Murder Brushed with Gold
The town of Medfield, Massachusetts, where my wife and I have lived off and on since 1980, is rife with history and, for a writer, chockablock with ready-made plot ideas. Murder Brushed with Gold is grounded in two events, 117 years apart.
In the spring of 1889 Isabella Stewart Gardner suggested to both John Leslie Breck and Dennis Miller Bunker that Medfield offered Giverny-worthy natural vistas. That summer they both came and painted here; and Charles Martin Loeffler joined them to work on musical compositions. To the best of my research, the biographical details of all those persons mentioned above are accurate as presented. The front cover of this book features a detail from Bunker’s ‘Roadside Cottage’ painted that summer.
The characters of Alan Churchill Lawrence and Edward Merrill Cosgrove, on the other hand, are products of my imagination, as are the murders committed by Cosgrove. The house painted by Bunker (and, in fiction, by Lawrence) does still stand in town; and its owners have gone to considerable lengths to preserve its 1889 appearance.
There is also stuff you can’t make up. In 2006, AOL announced it was seeking a court’s permission to dig up a Medfield family’s yard, suspecting their son, a fugitive spammer, had buried gold bars there (after a year, AOL abandoned the effort). If you Google ‘gold’ ‘medfield’ ‘aol’, you’ll see an astonishing number of stories on the subject. It must have been a slow news month. Oh, and the ‘Roadside Cottage’ and ‘gold bars’ homes are on opposite sides of town. Inventing Hardington allows me to merge the two locations.
Apart from being a highly readable tutorial on American Impressionism, this book has two other things of note for readers of this series. First, antiques dealer Roland Evans-Jones graduates from comic-relief and shoulder-to-cry-on sidekick to major character. And, Liz’s adult daughter, Sarabeth, finally appears in the flesh. A warning: she’s anything but a comfort to her mom. More than one reader has written, “I want to take her over my knee and spank her.”
Here are the opening chapters of the book. If you like what you read, please order a print copy either directly from me at the-hardington-press.square.site, or print or Kindle editions from Amazon.com.
Murder Brushed with Gold
Chapter One
Monday
“I loathe driving in Boston,” said Roland Evans-Jones. “It’s a complete and utter disaster. The roads are in a perpetual state of disrepair. The traffic is a nightmare. My God, that behemoth SUV is coming straight at us! Brace yourself!”
Liz Phillips said nothing. She glanced at the oncoming Jeep, which was safely on the other side of the Arborway, a pleasant, winding parkway with views of Boston’s ‘Emerald Necklace’ of parks.
“In what third-world country did these people learn to drive?” Roland said, his exasperation rising. “Do any of them have licenses? And, doesn’t anyone stop for a red light?”
“Roland, you’re not driving,” Liz said patiently as she eased her Jaguar forward when the light turned green. “Yet you’ve been complaining non-stop for twenty minutes. Besides, you once told me you drove all over Italy for a year and they were the world’s worst drivers. How did you survive that?”
“I was much younger,” Roland said, his voice defensive, then hurriedly added, “And I wasn’t holding something precious in my hands.”
Liz smiled to herself. “Yes, I’m sure it was easier back then,” she said, glancing at her GPS. “Well, we’ll be there in seven minutes. You could also check your painting. I don’t think you’ve inspected the wrapping in the last two blocks.”
Liz Phillips, the immediate past president of the Hardington Garden Club and Roland Evans-Jones, Liz’s friend and lone male member of the club, were bound on a mid-June morning for the Museum of Fine Arts. Liz was 57, blonde and trim. Roland, who had given his age as 72 for at least five years, had a full head of silver hair and carried the extra pounds of a man who had enjoyed life to the fullest. When Liz had first offered to accompany him to the museum, he had insisted he could take the commuter train into Boston and a cab to the museum. Liz knew he would have stood, paralyzed, in front of Back Bay Station, seeing a master art thief behind the wheel of every taxi.
Roland checked the bubble wrap on the painting in his lap. It was still securely around the frame, increasing the bulk of the picture by half.
Liz made the turn from the Jamaicaway onto Huntington Avenue and the greenery of Frederick Law Olmsted’s 19th Century parks was replaced by the gritty Mission Hill neighborhood. Roland responded by locking the Jaguar’s doors.
