The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

by Jeffrey Ford

  “Are you all right, Mr. Piambo?” said a voice.

  Terrible aches and pains in my ribs and legs were just then beginning to make themselves known. I could feel that my face was somewhat swollen on the left side. All in all, I did not believe anything was broken or irreparably damaged. The two thugs had beaten much of my drunken stupor right out of me. I managed to get to a sitting position, and then I looked up into the white eyes of Watkin.

  “Good of you to save me, Watkin,” I said.

  He slipped a pistol into his coat pocket and said, “All in a day’s work, Mr. Piambo.”

  “Can I ask what you are doing here?” I said.

  “My employer worried when you did not show up for your appointment today. She sent me out to make sure there was nothing wrong. I searched everywhere and was about to give up when a gentleman in a saloon on Fifth Avenue said he had seen someone who fit your description not too long before, drinking like a fish. I followed a logical course toward your home and came upon you being mercilessly pummeled. I drew my pistol, fired it once in the air, and your friends ran off.”

  “What did Mrs. Charbuque think had befallen me?” I asked as he held out a hand and helped me to my feet.

  “She told me she was speaking to you the other day about her husband, and any thought or mention of him makes her generally uneasy. She has made a certain investment in you, and her uneasiness, I believe, spilled over and mixed her past with her present, and she just wanted me to make sure you were well. I hope that explains it.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And to tell the truth, the past has spilled over into the present, in the form of Charbuque. Those men said they were his representatives.”

  If Watkin had not been wearing his white eyes, I know I would have been able to read his fear there, but just by the sudden rigidity of his body and the raising of his shoulders I could tell this was bad news to him. He shook his head.

  “This is a dangerous development, Mr. Piambo,” he said.

  “I thought Charbuque had gone down with the Janus,” I said.

  “If only that were true, but I’m afraid it is wishful thinking on Mrs. Charbuque’s part. That ship did sink soon after we returned to New York, and she took the news story and inserted her husband into it for her own peace of mind, but there was nothing to indicate that there is any truth in her belief.”

  “Is even the smallest bit of any of it true?” I asked.

  “In all widespread error there is a particle of truth,” said Watkin. “If you were supposed to have died tonight, you would have, allow me to assure you of that. If Charbuque has returned, as the events this evening indicate, that is serious business. The game has changed, my friend, and you are a useful but ultimately disposable pawn.”

  “And what of yourself, Watkin?” I asked.

  “I, sir, am also, as always, expendable,” he said, and flashed a grim smile.

  “You’d better tell me everything,” I said.

  “I’ve already told you too much,” he said. Then he whispered, “I’d abandon the commission if I were you.” He took something from his coat pocket and put it into my hand, saying, “In order to keep things clear.” With this he turned and was off up the street, madly tapping the shop fronts with his stick. “Take care of yourself, Piambo,” he called over his shoulder.

  Looking down at the object that Watkin had handed me, I discovered it was a small bottle with a plunger top, like the kind used to hold India ink. I hobbled over to the closest street lamp and inspected it. Inside was an amber-colored liquid. I unscrewed the top and smelled it. It would have been as easy to cry as to laugh, but I did the latter, for the aroma was none other than that emitted by Samantha’s candle—nutmeg.

  I stood for a few minutes breathing deeply the cold wind of the night, wondering if what had just transpired was all that it seemed. The thought of my attackers soon returned to me, and I limped off at as brisk a pace as I could manage, what with all my new aches and pains. Traversing those few blocks to my house was absolutely harrowing. Every passerby, every dog moving in the shadows, made me jump.

  I was never so pleased in my life to return home. Once inside, I checked each of the rooms for lurking assassins and, when I found none, went directly to bed. The trials I faced were still many, but there would be no more alcohol, of that I assured myself. I was still beset by troubles to match the plagues visited upon Egypt in the Bible, but that beating had been somehow therapeutic. I went to sleep resolved to lift myself from the slough I had voluntarily leaped into.

  Late the next morning I was sitting at Crenshaw’s working on my second seltzer water, trying to determine if food was actually going to be an option or not, when someone took a seat at my table directly across from me.

  “Your head is somewhat larger than usual today,” said Sills.

  “I was brutally attacked on the street last night,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “Were they after your wallet?” he asked.

  “No, just some sport, I’m afraid.”

  “I was out retrieving another body, a woman whose eyes had turned to blood,” he said. Here he lifted the newspaper I had not looked at yet, and turned it over to show me the headline.

  “The cat is out of the bag,” I said.

  “The pressure from the higher-ups to get to the bottom of this thing is crushing,” he said. “And listen, I now know what the common denominator was among all these women.”

  “They all were having affairs with the same sailor?” I said.

  “That would be some fellow,” he said, “but no. I can’t believe they didn’t pick up on this sooner, but then they had to be rather hasty in cremating the corpses out of fear the thing would spread.”

  “Well?” I said.

  “This wasn’t told to the press. So of course it’s still a secret.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “We are fairly sure that each woman was wearing an identical cameo. A pin with the image of a woman with snakes for hair,” he said.

