The Oldest Confession Read online

  “Very much.”

  “Is it your first trip?”

  “No. No, I was a newspaperwoman here, Dr. Muñoz. I learned Spanish here.”

  “Well! You speak Spanish!” He spoke to the others generally. “We really should speak Spanish, you know.” Dr. Muñoz spoke perfect English with a marked British accent. “Do you speak Spanish, M’sieu Calbert?”

  “After a fashion. My French is much better.”

  Dr. Muñoz looked at him strangely for that remark. “Naturally,” he said then, brightening, exclaimed, “Well,” why not?”

  “Why not what?” asked Jean Marie.

  “Why not speak French?” He spoke to Eve. “Do you speak French, Mrs. Bourne?”

  “As you wish, doctor. Any language at all.”

  He bit his lower lip and blood rushed into face again. He was saved by the doorbell. He excused himself, in French, and hurried out of the room.

  “I just may slug this cat,” Eve said.

  “He is certainly awful,” Jean Marie acknowledged. “My God, Jim, how long do we have to stay here?”

  “We leave after we admire his new pictures,” Bourne said, sounding a little sore. “And I do mean admire. Get with it, Eve, for Christ’s sake. It’s a job. You’ve had worse jobs.”

  “I’m sorry, darling. I will. I can’t get started but I will.”

  They heard Muñoz approaching with his guest, shooing him along. He very nearly pushed the man into the bar. The guest happened to be the chief of customs at Barajas Airport who took one look at Eve then smiled as if he had invented false teeth. “Señorita Quinn!” he cried, pronouncing it Keen. “What a wonderful surprise!”

  Dr. Muñoz was covered with happy confusion. “You know each other? That is marvelous!” They were all speaking Spanish now. That is, those who could speak.

  “When did you return?” the chief asked Eve and Dr. Muñoz said as if it were a witty joke, “Señora Bourne, may I present Colonel Gómez, chief of customs at our Barajas Airport?”

  Bourne looked suddenly at Eve. She nodded slightly.

  “Señora Bourne! Well! That was sudden, wasn’t it?”

  Eve moved in hurriedly, but very smoothly. “You must have been my good luck token, Colonel. He isn’t Spanish but he lives in Spain.” She hastened to explain almost everything to her husband. “The colonel and I have sort of a secret, darling. But I can tell you that we were discussing marriage and its blessings exactly ten days ago, the day before I met you.”

  “Secrets, hey?” Bourne managed to boom that out, as square as a box.

  The coloned laughed with delight. “Nothing serious, I can assure you, sir. But charming. Very, very charming.”

  Dr. Muñoz crowded Jean Marie up to the colonel, holding him firmly by the elbow, with Jean Marie unobtrusively fighting to get free. “Colonel, this is M’sieu Jean Marie Calbert, a very promising French painter.” Jean Marie glared at him.

  The two men shook hands, while Dr. Muñoz hastened behind the bar to fetch Colonel Gómez a sherry. The colonel beamed on the newlyweds. “So you met in Paris nine days ago. Oh, I like that very much. What a successful ending to a tour of Europe.”

  “To a tour of Spain,” Eve corrected him gently, then, holding her glass high, “To Spain,” she said as the colonel received his glass from Dr. Muñoz. Everyone but the marqués drank the toast because he didn’t drink, but he stood at flag attention and looked very silly.

  “How did you two happen to meet?” Dr. Muñoz asked. “After all, my colonel, you are very much of a bridegroom yourself.” They all had a nice, false, hollow laugh over that.

  “Señora Bourne came to Spain with a very good copy of a Velázquez which I was permitted to register.”

  “Really a good copy?” Muñoz asked. Jean Marie glared at him.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” said the colonel, “that it was so good we not only checked this young lady’s routing in Spain, but we made it a point to call the owner of the original before Señora Bourne was allowed to leave the country.” Jean Marie beamed. Bourne sat up a little straighter. “A mere formality, I assure you, señora. I like to do my job well. No offense meant.”

  “I forgive you,” said Eve smiling charmingly. Her forhead was moist all along her hairline. Beads of sweat, sweat like the sweat in the taxi on the way to the airport when she had last seen the colonel, began to form from all around her ears. She could not look down at her dress, afraid it would be marked with those enormous circular splotches again.