“Five minutes, Roland,” Liz said. “Then your painting will be safe.”
* * * * *
The Painting Conservation Lab of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts occupied a spacious suite of rooms in the museum’s new wing. Expecting a claustrophobic basement location, Liz and Roland were surprised to see natural, but filtered light from spacious skylights across the space.
“Let’s have a look at this hidden gem,” said Polly Kirchhoff. She smiled and held out her hands. Kirchhoff was one of the museum’s curators of special exhibitions. She looked to be in her early sixties, was dressed in a well-tailored pink suit, and she stood a full head taller than Roland, with silver hair worn in an Egyptian bob and black lacquer glasses. Roland reluctantly handed over the package.
Kirchhoff tenderly pried off the outer tape Roland had applied, then unwound multiple yards of plastic bubble wrap.
“You may want to know that we used less padding than this when we sent off The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit to Europe,” Kirchhoff said cheerfully as she peeled off the last of the bubble wrap. At last, the painting could be seen.
“Beautiful,” she murmured, holding the painting at arm’s length. “Magnificent.”
The painting, twelve inches by sixteen inches, was of a modest, rectangular house on a country road.
“The Wayside Cottage,” she said, with a hint of reverence in her voice. The painting was signed and dated: Alan Churchill Lawrence 1889.
“I can’t tell you how excited we are to get this painting, Mr. Evans-Jones. I sometimes think museums swap the same hundred and fifty American Impressionist works back and forth, and just dream up new titles for the catalog. This is refreshing. It’s new to viewers, it’s in wonderful condition, and it’s spot-on for the exhibition.”
The exhibition in question was ‘En Plein Air: Nineteenth Century New England Art Colonies’. The exhibition was planned to open in September, three months hence.
“Lawrence’s body of pre-1900 work isn’t large, and his only works from that era in the MFA’s collection are two of his Falmouth series and an early commissioned portrait,” Kirchhoff said to no one in particular, continuing to examine the painting. “What makes this exciting is that we’ll have the loan from the National Gallery of Dennis Miller Bunker’s painting of the same structure and John Leslie Breck’s The Pool, Hardington, all from the same summer and all executed within a few weeks of one another, with the artists all living under the same roof. Wilma Jeffries’ boardinghouse in Hardington isn’t as famous as Florence Griswold’s in Old Lyme, but it predates Old Lyme by a decade. We’ll group the Hardington paintings together, of course.” She looked up from the painting at Roland and smiled.
“Of course,” Roland said, seemingly still coming to grips with the idea that his painting was going to be at the mercy of strangers; more than a few of them capable of grabbing his painting off the wall and sprinting to the nearest exit before guards could react.
“You told me the painting has been in your family for quite a long time?”
Roland nodded. “The provenance is rock-solid. I’m the first person outside the family to own the painting; and I have the original bill of sale from the gallery from which their grandfather purchased it in 1889. I acquired it with an estate of a local family – Hardington, I mean. A couple, both in their eighties, died within a few months of one another and the children – who were in their sixties – didn’t know what to do with the home’s contents. I bought it all. Everything. Furnishings, furniture, clothing, art.”
“When was that?”
“Nineteen seventy-four,” Roland said with certainty. “It was my first major estate purchase. When I think of what I let some of that furniture go for… But the painting has hung in my own home ever since.”
“We’ll do the conservation work, of course, as agreed,” Kirchhoff said. “Let me introduce you to the restorer.”
At a table on the other side of the work area, a lithe woman in her mid-twenties, with brown, pixie-cut hair, and dressed in a red Harvard sweatshirt, looked up in anticipation and moved aside a small painting immediately recognizable as a Childe Hassam painted at Old Lyme.
“Ashley, this is Roland Evans-Jones. Mr. Evans-Jones, this is Ashley Paolino.” Kirchhoff held out the painting to Paolino. “And this is going to be the focus of your attention for the next few weeks. Alan Churchill Lawrence’s The Wayside Cottage.” Kirchhoff turned to Roland and Liz. “Don’t let Ashley’s appearance fool you. She may look young, but she is in her fifth year with us and she has handled everything from Sargent to Renoir. She has a superb eye and a delicate touch. Your painting couldn’t be in better hands.”
