The Cézanne Chase

by Thomas Swan

  The reception and special exhibition galleries were on the main floor, and the bars and food tables were in a long gallery that regularly held paintings loosely categorized as American Modern. The VIP party would enter the west wing. Astrid took a position at the bottom of the staircase that led up to the collection of European paintings. The noise generated by several hundred people became a persistent buzz that was punctuated by high-pitched laughs and occasional shouts of friends greeting friends. Then a quiet came over those nearest the west entrance, and a hush rolled over the entire assemblage.

  Astrid climbed a few steps and focused her camera on the figure at the leading edge of the group entering the hall. The former First Lady wore a bright blue dress, a strand of pearls, and a flattering tan that contrasted with her white hair. She was flanked by Chauncey Eaton plus a half dozen of his associates and a single secret service agent. Astrid continued taking pictures and, after each click of the camera, moved a step higher. When the attention of the guests was squarely on the honored guest, Astrid turned and ran quickly up the remaining steps to the second floor.

  She was in the William Koch gallery, a long, narrow room illuminated by small ceiling lights. They cast soft shadows and reached only dimly into the display galleries that were at each end. She stood at the entrance to the darkened gallery that contained the French Impressionists. She stepped off fifteen paces, then turned to her left and took out the flashlight from the camera bag. She stood absolutely still, hearing the music and hum from several hundred patrons of the arts rising from the floor below, listening to her own heavy breathing. Astrid flicked on the light, and it shone straight ahead onto the portrait Cézanne had painted of himself in 1898. The artist, then nearing sixty, was wearing a floppy beret, his white beard neatly trimmed. Then she took the can of hairspray from the camera bag—SofTouch was the name on the label—and took off its cover. She stepped closer to the painting.

  She paused, hearing a saxophone playing music programmed for the gray-haired, deep-pocket crowd. She held up the can unsteadily and aimed the spray nozzle at the artist ’s forehead. Her fingers tightened.

  A woman’s voice called out in a frightened whisper. “Eddy? Eddy, where are you?” Astrid dropped the flashlight then quickly retrieved it and turned it off. She knelt on the floor, frozen in place.

  “Damn it, Eddy. It’s dark. I’m scared.”

  Then a man’s voice. “For Christ’s sake, Shirley, what’re you doing up here?”

  Excited words were exchanged, then a scampering of feet, and the couple disappeared.

  Astrid got back on her feet, turned on the flashlight and held the can up again. “Do it!” she said in a low, hoarse whisper. “Do it and get out of here!”

  Seconds went by ... a half a minute. She stood as if transfixed by a power flowing off the canvas. Then she cried, and her arms fell to her side. She dropped to her knees and sobbed. She cried out of fear that Peder would be furiously disappointed, and she cried with relief that she had not sprayed the devastating liquid over the painting.

  She covered the spray can and slipped it into the camera bag, then went back through the tapestry gallery. Ahead was the staircase that led down to the first floor, and at the top were two men wearing the uniform of the museum’s security staff. She continued past them, busy again with her camera, seeming intent on getting an unusual shot of the guests below. But her heart was pounding, and she cared only about escaping into the night air.

  She ran, nearly stumbling as she went to her car and got inside. Then an awful feeling of nausea came over her, and she opened the door, turned and vomited onto the gravel. Finally she was able to stand and lean against the car and breathe in the cool air. And let the tears flow. Peder might punish her and hurt her, but the agony of the decision that had been plaguing her for so long was finally over. That had been pain enough.

  She drove to Logan Airport and was on the midnight shuttle to La Guardia.

  Chapter 15

  Information concerning the destruction of each self-portrait had flowed into Interpol World Headquarters in Lyon, France. Details varied from the most reliable in the instance of the “smoke and burn” case in London’s National Gallery, to the sketchy and obtuse reports from the police in St. Petersburg, which had been made more confusing by the heavy hand of a new police regime in Moscow. Data that related to the “Bletchingly Incident” (subtitled Pinkster Gallery) had been supplied by the Surrey Police as well as Scotland Yard, and each were vying in a territorial dispute for ultimate investigative responsibility. Usually if the Yard wanted to win such bureaucratic infighting, it would. However well or poorly the information had been gathered, all of it was eventually submitted to the appropriate National Central Bureau (NCB) in each country and sent to the receiving unit of the Secretariat General at Interpol.

