by Mark Hebden
‘Jean Casse-le-Papillon?’ he said. ‘What’s it supposed to mean?’
‘It’s a name,’ Nosjean explained. ‘I wondered if it meant anything to you.’
‘Nothing, comrade. Nothing at all.’
Trying an elderly man with a spade beard and Dundreary whiskers, they received the same answer, and they began to move among the crowded figures, wrestling with the tourists for an inch or two of pavement to walk on.
After a while, they stopped, had a beer at one of the bars that cost enough to be made of uranium, then separated and started again. After an hour of vain searching, Nosjean saw De Troquereau heading towards him, literally flinging people out of his way.
‘Type over here,’ he shouted. ‘He recognises it.’
The ‘type over here’ was a man about thirty-five with long blond hair that looked none too clean and was tied with a ribbon. He wore a workman’s smock, well-daubed with paint, and a wide straw hat. In his mouth was a corncob pipe. He was at work on a painting of a boat in black, white and brilliant orange that was enough to make Nosjean want to vomit. The artist saw the expression on his face.
‘I have to eat,’ he pointed out. ‘And you’d be surprised how well they sell. They like things they can recognise. Picasso would be a dead loss here. I know this chap you’re after. Jean Casse-le-Papillon. Name of Jacqmin. Maurice Jacqmin. He used to paint a butterfly with a broken wing in the corner of his pictures. I think he got the idea from Whistler.’ He gestured at the drawing Nosjean held. ‘That’s his style. He was a specialist in Sacré Coeur. Painted it from all angles. Not here where you could see him at it, though. He had photographs and worked on them during the winter in a studio he shared in Montparnasse. Then he’d come up here and stick one on the easel and pretend to be adding the finishing touches, and sell it as an original. It always went down big that way. When he’d sold it, he’d go straight back to the studio and fish out another and start again. It was money for jam when the tourists came. Mind—’ he pulled a face ‘—there wasn’t much the rest of the year. You have to have good weather or they don’t linger. They head for the bars.’
‘This Maurice Jacqmin?’ Nosjean said. ‘Where is he now?’
The artist shrugged. ‘I heard he’d left Paris,’ he said. ‘He packed up about two years ago. The dollar was doing badly and the number of tourists fell off a bit. I heard he went to Royan. Painting beach scenes, drawing quick portraits and doing a bit of mural work in cafés when things were tight. You know Royan: Bombed in mistake by the Yanks in World War Two. Now it’s all painted concrete. Outside and in. Half the cafés in the district have murals. Enough to keep a guy busy if he’s interested.’
By the end of the day they had confirmed from three other sources that Maurice Jacqmin had indeed gone to Royan. It seemed to Nosjean that he was going to have a long journey.
He drove De Troquereau, who was reluctant to leave because he’d been enjoying himself, to the station, then headed for the nearest police office and, identifying himself, requested permission to telephone Pel.
‘I’ve found our man,’ he announced. ‘Name of Maurice Jacqmin. Paints as Jean Casse-le-Papillon. Uses a butterfly on his pictures. The drawing was firmly identified. He’s in Royan.’
‘Where?’ Pel sounded shocked.
‘Royan, Patron. I think I ought to follow him, don’t you?’
There was silence for a moment and the sound of rustling papers, so that Nosjean decided Pel was looking at a map. He waited happily because he was well aware that Royan was further from the Hôtel de Police where Pel operated, than it was from Paris and it would cost more to send a man over than to let Nosjean continue.
‘Can’t we get Royan to ask round?’ Pel asked eventually.
‘We can, chief. But they haven’t got the drawing. I’ve got it. By the time we could get it photographed and sent on to them, he might have moved on again.
‘Very well,’ Pel said grudgingly. ‘Go to Royan.’
‘I was only wondering, Patron. I wouldn’t like my expenses queried.’
‘So long as you don’t detour via Cap d’Antibes and Monte Carlo.’
Nosjean put the telephone down and set off at once. He reached Royan just before midnight, worn out but feeling that he was getting somewhere. The police suggested a small hotel. He had to knock up the proprietor and it was bare and comfortless, but it was cheap enough for there to be no queries about expenses.
