De Potter's Grand Tour (18 page)

“Isn't this from Petrie?” her associate asked, pointing in the direction of a tablet mounted on the wall.

“Oh, that? Rosher brought that back from his visit to Dendera. Now, what is it you wanted to show me, Professor Randall-MacIver?”

The man nodded toward the student. “Mrs. Stevenson, this is one of my research assistants, Walter Morley. You'll recall, madame, that my colleagues and I have had some difficulty verifying the information accompanying these items. I've asked Mr. Morley to look into the matter.”

“And what have you discovered, young man?” Mrs. Stevenson asked.

The student gestured toward the case. “The scarab ring … the given date is incorrect. The craftsmanship is more typical of the Twenty-second Dynasty. You see the design—”

“Very fine detective work,” Mrs. Stevenson said, cutting him off, probably because she was aware that the visitor standing nearby was listening. “I look forward to reading your report.”

“If you don't mind my saying, Mrs. Stevenson, I told you so,” Professor Randall-MacIver announced triumphantly.

“You did, you did indeed,” she said with a smile that was obviously contrived to flatter. “Your attention to the matter is admirable. How may I thank you?”

The professor was set on undermining Armand's careful work, and Mrs. Stevenson wanted to thank him for it! So the date for the ring was off by a century or two—what of it? Armand had done his best to match his treasures to their provenance. But with more than three hundred items to consider, there were bound to be mistakes. Perhaps the mistake was Mrs. Stevenson's—maybe she transcribed the information incorrectly. Certainly she'd made a mistake splitting up the De Potter Collection between the freestanding case and the cabinet. The De Potter Collection was supposed to be displayed together. And why was the name De Potter written on the side of the case, and not on the front? Nothing at all by the items in the cabinet, or by the sarcophagus in the rotunda, indicated that they were on loan from Armand de Potter. What had happened to the plaques he'd made for the bronzes? And what about the catalog Mrs. Stevenson had promised to write?

Oh, she'd promised a lot of things. Looking at her from across the room, Armand thought she had a sneaky, feline air about her. He imagined her purring as she smiled at Professor Randall-MacIver. She clearly wanted something from the man, and she'd get it because he was too stupid to see through her. This professor was an idiot, yet Mrs. Stevenson was bothering to consult with him about the provenance of a scarab ring, all the while ignoring Armand de Potter.

Of course she couldn't have known he was there. She must have thought him an ordinary tourist. He'd been planning to greet her, but had by then heard enough to change his mind. He left the room in a hurry and strode toward the rotunda, holding his walking stick upright, resisting the urge to knock it against the sarcophagus to show the world that it still belonged to him.

He wrote again to Mrs. Stevenson from Geneva, Switzerland, on September 20, 1902. He expressed his frustration at the way his collection was displayed without revealing that he'd been to the museum. “In all events,” he concluded, “I will leave the Collection in the Museum for the present.”

He wrote the following year with a return address of the Villa du Grand Bois, and once more in the fall of 1904. He asked for more prominent display space for his collection. Though he avoided repeating his request for an honorary degree, he reminded her of her promise to write a comprehensive catalog of the De Potter Collection. Mrs. Stevenson wrote back with infuriating brevity to say that she did not have time to write a catalog.

She didn't have time to write a catalog describing the significance of the collection, but she had time to accept anything he cared to send? He swore to himself that he would take his treasures elsewhere. But still he kept sending Mrs. Stevenson additional pieces. Sooner or later she would agree that the De Potter Collection had no equal in America.

He sent his last shipment on a damp February day in 1905, four months before he disappeared from the
Regele Carol
. He carefully arranged a group of basalt scarabaei on tissue in a small wooden box, which he set on the bottom of the shipping crate. Beside this smaller box he laid a long, rectangular box that contained miscellaneous pieces—amulets, strings of porcelain and carnelian beads, and a small lapis-lazuli frog. He padded the crate with crumpled newspaper and then laid on top of the smaller boxes a row of alabaster vases, each thickly wrapped in sailcloth. After adding another layer of newspaper, he wrapped sailcloth around the last object, a sepulchral figurine of a small faience man, with an illegible inscription. He hesitated, wondering if he should keep the faience man for himself, then decided against it. He tucked the bundle into the nest and nailed the crate shut.

 

PART FIVE

 

At Sea

H
E IS AS BLANDLY INOFFENSIVE
as the pea soup at dinner. He agrees with the vicar's wife that the beef is overdone, the wine is too sweet, the silverware needs polishing. He is cordial to the banker and doesn't correct him when he attributes the
Theogony
to Pindar. When the stewardess wheels over the dessert cart, Armand pretends to be interested in the lemon cake. After the meal he refolds his napkin beside his plate and follows the vicar out on deck for a smoke.

The challenge for him now is to convey a mood of serene confidence. If he has failed so far in his interactions with others on board, at least he has resisted revealing his true feelings. It is safe to assume that no one has any inkling of his troubles. He must maintain the façade right up to the end, until he is alone, if his plan is to succeed. Once there is no one to watch him, he may do as he pleases.

But his patience has been tested through the day—first with the steward and stewardess, who took his money as if it were dirty laundry, and then with the banker, who wouldn't accept a gift at all. Now the vicar is beside him looking utterly absorbed in his own satisfaction as he pats his ample belly.

Armand is prepared to entertain the vicar with small talk, but the vicar preempts him. Wasn't the dinner splendid, he says, and isn't it a comfortable ship? And could he beg a pinch from Armand to fill his pipe, since the Turks confiscated his own bag of tobacco when he passed through customs on his arrival in Constantinople?

