The Mystery of the Vanished van Gogh

(Part Two)

by Ron Katz

***

“I’ve done a little more historical research, Mom,” said Melanie. 

“Let me put you on the speaker, dear,” said Barb, "so your father can hear too. We’re in our suite at the Hotel de Crillon.”

“Nice digs,” said Melanie. 

“So glad to hear you’re taking an interest in your parents’ profession,” noted Bernie. “It’s not too late for you to become a gumshoe, sweetie.”

“I agree that being an academic and being a detective are not as different as I thought at the beginning of this very interesting assignment,” responded Melanie. “I thought you mainly focused on medicare fraud.”

“That is so twentieth-century,” said Barb. “As of now, if it’s not a 100-year-old case involving lost, priceless masterpieces, count us out. You’ll be proud to know that tomorrow we are making a pilgrimage to Auvers-sur-Oise in order to investigate this case and to visit the final resting places of Vincent and Theo van Gogh.”

“That’s where I thought you might be headed. Is Rene Secretan still your prime suspect?”

“Yes,” Barb responded, “but ‘suspect’ might be the wrong word. Whatever happened in 1890, it’s too late for earthly justice. Knowing more about the murder, however, is what we hope will lead us either to the missing painting or to the missing empty canvas. Otherwise, the holder of that old insurance policy, Albert Janssen, probably has enough circumstantial evidence to collect millions of dollars from Alpha.”

“You might want to check out the road from Auvers to a place called Chaponval. Along the way is a bend in the Oise River, which was Rene Secretan’s favorite fishing spot and is near what was a poachers’ bar where Rene and Vincent used to drink. There are some statements from long-dead witnesses placing Vincent on that road the day of the gunshot. Also, it’s only half a mile from Auvers, which makes it plausible that a wounded Vincent could have limped and crawled from there to the inn where he was staying in Auvers.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” said Barb. “I would think the police would have looked there in 1890, but we’ll give it a try.”

“Great idea,” exclaimed Bernie. “Plus, we’re going to buy something they didn’t have in 1890—a metal detector.”

***

“$1000 for a metal detector?” queried Barb. She, Bernie and Ozzie were sitting in Barb and Bernie’s modest room at the Hotel des Iris in Auvers-sur-Oise, conveniently located opposite the inn where van Gogh expired.

“It’s the top of the line,” Bernie responded proudly, “a Minelab Equinox 800 with Double-D Waterproof Coil. It can detect metal up to ten inches deep, including under water.”

“131 years after the fact,” observed Ozzie, “ten inches may not be enough.”

“Remember,” rejoined Bernie, “that the legend of Vincent’s death is that he died in the wheatfields near here, not near the bend in the river where I’ll be looking. The riverbend area should have been less disturbed than the wheatfields, but, I admit, if what I’m looking for is deeper than ten inches, we will have to hope that your and Barb’s investigative assignments turn up something.”

“Auvers is an art professor’s dream,” said Ozzie. “A charming village of 6000 people or so—probably 2000 when van Gogh lived here—dotted with places that are the subjects of van Gogh masterpieces. One of those, the house of Dr. Gachet, is where I’ll be investigating--for what, exactly, I am not sure.”

“If it was obvious what to look for,” said Barb, “Bernie and I would be out of business. Just go with the flow of your artistic intuition. I’ll be heading to the Church at Auvers, also the subject of a van Gogh masterpiece. Because Abbot Tessier forbade van Gogh’s funeral service there, who knows what I might find?”

“After we each finish our assignments,” said Bernie, “let’s meet at the graves of Vincent and Theo, near the very wheatfields that van Gogh painted. If we’ve found nothing, it will be a good place to give our investigation a decent burial.”

***

The Auvers cemetery, visited every day by numerous admirers of van Gogh, was a ten-minute walk from the town center. The cemetery itself could have easily been the subject of a van Gogh painting, with a picturesque stone wall and thick ivy overgrowing the graves of Vincent and Theo. Vincent’s gravestone says, in French, "HERE RESTS Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890"; Theo’s says, in identical script, "HERE RESTS Theodore van Gogh, 1857-1891.'"

Bernie was the last of his group to arrive. Ozzie and Barb were speaking quietly. It was dusk, so they had the place to themselves. Barb greeted Bernie: “I’d know that smug smile anywhere. Spill the beans.”

“I did have some success, thanks to my trusty metal detector, which was so unfairly maligned by you two,” said Bernie. “But 130-year-old pieces of evidence are usually not conclusive, and this is no exception.” He held out a small misshapen piece of what appeared to be green metal.

