Death in Pont-Aven

by Jean-Luc Bannalec

  Kerdruc was picturesquely situated where the flat hills along the Aven fell away; the streets wound right down to the river. Some beautiful old stone houses and even a few imposing villas were scattered amongst the lush greenery. Palm trees, dwarf fan palms, larches, pines, lemon trees, rhododendrons, beeches, hydrangeas, high beech hedges, bamboos, cactii, laurels and bushy lavender shrubs all grew in wild profusion. The plants could not have been more typically Breton. Just like in Port Manech down by the mouth of the Aven, you felt like you were walking into a botanic garden. The Aven lay wide and majestic in the valley, halfway to the open sea.

  The street turned into a pier. A dozen coastal fishermen had moored their traditional colourful boats here; a few of the locals had left their motor launches and a few holiday-makers their sailing boats. The tide was coming in, the water already high, the waves long and flat.

  Dupin parked at the pier. There was space for maybe ten cars here, but no more. The little restaurant’s tables and chairs were right at the harbour and some were alarmingly close to the water. A dozen old sycamore trees lined the little quay. It was quiet now.

  They sat down at one of the tables by the water. A waiter appeared immediately, wiry, short, quick as lightning – Dupin liked that in a waiter. The kitchen was about to close. They ordered straight away, without much discussion. Belon oysters harvested from the river a few hundred metres away, followed by grilled monkfish with fleur de sel, pepper and lemon, washed down with a chilled, very young red wine from the Rhône valley.

  ‘It’s beautiful here, insanely beautiful.’ Marie Morgane Cassel let her gaze wander.

  Dupin thought it felt a bit surreal to be sitting here like this; neither the setting nor the food could be more beautiful, more romantic – and this was the evening of a day that had seen a second death and an arrest in the midst of a tortuous murder case. But she was right, this truly was beautiful.

  Madame Cassel tore him from his thoughts. ‘I got a call this evening from a journalist friend in Paris. Charles Sauré went to a friend of hers whom he apparently knows very well. He told him about the Gauguin. It’s going to be an exclusive in Le Figaro.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. They’ll probably run it tomorrow. An article and an interview.’

  ‘As a lead story?’

  ‘Presumably. I did tell you this would make international headlines. Every newspaper is going to be writing about it. Could you… suppress it?’

  ‘Do you mean could we, as police, prevent the newspaper reporting it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’ Dupin propped his head against his hand. Now there was the press too. The only thing that had been missing. He had sunk so deep into the strange world of this strange case. But it was obvious; as soon as anything about the existence of the painting and its incredible history was leaked, it would make for sensational news, especially in connection with a murder, or maybe even two. That was just the bare bones of the case and things didn’t come much more thrilling than that. ‘What on earth is he going to say?’

  ‘No idea. That’s as much as my friend knew.’

  Dupin was silent for a few moments. ‘Why? Why is Sauré doing this? This afternoon he was talking about discretion the whole time. He said he didn’t even go to the police when he heard about Pennec’s murder in order to maintain confidentiality.’

  ‘It’s a huge coup for Sauré, probably the biggest of his life. He is the person who discovered an unknown Gauguin, perhaps the most important painting of the artist’s whole oeuvre. What’s in it for him? Kudos, fame, honour. It’s about his career. You know that.’

  ‘Yes. You’re right.’

  She really was. By now the food had arrived. Everything looked wonderful. Dupin felt positively sick with hunger. They stopped talking and began to eat.

  Madame Cassel was the first to break the silence: ‘This is going to make everything more complicated for you, isn’t it? The whole world will be watching your investigation.’

  ‘I hope Sauré will keep the “case” out of it as much as possible. But yes, it is going to make everything more complicated. I prefer it when it’s not clear who knows what.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘How do you sell a painting like that anyway?’

  ‘You’ve got to know the right people… or get to know them. After that it’s much easier than you’d think.’

  ‘And where are these people? Who are they?’

