The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, page 19
“Someday I shall write my own book.” He laughed.
That was the death of that conversation. I had no wish to be immortalized in Goron’s book. Perhaps I should write my own book, in self-defense, I mused.
As the dreary minutes ticked by, I became restless and fretful, certain some ghastly accident had befallen Vernet. What if Gauguin had guessed he was being followed, and had lured him into some devilish ambush? Four stories above the street, the slightest push might be fatal. I pictured him lying broken and bloody in some dark alley.
When I voiced my concerns, however, Goron replied, “The Englishman has asked us to wait. I do not take his instructions lightly. I have no doubt he is perfectly safe.”
In the end, it was more than half an hour before we spied Vernet once more. When we did, he had a look of chagrin slapped across his face, and was firmly in the grip of a uniformed policeman approaching us down the alley.
“Your pardon, monsieur, this man claims you are Inspector Goron of the Sûreté?” the policeman asked, trying to find the right mix of respect and suspicion with which to address his superior. Goron, I would learn, was so accustomed to going about in disguise that few in his own force were familiar with his real features.
“That’s correct. What has occurred?”
“May I see your card, monsieur?”
A police chief is not accustomed to being questioned by an inferior. Nevertheless, Goron reached into his pocket and dug out his police card.
The policeman scrutinized it as if it were the Rosetta stone. Finally, he said, “Thank you, Monsieur Chief. This fellow claims you will vouch for him.”
Goron pinned Vernet with a gimlet eye. “What has he done?”
“He was attempting to assault a young woman in the privacy of her boudoir.”
Vernet had stood quietly by up until this point, but the charge drew a quick rebuff from him. “I was knocking on the skylight, hoping to be let in! There was no other way down from that infernal roof. The fact should have been abundantly clear, but mademoiselle refused to listen to reason. The roofs of Paris are not like those of London.”
“Nor is rooftop etiquette, apparently. Did you ask her if Monsieur Gauguin had come through that way?” asked Goron, chuckling.
“Gauguin took the rain pipe, I presume, because it had been pulled away from the wall entirely. Else I would have availed myself of it.”
Goron whistled. “Gauguin is more courageous than I gave him credit for.”
“Or more desperate.” Vernet shook off the officer’s grip. The man attempted to lay hands on him again, but Goron intervened.
“Thank you, officer. I’ll be responsible for this man.”
The officer dipped his head, but he wasn’t quite ready to surrender such an egregious villain. “I should mention, sir, that he could show me no papers.”
“No papers, Vernet?” Goron put on a pained expression.
“You know as well as I that there are few things more liberating than leaving one’s identity behind.”
“Perhaps, but there are ingenious craftsmen all over Paris who will gladly provide you a new one for a modest fee. We encourage visitors to spend money here.”
Their offhand remarks must have scandalized the officer. He cracked a smart salute and marched away double-time, washing his hands of the whole affair.
“You’ve lost the trail, then?” Goron asked, still needling Vernet.
“I have no doubt I could pick it up again if only I had the use of Toby. My resources in Paris are inadequate to the situation. But I’ve no doubt we can make Gauguin reappear when we need him. Our business now is with Dr. Gachet.”
“Then we must return to my office in the Quai des Orfevres. That’s where we’ll find my agent, or at least a message from him.”
We repaired thence to the Palais de Justice. As soon as Goron lit from the box, tossing the reins to a groom, he was issuing orders to subordinates who flocked to him from every nook and cranny. By the time we reached the sanctuary of his office, we knew that his agent had not yet checked in. Once more seated at the center of the mighty hive that was the Sûreté, Goron was no longer a detective, but the head of a vast bureaucracy whose wheels could not turn unless it was fed by a hundred forms a day, every one signed or stamped by the chief.
“Gentlemen, you are free to remain,” he said, looking up briefly from a stack of papers. “Or you may find a more comfortable setting in which to wait. The instant our agent returns, I shall send for you.”
