'I was just thirty when I left New York, Mr. Smith. I came here and bought this farm and I have lived here since, alone. I stopped painting when I came here and did not paint for some years after.' She picked up a twig lying on the wall, dug it into the joint between two stones. 'That's not quite true. Within weeks of establishing myself here I did a series of six canvases. I—' She drew a deep breath. 'Before I came here I had been in the hospital for —for a long time. I had been seriously injured in an automobile accident in which my husband was killed. The accident was entirely our fault, my fault, I was driving. We had been drinking heavily.' She paused again, stared into the distance, past the valley, past the hills.
To my mind, sudden, unwanted, and unavoidable, came the screech of brakes, the shattering of glass, sirens and shouts. Not Eve Colgate's accident, but another one, seven years ago: the crash when Annie died. An accident I hadn't seen, hadn't even known about until days later. I'd been away then, out of town on a case, and hadn't called anyone to say I was leaving, to say where I'd be.
The sun was high by now, shining through a silence broken only by the drone of a distant plane. Eve Colgate spoke again. 'The paintings I made when I first came here . . .' She stopped, restarted. 'It doesn't matter. They were not successful. They couldn't have been. I stopped painting then, and did not paint again for almost five years.' The twig in her hand lodged between two stones and snapped. 'When I came here I brought almost nothing from my days in New York. Most of my husband's things, and mine, I disposed of. The few things I couldn't part with I brought here, packed in the steamer trunk we had taken on our honeymoon. The trunk went into a storeroom and I never looked at it again. When I realized the paintings I had made were not good, I intended to destroy them, as I do all my unsuccessful work, but I couldn't. I crated them and put them in the same storeroom.' She threw the broken twig away.
'Four days ago—two days before I called you in New York—I had a burglary. I'm a prosperous woman in a poor county, Mr. Smith; it's happened before. I expect it
and I survive it. But this time the storeroom was broken Into The trunk and the crate were taken, as well as some other things: tools, equipment. I don't care about any of II, mil even Henri's things, which were in the trunk. I don't need to have them anymore.'
She fell silent, empty clear eyes staring out over the far hills. Then she turned to me, and I saw that her eyes weren't empty. Something gleamed deep within them like grins locked in ice. 'But I want those paintings back. Do you know why?'
I looked into her eyes, saw amethysts, rubies, sapphires, sparkling, infinitely distant. 'I think I do.'
She waited, still and silent.
I said, 'Because they're not good.'
She nodded, let her breath out slowly. 'I want you to mind those paintings, Mr. Smith. Can you do that?'
'I don't know. Have you told the police?'
She shook her head. Then she gestured over the orchard, the pasture, the hills. 'Do you know what this is?'
I answered a different question. 'It's beautiful.'
She was quiet for a very long time. Then she spoke. 'It's mud,' she said. 'Manure. Hay. Snow. Eight-hundred- pound cows that have to be helped to calve. Eggs that have to be collected every morning in a henhouse that stinks. Apple trees that lose their blooms in a frost, or their fruit in a hailstorm. Or produce so much fruit you can't hire help enough to pick it, at any price.' She unfolded her legs, slipped off the wall to stand again on the rocky ground. The black dog leapt to his feet, tail wagging. Eve Colgate looked at me. 'It's why I can paint.'
We started walking again, back through the orchard, toward the house. 'Eva Nouvel is famous,' she said. The dog dropped a stick at her feet. She picked it up, threw it in a high, curving arc. The dog charged after it. 'But Eve Colgate is a farmer. She splits wood and wrings chickens' necks. And she's the one who paints.' The dog trotted back, dropped the stick. I bent down for it. He lunged but I was faster. I lifted it into the air, let him jump at it; then I sent it flying end over end through the sunlight. He raced away.
'Thirty years ago,' Eve Colgate went on, 'I made an arrangement with myself. It was based on my opinion of the world as I knew it. I've had no reason to change that opinion.' She didn't speak again until we came up the hill behind the house, trim and solid against the blue of the sky. 'Fame is a disease, Mr. Smith. I don't want it; I won't have it. Nor will I have those paintings dissected, discussed, exposed—!'
The spots of red appeared in her cheeks again, but her voice stayed low, controlled. 'I want you to find those paintings, and do whatever you have to do to get them back. Pay the market price, if you have to. I can do that.' She smiled a small, bitter smile; then it faded. 'But who I am is my business.'
We rounded the house, stopped at the porch steps. I looked at her. Her boots were caked with mud. Her eyes were like crystal creatures caught in the net of lines around them.
'The paintings' I said, watched her eyes. 'Who would recognize them as yours? An expert? A layman? Are they signed?'
'They're not signed. An expert would certainly know them. An educated layman, possibly. My work is distinctive, Mr. Smith. There are recurring images, themes that don't change.'
I searched for the right way to put my next question. 'If it were necessary to destroy the paintings to preserve your privacy, would that be all right?'
She didn't speak right away. Finally she said, 'I don't know.'
Simple and clear, that answer; and I'd made my decision. I said, 'There are some things I'll need.'
'What things?'
'Descriptions of whatever was in the trunk. And I'll need to bring someone else in.'
She stiffened. 'Why someone else? No.'
'If I'd stolen your stuff, I'd forget about selling the paintings—assuming I didn't know what they were worth— and try to unload whatever looked valuable: silver, old photographs, things like that.' And probably dump everything else in the county landfill, but I didn't tell her that. 'But if I were smart enough to know what the paintings were worth, I'd also know I couldn't sell them up here. I'd take them to New York. I want to call someone, check that out. I could go down there myself, but I think I'm more useful up here.'
