The Resurrection Man (10 page)

“What do we know? That a man who suffered from narcolepsy might or might not have seen an Asian in a red jogging suit run through his yard? Let’s save it till we have something worth telling. I think the logical place for us to start is with your Cousin Percy’s parrot. Being assigned to track down a piece Arbalest has recently worked on should give us a legitimate reason to approach Arbalest.”

“So it should,” Sarah agreed. “Shall we go together, or draw straws?”

“I think I’d better tackle Arbalest alone, or else take Brooks with me, since he’s the one who knows the guy.”

“Then I’ll pop out to Percy’s house. He’ll be at the office by now, of course, but Anne will be home. Weeding, no doubt, she lives for her garden. I’ll ask for a photograph of the painting. If not, I can make an Identikit drawing from her description so we’ll know what we’re looking for. Anne has a pretty good eye for detail and color, I’ll take my paints with me.”

Sarah had done some book illustrating during her earlier life, these days her talent often came in handy for other purposes. She was also adept at extracting possibly useful facts that the victim might not have thought important enough to tell the policemen investigating the crime. Too bad she couldn’t take Davy along, but Anne would have a stroke if he did any of the things very young boys are all too prone to do. She mustn’t stick Theonia with him much longer, she’d have to work something out with Mariposa.

It was a great relief to have Max out and about, or would be, provided he didn’t try to take on too much too fast. Sarah toyed with the notion of getting Charles a chauffeur’s livery and letting him do for Max what Carnaby Goudge was doing for Bartolo Arbalest. She failed to persuade herself that Charles would be any good as a bodyguard, but at least he could drive the car and look impressive. Only then they’d be short a houseman. She really must do something about additional help. First things first.

“I’m sorry I shan’t be around to drive you to Arbalest’s. Charles could do it, couldn’t he?”

“Who needs him? If I don’t feel like walking, I can always take a cab.”

“How’s the leg now?”

“Still attached to the rest of me. I might lie down for a while with Davy before I tackle Arbalest.”

“That’s a good idea. He’ll be much happier about his nap if you’re taking one with him. I was just wondering how to cope. I couldn’t possibly take him to Anne’s, and Theonia’s patience must be stretched fairly thin by now. I’m going to drop you off at the house and take a chance on finding a place to park.”

Luck, for once, was with her. There was an open space on Tulip Street, Sarah tucked the car into it neat as a button with almost a foot of space to spare. In the dining room, they found Theonia, Mariposa, and Davy eating toasted-cheese and tomato sandwiches while Charles did a semi-hilarious singing-waiter routine. Nobody appeared to have missed them much, though everyone was glad to see them back.

“Davy and I made extra sandwiches in case you showed up,” said Mariposa. “I’ll go stick ’em under the broiler.”

“Sit still,” Sarah told her. “I’ll do it. Do you want iced tea, Max?”

Max said he did and inquired how many ducks Davy had fed while Theonia gave Sarah a progress report on the morning’s events. She and Davy had carried out their scheduled program with regard to walks, ducks, and swan boats. Brooks had left a telephone message for Max, to the effect that Bill Jones had dropped in with some interesting news. Brooks would be happy to pass it on if Max would come to the office sometime after two o’clock.

“Brooks also said that Cousin Percy had kept him on the phone for fifteen minutes demanding to know what progress has been made in getting his—or rather Anne’s—painting back,” Theonia went on. I gather Percy was less than satisfied by Brooks’s report. Just as a matter of curiosity, who does that man think we are?”

“I know, Percy can be an awful stuffed shirt when there’s money involved,” said Sarah. “Also when there isn’t, I must admit. I thought I’d take a run out there this afternoon and see what I can find out from Anne. She’s fairly sensible most of the time. Unfortunately young children make her nervous, which isn’t surprising considering what hellions her own grandchildren are. But it does mean someone will have to keep an eye on Davy for a couple of hours after he and his father have their nap. Do I have any volunteers?”

“Sure,” said Mariposa, “How about it, Chico? We get out the maracas an’ have us a fiesta, then maybe we go out in the yard an’ you play on the swing while I rest my feet. Olé!”

