by Ruth Brandon
We followed in their wake, as more stones hit the win-dows, and filed through a deserted kitchen into a sort of alleyway. There was a flash, followed by a bang, and I heard someone say ‘They’re setting fire to cars.’ I prayed ours was not one of them. I had no idea where it was: from the front of the hall I might have found it, but from this unknown alleyway, never. I hoped Manu was not similarly disoriented.
He set off at a furious pace. To our left we could hear shouts and bangs, and from somewhere at the front of the building a flicker of flame was visible. Something acrid in the air made us choke – perhaps now they were firing tear-gas. We heard running feet. And then suddenly we were at the car, which seemed miraculously untouched. As we slid inside and locked the doors, a group of boys appeared at the end of the street. They ran towards us. Manu lay back in his seat, saying nothing, staring at the roof: I put my hand into his pocket – an oddly intimate gesture – and pulled out the gun. It was smallish, heavy and black: it looked lethal enough, though in my shaking hands it would probably be worse than useless. As the boys drew level with us, I tried feverishly to work out which was the safety catch. But before I could release it they were past, more concerned with getting somewhere, or perhaps get-ting away from somewhere, than stopping to attack even such a tempting target as the Mercedes.
Unable to think what else to do with the gun, I stowed it in my handbag. A wave of rage washed over me – at Rigaut, at his bully-boys, at the terrifying young men who had just thundered past. Since he was to hand, I directed it at Manu. ‘You idiot!’ I shouted. ‘Are you mad? What good would that have done?’
‘It would have got rid of him,’ he muttered.
‘Your recipe for a better world.’
‘It would have been a better world. If you hadn’t interfered –’
‘So why did you bring me?’
‘You’re so keen to know about us,’ he muttered sulkily. ‘Et voilà. La famille Rigaut.’
I waited for him to start the car, but he seemed lost in a dream, so I unlocked the doors, rushed round to his side and pushed him into the passenger seat. He slid glassily across, his coat snagging on the gear-lever as I set about putting distance between us and the riot. Eventually we hit a main street, and after a while there was a roundabout and a sign to Paris and the périphérique. Beside me, Manu still lay motionless – stunned, perhaps, by what he’d nearly done. After a while I said sharply, ‘Manu, you’ll have to tell me where to go now.’
Silence.
I hit him sharply, a backhander across the neck. ‘Manu!’
His head jerked up. ‘What?’
‘Tell me where to go. I’ve never driven in Paris.’
He sat up, and mechanically issued instructions which I as mechanically followed. Eventually they led us to the parking garage. I slid the car into a slot and switched off the engine, shaking.
There was a bar opposite: we sat at a table near the back, and I ordered two double brandies. Behind the barman, the television news showed pictures of the riot we’d just escaped. In front of a burning car, the Minister talked about law and order and how the irresponsible few destroyed the lives of their fellow citizens.
‘Why do you hate him so much? Is it just politics?’
‘Just politics,’ he repeated scornfully. ‘His politics are part of what he is. You can’t separate them. Don’t you see that this is exactly what he intended? It’s not just that, though. He’s a murderer.’
‘You mean Delphine Peytoureau?’
‘Delphine Peytoureau? Your boyfriend’s wife? What’s she got to do with any of this?’
I felt myself blush. If even Manu knew about it, our only-too-visible embrace had evidently become a hot topic in the small world of St Front. I hoped Delphine herself had been spared the gossip, but it seemed unlikely – even my limited acquaintance with village life was enough to tell me that. I said, ‘Someone forced her off the road and she hit a tree. They haven’t found the driver.’
‘What are you saying? That my father –?’ Now that he was confronted by actual detail, he seemed stricken.
‘Not him personally, no. But it seems likely he’s connected. After Olivier published his story, he tried to get me accused of murder.’
‘Of my grandmother? Of course I read the story.’ He shook his head. ‘Really, Régine, things are bad enough without letting your imagination run away with you.’
