by Barry Ergang
My potentially illustrious moment was short-lived. Warner examined the disks we found in Gaines’s desk on the office computer. Those that weren’t blank contained only text irrelevant to the case.
Besides the desk, the only furniture was the chair behind it, a leather sofa, and, lining the room, floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed with volumes.
“Let’s start on the books,“ Darnell said. “Give me a pair of gloves and I’ll help you look through them. If the disk shows who I think it does, you‘ll have the evidence you need for an arrest.”
Warner held up a hand, palm out. “Wait a minute. You said who. You mean you know who’s behind this?”
Darnell nodded.
“Since when?”
“A little while ago.”
Warner exhaled loudly. “Y’know, you got to Cochran immediately, and now you’re beginning to irritate me.”
“It’s the effect I have on people. I’ve learned to live with it.”
“Stop being smart-assed and talk.”
He told us.
“What makes you think so?” Warner asked.
He told us that, too.
Warner got gloves for Darnell, had a uniformed man locate Cochran, and the three detectives spent nearly two hours pulling books off of shelves, looking for one into which the killer might have thrust the disk.
“Bingo!” Cochran said, holding a leather-bound book in one hand, a disk in the other.
Warner took it from him and inserted it into the computer’s drive. The disk was filled with photos, date- and time-stamped, that Derek had taken throughout the day. Among them was the one Darnell expected. Cochran gave it a splenetic examination, then transferred the look to Darnell.
“Score one for the P.I.,” he muttered.
“I have no official standing, remember?” Darnell said. “It’s your collar.”
“Do it quietly,” Warner admonished. “Away from the crowd.”
“I know how it’s done,” Cochran grumbled, and went off to arrest Carol Prentice.
Half an hour later, we stood in the gallery with the Gaineses and Julian Lakehurst, surrounded by color, texture and perspective that blazed out at us from the surrounding walls. Alexis slumped motionless on one of the padded benches, numbed by champagne and grief.
“The Professor’s theory was close to accurate,” Darnell said. “After killing Derek, Carol went into the office, hid the disk until she’d have time to erase it, and then went back to the party.”
“What was on the disk?” Marjorie Gaines asked. Her usually crisp tone was subdued by the gravity of the day’s events.
“A picture Derek took of Carol ducking into the closet a few minutes before you and Dr. Gaines brought your guests in here.
“She was a thief but not a killer—not a deliberate one anyway. When we saw her after she’d strangled him, she was pretty well out of it. It looked like she was upset about the theft, but it was the killing that chewed at her.
“After Dr. Gaines won the auction, she must’ve partnered with Derek. They knew each other from his visits here with Alexis. She socialized with them. I don’t know how intimate they were—she’s not talking till she gets lawyered-up. But they were both ambitious. She needed him to create a diversion so it’d look like Marchand pulled off the theft. Derek either got greedy or decided he needed an insurance policy. So he snapped a picture of Carol to give him a hold over her. When he went out to the deck, she followed him and they argued about it. She tried to get the disk away from him and Derek resisted. But Carol’s a strong girl—she’s an athlete, remember. Derek wasn’t. She got angry and panicked and wound up strangling him. She took the disk and hid it in the office till she could wipe it. There was no time to get rid of it—too many people around, and she was rattled.”
“The theft,” Gaines said hoarsely. “How did she manage it?”
“Partly by feeding the notion that Paul Marchand was the thief. I’ve said all along I don’t think Marchand exists. There’s no police record, and my guess is that Riveau made him up. He was ambitious, too, determined to make a name for himself as an artist. But he needed money to support himself. He engineered the thefts and the sales that got him the money, and then created Marchand as a defense. That didn’t work and he went to prison. You said he was something of a head-case to begin with. Maybe prison made him worse and he began to believe his own fantasy. Whatever, he wrote about Marchand in his journal, and art collectors and dealers believed him. Maybe Carol discovered that in her research and kept it from you.” He shrugged. “Whether Marchand’s a myth or not, the outcome in this case is the same.
“Think back to what you told me. Lakehurst suggested the party as a deterrent to theft, and as your assistant, Carol certainly knew that. Carol recruited the student hostesses and came up with the idea of having them dress alike to give her some camouflage.”
He shifted his gaze to Marjorie. “Derek persuaded you to let him take pictures of you and the girls, Carol being one of them. You went into the gallery, Derek shot the pictures, and then hustled you out of there. Carol hung back and nobody noticed.”
“Hold on,” Gaines said. “Alan and I saw them come out.”
“You saw a bunch of women, all dressed alike, all but one with dark hair like Carol‘s. Did you count them?”
Gaines hesitated thoughtfully. “No, I didn’t. Alan and I were talking.” He paused. “But we inspected every inch of that room before we locked it. Carol wasn’t in the closet or anywhere else. You saw that yourself.”
“She was in there,” Darnell insisted. “We forgot to look up.”
“What does that mean?”
“This room has a pretty high ceiling, doesn’t it?”
“So?”
“The closet has a high ceiling, too. I’ll remind you again: Carol’s an athlete—a championship swimmer. This morning Derek mentioned she’s also into rock-climbing.