The next morning, he got into his car again and set out to visit the cafés on Royan’s soulless front. Everywhere there were flags and loud-speakers blaring out ‘En Vacance’ to whip up any flagging enthusiasm among the holidaymakers. For two hours he drew a blank then, stopping for a beer at a bar called Le Sporting, he noticed immaculate little pictures of motor cars, motor cycles and racing bicycles round the walls.
‘Who painted those?’ he asked.
The landlord shrugged gloomily. ‘I wouldn’t know. I only acquired the place this year. It needs doing up. I’m thinking of changing the name. Something a bit more intellectual. Think Le Disco would do?’
‘That’s more intellectual?’ Nosjean asked.
‘Oh, yes, a lot more.’
‘What happened to the type who used to run this place?’
The landlord shrugged again. ‘Retired,’ he said. ‘Old. Out-of-date. You can tell by the décor. Thought I might hang up a few ropes and stirrups and a dead-or-alive poster or two and call it Le Wild West.’
‘This type who retired – where did he retire to?’
‘St Georges-de-Didonne. Just along the coast. Name of Morlieu. Gaston Morlieu.’
It didn’t take long in St Georges-de-Didonne, with the aid of a street directory, to unearth Gaston Morlieu. He was old-fashioned all right – old-fashioned enough to be plump, round-faced and smiling as if life was fun.
‘Who did the paintings?’ he said. ‘Type called Jean-Coupe la-Pâtisserie or something.’
‘Jean Casse-le-Papillon?’
‘That’s it. It wasn’t his real name, of course. It was Jacqmin or something.’ Morlieu fished out a bottle of wine which he sloshed into a couple of glasses, and they sat in his garden drinking.
‘Where did he go to?’ Nosjean asked.
‘Well, there wasn’t much doing here for an artist when the season started, was there? Nobody wants artists cluttering up the place when it’s full of visitors. He did sketches of people’s heads. On the beach. But they’re a bit against itinerant artists and so on here. They like their beaches organised. Clubs. Clubs for the kids. Clubs for the middle-aged. Clubs for the elderly. Where you can get weight off by doing calisthenics under the eye of bronzed instructors, then put it back on again by buying a drink at their bar.’ The old man grinned and patted his stomach. ‘French people love calisthenics. They think it does them good. After doing nothing for eleven months of the year all it does is give them heart attacks. I never went in for it myself.’
‘Where is this Casse-le-Papillon now?’
The old man shook his head. ‘I heard he got a job with a publicity firm in Limoges in Haute Vienne. He wasn’t looking forward to it but he needed money. He was on his beam ends, painting on the backs of unsold paintings. Publicité Limoges. That’s who it was.’
Nosjean set off eastwards with a growing confidence. Jean Casse-le-Papillon was moving nearer home, which was an indication that he was the man they were after, and at least nobody would query Nosjean’s expenses if he was heading for home ground.
At Publicité Limoges hard under the cathedral he learned that Jacqmin had moved to Vichy because he had a brother there. Finding the brother, once more with the aid of a directory, he learned the artist had moved on yet again, north-wards this time to Châlon-sur-Saône. Nosjean’s heart was thumping as he headed for his car. Jacqmin was now within eighty kilometres of where Pel presided over his small department. There was no doubt now in Nosjean’s mind that Jacqmin was their man.
What was more, he’d found him in record time. It was e
arly evening and if he hurried he could make Beaune before the shops shut. He might even celebrate by pushing on to Chagnay and taking Mijo Lehman out to dinner. In his excitement, Nosjean quite forgot old faithful, Odile Chenandier.
Twelve
‘You have his address?’ Pel asked.
‘Yes, Patron,’ Nosjean said. ‘I spent yesterday morning finding him in Châlon. He’s been working with a publicity firm called Ateliers Pierrefeu. Châlon’s quite a busy place. Waterborne trade, a wine market, iron and copper foundries, engineering, shipbuilding, brewing, sugar, glass, chemicals. Plenty for a publicity firm to get its teeth into.’
‘I know Burgundy,’ Pel said stiffly.
‘He gave up his job a few months ago. He said he was setting up on his own.’
‘And has he?’
