Murder in Lascaux

by Betsy Draine

  I rechecked the family chronology. Pierre was the son of Jenny’s brother, Antoine (and would become the father of the current baron). Just a month before Jenny’s entry in the notebook, the boy had turned eighteen and had been conscripted. Now he would return safely. By this time, Antoine was the head of the family. He was the one who had urged Jenny Marie to return to Cazelle.

  As the months went by, the entries, like the weather, became sunnier.

  3 July 1918

  We are in the heart of summer, and the days begin to pass more agreeably. Antoine sees to it that I want for nothing. He manages the château as well as Papa ever did. Of course, everyone speaks well of him. He has been encouraging me to get back to my art, and now that I have a little atelier in the south tower, I have begun painting again. The family leaves me to my work until dinner time and then sends for me to come to table. It suits me well, this routine. This morning I was sketching the big linden tree in the garden and finished before noon. Antoine tells me the notary wishes to have a portrait done. Why not? This afternoon perhaps a walk to the chapel when the sun is not so strong, and then repose.

  By now Jenny Marie was in her forties, and in those days she would have been considered well past her prime. Even so, she seemed to find renewed energy for work. She wrote of rekindling old acquaintances and busying herself with new projects. Judging from sales notations, her career took an active turn in the mid-1920s. There were details about exhibitions and commissions—and something else that caught my attention. She began selling works at auction. Not often and never her own works, which seemed exclusively to be handled through private transactions, but the works of other artists about her own age. Few of the names were well known, but all struck me as familiar. It took a while for my memory to work, but when it did, the explanation was obvious: I had come across them in an earlier notebook. Jenny Marie was selling paintings she had acquired in her student days from her friends at the Académie Julian. I went back to the notebook from that period, and sure enough, I found references to most of the names that surfaced in the auction accounts. At the Académie, the students often traded works or bestowed them as gifts of friendship; Jenny gave away many of her own works, as well. Now, to promote the careers of her friends, she was helping build a market for their works by placing some at provincial auctions. I cross-checked the box of letters from the period and confirmed that Jenny Marie had shared the proceeds from successful sales with her former comrades. Aimée Laurance was not among them.

  This information also provided a potential explanation for the source of paintings Guillaume de Cazelle was said to be flogging in Bordeaux these days. What if, instead of selling paintings from a secret stash of Holocaust art that was supposedly at the château, he was innocently selling works left over from Jenny Marie’s private collection? There was no law to prevent him from doing that. If the family members needed money, they were certainly entitled to sell works that had come down to them through inheritance. That possibility undermined Nigel Simmons’s rumor-mongering. Then again, said a voice inside me, possibilities aren’t the same as facts. In this case, what were they?

  I was losing time with these speculations and needed to get back to the notebook. In the remaining pages covering the 1930s, Jenny Marie’s entries were sporadic. There were fewer sales and a section of confusing pages of accounts and balances. Of course, those were the Depression years. Months went by without an entry; there was nothing at all from the years 1933 through 1936. Toward the end, though, there were several pages decrying the rise of Fascism in Germany and expressing fears of another world war.

  18 July 1938

  That lunatic Hitler is wringing the German heart. Blood will stain French soil again. Can it really be possible that another war is coming so soon after all the slaughter we have seen? Have we learned nothing from it? How the French can quarrel about politics with no sense of the future and no understanding of the past! It will end in ruin, Antoine says, and he is right, but the others are too stubborn to see the danger. They are like schoolboys wrestling in the yard while a hungry wolf watches from the forest.

  There were also allusions to dissension within the family, a quarrel involving Jenny Marie’s brother and nephew, but no details were given.

  16 August 1938

  It pains me to say so, but Pierre and his father are no longer talking. Antoine is distraught but refuses to say a bad word about Pierre. I suspect it’s about politics, and sooner or later I will penetrate the shroud that has fallen between them. Antoine is the kindest of men and a doting father. I can’t believe he is at fault.

  Nothing further explained the misunderstanding. The final entry was dated two days later, but the handwriting was unreadable, blacked over with a heavy felt-tipped pen. Had that been Jenny Marie’s doing? Did they even have black felt-tipped pens in 1938? Or had some other member of the family censored the passage? I flipped to the end of the notebook. There were twelve blank pages left between the last entry and the back cover. The three previous notebooks were each filled to the very end. Something seemed wrong.

  Maybe she had a breakdown. Maybe it was depression. There could be lots of explanations.” Toby was responding to my unsettled thoughts about the notebook as we maneuvered along the narrow, twisting road through Beynac on the right bank of the Dordogne. Our line of traffic came to a standstill while a tourist bus squeezed by, inching between the oncoming cars and the cliff face alongside the road.

  “Or maybe she switched to a more private diary, where she could confide her thoughts,” I speculated. “She had another six years to live, and she had been keeping some sort of journal ever since she was a teenager. How likely is it she would have just stopped cold like that?”

  “But you said Marianne told you there were no notebooks other than the ones in the library.”

  “That she knows about. Yes, so she said. But I have friends who keep diaries and colleagues who keep journals, and once you start, it’s a lifetime habit.”

