Stealing the Mystic Lamb (25 page)

There were no further clues at the scene of the crime. The only useful piece of information came from a passerby, who had seen a light shining in the Vijd Chapel around 11:15 PM. The police had no further leads. Three days after the theft, Canon Gabriel van den Gheyn said, in an interview for the newspaper
La Flandre Liberaleé
, “I imagine this must be the work of foreigners, and I am close to certain that it is for the purposes of blackmail.” One day later the canon published an editorial in the newspaper
L’Indépendance Belge
in which he stated, “Now that I’ve had time to recover my senses and consider it, I think that this must be a crime of vengeance.”

Was he guessing, or could he have known more about this crime than he let on?

An answer came on 30 April 1934, when the bishop of Ghent, Monsignor Honoré-Joseph Coppieters, received a letter in the mail in a pale green envelope.

It was a ransom note typed in French. It read:

Bishop Coppieters wanted to pay, but the crown prosecutor, Franz de Heem, and the Belgian minister of justice would not allow it. The police, under Antoon Luysterborgh, instead advised the bishop to feign compliance. Attorney de Heem and the police placed the Classifieds ad, as instructed,
but not with the requested phrase. Their response read: “D.U.A. Exaggerated proposition.”

On 20 May a second letter arrived. It was polite but insistent. If total agreement was not proffered, the ransomers would begin to cut off sections of the panels and mail them to the diocese. The letter ended, strangely enough, with this postscript: “Monsignor, because we handle this case almost as a commercial one, and the objects actually belong to a third party, it is fair to pay you a commission of 5%, of which you may dispose freely.” The bribery attempt made on the bishop added insult to injury.

Attorney de Heem took over the negotiations, writing in the name of the bishop. Matters were made more difficult when the Belgian government applied pressure to recover the panels, by ransom payment if necessary. The government claimed that they were the true owners of the altarpiece, not the diocese, and that the painting, as a
national
treasure (not merely an ecclesiastical treasure), was property of the nation on loan to the bishopric. The panel’s recovery was, therefore, a matter of national urgency.

The bishop offered a reward of 25,000 francs for the recovery of the panel. This sum seemed paltry in comparison to the inestimable value of the panel and the ransom demand. It smacked to many contemporaries of a strange lack of enthusiasm on the part of the bishop for the recovery of the panel, though the bishopric did not have sufficient funds to mount more of a ransom attempt, even if it had wished to do so. But if this theft were a national issue, why then did the government not intervene with funds of its own? These questions are still unresolved. A more appropriate reward of 500,000 francs was offered by an anonymous benefactor, identified only as a Mason. Neither reward yielded any real clues.

The ransom notes did, at least, suggest one thing. The note about the Treaty of Versailles probably was a red herring. The theft was no act of misguided nationalism. It was a crime for profit in a time of recession—though one cleverly laid with a false lead. Had it really been a reprisal after the treaty, the revenger would have ensured that Ghent would be definitively deprived of the panel.

Under pressure from the Belgian government to continue negotiations, the bishop and the police submitted another Classifieds ad: “D.U.A. As agreed with authorities, we accept your proposition fully.”

Then the bishop received a third letter: “We have read your answer in the paper of 25 May and take full note of your obligations. Observe them conscientiously, and we will preserve ours. . . . We suggest you tell no one anything about the hand-over of the S.J.” The pale green envelope contained a ticket for the Brussels Nord train station luggage check.

Inspector Luysterborgh and De Heem rushed to Brussels. When they presented the luggage ticket at the train station, they received a fifty-two by twenty inch package wrapped in black wax paper. The luggage check attendant recalled only that the depositor of the package was a man, about fifty years old, without remarkable features beyond a pointy beard.

This package was taken to the Ghent Episcopal Palace, the same bishop’s residence where van den Gheyn had hidden the panels during the First World War. There it was examined by museum experts. It was indeed the original recto half of the panel; there was the painted statue of Saint John the Baptist. But then the police made another questionable move. They kept the panel secreted at the Episcopal Palace, telling no one about its return.

Despite this attempt at secrecy, on 31 May the newspaper
L’Indépendance Belge
published an article about the return of the Saint John panel. How had they found out? Was there a rat among the police or at the diocese?

