City of Darkness and Light

by Rhys Bowen

  “I know, dear Molly,” Sid said. “We have agonized about what to do about you, but you see it is no game. It’s all too real and too horrible. No one can know where I am. The police are certainly looking for me. I am wanted for murder.”

  I gulped back tears and looked up at her white and strained face. “For murder? You?”

  She nodded.

  “Reynold Bryce?” I stammered out the words. “Did you kill Reynold Bryce?”

  “Of course she didn’t,” Gus said, “But she must be the prime suspect in the eyes of the police.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  We broke off as the maid came in with a tray of coffee and little cakes on it. I glanced at Gus.

  “It’s all right. Celeste is completely loyal to Miss Cassatt, and she has been absolutely wonderful,” Gus said as Celeste poured coffee for us. “And she speaks no English, which is useful.”

  All the same I waited until Celeste had disappeared again before I repeated my question. “Why do the police think you killed Reynold Bryce?”

  “Because I was discovered standing over him as he bled to death,” Sid said. “Here, have some coffee to warm you up and I’ll explain.” She handed me a cup and I sipped, gratefully, although I could feel my hand still trembling.

  “It was like this, Molly,” she continued. “Remember I wrote to tell you about Reynold Bryce and how Gus hoped to secure an introduction to him through her cousin and to be included in his upcoming exhibition of paintings.”

  I nodded.

  “The introduction took place. We attended a soirée at his house. Gus corresponded with Reynold Bryce. He seemed friendly and encouraging at first and she had high hopes that he’d include one of her paintings in the showing. She went to visit him a week ago taking several of her paintings with her. Then the next day we got a rude letter saying there was no way he’d consider any painting by her in one of his exhibitions. Poor Gus was devastated. She wrote back, begging him to reconsider, and received a curt rejection. Then on Sunday we were having tea here with Miss Cassatt and told her about Mr. Bryce’s sudden change of heart. Mary suggested it might be because he’d seen me with Gus and realized I was Jewish. She said he was rabidly anti-Semitic, a leader among the anti-Dreyfusards and went out of his way to make sure that Jewish artists and writers were not included in anything that might publicize their work.”

  “How mean-spirited,” I said and took another welcome gulp of coffee.

  “I was furious, naturally,” Sid continued, glancing across at Gus. “That poor Gus’s chances should be dashed because of me was absolutely unfair. I decided to go and confront him and tell him he was not to punish Gus because of her connection to me. Gus and Mary tried to dissuade me from going but I was adamant. I stalked off to his home. I rang the bell. No one answered. I tapped on the front door and it swung open. I called out. Again nobody answered, so I went in and made my way through to his studio. I thought he might be too absorbed in his painting to have heard my knocking. He was there all right. He was sitting on a chair, looking at the painting he was working on. I went right up to him. ‘Now look here, Mr. Bryce,’ I said. He looked up at me and there was terror in his eyes. For a moment I thought that he had red paint splattered across his front. Then I saw he was clutching at a knife that had been plunged into his chest. Blood was seeping across his white shirt, Molly. It was awful. I’ve never seen anything so ghastly in my life.”

  I nodded. I had seen several dead bodies in my time and one never really gets over the shock of them.

  She turned to look at Gus again, and swallowed hard. “I didn’t quite know what to do. He was trying to pull out the knife but I knew if he did that, the blood would coming gushing out of the wound and he’d quickly bleed to death. I put my hand out to stop him. ‘No, don’t do that,’ I said.

  “At that very moment I heard someone behind me. Footsteps coming into the room. I spun around, afraid that it might be Bryce’s attacker. But it was his housekeeper. She was standing in the doorway, staring at us in horror. Bryce opened his mouth, looked at her, tried to speak. An awful gurgling moan came out, and then he died. She backed away and ran screaming for help. ‘Murder! Assassins!’ she was shouting.”