  ‘Well, they’re private collectors. Crazy, powerful, rich. They’re all over the world. They belong to a loose circle of collectors, although officially it doesn’t exist, of course.’

  ‘And they would never associate with the police.’

  ‘There’s a lot of illegal stuff going on in that world. For a passionate collector, it’s basically immaterial where a painting came from or how it became available. Everything is done very “discreetly”.’

  ‘We’ve got to find the painting before it comes onto the market. It’s our only chance.’

  ‘Definitely. Do you think it’s still here… I mean in Pont-Aven or this general area?’

  ‘We saw a second copy of the painting this evening.’

  ‘What? A second copy of the second Vision?’

  ‘Yes, painted by an imitator from the artists’ colony. Gilbert Sonnheim. The copy was probably made just a few years after Gauguin painted the original.’

  ‘I know Sonnheim. It wasn’t unusual for “students” to copy large paintings by their masters in order to study them. Even in the artists’ colony.’

  ‘And people commissioned copies too.’

  ‘That wasn’t unusual either. People who owned a painting like that often had copies made.’

  ‘We just don’t know yet.’

  ‘And who had this copy?’

  ‘We don’t know that either. Probably the murderer. On the night when…’ Dupin gave up.

  He had been about to tell her the whole story, beginning with their visit to Beauvois, but he had no idea what or how to tell her. He was no longer capable of speaking concisely or coherently tonight. It all seemed absurd, even to him.

  Marie Morgane Cassel looked at her watch. ‘Leave it. Another time. It’s almost midnight. I’ve got to get back to Brest. For my lecture tomorrow morning. I’ve still got to prepare a few things. The Fauves, Matisse and the whole gang –’

  ‘I’ll just pay quickly.’ Dupin stood up and went into the restaurant.

  When he came back Madame Cassel was standing at the edge of the pier, looking down at the Aven. The tide was already in and it was extremely dark. The silvery surface of the Aven had shone as brightly as ever until the last scrap of light disappeared but now the silver was gone, replaced by an endless mass of black. One minute there was a silvery sheen and the next minute it had vanished. Above the river and out at sea, all that was left was a darkness you could almost reach out and touch as it swallowed everything in its path.

  ‘This is a special place.’

  Yes, thought Dupin. In a way, he was like a collector of ‘special places’, places that were extraordinary in some way. He’d been doing it for a long time, ever since he was a child and he had made lists of them over the course of many years; now Kerdruc was one. One of those special places.

  A few minutes later they were back at the harbour in Pont-Aven and Dupin was parking his car right next to Marie Morgane Cassel’s. Madame Cassel seemed to be flagging. They parted without saying much. Dupin waited until she had turned off onto the rue du Port and was driving away at an impressive speed.

  Then he walked back to the hotel. Labat hadn’t been in touch which meant that André Pennec still wasn’t back. He wasn’t surprised. He wouldn’t have expected any less of André Pennec. But even aside from the interview with Pennec, there really was a lot to do. The most important thing was to inform the Prefect personally about the article in Le Figaro. He could picture it now; he knew exactly how tense that conversation would be. ‘How is it that every Tom, Di
ck and Harry of a journalist knows how the investigation is going and I don’t? What kind of investigation are you running, with every little detail of the case getting leaked to the press?’ The Gauguin was too big an issue. He hadn’t been keeping the Prefect – or any of the top brass – ‘sufficiently informed’ of late. He was pleasingly indifferent to such things this evening. He didn’t want to do any more this evening. He couldn’t.

  Labat was standing in the entrance to the hotel, staring out into the night. ‘Monsieur Pennec hasn’t arrived yet. He’s not keeping to our agreement at all.’

  ‘We’ll sort it out tomorrow, Labat. We should all be off to bed now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need to go and get some sleep.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Tomorrow, Labat. Bonne nuit.’

  Labat made as though to protest again, but he was probably too tired himself. ‘Okay, Monsieur le Commissaire. I’ll call Monsieur Pennec’s mobile and let him know.’

