The Missing Masterpiece

by Jeanne M. Dams

  I gave Peter the tiniest of shrugs and said, ‘Good, that’s settled, then. Peter, you know Avranches and we don’t. Could you maybe show us around this morning? Then after lunch we can decide whether to stick together or go off on our own.’

  Peter looked puzzled, as well he might, and I didn’t want to explain in front of the kind American. ‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ he whispered as we trailed the man across the crowded, noisy lobby.

  ‘Don’t whisper,’ I said. ‘It carries. Wait.’

  Mr Krider left us at the door while he brought the car around, and the minute he was out of earshot, I began. ‘Don’t interrupt, because this has to be quick. I called Alan and he’s coming as soon as he can. He’ll help, I know, but it can’t be official because he’s not only retired but off his turf. Meanwhile I’ll do what I can. I’ve discovered a talent, late in my life, for untangling messes. We won’t talk about it in front of Mr Krider, because nice as he seems, we don’t know a thing about him except that he’s American. I like him and he’s probably okay, but we don’t know for sure.’

  Peter latched onto only one phrase. ‘You’re a … some sort of detective?’

  ‘Not officially. But remember, we don’t talk about anything important while Mr Krider’s with us.’

  He pulled up just then and I nudged Peter as we got into the back seat. He was looking like Inspector Clouseau, full of intrigue and mystery. ‘Smile!’ I hissed. ‘Or at least try not to look so conspiratorial!’

  His smile looked rather more like what an infant produces when its tummy hurts, but fortunately Mr Krider wasn’t looking in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Do you know the way, sir?’ asked Peter as we set off down the narrow road.

  ‘Well, son, I got the car there. I reckon I can get it back. D’you think I should turn in the car right away, or keep it for driving us around?’

  I looked at Peter. ‘Parking can be a bit difficult,’ he said, ‘but it’s a fair walk from the car hire to the Scriptorial.’

  ‘Would there be a taxi?’ I asked, bearing in mind my bruises and general stiffness.

  ‘I’d think so. Or perhaps a shuttle to the railway station.’

  ‘There’s a shuttle,’ said Mr Krider. ‘I rode it when I picked up the car.’

  ‘They might be persuaded to drop us off, then. The Scriptorial isn’t far from the station.’

  ‘And what is this Scriptorial place? Never heard of it.’

  Peter’s explanation, encompassing a history of Mont-Saint-Michel, the Benedictine order, medieval manuscripts in general, the French revolution, and the town of Avranches, was still going on when we pulled into the rental lot. Mr Krider looked as though he was drowning in the flood of information. ‘Hmm,’ was all he said as we got out of the car.

  ‘You know,’ I said as we walked to the rental office, ‘if this isn’t your cup of tea, I’m sure there are other points of interest in the town.’

  He turned to me. ‘Ma’am, I came all the way from Cleveland to Mont-Saint-Michel to see one of the oldest abbeys in the world, and I could only spend one day there because they went and closed it today for some reason. If some of its treasures are here in Avranches, lead me to ’em.’

  Oh, my. And I had taken him for a well-to-do businessman intent on checking off one more ‘sight’ in the list of a hundred must-sees. At least I got the Ohio part right. ‘What’s your interest in old abbeys? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘Don’t mind at all. My son is thinking of joining the Benedictines, and I want to know as much about them as I can. Figured one good way was to trace their history.’

  ‘Oh.’ Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything more to say, since I thought it would be rude to ask the questions that sprang to mind: is this son the father of some of those grandchildren you mentioned? How do you feel about this? What makes you think ancient Benedictine history will make you better informed about the order today?

  He turned in his car and tipped someone to take his bags to the train station. I went about the business of reserving my car for later pickup. We found a taxi to take us to the museum, and I still hadn’t said a word.

  ‘You’re wondering about my family,’ he said when we were settled in the back seat and making our slow way through city traffic.

  ‘Among other things. Children, you said, and grandchildren?’