  Gus reached out and took Sid’s hand. “Sid realized right away how bad it would look for her,” Gus said. “She was sure the housekeeper must have recognized her as we had both been to the soirée. He had just written me a rude letter then a postcard, saying that there was no way he’d ever consider my amateurish and substandard paintings. Also she was Jewish and his feelings on Jews were well-known. A perfect double motive.”

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Sid said. “I was sure they’d come and arrest me and that would be the end. But then I saw that the window was open. It overlooked the street and outside there was a little garden of shrubs and a small tree.”

  “I remember it,” I said. “I went to his house and found out he had died.”

  “Luckily I have renounced skirts,” Sid went on, her voice sounding calmer and more confident now. “I eased myself out of the window and into that tree. I heard the screams and running feet. I waited until the street appeared to be empty then I lowered myself to the ground and ran off as fast as I could. I made it back to Miss Cassatt’s house without anyone seeing me, or so I thought.”

  “We thought we should get a cab back to our place immediately,” Gus said, “but Miss Cassatt said we should stay put until we were sure we were safe. We just prayed that the housekeeper had been so shocked that she hadn’t had time to recognize Sid. But then we learned from asking in the neighborhood that a young Jewish man was seen running away from the house. Obviously they thought Sid was a young man, on account of the trousers and her short hair.”

  “I see,” I said. “So what happens now?”

  “I suppose we remain hidden until they catch the real killer, or we try to make it to the coast and take the next steamer bound for America.” Sid sank her face into her hands. “We hate to compromise Miss Cassatt in this way. She insisted we stay here, even though she hardly knows us, saying that we women needed to stick together. She’s been so wonderful to us. Such a pillar of strength, but we’d certainly not want her to be accused of harboring a fugitive from the law.”

  “But you can’t go back to your place in Montmartre,” I said. “Madame Hetreau would sell her own grandmother for tuppence.”

  This made them laugh. “Yes, she is rather frightful, isn’t she? And so nosy,” Gus said. “You see now why we had to contact you through the postcards. We were sure the police had been to our house and the housekeeper had identified Sid. Mary volunteered to go herself but we couldn’t let her, in case she was followed back here. In fact we couldn’t give any hint of where we were, sure that the dreadful Hetreau would relay any scrap of information to the police, in the hope of getting a reward.”

  “She almost didn’t want to let me use your apartment when you were not there,” I said. “And now she takes great glee in asking me if I’ve found you every time I come back.”

  “You didn’t leave Liam with her, did you?” Gus asked.

  “Of course not. He’s with the baker’s wife, across the street. She’s an absolute dear, although she’s been stuffing him too full of food.”

  The attempt to brighten up the atmosphere failed like a slowly deflating balloon. “So you’ll have to stay put for now, won’t you?” I asked.

  Sid sighed. “It all seems so hopeless, Molly. I’m so glad you are here. You’re a real detective. You’ll know what to do.”

  “I don’t really see what I can do to help in a strange city,” I said hesitantly. “It seems to me that your only hope is to find the real killer.”

  “Exactly what I said,” Gus exclaimed with enthusiasm.

  “But wait a minute,” I said. “When I was at the house they were dusting everything for fingerprints. Surely that will exonerate you, Sid.”

  She shook her head. “No, i
t won’t. When he was trying to remove the knife and I tried to stop him I know I must have touched it as well as his hand. I had blood on my hands afterward. My fingerprints will be on that knife.”

  “Oh, dear. That’s not good,” I said. “Now the fact that strikes me is that he wasn’t dead when you arrived and the front door was open. That indicates to me that he had just been stabbed before you got there and that maybe the killer slipped out as you went into the studio.”

  “You mean he was in the house at the same time?” Sid shuddered. “How awful. I might have been his next victim.”

  “He probably only had one knife,” I said. “I suspect he did what he came to do and then all he wanted was to get away. You are absolutely sure that there was nobody else in the room? Was there anywhere one could hide?”

  Sid frowned. “There was a red velvet curtain hanging as a backdrop for the painting he was working on. I suppose someone could have hidden behind that,” she shuddered.