Paolino gave a quick smile, then pulled a lamp closer to her and held the painting at various angles. “It has never been cleaned?” she asked Roland.
“Not to my knowledge,” he said, shaking his head.
She nodded. “Actually, that’s good.” She positioned a desk-mounted magnifying lens in front of her and examined a corner of the painting. “Some of the things we used to do to paintings to restore them actually made things worse.” Paolino tilted the painting to near-horizontal and again examined an area. “The varnish is slightly discolored. I’ll take that off and apply something that will keep the paint underneath in good shape for another hundred years. Do you mind if I remove the frame?” Paolino asked. “I mean, I’ll have to take it off it to clean it. Do you mind if I remove it now, in front of you?”
Roland looked nervous. “By all means.” He clenched his hands.
Paolino examined the back of the painting, deftly removed the picture wire and, with an X-acto knife, sliced through a layer of ancient brown paper. In four quick but delicate strokes, the paper was off and she placed it to the side of her work table. She was picking up a pair of pliers when Polly Kirchhoff picked up the painting, now resting face down.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Wedged into the frame were several folded pages of aged, white paper, dense with handwriting.
“May I have a pair of gloves?” Kirchhoff asked Paolino, who pulled a pair of white curatorial gloves from the drawer of her desk.
Kirchhoff donned the cotton gloves and pulled gently at the papers. “They’re wedged into the frame,” she said after failing to free the paper. “Let’s get the frame off.”
Paolino used pliers and a tack hammer to separate the painting from its gilded frame, and the papers were free. They lay, folded, on Paolino’s work table.
“It appears we have a message from the past,” Kirchhoff said. “Would you like to read it now?”
Roland nodded his head. “I had no idea anything else was in there.” Then, not wanting to admit he had left his reading glasses at home, he said, “I think as a curator you’re the better person to handle this.”
Kirchhoff scanned the first page, which was smaller than the ones that followed. “This is a letter from Lawrence to Howard Edwards – his Boston art dealer at the time.” She then flipped to the sheaf of three dense, handwritten pages that followed the cover note. She exhaled. “My lord,” she said softly. “These are pages from Lawrence’s journal.” And then she began to read the cover letter.
June 20, 1889
Howard,
I write in haste to allow this to arrive to you via the early afternoon train. Something profoundly horrible has happened here in Hardington. I believe Cosgrove is complicit in the murder of two men named Brighton and Carville, and he has interred their bodies behind the small cottage where he is staying adjacent to our boardinghouse. This is the same cottage I painted within the week. I have just this morning inserted into that canvas a red peony bush where there is no such shrub. The location of the peony aligns as closely as I can make it to the location of what I believe are the two graves.
I dare not report what I have seen because a man capable of the acts I witnessed would not hesitate to dispose of a third body in the same manner. I know you are Cosgrove’s friend and agent, but his actions transcend any claim of brotherhood or commerce.
I entrust to you this painting, together with the most recent pages of my journal which describe Cosgrove’s arrival at the colony and the subsequent murderous actions I observed. Please find a way to get this into the hands of the Police, while taking care to ensure my name is not part of the body of information they use to bring Cosgrove to justice, as I know he is a powerful man not unfamiliar with retribution against those who antagonize him.
Howard, you are my dear friend as well as my agent, and I entreat you to act in a way that will protect me.
Alan Churchill Lawrence
The room was silent when the curator put down the papers. Her hands were shaking as she did so.
“My art history leaves a lot to be desired,” Liz said. “Cosgrove is…”
“Edward Merrill Cosgrove,” Kirchhoff said. “One of ‘The Ten’, although that was a few years in the future. However, I don’t remember ever reading that Cosgrove was in Hardington that summer. He did a series of garden scenes and seascapes in Kennebunkport that summer and sailed for France in July from New York. We have five of his Whaling Point paintings lined up for the exhibition.”
“How do you know so much about an artist’s whereabouts?” Roland asked.
“For an important artist like Cosgrove, their entire painting career is documented,” Kirchhoff answered. “Scholars note at every change in an artist’s style, and then search for clues to explain what influenced the evolution. When Cosgrove went to France, he painted for a period of time with Monet and it changed his color palette for years thereafter.”
