by Morris West
On the slopes of the Sonnenberg, overlooking the city and the lake of Zurich, an enterprising developer had built a block of serviced apartments for the use of visiting businessmen. Each apartment had its own garage space. There was a porter at the entrance, a daily maid service, a small but comfortable restaurant with country-style cooking.
It was here that Mather decided to quarter himself for the duration of his stay in Zurich to maintain a residence and an address for future use. He needed a place to be private, to spread his papers without the constant intrusion of hotel staff. Here the developer had provided a small combination safe in each apartment, so that there was a reasonable degree of security. A Mercedes hired from an airport agency made him mobile.
The restaurant would send up meals morning, noon and night and keep his liquor cupboard stocked. Communication was no problem; he was fluent in French and Italian, passable in German. For the rest, his lease was in the name of Artifax and he was at one stroke endowed with anonymity and non-presence. The Swiss were a discreet and disciplined people who minded their own business very well and expected their guests to do the same.
Mather’s business was to be conducted with a careful eye to priorities. First he must be introduced around the trade, the old local houses in Zurich and elsewhere who still mopped up huge sums of money in the hard currencies of Europe. Unlike the Americans, they were not gossiped in the local press. Discretion was their stock in trade. They served a tight market: quiet old capital, wary new money. They not only knew every ‘von’ and ‘de’ title in Europe, but could tell you to the nearest thousand what the titles were worth in hard cash.
To insinuate himself into this clubbish group would require some careful diplomacy. Alois Liepert and Gisela Mundt would arrange the introductions. His scholar’s discipline gave him authority. Palombini, Berchmans, Belvedere and Harmon Seldes were potent referees. Access to a half-million dollars in syndicate funds was no small recommendation either, while his association with a new and well-backed gallery in New York had to make an interested buyer in all categories.
By the time he was ready to bring the Raphaels to market he should be, if not an indigenous animal, at least one well adapted to the jungle life. Memory conjured up the image of Berchmans the Elder proclaiming the predator’s gospel: ‘My sole motive is profit. The fact that I make it by dealing in beautiful things is beside the point.’
Berchmans was now the new element in all his calculations. He had bought and commissioned work from Madeleine Bayard. That was already a seal of market value. If he would consent to hang the canvases he had bought as ‘Not for Sale’ exhibits at the exhibition, the show would be an immediate sell-out. The man’s authority was enormous. Every dealer in town would be following his lead.
The catch was, of course, that Berchmans knew better than anyone the value of his own name. It would be interesting to see what he would charge for the privilege of using it. And that raised another question, whether Henri Charles Berchmans the Elder was recorded in any fashion in Madeleine Bayard’s papers.
Mather took out the photographs and the police reports, and began a methodical reconstruction of the murder. Most of the work had been done for him. Leonie Danziger had welded the disjointed police material into a coherent narrative, telegraphic in style but clear in every essential detail, so that there was no possibility of confusing hard evidence with speculation.
You know the location. You have to understand how it was used during Madeleine Bayard’s occupancy. The first floor was empty. Madeleine used the two upper floors because the light was better. There were – and still are – two entrances to the building. The rear entrance has a single door which gives on to a loading lane. The front entrance had a buzzer and an amplifier. It could be opened from either of the two upper floors. The approach to these floors was by stairwell or noisy elevator.
Look at the first photograph and you will see how the space was utilised. On the second floor, storage racks for used and unused canvases. Shelves for paper, drawing materials, paints, books. All pretty orderly. A work table with a mitre box for making stretchers. A drafting table for sketches and architectural drawing. Two chairs, a stool for a model.
