The Corpse with the Garnet Face Read online

  Bud answered brightly. “That’s the hope. Jonas left each person a portrait, and another piece. We’re to give them to the living relatives if the original member is deceased.”

  Els frowned. “Deceased? You speak like the police.” Her tone was suddenly guarded.

  “I was the police, for many years, in Canada,” explained Bud.

  “It is good that my father did not know that. He does not trust the police.”

  I saw Bud straighten his shoulders a little. I knew what was coming. Quietly, but firmly, he said, “All we do is keep the peace, and make sure justice is served. Society needs policing, to allow the honest to live the best lives they can.”

  Willem’s daughter’s expression softened. “I apologize. My father is an old man. His experience with the police has not always been happy—accused of unfair things in his life—and it disrupted our family many times.”

  Curious, I had to ask, “What happened?”

  “We live in a city of art where many robberies have taken place over the years,” replied Els with a shrug, “often with the art being recovered right away because the thieves are so stupid. There have also been many dishonest artists living and working here. They paint bad fakes, then try to sell them to unsuspecting tourists. You see it in the flea markets all the time. It’s foolish, but they do it. People can be so greedy—they want to believe they have found a great bargain, bought an Old Master for a song. They only have themselves to blame. These dishonest artists needed supplies, and my father sold supplies. You cannot interrogate everyone who wants a few tubes of ochre and umber. The police did not, and still do not, see things this way.”

  The business manager in her awakening, Els spotted a couple in plaid shorts and brilliantly white running shoes peering into the front window. I could tell by her body language she sensed potential customers, probably for the prints that hung above the art supplies on display. “Do you need to leave now?” she asked rather pointedly.

  Bud took the hint. “Yes, we should. We have a busy day ahead of us. But before we go, briefly, do you recognize this man, by any chance?” I picked up on what he meant and thrust one of the photographs of the unknown man I’d brought from Jonas’s house in front of her.

  Weenix’s daughter gave the photo a moment’s attention then shook her head. “I might say he could look familiar. Possibly a customer, once? It’s not someone I know. Is it important?”

  “Probably not.” I could tell she was getting anxious about allowing potential customers to escape her sales pitch.

  Bud seemed to sense the same thing and chimed in with, “Please say goodbye to your father for us. It was a pleasure to meet my late uncle’s best friend. We wish him and your family good health, right, Cait?”

  “Absolutely,” I said mechanically as I observed the couple beyond the window having a serious discussion about a large, unframed print on canvas of the original Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. “Thanks so much. I hope you share your father’s passion for art. This seems to be a successful business you have here.”

  “It is, and I hope it will continue. The Americans are coming back to Europe now, and we have all the museums open again. Business is getting better.” Els walked toward the door and opened it to allow us through. “Thank you for bringing the pieces. They mean a great deal to my father,” she said, smiling at us; then, with exactly the same smile, she turned her attention to the couple outside and said smoothly, “It’s an excellent price for a superior print. We can ship to anywhere in the world, if you like.” Bud and I walked out onto the street glad to be free of our burdens, and left her to work on her marks.

  “Back to Jonas’s house to pick up the next lot, right?” said Bud, striding out as best he could. “It’s getting pretty warm already. Could be a long, hot day.”

  I wished I’d packed a water bottle in my handbag, then thought better of that idea and said, “Quick beer at the bar at the end of Jonas’s street before we get going?”

  Bud looked at his watch. “It’s already almost eleven.” I adopted my cute, smiley face. He relented. “I guess a quick one wouldn’t hurt. Maybe they’ll have air conditioning. That store was so stuffy; I don’t think I could cope with the smell of the oil paint around me all the time. It must get into every fiber of your clothes.”

  “Of your being, I’d have thought,” I replied, then we picked up the pace heading for the hostelry I’d suggested, which I happened to know was called Koenig’s Bar. I visualized an ice-cold bottle in my hand and felt less sweaty by the minute, though the reality was a little different.

  The Solitary Drinker

  THE BAR WAS DIMLY LIT. I suspected it was for the best, because the wooden backs of the seats felt greasy to the touch, and the place smelled stale. The barman looked about twelve years old, and showed no interest in us at all when we walked in. We perched on the sticky stools and waited until he decided to acknowledge our presence.