“I give up,” said Ozzie. “The significance of this is eluding me.”

“Not surprising that an art professor doesn’t know about firearms,” responded Bernie. "I believe this is a brass .38 caliber bullet casing. I emailed a picture of it from my phone to our buddy, Joe Kelly of the SFPD, who is an expert, and, hopefully, we’ll hear back from him soon.”

“Green bullets?” queried Ozzie.

“To tell you more than you probably want to know, it is our good fortune that brass doesn’t rust. That was something I had in mind when I decided to try out the metal detector. Brass does oxidize a bit, which explains the green color. It took me about three hours of back-straining work to find this cartridge, which was about six inches underground. It’s not a direct link to Rene Secretan, but it’s circumstantial evidence that he was involved in Vincent’s death.”

“I got evidence that’s even more circumstantial,” said Barb, holding up a clear plastic bag with some brown granular substance in it. 

“From green metal to brownish dust,” mused Ozzie. “Now I’m ready to hear private investigator lesson #2.”

“The church was empty,” said Barb, “so I had some time to poke around. I noticed that one of the Bibles on the pulpit was printed in 1880, so I took a look at that.”

“The Bible’s a long book,” said Ozzie. “How’d you know where to look?”

“Well, you had said that Abbot Tessier didn’t approve of art—like van Gogh’s post-impressionist style—that didn’t uphold the Christian ideals of the classic tradition. You also said that the abbot believed that the classic tradition required the faithful portrayal of nature. So, keeping in mind sins that might violate those beliefs, on a hunch I decided to look up the Ten Commandments in that old Bible. In Deuteronomy, there was a thin brownish layer over the Second Commandment about taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m guessing that thin, brown layer is dried blood, so I scraped some off with a razor blade I carry for just such occasions, and here it is.”

“Nice work,” said Bernie. “Also not conclusive, but we can get it tested to see if it matches any known DNA of van Gogh. If so, we can return and do a more thorough search."

“What about you, Ozzie?” asked Bernie. “Anything from Dr. Gachet’s house. You’re a part-time detective now, so don’t be shy.”

“Not from the house,” answered Ozzie, holding up a sprig of ivy. “But I got this from the garden. Did you know that there are over 15 varieties of ivy?”

“Very interesting,” responded Bernie, “but what does that have to do with this case?”

“I had read that the ivy covering the graves of Vincent and Theo came from Dr. Gachet’s garden, and I have now confirmed that that is correct.”

“How did you do that?” asked Barb.

“Before I became an art historian, I studied botany,” responded Ozzie. “I don’t remember much, but, oddly, one thing that stuck in my mind is that you can tell different varieties of ivy by the unique size, color and shape of their leaves. 

“And,” he added, holding up a second ivy sprig, “as you can see, what I brought from Dr. Gachet’s garden matches the ivy on these graves exactly.”

“And, therefore?” queried Bernie.  

“Maybe,” Ozzie responded, motioning toward the thick layers of ivy covering the two graves, “it’s a cover-up of some kind.”

“Bad jokes aside,” observed Barb, “burying incriminating evidence here, where hundreds of thousands of tourists come each year, doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Didn’t Sherlock Holmes or someone like him say ‘Naked is the best disguise?’” responded Ozzie.

Bernie snapped his fingers. “I think you’re onto something, Ozzie. But I think it’s more like ‘Creepy is the best disguise.’”

***

Utrecht, Holland is a medieval city that has also kept up with the times, population 350,000. The fourth largest city in Holland, it is an important center of commerce, education and culture. On a rainy, chilly morning, Barb, Bernie and Ozzie sat in the lobby of the centrally-located four-star Hotel Mitland, planning out their day.

“The next time you chase a wild hare,” complained Barb, “please do it in a place with a better climate.”

“I agree that Utrecht doesn’t have resort weather,” said Bernie, “which is all the more reason to hide something here, rather than in lovely Auvers-sur-Oise.”

“And tell us again what makes you think we’ll find anything here?” Barb inquired. 

“When Ozzie started talking about the ivy and the grave in Auvers,” answered Bernie, “it came back to me that that was not Theo’s original grave. 23 years after his ignominious burial here, he was exhumed on the orders of his wife and re-buried in Auvers. That decision, you’d have to admit, is at least unusual.”

“I see your point, Bernie,” Ozzie chimed in. “You’re thinking outside the box, as it were. If someone wanted to hide something, it would be much better to hide it in an empty pauper’s grave than in an international tourist attraction.”