‘You didn’t see your father that morning. He was terrified. Utterly panicked. Something had happened.’
Manu said dreamily, ‘As a matter of fact I asked him about it.’
That was something I hadn’t expected. ‘Really? And what did he say?’
Somewhat to my surprise, he began to laugh. ‘He said it was all your fault.’
‘My fault! That’s too much. How could it be my fault? I didn’t even see her. That was the whole point.’
‘Ah, but you were the catalyst. The reason she died. He told me about it after the – the exhumation. I don’t think that was easy, even for him. She was his mother, after all . . . He rang, and we had dinner together. He wanted to talk. I didn’t want to, but he really seemed almost desperate. One of his intervals of being almost human . . . He said he’d arranged to call by La Jaubertie that morning to talk about the roof – you must have seen the mess there, they’d been arguing about it, there was something he’d forgotten to show her. He’d meant to get there around eleven, but then something came up and he had to make it earlier. He didn’t bother to tell Grand-maman – quite frankly, the kind of life she lived, it didn’t make a lot of difference if a visitor arrived at nine rather than eleven. So he got there a bit after nine.’
‘That must have been just after she’d called me.’
‘Perhaps. Anyhow, he found her in her bedroom, and she told him he’d have to wait, she couldn’t talk then, she had a visitor coming any moment. So he asked her who, and she said it was you. Naturally he got angry. He said he’d forbidden her to see you. And when my father forbids something . . .’
‘I still don’t understand that. The very thought of her lending us that picture seemed to make him apoplectic. Did you know he tried to pretend she didn’t really own it?’
Manu waved his hands in front of his face, as if to block out this fresh example of his father’s paranoia. ‘One thing at a time. So they began to argue, and then the doorbell rang, and of course Grand-maman wanted to go and answer it. But my father forbade her, he said she wasn’t moving from the room. He locked the door and wouldn’t give her the key, and she got angrier and angrier, and then, this is what he told me, after a bit she refused to talk to him any more, said he made her ill, and she was going to lie down. So then he unlocked the door and was going to leave – it was obvious they weren’t going to have a sens-ible discussion that day, and he took it for granted that by then you’d have given up. But when he looked out of the window he saw your car was still parked there, and there wasn’t anyone in it. Obviously you were still around somewhere. And of course he knew Grand-maman never bothered to lock the front door. So he thought he’d better check. And there you were, in the study, looking guilty. So he saw you off the premises, then went back to check on Grand-maman, but she was still lying down, and she wouldn’t talk to him. And he had to get on to his appointment. So he left her to it, left her to sulk were the words he used. He locked the place up to make sure no intruders would get in. And then of course it turned out she’d died. All because of you . . .’
It made sense. The autopsy had told the truth. He hadn’t actually killed her – not in the sense of laying hands on her. When she said he’d made her ill, he’d assumed she was talking metaphorically: You make me ill. But in fact she really was ill. She was old and frail and he’d made her so angry and frightened that she had a heart attack. He’d scared her to death. And he knew all right, he knew. I’d seen him. But he told himself what he told himself, and let himself off the hook. It was the start of an election campaign, life was a string of urgent engagements – that
was why he’d had to change his plans in the first place. It wasn’t the moment to quibble about details.
And when I’d gone? What happened – or didn’t happen – then?
I said, ‘Yes, the front door was locked when I went back. The whole place was shut. I thought he must have taken her off with him.’
‘Managed like a true politician,’ Manu pronounced. ‘Guilty as hell, but technically in the clear. To our future President.’ He lifted his glass.
I said, half-jokingly, ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t make a habit of it,’ and thought again of Delphine.
‘But that’s the trouble,’ Manu said. ‘He does.’
I stared at him.
‘My uncle Antoine,’ he said.
‘But I thought he committed suicide.’
‘Maybe . . . People don’t just commit suicide like that. Why would he do it? He had a good life. Everything was going fine.’ He picked up his glass again, but it was empty. ‘Another?’
