The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, page 6
“Who?”
“Vincent.”
“My dear doctor! How can you say such a thing?”
“Not as he lay dying, but there—look at that painting!”
It was a self-portrait of the painter, positively glaring at us from the canvas, his red hair and beard fiery against a swirling blue-green background. I hadn’t entertained the notion until I had seen the portrait, and remembered how the mysterious girl had taken him for Vincent’s brother the night before, but there was indeed an uncanny resemblance between the detective and the man we had seen dying in the attic room. The same hawkish profile and lantern jaw, the same whippet-thin frame, the same probing eyes, gray-green and deep as the ocean. Had Vernet recognized the resemblance himself? Had it perhaps stirred his unconscious sympathies for the poor fellow?
Vernet studied the painting. “That’s him?”
“A self-portrait, I think. Very like.”
“No! Look at that devil-red beard!”
“Your beard is red—reddish, at least.”
“Is it?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I wish I’d never grown the confounded thing. It itches damnably in this heat. Well, at least it’s not henna red, like Dr. Gachet’s.”
There was a portrait of the doctor there, too, head in hand, the picture of melancholy. His hair was indeed henna red, and he, too, somewhat resembled Vincent.
But Vernet had made me curious about the beard. “Why did you grow it?” I asked.
“I fancy Vernet as a bearded man, don’t you? Vernet is French. A bit of a rake, a bit of a swindler, a bit of a fox. The beard makes the man. Don’t know how you stand that great bushy thing in this heat.”
“My beard is not bushy,” I objected, stroking it fondly, though there was grey beginning to show in the black. “It is luxurious.”
It struck me that for him the beard, like all the rest of his accoutrements, was meant simply as a disguise. The “Monsieur Vernet” I had mistaken as solid flesh was a prop built of beards and scarves and stories snatched from the ether. I wondered what sort of man lay beneath the mask. Perhaps he was all surface, like a painting, with only the illusion of depth.
Ravoux had been right about the priest. With Vincent’s death officially registered as a suicide, he would allow neither a church service nor the use of the parish hearse. In this instance Vernet actually set to and made himself useful. Once he was made aware of Monsieur Theo’s predicament, he sent a blizzard of telegrams to various connections until another hearse was procured and sent over from a nearby town. He refrained from mentioning again his contention that Vincent had been murdered, and was awarded a wary gratitude from Monsieur Theo. As for the lack of a church service, Van Gogh seemed unconcerned, perhaps even relieved. Vincent had once been a missionary, we were told by the brother-in-law, Bonger, but he had rejected the church, and perhaps even God, as the years exacted their toll on his psyche. Theo van Gogh had never been a missionary, unless you counted his proselytizing for Impressionists. If he believed in a god, it was a deity in the image of his brother. Vernet was mad to consider him a suspect.
Adeline Ravoux and her little sister came in from the fields with an apron full of wildflowers to strew upon the coffin. Between their bouquet and Vincent’s bright canvases the room lost its somber atmosphere and took on a festive air. The girls capered about till even the undertaker laughed. Madame Ravoux opened a box of madeleines and kept the coffee coming. When her husband cracked open a bottle of the local abricotine, things became almost merry. Theo confided some happy tales of his boyhood with Vincent to the company. So does the eager earth send up shoots through the burial mound and cover it in green. The bones of men are buried beneath every house in every street and along every country ride. The coffins are stacked one atop another all the way down to the center of the earth. Yet mourning is not the natural mold of man. The heart is buoyant as a channel marker.
Vernet confided in me that he had received a wire from his cousin, Lecomte, calling it positively urgent that we drop further inquiries and come to Montpellier at once.
“Then shall we not heed his summons?” I said.
“Of course, Doctor, you must do what you think best, but I have further inquiries to make here. I would welcome your assistance.”
We were decided. What profit was there, after all, in arguing with the great English detective? He would have his way. I would feel a fool arriving in Montpellier alone.
I returned to the St. Aubin and spent the time at a sidewalk table in the shade of an awning, putting my report in order. I had offered to show Vernet a preliminary draft, but he demurred. “You’ve already informed me of your results; I have perfect faith in Dr. Morelli’s method.” Fairer words could not be said.
