Forrier entered, looked at me curiously, then walked to the corner. He studied Jeremy’s wall for a moment, then began conducting his invisible orchestra.
What is he hearing? I wondered again.
Before the guard closed the door, I grabbed the beach towel from the hall. When I unrolled it across the floor, it revealed the dried strips of painting. I stood above the strange mosaic with my arms crossed. Forrier’s eyes angled toward the strips, then away.
“They tried to kill your art by killing you, didn’t they, Trey?” I said quietly. “Hexcamp and his followers. They left you to die. But you survived.”
His hand faltered in the air.
“I know it was you in Paris, Trey,” I said. “The secretive artist.”
For a man who’d been in this country for over three decades, I figured Forrier knew much more English than he let on, comfortable in his native tongue, perhaps; or hiding behind it. Forrier’s gestures became a rote exercise, his attention focused on my words.
“You never insulted Hexcamp personally, it was your ability that belittled him. They beat your body, crushed your temple, shattered your cheekbone, then stole your painting.”
Forrier’s hand drifted to his wounded face, then dropped to his sides. He closed his eyes in the throes of decision. A moment later, he walked to the injured painting, dropped to his knees.
“Put the pieces together for us, Mr Forrier,” Danbury prompted. “I speak French, if you wish to talk. Please believe we are here as friends, to hear your story. S’il vous plaît croire que nous sommes ici comme les amis, entendre votre histoire.”
Forrier looked at Danbury and nodded. He began arranging the strips as if doing a jigsaw puzzle.
“Marsden avait un trou chez lui…”
Forrier spoke slowly, his words thick, like a man awakening from a trance. Danbury translated. “Marsden had a hole in him he thought my painting would fill.”
“Je suis arrivé aux Etats-Unis huit mois après…”
“I came to America after eight months. One of his monsters was from this area. I was right; they were nearby on a farm.”
“Il aurait été impossible de tout simplement reprendre mon œuvre…”
“It would have been impossible to simply take back my work; the people surrounding Marsden would have torn me apart. So I told Marsden he was a great artist and I was an ant in his shadow. I said, ‘Marsden, God spared my life so I could come to America and learn from you.’ I brought him flowers and kissed his feet. They smelled like rotting camembert.”
Pieces aligned as Forrier worked, and I figured he had hidden a contiguous quarter of the painting’s pieces in each mask.
“J’ai posé des questions sur mon art saisi: ‘Qu’est-elle devenue cette toile realisée si longtemps…?’”
“I asked about my captured art: ‘What became of that canvas I did so long ago, Marsden? Did it find a good home? Might I see it?’ He laughed and said he’d sleep on it. I learned it was a joke. He had a bedroom in the studio and had cut up my painting to fill his pillow with the scraps. Larger pieces and my studies he displayed as his own. He subjugated my work by savaging it and sleeping with it. Pillage and rape.”
I raised an eyebrow at Danbury; Forrier had made an astute psychological observation. He continued adding pieces to what was now a meter-square section of painting, bringing order to the chaos. There were blank areas, pieces used for other purposes, or lost in the water.
“…une dépendance, un édifice pourrissant…Marsden a appelé ces conditions mon ‘stage’…’
“I was not there when he displayed my work as his own. I had to live far from the others in an outbuilding, a rotting structure. I was not allowed contact with anyone but Marsden and…a woman. Marsden called these conditions my ‘internship’. Little by little I gained his confidence until allowed small use of the studio. But I could not find a way to free my painting without detection. Then, an idea: papier-mâché. I used the strips of my painting to build masks, replacing the strips from the pillow with scraps of dropcloth. I hoped to sneak my painting from the filthy life it was leading.”
“…J’ai rendu les masques laids et difformes…”
“I made the masks ugly and misshapen. I stuck glass in them. No one wanted to touch them, much less steal them. Marsden said, ‘Take those ugly things away, Forrier, keep them with you.’ He was secretly delighted I made such abominations, proving I had no art.” Forrier paused. “The strutting little peacock didn’t realize it was my turn to joke: I shaped the masks like the souls of those who stole my work.”
Deformed and hideous, I thought, astute. Forrier continued as Danbury translated, transfixed by the eerie image forming on the floor.
“Ask what he did with the masks,” I said.
“On m’a emporté aussi les masques…”
“The masks, too, were taken from me. All but the one I was working on. I think they finally entranced him. Even ugly, they had strength.”
“The masks showed up at death scenes over the years,” I said to his face. “You were finally arrested for horrible crimes.”
“Les meurtres ont eu lieu pas loin d’où je travaillais à cette époque…”
“Deaths occurred not far from where I worked, washing dishes. My lost masks were found. The police were led to me. I had a lawyer given by the court. I told my lawyer, ‘It has something to do with Marsden Hexcamp.’ The lawyer said if I admitted knowing Hexcamp it would seal my tomb. The truth that should have saved me would have killed me. It was a brilliant trap.”
Forrier shifted pieces until no more were left in the towel. The final result seemed the bottom quarter of the larger work, a phantasmagoria of destruction - blood, bone, body parts. Skullheavy faces screamed beneath cascades of excrement. Tiny golden worms slithered through the carnage. It was masterfully rendered - a work of genius from a technical standpoint - but a demented nightmare nonetheless. What had inspired such hellish pictures?
Forrier stood, walked to the wall, and again conducted his silent music. He seemed to have lost all interest in the art. I recalled his final pronouncement before completing the puzzle, that he had been trapped.
“Who trapped you?” I asked. He stared at me a moment, then waved his hands as if to outline smoke. “Fantômes,” he whispered.
“Ghosts,” Danbury translated.
Fantômes seemed to have been the final word in Trey Forrier’s daily verbal allotment. He fell silent and ignored all further questions. He simply stared at the wall, a beatific smile on his face.
“That’s the weirdest SOB I’ve ever seen, Carson,” Danbury whispered.