City of Darkness and Light

by Rhys Bowen

  “I knew this,” I said. “But she never came to visit him—never once in all these years?”

  “No, madame. There was a falling out, but she was a good Catholic. She did not believe in divorce.”

  “And he never found anyone else?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “You show great interest in this. Who sent you here? You are from a newspaper in America?”

  “No. Nothing like that,” I said. “I show interest because I came here with a message from Mr. Bryce’s family.”

  “He had no family,” she said sharply.

  “No immediate family, that is true. But his second cousin Louisa. Did he not mention her? He was always fond of her when she was a child.”

  “I don’t recall…” she said. “Maybe. I never detected him expressing any sentiment for a family member.”

  “Anyway, she still has fond memories of him.” I had rehearsed this speech and made sure I could deliver it smoothly in French. “She was very young before he went to Paris, of course. However now she has married well and has now moved into a fine big house in Boston. She dearly wanted to have one of her cousin’s paintings on her walls so she asked me to call on him and see if there were any pictures he had recently painted and hadn’t sold.”

  “He has not been painting much recently,” she said. “And she should understand that his paintings now command high prices—higher still now that he is no more, I should think.”

  “Money is not a problem for her,” I said. “She was prepared to pay the correct price, you understand, but she wanted something fresh and new, not a painting that someone else had owned before.” I was rather pleased with this approach. It was something I thought up during my shower this morning, something simple that would arouse no suspicions and make no difficult claims for me. It appeared to have worked.

  “Ah,” the old woman nodded. “She wishes to buy a painting.”

  “The lady in Boston knew I was coming to Paris. ‘Please select a painting for me, my dear,’ she said to me. ‘I give you carte blanche to buy one. Tell Cousin Rennie it is for me and he will help you select a good one.’”

  The housekeeper shifted her feet uneasily. “As I said, I don’t think you will find new paintings that remain unsold. He has hardly touched a canvas in a year or more. In fact I thought that maybe he had given it up all together. But then recently he found the urge to paint again. Not the charming landscapes he had been painting like his friend M. Monet, but a very different subject, you understand. Not one I approved of at all.” She glanced up at the windows with a frown, then looked back at me, shaking her head.

  “This new painting, is it finished?”

  “He only just started it.”

  “And there are no other paintings in his possession that would now come up for sale? His cousin in America will be so sad to learn he has died.”

  “Indeed she will, madame. We are all sad. M. Bryce is a great loss.”

  “So I really hope his cousin Louisa will have a painting to remember him by. I wonder if it might be possible to see around his home and inside his studio for myself, so that I can write to her and describe which paintings his cousin might wish to purchase.”

  “No, madame. That would not be possible,” she snapped. “The apartment is shut. Nobody is allowed to go in by order of the police. I myself have not been allowed to sleep in my room or to clean anything. I have been staying with my sister, which is most inconvenient as she has no room for me. I only came today to retrieve certain personal items, before the police decide to throw them out. And there is food in the pantry that will be spoiled soon, if it isn’t spoiled already. I had pies and cakes … Monsieur Bryce loved his pies, madame. I expect they have spoiled already, but I thought I would just see what could be saved.”

  From the way she said this and her defensive posture I sensed there was more to her visit than looking for spoiled pies. She was uneasy, knowing that she shouldn’t be here. She had expected to slip in unnoticed and now here I was asking questions. I wondered if she only intended to help herself to a bottle or two of good wine or if she had her eye on something more valuable, like the silver, or maybe even a painting.

  “Of course, it would be a shame to let good food spoil,” I said, nodding agreement and watching the hint of a smile twitch at her lips.

  “It is too bad,” she said. “After all these years to be told that my services were no longer needed and I should find employment elsewhere. The inspector told me to come on Monday morning to give the place a thorough cleaning and then I’m finished. No more. I must find a new situation and I am no longer young. If I ever found the swine that took Mr. Bryce’s life, I would run him through with a knife myself.”