“So, who are Brighton and Carville?” Roland asked.
Kirchhoff shook her head. “That will take some research. We may never know. If you’ll allow me to scan Lawrence’s journal, I’d like to send PDF copies off to some scholars in New York and Chicago for their insight. Obviously, there’s no record of Cosgrove every having been linked to anything like this.” She quickly leafed through the journal pages. “I think we could move some things around in the exhibition to display facsimiles of these pages – with your permission, of course. Original source documents like this almost never come to light any more. This could generate an enormous amount of interest.” With those words and Roland’s nod of assent, Kirchhoff left to make her copy.
The restorer, Ashley Paolino, had said nothing during the past several minutes. Now, she looked at the painting and shook her head, a sad look in her face. “It’s too bad the cottage doesn’t still exist,” she said. “Think what that would do for attendance, especially if someone found the bodies.”
Roland looked at her with surprise. “You’re wrong on that one, Miss Paolino,” he said. “The cottage is most definitely still there.”
Chapter Two
From the journal of Alan Churchill Lawrence:
June 12, 1889
After a hearty breakfast, we set out for a day at the Charles. Breck is keen on us each capturing the pools and eddies by the rail road bridge. I completed an oil sketch and am pleased with the composition, which Bunker also likes and intends to capture from a point about 100 feet north. The talk, as always, is of who will join us next. Frank Benson says he cannot leave his bride and the joke amongst us is that it is the longest honeymoon on record. Will Metcalf says he will join us for two weeks but is vague about which weeks it must be. And as usual, everyone is certain that ‘Cosgrove’s arrival is imminent.’ It has become a morning ritual: ‘Is Cosgrove’s arrival still imminent?’ Mrs. Jeffries is quite beside herself awaiting the purported arrival of this elusive luminary.
Parker chose not to go with us this morning. He instead says he wishes to sketch the factory girls and has walked into town. There is a group who sorts the straw out of doors and he is keen to capture their movement. Bunker says Parker is keen to capture a different movement on the part of these girls and that the boardinghouse will soon have a straw path from Parker’s room to the porch landing.
A note in the afternoon post: Edwards says three paintings have been placed for approval with ‘the Whitney family’ who are furnishing their newly built home in the Back Bay. Maddeningly, he does not say which three paintings. I have queried him by the evening post.
June 13, 1889
Mrs. Jeffries has laden us down with meats, cheeses and loaves of hearty bread and must believe we are bound for California rather than a riverbank less than a mile distant. Bunker says he will need new britches before the summer is done, such is the increase in his girth. There were six of us this morning: Bunker, Breck, Harkness, Thomas, Grimes, and myself. Parker is again sketching his girls at the straw handbag factory, which draws much snickering.
I have improved upon my sketch of the Charles, lowering the horizon to great effect, the better to capture the magnificent summer clouds in the style of Sisley. If the weather holds, I shall begin full work tomorrow. This evening, I have devoted to completing the oil of the little cottage adjacent to the boardinghouse. I am quite pleased. Bunker admires the painting greatly and implies he will take up the same subject when he has completed his oil of the Charles.
Edwards apologizes and reports that the Whitneys are a prosperous family and that the three paintings are from the seaside series of last August. I have given him pricing instructions.
June 14, 1889
Rain. I have spent the day fixing imperfections in the painting of the wayside cottage and in conversation with Bunker and his friend Chas. Loeffler, of whom we have seen little as he spends his days composing music and has scant interest in art. This evening, Loeffler entertained us with his violin. Mrs. Jeffries has plied us with tea and scones until we shall burst. Nothing from Edwards.
* * * * *
Detective John Flynn traced his finger over the map. Four colored lines meandered and crossed. A series of ‘X’ marks, times and dates lent authenticity and scientific methodology to his creation.
He mused to himself that, just eighteen months earlier, he had created similar lines on another map, though the locale was Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. The lines on that earlier diagram indicated the routes over several days, painstakingly recreated, of a burglar with a taste for rape. Flynn and his partner, Victoria Lee, had used his creation to stake out and catch the perp, a 21-year-old drifter who was now serving a life sentence at Cedar Junction.
