THE PLAY OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

by Barry Ergang

To the memory of my mother, Frances Ergang

 Part One

            On quiet nights Darnell came into Culhane’s and sat at a table or in a booth.  On busy nights he sat at the end of the bar, as far away from the traffic as possible.  He always had a book with him, and wherever he sat he’d read, sip Scotch, and smoke.  Sometimes he ordered dinner.

            Tonight he sat at the bar.  After pouring his drink, I glanced at the book and asked: “What is it this week?”

            He turned it over so I could see the cover: The Sound and the Fury.

            “Rereading an old favorite,” he said.

            I raised an eyebrow.  “Faulkner.  Pretty unconventional for a private detective.”

            He chuckled dryly.  “You’re calling me unconventional, Professor?”

            “Good point,” I admitted. 

            A few months earlier, at the end of the semester, I had begun a year’s sabbatical from teaching literature at City University of Philadelphia and taken a job as a bartender at Culhane’s Pub.  The alternative profession which I had practiced as a graduate student gained me unwanted notoriety among the administration, faculty, and student body, but it got me away from departmental politics and the hermetic insularity of academia and back into the “real” world among people with everyday concerns.

            Darnell was a regular customer; literature was our common ground.  He wasn’t inclined to small talk, but discussions about books pierced his reserve and evoked a veiled passion.

            A little over six feet tall, with an athletic build that could run to fat if he weren’t careful, he was in his mid-forties, with dark, gray-streaked hair and gray-blue eyes in a face of hard-won stoicism.  Deep brackets etched the corners of his mouth, marking him, you sensed, as witness for half a lifetime to tragedy and human darkness.      

            “How’s business?” I asked.

            He tapped his book.  “Let’s just say I have lots of time to read.”

            “Well, I got a call today from someone who could use a detective.”

            “If it’s divorce work, I’m not interested.”

            “It’s more of a security matter.”

            He lit a cigarette.  “Talk to me, Professor.”

            My explanation was fragmented by customers and waitresses who needed orders filled.  Darnell’s prospective client was one of my university colleagues, Dr. Barton Gaines, Chairman of the Art History Department.  He’d phoned to invite my wife and me to a party he was throwing the following Saturday afternoon to celebrate an auction he’d won for a painting by Charles Riveau.  My wife works for a large corporation and would be out of town, but I said I’d be happy to attend.  Gaines then voiced his brooding and abiding concern for the painting’s safety.  That was when I first heard allusions to the shadowy Paul Marchand, Riveau’s nemesis and Gaines’s hobgoblin--the catalyst for everything that happened later.

            Gaines wanted to hire a high-priced security agency but his wife Marjorie refused.  Hearing this, I said I knew a lone operative whose rates might be more reasonable and who might agree to the job if he weren’t already engaged by another client.  Gaines had welcomed the notion.

            “Babysitting a painting,” Darnell said, then shrugged.  “Sounds like paid reading time.  Go ahead, set something up.”

            After coordinating schedules, I arranged a meeting at Culhane’s over dinner the following Thursday evening--two days before the party. 

            Darnell was already at the bar when Barton Gaines arrived with Marjorie and his research assistant, a young woman named Carol Prentice whom I had known as a student the year before.  We exchanged greetings, I introduced them to Darnell, and took their orders for drinks.  Gaines invited me to join them.  It was a relatively quiet evening, and a coworker covered for me so I could. 

            “With due respect to you,” Marjorie said to Darnell as I sat down, “I think Barton’s being a trifle melodramatic  about this.”  Slender and auburn-haired, she stared at him with imperial gravity.  “I agreed to this meeting to get your professional judgment.”

            “As soon as I have the details.”

            “History is on my side.”  Red-faced after his wife’s pronouncements, Gaines spoke quietly, looking at the tablecloth and biting at his graying mustache.  “The painting is at risk.  I don’t want Marchand to get it.”

            “How could he know you have it?”  Marjorie demanded.

