Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  “No. She had an abortion.”

  “Do you know that, or is that what she told you?”

  “It’s what she told me. But I guess she wasn’t the kind of woman who would dream of becoming a single mother at the age of twenty-two.”

  “Was Morval aware of this?”

  “Yes. He used his contacts in the medical world and paid for everything, according to her.”

  “So, let’s go back to the beginning, then. We haven’t got any closer to a motive for murder.”

  More footsteps echo in the hospital corridor. The siren of an ambulance wails in the distance. Bénavides waits for a moment before he starts talking again.

  “Except that the child would now be ten or eleven years old.”

  “There is no child—she had an abortion.”

  “Yes, but what if…”

  “There is no child, Sylvio.”

  “Perhaps she was lying.”

  “Then why tell you that she was pregnant at all?”

  A long silence. Bénavides’s voice is slightly louder.

  “Perhaps she wasn’t the only one?”

  “The only one what?”

  “The only one who fell pregnant by Jérôme Morval.”

  Another long silence, then Bénavides goes on.

  “I’m thinking, for example, about the fifth mistress, the one in Morval’s sitting room, the girl in the blue smock that we haven’t been able to identify. Perhaps if we could crack that puzzle, then those damn numbers on the back of the photographs…”

  Down the line, Sérénac hears footsteps approaching, as if the chief nurse were running down the corridor to tell Inspector Bénavides that his nonsense had gone on long enough.

  “Christ, you disturb me, Sylvio, with your twisted hypotheses and your stupid columns.”

  He sighs.

  “Let’s try to get some sleep. We’ll be up early tomorrow morning for a dip in the river in Giverny. Don’t forget your fishing net.”

  DAY TEN

  May 22, 2010

  (Moulin des Chennevières)

  Tributary

  46

  Back then, whoever built the mill, and particularly the keep in the middle, must already have had the idea at the back of their mind: the ability to survey the whole village from the fourth-floor window. Call it what you like, that tower just above the treetops—a lookout post, a watchtower, or a concierge—one thing is certain: along with the church tower, it’s the best observation point in Giverny. An unassailable view of the whole village, of the meadow practically all the way to Nettles Island, of the brook as far as Monet’s garden and, as I’m sure you can imagine, it is above all the best and most discreet of ringside seats from which to view the crime scene. The crime scene relating to Jérôme Morval, I mean.

  Look at them right now, for example: with their trousers rolled up in the stream, the police don’t really look all that clever. Barefoot. No boots… They must be traumatized. Even the deputy, Sylvio Bénavides, is wading in the water. Inspector Sérénac is the only policeman who has stayed on the bank; he’s talking to a curious character with glasses who is putting strange instruments in the river and pouring sand into funnels that fit inside one another.

  Neptune is there too, of course; he doesn’t miss a thing, as you can imagine. He moves from one fern to the next, sniffing heaven knows what. As soon as there’s some activity going on, that dog is content. And I think he may now have spotted that Inspector Sérénac is indulgent to a fault, and doesn’t stint with his stroking.

  Now obviously I’m mocking them slightly, but it isn’t at all stupid on the part of the police to dredge the river. Except that they ought to have thought of it before. You will deduce from this that these provincial officers aren’t very quick; it’s an easy criticism to make. But don’t forget, also, that the handsome inspector in charge of this operation has had his thoughts elsewhere. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the river isn’t the first thing he’d like to make a move on. But you know, when you’re just an old witch who never talks to anyone, there’s not much point in making jokes to yourself. So I just go on spying in silence from behind my curtain.

  47

  The three officers from Vernon are sieving the material dredged from the bed of the brook. One and a half square inches at a time. They aren’t very convinced. The mayor of Giverny has informed them that the river is cleaned every month by the council’s environment officers. “It’s the least we can do,” he added. “That tiny brook lays claim to the title of the first Impressionist river in France! That deserves some special treatment.”

