by Michel Bussi
I walk along the Chemin du Roy. The older I get, the more trouble I have understanding the tourists who often wait more than an hour to get into the gardens on Rue Claude Monet, queuing up one behind the other, along more than two hundred yards of pavement. The thing is, you only have to walk along the Chemin du Roy and, through the green fence along the main road, you can see the gardens and Monet’s house, take unforgettable photographs, smell the scent of the flowers—all without having to wait.
The cars pass by, skimming the greenery that separates the road from the cycle path. Each time a vehicle passes in too much of a hurry it looks as if the leaves have been seized by spasms: local boys who work in Vernon, and who stopped turning their heads toward the pink house with green shutters a long time ago. For them, the Chemin du Roy is just the D5, the road to Vernon. Nothing else.
At the speed I go at, by contrast, I have time to admire the flowers. I won’t lie to you; of course, the gardens are magnificent. The cathedral of roses, the Rond des Dames, the Clos Normand with its cascades of clematis, the mass of pink tulips and forget-me-nots. So many masterpieces…
Who could deny it?
Amadou Kandy even told me that ten years ago, in a village in the countryside in Japan, they opened an exact replica of Monet’s house, the Clos Normand, and the water garden. Can you believe it? I’ve seen photographs; it’s almost impossible to distinguish the real Giverny from the imitation. You’ll tell me photographs can tell any story you like, but, frankly, the idea of building a second Giverny in Japan? Really, it’s beyond me.
I confess, it’s been years since I’ve visited Monet’s gardens. The ones in Giverny, I mean, the real ones. There are too many people there these days. With thousands of tourists crammed together, piled up on top of each other, treading on each other’s toes, it’s not a place for an old woman like me. And when the tourists visit Monet’s house, they are often surprised: it isn’t an art gallery. There is no painting by the master in Monet’s house, no painting of Water Lilies, no Japanese bridge or poplars. Just a house, a studio, and a garden. To see real paintings by Monet, you have to go to the Orangerie, to the Marmottan, to Vernon… Yes, all in all, I’m happier on the other side of the fence. And besides, I have only to shut my eyes, and the startling beauty of the garden is engraved there.
Forever. Believe me.
Those raving lunatics are still racing along the Chemin du Roy. A Toyota has just gone past at more than sixty miles an hour. Perhaps you don’t know, but it was Claude Monet who paid for the road to be tarred a hundred years ago, because the dust from the unsurfaced road was covering his flowers! He’d have been better off paying for a detour. They haven’t a clue, honestly—a garden like that cut in half by a main road and tourists walking underneath it down a tunnel.
Well now, you’ve probably had enough of the reasonably interesting reflections of an old Givernois on the development of her village and its surroundings. I understand. You’re probably wondering what I’m playing at. That’s what interests you, isn’t it? What’s my role in this whole affair? At what point do I stop spying on everyone in order to make my intervention? How? Why? Patience, patience. A few more days, no more than a few more days. Let me enjoy a little while longer the general indifference toward an old woman that no one notices any more than they would a signpost or a road sign, because they have always been there. I’m not going to try to make you believe I know the end of this business, no, but I do have my little idea.
And I am the one who will supply the final parenthesis to this story, trust me. You won’t be disappointed!
Bear with me, please. Let me tell you a little more about Monet’s gardens. Listen carefully, because every detail counts. Mornings in May are often besieged by school outings, with the gardens as noisy as a school playground. In fact, it depends on the teacher’s ability to interest the children in painting, and on the children’s state of excitement, which in turn depends on the number of hours they’ve been cooped up inside their bus. Sometimes they’ve spent an entire night—there are some sadistic teachers. Once the kids are inside the garden the teachers can relax; a little discreet surveillance is all that’s required. The place is a bit like a public park, and it’s educational to boot. The children fill in a questionnaire, they draw. Apart from the risk of drowning among the water lilies, they aren’t in any danger.