  “That good a copy of Velázquez? That’s marvelous. Where did you get it, Mrs. Bourne?” Muñoz asked.

  “In Paris,” she managed to say.

  “They have some excellent copyists in the Rue de Seine,” Bourne said quickly.

  “As a matter of fact,” Eve said, “that’s just where I got it.”

  “Will you be staying in Madrid, Señora Bourne?” the colonel asked.

  “I live here now,” she answered. “My husband is in business in Madrid.”

  “I’ve been here for over three years,” Bourne said.

  They chatted about housing and the climate for ten minutes or so and Eve’s fear gradually subsided, although she could not have told what she feared. The colonel then bid everyone farewell, telling them how pleasant the surprise had been and pleading with Eve that they must all arrange to meet really soon. Eve took his wife’s telephone number. The colonel asked her permission to tell his wife the secret. Eve managed to blush and nod virginally. The colonel left.

  “A very good man,” Dr. Muñoz said. “Regular tiger about the law, though. Relentless and all that.” He had gone back to English. Bourne insisted harshly that they be allowed to see the doctor’s new acquisitions as they had promised Nicky Storich that they would stop by for cocktails and time was running along.

  “Very well,” the marqués said. “I understand. Though I’ll wager you won’t want to run right along after you’ve seen these beauties.”

  They followed him out of the room, turning right into the corridor. Dr. Muñoz fumbled with keys then unlocked the tall, exquisitely carved double doors which were bracketed by dim lights at the end of the windowless hall, saying, “This is a very thrilling moment for me.” As both doors opened they could see the brilliant sunlight streaming into the room through the large windows, but Dr. Muñoz leaned into the room and snapped on a light switch. He stood back then and permitted the others to precede him into the room.

  They moved forward, or shuffled in boredom, then they came up short, perhaps four paces within the large, long room, staring and shocked. There were three brilliantly illuminated paintings on the walls. They were the Zurbarán, the Velázquez and the Greek from the Dos Cortes collection. Eve made a sound far back in her throat and slipped limply to the floor.

  Dr. Muñoz fired a troubled exclamation and scurried from the room. Bourne sat on the floor and held Eve’s head in his lap, rubbing her wrists as a woodman would start a fire with two sticks. Jean Marie stood open-mouthed and motionless, staring at the pictures. The only sound was the metallic tapping of the marqués’ little shoes as they hit the tiled floor of the corridor rapidly. He hastened back into the room carrying a bowl of tiny ice cubes, cubes which looked small enough to have been frozen in a honeycomb.

  Bourne thanked Muñoz formally, scooped up a handful of ice and pressed it into the back of Eve’s neck. Her eyelids moved, then opened. She was staring directly at Dr. Muñoz.

  “Did you have the paintings taken from us?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Señor Elek, too?”

  “I had to,” Dr. Muñoz answered. “You’ve no idea what a little adventurer that man turned out to be. He tried to blackmail me. It was all too fantastic and preposterous. Would you like a cognac?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Dr. Muñoz darted out of the room again and rushed down the hall like Carroll’s White Rabbit on his way to a prefrontal lobotomy. Eve said, “You’ve come to a murderer, at last, Jim.”
He looked down at her, but did not answer.

  “What do we do now?” Jean Marie asked. “This man is so bland he almost makes me feel as though I should thank him for showing us his beautiful paintings.”

  Bourne signaled Jean Marie to help them to their feet. He sat Eve in a chair as though she were a rag doll then walked to the window to stare sullenly out at the Plaza de Colón and the National Library. Eve looked at his back anxiously then to Jean Marie who shrugged, then to Bourne’s back again.

  Muñoz nipped into the room carrying a silver tray holding four balloon glasses, at shoulder height on the tips of his fingers like a comedy waiter in a revue sketch, carrying a bottle of French cognac in the other hand. He set the tray down on the low table, which was ringed by comfortable chairs, and began to pour the cognac saying, “Please sit down. Be comfortable. We have a great deal to talk about.”

