The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne (8 page)

I
f the apartment had once belonged to Paul Cézanne, today there was no sign of the painter. The high ceilings still had their carved moldings in place, and, thankfully, Bruno Paulik thought, the floor was still paved in hexagonally shaped tiles—
tomettes
—but someone with cheap and bad taste had outfitted the rest of the apartment. Each room was lined in a different wallpaper, usually a leaf pattern, except for the bedroom, whose walls had the bamboo effect popular in the seventies.

Paulik walked out of the bedroom, a mess like the rest of the apartment, and looked up to the living room ceiling where he imagined a small elegant chandelier may have once hung. In its place was a five-armed stainless steel light fixture whose lightbulbs were housed in yellow plastic globes. The commissioner of police liked old things—preferably from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—and although Paulik knew that 1950s and '60s design was all the rage in Paris, he
knew that the stuff in this apartment would never make it into the galleries on the rue Bonaparte. But the apartment had good bones, and in a weekend he and his wife, Hélène, could turn an apartment like this into a showstopper: strip the wallpaper and paint the walls white, for now (Hélène, against his wishes, had just painted their dining room a “Wedgwood blue,” and he loved it); buy used light fixtures off the Internet; and rummage around the architectural remnant shops on the Route de Célony that sold antique doorknobs, interior shutters, and nineteenth-century plumbing fixtures. He almost laughed out loud thinking of how different his life would have been had he not become a policeman but instead an interior designer.

“Come in, Pierre,” Paulik's boss, Antoine Verlaque, said to a fair-haired, thin, and well-dressed man standing in the entryway.

“I hope I can be of some help,” Pierre Millot said, stepping into the living room. Verlaque introduced the commissioner to his bookseller friend. “Up until a few months ago Pierre lived in the apartment next door,” Verlaque explained. “And that apartment has the same floor plan as this one. Pierre was one of the last people to speak to René Rouquet. Have the officers questioned the other tenants?”

“Yes,” Paulik answered. “We got their names and occupations from Mme Chazeau at L'Agence de la Ville, who runs their
syndicat
. That young couple next door didn't hear anything until you and Pierre arrived last night. They admitted that they had drunk a bottle of wine with dinner and were heavy sleepers. They heard you only because the husband had gotten up to go to the bathroom. There is a large apartment below, owned by an absentee owner who lives in Brussels. Below that are two small flats, both rented by students. The one student was visiting her parents in Nice this weekend, and the other was out
clubbing until four a.m. They're owned by”—Paulik flipped through a small notebook—“Mme Philomène Joubert. She lives on the rue—”

“Cardinale,” Verlaque said. “She sings in the choir at Saint Jean de Malte with Marine's mother. And the ground-floor flats?”

“A podiatrist has offices to the left of the front door,” Paulik said.

“Dr. Pitavy,” Pierre replied.

“And to the right of the door?” Verlaque asked.

“It's a big storage room,” Paulik said. “Mme Chazeau told me that the clothing shop uses it for their extra stock. René Rouquet owned it.”

Verlaque said, “Lucky him to have a débarras.” Every inch of available space in downtown Aix was rented out. He had once almost made an offer on an apartment until he was told by the owners that the hundred-square-foot storage room in the basement wasn't part of the deal, unless he wanted to pay 60,000 euros for it.

“Pierre,” Verlaque said, “does Mme Chazeau hold meetings of the apartment owners' association?”

“Um, yeah, she does,” Pierre said.

Verlaque made a mental note to phone her; she was also the mother of a good friend who had just moved to Paris. “Right. We're looking for a rolled-up, or flat, painting of a woman. Pierre told me about it last night, after our cigar club.”

“I thought that Yale professor saw a guy run out the door with it?” Paulik asked.

“She claims that he ran out carrying what looked like a framed painting,” Verlaque answered. “Pierre saw the painting that Rouquet was so worried about, and it wasn't framed.”

“If she was telling the truth,” Paulik said. “Where is she now?”

“At her hotel,” Verlaque said. “I've instructed her not to leave the country until we've told her that she may.” Verlaque had walked Rebecca Schultz back to her hotel the previous evening, although two other policemen had also eagerly offered.

“Judging by the state of the apartment,” Verlaque said, “the thief began looking for the painting, before pulling one off of the wall.”

“Or the professor did,” Paulik suggested.

