Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 17

"Oh, yes. I know most of them, though I don't get around much any more-aren't those the words of an old song?" He tapped his toe and hummed awhile. He stopped, continued. "When I had this job"-here he flicked a finger at the offending newspaper-"I was always making rounds; I felt it as a duty. Now I'd sooner save my time and my feet for a look round the Tate, the National, the Royal Academy. Old friends, old friends. I think of Matisse sometimes; I remember Vuillard and van Gogh, and it's a treat, a real treat, to know all I need do is heave myself out of this chair or my sofa at home and go. And there they all are again! Yes, there they are." Pitt sighed, as if in wonder that the paintings persisted, unchanged, dependable.

This flight of fancy was almost as much a transporting experience for Melrose as it clearly was for Simeon Pitt. Old friends, old friends. Matisse, Vuillard, van Gogh. Melrose could imagine the four of them-five if he himself were invited-the five of them here in Boring's deep leather armchairs, pouring the whisky, splas.h.i.+ng the soda. The good stuff, the real art, gave you the shock of the familiar not the cold consort of the alien, the wretched stuff that left you outside in the snow. Real art invited you in.

h.e.l.l's bells, that was what was so enraging about that bogus white "series" of Ralph Rees! Just that: It was bogus.

"Mr. Pitt-"

"You were deep into something there, Mr. Plant."

"I was. We were talking about the Fabricant Gallery."

"Place in Mayfair, yes."

"Have you been there lately?"

"No."

"Would you care to go?"

"What? You mean today?"

"I mean right now."

"But we've just settled in with our whiskies, man!" Pitt raised his in proof of this.

"I'd deem it a personal favor, Mr. Pitt, and when we return we'll settle again and have a double." Melrose smiled his special smile, the one he was not wholly conscious he had, but it was as fetching as the smile of a very young child. It was, like the work of Matisse, Vuillard, and van Gogh, the real thing on offer. It invited you in.

"Excellent! I'll hold you to it. And here's to a good long stay in Boring's!" They raised their gla.s.ses. "How long are you staying, Mr. Plant?"

"I'm not quite sure, actually, Mr. Pitt. A few days, I'd guess."

"Well, it's pleasant, and, G.o.d knows, it's quiet here. Actually, I don't miss the noise and grind of the newspaper business, not at all. I have my digs in Chelsea, on my own, except for my dog and cat. Sounds lonely, I expect, but it isn't. To tell the truth, I enjoy being on my own."

Melrose smiled. It was as he'd suspected. Simeon Pitt was good company, not only to others but to himself, which was more important. "You don't have a large family, I take it?"

"No, not at all. A few cousins who live in the West Country. Barbara, my niece, who I have to lunch occasionally, usually at the Ivy. She's coming here, actually, on Tuesday. That's Ladies' Day." He chortled. "Can you imagine? Ladies' Days in these times? But it's probably the only concession Boring's has made over the years to change." He drank the last of his whisky, brought the gla.s.s down heavily, and said, "I'm ready if you are, Mr. Plant."

"Ready, Mr. Pitt!"

Sebastian was the only one in attendance at the gallery when Pitt and Melrose turned up there a half hour later. Oh, yes, he most certainly knew Simeon Pitt: Sebastian fawned, and Melrose wondered why, given that Pitt was no longer writing reviews of gallery showings. Perhaps Pitt's was the sort of power that was never abrogated, or perhaps he was one of those whose good opinion was always sought, even after he could do one no harm.

There was small talk which Pitt cut short, and Melrose led him into the room where the Siberian Snow paintings were displayed.

Pitt took a quick look and a step backward. "What in h.e.l.l's this?"

"A series of paintings called Siberian Snow. Ralph Rees is the artist."

Pitt managed a snow-blinded blink. "You're kidding, Mr. Plant. It isn't Siberia and, h.e.l.l, it isn't even snow. What's this supposed to be, minimal art? Like Reinhardt and Robert Ryman?"

"I'm not familiar with that school. If it is one."

"Well, those artists favor white, especially Ryman. It's pure, it's a non-color. But you can see variation in his paint surfaces. The idea behind it is an expression of pure art. I don't really understand it either, but I think I can safely say this ain't it!"

"The Fabricant Gallery seems to think it's-well, something."

"It's b.l.o.o.d.y nothing. Nil. Nada. Zilch. Zero."

Pitt pulled what looked like an eyepiece from his waistcoat pocket. It was a magnifying gla.s.s, which he now applied to the third painting, moving it around. "Funny texture. What's it painted on, do you know?"

"Sandpaper, I think he said." The squares ghosted through.

"This painter's a friend of yours?" Pitt appeared discomfited. "Sorry, didn't mean to-"

Melrose shook his head. "No, no, not a friend. I know him only slightly. How do you explain the fact that this has got at least one good review?"

