A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 11

As the freeway rose to cross the Santa Monica Mountains in the Sepulveda Pass, McCaleb saw the Getty rise in front of him on the hilltop. The structure of the museum itself was as impressive as any of the great artworks housed within. It looked like a castle sitting atop a medieval hill. He saw one of the double trams slowly working its way up the side of the hill, delivering another group to the altar of history and art.

By the time he parked at the bottom of the hill and caught his own tram ride up, McCaleb was fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Leigh Alasdair Scott. After getting directions from a museum guard, McCaleb hurried across the travertine stone plaza to a security entrance. Having checked in at the counter he waited on a bench until Scott came for him.

Scott was in his early fifties and spoke with an accent McCaleb placed as originating in either Australia or New Zealand. He was friendly and happy to oblige the L.A. County sheriff’s office.

“We have had occasion to offer our help and expertise to detectives in the past. Usually in regard to authenticating artwork or offering historical background to specific pieces,” he said as they walked down a long hallway to his office. “Detective Winston indicated this would be different. You need some general information on the Northern Renaissance?”

He opened a door and ushered McCaleb into a suite of offices. They stepped into the first office past the security counter. It was a small office with a view through a large window across the Sepulveda Pass to the hillside homes of Bel-Air. The office felt crowded because of the bookshelves lining two walls and the cluttered worktable. There was just room for two chairs. Scott pointed McCaleb to one while he took the other.

“Actually, things have changed a bit since Detective Winston spoke to you,” McCaleb said. “I can be more specific about what I need now. I’ve been able to narrow down my questions to a specific painter of that period. If you can tell me about him and maybe show me some of his work, that would be a big help.”

“And what is his name?”

“I’ll show it to you.”

McCaleb took out his folded notes and showed him. Scott read the name aloud with obvious familiarity. He pronounced the first name Her-ron-i-mus.

“I thought that was how you said it.”

“Rhymes with anonymous. His work is actually quite well known. You are not familiar with it?”

“No. I never did much studying of art. Does the museum have any of his paintings?”

“None of his works are in the Getty collection but there is a descendant piece in the conservation studio. It is undergoing heavy restoration. Most of his verified works are in Europe, the most significant representations in the Prado. Others scattered about. I am not the one you should be talking to, however.”

McCaleb raised his eyebrows in way of a question.

“Since you have narrowed your query to Bosch specifically, there is someone here you would be better advised to talk to. She is a curatorial assistant. She also happens to be working on a catalogue raisonné on Bosch – a rather long-term project for her. A labor of love, perhaps.”

“Is she here? Can I speak to her?”

Scott reached for his phone and pushed the speaker button. He then consulted an extensions list taped to the table next to it and punched in three digits. A woman answered after three rings.

“Lola Walter, can I help you?”

“Lola, it’s Mr. Scott. Is Penelope available?”

“She’s working on Hell this morning.”

“Oh, I see. We’ll go to her there.”

Scott hit the speaker button, disconnecting the call, and headed toward the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said.

“Hell?” McCaleb asked.

“It’s the descendant painting. If you’ll come with me please.”

Scott led the way to an elevator and they went down one floor. Along the way Scott explained that the museum had one of the finest conservation studios in the world. Consequently, works of art from other museums and private collections were often shipped to the Getty for repair and restoration. At the moment a painting believed to have come from a student of Bosch’s or a painter from his studio was being restored for a private collector. The painting was called Hell.

The conservation studio was a huge room partitioned into two main sections. One section was a workshop where frames were restored. The other section was dedicated to the restoration of paintings and was broken into a series of work bays that ran along a glass wall with the same views Scott had in his office.

McCaleb was led to the second bay, where there was a woman standing behind a man seated before a painting attached to a large easel. The man wore an apron over a dress shirt and tie and a pair of what looked like jeweler’s magnifying glasses. He was leaning toward the painting and using a paintbrush with a tiny brush head to apply what looked like silver paint to the surface.

Neither the man nor the woman looked at McCaleb and Scott. Scott held his hands up in a Hold here gesture while the seated man completed his paint stroke. McCaleb looked at the painting. It was about four feet high and six feet wide. It was a dark landscape depicting a village being burned to the ground in the night while its inhabitants were being tortured and executed by a variety of otherworldly creatures. The upper panels of the painting, primarily depicting the swirling night sky, were spotted with small patches of damage and missing paint. McCaleb’s eyes caught on one segment of the painting below this which depicted a nude and blindfolded man being forced up a ladder to a gallows by a group of birdlike creatures with spears.

The man with the brush completed his work and placed the brush on the glass top of the worktable to his left. He then leaned back toward the painting to study his work. Scott cleared his throat. Only the woman turned around.

