Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  He bursts into his booming Senegalese-giant laughter. To my knowledge he is the only African in the village. Sometimes I spend a bit more time with him. He tells me about his business, his dream of one day having a Monet to sell. The jackpot. A Water Lilies, it doesn’t matter which one. In black, why not… Sometimes he, too, roams around the Moulin des Chennevières. Amadou Kandy did a lot of business with Jérôme Morval. I have to be cautious. I’ve also learned that he had dealings with the police not too long ago.

  I continue on my way. The Rue Claude Monet seems to get longer every day. The tourists part in front of me to let me through. Sometimes some idiot might even try to take my photograph, as if I were part of the landscape.

  Number 71. I’ve arrived.

  I study the name on the letterbox. Jérôme and Patricia Morval, as if the couple were still living under the same roof. I understand Patricia. It’s not easy to scratch out the name of a dead person.

  I ring the bell. Several times. She comes out.

  She looks surprised.

  And with good reason! We haven’t exchanged more than two words for several months, a hello in the street at most. I come closer, almost whispering in her ear.

  “I need to talk to you, Patricia… There are some things I have to tell you. Some things that I’ve learned and others that I’ve understood…”

  When she lets me inside, I notice that she’s looking pale. The two huge Water Lilies in the long corridor make my head spin. Patricia even more so, clearly. I have a sense that she’s about to pass out.

  She’s always been a little sickly, has Patricia.

  “Is… is it about Jérôme’s murder?” she stammers.

  “Yes, among other things.”

  I hesitate. After all, even if I have nothing left to lose, it isn’t easy to throw such confessions in her face. I wait until she’s sitting down on a leather armchair in the drawing room.

  “Yes, Patricia, it is about Jérôme’s murder. I know the name of his killer.”

  24

  Sylvio Bénavides has been wondering for some time what on earth those crocodiles are doing in the water-lily pond. He thinks it must be some kind of free interpretation by the painter, someone by the name of Kobamo, but he’s pondering whether there’s a hidden message behind it all. To pass the time, he counts the number of crocodiles. Kobamo has hidden them all over the place, under the lilies. Eyes, nostrils, tails.

  Behind him, the door of the art gallery opens and Laurenç Sérénac comes inside. Inspector Bénavides smiles with relief at Amadou Kandy.

  “I told you he wouldn’t be long.”

  Amadou Kandy slowly raises his hands. The Senegalese gallery owner must be approximately the size of two Japanese tourists. He wears an ample boubou decorated with an unlikely patchwork of African prints and pastel tones.

  “I wasn’t worried, Inspector, I’m just aware that my time is much less precious than yours.”

  The Kandy Gallery is like a vast bric-a-brac shop. Canvases of all sizes are piled up in every corner of the room, making the place look like a museum that’s about to move, and doubtless lulling art connoisseurs into a sense that they can get themselves a good bargain from its chaotic owner.

  But Amadou Kandy knows exactly what he’s doing.

  The policemen make themselves comfortable as best they can. Sylvio Bénavides sits on a step between two cardboard boxes, and Laurenç Sérénac’s buttocks are perched on the edge of an enormous wooden bin full of lithographs.

  “Monsieur Kandy, you knew Jérôme Morval well…” Sérénac begins.

  Amadou Kandy is still standing up.

  “Yes, Jérôme was an art lover, and well informed. We talked, I advised him. He was a man of good taste… I have lost a friend.”

  “And a good client as well.”

  Sérénac draws first. It’s almost as if the pain in his behind is making him aggressive. Kandy retains his pastoral smile.

  “If you like… It’s your job to think like that, Inspector.”

  “Fine, then you will forgive me for cutting straight to the chase. Did Jérôme Morval ask you to find him a Water Lilies?”

  “And you are very good at your job,” says Kandy with a little laugh. “Yes, among other things, Jérôme asked me to keep an eye on the market for works by Claude Monet.”

  “Water Lilies in particular?”

  “Yes… It was a hopeless task, of course, and Jérôme knew that, but he liked insane challenges.”