We elected to remove ourselves to a sidewalk café on the Parvis Notre-Dame that Goron recommended, just across from the cathedral. Sitting in the shade of the chestnut trees, drinking café au lait, listening to the doves’ contralto, and nibbling on a brioche, I could almost pretend that I had come to Paris for nothing more than the restoration of my good humor, that the man across from me was no more than a stranger who had kindly offered to share his table with me. He sat reading his paper while I watched the world stroll past. It was more than I could stand.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” I burst out. Peace and serenity were all well and good, but weren’t we hounds on the scent? Since the day Vincent had been murdered, our invisible adversaries had been running for the antipodes. By the time we were ready to apprehend them, they might all be safely beyond our grasp.
“This is the heart of detective work,” said Vernet, gazing at me placidly over the top of his newspaper.
“This? What is this? What are we doing?” I felt like pounding on the table.
“Waiting.”
I took a deep breath. I had become so accustomed to running, from Paris to Auvers, Auvers to Arles, Arles to Montpellier, Montpellier to Paris—oh, yes, and I was forgetting our stopover in St. Remy—that I could hardly credit Vernet’s words. “You’ve handed off the matter to the police. The police, in every case of yours I’ve read about, excel only at laziness and incompetence!”
“Literary license. Watson has never got along with Inspector Lestrade. If you are feeling anxious, you might read.”
“I don’t care for the Parisian papers. They’re nothing but sensationalism.”
“Read a book.”
“I haven’t got a book.”
“Nonsense. There’s one in your pocket.”
I felt my coat pocket. The notebook of Dr. Gachet! I had forgotten it entirely. I asked our waiter for pencil and paper, and was deep into deciphering it when the messenger arrived from Goron, asking him to join us in his office. We hurried back to the Palais de Justice to find the chief of the Sûreté waiting for us alone.
“Has he not returned?” asked Vernet with some surprise.
“I’ve just received a wire. Have a look.”
Vernet read it, then handed it to me. It was from Goron’s agent.
2.13 PM FOLLOWED SUBJECT TO 59 RUE ST LAZARE STOP
2.47 PM SUBJECT LEFT ST LAZARE TOOK CAB GARE DU NORD STOP
3.05 PM BOARDED TRAIN WITH SUBJECT STOP
3.58 PM SUBJECT LEFT TRAIN AUVERS-SUR-OISE STOP
4.10 PM SUBJECT ARRIVED DOMICILE STOP
4.19 PM DISPUTE BETWEEN SUBJECT AND YOUNG WOMAN IN GARDEN STOP
4.44 PM FOUND BOY TO SEND AS MESSENGER STOP
AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS FLORIAN END
“A most thorough accounting,” I commented. “Does it mean anything?”
Goron rang the bell for a clerk. “Find out who lives at 59 Rue St. Lazare.” The clerk nodded. “Oh, and send a wire to the police at Auvers to collect Sergeant Florian from this Dr. Gachet’s. Tell him well done.”
The clerk went out, then returned in a few minutes with a name on a slip of paper. Goron read it, then shook his head, chagrined. He smiled up at Vernet. “Monsieur, I congratulate you on your perspicacity. You were indeed correct.” He passed the paper over to us. Vernet did not even bother to look at it, but I most certainly did, my curiosity burning.
The name on the paper was that of Eugene Dupuis.
I stared dumfounded at Vernet. “You knew?”
He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “There were certain indications. Why do you think I let him slip laudanum in my absinthe? I had to force his hand.”
“But you could have been killed!”
“I put my faith in you.”
An awful thrill went through me. All this time we had been in the dark, standing at the edge of an abyss, and now the lights were blazing. We were ready to take the leap.
“So you’ll arrest him?” I asked. “Can I be there?”
Goron laughed out loud, then tried to cover it with a judicious cough. Vernet could barely contain his delight.
“We have arrived at the truth, Ivan Ivanovich, or the greater part of it. But the truth is of little importance to men like Monsieur Goron here. He must have proof. He must have evidence. Reflect on what evidence we have collected.”
It was but a moment’s reflection. “It’s all a house of cards,” I whispered.
“But a house of cards is not nothing,” said Goron.
“Now we know where the mortar must be applied,” Vernet agreed.
