The Flanders Panel

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "You say Menchu was in the hall? Yet she was found in the bedroom. Did you see the scarf round her neck?"

  "There was no scarf. She had nothing round her neck, and her neck was broken. She'd been killed by a blow to the throat."

  "And the bottle?"

  "Don't you start on about that bloody bottle. All the police keep asking me is why I stuck that bottle up Menchu's cunt. I swear I don't know what they're talking about." He put what remained of his cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply, nervously, giving Julia a suspicious look. "Menchu was dead, that's all. Killed by a single blow and nothing else. I didn't move her. I was only there for about a minute. Someone else must have done that afterwards."

  "Afterwards? When? According to you, the murderer had already left."

  Max frowned, trying to remember.

  "I don't know." He seemed genuinely confused. "Perhaps he came back later, after I left." Then he turned pale as if he'd just realised something. "Or perhaps..." Julia saw that his cuffed hands were trembling. "Perhaps he was still there, hidden. Waiting for you."

  They'd decided to share the work. While Julia visited Max and subsequently recounted the story to the Inspector, who listened to her without even trying to disguise his scepticism, César and Muñoz made enquiries amongst the neighbours. The three of them met in an old café in Calle del Prado in the evening. Max's story was scrutinised from all angles during a prolonged discussion round the marble táble, the ashtray overflowing and the table crowded with empty cups. They leaned towards each other, like conspirators, talking in low voices.

  "I believe Max," concluded César. "What he says makes sense. After all, the story about stealing the painting is just the sort of thing he'd do. And I can't believe he was capable of doing the rest ... The bottle of gin was too much, my dears. Even for a man like him. On the other hand, we know that the woman in the raincoat was also around. Lola Belmonte, Nemesis or whoever she turns out to be."

  "Why not Beatrice of Ostenburg?" asked Julia.

  César looked at her reprovingly.

  "I find that kind of joke completely uncalled for." He shifted nervously in his seat, looked at Muñoz, whose face was a blank, and then, half-joking, half-serious, held up his hands, as if warding off ghosts. "The woman who was prowling round your building was flesh and blood. At least I hope she was."

  He had discreetly interrogated the porter in the building opposite, whom he knew by sight. From him, César had found out a few useful facts. For example, around twelve, just when he was finishing sweeping the hallway, the porter had seen a tall young man, his hair in a ponytail, come out of the front door of Julia's building and walk up the street to a car parked by the kerb. Shortly afterwards–and César's voice grew hoarse with sheer excitement, as it did when he was recounting some high-class bit of social tittle-tattle–perhaps half an hour later, when the porter was taking in the rubbish bin, he'd passed a blonde woman wearing dark glasses and a raincoat. César lowered his voice as he said this, looking around apprehensively, as if the woman might be sitting at one of the nearby tables. The porter, it seems, didn't get a good look at her because she was walking up the street, in the same direction as the young man. Nor could he say with certainty that the woman had come out of Julia's front door. He'd simply turned round with the rubbish bin in his hand and there she was. No, he hadn't told the policemen who questioned him that morning because they hadn't asked him about that. He wouldn't have thought of it, the porter confessed, scratching his head, if Don César hadn't asked him. No, he didn't notice if she was carrying a large package. He'd just seen a blonde woman walking along the street. And that was that.

  "The street," said Muñoz, "is full of blonde women."

  "All wearing dark glasses and a raincoat?" commented Julia. "It could have been Lola Belmonte. I was with Don Manuel at the time. And neither she nor her husband was at home."

  "No," said Muñoz, "by midday you were already with me, at the chess club. We walked for about an hour and got to your apartment about one o'clock." He looked at César, whose eyes responded with a flicker of mutual intelligence that did not go unnoticed by Julia. "If the murderer was waiting for you, he must have had to change his plans when you didn't turn up. So he took the painting and left. Perhaps that saved your life."

  "Why did he kill Menchu?"

