by Aaron Elkins
Lefevre sighed. "I know, but tell them anyway." Huvet nodded, and went back in.
"I'm sorry," Lefevre said to me. "There was something you wanted to say to me? I have a moment."
"It's going to take more than a moment."
"Nevertheless."
"Well, it's, uh, about something that, uh, happened last night," I began. "Urn . . ."
Talk about misadventures. Lefevre was going to love this. I sighed, cleared my throat and went nervously ahead. "It concerns an occurrence that. . . that occurred last night. It may be pertinent to, ah, that is to say, relevant to the matter of which—"
"You can speak English if you prefer," he said bluntly. A perceptive man. No wonder he was a chief inspector.
"Someone pushed me out of Vachey's study window," I said. In English.
He looked at me without comment for a long moment, squeezing his nose between thumb and forefinger. Then he turned, squinting into the sunlight and looked up at the window.
"Someone tried to push you out of that window last night," he said as if he were trying out the words for himself and not much liking them.
"Someone did push me out of it."
He looked back up at the window. He looked at the rough cobblestone paving—there were no cars there now—then up again, taking his time. Then at me.
"I, uh, landed on a car," I said. "It's not there now."
"Ah. And am I to know who it was that pushed you out of that window and onto the car that is no longer there?"
He had, I was beginning to see, that distressing knack for making you feel—making me feel—that, whatever I said, I was in the wrong, or at least that my foot was in my mouth. Handy for dealing with miscreants, I supposed.
"Now look, Inspector—" I began through clenched teeth, but then thought better of it. I couldn't really blame the guy. As far as he was concerned, flushed with my recent success with the carabinieri I was now embarked on complicating matters for the Police Nationale.
I swallowed my irritation and told him the whole thing: about my discomfort with Vachey's conditions on the Rembrandt, about Gisèle Grémonde's pointing out the blue scrapbook, about my sneaking into Vachey's study later on to look at it, about my subsequent exit through the window, and about the book's disappearance.
By the time I finished, he seemed resigned, as if deep in his heart he'd known, from the moment he'd recognized my name, that I was going to screw things up for him too.
He took a pack of Gauloises from his pocket and lit another cigarette. "I would be interested in knowing," he said, "exactly what you hoped to find in that book."
"I'm not sure. A record of where that Rembrandt really came from. Some clues to its history."
"You don't believe his story about the flea market?"
"Junk shop. It was the Léger that came from a flea market. Let's say neither story is highly likely. The book would have had information on the rest of his affairs during the Occupation too— he started it in 1942. I'd like to ask Madame Grémonde—"
"I," he said, "will ask Madame Grémonde. You will be so kind—"
Huvet reappeared. "Sorry, Inspector. Moury called again. He's having one of his fits. I think it might be best if—"
"I'm going, dammit," Lefevre snapped. "Mr. Norgren, I'll want to talk with you again. I assume you'll be available for the next few days?"
My heart sank. Anne would be in Seattle tonight. I had started to hope that I might be there tomorrow. "Actually, I was hoping to get back to the States. There are some things ..." His look was hardening. "Well, of course," I said, "if I can help, I'll stay."
"Good," he said. "Tell Sergeant Huvet how to reach you. I must go now." He shook hands formally, as the French do at every opportunity, sighed deeply, squared his shoulders, and marched off for his meeting with the public prosecutor with all the joy of a man heading for the guillotine.
"Well, you know, he has a hard life," Huvet told me matter-of-factly, as we watched him go.
Huvet seemed like a more easygoing man than his boss, and I wondered if he might be less likely to bite if I dared to ask a question. "Sergeant," I said, "can you tell me anything at all about René Vachey's death? I don't know any of the details."
"Details? He was killed at approximately five-thirty this morning," he said. "A single, small-caliber bullet behind the right ear, not self-inflicted. His body was found in the pond of the Place Darcy at seven. Blood spatters and tissue fragments indicate that he was shot while sitting on a bench a few feet away. Is that what you wished to know?"