“She knew the schedule and that you’d bring your guests into the gallery shortly after the photo session was finished. She got into the closet before we checked the room, climbed the ladder, stretched out, and walked herself up the wall out of sight. The closet’s narrow and she’s a tall girl, so that’d be easy. She was dressed in black, and the light in the closet creates a glare you can‘t see past. She went far enough up the wall so she wouldn’t be seen if anyone bothered to look up. No one would’ve thought to. She’s strong and has enough stamina to stay stretched out like that for several minutes.
“After we left, she came down the wall, opened the door, ran out—wearing slippers that wouldn‘t make any noise on a marble floor—removed the painting from the stretcher, then ran back to the closet. But coming down or going up the wall, she made a couple of mistakes. She either bumped or rested her knee on the edge of the shelf, disturbing the dust. She stepped on the vacuum hose, too, or accidentally kicked it. When we looked in the closet this morning, the nozzle was on its side. After the theft, it was face down on the floor.”
“I saw her in the crowd when we came in,“ Marjorie said. “Surely someone would have noticed if she were already here.”
“The door opens inward from the hallway. Carol ran to the door and positioned herself so she’d be behind it when it opened. Nobody was focused on the door; they all wanted to see the painting. As everyone filed in, Carol stepped out and, to all appearances, was part of the group.”
“What put you onto her?” Warner asked.
“Partly it was the Professor’s remark about hiding something in plain sight. Mostly it was your technician‘s arthritis and the way he brushed off his pants when he stood up.
“After we discovered the painting was missing, Carol sat on a bench. She moved stiffly, like someone in shock—or like someone with cramped muscles or whose knee or foot hurts. At first I thought she was just upset the way everyone else was. When I saw the mark in the dust on the shelf, and later saw her rubbing her knee, I realized she’d either hurt herself and was massaging the knee or was trying to get the dus
t off her slacks before anyone noticed it. Forensics should be able to confirm that the dust in the fabric came from the shelf. There might even be fibers from the slacks on the wood.
“The Professor’s remark confirmed what I thought all along: that someone other than Marchand stole the painting. It narrowed the list to someone who had regular access to the office. Well, that meant either the Gaineses or Carol.”
“The painting,” Lakehurst said. “Did she tell you where it is? Have you recovered it?”
“No to both questions, but I’m pretty sure it’s in this room.”
Like automatons, everyone looked at the walls.
“Where?” the art dealer pressed. “Are you saying she tacked it to the back of one of the other paintings?”
“No. She didn’t use tacks. What she did use caused another mistake.”
“Damn it, where is it?”
Darnell wheeled to face him, his eyes angry but his voice low and even. “You mean the painting someone died for?“
Lakehurst turned away sheepishly. The others stirred uneasily at the reminder.
“It’s in the closet, where she left it.” Darnell met our collective incredulity with cool gray-blue eyes. “She couldn’t sneak it out of here under her sweater, and the theft required someone familiar with the house who could come and go as she pleased, someone who had access to the gallery. All she had to do was hide it. When everyone was convinced Marchand was the thief, she’d sneak it out of the house.”
“Could she have rolled it up and put it into the vacuum hose?” Marjorie asked.
“No. That was one of the first places we looked,” Warner said, then turned to Darnell. “What’d you mean about tacks and a mistake?”
“When the Professor and I looked for Derek upstairs, I noticed the posters in Carol’s room weren’t tacked to the walls. That meant some sort of adhesive, maybe double-sided tape. But there’s another sort of adhesive. It’s like putty so it won’t damage the posters—or the walls—if you decide to remove it. It’s blue.”
“The smudge on the closet wall,” I said.
“Right. Carol could conceal the adhesive. It’s packaged as a flat rectangle. You tear off what you need. After she grabbed the painting, she went back to the closet, climbed the ladder, and pasted it high up on the wall inside. It’d be hard to see even if anyone bothered to look. When she climbed down, she accidentally smeared some residue from her fingers on the wall. She wouldn’t’ve had time to clean it up. She had to get behind the door before Dr. Gaines opened it.”
Lakehurst and Gaines were already at the closet, both peering inside and looking up.
“There’s nothing there,” a crestfallen Lakehurst said.
“Got a flashlight?” Darnell asked.
“I’ll get one.” Gaines walked swiftly out of the room.
We waited, tension thrumming like strung wire in a strong wind. When Gaines returned, the flashlight was already on. Darnell took it from him, played the beam up into the closet, then ascended the ladder. A moment later he descended, the flashlight clutched in one hand, the canvas dangling from the other. Wads of blue adhesive clung to its corners.
“My God!” Lakehurst exclaimed in a loud whisper. “What was she thinking?”
“Good question,” Darnell said. “You’ve got a roomful of art worth millions—individual pieces that’d get a hell of a lot more from collectors than anything Riveau did. So why Nomad? The real question is whether it was worth the risk.”
He looked at Lakehurst. “You said Riveau painted over stolen masterpieces to conceal the works underneath until he could find buyers for them, and that some of the paintings were taken from his studio while he was in prison.”
Both Lakehurst and Gaines nodded.