  “Two Amstels, please,” said Bud, smiling. Nudging me, he added, “See? I changed it up.”

  The youthful server dragged two bottles from a chiller behind him, snapping off the tops with an experienced hand and placing them in front of us with one deft motion. He might not have looked old enough to drink, but he’d clearly opened his fair share of beer bottles. Rather than speaking, he picked up a glass rather half-heartedly, and gestured toward me with it. I shook my head, grabbed my bottle and took a deep swig. It was the best-tasting beer ever. The bottle was half empty before I realized it. I put it down and waited while Bud caught up with me.

  “Hey! Hey you,” a woman’s gravelly voice called from the shadows. “You’re them, in’t ya?”

  I peered into the corner, but all I could make out was a slightly darker patch within the dimness. It stood and moved toward us, becoming a woman with broad features and hips and, surprisingly, a thick Irish brogue. “You were at Jonas’s house. I’m right, aren’t I?” The woman was making a statement, not asking a question.

  My mind whirred. “Are you Jonas’s tenant, Hannah?”

  Alarmingly, the woman spat on her hand, wiped it on her hip, then extended it toward me. “Aye. Hannah Schmidt, that’s me. And you’re who, exactly?”

  Realizing she was the curtain-twitcher I’d spotted the previous day—Menno had mentioned only one tenant—I explained who we were.

  “Aye. Looked right at me yesterday, you did. So—are you going to sell?”

  She went right to it, and—for some reason—she asked me, not Bud. “I don’t think Bud’s decided yet, have you?” I said, being as noncommittal as possible.

  “Haven’t made up my mind,” he confirmed, eyeing the woman up and down.

  She reminded me of one of Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters: rough, gnarled features, crumpled, sack-like clothing in beiges and browns tied tightly around her middle, and a scarf knotted at her throat. Her voice could have etched glass. In his letter, Jonas had said she’d lived a difficult life. I wondered how much of that was of her own choosing, because I judged her to be a woman who lived life very much on her own terms.

  “I found him, you know,” Hannah leaned in as though confiding in us. “Terrible shock it was for me. Feared for my own heart, but I got the cops and so forth to come to look after him. Been under the same roof as a dead body for days, I had. No one even took me pulse.”

  “Would you at least let us buy you a drink so you can tell us all about it?” I asked.

  Her face lit up. “That’d be grand, t’anks.” I jumped when she called across the bar in a shout that was all but a cackle, “Large Jameson’s, straight,” then began to move back to the table where she’d been sitting upon our arrival.

  I picked up my bottle, then told Bud with my eyes that he should bring the other drinks and join us at the table. I was hopeful Hannah might be ready to talk—and I wasn’t wrong.

  Raising her drink to the cei
ling, she pronounced, “To Jonas: may he rest in peace,” then gleefully glugged about half the dark amber liquid, and proceeded to nurse the heavy bottomed glass in stubby-fingered hands. They were so red, raw, and chapped, they looked painful.

  “He was a good man. A bit weird, though, don’t you know. All them artist types are the same, I suppose. A bit off-kilter. Always out and about at night, he was. Did you know he did walking tours and what-not for the last ten years or so? Kept himself going just grand, he did.”

  Bud and I nodded. “Menno van der Hoeven, my uncle’s lawyer, told us,” replied Bud.

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “And he’s an odd duck too, to be sure. Poking about in Jonas’s place at all hours he was, after the poor man left us.”

  I felt I had to be sure what she meant. “You mean Menno has visited the house since Jonas died?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” snapped Hannah. “Came over three—no, four times, he did. Didn’t talk to me at all, did he? No. Ignoring me, he is. He’s one of them miserable Dutch, not one of the happy ones.”

  “You think there are different types of Dutch people?” I asked.

  Hannah leaned in again. “Right enough. Tall ones and short ones, of course—only the Good Lord knows why he planned it that way—and then there’s the miserable, bossy, nit-picking ones, and the happy-go-lucky, laughing-all-the-time ones. Like I say, the Lord must have had a plan for them all, but it’s not for us to know.”

