Pel And The Touch Of Pitch

by Mark Hebden

  Brisard was a little taken aback. Arguing with Pel in this mood was like questioning with Moses as he came down from the mountain. Nevertheless, he didn’t give up without a struggle.

  ‘I’ve had too much of your waiving the rules.’ he said. ‘I’m going now to the Procureur. I’ve also talked to Lamiel, the man from Paris. I gather he’s also not satisfied with the way you behave.’

  Darcy was next to appear. He looked upset, which was unusual because Darcy normally was never upset.

  ‘Patron,’ he said. ‘I’m damned sorry. I’d like to set fire to the whole of the bloody press for this. What’s more, I wouldn’t mind setting fire to Lamiel or Thomas. It was one of those two bastards who put that story out. The Chief didn’t tell the press, I know. Nobody in our department did either.’

  ‘Could it have been Misset?’ Pel asked. Misset had been suspected for a long time of passing information to the press.

  ‘It wasn’t Misset, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘I’d swear to it. He was the first to come into my mind, of course, and I had him in my office and put him through the hoop good and proper. I think I frightened him to death. Enough, in fact, if he has been leaking stuff to Sarrazin, to stop him dead. But it wasn’t Misset. It could only have been Lamiel or Thomas, or whoever looks after their press statements.’ He paused, still indignant. ‘What’s happening to you, Patron? They say you’re off the case.’

  ‘Yes.’ Pel lit a cigarette. ‘I’m still to continue with Arri. You’re to co-operate to the best of your ability with Lamiel.’

  ‘I’m damned if I will!’

  ‘I think you’d better, Daniel. I don’t think this will destroy my career. It’s no more than a hiccup. But if you refuse to co-operate it could destroy your career. Do what they ask – all they ask. You’ve got everybody but Claudie, Lagé and young Didier.’

  Darcy drew a deep breath. ‘Merde alors,’ he said bitterly. ‘All right, Patron. I’ll do as you say. But I’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘I’m still interested in Barclay.’

  ‘Why, Patron? Think there’s more to it than we realise?’

  Pel shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I’d just like to know what made him tick. The all-gold hero. The man who got a decoration at Dien Bien Phu. The man who saved the life of Sergeant Jules Arri. The junior minister at the Department of Health. The do-gooder. The art collector. The man who works so hard for charity. The popular, handsome, silver-tongued Member for Yorinne.’

  ‘He’s all of that, Patron.’

  Pel frowned. ‘So why was he kidnapped?’ he asked.

  Pel was still brooding on his demotion when he received a request to call on Leguyader at the Lab. For a while he was tempted not to bother because Leguyader was the last person he wished to see just then. Nobody would enjoy gloating over Pel’s downfall more than Leguyader. Then he decided that perhaps Leguyader who, after all, it had to be admitted, was good at his job, had discovered something important.

  Leguyader was busy at his bench as he arrived and as he looked round Pel went into the attack at once.

  ‘Well?’ he snapped. ‘What do you want?’

  Leguyader feigned surprise. ‘What do you imagine?’ he said. ‘Have no fear. I haven’t asked you here to sneer at the fact that you’ve been removed from the Barclay case – though I must say, it’s the sort of thing I’ve been half-expecting for years…’

  ‘What do you want?’ Pel snarled.

  Leguyader looked smug. ‘I’ve found something you might be interested in,’ he said. He placed a plastic sack on the bench and gestured at it. ‘Take a look at that,’ he suggested.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Clothes. Belonging to one Jules Arri.’

  For a moment, Pel forgot his dislike of Leguyader in his curiosity. ‘You’ve found something on them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How? Under the microscope?’

  ‘Not really. There’s nothing to see.’

  Pel glared. ‘Are you having me on?’

  ‘No.’ Leguyader opened the mouth of the sack. ‘Just stick your nose in there and sniff.’

  Pel stared at him suspiciously. The only thing he expected to smell was the odour of decomposition, decay, damp soil and leaves.

  ‘Got it?’ Leguyader asked.

  At first Pel missed it, then he sniffed again and it came, faint but quite distinct.

