by Cathy Ace
“If I’d known someone I’d have called them instead of the police. Anything to keep that lot away.”
I decided to ask. “Why don’t you like the police, Hannah?”
The woman paused, looked at Bud, and said, “You was one, right?” He nodded. “Well, they ain’t all bad, but some is. And I’ve met a fair few of them in me time. Not only the ones I had dealin’s wit’ over this thing.” She tapped her prosthetic leg. “Believe me, when you run a brown café, you know all the people who run the other ones, and they talk. Sometimes they talk about the folk who drink at their places, and sometimes them’s the police. Word gets around. Not everyone with a badge deserves to have one. And a lot of ’em live way beyond their incomes. You know what I mean?”
Instead of following up on Hannah’s hints about police corruption, Bud said, “If you’ll forgive us, Hannah, we need to get going. Good to talk, as always. See you in the morning.” He began to climb the stairs to Jonas’s apartment, leaving me to follow behind.
The stairs up to Jonas’s sitting room seemed even steeper than I recalled; I reckoned that was because jet lag was kicking in, and I was hungry. The ham and cheese at Pieter’s house had been welcome, but had only served to sharpen my appetite.
Plonking the damaged painting against the wall in Jonas’s sitting room, both Bud and I flopped into armchairs. Our faces told the tale; we were pooped.
“So, here we are, Wife. What’s the plan?” asked Bud.
“I’ve been thinking,” I began.
“Brain the size of a planet, genius IQ, photographic memory—you’re always thinking,” said Bud with a chuckle. “What about, and what conclusions have you drawn…based upon what facts and observations? Full report required.”
I sat up a little. “I haven’t had a chance to write up any lists, and you know I like them, so you’ll have to make do with one from my head. However, before we talk, I need to go upstairs. Want to come? There are chairs in Jonas’s bedroom in any case, and I want to check something—after I’ve used the facilities.”
Bud pushed himself out of the creaking chair. “You go on ahead; I’ll bring the painting. I’ll pop it back up to the attic.”
As Bud picked up the piece of artwork the sheet fell away from the corner I’d kicked, and I gave myself a moment to examine the naked corner of the canvas where all the gold leaf had dropped off. I’d expected plain white canvas, but what I saw was a thick, milky coating on top of what seemed to be dark splodges of color. “That’s odd,” I said. “I wonder what that stuff is?”
Bud peered more closely, then switched on a standard lamp and held the piece close to the source of light. “Maybe he recycled an old canvas from an earlier effort. I’ve read artists do that a lot. Always have, apparently. Don’t know what the white stuff is, though. Some sort of primer? You know, to allow the gold leaf to stick. Some type of glue?”
“I’ll take another look later. Got to go—now!” and I clambered up the stairs as fast as I could.
Minutes later, we were sitting beside the windows in Jonas’s bedroom; the dying light streaming in highlighted the two spots on the wall opposite us where, until that morning, the portraits of Willem Weenix and Pieter van Boxtel had hung. The whole room seemed unbalanced because of their absence; the largest portrait, of Willem, had been in the center, flanked by the two smaller depictions of Pieter and Greta. Greta’s picture was hung to the far left, closest to the wall of the room that abutted the house next door, and now our focus naturally went in that direction.
“They’ve been there a long time, those paintings,” I noted. “Look at the patches on the wallpaper. The places where they hung are much more vivid—the sun hasn’t bleached the pattern.” I noticed an anomaly and stood. I examined the wallpaper more carefully. “Look, something was pinned here. And for some time, though certainly not as long as the paintings. It’s gone now.”
Bud made groaning noises as he pushed himself out of his chair. He joined me beside the wall and bobbed his head about. “I see,” he said. “You’re right. Maybe a tiny picture?”
I shook my head. “There’s no hole for a nail or hook, just a pinhole. Besides, I don’t recall any of the paintings upstairs being as small as the size of this other mark.”
