Haunted Echoes

by Cindy Dees

  St. Germain announced, “I’ve been ordered to put all of Interpol’s resources at your disposal.”

  I smiled brightly. “Great! Then you can put a team of actual criminal investigators on this insanity and I can go back to cataloguing paintings.”

  “Dupont’s man also made it crystal clear that you are to be the only agent to investigate this case.”

  “That’s absurd!” I exclaimed.

  He nodded, unmoved by my outburst. “It is thus at Madame Villecourt’s express insistence. And apparently, what Elise Villecourt wants, Elise Villecourt gets.”

  Who was this woman? What hold did she have on Pierre Dupont? My frustration at that moment was boundless. What the hell was I supposed to do next? I parroted St. Germain’s earlier question back at him. “Any suggestions as to how I proceed?”

  He answered earnestly, “Interview the household staff. Find out what they know. Most thefts of this sort are inside jobs.”

  Duh. That was Police Investigation 101. When a single piece of art—not apparently valuable, but of great intrinsic value—is stolen, always look to the hired help and family friends.

  “Why me?” I muttered.

  Both of my bosses shrugged, imminently Gallic shoulder lifts that communicated both I don’t know and I could care less all in one movement. Aloud, St. Germain said, “Why don’t you ask the lady that?”

  I nodded resolutely. “I will.” Again. And maybe this time I’d get a straight answer.

  Littmann jumped in, all but wringing his hands. “But be…tactful…about it, will you? We don’t want to anger this woman. Her connections are, well…”

  Yes, her connections went to the very highest level of a government that was convinced the woman wasn’t crazy. Before the end of this case, I had a feeling I might be, though.

  When I left the building, I didn’t spot the tail again. Maybe I’d imagined the guy was following me, or maybe he’d been switched out for somebody better. Either way, I wasn’t worried. I had nothing to hide. If someone wanted to waste his time following me, that was his business.

  Rudy answered the door when I rang at Madame Villecourt’s building. In the harsh light of day, he looked older than I remembered, maybe in his early sixties. He moved with a spring in his step, though, and a twinkle in his eye.

  “Just the man I want to talk to,” I said.

  “Wantin’ to see the security setup for the building, are you?” he asked.

  “Exactly.” Not at all what I’d had in mind, but it worked as a way to spend time with him and engage in casual conversation. The good-cop interview technique, as it were. I would chat him up for a while, then work my way around to asking where he’d been on Saturday afternoon.

  Except he beat me to the punch. He took me into a room just off the small lobby crammed with the fanciest surveillance setup I’d ever seen, with the exception maybe of the Louvre’s. Rudy immediately began walking me through exactly how the equipment had been configured on Saturday afternoon prior to the theft. The guy was thorough. And at the end of his recitation, which included the fact that he’d been sitting at this very console at the time of the theft, my gut reaction was that no way had this guy been the thief.

  That didn’t mean he hadn’t been the inside man on the job, of course. But you had to be there in person to hear the outrage in his voice at a theft on his watch, the guilt over letting down Madame Villecourt and the burning desire to help me catch whoever committed this crime. I’m not one of those people who goes around listening to my intuitions much. I believe in carefully gathering all the facts and making logical, sensible decisions. Nonetheless, my intuition shouted that Rudy didn’t have anything to do with the theft.

  One thing I did learn from him, though, was whoever did steal the thingamabob was a professional thief of the highest caliber. To have overcome this security system was quite an accomplishment. Bypassing the cameras alone must’ve been incredibly difficult. Not once did the thief show up on any of the surveillance tapes.

  On the way out, I happened to ask Rudy, “So, how long have you known Madame Villecourt?”

  His eyes did that thing where they glaze over and look into the past. “Let’s see. Over sixty years.”

  Sixty? How old was this guy? Seventy-five? Man, I had to start drinking the water over here on the left bank. These people were better preserved for their ages than anyone I’d ever met before. “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Sixty-seven.”