  ‘Perfume,’ he said.

  ‘Perfume,’ Leguyader agreed. ‘Exactly. And by the smell of it, fairly expensive perfume. I’ve tried to establish what it is. Probably Yves Saint Laurent, L’Air du Temps or Chanel. We have samples of them all here. I can’t be sure, of course, because there are too many other smells in there besides, not all of them pleasant.’ He looked at Pel triumphantly. ‘What was Jules Arri who, from what I can learn, was an old soldier, doing with perfume on him? Was he a poof or something?’

  Pel frowned, his interest caught. ‘That’s something I doubt very much. How come this perfume appears now? It wasn’t there before.’

  Leguyader shrugged. ‘Before, the clothes had just come from the earth and from a decomposing body. When they first appeared they were cold and damp and there was no trace of perfume. But, since then, they’ve been here in the laboratory, which is warm. They should have been put in the cold room but one of the idiots I’m supposed to work with forgot.’

  Pel was frowning. ‘Perfume?’ he said again.

  ‘Indicate something to you?’

  ‘What does it indicate to you?’

  ‘That the man might, as I say, be a poof. A pervert. A homo. A fag. A pederast. He was a soldier and had served in the Far East and there’s been more than one man disgraced for the tastes he picked up there – in the days, that is, before we started believing it was nothing but another social bad habit like smoking or bad breath. Statistics show that pederasty’s always been common in the Middle East and more than common in places like Indo-China where the men are small and delicately-boned. I was there for a time and you could find them at it behind every bush if you looked hard enough. The ancient Greeks accepted homosexuality.’

  ‘So do we – now.’

  ‘Indeed. A report in the USA in 1948 found that thirty per cent of adult US males had engaged in some homosexual activity and ten per cent were committed to primarily homosexual behaviour patterns. About half as many women were predominantly homosexual.’ Leguyader looked smug, as if the fact that he wasn’t was a triumph of skill and judgement. ‘Kinsey doesn’t identify people as exclusively homosexual or heterosexual,’ he went on. ‘He observed a whole spectrum of sexual activity of which exclusive orientations of either type make up the extremes.’

  He had obviously been at Larousse again. Because of his enjoyment in airing his knowledge on every subject under the sun, it was said in the Hôtel de Police that his favourite off-duty reading matter was the encyclopaedia and that the subjects he read up in the evenings were always worked into the conversation next day so he could trot out as knowledge the facts he’d learned overnight.

  All the same, it was an idea. Had Arri been a homosexual? Had there been a lovers’ quarrel? As Leguyader said, it had happened before.

  Leguyader hadn’t finished. ‘Homosexual activity increases, of course, in environments where there are no heterosexual outlets for sexual desires.’

  ‘Such, for instance,’ Pel said, ‘as in an army posting to a foreign country where they’re cut off from female company.’

  Sitting at the end of the dining table, Professor Grandjean looked a little like an elderly stork.

  ‘I was suspicious from the start,’ he was saying. ‘I’d never heard of a Landscape with Houses by Vlaminck. It hasn’t appeared in any of the catalogues, though that’s not important because there’s never a complete record of any painter’s output. After all, before they start making money, they exchange paintings with friends or sell them to buy food, so we lose track of them. But this one is different.’

  Nosjean glanced across the table at the Pro
fessor’s niece, Mijo Lehmann. They had been invited to lunch because the Professor was bursting to tell someone what he’d discovered. Mijo Lehmann was occupied in conversation with the Professor’s wife so that the Professor could concentrate on Nosjean, but she couldn’t help sneaking glances at Nosjean from time to time, all pink and proud and possessive. She had waited a long time and with incredible patience and not a little heart-ache for him to throw off all the other Charlotte Ramplings.

  ‘The Collège Privé de l’Est gave me permission to examine the painting,’ the Professor was saying.

  ‘Didn’t they mind?’ Nosjean asked.