  ‘Leave it. I’ll call him tomorrow morning myself.’

  ‘He will think it wasn’t important to us –’

  ‘He’s going to find out exactly what we think is important.’

  ‘I’ll just get my things.’ Labat disappeared in the direction of reception. Dupin followed him.

  ‘Did you know about the little room upstairs next to Pennec’s, where he kept his archive and a few paintings?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Dupin thought it over. ‘No, no… we’ll leave everything till tomorrow. Let’s call it a day.’

  Labat actually looked quite relieved. ‘I’m going to head off, Monsieur le Commissaire. Kerbrat can take over the watch tonight.’

  ‘Kerbrat?’

  ‘Yes, he’s an officer from Pont-Aven. One of Monfort and Pennarguear’s colleagues.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good night.’

  They both left the hotel. Labat turned right, Dupin to the left.

  Dupin parked his Citroën in one of the side streets near his flat a little before half twelve. The big car park was already closed because of the Festival des Filets Bleus which would be starting tomorrow. He walked down the street to the waterfront, keeping his house on his left. He stood by the solid quay wall that surrounded the new town for a few moments, looking out at the infinite black of the Atlantic by night. You couldn’t see the sea of course, but you could feel it. In the west was the Phare de l’Ile aux Moutons from the Îles Glénan, a sharp, powerful beam of light, moving in swift but unhurried circles as it pierced the fabric of the night sky.

  A quarter of an hour later, Dupin was asleep.

  The Fourth Day

  Dupin ordered his third coffee, the first two having had no discernible effect. He was exhausted and he’d only been up for an hour. It was quarter past seven now. Even the bracing breeze that had blown right through him on his way to the Amiral this morning hadn’t helped. He had woken up at half past three, and hadn’t really been able to get back to sleep. He had a vague sense of misgiving; the interviews from yesterday kept going round and round his head. He had missed something. For a few moments, his instinct told him, he had been very close to the truth. But he had let himself get confused. And he hated when that happened.

  He was still hopelessly tired. And furious. Le Figaro had run the story. Oh yes. ‘Sensation: Unknown Gauguin Discovered!’ That’s how the headline across the front page put it. ‘For over a hundred years the painting hung unnoticed on the wall of a restaurant,’ according to the sub-head. The story was summarised in a few lines and then banished to page three. Half of it consisted of an interview with Charles Sauré and a photo of the man himself, the other half of a longer version of the story and a large reproduction of the familiar painting.

  Charles Sauré had put an interesting spin on the story. Naturally the world had Sauré himself to thank for this painting; a provincial hotelier – admittedly that’s not exactly what was written, but that’s what was implied – had left it hanging on a wall for a hundred years. Apparently he’d had no idea of its significance, which meant it had been criminally neglected. And of course it was now ‘probably the central work of Gauguin’s epoch-defining oeuvre – and what’s more one of the key paintings in the history of modern painting’.

  It was disgusting. Sauré reported that he had seen the painting in the hotel, and that it was ‘potentially involved in the murder case of the hotelier who owned the painting’. That was in the editorial too, but not in any more detail. ‘The police investigation is currently ongoing’, was the editor’s brief comment. At least there was no question of much speculation on this point, and there was no mention at all of Loic Pennec’s death, potentially a second murder.

  So it was public knowledge now. Dupin had noticed the regulars whispering animatedly when he’d walked into the Amiral, but he hadn’t paid much attention because of how tired he was. Even Lily must have read everything already, but she had left it at ‘It’s really something!’ and a cheerful ‘It’ll work out’ while serving the first coffee.