“Exactly!” said Bernie. “So, our first order of business is to find that empty 130-year-old grave.”

“That’s where my academic background can help,” said Ozzie. “Scholars are always looking for things like 130-year-old graves, and usually--probably because scholars at an important juncture in their research look desperately needy--bureaucrats like to help them. 

“Let me go to the City Records office here, find some kindly looking clerk and look a little pathetic. It always works!”

“Sounds good,” said Barb, “but…just wondering…do you speak Dutch?”

“Probably a bureaucrat at this level will speak English,” said Ozzie, “but I do speak German, which shares a lot of vocabulary with Dutch, so I think I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” said Bernie. “And, by the way, I just heard back from Joe Kelly of the SFPD regarding the bullet. He says it’s from a 7 mm Lefaucheux revolver, which was a relatively common gun in use in France in the 1880s. If he were alive, our boy Rene Secretan would have a lot of questions to answer about why such a cartridge was at his favorite fishing spot.”

***

Ozzie came out of the City Records office waving some papers triumphantly. “I got it—the location of the former grave, which is, mercifully, still unoccupied.”

“I guess the market for used gravesites is weak,” observed Bernie. “Is it far?”

“Not at all,” said Ozzie, “and I even have a picture of it.”

“How did you do it?” asked Barb.

“Easy, peasy! Luckily, as you can see, I had brought along one of my careworn sweaters that only an academic would wear.” He struck a modelling pose. “My opening gambit was to ask her if she liked van Gogh, which was a no-brainer because all Dutch people do. Then I told her I was doing some research on Theo, and I gave her a monograph I’d written years ago. Here, I bought two copies at the local museum bookstore, and you can have the second one.”

“’Missing Links in the Interpretations by Heidegger, Schapiro and Derrida of van Gogh’s Painting, A Pair of Shoes,’’’ read Bernie out loud. “Sounds like a real page-turner.”

“Now you see why I supplement my academic activity with detective work,” said Ozzie. “Keeps me from falling asleep sometimes. In any event, once I gave her the book--which analyzes the most famous painting of a pair of shoes in history--she was in a very helpful mode. She didn’t even charge me for the photocopying.”

“Time for a cemetery visit,” said Barb. "Let’s go now, while it’s between rainstorms.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Ozzie. “Bureaucrats in charge of archives are my specialty, not cemetery superintendents.”

“We have some unfortunate experience,” said Barb, referring to the mystery of the disappearing deceased that she and Bernie had investigated the year before. “The good news is that cemetery superintendents are always getting unusual--sometimes downright weird--requests. Because the superintendents know that those they permanently oversee will not talk, the superintendents are sometimes open to financial incentives.”

“I’ve got a plan that I think will work,” said Bernie.

“I’m not sure you’re the person for this job,” said Barb, “given your crematorium experience in our last cemetery investigation. Plus, I’m sure that you don’t speak Dutch.”

“I agree that my last experience wasn’t ideal,” said Bernie, “but I never look backwards, because I’m not going in that direction. Your point about Dutch is valid, but I think I can overcome that. Give me an hour, and I’ll lay out my plan for you and Ozzie in our hotel suite.”

***

The Old Dutch Masters Suite in the Hotel Mitland was sumptuous, lined with excellent replicas of famous Dutch paintings and overlooking a lake. “If we hadn’t just stayed at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris,” said Barb, “I’d be very impressed with our Utrecht accomodations.”

“Not shabby,” said Bernie, bringing his iPad over to the oak table where Barb and Ozzie were seated. Showing them the screen, which contained a paragraph in Dutch, he said, “What do you think of my Plan A, which I formulated with the help of Google Translate.”

“Perhaps you could give us the English version,” said Ozzie.

“It says, ‘I am a distant relative of Theo van Gogh from the United States. I understand from some old family documents I recently found that there may be some objects in the grave that he formerly occupied. Can you have one of your gravediggers look for those objects?’” Below the text was a picture of the old gravesite with its location.

“Why don’t you just give the superintendent the papers that I got from the City Records office?” asked Ozzie.

“I don’t want to give him anything with my DNA or fingerprints on it. It’s cold out, so it won’t look strange that I’ll be wearing gloves.”

“What if Plan A doesn’t work?” inquired Barb. “Quite frankly, I’m not bowled over with its persuasiveness.”

“That leads to Plan B,” responded Bernie. He showed them another screenshot on the iPad, this one reading in Dutch, “Do you know what Bitcoin is? This one is worth $5000. It’s yours if you do what I’ve asked.” He then pulled out of his pocket a brass coin, electroplated in gold, with a hologram on the back. 

