The Vanished

CHAPTER TWELVE

Blumenstrasse was a little cobblestoned street in a semi-residential area a few blocks from the Bayerischer Hof, and number fifteen was a dust-colored building with intricate wood-studding from sidewalk to peaked roof. A rounded arch gave on a short vestibule, and above the arc was a small sign lettered in pale blue: Galerie der Expressionisten.

I parked the Volkswagen across the narrow street and sat looking over there for a time. It was a few minutes past ten, and rain fell in a light, steady drizzle; but the sky to the west was ominous, the color of a dusty school blackboard, pregnant with heavy water. I felt cold and irritable. I still had the cough and the constriction in my chest, but I kept trying to convince myself they were psychosomatic; hadn’t the damned headache dissolved sometime during the night?

I pulled up the collar on my overcoat and got out and crossed the cobblestones. In the vestibule beyond the arch, a wood-and-glass-paned door let me into a small room with a parqueted wood floor, brightly lighted by ceiling fluorescents; a mellifluous bell above the door announced my entry. Directly across from me was another arch, with maroon curtains swept and tied like portieres at each jamb; beyond, there was another room, identical to the one in which I now stood.

The white-painted walls of both were filled with dozens of squares and rectangles and oblongs of various dimensions, some alive in vivid color, some brooding darkly-things imitative of Renoir and Monet and Degas; of German impressionists Kirchner, Beckmann, Nolde; of Surrealists such as Dali and Miró. There were also several new ideas and styles that defied categorizing, and no landscapes or seascapes or conventional portraiture. All of it was oil, and all of it original, and all of it-the good, the bad, and the ugly-done by amateurs or unrecognized professionals.

I was looking at a pyrotechnic study in diverse shades of blue, which had both a name and a meaning I did not understand, when a slender, distinguished-looking little man in a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard came through the curtained arch. He wore a dark suit and a multihued tie that might have been painted by one of the artists represented on the gallery walls; his eyes and his carefully brushed hair were the same slate-gray color.

‘Guten Morgen,’ he said, and smiled.

‘Guten Morgen,’ I answered. ‘Are you Herr Ackermann?’

‘Herr Norbert Ackermann, at your service,’ he said in precise British-accented English. ‘You are an American?’

‘Yes.’ I introduced myself, and then I said, ‘A couple of days ago you received a telephone call from a woman named Elaine Kavanaugh-from San Francisco. She asked you about a man named Roy Sands, and about a portrait of him.’

The smile chameleoned into a slight frown. ‘Yes?’

‘I represent Miss Kavanaugh,’ I told him. ‘I’m investigating the disappearance of her fiancé.’

Herr Ackermann’s frown deepened. ‘Surely you cannot think I know anything about this disappearance…’

‘No, of course not. But Sands did have the name of the Galerie der Expressionisten, and the portrait, as I’m sure Miss Kavanaugh mentioned, was stolen from my apartment. We thought there might be a connection somehow.’

‘I do not know anyone named Sands. Nor am I aware of a portrait of the type she described. I made this quite clear to her.’

‘No one is doubting your word, Herr Ackermann,’ I said. ‘But I do have a few additional questions, if you don’t mind.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Do you have anyone else working for you, someone who might perhaps have seen or spoken with Sands in some capacity during your absence?’

‘I am the sole employee of the Galerie der Expressionisten. In my absence, the front door is locked and no one is admitted.’

‘Well, do you have any idea why Sands would have been carrying the name and address of your place?’

‘Perhaps it was recommended to him by a friend,’ Herr Ackermann said. ‘We are quite well known in this area.’

‘That’s a possibility, I guess.’

‘Your Mr. Sands may have intended to visit the gallery at one time, and did not manage to do so. Or perhaps he did come, and stayed only a short while. There are times when I am busy with other customers.’

‘Also a possibility,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Herr Ackermann, do you handle the work of a large or small number of artists?’

‘A fairly large number, I would say. At various times in the past year, at least fifty promising young German artists have been represented in my gallery.’

‘All impressionists?’

‘If you prefer the broad label, yes.’

‘Do any of them do portraiture?’

‘I should suppose some may have at one point or another in their careers attempted portraiture, yes. Do you think one of my artists made this stolen sketch of Mr. Sands?’

