Fine Art of Murder Page 11

  “Please, sir,” Guillaume said, “we want to understand—to put a stop to the abuse.”

  “You won't be able to stop it.” The missionary frowned. “King Leopold's gunmen are stationed everywhere to prevent mass exodus from the region. Even worse, they've been ordered to account for every bullet they use by presenting a hand from each corpse to the designated ‘keeper of the hands.’” He shivered. His next words were spoken as if he was holding back the urge to vomit. “The hands are smoked to preserve them, I've heard.”

  His reveal trumped the rumors. Lemmen felt his stomach turn. He needed something stronger than ale to get through this conversation.

  He signaled Felecia and ordered whiskey for all. Lemmen watched the other patrons in the inn eat, drink, and laugh, unaware of the atrocities his tiny group in the corner contemplated The men waited in uncomfortable silence until Felecia returned with the drinks.

  Guillaume and Lemmen stayed silent while Reverend Vermeulen gathered his thoughts. Lemmen studied the man's face and realized with a shock that he was considerably younger than he'd earlier assumed. Maybe even younger than his apprentice, Yvonne, who was herself barely twenty. What a toll it took on a devout man of any age to live in the midst of such horror. But someone so young and inexperienced would surely be overwhelmed, unable to deal with the situation.

  Vermeulen finally spoke again in a very low voice. “I… I heard… but it was so hard to believe, you've got to understand … I mean, the extent of their cruelty.” He met Lemmen's gaze. “Until I saw the boy.” Vermeulen couldn't go on. Tears ran down his cheeks. He pulled a crumpled kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the tears, took another drink. After a few deep breaths he tried once more.

  “The child was only six or seven. His stick-thin brown arms were bandaged at the wrists where his little hands should have been.” Vermeulen's misery flowed out of his words. “I personally know the boy's family. I've been instructing them in the faith. The boy's father, Milandu, did not try to escape, but is a worker on the plantation.” He twirled his glass, now nearly empty. “Milandu didn't meet the weekly quota.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Guillaume whispered, stood suddenly, sliding his chair noisily across the uneven stone floor in the process, one hand on his waist and the other passing through his hair. “They did that to his child?”

  Lemmen grabbed his shirt and pulled him back down to his seat.

  “I'm thinking you're targeting the wrong souls for redemption,” Lemmen said. “You need to tell someone here.”

  “I've written to my superior and I have a meeting with him in the morning. I don't think he believes it's as bad as I say.”

  “You should go back to M. Serruys. Tell him what you've witnessed. He's wealthy, but not in bed with the King and has connections in Great Britain. If this can get to the press outside of Belgium, there might be a chance to bring about change. We need to expose the butcher for what he is.”

  * * *

  Jenny and I were bored. Mama took pity on us and allowed a tea-time break from our forced immobility. Mama played the piano while Jenny, Vonnie and I sang our favorite ballads and danced around the living room, narrowly avoiding many a disastrous collision with the easel. We stretched the interlude out as long as possible. However, once Vonnie deemed we'd used enough energy she ended the entertainment. “Go change into those lovely red dresses M. Lemmen requested,” she said. “I'll do a couple more sketches and we'll be done for the day.” Jenny and I ran upstairs to change.

  The wilted missionary was back in the foyer when I returned to the living room and I watched Papa escort him into the library. Mama continued her piano playing and singing so I couldn't hear any conversation leaking from the partially open library door. Papa had given the man some money earlier today, so I couldn't imagine why he'd be back so soon. I stood erect for Vonnie but kept one eye on the front lobby, waiting for the missionary to emerge.

  At the moment the library door opened wider to reveal Papa and his guest, Mama finished the piece she was playing. In the sudden vortex of quiet, I distinctly heard Papa say, “Be careful what you say, sir. Your life may depend on it.”

  I didn't know if that was a warning or a threat.

  Then Mama started playing again.

  * * *

  George Lemmen had a bad feeling about the little missionary. He heard that Vermeulen missed his morning appointment with his superior and by the following day was officially considered missing. Since Lemmen had been one of the last to have spoken with Reverend Vermeulen, he suffered through an afternoon at the police station under interrogation regarding the activities of the young missionary.