  “You’ve known her since you were children?”

  Rudy shrugged. “I was a very little boy. But it was during the war. I have strong memories of that time, you know. One never forgets living through a war, no matter how young you are.”

  How true.

  He continued, “Madame Elise, she saved my father’s life at least three times. She stayed at our house once. Hid in the cellar for two days.”

  “Who was she hiding from?” I suspected I knew the answer to that one, though.

  “The Nazis, of course.”

  “She worked for the Resistance during World War Two?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Oh, no. She worked for the Nazis.”

  Huh? An ex-Nazi was a close friend of the French president?

  Rudy laughed at my expression of surprise. “She was a spy. A double agent. She told the Resistance when and where the Nazis were going to raid Resistance targets. You cannot imagine the number of lives she saved. Hundreds. Thousands, perhaps. The risks she took—”

  The guy actually choked up.

  “—she is one of the great heroes of the war. I owe her everything. My life. My family’s lives. This job. She has always been there for me.” He dashed a tear from his cheek. “And I shall be there for her no matter what. You let me know if you need anything done to help her, Mademoiselle Reisner.” He added significantly, “Anything.”

  I think the guy had just offered to bump off someone for me. I nodded my understanding. “I’ll keep that in mind, Rudy. And thank you.”

  Okay. So this guy was fanatically loyal to Madame Villecourt. My gut was even more certain he had nothing to do with the theft. But I was more intrigued than ever with the woman upstairs.

  My computer search on her the day before turned up the amount of her annual taxes—a staggering sum. Somewhere along the way, Elise Villecourt had become an extremely wealthy woman. She used a startlingly large chunk of her wealth to fund charities that helped mothers and children. She moved in the highest circles of European society. She was rarely photographed and managed to stay almost entirely out of the press. And all references to her whatsoever stopped entirely in 1942. It was if, prior to that, she’d never existed.

  And given the revelation that she’d worked with the French Resistance, maybe she didn’t exist prior to that. Most of the hardcore Resistance fighters had taken false names during the war to protect their families from Nazi reprisals. Many of them kept those identities after the war. They’d lost everything and everyone they loved, anyway. Why not start a new life altogether?

  Rudy pressed the elevator button for the fifth floor and I rode up in silence. Even after six decades, the scars of World War Two were fresh in this part of the world.

  Madame Trucot was waiting for me at the front door this time. No need to embarrass myself over the doorbell—which I had been planning on using, by the way. I’d been hoping to have a conversation with Madame Trucot alone, but the woman immediately showed me into the library.

  Elise Villecourt stood up when I entered the room. “Bonjour, dear Ana. And how are you today?” she asked me warmly.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” It was hard not to get sucked into this woman’s charm. But I was here today to get answers, and I was prepared to play hardball to get them. “Madame Villecourt, either you give me some concrete information to work with, or I’m terminating this investigation.”

  Chapter 4

  R obert sat down at his computer. The standard method for tracing provenance on an object was to start with
the current owner and trace the sale, gift or inheritance he or she got it by. Then after identifying the previous possessor, working backward to how that person got it, and so on. Few pieces of art were so famous that their whereabouts were a matter of public record in and of themselves. It was all about tracing the owners.

  Problem was, he had no idea who owned the little wooden statue now. He had no starting point. His client had pointedly not given him a current location of the statue. Robert shrugged. And that’s why the guy had put fifty grand in a bank account for him. This search didn’t promise to be easy.

  He started in the logical first place. The Getty Museum index of art. He checked out every hit for a wooden Madonna statue in the medieval style, but none of the photos matched the picture taped to the corner of his computer monitor. He tried the Cloisters and Cluny Museum indexes next. As two of the leading medieval museums in the world, maybe they had a record of his piece. It looked to be a finely crafted statue. And given that someone was willing to pay 50 Gs to learn about it, he had to believe it was authentic.

  No luck.

