by Rhys Bowen
Miss Stein turned from the group she was standing with. “Why, if it isn’t Mary Cassatt. It’s a long time since you graced us with your presence.” And she held out her hand to Mary. “What brings you here?”
“Not trying to sell you a painting, that’s for sure,” Mary said with a laugh. “I know your taste is for the avant-garde and I am hopelessly mired in tea parties and domesticity. Actually I have found myself a new model—Master Liam Sullivan, aged eight months. And I have brought his mother with me. Molly Sullivan. I believe you two have met.”
Miss Stein’s sharp eyes focused on me. “Ah. So you’ve come back at the proper time,” she said. “Welcome. Did you find your friends yet?”
I decided that I had to lie to her although she wasn’t the kind of person one should lie to. “I did, and you were quite right. They got held up out of the city with no way of communicating.”
“So all’s well that ends well? That’s good. Help yourself to a drink. I know it’s France but some of my guests prefer a good strong bourbon.” She indicated a table in the corner around which several young men were hovering. “Move aside, fellows, and let the ladies in!” she bellowed. “They are dying of thirst and you’re hogging it all.”
Mary grinned at me as they stood aside for us. I noticed that one of them was the young Spaniard, Pablo Picasso. “Ah, the lady with the red hair,” he said. He turned to the men beside him. “One day I will paint her.”
“If Fernande allows you,” his companion said.
“Miss Stein is going to buy one of my paintings,” Picasso said. “We may move to an apartment with running water then Fernande will love me and be happy.”
“And still not let you paint other women,” the man said and they laughed.
I took the glass of wine that Mary offered and we moved away. My gaze was drawn to a group in the middle of the room, clustered around a large, heavyset man. He had dark skin, large jowls, and a face that looked like a cross between a shrunken head and a gorilla. I nudged Mary. “Who is that exceptionally ugly man over there?”
“Oh, him? That’s Vollard—he’s the most important art dealer in Paris. If he likes your work, you are in. He and Reynold Bryce had a long-standing mutual loathing. Reynold said it was because he only liked beautiful objects around him and Vollard’s face distressed him, but it was really because Vollard had called his paintings trite and meaningless.”
Even as she was speaking Vollard looked up and saw Mary. “Ah, la belle Cassatt comes to grace us with her presence,” he said and held out his hand to her. “What are you doing here? Not trying to sell Gertrude a picture.”
“I came to be sociable, Monsieur Vollard,” Mary said, “And to introduce my young friend, Mrs. Sullivan, visiting from America.”
“If she wants to buy paintings she had better come to me,” Vollard said. “I only deal in the best.”
“She is not buying. She is reporting on the art scene for her newspaper back home,” Mary said, catching me off guard. We had never discussed this. “Everyone at home wants to know about Reynold Bryce.”
“He insulted the Jews once too often,” Vollard said.
“Is that what everyone thinks?” I asked.
Vollard looked around the group. “What else could it be? A robbery and nothing is taken? I don’t think so. He has not helped himself to someone else’s wife lately that I have heard—or even someone’s mistress, or volatile young people like our dear Picasso over there might have stabbed him.”
“Did he ever help himself to someone’s wife?” I asked.
Several heads were shaken. “Or mistress?” I continued. “He was still officially married, wasn’t he? Did he have mistresses?”
“Not since Pauline,” one of the group said. “And that was some time ago now.”
“Pauline?” I realized instantly how helpful Mary’s ploy had been. I was a reporter, therefore not personally involved. They were quite willing to share gossip with me.
“Pauline Hubert. She was a model, but she never modeled for him. He stuck to his landscapes.”
“Did she leave him or the other way around?” I asked.
“She got too old,” one of them said and there was a general chuckle.
“Someone told me he was painting again,” another of the men said to his companions, seemingly unaware now that I was part of the group.
“Really? That explains it then. He had quite a twinkle in his eye when I met him at the American Club last week. I said to him, ‘You sly old dog. I think you’re on the prowl again.’”
“And what did he say?”
The first man smirked. “He said, ‘You’re never too old for that sort of thing, are you?’”
They realized I was standing with them and the speaker gave an embarrassed cough. “My apologies, ma’am. Poor form.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Has anyone heard when his funeral will be?” I asked.
“I heard he wanted his body shipped home and a grand state funeral in Boston.”
“That sounds like Reynold. Never slow about coming forward, was he?”
“I wonder if they will release his body if they don’t apprehend his murderer,” I said and saw their reaction. Ladies, even reporters, do not speak about bodies and murderers. I excused myself and moved away. Pauline Hubert had been cast aside because she was too old. That sounded like a good motive for murder. And then there was the invisible wife in America. The good Catholic who didn’t believe in divorce. Might she want to marry again or to get her hands on his money and have paid someone to come over and finish off her husband?
I wished I could ask Daniel to check into Mrs. Reynold Bryce, but I couldn’t. He had enough on his plate and wouldn’t be pleased to hear his wife was showing interest in a Parisian murder.
