Painted Ladies

It took me another two hours to finish the house. Before I left I took one last slow walk through the place. Something kept poking at the edge of my awareness. I finished my final sweep of the house standing just inside the door of Prince’s office and slowly surveyed the room. One whole wall was books in a tired-looking bookcase. The window on the opposite wall looked out at the winter barren backyard. The Hermenszoon painting remained hanging on the wall, and then I realized what was bothering me. Except for the copy of Lady with a Finch, there were no paintings. In the home of a man who apparently had devoted his adult life to the study and appreciation of paintings, there was only one. The Hermenszoon copy was it.

It was hardly a eureka moment. But it was odd.

43

I went back to my office and called the number I had found on Prince’s corkboard. A recording answered. A woman’s voice.

“This is the Herzberg Foundation. We can’t take your call, but please leave us a message at the sound of the tone.”

“Succinct,” I said aloud.

Nothing in my office responded.

I called the number every hour for the rest of the afternoon and got the same message. So, at twenty minutes to seven, I shut off the lights, locked up the office, and with my gun in hand, held inconspicuously against my thigh, went down to the alley where I parked. I stopped in the doorway. With my left hand I took out my car keys and, shielded in the doorway, reached out and started my car with the remote. The car did not explode. Encouraged, I walked down to it, got in, and drove to Cambridge.

When I got to Susan’s place and got past the five minutes of Pearl leaping up and lapping and chewing on one of her toys, I went on into the dining area, where Susan had the table set. Tablecloth, good china, nice crystal, a bouquet of flowers in the center, flanked by candles.

I kissed her.

“What’s for supper?” I said.

“I’ve ordered pizza,” she said.

“Pizza?”

“You love pizza,” Susan said.

“I do,” I said. “But the table’s set for duck à l’orange.”

“Doesn’t it look pretty?”

“Suze,” I said. “Pizza is normally eaten from the box, standing up, at the kitchen counter.”

“I got the flowers in the square,” she said. “I think it completes the table.”

“It certainly does,” I said.

The doorbell rang. Pearl barked.

Susan said, “Make us a drink. I’ll get the pizza.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

“There’s—Oh,” she said, “of course.”

The three of us went down to the front door, Pearl barking steadily. I had my gun out and stood just to the side, where I could see through the etched-glass window in the door.

It looked like a pizza delivery guy.

“Open the box,” I said to him. “I want a look.”

He glanced at me with a look that said, “You meet all kinds in Cambridge.” But he opened the box, and there was a very large pizza. With mushrooms and peppers.

“Thanks,” I said.

Susan paid him and took the pizza while keeping her leg between Pearl and the door’s opening. Pearl kept barking. But it was just her usual “Hey, who’s that?” bark. I locked and bolted the front door. The pizza guy got back in his car and drove away.

Another hair’s-breadth escape.

44

Susan managed to serve the pizza as if it deserved the good china. She had some white wine with hers. I had beer. Old school. Susan took a barely measurable bite off the very end of a slice and chewed it carefully. Then she sipped her wine and put the glass down. I often had trouble putting the glass down.

“I acquired Ashton Prince’s doctoral dissertation,” she said, “from the BU library.”

I drank some beer.

“It’s about Lady with a Finch,” she said.

“How long?”

“One hundred and seventy-three pages.”

“About one painting?” I said.

“Oh, don’t pretend to be boorish,” she said.

“Oh, good,” I said. “You think it’s pretense.”

“You know there is much to say about a great painting, just as there is about a great poem.”

“Anyone done one hundred and seventy-three pages on Sonnet Seventy-three?” I said.

She smiled.

“Probably,” Susan said. “It is difficult to imagine a topic too small, or too silly, for a doctoral dissertation.”

“So,” I said. “He like the painting?”

“Yes,” Susan said. “But that’s not really the thrust of the dissertation. It traces the history of the painting, as artifact, from Hermenszoon on.”

“Really?”

“Or at least to the time when the dissertation was written.”

“Did he trace it to the Hammond?” I said.

“No,” Susan said. “At the time he finished the dissertation, the painting was still missing.”

“Where did he last locate it?”

“In the possession of someone named Amos Prinz, who had been in the camps with the only surviving member of the Herzberg family. Judah Herzberg looked out for his son Isaac, and for Amos Prinz, who was fourteen when he was sent to the camp, and already orphaned. Isaac was nine when he arrived at Auschwitz.”

She paused and drank some wine. And swallowed it slowly and shook her head.

“Nine years old,” she said. “My God.”