“Penelope Fitzgerald, this is Detective McCaleb. He is involved in an investigation and needs to ask about Hieronymus Bosch.”

He gestured toward the painting.

“I told him you would be the most appropriate member of staff to speak with.”

McCaleb watched her eyes register surprise and concern, a normal response to a sudden introduction to the police. The seated man did not even turn around. This was not a normal response. Instead he picked up his brush and went back to work on the painting. McCaleb held his hand out to the woman.

“Actually, I’m not officially a detective. I’ve been asked by the sheriff’s department to help out with an investigation.”

They shook hands.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Has a Bosch painting been stolen?”

“No, nothing like that. This is a Bosch?”

He gestured toward the painting.

“Not quite. It may be a copy of one of his pieces. If so, then the original is lost and this is all we have. The style and design are his. But it’s generally agreed to be the work of a student from his workshop. It was probably painted after Bosch was dead.”

As she spoke her eyes never left the painting. They were sharp and friendly eyes that easily betrayed her passion for Bosch. He guessed that she was about sixty and had probably dedicated her life to the study and love of art. She had surprised him. Scott’s brief description of her as an assistant working on a catalog of Bosch’s work had made McCaleb think she would be a young art student. He silently chastised himself for making the assumption.

The seated man put his brush down again and picked up a clean white cloth off the worktable to wipe his hands. He swiveled in his chair and looked up when he noticed McCaleb and Scott. It was then that McCaleb knew he had made a second error of assumption. The man had not been ignoring them. He just hadn’t heard them.

The man flipped the magnifiers up to the top of his head while reaching beneath the apron to his chest and adjusted a hearing aid control.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know we had visitors.”

He spoke with a hard German accent.

“Dr. Derek Vosskuhler, this is Mr. McCaleb,” Scott said. “He’s an investigator and he needs to steal Mrs. Fitzgerald away from you for a short while.”

“I understand. This is fine.”

“Dr. Vosskuhler is one of our restoration experts,” Scott volunteered.

Vosskuhler nodded and looked up at McCaleb and studied him in the way he might study a painting. He made no move to extend his hand.

“An investigation? In regard to Hieronymus Bosch, is it?”

“In a peripheral way. I just want to learn what I can about him. I’m told Mrs. Fitzgerald is the expert.”

McCaleb smiled.

“No one is an expert on Bosch,” Vosskuhler said without a smile. “Tortured soul, tormented genius… how will we ever know what is truly in a man’s heart?”

McCaleb just nodded. Vosskuhler turned and appraised the painting.

“What do you see, Mr. McCaleb?”

McCaleb looked at the painting and didn’t answer for a long moment.

“A lot of pain.”

Vosskuhler nodded approvingly. Then he stood and looked closely at the painting, flipping the glasses down and leaning close to the upper quarter panel, his lenses just inches from the night sky above the burning village.

“Bosch knew all of the demons,” he said without turning from the painting. “The darkness…”

A long moment went by.

“A darkness more than night.”

There was another long moment of silence until Scott abruptly punctuated it by saying he needed to get back to his office. He left then. And after another moment Vosskuhler finally turned from the painting. He didn’t bother flipping up the glasses when he looked at McCaleb. He slowly reached into his apron and switched off sound to his ears.

“I, too, must go back to work. Good luck with your investigation, Mr. McCaleb.”

McCaleb nodded as Vosskuhler sat back in his swivel chair and picked up his tiny brush again.

“We can go to my office,” Fitzgerald said. “I have all the plate books from our library there. I can show you Bosch’s work.”

“That would be fine. Thank you.”

She headed toward the door. McCaleb delayed a moment and took one last look at the painting. His eyes were drawn to the upper panels, toward the swirling darkness above the flames.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s office was a six-by-six pod in a room shared by several curatorial assistants. She pulled a chair into the tight space from a nearby pod where no one was working and told McCaleb to sit down. Her desk was L -shaped, with a laptop computer set up on the left side and a cluttered work space on the right. There were several books stacked on the desk. McCaleb noticed that behind one stack was a color print of a painting very much in the same style as the painting Vosskuhler was working on. He pushed the books a half foot to the side and bent down to look at the print. It was in three panels, the largest being the centerpiece. Again it was a ramble. Dozens and dozens of figures spread across the panels. Scenes of debauchery and torture.

“Do you recognize it?” Fitzgerald said.

“I don’t think so. But it’s Bosch, right?”

“His signature piece. The triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s in the Prado in Madrid. I once stood in front of it for four hours. It wasn’t enough time to take it all in. Would you like some coffee or some water or anything, Mr. McCaleb?”

“No, I’m fine. Thank you. You can call me Terry if you want.”

“And you can call me Nep.”

McCaleb put a quizzical look on his face.

