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In fact, the only two paintings—the only two surviving paintings—with solitary male figures as their protagonists were a pair of later works titled The Astronomer and The Geographer. Or at least that’s what they were called now. Back in 1713, they had been auctioned as A work depicting a Mathematical Artist and A ditto by the Same Name, demonstrating Vermeer’s gift for really awful titles.
Another interesting point about the two paintings—Jason’s favorites out of Vermeer’s entire body of work—was that although one had been done in 1668 and the second in 1669, the same man had posed for them. One theory was that the man was Vermeer himself. Another theory was that it was his friend and estate executor, the noted microbiologist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. Maybe. The fact remained, a slender man in his late thirties with long dark hair and a solemn face had posed for Vermeer as the painter worked on the two possibly thematically paired pictures.
So if A Gentleman Washing His Hands in a Perspectival Room with Figures, Artful and Rare did exist, it would be all the more, well, artful and rare.
Schütz had nothing to add on the topic of A Gentleman Washing His Hands. There was no question the painting had existed, but for it to have shown up in the tunnels of Engelshofen Castle, it would have had to survive two world wars and a whole lot of history.
That didn’t mean it was impossible.
After dinner, Jason walked back to his hotel.
It was nearly dark by then, a warm summer’s evening with lights winking on everywhere—some of those twinkles turning out to be fireflies. A cool breeze, flavored with clear summer air and wide-open plains, dusted the sidewalks and stirred leaves and flags and imaginatively painted hanging signs. The sidewalks were crowded, but strangers smiled when you caught their gaze. He could hear distant music playing and the faraway, mournful wail of a train.
Bozwin was a college town. A pretty town too, sheltered in the blue-black shadows of the Bridger Range, and effort had gone into keeping it that way. There was a variety of architecture—Art Deco, Italianate, and Mission Revival—but one thing every style had in common was the effort made to preserve and protect. He liked that. And there was plenty of shopping, plenty of places to eat and drink. It was a nice place to visit, no question.
Though he couldn’t help thinking there was a real lack of ethnic or cultural diversity. And despite that surprisingly well-connected airport, this was a very long way from pretty much everywhere he needed to be.
He had stopped to look in the window of a closed art gallery when he caught the reflection of a police SUV. He glanced around, recognized Chief Sandford’s silvery hair and blunt features beneath a baseball cap.
The chief was looking straight ahead and didn’t seem to see him, which was fine with Jason. Local law enforcement didn’t always welcome the Bureau with open arms, but he’d rarely had such a hostile reception.
And he was still curious as to why Bert Thompson’s first instinct had been to call the Bozwin police chief after the shootout at his ranch. Maybe the chief was a personal friend of the family, though he hadn’t seemed particularly chummy with Bert.
When he reached his hotel, Jason got out his laptop and settled down to work. That was usually how he spent his evenings on the road.
If Sam had had the evening off, it might have been nice to walk around town and catch some of the summer activities he had seen advertised on posters and flyers: a local theater was running classic Westerns, the Montana State University was doing Shakespeare in the Park, and on Main Street the summer music festival was in full swing.
But they weren’t on vacation, and he had reports to write up.
He was doing his best to keep a careful and accurate account of his investigation, making particular effort to be scrupulous in any and all matters related to Emerson Harley’s potential involvement.
When the time came to turn in his final case report—and regardless of his findings—he intended to make full disclosure about his personal connection to Emerson Harley. He knew his chief at the ACT, Karan Kapszukiewicz, was not going to be happy. At all. And George Potts, his supervisor at the LA Field Office, would be even less pleased. There was a good chance he was going to receive a letter of censure for his file. That would be hard to take.
Not least because a letter of censure put him in danger of losing a much coveted spot on the highly competitive Art Crime Team.
He hoped not. He didn’t think that would happen, but he couldn’t be sure. Even knowing the risk, he felt he had to pursue the path he had started down on.
There was another possibility too: that he would be fired outright. But that he refused to even think about.
Accordingly, he noted Quilletta’s allegations that her uncle had been ordered to take the artwork by a commanding officer, and de Haan’s conviction that MFAA Deputy Chief Emerson Harley was the best and most likely candidate f
or Captain Roy Thompson’s accomplice.
He also noted that neither Terry Mayhew nor Edgar Roberts had recognized Harley’s name or remembered hearing Thompson mention him, but so far, the scales were not tilting in his favor. Still, it was early in the investigation.
He was hoping spending some quality time in the Bozwin Daily Chronicle’s archives might turn up the names of some other potential suspects, although if de Haan hadn’t identified them by now, they probably did not exist.
By the time he finished writing up his notes and checking and answering emails, following up current cases as best he could long-distance, it was after ten. Still no word from Sam.
Not looking too promising, then.
He tried to do a bit more research on A Gentleman Washing His Hands, but there really did not seem to be any more to discover.
He did come across a fanciful reconstruction of the legendary lost work painted by Delft artist Arthur Stam in 2013 and displayed at the Delft art gallery Ruimte Remmelink in spring of that year. The painting was…well, it was not Vermeer, of course.
It was an interesting experiment, though. Jason studied the recreated room and small, pudgy central figure intently. Putting aside technique, palette, composition, and Vermeer’s apparent sorcery, it seemed to him that Stam entirely missed the point, for lack of a better word, of Vermeer’s work.
Stam had tackled the lost painting again, this time in a three-dimensional installation. And, in Jason’s opinion, he’d got it even more wrong. Vermeer had not simply painted scenes of comfortable domesticity; he had tried to convey a quality of life, even perhaps the very essence of civilization. There was something profound in Vermeer’s work. Somehow the simplicity of the scenes he chose to portray only underlined their importance, their sublimity. Vermeer seemed to be illustrating what it meant to be human.