I was sitting therefore, sipping at a glass of wine, going over my notes on Fragonard’s The Lock, detailing the exuberant, nearly tumescent upsweep of long, fluid brushstrokes, the tension of the line like an arrow notched in a bow, the lover’s hand straining for the latch—ah, but that hand was never painted by Fragonard! Fragonard’s hands are round and plump, creased at the wrist like a baby’s, fumbling for its mother’s teat. This hand was long and splayed, one of El Greco’s claws!—when I suffered a strange delusion. I was studying the Fragonard with the mind’s eye; the canvas lay plainly before me. But as I did so, a watercarrier passed me on the street, tall and thin and brown, his heavy buckets yoked across his shoulders, yet he was moving in what could only be called a jig. And though he was certainly walking away from me, he was just as certainly coming closer.
I squinted, and brushed the rheum from my eyes; the world righted itself. An unframed painting was approaching me along the street, in the hands of—well, the hands were all the clue I needed, stumpy fingers sheathed in green kid gloves. I could barely see his eyes between the painting and his homburg hat.
He slammed the canvas down on the pavement in front of me. “Well! What do you think?” Jules Brunelle asked. His face was flushed, his little eyes bright with righteous indignation.
It was inoffensive enough. An Oriental scene, I gathered, a native water-bearer making his barefoot way down a shade-dappled street in Siam, or Tonkin, perhaps. It appeared to have been hastily made, a compromise of sorts between the labored Salon style and the myopic slapdash of Impressionism. Meant to suggest exoticism, I suppose, though the scene could have been Provence as easily as Cochin China.
“Very fine,” I said to placate him. “But didn’t you say you had commissioned a portrait of your wife?”
“My wife and her dog! Do you see my wife? Do you see the dog?”
I neither saw nor cared, but I humored the man. “What does Dumoulin say?”
“Monsieur Dumoulin says nothing! Monsieur Dumoulin says au revoir!”
His hands were trembling. I waited for him to collect his savoir faire.
“Dumoulin has gone to Japan. Left on Sunday. There were only a pair of hired men—a pair of poltroons!—closing up the house, putting things in storage, they said. They wouldn’t even let me look for my painting. They fobbed this off on me instead. One painting good as another, they said. They pushed me out the door! I’ll give this thing to the fire!”
“Keep the painting,” I counseled soothingly. “When Monsieur Dumoulin returns from abroad, I dare say he’ll make restitution. At the worst, if this Dumoulin has the reputation you say, you could always resell this one for . . .”
I looked at the painting again, appraising it. I was certain I had never seen a single work by this artist before, and yet the more I looked, the more familiar it seemed. I felt a wild electric tingling at the base of my scalp. Then it came running at me. I nearly jumped out of my chair in excitement. “Monsieur Brunelle,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level, “do you mind if I make a few sketches of this painting? It poses interesting . . . aesthetic problems.”
“You like this painting? You think it’s good? Perhaps I should keep it.”
I nodded vigorously to everything he said. In the end, he let me make the studies I needed right there at the table—I always keep a charcoal in my bag—though he never stopped carping from beginning to end. It was conspiracy, he railed, Jesuits or Zionists or the Black Hand. For my part, I was almost beginning to think we were fortunate indeed that Vernet had ignored Lecomte’s urgent summons. Here was a real clue to the mystery of the forged paintings, fallen in my lap. Once I had what I needed, I was able to turn aside Brunelle’s dinner invitation, citing a previous engagement. Feeling a bit feverish, I retreated to the quiet of my room, laying a cold compress on my forehead. I was just dropping off to sleep when Vernet came barging in without so much as a knock.
“Try this with your toast and tea, Doctor!” He slammed something down on the night table.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I picked up the object and brought it into focus. A jar of honey. “You’ve been shopping?” I asked.
“I’ve been snooping. At least that’s what Mademoiselle Gachet tells me.”
“Gachet? There’s a daughter?”
“There is indeed. You met her last night.”
My mind was a blank. Then I recalled the mysterious girl in the shadows of the Place de la Mairie. The revelation of her identity rendered her even more mysterious.
