Weaver asked, "Did he just offer them for exhibit, or did he try to sell them to you?”
"To exhibit for sale, of course. Except under special circumstances—very special ones—galleries don't buy pictures. If we accept an artist’s work, we show his pictures and try to sell them, taking a commission on whatever sales we make. Each gallery represents a limited number of artists, and those artists agree not to exhibit in any other gallery. Locally, that is; he may have pictures in other galleries elsewhere."
“But you refused to exhibit Nelson’s work?”
“Yes. I considered it, at least slightly. It seemed to me that he had something but that his work was immature. Another few years, possibly— The six or seven canvases he brought me were interesting enough to make me want to see the rest of his work before I came to decision. He invited me to come out to his house and see more; I accepted."
“He drove you out in his car?”
“No, he led the way in his car and I followed in mine. He offered to drive me out and back, but I made the excuse that I had another errand out that way and wished to have my own car. Actually—well, I didn't think that I was going to accept his work and it would have been embarrassing to have him drive me back after I’d turned him down.”
“I see.”
"And I was quite right. He turned surly after I’d given him a definite negative. Until then he had been extremely charming in his manner; he seemed quite likable at first. Perhaps—we are all susceptible to charm—that led me to consider his work more seriously than I would have otherwise. At least to give him the break of wanting to see more canvases than he had brought in to show me."
"You really think his work had no commercial value?”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far. It had some merit, but it is of a type that is very difficult to sell, and that’s something a gallery must take into consideration. Our space is limited. My gallery was particularly crowded that season and I represented—still represent—a goodly number of the most important local artists. I couldn’t have afforded to gamble on a newcomer unless I had been very strongly impressed with his work. So despite a personal prejudice in favor of the type of painting Nelson did, I couldn't see any way clear to representing him. May I ask where you obtained these paintings?”
Weaver explained.
"Too bad I didn't know that he'd left any pictures behind him. I would have suggested circularizing art dealers elsewhere with reproductions of them on the chance—since his style is quite distinctive—that it might have led to his capture."
"That's being taken care of now, Mr. Grant. Probably too late, but at least it gives me a good lead for an article I'm writing about the crime, and reproductions of the pictures will appear with the story.”
“You are a writer, then?”
"Not exactly.” Weaver explained again, briefly.
There was a soft whistling sound from a room opening off the back of the gallery. Grant said, “My singing teakettle, Mr. Weaver, has come to a boil. I generally brew my self a cup of tea at this time of the afternoon. Would you care to join me?"
Weaver joined him and was surprised to find that the first cup of tea he’d had in years tasted good.
He asked, "Did Nelson tell you anything about himself?”
"He talked only about his work. I asked no personal questions and he volunteered no information about himself—beyond the fact that he'd just come here and that he hoped to stay indefinitely.”
“Do you think he really did, at that time? That he hoped to support himself as an artist?”
"I don't really know. He'd have said, in any case, that he intended to remain here; it would be a selling point in that a gallery would much rather handle the work of a permanently resident artist than of one who was more or less transient. But whether or not he intended to remain here, he must have been quite naive if he expected to support himself as an artist. No matter what gallery backed him, he'd have been lucky to make a few hundred dollars a year. Much better artists than he fail to make a living from their work. They teach painting or have some other means of making a livelihood.”
Weaver said, "Speaking of teaching reminds me. Jenny Ames told the woman with whom she rode up on the bus from Santa Fe that Nelson was teaching at one of the art schools here. Was that out of whole cloth—a complete lie Nelson had told her—or could there have been a kernel of truth in it?”
”There could have been no truth in it at all. I greatly doubt that Nelson even applied for such a job; he'd have known better than to think there was even the slightest chance of his getting it. In fact, I can say definitely that he didn’t apply at either of the two art schools which were operating then. I heard Miss Evers’ testimony at the inquest and I recall now that later I asked the two men who con~ ducted the two schools whether Nelson had applied to them. He hadn't approached them, either as prospective instructor or prospective pupil. Will you have more tea?”
"Thank you .”
The big man leaned across and poured more tea into Weaver’s cup. "Even today," he said, "it would be impossible for a man of Nelson's qualifications—or lack of them— to become an instructor in a school. In those days, before the G. I. bill existed, it would have been even more impossible.”
“Could he have intended—even hoped—to open a school of his own?”
Grant smiled. "With no reputation, not even gallery representation? He could hardly have thought of it, let alone considered it seriously.”
“What was your personal impression of him, Mr. Grant? For example, did it surprise you to learn, later, that he was a murderer?”
“Well—yes. But I did have the impression that he was a sick man, mentally and physically. Which, of course, turns out to have been the case; his crime was not that of a sane man. Also his abrupt volte-face, turning from extreme charm of manner to abrupt sullen rudeness as soon as he learned that he had nothing to gain from me, convinced me that he was definitely asocial.”
"You say he was sick, mentally and physically. In what way?” Without asking leading questions, Weaver Wondered whether Grant would confirm Callahan's diagnoses of homosexuality and tuberculosis.
