1 Vivant, a common 18th and 19th century French first name, means « Alive ».
II
13
As the sun rose over Mexico City’s Federal District, Sixtine placed her luggage in the red house Han had found for her through acquaintances of his. Its colorful walls were reminiscent of those of Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, painted in cobalt blue, a few blocks away in the historic Coyoacán District. The property was surrounded by trees and the garden was exotic. Best of all, the owner didn’t ask any questions.
Sixtine’s finger was still scarred and tender where the brooch’s needle was stuck into and the pain came suddenly, without warning. Gigi’s brooch was warm in her jeans’ pocket, and she had to find Thaddeus.
There were only two days left.
In addition to the art gallery where Thaddeus’s works would be on display, there were two places where he could possibly be. The National Anthropology Museum and the baroque chapel with blue and white domes they had visited together, or the Pocito Chapel.
Sixtine first went to the chapel, the only one open at this early hour. She asked the priest whether he had seen Thaddeus, giving his description, but he didn’t want to say anything to her. There was, however, an old lady who swept the floor who agreed to talk to Sixtine.
“Yes, this gentleman you’re looking for stopped by yesterday, ma’am. If you give me some form of payment, I’ll let you know when he comes back.”
Sixtine handed her all the pesos she had on her, gave her the address of the red house, but as she left the chapel under the gaze of the old woman, she was under no illusion. A few more pesos and she’d allegedly maintain the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the angel Gabriel had also passed.
Sixtine visited the museum next, nauseated from the smell of bad memories. The curator was hostile and said bluntly he knew nothing about Mr. di Blumagia. However, he remembered her perfectly and the damage her presence had caused to the statue of Coatlicue.
Finally, Sixtine found herself at the art gallery, a small white space set up in a trendy street in the Roma District. When she entered, a young woman with high heels sitting behind a vintage desk, ate a juicy-looking taco, which she quickly stuffed back into her purse to greet Sixtine. Probably an intern, Sixtine told herself, who answered her discreetly.
Suddenly, his eyes caught a bunch of brochures on the desk. There was a reproduction of a painting and in blue letters, the name of Thaddeus di Blumagia.
Sixtine took one and examined it. In the center, a portrait of a woman with a rather ungraceful physique, perhaps angry, at least taciturn. It was surrounded by Aztec and Egyptian elements mixed with ancient and modern details. The painting was very busy, almost screaming – reminiscent of Italian religious frescoes. Yet, in its details, it was breathtakingly masterful, but Sixtine did not find the elegance and restraint that defined Thaddeus. His works were minimalist, at best.
How did she know that?
Her breathe suddenly felt cold as she gasped softly while a memory filled her mind.
His workshop.
Thaddeus had a studio in Mexico City.
This certainty had exploded in her mind and she turned to the young woman behind the desk.
“Excuse me, Miss, could you tell me how to get to Mr. di Blumagia’s workshop?”
The young woman’s eyes widened slightly and clasped her hands together. “Unfortunately, we can’t give the addresses of the artists.”
Of course, Sixtine thought. In case customers would like to place orders directly and deprive galleries of their commission.
“Don’t worry,” Sixtine added quickly. “It’s not to order any artworks from him, Thaddeus is far too disorganized. Fortunately, he has a gallery owner like you to manage his work. No, it’s just that – .”
Before she could finish her sentence, an elderly woman covered in sparkling jewelry burst into the gallery. Sixtine noticed a driver in a black sedan waited for her in front of the door. The young gallery owner paid great attention to the arrival of this woman, whom she called by her name, and totally ignored Sixtine.
“Tell me that dear Thaddeus will be at the opening,” the woman exclaimed in English, with a strong American accent.
“He said he’d be here this time.”
“He won’t come before the opening?” the lady asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, Mrs. Mappeultorpé. He didn’t say.”
“Mapplethorpe, my dear, Mapplethorpe. And his works, do you have them?”