  Jean Marie sat down first and took up a glass. He held it in both hands, inhaling the fumes. Bourne did not move, or turn away from the window. The back of his neck was turkey-red. Eve sat with great care; the way a very fragile, old lady would sit. Her face was startlingly pale. She stared past Muñoz at her husband’s back, knowing that he was fighting to hold his temper and that he could not trust himself to speak.

  The large room was furnished in the Moorish style; with a lot of reds, a lot of leather, and a lot of cushions. The three paintings were magnificently displayed at exactly the proper eye-level, each one flooded with bright, frame-contained light from a ceiling source. Jean Marie seemed to find it difficult to stop staring at them. Muñoz seemed to gain warm pleasure from watching him stare.

  “There are paintings one can build a room around,” he said blandly, wiping the spittle from the left corner of his mouth, “and there are paintings one can build a house around. These, one builds one’s life around.”

  Jean Marie made an involuntary sound, not unlike a snort of contempt, but did not speak in answer. No one spoke, but Muñoz accepted their sullenness. He made himself merry and livened them by so doing. “And so we meet again, M’sieu Calbert?” Bourne spun around.

  “Again?”

  “We undertook several art transactions in Paris during the German occupation,” the marqués explained.

  Jean Marie spoke up immediately. “I never knew his name until today. Or that he was Spanish. Who asks questions like that? He hired me to copy. I copied. He paid.” Bourne turned away again and stared out of the window.

  “Dear friends,” Muñoz orated,” “please listen to me. If you believe that I have brought you here to crow over you, you are wrong. Please try to remember that whereas you had planned your robbery for a mere year or two, I have been planning mine for my entire life. Please forgive me for causing you such disappointment. I really mean that. I have asked you here because I need your help.”

  “My God, what a man!” Jean Marie said. “He does us out of all of the French francs in Spain then wants a little favor!”

  Bourne turned again. He tried to talk but his voice sounded strange and choked. He coughed and started again. His voice wasn’t normal yet, but he had control of himself. “I want a letter to go to Traumer Frères now, instructing them to release my escrow funds.”

  “I will,” Muñoz answered. “At once.”

  “Now! Now, goddammit!” Bourne shouted. “We’ve been cheated out of a profit on this thing so far, but I’ll be god-dammed if we’ll operate it at a loss!”

  “As you wish,” the doctor said. He rose and moved out of the room, rapidly but with dignity. “I will write it now and you may mail it. You are entirely right.”

  “Are you going to bargain with him, Jim?” Eve’s voice was strident. “He’s a murderer. Let him haggle things out with the police.”

  “He’s also crazy,” Jean Marie said.

  “Shut up, both of you! We’ve been cheated out of a lot of money and nearly three years of work. I cannot and I will not be a chump for this foolish man. And don’t talk to me about murder! We can’t bring Elek back and there’ll be time enough after we dispose of these paintings.”

  “You heard him say he killed Señor Elek!”

  “Eve. Please. This is no time for a hysterical argument about morals. We’ll hear what he has to say and we’ll move when I decide we know what we’re doing.”

  “Jim, we’ve come to a murder. By our direct actions we have made a murder possible. We don’t want to be dragged any further. I’m not hysterical. You’re looking at me and you know it. That’s what sin is, Jim. If we go any further doors will close all around us and we’ll never get out.”

  Dr. Muñoz came back into the room carrying a sheet of letter paper and an envelope. He crossed the room and handed the note to Jim. “Having a family argument?” he asked. “Does not mama love papa?”

  Eve looked at him as though he were a swarm of locusts, seen through glass. “We were discussing my suggestion that you be turned over to the police to be tried for murder, you creep,” she explained with a reasonable voice.

  The marqués, in his turn, snorted in contempt. “Is that letter satisfactory?” he asked Bourne. Bourne nodded, folded it, inserted it into the envelope and sealed it.

  “What do you want, Victoriano?” he asked.

  “I feel that with all this bold talk about giving me to the police perhaps it would be best if I first tell you what I have and then what I want. It will put an entirely different complexion on things. You must know that I have a case against each of you. For M’sieu Calbert’s sake, I want to point out that I have a case against his wife.”

