“This would mean you, Mr. Frisch, will return to Zurich empty-handed. Won’t you be fired? Sacked? Whatever you wish to call it.”
“But you see, Jacob, that is precisely the purpose I want served. I want to leave this employment. I can no longer bear my condition, as it applies to auctions and auction houses. Because each time, I experience a thousand black butterflies.”
“But wouldn’t Mrs. Hamelin—that’s who I work for—wouldn’t she be part of an underhanded situation? Wouldn’t I be putting her in that position?”
“Ah, you are worrying about what? The situational ethics. Oh, poor fellow.”
“Not sure what that means.”
“Look, I am using you, Jacob. Let me be honest. I am using you to be able to leave my ghastly employment. I do not wish even to go back to Zurich. Zurich is for me full of black butterflies, you understand.”
“I think I understand.”
“However selfish, it is a wonderful opportunity for me. I will have done the good deed for you, a good man. I will have no reason to return to Zurich.”
He ordered a third drink and I ordered a second. He held his glass in the air and said, “To your success at auction.” We clinked glasses.
I wanted to go through with Frisch’s plan, but I didn’t fully recognize myself in it.
“The most fortunate thing has happened,” Frisch said. “I’ve met a good man.”
We drank ourselves to near oblivion, as I remember it, which, now that I have said it, sounds like a contradiction, the remembering part. Still, I definitely made it to my room, and definitely telephoned Martha. Somehow I managed to relate to her the details of the auction, the conversation in the bar, the pact I had made with Frisch. (“Yes, I think I agreed to everything he asked.”)
“Listen to me, Jacob,” she said, her very tone of voice sobering me faster than ten pots of black coffee. “Here is what you do. You walk downstairs to the lobby. You check out of your hotel. You find another hotel. It’s London—there’s got to be a decent one nearby. You leave no forwarding address. You try and sleep. The next day, when you are clearheaded, you go to Heathrow and fly home. Then you come directly to my apartment. You will not—not not not—have this photograph with you, Jacob. You cannot have it with you. It is just wrong.”
“This Mr. Frisch is desperate, Martha. He needs help. I can help him.”
“Jacob, there’s every possibility that this Mr. Frisch will wake up and remember none of this. That doesn’t matter one bit. What matters is that the moment we ring off, you march down to the lobby. Jacob!”
In the morning, I woke up on the floor. I washed, dressed, and went down to the lobby. The desk clerk said, “An envelope for you, Mr. Rigolet.” I took the envelope, sat in the nearest chair, opened the envelope, and read the note inside: “My dear Jacob, How foolish of me. In my own hotel I recognized two things. First, I was correct in assessing you as a good man. Second, that being a good man, you would finally not be able to accept my proposal. And yet I hold out a little hope. I wish you all great fortunes. In friendship, Hans Frisch.”
The note was written on the stationery of Brown’s Hotel. I stepped out to George Street, told the doorman I needed a cab, and he flagged one down in a matter of seconds. I took the cab to Brown’s Hotel, at 33 Albemarle Street. “Sorry, guv’nor,” the cabbie said, “looks like I’ll have to drop you off a quarter block from the hotel. Look up ahead there. The bobbies are out in full.” He pulled to the curb, I paid the fare, and when I stood on the sidewalk, I saw that several police cars and an ambulance were parked in front of Brown’s. There was a police cordon and a dozen or so curious onlookers. “What’s happened?” I asked a doorman. “Sadly, sir, one of our dear regulars has done himself in.” How could I not realize right away that it was Hans Frisch?
I was not about to stand there gawking, so I decided to walk. And walk I did, wandering the streets in a daze, I don’t remember for how long. Anyway, I ended up back at Durrants. Stepping into the lobby, the concierge said, “Delivery for you, sir. You only have to sign for it.” He went into the storeroom behind his podium and brought out a square package, neatly wrapped in brown paper, with the words MR. JACOB RIGOLET in black lettering. “From the auction house, I think,” Mr. Bernier said. “I take it congratulations are in order.”