“Not at the moment, no. They’ll arrive on Tuesday.” The young woman blushed, terrified at the thought of making a mistake in front of this precious client.
“No sculptures?”
The young woman shook her head.
“I want to make sure I see his painting before it’s displayed. You will call me the minute you receive it?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Mappeultorpé,” she answered and reached for a sheet of paper on a matte black clipboard. It had the name Thaddeus di Blumagia written at the top, and below it was a list of handwritten names with addresses and telephone numbers. “If you write your name and contact details on the list, you will receive the gallery’s newsletter, and the artist’s exhibitions,” the young woman said with a very small voice.
“If you want my contact information,” the lady said in an icy voice, “you only have to look at the fifty thousand dollars of purchase orders that have been issued in recent months. Unless you used them as a nacho cone?”
The young woman’s eyes widened, and her cheeks burned with intense vermilion.
“I am a personal friend of Mr. di Blumagia. Tell him Maeve Mapplethorpe stopped by.”
As the old woman was about to walk through the door, Sixtine approached her. “A friend of Thaddeus’s? What a coincidence, me too.”
The lady turned around and stared at her from head to toe. Unlike the young gallery owner, who seemed to be about to liquefy from embarrassment, Sixtine, despite dressed casually in a pair of jeans, the bandage around her hand and the jet lag which tired her face, did not come apart.
“I thought I knew you,” Sixtine lied. “Thaddeus has already introduced us. Sixtine.” She held out her hand to the old woman and the woman took it softly.
“Thaddeus and I were just together in Paris two days ago. I lent him my jet. You know how much he hates charter travel,” Sixtine said with a pout.
“Mrs. Mapplethorpe. How nice to see you again. Where were we introduced? It seems to me it was here in Mexico City. His workshop maybe? Or was it a hotel? I have trouble remembering.”
“No, it must have been at Yohannes De Bok’s. There are always so many people at his receptions that I never remember all the faces.”
“Yohannes, of course,” Sixtine beamed, feeling her heart beating faster. “Dear Yohannes, what an eccentric character, isn’t he? Yes, it must have been at his home. Mrs. Mapplethorpe, will I see you at the opening?”
“Or maybe before, if our friend Thaddeus makes us happy to come earlier. I’ll tell him I saw you. Sistine – ”
“Sixtine,” she corrected.
“A name original enough for there to be only one, I suppose. Have a good day, Miss.”
Sixtine’s gaze followed the old woman who climbed back into her sedan.
Yohannes De Bok, of course, Sixtine exclaimed in her mind.
As she was about to leave, the young woman handed her the clipboard. Sixtine was about to refuse, but changed her mind and took the pen from the desk. Sixtine scribbled a fake name and contact details, without batting an eye, told the young woman, “Now that you know how to find me, can you tell me the way to Thaddeus’s workshop?”
A quarter of an hour later, the taxi stopped a few blocks from Parque Mexico and Sixtine stepped out onto the pavement.
Not only did she recognize the place, but the visions that came back to her did not bode well.
14
Eleven hours later, Florence still stood in front of the portrait of Vivant Mornay. Belo
w it, resting on the mantle, as if it had been its guardian, was the thousand-year-old shrew bought from De Bok.
No matter how long she stared at the portrait, studying every nook and cranny, she couldn’t find any crosses. She inspected the gold leaf frame, the details of the subject’s clothing, but there was nothing.
“What does this cross look like?” Charles asked impatiently.
Florence took a small pink notebook out of her back pocket and sketched it roughly before handing it to her father.
Charles studied it for a long time and finally whispered, “I have to admit, it rings a bell to me too.”
“The family’s arsenal?”
“No, no, no, no. Not ours anyway. No, it doesn’t even look like the ones on our guns and rifles’.”
“It worries me. Because if you get involved in this story…” Florence’s voice trailed, as she couldn’t even imagine if something had to happen to her father. “I was the one who discovered the bodies. Can you imagine if it’s not a coincidence?”