"I'd explain by noting the reviewer is his mother. Please."

"The word, I believe, was audacious."

"Good word. I'd go along with that. Such as in, How would anyone have the audacity to fob this off on the public?"

Melrose moved closer to the fifth painting. "At first, you think they're all the same white. But then the white does change in this last one of the series."

"Why do you insist on calling it a series?" However, to humor Melrose, Pitt applied his gla.s.s to the last picture. "I suppose it's a slight variation. That's hardly enough to explain all five." Pitt shook his head. "I don't get it. I don't get it," he repeated.

It hadn't occurred to Melrose that there was anything to get. He said, "Let's look around. There's some good stuff here." There was only one example of "good stuff" as far as Melrose was concerned, and he wanted Pitt's comment on it.

They moved into the next small room, Sebastian looking up from his paperwork, tracing their progress with his eyes. He was crafty enough to know a person like Pitt wouldn't want to be accompanied by the dealer. They were standing now in the room where Bea's third painting hung, a North London view similar to the Catchcoach Street one. This was the one Melrose hadn't bought. He did not single it out now; he merely hoped Pitt would be caught by it and would approve.

Pitt commented on a big blaring geometric canvas that Melrose couldn't decipher, saying it wasn't bad, if a little crude, a little too obviously bearing the influence of Pica.s.so. Then, upon seeing Bea Sloc.u.m's painting next to it, he said, "Now, here's a treat!"

Melrose let out his breath. "I like that one too. As a matter of fact, I bought one of hers."

"Good man! I forgive you for that white lot!"

Melrose's reply came on a laugh. "I didn't paint them!"

"n.o.body painted them!"

Melrose thought that a bit harsh. He also thought he wouldn't want to tell Simeon Pitt he owned one.

21.

Another twenty-four hours, and we're going to have to charge her, Jury." Chilten was clearly uncomfortable. "What surprises me is she hasn't got herself lawyered up by now. Says she doesn't need one, since she hasn't done anything. How naive. But she's been here since Thursday night; you'd've thought she'd be screaming the b.l.o.o.d.y station down."

"Unless she's extremely clever."

"Especially with the old lady punching holes in her alibi."

"That's what I mean. Kate McBride hasn't been pressing it."

Chilten expelled a long sigh. "You might be mistaken about that bus ride. It happens."

Jury smiled. "It does. Only it hasn't happened here."

Chilten shrugged, started banging desk drawers in and out.

"I'll talk to her again, Ronnie."

She vanished. Jury had been carrying that around all day; it was never far from his thoughts, even when he'd been in the Pastis woman's flat or in the Fabricant Gallery. What had happened to this child, Sophie?

When the constable brought her into the room, Jury was standing by the small window that looked out over the spindly tree and the square of frozen gra.s.s in which it sat. He turned to say h.e.l.lo to her, feeling all of this had happened before, probably because they were meeting in the same place: window, table, chairs exactly the same as they had been the morning before. Or was there something else to this sense of dej vu?

She said h.e.l.lo, offered him a smile that looked worn-out, and sat down at the table.

Jury sat in the same chair, not that there was much of a choice. He asked, "Did you go there to meet someone?"

Her eyes widened. "Go where? What do you mean? Who would I meet?"

"The priest. Charles Noailles." He watched her face for a reaction, but the face remained as still as undisturbed lake water. "He keeps an office at the palace, for his writing."

She looked at him with a smile he supposed could be called resigned. "You didn't see me, Superintendent. You saw her."

Jury ignored this. "He said he knew your husband quite well when you lived in Paris. He didn't know you very well."

She bent her head, seemed to be studying her hands, and was silent for a few moments. "Michael, my husband-yes, he was friendly with this priest. I didn't really know him. Michael needed a measure of spiritual sustenance. He was dying of leukemia."

There was a silence.

"I'm sorry. Go on about your daughter, Sophie."

Sadly, she looked at him. "Do you want to hear about it?"

"Yes, of course."

She looked at him steadily. "It was in Paris. I stayed on there after Michael died."

"In Saint-Germain-des-Pres."

She nodded. "It happened one day in the Madeleine district. There's that famous grocery Fauchon; it's a sw.a.n.k market, food laid out like art, and every kind of fruit and vegetable you can imagine. The different kinds of food are sold in different buildings. It was Sophie's favorite place to go. We'd make a day of it. First to the Tuileries, and then Annebelle's in the rue de Rivoli for hot chocolate, then the Metro to the Madeleine and Fauchon's. There was an organ grinder, who had his spot always just outside the door of Fauchon's fruit and vegetable section. Sophie loved this. He had a pet dog and a cat and a baby pram in which the two slept-can you imagine? Sometimes they were awake and going through their round of tricks.