Print No.2 shows the third floor. A big king-size bed, normally made up with sheets and blankets and a patchwork throwover quilt. According to police – and you can check this yourself – the bed and the cover feature in several paintings. There’s a Dutch dresser with cups, ornamental plates, green, blue and red glassware, bowls – the sort of things any artist might use to compose a still life. There’s a refrigerator with coke, soda and white wine, also a whisky bottle (half full), a new bottle of bourbon. The easel and the sitter’s stool are placed to catch the light from front and back windows. There are no side lights. You will notice that there is a canvas on the easel; it is prepared with a background of blue and umber colour and there is the figure of a man with a naked torso blocked in. The police are still holding this canvas and a number of other sketches and studies. The models for most of these have been identified. Some came from an agency in SoHo, some were pick-ups from Negroni’s coffee shop which is a local hangout for models, artists and would-be’s.
Now take a look at print No.3. This shows you what Bayard discovered and what the police had to re-set because he had disturbed it by embracing his dead wife and cradling her in his arms. You’ll see that the body is rolled like a mummy in the bedclothes. It is lying face upwards on the mattress. It had been stabbed through the bedclothes, so that there was no spouting of arterial blood and no mess other than on the bed itself.
Under all the covering the body was naked. Madeleine’s clothes were laid neatly on the back of a chair. There was no sign of sexual assault or sexual congress with a male. There was no semen in the vaginal passage. There was alcohol in the stomach and the bloodstream and traces of a sedative which Madeleine had been taking on prescription. The sequence of events seems to have been that the killer found Madeleine asleep, rolled her in the covers and stabbed her to death.
The weapon was not found. Forensic reports described it as long, narrow, sharp-pointed, with two cutting edges – in short, a dagger of some kind or a dagger-like paper knife. The strokes were delivered from above while the victim was lying on her back. There were three in all and all pierced the heart. Again the medical reports describe the violence as ‘precautionary overkill, but not a fury of mutilation’.
The police asked: why a knife, then? Why not some simple, less messy form of execution? The simplest explanation seemed to be that it was a weapon of opportunity and that the killer took it away.
Pass now to prints 4 and 5. These are detail shots: Madeleine’s handbag has been rifled, the contents spilled on the dresser. Money was taken and probably her small diary, nothing else. Drawers on both floors have been emptied on to the floor, books have been opened and dropped. All these, according to the police, point to hurried search but not to violence or vandalism. In spite of the hurry there are no fingerprints. The whole situation was premeditated. Yet the police deliberately fostered a story about an addict crazy for drug money. They admit that they took a great deal of care to sell the notion to the press, hoping that the misinformation would make the killer over-confident and reckless.
They also admitted that what really interested them were the things that weren’t there: fingerprints, evidence of sexual violence, a murder weapon and, simplest of all – a pocket diary or a personal telephone directory. Madeleine Bayard spent half her life in her studio. Her telephone bills were high. Did she keep all the numbers in her head? Some of the models who worked for her testified that they had seen her using such a book and that she carried it in her handbag.
Along with friends who had visited the studio, they also testified that certain drawings which they had seen pinned up around the walls were gone. The drawings were described as ‘sexual in content’. Bayard claimed he might have seen them, but didn’t have them in his possession.
Which brings us to Bayard h
imself. For a long time he was the prime suspect, in spite of his alibi. The first thing against him was that he, a lawyer, should have known better than to disturb the scene of a crime. The instability indicated by the act bothered the police. Worst of all, Bayard made no secret of his wife’s wanderings and his own unhappiness, but refused absolutely to name any of his friends or acquaintances as her lovers.
His testimony on this point was clear and repetitive: ‘I know she had other sexual partners. I did not seek to know who they were. I saw no one in bed with her. She named no names. Anything I conveyed to you on this matter would be hearsay or suspicion and, in any case, tainted with anger. I cannot do that. I will not do it.’ In the end, of course, his alibi remained unshaken. According to the police he is no longer a suspect. However, there is one disturbing phrase which was dropped by one of the investigators: ‘We do have a profile of a man capable of violence – even extreme violence.’