  He sat back and stared at his screen. What the hell. He typed in Edinburgh University’s password to the Interpol database of stolen cultural property. It loaded for several seconds. He typed in a description of his statue. Another wait. His pulse started to pound. He couldn’t afford to get tangled up in any way with another art theft. As the seconds ticked away, his gut turned to water. And then, finally, thankfully, no hit.

  He typed in a description of the Madonna statue to a couple general Internet search engines and started sorting through the hits he got. After about a hundred mind-numbing references from various religious sites, he clicked on yet another link and sat up straight in surprise.

  It was a newspaper photo spread of an art exhibition at the Cluny Museum last month of various images of the Black Madonna. The accompanying article had little to say about Black Madonnas in general, but it was a starting place.

  His statue wasn’t actually black. It was carved from a dark wood, possibly mahogany or cherry, that had aged with time to a deep, sable brown. At a glance in the right light it might appear black, though. Maybe someone at the Cluny could take a look at his picture and tell him more. His area of greatest knowledge was actually paintings by seventeenth-and eighteenth-century masters. He couldn’t help but know a little about medieval art, living in Scotland as he did, but he was by no means an expert on the subject.

  He picked up the phone. “Lorraine, Robert Fraser here. I need to go to Paris for a few days. Could you arrange for somone to cover my graduate seminar tomorrow and Thursday?”

  The secretary, bless her, said she’d take care of it.

  He threw some clothes and gear in a leather satchel and grabbed his motorcycle helmet. Given that fat bank account he could fly from Edinburgh to Paris, but he’d rather ride his Harley. The bike was the lone holdout from his prelaw-abiding days. It felt right as he set out on this adventure to take the old girl with him. He was way overdue for a road trip on Penny. She was a tricked out, 4-cylinder, split-exhaust, 1,500cc Harley-Davidson chopper he’d rebuilt and customized by hand, and she’d eluded more than one Scotland Yarder in her day.

  He stepped on the kick-starter and reveled in Penny’s powerful rumble between his knees. Oh, yes. Time for a road trip indeed.

  Elise gestured me into a chair and I reluctantly sank into it. I would’ve preferred to remain standing, in a position of power, but my ingrained respect for my elders prevented me from ignoring her waved hand. Nonetheless, I resolved to stay strong. In charge of this conversation.

  “Madame Villecourt—” I began.

  “I insist you call me Elise,” she interjected gently.

  Fine. “Elise,” I repeated, “I have spent all weekend researching your theft, and without more information I am simply not going to be able to help you. You must tell me exactly what was stolen and what it looks like.”

  Elise leaned back in her chair, studying me closely. Surely it can’t have surprised her that I was here, asking this question. “You must understand, my dear,” she began, “I took a vow of silence. A most solemn vow. A vow with untold consequences if I should ever break it.”

  “What sort of consequences?”

  A shudder passed over her, visible even from where I sat. “I do not even like to think of it.”

  Curiosity momentarily diverted me. Be strong, dammit. Focus. I leaned forward and said urgently, “Tell me something. Anything. Give me a starting point. I truly want to help you, but I have nothing!”

  “A starting point, is it?” she said slowly. “Yes, perhaps that would be the best place to begin.” She smiled wryly at me, with that winning charm of hers. “You might want to relax and get comfortable, my dear. This could take awhile.”

  The rod of steel in my spine threatened to become a noodle. But I forced myself to remain perched on the front edge of my chair in an official pose. I was the interrogator here, after all.

  Elise commented, “I will preface this story by saying that, in the interest of keeping it short, I am about to make several broad and not necessarily precise generalizations over which scholars have argued for centuries.”

  I nodded my understanding of the rules of this game.

  Elise took a deep breath. And began.

  “Since the dawn of the human race, there has undoubtedly been an inherent tension between the male and the female of our species. My field of expertise is not the prehistoric era, so let us skip over that first generalization without debate, shall we?”

  I blinked. The woman’s demeanor, even her language, had just shifted completely. Here was the powerful mind of a highly trained scholar at work.