“You’d remember that because you never forget anything,” he said with a smile. My eidetic memory is something I don’t like people to know about, but Bud and I have relied upon it on many occasions when I’ve been able to recall details that have helped us in cases we’ve tackled together.
“No need to take my word for it; you can go up and measure them all if you like.”
“It might not have been a picture at all, I guess,” mused Bud. “What about one of those photographs of the mystery guy? You said there were lots.”
“None of them had a pinhole. In any case, there’s something I wanted to check up on the top floor anyway, so shall we go?”
“You go first and I’ll bring up the rear.”
Bud set me on my way with a playful pat on my bottom, then we both used the handrail to help pull our tired bodies up to Jonas’s attic. “He must have been pretty fit, going up and down these stairs all the time,” I noted. I hit the light switch as I got to the open space at the top of the stairs, but nothing happened. Flicking it back and forth—because that always works!—I said, “Probably a bulb is out; I’ll check. Be careful here. Hey! Why’d you dump that damaged piece right here? I’ve kicked the blessed thing again!” I stumbled forward and stopped myself from falling by waving my arms. Bud was at my back in a few seconds, and helped me regain my balance.
“I can’t leave you alone for two minutes, can I?” he said. “Sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t have left it where I did, but I didn’t think you’d walk into it.”
“I wouldn’t have done if the lights had come on,” I replied. “Now I think I might have done even more damage. Did I break the frame?”
“Priorities, Cait. Let’s sort out some illumination first. There are some candles here. Got a light?”
“Old smokers’ habits die hard,” I said, handing him a book of matches from the depths of my shoulder bag.
Bud lit five large candles, each at a different stage of use, which sat on a tin lid that had obviously served as a drip tray for many candles over a decent period of time. The flames flickered around the room, bathing it in a soft light that blended with the dying rays of the sun. It was magical, prompting a thought.
“I wonder if Jonas ever painted by candlelight?” I said. “He might have tried to reproduce the original setting in which certain artists worked.”
“Good point. That could have been part of his experimentation with technique.”
I laughed loudly, the sound ringing around the brick walls of the attic. “Swallow an art book recently, Husband?”
“I’m not a complete Philistine,” smiled Bud. “I browse pretty widely, you know. And now that I have full access to all your books too, I find myself thumbing through them on occasion. While you were at work putting out departmental political fires last week, I decided to mug up on Amsterdam. You’ve got a lot of books about artists. More than I realized.”
“A year of art history at Cardiff Uni before I specialized in psychology means I covered a lot of ground. I bought a few when I was here that first time, back in the eighties. The people I’d been peeling bulbs with thought I was mad to spend money I really couldn’t afford on books, rather than beer. But there you go—I still get pleasure from those books, whereas the beers would be long gone.”
Bud patted his tummy and chuckled. “Beers take longer to get rid of than you might think. We’ve had a few today, and not much to eat. Would you think I’m a complete wimp if I said I feel done in? Back in the day I could have taken the long-haul flight and the rushing about we’ve done in my stride. I hate to say it, Cait, but it seems ‘the hill’ everyo
ne talks about is fifty-five, and I find I’m slowing down a bit since I crested it.”
“Wow,” I mugged, “you’ll be fifty-six next month. An old man. Starting to act your age at last?”
“I’m more than middle-aged,” said Bud quietly. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
I wasn’t going to stand for that. “Your mom and dad are both hale and hearty in their eighties—your uncle, too. Who knows how long he’d have gone on if he hadn’t fallen? You’ve every chance of a having good few decades ahead of you. Ahead of us. So stop it now. You’re just jet-lagged and hungry. Come on, let’s call it a day and get ourselves back to the hotel. A reviving shower and an hour or two with our feet up and we’ll be ready for another lovely dinner out somewhere.”
“Not something as big as last night, I beg you,” pleaded Bud.
“Japanese? That’s light, and there are some great sushi places here.”
“Sushi? Here? When we live on the west coast of Canada? Are you nuts? It can’t be better than we have at home. I was thinking of something that’s actually Dutch.”