But this was a street atlas of Hardington and the four lines indicated known incidents and reported times of the local crime of choice, one almost certainly perpetrated by a carload of bored teenage boys. Each ‘X’ indicated a report of a smashed mailbox at a particular time on a particular day during the prior week. By plotting the route of the car on four days, he now believed he knew where the boys lived. More importantly, he knew where they would go next, and when.
This is not police work, he thought to himself. This is a job for a truant officer.
Not that he had lacked for useful work in the thirteen months since he had joined the Hardington Police Department as its sole detective. Just a month after his arrival, he had solved the murder of Sally Kahn, the first such death in Hardington in fifteen years and a killing that would end in the taking of two more lives. Two months later, he had found the killer of Fred Terhune, a town selectman found dead just as the Ultimate House Makeover television program was about to start work on a home for a needy family. Only a month ago, he uncovered the murderer of Frieda Woodley – or should she be called Frieda Gallagher? – a woman who, after bringing misery to thousands of people, sought to hide out in a quiet town, only to be undone because she could not control her destructive impulses.
No, that’s not right, he thought. I didn’t solve those murders. We solved those murders. Liz Phillips matched me every step of the way.
Liz Phillips…
They were the same age though their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different. She was from some tony New York suburb and had science degrees from MIT. He was from Cushing Avenue in Dorchester and had passed two desultory years at Holy Cross playing decent, if undistinguished football. He dropped out and, a year later, was where he always knew he wanted to be: walking a beat in a Boston police uniform.
She was married to a successful businessman, had an attractive daughter who was out in the world, and a carried on a busy life of volunteer work. He, too, was married, though probably not for much longer, and had a son, institutionalized since the age of five with irreversible brain damage. In 35 years, Flynn had never discussed his son with any friend or coworker… until he told Liz about Matthew a month earlier.
She was clearly comfortable with who she was and how she looked. Liz, he noticed, always carried herself with an air of self-confidence. She was a natural leader and organizer. He, on the other hand, winced when he overheard women whispering, ‘Doesn’t he remind you of George Clooney?’ For thirty years he had worked with a partner, never commanding a squad. Fundamentally, he was a loner.
But when he and Liz Phillips were together, there was an undeniable something. Two minds coming from different worlds, but focused on a common goal. They had found different, vital clues in each murder within minutes of one another. And God, she was good looking.
And something had happened a month ago. He had been at her home for dinner along with Roland Evans-Jones. Her husband had missed his train from New Jersey and arrived home several hours late. When he walked in the door to find the three of them listening to music, laughing, and enjoying wine, there were looks that passed between husband and wife that said their marriage was anything but happy and solid.
Liz Phillips…
His cell phone rang.
“John, it’s Liz…”
He nearly dropped the phone. He held it out in front of him and stared at it. Had thinking about her conjured this call? Seconds later, he realized she was still speaking.
“…painting and, while it’s probably impossible to do anything…”
“Wait, Liz,” he said. “Let me get a piece of paper. You better start over. And it’s wonderful to hear your voice again.” Too forward. Way too forward.
“I drove Roland Evans-Jones into Boston. He’s lending a painting to an upcoming exhibition at the MFA. When the curator took the painting out of the frame, some papers fell out. If the papers are accurate, the painting shows where two murder victims are buried in Hardington.”
“When?” Flynn asked.
“This afternoon. We just got back.”
“I mean, when was the murder?”
There was a pause on the end of the line. “June 19, 1889.”
Flynn closed his eyes and started to silently laugh. After a few seconds, he felt he could continue without the risk of hurting her feelings. “I suspect we’re a little late to be able to make an arrest this time around.”
On the other end of the line, Liz laughed aloud. “No, I don’t think you’ll need the sirens on this one. But we think we know where the bodies – it’s two men and all we have are last names – are buried. Anyway, Roland wants to invite you to dinner at his house tonight to show you the documents. We’ll show you what we’ve learned and you’ll be able to tell us if you think you can track down the identities of the dead men.”
“Liz, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” No, not too forward at all.
* * * * *
The dinner dishes were cleared. A second bottle of an exquisite Bordeaux was opened and poured. Roland Evans-Jones, dressed in professorial finery of a bow tie and sweater vest, produced printouts of the cover note and pages of Lawrence’s journal from a folder and laid them side by side on the dining room table together with a photograph of the painting. Liz and Flynn sat on one side of the table; Roland stood on the other.