‘It might explain why he had your gallery’s name and address,’ I said.

‘Yes, so it might.’

On the chance that Elaine had not mentioned the portrait’s bold lines, heavy shadows, and somewhat enlarged, exaggerated masculine features, I related these characteristics to Herr Ackermann. ‘Do they strike a familiar chord?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. I might possibly be able to recognize the style if I could see the sketch itself-assuming that it was done by someone with whose work I am familiar. However, there are, you must realize, hundreds upon hundreds of would-be or successful artists who may have drawn it, none of whom would be known to me.’

I nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I would like to help you,’ Herr Ackermann said, ‘but I simply do not know this man Sands; and if he once posed for a sketch done by one of my artists, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever.’

I saw no purpose in pressing him further; there was nothing he could or would tell me. I thanked him for his time, politely declined his offer to conduct me through the gallery, and returned to the Volkswagen.

I drove around until I found a Konditorei that had a lot of pastry in its front window and a service bar along one wall. I went in and had a cup of coffee and a doughnut with powdered sugar. Afterward I tried my first cigarette of the day, but the coughing began again after three drags; I put it out quickly and brooded into the coffee to keep my mind off my lungs.

It had not been a particularly illuminating trip thus far-and yet, as I had told Elaine, those threatening telephone calls had to mean that there was something important to be found out here. I had hoped that I would learn something further at the Galerie der Expressionisten-a possibility, a direction- but I had apparently been armed with too little information and too much hope. As for the three-day bender MacVeagh had told me about… well, there just may have been something in that; it was a puzzling occurrence, in any event.

I thought about what Sands had asked Sybille in the Dodge City Bar: Why did it have to happen? All right, why did what have to happen? Walter the barkeeper had told MacVeagh and me that Sands looked very weary, like an old man, and Sybille had said that he was unhappy. All of which amounted to what?

Saturday, October 30. What had happened on that day that could have put Sands into the kind of low-down blue funk that provokes a guy into a major session with a bottle? Apparently he had been all right when he’d left Larson Barracks to come into Kitzingen that day, so whatever it was was unlikely to be connected with the military installation. Something in Kitzingen, or in the surrounding area, then? That was an angle-not much, maybe, but it was worth looking into.

I returned to the Bayerischer Hof and asked the desk man if there was a daily newspaper circulated in Kitzingen that covered the local news. He told me that the Main-Post, which was published in Würzburg to the north, carried all news pertaining to the Main River region. The Main-Post had an office in Kitzingen, and he gave me directions to it.

I drove over there, and they had a guy in the small office who spoke English. I told him what I wanted and why, and he put me at an unused desk and disappeared into another room. He came back with a stack of papers covering the week prior to the thirtieth of October, and the Monday and Tuesday following it; after depositing them in front of me, he hovered nearby-either out of curiosity or to make sure that I did not damage any of the editions.

I went through them laboriously, beginning with the paper dated the thirtieth, working backward to the twenty-sixth. I had recalled enough German by now to be able to read most of the headlines and, if anything looked promising, the lead paragraph or two of the accompanying story; when I came to something I could not understand, I asked the guy about it. At the end of an hour, however, I had learned nothing.

I sighed and spread out the issue dated November 1. I went through the initial two pages and half of page three. And I came to the headline spread over three columns at the left-hand margin:

AMERIKANISCHES MÄDCHEN

ERHÄNGT SICH IN KITZINGEN

Translated, that read: AMERICAN GIRL HANGS SELF IN KITZINGEN. I frowned and called the English-speaking guy over and opened my notebook and had him translate the story slowly, so I could write it down as he did so in a form of shorthand I had worked out over the years. It reads this way:

Diane Emery, a young American girl and promising artist, hanged herself in her Kitzingen studio at Gartenweg 19 early last Saturday. Suspended from a ceiling fixture by a length of clothesline, her body was discovered by Mrs. Ursula Mende, another tenant of the building.

Miss Emery had lived in Kitzingen for the past year, having studied in Paris for the three years previous. Her oil work has been exhibited in Munich and Paris, as well as locally, and has drawn high praise from critics.

