The Vanished - [Nameless Detective 02]

by Bill Pronzini

  That was all—but it was enough to give rise to a small, excited tingling at the base of my neck. This could be the key, the nucleus of the whole affair. Diane Emery had been an artist, a painter, and Roy Sands had sat for a portrait that had some sort of significance; the Emery girl’s work had been exhibited locally, and Sands had had the address of the Galerie der Expressionisten. Had they known each other, then? Had knowledge of her death been the reason for Sands’ drinking bout? A dozen other questions and half as many suspicions floated across my mind; but I did not as yet have enough information to answer any of them.

  I went out to get it.

  * * * *

  Herr Ackermann said solemnly, ‘Ah yes, of course I knew Fräulein Emery. Her death was a terrible tragedy.’

  ‘Then she did exhibit some of her paintings here?’

  ‘Yes, several in the past year.’

  ‘Was she talented?’

  ‘Oh, very much so,’ Herr Ackermann said. ‘She was deeply involved in her work—a true artisan.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why she would commit suicide?’

  He sighed. ‘She was also quite an emotional girl, given to many moods, to spells of dark depression. That is the only reply I can offer you.’

  ‘The news story hinted at personal problems.’

  ‘I know of none in particular,’ Herr Ackermann said. ‘I had not seen her for some weeks prior to her death.’

  ‘Did she ever confide in you?’

  ‘No. We discussed only art.’

  ‘Do you know if she had any special male friends?’

  ‘She spoke of none to me.’

  ‘Would you happen to have any of her paintings at the moment?’

  ‘I have two. Following her death, several were purchased.’ He made a gesture of distaste. ‘The public can be as swift and as morbid as vultures at times.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Would you like to see the paintings?’

  ‘Please.’

  We went through the curtained arch into the second display room of the gallery. On the far wall, Herr Ackermann indicated a pair of rectangular canvases hung one above the other. I looked closely at them, and they were austere, brooding things painted in dark colors with heavy brushstrokes—and yet both were vivid and compelling. One was called ‘Deathwatch,’ and the other ‘Earthlove’: the former depicted, as near as I could tell, a sea of frightened faces staring with Keane-like eyes at a prostrated ancient in a flowing white beard; and the latter grimly portrayed a pair of mounded graves laid side by side, with a man’s hand jutting diagonally outward through the spaded earth of one to clasp a woman’s hand extended from the other, the third fingers of each encircled by a simple gold wedding band.

  A coldness settled on my spine, and I turned away to look at Herr Ackermann. ‘Was she a fatalist?’

  ‘Perhaps existentialist would be a better term.’

  ‘But she was preoccupied with death?’

  ‘I suppose you could say she was. Many great artists are, you know.’

  Ergo, she was fully capable of suicide, I thought. All right, so that proves what? That she killed herself? You knew that from reading the newspaper story. Don’t make waves on a calm sea, for Christ’s sake.

  I studied both paintings again, looking at the style this time rather than the scenes themselves. Even though there seemed to be similarities between these oils and the sketch of Roy Sands—some of the same exaggeration of masculinity, for example—I was not enough of a connoisseur to be able to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that she had created the sketch. Maybe Herr Ackermann could have, but as he had said earlier, he would have to have seen the portrait itself in order to make a judgment.

  He said, ‘Do you think Fräulein Emery was acquainted with this man you are seeking— Sands is his name? And that she made this sketch about which you asked me earlier?’

  ‘There’s a chance of it,’ I told him. ‘Did she ever do any portrait work that you know about?’

  He shook his head. ‘She was a true impressionist.’

  ‘But she might have—as a favor, or as a gesture of some kind, mightn’t she?’

  ‘Perhaps. She was, as I said, an unpredictable girl.’

  ‘Okay then. Thanks again for your time, Herr Ackermann.’

  ‘I hope you succeed in your quest, sir,’ he said, and bowed. ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’

  I walked out and got into the Volkswagen. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing that painting called ‘Earthlove’—the pair of hands reaching out of the graves, clasped together, the wedding rings plainly evident. The morning seemed suddenly colder.

  And when I drove away from there, it was with the disturbing mental image of a faceless girl hanging dead and motionless in a room filled with the tools, the wonderment, of creation.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kriminalbeamter Franz Hüssner was a big, smiling man with heavy blue jowls and bright, quick blue eyes. He wore gray tweed as well as anyone can wear it, and smoked a short white-bowled clay pipe, and had a nervous habit of scratching behind his right ear with the little finger on his right hand. He spoke English in a voice that would have gone well singingTrink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink in a German beer garden, and he was not averse to discussing the Diane Emery suicide with me—especially after he learned my profession. He had never met a private detective, he said, his bright eyes dancing, and to have one from America visit him was indeed an honor. I could not tell if he was putting me on or not.

