by A. R. Taylor
Inti instantly spotted this one as a story he could pursue, as did his editor. “So many rich people read the Times or wannabe rich, it’s perfect. And an inside job? ‘Did the servants know?’ I can see the headline now. In fact, write that down.” The NY region section of the paper adopted a slightly more hysterical tone than one the managing editor might adopt, but they were tolerant. “It’s not a coyote, Weill, but it’s damn close. And Jack Pittman is a very big deal, must be dirt there you can use.”
Inti tracked down every known art theft in the New York area for the last ten years, but found, to his dismay, that there really was no identifiable tribe of known thieves, just a hodgepodge of greedy housepainters, smalltime crooks who didn’t know what they were stealing, even some distraught political activists with knives. Occasionally a crime syndicate would use stolen paintings as collateral in a drug deal, but a fair number of these people dumped the art wherever they could because well-known pieces couldn’t be sold. At last he found Mrs. Pittman herself at her home near Amboise, predictably hysterical about the theft and eager to talk.
The Fragonard involved a rosy young aristocrat clad in crinolines on a swing, while a comely young man in blue pushed her forward. It all sounded charming to Inti, in a gooey sort of way, but the Spranger sounded positively horrendous. From her account, Venus and Mars were canoodling, the woman’s breasts completely naked over a red swath of silk, while Cupid played nearby and even seemed to bless the two as they snuggled together, more difficult because Mars wore a suit of armor and would not have been very snuggable. These details the Pittman woman relayed, giggling all the while, seeming to revel in the subject matter. Oddly chirpy, almost flirtatious, Reggie, as she had instructed him to call her, had several theories about who had done the deed but didn’t want to talk about them on the phone. “Send me an email,” Inti suggested, “with photos if you have them,” but she refused.
“Oh, I never do email, besides, they’re not secure.”
These absurd notions must have furthered the ease with which people stole from her, Inti thought, but then, on impulse he suggested that he might be doing some reporting in Europe soon and could possibly interview her in person. Loudly she encouraged this idea. “Publicity is the only way art gets returned, Mr. Weill. They can’t sell any of these famous paintings on the open market.”
Inti wasn’t totally sure how famous the works were, and to his mind the nutty woman would probably have to give them away or fling them toward some innocent passerby on the Bois de Boulogne, but he was prepared to sell the hell out of this “go interview the wife” idea to his editor, even if he had to pay for the flights himself. Given the spin Inti put on this art theft story and the fact that Jack Pittman had recently been investigated by the SEC, his editor agreed to pay for three days only in France to extract some semblance of a story. “Maybe the husband stole them himself? I’ve heard worse.”
Not that Inti had much understanding of his own intensity about the business. Nothing for him had clarity at this time in his life. It was cold in the city, empty and dead in a way he had never experienced. Why Jenna’s betrayal, less than that really, her unaccountable role in such a mysterious drama, hurt him so, he wasn’t sure, but on the flip side he had that itch, that ambitious curiosity regarding a great story, and the urge to know more prompted him to calculate the timeline over and over again, especially late at night while he listened to the screech of cabs navigating through the latest snowfall. He finally settled on the fact that basically he wanted to get out of town, number one, but also he had finally remembered something Jenna had said regarding Vincent Hull. “He loves France, reveres it, and says I will never really understand the painterly impulse until I go there myself.”
TWO
“On fait de la chasse ici?” became Jenna’s first inquiry of the young woman at the front desk. At least she knew that she had landed in a region of grapes and the hunt, the Champagne region of France.
“Mais oui, Mademoiselle,” the delighted girl had answered, shocked that an American who could afford to stay in this hotel actually spoke some decent French. Alas, though, the young woman proceeded to describe the hunt in great detail, rolling forward with so much of the French language that Jenna lost the thread entirely and was left to mutter, “ooh,” and “oui,” and “magnifique,” at comical intervals in her speech.