“The art world thrives on scandal,” Roland said. “Scandal sells art, scandal fills museums. It doesn’t make any difference if the scandal happened last week or five hundred years ago. Dan Brown writes something provocative about Leonardo DaVinci and all of the sudden, the Louvre has mile-long lines down the Rue de Rivoli to stare at paintings that no one except the curators had cared about for decades.”
“Let’s start with the dramatis personae,” he said. “Alan Churchill Lawrence, born 1860 in Boston. On the poor side of the Cabot family, not that anyone among the Cabots could ever be considered poor. Lawrence studied in Paris and returned to the U.S. in 1884. By 1889 he was just starting to mature as a painter though he likely wasn’t making much money yet. His family had a compound, Chappaquoit, in Falmouth and he painted there much of the year, turning out scenes of his sisters and cousins at leisure.”
Roland pointed at the first name he had underlined. “John Leslie Breck. He was the driving force behind the Hardington art colony. Born at sea in 1859 and grew up in Boston. He and Lawrence were the same age. Studied in Munich and Paris, including painting with Monet in Giverny in 1887, where he and Monet’s step-daughter were an item. He wanted to find a Giverny-like place – something with a river, meadows and open fields, and Hardington fit the bill. He and Lawrence had been fellow students at the Academy Julien, and Breck invited Lawrence here for the ‘inaugural summer’. He died, apparently of accidental causes, in 1899.”
Roland pointed at the next name. “Dennis Miller Bunker. A year younger than Lawrence or Breck. Born in New York in 1861. Studied with William Merritt Chase in New York, then in Paris, where he came to know John Singer Sargent…”
“Why do all these guys have three names?” Flynn asked. “I mean, can’t you just be John Sargent? Were there so many artists around that they all needed to clarify things? ‘Oh, you mean John Singer Sargent, not John Flynn Sargent.’”
Roland’s face fell. “I am among the unwashed rabble. Family, Detective Flynn. Family. None of these people were poor. They all drew stipends from somewhere. John Singer Sargent’s parents were peripatetic Americans who moved around Europe, searching for the best climate. He and Bunker were from the same social strata, and they were both part of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s circle of ‘bright young men’ she kept around her. Sargent invited Bunker to spend the summer with his family at Calcot Mill in England the year before Bunker joined the colony in Hardington. Sargent even painted him – the painting is in the Met. You don’t invite strangers to move in for the summer. But you do invite a Bunker if your cousin Gertrude married a Bunker. People waved their family trees like flags and semaphores; they were their passports and their letters of introduction.”
“Anyway, Dennis Miller Bunker came back to America at the end of 1888 full of ideas about Impressionism and found a group of like-minded people in Hardington. Sadly, he died of meningitis just two years year later.”
“The rest of the names are minor artists – Boston-area gentry who gave up painting when they failed to sell anything after a few years.”
“Who’s this ‘Chas. Loeffler’?” Flynn pointed to the name on the page, which Roland had not underlined.
“He’s the odd duck,” Roland said. “Charles Martin Loeffler; a friend of Bunker who came to Hardington for the summer to compose music, rather than to paint. He stayed at the boardinghouse along the artists but stayed in his room. Bunker even wrote a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner complaining he came back from painting one day to find Loeffler still working on the same musical phrase as when Bunker left. Loeffler got to be extremely important in the Boston Symphony hierarchy.”
Flynn nodded, satisfied.
“But here’s the big boy.” Roland thumped the name underlined on the page. “Edward Merrill Cosgrove. Born 1853 in New York. One of the Merrills who would give us, among other things, Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith. Joined with the Cosgroves, of the moneygrubbing industrialist Cosgroves, robber barons extraordinaire.”
“Cosgrove knew how to paint, no questions. He also had connections. He studied in Paris and hobnobbed with the Impressionists when Impressionism was new. He came back to America and began turning out paintings and portraits that were stunning. His family had about five hundred acres on the ocean at Kennebunkport and he started inviting his artist friends to spend their summers on the property whether he was there or not.”