  The mayor wasn’t lying. The dredging officers have found very little detritus in the mud at the bottom. Some greaseproof paper, some soda capsules, some chicken bones…

  And to think that all that crap will be examined by the forensic police.

  Sylvio Bénavides is struggling to keep his eyelids open. He says to himself that if it goes on like this, he’s likely to fall asleep right here, in the water. He thinks these things happen very quickly. You doze off and, with a bit of bad luck, you hit your head on a stone, not very serious in itself, but it’s enough to knock you out, enough to allow your head to slip into the water, beneath the water, and in the end you drown.

  Sylvio is having dark thoughts this morning. After putting the phone down on Laurenç Sérénac yesterday, he couldn’t get to sleep. The nurses wanted him to go home, but that was out of the question. Being a police officer gives you certain privileges. He spent the night watching Béatrice sleep, and dozing on two chairs, opposite some posters warning against the dangers of cigarettes and alcohol for pregnant women. He had time to think and rethink his damned three columns, which are still as compartmentalized as before.

  Lovers, Water Lilies, children.

  What is he supposed to think about those legendary black Water Lilies? Amadou Kandy must be aware of them, of course. Morval must have been too. And what about the accident involving that little boy, Albert Rosalba, in 1937? What about that postcard written for an eleven-year-old child, illustrated with a picture of the Water Lilies and a quote from Louis Aragon? And why Aragon? Because what could that quote, “the crime of dreaming, I agree to its creation,” possibly mean? And why were there numbers on the back of the photographs of Morval’s mistresses? He guesses, he senses, that all of these pieces fit together, that he mustn’t ignore any of them, they are all important.

  He observes Sérénac. It isn’t easy to determine whether his boss is concentrating on the sedimentologist’s method of dating the samples, or whether he just isn’t interested in the operation at all. The problem is that the jigsaw approach isn’t really his boss’s thing. Sérénac would be more inclined to tug on only one of the many threads in this tangled situation, and to tug very hard. Sylvio feels that this isn’t the solution, that it will only confuse matters still further, and that Sérénac risks having the thread slip between his fingers.

  Sylvio notices that Louvel has just scraped the mud off his third plastic bottle. The royal river of Impressionism isn’t as squeaky clean once you start digging down to its depths. The sedimentologist analyzes all the pieces of exhumed evidence with systematic professionalism, establishing in turn that if it didn’t know Claude Monet in his lifetime, it wasn’t acquainted with Jérôme Morval’s corpse either.

  Sylvio thinks about Sérénac again. It isn’t for want of trying to explain his thoughts to his boss. And Sérénac does agree with everything, his three columns, the mysteries, the whole confused mess of it all. But that doesn’t keep him from locking himself up in his intuition: as far as he’s concerned everything revolves around Stéphanie Dupain. The teacher is in danger. That danger has a name: Jacques Dupain. He can’t seem to get away from that idea. Objectively, if he examines the facts, Sylvio thinks that the teacher fits the profile of a suspect every bit as much as that of a potential victim. He said as much to Sérénac, but the pig-headed southerner seems to prefer following his instinct rather than the facts. Wh
at can Sylvio do about it then?

  He thought about it a lot last night. Sylvio is like Béatrice; deep down, he rather likes Sérénac. Paradoxically, however different they might be, he enjoys being paired up with him. Perhaps it’s a question of them complementing one another. But he has a strange sense that Sérénac won’t stay in Vernon for long. Transfer express, by the look of it. In the north, intuition isn’t the favored method. Particularly when that intuition is being influenced less by what’s going on in his brain than what’s going on in his trous—

  “I think I’ve got something!”

  It was Officer Louvel who shouted. All the police immediately gather around.

  Louvel plunges both hands into the sand and brings out a flat, rectangular object. The sedimentologist holds out a plastic box so that the sand can flow into it. Gradually they begin to see what the policeman is holding in his hand.

  Louvel has found a wooden paint box.

  Sylvio sighs. They’ve drawn a blank, yet again, he thinks. Some painter must have dropped it there, after painting too close to the river. It could belong to anybody at all. It’s certainly not Morval’s, who collected paintings but didn’t paint them.

