The Play of Light and Shadow & Writing (2 page)

“
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!
”