Rembrandt's Ghost

by Paul Christopher

  Derlagen looked a little perplexed. He frowned and opened up the box. Inside was a key, something that looked like a fat guitar pick, and a delicate, half-inch-high figure of a man mounted on a horse. It was obviously very old. Just as obviously, it was made of solid gold.

  ‘‘It is from Mali,’’ explained Derlagen. ‘‘Experts at the Rijksmuseum say it is from the reign of Mansa Musa, who was apparently the king of Timbuktu.’’

  ‘‘It’s beautiful,’’ said Finn, turning it over in her hand. ‘‘But what does this have to do with us?’’

  ‘‘Meneer Boegart left it in our vault for safekeeping. It was purchased from an antiquities dealer named Osterman in Labuan, just off the coast from the sultanate of Brunei, which was the last place Meneer Boegart was seen. According to this man Osterman the gold figure was to be given to you in the event that he . . . disappeared. The figurine is for you specifically, Vrouwe Ryan. The other two items are the key to the front door of the house and the device used to disarm the security system. The panel is on the right as you enter. Simply place the narrow end of the device in the appropriate spot and squeeze. The light should turn green. Everything else is automatic. There is a cleaning service we have hired, which comes every Wednesday morning for three hours. If there is anything else you need to know, I am, of course, at your service, day or night.’’ It didn’t sound like much of an invitation. Derlagen went on, voice droning and uninflected. ‘‘As the documents describe you are not allowed to sell either the house or any of its contents for at least twelve months, and if you do the Boegart Family Trust has the right of first refusal, that is to say—’’

  ‘‘We know what it means,’’ said Billy.

  ‘‘Then if that is all . . . ?’’ answered Derlagen. He pushed away from his chair. They were being dismissed. Finn carefully put the little gold figure back into the box. She put the box into her bag.

  ‘‘How do we find the house?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘Nothing could be simpler,’’ said Derlagen. ‘‘Walk back up to the Dam, turn left on the Raadhuistraat , cross one bridge, and turn right onto the Herengracht. It is the first block, before Driekonigenstraat , number 188. It cannot be missed. It is dark stone with a green door.’’

  ‘‘Thanks,’’ said Finn, holding out her hand. Derlagen ignored it.

  ‘‘Geen dank,’’ he responded, giving her a little bow.

  A moment later, when they were back on the street, Billy said, ‘‘Not the friendliest type in the world, was he?’’

  ‘‘What did you expect?’’ said Finn. ‘‘He’s a lawyer, and I don’t think he understands any of this any more than we do.’’

  ‘‘And there’s nothing that makes a solicitor more unhappy than not knowing what’s going on.’’ Billy nodded. ‘‘I see one of those brown cafés or what do you call them? Let’s gird our loins with some coffee and then go see the house.’’

  ‘‘Fine by me.’’

  The coffee was excellent once again, and the walk was pleasant and just about as simple as Derlagen had described it. The weather was perfect and the streets were full of tourists, bicycles, and bright yellow tram cars. There was an enthusiasm in the air Finn hadn’t felt in London, and after a few blocks, she thought she knew what it was. The people here, the ones in the sidewalk cafés, or walking by, seemed less interested in business and money than they did in just enjoying themselves. Instead of being on cell phones or busily tapping away at laptops, they were actually reading books and talking to one another face-to-face. The overall surroundings were less intrusive too; there was neon enough certainly, but even it was fairly restrained, and there wasn’t much in the way of giant billboards or screaming mega-screen TVs either. She knew a lot of her of friends back at NYU would call it retro or old-fashioned, but Finn thought it was refreshing.

  The Herengracht was a canal side street of small trees and large houses. Cars were angle parked next to the canal and there were large houseboats lined up in the dark water. As usual there were more bicycles than automobiles on the street. In the air, there was a faint, heavy smell that Finn couldn’t quite place—a hint of the sea but something else and slightly unpleasant, like old garbage gone sour.

  ‘‘It’s the sewage system,’’ Billy offered, seeing her nose wrinkle. ‘‘Amsterdam’s probably the last major city that dumps its raw sewage directly into the water table.’’