  Louvel sets his find down on the bank while the sedimentologist pours the sand that covered the paint box into his sieves and funnels.

  “How long has it been there?” asks Maury, who is interested in such things.

  The sedimentologist examines a dial in the smallest of the funnels.

  “Less than ten days, no more than that. It fell into the brook yesterday at the latest and probably the day of Morval’s murder at the earliest… It rained on May seventeenth and the alluvial deposits swept down by the shower are typical. They come from upstream, and it hasn’t rained since then. I’d allow myself a margin of five days before and five days after that date.”

  Sylvio steps toward the bank. He’s intrigued by this discovery now. So the paint box has been silting up in the stream for ten days at the most… The date it was left there might correspond to the murder. Sérénac has come over too.

  “Please, Sylvio,” says Sérénac. “Be my guest. You deserve to be the first to open this treasure,” he adds, winking at his deputy. “But we’ll share out the booty in five equal parts.”

  “Like pirates?”

  “Exactly.”

  Ludovic Maury laughs behind them. Inspector Bénavides doesn’t need to be asked twice, and lifts the paint box right up in front of his nose. The wood is old, lacquered, curiously undamaged in spite of its sojourn in the water. Only the iron hinges look rusty. Sylvio deciphers what looks like a faded trademark, WINSOR & NEWTON, inscribed in capital letters beneath a logo showing a kind of winged dragon. In smaller letters is a subtitle: The World’s Finest Professional Art Materials. He isn’t sure, but Bénavides imagines that it’s a prestigious brand, possibly English or American; he’ll have to check.

  “So,” Sérénac says impatiently, “are you going to open that box? We want to know what’s inside. Doubloons, jewels, a map of Eldorado…”

  Ludovic Maury bursts out laughing again. It isn’t easy to know whether he really appreciates the boss’s sense of humor, or whether he’s just laying it on thick. Sylvio, in no particular hurry, works at the rusted hinges, making them squeak. The box opens almost as if it were new, as if it had been used only yesterday. Sylvio expects to find brushes, tubes of paint, a palette, perhaps a sponge. Nothing special…

  Good God!

  Inspector Bénavides nearly drops the box into the stream. Good God… His head is spinning. And what if he has been wrong from the beginning, and Sérénac is right?

  His fingers tense on the wood.

  “Bloody hell, Chief! Quickly, come and see this.”

  Sérénac takes a step forward. Maury and Louvel too. Sylvio Bénavides holds the box open in front of their eyes. The policemen stare at the wooden frame with the fearful contemplation of Orthodox Christians in front of a Byzantine icon.

  They all read the same message, carved into the pale wood of the box: She’s mine, here, now and for ever.

  The engraved text is followed by two carved notches. A cross. A death threat.

  “Christ alive!” yells Inspector Sérénac. “Someone threw this box into the stream less than ten days ago. Perhaps even on the day that Morval was murdered!”

  He wipes the sweat away from his forehead with his sleeve.

  “Sylvio, find me an expert in graphology this minute, and compare this message with the handwriting of all the cuckolds in the village. And put Jacques Dupain at the top of the list!”

  Sérénac looks at his watch. It’s 11:30 a.m.

  “And I want that done before this evening!”

  The chief gazes for a long time at the washhouse in front of them. As his excitement subsides, he smiles at the four men surrounding him.

  “Well played, guys! Let’s finish the search of the river quickly and clear the area. I think we’ve found the biggest fish hiding there.”

  He raises a thumb toward Maury.

  “That was one hell of a bright idea you had there, Ludo. Dredging the river. We have some evidence, guys. At last!”

  Maury can’t help it. He grins like a child who’s been given a gold star. For his part, Sylvio Bénavides is habitually suspicious of such premature enthusiasm. For his boss, “she’s mine, here, now and for ever” can only refer to a woman, and the threat must have been written by a jealous husband, ideally Jacques Dupain. But, Sylvio thinks, the “she” could refer to anyone, even a child of eleven, not necessarily a woman. It could even, at a pinch, be a painting.