It was more than I wished to know. "What was he doing in the Place Darcy at five-thirty in the morning?"
"Walking. He was an insomniac. He walked most mornings at five if the weather was all right. At six-thirty he would have coffee in one of the brasseries."
"But that must narrow things down for you," I said. "How many people would know he'd be out then?"
"No more than a few million," Huvet said, shifting the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. "He was the subject of several magazine pieces. These solitary before-dawn walks were featured. One had a photograph of him against a cloudy sunrise. Taken in the Place Darcy. Sitting on the same bench."
"So much for that," I said.
"Indeed," he said sadly.
* * *
When I came back in, Calvin was waiting for me in the lower hallway, outside Pepin's office. "What now, chief?"
"Well, we ought to have the gallery all to ourselves right now. Let's go see if I can tell a Flinck from a Rembrandt."
He looked at me, head cocked. "What for? I thought you didn't want anything to do with it."
"That was then. It's different now."
"Yeah, how is it different?"
"Vachey's dead," I said.
"What's that got to do with anything? That guy in Saint-Denis is still claiming it's his."
"I know, Calvin, but . . . I'm not sure I can explain what I mean, but Vachey's being killed changes everything. He wanted us to have the painting, he went to a lot of trouble to see that we'd get it, and now somebody's killed him." I shrugged. "I don't want to drop it now; I feel as if I owe him more than that."
He nodded. "I understand what you're saying." Good, I thought; I wasn't sure I did.
"Let's go on up," he said. "Who knows, maybe I'll learn something."
I laughed. "So you can impress your new girlfriend some more, right?"
"Sure," Calvin said, "what else?"
We went up to the second floor, but the movable walls at the head of the stairs had been shoved together and locked, so we had to go back down and get Pepin to let us in. Convincing him took some doing; the time lock would have to be disengaged, he groused, the alarm systems would have to be disarmed, there were many other demands on his attention at this moment, etc., etc. But we insisted, and he finally went unwillingly along with the idea, probably figuring that it would take less time to just let us in, than it would to keep arguing with us about it.
A few minutes later, he slid the walls apart and stood doubtfully aside to let us pass. "Touch nothing, please. You'll tell me when you go? I must arm the systems again."
"Of course," I told him.
"Arm the systems, hell," Calvin said as Pepin reluctantly left us on our own. "He probably wants to count the paintings when we leave."
I laughed. "Forget it, it's just his manner. Nothing personal. Come on, let's have a look. Maybe I'll learn something too."
* * *
"Looks good to me," Calvin said helpfully.
We'd been at it for half-an-hour. Calvin had listened uncomplainingly, possibly even comprehendingly, to my muttered comments on the paints, the manner of application, the surface crackling, the canvas, the frame construction.
"Looks good to me too, Calvin."
"As good as a Rembrandt?"
It wasn't easy to say. The technical details all seemed to be as they should have been on a genuine Rembrandt. But what did it prove? All of them applied to Flinck too. Same time per
iod, same place, same materials, same equipment. And the same techniques, patiently learned over several years, from the master himself.
I took a few steps back to get away from the minutiae, to try to take in the subtleties, nontechnical and intangible. And the more I studied it, the more I thought I could see signs of that mysterious, brooding power that would bloom later in Rembrandt's career, the singular ability to make the viewer feel that he was looking into the mind, even the character, of the subject. The longer I looked at that worn and dissipated face, the more I seemed to see in it. No doubt about it, that wistful old bum was getting to me.
"I think," I said slowly, "it might be the real thing."
Calvin looked at me with interest. "Yeah? That's terrific."
"On the other hand …" I said.
He shook his head. "I love you guys. There's always another hand."
"It's a judgment call, that's all. I think it's a Rembrandt, but I wouldn't bet my life on it." After a moment, to cheer him up, I added: "Yours, maybe."
"Thanks. Tell me this: So let's say it doesn't belong to Julien Mann— is it good enough to hang in SAM?"
I nodded. "Oh, yeah, it's Dutch Baroque at its finest. Whoever painted it."