  He sighed. ‘Two children, a son and a daughter. My daughter, Kathy, married young and produced four children in short order, including one set of twins. They’re all in school now, and my wife and I were beginning to long for babies again. Grandchildren are so much more fun! Well, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No, actually. I was never able to have children, and I didn’t marry my second husband until his grandchildren were well past the baby stage. But I do understand. You have to care for and worry about your children, but grandchildren are for spoiling – and sending back to their parents when you get tired of them.’

  ‘You got it. So when Roger was getting close to thirty, and didn’t seem interested in marriage …’

  ‘You thought he might be gay.’

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow, you know,’ put in Peter. ‘It could simply be that he’s too interested in his career to think about settling down yet.’

  ‘My wife and I tried to believe that, but he doesn’t really have a career. He’s had a series of jobs, none of them very interesting. But this religious stuff just came out of the clear blue sky.’

  ‘That,’ I said with a grin, ‘is where inspiration is reputed to come from.’

  ‘I suppose. But he’d never – I mean, we’re Methodists!’

  ‘Ah. Hardly a monastic sort of denomination.’ Peter sounded a little condescending.

  ‘Boy, you said a mouthful!’ Either Mr Krider didn’t catch the attitude, or he didn’t care. ‘I’ve worked in research all my life. Trying to figure out stuff is what I do. So when Roger blindsided us with this, I set out to understand it.’

  Talk to him, I thought. Sit down with him and have a heart-to-heart. Have you ever tried to understand your son?

  That was unfair, I scolded myself. You know nothing about this man. Maybe he’s the best possible parent. He did, after all, travel several thousand miles to learn more about the Benedictines.

  And then we arrived at the Scriptorial, and I got out of the cab with relief, lest my thoughts show on my face.

  At first glance I thought we had been taken to the wrong place. ‘But this is a castle. I read somewhere that the museum is new. Maybe I read the French wrong.’

  ‘No, you’re quite right,’ said Peter. ‘The Scriptorial was built in 2006, but within the old town walls. That’s what you’re seeing here. Not a castle, but fortifications, all the same. The museum inside is entirely modern. Shall we?’

  EIGHT

  The museum struck me as user-friendly, and with Peter as escort, everything went very smoothly indeed. He was able to translate for us, which might not have been necessary (there were some English-speaking staff), but was pleasant.

  The museum was far more interesting than I had expected. There was a temporary display of Egyptian artefacts which I found a bit out of place, but attractive. Then, more in keeping with the main mission of the place, there were well-designed rooms showing just how medieval manuscripts were produced – making the ink and brushes, preparing the vellum, and so on. That part of the display went on to show very early printing techniques, long before Gutenberg and movable type. We lingered over these displays, even though I was itching to get to the main attraction.

  When Peter finally led us there, I was a bit disappointed. Only a few of the treasures held by the museum were on display, and those in a carefully controlled environment. The lighting in the room was dim, and turned itself on only when we entered. The manuscripts were in glass cases, and were not easy to read, even if I had known more than a few words of Latin. The writing on several of them was very small, and slightly faded, and what with the low lighting
and the darkening of the vellum with time, I couldn’t make out more than a word here and there.

  ‘The rest of them are in vaults. It’s not good for them to be displayed for very long,’ said Peter in a near-whisper.

  ‘But then what good are they?’ asked Mr Krider in a normal voice that seemed somehow out of place.

  ‘Scholars and researchers can study them, under restrictions, of course. There’s a balance between the need to use the works and the need to preserve them. Eventually they’re all going to be copied digitally, and then anyone, anywhere in the world, can look at them without the slightest risk of damage. Until that project is finished, though, one has to come here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ I began. ‘No, probably not, though.’

  ‘You want to see one of the Abelard manuscripts.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Would I be allowed?’

