The Corpse with the Garnet Face

by Cathy Ace

  “I’ve cooled on that one too. Clean records all round, as you know, with the exception of Willem, and I’ve met enough people mixed up with the dope trade over the years to get a feel for them. This lot? I don’t think drugs. But accidental, or suspicious, deaths? I hadn’t seen that one coming, so maybe I’m wrong about the drugs too. I just don’t know any more, Cait. One thing’s for sure: I want a face-to-face with Menno van der Hoeven to ask him what he took from Jonas’s home that he ‘forgot’ to mention. I suggest we drop by his office in the morning.”

  “Before or after we have coffee with Hannah?”

  Bud cursed. “I’d forgotten about that. After, I guess. We should deal with her, you’re right. Funny old girl, isn’t she? She deserves to pick out a painting for herself; then we can decide what to do with the rest of them.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a bit of time to have a good look at them myself, Bud,” I added. “I think that, for now, the best thing I can do—we can do—is brush our teeth and try to get a full night’s rest. If your contact can come up with something—anything—tomorrow, that would help, and I agree we should swing by Menno’s office after we’ve seen Hannah. That’s a good plan. Oh no—hang on, it’s Sunday tomorrow, so he won’t be there.”

  “I guess it’ll have to be Monday, then,” said Bud with resignation. “In fact, there’s not much we can get done tomorrow. Hang on a minute…if it’s Saturday today, then I promised I’d phone Mom tonight. Good catch, Cait,” said Bud heavily, “though I have no idea what to say.” His eyes pleaded with me for support.

  “Get your head to a place where she won’t hear the worry in your voice, then give her the version of the truth she’ll want. Say we’re seeing lots of Amsterdam, the countryside, and even the coast, that we’re enjoying meeting all of Jonas’s old friends, and we’ll have lots to tell her when we get back.”

  Bud smiled. “You’re much better at telling me how to lie than doing it yourself.”

  “Trust me. I’m a psychologist.” I patted his arm as I headed for the bathroom. “It’s exactly what she’ll want to hear from her son, and she’ll have an easier day because you told her. It’s a kindness, not a lie.”

  The Artist’s Home by Daylight

  BUD AND I LET OURSELVES into Jonas’s house at nine fifteen the next morning. Despite the promise of another warm, cornflower-blue-skied, sunny day, the streets were much quieter than we’d experienced before, and I assumed most people were lingering over their Sunday morning breakfasts. I knew I wished I’d been able to. My sleep patterns were still all over the place, and I’d found myself relatively wide awake and ready to get going much earlier than I’d expected, so Bud and I had agreed to do just that—get going.

  Jonas’s house smelled even mustier than on previous visits, so the first thing we did was open all the windows on each floor. I wanted to take the time to have a good look, in daylight this time, at all of Jonas’s paintings. I knew I’d need Bud’s help, so we set about moving pieces around so I could see more of them at once. We organized the works into three main sections, one against each of three walls: the portraits of the unknown man, the two-artist paintings, and the remainder—the slightly altered versions of famous works Jonas had produced. The two-artist collection was by far the biggest. We spread them out against the fourth wall too, allowing me to see them better. It took awhile, and we were both quite warm by the time we’d finished, so we took a breather beside the open window at the back of the house.

  Standing there quietly, overlooking the small garden to the rear of Jonas’s home—just big enough to accommodate a clothesline shaped like a spider web—and the tiled roofs beyond, I mused, “It’s nice here, isn’t it? Relatively quiet at the back for an urban home.” Bud agreed. “I’m glad we’ve bought a place to live out in the countryside. I like cities, but I’m happy to just visit.”

  “So you’d be all right with me selling this place?” said Bud quietly.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good, because I’m thinking it might be best. I’m not sure I want an international portfolio of rental properties to worry about.”

  I gave him a friendly punch, then turned my attention to the paintings. “And what about this lot?”

  Bud shook his head. “I know in my heart I have to take some back to Canada—for Mom, and for me. Us. Let’s be honest, these aren’t just good, they’re amazing. Even I can see that. And, of course, they were painted by my uncle. I know he’s not turning out to be an angel, but he’s still family. But taking the lot? It’s just not practical. Do you think there’s anything here you’d like to send off to your sister in Australia?”

