The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne (19 page)

“The soul of the painting,” Verlaque offered. “Benjamin's word ‘aura' is apt.”

“Yes. But enter the twenty-first century, and 3-D printing.”

“
Merde
. I didn't think this would have a happy ending.”

“
Ah oui
,” she said. “Even van Gogh's own museum in Holland offers—free of charge—massive amounts of close-up scientific information of Vincent's oil paintings. We may yet come full circle and prove Walter Benjamin correct.”

“When reproductions become so good,” Verlaque said, “that the originals no longer have any value.”

“And at that moment the art market will collapse,” the commandante said. “And I'll be out of a job.”

She picked up a now-awake and yawning Jeanne and rocked her in her arms.

“Thank you for this meeting,” Verlaque said, uncrossing his legs to get up.

“No problem,” Commandante Barrès said. She looked down at his ankles and smiled. “Nice socks, by the way. I couldn't help but admire them.”

“Thank you,” Verlaque said, laughing.
They were a gift from my father, via Chiara, his Florentine girlfriend.
“My father gave them to me.”

“Missoni, right?” she asked. She pointed in the direction of Albert Kahn's beloved Japanese garden. “Like that woman's coat over there.”

R
ebecca Schultz was standing on a Japanese bridge, looking down into the water, when Verlaque caught up with her.

He coughed and she swung around. “Oh my God!” she gasped in English. She then did a half laugh and continued in French, “You're the last person I expected to see here. You startled me, Judge.”

He said nothing but held out his hand for her to shake.

“Have you been here before?” she asked, pulling off a green leather glove to shake his hand. “It's one of my favorite places in Paris.”

He stared at her, bewildered by her genuine surprise. Either that, or she was a great actress. “You didn't follow me here?” he asked.

This time she burst out laughing.

“Why do I believe you, and yet I have this crazy hunch that if I were to call my commissioner he would tell me that you took the same TGV as I did?”

The professor stopped smiling. “I took the 7:05 last night.”

“
Moi aussi
,” Verlaque replied.
My turn to smile.

She let out a bit of nervous laughter. “Well, at least we weren't on the same car. I would have seen you. I was in car eleven.”

“I was in thirteen.” Verlaque looked at Beauty. She was right; if she was in car 11 then he wouldn't have seen her, even on his way to buy the Cognac, as the bar was in car 14, right next to his. “You left your hotel without telling anyone.”

“Isn't that all right?” she asked. “You told me not to leave France, that's all.”

“You're to notify us of your movements.”

“Oops.”

It suddenly occurred to Verlaque that Rebecca Schultz may have gotten where she was partly due to her beauty. But it didn't work on him; he had seen plenty of beautiful women. His heart belonged to Marine. “Have you been in Paris the whole time?” he asked.

Schultz pulled her mohair scarf tighter around her neck. “No,” she answered. “Listen, can we go somewhere warm to talk?”

Verlaque looked at his watch. It was 12:25. In an apartment around the corner, Commandante Barrès would be feeding Jeanne. Hortense was more than likely eating alone, or perhaps with another maid, as his father usually ate lunch at his men's club.

“Should we get something to eat? It's lunchtime,” he said.

 • • • 

It had been years since he had been in a teppanyaki restaurant. The pure spectacle of it now embarrassed him, but as children, he and Sébastien loved it. He remembered their laughter as the tofu sizzled on the hot grill, then jumped up and flapped around, much like a fish does when it has been caught and
thrown onto the deck of a fishing boat. He must have been smiling as Rebecca Schultz said, “I hope you don't mind that I brought you here. I used to love this place as a kid.”

“You've been here before?” Verlaque asked as he looked around the simply furnished Japanese restaurant.
Today is a Japanese-themed day
, he thought.

“Many times,” she answered. “We used to borrow the pied-à-terre of friends of friends that was on this street. My parents may have had a great art collection, but they were careful not to spend their money on frivolous things like hotels. I usually stay down here. Besides, there didn't seem to be any hotel rooms available in central Paris.”