  ‘Yes, for a few moments, with me, of course. Mr Krider, I could take you in, but it would have to be separately. Too many people raise the humidity level beyond acceptable limits, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I don’t read medieval Latin, and I don’t suppose I could make head or tail of anything I saw. You two go right ahead and enjoy yourselves.’ His tone clearly indicated what he thought of our choice of amusements. ‘I’m going to poke around here and see what I can learn about the Abbey and its history. There must be someone who speaks enough English to help me out.’

  I wasn’t sure what I hoped to gain from looking at something by Abelard. It wouldn’t be in his own hand, but a monkish copy. I wouldn’t be able to read the Latin. If I wanted to learn something about the man, it would make much more sense to find a modern translation of his work, and/or a biography.

  But it wasn’t so much Abelard I wanted to learn about, I realized. It was Peter’s reaction to Abelard. And for that, watching him as he showed me the manuscript might be very instructive indeed.

  Do you remember when you were a really little kid, three or four, and the whole world was new and interesting? You’d stop and crouch over a patch of dirt, intent on some tiny thing the grown-ups couldn’t even see, and you couldn’t understand why they wanted to hurry you along.

  I felt exactly like one of those grown-ups, when we had put on our white gloves and sat down in front of the manuscript Peter had chosen to show me. It was, he told me, Abelard’s most famous work, Sic et Non (Yes and No), one of the works that got him into so much trouble with the church authorities. To me it was just a book. Yes, extremely old, and worthy of respect for that reason. The leather binding was crumbling; the pages were chipped. There was nothing unusually beautiful about it, though some of the capital letters were ‘illuminated’, or at least drawn with extra flourishes, and the almost-perfect regularity of the writing was admirable.

  To Peter, this was even better than a patch of dirt to a three-year-old – more like a Holy Grail. He almost genuflected before it. He pointed out the structure of Abelard’s arguments, posing a question and then supplying several answers, often conflicting ones, and arguing the reasons for the apparent contradictions. Then, having done his duty by his guest, he started reading and was immediately lost in the twelfth century.

  He never even noticed when I left.

  Okay, so Peter’s interest in Abelard was genuine. But there was still something a little odd about the whole situation. He was looking for music, or so he said. So why was he poring intently over a theological treatise? It couldn’t be for the content. He could get that much more easily in a modern translation, or a transcription, if for some reason the Latin held some arcane detail not obvious in English.

  I gave it up and went to see what Mr Krider was up to.

  The layout of the Scriptorial is interesting, but somewhat confusing. It’s intended to remind one of the configuration of Mont-Saint-Michel itself, an upward spiral leading to the pinnacle. But the continuous ramp made it hard to remember where I was. I wandered for quite a while before I spotted Mr Krider, and when I did, I stopped in my tracks.

  He was deep in conversation with one of the museum staff, and they were both speaking in rapid-fire French.

  I moved behind a display case. It was a glass cube, not a great hiding place, but it was the first obstacle I could find. Had the man actually said he didn’t speak French, or was I making assumptions? No, darn it, he’d gone off looking, he said, for someone who spoke enough English to help him.

  Maybe that wasn’t a direct lie, but it sure was intended to deceive. And I couldn’t imagine why.

  The two men were quite close, and were speaking in normal tones, but I could learn nothing from their conversation. Not for the first time, I wished I’d kept up my French. But good grief, how was I to know, over fifty years ago, that I was going to move to a place closer to France than Hillsburg, Indiana, was to Cincinnati?

  Now I was in a predicament. Should I come out from my place of minimal concealment and say something of the order of ‘Hah! Caught in the act!’

  Well, no. My style is more ‘Oops! So sorry,’ while I sneak away pretending I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.

  But something was going on and I was pining to find out what, if I could figure out a good way to do it.

  Think. I needed time to think. Which meant I needed to get out of there fast, before Krider turned around and saw me there.

  I started to back away, trying not to let my sneakers squeak on the shiny floor.

  ‘Dorothy, whatever are you doing?’