  “Now think, Sid. Sometimes we take in more details than we realize. Was there anything about that room that struck you as different, odd, unusual? No bulge behind the drapes? No sixth sense that somebody else was breathing?”

  Sid closed her eyes, then shook her head. “It all happened so fast, Molly. I came in, went straight up to him, and saw he was dying. I didn’t have time to look at my surroundings. When I did, afterward, it was only to look for an escape route. I saw the open window and made for it.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Perhaps by now the police have identified a fingerprint on that knife that matches a known criminal. And even if they have your fingerprints, they wouldn’t know how to start looking for you, especially if they think you are a young man.”

  Sid clutched at my hand. “Molly, you are so calm and wonderful and efficient,” she said. “I know you’ll be able to help me prove my innocence.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “It seems to me we have to establish who would want to see Mr. Bryce dead. Either it was an unplanned murder—he surprised a burglar who thought the house was empty—or someone came with the intention of killing Mr. Bryce.”

  I felt Sid shudder. “He was a horrible, rude, and prejudiced man,” she said. “But nobody deserves to die in that manner.”

  My brain was working rapidly, trying to think how a good detective would tackle this, what Daniel might do in these circumstances, and whether Inspector Henri, whom I had met at the scene, would know how to carry out a thorough investigation. My gaze moved around the elegant room, taking in the heavy swags of drapery, the paintings on the walls, the little cakes on the silver salver. It was the height of cultured living and it seemed so strange to be sitting here and discussing murder. “I think the fact that he was sitting in his chair is important,” I began slowly. “That indicates he probably knew the person who was in the room and was comfortable with him, or her. Perhaps he had been sitting chatting before he was stabbed. If it had been a burglar or someone had surprised him he would have jumped to his feet, turned to confront them, and then fallen to the floor. There would have been some signs of a struggle and the inspector said there weren’t.”

  “Unless he did stand up but slumped back into his chair after he was stabbed,” Sid pointed out.

  “I don’t know how you two can discuss this so calmly,” Gus said. “Murder is so terrible, and the fact that your life might be in danger, Sid…”

  “We’ll get through this somehow,” Sid said. “Not the welcome we planned to give poor Molly, is it? And after what she had just been through in New York, and the awful rough crossing too. We had so many exciting things planned for you, Molly. If only you hadn’t become ill on the ship and had arrived on time none of this would have happened.”

  “You can’t say that,” Gus said. “Don’t go blaming poor Molly.”

  “Of course I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying the timing would have been different. We wouldn’t have gone to tea with Mary, would we?”

  “It’s strange on what small coincidences our fate hangs,” Gus said.

  On that profound note Mary Cassatt came back into the room.

  Twenty-four

  “I thought I’d stay out of it and give you time to explain everything to your guest,” Mary Cassatt said. She came over to us and pulled up one of the curly-backed gilt chairs beside me. “A horrible business, is it not, Mrs. Sullivan?”

  “The worst,” I said.

  “They tell me that you are a real and proper detective,” Miss Cassatt said, giving me an encouraging smile. “We’re all hoping that you’ll be able to help them.”

  “Neither real nor very proper, I’m afraid,” I said. “I gave up my business when I married…”

  “See, Sid, what we were talking about earlier today,” Mary Cassatt turned to Sid, wagging a finger at her. “Marriage is the biggest restrictor of women’s freedom and progress and creativity. Look at Berthe Morisot. She was producing the most exciting paintings, then she married Manet’s brother and then what?” She turned back to me. “Sorry, Mrs. Sullivan. As you can see we were discussing this very subject earlier today. Please do continue. Even if you’ve given up your profession, you still possess the skills, don’t you?”

  “I don’t really see what I can do,” I said. “I won’t be allowed access to anything they found in that room and the police certainly won’t share with me what line their investigation has been taking, if in fact they are pursuing a line of investigation.”