  “Why you?” Bénavides asks.

  Amadou Kandy turns his head.

  “What do you mean, why me?”

  “Yes, why did Morval ask you and not some other art dealer?”

  “Why not me, Inspector? Do you think I’m not enough of an expert?” Kandy forces a white-toothed smile, his eyes wide.

  “If he had been looking into primitive art, I might agree with you, but asking a Senegalese to do research into the Impressionists…”

  “Don’t worry, Inspector, Jérôme also asked me to find a particularly magnificent gazelle horn…”

  Sérénac laughs out loud, stretching his back.

  “You’re a clever one, Monsieur Kandy, our colleagues told us that. But right now we’re in a hurry, so…”

  “You didn’t seem to be in a hurry, earlier.”

  “Earlier?”

  “About an hour or two ago. You passed in front of the gallery, but I was careful not to disturb you, as you seemed to be concentrating very hard on what your guide was telling you.”

  Bénavides is concerned. Sérénac takes the blow.

  “You really are a clever man, Kandy.”

  “Giverny is a small village,” the gallery owner says, turning toward the door. “Just two streets.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Having said that, Inspector, to be quite honest, it wasn’t you that I noticed, but your guide, our pretty schoolteacher. I saw the two of you and I said to myself, ‘You lucky fellow.’ You know, I would’ve liked to have had children just for the pleasure of taking them to school and seeing Stéphanie Dupain every morning…”

  “Like your friend Morval.”

  “Except that Jérôme didn’t have any children,” the gallery owner replies. “You’re a clever man too, Inspector.”

  He turns toward Sylvio.

  “You, on the other hand, you just like to root about. You must make an effective double act. Like the monkey and the anteater—is that how I should describe you?”

  Sérénac shifts uncomfortably on his buttocks.

  “Do you often invent such folktales?”

  “All the time, it adds a bit of local color, and my clients love it. I invent animal nicknames for Monsieur and Madame. It’s my little commercial tic. You can’t imagine how effective it is.”

  Sérénac is greatly amused. Bénavides seems horrified. His feet tap nervously against the first step of the stairs.

  “Do you know Alysson Murer?” he says abruptly.

  “No.”

  “Your friend Morval knew her.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you like stories, Monsieur Kandy?”

  “I love them, my grandfather used to tell them to the whole tribe in the evenings. Instead of television. First we would grill some crickets…”

  “Don’t push it, Kandy.”

  Bénavides grips the banister, stretches his cramped limbs a little, and holds out a photograph to the gallery owner. Alysson Murer on the beach at Sark, lying side by side with Jérôme Morval.

  “As you can see,” Sylvio remarks, “she was an intimate friend of your friend, Jérôme Morval.”

  Amadou Kandy appraises the picture like a connoisseur. Sérénac picks up the baton from his deputy:

  “From the photograph, you might think that Miss Murer is quite pretty, but, in fact, our Alysson has a rather… unattractive face. Not hideous, but let’s just say that she has no particular charm. And as we are clever policemen,” says Laurenç, glancing at Sylvio, “clever people who l
ike to go digging around, it occurred to us that something wasn’t quite right about this Alysson, when you consider Jérôme Morval’s other female conquests. Isn’t it strange, Monsieur Kandy, that Jérôme Morval would have flirted with this rather ordinary-looking girl who worked in the accounts department of an insurance company in Newcastle?”

  Amadou Kandy returns the photograph to the policeman.

  “Perhaps you just have to put some perspective on your aesthetic judgment. After all, the girl is English…”

  Once again, Sérénac can’t help laughing. Bénavides fills the gap.