“Childhood nickname.”

He nodded.

“Now,” she said. “In these books I can show you every piece of Bosch’s identified work. Is it an important investigation?”

McCaleb nodded.

“I think so. It’s a homicide.”

“And you are some kind of consultant?”

“I used to work for the FBI here in L.A. The sheriff’s detective assigned to the case asked me to look at it and see what I think. It led me here. To Bosch. I am sorry but I can’t get into the details of the case and I know that will probably be frustrating to you. I want to ask questions but I can’t really answer any from you.”

“Darn.” She smiled. “It sounds really interesting.”

“Tell you what, if there is ever a point I can tell you about it, I will.”

“Fair enough.”

McCaleb nodded.

“From what Dr. Vosskuhler said, I take it that there isn’t a lot known about the man behind the paintings.”

Fitzgerald nodded.

“Hieronymus Bosch is certainly considered an enigma and he probably always will be.”

McCaleb unfolded his notepaper on the table in front of him and started taking notes as she spoke.

“He had one of the most unconventional imaginations of his time. Or any time for that matter. His work is quite extraordinary and still subject these five centuries later to restudy and reinterpretation. However, I think you will find that the majority of the critical analysis to date holds that he was a doomsayer. His work is informed with the portents of doom and hellfire, of warnings of the wages of sin. To put it more succinctly, his paintings primarily carried variations on the same theme: that the folly of humankind leads us all to hell as our ultimate destiny.”

McCaleb was writing quickly, trying to keep up. He wished he had brought a tape recorder.

“Nice guy, huh?” Fitzgerald said.

“Sounds like it.” He nodded to the print of the triptych. “Must’ve been fun on a Saturday night.”

She smiled.

“Exactly what I thought when I was in the Prado.”

“Any redeeming qualities? He took in orphans, was nice to dogs, changed flat tires for old ladies, anything?”

“You have to remember his time and place to fully understand what he was doing with his art. While his work is punctuated with violent scenes and depictions of torture and anguish, this was a time when those sorts of things were not unusual. He lived in a violent time; his work clearly reflects that. The paintings also reflect the medieval belief in the existence of demons everywhere. Evil lurks in all of the paintings.”

“The owl?”

She stared blankly at him for a moment.

“Yes, the owl is one symbol he used. I thought you said you were unfamiliar with his work.”

“I am unfamiliar with it. It was an owl that brought me here. But I shouldn’t go into that and I shouldn’t have interrupted you. Please go on.”

“I was just going to add that it is telling when you consider that Bosch was a contemporary of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Yet if you were to look at their works side by side you would have to believe Bosch – with all the medieval symbols and doom – was a century behind.”

“But he wasn’t.”

She shook her head as though she felt sorry for Bosch.

“He and Leonardo da Vinci were born within a year or two of each other. By the end of the fifteenth century, da Vinci was creating pieces that were full of hope and celebration of human values and spirituality while Bosch was all gloom and doom.”

“That makes you feel sad, doesn’t it?”

She put her hands on the top book in the stack but didn’t open it. It was simply labeled BOSCH on the spine and there was no illustration on the black leather binding.

“I can’t help but think about what could have been if Bosch had worked side by side with da Vinci or Michelangelo, what could have happened if he had used his skill and imagination in celebration rather than damnation of the world.”

She looked down at the book and then back up at him.

“But that is the beauty of art and why we study and celebrate it. Each painting is a window to the artist’s soul and imagination. No matter how dark and disturbing, his vision is what sets him apart and makes his paintings unique. What happens to me with Bosch is that the paintings serve to carry me into the artist’s soul and I sense the torment.”

He nodded and she looked down and opened the book.

The world of Hieronymus Bosch was as striking to McCaleb as it was disturbing. The landscapes of misery that unfolded in the pages Penelope Fitzgerald turned were not unlike some of the most horrible crime scenes he had witnessed, but in these painted scenes the players were still alive and in pain. The gnashing of teeth and the ripping of flesh were active and real. His canvases were crowded with the damned, humans being tormented for their sins by visible demons and creatures given image by the hand of a horrible imagination.

At first he studied the color reproductions of the paintings in silence, taking it all in the way he would first observe a crime scene photograph. But then a page was turned and he looked at a painting that depicted three people gathered around a sitting man. One of those standing used what looked like a primitive scalpel to probe a wound on the crown of the sitting man’s head. The image was depicted in a circle. There were words painted above and below the circle.

“What is this one?” he asked.

“It’s called The Stone Operation,” Fitzgerald said. “It was a common belief at the time that stupidity and deceit could be cured by the removal of a stone from the head of the one suffering the malady.”

McCaleb leaned over her shoulder and looked closely at the painting, specifically at the location of the surgery wound. It was in a location comparable to the wound on Edward Gunn’s head.