  From Interpol, following the processing of incoming information, an all points bulletin (APB) was generally telecommunicated worldwide by Interpol’s Notices Group. The APB was short on details, promising additional information in a Stolen Art/Cultural Property Notice due to be faxed the following morning. It was, in Interpol jargon, a Blue Notice, which both gave and asked for information on a specific crime or criminal. A Red Notice urged capture and arrest, frequently followed by extradition procedures. Interpol’s Notices Group also issued Green, Yellow, Orange, and Black Notices, each designed to disseminate or request information on a range of international crimes.

  Now, Tuesday morning, Ann Browley had arrived at her customarily early hour and had gone routinely to the Information Section and made copies of all incoming communications relating to the Cézanne investigation, which, on this morning, numbered two. One message was for her; the other a copy of the APB, which had been received over Scotland Yard’s secure lines to Interpol and the FBI in Washington. She then looked for Jack Oxby, only to learn that he too had arrived early, had also checked into IS, and had gone off. When Ann finally reached her office, she found a note taped conspicuously to her chair. The message elicited a wry smile.

  Visiting the spirits. Back at ten.

  J. Oxby

  Westminster Abbey had opened to the rush of tour groups, and Oxby had earlier followed a familiar route to an obscure door off the Dean’s Yard, rung the bell, and was admitted into the south nave.

  Jack Oxby was most likely the only person in London who knew that the ghosts of the great men memorialized in Westminster Abbey met regularly for spirited debates on the condition of man, or about the state of the arts, or about politics, or, the women in their lives. He sometimes took one of his problems to the Poets Corner where he selected one or two of the minds best suited to whatever was nagging at him. Of course, it was Oxby who played all the roles, arguing strenuously with himself at times, and all the while focusing his thoughts in such a way that he was often able to see through whatever problem he was dealing with and arrive at a solution.

  As he looked up to the crypts and plaques that commemorated the great men, Oxby thought of Ruskin’s high moral passion for fine art and Henry James’s probing insights into the intricacies of the human character. He was alone and spoke aloud, as if the great men were sitting across from him. He posed his questions then imagined their replies. The exercise was, in fact, the working over of his own thoughts, impregnated with fresh insights. It was a serious form of meditation, and it was hard work. After an hour he went to his favorite seat in the choir, where he filled a half dozen pages with facts and speculations, and from these he began to shape a hypothesis that, while riddled with too many assumptions, became a specific and tangible approach to the investigation.

  Oxby was certain that the burning of the self-portraits was meant to shock the art world, yet there might be an even greater purpose. But what could that be? And who was behind it? What kind of person could do it? His eyes were closed, his concentration on the range of possible reasons for the attack on Cézanne’s self-portraits. Revenge, money, notoriety—it could be one or all or none. Or it could simply be the wor
k of a deranged mind.

  He knew from Interpol’s reports that all the self-portraits had been destroyed by the same powerful solvent, but no other circumstance, fact, clue, or hint of motive was common to the three incidents. A tour group visited the Pinkster Gallery. A smoking briefcase camouflaged the act of destruction in the National Gallery, and only wild assumptions had come in from the investigators in St. Petersburg.

  “Three paintings are gone,” he said aloud. “The Hermitage, the National Gallery, the Pinkster. No pattern to that, or is there and I’m missing it?” He repeated the unanswerable refrain: “Why Cézanne’s self-portraits?”

  In the afternoon he was scheduled to receive Nigel Jones’s report on the chemicals recovered from the remains of the National Gallery and Pinkster portraits. Then there would be time with Ann Browley when he would learn of her progress in the search for sources of diisopropyl fluorophosphate, though he was not expecting much hard information so early in the hunt. Jimmy Murratore’s report on Clarence Boggs’s gambling history was due.