  She continued, “I mention prehistory because this is also where our first notions of religion came from. A few of those beliefs survived over a very long period of time and made their way forward into the recorded history of modern people. My point is that when you combine the male-female dynamic and religion, you have a recipe for trouble.” She added almost under her breath, “And indeed, trouble we’ve had.”

  That sounded as if she were referring to something personal in her life. I propped an elbow on the armrest and leaned toward her, interested in spite of myself.

  “Throughout history, people have approached religion in diverse ways. For the purposes of our discussion today, consider two schools of thought: those who see religion as a route to power, and those who see religion as a route to peace. Surely the conflict between two such belief systems is immediately obvious to you?”

  I nodded, feeling like an obedient student.

  “While I would enjoy tracing the history of each of these concepts for you, you’ve asked me specifically for information that will aid you in your search. So, I will limit myself to that.”

  I was actually disappointed. And I’m not usually the type who goes in for sitting around pondering the meaning of life for fun.

  “Have you ever heard of the Huguenots, Ana?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve heard the name, but I can’t claim to know anything about them.”

  Elise smiled. “I suppose not everyone is a dusty old religious scholar like me. Hmm. Quick overview. The Huguenots believed that faith should be demonstrated by living a sober, godly life. They violently disliked forms of worship that emphasized ritual, images, saints, pilgrimages and church hierarchy. In short, they despised Catholicism. The Huguenots were a major force in causing the Reformation, which was mostly about the rise of Protestant religions. Are you with me so far?”

  I nodded. “Huguenots versus Catholics. Led to the Reformation. Got it.”

  “The conflict came to a head by the mid-1500s. Henry the Eighth had tossed the Catholic Church out of England and formed the Church of England ostensibly because the pope wouldn’t grant him a divorce. The Huguenots controlled large chunks of southern and central France. Martin Luther was widely popular in Germany and other countries. The Catholics were beset on all sides. They began to fight bac
k, which provoked Huguenots to do the same. There were eight civil wars in France in the last half of the 1500s. The Catholic monarchy murdered Huguenots, and the Huguenots formed their own army to raid and kill Catholics. It was a bloodbath.”

  She looked at me expectantly, so I summed up again. “Religious wars. Huguenots and Catholics killing each other in France.”

  “England wasn’t much better,” she said, picking up her narrative. “When Henry the Eighth died, his son, Edward the Sixth, forced the protestant Church of England on all his subjects. When he died and Mary the First took the throne, she forced Catholicism on all of England, earning the moniker Bloody Mary while she was at it. She eventually died, and Elizabeth the First took the throne in 1558. Elizabeth herself was Protestant but understood the need to reduce the religious unrest in England. Compared to her two siblings, she was downright moderate in her views.”

  Queen Elizabeth? How creepy was that? Here I was, listening to a lecture about her when I’d dreamed of her so vividly just the night before. It was no doubt just a coincidence. But what a coincidence! I realized Elise was throwing me an inquiring look. I nodded at her to indicate so far, so good.

  Elise continued, “Scholars still argue about how tolerant Elizabeth actually was. But two factors forced her hand. Mary Queen of Scots—an ardent Catholic—was implicated in several attempts to assassinate Elizabeth. And in France and Spain, Protestants were viciously persecuted, culminating in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Seventy thousand Protestants were killed in Paris and across France.”

  “Including a bunch of Huguenots?” I interjected.

  “Exactly!” Elise exclaimed in delight. “Elizabeth was forced, reluctantly, to send an English army to the aid of the Huguenots after the massacre.”

  “Then what happened?” I heard myself asking eagerly. God, I’m a sucker for a good story.

  Elise shrugged. “More persecution. Many of the Huguenots fled over the next fifty years or so to Protestant countries like England, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Prussia and the American colonies. The first Huguenots in America settled in New York in 1624. But that takes us away from your original question. You seek a starting point.”