Verlaque ignored the remark and went on. “Pierre, do you remember what hung there, in that bald spot above the sofa?”

Pierre rubbed his chin and then said, “Yes, I think so. It was an oil of Mont Sainte Victoire. A contemporary one—René won it during a Christmas lottery organized by the city. It wasn't bad; painted by a Dutch woman who lives in Provence part-time. She has some talent, but still—”

“Could a thief have mistaken it for the real thing?”

Pierre laughed. Neither Paulik or Verlaque said anything, and so Pierre finally said, “I suppose so. I guess some thieves wouldn't know the difference.”

“Not ones around here,” Verlaque said.

“Why take the painting off the wall and then still tear the apartment apart?” Paulik asked. “The thief—or murderer—would have seen the Mont Sainte Victoire painting right away. Another thing to ask Dr.—”

“Schultz. Rebecca Schultz.”

“You should see her,” Pierre said.

“That's neither here nor there,” Verlaque said.

“Oh yeah?” Paulik asked, looking at Pierre.

“She's an African American beauty,” Pierre said. “She looks like a runway model who's all of a sudden decided to be a pop singer. Very striking.”

“Bruno listens only to opera,” Verlaque said, smiling. “Okay,
where do we start looking?” he asked, handing cotton gloves to the other men.

“Under the bed?” Pierre asked. “Behind the armoire? Sorry, I've never done this before and I'm trying to think of the obvious places.”

“Safe-deposit box in a bank?” Paulik suggested.

“No,” Pierre said. “René hated banks.”

“Where did Rouquet find the painting?” Paulik asked.

Verlaque looked at Pierre, who replied, “He didn't tell me, and I didn't think to ask.”

“It's very odd that Rouquet lived here for almost fifty years and came across it only now.” Verlaque looked around the living room, at the clay floor and the baseboards, trying to see any loose tiles or boards. But the police had been through the apartment early that morning and hadn't reported anything odd.

“I thought the same thing,” Pierre said. “But it's happened before, no? People finding Renoirs in their attics, Monets in the cellar.”

“It could be a fake, too,” Verlaque said. “Even painted by Rouquet. Did he paint?”

Pierre shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I didn't know him all that well.”

“If he painted,” Paulik said, “at least here, we'll find signs. Paint droppings and such.”

“We'll each take a room, being careful not to disturb anything,” Verlaque said. “The painting may be rolled up, or lying flat. It's not very big, right, Pierre?”

“Right,” Pierre said. He held his hands about a foot apart.

Paulik walked over to a large bookcase, whose shelves sagged under their weight, and went immediately to the Z section.

“Émile Zola,” Verlaque said. “Cézanne's best friend. Good thinking.”

Paulik reached his hand in behind the Zola novels. Nothing. “They did having a falling out,” he mumbled as he reached in behind the rest of the books. “Nothing here.”

Verlaque walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboards. He and Marine had just watched the film
Good Bye Lenin!
and he remembered a poignant scene when the sister finds long-lost letters that had been slipped in behind the cupboard's cheap backboard. In fact, René Rouquet's cupboards were just as cheap looking as the Communist-era ones in the film. He carefully ran his gloved hand along each backboard, not finding any openings. He then opened the oven, the washing machine—Rouquet hadn't owned a dishwasher—and the fridge and freezer. Nothing. He could hear Paulik in the living room and Pierre in the bedroom.

“Is there a cellar in the building, Pierre?” Verlaque called out.

“No,” Pierre called back. “I mean, yes there is one, but it's condemned. The water table is too high in this part of Aix.”

“I'm not finding anything,” Paulik said.

“Me neither,” Pierre called from the bedroom. “I just tried the hatbox. You know, Cézanne's father—”

“Began with a hat shop,” Verlaque answered. “Good try. Let's think about that for a minute,” he went on. “I mean think about Cézanne clues. Bruno, what's the first thing that comes into your head when I say Paul Cézanne?”

“Mont Sainte Victoire. I see it every day and never tire of it.”

Pierre suggested, “It may have been taped to the back of the Dutch woman's Victoire . . .”

“Maybe,” Verlaque said. “Although that seems too obvious a place. Pierre, what's the first thing that pops into your head when I say Paul Cézanne?”

“Aix-en-Provence.”