“Olé!” yelled Davy.

So that little problem was taken care of. Before Brooks and Theonia had moved in, the tiny back area between the basement door and the alley behind Tulip Street had been a depressing waste of rocks, weeds, and trash cans. Brooks had cleaned up the mess, built a functional bin to hide the trash cans and a new board fence for privacy, as well as a sturdy door to replace an old one that had been badly damaged and crudely mended. He’d bricked over the center to accommodate outdoor furniture and lugged in sacks of loam and peat moss to make flower beds. He’d planted cooking herbs and the more rugged sorts of low-growing shrubs and flowers. He was in the process of espaliering a dwarf pear tree. Now the garden held comfortable chairs for grown-ups to sit in, plus a custom-built, spill-proof swing for a little boy to play on. A safe, pleasant place for a child and his minder to spend a summer afternoon. That minor domestic problem solved, Sarah finished her sandwich, got her menfolk comfortably settled, and went to collect her sketching gear.

“O
F COURSE HEMEROCALLIS DOESN’T
offer much of a challenge.”

Sarah was quite ready to agree with Cousin Anne, she herself could not recall ever having felt challenged by a hemerocallis. It was no earthly use trying to get on with the job she’d come for until she’d been given the complete guided tour and delivered what Anne would consider a sufficient amount of approbation, gratification, and laudation.

That was all right, Sarah was enjoying the stroll. Anne’s garden was a welcome change from that depressing morning visit with poor old Anora Protheroe. While not quite on the level of Sissinghurst or Winterthur, it was beautifully planned and impeccably maintained. She did most of the work herself with only a young fellow once or twice a week to spade, mow, or rake as season and occasion demanded.

Even the compost heap was a work of art in its way, Anne held strong views on the subject of compost. She listened quite spellbound as Sarah explained how Mr. Lomax, the caretaker out at Ireson’s Landing, had tilled new life into worn-out soil by judicious applications of codfish heads and guts obtained from a nearby fish-packing plant. It was in a spirit of amity and contentment that the two finished their stroll and sat down to rest under a spreading horse-chestnut tree.

Anne’s iced tea wasn’t much compared to Theonia’s and her offered cookies had come out of a package, but the mint was fresh picked, the lemon fresh sliced, and the surroundings lovely enough to make up for the slight staleness of the gingersnaps. Now they could talk.

“About your painting that was stolen,” Sarah began, “you wouldn’t happen to have a photograph of it, by any chance?”

Sarah might as well have asked for a stuffed anteater, Anne was completely taken aback. “A photograph? Of the painting? Why, no, it never occurred to me. I do keep a detailed photographic record of the garden each year, naturally, but as for a painting—well, we hadn’t had our little girl with the parrot all that long, and Percy had tended to regard her as a rather poor joke. As much as Percy ever takes anything as a joke, anyway. That was before Mr. Arbalest told us what she was worth, needless to say. Since he found out her market value, Percy has been quite pleased with her. Percy has a great sense of justice, you know; he was as distressed as I when we found her gone. Of course she’s a portable asset, and you know how Percy is about assets; but it’s more than that, we’ve both grown quite fond of her. You do understand how anxious we are to get her back?”

“Oh yes,” Sarah assured her. “I quite understand.”

“Then how do you propose to go about finding her? I assume I’m entitled to ask, now that I’m a client.”

Anne was not being sarcastic, she wouldn’t have known how to be. Sarah groped for an explanation that might satisfy a person whose heart belonged to her compost heap.

“I suppose we work more or less the same way you might if you were setting out to develop a new hybrid hemerocallis. We start with what we know, the way you’d start with a familiar plant, then we think what might be a logical next step and try that. If it doesn’t work, we try something else. All sorts of unexpected things might come up, but we just persist, as you would till you’d finally got the plant you were after.”

“Ah, now I understand. You make it so beautifully clear.”

Sarah was relieved to hear Anne say so, though she couldn’t imagine why Anne thought so. Probably her cousin’s wife had interpreted Sarah’s words in a way she could comfortably handle. Clearly the important thing was to stay within a context where a gardener would feel at home. Having got the range, Sarah carried the conversation a step further.

