by Michel Bussi
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © Presses de la Cité, a department of Place des Éditeurs 2011
English translation copyright © 2016 by Shaun Whiteside
Excerpt from After the Crash copyright © 2012 Presses de la Cité, a department of Place des Éditeurs
English translation copyright © 2015 by Sam Taylor
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: February 2017
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ISBN 978-0-316-50501-7
E3-20161220-JV-NF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
PICTURE ONE: Impressions DAY ONE: May 13, 2010: (Giverny)
DAY TWO: May 14, 2010: (Moulin des Chennevières)
DAY THREE: May 15, 2010: (Vernon Hospital)
DAY FIVE: May 17, 2010: (Giverny Cemetery)
DAY SIX: May 18, 2010: (Moulin des Chennevières)
DAY EIGHT: May 20, 2010: (Vernon Police Station)
DAY NINE: May 21, 2010: (Chemin du Roy)
DAY TEN: May 22, 2010: (Moulin des Chennevières)
DAY ELEVEN: May 23, 2010: (Moulin des Chennevières)
DAY TWELVE: May 24, 2010: (Vernon Museum)
DAY THIRTEEN: May 25, 2010: (Chemin de l’Île aux Orties)
PICTURE TWO: Exhibition DAY THIRTEEN: May 25, 2010: (Meadow, Giverny)
DAY ONE: May 13, 2010: (Moulin des Chennevières)
DAY THIRTEEN: May 25, 2010: (Chemin du Roy)
DAY FOURTEEN: May 26, 2010: (Moulin des Chennevières)
About the Author
A Preview of After the Crash
Also by Michel Bussi
Newsletters
In memory of Jacky Lucas
With Monet, we don’t see the real world,
but we grasp its appearances.
—F. Robert-Kempf, L’Aurore, 1908
No! No! No black for Monet!
Black is not a color!
—Georges Clemenceau,
at the foot of Claude Monet’s coffin
(Michel de Decker, Claude Monet, 2009)
Author’s Note
In the following pages, the descriptions of Giverny are as exact as possible. The places exist, whether it’s the Hôtel Baudy, the Ru and the Epte, the Chennevières mill, the school in Giverny, the church of Sainte-Radegonde and its cemetery, Rue Claude Monet, the Chemin du Roy, Nettles Island, or, of course, Monet’s house and the water-lily pond. The same can be said of locations in the neighboring area, such as the museum in Vernon, the art museum in Rouen, the hamlet of Cocherel.
The information about Claude Monet’s life, his works, and his heirs is authentic. That is also the case for the other Impressionist painters mentioned, notably Theodore Robinson and Eugène Murer—however, the Robinson Foundation and the International Young Painters Challenge are my own invention.
The cited thefts of artworks come from real news stories.
All the rest, I have imagined.
Three women lived in a village.
The first was mean, the second a liar, and the third an egotist.
Their village bore the pretty name of a garden. Giverny.
The first lived in a big mill on the banks of a stream, on the Chemin du Roy; the second occupied an attic flat above the school, on Rue Blanche Hoschedé-Monet; the third lived with her mother, in a little house with the paint flaking off the walls on Rue du Château d’Eau.
They weren’t the same age. Not at all. The first was over eighty, and a widow. Almost. The second was thirty-six and had never deceived her husband. Yet. The third was nearly eleven and all the boys in her school wanted her to be their girlfriend. The first dressed always in black, the second put on makeup for her lover, the third plaited her hair so that her tresses flew out behind her in the wind.
All three were quite different. But they had something in common, a secret. All three dreamed of leaving. Yes, of leaving Giverny, the famous village that compels swarms of people to travel across the entire world just to stroll in its gardens for a few hours. Because of the Impressionists.
The first woman, the oldest, owned a pretty painting; the second was interested in artists; the third, the youngest, was good at painting. Very good, in fact.
Many would find it strange, wanting to leave Giverny. But these three women viewed the village as a prison—a big, beautiful garden, but surrounded by a fence. Like the grounds of an asylum. A trompe-l’oeil. A painting from which you could not escape. The third woman, the youngest, was looking for a father. The second was looking for love. The first, the oldest one, knew certain things about the other two.
But once, for thirteen days, thirteen days only, the gates of the park were opened. The dates were very precise: from May 13 to May 25, 2010. But the rules were cruel—only one of them could escape. The other two would have to die. That was how it was.
Those thirteen days passed like a parenthesis in their lives. Too short. Cruel too. The parenthesis opened with a murder, on the first day, and finished with another, on the last day. Strangely, the police were only interested in the second woman, the most beautiful; the third, the most innocent, had to carry out her own investigation. The first, the most discreet, was left in peace to keep an eye on everyone. And to kill.
It lasted thirteen days. Long enough for an escape.
Three women lived in a village.
The third was the most intelligent, the second the most cunning, the first the most determined.