  I couldn’t work out why Menno hadn’t mentioned to us that he’d been to Jonas’s place.

  “And here’s another t’ing, now. Why was Jonas all a-twitter just before he went and fell down them stairs?” said Hannah, sipping her whiskey.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Cleared out a lot of stuff from his place, he did. Up and down them stairs at all hours for months, he was. Always carrying big lumps of things. Not paintings—I’d seen him do that often enough. Big lumpy sacks they usually was. Then a couple of old chairs. Don’t know how he managed it. Stupidest things in the world, Dutch stairs. Too steep and narrow for anyone to cope. I’m glad I only have the one lot in my place. And as for where it all went? Who knows? Never even had a bike, your uncle. He was a walker.”

  “Have you been in Amsterdam long? I notice your accent,” said Bud, sipping his drink.

  “Not going to lose it, am I? Like you, right?” She jutted her chin toward me. “Welsh?”

  “Swansea, originally. Do you know it?”

  “Sure I do. They have the ferry from there to Ireland. When d’you leave?”

  “I moved to Canada over a decade ago and I’ve been there ever since. Menno suggested you’d lived in Jonas’s house for many years, is that right?”

  “Fifty years, near enough. Came here as no more than a girl in 1964, and moved in the next year. I was eighteen when I came to Amsterdam. Pretty as a picture back then. But a rebel. Always was. Met a boy back home, got meself pregnant, ran away. I wasn’t going to be locked up in one of them God-awful places full of bitter old nuns and have them take me child away from me. Amsterdam was a place for rebels back then. Full of them. Even the Beatles came here that year. Oh, loved that Paul, I did. Don’t you t’ink he’s aged well?”

  Desperate to get Hannah back on track, I said, “How did you find Jonas’s body? Do you have a key for the front door to his home? We’ve seen how you and Jonas each had a separate entrance to the place.”

  Hannah shook her head. “No key for his part. He was the landlord, I’m the tenant. But I knew something was up, and I was right there when the police came. I saw him first.”

  “How did you know something was amiss, Hannah?” asked Bud.

  The woman gave the matter some thought. “It was the noise. There wasn’t any. Jonas wasn’t light on his feet, and the noise comes through to my bedroom from his living room. He was up and about at all hours. Told him about it, I did, too many times to count over the years. Of course he worked shifts for most of his life, so he was always ‘irregular’ in that sense. Then, when he was painting, not working, he said it was for the light. Pain in the proverbial for me, him clomping about up there at all hours. Then it was quiet for a few days and I knew he hadn’t gone away. Always told me when he went away. Not normal, so it weren’t. That’s when I knocked and knocked, but got no answer. When I was knocking at his door I noticed the smell. Terrible bad, it was, so I phoned the police. Not what I wanted, having them around the place, but I couldn’t break the door down meself, could I?”

  We all allowed a few moments of silence to pass.

  In an effort to find out more about the woman, I finally said, “I see you married.” I gestured toward her wedding ring.

  Smiling down at the narrow band of gold, she let out a mighty, joyous laugh that echoed in the still-empty bar. “For five minutes,” she said, then winked. “Never could pick the good ’uns, me. I’d lost the baby, decided to go back to the Old Country, then fell for one of Jonas’s friends, Bernard de Klerk.” She stared back across the years. “Good-looking boy. Even more rebellious than me, though. We gave it a go, but it didn’t work out. We weren’t married in church after the civil ceremony, so I didn’t mind gettin’ divorced. I know they say once a Cat’lic, always a Cat’lic, but a girl’s got to be sensible about this stuff. I never took this off, though. I t’ink of him still. Sometimes.”

  “Bernard remarried, I understand,” said Bud gently. Hannah shrugged. “I spoke to his wife on the telephone last evening. We’re visiting him tomorrow. Jonas left some items for him, and for all his friends. There’s an offer for you to come into his studio and pick out whatever you’d like from his collection of works, and there’s a portrait of you too, for you to keep. He was a gifted artist—there are some lovely pieces.”

  I wondered if Bud had Hannah pegged for a “vase of flowers” type, as I did. Still life studies didn’t seem to have been something Jonas had tackled often, though I’d spotted a couple of canvases in the early Dutch style featuring fruit, glassware, and even insects that I suspected might appeal to the woman.