* * *
The evening went on. More people arrived until the salon was crowded to the point of not being able to move. The air was heavy with that strange scented smoke of French cigarettes and I felt hot and clammy. The noise level had risen until it was almost unbearable, with everyone around me shouting to be heard. I had put down my drink as I was in constant danger of someone jogging my elbow. Mary was swallowed up somewhere in the crowd. I looked around, feeling like a wallflower, as one does at a gathering where one knows nobody, and saw Maxim Noah, standing at the fringe of the crowd looking as awkward as I felt. His face lit up as he noticed me. “Madame Sullivan, the friend of my cousin. I did not expect to see you here? What news of Elena—did she return to Paris?”
“No, and they are going to stay away for the present,” I said. “They have been ill.”
“I am so sorry. Will you be going to visit them?”
“Possibly soon.”
“Please give them my very best wishes for their recovery.”
“I will,” I said. I noticed that he appeared to be alone. So was Picasso. So the artists didn’t bring their mistresses with them to social events. “Do you come to Miss Stein’s salon often?” I asked.
He smiled. He had a most disarming smile. “I get one good meal a week this way. And I hope that one day she may buy one of my paintings.”
“Everyone is talking about Reynold Bryce,” I said. “You heard about his murder, I’m sure.”
“I am not interested in passé American painters,” he said. “I am sorry he died, but it was no great loss to the world of art.”
“They are saying that he was killed for insulting Jews. Have you heard any rumors about that? Do you attend the synagogue?”
He shrugged. “I don’t practice my religion. What did Karl Marx say: ‘Religion is the opium of the people?’ We Jews have followed the same god for thousands of years and look where it’s got us—persecution and no place to call home. Art and beauty—those are my religions. At least they mean something. But I’m stuck with my race. If a Jew killed this Bryce fellow, then I expect he deserved it. Me, I never met the man, so I can’t really pass an opinion.” Then his face lit up. “Ah, good. They’re p
utting out the hot canapés.” And he was gone.
I stood close to the door until I spotted Willie Walcott’s blond curls. He too had closed in on the food table. I wondered how many of the impoverished artists here only came for the food. No, that was doing them an injustice. With people like the frightening Monsieur Vollard here as well as the Steins there was always some hope of selling a painting. I forced my way through the crowd, making for Willie. He moved away from the food table at that moment so that we came upon each other more rapidly than I had anticipated.
“Oh, hello there,” he said. “You’re Gussie’s Irishwoman, aren’t you?”
“You make me sound like the lady who comes to scrub the floors or iron the sheets.”
He blushed at this, his fair skin turning bright red. “Oh, jeepers, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No offense taken.” I smiled.
“So did you finally discover where Cousin Gussie and her friend had popped off to?”
“Yes, I did, thank you.”
“Oh, that’s good.” He didn’t ask any more questions and I gathered that he wasn’t really interested in what had happened to his cousin. I was tempted to add that she had fallen down a mine shaft or been abducted by white slavers. He probably would have responded, “That’s good.” So a rather self-absorbed young man.
“I think we’re in danger of being trampled if we stand here,” I said. I noticed he was carrying a plate piled with vol-au-vents, oysters, cheeses in one hand, and a glass of champagne in the other. “Here, let me take your glass before you find the contents of your plate plastered to your front.”
He grinned, handed me the glass, then followed me to a less crowded corner. “It is extra full tonight, isn’t it?” he said. “Word got around that Vollard was coming and everyone wants to get into his good books.”
“Why is that?”
“His exhibition is the one that counts.”
“More than Reynold Bryce’s?” I asked.
A spasm of pain or annoyance, I couldn’t really tell which, crossed his face. “Well, Reynold won’t be holding an exhibition this year, will he? Vollard will be the only show in town this summer.”
“Will you have any paintings in it?”
“No. I’m not, shall we say, in fashion, so it seems. One is expected to hurl paint at a canvas and paint a rhinoceros with a baby sitting on it if one wants to be noticed. I simply can’t do that. That’s why Reynold’s death was such a shock. At least I could usually count on being part of his shows.”
“I’m glad to see you here,” I said.
“You are? Why?”
“I got the impression the other day that his death had really upset you. So it’s good to see you’re out and about in company and not moping at home.”
“It was a bit of a shock, that’s all.” His face colored again. “I mean, who would have expected old Reynold…”
“I don’t think he expected it either,” I said. “Do you have any idea who might have killed him? What is the general opinion among your crowd at the cafés?”
“We heard it was a Jewish fanatic. Why, did you hear something different?”
“I’m a newcomer here,” I said. “I don’t know anybody. But obviously one is intrigued when a prominent member of an expatriate community is murdered. I wondered if there was more to it.”
“I think a Jewish fanatic is the most likely,” he said carefully. “He did say some absolutely damning things about Jews and what should happen to them. Tact was never Reynold’s stong point. If he didn’t like something, he said so, and loudly. Someone once commented that he really thought that God created him and then He rested.”
“You were a close friend of his, weren’t you?”
Again the pink cheeks. “Not really,” he said. “When I first arrived he was kind to me. Took me under his wing, you know. And he was decent about including my paintings when he had a showing. But he was like a little boy, really—easily bored. If he found a new toy, he dropped the old one and forgot about it.”
“Like Pauline?” I asked.