Verlaque looked around the kitchen. On the wall next to the fridge was a large firefighters' calendar, sold door to door just before Christmas to raise money for Aix's fire brigade. Verlaque quickly walked over to it and took it off the wall. “Nothing,” he said, gently turning the pages.

“Nothing in the living room, either,” Paulik said. “Someone else had cut open the underside of the sofa cushions for us. Again, it seems odd that the thief would have done that, given he left with the mountain painting.”

“If that's the one he left with,” Verlaque said.

“It was there last time I saw René, which was only a few days ago—Tuesday to be exact,” Pierre said. “I came to hand over my last co-owners' check for the building maintenance.”

“And if Professor Schultz is also looking for the portrait?” Paulik asked. “She could be the one who ransacked the apartment.”

Verlaque nodded. He had thought the same thing when he found Rebecca Schultz in the apartment. But now—

“And you?” Pierre asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Verlaque asked, caught off guard.

“When I say Paul Cézanne, what do you think of?”

“Apples and pears.”

“His still lifes,” Paulik suggested.

“Exactly.”

The men continued to search the apartment. After twenty minutes Verlaque walked over to the living room windows and looked out on to the busy rue Boulegon. “Pierre,” he said, “who's that young guy across the street looking up at us?”

Pierre joined the judge at the window and looked down. “Oh, that's Momo. Mohammed's harmless. I told him this morning about René, and he's devastated.”

“Look what he sells,” Verlaque said.

Paulik walked over and looked out at Momo's shop. “It's a fruit stand.”

Verlaque looked at Pierre. “Apples and pears.”

“Momo is simple,” Pierre said, touching the side of his head with his index finger. “Born that way. His uncle owns the shop. René was very kind to Momo.”

“Trustworthy?”

“Completely,” Pierre said.

Lends a Hand, and Eye

L
et me do the talking,” Pierre said as he locked the door to René Rouquet's apartment.

“Do we look like thugs or something?” Verlaque asked, winking at Paulik.

“More like cops,” Pierre said, dropping the keys.

“Hurry up, Pierre!” Verlaque yelled.

The neighbor's door opened and the young man who had made them tea the previous evening asked if everything was alright.

“
Oui, oui, merci
,” Verlaque said. “Sorry about the noise.”

“It's all right,” Eric Legendre said, rubbing his eyes. “I was just trying to catch up on lost sleep.” He closed the door and the three made their way quickly down the stairs.

“Too bad that guy didn't hear people coming and going last night,” Paulik commented as they were crossing rue Boulegon.

Verlaque nodded in agreement but then saw Momo. “There he is,” he whispered to Pierre, giving him a gentle push between the shoulder blades.

Mohammed Dati was thirty-one years old but still looked like he was in his teens, partly due to his bright, shining eyes and rosy cheeks and partly due to his constant chatter and inquisitiveness. But the news of René's death had saddened him, and today Momo looked almost his age. Verlaque, Pierre, and Paulik watched as Momo helped an elderly man select fruit, carefully setting each piece on the store's balance. He took a large Pink Lady apple and slowly walked across the store, putting it back with the others, picking a smaller one. “The smaller apples are better, no?” Momo asked.

“Absolutely,” the man said. “I can't eat a big apple anymore. Thank you, Momo.”

Momo finished weighing the fruit. “That's 4.83 euros,” he said.

The man opened a worn leather change purse and peered inside, moving the coins around with his crooked fingers. He turned it toward Momo, who took the purse and counted out the money. “Is everything all right today, Momo?” the man asked as he took his change purse back and picked up his woven market bag.

“I'm sad today,” Momo answered. He began moving the clementines around, making it clear that he didn't want to speak.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” the old man said. “Tomorrow I'll be back, and I bet you'll be better by then.
Au revoir
.”

“
Au revoir
.”

“Mohammed,” Pierre quietly said as he approached the store's wooden counter. “Is your uncle here? Could we go in the back and talk? It's important.”

“I don't feel like talking.”

“I know that you're sad,” Pierre said. “I am, too. But could you please ask your uncle to watch the shop while we talk in the back? Then when we're through I'll go buy you the new
Paris Match
. It just came out.”

“Are there pictures?” Momo asked.

“Tons.”

“I'll go and get my uncle.”

“What was that all about?” Verlaque whispered once Momo had gone.

“You'll see,” Pierre answered. “It's Momo's obsession.”