  "Perhaps he wasn't expecting to find her there and eliminated her as an inconvenient witness," Muñoz said. "The move he'd planned might not have been queen takes rook. It's possible it was all a brilliant improvisation."

  César raised a shocked eyebrow.

  "Calling it 'brilliant' is a bit much, my dear."

  "Call it what you like. Changing the move like that, on the spur of the moment, coming up with an instant variant appropriate to the situation and placing the card with the corresponding notation next to the body..." The chess player reflected on this. "I had a chance to have a look at it. The note was even typed, on Julia's Olivetti, according to Feijoo. And there were no fingerprints. Whoever did it acted with great calm, but also with speed and efficiency. Like a machine."

  Julia suddenly remembered Muñoz, hours before, while they waited for the police to come, kneeling by Menchu's corpse, not touching anything and saying nothing, studying the murderer's visiting card as coolly as if he were sitting before a chessboard at the Capablanca Club.

  "I still don't understand why Menchu opened the door."

  "Because she thought it was Max," suggested César.

  "No," said Muñoz. "He had the key, which we found on the floor when we arrived. She knew it wasn't Max."

  César sighed, turning the topaz ring round and round on his finger.

  "I'm not surprised the police are hanging onto Max for all they're worth," he said, sounding demoralised. "There aren't any other suspects. And at this rate, soon there won't be any more victims left either. If Señor Muñoz continues to stick strictly to his deductive systems, it's going to end up–I can see it now–with you, my dear Muñoz, surrounded by corpses, like the final act of Hamlet, and being forced to the inevitable conclusion: 'I am the only survivor, therefore, according to strict logic, discounting all impossible suspects, that is, those who are already dead, the murderer must be me ...' and then giving yourself up to the police."

  "That's not necessarily so," said Muñoz.

  "That you're the murderer? Forgive me, my dear friend, but this conversation is beginning to sound dangerously like a dialogue in a madhouse. I never for one minute thought..."

  "I don't mean that." The chess player was studying his hands, holding his empty cup. "I'm talking about what you said a moment ago: that there are no more suspects."

  "You don't mean," murmured Julia, "that you've got someone else in mind?"

  Muñoz looked at her for a long time. Then he clicked his tongue, put his head a little to one side and said:

  "Possibly."

  Julia protested and begged him to explain, but neither she nor César could get a word out of him. Muñoz was gazing absently at the empty stretch of table between his hands, as if he could see in the marbled surface the mysterious moves of imaginary chess pieces. From time to time the vague smile, behind which he shielded himself when he preferred not to be drawn into things, would drift across his lips like a fleeting shadow.

  XIII

  The Seventh Seal

  In the fiery gap he had seen

  something unbearably awesome,

  the full horror of the abysmal depths

  of chess.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  "NATURALLY," Paco Montegrifo said, "this regrettable incident will not affect our agreement."

  "Thank you."

  "There's no need to thank me. We know you had nothing to do with what happened."

  The director of Claymore's had gone to visit Julia at the workshop in the Prado, taking advantage, he said when he turned up there unexpectedly, of an interview with the director of the museum with a view to their buying a Zurbaran commended to his company. He'd
found her in the middle of injecting an adhesive made from glue and honey into an area of incipient flaking on a triptych attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna. Julia, who was not in a position to stop what she was doing, greeted Montegrifo with a hurried nod of her head while she pressed the plunger of the syringe to inject the mixture. The auctioneer seemed delighted to have surprised her in flagrante - as he said, at the same time bestowing on her his most brilliant smile. He'd sat down on one of the tables to watch her.

  Julia felt uncomfortable and did her best to finish what she was doing quickly. She protected the treated area with water-repellent paper and placed a bag filled with sand on top, taking care to mould it carefully to the surface of the painting.

  "A marvellous piece of work," said Montegrifo, indicating the painting. "About 1300, isn't it? The Master Buoninsegna, if I'm not mistaken."

  "That's right. The museum acquired it a few months ago." Julia looked critically at the results of her labours. "I've had some problems with the gold leaf along the edge of the Virgin's cloak. In some places it's been lost completely."

