping Isabelle write her paper? Whoever that was would have known about it too.”

  “That’s right. Juliette didn’t know the professor’s name, but it had to be Didier. According to Ray, he was the one who told Isabelle about the conference. Didier put her in touch with Ray.”

  Toby raised a finger. “That makes Ray another possibility. Let’s say Isabelle takes Didier’s advice, contacts Montoni, and tells him about her discovery of the letter. As head of the conference, Ray offers to put her on the program and help her write the paper. Does that make sense?”

  “It does and it doesn’t. If the killer’s motive was to stop information leaking out about the existence of the painting, then Ray isn’t the killer. Why would he want to put Isabelle on the program? Someone who hoped to steal the painting would avoid any public announcement.”

  Toby scratched his jaw. “What about Ben? He’s the one whose research is directly connected with Van Gogh’s death. Would Montoni have suggested she work with Ben?”

  That made me sit up in bed. “It’s possible. That would give Ben a double motive to silence her. One would be to keep the facts about Vincent’s death a secret until he published his biography. The oth
er would be to try to get the painting. If that’s the case, he’s one good liar. I would have sworn he was sweating with frustration because he didn’t know what Isabelle was going to say.” I touched Toby’s arm. “I just thought of something else. If we’re right about the hunt for the painting, the killer is waiting for his first opportunity to get inside the monastery. If it’s Ben or anyone else from this conference, that would be tomorrow, when everyone’s leaving.”

  “Suppose we got there first?” Toby scrutinized the map. He put one finger on Saint-Paul-de-Vence and another on a spot above it to the upper right, in the foothills of the Alps. “It’s not that far from here to Saorge, but the road is mountainous. If we leave at a good hour tomorrow, we could make it by the afternoon.”

  “Whoa. Isn’t this a matter for the police? I’ve been working well with Lieutenant Auclair. Shouldn’t we defer to her on this?”

  “Of course,” Toby assured me. “We’ll call the lieutenant first thing in the morning. But meanwhile, look up Saorge on the Internet and see what you can find out about the monastery. For instance, whether it’s open to the public.”

  It wasn’t hard to get information. The Monastery of Saorge is classified as a national historic monument and has its own website. According to the description, the former monastery is notable for its picturesque site, baroque architecture, and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century frescoes. The main building currently serves as a writers’ retreat. The monastery is open to visitors “in season” but closed in winter. Prospective visitors are asked to call for exact dates.

  We rose early the next morning to make our calls. The storm had intensified during the night and I hadn’t managed to get much sleep. To save time, we had breakfast in our room. The tray came with a pot of coffee, croissants, and a neatly folded copy of Nice Matin. The front page was filled with news about the storm, apparently the worst in years. There were floods in parts of Nice, mudslides in the hills, downed power lines, and washed out roads. Not what you’d call a good day for an excursion. Communications were disrupted as well. When I dialed the gendarmerie at Grasse, I received a recorded message that said in effect, “We’re sorry your call could not be completed. Please try again later.”