Our investigator then asked whether the police had identified any other real suspects. They answered the question in a roundabout fashion. First, they said, Madeleine’s life in the environs of the studio was fairly well patterned. She painted in the morning to get the light. About midday she would go to Negroni’s for coffee and a snack. She would chat to whoever she found there. Sometimes she would pick up a male and/or female model who interested her, take them back, make a series of studies, then pay them in cash. There were occasional sexual episodes with these models. There were sometimes staged sex scenes which Madeleine sketched. She was as much voyeur as participant. She enjoyed sex with both men and women, but no big affairs developed out of her local village friendships. It is clear that her emotional life was lived on another plane and with other people. All the models, for example, entered by the front door. Yet the lock on the back door was well-oiled and frequently used. Cars could and did park in the rear lane without exciting notice.
Sometimes after midday she hailed a cab and was driven away from the area. Sometimes she stayed at the studio, but always pinned a card to the front door: ‘not available until 5.30 p.m.’
This card was still on the door when Bayard arrived on the day of the murder. The front and back doors were still locked. No one had been seen entering or leaving the building through the front door.
All her friends were thoroughly questioned. Some of them apparently admitted to brief affairs with her, but the police were unable to construct a murder case against any of them.
And that’s the sum of it, Max: talented lady couldn’t get enough sex at home, went prowling to get it, ended in bed with a killer. It’s an old cliché dressed up in an artist’s smock and set in a garret in Bohemia. Yet, in one way or another, a lot of us are involved in it and we’ll be looking to you to make sense of it for us. After all, you’re a Bohemian too – a scholar gypsy who may well have insights denied to the rest of us.
Call me if you need more information – and make a great job of this one.
Danny D.
For a long time after he had finished reading Mather sat, chin cupped in hands, staring into blankness. There was something in the whole tone and tenor of the letter that made him uneasy, though for the life of him he could not define what it was. Then, mechanically, he stowed the papers and the photographs in the envelope and locked it in the safe. He looked at his watch: eleven-thirty. New York was six hours behind. She would just be packing up the day’s work, pouring herself a drink. He picked up the telephone and tapped out the number.
The phone in her apartment rang and rang. He stood there hypnotised by the sound for nearly three minutes; then he put down the receiver and, numb with fatigue, began to prepare himself for bed.
NINE
At his first meeting with Liepert and Gisela Mundt, Liepert offered a shrewd counsel.
‘I note that you have listed as desirable contacts dealers and auctioneers in Zurich. But I think you must be very careful in your first choice of associates. You are, if I may say so, more in tune with Europe than many Americans. I think you should be dealing with those companies where the control has passed from the old ones to the young Turks, the ones who are in contact with new fashion, new money and who take a global view of the market.’
‘That makes very sound sense.’
‘Let me try to make a little more. You are well recommended, well connected. In a conservative town like Zurich that is valuable. However, I do not want you to dissipate that value by making yourself too available or appearing too eager to trade.’
‘Again I agree. How do you suggest we proceed?’
‘Let me arrange a small dinner party at my house. I’ll invite someone from the bank, two dealers – each a specialist in his own field – and one auctioneer, Swiss of course. That way we create friends and not rivals. I must declare to you at once that I have an interest in this matter. The auctioneer is my client. The others I know in the course of business, but the bank would be interested to have them as clients. For me – a pleasant diplomatic exercise which creates goodwill. For you, it’s a springboard from which you jump painlessly into the pool.…It’s the way business is done in Zurich. You know what they say about the banks here. They have enough colonels to run South America!’
‘I’ve never heard that before.’
‘It’s true. The bank officers all do Army service together, so they climb up the promotion ladder as friends. Let me call my wife now and see if we can fix an evening.’
After a swift exchange in Schweitzerdeutsch, he turned to Mather: ‘Wednesday?’
‘Suits me fine.’
‘Seven-thirty for eight. If you want to bring a friend, you are welcome to do so.’
‘I’m travelling alone.’
