The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, page 22
His stick clattered to the ground. Clasping the gun with both hands, his back against the column, he was able to hold it more or less steady, though his eyes were those of a drowning man. He jerked the muzzle toward Goron, directing him to move away. Goron released Gauguin, who rose triumphant as the phoenix, though a good deal dustier.
“I beg of you, monsieur, consider what you’re doing,” Vernet implored. “Would you be thought mad, like your brother?”
“Your words are nothing but cant. Paul will paint true pictures and be scorned by your like, just as Vincent was. Bailiffs will hound them to the four corners, but they will never be broken.”
“I don’t scorn them,” said Vernet solicitously. “I fear for them, that they may be gulled and cheated, their reputations dragged through the gutter by men who would use them for their own profit, then cast them aside. Let your friend Paul tell you how he convinced your brother he was mad.”
Van Gogh’s eyes met Gauguin’s, searching deep within them, seeing the truth laid bare. Still he stared, hoping, perhaps, to find some shared sympathy, some shred of human decency. I think even he could see there was none. “Vincent believed in you, Paul. I believe in you,” he whispered. But the conviction had drained from his voice.
Gauguin tossed a disarming smile Vernet’s way. He moved confidently to Van Gogh’s side and laid a consoling arm on his shoulder. “I never meant to harm Vincent. Only to keep him out of our way. You know he was always something of a bull in a china shop.” He eased the gun from Van Gogh’s trembling hands, whispering assurances. He scanned his audience: Vernet, Goron, myself, even the bewildered Madame Schuffenecker, all frozen there before him. He hefted the gun in his hand, seemed ready to toss it away.
“But understand this!”—he jammed the gun against Van Gogh’s temple—“I’ll blow your brains out if you don’t come with me now.”
No fear flickered in Theo van Gogh’s eyes, only resignation. Like a child, he let Gauguin take him by the wrist and guide him to the train. The engine was chuffing, building up steam.
I can hardly sort out what happened next, events collapsing in upon one another, all in a frozen moment. There was the gunshot, the bullet that whistled between Gauguin and Van Gogh, exploding against the side of the train, the glimpse of Jules Brunelle, the gun big in his little paw, as he stepped out between the carriages, deadly earnest in his eyes, poised to fire again. There he was, after the attack on the train to Auvers, before the attack in Montmartre. There he was, after he had destroyed the forgeries in Louis Dumoulin’s fireplace, testing my abilities with the painting of the watercarrier. There he was in Van Gogh’s apartment, taking the Watteau from Theo’s hands. There I was, turning, slow as a sundial, the blood roaring in my ears, the knife leaping from my hand, rotating through space, blossoming in his chest, the surprise in his bright feral eyes as he dropped to the ground, the overwhelming feeling of terrible purpose pounding in my brain, as if every moment since I had arrived in Paris had led me to the Gare du Nord at midnight only to kill this horrid little man, this assassin, and consign him to hell.
Then the clock ticked again. Gauguin was hustling Van Gogh aboard as the train began pounding down the platform. Vernet swung aboard the carriage behind them. Madame Schuffenecker threw herself at Goron, her claws tearing at his face, keeping him from following. I found myself running, running, the lights of the train striking down shadow after shadow, catching up to the last carriage and hanging on for dear life by the handrail till I could pull myself up onto the steps of the observation car and lose my dinner in noisy chunks over the side. I heard another shot split the night.
I made my way into the first carriage, a sleeper. Curtains up and down the aisle had been thrust aside as heads poked out nervously. A woman screamed from the next carriage or the next, and the heads popped back in like turtles in their shells. I started down the carriage, in a fog of nausea and blind panic.
I opened the door to the saloon carriage and flung myself to the floor as another gunshot roared through the enclosed space. The woman recommenced screaming. Passengers were throwing themselves to the floor behind their seats, shouting, weeping, their everyday lives oysters cracked open by terror. Gauguin towered at the far end of the carriage, keeping Van Gogh in a choke hold with one arm, the gun’s muzzle balanced on the Dutchman’s shoulder. Would to God there were a Dr. Watson at hand, with his trusty service revolver.
Vernet’s voice boomed out: “Monsieur! The police await you in Calais! Are you determined to be hanged?”