“That happens often,” he said. “So that's why you know about the Albert Kahn museum.”

“It was a favorite place of my mother's,” she said.

Verlaque saw that although the professor was smiling, her eyes were moist. “Why did you come to France?” he asked. “And don't say for research.”

She was about to answer when the cook appeared, both regal and frightening in his dark-blue kimono and leather knife holster. He bowed, drizzled oil onto the hot grill, and set six pieces of tofu down, which, as Verlaque remembered, began to jump and flip in midair. Schultz clapped her hands and then immediately brought them up to her face. “I'm sorry,” she cried out. “But the jumping tofu always got me!”

Verlaque laughed, too. “It's just as funny now as it was when I was ten,” he said.

“You're even more handsome when you laugh,” she said in English.

The cook set aside the tofu and carefully placed thin slices of rolled omelette on the grill, and Verlaque realized that their
conversation would be constantly interrupted by the spectacle of the teppanyaki chef. Had that been Rebecca Schultz's reason in choosing this restaurant? And here they sat, side by side. Verlaque had to turn most of his upper body to look at her; had they been sitting at an intimate table for two he still wouldn't have answered her flirtatious comment, but here he didn't have to, as they had the spectacle to watch. Slices of eggplant were now sizzling as the chef quickly flipped them back and forth, his spatula making rhythmic scraping sounds against the stainless steel grill.

“Sorry for being so brash,” she said, twisting a large silver cuff, studded with turquoise, along her wrist. “Where were we before my ill-timed flirt?”

“You were going to tell me why you're here.”

“I came because Cézanne had a mistress, and I'm fairly close to determining who she was.”

“The affair in 1885.”

“Well done,” she answered. “And knowing what I know about the artist, I'm convinced he painted her.”

Verlaque didn't reply but let her carry on. It was a trick that one of his law professors had taught him, and one of the only things about law school that he had retained. That, and an appreciation for whiskey that he had developed the semester he spent in Edinburgh.

“I had been to René Rouquet's apartment earlier in the evening,” she said. “I lied before.”

“Ah,” he replied, turning to look at her.

“I arrived at René's apartment at around seven p.m. and rang his buzzer. To my surprise, he answered. I had expected Cézanne's former apartment to be owned by a pair of nobles, or by an obsessed artist, not him.”

“Retired postman.”

“Ah yes, that
is
what he looked like,” she said. “I told him who I was, and that I was writing a biography on Cézanne, and he let me come up.”

“Probably because he
was
a retired postman,” Verlaque suggested. “And not a count.”

Schultz smiled. “You're probably right. He made me a cup of instant coffee, and the more questions I asked about Cézanne, the more fidgety he got. Especially when I raised the date 1885.”

“He didn't show you anything?”

“No, but I could tell he had more information. Or something he was hiding.”

Verlaque leaned back as the chef served them their first course. “Do you like sake?” he asked. “I don't feel like drinking tap water.”

“I loathe it.”

“Good, so do I.” He picked up the menu, motioned over a waiter, and pointed to a white Burgundy.

“My parents used to order the sake,” she said, “until one evening my father made this funny face and said to my mother, ‘Judy, I just can't stand this stuff!'”

Verlaque laughed again, taking a piece of tofu with his chopsticks and dipping it into soy sauce. “I've never been to Japan,” he said. “But I would imagine there's great sake there.”

“I haven't been there, either,” she said. “It always surprised me that my parents never went, given the influence of Japanese prints on modern art. But they really couldn't stand being out of the East Village, especially my dad. Every Saturday they would do a tour of the small galleries, always on the lookout for new talent. It was more than a hobby for them; it
was a passion.” She smiled as she leaned her elbows on the lacquered counter, playing with her chopsticks, lost in thought.

“You have such palpable love for your parents.” He took a piece of omelette, paused, and set it back on his plate. “It's admirable.”

Rebecca looked at the judge and imagined she saw a cloud hovering over his barrel chest and wide shoulders. Family troubles? He seemed to her to be the classic wealthy Frenchman who had been ignored by his parents. “I'd do anything for them,” she said.

