The painting was by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
M
argueritte DeVilleurs had grown tired of wearing the mourning band, and as she dressed for the day she took the piece of black cloth from her dressing table and ceremoniously dropped it into the wastebasket. Not a soul was counting the days since her husband Gaston DeVilleurs failed to wake up on his seventy-fourth birthday. On this day of liberation Margueritte selected a brightly colored dress, one she had purchased in Monaco the week before. In her younger years she had been pretty, and, though her well-groomed hair was now gray and her waistline a touch heavier, she was still described as dignified and very handsome. She was seventy and moved on a tennis court or a dance floor with surprising grace.
A strong brew of coffee sent an aroma from the kitchen. Emily, companion and housekeeper, had put the day in motion. Though Emily was younger than Margueritte, time had treated her unkindly, and it showed on the working woman who had barely tolerated Gaston but was passionately devoted to Margueritte. In a home without children, Emily had become family.
The DeVilleurs home was perched on a bluff on Cap d'Antibes overlooking the Mediterranean, with a view of Nice and the Maritime Alps behind it. Gaston had loved Nice, Margueritte despised it; an irritation that had helped divide their marriage. Margueritte was born in Salon-de-Provence, midway between Aix-en-Provence and Arles. Her father traced his roots to Lucca, Italy, where his ancestors had built an olive-oil factory in 1757. Then, a hundred years later, a member of the family traveled to Lourdes with a crippled son, subsequently returned with the rest of his family, settled in the Provence, and developed new olive-tree groves and, not long after, a factory to produce great quantities of olive oil.
The company prospered over the years and by the end of World War II was a prominent worldwide marketer of fine quality olive oil. Margueritte inherited the business, and Gaston had been installed as
managing director. Over the next forty years he successfully masterminded the inexorable decline of the prestigious company while simultaneously siphoning off assets to build his own net worth. Bad advice from a lawyer named Frédéric Weisbord coupled with disastrous losses in the stock market had pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy. In spite of the down-spiraling of the company's fortunes, however, Weisbord had managed to cling to the role of family adviser and legal counselor.
Margueritte continued to wear sable, not told that the DeVilleurs's wealth was disappearing until Weisbord announced the bad news at the end of July; and in mid-August the decision to sell the company was made. To everyone's surprise, a buyer stepped forward and the transaction completed early in September. Only after the papers were signed did it dawn on Margueritte that the lawyer had been planning to sell the company all along, that the buyer who had miraculously stepped forward had in fact been patiently waiting for Weisbord's call.
After the sale of the company, Margueritte discovered the true despair of her financial position. The proceeds yielded only enough money to liquidate Gaston's debts and buy a thousand shares of stock in the newly organized company that had bought her family's business. She owned the Antibes home, furs and jewelry, and several acres of land in the country outside of Salon. It had been a wedding present from her father, and in spite of Gaston's incessant importuning, she never transferred title. The Antibes home would bring a handsome price, but it was heavily mortgaged, another unwanted surprise from Gaston.
Then there were the paintings. If Gaston had been inept at all else, he had shown a deep affection for fine art. He and Margueritte had put their incompatibility aside and over the years bought and sold until they had assembled a small, valuable collection. Margueritte became a shrewd trader, and in the end the DeVilleurs collection consisted of eleven paintings, the least valuable of which was a small yet perfectly lovely Renoir. There were two by Pissarro, one by Mary Cassatt, a Caillebotte, an early Picasso, a Corot, two by Sisley, and prized above all, two Cézannes. One was a country scene, the other, and the centerpiece of the collection, a self-portrait. Margueritte was attached to the country scene depicting a farmhouse near Salon. It reminded her of a sweet childhood.
With the period of public grieving behind her, Margueritte looked forward to a visit from the new owner of a small framing shop situated
in Cannes. Margueritte grudgingly shopped in Cannes, and a month earlier had met a tall Norwegian in one of the food shops. Both were inspecting a supply of oranges shipped in from Africa, and he had helped her put her groceries in the car. She had been charmed by his accent and his bearlike bigness and pleased when he introduced himself and invited her to see his shop. She found him kind and knowledgeable and, at the same time, felt that he was sexually intimidating. And that excited her. After several more visits to his shop, she decided to entrust him with an important assignment. She removed her precious Renoir from its frame and gave the canvas to the owner of the shop. She asked him to carefully clean the painting and prepare a new frame.
A station wagon turned into the driveway. It pulled to a stop in front of the house and out of it stepped a tall man wearing a light tan suit and peaked cap. Emily answered his ring and escorted him to the garden.
Peder Aukrust seemed taller and more handsome each time Margueritte met with him. She had judged him to be forty and was studying him more carefully than before. His face was tanned by a genuine Côte d'Azur sun and his eyes under heavy brows moved constantly, reminding her in a strange way of a mischievous little boy. His hands were as large as melons, and she feared her own hand would be crushed when she extended it in greeting. His French was workmanlike, well influenced by his guttural Scandinavian inflections.
“You have a beautiful home.”
“Thank you,” she replied warmly. “Everyone likes the view over the water, but I prefer the land and the changing colors.”
Emily brought a tray with coffee.
“Your choice of a frame is a success,” he announced, then unwrapped the package and held up the Renoir for her inspection.
Margueritte's smile matched the one in the painting. “Let's put it where it belongs.”
She took the painting to a room that at one time had been the dining room. Two years earlier it had been converted to a gallery. Windows were removed and skylights installed to provide a flood of natural light, and yet there was an auxiliary light beamed at each painting. Aukrust stood in the doorway, his eyes darting from painting to painting.
“Do you like it?” Margueritte asked.