On the Chemin du Roy, the Lorin bakery van goes past and honks its horn at me. I give the driver a little wave. Richard Lorin is the last shopkeeper who knows me, along with Amadou Kandy. A lot of the shop signs in Giverny change every year, along with the galleries, the hotels, the summer houses. They come, and they go. Giverny is the tide, at the mercy of the floods. I see that now, from a distance. Stranded on the sand.
I wait some more…
I’ve heard the noise of a motorbike, the characteristic sound of a Tiger Triumph T100. It has parked in Ruelle Leroy, near the group entrance. It might seem strange to you that a woman of over eighty can recognize the make of a motorbike just from the noise of its engine. An old bike too, almost an antique. Believe me, I think I could recognize the sound of a Tiger Triumph T100 among a thousand others.
My God, how could I ever forget it?
I also note that I’m not the only one who has been listening out for it. It isn’t long before Stéphanie Dupain pokes her head out through the highest window of Claude Monet’s house, her face half-covered by the Virginia creeper. From her lofty perch she pretends to count the children. As if.
I sense that she’s trembling at the sound of the engine. Looking vaguely attentive, she watches the children running among the flower beds. I think that, in fact, the children in her class will be able to do what they like for a moment…
37
Stéphanie Dupain runs down the stairs. Laurenç Sérénac is there, waiting in the reading room.
“Hello, Stéphanie. It’s great to see you again.”
The teacher is breathless. Laurenç performs a half turn on his heels.
“It’s the first time I’ve been in Claude Monet’s house. Thank you for giving me this opportunity, really. I’d heard about it, but it’s fascinating.”
“Hello, Inspector. It’s true that you’re incredibly lucky. Monet’s garden is only open to the children of Giverny School this morning. It’s very unusual! It only happens once a year, and we have Monet’s house all to ourselves.”
All to ourselves…
Laurenç Sérénac can’t define the feeling of excitement that washes over him. Somewhere between fantasy and unease.
“And your pupils?”
“They’re playing in the garden. No harm can come to them, don’t worry—I only brought the older ones. And I’m keeping an eye on them; all the windows of the house look out onto the garden. The more serious ones are supposed to be painting, looking for inspiration—they’re supposed to be handing over their paintings for the Robinson Foundation’s ‘International Young Painters Challenge’ in a few days. The others don’t care, so they’ll be playing hide-and-seek among the bridges, around the pond… It was like that in Monet’s day too, you know. You shouldn’t believe the myth of a silent house inhabited by a hermitic old man; Claude Monet’s house was filled with his children and his grandchildren.”
Stéphanie steps forward and strikes the pose of a tourist guide.
“As you see, Inspector, here we are in the little blue drawing room. It overlooks a strange pantry. Observe the egg boxes hanging from the walls…”
The teacher is wearing an amazing blue-and-red silk dress, gathered in at the waist by a wide belt, and closed by two flowery buttons at the neckline. The dress makes her look like a geisha who has just stepped out of a print. Her hair is pulled back. Her mauve eyes merge with the pastel of the walls. Sérénac doesn’t know where to look. Dressed like this, Stéphanie reminds him of a painting by Claude Monet that he admired years ago, the portrait of the artist’s first wife, Camille Doncieux, dressed as a geisha. He feels almost like an intruder in his jeans, his shirt, a
nd his leather jacket.
“Shall we go to the next room?” the gentle voice of his guide suggests.
Yellow.
The room is entirely yellow. The walls, the painted furniture, the chairs. Sérénac stops in his tracks, stunned.
His hostess comes over to him.
“You are now in the dining room where Claude Monet received his most important guests.”
Laurenç admires the glow of the room. His eye finally settles on a painting that hangs on the wall. A pastel by Renoir. A seated girl, in three-quarter profile, wearing an enormous white hat. He walks over to it, appreciating the way the tones between the long brown hair and the peachy skin of the young model blend into one another.
“A pretty reproduction,” he observes.
“A reproduction? Are you sure, Inspector?”
Sérénac studies the painting, surprised by her comment.