I took the package up to my room, which was already reserved for one more night. I set the package upright on a chair and stared at it a long time. Finally, I carefully opened the package. There was Tombeau des Rois. There also was a manila envelope. Just as Frisch had promised, the envelope contained a copy of a typed letter stating that he had power of attorney for Mr. Peter Zellistar (his employer) and was “giving, as a gift, the photograph titled Tombeau des Rois to Mr. Jacob Rigolet of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.” Paper-clipped to the letter was Hans Frisch’s business card.
The consequences of my delivering Tombeau des Rois de Juda to Mrs. Hamelin—that is, of not sending the photograph on to Frisch’s employer in Zurich—became clear relatively soon. My London-to-Montreal flight arrived at 5:30 p.m., and the connecting flight to Halifax arrived at 7:15, and I took a cab to Martha’s apartment. She had put on a pot of coffee and was still wearing her “professional attire,” as she called her pantsuit and white blouse. We embraced and kissed and she said, “You must be exhausted.” “Not too bad, really,” I said. But we were both staring at the package I had set against the kitchen wall.
“Jacob, tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” Martha said.
“Tombeau des Rois,” I said. “Want to look at it?”
“Jacob, this is a real test of our marriage, even though we aren’t married.”
I sat down and she poured me a cup of coffee, then one for herself. She sat across from me. “I have a real problem with what you did, Jake. You better try and talk me through this, because I’m very, very angry with you just now. I haven’t seen you for nearly five days, and I love you, but I’m very angry. I don’t understand how you could do what you did with this photograph. And no, I don’t want to look at it.”
“It’s really beautiful.”
“Good.”
“May I ask one favor, though, Martha? Would you get out of your interlocutrix clothes, please?”
Martha gave me a tight smile, got up, went into her bedroom, and emerged wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt and thick, dark blue socks.
“There,” she said. “Now, what the hell happened, Jacob? What were you thinking?”
“All right. Let me try to explain. The fellow I mentioned, who’d bid so high on the photograph, he killed himself.”
“What?”
“Hans Frisch committed suicide at Brown’s Hotel. Have you ever heard the term ‘black butterflies’?” Martha shook her head solemnly back and forth. “Well, he said that in French it means you’re badly depressed. You have black butterflies. I didn’t know the term either, but he explained it to me. He said he wasn’t going back to Zurich, where he worked for some wealthy patron. A Mr. Zellistar. He told me his life was a train wreck.”
“Really took you into his confidence, didn’t he?”
“You had to be there.”
“I’m not so sure about that, but go ahead.”
“Basically, he wanted me to have the photograph. That’s the long and the short of it. But I had no idea he would do what he did. How could I know that this deal with the photograph was his last act on earth. How could I know that?”
“But that’s not the point, is it, Jacob? The point is that once you had the photograph, the right thing to do was—”
“Have the auction house send it on to Frisch’s employer in Zurich.”
“Correct.”
“Guess what, though. The photograph is right here in your kitchen.”
“Which means you can still do the ethical thing. Tomorrow you can go and send it overseas. Have you told Esther Hamelin that you have the photograph?”
“I did telephone her.”
“And from the look
on your face, I take it you lied to her.”
“Yes. By what I didn’t say. Lied to her by what I didn’t say. I only said I had the photograph.”
“So she thought, Well, Jacob’s been successful. How nice. He’s come back to me. He’s my reliable employee again. Let’s think about a bonus.”
“Probably right.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Sleep on it.”
“Not here, you aren’t. You aren’t going to sleep on it here.”
I reached to take her hands in mine, but Martha stood, walked to the door, opened it, and stared at the floor, waiting for me to leave. She slammed the door behind me.
It was after midnight when I arrived at Mrs. Hamelin’s house. I’d carried my suitcase and the photograph all those blocks. I unlocked the front door and walked to the kitchen and saw Mrs. Hamelin and Mrs. Brevittmore sitting at the table. They were dressed in the clothes they would wear on any given day. They had obviously just finished having dinner: they were eating sorbet and berries, and they both had a demitasse of espresso in front of them. Two candles had burned down to an inch high. “Jacob,” Mrs. Hamelin called out, “please come in and join us. As you can see, we’ve had a late dinner. Coffee?”