‘Then permit me to suggest that I invite Dr Mundt as your partner. The others will have their wives. A family affair is easier, you understand.’
‘Are you sure this is agreeable to you, Dr Mundt?’
‘Perfectly, Mr Mather.’
‘Thank you. Now may I ask you both a question. Would you have any means of finding a married couple in Brazil? She is Italian, he’s Brazilian of German stock. They were married in Milan in 1947 and then went to Rio de Janeiro.’
Liepert gave him a swift sidelong look. ‘May I ask the reason for the inquiry?’
‘It has to do with the authentication of the Raphaels. The woman, Camilla Dandolo, was a well-known opera singer and mistress of Luca Palombini. Her husband is thought to have been the local SS commander during the war. A question arises as to whether the Raphaels – or indeed any other Palombini art works – may have been given to the woman as a pay-off or to the man in return for wartime protection.’
‘You must forgive the tenor of my next question, Mr Mather.’
‘Please go ahead.’
‘Are you Jewish?’
‘No. I’m not sure I see the point of the question – but no, I’m not Jewish.’
‘Sometimes matters like this are raised for other reasons: vengeance for lost relatives, war crimes, recovery of property taken by the Nazis. One has to know before one intervenes.’
‘Then let me be specific.’ Mather fished in his briefcase and brought out the proofs of the Belvedere articles and the letters from Guido Valente and Claudio Palombini. ‘Read those and you’ll see what I’m driving at.’
Liepert took his time reading the articles. As he finished each page, he handed it to Gisela Mundt. Her expression relaxed into a smile. When the reading was done she folded the papers and handed them back before speaking.
‘Well, it seems we have found ourselves a very distinguished client. Alois’ dinner guests will be very interested in that material too. Meantime, I can make a start on the Brazilians. They will, of course, be quite elderly people now. We don’t want to disturb them unduly and we certainly don’t want to be waving large quantities of money under their noses. Why don’t we construct an advertisement? “Distinguished scholar is researching work on the divas of La Scala. Would be grateful for any information on career and present
whereabouts of Camilla Dandolo, et cetera, et cetera.…” There’s an agency in Zurich which places this kind of advertisement.’
‘Let’s do it.’ Mather was excited as a schoolboy. ‘Who knows what we may prise out of the woodwork?’
‘Do you have any of your research material with you?’
‘All of it. I’m going on to Italy. I have to return the material I borrowed. I’ve also brought some pieces to auction here.’
‘Why not display them at dinner?’ Liepert suggested. ‘I know our guests would be interested.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘Quite sure. They are all young and enthusiastic.’
‘I’ll do it, then. Now if we may press on…the next question is important: confidentiality – between you and me – is guaranteed. I know that. But between me and the friends I meet in your house?’
‘There is Ehrenwort.’ Alois Liepert was very firm. ‘The word of honour. This is a small country and in many ways an old-fashioned town. Break faith and you are out of business.’
‘That’s a refreshing change,’ said Mather. The words came out with a smile of regret for vanished righteousness. Inside he felt a pang of wonder that a thunder-bolt didn’t strike him or the words turn to a bolus of molten lead in his gullet. However, if heaven was silent, Liepert was eloquent.
‘Nonetheless, my friend, you are a stranger and we have to protect you. So I advise a rigid protocol. You come and go. You talk business. You explore possibilities. But always you let it be known that the only binding document is a letter from me as your legal representative. You speak excellent German. I imagine you are equally fluent in French and Italian – but you must never presume on the legal subtleties in a foreign tongue. So no handshakes, no “dear old boy” like the British. You say, “I’ll have Alois Liepert or Gisela Mundt write to you to clarify and confirm.” Keep the words in mind…aufklären und konfirmieren.’
‘I’ll brand them on my brain,’ Mather laughed. ‘ “Aufklären und konfirmieren”, and you’re the ones who do it for me. A few more things from my list: you can receive money for me and for the companies?’
