The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne

by M. L. Longworth

  “I get it, I get it,” Marine said. “But the person who forged that painting may also have the same book.” She winked.

  “You’re so cruel sometimes,” Verlaque said, smiling. “I think that our portrait is the real thing. This evening I sat here, smoking, mesmerized by Cézanne’s portraits, and by his life.”

  “Not you, too! I grew up traveling with my parents across Europe to see Cézanne’s works.”

  “I thought you guys visited Romanesque churches.”

  “That was my mother’s passion,” Marine said. “Cézanne was Papa’s.”

  “To think that he lived, worked, and walked here—” Verlaque gestured with his arm around the apartment.

  Marine raised an eyebrow.

  “Aix, I mean, not in my apartment.”

  “You never know,” Marine said, holding out her empty glass. “Maybe their tryst was here, in your flat. Although I’m not convinced that he had an affair.”

  “Dr. Bonnet, are you challenging my thesis?”

  “Not at all,” Marine replied. “I agree with you that the girl in our painting may have been very special to Cézanne. But who says they slept together?”

  Verlaque rolled his eyes and gave a suspicious grin. “Well, I’ve always thought that this apartment has good karma.”

  “I’ll agree with you there. I love the new addition, by the way.” She pointed to a large, colorful ceramic plate hanging on the wall above the door between the dining room and kitchen.

  “Ah, Arnaud, my faithful handyman, hung that for me today,” Verlaque said. “It was Emmeline’s.”

  “I love those fat yellow lemons,” Marine said. “They dance around the plate. Is it Tuscan?”

  “Sicilian,” Verlaque said, turning to look at it. “I remember her buying it, in a tiny shop in Ragusa.” He poured Marine some wine and went on, “Poor Cézanne. How did those guys keep on painting?”

  “You mean the Impressionists?”

  “And Post-Impressionists,” he said. “People hated their work, and they kept on painting.”

  “Luckily they were rich,” Marine said.

  “Not all of them,” Verlaque replied. “Van Gogh didn’t have a pot to piss in, as my grandfather would have said. And even if Cézanne did have family money, he still had no one buying his art. How do you go on? Do you know what Henri Dobler, the guy who owned the Pavillon de Vendôme in Cézanne’s day, said about Cézanne’s works? He called them la sale peinture. Dirty paintings! What an idiot!”

  “You’re using hindsight,” Marine said, sitting back and rubbing her stomach, regretting eating the second saucisse de Morteau. “Perhaps we would have said the same thing. Can you imagine, seeing those weird hatchings, in the late nineteenth century? Then again, you did buy a Pierre Soulages painting long before he was fashionable.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  “Oh, before I forget to tell you, I picked up your mail downstairs,” Marine said. “It’s on the kitchen counter.”

  “Thanks,” Verlaque said. “I saw it sitting in the entryway, but my hands were full. Anything interesting?”

  “What looks like a personal letter from the director of the Pompidou in Paris,” Marine said. “Do you owe membership dues?”

  “Certainly not,” Veralque answered. “I’m all paid up. That’s the second letter Philippe has sent me.”

  “First-name basis with the director of France’s most important contemporary art museum? Impressive.”

  “We went to boarding school together. He wants the Soulages painting for a retrospective they’re organizing next year.”

  “Wow, Antoine,” Marine said, lifting her glass for a toast. “That’s incredible!”

  “No, it isn’t,” Verlaque said. “And I told him so.”

  Marine shook her head back and forth. “Come again?”

  “I can’t let it leave here,” Veralque said. “No way.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Marine said, setting her glass down. “You’d hog that gorgeous painting all to yourself? Not let anyone else have the pleasure of seeing it?”

  “It would be a paperwork and insurance nightmare. They’ve got plenty of others.”

  “What if everyone said that? What if no one had ever donated, even for a few months, a painting to a world-class museum? You’re selfish, do you know that?”

  “I knew you’d pick a fight tonight,” Verlaque said, throwing his napkin on the table. “Just like that tantrum after the Pauliks’ galette des rois.”