  ‘Not at all. They were so confident I would be proved wrong. But I’m not. I’ve examined the painting carefully now. And I’m certain it’s a copy. Most oils have a degree of spontaneity where some mistake has been painted over or the artist has changed his mind. You never find it in a forgery, though, because the forger copies with great care. Corrections indicate authenticity.’ The professor gestured. ‘The brushwork’s like Vlaminck’s brush-work, of course, but it isn’t Vlaminck’s.’

  ‘What if provenance is produced, or a letter from an original owner or a gallery operator of the period?’

  Grandjean was unmoved. ‘You could always check the handwriting. Even handwriting can be faked.’

  Nosjean frowned as an idea occurred to him. ‘Can you buy a painting, have it copied, sell the original in, say, Japan or the States – especially if it’s unlikely to go to a public gallery – and then sell the copy in France?’

  ‘Without the slightest doubt.’

  ‘But it would be necessary, of course, to have the provenance or such a letter as I suggest?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Nosjean frowned. ‘Have you told the college what you think?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then, sir, if you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t. Not just yet.’

  ‘They’ll want to know.’

  ‘Play them along for a few days.’ Nosjean needed a little time and it seemed to require a visit to Professor Solecin.

  Professor Solecin lived in a small house on the outskirts of Lyons. It was shabby-looking and, Nosjean noticed, there was no sign of a car’s wheels in the muddy drive, while the garage seemed to be full of junk. The professor seemed to have hit hard times.

  The door was opened by a small bent old man with a club foot, a parchment-like face and grey lips. Faded wet eyes stared at Nosjean.

  ‘Have you come about the gas?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Nosjean presented his identity card. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

  He thought he saw a flicker of alarm cross the old man’s face but he backed away and Nosjean pushed into the house. It smelled of mustiness and stale food and the rooms were shabby and littered with rubbish, with unwashed plates containing the remains of meals on chairs and tables and window ledges.

  Nosjean didn’t waste time, and started off by asking the old man’s profession.

  ‘I’m a writer.’

  ‘What have you written.’

  ‘Books.’

  ‘What on?’

  ‘Anything you want. All non-fiction. I get an idea, read it up at the library and write a book. About Marconi. The discovery of electricity. Napoleon’s campaigns. The French railway system. Anything.’

  ‘Make much at it?’

  ‘Not much. They’re not very good books really.’

  ‘Ever written about art?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Lots about art. That’s easy. There are a lot of books written about paintings so it’s easy to look up. I always make sure first that there’s plenty of material before I suggest the idea to a publisher.’

  ‘Know anything about art?’

  ‘If I read it up first.’

  ‘Ever owned a painting?’

  ‘Never had enough money.’

  ‘But you once ran the Musée Fervier?’

  Solecin’s eyes flickered. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I did.’

  ‘I can’t find anything about it in any of the directories.’

  ‘Ah—’ the old man’s eyes gleamed ‘—no! It no longer exists.’

  ‘Did it ever?’

  ‘Oh, most certainly.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  The old man hesitated. ‘Well,’ he blurted out, ‘it didn’t exactly exist. Not as a museum. It was an art gallery.’

  ‘What size?’

  ‘It had a few pictures.’

  ‘A few?’

  ‘Yes, a few.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘It would be around the end of the war.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighty-nine.’

  ‘Well, the end of the war’s a long time ago. Do you have much to do with art these days?’

  ‘Not a great deal.’

  ‘Have you had for a long time?’

  ‘Not for a long time. I’m getting old.’

  ‘Have you always worked with paintings?’

  The old man hesitated. ‘Well, not always,’ he admitted.

  ‘You’ve done other work?’

  ‘I told you. I’m a writer. I started as a newspaperman.’ The old man seemed to consider he was now so old it no longer mattered what he’d done and seemed unconcerned with the fact that he might be accused of misrepresentation.

  ‘Are you a professor of Fine Art?’

  ‘Well, no. Not exactly. But I studied. In Lyons. Before I became a newspaperman. From the age of sixteen.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Well – eighteen. Actually, that stuff on the letterheads is a mistake. My brother – he’s dead now – had those things printed. Years ago. You can’t get paper like that these days. And he was a bit over-enthusiastic. I didn’t like it but when I found it brought work I decided to leave it.’