  “The knife that killed him—I understand from the inspector that it was an ordinary kitchen knife.”

  She shrugged. “He asked me if it came from my kitchen. I told him it was an inferior knife to the ones he would find in this establishment. Mr. Bryce only liked the best. Stainless steel, you know. Very modern. And now…” She turned away from me.

  I put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I understand how hard it must be for you, madame.”

  She nodded, putting her hand up to her mouth. “Mr. Bryce would never have wanted me to be cast aside in this manner. He appreciated all that I did for him.”

  “Perhaps I could help you to go through the pantry to pack up the food,” I suggested but that clearly went too far.

  “Certainly not, madame. That would be quite wrong,” she said. “I do not plan to stay long and I would be in much trouble if the police knew I had admitted a stranger. If you want to gain admission to this apartment to look at Mr. Bryce’s paintings, you must first ask permission from the police. Bonjour.” She gave a curt nod and then went up the steps, putting a key into the lock.

  So much for my Irish powers of persuasion, I thought. I didn’t think Inspector Henri would be too willing to accept yet another story from me.

  Twenty-seven

  I felt frustrated as I walked back to Miss Cassatt’s residence. Surely I should have been able to find out more from the housekeeper. Unfortunately she was clearly anxious to get in there, help herself to what she had come for, and then escape. I was in her way and there was no point in putting myself on her bad side. Had I learned anything from her, I wondered? Well, for one thing I knew that nobody would be at Mr. Bryce’s apartment on Sunday, if I could find a way in. Also I learned that he had not been painting much recently and his paintings now commanded a high price. So perhaps we had this all wrong—it might have been a simple art theft gone wrong. I wondered if the housekeeper knew which paintings had been hanging in the studio and whether one might be missing.

  I arrived back to find Sid and Gus kneeling beside one of the crates of paintings I had retrieved from Rue des Martyrs. They were holding them up to show to Mary Cassatt, sitting across from them on the sofa.

  “Honestly, you two,” came Mary’s voice from the sofa. “A more eclectic mix I have never seen, and most of it, I’m sad to say, is junk. These Fauvists, they’ll never last. Fauvism, Cubism, they are fads. They’ll vanish in a puff of smoke, hopefully giving way to good art again.”

  “What about this one?” Sid held up another painting.

  Mary leaned back to examine it. “That’s not bad. The artist can at least handle a brush well. Rather melancholy, but most of them are. It seems that to be modern means you can find no joy in life.”

  They looked up as I came into the room, and Gus held out a hand to me. “Molly, you’re back. Any luck?”

  “I met the housekeeper,” I said. “I tried my best with the Irish charm but I can’t say I achieved much. She is furious at being thrown out by the police and was hoping to slip back in unnoticed. I don’t think she was at all pleased that I found her there. She said she was just rescuing some food before it spoiled and that may be true, but I sensed she wanted to get her hands on more than cakes and pies.”

  “Steal from her dead employer, you m
ean?” Gus looked shocked.

  “I don’t know about that. It could be just taking things she felt she was entitled to. But either way she was not going to let me in, and she didn’t disclose much about Mr. Bryce, except what we already know: he and his wife had a falling out, but she’s Catholic and wouldn’t divorce him. They haven’t seen each other since he came to France but there was no mention of another woman in his life.”

  “Was there any mention of another man?” Sid asked.

  We all reacted with surprise. “Holy Mother of God, I never thought of that. Have there been any rumors of that ilk, Mary?” I asked.

  Mary shook her head. “I can’t say I’ve heard any rumors about his private life recently. Of course everyone in Paris is expected to have a mistress, so that would hardly have been worth mentioning. But a male companion? I’m sure I would have heard about that.”

  “The one thing I did ascertain is that nobody will be at the apartment tomorrow. The housekeeper is coming back on Monday to give the place a thorough clean so I really must try to get a look at it before everything is moved and packed away.”

  “How do you propose to get a look at it, dare one ask?” Sid said.

