The Dying Minutes

by Martin O'Brien

  ‘That’s correct. Shortly before we met, before the sale. But there were photos of her, of the two of them, all over the house. And paintings too. Portraits. She was a beautiful woman.’

  ‘Do you happen to know how she died?’

  Madame Vaillant shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t want to pry, Chief Inspector, and he didn’t volunteer any information. But it was clear that he had been deeply affected by the death. It was as though he didn’t want to be in the house any longer than he had to be. Memories, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you see much of him?’

  ‘When the sale had been agreed and contracts were being drawn up I used to pop round – taking measurements, all that kind of thing. He was always very welcoming. Très sympa. Nothing was too much trouble. Once he prepared lunch for me, out here on the terrace. Great hunks of bread and hard cheese and pâtés that had seen their finest hour …’ she chuckled at the memory ‘… and the roughest, roughest white wine – you wouldn’t believe. Such a strange person. On the one hand a knowledgeable, cultured man, something of a scholar one might say – the books, the paintings – but on the other, à table, for example, well … not to put too fine a point on it, he was … un paysan. Oh, and the most outrageous flirt, Chief Inspector. He must have been in his late seventies but sometimes, when he looked at me … well, let’s just say I could feel his eyes all over me.’

  ‘This may seem a very strange question, Madame, but … did he have teeth?’

  ‘Dentures. Sometimes he shifted them in his mouth. It was quite disconcerting and somehow … well, suggestive.’ She chuckled again. ‘The way he did it, the way he looked at you when he did it.’ She raised a hand to her face, fanned her cheek. ‘Ooh là là …’

  If she could have blushed, Jacquot was certain she would have done. But a woman like Madame Jeanne Vaillant, he suspected, was long past blushing.

  ‘He liked his books, I understand.’

  ‘Books everywhere. Good books, too, by the look of them. Leather bound. Shelves in every room. It took days to dismantle them all, get them out. And the space without those shelves, Chief Inspector, you wouldn’t believe. The house was so dark when I first came here.’

  ‘And the paintings? You said he had paintings.’

  ‘Apart from the portraits of his wife, his preferred subjects were nautical. Every single one. Ships at sea, in storms, in battle. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘And do you have any idea where he went, after the move?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. He left no forwarding address. When I asked about mail, that sort of thing, he said I was not to worry. His lawyer would take care of everything.’

  ‘Do you happen to remember the name of the lawyer?’

  ‘A firm in Avignon. Cluzot Fils. I don’t have a number, I’m afraid, and I no longer have the address, but I’m sure they’re in the book.’

  Jacquot finished his coffee, and pushed away from the table, got to his feet.

  ‘Are you leaving? Is there anything else …?’

  ‘Madame, you have been most helpful.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, also getting to her feet and indicating the garden steps, ‘has Monsieur Emanetti done something dreadful? Is he a wanted man? Will I have to dig up my terraces?’

  ‘At the moment it’s nothing more than a general enquiry. Another investigation. His name cropped up.’

  ‘Well, if there’s anything else I can help you with, Chief Inspector … don’t hesitate to drop by,’ she said, as she led him along a gravelled garden path, back to the front of the house.

  ‘You can rely on it, Madame.’

  57

  NEIGHBOURS. NEIGHBOURS WERE always a good bet. Even within the guarded, private estates of Roucas Blanc, people saw things, people heard things. The people who lived in these privileged suburbs, and the people who worked for them, coming in from the narrow alleyways of Le Panier across the harbour, and the concrete blocks of the projets in the city’s northern suburbs.

  After leaving Madame Vaillant, Jacquot drove through her gates and parked fifty metres further along rue Savry. The next house he tried, its gates closed, its grounds enclosed by high stone walls draped in morning glory, showed shuttered windows on the second floor, and despite three long buzzes on the entryphone there was no answer to his call.

  At the third house, across the road, a smaller property with no view of the sea, he had more success and took another coffee with the old lady who lived there. A widow. Madame Nallet. She was plump and friendly, and clearly pleased to have some company. Her hair was tightly permed, like a bouffant helmet, creamy white with a rose shadowing, and thin enough to show the shiny skin on her scalp. As she led him into the house, a pair of dachshunds yapped at his heels and skidded around him on the tiled floor. She shushed them but they paid no attention.

