The Cézanne Chase (35 page)

“He said many things that were not true.” Margueritte responded with the usual intolerance she attached to all references to Frédéric Weisbord. “I knew him all too well, and it's why I haven't set foot in this house since his wife passed away.” Margueritte took quick inventory of the rooms connected to the hall, then said to Idi, “I've come for a painting Monsieur Weisbord took from me.”

Emily moved abreast of Idi, and now she and Margueritte flanked the housekeeper. Margueritte said, “The painting is a portrait of a man,”—she held her hands apart—“so big, and in a frame. Have you seen it?”

Idi's hand shot up, pointing to the floor above. “He put it over his bed, a man with a dark beard.” Idi nodded. “But it's not there. It's gone.”

Margueritte reacted sharply. “How do you mean, it's gone?”

“It's not there any more,” and her hands waved again. “I didn't go
to his bedroom until—I think it was Monday, and he died Friday evening in his office just over there.” She waved in the direction of the office. “They asked me to find his best suit to bury him in—that's when I saw that the painting was gone.”

“Have you looked for it?” Margueritte asked anxiously.

Idi shook her head. “I didn't like it enough to care if it was on the wall or not.”

“Perhaps he put it in his office. Take me there.”

Idi guided Margueritte and Emily into the room that had been unused for a week, the air redolent with stale tobacco smoke. They looked everywhere the painting might have been concealed, but in minutes it became obvious the hunt was futile. “Could it still be in the bedroom?” Margueritte asked.

They paraded up the stairs to Weisbord's bedroom, and all three looked through closets and in a high, wide armoire; then they hunted in the other bedrooms, then back to Weisbord's bedroom. Idi pointed to a picture hook on the wall above the bed. “That's where he put it.”

Margueritte's eyes darted from closets to bureau then down to the bed, which had been neatly made with a thick spread pulled tightly over a mound of pillows. She sat on the bed and ran her hand over the spread as if it were possible the painting was beneath the covers. “Look under the bed, Emily. We haven't tried there.”

Emily got on her knees and probed under the bed. “I've got something,” she said, and pulled out the frame.

Margueritte knelt beside Emily, the empty frame in front of her on the floor. “That's the one.” She glanced at Emily then up at Idi, her eyes sad. “Why would he take the painting out of the frame?”

“There was a man,” Idi began, “who said he was a friend. He came that night to surprise Monsieur Weisbord. He had a bottle of wine. A present, he said.”

“What did he look like?” Margueritte asked.

“Tall, I remember,” Idi said, her eyes closed, testing her memory. “He had brown hair and a bandage on one ear, and he carried a strange kind of bag under his arm; it was long and round.”

“Was he French?”

Idi shook her head. “He spoke French, but with an accent I don't know.”

“Scandinavian?” Margueritte asked, then spoke several heavily accented sentences. “Like that?” she asked Idi.

Idi thought for a moment. “Maybe that way.”

“It was Peder,” Margueritte said to Emily. “I want to go to the office again.”

Emily carried the frame, and they returned to Weisbord's office where they were assaulted with a new odor, a sweet, artificial smell of flowers, the kind made strong and bottled into cheap cologne. Seated in Weisbord's oversized chair was LeToque, his black hair combed slickly across the edges of his forehead and over the tips of his high cheekbones. One eye was still red and moist, yet on the rest of his thin face was a supercilious, smug expression. Standing beside him was Gaby, wearing a short skirt and black stockings and emitting the
grande-odeur
.

“Why are you here?” Idi demanded.

“To have the Italian
putain
cook for us.”

Idi grasped a glass paperweight from the desk and raised it over her head, “You bastard, call me a whore—I curse your family, everyone!”

“I hope you do.” He mixed the words with a high-pitched giggle, then jumped up and grabbed the paperweight from Idi's hand. “They are shit, and you can put a curse on them all, my father first.” He looked insolently at Margueritte. “Do you have business here?”

“Of course I have business,” Margueritte said. “Monsieur Weisbord was my lawyer, his wife a dear friend. I have been here many times.” She sized up the young man as brash and potentially dangerous.

“I have business, too. Money. I got sixty thousand francs coming.”

“A good deal of money,” Margueritte said. “How did you earn so much?”

“That was between me and the old man,” LeToque said.

“But Weisbord is dead, and there will be no money unless you file a claim against his estate. You'll need proof he owed you money.”

He shook his head. “What fucking business do you have with Weisbord?”

Margueritte bristled, then revised her assessment of LeToque, seeing him now as insecure and unable to understand why he was unlikely to collect any money owed him by Weisbord. “My business is to recover a painting Weisbord took from me.”

“He had a painting that he was going to sell in Geneva.” LeToque pushed away from the table. “I drove him to the gallery and was with him when he made arrangements. They said it would sell for 250 million francs.”

“Where did you last see it?”

“In Weisbord's bedroom. He hung it over his bed like a goddamned crucifix.”

“It's gone. We found the frame under the bed.”

“The bastard Aukrust—he took it. He was here the night Weisbord died.”

“He said he'd kill me,” Gaby chimed in excitedly. “He pointed a knife at me.” She put a finger on her throat.

“No, no,” Margueritte protested, “that isn't his way. I know him. He's gentle and—”

“He's gentle like a wild-ass bull. Look here at my eyes, still red from what he sprayed over me. And he put a piece of glass through a pal's hand. He killed Weisbord is what I think.”

Margueritte sat in the chair next to the desk. “Could you find him?”

“I'm here to get what Weisbord owed me. There's silver and china and other paintings I can sell.”

“You won't take a spoon from this house,” Idi glowered.

Margueritte said, “Find the painting, and I'll pay you ten thousand francs.”

“Ten? I'm owed sixty.”