  I grinned. “I was hoping to borrow a pair of your trousers and climb up the tree. It seemed as if the end window wasn’t quite shut tight, so I thought…”

  “Molly, you’ll be arrested for breaking and entering,” Mary said. “You’ll also make Inspector Henri even more suspicious about you than he already is.”

  “Molly, don’t take any stupid risks for me,” Sid said. “I’m sure it will all sort itself out, and if it doesn’t, we’ll just find a way to slip out of the country and catch a boat home.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “If I am caught I’ll confess to being a newspaper reporter, hoping to write a scoop on Reynold Bryce for the Boston papers. They can be annoyed with me, but they wouldn’t charge me with anything. Newspaper reporters can get away with murder—” I broke off at that choice of words. “I didn’t mean that literally,” I said.

  “What will you think of next?” Gus shook her head.

  I looked around the room, now bathed in midday sunlight. “Where’s Liam?”

  “Sleeping like a baby,” Gus said. “We played with him and then put him down for his morning nap. He’s such fun now. We love his laugh. Sid kept balancing a matchbox on her nose and then letting it fall.”

  Sid laughed. “It didn’t fail to amuse him for a good half hour.”

  “Babies are wonderful, aren’t they?” I said. “I was thinking last night about how uncomplicated life is for them. As long as they are warm and fed and have someone they trust near them then nothing else matters.” I fought back an unwelcome surge of emotion. After what we had just gone through tears were liable to resurface too often. Having prided myself on being such a strong woman I couldn’t abide this show of weakness. Instead I turned my attention to the paintings. The one that now lay on the sofa was of the young girl with haunted dark eyes.

  “I particularly noticed this one when I packed them up,” I said. “It’s quite good, isn’t it? Sad, but well-done.”

  “It’s one of Maxim’s,” Sid said.

  “Who?” Mary asked.

  “My cousin. Maxim Noah.”

  “Ah yes, you spoke of him, I remember now,” Mary said. “You say you just discovered him living in Paris?”

  “It was rather fortuitous,” Sid said. “Right before I left, my mother wrote to tell me we had relatives in Paris and asked me to look them up. I went around several synagogues but I couldn’t find any Goldfarbs who could have been related. Then I was at a poetry reading and was chatting to this most attractive young Jewish man. We started talking about families and when he said that his mother was a Goldfarb and her father had come from Eastern Europe when she was a small child I started asking questions. And it turned out that his grandfather had had a falling out with his brother. One had gone to New York, one stayed in Paris. And the brother’s name was Nathan, which was my grandfather’s name. Wasn’t that an amazing coincidence? So we concluded we were long-lost cousins. He lives in a shack on Montmartre. Horribly primitive, but I think he’ll make his name as a painter very soon. I plan to take some of his pictures to New York and maybe bring him over some time and hold a showing for him.”

  “How interesting,” Mary said. She bent over the painting, then sat back on the sofa again. “Yes, I think his work does show some promise. When all is well again I’d like to meet him.”

  Gus touched Sid’s arm. “And do you think he’d be able to help us? He could go anywhere within the Jewish community without arousing suspicion. He could attend meetings at synagogues and of the pro-Dreyfusard brigade. They might have an idea who carried out this murder.”

  Sid hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t think I want to get anyone else involved, especially not Maxim. If he knows we’re in hiding he may be questioned by police and have to reveal our hiding place. Or appear to be a suspect himself. For the same reason you can’t contact Willie Walcott, Gus. We can’t put family members in danger.”

  “I could go and talk to Willie Walcott,” I said. “I got the feeling he knew Mr. Bryce quite well.” And as I said the words I felt a sudden chill. Gertrude Stein had described Willie Walcott as a very pretty boy. And I remembered the petulant look on his face when he had said that Bryce was painting again and didn’t want to be disturbed. Could there be something to Sid’s suggestion after all?

  “He will probably be at the Steins’ tonight,” Mary said. “Willie likes to see and be seen, if you know what I mean. I believe he likes the social aspects of art more than the actual painting.”