Jenna now resided in an exotic, ornate hotel that contained layers upon layers of French history. The newer building, completed in 1856, was surrounded in a semicircle by the ruins of a twelfth-century castle. Its arches bowed, sliced in half, some stones lying on the ground, the older castle displayed the authentic cast of an ancient world, so much so that visitors could feel the weight and the power of those who actually managed to have such structures built. In these first few months of her exile, Jenna took to wandering through the arches, especially in the late afternoon. January now and freezing cold, she couldn’t do much but obsessively go over the sequence of events that had led her here, and the people; they haunted her thoughts. What did Jorge do now, still at NewsLink? He had worked there forever, impossible to think of him anywhere else. And where was Tasha, at a new job? Mrs. Hull, what of her and the girls? Of an age to read the newspapers and hear about their father, his children too must hate her, though not even knowing who she was.
Only a few months prior, holed up in her New York apartment, stuck in something like a tableau vivant of a fake event and before the powers-that-be disconnected her land line, she had had to stop herself from listening to her old voicemail messages, Inti yelling into the phone, “They’re fantastic, the best photos. I’ll let you know when they appear. Call me. Where the hell are you?” He mentioned her current notoriety not at all, and that in itself was quite mysterious.
Jorge had left her three messages, shock filling his voice, and question after question. “Can you see me somehow and talk?” “Why didn’t you come to me for help?” Finally, plaintively, “There’s still some of your stuff at the office. Don’t you want it?” And then at last, “Listen, I completely understand. I told my mother Vincent Hull was going to get reincarnated as twin Asian sex slaves.” At this she had to laugh, but she wasn’t allowed to respond in any way, and she hated being hated, that much she knew and felt it almost as a physical pain in her chest.
Her anguish from that time could only be allayed by exercise and vigorous attempts to master the French language, two current obsessions that kept her mind full, engorged even. Under her newly stage-managed surroundings, this proved stranger, more alien than she expected, living at this extraordinary hotel outside the small market town of Fère-en-Tardenois. All meals took place in a gilt-edged fairy-tale dining room that felt like a perpetual holiday gathering with relatives she either didn’t like or didn’t know. Having to eat with people much older than herself made her shy, and especially the huge amounts of food, even for breakfast, had her aching for a small cup of yogurt and an apple. At one particularly fattening lunch, she heard the whir of helicopter propellers, her heart sinking for a moment at the thought of more Hull minions arriving with some terrible new demand. When she took herself to the lobby, with its gothic arches and massive blue urns standing watch over those who entered, she saw that the well-dressed foreigners, Germans as it turned out, couldn’t possibly be the paparazzi, just rich people who had arrived for lunch by air.
One of the most confounding elements in her present life involved her new appearance. Every time she caught her image in one of the carved wooden mirrors, she gave a start. Bobbed dark hair, darkened eyebrows, conservative slacks, jackets, even suits sometimes for dinner, this was a woman she did not recognize—an older woman. And her name, now there had come a sticking point, the only time she had balked at the commands of the Hull attorney. He had presented her with a list: Barbara, Karen, Sarah, all of which she found too old-timey. In the end, she’d chosen Catherine, acceptably French, though of course she couldn’t completely pass for that nationality, last name Myatt. Cate, or Cathe
rine Myatt, she could relate to her, whoever she might actually be, and she could tell people her mother had loved France and had given her a French name. Vincent had loved it too, and his raptures on the subject had led her to flee to the only country he spoke well of.
Another result of her flight and the only consolation during these early months of her new life involved the high level of luxury she currently enjoyed: shimmering soft bedding, a quilt that mimicked an antique French tapestry, the enormous suite with a set of table and chairs that no doubt would have cost what she would have earned in a year as Hull’s assistant, even a stone fireplace. Foreign, baroque design, full of puffs and embroidered stools and stuffed velvet pillows, so unlike anything she had ever had, but she loved their goofy unreality.
