“It’s terrible, all right. Sounds like New York. Was it a robbery? You know,” I said, waving a fork at him, pontificating my way through — had I known it — my last carefree moment, “the way to cut down on this sort of thing is to get rid of the fences. As I understand it, you can place your order for your favorite brand of TV or a yellow Toyota and they’ll pick it up for you in twenty-four hours.”
“This wasn’t a TV,” said Piet. “They think a picture was stolen.” I put my fork down. “A painting?”
“Yes. I think they said it was an oil painting. This fellow’s body was found by a woman who comes late in the afternoon to cook his dinner and tidy up. It seems he was an art dealer. She had seen him working on a painting — touching up the frame, she thinks, or putting varnish on. Is that possible?”
“Yes.”
“Well, whatever it was, she noticed him working on it yesterday afternoon. Nothing of great value, she says — a picture with a cow in it, ordinary stuff. But this woman says that today it’s not there.”
“Maybe he sold it.”
“That could be. Or maybe some hoodlums who broke in looking for a color TV took the painting instead. God knows! In any case, the fellow was shot and he’s dead. It’s a terrible world when you’re not safe in your own house.”
“Where did this happen?”
“It was out along one of those roads in the direction of Ihmuiden. I’ll tell you the truth, I never cared for the area myself. It’s desolate. But people live there. There’s no accounting for tastes.”
I pushed my plate away.
“You’re not hungry?”
I shook my head. “I had a late lunch.”
“Oh.”
“Did the radio say anything else?”
“About the killing? Oh yes, it was full of it. Let’s see. An old lady who lives down the road, closer in to the city, told the police she saw a little blue car going down the road in the afternoon. She thinks it must have come from the dead man’s house since no one lives beyond. A blue station wagon. Don’t ask me how she saw it. Maybe she has a telescope. Wonderful witnesses, old men and women. They sit all day in their parlor windows and witness.” He made a wry face; the clear blue eyes caught mine for a moment with a look of amusement. “That’s how we’ll end our days, old friend. Witnesses.”
“I wonder—”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. As you say, hoodlums out for a lark. Or a killing. Well. Have you finished?”
“Oh, yes.” Piet patted his stomach. “No dessert. I promised Maia to take off five pounds. It’s the only birthday present she wants. I’d rather give her a diamond necklace.” He pushed back his chair. “Will I see you at the plant tomorrow morning?”
“I doubt it. Not this trip. I have business to do at the bank and then I’m due back in New York.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “All right. Let’s go.” He walked out with me to the cobbled road beside the canal and stood talking odds and ends of business, leaning with one arm braced against the hood of the car. Suddenly he paused, smiled, and said, “Aha! Here’s a little blue station wagon right under my elbow! You didn’t drive to Ihmuiden today, yourself?”
I smiled too. “Damned if I can remember. You’d better watch your fingerprints.”
When he had covered a dozen yards in the direction of his own car he looked back and called to me, “Gerrit something. Do you know the name?”
I shook my head.
The painting seemed to be what it seemed to be. I examined it, my door locked, blinds drawn, for a quarter of an hour, tilting it this way and that, running my fingers over the surface. I remembered Gerrit Till’s wiry body crouched down in front of the painting, his voice saying something about the cow and summer afternoons. Dead. I frowned at the painting. No one would have killed for it. I reminded myself that no one had. The proof of that was here in my hands. I had the painting, and I had paid for it fair and square. And yet, an odd-chance break-in? I didn’t believe it. The police didn’t believe it, either. They were looking for a blue station wagon.
I covered the picture with a blanket, stepped out into the hallway, and shouted up the unlit staircase. After a moment a light went on and Mevrouw Hendrix appeared on the landing above. She was clutching an old bathrobe, a man’s robe, about her. She looked apprehensive, a little absurd, and very pretty. “What’s wrong?” she asked me.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry to disturb you. Do you have a flashlight?”
“Has your electric gone off?”
“Nothing like that. I just want to look at something.”
“I’ll get it for you.” She came down the stairs, crowded past me in the narrow hallway. I allowed myself to observe all those attributes to which in her case I normally closed my eyes — the fine-grained skin, the silky hair now falling over her shoulders, the desirable figure. I reminded myself that this was no time to abrogate, as they say at The Hague, my nonintervention policy. I heard her rattling things in the little pantry behind the stairs and then she was back with a square plastic flashlight which she put into my hands. After a considering glance which met my eyes, she climbed the stairs.
I waved the flashlight at her. “I’ll bring this up to you later.”
“No, thank you. When you are finished using it, put it on the stairs. I’ll pick it up in the morning.”
“But—”
“We have a perfect relationship,” she said firmly. “Let’s not tinker with it. We meet, we talk about the weather, we will go on that way.”
“Tina—”
She closed the door.
The flashlight revealed what ordinary lamplight had failed to disclose, minute elevations and depressions in the clear blue patches of sky. It was the only anomaly I could find. The brushwork in the area should have been smooth, and it was, but something lay underneath. Gerrit would have been wiser to fill the sky with storm clouds — the busy brushwork would have concealed the brushstrokes underneath. But then, of course, the cow’s afternoon would have been spoiled.
I spent a restless night, pacing through the little rooms, gazing alternately across the dark salt meadows at the back and out into the street, where foot traffic, none of it sober, went on through the night. I kept my windows locked, carried the steel-tipped roller of a window shade for a weapon, and knew myself for a fool. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that Gerrit Till’s death was connected with the painting, that Max and Anna had sent me there to avoid danger to themselves, and that the painting now resting under my mattress was a national treasure. I felt a strong urge to get rid of it — to dump it in the nearest canal — and the nearest canal wasn’t far. But I can’t drown a kitten and I can’t drown a painting. Art lives.
Near dawn I dozed off in the armchair in the bay window, and when I awoke — don’t ask me how the mind works — I knew the name of the man who had walked quickly and furtively out of Max’s doorway. We have all seen his picture in the papers. Ambrose Voyt — multimillionaire, art collector, a man of unknown origins and manifest destiny.
Ambrose Voyt, it is said, buys nothing worth less than half a million. I looked at the time. It was half past five, and the house-fronts opposite were pink in the early light. I got to my feet, made myself a cup of coffee, drank it, tore the paper backing off the picture, studied it, killed time till the stores opened, went out, returned the car, wasn’t arrested, came back on foot with packages, and said goodbye to the cow.
“Thank God you’re back,” said Max. “You are back, aren’t you? Where are you calling from?”
“I’m back.”
“I expected to see you two days ago. What happened?”