  The policemen go on methodically searching the river, with less and less conviction. They unearth only a few more objects. Gently, the sun turns, casting the shadow of the Moulin des Chennevières over the crime scene as the officers are preparing to leave. Before they go, Sylvio Bénavides looks up several times at the tower: he could have sworn he saw a curtain moving near the top, on the fourth floor. A moment later he dismisses the thought. He has other things on his mind.

  48

  “Does Claude Monet have heirs? Living ones, I mean?”

  Chief Inspector Laurentin’s question surprises Achille Guillotin. The retired chief inspector didn’t beat about the bush, according to what the secretary of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen told him. Laurentin had phoned the museum and asked to speak to their top specialist on Claude Monet. Which is Achille Guillotin. The secretary had rushed to get hold of him on his mobile. He was in a committee meeting with the general council charged with overseeing operation “Impressionist Normandy.” Another endless meeting. He was almost pleased to come out into the corridor and take the call.

  “Heirs of Claude Monet… Well, Chief Inspector, it’s hard to say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Claude Monet had two children with his first wife, Camille Doncieux: Jean and Michel. Jean would later marry Blanche, the daughter of his second wife, Alice Hoschedé. Jean died in 1914, Blanche in 1947, and the couple had no children. Michel Monet died in 1966, so he was Claude Monet’s last living heir. A few years before his death, in his will, Michel Monet appointed the Musée Marmottan, that is, the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as his sole legatee. The museum is still home to the Monet collection, which includes more than a hundred and twenty paintings. It is the most important collection of—”

  “So no heirs,” Laurentin cuts in. “Claude Monet’s descendants died out in a single generation.”

  “Not entirely,” Guillotin specifies with obvious delight.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Guillotin leaves a moment of suspense, and then says:

  “Michel Monet had an illegitimate daughter with his lover, Gabrielle Bonaventure, a ravishing woman who worked as a model. Michel finally made their relationship official, and married Gabrielle Bonaventure in Paris in 1931, after his father’s death.”

  Chief Inspector Laurentin explodes down the telephone:

  “Surely in that ca
se, the illegitimate daughter is the last heir? She would be Claude Monet’s granddaughter?”

  “No,” Guillotin replies calmly. “Strangely, Michel Monet never acknowledged his illegitimate daughter, even after his marriage. So she’s never touched so much as a penny of her father’s fabulous inheritance.”

  Chief Inspector Laurentin’s voice goes blank.

  “And what was the name of this illegitimate daughter?”

  Guillotin sighs.

  “You can find her name in any book about Monet. She was called Henriette. Henriette Bonaventure. In fact, I don’t know why I’m using the past tense. She must still be alive; at least, I think she is.”

  49

  Four thirty-one p.m. On the dot.

  Fanette doesn’t waste a second. She bolts out of school and turns into Rue Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, then runs straight to the Hôtel Baudy. She knows that’s where American painters stayed in Monet’s day—Robinson, Butler, Stanton Young. She knows the story; the teacher told her. That must be where an American painter would stay today. She glances at the green tables and chairs on the terrace opposite, then whirls into the hotel.

  The walls are covered with pictures, both paintings and drawings. You would think you were in a museum. Fanette realizes it’s the first time she’s been in the Hôtel Baudy. She would like to have the time to study the prestigious signatures in the poster corner, but a waiter is looking at her from behind his counter. Fanette walks over to him. It’s a very tall counter of pale-colored oak, and Fanette has to stand on tiptoe so that her head peeps over the top. The man has a long black beard, and looks a bit like the portraits of Renoir that Monet painted.

  Fanette speaks quickly, she stumbles and stammers, but in the end Renoir seems to understand that the little girl is looking for an American painter, “James”—no, she doesn’t know his surname. Old, with a white beard. He had four easels.

  Renoir looks apologetic.