  What Sauré was really hammering home was Pierre-Louis Pennec’s intention to donate the painting. ‘During our conversation, Monsieur Pennec showed his great generosity in wanting to make the painting accessible to the world. He wanted to leave it to the Musée d’Orsay as a generous gift. That was his firm wish.’ He managed to say this in three different ways during the interview and the journalist was also most emphatic on the point a number of times. At first Dupin hadn’t known exactly why, but then, suddenly, he understood: Sauré was cunning, and he wanted to make sure the painting would go to the museum even after Pennec’s death. That even under the – admittedly dramatically – altered circumstances the donation would still be made. More specifically, he was putting subtle pressure on the heirs, even though he didn’t know anything, not even who was going to inherit the painting or whether Pierre-Louis Pennec had officially written the donation into his will or not. He wanted to make sure, manipulate, pull the strings. He had to in fact, or his whole campaign would be for nothing. He risked making himself a laughing stock if there were no donation now. Dupin smirked. It was the first time he’d felt good all morning. If he knew Catherine Pennec at all, she wouldn’t be the type to let pressure of this kind get to her, or of any other kind for that matter. And although Sauré couldn’t have known it, the situation was absolutely absurd and looked set to stay that way. There was no painting, just two copies of it. Sauré didn’t have the faintest idea that the original had been stolen.

  There was a report about Loic Pennec’s death on page one of Ouest France but it was vague and confused; it seemed to Dupin that nobody had really taken any interest in it at all. The author didn’t dare speculate. The death was briefly noted to have occurred ‘just two days after the murder of his father’. And it was stated that a police investigation was underway. At least it did say at one point that ‘this old Breton family has found itself struck by great tragedy twice in such a short space of time’. Oddly enough, there was no speculation on any possible link between the two events. Someone was nervous, waiting for more information, or at least some small nugget of verified fact. For the local press these were daunting events. Dupin didn’t know the editor; he must have been new. The editorial department at the Ouest France in Concarneau was in one of the storm-swept old fishermen’s houses right by the harbour, just a hundred metres away from the Amiral. He knew the whole gang, some of them quite well.

  So that’s how things stood as far as the news was concerned – it was going to take up Dupin’s time today and throughout the coming days. Everyone would have read it or heard about it. To be on the safe side he put his phone on silent, and after leaving his money on the plastic saucer as usual he saw that he had been right. Six missed calls in the last hour. He had no desire to see who had called – he could figure that out without checking – and his mood was already black enough. He had to get going.

  Dupin had been so exhausted last night that he couldn�
�t remember the exact place he’d parked his car. It wasn’t something he was good at remembering at the best of times. It had driven him crazy in Paris sometimes, having to spend endless hours looking for his Citroën. He walked hopefully through the streets he thought it might be on and found it on the very last one, not all that far from his house in fact. He had simply been walking in the wrong direction.

  Dupin drove at top speed. He fumbled around with the car phone.

  ‘Le Ber?’

  ‘Monsieur le Commissaire, the Prefect wants to speak to you. He is very… upset. He’s been trying to reach you and he’s called Labat twice already. Nolwenn too.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the hotel, I just got here.’

  ‘How did it go with Beauvois?’

  ‘It was an unpleasant journey. They kept him overnight. “Reasonable cause.” But it wasn’t easy. He has an odious lawyer. It took a while to get the judicial order, it was a close one.’

  ‘When will we be able to question him?’

  ‘Right away, this morning in fact. Are you going to drive over?’

  ‘No, I’m staying here.’

  There was one thing Dupin wanted more than anything: to find out what was troubling him, giving him that deep-rooted feeling of unease.

  ‘You drive over.’ Dupin thought about it. ‘No wait, I need you. Send Labat. Is he there yet?’ Labat was more aggressive in interrogations; besides, Dupin would rather have Le Ber with him.

  ‘Yes, we spoke just now. He wanted to see about the room upstairs next to Pennec’s. We’d already looked at it, but I assume he’s after something specific now.’

  ‘Go upstairs, I want to speak to him.’

  ‘Who, Labat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Dupin could hear Le Ber climbing the stairs.

  ‘I want you to take over the search from Labat. Go over the little room again carefully. But the most important thing I want you to do is to question Madame Lajoux, and also Madame Mendu, Madame Galez and the rest of them. We’ve got to know whether there was a copy of the second Vision there.’