  “And, guess what? It all has to do with the same thing!”

  “Soulages?”

  “No, you idiot,” Marine said, getting up from the table. “Your ego!”

  • • •

  The Hôtel Fleurie was the kind of hotel that Bruno Paulik and his wife, Hélène, liked to stay in when traveling around France. Always downtown, these small one-star hotels were family owned, quaint on the verge of faded and sometimes run-down, and without the amenities that the Pauliks didn’t care about anyway, such as televisions and minibars.

  Paulik paced around the waiting room and then began flipping through the guest book, its passages written in a variety of languages that included French, English, German, and what looked to him like Dutch. The hotel’s owner didn’t seem fazed by having a policeman visit, and she sat behind the desk reading a novel, looking up now and then at the commissioner and smiling. He turned the guest book’s pages, stopping at small drawings that guests had left, one of them a quite good sketch of the sitting room that he could see from the lobby, full of mismatched, not-very-precious antiques. Some of the entries were too long, or in languages he didn’t understand, but toward the end of the book was a French entry written only a few days previously: Room eleven, one evening, one woman, one man. Bliss.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” a voice said from the doorway.

  Paulik quickly closed the book, as if he had been caught looking at the lingerie pages of a La Redoute catalogue.

  “I haven’t been here long,” Paulik answered.

  “Perhaps we can meet in the sitting room,” Rebecca Schultz said, turning to the hotel’s owner for permission.

  “Oui, oui, oui,” the owner said, gesturing to the sitting room. “Allez-y.”

  “My room is the size of a postage stamp,” Dr. Schultz said.

  Paulik laughed, amazed by the American’s perfect French. He looked at the professor’s long legs, which were clothed in pink woolen tights under an orange leather miniskirt, and he wondered how someone with so much leg could fit into a small French hotel room, or bed for that matter. Blushing slightly, as he had while reading the guest book, he opened his small notebook as they sat down, and asked, “What exactly are you doing in Aix, Dr. Schultz?”

  If the professor looked surprised, she didn’t show it. “It should be perfectly obvious,” she finally answered. “I’m here researching Cézanne, as I told Judge Verlaque.”

  “Were you researching Cézanne when you walked into René Rouquet’s apartment?”

  “I saw that there had been a robbery in the building—”

  “So you went in to investigate?”

  “To help,” she answered, shrugging. “I was jet-lagged and not thinking straight. There I was, after spending years reading of Cézanne’s last residence, able to go inside. Can’t you imagine the temptation?”

  “No,” Paulik answered. “I would have stayed outside and called the police. Especially given your excellent French.”

  “I had forgotten my cell phone back at the hotel,” she answered. “That I also told your boss.”

  If Dr. Schultz had attempted to belittle him by mentioning that he wasn’t in command, Paulik thought, it hadn’t worked. He was more than happy being commissioner and didn’t have the law training to be an examining magistrate. But Dr. Schultz, despite her command of his language and
expertise in art, obviously didn’t understand how the French judicial system worked. He asked, “What did you do when you went into the apartment? What I don’t understand is why you didn’t call the police as soon as you saw M. Rouquet’s body on the floor.”

  “I was in shock,” Dr. Schultz replied. “Completely stunned.”

  “Didn’t it frighten you?”

  Dr. Schultz paused before saying, “No. Given my fatigue, and the astonishment of being in Cézanne’s apartment, it all seemed unreal.”

  “Your fingerprints were found on a number of items in the flat,” Paulik said. “The wardrobe in the bedroom, for example. Why in the world would you go into the bedroom when there was a dead man in the living room?”

  Dr. Schultz began picking at what looked like imaginary lint on her tights. Jesus, the lint trick, Paulik thought to himself.