  Exhausted and agitated, Lemmen returned to his studio to find his friend, Guillaume, waiting and chatting with his assistant, Yvonne Serruys.

  “How long did they hold you?” Guillaume asked.

  “Nearly three hours, the bastards,” Lemmen said.

  “I was there all morning,” Guillaume said.

  “What did they want?” Yvonne asked as she set up the multiple sketches of her sisters for Lemmen's consideration.

  “We took the missionary out for supper after he met with your father,” Lemmen said, walking from sketch to sketch. “The police wanted to know what we talked about and if we knew who else he planned to proposition for funds.”

  “Seems like more effort from the king's men than you'd expect for just a missing missionary,” Yvonne said. “Did they get wind of what he intended to tell his superior?”

  “You told her?” Guillaume asked.

  Lemmen laughed. “She's one of us, mon ami.” He studied the last sketch for a minute then answered Yvonne's question. “They seemed to know something. But I certainly wasn't going to tell the king's pawns what I've heard of royal atrocities. I might go missing, too.”

  “They found him, I heard,” Guillaume said. “His beaten body was hidden in a dogcart along the Senne way over on the other side of Brussels.”

  Lemmen was quiet for a moment, then he backtracked to the middle sketch which depicted Berthe Serruys's angular face turned toward the activities in the front foyer of her home. He pointed to it. “This one,” he said, his expression turning serious. “I'll always remember the little missionary when I look at your sister's expression in this pose.”

  Guillaume walked over to look at the sketch. “The Surreys Sisters?”

  “I think The Two Sisters, but we'll see. Red dresses, pale complexions, blue background. Pointillism, of course. I'm going to try something different and extend the technique to the frame as well.”

  Guillaume found an empty frame and held it in front of the sketch. Lemmen gently raised the frame slightly to cover the Surreys girls’ hands at the bottom of the sketch and met his friend's sad eyes. The girls’ stick-thin white arms became ‘bandaged’ by the wooden frame—where the little hands should have been—creating a memorial to the missionary and his tortured family of converts in Africa.

  * * *

  Jenny and I were dancing to Mama's music when Yvonne and M. Lemmen delivered the finished painting.

  “Edmond,” Mama called out toward the library. “The portrait is here.” She didn't wait for him. She carefully clipped the binding and removed the paper wrapping. Her eyes took on that soft expression she reserved for babies and other cute things.

  “Oh, it's beautiful,” she said. “Thank you, Georges, thank you.”

  “Let me see,” Jenny said, jumping up and down.

  I was just as excited, but didn't jump in front of company.

  Mama turned the painting around and my heart sank. It was awful. I looked like a mean old woman dressed like a little girl. Even beautiful Jenny looked pouty. I didn't know what to say without crying or hurting Vonnie's feelings. Was that really how we looked to her?

  Vonnie must have noticed because she put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “M. Lemmen chose the pose,” she said in a whisper. “He said that was how he remembered you that day.”

  “You were mad at me, w
eren't you, Bertie?” Jenny asked. “You look mad.”

  I growled. Well, I certainly was mad at her now.

  Papa joined us just then.

  “Welcome, mon ami,” he said in greeting, shaking M. Lemmen's hand. He took the portrait from my mother and studied it. “My darling Bertie,” he said. “What were you looking at so intently?”

  I fought back the tears but didn't answer. Just lifted my shoulders in a shrug.

  “She was focused on the little missionary that was visiting you,” M. Lemmen said. “Remember?”

  In my misery, I almost missed the look that passed between Papa and the artist. It jogged my memory. The police had been around asking us what we knew of the missing man.

  Papa looked at the picture again. “Thank you, Georges. Now, I'll never forget that day.”

  “It's not so bad, Bertie,” Jenny said. “And don't worry. It's going in Papa's library. No one else will ever see it.”

