Rosalind stared at her as if she’d uttered blasphemy.
“Something like it?” Rosalind said.
“If I remember my modern poetry seminar at BC,” Kate said, “it was, ‘A poem should not mean/But be.’”
“Oh, no,” Rosalind said. “I’m sure Archie used the word ‘simply.’”
“Sure,” Kate said. “So what about these painted ladies?”
Rosalind looked as if she was disappointed in Kate. She glanced at me. I tried to look encouraging. She looked at Healy. He remained as expressionless as gray paint.
“I’m an artist,” Rosalind said. “I do not cast my language before swine.”
“And I’m an AD,” Kate said. “And I might put your ass in jail.”
“Jail?” Rosalind said.
“Jail,” Kate said.
“For writing a poem?”
“For obstructing justice by refusing to divulge information needed in the investigation of your husband’s death,” Kate said.
Healy stood.
“You want me to arrest her?” he said to Kate.
Kate looked at Rosalind.
“Your choice,” she said.
Had I been Rosalind, I’d have brought a lawyer with me. I suspected that Kate and Healy were on shaky legal ground, and a lawyer might have made that point. But Rosalind didn’t have a lawyer, and that was all to the good. She got scared.
“I didn’t . . .” she said. “I wasn’t . . . I’ll tell you anything you wish.”
Healy sat back down and crossed his legs.
“Excellent,” Kate said. “Did the reference to painted ladies have anything to do with the Hermenszoon painting that is missing?”
Two bright red smudges appeared on Rosalind’s cheek-bones. She was taking in a lot of air. She seemed to be gathering herself. Kate waited. Healy and I watched.
“He cheated on me compulsively,” Rosalind said. “He said he was addicted to sex.”
“Lot of that going around,” Kate said.
“I’m not sure he loved me at all,” Rosalind said. “Though he said he did, and I stayed with him, because all my other choices were worse.”
She breathed for a moment.
“But we used to talk, we’d known each other a long time, and it was, at worst, like a long habit, you know.”
It was interesting how, as she got to talking about matters of personal substance, all the phony-accent artistic gobbledygook with which she’d plastered herself over went away. She seemed, for the moment, almost real.
“He always said he’d make it up to me,” she said. “He always said he was going to make a lot of money, and we could live as we deserved to.”
“How was he going to do that?” Kate said.
“He said he was going to swap the paintings.”
“Which paintings.”
“He had a good copy of Lady with a Finch,” she said. “He was going to replace the real one with it. Then he’d have the original painting, and make some money, too.”
“And he was the identifying expert,” I said.
“So where is either of these paintings?” Kate said.
“The fraud,” Rosalind said, “as in the poem, is on view in my home. As am I.”
“You’re a fraud, too?” Kate said.
“I was faithful to my husband,” she said. “He was unfaithful to me. I was one half of a fraudulent relationship.”
“I’d say that made him a fraud,” Kate said.
Rosalind shrugged. She was slipping back into her poetic persona.
“It’s a metaphor,” she said.
“I have a question,” I said.
She nodded at me without much warmth.
“How do you know the one in your house is a fake?”
“Well, it certainly isn’t the original,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Why, we couldn’t . . .” She paused. “Ashton told me it was.”
“We could get somebody over there from the Hammond,” Healy said.
“Their expert was Prince,” I said.
“Someplace,” Healy said.
“Guy in New York,” I said.
“Gimme a name and address,” Kate said. “We’ll see if we can arrange it.”
Rosalind stood.
“I wish to go now,” she said.
“Sure,” Kate said. “Just so long as I can find you when I want you.”
“I’ll be at home,” she said.
“I can have someone drive you home,” Kate said.
Rosalind shook her head.
“No,” she said, and left.
“Show us,” Kate said. “She don’t need no stinking ride.”
“I think there’s more to get from her,” Healy said.
“I do, too,” Kate said. “But we pretty well used her up today. We’ll have a few more rounds with her.”
“Yeah,” Healy said. “Telling the truth exhausted her.”
“She’s not used to it,” I said. “She’s been pretending all her life.”
“You saw the painting,” Healy said. “What do you think?”
“Looks good to me,” I said. “But I don’t count.”
“How’d you get to see it?” Kate said.
“He B-and-E’d her house,” Healy said.
“I never heard that,” Kate said.
58
Susan took power yoga in a gym in Wellesley on Saturday mornings. I normally went with her and lifted some weights, and when she was though we’d go to breakfast. This morning I’d picked her up at nine-ten and we headed out the Mass Pike.
“People pick the damnedest ways to confess,” I said.
“If they need to,” Susan said.
“Rosalind confesses in her public poetry,” I said. “Prince confesses in his doctoral dissertation.”
“You should read mine,” Susan said.
“Maybe I ought to.”
“Be the first human to do so,” Susan said. “Do you have any theory on how this swindle was supposed to work?”
“I’ve been dwelling on that,” I said.
“Wow,” Susan said. “Dwelling.”
“For instance, I’m wondering how long this scheme has been incubating. He had to know for quite a while that Lady with a Finch was at the Hammond.”
“And his father had, at one time, had possession of it,” Susan said.
“And perhaps some claim on it,” I said. “Or a claim that someone like Prince could persuade himself of. And he had a connection to the other claimants.”
“The Herzberg family,” Susan said.
“Which appears to consist primarily of Ariel Herzberg,” I said. “And the family business seems to be finding art taken during the Holocaust and returning it to its rightful owner.”
“So do you have a theory?” Susan said.
“Maybe Prince sought out the Herzbergs,” I said, “citing the historical relationship, and suggested that they steal the painting. He’d authenticate it; they’d get the ransom and split it with him. Maybe he agreed to authenticate a phony, which he could get, being as how it was in his home, so they could get the ransom, keep the original, and probably keep it in the rightful possession of the Herzberg family.”
“And they agreed?” Susan said.
“Say they did, and they stole it. And say that Prince wanted the ransom and the original painting. For whatever reason, including obsession. And he devised a way to swap them, he being the only one involved who could actually tell the real from the phony, and suppose they discovered his plan?” I said.
“How?”
“I don’t know; maybe I’ll never know. But Rosalind would not be my first choice of someone to share a mortal secret with.”
“You think she might have blabbed?”
“Or written a poem, or told someone in confidence.”
“So they went ahead with the ransom plan, and then blew him up,” Susan said.
“And the painting, maybe,” I said. “It at least casts doubt as to its whereabouts, and even its existence.”
We were on Route 16 in Wellesley now. Susan was silent for a time as we drove in Saturday-morning traffic, past the handsome homes and the affluent shops.