  “The wardrobe was nineteenth century, and I imagined it being Cézanne’s, given the rest of the cheap ’60s furniture in the flat,” she replied. “I opened it half out of curiosity, half from amazement.” Before Paulik could continue questioning, she went on, “The same thing for the kitchen cupboards. I guess I had hoped to see those ceramic pitchers and plates from his still lifes in there. But what you must know is that I was only in there for a few minutes before I began looking for the phone to call the police. But then they came—”

  “It took you a few minutes to decide?”

  “Yes,” she replied, staring at Paulik and then crossing her arms across her chest. “And if you were a black Jewish woman who had worked all her life to finally get a white Anglo-Saxon man’s job, and you were caught trespassing and entering where there had just been a murder, you, too, would have thought twice before deciding to phone for help instead of running straight out the door.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Antoine Verlaque Invites Officer

  Schoelcher for a Beer

  Marine stood under a streetlamp in the middle of the rue Adanson and texted Sylvie, who lived around the corner. “I’m still up,” Sylvie texted back. “Come on over.”

  Marine walked quickly down the street, turning left on the rue Campra. At times living in Aix felt suffocating, especially when she ran into acquaintances from junior high or high school, people she hadn’t liked when she was fifteen and whom she liked even less now. But tonight she was thankful that she lived in a town small enough to walk across in fifteen minutes. She buzzed three times in quick succession at Sylvie’s door and it opened with a click.

  Marine walked up to the third floor and smiled when she saw Sylvie standing in the doorway, wearing pink bunny slippers. Prada was Sylvie’s preferred footwear.

  “Hey, come on in,” Sylvie said, giving Marine the bise.

  “I hope it’s not too late for you,” Marine said, taking off her coat and hanging it on the overstuffed coatrack.

  “For me, no,” Sylvie answered. “But Charlotte’s in bed. We were invited to the neighbor’s for the Fête des Rois, even though it was officially yesterday.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” Marine said. “Did Charlotte go under the table?”

  “Non, grande drame!” Sylvie said. “Charlotte’s no longer the youngest. Their son Alex is now three, so he was able to call out everyone’s name. Last year he was too young.”

  “Was Charlotte upset?”

  “At first,” Sylvie said. “I could see it in her eyes. But Alex was so cute calling out our names—he has a bit of a baby’s lisp and can’t say his s’s, so my name becomes Tylvie—and after about two minutes Charlotte was laughing. A year ago I would have had to give her the ‘not everything revolves around you’ talk.”

  Marine smiled, thinking of Antoine.

  “I put some tea on when I got your text message,” Sylvie said, passing Marine a mug decorated with Man Ray’s large black-and-white eye. “But I won’t offer you any sweets.”

  “That’s more than fine,” Marine said. “I had two pieces of galette last night at the Pauliks’.”

  “You know,” Sylvie said, pouring mint tea into their cups, “I hate almond paste.”

  “Yet another thing you have in common with Antoine Verlaque. He ate his to be polite.”

  “Well, I flat-out refused,” Sylvie said. “But then again, I’m not as well bred as Antoine. So, what’s up? Are you gonna whine into your tea like you did last week?”

  Marine set her cup down and stared at her friend. “Did I do that?”

  Sylvie nodded.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marine said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Sylvie blew on her tea, saying nothing.

  Marine continued, “I have so much to be thankful for. But I can’t shake this feeling of . . .”

  “Disappointment?” Sylvie asked.

  “Yes! It’s as if my head is buzzing with obsessive thoughts about my failures.”

  Sylvie laughed. “You? Failures?”

  “I teach in Aix, not Paris, not New York,” Marine said. “I haven’t published enough. It’s a crazy panicked feeling I get—especially in the morning—that I’ve let life pass me by. And it makes me feel so ungrateful.”

  Sylvie set her her mug down and went into the living room, picked up a magazine, and came back, throwing it on the kitchen table.

  Marine looked at the cover and said, “Sylvie, not Psychology Today—again.”