  “Molly thinks he must have known the killer,” Sid said. “He was sitting in his chair and he would have been standing if taken by surprise by an intruder.”

  “The inspector said there were no signs of a break-in and no signs of a struggle,” I said, “which probably means that Bryce let in the murderer himself through the front door, given that his housekeeper had gone out. They came back to his studio. Bryce sat while they talked and then was caught completely by surprise and stabbed.”

  “There was an open window,” Sid said. “Someone could have entered and left that way as I did with relative ease.”

  That was true.

  “I’ll go and have a chat with the housekeeper if she’s still there and the police have gone,” I said. “Maybe I can get her to tell me something. And then there are Bryce’s fellow artists.” I turned to Miss Cassatt. “I know that there was a lot of ill feeling between the Impressionists and those coming after them. I’ve met several of the new generation—a young man called Picasso from Spain who seems quite a violent type.”

  “Ah, yes. Strange little man. He has some talent if only he’d paint some real pictures.” Mary Cassatt laughed.

  “And I met your cousin, Sid.”

  “You have a cousin here too?” Mary Cassatt asked, looking inquiringly at Sid.

  “I just discovered him. He’s also a painter. His name is Maxim Noah.”

  “I don’t think I know of him,” Mary said. “Another of the new breed?”

  “He showed me his paintings,” I said, without further comment.

  Sid’s face lit up. “Isn’t he wonderful? So full of passion and his paintings are so expressive. Gus and I were talking about bringing him back to New York for an exhibition. He has no family here any longer, you know. My mother would be thrilled.”

  “Maybe we could ask him to help us,” Gus suggested. “He is obviously right at the heart of the artistic community, and perhaps he also mixes with fellow Jews.”

  “Reynold Bryce had certainly made himself unpopular with both communities,” Miss Cassatt said. “Artists and Jews. As you know he ran the most influential exhibition in the city every summer, the one all the foreign buyers come to. And he had virtually shut out all those young painters who call themselves Fauves or Modernists. To him art had to be representational. I can’t say I disagree with him. But unlike him I admit that we are in a new century, a century of automobiles and electricity and telephones. There must always be progress.”

  “So do you think it’s possible that a young painter who w
as thwarted by Bryce would come to kill him?” Gus asked.

  “You were thwarted by him, my dear,” Mary Cassatt said. “Did your thoughts turn to murder?”

  Gus laughed. “Of course not, although Sid was so angry that…” And she turned to look at Sid.

  “I went to give him a piece of my mind, not a piece of steel in his gut. There is a difference,” Sid said.

  “But some of those young artists are not so controlled,” I pointed out. “Picasso was itching to fight a duel and complained he hadn’t shot his pistol for several days.”

  “Ah, duels. They are different,” Mary Cassatt said. “Among the young men of Paris they are a major form of sport. They will fight duels on the least little excuse. Usually over a woman, but an insult to a painting might do as well.”

  “So if a painter challenged Reynold Bryce to a duel but he laughed and refused, might the challenger feel affronted and come to stab him?” I asked.

  “Unlikely. The heat of the moment would have passed. The challenger would shrug and go his merry way. None of them takes anything too seriously for too long.”

  “Miss Cassatt, do you know of any particular painters who have crossed swords with Reynold Bryce recently?” I asked.

  “I am afraid I am a trifle out of touch these days.” Miss Cassatt gave an apologetic smile then reached to pour herself a cup of coffee from the tray. “An aging has-been. I was never allowed into the cafés with them, of course.”

  “Why ever not?” I asked.

  “Women are not part of café society in Paris. At least, not respectable women. Artists’ models are sometimes permitted.”

  “I’ve been into several cafés,” I said. “There was never any indication that I was about to be flung out.”

  “Ah, but you’re a novelty. A visitor from abroad. Should you want to join them on a regular basis I can assure you it would be different.”

  “Perhaps I could go and ask more questions. You have not heard any gossip about anyone else with whom Reynold Bryce might have fallen out? Outside the art fraternity, I mean.”