I chose the shorter route, for it was dark now & I imagined we would be screened by a meager thicket to the east. We had gone 200 yards when the first shot came, then a second, amid cries of ‘Sniper! ’ The men pulled Cpl. Locke to the shelter of a low hill. I found him spread out atop a dirty shallow puddle, his tunic pulled open as men worked feebly to stop the bleeding. He had been shot in the lungs.
Locke tried to speak. He seemed desperate to tell us something, though we hushed him & begged him to be still, for each time he opened his lips, all that came was blood. The men still wonder what he wished to say. It’s been days now & still they speculate endlessly, as though he’d been privy to some deep secret, if only because he could not share it.
I put the letter down and go outside, watching the wind pass through the trees above. Christian walks by with a large cooler.
— Are you all right?
— Yeah.
— You were staring all funny.
— Just a little hungover.
He grins. — Everybody is.
It takes me another hour to finish copying. The text fills thirty pages. My wrist is aching. I lay the letters out on the table to photograph them, two sheets at a time. I meter the exposures carefully, but I still bracket them anyway, taking identical shots with different settings to make sure I’ll have clear pictures. On their own I don’t think the letters have any useful evidence, but I can’t be sure. Karin tells me to leave the tin on the kitchen table for her father.
Back in the old house I try to put everything the way it was, even the mess downstairs. It takes a long time to move the boxes and tools back to their old locations, and even then I’m only guessing. I leave a path to the staircase and go up one last time to check on everything.
In the upstairs bedroom the notecard from Ashley is sitting on the nightstand. I’d forgotten to replace it in the magazine where I found it. I hold the card in my hand for a moment, looking around the room.
— A bad idea, I whisper.
I slip the card inside my notebook and flip it shut.
We clean up the house and prepare to cross the lake, passing luggage and bags of leftover food into the boats. Christian and one of the girls are already drinking beer again. A garbage bag of empty cans falls into the water and I wade in to grab it, everyone laughing and calling. I go up to the house to get my backpack and change into dry pants.
When I put on my other pair of pants I notice something in the pocket. I pull out a sheet of thin yellow paper. It’s the receipt from last night. In daylight the handwriting is easier to read.
MOISSE
TOILES & TABLEAUX ET COULEURS — ENCADREMENTS—28, RUE PIGALLE
blanc d’argent
jaune de Naples
ocre jaune
terre de Sienne naturelle
vert cinabre
terre de Sienne brûlée
laque d’alizarine
rouge de Venise
bleu d’outremer
bleu de Prusse
noir d’ivoire
siccatif de Courtrai
There are two more colors I can’t make out, another kind of vert and another kind of bleu. The bill is marked Paris, le 11 décembre 1916 and made out to H. Broginart, 18 rue de Penthièvre. The name sounds familiar. I get my folder from my backpack and flip through the papers until I find the photocopy from the Tate Archive.
23 Mar 19
Dear Mr. Devereux,
I received your letter of the 19th inst. and have disposed of the study as directed. M. Broginart was terribly disappointed and offered to double his price for the canvas, until at last he was made to understand the situation. He enquired about the larger picture and is keen enough to buy the painting sight unseen, though he would not tender a figure and I expressed my grave doubts. Has Mrs. Grafton advised whether that painting shall ever be put out?
— What you know for sure, I whisper. That’s all that counts.
I run my hands through my hair, rehearsing the details step by step. In the winter of 1916 Eleanor is living on this lake near Leksand. Imogen is almost certainly here too, because I found letters addressed to her in the old house. Around the same period, in December 1916, an art-supply dealer in Paris fills an order for paints made out to “M. Broginart” and the receipt ends up here. In May 1917 my grandmother Charlotte is born here. In March 1919, five months after the end of the war, at Eleanor’s request a gallery employee in London destroys a painted study recently shipped from Sweden, in spite of the fact that Broginart wants to buy the study and a related larger painting. The same month a painting by Eleanor titled Nude Study is entered in the Devereux Brothers ledger, only to be crossed out.
She could have painted a million things here. She could have painted the trees or the sky, the red house or any damn thing that would be a waste of time for me to chase after. But why have it destroyed? What could be so bad that even after it had reached London it had to be destroyed at once?
— That doesn’t make it Imogen.
I look at the receipt again. Broginart had bought Eleanor materials in Paris in 1916, so they must have had some kind of relationship to each other. She may have been painting something for him, or he may have been a collector of her work, which would explain why he wanted the study two years later. Or Broginart may simply have been a friend who bought the paints as a favor, because they were better than anything Eleanor could get in wartime Sweden. But what happened to the larger oil painting? Did Broginart ever get it, and if he did, what did it look like?
If Broginart was a serious collector his papers might have been saved. His collection could still be in Paris, or he might even have owned a gallery with surviving records of its own. His address is on the receipt and I know the exact dates I’m interested in, so I’d have a starting point. But Prichard would probably say it’s a waste of time, because even if I found the painting and it was Imogen, even if it showed her pregnant—
A voice is calling from outside.
— Tristan? You’d better come down now, unless you want to swim back.
I gather my things and run down the hill, catching up with Karin. Everyone else is already in the boat. Christian hitches the dinghy onto the aluminum boat with a length of nylon rope. He pulls the starting cord on the outboard motor and the engine belches to life, sputtering black smoke. The boats glide forward.
The Swedes pass around cans of beer. Karin sits down beside me.
— Do you want a ride down to Stockholm?
— That’d be great.
Karin smiles. — It beats rowing. Did you copy all those letters?
— Yeah.
— What was in them?
I drag my hand in the cold lake. I shake my head.
— You’ll have to read them. There’s a lot of stuff in there, it’s hard to explain.
— Are they good letters?
— Yeah. They’re good letters.
Christian cuts the motor as we near the muddy lakefront. It’s only noon, but it’s a long drive back to Stockholm. I hope I can get a flight to Paris tonight.
20 August 1916