Margueritte shook her head. “I knew that old lawyer all too well. You won't collect one franc.”

LeToque's eyes darted from Gaby to Margueritte. “And what do I get if I can't find it?”

“Prove that you tried, and I'll pay you five thousand francs.”

O
xby's penchant for operating independently was shaken a bit when Elliott Heston sent his inspector a memorandum in which the service's stricture on investigation procedure was cited; specifically, that a second officer is required during an official interrogation. It was a mild reprimand, accompanied by a note something to the effect that it was unlikely another warning would be necessary. Heston had also asked Oxby to kindly inform him of any unilateral action he had taken in the Vulcan case but that he had “inadvertently” failed to report. Heston's notes were brief, the scoldings never personal. Oxby did what he always did with these memorandums. He crumpled this one into a small ball and lobbed it into a wastebasket.

The loss of the photographs preyed on Oxby's mind. It was more than what the photographs might have shown; it was the fact that whoever spilled acid over the negatives was also responsible for destroying the paintings—or so it was becoming apparent to Oxby. A workable hypothesis, he thought. There was also the strong suggestion that Pinkster knew much more than he had admitted. And what of Sailor, whose autopsy showed he had had a ravaged liver and an ulcerated stomach but had died from a fractured skull? Perhaps it was just as well that Heston had reminded him of protocol and that Sergeant Browley was accompanying him on his visit with Ian Shelbourne. Perhaps he would be able to concentrate on what he wanted to learn.

Ian Paul Shelbourne was a man of forty, a bit paunchy, with prematurely gray hair, pale blue eyes, white skin, and was dressed in faded jeans and sweater. He spoke in a soft monotone and suggested that the interview be conducted in his portrait studio, where they settled on an odd pair of chairs, with Shelbourne perched on a piano bench in front of the powder-blue scrim where his subjects sat for their portraits. With clothes, hair, and eyes nearly the same color as the background, it seemed that Shelbourne might actually disappear. Too many hours in the darkroom, Oxby thought.

Oxby began the questioning. “How long have you known Alan Pinkster?”

“Five years, I suppose. Or six. About that.”

“How did you get to know him?”

“We were introduced shortly after he bought the house in Bletchingly. We rarely saw each other for a year or so, but then we're not exactly in the same socioeconomic sphere. Several years later I got an assignment from
Country Life
to cover the party he gave after his house had been redecorated. That's when he announced his plans to build his art gallery and when I got the idea to make a photodocumentary of the construction, from groundbreaking to dedication. He thought it was a good idea and gave me a contract.”

“Did that help overcome the fact you were not in the same socioeconomic sphere?”

“Not exactly, though we became more friendly.”

“Are you the official photographer of the Pinkster gallery?”

“I suppose, but only informally.”

“Was it unusual for Mr. Pinkster to ask to see your photographs before they were shown to Clarence Boggs or David Blaney?”

Shelbourne thought briefly about the questions. “He would occasionally ask to see my photographs before I submitted them to Blaney.”

“Do you have a personal relationship with Mr. Pinkster?”

“I'm not sure what you mean by ‘personal.' ”

“Do you see him socially?”

“I said we are not in the same—”

“Sphere, I think you said. Even so, did you see him socially at all? Twice a month—twice a year?”

“Something in between, I would say.”

“Would you say that you are personal friends?”

 

“You're perfectly right, Mr. Shelbourne. It may have absolutely nothing to do with the negatives. It seems I get going on questions sometimes and ... well, forgive me.”

“I understand,” Shelbourne said.

“About the negatives. Miss Browley asked David Blaney to order a complete set of photographs, and I understand he called to give you that order. But you were away on an assignment. Can you tell me the nature of that assignment?”

“Photographs of new manufacturing facilities at the Oxford Fabrics Company.”

“Where is that located?”

“In Ashton. Outside of Manchester.”

“That's not far away. Was it a difficult assignment?”

“The assignment was straightforward, it was the weather that was difficult.”

“How is that?”

“We were washed out by rain for nearly a week.”

“Do you recall the dates?”

“Sometime in the middle of the month.”

“You were gone for quite a while. Two weeks, or was it longer?”

“I also had a personal matter pending at that time.”

“Exactly when did you discover that your shop had been broken into?”

“As you can see, I'm not terribly good about dates, except that it all happened on a Saturday, and Christmas wasn't too far off. I don't offhand know what date that would be.”

Ann supplied the answer. “The fifteenth.”

“Yes, I remember now, that was the date. But it was the seventeenth, Monday, when I learned from Blaney that he wanted another set of prints. That's when I discovered someone had broken into my dark-room.”

“When did you tell David Blaney about it?”

“I think on the next day, Tuesday.”

“Weren't you alarmed to discover the negatives had been ruined?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you notify the police?”

“Not right away.”

“Why was that?”

“Looking back on it, I don't know why. Foolish that I didn't.”

“Who did you tell?”

“Blaney. And I told Alan Pinkster.”

“Was he upset?”

“He was sorry that someone had broken into my shop, but when I told him the only damage was to negatives of the tour group he didn't seem terribly upset.” Shelbourne returned to the bench and sat.

“Did Pinkster seem surprised that someone went to a considerable effort to destroy only those negatives?”

“He didn't say anything to that effect.”

“Why do you suppose someone would want to destroy pictures of a group of Danes?”

“I haven't any idea, Inspector. I'm so relieved that nothing else was damaged that I haven't given it much thought.”

“Did Pinkster know that we had requested a duplicate set of the photographs?”

“I don't believe I ever told him. Blaney might have said something.”

Oxby said, “I want you to recall the group that went through the gallery. There were about twenty-five, and all were from the Danish embassy in London. Do you remember anything about them?”