“But we also know Cosgrove also had a dark side. He was ruthless about making certain he was the top dog. Any client who professed to love another painter as much as they loved Cosgrove’s work found they were cut off; dealers were forbidden to sell his paintings to such heretics. In 1898, he and a group of American painters seceded from the Society of American Artists and began exhibiting together, much as the Impressionists had done twenty years earlier. Cosgrove didn’t really get along with these other artists, but he had to be there, if you understand.”
“I don’t want to join this club, but if I’m not a member, people will wonder why not,” Flynn said.
“Exactly. And he was invited because of his wealth and connections, not because Hassam or Dewing or Tarbell or any of the others especially liked the guy.”
“Which brings us to Edward Merrill Cosgrove and the ladies,” Roland said. “Cosgrove lived into the 1940s, and his heirs have kept a tight rein on his reputation. Access to his papers is strictly by invitation to biographers who promise to toe the official line. There are a dozen biographies of him, all fawning. But the private stories are altogether different. Despite having a wife and three children, he was a man to whom the words ‘model’ and ‘mistress’ were synonymous. And, if they gave him the slightest encouragement, Cosgrove was not above dallying with the daughters of the society ladies who paid him to paint their portraits.”
“Do the Cosgrove heirs know about this painting and these papers?” Flynn asked.
“The curator at MFA scanned them and sent them off to a few of her contacts around the country, basically asking if anyone knew anything about Cosgrove having visited Hardington in 1889,” Roland said. “It is a reasonable assumption that those PDFs made their way to the Cosgrove Trust within an hour after they were sent off. By now, they’ve pulled up the drawbridge and circled the wagons. Any confirmation is going to have to come from some third party. And who that is going to be, I have no idea. But it’s hard to disagree with an original source document.”
“What’s the ‘Cosgrove Trust’?” Flynn asked.
“It’s a New York-based group, mostly heirs of Cosgrove and some lawyers,” Roland said. “They control his papers and hold the reproduction rights to most of his paintings. They also have a sizeable number of paintings that are still in the family. Remember: the Cosgroves were wealthy in Edward Merrill Cosgrove’s time. They’ve only grown wealthier in the last century.”
“Got it,” Flynn said.
“There’s one more name,” Roland said. “Howard Langston Edwards, art dealer. The Edwards, father and son, were a major name in art in Boston from 1870 until the depression. Edwards was Lawrence’s dealer at the time, and believed strongly in him. And Lawrence trusted Edwards enough to send him these pages from his notebook along with the painting. The question, of course, is how the notebook pages ended up behind the painting rather than in the hands of the police? Maybe Edwards never saw it. It’s also quite possible that Edwards read it and was scared to death because he also handled Cosgrove’s work. Remember: Edwards sold a Lawrence painting for $125. A Cosgrove canvas would have commanded $500 and up.”
“So how do you think the pages got to be in the frame?” Flynn asked.
“That, we’ll never know,” Roland said with a shrug. “What we do know now is that the ‘chain of custody’, so to speak, is unbroken.” He took out a yellowed slip of paper from the manila folder. “As soon as I got home this afternoon, I went straight to the attic and, thankfully, found I had saved all the relevant paperwork. I bought the painting as part of the estate of William and Louise Green, who both died in 1974 at the ages of 83 and 81, respectively. The Greens were married in 1912 – he was 21, she was 18, not at all unusual at that time.” He unfolded a piece of paper. “But let’s start with the original bill of sale.” It read:
RECEIVED from THADDEUS GREEN the sum of
ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS
for a painting of a house in Hardington, Massachusetts by
A.C. LAWRENCE.
Dated JUNE 22, 1889 by H.L. EDWARDS.
“If Edwards received the painting from Lawrence on June 20th,” Roland said, “the painting was in his hands for no more than two days. That’s a suspiciously fast turnaround from receipt of painting to sale, and the fact that it went back to Hardington can’t be a coincidence.” He shrugged. “But we’ll probably never know what happened. The painting was apparently never re-framed. And, it never left Hardington. I recall when I inventoried the estate before putting in my bid, one of the grandchildren said the painting was an anniversary present from Thaddeus to his wife.”
Roland then produced a thick envelope, likely once cream; now browned with age. From it he gingerly removed a card:
To William and Louise.
May you cherish this painting
as much as your mother and I have.
It is our gift to grace your new home.
Thaddeus and Amy July 11, 1912.