"If that's the way you feel about it, then what's the problem? Sign the contract, and we can worry about where it came from later."
"I just told you. I'm not positive it's a Rembrandt."
"Big deal," Calvin said, "you're not positive. You also just told me it's a great piece of art in its own right. Why do we have to say what we think it is or isn't? Can't we just waffle a little, sign the papers, and say thank you? So what if it turns out to be by Flinck or somebody else? We still wind up with a great painting, right? Unless it's really Mann's, in which case we turn it over to him. What's to lose?"
"No good, Calvin. You're forgetting one thing."
"What am I—? Oh, yeah." He settled down. "The restrictions. We have to display it as a Rembrandt."
"So that if it turned out not to be, we'd look like goats no matter how we tried to explain it away—which is just what we've been worried about from the beginning, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but—"
"Look at what Les Echos Quotidiens has already done to us. Not only do they have us accepting the painting, they've got us agreeing that it's a Rembrandt. And we haven't said a word yet."
Over the partitions we heard the voices of Pepin and Jean-Luc Charpentier. Charpentier, it appeared, had come at Froger's request to look at the Léger, and Pepin was delivering the same prissy lecture he'd given us, about not touching anything.
"See?" I said to Calvin. "He picks on everybody."
A moment later, Pepin himself appeared in the alcove, pushing his fingers through his dark, thinning hair. "Is everything all right? You are done?"
"Not quite," I said. "Could we take it down, please?"
He stared at me. "Down?"
"Yes, I'd like to examine the back."
"The back?" He was peering at me as if I'd asked him to be so kind as to slice the picture into eight equal segments. "Why do you want to examine the back?"
"I need to see what's on it. The back of a painting is part of it."
Not really. Any canvas this old had almost certainly been relined, possibly more than once, so that the back that would now be visible wouldn't be the original one. All the same, one finds all kinds of things on it—stickers, numbers, notations, stamps—that can tell something of its history. And this one needed all the provenance it could get.
He scowled at me, then at his watch. "No, I can't, I would have to get a tournevis."
It was a word I didn't know. "Pardon?"
He made a twisting gesture. A screwdriver.
"All right," I said.
"No, monsieur, not all right," he said irritably. "I would have to disconnect an additional alarm system as well. Do you realize how much is expected of me today? I have a great many important things to attend to. I'm extremely busy. Extremely busy," he added, in case I failed to grasp the point.
"Nevertheless," I said firmly.
I'm not really this pushy. Ordinarily, I'm the least assertive, the most accommodating, of men. Ask anyone. Tony likes to poke fun at me for being the only person in the art world without known enemies, something he apparently regards as indicative of a personality defect. My friend, the endlessly helpful Louis, once explained to me over an Italian dinner that my narcissistic, ego-ideal-driven need to be liked had created an unhealthy avoidance of confrontation, particularly of dyadic confrontation. This, he further informed me, had contributed greatly to the failure of my marriage and to several subsequent post-divorce, pre-Anne disasters.
Well, Louis and Tony would both have been proud of me today. I wasn't making any friend of Marius Pepin. But I couldn't help feeling that he was going out of his way to be obstructive, for no reason I could see.
He stared frigidly at me. "Very well, monsieur." He pivoted with military crispness and went off in a huff.
"No, it's you," Calvin observed. "He doesn't like you."
"I'm not too crazy about him either. Something tells me he's not going to put himself out to hurry back here with his tournevis. Why don't we go see how Charpentier's doing in the other room?"
We found him standing before the canvas just the way he had last night: his big head thrown back, his hands behind him, clasping his elbows. He was wearing a scruffy, yellowish-brown tweed jacket with leather elbow patches (to protect against all that elbow-clasping?), a baggy tan sweater, a dull brown shirt with curling collar points, and an ancient, mustard-colored tie. It was the dress of a man who didn't care how he dressed, and he looked a lot more at home than he had in a tuxedo.