Momo's uncle came out and gestured toward the back of the shop. If he did not look worried or even curious why three men, two of them strangers, would want to speak to his nephew, it was because he had just had a phone call from the owner of the building saying they were going to increase his rent by 40 percent.

“Momo,” Pierre said to the young man as they stood among piles of empty crates. “These are my friends Bruno and Antoine. Bruno and Antoine are looking for the person who . . . hurt . . . René. We think that person may have been looking for something in his apartment. Did René give you something to take care of?”

Momo shook his head back and forth, biting his upper lip.

“Momo,” Pierre pleaded, “it's really important that you tell us the truth.”

Verlaque, looking around the room, said, “Momo. You sure have a lot of pictures of soccer players.”

Momo nodded again.

Verlaque looked at the photographs, and flags, and posters, red and gold being the prominent colors. They were all of Manchester United.

“My grandmother was English,” Verlaque said.

Momo's eyes lit up. “Where was she from?” he asked.

“London.”

Momo's shoulders fell, and Verlaque quickly added, “But I go to England often and can bring you back more photographs of the team.”

Momo waved his hands back and forth in the air. “With Wayne Rooney?”

“Of course.” He looked at Momo's blue apron, identical to the one his uncle wore. “I'll bet they even have aprons with Rooney's photograph on them.”

“Wow!” Pierre said. “Can you imagine?”

“Do you promise?” Momo asked.

“Yes,” Verlaque said. He'd get on the Internet as soon as he got home and order one. There'd be no need to even go to London for it.

Momo then turned and bent down, opening the bottom drawer in his uncle's vintage metal desk. He stood up and handed Pierre a plastic bag.

 • • • 

Still wearing his cotton gloves, Verlaque flattened down the canvas as best he could. Pierre and Paulik pressed down on the other corners in their gloved hands and the three men looked at it in silence.

“You'll thank Momo again for us?” Verlaque asked, looking over at Pierre.

“Yes, I'll take him some comic books,” Pierre said. “Although for a few seconds back there I thought that Momo wouldn't give us the painting. But his face gave everything away; I knew he had it.”

“He was protecting it,” Verlaque said. “It was very touching.”

“Here we are talking as if it's a real Cézanne,” Paulik said, looking down at the painting.

“It has to be,” Pierre said. “At least it looks like one to me.”

Verlaque looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow.

“Doesn't it to you?” Pierre asked. “Those blotches of color—”

“Blotches?”

“You know what I mean,” Pierre said.

“Is it Mme Cézanne?” Paulik asked.

“It doesn't look like her,” Verlaque said. “But he did paint his wife a lot. There, I'm talking about it as if I think it's the real thing, too.”

“Who could identify the painting?” Paulik asked. “Other than Dr. Schultz, who's a murder suspect. Do we take it to Paris?”

“Let's start here, in Aix. We don't want to embarrass ourselves at the Musée d'Orsay cradling an obvious fake. Marine's father can help us,” Verlaque offered.

“Dr. Bonnet?” Pierre asked. “Aix's favorite general practitioner knows a lot about Cézanne?”

“Yes, an incredible amount,” Verlaque replied. “He's self-taught, but his knowledge is impressive all the same.”

Paulik said, “The policemen who came early this morning to finish dusting found a name and phone number jotted down on a piece of paper. Edmund Lydgate—he's a retired Sotheby's auctioneer with a vacation house in the Luberon.”

“You're kidding,” Verlaque said. “Why didn't we find that last night?”

“That's a good question, and I gave the team a piece of my mind for missing it.”

“Had René contacted him?”

“We tried calling his number but there was no answer,” Paulik said. “Officer Schoelcher was going to keep trying.”

Pierre looked at his watch. “I have to get back to the bookstore. Saturday is still, thankfully, a busy day for booksellers.”

Verlaque said, “
Oui, bien sûr. Salut, Pierre
.”

“
À demain
,” Pierre said as he headed toward the door. He stopped and then asked, “If it's a real Cézanne, do you realize what it's worth?”

“Hundreds of millions,” Verlaque said. “While drinking my coffee this morning I had a quick look on the Internet.”

“I did the same,” Paulik said. “
The Card Players
sold for $250 million.”

“Who in the world—?” Pierre asked.

“The royal family of Qatar,” Verlaque answered.