‘Just a small one.’ I noticed his hand was shaking. ‘We should really get something to eat . . . Are you saying that had something to do with your father?’
He shrugged unhappily. ‘I don’t know. What I do know is that Antoine was as horrified as me when it became clear he might really become President. We were in the apartment, watching television, when he announced it. I feel this is something I owe the French people blah blah. Antoine said, He can’t, and I said, Oh yes he can, you just watch. So Antoine said, No, I’m going to stop it. I asked him how, but he wouldn’t tell me. He just said he could. He said, This is something I owe the French people, and we laughed. But then, a few days later, when it came up again, he looked very serious and shook his head and wouldn’t discuss it. All he’d say was, I can’t bear to talk about it, your father is a very wicked man. And two weeks after that he was dead.’
‘And you thought it was to do with the picture. Isn’t that why you gave me your grandmother’s address? You’d promised your uncle you wouldn’t, but you felt that let you off the promise.’
Manu sighed. ‘The thing is, I heard them arguing about it. Antoine and my father. It was some family do, a wed-ding, those were the only times we all met. Antoine mentioned the Caravaggio, there was obviously something he wanted to do, and my father was shouting at him. Whatever it was he wasn’t having it. He was really angry. Have you taken leave of your senses, don’t you understand what that would mean, telling him it wasn’t his to do what he liked with, it belonged to the whole family, on and on. But I can’t bear that kind of thing, so I went off and left them to it.’
‘When was that?’
‘It must have been when my cousin Jeanne got married. Sometime in May.’
‘This year?’
He nodded. ‘Why, what difference does that make?’
I was thinking. May. That figured. TM had given me the go-ahead in March. I’d been in touch with the Louvre and the Getty, and they’d both said yes. Subject to conditions, obviously, but in principle, yes. And then, at the beginning of June, the Louvre’s permission was withdrawn. Just like that, no reason given. Of course Antoine Rigaut must have suspected I’d be round, trying to persuade him to think again. And it was not impossible I’d find my way to Manu. So he’d exacted his promise.
Yet in April he’d been all for it. That phrase in his letter about having some suggestions to offer – it must mean he’d intended to send me to St Front. So what could have happened between April and June to change his mind?
What would you do, if you were Rigaut and a letter like mine arrived, requesting the loan of a picture for an exhibition? It’s obvious: unless it was very familiar, you’d take a look at it.
I was willing to bet that it was a while since Rigaut had spent any time in front of the Louvre St Cecilia. Caravaggio wasn’t one of his main interests. True, he’d grown up with another version of that very picture, but that didn’t mean he was particularly fond of it.
So perhaps this was the first time he’d looked at it hard. He would quickly have seen that it wasn’t actually very good, and being human, would surely have felt rather pleased that the family version was better. But once he’d got interested he probably wouldn’t have left it there. Could that really be a Caravaggio? All artists have their off-days, but . . . He’d have had some tests and X-rays done, and he’d have done some reading round. The Louvre must have had a copy of the Surrealist pamphlet – Rigaut probably had one himself, perhaps more than one. After all, it had been put together by his uncle and his father. And looking at it again, perhaps more attentively than before, he’d have noticed the flower detail, and realized that the pictures had been exchanged, and that the substitution must have happened when the Louvre picture was ‘borrowed’.
If that was true – if the picture hadn’t been borrowed but stolen, and an inferior picture, the one bought by his grandfather, substituted for it – his position was potentially rather awkward. However, before making any move, he’d have wanted to be absolutely sure of his facts. The obvious thing would be to do what I’d done, and check in old books to see if there was any record of the picture between its acquisition and the theft. The Louvre library would probably have the book I’d found – I could ask Marie-France, or check in the catalogue. If he’d seen that, the last vestige of doubt would have been removed. There was the picture he’d grown up with at La Jaubertie, and there was the caption – Caravaggio, St Cecilia and the Angel, The Louvre, Paris.