“I’m guessing here, but maybe Riveau pulled off the thefts after he got out of prison to recover the masterpieces he‘d painted over. He used the Marchand myth as a coverup and to create the romantic martyr image that boosted the value of his legitimate work. So why did Carol steal this?” He held up the canvas which hung somewhat stiffly, a flag defying surrender, from his hand. “Possibly because in researching Riveau, she discovered there’s something much more valuable underneath it and used the myth herself to get it.”
Gaines closed his eyes. “I was right. That painting is a curse.”
Agreement was as soundless as a shadow.
On Wednesday of the following week, Darnell, book in hand, came into Culhane’s and, despite its being a quiet evening, sat at the end of the bar. I put a Scotch on the rocks in front of him.
“Thanks, Professor.” He sipped it, then lit a cigarette. “I got a call from Mitch Warner today.”
I leaned against my side of the bar. “Oh?”
“After they booked Carol, they gave her some jail clothing. A policewoman kept an eye on her while she changed. There was a pair of latex gloves stuffed in her underwear. They had traces of adhesive on them. The cops broke her down and she confessed.”
“If I’d kept a closer eye on the gallery, I could’ve prevented her from stealing the painting.”
“If she hadn’t tried for it then, she’d’ve gone after it another time. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“It’s hard not to. If she hadn‘t gotten the painting, Derek wouldn’t have died.”
“You can’t be sure of that either. They could’ve had a falling-out later on, with the same result.”
A customer signaled for a refill, and as I moved off to accommodate him, Darnell opened his book. When I returned, he put it down and said:
“They had Nomad x-rayed. Underneath is an oil sketch for one of Monet’s paintings of the Japanese bridge.”
I briefly considered the legal wranglings about ownership the discovery would entail for Barton Gaines, and the irony of Riveau’s concealment of a masterpiece beneath work he must have deemed slapdash, negligible. Then, still unable to dispel feelings of unwitting complicity in the crimes, I visualized Nomad: its nightmare landscape, grotesque images, play of light and shadow.
I wondered which of us—Barton Gaines, Charles Riveau, or me—was the naked figure in the impassable terrain.
[*]Peter Landesman, “A 20th Century Master Scam,” The New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1999; pp. 30-37, 54, 58, 62-63.
Bonus Reading Matter
Sometime after “The Play of Light and Shadow” was published, I learned that the editor/publisher of Mystery Readers Journal, a magazine that puts out themed issues, was for a forthcoming issue looking for information about writers who specialize in mysteries dealing with art. I wrote to her and explained that although I don’t specialize in art mysteries, I had recently had one published. She responded with a request for an article about it. Hence, what follows.
WRITING “THE PLAY OF LIGHT AND SHADOW”
by Barry Ergang
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Barry Ergang
Originally published in Mystery Readers Journal in slightly different form,
Volume 21, No. 1, Spring 2005
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Whether it was “inevitable” that I’d develop a love of imaginative writing is something for psychologists to determine. In early childhood I watched innumerable “B” westerns starring Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash Larue and other cowboy stars; cliffhanger serials (Larry “Buster” Crabbe as Flash Gordon was my first boyhood “hero”); and early TV series like “Space Patrol” and “Ramar of the Jungle”. Super-hero comic books ranked high on my reading list. Playtime with friends frequently consisted of acting out our own versions of these adventurous fantasies, yours truly usually
being the creator of the scenario and assigner of roles. (I invariably played the leading man.)
It therefore doesn’t strike me as odd that one morning in 1959 during the summer between seventh and eighth grade, for no particularly good reason, I picked up a pad and pen and wrote a hardboiled detective story. Please note: I had never read one. I only knew private eyes from television programs like “Peter Gunn,” “77 Sunset Strip,” and others that were popular at the time. For that matter, the only mysteries I’d read at that point were the Hardy Boys and some Conan Doyle, most memorably The Hound of the Baskervilles. The pleasures of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John Dickson Carr, Hake Talbot, Clayton Rawson, and Edward D. Hoch—among countless others—lay ahead of me.
Be that as it may, I grew addicted to writing creatively, mysteries being my preferred genre, and began reading Erle Stanley Gardner and Agatha Christie while cranking out stories of my own. After reading The ABC Murders, I wrote a would-be Christie-type story and submitted the handwritten manuscript to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, thus garnering my first rejection slip at the age of twelve.
(As a bar mitzvah present, my parents gave me an Olivetti portable typewriter—enabling properly formatted, legible submissions—which served me well till the early Eighties.)
It was 1970 when I first had a story accepted for publication outside of a high school literary magazine. Appearing in a long-forgotten local periodical called Philly Talk, “Slow and Quiet, Drift Away” was not a mystery but did involve a crime.
Flash forward to 1999. In the intervening years I’d placed a few short stories, a few non-fiction pieces, and a fair number of poems with magazines, most of which were small-press and nearly all of which are now defunct. The only detective story in the bunch was a satire of the high-end audio business, in which I’ve worked on and off over many years. “The Audiophile Murder Case” was written as a pastiche of S.S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance novels and serialized in Stereophile in 1982/83.