  “One moment, my friend. My wife has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “I have, of course, an open-and-shut case against your wife, Jaime. Colonel Gómez is a dedicated civil servant who has befriended your wife to be cruelly deceived by her. Beyond that single instance, she has violated many points of the Spanish law and I am certain that I could arrange to keep her here, in prison, for thirty or more years.”

  Eve’s face was bloodless, but she was lively in her disapproval of the doctor. “I don’t think you can operate that cool. You think you have this on us. We have a murder on you.”

  “No you have not, Mrs. Bourne. I can prove. You cannot. And as far as M’sieu Calbert is concerned, well! There is no doubt there. He will be greatly admired by the court and the press for the quality of his work but, if I choose, he will die in prison in Spain.” He grinned at Bourne sillily. “And as for you. Ho-ho! Do you know that I have infrared photographs of you in the very act of stealing these paintings from Dos Cortes? You’ll need two lives to give to the Spanish government.”

  “I suppose you’ve considered the rather distressing thought that if you turn us in,” Bourne said, “you’ll have to give up these paintings and that we will most certainly implicate you.”

  “Of course I’ve considered that.”

  “And?”

  “Jaime, I am a grandee of Spain, in Spain. You are foreigners and in your case, Jaime, and your wife’s, I contend that when your passports and other papers are placed under the scrutiny of your own Federal Bureau of Investigation, with whom our government works on a daily basis, they will prove to be spurious. Oh, there is an entire chain of circumstances which would render you helpless to involve me,” he crowed.

  He poured cognac into Eve’s glass, into Jean Marie’s and into his own. Bourne had not touched his.

  “Don’t you see?” he continued. “I am not trying to bluff you. Look here. I am ready to go much further to convince you. I see it this way: No one likes me so anyone would believe very nearly anything about me if I were charged by an unimpeachable source.” He held up his finger. “I said, unimpeachable. Also, everyone knows the lengths I would pursue to possess a certain masterpiece of Spanish painting because I am considered crazy on the subject of my family and the wrongs which were done them. Well, perhaps they are right. I care about masterpieces of Spanish painting because they are one of the ancient rights and possessions of my ancient family which I,
myself, have the power to restore. Therefore, and here at last I am getting to the point, if you force me to turn you over to the police and to the state—and I do not want that—I will so do this in a manner which will reveal myself as the leader of this band of thieves who have stolen these three paintings, so that we may be tried together and so that I may testify against all of us to insure maximum sentences for each of us, including your wife, M’sieu Calbert, when our absolutely certain conviction is secured. That is how serious I am.”

  By the time he had finished, Bourne’s face and Jean Marie’s face were glistening with sweat. Jean Marie’s hand also trembled as he leaned forward to take the bottle to the glass again. Eve sat erectly looking like a classical ivory carving. Muñoz fumbled with his wrist-watch band, which seemed to be a bit tight.

  “Victoriano,” Bourne said, leaning forward as though he were selling insurance, “let’s start at the beginning. I’d like to get everything as clear as possible.”

  “By all means, Jaime. You must.”

  Bourne spoke deliberately, with some effort, thinking of each word just before he chose to speak it. “You wanted these paintings for what you considered overpowering reasons. You have known Jean Marie for some time. It is possible that he told you of my plans for Spain.”

  “Think it through, my friend,” Jean Marie said. “This one doesn’t have much money. Your way I could have made more money than any of us have ever seen.”

  “In any event, I haven’t seen or communicated with the man since nineteen forty-three,” Dr. Muñoz said.

  “All right,” Bourne acknowledged. “In any event you found out what I wanted to do just about eighteen months ago, because that was just about when you began to seek me out after the weekly concerts at the Royal Palace to discuss art.”

  “Yes. About the time you began to meet Madrid society.”

  “And to discuss art with you.”

  “I am still astonished at what you know and feel about our art.”

  “Yes,” Bourne answered. “And more so now than ever. Once you knew we had started, and I assume that you knew this in detail from Lawyer Chern, it was simple to keep a watch on his studio and to know the dates of the transfer of the copies and by which frontier. Because you knew which copies had been executed, you knew which originals would be stolen and where they were hung. Each time I took an original from Dos Cortes you were among the guests.”