  “I’d like to continue with my story, Monsieur Kandy, if you’d be so kind. Alysson’s only living relative is her grandmother, Kate Murer, who has always lived in a fisherman’s cottage on the Isle of Sark, an unremarkable little house that is falling to pieces. Kate Murer’s home is filled with worthless old objects—knickknacks, baubles, a series of old paintings that no one wanted, cracked crockery, and a reproduction of one of Monet’s Water Lilies, a little canvas, two by two feet. Kate felt very attached to that picture, not because of its value, as you can imagine, but because it was the only thing she had left of her family. I’m talking to you about Kate because Jérôme Morval went to the island of Sark several times with the young Alysson Murer. And on this particular occasion he also formed a friendship with her grandmother. When you’re a nosy policeman, Mr. Kandy, an anteater, you inevitably find yourself asking a question: what the devil was Jérôme Morval doing visiting an old Englishwoman on that godforsaken island?”

  25

  Patricia Morval watches the stooped black figure as it moves away. The cane squeaks on the tarmac of the Rue Claude Monet with every step the old woman takes as she descends the hill toward the Moulin des Chennevières. When she is more or less level with the Immo-Prestige estate agents, Neptune joins her. Patricia Morval wonders how long their surreal conversation lasted.

  Half an hour, perhaps?

  Hardly more than that.

  My God!

  Just half an hour, yet it was enough to shake all her certainties. Patricia Morval struggles to assess the consequences of everything she has just heard. Does she have to believe this mad old woman? And more importantly, what should she do now?

  She walks down the corridor, taking care not to let her eyes lose themselves in the long panels of the Water Lilies. She will have to tell the police. Yes, that’s what she should do…

  She hesitates.

  What would be the point? Whom can she confide in?

  She stares at the drooping flowers sticking out of the Japanese vase; she remembers every detail of Inspector Sérénac’s visit, his inquisitor’s gaze, his way of evaluating every painting hung on the wall, his discomfort at the sight of the Water Lilies in the corridor. My God… She asks herself the question again. Who could she confide in?

  Patricia sits down in the drawing room, and thinks for a long time about the conversation she has just had. There is only one question to ask, in fact: is it still possible to repair what might have been? Perhaps to reverse the course of things?

  Patricia walks to a little room that is almost entirely occupied by a desk and a computer. The computer is switched on. The screensaver shows a sequence of photographs of sunlit Giverny landscapes. Patricia has only been interested in the Internet for a few months. She would never have imagined she could be so excited about a keyboard and a screen. And yet it was love at first sight. She spends hours on it now. Thanks to the Internet, Patricia has even rediscovered Giverny, her own village. Without the Internet, would she ever have imagined that there were thousands of photographs of her village just one click away, each more enchanting than the last? Without the Internet, could she have imagined the thousands of comments from visitors from all over the world, each more enthusiastic than the last? Several months ago, Patricia was stunned by the beauty of a site, Givernews. Since then, not a week has gone by when she didn’t visit that blog, with its incredible daily poetry.

  But not today.

  Right now, Patricia is looking for something else on her canvas. Her cursor settles on the yellow star that indicates her bookmarked websites. She runs through the menu and stops on Copainsdavant.linternaute.com—a site where old friends can rediscover each other.

  A few seconds later, Patricia types “Giverny” into the search engine. The photograph she is looking for is waiting there. Impossible to miss, it’s the only school photograph on the whole site that dates back before the war.

  From 1936–37, to be precise.

  For a moment Patricia wonders what surfers who happen upon this website must think of it.

  What is this prehistoric school photograph doing there?

  Who could be looking for friends who shared a school desk seventy-five years ago?

  For a long time Patricia studies the docile faces of the pupils in the old photograph. My God, she is still struggling to believe the revelations that the mad old woman made to her. Is it possible? Mightn’t she have invented it all? Could Jérôme’s killer really be the one she named, the last individual she would ever have suspected?

  Her whole body trembles at the sight of those gray faces. Cold tears flow from her eyes. After hesitating for a long time, she stands up again.

  She knows what she’s going to do; she has made up her mind. She crosses the drawing room again and mechanically moves the little bronze of Diana the Huntress a few inches along the cherrywood sideboard.

  After all, what risk is there now?

  She opens one of the drawers and takes out an old black diary. She sits down again in the leather armchair and dials the number on her cordless telephone.