  ‘Nelli and Maria. After Melba and Callas,’ she told him. Her late husband, she explained, had been music director at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, before retiring and coming south. It had been his little joke, she explained; such shrieky little barks.

  In the small salon where they settled the walls were covered with old black-and-white photos of a younger Madame Nallet on the arm of her husband – in gowns and tails, at first nights and at fancy restaurants – and the polished top of a grand piano in a corner of the room was similarly crowded with signed and silver-framed photos of the pair of them with famous operatic stars: Domingo, Caballé, Pavarotti, Luchese and the aforementioned Callas. Above the hearth was an oil painting of a maddened Othello beside a clearly deceased Desdemona. He held a hand to his heart, an arm flung out, the whites of his eyes rolling in a black face, his mouth a twisted rictus of despair.

  ‘Did you sing, Madame?’ asked Jacquot. She certainly had the build and bearing of an opera singer.

  ‘I was in the orchestra. I played the cello.’

  Jacquot nodded.

  ‘Charles, my husband, used to tell people: “She played cello. What can I say? I married her.”’ Daringly, to show him what she meant, Madame Nallet parted her knees and pushed her skirt between her thighs to mimic the placement of the cello. ‘Voilà,’ she said, rearranging herself, and the chuckle turned into a fond laugh. ‘So, Chief Inspector. How can I be of assistance?’

  Jacquot crossed his legs, remembered the fish scales, uncrossed them and tucked his shoes under his chair. He began by asking about Philo – Niko Emanetti – but there wasn’t much she could tell him.

  ‘He was never really around. At least, that’s how it seemed. I’d see him every now and again, but I never really … got to know him. Short, wiry, brown as a nutmeg. He had the look of an old fisherman … a bit of an eccentric, if you ask me. Must have been in his late sixties, seventies when we moved here, but still with the magic, if you know what I mean? The odd occasions we met, well … he had it. The way he looked at you. Must have been a naughty boy in his time.’ Madame Nallet chuckled again at the thought.

  ‘What about his wife? Edina?’

  ‘Oh Eddie! Yes, I knew Eddie. Far better than I knew him. What a beauty. Much younger than him, of course. But not his wife, Chief Inspector. They wore rings, but …’ Madame Nallet shrugged, as though such a thing was of no importance. ‘She’d been married before, you see? I don’t know to whom, she never mentioned his name, but she told me about him. Like Monsieur Emanetti, he was older than her. I gained the impression she preferred older men. Some of us are like that. And pay the price with a lonely old age.’ She waved her hand as though to dismiss such a self-pitying thought and her lips tightened around a sad smile. ‘But this one, the one Eddie was married to, was a bully. Early on it had all been wonderful, she told me, but after they married, it changed. So what’s new, hein?’

  Jacquot nodded, agreed that, sadly, that was often the case.

  Was offered more coffee, but declined.

  ‘He beat her up,’ Madame Nallet went on. ‘Any excuse. Jealous. Jealous. Jealous. And she grew to be terrified of him. He sounde
d like a real low life. But rich. A lot of money. A gangster, that’s what he sounded like. Some horrible gorille, if you’ll pardon the expression. She was well rid of him, if you ask me.’

  ‘There were children?’

  ‘Not that I know of. She never said.’

  ‘They divorced?’

  ‘Oh no! Mais non. No divorce. He’d have killed her before they got to the lawyer’s office. That’s what she told me. She simply ran, she said. Left him. Jumped in the car and was gone. Disappeared. But, of course, she had Niko. The love of her life, she said. He helped her. He set her up, took care of her. Moved her from Nice. Brought her up here. But Nice is still close, n’est-ce pas? She didn’t go out much. They kept to themselves. Except for the holidays, of course.’

  ‘They travelled a lot?’

  ‘Always away somewhere. Four or five times a year. At least. America, which they both loved. The Far East. Africa. Always off on some jaunt or other.’

  ‘And how long did they live here?’

  Madame Nallet gave it some thought. ‘A long time, long before Charles and I arrived from Paris.’