“Then how to proceed?” I asked.
“I, for one, would adore to see the contents of that notebook deciphered,” said Goron.
Dueling in the morning, rooftop hunting in the afternoon, a return to scholarship in the evening. Vernet went out, saying he had business to attend to that would not require my presence. I didn’t know whether he truly had work to do, or whether his restless nature simply would not allow him to stand still, especially there on the edge of the denouement of our investigation. But I welcomed the chance for solitary work and contemplation.
Even with Gachet’s mirror-script reversed, it was difficult to make out the details of his transactions. There were a jumble of abbreviations and several columns of figures. Were the abbreviations the names of the paintings, or the painters, or the forgers, or the smugglers, or the receivers? Were the figures payments to the forgers, or prices paid for the forgeries? Or perhaps the notebook had nothing to do with forgeries at all. It could have been a record of Gachet’s own art collection, or even a list of patients who were undergoing Oudin coil therapy, meant to be confidential. There seemed to be no system to the notes at all, or perhaps different systems had been applied as the idea struck. I was dealing, after all, with the less-than-methodical Dr. Gachet.
Of course, I wasn’t starting at square one. There were some names I knew already, from General Normand’s intelligence, or that I had gleaned from our investigation, and those I could match to their initials. Surely AW must be Antoine Watteau, as JHF must be Jean-Honore Fragonard. But if all the entries in that column were painters whose works had been stolen, then there were painters we hadn’t accounted for. Did the notation “CL” mean that I should return to the Louvre to examine the works of Claude Lorrain? Or did the list include works not yet plundered, but planned for? Who were the forgers? “PG” was listed nowhere—perhaps he simply had not the talent for the work?—but there was an “LD” and an “LA”—Dumoulin and Anquetin? But then who was “BD”? Was the five thousand, for instance, a payment to “ES”—Emile Schuffenecker, or to “ES”—Earl Shinn, the fellow Normand had mentioned who authenticated the Master paintings for the Americans? Was the denomination francs or dollars? I worked long into the night, trying to make some sense of it all.
It seemed I had only just shut my eyes when I was wakened by a pounding on the door. I opened it, bleary-eyed, to Vernet.
“Goron needs us.”
I glanced at the clock. It was not yet six. “Have we time for breakfast?”
“You have time to put on your trousers. Carry your boots.” He, of course, had already made an impeccable toilet and was fully dressed. I cursed him under my breath.
There was a carriage waiting for us in the street, the horses fairly dancing to be off. I was still knotting my cravat as we flew through the streets to the Quai des Orfevres. We were shot into Goron’s presence as soon as we arrived.
The chief of the Sûreté was sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves, chafing under the ministrations of his barber giving him a shave. He looked as if he hadn’t closed his eyes all night.
“Your pieces are all on the move. Schuffenecker has disappeared from Pont-Aven in Normandy. Mademoiselle Derousse left Auvers last night. There are one or two others we have under our eye who seem to be arranging their departures.”
A clerk entered with a tray of coffee. I fell to gratefully. Vernet followed suit with less enthusiasm, no doubt missing his morning tea.
“What about Dupuis?” Vernet asked.
“Still abed. But his mistress did not stay the night.”
“So the satellites move, but the sun remains.”
“Unless we can get hold of the horses that drive his chariot, the sun remains inviolate.” Goron pushed the barber away, wiping the lather from his chin and gulping his own coffee greedily, burning his lips. “Ow, ow ow! . . . and your cousin has left Montpellier for Paris.”
I had thought it nigh impossible to surprise Vernet, but he was thunderstruck by this news. “Impossible! Lecomte never travels.”
“Nevertheless.”
Vernet paced the floor, pondering the implications. “We must take the kettle off the fire before it starts to sing. Where is Dr. Gachet?”
“I thought we were finished with Gachet!” Goron groused.
The reproach in Vernet’s eyes was a spur to Goron. “Get me Despres,” the chief told his clerk. “Now!”
The clerk hurried out.
Vernet looked at me. “You brought the notebook?”
“I’ve got it here, but I’m still working out the details.”