"On the physical side,” Grant said, "I noticed that he coughed quite a bit; it could have been a tubercular cough, though I wouldn’t be sure of that. When I say he was sick mentally, I do not refer to the obvious fact—obvious to anyone familiar with such things—that he was homosexual." The big man smiled. "Here in Taos that is considered a minor deviation. Being asocial to the degree he was is much less normal. But I had neither of these things in mind. I think he probably—and this is guesswork—had a deep fear psychosis.”
"If he did have tuberculosis,” Weaver suggested, "would fear of death be a probable cause of such a psychosis?”
“Quite possibly. I wouldn’t go any farther than that on the basis of having spent possibly two hours in his company.”
Weaver tried to think of a fresh angle. “This turn-off-able charm of his,” he said, "would you say it would make him attractive to women, despite his homosexuality?”
“Oh, definitely, if he chose to exert it on them. And he was quite handsome, I would say. He could have been charming to any woman, even one sophisticated enough to recognize him for what he was. A naive girl—“ He gestured. “And I would judge the girl who came here to marry him to be quite naive, if only from the manner of her becoming acquainted with him—through a—what do they call it? Lonely Hearts Club."
“Do you know, by the way, if Nelson approached both of the other galleries which were operating here then?"
"Yes, he did. I discussed him with Mr. Rollinson and Mr. Stein; they were in charge of the other two galleries at that time. I was quite interested, of course, after the murder. It was the first experience I’d ever had with a murderer and naturally I was interested in comparing impressions with others who had met him.
"Their experiences, and their verdicts, were quite similar to mine—except that I was the only one of the three of us who had
been sufficiently interested to accompany him to his house to see more of his work. Each of the others had talked to him, and only briefly, in their galleries and had looked only at the things he had brought to them. Each, incidentally, shared my experience of having him turn suddenly rude when he had been turned down, and each commented on how charming he had been until that point.”
Weaver nodded. Even aside from verification of the authorship of the paintings, he was glad he’d come to Ellsworth Grant. The picture of Charles Nelson was beginning to round out.
He asked, “Would you have any idea why he left these three canvases behind him? Are they inferior to the others you saw?”
"The two of your three that I saw, no; they are about average, perhaps. I saw some of his work that I liked better, others that I liked less. I imagine—you said that you found these in the shed back of the house?—that he may have overlooked them inadvertently. It could have happened, especially if he packed up in a hurry, because he was apparently quite a prolific painter. He had stacks of paintings at his place; I don't see how he could have got all of them, and his other possessions, into his car—and of course he had to take with him everything he wanted; he would hardly have made a shipment which could easily have been traced. It’s barely possible that he left three canvases behind simply because he didn't have room for them, but I doubt it. He would have burned them—he was certainly sane enough to have thought of the possibility of his being traced through his painting style if he left samples. I'd say that they were left behind accidentally.”
"One thing occurs to me," Weaver said. "Wouldn’t those paintings, if it had been generally known that they’d been left behind, have been worth something to a gallery while the murder was fresh? I mean, as the work of a murderer—”
Ellsworth Grant pursed his lips. “I imagine they would have had a certain notoriety value, that they could have been sold at that time. It would depend upon the artistic integrity—if you'll pardon the phrase—of a dealer as to whether he would have handled them for that reason. I would not have sold them for that reason myself, but I fear that one of my two then competitors—and I'll not say which one—would gladly have done so, had he known the paintings were available."
Weaver said, “Somebody in your business must have known. Doughbelly Price, who was apparently the only one besides the sheriff who knew the paintings were there—and who was technically owner of them—asked someone, he tells me, whether they were valuable and was told they weren't.”
"That was I, Mr. Weaver. Yes, it was shortly after the discovery of the murder. Doughbelly asked me whether Nelson's paintings were worth anything, and I told him they had negligible commercial value. But—damn it—he didn't mention that he actually had any of them and I thought he was asking an abstract question so I gave him an abstract answer. If he’d only happened to mention—" Grant shrugged mountainously. "No use thinking about it now. Will you have more tea, Mr. Weaver?”
Weaver thanked him but declined and left. He drove home slowly, thinking. It was too bad neither Grant nor Callahan had known, eight years ago, about those pictures. Quite possibly, then, they would have led to Nelson's apprehension. The chances were slim now.
But what the hell, he thought; he wasn't trying to find Nelson. He was trying to write a magazine article to make himself a few hundred bucks, and it was a break for him that the right people hadn't known about those pictures at the right time.
And what more did he expect to get, anyway? Why didn't he go ahead and write the article and get it over with?
He wrote it that evening and it came easily; he found that he had to refer to his notes hardly at all and that he could write almost as fast as he could type. He did a rough draft on yellow paper; tomorrow he'd retype it on white, polishing it a little and correcting any mistakes he might have made. Then as soon as he got the other two photographs taken—the interior and the retake of the shot from the point where Pepe Sanchez had stood—he'd send the whole thing to Luke Ashley. And forget it.