And then there was the larger weight of her money. Hitherto having never had any, she now possessed what she called “absolute piles of the green stuff.” She didn’t like to number for herself the actual dollar amount, as it frightened her even to think of it, and besides, someone might take it away as quickly as those murky powers had given it to her. At first all had been handled by Rudolph Hayes, including the sending of a large sum to a French bank to cover her residence here. He made it clear that she must familiarize herself personally with the financial advisors he supplied, as no information about her fortune could seep out into the larger world. They weren’t even allowed to communicate by email, only phone, but she hadn’t gone to see these ephemeral managers, only just managing to call them when she needed to replenish her account in the tiny local bank.
Even on sleeping pills though, she still couldn’t sleep, often waking up at two or three in the morning, restless, overheated under the heavy comforter, tormented with the awful weight of Vincent Hull’s dead body on top of her, so alive at one time in her arms, so loved. Had she loved him? Yes, she had, surely, though before meeting him, she had never known much about what sexual love really meant. What about Tasha? Had she loved Vince too? Once Jenna had admired her point of view, her very realistic assessment of things, whereas she herself lived in the land of what she hoped or what she fantasized. She had wondered at the sophistication, the personality able to fit into whatever world she encountered; in truth she had wanted to be like Tasha, but unanswered questions tormented her. Tasha and Mrs. Hull had seemed to be friends, even close friends, so why had she betrayed her? Jenna remembered all the cautionary tales she had told her regarding certain New York norms of behavior, warning her off Hull, it had seemed. So Tasha was preparing her for something? But she couldn’t have known the man would die in such circumstances, could she? Had Sabine and Tasha collaborated and killed him? A grotesque thought, but somehow she felt caught up in real evil, the origins of which she did not understand.
In this pained mental state, Jenna found herself in the French countryside, where the rosy pink morning sun, the regularity, the neatness, the fixed square shapes of the land had her transfixed. If nothing else, this order comforted a most rattled visitor. She hadn’t jumped off her old life, she’d been thrown out of it, and during this time she felt herself falling into a psychological nowhere, though at the very least, geographically, this nowhere had a landscape, which despite her sad state, she liked.
Jenna had promised to remain here for at least six months, unless someone got wind of her residence before that time. As the dead months of January and February wore on, it grew colder, freezing at night, and in the morning a sheen of white frost glazed every structure and all the surrounding hills, like a snow globe that never settled to the bottom. This was weather as awful as northern Ohio, made worse because she could find no one of interest to talk to and had nothing to do except relive the past, this at age twenty-four. The terms of her agreement resembled almost exactly the requirements of someone in the witness protection program. She could not get in touch with any of her friends, nor let them know where she was. She had to get serious about her personal transformation, buy contact lenses, and have her hair colored in a more professional way, all the while remaining silent on what she had done and her knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Vincent Hull’s death.
Thus Cate Myatt, of great wealth, no family, no friends, no associates, resided alone at a hotel. She drove a rented Renault and didn’t talk to many people, only the staff. There was some curiosity about her, but the Hull officials had sufficiently covered her tracks to prevent any real detection from the jaded French press. A discarded mistress, a daughter in hiding—it meant little to anyone in this part of the world. The only thing she really wanted to do was let both Jorge and Inti know. But what? That she wasn’t Hull’s mistress? Not quite, but she had had an affair, no, merely encounters. How sordid was that? Therein lay the central secret of her life, and she could think of no words to craft more lies, worse yet, to let them know the truth. She had gained a great deal, but at the same time seemed to have lost everything.
By chance one day the friendly, even concerned concierge pointed out to her that the surrounding tracts of land near the chateau actually contained a vast cemetery for American victims of World War I. “Very beautiful there, peaceful, as if for them there was no war.” The small dark man lifted his eyebrows and smiled in a sad, resigned way.