Charles saw Florence was losing her temper allowing herself go into a panic. “There is a way to find out for sure,” he announced, trying his utmost to stop her from panicking.
Her eyes sparkled as Florence glanced at him hopefully, waiting for an answer.
“The archives of Vivant,” he announced, triumphantly.
“Did we keep his records?”
“Grandpa always said that one day it would pay off big.”
“Don’t tell me, it didn’t happen,” Florence said and crossed her arms.
“No. That’s why they’re not in the safe, but in an even more secret place,” Charles said as he headed down another corridor.
This time it was Florence’s turn to follow her father through Falmouth Manor.
In the semi-darkness, they passed through rooms Florence could not even remember. They had left the inhabited part and now moved to the part that was open to the public once a year.
Encircled by a red velvet cord stood the wax figure of Vivant Mornay, elegant and eccentric. Around him stood plaster reproductions of antique columns he had brought back from Greece and offered to the British Museum. He posed in his dapper red uniform, with the pale complexion of the aristocrat, slightly pink cheeks, thick eyebrows, gray wig to look prominent, which in the prime of life he was not yet.
Florence stopped for a short moment to examine it.
Despite his wax body, Vivant Mornay seemed to be in motion, and an appetite made the eyes shine. An appetite to live, to discover, to decide, who knew? What did he have to hide?
As Charles left the room, he turned off the light, but Vivant still looked at her, even in the darkness.
Stupid Halloween.
A portrait of Vivant surprised her in a corridor which no-one ever entered, or passed through. Florence grabbed her father’s flashlight to inspect the painting. Vivant had been painted, according to the date engraved in the gilded frame, the year of his death, at 72 years old. The wig was gone, leaving room for an advanced baldness, embellished with muttonchops, and they were authentically gray. His gaze was no longer determined, but the appetite still shone, almost voracious. He sat on a fur-covered bench beside a beautiful globe, a decoration prized by vain scholars. His hand was carelessly placed on the marble bust of a breathtakingly beautiful Greek goddess. Florence looked at the painting for Egyptian clues, or the cross with vertical tips.
“Here we are,” Charles said as he entered the room. “You’re lucky I sorted it out not too long ago.”
The windowless room was filled to the ceiling with furniture, cardboard boxes and other objects. The carcass of an old bicycle, a broken vacuum cleaner, military uniforms of uncertain age hanging from the cornice of a wobbly wardrobe, horse saddles. The floor was littered with yellow Horse & Hound magazines and random paperback books.
“When you say you sorted it out not too long ago – ” Florence muttered.
“When your mother left.”
“That was almost thirty years ago.”
“It always feels like it was yesterday, and it always will, Florence,” Charles sighed and approached a wall lined with shelves. “All right, here we go. It’s all here on the shelves. The archives of Vivant Mornay.”
After half an hour of moving mountains of boxes, books and dead insects in cobwebs, her father wiped his hands on his pajamas and said, “That’s about everything, I’m guessing. Or hoping.”
They had stacked eight large moving boxes, which contained almost fifty volumes of books and Florence looked at them with spite.
“It would have been too much to ask for to have them on a flash drive, right.”
“Especially now that we have to take them down to the garage.”
Florence looked at her father without understanding.
“What?” her father asked with a shrug. “You didn’t think we were gonna leave it here? There’s a psychopath watching us, all he has to do is ask the Tourist Office where we are. We take Vivant’s paperwork and get the rest of it.”
She saw a splash of excitement in her father’s eyes as this little taste of adventure sparked up the young adventurer inside him.
“Where?” Florence asked.
“Weren’t you supposed to go to Cairo?”
“Somehow the expression ‘to throw oneself into the mouth of the wolf’ comes to mind.”
“Rather that than die like a sheep here. Besides, I know people in Cairo. We’ll be safe there.”
He grabbed one of the boxes, and let it fall down with a loud thud in a cloud of dust.