  Oxby stepped down from the choir, turned to the high altar, nodded respectfully, then exited through the door he had entered and set out on Victoria Street. His office in New Scotland Yard had a single window that looked out on a sliver of St. James Park four long London blocks away. There was a desk, two side chairs, a file cabinet, and a cork board, on which were pinned routine office memos, assorted notes, newspaper clippings, and photographs. He put his briefcase on his desk and began unloading an armful of books that included John Rewald’s Paul Cézanne and Lionello Venturi’s catalogue of the artist’s paintings. He looked up to find Ann Browley in the doorway, a worried expression showing clearly on her pretty face.

  “Nothing’s come of my inquiries on the DFP question, and the big drug companies are as bloody damned bureaucratic as our own government.” She came into the office. “And soon as you ask for a fast response they damned well build in another two-day delay.”

  Oxby smiled at Ann’s attempted tough talk. “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “Gone for coffee, I suppose. I’ll fetch him.”

  Oxby sat behind the wall created by his books and briefcase and stared at the notes he had made at the Abbey.Jimmy Murratore appeared, coffee in hand, and sat across from Oxby. Ann slipped into the third chair.

  “What’s new at the racetrack?” Oxby asked.

  Jimmy shook his head. “It was easy enough to learn that Clarence Boggs was losin’ a bucket of money on the horses, in fact he developed quite a reputation for losin’ at the track. Until July he had booked with one agent, an old chap named Terry Black, but that changed. Black’s health was growin’bad and he was lookin’ to retire. So he sold his books to a syndicate, one that’s got five principals. I know one on a kind of personal basis, a guy named Sylvester. I checked the others, and they’re okay.” Jimmy turned the page in his notepad. “Then—middle of August—they cut Boggs off. He’d gone over twenty thousand pounds.”

  “Surprised they let him go that far,” Oxby said.

  “There’s more to it, because old Terry Black may have put one over on them. The syndicate hadn’t sorted out all of Black’s accounts, and it seems that Boggs owed a few more thousand. They might have looked the other way, but they weren’t going to blink at all on the twenty thousand.

  “What does the syndicate do with people who owe over twenty thousand pounds?” Oxby asked.

  Murratore answered immediately. “They don’t kill them—not as a rule they don’t.”

  “What do they do?” Oxby paused. “As a rule.”

  “Bring in the lawyers.”

  Oxby showed his surprise. “I’d expect more severe measures.”

  Jimmy nodded. “There’s a few bad apples that play dirty and hire an ‘enforcer,’ but if someone’s in debt, makin’ him dead won’t do much good.”

  “But Boggs was circling his bets in the newspaper less than an hour before he was killed. Was he still betting?”

  “He got mixed up with a two-man operation, an unlicensed bunch that gave him credit.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “One’s a jockey, least he was until he got warned off for throwin’ a couple of races, and the other’s an Indian who was waitin’ tables a year ago. Neither one’s got what it takes to put together the poison package that did old Boggs in.”

  The phone rang, Ann answered. “It’s David Blaney at the Pinkster Gallery. He’s finally got the photographs and asks if you want to see them.”

  Oxby looked at his watch. “Tell him we’ll be there by two o’clock.”

  The photographs were set out on the same table where Oxby had seen the wretched remains of the self-portrait. There were more than a hundred prints, but only twelve that showed the group from the Danish embassy.

  “I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” Blaney said, “but the photographer’s been off on assignment, and it wasn’t until this morning that I talked to him.”

  “Did he give a reason for not returning your calls?”

  “No, not specifically. He gets assignments and goes off. But he told me that Mr. Pinkster had the prints.”

  “Why would Mr. Pinkster have them?”

  “It’s not unusual. Mr. Pinkster insists on seeing all the photographs before they’re shown around. It’s his gallery and his money,” he smiled. “Besides, the photographer’s a friend.”

  “What’s his interest in seeing them?” Oxby asked.