  “Hello. Chief Inspector Laurentin, this is Patricia Morval.”

  There is a long silence at the other end.

  “The wife of Jérôme Morval. The Morval case, the ophthalmologist who was murdered in Giverny. That’s what I want to talk about, you see…”

  This time an appalled voice replies: “Yes… of course, I remember. I’m retired, but I haven’t got Alzheimer’s yet.”

  “I know, I know. That’s why I called you. I’ve often read about you in the local newspapers. A lot of praise. I need you, Chief Inspector, to conduct… how shall I put it… a counter-investigation. An investigation that runs parallel to the official inquiry.”

  Another long silence falls between them.

  A lot of praise…

  At the other end of the line Chief Inspector Laurentin can’t help thinking again about the most important investigations of his career. His years in Canada and his involvement in the Musée des Beaux-Arts case in Montreal, September 1972—one of the biggest thefts of artwork in history, with eighteen masterpieces whisked away: Delacroix, Rubens, Rembrandt, Corot… His return to the station in Vernon in 1974, and his biggest case, eleven years later, three years before he retired, in November 1985: the theft of nine Monets from the Musée Marmottan, including the famous Impression, Soleil Levant. It was he, Laurentin, along with the art division, or the OCBC, the Central Office against the Illegal Trade in Cultural Objects, who finally found the paintings in 1991, at Porto-Vecchio, in the home of a Corsican bandit. The case had been of national importance, with large headlines in the newspapers at the time… That was an eternity ago.

  Laurentin breaks the silence at last.

  “I have retired, Madame Morval. There is nothing exceptional about the pension of a retired chief inspector from a financial point of view, but I can’t complain. Why not approach a private detective?”

  “I have thought of that, Chief Inspector, of course I have. But no detective has your experience in the field of illegal art trading. I need someone with considerable competence.”

  The voice of Chief Inspector Laurentin sounds increasingly astonished.

  “What do you expect of me?”

  “Is your curiosity starting to get the better of you, Chief Inspector? I confess that I had hoped as much. Let me paint the picture for you, and then you can evaluate it. Do you n
ot think that the judgment of a young and inexperienced investigator who has fallen madly in love with the main suspect would be particularly impaired? Do you think he will be able to reach a successful conclusion in his investigation? Can he be objective? Clear-sighted? Do you think we can trust him to get to the truth?”

  “He isn’t alone. He has a deputy, a team…”

  “Under his influence, and with no initiative of their own…”

  Chief Inspector Laurentin coughs at the end of the line.

  “Excuse me. I’m just a former policeman, almost eighty years old. I haven’t set foot in a police station for ten years. I still don’t understand what you expect of me…”

  “Then I will try to pique your curiosity further, Chief Inspector. Because you still read the newspapers, I advise you to turn to the obituary section. The local pages. I’m sure you’ll be interested.”

  Chief Inspector Laurentin’s voice is very dry.

  “I will do so, Madame Morval. As I’m sure you know, a leopard can’t change his spots and your strange riddle will make a change from my sudoku. It’s not every day that an old bachelor like me gets such a request. But I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “Do you want me to be even more precise? That’s it, isn’t it? OK, let’s say that a very young inspector might be a little too interested in painting, in art in general, in Water Lilies, and not interested enough in old people.”

  There is a long silence before the chief inspector replies.

  “I suppose I should be flattered, but my past as a policeman is far behind me now. I’m a bit out of touch, really. If what you want from me is a counter-investigation, I don’t think you’re talking to the right person. Contact the art division. I know younger colleagues who—”

  “Chief Inspector,” Patricia breaks in, “I want you to carry out your own investigation. As an amateur. With no prior assumptions. It’s as simple as that. I ask no more of you. You’ll see… Here, I’ll give you a clue that I hope will whet your appetite. Go on to the Internet, and click on a website, Copains d’avant. If you have children or grandchildren, they’re bound to know it. Type in ‘Giverny 1936–37.’ It’s an interesting starting point for this investigation, I think… Look at it from another angle. Well, you’ll see.”