  Montegrifo leaned over the triptych, studying it with a professional eye.

  "It's still a magnificent effort," he said when he'd finished examining it. "Like all your work."

  "Thank you."

  The auctioneer gave her a look of deepest sympathy.

  "Although, naturally," he said, "there's no comparison with our dear Flanders panel."

  "Of course not. With all due respect to the Duccio."

  They both smiled. Montegrifo tugged at his immaculate shirt cuffs to ensure that the required inch was showing below the sleeves of his navy blue double-breasted jacket, enough to reveal the gold cuff links bearing his initials. He was wearing a pair of impeccable grey trousers and, despite the rainy weather, his black Italian shoes gleamed.

  "Do you have any news of the Van Huys?" Julia asked.

  The auctioneer adopted an expression of elegant melancholy.

  "Alas, no." Although the floor was strewn with sawdust, paper and splashes of paint, he made a point of dropping the ash from his cigarette in the ashtray. "But we're in contact with the police. The Belmonte family have put me in charge of all negotiations." The look on his face was one that managed simultaneously to praise the owners' good sense in doing so and regret that they had not done so before. "The paradoxical thing, Julia, is that if The Game of Chess ever does turn up, this whole unfortunate series of events will send the price sky high."

  "I'm sure it will. But, as you said, that's if it ever does turn up."

  "You don't seem very optimistic."

  "After what I've been through the last few days, I don't really have much reason to be."

  "I understand. But I have faith in the police investigation. Or in luck. And if we do manage to recover the painting and put it up for auction, I can assure you it will be a real event." He smiled as if he had a marvellous present for her in his pocket. "Have you read Art and Antiques? They've dedicated five colour pages to the story. We've had endless phone calls from specialist journalists. And the Financial Times is doing an article on it next week. By the way, some of those journalists asked to be put in touch with you."

  "I don't want any interviews."

  "That's a shame, if you don't mind my saying so. Your reputation is your livelihood. Publicity can only increase your professional standing."

  "Not that kind of publicity. After all, the painting was stolen from my apartment."

  "We're trying to gloss over that fact. You're not to blame, and the police report leaves no doubt about that. Everything points to your friend's boyfriend having handed over the painting to an unknown accomplice. That's their main line of enquiry. I'm sure it will turn up. It wouldn't be easy to export a painting as famous as the Van Huys illegally. At least, not in theory."

  "I'm glad you're so confident. That's what I call being a good loser. Good sportsmanship, I think they call it. I'd have thought that the theft would have been a real blow to your company."

  Montegrifo put on a pained expression. Doubt is most hurtful, his eyes seemed to say.

  "As indeed it is," he replied, looking at Julia as if she'd done him an injustice. "In fact I had a lot of explaining to do at our head office in London. But such problems are always cropping up in this business. Still, it's an ill wind ... Our branch in New York has discovered another Van Huys: The Money Changer of Louvain?

  "The word 'discovered' strikes me as a bit excessive. It's a well-known painting, it's been catalogued. It belongs to a private collector."

  "You're well-informed, I see. What I meant to say is that we're in negotiations with the owner. He considers that now is the moment to get a good price for his painting. My colleagues in New York have managed to get in before our competitors."

  "Congratulations."

  "I thought we might celebrate." He looked at the Rolex on his wrist. "It's almost seven o'clock now, so how about coming out to supper with me? We need to discuss your future work with us. There's a polychrome statue of San Miguel, seventeenth-century Indo-Portuguese, that I'd like you to have a look at."

  "That's very kind of you, but I'm still rather upset. My friend's death, the matter of the painting ... I wouldn't be very good company tonight."

  "As you wish." Montegrifo took her refusal with resigned gallantry and without losing his smile. "If you like, I'll phone you early next week. Would Monday be all right?"

  "Fine." Julia held out a hand and he clasped it gently. "Thanks for dropping in."