            “He knows.  Historically--”

            “It’s possible, Mrs. Gaines,” Carol Prentice said softly.  “Newspapers, art magazines, and Internet sites report auction results.”

            “Even so--”

            “Hold it,” Darnell interrupted.  “We’re getting nowhere.  Start from the beginning.”

            “How much has Alan told you?” Gaines asked.

            “Very little,” I said.  “I didn’t know enough.”

            Gaines crossed his arms over his barrel chest.  “All right.  About three years ago, after he died, I became very interested in the work of a French artist named Charles Riveau.  I began researching his life to write a book about him.  Carol’s been assisting me for the past year.

            “Riveau grew up in a small town and later went to Paris to study.  Like many young painters, he learned some of his techniques by copying the works of major artists.  He got so good that many of his copies were virtually indistinguishable from the originals.  But unlike most artists who eventually get away from imitation, Riveau stayed at it.  He wrote in his journal that it helped him develop a more diversified and flexible style.  During this time he met Paul Marchand.”

            “The guy who wants the painting.”

            “Yes.”

            Darnell nodded.  “Go on.”

            “Marchand involved Riveau in a scheme to forge masterpieces.  But instead of selling the forgeries, as most thieves would, Marchand stole the originals from private collections or museums and substituted the fakes.  He and Riveau both profited enormously by selling the genuine masterpieces to unscrupulous collectors.”

            “How do you know all this, and why are you worried about protecting a Riveau painting from Marchand?”

            “Riveau detailed the significant events in his life in a journal he published shortly before he died.  He wrote candidly about his association with Marchand.”

            “He’s stolen from collectors and museums all over the world,” Carol said, “even from places considered impossible to rob.”

            “You’re saying Riveau named him, but the cops didn’t tag him?” Darnell asked.

            “There wasn’t any proof outside of the journal.”  Her face, pretty in a fresh, snub-nosed way and framed by short, shaggy dark hair, was as earnest as her employer’s.  “Besides, nobody knows what he looks like.”

            Darnell scratched his chin.  “This is as clear as the Schuylkill River.”

            “It needs further explanation,” Gaines said.  “You see, Riveau was caught.  The police found some of the stolen masterpieces in Riveau’s studio he and Marchand hadn’t yet sold, and he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for fifteen years. Out of misguided loyalty, Riveau never told the police about Marchand.  Prison took an enormous toll on his physical and mental health, but the officials there allowed him to paint, and that kept him from complete disintegration.  That and his journal.”  Gaines smiled with a kind of triumphal empathy.  “He began to paint with a renewed dedication to his own vision.  He’d been painting his own original works all along, you understand, and even sold some.  Someone evidently benefited from the notoriety of his imprisonment by obtaining and selling work found in his studio.  It may have been Marchand.  While in prison, Riveau experimented with various styles until he found the one that suited him and resulted in the works for which he’ll probably be best remembered.

            “After his release he continued to paint and started to show his work.  When the work began to sell, he became an artist of some repute.  Along with the profits from his former illegal enterprises, which he’d concealed from the authorities, the income from new sales gave him freedom to concentrate on his art. Nomad, the one I bought, is from that period. 

            “Marchand contacted him to revive their old partnership, but Riveau refused.  He didn’t need the money, was afraid of going back to prison, and was determined to carve his own niche in the modern art world.  He and Marchand had a bitter argument, and Marchand swore that he would destroy Riveau’s work to prevent him from attaining the fame he desperately wanted.  Afterwards, many Riveau paintings disappeared from galleries, museums, and the homes of collectors.  It’s assumed that Marchand stole and destroyed them.”

            Gaines unfolded his arms and took a sip of his drink, waiting for Darnell’s reaction.

            “You want me to guard your painting,” the latter said.

            “Yes.”

            “Why?  What’s the point?”

            Gaines frowned as if Darnell were a dull-witted student.  “To protect it, of course.”

            “Yeah, but for how long?  I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day watching a painting.”

            “Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you, Barton,” Marjorie said.