For answer Gauguin squeezed the trigger again. The gun misfired. He flung it from him with a snarl. It hit the floor and went off, the bullet shattering a window. Someone near me whimpered like a kitten.
Vernet rose up like a ghost unfettered, halfway down the aisle. “Give yourself up, Gauguin.”
I made it to my knees. A few of the passengers had crept to their feet. Those closest to Gauguin, seeing him unarmed, edged toward him in a body. Thrusting Van Gogh behind him like a sack of meal, he snatched the stick out of the hands of the nearest of his assailants, brandishing it like a saber. The crowd scuttled backward.
Vernet cast about for some kind of weapon. A rheumatic old pensioner, huddled in his frock coat behind the seat, tapped him on the shin, offering his blackthorn. Vernet accepted it gratefully. The passengers parted like the Red Sea as he closed with Gauguin, the two men inscribing sigils upon the air with their sticks. I moved up warily behind, wishing I still had Gauguin’s knife.
Vernet laid on, and a swift volley of cuts and parries followed, the drumbeat of sticks counterpoint to the stroke of pistons driving the train. If Vernet’s ankle still bothered him, he showed no sign of it. This time he was not playing to provoke; lives were at stake. His new ferocity must have shocked his opponent; he forced Gauguin back, step by step, until the latter nearly stumbled over Van Gogh, who had been leaning against the connecting door all the time, like a package waiting to be claimed. Gauguin grabbed him by the shirtfront and slung him into Vernet’s arms. He elbowed the door open, skipped nimbly across the gangway, and disappeared into the next carriage.
Vernet took a moment to hand Van Gogh into my arms. Sympathetic passengers crowded round to give aid. Vernet followed Gauguin. I watched him leap from our carriage to the gangway, and throw open the door into the darkness of the next car. There was a loud crack, and he went down like a brick.
What was I to do?
Van Gogh had been lowered onto a seat, and the woman who screamed was wiping his brow with a lace handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne. Someone produced a flask of brandy and put it to his lips. He was well tended to. Meanwhile, if Vernet were injured, who could help him but me? If he were dead, who but I could stop Gauguin?–though God alone knew how. I put my head out the door, felt the night wind whip at my face, and crossed the heaving chasm between cars.
Vernet had thankfully not stayed down long. The first thing I made out was his narrow back, black against the softer black surrounding him. Someone had smashed the lanterns in the carriage. I could hear glass crunching beneath my bootheels. The only light came from a curtain that had caught fire. The shadows of a few passengers drifted among the seats like revenants in a churchyard.
Blood ran down Vernet’s cheek from a cut on his scalp; he seemed barely to notice. Gauguin faced him, but he kept shifting from side to side, readier to retire than advance. His guard was slack; he was tiring. I could do no more than bear witness to the struggle.
Vernet advanced in high tierce. Gauguin met him. They danced up and down the aisle in a blur of traded blows. Gauguin grunted like a cornered boar. He was obviously fagged, whereas the steel in Vernet’s wrist seemed annealed by his own blood. He feinted to his left, then struck right, not at his opponent’s body but down upon his exposed wrist. Gauguin howled in pain and dropped his stick. He lurched backward, reached up into the overhead rack with his left hand, and dragged a pile of luggage down on Vernet’s head. He turned and ran.
I went to Vernet’s aid. He emerged chagrined from beneath a steamer trunk, shaking himself like a dog. His face and head were bruised, but it was the cut in his temple that troubled me most. My attempts to minister to his wounds were met by a brusque dismissal.
“You need something to stanch the blood!” I warned, trying to press my handkerchief upon him. “Else you’re liable to faint.”
He took the scarf from his throat and wrapped it around his forehead, making a hasty knot at the side. He looked quite piratical as he stood, shedding his coat and handing it to me.
“How can I help?” I asked.
“Keep away.”
It was sound counsel, I admit that now. But at the time I thought he only meant to protect me at his own peril, and that false sense of bravado that he stirred in me at such times would not hear of it. Once he had crossed the gangway to the next car, I was compelled to follow.