I shook my head no, set down the suitcase in the hallway, and carried the photograph into the kitchen. I began to unwrap the package, but Mrs. Hamelin said, quite insistently, “No, don’t! That photograph does not belong to me. Please don’t open it. It would be a torment to see it here in my home, knowing it must be sent away.”
This is not going to be good, I thought, this is going to be awful. Then I betrayed Martha’s trust in absentia by saying, “Did Martha call you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jacob,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “Please sit down.”
“The director of the auction house in London called Esther,” Mrs. Brevittmore said. “Also, the proper owner of the photograph, a Mr. Zellistar, telephoned.”
I sat down and, without really knowing what I was doing, finished off Mrs. Hamelin’s and Mrs. Brevittmore’s espressos in quick succession, with two loud slurps, setting each small cup on the table. They just watched this in wonder.
“Naturally, you will no longer be employed by me,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “This is effective immediately. Though you may stay in the cottage tonight. I wouldn’t put such a dear and loyal friend out on the street, now, would I?”
When I didn’t answer, Mrs. Brevittmore said, “No, you wouldn’t, Esther.” She began to clear the dishes, but Esther grabbed her hand, and Mrs. Brevittmore sat down again.
Now Mrs. Brevittmore lit into me. “For some thirty years, Esther Hamelin has built a reputation in the world of antiquarian photography that is unprecedented in its dignity. You have almost single-handedly put that reputation in the shadows. But only for the moment, Jacob. Only for the moment. Because Esther has already made her apologies to the appropriate persons. She has made her humble apologies, but she did not once place the blame on you, Jacob, but on herself.”
“Would you care to know what has occurred over the past six or so hours, Jacob?” Mrs. Hamelin said.
“I owe that much to you,” I said. “Of course.”
“As Mrs. Brevittmore has already informed you, I received telephone calls from the director of the auction house, Mr. Michael Wedgewood, and, less than an hour later, from Mr. Peter Zellistar, who is the rightful owner of the Salzmann photograph. Both were painful calls to receive. Very painful. These two men explained what they were able to explain—in some detail, mind you.
“Yet those two telephone calls, I should tell you, were not without sympathy and understanding of a very impressive sort. For one thing, Mr. Hans Frisch—yes, I know all about him—Mr. Hans Frisch had been in Mr. Zellistar’s employ for ages.
“In fact, the actual reason for the calls—the fact that Peter Zellistar paid twenty-two thousand pounds for the ownership of Tombeau des Rois de Juda—was scarcely mentioned. There would be no scandal allowed. No, each of these dignified men spent considerable time and effort to reassure me that our professional relationships, having the auction house in common, and therefore forged over many years, would remain completely intact. Still, I admit, I heard astonishment in their voices: ‘How could such a thing happen? How could you employ someone so given to such disgraceful behavior?’”
“The thing unspoken often settles most bitterly in the heart,” Mrs. Brevittmore added, chastising me harshly with that proverb, or whatever it was.
There was a long silence. Finally, Mrs. Brevittmore did clear the dishes, then repaired to her room. Mrs. Hamelin said, “Obviously, by what you said earlier, you’ve already informed Martha Crauchet of your actions. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“I can only imagine the difficulties there, now. From everything you’ve told me, she seems such a fine person.”
“I’ll have to ask the people living in my mother’s house to leave. I’ll have to give them notice. Which I’ll do first thing. I’ll move back in there.”
“That is entirely your business, Jacob. My business is to say to you how deep my disappointment is in you. And to also say, because it is true, that I will miss you. But you have to leave my employ.”
“I understand.”
“Well, perhaps you don’t yet fully, but will.”
I carried my suitcase out to the cottage and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. There was no way I could sleep. Impossible. At about three o’clock in the morning, I went back into the house and overheard Mrs. Brevittmore and Mrs. Hamelin talking in the kitchen.
“You simply had to look at it,” Mrs. Brevittmore said. “I knew you would.”
“How could I not?”
“It is a lovely thing to look at. I do confess it is a lovely thing to look at.”
“And yet all the damage it’s caused,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “Some permanent, I fear.”
A month later, I was enrolled in the library science program at Dalhousie University.