  “Well, if there is another notebook and the family knows about it, it’s obvious they don’t want you to see it. Anyhow, you’ve got enough material for the article you want to write, don’t you?”

  “More than enough. But I want to know what happened to Jenny Marie during the war, and so far I’ve drawn a blank. It’s frustrating, is what I’m saying.”

  “Who else can you ask about it?”

  “Marianne’s the only one. But I don’t want to push her too far. I think we kind of hit the wall with her this morning.”

  Toby nodded.

  The truck ahead of us had at last cleared the bottleneck and was receding, trailing black fumes of exhaust. Toby shifted into first, and we started moving again. In the distance we could already see the Château of Castelnaud mounted on a wooded cliff above the valley.

  At five in the afternoon, the sun was still high and the day hot. As we continued, the massive fortifications of Castelnaud grew larger, commanding the valley from their strategic height. In another ten minutes we crossed the river on a narrow stone bridge and arrived at a bustling intersection. Behind a row of shops, we heard the delighted shrieks of children at a beach along the river bank. A quick left turn, then an immediate right, put us onto the steep road winding up to the village. Around every bend, the castle loomed, its limestone façade glowing orange in the afternoon sun. The tiny parking area for locals was full, so we followed the signs directing us to a large field for parking on the outskirts of the village and then made our way on foot to the little town square.

  The door to the combination library and book shop stood open. The door to Marc Gounot’s mineral shop on the floor above it was open as well, but we didn’t want to run into him on this visit. Warily, with an eye to his entrance atop the building’s outside staircase, we entered the library below. The freckled librarian recognized us and greeted us as if we were old friends.

  “Ah, the Americans,” she said, with a smile. “How may I help you?”

  “We thought we would t
ake another look at your books on Périgord,” said Toby.

  “Go right ahead. And let me know if you have any questions.” She gestured to the section of books for sale on local topics.

  We browsed casually, pulling volumes off the shelves here and there and flipping the pages. Toby picked up a book on traditional furniture, and I found a paperback on the Cathars that looked interesting. But my focus today was on events in the region during the Second World War. There were a dozen or so books on the subject, and one of them, Tales of the Resistance in Périgord, illustrated with photographs, looked most serviceable (meaning not too dense or difficult to read). We brought our finds to the counter and roamed around the room while the librarian tallied the cost.

  I could hear the old boards creaking on the floor above, as well as voices engaged in conversation, which reminded me that Marc’s alibi for the day of the murder had been provided by the young woman who was now ringing up our purchases. It would be forward of me to mention it, but I had nothing to lose.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I wonder if you would mind answering a question for me. You know, we’re staying at the Château de Cazelle, and everyone there has been questioned as part of the investigation of the murder that took place in Lascaux.”

  The smile on the librarian’s face froze as if she had been botoxed. I thought I detected a tic of the eyelid. “Is that so?” she asked in a neutral tone.

  “Yes. And now that we know Monsieur Gounot, who owns the shop upstairs,” I continued, pointing toward the ceiling, “we were concerned to hear that he was questioned at length by Inspector Daglan.” I went on breezily, without pausing: “But we understand it was you who told the inspector that Marc was in his shop during the time the murder took place.”

  “That’s right,” she replied, coloring. “Listen for yourself. You can hear everything that happens up there. I know Marc was in his shop all afternoon on that day. It’s impossible to think anything else. And besides, it’s absurd to believe he would ever be involved in such a thing.”

  “Without a doubt,” Toby asserted. “We think very highly of him ourselves.”

  Her features relaxed just a little. “That’s nice to know. He is a good and honest man,” she added, wrapping our books. She stood stiffly now, unhappy with the conversation.

  “Thank you for suggesting that we visit his shop,” said Toby. “It sounds like there’s someone with him at the moment, so we won’t go up today, but please tell Marc we said hello.”

  “D’accord.”

  Her body language told us we had worn out our welcome. We smiled, acknowledging the awkward moment, but said no more, paid for our purchases, and left.

  We were halfway across the square when I heard a familiar, guttural voice speaking French with a thick accent. Fernando. He was poised on the upper landing of the iron staircase leading to the mineral shop, saying something back to the person inside. He hadn’t seen us. I pulled Toby behind a column supporting the roof of an open shed, so that we were both out of sight. What was Fernando doing in Marc’s shop? He was standing in the doorway, gesticulating.

  “Don’t let him see us,” I whispered.

  There was a little souvenir shop next to the shed. We ducked inside and watched while Fernando continued his dialogue with his invisible partner. He appeared to be annoyed. Then he stood still and listened, finally nodding gruffly. In another moment Marc stepped out onto the landing, shook Fernando’s hand with a curt nod, and dismissed him with a pat on the shoulder. Marc turned back inside as Fernando skipped down the stairs. We watched unobserved as he swaggered to a motorbike leaning against a wall, kicked up the stand, gunned the engine, and roared off.

  Just then the owner of the souvenir shop approached and asked what she could do for us.

  “Thank you, Madame, just looking,” said Toby, placing a hand at the small of my back and steering me outside.