Nosjean shrugged. ‘It seems he has,’ he said. ‘But Ateliers Pierrefeu didn’t think he’d have much business.’
They were in Nosjean’s car heading down the motorway, Pel gripping his seat as Nosjean indulged in his favourite sport of racing against everything else on the road. At Beaune the traffic increased as they were joined by the motorway from Paris and Nosjean’s driving seemed to Pel to become even more suicidal. However, they reached Châlon, rather to his surprise, without an accident, though the pedestrians had to be pretty nippy as Nosjean slipped in and out of the old streets.
‘You nearly got that one,’ Pel observed dryly as an old man with a walking stick did a quick hop, skip and jump to the pavement.
‘Doesn’t count.’ Nosjean grinned. ‘You don’t get any points for geriatrics.’
Stopping to consult a street map, he jabbed with a finger. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Rue Rochefort.’
They headed for the old part of the town near to the Cathedral of St Vincent with its mixture of romanesque and gothic architecture.
‘What sort of work is he doing now?’ Pel asked.
‘Same as before. Drawing things for people who wish to advertise. They have metal blocks made from his pictures and they’re incorporated in adverts. You know the sort of thing. A picture and “Peugeot Cars are Best.”’
‘Mine isn’t,’ Pel said gloomily.
Jacqmin’s studio was in an old house which stood alone at the end of the street. The house looked neglected and the garden, Pel thought, was as bad as his own, with overgrown shrubs, desperately in need of pruning, moving in the breeze over shabby flowerbeds. An elderly Citroën stood in the drive, still covered with the previous winter’s mud and spattered with leaves from the overhanging trees. One of the tyres was flat.
As they rang the bell, the door immediately rattled as something large and ferocious leapt at it. Through the glass, they could see the claws and fangs of a dog which to Pel looked as big as a cow. The door shuddered under its assaults and its deep baying bark was enough to strike terror into the whole neighbourhood.
Eventually, a woman appeared and dragged the dog away, screeching at it to be quiet. Obviously with some effort, she managed to lock it somewhere out of sight and opened the door. As they stepped into the hall, the dog was still barking and what appeared to be a kitchen door was shaking under its attacks.
‘He’s all right,’ the woman said. ‘He’s really quite quiet. You’ll be wanting Maurice, I suppose.’
She was in her late twenties, not unattractive but heavily pregnant and clearly easy-going about her appearance. Maurice Jacqmin appeared a few moments later, sharpening a pencil with a large pointed knife.
Nosjean noticed the knife at once. ‘That’s a large tool for a very small job,’ he observed.
Jacqmin stared down through thick glasses at the knife in his hand as though he were seeing it for the first time. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose it is. It’s a German dagger, I think. Turned up during the war. It was my father’s. He was in the Resistance and had the pleasure of disarming a few of them.’
A tall young man, dwarfing both Pel and Nosjean, he had wild blond hair that stood on end, and he looked as though he hadn’t shaved for a day or two. He was an enormously powerful figure but the suggestion of power was destroyed by his legs – he had knock knees and obviously bad feet. Dressed in a checked shirt and jeans, his hands were marked with indian ink. Tossing the knife on to a table, he grinned at them.
‘What is it you want drawing?’ he asked. ‘A Citroën? I should need one to work from, of course, to be given later as a free sample. Mine’s had it.’
Nosjean produced his badge. ‘Police Judiciaire,’ he explained briskly.
Jacqmin’s face fell. ‘Oh, mon Dieu!’ he said.
‘You were expecting us, perhaps?’ Pel asked silkily.
Jacqmin grinned, recovering quickly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you know what it’s like.’
‘What is it like?’
‘Well, you know artists. We don’t pay bills. We forget the tax for the car. The dog got out and ate somebody’s baby’. Trivial things like that but important to authority.’
‘This time,’ Pel said, ‘it’s not that sort of thing. Can we go somewhere we can talk?’
Jacqmin indicated a door and they found themselves in what appeared to be his studio. A large window faced north but was almost obscured by creepers and overgrown bushes.
‘I keep intending to cut those things back,’ Jacqmin said cheerfully. ‘But I never seem to get around to it. I expect I will one day. Perhaps I don’t want to. They help keep out the north wind in winter. The draughts then are enough to suck the cat up the chimney. You’d never notice you had a fire.’