  The conversation nearby came to an abrupt halt. Krider and the staff member turned. I turned around and clutched Peter while making an urgent ‘Shut Up!’ signal. ‘Oh, goodness, you startled me! I was just – just trying to get a different angle on this display. And then I thought I saw – oh, there you are, Mr Krider! I was looking for you, actually. Did you find someone who could help you find your history? Or at least, whatever you’re looking for?’

  I shouldn’t have said that. It slipped out. I had pasted a broad smile on my face, but his wore an expression I couldn’t quite read, except that ‘cordial’ was not among the words that came to mind.

  The next moment ‘cordial’ was the exact word. He smiled and nodded. ‘Why, yes, thank you, Mrs Martin. Everyone has been helpful, though most of the staff speak only French. It’s amazing how fast it came back to me when I really wanted to understand. At least I got part of what they were trying to tell me, eh, monsieur?’

  He made the mistake of pronouncing that word very well indeed. That wasn’t Cleveland French. It was the real thing.

  The staff member, who had enough English to understand that something odd was going on, smiled meaninglessly and melted away. Peter, who had remained obediently silent, took a breath.

  I stepped on his foot and broke into rapid chatter. ‘Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry. Breakfast was a long time ago, and I’m burnt out with looking at books I can’t read. Peter, you know the town. Where can we get a decent meal?’

  ‘Um. If simple food will do, there’s a café not far from here where they do good galettes, for not a lot of money. Or there are four-star restaurants, of course, but—’

  ‘But none of us is made of money,’ I concluded for him. I wasn’t sure what a galette was, and I waited for Krider (he of little French, supposedly) to ask, but he said, ‘As long as I can have some of Normandy’s famous cider with it, I’m your man.’

  And how did he know Normandy was famous for cider? I was growing more and more interested in our simple American research worker.

  Lunch was excellent. A galette turned out to be a savoury crèpe, filled with cheese and ham and onions and other bits I didn’t recognize, folded in from the sides to make a square, and with a poached egg on top. A little odd looking, but delicious. I washed it down with a little cider, but only a little. Cider back in Indiana was just apple juice. On this side of the pond they ferment it, and it can range in alcoholic content from mild to nuclear. One taste told me this variety
was well up on the scale, and I wanted to keep my wits about me. Waiting until Krider was well into his second glass, I put on my most innocent face and said, ‘Mr Krider, you told us you’re a researcher. Did you work for a university?’

  ‘No, for corporations.’ He hiccupped. ‘Sorry. I was freelance. When a firm wanted to find out about how well the competition was doing, say, or how well their sales were doing in terms of demographics, or almost anything of that sort, they came to me.’

  ‘Not scientific research, then.’

  ‘Depends what you mean by scientific. Lab work, no. Didn’t have the equipment for that. Or, I confess, the brains.’ He finished his cider and burped gently. ‘Pardon. No, I dealt with stas–saticks – with numbers.’

  ‘You must have had a huge staff, then, to collect the data.’ I tried to sound extremely impressed.

  ‘Nah. Pay lots of money for people to sit at computers? I could do the sitting myself.’ He laughed and hiccupped again. ‘Pardon. I can find anything on the Net. All over the world, companies hired me to give ’em info. Nothin’ I couldn’t find. You gonna finish that cider?’

  ‘No, it’s a bit strong for me. Would you like to have it?’

  We managed, Peter and I, to get him out of the café before he actually passed out, and into a cab headed for the train station. Peter asked the driver if he knew when the next train left for Paris, and learned that it wasn’t for another hour or so. I hoped the man would wake up by then and remember to collect his bags before boarding. But it was, after all, no business of mine. Except …

  Peter said it first as we stood in front of the café watching the cab disappear. ‘There’s something not quite right about that chap.’

  ‘Yes. He’s not what he appears to be. Look, I need some coffee to offset that cider. Let’s find someplace cheap where we can sit and talk.’