The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne (6 page)

The bell rang again and Manon heard Clara groan.

“Your customer, Clara,” Suzette said. “I'm busy with La Baronne de Montille's order for her ball next week.”

“But I got here at seven o'clock,” Clara said, rubbing the small of her back.

“Go and ask Mme Michaud for a break,” Manon whispered. “I'll take the next customer.”

“But Amandine will write it down in her little notebook,” Clara complained.

“Don't worry about Amandine's notebooks. She's probably just writing down the sales figures,” Manon said. “You go.”

Clara thanked her and Manon looked up and saw a short man with receding hair and a thick beard. He wore a red cotton sash—a
taiolo
—around his waist, marking him as a true Provençaux, and carried a beaten leather satchel. “I'll have a galette des rois, please,” he said. Before Manon could speak, he went on, “A brioche one. I have no time for those Parisian almond paste fancies.”

Manon nodded. “Right away, sir.”

“You're Philippe's kid sister, aren't you?” he asked.

Manon blushed to hear herself referred to as a kid. “Yes, I'm Manon.”

“Give him my regards. I'm Paul. I've painted a few times with your brother.”

Manon smiled. “You're also a friend of M. Zola's,” she said, carefully placing his brioche in a box.

The client nodded then put his hand up. “Save the fancy box for someone else,” he said. “Just put my cake in some paper.”

“
Oui
, Monsieur—”

“Cézanne.”

and a Painting

A
ntoine Verlaque set his pen down and looked at what he had just written. Months ago he had begun writing short stories, a few paragraphs at a time. No one knew. He wrote in English; it wasn't his mother tongue, but he was bilingual and had been inspired after reading an essay about Samuel Beckett, who wrote his plays not in his native tongue but in French. The reason surprised, and delighted, the judge: Beckett claimed that writing in French gave his prose a roughness, an imperfection, which he liked. It suited his plays.

It was late and Verlaque knew he should be in bed. He looked at the framed photo on his desk: a black and white of Marine and him. Marine's best friend, Sylvie, had taken it while the three of them vacationed together on the Île Sordou. When Sylvie had thrust her small Leica into their faces, Verlaque had assumed she was using color film; it was summer and they were
on a Mediterranean island—blues and greens abounded. But it had stormed the night before and the sky was—rare for summer—cloudy, and the sea choppy, and so Sylvie, who made a comfortable living as an art photographer, had wisely chosen black and white. The tops of their heads were cut off, which only made the portrait more intense; the viewer's gaze, instead of focused on their hair, or the background, was instead forced to examine Marine's and Verlaque's faces. They were both smiling, and laughing. As a child Antoine Verlaque had rarely smiled in photos, much to the chagrin of his beloved grandmother Emmeline. He now knew why he hadn't smiled in those photographs: to show his parents that he was not happy. M. and Mme Verlaque had failed to give their two sons the love and affection they so desperately needed. Whether they had noticed their son's expressionless face in family photos he didn't know. But Emmeline and Charles, his paternal grandparents, certainly had.

He stared at Marine's face in the photo and tried to read it. Was she unhappy? She was laughing, but then Marine always laughed around Sylvie. When they began dating, Sylvie's presence had been a thorn in Verlaque's side; he was jealous of the deep relationship and easiness the two women shared. It took him a year or more to realize that Marine needed Sylvie's craziness to balance her own calm, at times overly considerate, selflessness. Verlaque grew to appreciate—even love—Sylvie when he realized that they were alike: both bossy, and opinionated, and in some weird way both vying for Marine's love and attention. That week on Sordou taught him that Sylvie was not a threat; Marine was in fact stronger than the two of them, and it took both Sylvie Grassi and Antoine Verlaque to balance Marine Bonnet's steadfast and honest character.

He got up and closed the cover of his notebook and turned off the desk lamp. Tomorrow would be a new day, and he'd do anything to make things right again with Marine. She'd love, too, the story of old René and his supposed Cézanne painting. Verlaque walked into the bathroom to change and remembered that Marine's father, Dr. Anatole Bonnet, was somewhat of a Cézanne aficionado. Perhaps he would invite Marine and her parents over for dinner.