  ‘‘Into the canals?’’ Finn said, astounded. ‘‘Untreated?’’

  ‘‘They depend on the tide to wash the effluent away.’’

  ‘‘I guess you learn something new every day,’’ she said, slightly depressed by the information; walking the few short blocks from Derlagen’s office, she’d begun to fall in love with the gentle, unpretentious city with its trams and its politically correct bicycles. Love might be blind, but it still had a sense of smell. She sighed.

  ‘‘Here we go,’’ said Billy. They were standing in front of number 188.

  The house was three stories plus a ground floor that looked as though it might have once been for servants. It was a big place without being grandiose, absolutely symmetrical. There were four tall windows and a door on the main floor, and five windows on each of the next two floors with a pair of evenly spaced single window dormers set into the steep roof angle and two identical chimneys jutting upward. There was a massive stone portico and the Boegart crest with a ‘‘1685’’ carved beneath it.

  ‘‘Honey, I’m home,’’ said Finn. She took the key out of her bag and they climbed a short flight of steps to the imposing front door. She fitted the key into the lock, pushed the door open, and they stepped inside.

  12

  There was a Chubb keypad on the wall just as Derlagen had described it. Finn fitted the guitar pick’s narrow end into a little slot, and the red pulsing light turned green. A message appeared in an LED panel: REPEAT TO ARM.

  ‘‘Close the door,’’ she said to Billy. He did and she squeezed the guitar pick again. The panel light pulsed red and the LED said: ARMED. ‘‘Okay, let’s look around.’’

  ‘‘I feel like I’m trespassing,’’ said Billy.

  Finn nodded. Billy was right; there was something a little unsettling about wandering around in a stranger’s house, even if she did now own it. There was a mustiness in the air. No one had been here in quite a while. She had an urge to run around opening windows.

  Directly in front of them was a long hallway with rooms on either side. The hallway walls were hung with a number of paintings, all modern. The walls were painted flat white. The overall effect was a kind of studied blankness as though Pieter Boegart didn’t want to reveal anything about himself through his taste in decor.

  There were two front rooms, like large parlors, flooded with light. The one on the right was laid out like an office. Behind the parlors were a large rectangular living room with an ornate fireplace and an equally large dining room on the right. A narrow staircase led upstairs and an even narrower one led down. At the far end of the hallway was a moderate-sized room that looked out onto a tiny garden. It might have served as a breakfast room or an old-fashioned music room.

  ‘‘No kitchen,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘If it’s anything like England, in a house this old the kitchen would be in the basement,’’ answered Billy.

  ‘‘Somehow this isn’t what I expected,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Nor I,’’ agreed Billy. ‘‘I thought it would be all stuffy and Victorian. Uncomfortable couches filled with horsehair. Pictures of the ancestors lining the walls, that sort of thing.’’

  It was quite the opposite. There wasn’t a scrap of wallpaper to be seen. Like the hallway, the rooms were painted a uniform white and hung with large framed photographs from exotic locales and modern, nonfigurative paintings in splashy primary colors. The furniture looked as though it came from some sort of upscale Dutch version of Ikea. The floors were narrow, pegged, highly polished rosewood.

  They went back to the stairs and up to the second floor. There w
ere four bedrooms and a single bathroom with a separate toilet cubicle. Only one of the bedrooms, the one above the front parlor, appeared to be in use. More white, more modern furniture. There was a freestanding wardrobe filled with expensive suits and a second wardrobe full of more casual clothes. A pile of books on the bedside table, most in Dutch, mostly history from the look of the covers. One in English: The Land Below the Wind by a woman named Agnes Newton Keith. Finn picked up the book and flipped it open. A British edition published by Michael Joseph Ltd. in 1939.

  ‘‘Adventures in Sandakan.’’ She flipped to a map just after the title page. ‘‘Looks like a province in North Borneo.’’

  ‘‘Do I begin to see a pattern here?’’ Billy asked.