“You’ve been to see Dr. Gachet? I can’t imagine he welcomed you with open arms.”
“I did not go to see Dr. Gachet, or his son, or his daughter. I followed the bees.”
“I’d heard your methods of investigation are unorthodox, but I didn’t know you interrogated bees.”
“Would that I could. Oh, what the bees could tell me! I hope one day to retire and spend my days keeping bees. But today I merely observed a profusion of bees upon the road west of the village, and followed them to the rather unkempt garden in which they are hived. There I happened upon the beekeeper.”
“Our mystery demoiselle?”
“And most mysterious she appeared, floating among the skeps dressed head to toe in black, a black boater with a veil down to her waist, and a smoker in her mouth. Quite alluring, if you’re a bee enthusiast.”
“A smoker?”
“For stunning bees with smoke.”
“I see. Like tiring the bull with lances. So, you spoke to her?”
“She had other visitors. I didn’t want to intrude.”
“But you didn’t mind . . . observing.”
Vernet flashed a sudden grin. “You’re beginning to grasp my methods.”
“What did you observe?”
“Two men. One short, in muttonchops, one tall, with a moustache like a Tatar, both exuding a rather thuggish air. Indeed, Mademoiselle Gachet must have thought so, too.”
“They were on the train!” I said, for Vernet had described exactly the evil-faced men I had encountered when trying to avoid Brunelle. I had only seen them for a moment, but they had impressed themselves upon my memory.
“You seem to have made all sorts of acquaintances. At any rate, they asked for her father, and she answered not a word. Something about a painting in his possession. They were quite insistent upon it, but they may as well have been speaking to the ghost of the Richmond murderess. The short one began to make threatening gestures. I thought I might have to intervene. Did she seem a meek young girl to you last night?”
“The word insipid springs to mind.”
“She was mighty among the bees. As soon as she was threatened, she blew smoke in their faces, sending them both into coughing fits.”
“Brava. And then?”
“She threw a skep at the short one. Which he caught, wonder of wonders! But when he realized that what he had caught was a hive full of bees, he dashed it to the ground and started kicking it. I have read a number of celebrated beekeeping manuals, and none of them recommend such a procedure. Exit, pursued by a swarm of bees. But even in midflight, the Tatar called back, ‘Tell your father to order his affairs. Tell him to close the house down!’—to which our mystery mademoiselle answered that she would look after her father.”
“She sounds imminently capable of doing so.”
“She was perfectly prepared to unleash her wrath upon me once I made my presence known, but I won her trust by helping her set her skeps aright. By the time I was offering to purchase some of her honey, I believe I had allayed most of her suspicions.”
“And what did you learn?”
“I learned that besides bees, Marguerite Gachet keeps a goat, a tomcat, a turtle named D’Artagnan, some ducks, and an ever-expanding family of rabbits. And that Vincent van Gogh was part of her menagerie.”
“You mean to say that she and the painter were intimate?”
“I won’t hazard to guess what degree of intimacy they achieved, especially since her father apparently had some rather strenuous views on the subject, but I believe Vincent was dear to her. She broke down crying as she spoke of him.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“At that point, unfortunately we were interrupted by the arrival of one of her father’s students, one Mademoiselle Derousse.”
“A medical student?”
“An art student. The doctor, like every other denizen of this enchanted hamlet, suffers from the delusion that he is a painter, worthy to train other painters. Did you know that he had drawn a postmortem portrait of Vincent?”
“What, as he lay dying?”
“As he lay dead. Mademoiselle Derousse set about making an exact copy of the thing as I stood there.”
I wasn’t sure what Vernet had achieved from this rather outré encounter, but he seemed to consider it quite a coup. My own revelation would trump his, I thought.
I recounted the story of my serendipitous reunion with Brunelle. Vernet listened without interruption. When I finished, he said simply, “So you’re certain this Dumoulin was the forger?”
“I’m certain at least that the painting I saw this afternoon was made by the same hand that executed the fake Ingres I showed you in the Louvre.”
“Then I suggest we visit chez Dumoulin forthwith.”