I was puzzled. Bud doesn’t normally care what he eats. Maybe we’d eaten too many sauces and flavors for his palate the night before. “You know it’s not really the sort of weather to be eating lots of stews or cheesy dishes. What about trying to find a fish restaurant? They have good fish here, beyond the sushi variety.”
“Okay, let’s try to do that. But, even if not fish, something light. Now—back to our hotel. I’ll clean up and you can do restaurant research. Do you think the fact that it’s Friday night will mean it’ll be tough to find a fish place?” said Bud as he began to blow out the candles.
“Hang on a minute!” I shouted louder than I’d meant to.
“What?” Bud sounded startled.
“There, on the wall. See? There are a few bricks sticking out in the shape of an ‘X.’ The light from the candles is casting a shadow we wouldn’t have seen in daylight. I wonder what it is.” I strode over to feel the lumpen outcrop. The bricks were loose. “They move,” I said, feeling a thrill in my bones.
“Don’t pull them out, Cait. The whole wall might fall down,” said Bud, relighting the two candles he’d already extinguished, but he was too late to stop me.
Once I had all five bricks on the floor, and was sure I hadn’t caused a major structural catastrophe, I peered into the hole. “Candle please.” Bud obliged and I poked about with my hand, then the whole of my forearm. “It goes back a long way,” I noted.
“You’re probably waggling your fingers in next door’s attic,” said Bud.
“No, I can’t be. The roof is angled. This is in some sort of cavity between the wall and the roof structure. Remember, when we looked up from the street, this window at the front was in the peaked, tiled roof part of the house. This doesn’t connect with next door. Hang on, there’s something here.”
When I pulled my hand out, my fingers were gripping a long wooden box. It had a patina suggesting great age, and the letter s was carved into its top.
“Bud, where’s that key?” Bud handed it to me, but it didn’t look as though it would fit. “Too big. Shame.”
“Is it even locked?”
“Good question.” I tried the lid. It opened easily. The box was empty. We both made little noises of disappointment. I happened to look down at where I’d placed the bricks. “Play the candlelight down there, Bud.” Wax dropped onto the floor as Bud tried to do as I’d asked. It congealed on the little flecks of rosy brick dust I’d created when I’d pulled the bricks loose. “Now isn’t that interesting,” I observed.
“Very.” Beside the mess we’d just made was a similar pattern of dust and wax. “I wonder who did that.”
“It could have been Jonas, but it could have been someone else.” I closed my eyes for a moment, recollecting the room as it had appeared when we first arrived. “Thinking about it, there was a bit of a gap in the overall chaos, right here, when we first arrived—before you started moving stuff about. That’s curious in itself, don’t you think?”
Bud sagged. “Today’s been a very curious day. Let’s take the box, get out of here, and talk about all of this when I don’t feel as though one of those bricks just hit the side of my head. I can’t cope. This isn’t what I thought would happen when we came here. I need to think, and I just can’t.”
“Come on, let’s get you sorted, old man.”
The Leidseplein at Night
BY NINE-THIRTY WE’D REFRESHED OURSELVES, found a place to eat, and were grazing on some delicious, if small, succulent steak wraps accompanied by crispy fries and various dips—including mayonnaise. We treated ourselves to a bottle of prosecco, both agreeing more beer wasn’t the way to go, that it was too warm for red wine, and that we didn’t have a good reason to splurge on champagne. It was fun to sit beneath the stars and the neon, watching the world go by. As the night wore on I began to feel ancient, as the people swirling around and past us seemed to get younger by the hour. We decided to head back to the hotel before we fell asleep at the restaurant.
“The wine’s gone straight to my head,” I admitted as we weaved our way through what seemed to be even busier streets than when we’d gone out. “And I know I promised not to bring up any difficult topics tonight…”
“Thanks for that,” replied Bud, “but I know it won’t last, so go for it. You have until my head hits the pillow. After that I’m making no promises.”