  I leaned forward in my chair and asked, “What color was the background of the cameo?”

  “I believe they said it was a dark blue,” he said.

  I pushed back my chair and stood. Reaching into my pocket I pulled out a coin and threw it on the table to cover my bill. “Are you checking with jewelers to find out where the cameos came from?” I asked.

  “Even as we speak,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “I have an errand to run. Are you working tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes. Do you know something?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “I believe these deaths are murders. Something I can’t yet prove, but if you’re smart you’ll start searching for a fellow by the name of Moret Charbuque.”

  “Where do we find this Charbuque?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Look in the dark. I’ll contact you tonight, John. Find Charbuque,” I said.

  “Piambo,” he called after me, but I was on the street in an eye-blink, limping toward the nearest streetcar headed uptown.

  AN INSIDIOUS CURSE

  EVEN THOUGH I arrived at Mrs. Charbuque’s address two hours before my allotted time, I was determined that she would have an audience with me immediately. Women were losing their lives at the rate of three a week. Owing to this tragic fact and the development of my own current situation, the promised commission money no longer held sway over me. In just one day I had gone from self-absorbed, self-interested artist to defender of public safety. Watkin was going to open up, and Luciere and I were going to have a lengthy chat about a subject we had not covered as of yet; namely, reality.

  It was with a marked determination that I took the path to her front door and with great vigor that I worked the brass knocker. There was no immediate answer. I waited some time and then tried the knocker again. Putting my ear against the door, I tried to discern Watkin’s approaching footsteps. I heard nothing. Under normal circumstances I would never have considered entering a home uninvited, but I th
ought the situation was of sufficient importance to warrant it. I first played the long shot and twisted the doorknob to see if the house was unlocked. Imagine my surprise when the thing turned and the door pushed back with no trouble at all. I stepped inside.

  “Hello?” I called in a halfhearted voice. There was no answer, so I tried again, louder. A strange echo returned to me. I could not decide why it didn’t sound as I had suspected it should until I stepped into the small room off the foyer and noticed that nearly all the furnishings were gone.

  “My God,” I said aloud, and walked quickly down the hallway. All those rooms that Watkin always led me through on our twisting journey to reach Mrs. Charbuque had been emptied of most of their furnishings. The pieces that remained were left in haphazard positions as if the place had been hastily sacked. I went quickly through the dining area, through the study, both rooms disconcertingly empty. I was so used to it at this point, I could have made the jaunt to our appointed meeting room blindfolded.

  It was only when I flung open the final door and stepped into the high-ceilinged space that I was certain she was gone. The screen was not there. All that remained was my chair, sitting like a lonely atoll amid the sea of polished floor. “Luciere,” I yelled, and the name bounced around the empty room for quite a while before dying out. I walked over and sat down, utterly confused and broken.

  I have to say that for all the trouble she had caused me, I truly missed her presence. At that very moment one of her stories would have been a comfort. I pulled myself together and decided that since I had already entered the house illegally, I might as well search the premises for any clue to where she had gone or whatever else I was able to discover. Of course, the first place I thought of going was through that doorway and up those stairs at the back of our room. This had always seemed to me to be the ascent to Mrs. Charbuque’s private sanctuary. I had no reason to believe my perceptions were correct, but that is where I knew I should start. I got up from my chair and stood still for a moment, looking out the window at the beautiful blue sky, listening to the wind. Then I headed for the stairs with the same sense of trepidation and excitement as might attend peering behind the screen itself.

  The upper floor, I am sorry to report, was not the treasure trove, the bower of secrets, I had envisioned. Merely four large rooms, also emptied of their furniture. As far as clues went, there were none. All I could take away with me was the view of the park Luciere must have enjoyed from time to time. It was dawning upon me that with Watkin’s knowledge of the return of Charbuque, Mrs. Charbuque had probably fled into hiding, forgetting my commission and everything else. For her to know he was back must have been like being haunted by a malicious ghost.

  On my way from the second floor front of the house to the stairs at the back that led down to our meeting room, I passed in a hallway a door on my left I had not opened. Upon investigating, I found that it gave access to yet another short flight of steps that led up to what appeared to be a small attic not discernible from the street. At first, I was going to forsake the dreary-looking loft but then put my foot on the first creaking step and proceeded.

  My head rose above the floor of the attic as I ascended the steps, and the first thing I noticed was that, thankfully, light was coming into the low-ceilinged space from windows at either end. If I had found only darkness, I would no doubt have abandoned my search. The next thing I noticed was a familiar aroma. This I recognized almost instantaneously as the smell of dried oil paint. When I reached the attic floor, I had to bend over slightly, as the room was not tall enough to accommodate my full height. What I found there were rows of painted canvases leaning against either wall. I had only to peruse the first few in each stack to know they were all portraits.