He began to unbutton his shirt as he stared at Pierre Soulages's large black textured painting; each time he did this he saw something new in it. Tonight, the artist's thick brushstrokes, reaching across the immense canvas vertically and then crisscrossing horizontally, reminded Verlaque of the bare branches of Provence's plane trees in winter. He stopped unbuttoning as he heard a ringing coming from the kitchen. Running down the hall, he grabbed his cell phone on the fourth and last ring.

“
Oui
,” he said, buttoning his shirt back up as he balanced the phone between his cheek and shoulder. For some reason he knew that he would not be going straight to bed but would be heading out the door. He had hoped the caller was Marine.

“I'm so sorry, Antoine,” Pierre whispered.

“What's wrong, Pierre?”

“I'm not sure. I didn't want to wake Jean-Marc—”

“And so you woke me.”

Pierre took a breath and quickly continued, “Well, Jean-Marc has to be in court at eight tomorrow morning, and you had mentioned that you were taking the morning off.”

“True,” Verlaque answered. “And I was kidding about waking me. So what's wrong? You sound anxious.”

“Just before going to bed I noticed that my cell phone was
blinking,” Pierre explained. “I hadn't heard it ring during the club meeting. The message was from René—”

“The painting guy—”

“Right. He was frightened and whispering quickly into the phone. He was sure that he was followed down the rue Boulegon, and that someone was outside the hall, listening to him as he spoke.”

“That's unsettling,” Verlaque replied. “He didn't seem to be the kind of man to exaggerate or be paranoid.”

“Exactly. I just tried calling him, and there's no answer. That's why I'm heading out the door. I've got to check on him. And I was wondering—”

“If I'd come with you,” Verlaque said as he picked up his apartment keys off the kitchen counter and pulled his coat down from the coatrack.

“Twenty-three rue Boulegon,” Pierre answered quickly. “Thanks!”

Verlaque ran down the four stories of winding red-tiled stairs as quickly as he could. He knew that he would reach the rue Boulegon before Pierre, and he hoped that Pierre still had a key for the street door. He also hoped, as he turned left onto the rue Campra, that René Rouquet had fallen asleep and could not hear his telephone.

It was almost 1:00 a.m. and Verlaque imagined—as he usually did when he walked late at night—that much of downtown Aix hadn't physically changed since Cézanne's time. The streetlights were now electric and the shop signs no longer painted
à la main
, but the buildings were the same, as were the narrow streets. People now slept, as they would have at 1:00 a.m. in the nineteenth century. Who had slept in his apartment? How many families had lived there before he bought the large seventeenth-century flat? When he took
possession it was made up of four or five small, high-ceilinged rooms; Verlaque's architect had removed as many of the walls as permitted to make a large one-bedroom loft. What would those former tenants make of his stainless steel dishwasher? Or his glass-walled bathroom?

As he turned left onto Boulegon he heard footsteps running behind him. Pierre came up beside him and leaned over, gasping, with his hands on his knees.

“How did you get here so quickly?”

“I ran,” Pierre said, coughing.

“You have the front door keys, I hope.”

Pierre patted his back pocket. “I accidently kept them.”

“Let's go, then,” Verlaque said as they walked by the shuttered shops.

“I'm so worried,” Pierre said, still out of breath.

“He'll be fine,” Verlaque replied. “Is he a drinker?”

“Binge drinker,” Pierre said. “Doesn't drink for weeks and then ties one on at the Bar Zola. Why do you ask?”

“Because he may have had a few drinks to calm his nerves and now is sound asleep.”

Pierre mumbled something in acknowledgment.

Rue Boulegon was no longer a posh street that housed an eccentric artist, as it had been at the turn of the century; it was now a street of kebab stands, shops selling inexpensive clothing and jewelry from India and Africa, and other miscellaneous businesses whose owners couldn't afford the rent elsewhere.