I pushed through the door to find myself in a deserted dining car, lit only by the moon hopscotching windows. The drawers of a sideboard had been rifled open, silver spilled across the floor. Vernet was limned in the center of the car, white tablecloths on either side fluttering like ghosts. He held up a hand to warn me, a finger to his lips to keep me silent. He moved through the car, turning and turning, tuning his senses to the flashing moonlight and the thunder of the engine.
A shadow lunged from the darkness. Vernet dodged, a heartbeat too late. A carving knife glinted in Gauguin’s hand. A red gash jumped out on Vernet’s shoulder. He dropped his stick. Gauguin turned and leapt again, aiming for Vernet’s back. I cried out.
Vernet whirled, planting a boot in the Frenchman’s ribs. He threw himself upon his adversary. They went crashing across tables, then hit the floor, locked in a desperate struggle for the knife.
Vernet reached up and swept a tablecloth over Gauguin’s head, blinding him. He seized the knife arm with both hands, pounding Gauguin’s wrist against the floor. Gauguin roared with pain, surrendering the knife. Vernet picked it up and sent it quivering into the wall at the other end of the carriage.
Gauguin untangled himself from the cloth and scraped to his feet. He eyed his opponent like a cornered fox. Both men were standing on the end of their nerves.
“Why continue this folly?” asked Vernet.
Gauguin gave him a sullen look. “I didn’t kill Vincent.”
“I know, I know.” He waved me over. “Doctor, if you’ll bring me one of those curtain sashes? We’ll have to restrain you, Monsieur Gauguin, just to be certain.”
Gauguin nodded, resigned. The fight was gone out of him.
But fate had one more wild trick to play.
“Monsieur Vernet? Is anyone there?”
Theo van Gogh stood with the door banging behind him. Whether he could be said to be conscious or was caught in the meshes of a walking dream I cannot say, but for a moment he sucked in all our attention. And Gauguin made his move. He tore past Vernet, moving like a bullet straight for Van Gogh. Whether he planned to get hold of him again or simply knock him down I’ll never know, for Van Gogh collapsed in front of him like a pillar of salt. Gauguin hopped over his supine body and shot out the door.
Vernet was a hair’s breadth behind him. I was treading on Vernet’s heels. Still we were too late. There was no one on the gangway. “He’s thrown himself from the train!” Vernet threw a leg over the guardrail. I grabbed him roughly by shoulders. He flinched in pain. “You’re wounded,” I cried against the wind. “The fall likely killed him; it will certainly kill you. Even should you both survive, he’s already miles away; you’ll never find him in the dark.” Indeed, it was pitch-black on the embankment rushing by below us.
“Without the painting, without his confession, we have nothing!”
There was only one answer I could make: “We’ll have his confession.”
A look of understanding passed between us. Vernet nodded and collapsed against me. We had surrendered the chase.
Theo van Gogh lay in fitful dreams abed. The doctor, that same aggrieved police functionary, was taking his pulse for the hundredth time. Madame Van Gogh was draped over him like the Madonna in a pietà, watching every rise and fall of his breast, oblivious of the outside world. I stood in the doorway, signaling the doctor to come into the parlor, where Goron wanted him. The doctor dismissed me with a backhand gesture. I went back into the drawing room, shrugging by way of apology.
Goron chuckled. He was helping Vernet put his shirt on. Vernet’s shoulder and scalp were both swathed in bandages. “Dr. Monier spends too much time in healing, and not enough in filing reports in triplicate. A bad fit for our bureaucracy,” said the chief mournfully.
“Any trace of our suspect?” Vernet asked, wincing as he navigated his arm through his sleeve.
“Harbor police searched the boat from stem to stern, with the captain cursing them every step of the way,” answered Goron. “Since dawn we have men searching the railway embankment between Rouen and Calais. But I’m fairly certain he won’t be found.”
Vernet raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“We checked the passenger manifests for every ship departing Calais since last night. There was an interesting entry for the Northern Star, which sailed at six thirty this morning for Copenhagen.”
He handed Vernet a copy of the ship’s passenger list. The detective scanned it as he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. He read aloud:
“‘John Watson, M.D.’” A slow smile of appreciation spread across his face. “Cheek!”