“Well… if I admired this painting in a Paris museum I wouldn’t doubt for a second that it was an original. But here, in Monet’s house? Everyone knows that—”
“And what if,” Stéphanie interrupts, “I were to tell you that it actually is a Renoir, an original?”
The teacher smiles at the inspector’s disconcerted expression. She adds, in a lower voice:
“But shh, it’s a secret. You mustn’t tell anyone.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Not at all. I’ll let you in on another secret, Inspector. An even more surprising one. In Monet’s house, if you look very carefully, in the studio, in the attic, you’ll find a whole range of masterpieces. Dozens of them. Renoirs, Sisleys, Pissarros. Real ones. Monets too, of course, original Water Lilies… all within your reach!”
Laurenç Sérénac looks at Stéphanie, perplexed.
“Stéphanie, why are you telling me such fairy tales? Everyone knows that’s impossible. Paintings by Renoir or Monet have such immense financial value… Cultural value too. How on earth can you imagine they’d be here, crouching in the dust? It’s ridiculous.”
Stéphanie adopts a delicious pout.
“Laurenç, I grant that my revelations may seem incredible. But you disappoint me if you think they’re impossible, or ridiculous, because I’m only telling you the truth. Besides, lots of Givernois know about the real treasures hidden in Monet’s house. Let’s just say it’s a kind of open secret here, something people don’t talk about.”
Laurenç Sérénac waits for the teacher to burst out laughing. It doesn’t happen, even though Stéphanie’s eyes are sparkling with mischief.
“Stéphanie,” he says at last. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to try out your joke on someone more gullible than me.”
“You still don’t believe me, do you, Laurenç? Never mind. After all, it’s not important, let’s not mention it again…”
The teacher turns round abruptly. Sérénac is worried. He thinks that perhaps he shouldn’t have come; not here, not now. He should have arranged to meet Stéphanie somewhere else. But it’s too late. Everything is collapsing. So even if this is neither the time nor the place, he takes the plunge:
“Stéphanie, I didn’t just come here for the guided tour or to discuss art. We need to talk—”
“Shh…”
Stéphanie puts a finger to her lips, as if to tell him that this isn’t the moment. It’s probably an old teacher’s trick.
She points at the glass sideboards.
“Claude Monet also insisted on refinement for his guests. Blue porcelain from Creil and Montereau, Japanese prints…”
Laurenç Sérénac can’t help it, he grabs Stéphanie by the shoulders. He immediately realizes that he shouldn’t have done so. The fabric of her dress is silky, smooth, fleeting, like a skin on skin. The fabric gives him ideas, and they aren’t anything to do with his police work.
“I’m not joking, Stéphanie. Things didn’t go very well with your husband yesterday.”
She smiles.
“I got a slight inkling of that yesterday evening.”
“He’s a suspect. It’s serious…”
“You’re wrong.”
Laurenç’s fingers slip down the silk, independent of him, as if he were stroking her arms. He struggles to remain lucid.
“Stop playing with me, Stéphanie. Yesterday, during the interrogation, your husband told me that on the morning of the crime he stayed in bed with you. You told me the opposite three days ago. One of you is lying.”
“Laurenç, how many times do I have to tell you? I was not Jérôme Morval’s lover. Not even a close friend. My husband had no motive for killing Morval! I know the classics, Inspector. No motive, no need for an alibi.”
She laughs deliciously.
“You like a bit of theater, Laurenç. After your mission to collect all the boots in Giverny, are you going to ask all the couples of the village if they were making love in their bed on the morning of the crime?”
“This is not a game, Stéphanie.”
Stéphanie’s voice suddenly assumes the tone of an angry teacher:
“I am well aware of that, Laurenç. So stop going on at me about this crime, this sordid investigation. That’s not what’s important. You’re ruining everything.”
She pulls away from him and runs off, almost slipping on the brick and straw tiles. She turns round, smiling again. Angel and demon.
“The kitchen!”
This time it’s blue that leaps out at Laurenç Sérénac. The blue of walls, the blue of the porcelain, every shade, from sky blue to turquoise.