“Why, of course,” Armand replies, adding, as he shakes out the tobacco from his pouch, “There's a trick to it, you know.”

“A trick?” The vicar has a round and ruddy face, his bowler is perched on his bald head, his mustache is curled in round tips, and the stem of his neck pokes up from the circle of his collar. His spectacles are round, and behind them his eyes widen, as if he doesn't understand the meaning of anything that involves deceit.

“I mean the trick to passing through customs. The technique varies widely from country to country. Sometimes baksheesh is expected. Other times you need to keep certain items on your person.”

“You sound like an experienced traveler, sir.”

“I should be. It has been my profession for more than twenty years.” Armand hands the vicar his business card.

“‘De Potter Tours,'” the vicar reads aloud. He squints at the figure of Puck standing on a jumble of luggage in the advertising emblem. He reads the slogan: “‘I'll put a girdle round the earth.'” He starts to return the card, but Armand invites him to keep it. “I once played Oberon in an amateur production,” the vicar says as he fishes a matchbook from his pocket. He strikes a match, offering the light to Armand before lighting his own pipe. He continues studying Armand's card as he coughs with the first puff of smoke. He clears his throat and recites:

Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once:

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make a man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

Armand doesn't know how to respond to the vicar's recitation. What else is there to do but say “Bravo!”—a ridiculous response for such a minor feat, but still the vicar's round pillow of a face crinkles with his smile. How easily pleased with himself he is. He looks as proud as a young boy praised for drawing in the sand with a stick. Armand wants to admire the vicar for his good nature. Instead he is beginning to understand why the vicar's wife is perpetually annoyed. What a trial it must be for her to be stuck with a husband who is always content. The vicar meanders happily through life, as ignorant as a fattened lamb munching in a pasture on a lovely summer day.

But Armand is a gentleman, and a gentleman does not stand on the deck of a ship thinking ill of a vicar with whom he is sharing a smoke. He returns the vicar's smile with his own, sucks on his pipe, and gestures toward the sunset. He is about to say
Che bellisima
, but instead says simply, “How beautiful.”

“Ah, yes,” the vicar murmurs. “It reminds me of the bloom of shepherd's purse.”

“God the artist,” Armand says in an effort to impress this man of the church with his piety.

“Indeed,” replies the vicar mildly. After a moment he asks, “Did you know that the lowest blossoms on a sprig of shepherd's purse always open first?”

Armand says, “Of course,” though in truth he's never thought about it.

“And the order of blossoming is always ascending, from bottom to top?”

The questions are beginning to confuse Armand, and the confusion makes him wary.

“And shepherd's purse can keep producing lateral flowers one after another the whole summer long?”

“You don't say…” He swallows loudly. The vicar looks at him with a new expression of understanding, as if he's figured out the purpose of that “trick” Armand referred to a moment ago.

Still the vicar presses on: “There is no terminal flower if the stem continues to grow, which means that the summit can never be reached, at least not until the frost.”

Could the vicar know what Armand is intending? Has he guessed his secrets? Is he cannier than he pretends?

The sky is darkening. The two men stand at the rail, smoking their pipes. Armand waits tensely for the vicar to speak. What is he going to say?

He's going to say that if Professor de Potter is ever escorting a party through the Cotswolds, he must come visit him in Swindon. Then he is going to yawn. And then he is going to find his wife, who will be eager to begin their nightly game of pinochle.

 

Grand Bois

A
MID ALL THE BUSINESS
Aimée had to attend to in the aftermath of her husband's disappearance at sea, there was Gertrude, dear, sweet Gertrude, who had more needs than poor Victor did. At the beginning of the new year, Victor announced that he wanted to return to school to be with his friends. He stayed there for the rest of the term, while Gertrude gave up her French lessons altogether. She had no scruples about borrowing money from her aunt to pay for things she couldn't afford—a new bathing costume, a dress for spring, new shoes. When the lace maker from Alençon was going door-to-door in the neighborhood and arrived at Grand Bois, Gertrude wanted to buy every tray cloth and handkerchief she was selling. During tea at Gallia's, she started talking too loudly while the orchestra was playing the “Ode to St. Cecilia” and needed to be hushed. She needed social engagements where she could meet young men. She wouldn't wear mourning, yet she needed comfort nearly every evening, when she'd drink too much wine with dinner and begin weeping over her uncle's death.

One springlike day in February, Aimée and Gertrude took the train to Vallauris and walked the full ten miles back to Cannes along the canal. The air was delicious with the sweet fragrances of heather and pine, and the sun was warm. While Gertrude chattered about a hat she'd seen in a shop window in Nice, Aimée could think of nothing but her accumulating expenses. Lawyers representing the travelers affected by the Jaffa accident were hounding her. Bartlett was demanding the next installment of his payment.

As she walked along, she hardly listened to Gertrude, who rambled on about the hat in Nice and plucked tufts of the wild grass growing along the sides of the path. Aimée was paying so little attention that she didn't hear when Gertrude changed the subject from the hat to her uncle. She didn't know what caused the girl to stop in her tracks all of a sudden, leading Aimée to think that she'd dropped something behind her on the path, until Gertrude finished the sentence she'd begun: “… and when Robert said that about Uncle Armand, I didn't believe him. I didn't want to believe him.”

“Said what?”

“I told him he was out of line. I told him he was cruel and rude and I never wanted to see him again. And I
haven't
seen him, it's been three weeks and I haven't answered his—”

“Gertrude, please, what did Robert say to you?”