He turned his head as we came in, nodding abstractedly when I introduced Calvin. "You heard about Vachey?" he asked, returning to the picture.
"Yes," I said, "it's hard to believe."
His purplish lips curled. "Let's be honest, Christopher. It's a miracle no one killed the old scoundrel years ago." Charpentier was never going to be known as a man who went around with his heart on his sleeve.
I couldn't think of anything to reply. I'd taken a quick liking to Vachey, but all the same I knew what Charpentier meant. René Vachey had been a man with a knack—possibly with a relish—for making enemies, and he'd spent a great many years doing it. Inspector Lefevre, I thought, was not going to have any trouble finding likely suspects.
I changed the subject, gesturing at the Léger. "What do you think of it this morning?"
He shrugged. "The same thing as I thought last night, why should it be different?"
"It's authentic? There's no doubt in your mind?"
"Doubt?" Charpentier said. "Are you joking? None whatever, none at all. Everything cries out 'Léger.' Not merely the composition, which can of course be imitated successfully, but the particularities of execution, which cannot. Look, for example, at the shading on the inside of the pitcher, how it is applied more thinly than the white—you see how the ground shows through, and the texture of the open-weave canvas as well? How, in addition, the ground itself makes up the greater part of the white background? What could be more characteristic?"
He moved closer to the canvas to point carefully at some unidentifiable—to me, anyway—small objects depicted on the table. "Note how the grays are on close inspection a range of carefully blended cream washes. And see, throughout, how the paint is thickly applied—but no impasto—and with precious little brush marking? These are all unmistakable attributes of Léger, impossible to simulate so exactly."
If Charpentier said so, who was I to argue? He really was one of the world's most sought-after authorities on the Cubists, and this wasn't the first time he'd been faced with a previously unknown Léger. Five or six years earlier he had made minor headlines of his own as head of an international team that had authenticated, as a Léger, a painting that had been hanging in a Basel restaurant for thirty years, on the wall of the corridor between the telephones and the restrooms
. Originally, it had been reluctantly accepted by the owner in lieu of a thirty-dollar tab. Three years after its rediscovery it was on the auction block in London, where it went for somewhere in excess of two million dollars.
So there wasn't much doubt about his knowing his stuff. Still, I couldn't help thinking that what he was describing didn't seem so impossible to simulate. Why couldn't a knowledgeable and competent forger do all that? I suppose I was doing some wishful thinking. Since my first enigmatic talk with Vachey, I'd never shaken the idea that there was some kind of forgery involved in his show. I knew it couldn't be any of the paintings that were going to the Louvre; they were all impeccably documented. So was the Duchamp that Gisèle was getting. That meant it had to be the Léger, or the Rembrandt, or both. I sure as hell didn't want it to be the Rembrandt, which left the Léger as my favorite candidate.
But Charpentier wasn't interested in helping my case. "You can see," he went on mercilessly, his wild eyebrows almost brushing the canvas, "the characteristic pencil markings that show through the ground. And see here, gentlemen, where this cadmium yellow band has clearly been repositioned two times— no, three. Always, Léger was making these changes in striving for the perfection of his effect."
He straightened up. "Not, unfortunately, to be achieved this time. As I trust I made clear last night, a Léger it is, but a third-rate work at best, of the sort that even the finest artist produces from time to time. Usually, he destroys it. I tell you frankly, I wish he had done so with this."
"Well, at least it'll fit in at the Barillot," I said.
"Yes, there's always that," he said with a near-smile. "Froger, that pompous elephant, will no doubt convince himself he has a masterpiece, whatever I say. Ah, that reminds me. I'm going to see him when I'm finished here. He asked me to invite you to join us, if I saw you. If you prefer, I'll say I didn't see you."
"No, that's fine. I'll go over with you."
Pepin poked his head into the alcove. "So here you are," he said to me, as friendly as ever. "Make up your mind, do you want to get it down or not?"
"Please." Then to Charpentier: "I'll need another few minutes with the Rembrandt, Jean-Luc," I said. "Want to join us?"