  She shook her head. “He was always too figurative for my taste. I prefer abstract.” My surprise must have shown, because she added, “Love me some Jackson Pollock, I do,” and grinned wickedly.

  “In that case, you might not be keen on your portrait, which is in the style of Van Gogh, but you might like some of his other pieces,” said Bud.

  The woman didn’t look convinced as she sipped her drink thoughtfully.

  “Were you close?” I asked. “Fifty years is a long time to share a house.”

  Hannah contemplated the tiny drop of whisky left in her glass. “We shared nothing, just some nights when we’d talk. He’d come to my door with a bottle, and I’d invite him in. Maybe a few times a year, that’s all. August, when it was hot; about this time. November, when it was biting outside, and you’d be afraid your fingers would drop off. End of January when everyone is unhappy.”

  “My mom’s birthday is next week,” said Bud. “Perhaps he would drink with you when he thought of his sister?”

  “Never talked about family, only art. It was how we met, and how I met Bernard.”

  Bud and I waited, hoping she’d be more illuminating. When it was clear that she wasn’t offering any more insight, I said, “Hey, I’ve finished my beer. Fancy another drink before we leave?” Hannah’s reaction was predictably positive, so Bud left to get another round of drinks. I pressed on with, “So how exactly did you meet Jonas?”

  Hannah preened a little—a disquieting sight. “Like I said, I was quite a looker back then, and I did a bit of modeling on the side. I heard about this group of artists who wanted someone for a series of life studies, and that’s when I met them all. The Group of Seven, they was. Funny lot. None of them professionals, like, just painting for fun. Jonas was good. Everyone said he could have made a liv
ing at it. All he wanted to do was moon over the stuff in the galleries he worked in. Like a kid, he was. Passionate about the art he loved, but I t’ink he missed a lot of the good stuff because he wore them blinkers. Maybe age made them more transparent and he saw past them to a wider range of works. He never said. Sat for them for months, I did, off and on. Not much money, but good company. I’d fallen for Bernard, so I’d have done the modeling for free, to be with him.”

  “We just met Willem Weenix,” I said. “He seemed like a good, steady type.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Might look that way now, didn’t back then. A chancer, he was. Did he tell you how he got started with that shop of his?” I lied and shook my head. “No, he wouldn’t. Not the real story, anyways, though I expect he’s got one off pat for the tourists. Stole stuff he did, to order, for all his painter friends. Sweet-talked a girl who could get him into some warehouse outside the city where he could get pretty much anything people wanted. Not easy back in the fifties, I shouldn’t think. By the time I turned up he’d got that shop set up, and he’s gone from strength to strength ever since, so he has.”

  “A lot of entrepreneurs got started in a bit of a dodgy way,” I said, hoping for more from Hannah.

  “To be sure they have, and many a lot worse than lifting a few rolls of canvas and some tubes of oils. All of them Group people were a bit…off. Know what I mean?” I shook my head. “Willem had the sticky fingers—and all of them happy to buy what they knew to be stolen goods, of course. Bernard was good-looking, clever, and had a way with him—but he was a user. People, not drugs—though there was sure a lot of them about the place too. By the time I found out, I’d married him and it was too late to do anything about it, except get divorced. I reckon he was glad to be rid of me for what I bet was the next girl what came along. Then another after that. And another, no doubt. Kept out of me way for a good long time, he did. Then I heard he finally settled for one with money and a good family business, which he joined. Became a draftsman at an architects’ company, he did. Retired now, if he’s lucky. Pieter van Boxtel? An accountant by day, a hard-drinking, lascivious, so-called artist by night.” Hannah’s face clouded. “I didn’t like him. Too wild, even for me. Johannes Akker was nice. Reddish hair, plump, steady. Back then he worked in the…what was it? Something to do with transport—anyway, he ended up working on the planning and building of the metro. It opened in ’77. Princess Beatrix did it, before she was Queen. Very nice do, it was. We all attended. I suppose Johannes must have been important by then. Did you know she went to school in Canada, did Beatrix, during the war, and that our Princess Margriet was born in your Ottawa?”