  We sat in his small, spartan office in the Kitzingen Polizeirevier and smiled at each other across an old oak desk that was vaguely reminiscent of the one in my own office. Smoke from his clay pipe lay on the air like tule fog in a marsh, and it was aggravating my chest, biting sharply into my lungs with each breath; it smelled as mawkishly sweet as the perfumed joss they burn on Chinese New Year. But Herr Hüssner was on my side now, and I did not want to jeopardize that by insulting his brand of tobacco or his smoking habits; I kept my mouth judiciously shut.

  ‘A sad business, a very sad business,’ he said at length. ‘Such a young girl to take her own life. Ach, a terrible thing.’

  ‘I understand there was no suicide note,’ I said.

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘She was despondent over personal problems?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any particular personal problems?’

  ‘She was to have a child.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I see.’

  ‘A sad business, yes?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Were you able to locate the father?’

  ‘No, we were not.’

  ‘Then you have no idea who it was?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘There was nothing in her personal effects?’

  ‘Fräulein Emery did not keep letters or a journal or photographs.’

  ‘And there were no portraits among her paintings?’

  ‘We found only two canvases in her flat— both unfinished and both most definitely not portraits. Her drawing pad contained nothing but blank sheets of paper.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, what about her friends?’

  ‘She had few friends in Kitzingen,’ Herr Hüssner said, and went to work behind his ear with the little finger on his right hand. ‘She was—what do you say?—a lonesome person.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Her lover was her private affair, apparently shared with no one.’

  I studied the backs of my hands. ‘Were you completely satisfied that her death was suicide?’

  Surprisingly, Herr Hüssner smiled. ‘You suspect murder perhaps?’ he asked, as if the idea were gentle insanity.

  ‘No,’ I said, and gave him an apologetic look. ‘I was just curious.’

  ‘Of course. But no, the death of Fräulein Emery was at her own hands and no others. Frau Mende, who lives in the apartment next door, heard a loud noise from the girl’s studio that Saturday and came quickly to investigate. She found the girl still alive and st
rangling on the clothesline, a chair overturned beneath her. By the time she could summon help, the poor child was dead. A sad, sad business.’ Herr Hüssner shook his head again and dug behind his ear and raised a great pollutant of gray-blue smoke like a withered wreath about his head.

  I said, ‘Had the Emery girl been known to keep company with military personnel? Or were you able to determine that?’

  ‘We learned little of her private life. You were thinking, perhaps, that the man you are looking for—Herr Sands—was her lover?’

  ‘The idea crossed my mind.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  I told him, and he nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is possible you are right. But if so, what would this have to do with Herr Sands’ disappearance in America?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’m still sifting through the haystack.’

  ‘What does this mean, sifting through the haystack?’

  I explained it to him. He smiled and looked pleased. ‘The American idiom is wonderful,’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Was Diane buried here in Kitzingen?’

  ‘No. Her family was notified, from a card we discovered in her purse, and arrangements were made for her to be returned to America by plane.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It was to California,’ Herr Hüssner said. ‘You are from San Francisco—that is in California, is it not?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where does the Emery girl’s family live?’

  ‘The town of Roxbury.’

  ‘I don’t think I know it.’

  ‘It is near—what is it?—ah yes, Eureka. We wished to cable the family of the tragedy and it was necessary to send the cable to this Eureka.’

  The air in there was cloying now, and very hot, and I wanted nothing so much than to get up and open the window behind Herr Hüssner’s desk; I could see the cold, fresh rain beading and running on the glass outside. I forced myself to sit still, and said, ‘Would you mind telling me the address, Herr Hüssner?’

  ‘Do you plan to see the Emerys when you are again in America?’

  ‘Well, possibly. I’m not sure just yet.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and smiled knowingly, and got up on his feet. ‘A moment, please?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He went out and shut the door, and I stared hungrily at the rain on the window glass. I coughed into my handkerchief and tried not to dwell on implications just yet, not with the atmosphere the way it was. Two or three minutes went by, and Herr Hüssner came back with a folder and sat down behind his desk again.

  He spread the folder open and moved a sheaf of papers aside. On top of them was a photograph. I tried to look at it upside down and gave that idea up almost immediately. I said, ‘Is that a picture of Diane Emery?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  He handed it to me, and it was a death-scene shot, a close-up of the girl’s body after they had cut her down from where she had hanged herself. Mercifully, someone had closed her mouth and her eyelids, and you could not see the marks the clothesline must have left on her throat. Her features were contorted, swollen, but the intrinsic beauty which had been hers was apparent; she had been slim, dark, long-featured, with hair cropped close to her head. She looked very young—-very young.