  ‘Dites-moi, Madame, did Monsieur Emanetti work? Did he have a job?’

  ‘I understood that he had family money. That’s what Eddie told me.’

  ‘It sounds as though the two of you were great friends.’

  ‘I suppose we were. She was such a sweet thing. You couldn’t help but love her. So full of life. So gay. Yet underneath, a sense of fear, you know? Always there. As though she was afraid that brute of a husband would find her. Afraid of what he might do. To her. To Monsieur Niko.’

  ‘I understand she died? Not so long ago.’

  ‘Ah, so sad. So, so sad. So young, too. In her fifties. She can’t have been more.’

  ‘And how, exactly …?’

  ‘Cancer. It had spread. She went down very fast. Here one day, gone the next. I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, thought they might be away on one of their trips. Then she called, asked me round. She was on a day bed in the salon, facing the sea, propped up. I took one look and knew at once that she was doomed. There was no chance. La pauvre.’

  ‘And how did Monsieur Emanetti take it? Her death.’

  ‘He was brave. But you could see it hurt. Hurt terribly. The light went out in his eyes. Soon after, the house was sold and he was gone. I have no idea where he went.’

  Madame Nallet gave Jacquot a look. He knew what she wanted to ask, what she suspected.

  ‘I’m afraid Monsieur Emanetti has died, too, Madame. A couple of months ago.’

  ‘Of a broken heart, je suis certain. He was devastated. Si désolé.’

  ‘I understand the house is now owned by a Madame Vaillant,’ said Jacquot, not wishing to let Madame Nallet know that he had already called on her. It would be interesting to hear what she had to say.

  ‘Is that her name? I didn’t know. We haven’t met.’

  Jacquot sensed a certain shortness in the tone. He wasn’t surprised. He doubted the two women would have had much in common. He said nothing, waited.

  ‘There are parties, Chief Inspector. Late at night. A lot of noise. A lot of visitors. It is not … considerate, you understand.’

  ‘Quite so,’ replied Jacquot. ‘Well, Madame. Thank you for your time. And the coffee.’

  Sensing a movement, Nellie and Maria scrabbled to their feet, and started up their yapping again. Despite her admonishments, the two dogs kept it up all the way to the front door. They only fell silent when he turned out of the gates, with a final wave from Madame Nallet.

  58

  THAT EVENING, WHILE Claudine baked the plump, silvery sea bream that he had brought back from Marseilles’ Quai des Belges fish market – stuffed with fennel, doused in Vermouth, coated in rough sea salt and wrapped in foil – Jacquot phoned Philippe Joubert.

  Like Santal, the senior curator at the Musée Bibliothèque in Aix had not heard of Philo’s death. He sounded just as shocked as Santal, and for much the same reason, Jacquot suspected, more concerned that his collection might be removed than by the passing of its owner. Playing the same role that he had played with Santal, nephew as executor, Jacquot established that Joubert had met Philo on a number of occasions.

  ‘Such a wonderful, dare I say, eccentric gentleman?’ Joubert had spouted. ‘A bibliophile to the very tips of his fingers. Not to mention a hugely generous patron of the Museum.’

  Jacquot had picked up on the eccentric. ‘How so?’ he asked, trying to put a face to Joubert. Longish hair, he decided, parted in the middle. A cardigan. Moroccan slippers.

  ‘Oh, so many things,’ Joubert began. ‘One time, at a reception, he turned up dressed like a fisherman. Can you imagine? The great and the good of Aix and Avignon and he turns up in a hat with a gold anchor on the brim, a big roly-poly fishermen’s jumper, rough cotton ducks and down-at-heel espadrilles. He was always playing these little tricks. Always a glint in his eye.’

  ‘Did my uncle tell you how he acquired the collection?’

  There was a pause down the line, and a cautious, quiet ‘non’, as though he was about to learn something he didn’t want to hear. ‘He just said that he had loved books since childhood, had been collecting for years.’

  ‘Quite true,’ said Jacquot. ‘I never saw him without a book in his hand. A real scholar, despite appearances. So tell me, Monsieur, how long has the collection been with you?’