“Okay, you can go on.”

Owls were everywhere. Fitzgerald did not have to point them out most of the time, their positions were that obvious. She did explain some of the attendant imagery. Most often in the paintings when the owl was depicted in a tree, the branch upon which the symbol of evil perched was leafless and gray – dead.

She turned the page to a three-panel painting.

“This is called The Last Judgment, with the left panel subtitled The Fall of Mankind and the right panel simply and obviously called Hell.”

“He liked painting hell.”

But Nep Fitzgerald didn’t smile. Her eyes studied the book.

The left panel of the painting was a Garden of Eden scene with Adam and Eve at center taking the fruit from the serpent in the apple tree. On a dead branch of a nearby tree an owl watched the transaction. On the opposite panel Hell was depicted as a dark place where birdlike creatures disemboweled the damned, cut their bodies up and placed them in frying pans to be slid into fiery ovens.

“All of this came from this guy’s head,” McCaleb said. “I don’t…”

He didn’t finish because he was unsure what he was trying to say.

“A tormented soul,” Fitzgerald said and turned the page.

The next painting was another circular image with seven separate scenes depicted along the outer rim and a portrait of God at center. In a circle of gold surrounding the portrait of God and separating him from the other scenes were four Latin words McCaleb immediately recognized.

“Beware, beware, God sees.”

Fitzgerald looked up at him.

“You obviously have seen this before. Or you just happen to know fifteenth-century Latin. This must be one strange case you are working on.”

“It’s getting that way. But I only know the words, not the painting. What is it?”

“It’s actually a tabletop, probably created for a church rectory or a holy person’s house. It’s the eye of God. He is at center and what he sees as he looks down are these images, the seven deadly sins.”

McCaleb nodded. By looking at the distinct scenes he could pick out some of the more obvious of the sins: gluttony, lust and pride.

“And now his masterpiece,” his tour guide said as she turned the page.

She came to the same triptych she had pinned to the wall of the pod. The Garden of Earthly Delights. McCaleb studied it closely now. The left panel was a bucolic scene of Adam and Eve being placed in the garden by the creator. An apple tree stood nearby. The center panel, the largest, showed dozens of nudes coupling and dancing in uninhibited lust, riding horses and beautiful birds and wholly imagined creatures from the lake in the foreground. And then the last panel, the dark one, was the payoff. Hell, a place of torment and anguish administered by monster birds and other ugly creatures. The painting was so detailed and enthralling that McCaleb understood how someone might stand before it – the original – for four hours and still not see everything.

“I am sure you are grasping the ideas of Bosch’s often repeated themes by now,” Fitzgerald said. “But this is considered the most coherent of his works as well as the most beautifully imagined and realized.”

McCaleb nodded and pointed to the three panels as he spoke.

“You have Adam and Eve here, the good life until they eat that apple. Then in the center you have what happens after the fall from grace: life without rules. Freedom of choice leads to lust and sin. And where does all of this go? Hell.”

“Very good. And if I could just point out a few specifics that might interest you.”

“Please.”

She started with the first panel.

“The earthly paradise. You are correct in that it depicts Adam and Eve before the fall. This pool and fountain at center represent the promise of eternal life. You already noted the fruit tree at left center.”

Her finger moved across the plate to the fountain structure, a tower of what looked like flower petals that somehow delivered water in four distinct trickles to the pool below. Then he saw it. Her finger stopped below a small dark entrance at the center of the fountain structure. The face of an owl peered from the darkness.

“You mentioned the owl before. Its image is here. You see all is not right in this paradise. Evil lurks and, as we know, will ultimately win the day. According to Bosch. Then, going to the next panel we see the imagery again and again.”

She pointed out two distinct representations of owls and two other depictions of owl-like creatures. McCaleb’s eyes held on one of the images. It showed a large brown owl with shiny black eyes being embraced by a nude man. The owl’s coloring and eyes matched that of the plastic bird found in Edward Gunn’s apartment.

“Do you see something, Terry?”

He pointed to the owl.

“This one. I can’t really go into it with you but this one, it matches up with the reason I am here.”

“A lot of symbols are at work in this panel. That is one of the obvious ones. After the fall, man’s freedom of choice leads him to debauchery, gluttony, folly and avarice, the worst sin of all in Bosch’s world being lust. Man wraps his arms around the owl; he embraces evil.”

McCaleb nodded.

“And then he pays for it.”

“Then he pays for it. As you notice in the last panel, this is a depiction of hell without fire. Rather, it is a place of myriad torments and endless pain. Of darkness.”

McCaleb stared silently for a long time, his eyes moving across the landscape of the painting. He remembered what Dr. Vosskuhler had said.

A darkness more than night.