            Again Gaines’s eyes dropped to the tablecloth.   He spoke quietly to Darnell: “I don’t expect you to be on duty every day.  Just for the duration of the party.”

            “That’s what I don’t get.  Why should he try for it in a houseful of people?  What’s to prevent him from stealing it another time?”

            “Nothing.  But it’s his flamboyance that worries me.  He’s frequently committed his thefts on the opening day of a museum or gallery display.  It’s his twisted sense of vengeance.”

            Darnell drank some Scotch.  “So having or not having a party doesn’t really matter.”

            “No.  We thought…well, our friend Julian Lakehurst thought…that a celebration might act as a deterrent.”

            “Who’s he?”

            “An art dealer.”

            Darnell nodded.  “The painting’s insured, isn’t it?”

            “Of course.  But that doesn’t mean I want to lose it.  I’ve worked long and hard to own a work this valuable.”

            “How many guests will be at the party?”

            “About twenty-five,” Marjorie said.  “A small gathering seemed the most sensible idea.”

            “And you know all of them?”

            She smiled coldly.  “I’m hardly in the habit of inviting strangers to our home, Mr. Darnell.  We’re having family and friends over.  Some are Barton’s coworkers.”

            “I meant will anyone be bringing dates you’ve never met.”

            “Not unless they want their spouses to kill them,” Gaines said wryly.  “I can disabuse you of the idea that Marchand will be one of the ladies’ escorts.”

            Darnell nodded.  “All right.  I’ll take the job if you‘re still offering.”

            Gaines looked at Marjorie again.  She glanced at Darnell unfavorably, as though he’d betrayed her by not refusing, then returned her husband a look of resignation and assent. 

            “I expect you to be discreet, Mr. Darnell,” she said.  “Our guests mustn’t think they’re getting the fish-eye.”

            “I’ll use these and leave the fish eyes at home.  Just think of me as the babysitter.”

*****

            Darnell and I lived in the city.  Having been to Gaines’s home in Chester County on previous occasions, I knew the way, so we agreed to travel together.  Thus, at shortly before ten o’clock Saturday morning, we drove through the gates built into the high stone wall surrounding the grounds.  Darnell navigated his car up the gently meandering driveway to a huge circular parking area fronting the house.  It was a modern, rambling two-storey redwood structure sprawling atop a green treeless hill amid three acres of what had once been farmland.  The driveway curled around the left side of the house to a three-car garage where we slid to a stop behind two vans belonging to Chadwick Caterers. 

            “Pretty lavish setup for a college teacher,” Darnell said.

            “One who married well.”

            “Oh?”

            “Ever heard of Crowell Industries?”

            “Who hasn’t?”

            “Marjorie Gaines’s first husband was Alexander Crowell.”

            His eyebrows rose. “That speaks volumes.”

            It spoke billions.  Crowell Industries was begun in the eighteenth century by Alexander Crowell’s great-great-grandfather and burgeoned into one of the country’s industrial giants.  Originally manufacturing consumer goods like paints and cleaning supplies, the company subsequently embarked on chemical research-and-development projects that earned it numerous government contracts, all profitable.

            “How’d Gaines hook up with her?”  Darnell asked.

            “They met after Crowell died.  She’d always loved and collected art and wanted to learn more about it.  Bart has an international reputation as a scholar, so she signed up for courses with him.  They clicked as a couple and eventually married.”

            “From the way it looked the other night, she controls the money.”

            “I couldn’t say,” I told him.

            “Don’t be naïve, Professor.”

            We climbed out of the car into morning heat and humidity that anticipated a blazing afternoon.  Gaines had told us the party would be informal, so I’d omitted a jacket.  Darnell pulled on a sports coat over a tieless shirt.  His coat covered the holster clipped to the back of his belt.         

            “Is the gun for Marchand’s benefit?” I asked.

            “Let’s hope it’s not for anyone’s.” 

            He moved to the left, beyond the garage and around the back of the house.

            “We’re not using the front door?” I asked.

            “I want to look around outside first.”  