Letter number four arrived on 1 June:

Who was this new middleman? Vicar Henri Meulapas was resident at the Church of Saint Lawrence on Markgravelei Street in Antwerp. When interviewed by the police, he convinced them that he knew nothing about the incident. All that he could report was that, through the brass grate of a confession booth, he had been asked if he would help a prominent Belgian family recover some letters that would have brought about the ruin of the Belgian royal house. He had agreed to help. No, he responded to the police, he did not know who was confessing, as confession relied on anonymity. Nor, if he knew, would he tell anyone, lest he violate his vows as a confessor.

Was he telling the truth, or was he Belgium’s best actor? One thing was clear—the ransomer was using the secrecy of the confessional booth to profit from a crime.

De Heem continued to feign compliance in the bishop’s name, and tried to lure the ransomer into a trap. He replied via the Classifieds: “Letter received. Pursuant to indiscretions involved, please be patient for a few days.” The police began to formulate a plan. They next published, “Package will be handed over 9 June.”

The next few letters and Classified responses exposed the ransomers’ increasing wariness at the slow pace at which events were unwinding. Though publication in a newspaper’s Classifieds section was hardly a legal contract, the ransomers repeatedly insisted that the bishop publish his renunciation of legal proceedings, as if that would make the ransomers exempt from possible conviction. This showed both a lack of understanding of legal matters and a reliance on a strangely moral “gentleman’s agreement.” They would return the painting and collect the reward, and the bishop should play along like a good and honorable victim. Two letters insisted on a specific phrase, which was finally published by de Heem on June 13: “Full pledge that secret will be kept. Act without concern.” These hollow guarantees in print provided moral support, if nothing else.

The police presented the sealed package containing payment to Father Meulapas in Antwerp, just as the ransomers demanded. On 14 June,
Meulapas’s housekeeper saw a taxi driver pull up outside the vicarage. The driver got out, carrying a torn piece of newspaper, and knocked on the vicarage door. Meulapas, matching the half of the newspaper that the police had given him to the one held by the taxi driver, handed over the package.

But the sealed package did not contain the 1 million Belgian francs demanded. Instead, the police had included 25,000 francs only, with the serial numbers carefully noted, and a letter of their own:

De Heem and the police were giving the ransomers a taste of their own medicine. There would be no gentleman’s agreement with these criminals. They lied outright about the serial numbers on the ransom payment notes. And the bishop could not grant them immunity. This was a police matter, and only the police could decide when the case was closed.

Throughout the negotiations, the ransomers seemed under the impression that they were corresponding exclusively with the bishop. In actuality, Bishop Coppieters had ceased long ago to have any involvement and handed all letters, still sealed, directly to de Heem. In this letter, de Heem dropped the subterfuge that the bishop was involved in the negotiations, referring to him in the third person.

The next ransom letter expressed dismay:

Expressing their sense of betrayal at the lack of cooperation, the ransomers seemed to have forgotten that they were criminals. At the least, the bishop could have the good manners to pay the ransom.

The police only replied: “Regret to have to maintain the proposition in our letter.” They were clearly dealing with amateur criminals. The ransomers could not bring themselves to say that they would destroy the Judges panel altogether if the ransom were not paid. They skirted the threat, suggesting that something terrible would happen. The police felt confident that they would never let the painting come to harm.

Further, the ransomers had returned their only bargaining chip, the Saint John panel. If they cut up the Righteous Judges panel, they would receive no ransom. It was in no one’s interest, least of all the ransomers’, to destroy the panel. That would be like setting fire to a suitcase full of money. The police would wait and let the ransomers expose themselves.

On the sixth of July, the eighth letter arrived. The first half further reprimanded the bishop for his failure to deliver ransom payment. Having gotten that out of their system, the ransomers were prepared to alter their demands slightly. They countered with a demand of 500,000 francs now, and another 400,000 within twelve months of the return of the painting.

To this, the remarkably blasé police replied, “Maintain our last proposition.”

Letter number nine bubbled over with frustration. The ransomers were repeatedly granting extra time, bending to the call of their bluff.