“A wedding present from the groom’s parents to the happy couple,” Roland said. And now for the piece de resistance.” He took a small photograph from the folder. It showed a stiffly posed young man and an even younger woman holding a painting, an older couple flanking them. The painting was unmistakably The Wayside Cottage in the same frame. The border of the photo bore, in faded black ink, 1912.
“All this – including the original Lawrence note papers and my receipt for having purchased the Green’s estate – goes into my safe deposit box first thing in the morning,” Roland said.
“So, let’s talk about Brighton and Carville,” Flynn said.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Roland said. “Reading between the lines of Lawrence’s journal, they weren’t gentlemen though they dressed reasonably well, and they had tracked down Cosgrove shortly after his arrival in Hardington. But whether we speculate that they were private detectives sent by someone Cosgrove had cheated or the father of one of one of Cosgrove’s models great with child, my guess is that there’s a complaint somewhere on file, either here in Hardington or in Boston.”
“And you’d like me to look,” Flynn smiled. “And then there’s the matter of these graves…”
“One grave, two bodies.”
“Liz said you think you know the location.”
“The cottage is still standing. It’s over on Charles Street.”
“And you think you could find the graves based on the painting?”
Roland pointed to the red flowers in the photo of the painting. “The peony plant marks the spot.”
“Two questions,” Flynn said. “First, what happened to Lawrence?”
“That’s an excellent question,” Roland said, returning the papers to the file folder. “As near as what I’ve been able to find out in a few hours of research, he left Hardington without finishing any of the other paintings he talked about in his notes, although the Bunker and Breck paintings did get completed pretty much as described, so the group at the boarding house stayed on. Lawrence went back to Chappaquoit and seldom left the family compound. His reputation went into something of a tailspin and he nearly stopped painting. But in 1895, he abruptly switched gears artistically, moved to New York, and began painting immigrant life. People fresh off the boat at Ellis Island.”
“The Ashcan School,” Liz said.
“Five points to the bright pupil in the front row,” Roland said and smiled. “Yes, Alan Churchill Lawrence, scion of the Cabots, became one of the founders of the Ashcan School of gritty urban realism.”
“Something a sensitive painter might do if he had seen a fellow artist bury two men and get away with it,” Liz said.
“My second question is a little more personal,” Flynn said. He waited until he was certain he had Roland’s attention. “If all this is true – if we find two skeletons under a non-existent peony bush in someone’s back yard, and someone out there can say, yeah, here’s a dated photograph of Cosgrove being greeted by dignitaries at the Hardington train station – what does that do to the value of your painting?”
“I haven’t thought about that,” Roland said. He was looking up at the ceiling.
“Bull, Roland. You’ve thought of little else since you left the museum.” Flynn’s eyes were focused intently on Roland’s.
“I don’t need the money, Detective Flynn. I’ve already got more money than I’ll ever spend.”
“Then you’ll have no problem answering the question.”
“Well…”
“Before this, what was the painting worth?”
“A Churchill painting done in 1887 at Falmouth was auctioned at Skinner’s for $62,000 in May,” Roland said. “I figured putting the painting in the MFA show would probably goose the value of my painting by about $20,000.”
“So, let’s call it $85,000 without the notoriety,” Flynn said. “Now, what happens to the value of the painting if it’s the key to taking down Edward Merrill Cosgrove?”
Roland’s face paled, but he did not respond.
“This is the painting and these are the papers that say the skunk buried two bodies in back of old lady Jeffries’ boarding house. What does the painting go for at Skinner’s now?”
“Five hundred,” Roland whispered.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“My best guess is that in a spirited auction, the painting would bring half a million dollars.”
Flynn nodded. “Thank you for your honesty.” He picked up his glass and took a sip of wine. The others did the same.
“Why do I think I’m going to be sorry I did this?” Flynn said, mostly to himself. He looked at Liz, who had been silent through most of the discussion. He held out his glass to make a toast. “I’ll help you, Roland. I’ll do it because you’re Liz’s friend and you can be an interesting guy when you aren’t trying to sell something. I’ll do it because I wouldn’t be much of a detective if I didn’t like a good mystery. And I’ll do it because, Roland, you’re going to educate me about wine.”
Flynn drained his glass. The other two did the same.