 • • • 

The wine and the good food were having their effect on Rebecca Schultz; she was finally warm, and slightly dizzy. “I have another confession to make,” she said as she watched the chef expertly cook her cod and Verlaque's tuna.

Her beauty had not gone unnoticed by the two young Japanese French waiters who hovered around her, at the ready with the wine bottle or carafe of water. Verlaque watched them, amused. “
Ah bon?
” he said, motioning to one of the waiters with his wineglass that had been empty for some time.

“I was upstairs, at Edmund Lydgate's, when you lunched there on Sunday. So I know about the painting.”

Verlaque set his wineglass down and looked at her.

“I was going to tell you,” she quickly said. She leaned back as the chef placed a rectangular ceramic plate in front of her, fish on one side and thinly sliced vegetables on the other. She asked, “What do you know about Mr. Lydgate?”

“Worked as a high-end art auctioneer for years,” Verlaque said. “Now drinks too much in the Luberon. That's about it. My commissioner is looking into his history.”

“He knew my parents,” she said. “They were often called into Sotheby's to estimate the value of paintings. They didn't trust him, nor do I.”

“Go on.”

“He has this long-winded, emotionally charged version of why he quit the auction house,” she said. “But I think it was because he was linked to an art theft. Though it was never proven. For years—no, decades—an extended family from Long Island has been in charge of the handling of art and antiques at the auction house,” she went on. “It's a well-paid, comfortable job that these guys are sort of born into.”

“
Les Cols Rouges
,” Verlaque said.

“Pardon?”

“We have the same system here, at Drouot. The men who handle and store the art are Savoyards. Always have been.”

“And the ‘red collars'?” she asked. “Is that their uniform?”

“Exactly. It's hundreds of years old.”

“Well,” Rebecca said, smiling, “I think these guys—most of them are from the Bolibar family—probably wear blue jeans. But they're French, too, or at least their origins are. Anyway, a few years ago a New York surgeon died and the Bolibars arrived, as they usually do, to pack up and catalogue the art that would be auctioned.”

“And let me guess,” Verlaque said. “They helped themselves to a few pieces?”

“Yes. They took some Raoul Dufy prints, a Picasso drawing, an Eileen Gray desk—the real thing, not a re-edition—and a small Degas sculpture. One of the ballerinas.”

“How were they caught?”

“The surgeon had, luckily, shown his collection to a junior member of the auction staff just weeks before. It's hard to
remember all of the art that passes through these places, believe it or not—”

“I believe it.”

“But she had done her MA thesis on Eileen Gray's furniture, and so remembered the desk.”

Verlaque wiped his mouth with his napkin and set it down, leaning back. “Where does Lydgate fit in?”

“My parents said that the Bolibars chose pieces that were valuable and that would be easy to sell,” she said. “As if they had an advisor. Someone who would have seen the collection earlier, or who went with them.”

“Someone from the auction house, and someone who could help them sell that stuff.”

“Right,” Rebecca answered, finishing what was left of her wine. “They'd been stealing for years, and in a warehouse on Long Island their ‘holdings' were found. Crates and crates of art and antiques. Once they were caught, the trail of their sales was stupefying. One of them used his earnings to buy six studio apartments in Manhattan. Another sold two Picassos to open a chain of pubs. They drove Porsches and Lexuses.”

“Were you hoping to meet Lydgate when you came to France?”

“Yes. I brought his number in Gordes with me. He knows a lot about art—my parents confirmed that for me, even if they didn't like him. So I called him and asked if I could visit. He told me that he was giving a lunch party for a judge, so I knew it was you.”

“And was he able to shed some light on Cézanne?” Verlaque asked.

“Well, I couldn't see the painting,” she answered. “But we talked about it after you had left. He didn't think it was a
genuine Cézanne, and he talked about the canvas in vague terms, the kind of stuff my first-year students say.”

“That sounds surprising.”

“Yes. So either he's forgotten all he knows about modern art, or he didn't want to tell me.”

“I'd go with the latter.”