“I've always liked Boulegon,” Pierre said. “I miss it.”

“I know what you mean,” Verlaque answered, sensing that his friend, out of nervousness, wanted to talk of something neutral. “Every town should have a street like this, although I fear its time is running out.”

Pierre was about to lament the increasing rents and
globalization of Aix's shops but instead pulled the key out of his pocket that would let them into number 23. The urgency of René's message sounded once again in his head and he fumbled trying to open the door that he had passed through daily for years. He pushed the key in and turned for a third time; the heavy wood door finally opened and they entered the hallway. It had always smelled of dust to Pierre, and it did so this evening, but mixed with something odd, like wet woods.

Verlaque motioned for Pierre to leave the hall lights off. There was enough street light coming in through the transom window above the front door, and Verlaque pulled out his new cell phone and used its flashlight. Quickly they made their way up the stairs—much narrower than in Verlaque's more noble building—stopping when they reached René's door.

“Light,” whispered Pierre, pointing to the strip of light shining under the front door. “And I can hear someone in there.”

Verlaque held his finger to his lips. He held up his cell phone and made a dialing motion for Pierre to try René's phone.

Pierre pulled out his cell phone and called the old man's home phone. Within seconds they could hear the telephone ring. The shuffling noise in the apartment stopped.

Verlalque motioned toward the door, signaling what both men knew: there was an intruder in the apartment; otherwise René would have answered the phone. Verlaque thought that with luck the door might still be unlocked if the intruder hadn't thought to lock it behind them. He put his hand on the ancient brass doorknob and slowly turned. The door opened.

Before the judge could stop his friend, Pierre, panicked, ran
in and called out to his former neighbor. “Pierre!” Verlaque called out. “Don't!”

The door across the hall to Pierre's former apartment opened, and a young man in pajamas rubbed his eyes and asked, “What's going on?”

“Police,” Verlaque said. “Go back inside.” He heard the man mumble something to a woman named Françoise as he quickly closed the door.

Verlaque looked back at René Rouquet's living room. An old man—he assumed Rouquet—was lying on the floor, near the fireplace. Verlaque saw blood on the threadbare carpet and noticed that the fireplace was made from Mont Sainte Victoire's orange-colored marble. Pierre was kneeling down, with his index and middle fingers on Rouquet's neck, immediately remembering the Red Cross lessons he had taken as a teen. Verlaque stood in the doorway and called an ambulance.

Pierre now smelled the woodsy scent that had permeated the entryway. It was cologne. He slowly turned around and stared, transfixed. Verlaque looked up from his cell phone and now saw the fourth person in the room, standing against a window.

“Please don't hurt me,” the intruder said, in English.

Pierre looked quickly at his friend Antoine Verlaque.

“I didn't do it,” the intruder said, pointing to René's body.

Verlaque held up his hands palms out and walked slowly toward her. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Several inches taller than both he and Pierre, the slender black woman had the height, flawless skin, and high cheekbones of a runway model. Her eyes were almond-shaped and the color of honey, and she kept her hair in a large afro. She wore no jewelry, but she didn't need any. Her coat was a
multicolored vintage Missoni that barked good taste, money, and bravado.

She slowly backed toward the kitchen, which both men could see was in a state of chaos, its cupboards and drawers open with contents spilling out.

“I speak English,” Verlaque said. “My name is Antoine Verlaque; I'm the examining magistrate in Aix. This is my friend Pierre Millot—.”

“He was like that when I came in,” she interrupted, stuttering and pointing to the body. “The door was ajar and I walked right in.”

“Who are you and what are you doing in René Rouquet's apartment?” Pierre cried out.

The Beauty—as Verlaque would later call her—stepped forward and held out a trembling hand. Antoine Verlaque reciprocated and shook her hand.

“You still haven't told us what you're doing here,” Verlaque said.

“My name is Rebecca Schultz,” she replied, switching to an almost-perfect French. “I teach art history at Yale University.”