“Gauguin’s wife and children live in Copenhagen. They’re estranged, but I’ve no doubt he can worm his way back into her good graces.”
“Then we have nothing.” Vernet’s face was stormy.
I could quell my curiosity no longer. “Did you learn anything about the Belgian, Jules Brunelle?” I asked.
“Ah, yes! Good eye, Lermolieff—and damned good knife work. Your talents are wasted at the Pitti Palace. He was Belgian, all right, but his name was de Groux, not Brunelle, and he was certainly not in the business of ladies’ gloves. That little police lieutenant friend of yours in Brussels was a great help to us there, Vernet. Says he was an assassin with three certain kills and half a dozen more suspected. No convictions, of course.”
Vernet cocked an eyebrow at me. “You knew?”
“There were indications,” I replied, attempting modesty.
The doctor emerged from the bedroom, scratching his beard distractedly and staring at the floor. He seemed unaware of our presence.
“How’s your patient?” Goron finally asked.
He looked up. “Which one?”
“This one’s a horse,” answered Goron. He slapped Vernet on the back. Vernet’s face went white.
“Monsieur English, you have a positive talent for mayhem,” said the doctor. “I see your ankle’s swollen again. As for that poor fellow”—he cocked his head toward the bedroom—“it’s never good for a man in the throes of brain fever to go for a midnight excursion on a train. He’s safe for now, but I wouldn’t give odds he’ll dance at his son’s wedding. He needs a nerve specialist.”
“I’m sure Gachet would take him on in his chamber of horrors,” Goron said.
“Won’t Gachet be in prison?” I objected.
“No one is going to prison,” said Vernet, visibly dejected at the thought.
“Without Gauguin we have no case against the doctor,” Goron agreed. “We might have played them off one against the other under interrogation, but now he’s safe enough.”
“But if we had Gauguin’s confession? In his own handwriting? Wouldn’t that make your case, gentlemen?”
They both looked at me curiously. Eventually both nodded in agreement.
“Well, then.” Before me on the table lay a bundle of correspondence that I had requested from Madame Van Gogh. The letters were tied up with a ribbon. “These are all the letters from Gauguin to Van Gogh.” I untied the ribbon and took out one of the letters. I began reading.
“Pardon me, monsieur, do you expect to find a confession in those letters?” There was a note of mockery in Goron’s voice.
“I do,” I answered confidently.
The sky was smeared with vermillion dawn as we returned to our hotel. I had a long day ahead, and would be burning the midnight oil once again. It was agreed Vernet would call a final meeting of the consortium. They would require one more report from their authentication expert. The die was cast.
Chapter Seventeen
Eugene Dupuis kept a suite of rooms in the Rue St. Lazare, with a terrace looking out on sidewalks lined with plane trees. He was sitting at breakfast in the cool of the morning, serenely stirring the cream in his coffee. He was expecting a visit from Monsieur Lecomte that morning, an occurrence rare enough to upset the equanimity of even the most sanguine, but the lark was on the wing, the snail on the thorn, and his affairs were in order. He was probably half-convinced Lecomte’s wire was some sort of prank. Then his manservant came to the door, announcing that gentleman’s arrival. Dupuis composed a smile upon his face.
“Monsieur Lecomte! The mountain comes to Mohammed.”
Lecomte looked profoundly uncomfortable so far away from his own breakfast table, which made Dupuis smile all the more. His mask of bonhomie cracked for a moment when Vernet and I followed Lecomte out onto the terrace. “You’ve brought your retinue with you, I see,” he said, recovering himself. He took note of Vernet’s bandaged temple. “Bar-room brawl?”
“Midnight excursion,” Vernet returned.
“I suppose civility is too much to ask of the Anglo-Saxon.”
“I didn’t come for badinage,” snapped Lecomte, in undisguised ill humor. “Where’s my coffee?”
“Octave, you mule!” Dupuis barked at his manservant. “Bring coffee. Bring champagne. Bring us the head of John the Baptist.”
“Bring three more chairs,” Vernet directed, more practically. The servant bowed woodenly and left to carry out his orders.
“Monsieur Vernet, are we to hear more tales to beguile? Has the Eiffel Tower been made away with? Does the Seine run backward?”