            He opened a gate in the redwood fence that enclosed a broad sundeck.  Along one wall of the house, a member of the catering staff was putting tablecloths on a couple of long  tables.  Some distance opposite, a swimming pool glinted in the sunlight.  Umbrella-shaded tables and chairs dotted the wooden deck.  On one of the tables was a tray containing a coffee service.  Lounge chairs ringed the pool, five of them occupied by willowy young swimsuited women--four brunettes and a redhead--who glanced at us with casual curiosity.

            The pool rippled with activity as Carol Prentice cleaved the water with clean, powerful strokes, moving with sharklike efficiency and precision.

            “She’s good,” Darnell remarked.

            “She was a championship swimmer at the university,” I said.

            In the deep end, Carol tucked under and kicked off from the wall, surging beneath the surface a moment before once again resuming the smooth strokes and flutter-kicks that moved her half the length of the pool.  When she reached the shallow end she rose, tall and slender in a modest navy blue swimsuit and cap, wiping water from her face.

            “Hi.” She stepped onto the deck and removed the cap.  She was puffing a little.  “I didn’t think you’d be here this early.”

            “I wanted to look the place over before the party starts,” Darnell said.

            “I understand.”  She picked up a towel and dried her face and firm-muscled but shapely arms and legs.  “Can I offer either of you some coffee?” 

            Darnell declined, but I, having tended bar until late on a raucous Philadelphia Friday night, needed the caffeine and accepted: black, no sugar. 

            Darnell indicated the women around the pool and asked: “Who’re your friends?”

            “Oh, they’re art students taking summer classes.  I asked them to help as hostesses.  They jumped at the chance to see some major artwork up close.”

            “Can’t the catering staff handle the hostessing?”

            “Well, yeah, but we’re going to add some ‘bohemian’ atmosphere to the party.”  Her eyes twinkled.  “You’ll see.”

            A door on the opposite side of the deck opened, and a lean young blond man emerged.  Wearing a dark green Polo shirt and khakis, he had a camera on a strap around his neck and an accessory bag slung over his left shoulder.

            “Hi, Derek,” Carol smiled.

            “Good morning,” he answered in a distinctly British accent, grinning back.  “Doing penance for last night’s lapse?”

            “Mr. Darnell, Dr. Driscoll, this is Derek Trevor,” Carol said.  After we’d shaken hands, she explained: “My date and I went out with Lexie and Derek last night.  Derek thinks having a couple glasses of wine means I’ve broken training.”

            “I should think training demands a diet of nothing but wheat germ and protein drinks,” Derek said.

            “Still competing?” I asked.

            She made a wry face.  “No, I just work out regularly.   You know: once a jock, always a jock.”  She looked at Derek impishly.  “Which reminds me.  I thought you were going to swim against me today.”

            “I’m hardly dressed for it,” he said.

            “Uh-huh.  Lame excuse.  There’re suits for guests in the changing area.”

            “Besides swimming, you jog, rock-climb, bicycle, and work out at a gym.  I’d hardly be competition.” 

            Her mouth quirked puckishly.  “I’ll just have to take you along to build you up.”

            “Face it, my interests are aesthetic, not athletic.”  From his accessory bag he removed a computer disk and inserted it into a slot in the camera, which indicated it was a digital device.  He gazed into the LCD screen on the back, snapped a picture of her, and winked at us.  “One can’t resist the enticing shot.”

            “Stop it.  I look like a drowned rat,” Carol said. 

            “You look quite fetching.”

            “Puh-leeze!” 

            “I hate to interrupt the banter,“ Darnell said, “but I’m on the clock.  Has the guest of honor arrived?”

            “Yes,” Carol said, reverence replacing levity.  “The auction house delivered it yesterday afternoon.  It’s inside if you’d like to see it.”

            “In a little while.  I want to scout around out here first.” 

              He strode along the deck and disappeared around the corner of the house.  Carol, Derek, and I sat at one of the shaded tables.

            Carol propped her elbows on the table, her chin between her hands.  “So, Dr. D, why’d you take the sabbatical?”

