The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne (21 page)

Dr. Bonnet said, “She's one of my most ornery patients.”

V
erlaque gasped for breath and sat up. He had drenched the sheets with sweat. “Thank God,” he muttered, covering his eyes with the back of his arm. He now remembered why he preferred staying in hotels in Paris: the bad dreams he had on the rue des Petits Pères. Someone knocked at his door. “Come in,” he said, more gruffly than he meant to.

“
Bien dormi?
” his father asked, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. “You came home late last night.”

Verlaque sat up, surprised both by the fact that his father was in his room and that he had noticed what time his grown son had come home. “Sorry,” he said. “I spent the day in Boulogne, then last night having a mediocre, overpriced meal at Le Dôme.”

“You were in Boulogne-Billancourt?” his father asked, sitting down in an armchair. “
All day?
What on earth for?”

Verlaque laughed. “A case I'm working on. Boulogne's not
that bad, you know. And God knows the real estate is almost as expensive down there as it is here.”

“Perhaps—”

“Say,” Verlaque said, “do you remember when we used to go to teppanyaki restaurants?”

His father surprised him, once again, by smiling. “You kids loved them,” he said. “Speaking of restaurants, I thought, if you're free, we could have lunch together. Or dinner. There's this Basque chef—”

Verlaque rubbed his eyes and yawned. “In the eleventh—”

“That's right,” his father said. “I just read a review of his restaurant in
Le Monde
. What do you say?”

It would be possible, if I work all day at trying to find the blasted stolen canvas
. “Dinner would be possible,” he answered. “Great, even.”

His father made no answer, but Verlaque thought he saw him twitch and the slightest smile form at the edges of his small, narrow-lipped mouth.

Verlaque then added, “But I'm afraid we won't get a table.”

“Leave it to me.”

Verlaque smiled. His father, after all, had been a powerful Parisian businessman, the owner of one of France's largest flour mills.

“How is Mother?” Verlaque asked. “Will I be able to visit her?”

“I'm afraid not quite yet,” M. Verlaque replied. “She needs as much rest as she can get, so the doctor has requested no visitors.”

“But surely family—”

Verlaque Senior bent his head and then looked up. “She doesn't want you boys there,” he said. “I'm surprised even I can
go in. It would be shocking for you to see her. She's . . . changed. She's thinner than ever, if you can imagine, and has tubes coming and going—”

“I don't care,” Verlaque said. “I want to see her.”

“Her heart is weak,” M. Verlaque explained. “She's been having abnormal heart rhythms resulting from the anorexia.”

“Oh, I see.” Verlaque tossed off the comforter and slowly got out of bed.

His father got up from the armchair and went to the window, making a mental observation: Antoine's short, muscular legs and huge back and shoulders were so dissimilar to his own long, thin legs and narrow chest. Sébastien had his build, and Antoine had his grandfather's.

“Next time,” M. Verlaque said, pushing open the drape a few inches to look outside. “As soon as her heart rate gets back to normal.”

“I'll come up again next week if I have to,” Antoine said, walking toward the bathroom. “I'm serious about that.” He turned on the shower and decided not to argue with his father. Not this time. “I'm surprised you'd try a restaurant in the eleventh,” Verlaque called out. The 11th, 12th, and 19th arrondissements were the city's current hip neighborhoods, full of rowdy, packed bars and surprisingly good restaurants.

“So am I,” Verlaque Senior replied, his trembling hand running up and down the soft velour curtain. “I haven't been north of the Place des Vosges in years.”

 • • • 

Hortense once again served Verlaque breakfast. After he had finished, he asked her if he could spread out his papers and computer and work at the dining room table. She smiled, pleased that he would ask her permission. Lord knows she
worked hard polishing all the wood and silver in that great room where guests rarely entered.

“Of course, Judge,” she answered, looking out of the window at the rain hitting the panes in giant fat drops. “Would you like some tea while you work?”