  Finn flipped through the pages. ‘‘It looks like cousin Pieter underlined a lot of things and made notes in the margins,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Hang on to it,’’ replied Billy. Finn slipped the book into her bag. They went up to the third floor. There were a half dozen small rooms, empty except for the dust on the windowsills. ‘‘Servants’ quarters,’’ said Billy. There were two large store-roomsin the dormer garret, also bare except for pieces of furniture, most of it old but not antique. They poked through it, but the only thing of interest was the fact that there was absolutely nothing in the way of personal material—no old scrap-books, papers, letters, pictures, or memorabilia.

  ‘‘It’s as though he never lived here at all,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Now there’s a thought,’’ said Billy. ‘‘What if this is just some sort of, how would you describe it?’’ He paused and then went on. ‘‘A pied-à-terre where he hung his hat while he was in Amsterdam? Maybe he actually lived somewhere else.’’

  ‘‘We never checked his flat in London,’’ agreed Finn. They wound their way back downstairs, even inspecting the basement kitchen. Fully stocked, but the big refrigerator was completely empty except for a six-pack of something called NALU. It was a faint green color and came in a screw-top bottle. Finn opened one and took a sip.

  ‘‘Not bad, mango . . . sort of,’’ she said.

  They took their bottles of NALU and went back up to the main floor. Billy looked around, frowning. ‘‘What’s the matter?’’ asked Finn.

  ‘‘Just figuring the angles.’’ Billy went to the front rooms, then came back to the hall. He stood with Finn at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor. ‘‘It’s not here,’’ he said finally.

  ‘‘What’s not here?’’

  ‘‘The painting we uncovered with your friend Dr. Shneegarten at the Courtauld Institute . . . describe it.’’

  ‘‘It’s a portrait of Willem Van Boegart dressed up as some sort of burgher. There’s a table with some nautical instruments and some velvet drapery behind it.’’ She thought for a moment. ‘‘He is standing on a rosewood floor.’’ She looked down at her feet. ‘‘Just like this one.’’

  ‘‘Where is the light in the picture coming from?’’

  ‘‘The left,’’ said Finn, squeezing her eyes shut, remembering her first sight of the painting in Shneegarten’s workshop. ‘‘A narrow stained-glass window on the left.’’ She stopped. ‘‘What’s wrong with that? Eighty percent of Dutch Master portraiture has the light coming from the left . . . Vermeer, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Van Dyck, Rembrandt—just about all of them.’’

  ‘‘The window was stained glass. It had the Van Boegart crest. The same crest carved into stone over the front door of this house. The floors were rosewood.’’

  ‘‘The portrait was painted here,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Exactly,’’ said Billy. He made a sweeping gesture. ‘‘But where? Figure it out. . . . If Willem Van Boegart is standing on the right side of the painting and the window is on the left, then where in the house is he standing? There are two possibilities on each floor: front left room, back right room. And none of those windows is stained glass. They’re old dormers that don’t look as though they’ve been opened in three hundred years, let alone been replacements, not to mention the fact that they’re far too wide.’’

  ‘‘Then we’re wrong,’’ said Finn, shrugging. ‘‘It wasn’t painted here after all. Maybe it’s a figment of the artist’s imagination. Rembrandt’s studio had a huge window on the left. Virtually every one of his commissioned portraits was painted there.’’

  ‘‘Then why the stained-glass window?’’

  ‘‘Because Willem Van Boegart asked for it.’’

  ‘‘And why would he ask for it even if it was painted somewhere else?’’

  ‘‘Slow down,’’ said Finn. ‘‘You’re losing me.’’

  ‘‘The painting was done here, or at least the idea came from this house. Nobody imagined that stained-glass window. It existed.’’

  ‘‘Then where is it?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘Not here.’’

  ‘‘But you say it has to be.’’

  ‘‘We’re going around in circles.’’

  ‘‘Which means we’re missing something,’’ said Finn. ‘‘So let’s look again.’’

  They moved slowly through the house a second time, silently, pausing in each room and turning carefully. No stained glass anywhere or any sign that it had ever existed. Finn checked Billy’s theory and saw that he was right. Standing in the position of Rembrandt painting Willem Van Boegart’s portrait three centuries before left very few alternatives. It had to represent one of the rooms Billy had described—left front, right rear, going up the three stories.