Library Science
My mother’s stalwart reputation in the library system didn’t hurt. I was able to get strong letters of recommendation from Jinx Faltenbourg and the other senior librarian at the Halifax Free Library, Margaret Plumly. What is more, Mrs. Hamelin, when I told her I was applying for the library science program, said, “I will write you a letter on my private letterhead. Of course, only if you want a letter from me. What happened in our professional relationship is over and done with. I can’t say, on a personal level, it is water entirely under the bridge. But I can guarantee that a letter from me on your behalf would betray absolutely no ambivalence. In fact, I would enthuse and enthuse. Let me know.”
In the end, I did request a letter from Esther Hamelin, though I never read it. I couldn’t tell if anyone in the academic office at Dalhousie knew about my mother’s fall from grace, but if they did, not a word was said about it. During my interview, the chair of the department, Dr. Deborah Margolin, said, “Well, part of your résumé is your childhood, really. Being around libraries so much. But, Mr. Rigolet, we do accept into our program people who didn’t have a single book in their house growing up. We look for many qualities. Yet certainly we are pleased to accept you into our program. I take it all of your paperwork is completed. Technicalities, I’m afraid.”
“Yes. I saw to that.”
“I did notice that your cover letter had a certain . . . shall we say anecdotal element to it. Not tangential, mind you. More . . . subjective. Which is fine.”
“Well, being raised by a librarian, I tend to think of the world of libraries with familiarity.”
“Indeed. But without my curiosity running amok, may I inquire? You see, it was quite interesting to read that you were actually born in the Halifax Free Library. And quite interesting you felt the need to include this fact. Oh, well, none of my business. Besides, I myself had rather an emergency situation with my firstborn son—almost gave birth to him right in the ambulance, as a ma
tter of fact. These things happen.”
“I might have edited the letter a little more closely. It was my first cover letter.”
“No, no, Mr. Rigolet, it’s all fine. We will look happily toward working with you. Then, of course, there is the other extracurricular detail. About the graffiti. Do you recall?”
“I don’t know why I included that, Dr. Margolin. My mistake.”
“It’s not that I need verification. It’s not that at all. It was just that—and I didn’t discuss this with the panel—that the drawing and caption you knew about, carved into the back of the old wooden card catalogue at the Halifax Free Library, is . . . unusual.”
“I can only again say thank you for accepting me into the program.”
I stood up to leave, and when I got to the door of Dr. Margolin’s office, she said, “However, I would like to see the back of that card catalogue. If you might possibly arrange that, Mr. Rigolet.”
I was not about to turn down a request from the chair of my new academic department. “We can go right now if you want. Do you have the time?”
She put on her coat and hat and followed me down the corridor, out to Gottingen Street. We walked the five blocks to the library. It was a beautiful day in Halifax. Jinx Faltenbourg was at the front desk and seemed pleased to see me. She immediately recognized Dr. Margolin, and they exchanged pleasantries in a formal sort of way. “How can we help you today, Dr. Margolin?” Jinx asked.
“Our new student, Mr. Rigolet—”
“I’ve known Jacob since he was five years old. This library was in effect his babysitter.”
“Well, Jacob has agreed to show me something he apparently discovered when he was a little older than that—what would you say, Jacob, you were twelve or thirteen?”
I could not quite meet her eye. “Fourteen.”
“Really, how interesting,” Jinx said. “Mind if I tag along?”
“The more the merrier,” Dr. Margolin said.
They both followed me into the part of the library containing the row of solid-oak card catalogues, with their drawers, metal handles, and alphabetized index cards. They were set against a wall. I went to the first catalogue on the left, and with a good deal of effort pulled it out far enough to be able to wedge myself a little between the cabinet and the wall, and then shouldered it at an angle so the back could be seen in its entirety. I was hoping the graffiti had miraculously been sanded away, but no such luck. I looked a quick moment at the etched drawing and caption: a naked woman was lying across a library table (it had a gooseneck lamp on it, the same sort of lamp as on my mother’s desk in her former office); a man, naked from the waist down, wearing a police uniform shirt, badge visible, was holding her legs over his shoulders and was about to enter the woman; he was noticeably erect, and I don’t mean his posture. Below the crudely etched desk was carved: Special hours in the library—after closing time ORE.
My Darling Detective Page 7