  Author's note: Little Jenny Serruys in my story was wrong—everyone can see the painting. The Two Sisters, (1894) is on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The Serruys family and the Neo-Impressionist artist, Georges Lemmen, were real. Also the atrocities of King Leopold II related to the people in the Congo Free State (1888-1908) are well documented. However, the events described in my story connecting the two are products of my imagination.

  Jon Magnus Jonson (1893-1947)

  Janis Thornton

  Frankfort, Indiana, was elated when their resident sculptor, Jon Magnus Jonson, was deemed Outstanding Exhibitor at the 1935 Hoosier Salon in Chicago. Critics called his Mother and Child, executed in pink marble, “a striking study.”

  By then, Jonson was already established as an innovative artist. His wood, bronze, and marble renderings were hailed from Salt Lake to New York City. The head of Lincoln, carved from African walnut, and the massive, architectural sculptures gracing the International House in Chicago are among his best-known works.

  Jonson started life on his Icelandic immigrant parents’ North Dakota farm in 1893. By nine, he was herding cattle and dreaming of becoming an artist. While serving with the American forces in France during World War I, he visited art museums throughout Europe. Afterward, he studied at the Chicago Art Institute, where he met Lelah Maish, a beautiful sculptor and poet from Indiana. They married Christmas Eve 1923 in New York City and soon relocated to Utah, where Jonson helped sculpt the Mormon Battalion Monument.

  Lelah fell ill in 1928, and the Jonsons moved to her family farm near Frankfort. Farming was in Jonson's blood as much as art. In Frankfort, he enjoyed both. His Indiana commissions include sculptures in Purdue University's Elliott Hall of Music and its Memorial Union, George Rogers Clark Memorial at Vincennes, and fountains in Richmond and Frankfort.

  Jonson died unexpectedly in 1947 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he taught at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He was fifty-three.

  No Good Deed

  Brenda Robertson Stewart

  I could hear loud voices in my head, but my eyelids felt like lead and I struggled to crack them open.

  “Ms. Wolfe, can you hear me?”

  “There's a lot of blood around that head wound.”

  “Looks like she was struck with that shepherd statue lying on the floor. It's covered in blood.”

  “EMTs are on their way.”

  I opened my eyes and saw a circle of people around me, some wearing uniforms. Startled to find myself lying on the floor, I tried to sit up. Blinding pain shot through my head and I fell back to the floor as I heard a siren.

  “Help's here,” someone said.

  I must have passed out again because the next thing I knew, I was seeing bright lights in total blackness. I thought I must be in the tunnel I'd read about in articles about near-death experiences.

  “Are you awake?” someone asked.

  I opened my eyes and saw that I was lying in a draped cubicle. There was a woman dressed in a white coat standing by my bed.

  “I'm Dr. Chambers, an emergency room physician on the staff of General Hospital here in Indianapolis. Can you tell me your name?”

  “Lettie Sue Wolfe.”

  “Do you remember how you suffered a blow to your head?”

  “No, but I heard somebody hit me on the head with a statue. I've got a violent headache.”

  The doctor asked me multiple questions and checked my reflexes. “You've got a mild concussion and we're going to keep you in the hospital overnight for observation.”

  “I need to go home to Bloomington. Pets need to be cared for.” I could tell I stumbled over my words.

  “You need to take care of yourself right now. I understand someone has been notified who can see to your pets. It's important for your full recovery that you rest your brain. However, there are two policemen here who would like to talk to you. Do you feel up to answering their questions?”

  “Sure, but my memory might be a bit fuzzy right now. Can you give me something for this raging headache?”

  “Memory problems are common with a head injury. I'll order some acetaminophen for the pain. Other pain killers can cause bleeding in the brain,” she said.

  Sometime later, two men walked into my cubicle. I think they were wearing suits and ties, but my vision was so blurred they looked like distorted images in a fun house mirror.

  “I'm Detective Mike Spencer with IMPD and this is my partner, Detective Amos Sharp. We'd like to ask you a few questions if you feel up to it, Ms. Wolfe.”

  “I feel like I've been hit by a truck, but go ahead.”