  Nosjean produced the authentications of Chevrier’s painting. ‘This one values it at 200,000 francs. This one three months later at 750,000 francs. Cubescu didn’t think it was worth that much. Nor did Chevrier when he bought it. There’s a lot of difference. Why did it go up more than twice in three months?’

  The old man seemed quite untroubled. ‘Second thoughts,’ he said. ‘I changed my mind.’

  Nosjean produced the written provenance. ‘You wrote this?’

  ‘Yes. I got it from an art book.’

  ‘It states the work has also been verified by Jerôme Sède, of Metz. Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘He’s supposed to be a professor of Fine Art, too.’

  ‘I don’t think he is.’

  ‘Does he know anything about art?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. My brother found him. He was also a reporter. On a Marseilles paper. He wasn’t very good. I was told to put that bit about him in.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘A type called Riault. He said it would add weight.’

  ‘Where did you examine this painting of Chevrier’s?’

  ‘At the home of a painter. His name’s Ugo Luca. He lives at Fougerolles. I did several.’

  ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Several times.’

  ‘Who got you into this? Who first introduced you to people like Luca?’

  ‘This type called Riault.’

  ‘And you verified the painting as original?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nosjean studied the old man out of the corner of his eyes. ‘Pay well?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred francs.’

  ‘Not a lot for expertise of this nature.’

  Solecin shrugged. ‘I’m an old man now. I can’t expect as much as I used to.’

  For lack of other news and because people were already bored with the election, the newspapers were still going to town over Barclay and their pages were plastered with instances of his good deeds, his wisdom, his charitable pursuits. Perhaps, Pel thought c
ynically, their sycophancy was due to a hope that he would buy them up out of gratitude when he turned up again. Newspapers were having a rough time these days and it was well known that Barclay had a great deal more money than he needed.

  He still felt vaguely like an outcast. Nobody in the Hôtel de Police was saying much. With their jobs to consider, he could not, he realised, expect open support there but he had rather hoped his relations might have rallied round. His wife was firmly behind him, of course, as – to his surprise – was Madame Routy and Yves Pasquier through the hole in the hedge. But he had hoped that his sister in Chatillon might have written to say ‘Take heart, we’re on your side,’ or that Madame’s relations might have telephoned to indicate their faith in him. There was, however, only a deafening silence.

  That lunchtime, gloomy with a feeling of martyrdom, Pel met Darcy in the Bar du Palais des Ducs. It had once been the Bar Transvaal but there was so much ill-feeling these days about South Africa and apartheid that the proprietor had changed the name to that of the venerable pile that stood opposite across the circular parking lot. It didn’t make much difference. Everybody still called it the Bar Transvaal.

  Pel and Darcy had not arranged the meeting. It had been carefully fixed up for them by Claudie Darel, so that they could honestly say, hand on heart, if Lamiel accused them of anything, that they weren’t acting in collusion. They hadn’t said a word to each other about meeting – the fact that Claudie had was different and, having met quite by chance, old colleagues for years, surely they could exchange the time of day with each other.

  His mouth full of bread and ham, Darcy informed Pel of the progress they were making with the kidnapping.

  ‘There’s been no ransom demand’, he went on, ‘and nobody’s claiming to have done it. Lamiel’s boys are going through every group of dissidents and terrorists they can think of and thinking up reasons why not.’ He gestured with the remains of his sandwich. ‘They’re running round, in fact, like a lot of cockerels with their heads chopped off.’

  A telephone exchange had been set up in the basement of the Hôtel de Police expressly to deal with the kidnapping, and extra men had been drafted in to take calls from the drunks, practical jokers and mentally sick who usually tried to climb on the bandwagon, and it was now fully manned. A demand for information had been put into the papers and flashed on to TV screens, requesting help from anyone who had seen anything suspicious, and there were already plenty of people willing to help. Unfortunately, there were also plenty of nuts, and those who were foolish enough to give their addresses had had them marked down and would in due course, if their information were flippant, be arrested for wasting police time.