  "It's always a pleasure to see you, Julia. If you need anything"–he gave her a long look, full of meanings she couldn't quite decipher–"and I mean anything, whatever it might be, don't hesitate to call me."

  He left, turning at the door to give her one last, brilliant smile. Julia spent another half hour on the Buoninsegna before putting away her things. Muñoz and César had insisted that she not go home for a few days, and César had again offered her his house; but Julia had remained steadfast, simply changing the security lock. Stubborn and immovable, as César had described her with some annoyance during one of his many phone calls to check that everything was all right. As for Muñoz, Julia knew, because César had let it slip, that both of them had spent the night after the murder keeping watch near her building, numb from the cold, with only a thermos of coffee and a flask of brantly (which César had had the foresight to bring with him) for company. Swaddled in overcoats and scarves, they consolidated the odd friendship which, by force of circumstance, these two very different personalities had struck up around Julia. When she found out, she forbade them to repeat the episode, promising in exchange that she wouldn't open the door to anyone and that she would go to sleep with the derringer underneath her pillow.

  She saw the gun when she was putting her things in her bag and she brushed the cold chrome-plated metal with the tips of her fingers. It was the fourth day since Menchu's death with no cards or phone calls. Perhaps, she said to herself without conviction, the nightmare has ended. She draped a linen cloth over the Buoninsegna, hung her overalls in a cupboard and put on her raincoat. The watch on the inside of her left wrist said it was quarter to eight.

  She was just going to put out the light when the phone rang.

  She put the receiver down and stood holding her breath, suppressing the desire to run as far away as possible. A shiver, a breath of icy air down her spine, made her tremble violently, and she had to lean on the table to recover. She couldn't take her eyes off the phone. The voice she'd just heard was unrecognisable, asexual, like the voice ventriloquists give to their creepy articulated dummies. A voice with shrill notes in it that had pricked her skin with a stab of blind terror.

  "Room 12, Julia." Silence and muffled breathing, perhaps because a handkerchief was covering the mouthpiece. "Room 12," the voice had said again. "Brueghel the Elder," it added after another silence. There was a short, dry, sinister laugh and the click of the phone being put down.

  She tried to put her scattered tho
ughts in order and not let panic take over. César had told her once that when ducks were flushed out by beaters for the benefit of hunters' rifles, it was the frightened ones who were always the first to fall. César. She picked up the phone and dialled his shop and then his home number, but got no answer. She had no success with Muñoz either. She would have to fend for herself, and she trembled at the thought.

  She took the derringer out of her bag and cocked it. At least that way, she thought, she could be as dangerous as the next person. Again the words César had spoken to her as a child surfaced. There are exactly the same things in a room at night as there are in the daytime; it's just that you can't see them.

  Pistol in hand, she went out into the corridor. At that hour the building was deserted apart from the security guards making their rounds, but she didn't know where to find them. She had to go down three flights of stairs which formed a sharp angle with a broad landing on each floor. Lights cast a bluish penumbra there, in which could be made out dark paintings, the marble banister and busts of Roman patricians watching from their niches.

  She took off her shoes and put them in her bag. The chill from the floor seeped through the soles of her feet and into her body. This night's adventure might end up giving her a monumental head cold. She stopped now and then to peer over the banister, though without seeing or hearing anything suspicious. At the bottom she had to make a choice. One route, through several rooms set up as restoration workshops, would lead her to a security door through which, using her electronic card, she could get out to the street near Puerta Murillo. The other route, at the end of a narrow corridor, would take her to a door that led into the museum itself. It was usually closed but never locked before ten o'clock at night, when the guards made their final inspection of the annexe.

  She stood at the bottom of the stairs, the gun in her hand, considering the two possibilities. She could either get out as fast as possible or find out what was going on in Room 12. The second option would involve an unpleasant trek of six or seven minutes through the deserted building. Unless, on the way, she was lucky enough to meet the guard in charge of that wing, a young man who, whenever he found Julia working in the studio, would buy her coffee from the vending machine and joke about what nice legs she had, assuring her that they were the main attraction at the museum.