He rose and rapped the floor with his stick. I slipped my boots back on. “Dumoulin left for the Orient on Sunday,” I reminded him.
“Before or after murdering the Dutchman?”
I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it again. It was only the twinkle in his eye that made me realize he was joking. Or if not joking, at least not entirely serious.
“At any rate, he’s gone,” I answered.
“He left his paintings behind, I trust.”
The hotel clerk was able to give us directions to Dumoulin’s villa; he was a well-known figure in the village. Auvers-sur-Oise is rather vain of its painters, the successful ones at least. We made our way on foot as quickly as possible; it seemed all I could do to keep the detective from breaking into a sprint. But as we came in sight of the villa, a tall white house in the violet chokehold of clematis, he came to an abrupt halt, gazing up sourly at the sky. I urged him on, but he continued only reluctantly. “I thought we were in a hurry!” I said, impatient with his sudden despondency.
“Look at the chimney, man,” he replied.
Smoke was rising from the chimney stack. On a hot July afternoon. We were too late.
Vernet rapped on the door with his stick. No answer returned. He tried the handle. It turned; we walked in. There was no light in the hall or in the shuttered parlor, but the fireplace in the kitchen glowed red, and a horrid reek stung the nostrils. There had been a great fire in the chimney; the embers were still smoldering. Every canvas, every stretcher, every sketch had been incinerated methodically in the grate. The hearthstone was littered with bent nails. There was not a scrap we could save.
We fought our way out to the street, coughing and hacking. The heavy brick-oven air felt like wine after the poisonous atmosphere inside.
“What do you make of it all, then?” I asked, once we were well away from the house and its treacherous fumes.
“I think it time we depart for Montpellier, my friend,” he replied dourly.
Just when I was certain we should remain in Auvers.
Chapter Five
We did not leave that night, nor by the morning train. I had thought my discovery of one of the forgers had made Vernet forget about the travails of the dead painter, but the man suddenly got it in his head that we should witness the funeral. When I say witness, I don’t mean that we actually attended—no, that would have been too bourgeois for Vernet. When the coffin was loaded on the hearse that afternoon, we were watching from across the square. I had thought perhaps that Vernet wanted to refrain from upsetting Van Gogh any further by his presence, but that of course was not his concern. He didn’t try to conceal himself; he explained that he simply wanted to remove himself from the frame, to observe the scene without being part of it. If we were noticed, we would be noticed like the hills on the horizon or the barges on the river. A man who carried a magnifying glass with him everywhere might have realized the advantages of observing his subjects up close, but Vernet could not resist being a contrarian.
The funeral was sparsely attended. What would you expect? It is only the very old and the very young whose funerals people flock to, in genuine grief or greedy expectation. The funerals of suicides are especially avoided, out of pure embarrassment. Those who do attend want to give each other comfort, but they really want to say: Not my fault! I did what I could. We were never that close. Not my fault, not my fault, not my fault!
There was near a straggling score of them altogether, so far as I could see, villagers and city dwellers, most dressed somberly, yet carrying bright flowers. Sunflowers, drooping awkwardly on their tall stalks, seemed to be the preferred offering. The mourners followed the hearse up the hills to the cemetery. Dr. Gachet was weeping like a watering can, leaning on his son’s shoulder. The daughter was not in attendance; I wondered what Vernet made of that. Van Gogh and his brother-in-law walked together, their faces set as if against a north wind. Others conversed in low voices, laughing sometimes, sharing memories of the dead man, perhaps. Most of them must have been painters (and not the prosperous ones) or their camp followers. I recognized old Tanguy from the paint shop among them, and, oddly enough, Mademoiselle Valadon, all in black silk like Death’s maîtresse-en-titre. I pointed her out to Vernet; he merely nodded, unsurprised. A peasant girl, incongruous in white, trailed nonchalantly in the van, picking wildflowers. I couldn’t decide whether she was one of the mourners or had simply fallen in with the crowd. She might have been the angel sent to roll back the stone from the grave, were she not embarrassingly early for such a chore. At the tail of the procession Adeline Ravoux danced with her little sister, scolded by their mother.