  Blaney shook his head. “Mr. Pinkster wants to see and know everything. It’s his way.”

  Ann asked, “I’d like the photographer’s name and an address where he can be reached.”

  “It’s Shelbourne. Here, I’ll write it down.” Blaney wrote the information on a piece of paper and handed it to Ann.

  Oxby and Ann studied the photographs, occasionally asking Blaney to identify where each one had been taken. Oxby held onto one of the photographs as he inspected the others under a magnifying glass. He took the photograph he had been holding and studied it for a full minute. “Tell me again where this was taken?”

  Blaney looked at the photograph carefully. “In the reception hall.”

  “At the beginning of the tour?”

  Blaney nodded. “Probably before the tour got under way.”

  “Can you have it enlarged?”

  “I’ll have Shelbourne send it directly to you.”

  Oxby took all of the photographs of the Danish group and put them in numerical order. “They begin with 74 and end with 88. The print we want enlarged is number 81. Numbers 77, 83, and 84 are missing. Could they be mixed in with the others?”

  Together they sorted through all of the prints looking for the missing ones. “Not here,” Blaney said. “That’s odd. Unless Mr. Pinkster held them out for some reason.”

  Ann looked again at the photo Oxby asked to be enlarged, “What’s so special about this one?”

  Oxby said, “There are two people in it and one is a man. The only man who was in the group. Neither the man nor the woman appears in any of the other photographs but, of course, three of them are missing.” He put the point of his pencil under the two figures. “They were with the group when the tour began and then fell behind the others. Boggs complained about stragglers, and his daughter remembers that he referred to them as a couple...as in one of each: a woman and a man.”

  Chapter 16

  Edwin Llewellyn’s bed was an extrawide, extra-long, super-king-size affair that was luxuriant to sleep in, read a good book in, have breakfast in, and have long sexual encounters in. To Llewellyn’s dismay, the latter had in recent days been few in number, a situation he felt obliged to do something about. Fraser had brought a breakfast tray, the newspaper, and Clyde, who ate the bacon then snuggled in about thigh-high where he lay under sections A and D of the New York Times.

  On his calendar for Wednesday were two appointments: the first at ten with Charles Pourville, an assistant curator at the Metropolitan; the second at eleven with Astrid Haraldsen for a tour of
the museum. The last time he had seen Astrid she had said something about a nuisance trip to Washington and refused his offer to take her to the airport. Now he began worrying that the nuisance had turned into genuine trouble. He dialed her number a second time. Still no answer.

  While he showered he thought of his meeting with Pourville, the young Frenchman he’d taken under his wing because he was an innovative curator and because Llewellyn genuinely liked him. Pourville had been instrumental in persuading the Metropolitan to participate in the upcoming Cézanne retrospective and had been named as consulting curator to the exhibition.

  At nine-thirty on the dot, Llewellyn got a London call from Scooter Albany, an old friend who correctly labeled himself a good television journalist and a lousy drunk. CBS had tolerated Albany’s irresponsible drinking beyond reasonable patience then had reluctantly given him a generous severance along with a final trip to an alcoholism rehab where he once again learned how to put the cork in the bottle. He failed miserably, however, in keeping the cork there. Scooter was one of the unfortunates who knew how to stop drinking, but didn’t want to learn how to stay stopped. He had covered royalty, politicians, drug rings, natural disasters, and the art world and decided the art world was safer and gave better cocktail parties. Now he was freelancing for a cable news service.

  “I just got back from Paris where they’re beginning to rumble about all the Cézannes going up in clouds of acid. It put me in mind of you and that family legacy of which you are so richly undeserving. I don’t usually think about you, so it’s a good excuse to call.” There was a noisy snicker. “How’re you anyhow, you old fart?”

  Scooter hadn’t changed, Llewellyn thought. It was mid-afternoon in London, and his friend was well on his way to another dive into alcoholic oblivion. The wonder was that he could carry on with his job and turn in a sparkling five-minute segment for the evening news.