  The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, so I considered it. “I’m not sure, Bud. Art’s a funny old thing. For example, there are pieces here I can admire, and even call ‘wonderful,’ but I wouldn’t want to live with them on my walls. Take that Van Gogh over there—the apple blossom one. It’s amazing. It’s not the same composition as the real thing, but the beauty and technique are, frankly, just as good. That said, I’m not really an ‘apple blossom’ sort of girl.”

  Bud hugged me. “Stretching the word ‘girl’ a bit, eh?”

  I shot him down with an expertly aimed eyebrow-arch, then said, “Look, the apple blossom one is sitting beside Jonas’s version of The Dutch Proverbs by Pieter Breugel the Elder. I admire that one too, but I couldn’t live with it. Hang on a mo—is that a Breugel tree I see?”

  I crossed the room and pulled out a canvas Bud had placed at the back of the pile. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was The Hunters in the Snow, and next to it was the wonderfully grisly Triumph of Death.

  “I tell you what, Bud. I’d be really happy with both these pieces on our walls at home. The snow scene was another of the prints deigned suitable to be hung on the walls of my old school back in Wales, and I adore it. It’ll also make me smile when I look at it and see the way he’s depicted people playing hockey on the farthest frozen pond.”

  Bud joined me beside the piece and peered at it. “So he did. Yeah, then, okay, that’s a keeper. I’ll pretend they’re the Canucks winning the Stanley Cup.”

  We both laughed at that one.

  “Maybe Jonas cheered for Sweden, like you do sometimes.”

  Bud looked wistful. “Perhaps.”

  “Okay, so, if that keeps you happy, and aware of how many hours we’ve spent talking about what art to hang where at home, why don’t we both have another look at these pieces with a serious eye to what use we could make of them back in Canada. We could organize getting them shipped as they are, because the frames are wonderful too.”

  “Whatever you want. It won’t bother me having the one with the hockey around. But that other one?” he gestured toward the corpses and cadavers in The Triumph of Death. “That’s a bit much to have to face every day. If you hide it somewhere where I never have to see it, then that would be okay. So, yes, I’ll pick out a few I like too.”

  “Great idea—let’s do it.”

  As Bud and I happily pulled canvases forward so we could see everything in turn, we gradually formed a little pile in the middle of the room, leaning up against the legs of the central table. Stepping back to admire our selection I heard a terrible cracking, crunching noise. I looked down to discover that, for the third time, I’d stood on the Seurat/Klimt we’d taken to present to Marlene van der Hoeven.

  Bud shook his head. “You just don’t like that piece at all, do you? Determined to wreck it. I’d say the job’s done now. Pass it to me, and we’ll take it down to drop in the trash.”

  “No, I broke it, I’ll dump it,” I said, “besides, we’d better get down to Hannah’s for coffee, or she’ll think we’ve forgotten her. Let’s leave it here for now and ask her about it. She’ll know best how to dispose of it. I don’t know how the recycling and garbage arrangements work here.”

  “Sure,” said Bud headi
ng for the top of the stairs.

  A few minutes later we were at Hannah’s door, which opened almost before we’d knocked. Her usually beaming face was a mess. She had a lump that would become a black eye, a split on one side of her lower lip, and she’d been crying. It was a shock to see her looking that way.

  “What happened?” I almost shouted.

  She tried to smile, but couldn’t “Stairs. Fell. Fine,” she managed in a thick voice, then she stepped inside to allow us to follow her.

  Her sitting room was in disarray. Ashtrays lay about the place full of stubs, and the air was rank; dozens of beer bottles littered every surface, and I spotted a couple of half-empty bottles of Paddy Whisky on the kitchen table. LPs had been taken from their place on the shelves, removed from their covers, and lay on the floor, alongside dozens of others still in their sleeves. Hannah had either smoked and drunk enough to kill a horse since we’d left the previous day, or she’d had people to visit.

  My Welsh instincts kicked in and I did what I suspect I’m genetically programmed to do—I headed for the kitchen where I began to organize making a cup of tea, and hunted about for something sweet that the woman could eat. Meanwhile Bud made Hannah sit down, and he opened every window he could reach.