"Fauchon's is very large, very festive, and very expensive. We were in the part that sells fruits and vegetables and I was buying apricots and peaches; I told Sophie to get potatoes and she was doing that, putting small potatoes into a sack. She did this very carefully, inspecting each one. A few minutes later, I looked around and Sophie was gone. Well, I didn't really panic at first; I thought she'd wandered next door or to the candy and pastry shop across the street-she wasn't supposed to, but it was narrow and crowded far more with shoppers than with street traffic. We'd been to Fauchon's so many times, she knew what was in each building.

"I went across and into the patisserie, but she wasn't there either. Then, afraid I might have simply missed seeing her in the vegetable and fruit department, I went back there. I waited for five or ten minutes, and it was then real panic began to set in. I started canva.s.sing all the different sections. I found a policeman, finally, and told him, and he got another policeman and they searched the marketplace for half an hour. She was gone-just like that-vanished. They told me then to fill out a report for the police and to go to the British Emba.s.sy.

"When I finally got back to the rue Servandoni I think I still expected Sophie to appear. I thought surely she must be at home; she couldn't have disappeared without a trace." Kate looked away. "But of course she wasn't there. It was the worst day of my life-the worst. For something like this to happen in a foreign country . . . "

"When was this? When did it happen?"

"A little over a year ago. The police did all they could-well, I took that on faith; how was I to know? When I went back to Paris a few months ago to see if they'd found out anything in all that time, I was told there was no record of a report on what happened."

"No record? Why not?"

"They said a lot of files had been destroyed in an office fire. I had the most dreadful feeling that Sophie had been expunged, obliterated.

"When it first happened, when she just disappeared, I tried to think why anyone would abduct her. I put out of my mind-I had to-that it was s.e.xual, that it was some pedophile, but I couldn't come up with other possibilities. Had she been kidnapped? Would ransom be demanded? We were comfortably off; Michael's family had money. But we certainly weren't wealthy.

"I stayed in the flat all of the next two days, hoping the phone would ring. Then I went back to Fauchon's. It was a waste of time, but I expect one still holds out hope that the person is back where you lost them. That it has all been a dream.

"The police, I like to think, were doing their best. I didn't ask them what usually happens in the case of a lost child; I didn't want to know the answer. Or, rather, I knew what must be the most common scenario; I simply didn't want it confirmed. Though I expect police are very hesitant to speculate-Are you?" She rose and went to the window.

Her movement perhaps had stirred the air, for a breeze touched Jury's face. It could have had no other source, in this dreary room with its grimy windows.

"I was unable to settle on anything, unable to decide what course of action to take. But there really wasn't-was there?-an act of mine that could have changed things. It wasn't until two weeks later that I got the first letter."

"Letter?"

"Typed on a computer, or I a.s.sume so. It's very hard to trace something done on a computer, I was told. It was short. It told me that if I wanted to see Sophie again, I'd have to do what they told me to. They were all posted in Paris. Different arrondiss.e.m.e.nts, but all in Paris."

"You mean there was more than one?"

She nodded. "The thought that Sophie was alive and well-the sudden s.h.i.+ft from despair to hope-this so overshadowed the strangeness of the note that I didn't try to understand what in G.o.d's name the writer wanted. Or what they wanted. In subsequent messages it was always we.

"I guessed they were ransom notes, or so I was supposed to think. There were three of them. This first one told me to go to Zurich, that I would find Sophie in Zurich after I had turned over five hundred thousand francs. I had more than that; as I said, my husband's family had money and we were well off. So I wondered why the ransom was so modest. That's only a hundred thousand American dollars, isn't it? I was to go to a coffee house called Le Metro and sit outside with the money in a carrier bag from Fauchon's. That is, I had to take one of their bags with me. Well, I did that: sat at a little table outside Le Metro and had coffee. I sat there all afternoon, went back the next day, and the next, until it was obvious no one was ever going to turn up.

"I went back to Paris. Over the next eight months, two more letters arrived just like the first, written on a computer, or I a.s.sume so. The second was short, like the first, and said I was to go to St. Petersburg to a cafe on Nevsky Prospekt. It was called the Balkan."

When she stopped again, Jury prompted, "And did you?"

"Of course. What else was I to do?"

Jury spread his hands. "And the same thing happened?"

"Not quite. As before, I sat and waited for nearly two hours. Then someone came, an ordinary-looking woman. She took the next table and opened a book. I stared at her. Finally, she raised her eyes and rose. Well, I thought she was going to approach me, but she merely walked away. . . . " Her voice died out.

"So it could have been anybody."

"It could have been anybody, yes."