  “Incredible,” I said as I gazed at each one in turn. The screen with falling leaves figured prominently in many of them, some depicted the monkey arm, one or two the green leaves Mrs. Charbuque used in her act, but all of them were portraits of women. The single female figure in each was, of course, my patron. I knew the signature techniques of the different artists and identified them before reading their names—Pierce, Danto, Felatho, Morgash. These works were marvelous, done in every conceivable style that had been popular throughout the past twenty years. The women represented in them were all beautiful and all remarkably different. Redheads and blondes, raven blacks and chestnut browns, tall, short, slim, full-figured; wearing expressions of lust, contrition, sarcasm, joy, weariness, anguish. They wore kimonos and bathrobes, evening gowns and billowing summer dresses, but none, may I add, was depicted naked, as mine was to have been. There must have been twenty Mrs. Charbuques there, if not more. As with some innocent young lover, my curiosity was tinged with jealousy at the fact that I had not been the first.

  I kept digging through the stack, found a Spensher, a Tillson, a very nice Lowell, and then one the sight of which made my knees buckle slightly: Mrs. Charbuque as a kneeling, haloed penitent in a garden, surrounded by crumbling Roman statuary and lit from above by a silvery beam breaking through the clouds. The piece was painted in a Pre-Raphaelite style that could belong to only one artist. I did not have to check the signature to know it was by Shenz. This revelation was enough to floor me, but the canvas behind my friend’s was even more devastating, for it had been created by none other than M. Sabott.

  I let go of the stack of pictures, and as they banged back against the wall, I turned away and made for the stairs. As I descended at breakneck speed, it came to me that all the work represented in Mrs. Charbuque’s private gallery had been done by painters who had either fallen out of the profession, committed suicide, gone mad, or lost their touch and could no longer attract patrons.

  I reached the main floor and ran through the house, wanting now only to escape the place. All I could think of was how many artists had been done in by Luciere’s game. They had tried their hand at depicting what was impossible to know, and failed. Yes, most likely they were all paid for their interpretations, but their lack of success in the face of the ultimate challenge had left them broken. Perhaps, like me, they thought they would exceed their present circumstances, extend their reach to scrabble up with the great masters, but in the end they realized they could never be any more than what they had originally been. The commission was an insidious curse.

  I’m surprised no one noticed me as I fled the place, looking for all the world like a thief leaving the scene of a crime. I hailed the first hansom cab I could get and gave the driver Shenz’s address. Once settled inside the conveyance, I began to review what I remembered of the sudden diminution of my friend’s and my mentor’s talents. It struck me that Sabott’s madness descended after a period in which he had taken up portraiture once the galleries were no longer interested in his mythic paintings. I was not staying with him anymore but had struck out on my own with his approval. Just before the insanity took hold of him, I remembered him telling me that he was working on a very important job. He became very scarce for quite a few weeks, and when he emerged, he did so raving.

  Likewise with Shenz, a year or so back he had vanished from the scene for a time. I was too busy to inquire what he was up to, and thought I would soon see him standing in my studio, but when he finally did show up after some months of absence, he looked haggard and had begun his affair with the poppy. Now it became clear to me why he was so adamant that I succeed at this commission. Somehow he must have suspected what had happened to Sabott, and after he himself was beaten by the conundrum, he saw me as their agent of revenge. Perhaps I should have been flattered by his belief in my abilities, but I could feel nothing other than remorse for what Mrs. Charbuque had made him believe about his own talent.

  The greater question, the ultimate mystery, was whether Luciere was truly hoping the commission would produce a portrait that would in some way discover her as herself or if she knew of its corrosive effects and the power she could wield through it and was using that influence to play God. With her gone, I was left in a less enviable state t
han my beaten brethren, for I could no longer achieve heaven and had not been officially consigned to hell. In the absurd world of the game, I was now even less substantial than her phantasmal, sinister husband.

  FINISH IT

  SHENZ APPEARED absolutely decrepit. He left the door open for me to enter and retreated away from the afternoon sunlight. I followed him into his exotic parlor and took my usual seat as he did his. The atmosphere was thick with the scented smoke of the dragon and the exhalations of the drug.

  “I had a minor setback yesterday, Piambo,” he said, “and it has left me feeling rather weak.” His hands clutched the chair arms as if he feared he might float away.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Can you imagine, the Hatstells refused my work. They would not purchase it, saying it was shoddy and no real likeness of their children.” He shook his head. “Pigs at the pastry cart,” he said. “I’ve spent the last weeks squandering my time and talent on dolts.”

  “I’ve heard Hatstell has had a rather severe financial reversal in recent days. Perhaps that is at the bottom of it,” I said.

  “Piambo, thank you for your kindness, but I happen to know he was just promoted.”

  I looked down, ashamed at having been caught in my lie.

  “One good thing,” said Shenz. “As I was sent packing from their home, the children came out of hiding and accosted me with hugs and kisses. The horrible dumplings and I have become thick as thieves. I will miss them. I gave them the last of the candy before departing.”

  I did not know how to broach the issue I had come to discuss. It could not have been a worse time, but at the rate Shenz was falling apart I realized there might not be a future opportunity. “I’ve been to Mrs. Charbuque’s,” I said.

  “How is my favorite enigma?” he asked.

  “She’s gone.”

  “The real question concerning her is, Was she ever there to begin with?”