It was going to be a long night, Florence thought.
“Besides, it’s not going to fit in any of your cars,” Florence pointed out, thinking about the coupe cars her father loved. The look on Charles’s face showed that he hadn’t thought of it.
“We’re going to take Grandpa’s car,” he answered with a proud smile. “Here, can you help me?”
The father and daughter stood together to lift the box. She was surprised to see a smile on Charles’s lips.
Cairo with her father.
They hadn’t traveled together in years, and amid all those frightening thoughts, that unexpected connection with the murder, the dull impression that someone was pulling the strings, that someone was spying on him, then lying to Max and the pressure of her bosses at the BBC, she suddenly realized that this trip was making her happy already.
In the end, even at almost thirty years old, it was reassuring to know that her father was still watching over her.
Half an hour later, a vintage Rolls Royce parked in front of the mansion’s service entrance. Once the boxes were stacked on the back seat, two suitcases in the trunk, and Florence in the passenger seat, Charles climbed inside. He had put on his riding boots and a Barbour overcoat, and a pack of Haribo strawberry sweets stuck out of his pocket.
Florence scoffed. “Daddy. Note that I’m not saying this to be negative or judgmental in any way, but you’re still in your pajamas.”
“It’s Egyptian cotton, Flo,” he said with a wink as he drove off.
The yellow lights of the old Rolls swept the facade of Falmouth Manor one last time, illuminating the large living room where Florence had placed the mummified shrew of De Bok one last time. The ephemeral light caressed the strips, cast its slender shadow over the imposing sculpted fireplace on which it rested.
It revealed the relief of the soot-blackened motifs as if they awakened to life for a second, the obscure alphabet of aesthetic forms whose meaning had been forgotten at the death of the artist.
Just before the light escaped without anyone to see it except the dead shrew, coiled among the many details in the rich vocabulary of the decoration of the large fireplace, the cross with vertical tips appeared.
Like on the skin of Sixtine.
15
Alone on the shaded sidewalk, Sixtine glanced up at the narrow concrete building. Its walls covered with high glass windows framed in black metal, four floors high. It was trapped bet
ween two more welcoming buildings, whose balconies overflowed with green plants. The plants mingled with trees planted on the sidewalks and too-low-hanging electrical wires.
Sixtine checked the address given to her by the young woman at the gallery, but the front door did not have a number.
Broken office furniture lay on the sidewalk, a front door hidden in the recess of a tagged wall. In short, an ordinary neighborhood. Nothing in this urban setting reminded her of Thaddeus’s sophistication, and yet, Sixtine knew that there was something here that brought her closer to him.
She walked to the terrace of the restaurant next door, an address connected under a black canopy and the waiter confirmed to her that the narrow building was indeed the one she was looking for.
Sixtine pushed against the door and sighed a breath of relief when it opened with ease. The glass scraped against a broken tile, sending shivers down her spine. The light was so bright in the streets of Mexico City that her eyes needed several seconds to adapt to the darkness of the lobby.
She stopped on every floor, looking around for God knows what. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for herself, but it was not until she reached the fourth floor that she saw his name on an envelope on the ground.
Di Blumagia, T.
She rang the doorbell, her hands shaking with an imperceptible tremor. The sound echoed through the space and Sixtine visualized it clearly in her mind. A space bathed in light, minimalist sculptures, the glorious glass roof, shelves packed with tools and materials. The old parquet floor splashed with paint. And Thaddeus, in the middle of all this clarity, in his stained shirt and paint-splashed jeans, relaxed, and smiling at her.
A soothed smile.
Foreign, yet so familiar.
Worst of all, she remembered being happy here.
Sixtine closed her eyes briefly, and when she reopened them, she was still on the bleach-smelling landing in front of the closed door, along with the silence behind it.
Still shaken up, she scribbled her address on the gallery owner’s note, begging Thaddeus to contact her urgently.
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 36