            “Let’s just say I’m having my pre-mid-life crisis,” I answered, then sipped some coffee.  “And you?  How'd you get to be Bart‘s assistant?”

            She chuckled deprecatingly.  “Dumb luck.”

            “I doubt that.”

            She bobbed her head self-consciously.  “Okay.  Right before I graduated, Dr. Gaines posted a notice for a research assistant on his Riveau project.  There were a bunch of applicants.  He tested us on a research point, and I got the job.  It‘s been great.  Free room and board included.” 

            “You’re living here?”

            “Yes.  It’s a long drive every day to and from the city, and there're plenty of extra rooms.” 

            “And when the project’s completed?”

            “Well, I’ve made some wonderful contacts, and I’m hoping to get a job with a museum or gallery.”

            “You were a good student,” I said, “so I have every confidence you will.”

            She thanked me and then, that line of conversation apparently exhausted, addressed Derek: “Where’s Lexie?”

            “Inside, chatting with Marjorie.  I thought I’d get some pictures of you and the other sea nymphs.” 

            “Forget it.  One's too many, the way I look.”

            If he intended to cajole them into posing, he was thwarted by Darnell’s return.  The latter asked Carol: “Where would I find Dr. Gaines?”

            “Probably in the gallery.”  She rose and wrapped the towel around herself.  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

            We followed her across the deck, through a door that led to the shower and changing-room area, and through another door that took us into the main part of the house.  Turning left, we went down a wide carpeted hallway that emerged into a transverse corridor.  Farther down the hall, I knew, was Barton Gaines’s office.  Across from us and slightly to our right was the door to the gallery which Carol pushed inward. 

            “Here he is.”  She stood aside to let us pass.  “See you after I get dressed.“

            I had been here on several previous occasions, but I was always astonished by the richness--artistic and monetary --of the gallery.  Long, wide, white-walled and marble-floored, with a twenty-foot-high ceiling, it was hung with two tiers of paintings, among them works by Cezanne, Matisse, Braque, Leger, Maillol, and Cassat. Several sculptures, one of which I recognized as a Jacques Lipchitz, stood on pedestals spaced symmetrically around the floor.  Track-lighting provided the illumination, the gallery windowless.  The only other door, now closed, was in a corner at the rear.

            Barton and Marjorie Gaines stood before an easel several feet from one of the long walls.  Marjorie received us with varying degrees of warmth.  On Derek she bestowed a smile befitting a favorite courtier, on me one cordial but less intimate, and on Darnell one coolly businesslike.   Gaines, too absorbed in his acquisition for formalities, merely said: “Welcome, gentlemen,” and with a flourish indicated the work on the easel.  “Behold Nomad.”

            The painting was about two feet high by eighteen inches wide in a gilt frame.  It depicted the figure of a man, naked and small and seen from the rear, wandering in a grotesque dreamscape.  He seemed caught between an impenetrable forest dense with misshapen, predatory trees and an arid desert of reddish sand.  In places the sand had shaped itself into monstrous faces, over which travesties of snakes, scorpions and lizards slithered and scurried. Mountains loomed beyond the desert, separated from the sands by a rampaging stream that appeared unnavigable.  Skeletal fish leaped from the water.  Overhead a vulture, talons dripping torn flesh, wheeled beneath a sun too pale to give off much light, too remote to give off warmth.

            Gaines stood by expectantly; I said: “I don’t quite know what to tell you, Bart.  It’s macabre.  Striking, but macabre.”

            He seemed oddly pleased by my response. He drew in a breath, and his mouth beneath the carefully-tended mustache stretched exultantly.  “No question.  That’s characteristically Riveau.” 

            “There’s a strongly existential component here,” Derek said.

            “A good observation, and also characteristic.”

            “Barton’s like a child who’s just gotten the Christmas present he’s always wanted,” Marjorie said.

            “I am,” Gaines beamed.  “I admit it.  I am.”  His grin  faded, and his face tightened.  “I only hope Marchand doesn’t want it, too.”