In your opinion, which one managed to escape?
The third, the youngest, was called Fanette Morelle; the second was called Stéphanie Dupain; the first, the oldest, that was me.
PICTURE ONE
Impressions
DAY ONE
May 13, 2010
(Giverny)
Assembly
1
The clear water of the stream is tinted pink, in small threads, like the fleeting pastel shades of water in which a paintbrush is being rinsed.
“Neptune, no!”
Farther down the stream the color is diluted and clings to the green of the weeds that hang from the banks, the ochre of the roots of the poplars, the willows. A subtle, faded shade…
I quite like it.
Except that the red does not come from the palette a painter has been cleaning in the river, but from the battered head of Jérôme Morval. The blood is escaping from a deep gash at the top of his skull, neat and clearly defined, washed clean by the Ru, a branch of the river Epte, in which his head is now immersed.
My German shepherd approaches, sniffs. I call him again, more firmly this time.
“Neptune, no! Come back!”<
br />
I suspect it won’t be long before the corpse is found. Even though it’s only six in the morning, someone out for a walk will pass by, or a painter, or a jogger, someone out collecting snails… they will discover the body.
I’m careful not to go any closer. I lean on my stick. The ground in front of me is muddy; there’s been a lot of rain the past few days, and the banks of the stream are soft. At eighty-four, I’m not really the right age to pretend I’m a water nymph, even in such a piffling stream less than a yard wide, and half of which used to be diverted to feed the pond in Monet’s gardens. (Apparently this is no longer the case—there is an underground pipe that feeds the lily pond these days.)
“Come on, Neptune. Let’s keep going.”
I lift my cane in his direction, as if to keep him from poking his snout into the gaping hole in Jérôme Morval’s gray jacket. The second wound. Right in the heart.
“Go on, move! We’re not going to hang about here.”
I look one last time at the washhouse just opposite where I am standing, then continue along the path. It is impeccably maintained. The most invasive trees have been sawn off at the base and the banks have been cleared of weeds. You have to remember, several thousand tourists walk along this path every day. You might pass someone with a stroller, or in a wheelchair, an old woman with a cane. Like me.
“Come on, Neptune.”
I make a turn a little farther on, at the spot where the brook divides into two branches, cut off by a dam and a waterfall. On the other side you can see Monet’s gardens, the water lilies, the Japanese bridge, the greenhouses… It’s strange, I was born here in 1926, the year of Claude Monet’s death. For a long time after Monet’s passing, almost fifty years, those gardens were closed, forgotten, abandoned. Today, the wheel has turned again and every year tens of thousands of Japanese, Americans, Russians, and Australians travel round the world just to linger here. Monet’s gardens have become a sacred temple, a mecca, a cathedral… In fact, it won’t be long before those thousands of pilgrims descend upon us.
I look at my watch: 6:02. Another few hours of respite.
I walk on.
Between the poplars and the huge butterburs, the statue of Claude Monet stares at me with the malicious expression of an angry neighbor, his chin devoured by his beard and his skull concealed by a piece of headgear that vaguely resembles a straw hat. The ivory plinth indicates that the bust was unveiled in 2007. The wooden sign hammered into the ground beside it explains that the master is watching “the meadow.” His meadow. The fields, from the Ru to the Epte, from the Epte to the Seine, the rows of poplars, the wooded slopes that undulate like soft waves. The magical places he painted. Inviolable… Varnished and on show for all eternity.
And it’s true—at six in the morning, the place can still be deceptive. I look in front of me at a pure horizon consisting of fields of wheat, of maize, of poppies. But I won’t lie to you. For most of the day, Monet’s meadow is, in fact, a giant parking lot. Four parking lots, to be precise, clustered around an asphalt stem like a water lily made of blacktop. I think I can afford to say this kind of thing, at my age. I have seen the landscape transform itself, year after year. Today Monet’s countryside is just a commercial backdrop.
Neptune follows me for a few yards, and then sets off, running straight ahead. He crosses the parking lot, pees against a wooden barrier, then lopes on into the field, toward the confluence of the Epte and the Seine. For some reason this little wedge of land between the two rivers is known as Nettles Island.
I sigh and continue on my way. At my age, I’m not going to go running after him. I watch as he scampers away, then circles back, as if he’s taunting me. I don’t want to call him back yet; it’s still early. He disappears once more into the wheat. That’s how Neptune spends his time these days—always running a hundred yards ahead of me. Everyone who lives in Giverny knows this dog, but I don’t think many people know he’s mine.