No suicide note was found, and no immediate explanation could be determined for Miss Emery having taken her own life. However, it was conjectured by Kriminalbeamter Franz Hüssner that she may have been despondent with personal problems.

That was all-but it was enough to give rise to a small, excited tingling at the base of my neck. This could be the key, the nucleus of the whole affair. Diane Emery had been an artist, a painter, and Roy Sands had sat for a portrait that had some sort of significance; the Emery girl’s work had been exhibited locally, and Sands had had the address of the Galerie der Expressionisten. Had they known each other, then? Had knowledge of her death been the reason for Sands’ drinking bout? A dozen other questions and half as many suspicions floated across my mind; but I did not as yet have enough information to answer any of them.

I went out to get it.

Herr Ackermann said solemnly, ‘Ah yes, of course I knew Fräulein Emery. Her death was a terrible tragedy.’

‘Then she did exhibit some of her paintings here?’

‘Yes, several in the past year.’

‘Was she talented?’

‘Oh, very much so,’ Herr Ackermann said. ‘She was deeply involved in her work-a true artisan.’

‘Do you have any idea why she would commit suicide?’

He sighed. ‘She was also quite an emotional girl, given to many moods, to spells of dark depression. That is the only reply I can offer you.’

‘The news story hinted at personal problems.’

‘I know of none in particular,’ Herr Ackermann said. ‘I had not seen her for some weeks prior to her death.’

‘Did she ever confide in you?’

‘No. We discussed only art.’

‘Do you know if she had any special male friends?’

‘She spoke of none to me.’

‘Would you happen to have any of her paintings at the moment?’

‘I have two. Following her death, several were purchased.’ He made a gesture of distaste. ‘The public can be as swift and as morbid as vultures at times.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Would you like to see the paintings?’

‘Please.’

We went through the curtained arch into the second display room of the gallery. On the far wall, Herr Ackermann indicated a pair of rectangular canvases hung one above the other. I looked closely at them, and they were austere, brooding things painted in dark colors with heavy brushstrokes-and yet both were vivid and compelling. One was called ‘Deathwatch,’ and the other ‘Earthlove’: the former depicted, as near as I could tell, a sea of frightened faces staring with Keane-like eyes at a prostrated ancient in a flowing white beard; and the latter grimly portrayed a pair of mounded graves laid side by side, with a man’s hand jutting diagonally outward through the spaded earth of one to clasp a woman’s hand extended from the other, the third fingers of each encircled by a simple gold wedding band.

A coldness settled on my spine, and I turned away to look at Herr Ackermann. ‘Was she a fatalist?’

‘Perhaps existentialist would be a better term.’

‘But she was preoccupied with death?’

‘I suppose you could say she was. Many great artists are, you know.’

Ergo, she was fully capable of suicide, I thought. All right, so that proves what? That she killed herself? You knew that from reading the newspaper story. Don’t make waves on a calm sea, for Christ’s sake.

I studied both paintings again, looking at the style this time rather than the scenes themselves. Even though there seemed to be similarities between these oils and the sketch of Roy Sands-some of the same exaggeration of masculinity, for example-I was not enough of a connoisseur to be able to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that she had created the sketch. Maybe Herr Ackermann could have, but as he had said earlier, he would have to have seen the portrait itself in order to make a judgment.

He said, ‘Do you think Fräulein Emery was acquainted with this man you are seeking- Sands is his name? And that she made this sketch about which you asked me earlier?’

‘There’s a chance of it,’ I told him. ‘Did she ever do any portrait work that you know about?’

He shook his head. ‘She was a true impressionist.’

‘But she might have-as a favor, or as a gesture of some kind, mightn’t she?’

‘Perhaps. She was, as I said, an unpredictable girl.’

‘Okay then. Thanks again for your time, Herr Ackermann.’

‘I hope you succeed in your quest, sir,’ he said, and bowed. ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’

I walked out and got into the Volkswagen. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing that painting called ‘Earthlove’-the pair of hands reaching out of the graves, clasped together, the wedding rings plainly evident. The morning seemed suddenly colder.

And when I drove away from there, it was with the disturbing mental image of a faceless girl hanging dead and motionless in a room filled with the tools, the wonderment, of creation.