Aukrust didn't reply immediately, but moved to the center of the room where he slowly turned a full circle, studying each painting briefly. His attention was drawn to the Cézannes that were hung next to each other, his eyes fixed on the self-portrait. In a hushed voice he said, “It's a beautiful collection, you chose wisely.”
Margueritte was pleased by the mild praise. She put the little portrait by Renoir in the space immediately to the left of the Cézannes.
“You like it then?” Aukrust said.
“Yes, very much. The new frame makes the others look very sad.
He smiled and gestured broadly. “Then you'll come back to my shop and choose new frames for the others.”
“Only for the ones I will keep. Let the new owners choose their own frames.”
“Which ones will you keep?”
She touched the Renoir, “This is my friend and will go in my bedroom. It's not one of his best, but I like it and that's what matters.” A few steps took her to the pair of Pissarros, and she put her finger on a picture of a flower garden that exploded with a blaze of color. “And I will keep this one.” Then she moved in front of the Corot, a mere twenty-four square inches of pure charm, “I can't part with this one, it has special meanings that are important only to me.” Two more steps took her to the Cézannes. “I know this old farmhouse, it's only a ten-minute walk from my childhood home.”
She stared at the painting and her eyes misted. “It's my favorite.” She extended her hand until her fingers gently touched the still shining paint.
The sound of a ringing phone came from another room. Emily came to the door, and a tilt of her head gave the message. Margueritte excused herself.
Aukrust went immediately to the Cézannes and ran his hand over the frame of the self-portrait. The painting, not including the heavy six-inch frame, measured nearly twenty-six by twenty inches and was quite large for a Cézanne self-portrait. He pulled it away from the wall and found that the protective heavy brown paper covering the back was torn in the lower right corner. He allowed the painting to come back to rest against the wall, then stepped in front of the Pissarros just as Margueritte came back into the room.
She said, “I neglected to tell you that theft alarm sensors have been put on some of the paintings.”
She could not see the surprise on his face. He said, with a flat voice, “I was hoping to find that you had protected them.”
“When my husband was alive we didn't think to take any special precautions, but when I realized that Gaston could not stop someone from running off with a sterling soup spoon, I knew we needed better security. Then Frédéric Weisbord became involved, and he had alarms put on the Cézannes and the Pissarros. Freddy's a perfectly dreadful man, what Gaston saw in him I'll never understand.”
She came beside him. “I turned off the sound on the alarm system, but if they're tampered with, a light goes on at several places in the house.” She looked up at him. “The lights were on.”
“I'm afraid that's my fault... I was curious, but I didn't see the sensors.”
“They're in the frame, very small, and very hard to find,” she said proudly.
“But someone could cut the painting from the frame. Thieves don't care for frames.”
“Why steal a valuable painting at all? They can't be sold, even privately. Except for an obscenely low price to some kind of strange recluse living in Antarctica.” Then her eyes widened. “Freddy became so obsessed with protecting the paintings that he had fluorescent dye injected into each one. The insurance people are the only ones pleased by all our precautions.” Her expression turned angry. “Since my husband's death, Freddy's taken a fanatical interest in the safety of the paintings.”
“Is the alarm connected to the police?”
“Yes, and they're very angry with me. We've turned in too many false alarms, and they've threatened to put us off their list if it happens again.”
“Show me the alarms. I have a customer who might be interested in the system.”
Margueritte pulled the painting away from the wall and pointed to the frame where the backing was ripped. “Here, where the wood is joined you see a circle the size of a small coin. Under that is the alarm and battery.”
“How much movement before the alarm goes off?”
“You can jar the painting or straighten it and nothing will happen, but pull it away several inches or take it off the hooks and the alarm goes off.”
He ran his finger over the circle of wood. “An alarm will stop the amateur, but nothing stops a professional.”
“I suppose that is true,” she sighed, “but I'll only have four to worry over.”
“When will you sell the others?”
She shook her head. “Gaston's will requires us to sell each one at auction. While that may mean a higher price, I care more about who buys them than how much money is paid. But it matters to Freddy because he gets a commission when each painting is sold. She touched the frame of Cézanne's self-portrait. “This painting has been in a private collection for too long and should be in the Musée Granet in Aix.”
“Will Weisbord allow you to sell it to them?”
“He insists on following the terms of the will.” Her eyes widened and anger showed. “He wrote it, of course.”
“Perhaps you can loan the painting to the museum.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Freddy saw to that, too. He'd like to see every one sold, and for the highest possible price.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
Margueritte's eyes brightened. “What can you do?”
Aukrust lifted the portrait from its hooks, then held it at arm's length. “You can ask me to replace the torn paper, here on the back.” He turned the painting around and pointed to the paper. “I could also check the canvas for mildew or mold, then replace the hanger wires.” He grinned. “I could find several months' work once I began looking for it.”
“Of course. Old paintings and frames always need fixing,” she mused. “I promised the director at the Granet that they can display it during their Cézanne exhibition when it opens in January. You could deliver it to them.” She laughed. “Freddy would be furious. He claims it will bring a record price.”
“For a Cézanne, it might,” Aukrust agreed.
“The Granet has raised seventy-five million francs, that's more than enough.”
“In an auction in New York or London it would bring twice as much.”
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the self-portrait then toward the country scene. Her mind was racing, and she was suddenly struck by the immensity of what was before her. Neither she nor Gaston had purchased or sold a painting in nearly seven years; instead
they had traded shrewdly, reducing their collection from more than thirty paintings to the eleven that were on the walls in front of her.
A new determination had come over her, and she spoke firmly. “I will speak with Freddy about the will. My family's money paid for these paintings, and I'm not going to let a selfish old fool tell me how or when or to whom I must sell them. For the present I'll leave everything as it is.”