“Suppose there’s an exotic plant you’ve seen somewhere that you’d like for your garden, but you don’t know where to find it and you can’t ask because you’ve forgotten the name. So you hunt through gardening books and seed catalogs until you spot a picture of it. You might still have to search for your plant at a lot of different nurseries, but at least you know now what you’re looking for, and that makes it easier.”

“I know exactly what you mean! There was this—”

Anne was all set to launch into a story about just such a horticultural quest, but time was running on. “So what I’m here for,” Sarah told her in the downright Kelling style that was often confused with arrogant rudeness, “is to get a picture of your painting, so that however many agents we wind up having to use will all know exactly what they’re looking for. Since no photograph is available, I want to make what you might call an Identikit sketch from your description.”

“Oh dear, I’m not much good at describing things.”

“That’s all right, Anne, I’ll worm it out of you. Percy said it’s a painting in the American Primitive style of a little girl holding a very large green parrot on one of her fingers.”

“Yes, that’s quite right. Percy is much better than I at this sort of thing.”

“I’m sure he isn’t. You have the gardener’s eye, that’s what we need here.”

“We do?”

“Absolutely,” Sarah insisted. “Now, I expect you know about the itinerant painters who used to go from village to village doing portraits of anybody who had the money to pay for them. You may not have heard that they often spent their winters painting figures without any heads on them, always dressed in nice clothes and often with some pretty touch, like a pet or a child’s toy or a bunch of flowers thrown in at no extra charge. Or a parrot.”

“How nice of them,” Anne said politely, “but why no heads?”

“The idea was that the client could pick out the figure he liked best, then the artist would get the subject to pose so that he could paint in the appropriate head. The artist would frequently make several copies of the same figure, which of course would all wind up looking different because they’d have different heads. Like a bed of mixed dahlias,” Sarah amplified. “The foliage looks pretty much the same on all of them, but the heads will vary.”

It would not do to let Anne get started on dahlias, she hurried on. “So I’ve brought along a book on folk art and I’m hoping there may be something in here that may remind you of your own painting. Let me know if you see even a minor detail that jogs your memory.”

Because paintings of the genre are so stylized, it didn’t take Anne long to begin spotting resemblances. “Our girl was standing sideways with one foot in front of the other like this, and she had those same tiny little feet and heelless black slippers. Only her face is chubbier, like this other one here, and her hair is lighter brown.”

Anne was even able to select a dress, only it needed certain alterations and was the wrong shade of blue. “It was more, oh, how can you describe a color?”

“You compare it to something else,” said Sarah. “Can you show me a flower of the right shade?”

“Oh yes, easily. What a splendid suggestion. And I can find you a leaf to match the parrot.”

Once they’d got that far, the rest was a breeze. Combining bits and pieces from the various plates with snippets from the flower beds, Sarah managed a sufficiently accurate watercolor sketch in less than an hour. Anne was charmed.

“How terribly clever! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of my having it, in case you can’t get back the other one?”

“I can do you an oil painting that would be more like the original if it comes to that,” Sarah promised, “but we do have a fairly high rate of success at getting back the originals. Can you show me exactly where the painting hung, and how you think the thief may have entered the house?”

“Oh yes, though it’s a shame to go inside on a day like this.”

Anne gave a last yearning glance toward a bed of geraniums red and delphiniums blue and led Sarah into the drawing room. The space above the mantel was now occupied by the likeness of a grim-faced elderly man in a banker’s gray business suit, clutching a sheaf of papers in a stern and purposeful manner. Mortgages he was about to foreclose on, Sarah surmised.

“We put father back because the room looked so bleak with that big bare space over the fireplace,” Anne explained, “but he doesn’t really go at all well with the new slipcovers. Our little girl was exactly right; the parrot picked up on the green of the foliage, there was even that same yellow in his beak as in the centers of the roses. Even Percy noticed how badly father clashes. I do so hope you get her back!”

Anne stroked the gaily flowered chintz as she might have comforted a stricken child, assuming she’d been as devoted to children as she was to her garden. What could Sarah do but murmur words of cheer and comfort and ask whether any of the locks had been forced.