  “What do you think of him as a painter, Mary?” Gus asked.

  “Technique’s all right, I suppose, but I’d call him another of the copiers. He can give you a good, lifelike rendition of the Seine, but it is entirely in the style of Monet or Reynold Bryce. I’m sure such pictures sell well at home, but I don’t think any of you Walcotts are lacking for money, are you?”

  “I heard that his father had cut off his allowance when he dropped out of Harvard,” I said.

  “When did you hear that?” Gus demanded sharply.

  “When I met him at the café in Montparnasse. The other fellows said that he was good at sponging off his friends for meals.”

  “How strange,” Gus turned to Sid. “We never got that impression, did we? He let us think he was doing awfully well, that he was chummy with Reynold Bryce, and moved in the right circles.”

  I’m sure he was chummy with Reynold Bryce, I thought. Out loud I said, “I’ll cross-question him tonight, if he comes to Miss Stein’s salon.”

  Celeste appeared at the doorway. “Madame Sullivan, your son is awake and crying.”

  I jumped up. “Excuse me,” I said. “Duty calls.”

  Duty calls, I repeated to myself as I went up the stairs. It seemed as if life these days was one long round of duty: to my husband, my child, and now to my friends. I tried to remember if ever there was a time when I was carefree. Not for many years, if ever. How I had envied Sid and Gus their freedom to do exactly what they chose on a whim. Well, at this moment I didn’t envy them, and it was my duty to help them.

  After I had fed Liam and we had taken our own midday meal Mary contacted some friends about borrowing a baby carriage. I went to pick it up and then Mary and I took Liam for a stroll along the Seine. Liam was enthralled by the traffic on the river and Mary and I enjoyed the lively Saturday afternoon scene—families picnicking on the grass, lovers walking arm in arm, a brightly decorated pleasure craft going past.

  “How I love Paris,” Mary said. “It’s always so full of life and people know how to enjoy themselves. In America work always comes first. Never in France.” She turned to look at me. “Now your friends have the right idea. They have learned how to live for the moment.”

  “They have money. It helps,” I said. “Without it I imagine they’d have very diffe
rent lives.”

  Mary paused, looking out across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. “Do you think you’ll be able to help them?” she asked. “I can’t bear the thought of Sid shut in a French jail. She’d go mad.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said. “But I can’t possibly do as good a job as the police. I have no access to any evidence they took from Mr. Bryce’s house. What if someone had been blackmailing him? Or he had just broken up with an unsuitable woman? I have no way of finding out those things. In fact I’m beginning to think that their best hope is to leave the country. If Sid dresses properly as a woman again, who would think of stopping them?”

  “Unless the police have their names by now. A woman who goes around dressed in male garb does attract attention, you know. I think they are quite safe for the moment in my house.”

  “It’s very good of you to take this risk,” I said.

  She smiled. “We women have to stick together,” she said.

  Twenty-eight

  That evening we dined early and then Mary and I set off for the Steins’ apartment on Rue de Fleurus. I was prepared to take the Métro and then walk but Mary insisted on hiring a cab. “The Métro on Saturday night is full of undesirables,” she said, “and later on, when we return, it will be full of drunks.”

  I must say it was pleasant to be clip-clopping across the Seine, past the imposing shape of Les Invalides and then down several attractive boulevards lined with bars and restaurants just coming to life until we reached the Rue de Fleurus. Other cabs were disgorging their passengers outside the Steins’ building while younger, impoverished artists were approaching on foot, some carrying paintings under their arms.

  We could hear the buzz of conversation and a burst of laughter long before we came to the Steins’ front door, which was now wide open. Other people were going in so we followed them.

  “Gertrude and Leo don’t stand on ceremony,” Mary said. “The only criteria for being admitted are passion for art, good conversation, and the ability to hold liquor. “Ah, there she is, now. Gertrude!” And she forced her way through the crowd.