  ‘A little over two years. Monsieur Emanetti said he needed more space, that the insurance was becoming … burdensome.’ Joubert gave a chuckle. As if …

  ‘I wonder, could you put a price on my uncle’s collection?’

  Another pause. ‘That’s difficult to say, without a proper audit …’

  ‘Roughly. For tax, death duties, you understand. I will need to make proper declarations.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Well, let’s see. Maybe … somewhere in the region of … say, three, maybe four million francs.’

  If Jacquot could have whistled, he would have. Books worth four million francs? A house in Roucas Blanc? Was there any possibility he was mistaken, that Santal had got it all wrong, sent him off on the wrong track, that the Niko Emanetti they were discussing had nothing to do with the Philo whose motor cruiser he now owned? But there was no chance of that. The evidence from Jeanne Vaillant and Madame Nallet was all too compelling. Right down to the dentures.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur Joubert. You have been most helpful.’

  ‘I am only too happy to have been of assistance,’ he replied. ‘And so sorry for your loss.’ Then, a little tentatively: ‘And the collection?’ he asked, finally summoning the nerve to ask the only question he really needed an answer to. ‘What do you suppose the estate will want to do with the collection?’

  ‘Unless you hear otherwise, I have no doubt that it will remain with you for some time, Monsieur Joubert.’

  Breaking the connection, Jacquot called the number he had found for Maître Cluzot of Cluzot Fils in Avignon. The office was closed but his call was redirected to an out-of-hours answering service. After Jacquot mentioned the words ‘Chief Inspector’ and ‘Judiciaire’, the woman at the end of the line was quite happy to pass on Cluzot’s home number.

  The lawyer, Jacquot decided when he heard the voice, sounded fat, prosperous and heavily jowled, a little breathless too, probably from carrying around too much weight. Like Joubert and Santal, he was unaware that his client had died.

  ‘Funny little fellow,’ Cluzot admitted, after passing on his condolences. ‘Played havoc with the secretaries whenever he called by. A wink, a pinch even. But they all adored him. And he was hardly a picture, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I believe you acted for Monsieur Emanetti in the sale of his home?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘It was sold to a Monsieur Vaillant, I believe?’

  ‘En effet, to a company called Basle et Cie.’

  Made sense, thought Jacquot. He wondered if Madame Vaillant knew who owned her home. He
had a feeling she didn’t.

  ‘And the price?’ he asked

  ‘I don’t have the figures …’

  ‘Roughly,’ said Jacquot, just as he’d said to Joubert.

  ‘After the various taxes and fees, Chief Inspector, a little over twelve million francs.’

  Jacquot had been expecting something substantial; he wasn’t disappointed. But there was more.

  ‘As for the contents,’ Cluzot continued without any prompting, ‘the house was cleared of all but a few personal possessions by an auction house here in Avignon. After the various sales, the cheques started coming in, to be added to Monsieur Emanetti’s account.’

  ‘And the proceeds of those sales? The contents. How much?’ Jacquot was thinking of the ‘second-division’ book collection that Santal had mentioned, the portraits and nautical paintings that Madame Vaillant had told him about, along with the usual furnishings, fixtures and fittings.

  ‘A little in excess of four million francs,’ said Cluzot. ‘The money from Basle et Cie, and from the various auction houses, was paid into our client account.’

  ‘What about his bank?’

  ‘If he had one, I didn’t know about it.’

  ‘So what happened to the money? From the house sale and the auctions?’

  ‘A number of disbursements. Bequests.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Every last sou, all drawn on our firm’s account. I arranged payment on the last one only a few weeks ago.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘A refuge in Marseilles. For abused women. Run by nuns. A cash settlement. Anonymously. Like all the rest.’

  ‘Why the delay getting them the money?’

  ‘There were many bequests, Monsieur. And many of the designated beneficiaries were hard to find.’

  Cluzot heard the silence, and quickly continued: ‘Of course, all earned interest to the date of disbursement was apportioned equally amongst said beneficiaries. As I said there’s not a sou left. The account was closed after that final payment.’

  ‘Who else benefited? The other beneficiaries?’ Apart from me, he thought.