“Clever,” said Ozzie, “but I thought Bitcoin was a virtual currency."

“It is,” answered Bernie, “but some people still like physical objects. Under the hologram is a private key that can redeem the value of the Bitcoin online.”

“I like it,” said Barb, “but what if Plan B fails?”

“Then we go to Plan W,” said Bernie. “Whatever works.”

***

The administrative office of the public cemetery in Utrecht was as basic as one would expect. Bernie didn’t know quite what to expect the superintendent to look like, but he was not surprised to meet a tall, spindly man named De Jong, who had thinning brown hair and a pale, pockmarked face. He wore a black suit, shiny with age.

Bernie shook De Jong’s hand. Not even introducing himself, he simply said one of the few Dutch phrases he knew—‘Good morning’—pulled out his iPad and went directly to Plan A.

De Jong studied the screen for a few moments, looked disdainfully at Bernie, shook his head back and forth vigorously and firmly uttered one of the few other Dutch words Bernie knew: “Nee,” meaning “no.”

Undeterred, Bernie proceeded with Plan B, showing De Jong the iPad screen, pulling the Bitcoin out of his pocket and placing it on the counter.

Curious, De Jong picked up the Bitcoin, holding it close to his eye. While holding it, he again started shaking his head back and forth negatively and was about to say something when Bernie backed toward the office door and took a flash picture with his iPad of De Jong holding the Bitcoin.

De Jong yelled two words as Bernie rapidly exited. Barb and Ozzie were waiting in their rental car outside, and they sped away with Bernie before he could even completely close the car door.

“Well,” said Barb. “Out with it. Did you succeed?”

“Plans A and B failed,” Bernie said breathlessly, “and I’m not sure about Plan W. It depends on the meaning of two Dutch words that he yelled at me as I ran out of there: ‘morgen’ and ‘middernacht’.”

“I can tell you from my knowledge of German that you succeeded,” exclaimed Ozzie, high-fiving Bernie. “What he said means ‘Tomorrow at midnight.’”

***

Barb, Bernie and Ozzie were back at Barb and Bernie’s suite at the Hotel Mitland, sitting at the oak table. The only difference from the day before was that now there was a three-foot by three-foot dark metal box in front of them, six inches deep. It still had some grass and mud on it, marking where it had been, six feet underground.

“As I approached the dark cemetery administrative office at midnight” reported Bernie, “I saw Mr. De Jong open the door and put this outside. Apparently, he did not want to interact with me personally again.”

“Perhaps he was afraid you’d ask for the Bitcoin back,” joked Barb. “Your Plan W was a total bluff—you’d have never done anything with that photo.”

“You know that,” said Bernie, “and I know that, but apparently Mr. De Jong didn’t know that.

“If this lead box—by the way, lead, like brass, doesn’t rust—contains clues to this coldest of all cases we’ve ever investigated,” continued Bernie, “I’ll stop by there and give him another Bitcoin, just to insure his goodwill…and silence.”

“What about this rusty lock on the box?” asked Ozzie. “Must not be made of lead.”

“My Swiss Army Knife has a hacksaw attachment,” said Barb, pulling the knife from her suitcase.

“Mine doesn’t have that attachment, Mrs. James Bond.” Ozzie marvelled, “and I don’t think they sell that on Amazon.”

“We have a friend of a friend in South San Francisco who customizes these things,” responded Barb. “Someone you might not meet up with at art history conferences.”

“I’m glad to leave the weaponry and gadget aspects of our work to you,” said Ozzie. 

“Which brings us to the main event,” said Bernie. “Actually, I don’t think we’ll need the hacksaw." He twisted the completely rusted lock, which broke easily, and began to open the lid of the lead box. “This cold case is about to heat up.”

***

“I asked Al when you were returning,” greeted Mo Riley as she crossed the expanse of her penthouse office suite, “and told him to clear my first appointment on that day so that I could hear your report.” She embraced Barb and then Bernie. She shook Ozzie’s hand, saying “And you must be the brilliant Professor Osofsky.”

“Vladimir Osofsky,” he said, reddening, “rookie detective sidekick.”

“I’d love to see what was in that lead box,” said Riley.

“We can only show you pictures,” said Barb. “We couldn’t risk taking what was in it through customs, so, through Vlad’s connections at The van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, we were able to drop everything off there, which should solve all of Alpha’s problems.”