I gave him a playful thump on the arm, and did what he knew I was going to do. “I think we need a plan of action for the morning. First thing, can you get hold of some of your old buddies from Interpol or the secret squirrel squad or whatever, and find out the exact details of your uncle’s death? I hope this isn’t a bad precedent to set, but if you have useful contacts, maybe now’s a good time to use them. I don’t feel comfortable having only Menno’s scant explanation. He might not be lying, but he might be hiding something. If Hannah’s right about him looting your uncle’s place after his death, he might have been removing evidence of something suspicious. Possibly a laptop, too. I also want to spend some time getting some stuff down on paper. I know I can recall what I wish at will, but I need some time to lay out my thoughts. We should have coffee with Hannah and meet Greta at the Café Americain for lunch as planned, then go to Bernard’s and Johannes’s homes in the car you’ve booked. Once we’ve seen them all, I’ll have a better grip on this, I reckon.”
“You don’t think Jonas fell down his stairs, do you?” said Bud, sounding glum.
“I don’t know about his falling, but I think there’s something fishy going on.”
“Not every death is murder or manslaughter, Cait. People do die of natural causes or accidents, you know.”
“I know, but even if his death was just an accident I have the distinct impression there’s something going on behind a veil of secrets. This Group of Seven? Very odd. Your uncle’s letters and innuendos? Even more odd. I feel there’s something just beyond my grasp—and it’s annoying me. I’ll grant you he was old, and the stairs at his place are a deathtrap, but…” I trailed off, not able to find the words to adequately express what I was feeling. “Look, the fact of the matter is that this isn’t about me or my instincts; it’s about your mother. She’s gone through her entire life feeling the loss of her brother. The fact that she never mentioned him to you suggests a deep-seated sense of that loss. A type of grief with no possible outlet. No resolution. We have a chance to give her that at least. She’s a lovely woman, Bud—despite her quirks—and she’s been incredibly kind and loving toward me. I feel the need to do this to help her very keenly. She deserves some real information and insight. We owe her that.”
“I owe her a great deal more, Cait, and you have great instincts,” said Bud as we arrived outside our hotel, “so you don’t need to prove anything to me. I know your gut reactions aren’t that a
t all—you’ve usually sensed something you lock away in your hot little brain, and when you pull it out again it makes sense. We’re both grappling with the effects of an extremely long travel day, just a couple of days ago. We’re still out of sorts. Be kind to yourself, and me, and let’s sleep on it. You know you do some of your best thinking when you’re asleep.”
“Hey! Just because I’ve been known to drop off while I’m using my wakeful dreaming technique doesn’t mean I use dream analysis to help solve cases. Not always, anyway. But I know if I tried my special method right now I’d be in the Land of Nod before five minutes had passed. So, you’re right, let’s sleep on it.”
For about three hours after I snuggled into the comfort of the sheets and my husband’s arms, I slept as though I were a corpse myself, without recalling a single dream. When I awoke I immediately knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep in a hurry, especially given Bud’s rhythmic snoring. I lay still for quite a few minutes, then decided to give in to my bladder and my need for quiet thinking time. I judged the little lamp on the desk wouldn’t bother my comatose husband, and I was right. For the next couple of hours I made lists, struck through items on them, then made new ones. Everything was jumbled. It was a frustrating process.
Jonas’s different styles of artistic endeavor, his travels to visit places connected with Van Gogh, his work as a guard, then a walking guide, his attachment to a group of people who—so far—all seemed a little less than likeable. These were all real facts as far as I could determine, but what did they tell me? Did I feel I knew Jonas better now than a couple of days earlier? Not really. And that was annoying. No one seemed to be adding to the picture of the man—there just seemed to be more to back up what little we knew: he was talented and obsessed.
I admitted to myself that my personal dislike of Menno possibly had something to do with the fact that he was unpleasantly brusque, rail thin, and, if Hannah was to be believed, he’d been economical with the truth about visiting Jonas’s house.