I walk along the parking lot and toward the Moulin des Chennevières. That’s where I live. I like to get back home before the crowds arrive. The Moulin des Chennevières is by far the most beautiful building in the vicinity of Monet’s gardens, and the only one built beside the brook, but ever since they transformed the meadow into fields of metal and tires, I feel like a species on the brink of extinction, a rare animal that has been put in a cage so that inquisitive people can come and have a look. There are only four bridges over the brook to get from the parking lot to the village, one of which crosses the stream just in front of my house. I feel that I’m besieged until six in the evening. At that hour, the village closes down again, the meadow is given back to the willows, and Claude Monet can reopen his bronze eyes, without coughing into his beard at the smell of hydrocarbons.
In front of me, the wind stirs a forest of sea-green wheat, studded with the red pearls of scattered poppies. If someone viewed the scene from the other side, along the Epte, it would inevitably remind them of an Impressionist painting. The harmony of orange tones at sunrise, with just a hint of mourning, the tiniest black speck in the background.
A widow dressed in dark clothes. Me.
A subtle note of melancholy.
I call again: “Neptune!”
I stand there for a while, savoring the momentary calm, until a jogger arrives. He passes in front of me, headphones jammed in his ears. T-shirt. Sneakers. He bursts into the meadow like an anachronism. He is the first of the day to spoil the picture; others will follow. I give him a little nod; he returns it and disappears, the noise from his headphones like the buzzing of an electronic cicada. I see him turn toward the bust of Monet, the little waterfall, the dam. I imagine him running along the brook; he, too, taking care to avoid the mud at the edge of the path.
I sit down on a bench and wait for what will happen next.
There are still no buses in the lot when the police van screeches to a halt on the Chemin du Roy, between the washhouse and my mill, around twenty paces from the drowned body of Jérôme Morval.
I stand up.
I wonder about calling Neptune one last time, but he knows the way home, after all. The Moulin des Chennevières is nearby. I cast one last glance at the police getting out of their vehicle and then I leave. I go back to my house. From the fourth floor of my mill you get a much better view of everything that is happening.
And a much more discreet one.
2
Inspector Laurenç Sérénac begins by marking out a perimeter of several yards around the corpse, attaching a wide orange plastic tape to the branches of the trees above the stream.
The crime scene suggests that this will be a complicated investigation. Sérénac is reassuring himself that his reaction when the call came in to the police headquarters in Vernon was sound; he had set off immediately with three colleagues. Right now, Officer Louvel’s chief task is to keep away the rubberneckers who are starting to crowd along the brook. It is incredible, in fact—the village seemed deserted when the police van drove through it, but a few minutes later it was as if the entire population had converged on the murder scene. Because it certainly is a murder. You don’t need three years at the police training academy in Toulouse to be sure of that, Sérénac thinks, observing the wound to the heart, the gash in the skull, and the head immersed in water. Officer Maury, supposedly the best forensic specialist at Vernon headquarters, is carefully picking out footprints in the ground, just in front of the corpse, and taking a mold of the prints with quick-setting plaster. It was Sérénac who gave him the order to immortalize the muddy ground before they even began to examine the corpse. The man is dead, he can’t be saved. Trampling all over the crime scene before everything is bagged and photographed is out of the question.
Inspector Sylvio Bénavides appears on the bridge. He stops to get his breath back. Sérénac had asked him to run along to the village with a picture of the victim, to see if he could get some initial information—especially the identity, if possible, of the murdered man. Inspector Sérénac
hasn’t been working in Vernon for long, but it didn’t take him much time to work out that Sylvio Bénavides was very good at following orders, organizing, filing meticulously. The ideal deputy, to a certain extent. He suffers, perhaps, from a slight lack of initiative, but Sérénac senses this may stem more from an excess of timidity than a lack of competence. And the man is devoted—yes, devoted—to his job as a policeman. Because, in fact, Bénavides must view his superior, Inspector Laurenç Sérénac, fresh from police academy in Toulouse, as some kind of unidentified police object… Sérénac was dropped in as boss of the Vernon station only four months ago, without even having reached the rank of detective chief inspector, so were they really expected to take seriously—here, north of the Seine—a cop who wasn’t yet thirty, who talked to both criminals and colleagues with his southern, Occitan accent, and who already approached each crime scene with an air of disillusioned cynicism?
Sérénac isn’t sure. People are so stressed up here. Not just in the police. It’s even worse in Vernon, a large Parisian suburb that has spilled into Normandy. The border with the Île-de-France passes through Giverny, a few hundred yards away, on the other side of the main river. But people here think of themselves as Norman, not Parisian. And they’re proud of it. It’s a kind of snobbery. Someone once told him, in all seriousness, that more people had been killed at the Epte, that ridiculous little stream that had once defined the border between France and the Anglo-Norman kingdom, than had died at the Meuse or the Rhine.
“Inspector…”
“Call me Laurenç, for Christ’s sake… I’ve told you that before.”
Sylvio Bénavides hesitates. It hardly seems the fitting moment to discuss it, given that Inspector Sérénac is talking to him in front of Officers Louvel and Maury, about fifteen rubberneckers, and a blood-drenched corpse.