And then what? Well, maybe he’d try his hand again at some more water colors. And take some long walks back toward, even into, the mountains.
He turned out the light in the shed and stepped outside, into the night. Vi’s radio came blaring at him from the house, clearly audible even this far away, although it hadn’t bothered him while he was inside the shed with the door shut.
He went in. Vi was sitting there listening to the radio, just listening. He raised his voice to be heard over it. "Vi, I’m going to take a little walk. Won't be gone long.”
“George, in the dark?”
"I'll take a flashlight; I'm not going far. And leave the lights on so I can’t miss the house, to get back to it."
She turned away listlessly. "All right, George.” She lost all further interest in him and went back to her own dream world in a radio program.
Weaver tried to close his ears to it while he found the flashlight. At the door he turned back. There was a bottle of whisky on the table beside Vi, an almost full bottle. He hadn’t had a drink all day or evening and a straight shot would go good, he thought. He deserved it after the intensive work he'd put in at the typewriter; he must have spent four hours at it, ever since dinner.
"Mind if I take some of this along, Vi? Little cool out, and I might not meet any St. Bernards.”
She shook her head. He found an empty ha1f~pint bottle on the sink and filled it from the fifth, put it into his pocket.
The night was cool and clear, a dry coolness that felt good even though he was wearing only a suit coat. Faint moon again, starlight. About as much light as this, he wondered, the night Jenny ran this way? This way; he was walking her last quarter-mi1e again. He knew now that was where he'd intended to go all along, to where Jenny’s grave had been, to the big cottonwood.
He turned off the flashlight and after a moment he could see clearly enough to avoid the clumps of chamiso and to find good footing as he walked. There must have been enough light for Jenny to have avoided them too as she ran this way. One stumble, near the house when the killer must have been right at her heels, and she'd never have made that quarter of a mile.
He turned around and looked back at the house, now a hundred yards behind him and shivered a little, not completely from the cold. He took the bottle from his pocket and took a swig from it. The coyotes were howling back in the hills toward which he was heading. But coyotes are more afraid of you than you are of them.
Keep walking. The rise from which he could see the big cottonwood, and he could see it again, white wraith in the darkness, far ahead. Jenny, how could you have run this far? You were young, you were running from death—with your life before you and death behind you, but a quarter-mile—it must have been a hell of a run, girl.
Jenny. Jenny Ames—
Down the slope, up the slope, and at the cottonwood, your grave, or what had been your grave, until a prowling coyote dug a hole that found you.
He sat down under the cottonwood and took a drink from the bottle. Pour a libation? Or how ridiculous can you get? Wasn’t he being silly enough about this whole affair? He’d already done more work on it than would have earned him a few hundred dollars back in his own racket. Not to mention the money he’d spent on photography, dinner for Carlotta, framing pictures, the trip to Albuquerque—
Forget it, he told himself; go back home and forget it except to polish that story tomorrow, take the other photograph or two, and then—forget it.
He took another drink, sitting there beside the faint depression that had been a shallow grave.
There’s nothing for you here, he told himself. Go back. Go back to Vi, to what you have. Go back to the light, to the life that you know, the life that isn’t so horrible but that you can face it and continue to live.
This is death, out here in the dark. Jenny Ames is dead, eight years dead, and death is darkness; darkness is death. Go back to the light.
Go back to life and light; no matter what that light shows, it is better than
death and darkness.
Is it?
He finished the half pint and then walked back, more slowly than he had come. Behind him the coyote noises and the dark. Before him, once he had topped the rise, the lights of home. Or, rather, the light of home; only the kitchen light still burned. Had Vi gone to bed already?
Vi had gone to bed, and to sleep. He could hear her snoring lightly as he opened the kitchen door.
He went in and sat down at the kitchen table. The quart bottle stood before him, still a quarter full. But he didn’t kill it; he had one more drink and one only, and after a while he went to bed. The sound of Vi's snoring kept him awake a long time.
In the morning Vi was already up, getting breakfast, when he woke.
"George, you were gone an awful long time last night. I got worried about you.”
Weaver grinned. “So I noticed.”
“Well, I did. Before I went to sleep. And those coyotes out there—"
“Coyotes aren't dangerous, Vi.”
“Just the same, wandering around outdoors late at night— Have you got something on your mind, George?”
“Nothing. Not a thing.”
Coffee in silence. He wondered what she'd think if he told her the truth—and then he wondered what the truth really was.
He went out to the shed as soon as he'd finished breakfast and read over the story he’d written the evening before.
It wasn't good. All the facts were there but—they sounded dull. Dull and distantly in the past. There was something missing, and it was the important part of the story, although he couldn’t decide just what it was. It was the part that he couldn’t put into words, even to himself.
Or could he? Jenny Ames wasn’t there, in the story. She was a name and a few facts, but not a person. And without her, the story didn’t add up.
For a moment he almost tore the manuscript across, and then he remembered that last night, after writing it, he'd torn up his notes; if he didn’t keep the manuscript he would no longer have all his names and dates except those he remembered offhand.
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