  I put the photograph back on the sheaf of papers, face down. ‘How old was she?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘Nobody should die at twenty-four,’ I said. ‘Twenty-four is an age for living, an age for laughing.’

  Herr Hüssner glanced up at me, and now his smile was gentle and sad. ‘Life can be very cruel at times,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Silence settled for a long moment, and then I looked at Herr Hüssner and I knew that he was thinking the same things I was—two middle-aged cops looking back on all the injustices and all the cruelties which had been wreaked on man by man in two worlds not so different, not so far apart. What happened in Germany thirty-five years ago could have happened in America, because man was the most callous of beings, the rational beast, the thinking predator, destroying himself and his species and never knowing—this superior, intelligent creature—the why of it, of any of it...

  Herr Hüssner shuffled papers and sighed and said, ‘The girl’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Emery, twenty-six nineteen Coachman Road, Roxbury, California.’

  I wrote that down in my notebook, closed it, and got on my feet. I had no more business here, and as much as I enjoyed Herr Hüssner’s company, I needed to get out of that room very quickly. I said, ‘I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, Herr Hüssner.’

  ‘Keine Ursache,’ he answered graciously.

  ‘If I find out anything that might interest you on this matter, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘That would be very kind.’

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Hüssner.’

  ‘Alles Gute, meine Freunde.’

  The cold sweetness of the rain outside was like an oxygen resuscitator to a man dying of cyanide-gas poisoning ...

  * * * *

  At the Bayerischer Hof, I asked the desk man to confirm a reservation for me on the earliest flight from Frankfurt to London the next day, and to get me onto the first polar flight to San Francisco following my arrival at Heathrow. Then I wrote out a brief telegram to Elaine Kavanaugh, telling her I was leaving Germany and that I would come to see her as soon as I arrived back in San Francisco. That would have to do in place of my promised telephone call.

  It could be, I knew, that my decision to leave was premature, but I had to make a choice and my instincts had called for this one from the moment I had left Herr Hüssner’s office. I could spend another couple of days in Kitzingen, but it seemed pointless in view of what I had learned—the implications, the direction, of what I had learned. I fully intended to use the remainder of this day in trying to uncover further information on Sands, on the portrait; I had the feeling, however, that I had already found out most, if not all, of what there was to be found in Germany.

  I went up to my room and sat drinking hot coffee, letting my mind work over what I now had. I got it into an orderly progression after a time, and it went like this:

  Roy Sands is not so much different from his circle of friends as it had first appeared; like MacVeagh and the others, he is an aging lover, a cocksman who needs the reassurance of his desirability and his manhood—and even though he’s in love with Elaine Kavanaugh, and plans to marry her, he happens to be in Germany and she happens to be in the States. A hard-on having no conscience, as they say, he goes prowling and he meets pretty, young, emotional Diane Emery. They have a thing— maybe casual for both in the beginning, maybe immediately deeper than a shallow physical relationship for the girl.

  For one reason or another—Sands’ reticent nature is such that his ego does not require the verbal feeding of one such as MacVeagh’s, or he is afraid of word leaking back to Elaine—he keeps his affair with Diane strictly to himself. But in a weak moment he allows her to make a sketch of him, which she then presents to him as a token of her love or esteem or whatever. He cannot bring himself to destroy the sketch, and so he puts it in with the things he is shipping back to Elaine, knowing that under normal circumstances she won’t pry.

  Aside from the sketch, Sands is very careful. He meets Diane only in Kitzingen, perhaps at her apartment, perhaps at a café or restaurant—and perhaps at the Galerie der Expressionisten. She frequents the establishment, since her paintings are on exhibit there, and so on some occasion she gives him the name and address and he writes it down and if he rendezvouses with her there, it is outside somewhere; Herr Ackermann never sees him.

  The affair progresses, with dozens of possible nuances unexplainable just now—and then the girl becomes pregnant. Sands’ interest in her has apparently been little more than the scratching of an itch, but it has become far more than that for Diane; she’s fallen in love with him. Maybe she asks him to marry
her, but even if he wanted to do the right thing by her, he is unable to; he’s in love with Elaine, and the choice between the two of them is no contest. He tells Diane that he can’t marry her, perhaps offering to pay for an adoption or an abortion.

  But the girl does not take his rejection of her love and her love-child in the worldly manner in which he expects. She is an earthlover, hands clasped to and from the grave, and life on any other terms is unthinkable for her; the rejection is absolute. So on one fine Saturday she makes her decision and she ties a length of clothesline around a light fixture and around her throat and destroys herself and her baby in a single strangling, suspended danse macabre.