 • • • 

Anatole Bonnet had just been finishing lunch with his wife of forty-two years, Florence, when the phone rang. For a man of his age he was in good shape, as was Florence—they both biked to work and hiked on the weekends—so he was quick to get up and answer.

“
Encore à table, Papa?
” Marine asked, pacing back and forth in her own kitchen in downtown Aix.

“Just finished our yoghurts.”

Marine smiled, glad she didn't have to eat with her parents—at least their food. The yoghurt would have been a supermarket brand, with zero fat, and lots of sickly fruit added to it. Her parents' weekly food budget was probably what she and Antoine spent in two days, something she felt no guilt about. Eating was something the Bonnet family did for fuel, not for pleasure, as Antoine, and even Sylvie, had taught her. Years ago Marine had
shared office space, and frequently lunches, with a visiting law researcher from Seattle. While they explored Aix's restaurants, Susan described her childhood meals, which had consisted of their family of five racing through bland dinners. Marine had nodded in agreement. “What?” Susan had asked, staring in disbelief. “Your family ate like that, too? I thought it was an American thing.”

“Nope,” Marine had replied, stealing one of Susan's hand-cut french fries. “Lots of French families ate like that in the seventies. Our mothers were post–World War II babies and didn't learn to cook; they were out in the workforce, celebrating their independence from the farmhouse kitchen.”

“As if a career can't go hand in hand with cooking decent food.”

“And eating it.”

“
Chérie?
” her father asked.

“Sorry, Papa,” Marine answered. “I—well, Antoine and myself—have a favor to ask. It has something to do with a case he's working on—”

“Murder? Need a doc's opinion?”

“I'll fill you in later,” Marine said. “But I can tell you it has something to do with Cézanne. That's why Antoine needs you to come to the Palais de Justice.”

“I'm intrigued.”

“I thought you would be. Can you meet us there in an hour? At three p.m.?”

“Does Antoine need a theologian, too?” her father asked.

“No, but thank you,” Marine answered. Florence Bonnet and Antoine Verlaque weren't the best of friends, but Marine found it touching that her father would want her mother to come along. The Bonnets were inseparable.

Marine said good-bye and hung up the phone, thinking of her quick conversation a half hour earlier with Verlaque. He had immediately said that he was with Bruno Paulik, a hint that he couldn't speak intimately to Marine, but he did say, “I've been wanting to talk to you,” before telling her about a supposed Cézanne portrait that he and Bruno were taking back to Verlaque's office. He had also suggested that she come for dinner that evening, promising to light a fire in his fireplace and cook his winter specialty,
choucroute
, which he picked up from an Alsatian deli around the corner from his apartment. She had agreed, intrigued by the Cézanne story and caught off guard by the call; but she was looking forward to the meal. Sauerkraut, sausage, and boiled red potatoes—accompanied by one of the stellar Rieslings that Antoine had in his cellar—were one of her big loves. She had become, despite her upbringing,
une gourmande
. “I'm also a pushover,” Marine mumbled to herself as she made herself a coffee. She realized that she had overreacted on Friday evening, but she still had things she wanted to discuss with Antoine. It was time.

 • • • 

“Well, one thing I'm sure about,” Anatole Bonnet said, looking down at the portrait and rubbing his chin, “it's not Hortense, Mme Cézanne.”

“Is it even a Cézanne?” Verlaque asked, pacing back and forth in his office.

“I'd need to look at it longer, and have my books next to me,” Dr. Bonnet said. “But I think so, yes.”

“I have chicken skin,” Paulik said, rubbing his muscular forearms. He adjusted the wool scarf that was twisted around his neck.

“It's not that cold in here,” Verlaque said.

“Speak for yourself,” Paulik replied. “The heat works every other day in this building.”

“I'm freezing,” Marine agreed. “Mme Cézanne always frowned, didn't she, Papa?”

“Almost without exception,” Dr. Bonnet replied. “And this doesn't look like her. Mme Cézanne had straight brown hair—always tied back—a long, fine nose; a small mouth; and almond-shaped eyes. Hands clasped, like this.” Dr. Bonnet nervously folded his hands together and Marine smiled, charmed by her father. His hands had more age spots than she remembered.

“There's a portrait of Mme Cézanne at the d'Orsay where she looks like she's ready to kill her husband,” Dr. Bonnet said. “And it was painted the year of their marriage—1886. That always struck me as odd.”