  “It’s called the U-curve,” Sylvie said, sitting down. “And you’re not alone. Research being done at a few English and American universities has uncovered a recurrent pattern in various countries around the world: that life satisfaction declines with age the first couple of decades of adulthood, bottoming out right now—in our early forties.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I know,” Sylvie answered. “And it has nothing to do with whether you’re from a rich or poor country, married or divorced, employed or unemployed, with or without children. The common denominator is the age—our forties—when we experience this feeling of discontentment.”

  “There’s just one little problem.”

  “Yeah,” Sylvie said, “you’re not in your forties yet.”

  Marine smiled.

  “But,” Sylvie went on, pointing in the air, “you’ve always been ahead. You skipped a grade, right?”

  Marine laughed. “Yes. And I’ll be forty soon enough. So where does the U-curve come in?”

  “It gets better,” Sylvie said. “That’s the good news. All of a sudden, somewhere in our early to midfifties, the nagging feeling that we’re losers disappears. And apparently sixty is awesome.”

  “Hurrah,” Marine said flatly.

  “Yeah, well, the research indicates that people in their seventh decade are at their emotional peak of happiness. It’s like they’re on a high.”

  “My parents,” Marine said. “I can hardly keep up with them.”

  “There you go.”

  “There’s an obvious explanation,” Marine said, tapping the table.

  “Spoken like a true lawyer,” Sylvie said as she opened the window to allow the smoke from her cigarette to billow outside.

  “Time horizons grow shorter as we age. People concentrate on what is most important,” Marine said.

  “Meaningful relationships.”

  “For example. They focus on the present.”

  “Walks in the countryside and that kind of crap.”

  Marine laughed. “Are you suffering from these forties blues?”

  “A little bit,” Sylvie said. “Especially in the morning, like you said. But having Charlotte to look after keeps my inner demons at bay.”

  “Charlotte is the same age as Léa Paulik,” Marine said. “And when I see Léa with Antoine, and he laughs like he’s a kid, I get this knot in my stomach. Am I jealous?”

  “Hmm,” Sylvie said, finishing her cigarette and setting the ashtray in the
flower box, closing the window. “No, I don’t think you’re jealous of Léa. You see moody Antoine all happy at the Pauliks’, and you don’t understand why he isn’t like that all the time. Do you want his attention all the time?”

  “No, that would be suffocating.”

  “Do you want him to be happy only when he’s with you?”

  “No,” Marine answered. “I want him to be happy all the time. He deserves it.”

  “What do you think makes Antoine so happy at the Pauliks’? What do they have that you don’t have?”

  Marine looked at Sylvie.

  “I think I just answered my own question,” Sylvie said after a pause.

  “So maybe I’m not in this forties blues thing yet.”

  “No, I don’t think you are,” Sylvie said. “There’s a very specific reason for your feelings of disappointment. You want to have what the Pauliks have, with Antoine Verlaque.”

  • • •

  Verlaque was surprised to see someone he knew looking up at the sculptures on the Halles aux Grains pediment. It was late and the streets were full of tipsy students on their way to and from Aix’s many bars and cheap restaurants.

  “Good evening, Officer Schoelcher,” he said.

  “Oh!” Jules Schoelcher replied. “Judge Verlaque. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  “I live around the corner.”

  “So do I.” Jules quickly stubbed out his cigarette on the pavement.

  “You should smoke these,” Verlaque said, holding up his half-smoked Churchill short. “No chemicals, handmade.”

  “I don’t even smoke,” Schoelcher replied. “I bought these out of desperation. I had a fight with my girlfriend—”

  “The coffee shop girl?” Verlaque asked. “Sorry, news travels fast at the Palais de Justice.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jules replied.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This evening I had a good row with Marine, my girlfriend. Care for a walk?”

  Being that Antoine Verlaque was about a mile ahead of him in the chain of command, Jules didn’t feel like he could refuse. But he felt some kind of connection with the judge: Jules was known at the precinct, this he knew, as an uptight, by-the-book policeman from Alsace, and Verlaque was known as a rich Parisian. They were both outsiders in Aix. “Sure,” he said.