As Barb finished speaking, Bernie laid out four 8x10 color photos on the large table in the center of Riley’s office. One was of an unfinished painting--spattered with a brownish material that clearly wasn’t part of the painting--of a shirtless adolescent; one was of the hulk of a rusted pistol; one was of five 100-franc gold coins; and one was of a worn envelope that had the words “Pere Secretan” on it. 

“I’m no expert,” said Riley, “but that painting certainly looks like a van Gogh.”

“I agree,” said Ozzie, “and I am sure that The van Gogh Museum will authenticate it in due course.”

“That disposes of Albert Janssen’s claim,” observed Barb. “That insurance policy he owns is now not worth the old paper it’s printed on.”

“Yes,” agreed Riley. “Congratulations on a job well done. Getting back to the painting for a moment, I would also venture to say, that it seems quite a bit more erotically charged than I’m used to seeing from van Gogh. Again, I’m no expert, but this is miles from paintings like ‘The Potato Eaters.’”

“Again,” said Ozzie, “you can go to the head of the class. The eroticism of the painting may help us connect the dots of what happened more than a century ago.”

“I hasten to add that those dots are quite faded,” interjected Bernie, “and anything we come up with is speculative. But we have pieced together a plausible narrative.”

“Now that you’ve found the painting and saved Alpha from having to deal with a multi-million-dollar claim, I should really be going on to my next multi-million dollar problem,” said Riley, pressing a button on the table. “But I admit that I’m fascinated with your methods, and I think we should celebrate.” At that moment, two stewards entered the office bearing champagne and savory snacks.

Barb began the explanation. “Because Gaston Secretan, the quiet, artistic brother of Rene, was a well-known cabaret singer, it was pretty easy to identify him as the adolescent in the picture.”

Bernie picked up the story. “We think that either Gaston or Rene was scandalized when they saw this painting, a struggle ensued and the gun went off, either accidentally or purposefully. Having seen a lot of dried blood in my work, I’m certain that that is what that brownish material is. The gun is a rusted hulk because it’s steel, which rusts relatively easily. Also, it might have spent some time buried in riverbed mud before ending up in this box.”

“What about the gold coins,” asked Riley, "which I assume were in the envelope, and how did that envelope survive all these years?”

“The envelope question is easy,” responded Barb. “Because paper is often forensically significant in our cases, we have some experience with it. Although paper is now made from wood, at the time this envelope was made, much paper was made from rags, and such paper could easily have lasted this long.”

“Regarding the coins,” Bernie added, “we get much more speculative, but we have a theory that works. The wealthy father—‘pere’ in French, which explains why ‘Pere Secretan’ is printed on the envelope--of Rene and Gaston had some serious problems to deal with in July, 1890: two suspicious sons, a weapon, a painting, an easel and some paint.”

“The easel and the paint he could easily get rid of,” continued Ozzie, “because they were common items. As for the painting, the gun and the coins, we think they may be part of one of the most brilliant cover-ups of all time.”

Barb picked up the story. “Monsieur Secretan could have found out, without much effort, that Jo van Gogh-Bonger was a great admirer of Vincent’s talent and would want that painting. He also knew that she and her husband, Theo, who was dying, were poor and very concerned about continuing to support Vincent.”

“So,” concluded Bernie, “the theory goes that he paid her 500 francs--a huge sum at that time--of hush money to protect his sons; gave her the painting; and asked her to hide the gun. The 500 francs would have helped her to accomplish what no woman had done before—make an unknown painter into one of the most famous in history. Remember, she had to support herself and her son, Vincent, for years before her brother-in-law became famous.”

Added Ozzie, “The police would have never thought that the painting or the gun was with Jo—naked is the best disguise.”

“That explains the painting and the gun,” said Riley, “but the 500 francs you think were given to Jo by Pere Secretan would have been long since spent by the time Theo was exhumed in 1914.”

“True,” explained Ozzie, “but, by 1914, Jo was quite wealthy from having made Vincent famous and selling 200 of his paintings. She no longer needed Secretan’s francs, and our theory is that she wanted to repay this blood money. Burying it In the lead box, in the hope that someone like Barb or Bernie would discover it in the future, was the best she could do. She certainly didn’t want the discovery to occur in her lifetime, which is consistent with the fact that her family would not allow her diaries to be published for almost a century.”

“Fascinating,” said Riley, looking at Al Jordan. “Al, please have the worth of the painting determined, and propose to me an appropriate bonus to pay the Silvers and Professor Osofsky.”

“Will do,” said Al. “I wonder if there is a discount for blood-spattered masterpieces.”

***

Copyright 2021, Ron Katz