He indicated the fireplace. It seemed to be full of burned coal and wood, and the hearth all round seemed to be littered with screwed-up sheets of paper as though, dissatisfied with things he’d worked on, he’d wrenched them from his drawing board and flung them towards the flames.
There was a table alongside the window with a large drawing board propped up on a block of wood. The desk was cluttered with bottles of ink, poster white, pencils, rubbers, rulers, T-squares, a jam jar full of brushes. Alongside was a scribbling pad and resting on top of a pile of books was a bottle of yellow lemonade labelled ‘Fizz!’ On the drawing board was a meticulous drawing of it in black and white.
The rest of the room seemed to be occupied by piles of paper, books of reference, empty wine bottles, untidy-looking files with their contents hanging out, a swivel chair with the stuffing protruding from the seat, a woman’s dress-making dummy, a three-foot-high manikin with moveable joints, round which was draped a handkerchief, a few posters, some of them outlandish and two of them distinctly erotic, piles of old drawings and paintings with dog ears and curling edges, a few dirty cups with saucers as big as bathtubs, and a basket in a corner containing a cat and several kittens. Over the fireplace was a large painting of a cockerel in reds, blacks, greens and golds. It was good but it seemed to Nosjean, who had learned a lot about art recently, to indicate the Montmartre influence, and seemed to go with the pictures of Sacré Coeur, the sunsets, the fishing boats and the large-eyed tearful children.
‘Did you do that?’ Pel asked.
‘Yes.’ Jacqmin grinned. ‘It’s not all that good. I’m not at my best with colours, though I’ve done one or two good things.’ He eyed the painting, a pleased smile on his face. ‘I like drawing poultry. Cockerels especially. Such splendid creatures. So arrogant. After that, ducks and cats. Cats are always graceful, whatever they’re doing.’ He gestured at the cat languidly washing the kittens in its basket, a picture of grace. ‘Ducks never are. Flying, they’re superb. On the ground, they’re the clowns of the feathered world.’
Pel stared about him. ‘Nice house you’ve got here,’ he observed. ‘Just the thing for what you want, I should think. Roomy. Plenty of light.’
‘It’s not bad,’ Jacqmin agreed. ‘I got it when I came here. We had my – er – Léonie’s mother was living with us then. She’s got her own place now.’ He grinned. ‘Old people are a nuisance at times, aren’t they? You have to have somewhere for them to go. You cou
ld leave ’em at the side of the motorway, I suppose, but someone would be bound to object if you did.’
He seemed nervous and Pel didn’t hurry. He glanced about him. ‘Rented?’ he asked.
‘No. It’s mine.’
‘On a mortgage?’
‘No. I bought it outright. It’s the only way. With an income like mine that goes up and down, you don’t let yourself in for monthly payments. I’d had a windfall.’
Pel indicated the bottle of lemonade.
‘That the sort of thing you work on?’
‘Yes.’ Jacqmin shrugged. ‘Not much of a job, really, but I do occasional portraits for the local paper. Local bigwigs. From photographs, of course. They use them to break the type. I do headings for them as well: Lettering and design. You name it, I draw it. Boxes of pills, which I’m allowed to keep, and motor cars – from photographs – which I never even get to see. I also do drawings for serials – some for magazines, which pay better – and if a manufacturer wants anything drawing for an advert he comes to me. It’s a living. I’ve been at it ever since I finished my military service.’
‘You were in the army?’
‘One month. All of it at recruit-training level,’ Jacqmin gestured at his feet. ‘I didn’t get far with these. They gave me up double-quick. Especially since I wore glasses, too. I never learned one end of a gun from the other. It suited me, of course. I’m an artist, not a soldier.’
He picked up a pile of drawings – of tubes, packages, staplers, bottles of glue, desks, typewriters, calculators, filing cabinets.
‘Good job that,’ he said. ‘Brought in quite a bit. An office equipment firm which was bringing out a catalogue.’
Pel heard him out, then he spoke quietly. ‘Did you know a man called Claude-Achille Cormon?’ he asked.