  On the other hand, if the painting had been a ‘‘tronie,’’ a fantasy portrait done from memory or his imagination, then Rembrandt could have painted it anywhere. She tried to remember the Rembrandts she studied in the university over the years.

  Rembrandt had painted hundreds of portraits during his career, many of them self-portraits, and in most he hadn’t made very much representation of the backgrounds at all. He’d been interested in the human figure, not the props involved, with the possible exclusion of his studies like Bathsheba at Her Bath or Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.

  In the portrait uncovered by Shneegarten, the coat of arms had been specific, and so were the floor-boards at Willem Van Boegart’s feet—expensive, narrow, pegged rosewood. She’d seen lots of photographs of Rembrandt’s studio, and even in the famous painting he’d done called The Artist in His Studio the floors were honey-colored and very wide, either pine or oak. Certainly not the deep red hardwood she was standing on now.

  They went back to the main floor. ‘‘This is nuts,’’ said Finn. ‘‘It has to be here.’’

  ‘‘The room in the painting doesn’t exist,’’ answered Billy, frustrated.

  ‘‘When is a room not a room?’’ said Finn quietly, turning the problem into a riddle. She turned and looked up and down the hall. Something niggled and then fell into place. ‘‘The room that looks out onto the garden,’’ she said.

  They walked down to the small, brightly lit chamber. A table and four chairs. A small side table with a plain blue vase full of wilted, dried-out flowers. Brown-eyed Susans. Windows left and right and a French door in the middle giving access to the outdoors.

  The little patch of garden had turned into an overgrown jungle. The grass needed cutting and the rosebushes were in need of work as well. The high wall separating Pieter Boegart’s property from the one behind it was overgrown with vines. There were weeds everywhere and the few pieces of cast-iron furniture were spotted with rust.

  Finn handed the guitar pick security key to Billy. ‘‘Disable the alarm, would you?’’ she asked. Billy nodded. He returned a moment later.

  ‘‘Done,’’ he said. Finn pushed down on the handles of the glass and wood doors. They opened and she and Billy stepped outside. It was a perfect spring day. The air smelled of damp earth and dew-wet grass. There was a cricket somewhere, scraping out its tinny little song. Bees buzzed among the red and yellow roses and the sun shone down into the shafts created by the tall houses.

  �
��‘Pretty,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘What are we looking for?’’ asked Billy.

  Finn went to the wall at the end of the garden, turned, and looked back at the house. She pointed upward. ‘‘There,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Bloody hell,’’ whispered Billy, seeing what she saw.

  Seen from outside, the structure of the house was easily identifiable. The house itself was a tall rectangle with the little garden room at the back sticking out, connected to the main house by a short span of stonework. Directly above the garden room on the second floor the stone extension was a set of tall, narrow windows. There were heavy curtains drawn over the panes. They moved slightly to the right. Between the back of the house and the jutting room on the second floor, they could see a tall, narrow window of stained glass.

  ‘‘There,’’ said Finn. ‘‘The way the windows are laid out on the second floor, that stained glass is in a blind spot. You’d only see it if you were looking for it. The chimney must be a dummy,’’ she added. ‘‘There’s no connecting fireplace down here.’’

  ‘‘And the windows below the chimney piece on the second floor?’’

  ‘‘A hidden room,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Brilliant,’’ said Billy.

  They went back through the doors into the garden room, and before they went upstairs, Finn carefully paced out the distance between the door and the foot of the stairs.

  ‘‘Twenty-five feet.’’

  They went up to the second floor and Finn paced off the distance in reverse. Twenty-five feet took them to a monumental carved wardrobe fitted flush against the end wall of the corridor.

  ‘‘Did you ever read any C. S. Lewis when you were a little girl?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘You mean The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ?’’ said Finn. ‘‘Of course.’’

  Billy opened the door of the wardrobe. Like the one in the book, the cupboard was filled with heavy winter coats. He pushed them aside and felt around on the back wall of the wardrobe.