  A plate of lemon tarts, which I suspected were left over from our visit, and a pot of tea found their way onto Hannah’s lurid coffee table, and, with Bud and me working as a team, it wasn’t long before all the bottles and ashtrays were cleared, most of the LPs were back where they belonged, and the place looked a good deal cleaner, with the open windows allowing it to smell much fresher.

  Hannah let us do everything. She’d zoned out, fat tears rolling down her face in silence.

  Once she had a cup of tea with three sugars in her hand I decided it was time to speak to her.

  “So, what happened?” I began. Her immediate reaction was to bawl. Bud handed her tissues, and we waited. Eventually she stopped sobbing long enough to sip her tea, and she even wolfed down a tartlet. I wondered when she’d last eaten; there was no evidence of any food at all in the kitchen.

  Finally composed, Hannah said, “I went out after you left yesterday. I was so happy seein’ meself in that lovely portrait I t’ought I’d go back to me old café and just, you know, relive a few old memories. I drop in there now and again, and I know some of the young folk what work there now, so I knew they’d look after me, like. And they did. A whole bunch of amateur rugby players from Dublin was in for the weekend for a stag do, and they was having a rare old time of it, to be sure. Said they’d come to Amsterdam for the party ’cos Dublin’s full of English blokes doing the same t’ing there every weekend nowadays. They told me they’d been to the Sex Museum, but said they’d avoided the Red Light District. I didn’t believe them for one minute, of course, but I played along, you know, as you do. They even bought me me supper, lovely boys. They said they’d walk me back here and I invited them in, of course. The craic was grand. But when they’d gone…” she started to cry again “…it’s gone. They took me lovely picture, so they did. Wicked boys. Looked everywhere I have. It’s gone.”

  My heart went out to the woman. Hannah had an aura about her that made you like her, and made you want to spend time with her. She’d initially struck me as a woman I could trust, and I hated to see her so unhappy. “And you fell down the stairs when?”

  Hannah tried to smile again. “First thing this morning. I hadn’t strapped me leg back on properly, at some point. Can’t remember even takin’ it off, but I know it’s one of me party tricks, so it is. Might have had one too many.” She managed a wink with her good eye. “Them tarts is good,” she added, gesturing she’d like another. I passed her the plate, then felt my tummy rumble. I hoped she hadn’t heard it. If she had, she didn’t react.

  “Are you two not havin’ tea too?” she said, munching.

  Bud and I took a cup each, and we tried to settle; this wasn’t the gathering we’d expected.

  Fortunately, it only took another ten minutes until it seemed Hannah was feeling quite like her old self again, so Bud and I offered to accompany her up to Jonas’s studio right then for her to pick out a piece for herself. “You could choose two, if you like,” I added as we set off on our mountaineering expedition. “I’m so sorry your picture has gone, but I know you like the more modern style, so let’s see what’s there that you fancy.”

  The Selection of a Piece of Art: Study

  GIVEN SHE’D FALLEN DOWN HER own stairs the night before, Hannah Schmidt was surprisingly nimble, for a woman of her age, as she clambered the flights to Jonas’s studio ahead of me. In fact, I had a hard time keeping up with her. It was particularly annoying that she wasn’t at all out of breath when we assembled in front of Jonas’s collection; the ashtrays in her place suggested she smoked a good deal. I’d given up for almost a year, but I was wheezing like an old pair of bellows.

  “He’s done a lot more since I was last up here,” said Hannah.

  I decided to call her out on that one. “You gave us the impression you’d never, or only rarely, visited Jonas in his part of the house. You went so far as to say you weren’t close. Yet Bernard told us Jonas used to visit your brown café on a pretty regular basis.”

  Hannah looked me up and down as though I was a leftover plate of cabbage, her nose wrinkling. “And what would he know, I ask you?” she snapped. “I might have been married to the man for a couple of seconds way back when, and he and Jonas might have been as tight as ticks, but he’s talking out of his you-know-what. To be sure, Jonas would come to my bar and have the odd free glass or two with me, but that was back in the days when I had the place to offer him such, and that’s a long time ago now, so it is.”