Now Stéphanie sounds more like a market trader.
“Housewives in particular will appreciate the huge range of kitchen equipment: the copper pots, the faience from Rouen…”
“Stéphanie…”
She stands by the fireplace. Before Sérénac has time to react, her hands grab the lapels of his leather jacket.
“Inspector, let’s be clear. Let’s dot the i’s once and for all. My husband loves me. My husband is fond of me. My husband isn’t capable of hurting anyone. You need to find another suspect!”
“And what about you?”
Surprised, she relaxes her grip a little.
“What do you mean? Am I capable of hurting someone, is that what you’re asking me?”
Her mauve eyes open, revealing a shade that he hadn’t yet explored. Sérénac stammers, disturbed:
“N… no. I meant: what about you? Do you love him?”
“You’re becoming indiscreet, Inspector.”
She lets go of his jacket and plunges back into the dining room, the drawing room, the pantry. Laurenç follows her at a distance, no longer sure what attitude to adopt. From the pantry, a wooden staircase rises to the first floor. Stéphanie’s dress glides along the wooden steps as if polishing them.
Just before she disappears upstairs, she calls down a word. Just one word:
“Finally!”
38
Sylvio Bénavides is standing in the square in front of Rouen Cathedral. He hasn’t been back to Rouen for a long time, almost a year. Clutching his guide, he imagines that people will mistake him for a tourist. He doesn’t care. He has a meeting with the curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, one Achille Guillotin, in half an hour, but he has been careful to arrive early, as if to prepare himself psychologically and immerse himself in the Impressionist ambience of old Rouen.
He turns back toward the tourist office and consults his guide: it was from the first floor of this building that Claude Monet did most of his paintings of Rouen Cathedral, a total of twenty-eight, all different, depending on the time of day or the weather. In Monet’s time the tourist office was a clothes shop, and long before that it was Rouen’s principal landmark dating back to the Renaissance: the House of the Exchequer. Monet also painted the cathedral from different angles, from different houses in the square, some of which were destroyed in the war, on the Rue Grand Pont or the Rue du Gros Horloge.
Inspector Bénavides smiles as he imagines Claude Monet setting off at dawn with
his easels to the sleepy town houses, or installing himself all day, for months on end, in a ladies’ fashion emporium: all to paint the same building almost thirty times. People must have thought he was mad…
Although deep down, people admire madmen.
Sylvio goes back toward the cathedral. Yes, people admire madness. Even to admire this building is to acknowledge that he was right, whoever it was who came up with the idea of constructing such an unlikely monument, even though it would take five hundred years; that lunatic who no doubt insisted that the spire of his cathedral should be the highest in France, even if several thousand more workmen lost their lives in the process. At the time such a building site must have been like a slaughterhouse, but we forget. We always forget in the end. We forget the slaughterhouse, we forget the barbarism, and we admire the madness.
Sylvio consults his watch—he mustn’t dawdle if he doesn’t want to be late; he’s kept that schoolboy impulse of always arriving on time. He leaves the Place de la Cathédrale and passes under the arcades of the big shops. Rue des Carmes. The museum should be somewhere on the left, if he’s understood the map correctly. He turns into a narrow little street lined with half-timbered houses. He has always had trouble finding his way around the medieval center of Rouen. To him, the city seems like a kind of labyrinth designed by someone with a tortured mind. Maybe it was the same guy who wanted his cathedral to be the tallest in the country. An additional problem: Sylvio hasn’t been concentrating very hard on the route. Instead he has been obsessing over the idea that there’s something off about the Morval case. As if someone were pulling the strings, some Machiavellian Tom Thumb, leaving them clues in order to lead them wherever he wished. But who could it be?
Sylvio reaches Place du 19 Avril 1944. He hesitates for a moment and then turns sharply to the right, just as a buggy pushed by an energetic mother heads toward him. The mother rolls right over his foot without slowing down, while the inspector murmurs vague apologies.
Who?
Jacques Dupain? Amadou Kandy? Stéphanie Dupain? Patricia Morval?