  We crossed as quickly as possible to the road back to the parking area, where we found our car so hot that we opened the doors and stood there talking while it aired out.

  “I don’t want to believe Marc is involved in this,” I said.

  “Remember, he has an alibi.”

  “It’s a good thing he does. I keep thinking about the war. At home it’s history, but here it’s still alive, part of the present. There’s that business about Marc’s father as a collaborator, which is nagging at me. Then there’s the rumor we heard yesterday about Nazis and hidden art at the château, not to mention the blank I’ve drawn about Jenny Marie during the war years. And now we discover there’s some connection between Marc and Fernando. I don’t have a good feeling about any of this.”

  “Let’s slow down a minute. So what if Marc and Fernando know each other? Everyone knows everyone around here. And as for the rumors about art and Nazis, how trustworthy is Nigel Simmons? Not that I’m dismissing the idea. I’m just saying we don’t know very much. And I still don’t see the link between any of this and the murder. Maybe we should stick to our sheep, which in my case is antiques and in your case is art.”

  “Stick to our sheep?”

  “It’s a French saying meaning let’s get back to the subject. Don’t you know it? Revenons à nos moutons. ‘Let’s return to our sheep.’ I think it’s from a play by Molière.”

  “What have sheep got to do with anything?”

  “You need to know the story.”

  “So?”

  “Something about stolen sheep. Or maybe they were lost. I don’t remember.”

  “Sometimes you can be infuriating.”

  “I admit it. But get into the car.”

  Toby’s suggestion was to go to the beach. It was still egg-frying hot at a quarter to six in the evening, and the Castelnaud beach at the foot of the cliff was inviting. We drove down the looping road from the hilltop village and parked in the dirt lot with its cluster of shops fronting the river. There was a café bustling with vacationers who had come from the beach to enjoy an aperitif before dinner. By contrast, the beach itself, a sandy strand shaded by trees, was pleasantly uncrowded. The Dordogne River, clear and wide at this spot, burbled gently and sparkled in the late sun. We found a comfortable patch of grass beneath a tree on a rise set back a little way from the beach, and we plunked ourselves down to relax.

  Couples and groups were scattered along the river’s edge, spread out on blankets or lolling in plastic beach chairs. Some had picnic baskets at the edge of their little patches of territory. Most of the families with young children had pulled up stakes by this hour, but teenagers and older folks were enjoying the scene. Three teenage boys were wading out to a bit of exposed land in the middle of the river—it was too small to call it an island—where two girls were stretched out sunbathing. A man in charge of the canoe concession was pulling his boats up onto the beach and aligning their prows; this was the landing point for canoes that had been launched upstream and were now being returned at day’s end. A light breeze rustled the leaves. I folded my arms around my knees and breathed in slowly. The air felt good.

  This being France, many of the women were topless, and not just the twenty-somethings. Women of all shapes and ages were following the fashion. It seemed quite natural. Maybe that was because no one was staring (aside from Toby). On some blankets women bare from the waist up were sitting next to others who were covered up, and nobody seemed to find anything amiss. I couldn’t help thinking of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which had caused a scandal by depicting a naked woman sitting on the grass beside two fully clothed men. But that had been a century ago and might as well have taken place in a different country.

  Off to the right about fifty yards in front of us sat a slim man in trunks and a blonde whose back was bare. They were gazing at the river. There was something familiar about the pair. Almost at the same time, Toby and I recognized Dotty and Patrick.

  “Should we say hello?”

  “I suppose we have to,” I said.

  “But she’s …”

  “Yes, I can
see that.”

  “Maybe we should go.”

  “Too late.”

  Patrick had stood up and spotted us. He said something to Dotty, who turned and waved. And jiggled.

  “Toby, you can put your eyes back in your head.”

  “Huh?”

  “And for your information, those are implants.”

  “How can you tell from here?”

  “Because they look like megaphones.”

  “Yeah, they do, sort of. It’s embarrassing.”

  “True enough.”

  Dotty was shimmying into her halter. Once ensconced, she waved again and started to troop over, followed by Patrick, who gathered up their towels and slung them over an arm.

  “I didn’t know you were coming to the beach today,” said Dotty brightly, directing her remark more to Toby than to me.

  “We didn’t either,” replied Toby. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  Patrick spread out their towels, and they sat down. He gave a wan smile. It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that he might not be attracted to women. That must have dawned on Dotty too, for she fixed her attention on Toby.

  “Still thinking about that armoire?” she asked, with a tilt of the head.

  While I had been working in the library, Dotty, Roz, and Toby had spent the early part of the afternoon at an antique fair in Le Castang. Toby told me he had thought of buying a small cherry wardrobe but had decided against it.

  “It was a nice piece, but awfully expensive,” he answered. Toby dutifully made eye contact with Dotty rather than letting his gaze drop lower. I gave him points for that.

  “What about you, Patrick?” I asked. “What did you do today?”

  “I’ve been reading up on local restaurants, comparing reviews from various guides, you know, Michelin, Gault and Millau, and a couple of others.”