Jenna took to driving out to the Oise-Aisne memorial and walking the lonely fields of white crosses. The wind swept over this land of the dead in broad, cold sighs. She moved slowly, reading each name on each cross, and as she made her way from one field after another, she developed a strong sense that she must repeat to herself the names of as many soldiers as she could. “In Sacred Sleep They Rest,” yes, such sacred sleep. There were 6,012 souls beneath the ground, and 597 of them nameless. “Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier Known But to God.” Attention must be paid, she the witness, and her actions had a soothing effect, as if she were worshipping at a kind of church.
Where was Vincent buried? It would have been a huge funeral, and must have taken place while she was hiding out in her transformed apartment. Deliberately she had avoided reading any newspaper whatsoever, afraid of the horrible pictures of herself and the hideous speculations. She also never responded to a single email. Not that she had any family, but some old school friends back in Ohio wondered and wrote, and even had questions in the subject line. “Was this really you?” “Hey, old friend, how are you holding up?” “I can’t believe this. They must have the wrong girl.”
Yes, the wrong girl, but still the actual one found underneath the dead body of someone she had cared for. Everyone else in her field of vision seemed to dislike him, even hate him. In reality, was it a silly crush, loaded up with meaning because she had been forced to lie beneath the man? Maybe. Why had she done what Tasha asked? She should have reacted in outrage, told her to get some older, more desperate employee to become rich, disappear, and lose whatever future had been her destiny to live out instead of becoming another human being altogether. Here the true fear lurked. She had evaded her own future. She didn’t know anything about this mythical Miss Myatt, a young woman with no past and certainly no present, the future looming as a blank.
Exhausted with the cemetery, she changed her driving ritual. After an early morning walk around the crumbling castle ruins that surrounded her own luxurious abode, she mounted her Renault and vowed to follow whichever sign on the road she saw first, and on this frosty day it led her deep into the countryside of vineyards and wineries. Not too far distant resided Euro Disney, so today she caught sight of tourists and their children in buses and rental cars, like home really, or somewhat like. It breathed America, its openness, its fun. She envied the tourists and would have liked to take one of the rides, but of course couldn’t join them.
Undeterred, she drove with more purpose, this time following the signs to Villeneuve-sur-Fère, where the doomed sculptor Camille Claudel had lived for a time, before her hateful mother and brother had her locked up in an insane asylum for thirty years, even after the authorities had told the family that she was most definitely not mad. Armed
with her treasured Leica, the only Hull item she had actually stolen, she drove an hour to the small, square village perched atop a flat hill. The whole town seemed to consist of just this public square and perhaps ten houses surrounding it. Beyond that, fields swept out as far as one could see, glistening with a light sheen of frost.
After a trek around the square, she could find no notice at all of the famous artist except a small plaque on a nondescript house just like every other one in the town. Yet another one of these houses appeared to be a restaurant. Inside were plain wooden communal tables, no menus, only men recently come in from the fields eating the dish of the day, blanquette de veau. But it was so cold, and Jenna wanted to eat somewhere smaller than a castle, so she stayed and in her passable French ordered what everyone else was eating, trying to look nonchalant while every pair of eyes in the place stared at her. Had they read The New York Times? Were they addicted to page six of the New York Post? Impossible, ridiculous, she thought. Stolid, grim fingers heavy with work, why on earth would they know or care about a New York City drama?
The aggressive staring made her anxious to go. After all, with a population of 231 people, one more would excite major interest. She drove home quickly through the winding roads, nothing in sight except vast empty fields. She could feel the panic rising like a wave in her chest, and for a moment she gasped and had trouble breathing. Was it a heart attack? She clutched the wheel and gripped it until her hands shook. Where was the chateau? The signs were so small she had to lean out of the car to see them, but at last she spotted Fère-en-Tardenois, her village, and with three thousand people it seemed positively crowded. She had only to make her way through the tiny streets of this market town, and then she would know how to get home from here. Home, her hotel, part of a lost medieval world. No one had discovered her, no press people. There weren’t even any American guests, only Germans and Italians, it seemed, well-heeled, talkative, completely engaged with each other as they sat under the glass chandeliers of the dining room near a roaring fire. Outside everything else had frozen solid.