She remembered the young cop on the walkie-talkie, could almost hear him commiserating with Wanless. Yes sir, the doctor’s jumpy, I’ll humour her.
“I didn’t make it up.”
“Did I say you made it up?” He was flipping through his notes. “You had a shock tonight. Maybe your imagination’s playing tricks on you.”
The sentiment, if not the words, reminded Rebecca of herself when Mrs. Kochinsky had so often tried to convey in their sessions how frightened she was.
“I’ve brought you something,” Rebecca said, handing him the envelope. She had wondered fleetingly about confidentiality, but the woman was dead and her only relative was incommunicado. They all needed some answers.
He pulled out a thick folder filled with paper. “Mrs. Kochinsky’s file?” He perused a few pages.
“I can’t help feeling I’ve missed something,” she said. “I’ve read over my notes and all I can see is her paranoia. Maybe someone with a fresh eye can spot what I can’t. She was killed for a reason. I’m sure of that now. This ...” Rebecca waved her hand at the wrecked apartment, “this is just a diversion.”
“You weren’t sure before. What’s different now?”
“Everything changes when your life is threatened. I know how she felt now. There are too many coincidences.”
“Only if you look from a certain angle,” he said, observing her critically. “I’ll flip through it.” He replaced the chart in the envelope. “Have you been to the station yet?”
“I’m on my way.”
The April night was crisp in her mouth. And bitter. That anyone should die in spring when even the air held such promise.... Mrs. Kochinsky, who had already suffered enough.... The unjustness of it pushed her, barely aware, past the murmuring couples still waiting on the sidewalk for some news, some gossip, perhaps the taking out of the body.
She was heading for her car when she saw him. Feldberg stood on his steps smoking, three duplexes down from Mrs. Kochinsky’s, as he had said. He saw her, too. Quickly throwing down his cigarette, he stepped up to the sidewalk where she would pass.
“You are the doctor? Goldie’s doctor?”
“Yes.”
“What a shock to find her like that. I was just going to make coffee. Would you like some?”
The statement could wait.
Feldberg’s main floor apartment was laid out exactly like Mrs. Kochinsky’s, but the differences in style were startling. She had filled her living-room with the curved lines of French Provincial sofas and needlepoint chairs set in a circle, creating an impression of gentle clutter. His tastes ran to modern and expensive, a pale blue leather couch beneath the bay window, a steel and leather armchair near the fireplace. Between them stood an ultra-modern coffee table of chrome and glass. On the surface a large art book lay perfectly aligned with the couch. No carpets softened the floor of blond pine planks whose pattern converged in the centre of the oblong space that housed the living- and dining-room. The lines of the floor, and their juncture, drew the eye into the dining-room, which was almost empty except for a small table and two chairs. On a corner table sat a Mayan head carved from stone.
“Make yourself comfortable, Doctor. I will start the coffee.” Feldberg disappeared into the kitchen, the aroma of his cologne receding with him.
Rebecca observed the painting over the fireplace: wispy, nearly translucent figures dancing in the twilight of a romantic grove of cypress. She glanced instinctively at the signature, then smiled. Corot. Who was he trying to fool? What had David told her once? Jean-Baptiste Corot had completed four hundred paintings in his lifetime, and eight hundred of them were in North America.
From the kitchen Feldberg called out, “As you can see I’m a great lover of art. Have you heard the expression: the air we find in the Old Masters paintings is not the air we breathe? I deeply believe this.”
Her eyes followed the pattern on the pine floor where it converged in the dining-room. The burled table top was large enough only for a few tea cups. The austere ladder-backed chairs did not invite the guest to stay long. Rather the room drew the eye to the art on the walls, where she was amused to find paintings signed by Utrillo — a scene of bleached houses pressed together in a village — Pissarro — a busy scene at the docks in some French town — and a lopsided Chagall fiddler flying over a house through a pink sky. They were very good copies. Not just coloured photographs on artboard, but brushstrokes that looked real on canvas. Was this the new technique of reproduction that David had scoffed at? All that money and taste and then Feldberg had spoiled it.
Enough schlock. She turned to the photos on the mantelpiece. Feldberg and Chana in summer clothes stood together on a sidewalk somewhere, not close enough to touch. Rebecca noted a sisterly resemblance to Goldie even in the wary half-smile for the camera. In another, a young Chana and Goldie, arms around each other’s shoulders, beaming in front of a large tree. Goldie’s face, small, heart-shaped, her brown hair swept up into a chic roll. And the eyes! Ironic eyes radiant with humour. How beautiful she was. They both were. No wary smiles here, no buried emotions. Then a photo caught at Rebecca’s heart. Mrs. Kochinsky wistful beside a dark-haired handsome young man, his arm stretched affectionately around her. Enrique.
“A tragic family,” Feldberg said entering the living-room, noting the photo in her hand. He carried in an elaborate silver tray that he placed on the coffee table. “Did she tell you of her past?” He had an admirable head of steel-grey hair for a man in his sixties. His fine bones and trim frame exaggerated the hair.
“I know about her experience in Argentina.”
His back stiffened as if she’d said something personal. What had he to do with it? Perhaps there was something here to find out, but she needed to put him at ease first.
“At least she escaped from Europe before the war,” she said. “Things could’ve been worse.”
“She was luckier than me, in that respect,” he said, showing Rebecca to the sofa. He sat down in the severely modern chair opposite her, crossing his legs the prim way she had seen European men do. His grey jacket was made of expensive wool, the line of the trousers creased just so. He appeared nervous though, understandable after the evening’s events. His grey eyes tended to dart around quickly. Every now and then he rubbed his patrician nose as if irked by a smell.
“You were caught in the war?” she said.
He looked past her to the draped window. “At first we just ran from one town to the other, trying to stay ahead of the Nazis. Then in one of the towns, someone informed on us. Those Poles were devils. They hated Jews. And that was the end of our freedom. They took us to a camp in Poland, me and my brother.”
“How did you survive?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“We were young. I was lucky I was small. My brother was bigger than me and I gave him some of my food. I knew he needed it more than me. But he couldn’t take the hard labour and he wouldn’t listen. I helped others to survive. They valued my advice and they lived. But I couldn’t save my brother.”
The nasal voice stopped and she realized he was observing her. “Did anyone else from your family survive?” she asked.
“Some