  “Can you describe what happened before the assault and theft?”

  “There was a theft? What was stolen?”

  “I'll get to that in a minute. Tell me about your day. Take your time. We're in no hurry.”

  “My friend, Zach, owns a photo studio and small art gallery in Camby. He's on a photo shoot in California and I volunteered to man the gallery to help out for a few days to give his mother a break. She's been working there until he can hire an employee.” I stopped to think. “It was a quiet morning—only one person came in. He looked at the artwork, said he might be interested in one of the paintings, but wanted to check with his wife before he spent that much money. He left and I went to the back room of the shop. When I came back to the front, I rummaged around in some files I had brought with me involving a facial reconstruction I'd been working on. I'm a forensic artist. I was bent over the table and thought I heard a noise behind me. I started to turn to look and wham—my head exploded and that's the last thing I remember.” I closed my eyes and laid back to rest.

  “Can you describe the customer who was in the gallery?

  “He was about five-ten, one hundred sixty pounds, brown eyes, longish brown hair, mustache, and teeth stained with a tobacco tint. Spoke with a west Texas drawl. Wore a gray wind-breaker and black leather gloves, which I found strange considering it was such a warm day for early March.”

  “Good. You were very observant. Do you think you could work with our forensic artist to get a likeness of the man?” Detective Spencer asked.

  “I can do better than that. When the stabbing pain in my head quiets down, I can draw his portrait myself.”

  “Excellent. What can you tell me about a painting of a shepherd that was hanging in the gallery?”

  “Is that what was stolen?”

  “That's what the gallery owner's mother told us.”

  “The Shepherd Boy is a beautiful painting by a west Texas artist named Randy Maloney. An Indiana relative inherited it after she died. It was said many people had tried to purchase the painting while the artist was alive, but she refused to sell it. According to the relative, it was always displayed with the small terra cotta statue that apparently clouted me, but no one seemed to know the significance of the statue—except it was also a shepherd.”

  “Yes, you were hit by the statue. Your blood was on it,” Detective Spencer said.

  “Head wounds bleed a lot. Was it broken? I've been told I h
ave a hard head.”

  “It looked intact,” he said.

  Fatigue seeped into my bones, but I continued. “The canvas is about forty-eight by thirty-six inches and depicts approximately two thirds of the shepherd's body. Earth tones dominate in the background and in the blanket that is pulled up around his shoulders and head almost like a cape. A shepherd's crook is in the boy's right hand. I was thinking of buying the painting myself. The price was five thousand dollars. It was on consignment in the gallery. The sellers said they needed the money to help with their son's college expenses.”

  “Did you see what the customer was driving?” Detective Spencer asked.

  “I looked out the window as he was getting into a small blue SUV. I can't tell you the make. He must have come back into the gallery while I was in the rear and hid in Zach's photo studio which is in a separate room off the main floor. There isn't any place to hide in the gallery.”

  “What made you think he had a west Texas accent?” Detective Sharp asked.

  “I have relatives in Midland, which is where the artist lived, and the man talked like they do.”

  “Did you know the artist?”

  “No, but I wish I had. She was certainly gifted.”

  “The doctor said they're keeping you overnight, but I'll need to be in contact when you feel you can draw the portrait, and I may need to ask you some more questions. Will you give me your home address, phone number and email?” Detective Spencer asked.

  “Of course. Write down your contact information and I can email the picture to you.”

  An eternity later I was transferred to a regular hospital room. I was bored, but the only show on TV that I could bear to watch was the Cupcake Wars, probably because my cooking skills leave much to be desired. My vision was still a bit distorted. The cupcakes probably weren't oval.

  A nurse's aide came in with a pitcher of iced water. “It's best not to watch TV with a concussion,” she said as she turned off the TV.

  I must have dozed because people were sitting in my room when I woke up. When I got my eyes focused I recognized the company. “Aunt Mattie, Uncle Jim, what are you doing here? How did you get here?” I was so happy to see my elderly neighbors that I began to sob which didn't help my headache.