  “That portrait he painted of you suggested that he and you were close, Hannah,” I pressed. “The way you were looking him tells me there was a connection.”

  “Well, now, that’s where you’re wrong. Never sat for him for that one, I didn’t. Plenty of others, many years earlier, when I had the figure and the face for it, as I know I told you. But not that portrait. I didn’t t’ink it were particularly flattering in any case. Van Gogh’s style didn’t lend itself to flattery. Raw his people were, like everything else he put on canvas. Stars, fields, trees, skies—they’re all well and good raw. People need humanity painted into ’em. Never any good at that, he weren’t. Now, this stuff Jonas did,” she said waving toward the piles of two-artist pieces, “this is more like it. Not done in oils, like the one he did of me, of course, but acrylic’s all right for this sort of thing. They’re hilarious. Very like Jonas to come up with these sorts of ideas. And none of them in clunky old frames, neither.” Her face lit up as she added, “You reckon it’s all right for me to take a couple?”

  Bud smiled his agreement. Clapping her hands with excitement, Hannah moved toward the pile slowly, savoring every second—like a cat approaching a mouse. I couldn’t help but smile as I saw her touch pieces with reverence, and move them as gently as though they were made of eggshells. She clearly respected his work, and took her time with her selection.

  As Bud and I had done earlier, she pulled several pieces from the collection. In her case she lined them up along the front of the heap, and regarded them with half-closed eyes and a look of rapt concentration. Her hands on her considerable hips, she walked slowly along the line, then looked at Bud and me and said, “It’s terrible hard to have to choose. These are all so good.”

  Hannah’s thoughtful strolling had become full-on pacing. She was muttering to herself; shaking her head, she looked at Bud and said, “I can’t do it. I can’t choose. I’m just a useless old bat. Me head can’t cope.”

  Bud touched her shoulder reassuringly. “You’re not useless, Hannah, it’s a tough choice. Tell you what, if you want all five, take them. Cait and I would be delighted to know they’ll all be enjoyed and loved by someone who knew Jonas, and clearly ador
es his work.”

  Hannah stared to cry. “Oh, you’re such a lovely, lovely man,” she sobbed happily. “I cannot get over how lovely you are. Just like your uncle, to be sure. He was so kind to me, all my life. And now you too.” Bud had run out of tissues, so he pulled some paper towels from the roll sitting on Jonas’s painting table. Hannah used it to mop her face—avoiding her cuts and bruises.

  Finally composing herself, she caught sight of the broken piece lying on the floor. “That would have been a nice one too, if someone hadn’t broken it. See how the gold looks like the sunshine?”

  I picked up the piece guiltily. “It was the one Jonas earmarked for Marlene van der Hoeven. I managed to break it a bit at her place, then I went and made it even worse when we brought it back here. To be honest, she didn’t seem too keen on it, so I thought we’d just pick out another smallish one for her. She seems to have walls full of pictures as it is.”

  “Strange woman, that Marlene, even if I do say so meself. Always was. Dare say she always will be. Like the character of Countess Aurelia in The Mad Woman of Chaillot. Or maybe not; that character railed against alienation and acted to stop it. Marlene was the one who was always alienated from the rest of us. It was as though she had something to hide—something she held close to herself, and only she knew about it.”

  “The Countess Aurelia oversaw a mock trial, then led the men planning to redevelop her home to their deaths,” I mused. “Having met Marlene, she doesn’t strike me as the nemesis type.”

  “Never can tell with them nut-jobs,” said Hannah with finality.

  I fiddled with the edge of Marlene’s broken picture as we spoke, and was horrified to discover the whole skin of the gold leaf Jonas had applied was beginning to peel off. Of course, I couldn’t resist picking at it and, by the time Bud had gathered up the larger pieces Hannah was taking, and they had begun to make their way down the staircase, I had pulled off a good four or five square inches of Jonas’s work. I rolled the metallic substance into a little ball, then noticed the thick, milky coating I’d spotted when I’d first damaged the painting was beneath the entire piece, and, through it, I thought I could make out the shape of a horse pulling a cart. Jonas must have reused canvases as Bud had suggested.