            Marjorie patted his arm.  “Mr. Darnell will see to that.” 

            “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Darnell said, and I wondered how much art criticism was implicit in the remark.  “What’s the schedule?” 

            “Our guests will arrive around noon,” she said.  “We’ll serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the living room, and then bring them in here to view the painting.  After that we’ll have a buffet lunch around the pool.”

            Heels clacked on the marble floor.  We turned as an auburn-haired young woman in her late twenties strode determinedly across the room.  She was a younger edition of Marjorie, with a fuller but not heavy figure.  She stopped in front of the easel and put her hands on her hips.  Blue eyes glowered at the painting.  Her lip curled. “Who in his right mind would want to steal this?” she said to Gaines.  “It’s hideous!”

            Though reddening, Gaines smiled and greeted her with an enthusiastic, “Lexie!”

            “On the other hand,” she continued relentlessly, “anyone who destroyed it would be doing a service to people with taste.”

            He tried hard to maintain a polite and amicable facade. “Lexie, I’d like you to meet--”

            “Hello, Alan, nice to see you again,” she said, glancing at me cursorily before turning her gaze to Darnell. “You must be the detective.”

            Darnell only nodded.

            “This is my stepdaughter, Alexis Crowell.”

            “Nice to meet you,” Darnell said.

            He wandered around the gallery, glancing at the tiers of paintings, pedestaled sculptures, and furnishings.  The latter consisted of four padded benches, two paralleling each of the long walls.  He opened the door in the corner.  The space beyond was a utility closet, a little under five feet wide and less than that in depth.  A narrow overhead shelf was empty save for a light coating of dust.  A foot above it, a bare light bulb suspended on a wire from the ceiling came on automatically when the door was opened.  Beyond its glare was darkness.  A lightweight aluminum seven-foot ladder leaned against a side wall.  A hose for the central vacuum system lay coiled on the floor, a snake with a wide T-shaped nozzle half-turned toward us like a gaping mouth.  A plastic-handled duster stood in the corner.

            “The ladder is for hanging paintings?” 

            Gaines nodded.  “And to reach them to dust the frames, yes.”

            Darnell shut the door.  Her mouth crooked contemptuously, Alexis Crowell said: “Find the boogieman?”

            “Behave, Alexis,” Marjorie ordered.

            Alexis turned a punishing glare on her.  “I thought we were on the same side in this, Mother.”  Her last word held the bitter challenge of a loyalty test. 

            “It doesn’t require you to make a scene.”

            “And what’s Bart doing?”

            “I’m just being cautious,” Gaines said quietly.

            “You’re being ridiculous.  If this Paul Marchand you’re so paranoid about knows the painting is here and has faked out the police on three continents, how’s he”--she jerked her head toward Darnell--“going to stop him from stealing it?”  To Darnell she said: “Or were you planning to bring in an army?”

            He ignored the barb.  “You raise a good point.  I made a few transatlantic calls yesterday.  If Marchand’s for real, he’s very good.  The French police have no record of anyone by that name on file.”

            “Marchand is a criminal genius,” Gaines said insistently.  “He’s always managed to elude detection. The only record of his crimes is Riveau’s journal.”

            Alexis gestured dismissively.  “Between you and Carol, we’ve heard it all before.”  She looked at Derek, who was now several yards away in conversation with a smiling, nodding Marjorie Gaines.  “I need to talk to you, Derek.”

            “In a minute.  First, I’d like to get a picture of your mother and Dr. Gaines on either side of the painting.”

            “I’d rather you didn’t,” Gaines said.

            “Why?  This is a special occasion, after all.  You should commemorate it.”

            “Yes.  Come on, Barton.  It’s your pride and joy.”

            “You know flashes bleach the paintings, Marjorie.”

            “Oh, a couple of quick snapshots aren’t going to hurt them.”

            He flapped a hand in disconsolate resignation.  “All right.  Make it fast, Derek.  And just one.”