The clerk returned with another agent, a gawky young man with spectacles so thick he might have been blind.
“Despres, I need you to place a telephone call.”
Despres nodded, went to a cabinet on the wall, and unlocked it. Inside was a telephone.
“We need the police station in Auvers-sur-Oise,” Goron told him.
“The sergeant’s name is Rigaumon,” volunteered Vernet. “A rather prickly customer.”
Despres nodded and cranked the phone to life. He began shouting into it.
“The Auvers police are on the telephone?” I asked.
“The post office. But they’re just next door,” Goron answered.
Our family had been on the telephone in London, but there was spotty service yet in Tuscany. My wife mourned as though she had lost a family member, but I secretly rejoiced. A more insidious imposition on a man’s privacy could hardly be imagined. It was a useful tool for the police, certainly, but then so was a truncheon. Goron’s discomfort with the instrument was apparently so extreme that he employed this fellow Despres simply to handle his calls. I envied him.
Despres navigated his way through the exchanges and made his connection. He began yelling down the wire for Sergeant Rigaumon.
“Ask them about the movements of one Dr. Paul Gachet. Find out if he’s stirred from his house,” Goron instructed.
Rigaumon must have answered. Despres started repeating Goron’s questions rapid-fire.
“Yes, sergeant . . . yes . . . yes?” He put a hand to the speaking horn. “Should they stop him?” he asked his chief.
Goron shook his head vigorously.
“No, no, thanks,” Despres said into the phone. “We’ll manage him at this end.”
Despres rang off. “He’s gotten on the train for Paris.” He began locking up the phone cabinet again.
“Doctor, we must return Gachet’s notebook immediately,” said Vernet.
I nodded, patting my coat pocket where our treasure lay.
“We could provide a diversion when he gets off the train,” Goron offered.
“No, that might rouse his suspicion. If you’ll lend us the driver we had coming here, he has a healthy disregard for safety. We’ll get there ahead of Gachet, if your man doesn’t break our necks.”
And before we knew it, we were once more whirling through the streets of Paris.
“I haven’t finished deciphering the notebook,” I said, trying to focus on the pages as the cab tossed us about.
“You have the ten minutes it will take us to arrive. Gachet was panicked by Gauguin’s visit yesterday, but he’s had time to calm down. He’s remembered that he left the record of his crimes in that notebook. He races back to retrieve it. If he doesn’t find it, all his suspicions will turn to certainty. Then will our rabbits truly run.”
I snapped the lead off three pencil points and was reduced to writing on the lining of my jacket with a piece of chalk before we arrived, but I got most of what I needed. We went tearing up the stairs at 78 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. I stood panting like a hound while Vernet picked the lock on Gachet’s door. He couldn’t match Goron’s easy facility with lockpicks (nor his immunity from prosecution, thought I), but eventually we were inside the office once again, running through the waiting room to the surgery. I handed the notebook over to Vernet with a pang of regret, only to find out that the desk drawer had somehow gotten locked. Vernet went to work on it.
“How much time have we?” he asked.
I consulted my watch. “That depends on how quickly you think he can get here from the Gare du Nord. Let us hope he elects to walk again.”
“Desperation gives a man wings. Go into the hall and stand sentry.”
It was good counsel, for I was only out in the hall a minute or so when I heard footsteps on the stair. I pulled the office door shut behind me.
“Doctor Gachet!’ I boomed out as he came into view. “How fortunate! I was afraid I had missed you. Could you spare me a minute, my friend?”
He stopped at the top of the stair, wary. “Have I made your acquaintance, monsieur?” He ran his hands through his coppery scalp.
“The name is . . . Lermolieff! We met in Auvers.” Let me keep a cool head here, I told myself. Mustn’t forget my own name.
The memory flickered feebly in his mind. “You’re an associate of Theo van Gogh.”
“I was at his brother’s funeral. Your eulogy was moving.” As I hoped Vernet was, right now.
He had placed me. “You and that detective!”
“Monsieur Vernet? Oh, no, monsieur, not a detective exactly, he’s a—a journalist, a reporter. Always asking questions, you know how they are.”
