Daniel Silva - The Messenger

“I put the varnish on yesterday before I left Jerusalem,” Gabriel said. “I’ll use one of our front shippers to get it here as quickly as possible. You could have it by the end of the week. By the way, you owe me a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”

“Check’s in the mail, petal.”

“Who else?” Gabriel asked. “Who else knows about us?”

Isherwood made a show of thought. “The wretched Oliver Dimbleby,” he said. “You remember Oliver. I introduced you to him at Green’s one afternoon when we were having lunch. Tubby little dealer from King Street. Tried to buy my gallery out from under me one time.”

Gabriel remembered. Somewhere he still had the showy gold-plated business card Oliver had pressed upon him. Oliver had barely looked in Gabriel’s direction. Oliver was that way.

“I’ve done many a favor for Crabbe over the years,” Isherwood said. “The sorts of favors we don’t like to talk about in our line of work. As for Oliver Dimbleby, I helped him clean up a terrible mess he made with a girl who worked in his gallery. I took the poor waif in. Gave her a job. She left me for another dealer. Always do, my girls. What is it about me that drives women away? I’m an easy mark, that’s it. Women see that. So did your little outfit. Herr Heller certainly did.”

Herr Rudolf Heller, venture capitalist from Zurich, was one of Shamron’s favorite aliases. It was the one he had used when recruiting Isherwood.

“How is he, by the way?”

“He sends his best.”

Gabriel lowered his eyes to the damp pavement of Birdcage Walk. A breath of cold wind rose from the park. Dead leaves rattled across their path.

“I need a van Gogh,” Gabriel said again.

“Yes, I heard you the first time. The problem is, I don’t have a van Gogh. In case you’ve forgotten, Isherwood Fine Arts specializes in Old Masters. If you want Impressionists, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

“But you know where I can get one.”

“Unless you’re planning on stealing one, there’s nothing on the market right now-at least not that I’m aware of.”

“But that’s not true, is it, Julian? You do know about a van Gogh. You told me about it once a hundred years ago-a story about a previously unknown painting your father had seen in Paris between the wars.”

“Not just my father,” Isherwood said. “I’ve seen it, too. Vincent painted it in Auvers, during the final days of his life. There’s a rumor it might have been his undoing. The problem is, the painting isn’t for sale, and it probably never will be. The family has made it clear to me they’ll never part with it. They’re also bound and determined to keep its very existence a secret.”

“Tell me the story again.”

“I don’t have time now, Gabriel. I have a ten-thirty appointment at the gallery.”

“Cancel your appointment, Julian. Tell me about that painting.”

ISHERWOOD CROSSED the footbridge over the lake and headed toward his gallery in St. James’s. Gabriel shoved his hands a little deeper into his coat pockets and followed after him.

“Ever cleaned him?” Isherwood asked.

“Vincent? Never.”

“How much do you know about his final days?”

“About what everyone knows, I suppose.”

“Bollocks, Gabriel. Don’t try to play the fool with me. Your brain is like the Grove Dictionary of Art. ”

“It was the summer of 1890, wasn’t it?”

Isherwood gave a professorial nod of his head. “Please continue.”

“After Vincent left the asylum in Saint-Rémy, he came to Paris to see Theo and Johanna. He visited several galleries and exhibits, and stopped at Père Tanguy’s artists’ supply store to check on some canvases he had in storage there. After three days he began to get restless, so he boarded a train for Auvers-sur-Oise, about twenty miles outside Paris. He thought Auvers would be ideal, a quiet country setting for his work but still close to Theo, his financial and emotional lifeline. He took a room above Café Ravoux and placed himself in the care of Dr. Paul Gachet.”

Gabriel took Isherwood’s arm and together they darted through an opening in the traffic on the Mall and entered the Marlborough Road.

“He started painting immediately. His style, like his mood, was calmer and more subdued. The agitation and violence that characterized much of his work at Saint-Rémy and Arles was gone. He was also incredibly prolific. In the two months Vincent stayed in Auvers he produced more than eighty paintings. A painting a day. Some days two. ”

They turned into King Street. Gabriel stopped suddenly. Ahead of them, waddling along the pavement toward the entrance of Christie’s auction house, was Oliver Dimbleby. Isherwood turned suddenly into Bury Street and picked up where Gabriel had left off.

“When Vincent wasn’t at his easel, he could usually be found in his room above Café Ravoux or at the home of Gachet. Gachet was a widower with two children, a boy of fifteen and a daughter who turned twenty-one during Vincent’s stay in Auvers.”

“Marguerite.”

Isherwood nodded. “She was a pretty girl and she was also deeply infatuated with Vincent. She agreed to pose for him-unfortunately with out her father’s permission. He painted her in the garden of the family home, dressed in a white gown.”

“Marguerite Gachet in the Garden,” Gabriel said.

“And when her father found out, he was furious.”

“But she posed for him again.”

“Correct,” Isherwood said. “The second painting is Marguerite Gachet at the Piano . She also appears in Undergrowth with Two Figures, a deeply symbolic work that some art historians saw as a prophecy of Vincent’s own death. But I believe it’s Vincent and Marguerite walking down the aisle-Vincent’s premonition of marriage.”

“But there was a fourth painting of Marguerite?”

“ Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table ,” said Isherwood. “It’s the best of the lot by far. Only a handful of people have ever seen it or even know it exists. Vincent painted it a few days before his death. And then it disappeared.”

THEY WALKED TO Duke Street, then slipped through a narrow passageway, into a brick quadrangle called Mason’s Yard. Isherwood’s gallery occupied an old Victorian warehouse in the far corner, wedged between the offices of a minor Greek shipping company and a pub that was inevitably filled with pretty office girls who rode motor scooters. Isherwood started across the yard toward the gallery, but Gabriel snared his lapel and pulled him in the opposite direction. As they strolled the perimeter through the cold shadows, Isherwood talked of Vincent’s death.

“On the evening of July 27, Vincent returned to Café Ravoux in obvious pain and struggled up the stairs to his room. Madame Ravoux followed after him and discovered he’d been shot. She sent for a doctor. The doctor, of course, was Gachet himself. He decided to leave the bullet in Vincent’s abdomen and summoned Theo to Auvers. When Theo arrived the following morning, he found Vincent sitting up in bed smoking his pipe. He died later that day.”

They came into a patch of brilliant sunshine. Isherwood shaded his eyes with his long hand.

“There are many unanswered questions about Vincent’s suicide. It’s not clear where he got the gun or the precise place where he shot himself. There are questions, too, about his motivation. Was his suicide the culmination of his long struggle with madness? Was he distraught over a letter he’d just received from Theo suggesting that Theo could no longer afford to support Vincent along with his own wife and child? Did Vincent take his own life as part of a plan to make his work relevant and commercially viable? I’ve never been satisfied with any of those theories. I believe it has to do with Gachet. More to the point, with Dr. Gachet’s daughter.”