In such a situation, what would any conscientious curator do? All the ones I knew would have given the same answer. He would want to exchange the pictures back again. A member of his family had committed a crime, and he was in a position to set it right. No scandal, no lawsuits, no unpleasantness – just a quiet switch. Or perhaps not so quiet. It was just the kind of story to draw in the customers: new light on a famous Surrealist exploit.
But Jean-Jacques wouldn’t want that. He was planning to run for President – to run as an independent, if necessary – and where was the money coming from to finance his campaign? He wasn’t a rich man, and he led an expensive life. When you move among the wealthy and powerful, you need to keep up appearances. If other wives dress at the couturiers’, so must yours; you must be seen in the right places, live in style, entertain as you are entertained. No mere salary, however relatively generous, would be enough – let alone to support the expenses of an inde-pendent election campaign. And there, hanging on the wall of La Jaubertie, was the answer. What did a Caravaggio fetch these days? Five million? Ten? Twenty? Enough, in any case, to set him up nicely, even after the roof had been mended, even if the proceeds had to be shared with his brother.
Had Antoine shown him the pamphlet? Probably – that was the proof of what Robert de Beaupré had really done. If he really had proposed switching the pictures back, how appalled Jean-Jacques must have been! And even if he could be dissuaded, the exhibition I proposed would put everything together, side by side, including the pamphlet. A particularly interesting small show, my letter had said – and so it was, more interesting than I’d ever imagined. Thousands of people would see it all laid out there, the whole story before their very eyes. Anyone might draw the obvious conclusion. It was virtually certain someone would.
So the show must be stopped. And that wouldn’t be hard. No hint of the Jaubertie picture, no loan from the Louvre – et voilà: no show. He’d leant on Antoine, and the family had been warned: if I came sniffing round, they were to keep quiet. No hints, no interviews. Nothing.
And then Antoine died, and Manu declared open season on his father.
‘How exactly did Antoine die?’
‘Shot himself. The gun was found by the body. There was no note. Some homosexual scandal. That was the story,’ he added contemptuously.
‘Is that so unlikely?’ I thought of Charlie Rey, who had the apartment key, and Manu’s own assumption that his father had suspected him of being Antoine’s boyfriend.
‘I suppose what I mean is that these days it’s hardly a matter of
life and death. But scandal seemed the only rea-son he’d do something like that, and what else was there? Not money, certainly not paternity . . . And there was no sign of violence, no sign of an intruder.’
‘So how can you say your father did it?’
‘Like my grandmother. You don’t have to actually commit the crime.’
It made sense. Keeping his hands clean had to be better in every way – less unpleasant, easier to live with. And safer. Get rid of Juliette: that would get him the money. Get rid of Antoine: he wouldn’t have to share it. And there’d be no danger of embarrassing revelations.
But why should Antoine oblige?
‘Did your father have some hold on Antoine? Any way he could say, If you do this I’ll make sure they know that?’
‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. There was some old scandal they were both involved in . . .’
‘To do with pictures from Russia?’
He nodded. ‘I remember years ago some book came out and everyone was very nervous. But it all blew over and nothing happened.’
According to Tim Salisbury-Newall, Jean-Jacques had been far more involved with that than Antoine. But per-haps Antoine had dipped in deeper than his virtuous public pronouncements let on. Jean-Jacques might have had proof to that effect – a letter, a tape – he wasn’t a man to let that kind of evidence slip through his fingers. He’d have kept it and, where necessary, used it. Maybe the brothers had played a game of mutual blackmail – threat and counter-threat: if Antoine put a spoke in Jean-Jacques’ political wheel and destroyed his presidential prospects, Jean-Jacques would take his revenge and get Antoine ejected from his job.
‘How important was the Louvre job to your uncle?’
‘Everything. It’s the top job in that field. There were hints he might quite soon be nominated for the Académie Française.’