He looked startled. “Pauline? How did you hear about her?”
“Some of the people here mentioned her. They said Reynold Bryce had broken with her because she was too old.”
He looked amused now. “Is that what they said? How funny. Anyway that was ages ago.”
“So had he found a new toy more recently?” I asked.
“So one heard.”
“A who or a what?”
“Both, I think I can safely say. But I’d prefer not to discuss this subject any further, if you don’t mind. I find it highly distasteful, especially with one who didn’t even know him. And I would like to eat my food before it gets cold.” He looked around. “What happened to my glass?”
“I put it down on that table,” I said. “One of the waiters must have cleared it away.”
“Damn. I’d better go and get another one. I need a steady supply of alcohol to keep me going.”
With that he turned his back on me. Interesting, I thought. Willie Walcott had been that new toy once. Had he been angry at being cast aside? Or had there been more new toys since him? And Willie was impoverished, so I had heard. Had he been relying on some kind of financial help from Reynold Bryce? And if Reynold had cut off that help … I paused, trying to picture the innocent-looking Mr. Walcott plunging a kitchen knife into Bryce’s chest. It didn’t seem likely, and yet I had learned by now that murderers are often the most unlikely of people.
I wondered who might know about the details of Reynold Bryce’s private life and be willing to talk about it. I tried moving about the room, invisible, and listening in with the hope of overhearing gossip, but I didn’t hear his name mentioned once. This was the Parisian art world of today, I gathered. Reynold Bryce belonged to yesterday and as such he had become irrelevant. But one thing I could surmise—they didn’t think that one of their own might be responsible or they’d have been discussing it.
I tried infiltrating groups and asking questions but at any gathering where people know each other intimately they showed no interest in an outsider. I was looking for Mary, hoping that we could make an early exit when I felt someone take my hand. It was that rather frightening Creole man, Vollard.
“You are looking for something, madame,” he said. “And you do not find it. A lost lover, maybe? A new lover?”
I laughed. “I am happily married, monsieur.”
“So is everyone in this room. That does not preclude the taking of lovers. It is an amusing sport and less exhausting than tennis. Everyone does it.”
I wondered for one awful moment whether he was suggesting that he might fill that role for me. But then he went on. “You are a fish out of water here. Why did you come?”
“I’m newly arrived in Paris. I’m staying with my friend Mary Cassatt. She thought I should experience the Steins’ salon at least once.”
“Ah, La Cassatt. Is she painting these days? Tell her to work harder. She is one whose work I can sell at the drop of a hat. And the best prices too.”
“And Reynold Bryce?” I asked. “Can you sell his paintings at the drop of a hat?”
“He never brought his paintings to me. Perhaps he feared I might reject them, or perhaps he thought he could do better without the middle man. And maybe that was true. He always sold well with Americans who like pretty landscapes on their walls. Personally I always felt he was a good journeyman, a good craftsman but lacking in brilliance. You compare his paintings of the Seine to Monet’s and you’ll see the difference. Monet’s light glows on the water, the trees are alive in the wind. To view his painting is an experience of the heart, while Bryce’s are merely for the eyes.”
“They are saying the price of his paintings will rise now that he is dead,” I said and he laughed.
“What a mercenary thought from such charming lips. Possibly true. It will rise because there are few paintings available for sale. Supply and demand, you know. He had money. He didn’t ne
ed to paint. Again proving he was only a journeyman. The others—Renoir, Degas—they would die if they were not allowed to paint.”
“Who do you think might have killed him?” I asked.
“Bryce?” He shrugged, making his whole large body shake like a half-inflated balloon. “Any number of people. He said exactly what he thought and didn’t care whose toes he trod on.”
“But surely you don’t kill someone because he insults you?”
“I do not personally, madame, but there are many in Paris who might. We are a passionate mob, madame. A mongrel mob from all over the world. We fight duels over women and over perceived insults. But one hears he was stabbed with a kitchen knife. This was not a spur of the moment act of passion. Someone came prepared to kill him. And a common kitchen knife too. So it all points to the Jewish immigrant they suggest—poor and fanatic. A dangerous combination.”
Mary appeared at my side then. “Are you about ready to leave? They’ll go on all night and I’m getting too old for such things.”
“Oh, no, Mademoiselle Cassatt. You will be forever young. When are you going to bring me more paintings? My little gallery is bare without them,” Vollard said.
“You are a flatterer, Monsieur Vollard,” she replied, “but I am going to start work on a new piece. This lady’s charming son is absolutely made to be a model, if I can ever get him to sit still.”
We took our leave and were assisted into a cab.
“Well?” Mary asked as we set off. “Did you discover anything?”
“Not much. Most of them weren’t at all interested in Reynold Bryce or his death. The consensus is that it was indeed the Jewish fanatic. But I did have a long chat with Willie Walcott and he had definitely been a close friend of Bryce’s, shall we say, and was peeved that Bryce had found a ‘new toy,’ as he put it. So I’m rather curious to know who or what that new toy was. I can see I’ll have to have another chat with the housekeeper when she comes to clean the place on Monday. But I really want to take a look for myself tomorrow, if Sid will lend me her trousers.”