Verlaque looked up at the maid and thought,
Here is a woman who enjoys taking care of others.
“Yes, why not,” he answered.

“A green tea?” she asked.

Verlaque frowned. “That's supposed to be good for you, isn't it?”

Hortense smiled. She tried not to stare at Antoine Verlaque's paunch; he had put on weight since the last time she saw him. She hoped he had gained weight because he was happy, sharing dinners with someone he loved, unlike his parents. “I'll be right back with the tea,” she said.

Verlaque thanked her and his cell phone rang. “
Oui
,” he answered, seeing Officer Flamant's name appear on the screen.

“Sorry to disturb, sir,” Flamant said.

“Not at all,” Verlaque answered. “It's raining cats and dogs here and I'm about to drink some green tea.”

The humor was not lost on Flamant; he knew how much Antoine Verlaque loved coffee, and sun. “We're still working on the motorcycle licenses,” Flamant said. “So far none of the owners' names ring a bell, and none of them have felonies, save for a lot of speeding tickets.”

“No surprise there.”

“But I have interesting news about a rental car turned back at the Hertz offices at the TGV station a half hour before your train left Aix.”

Verlaque smiled, knowing what would come next. “Go on.”

“Dr. Schultz,” Flamant said. Verlaque could almost see the young officer's smile. “The Yale professor. She turned the car in at 6:30.”

“
Ah bon
—” Verlaque had no idea why he wasn't telling Alain Flamant the whole story: that he had found Rebecca Schultz, that they had lunched together, and that they had walked around suburban Boulogne-Billancourt while Verlaque smoked a cigar and Rebecca had chatted on about New Haven, New York, and Cézanne's life. But something told him to hold off on telling the others that he had seen her.

“So I think we all know who took the painting while you were on the train,” Flamant said. “Find her, and you'll find the painting.”

Before Verlaque could reply, Flamant said, “Sorry, sir. That wasn't much help, my last comment. Paris is a pretty big city.”

“It is, indeed.” And in that big city he had found Rebecca Schultz, walking in a remote, gray winter garden, wearing a coat as bright and colorful as springtime. A coat he could have spotted from miles away. As if she had wanted to be found.

 • • • 

He set the phone down and banged the table with his fist. From her post in the kitchen, Hortense jumped. She had heard the judge on the phone, asking about a woman, and now he was angry. She had been about to go in and ask him about lunch, but now she'd wait.

Verlaque put his head in his hands and moaned. “Of course she's gone,” he said. He could no longer hear Hortense; she had been opening cupboards and humming to herself. Now there was just the sound of ticking clocks, and the rain hitting the windows.

She didn't ask any questions about the painting
, he wrote in his
Moleskine.
Wouldn't she have been curious? She didn't ask: What does the painting look like? What does the sitter look like? R.S., who has been researching Cézanne's life for years, and who was close to, as she claimed, finding the identity of his mistress . . .

He sighed and looked around the crowded room. He was lost; here he was in his parents' house, after an absence of almost a decade, his only company a kind and bored maid who kept trying not to look at his stomach. He had lost a piece of evidence, been taken in by a gorgeous American, and was lying to everyone around him. Except Marine, but she wasn't here; she was in Aix, getting on with her life, taken in by no one.

Who could he talk to in Paris? Who could help him? He picked up his cell phone and scrolled down the address book until he got to the Ts.

•
MARCH 17, 1885
•

T
hat was the most thrilling ride I've ever been on!”

Cézanne frowned. “Keep still, Manon,” he said. “That was also the
only
train ride you've been on.”

Manon laughed and twisted the gold ribbon around her fingers. “When we went over the viaduct I thought I would faint!”

“I bet you could almost see your sister Isabella's house from up there,” he said as he dabbed green paint on the canvas.

“I think I did!” Manon answered, pleased that he had remembered Isabella's name. “The train was so fast, but I'm sure I saw my nieces and nephews playing in the yard. Imagine, from Aix to Gardanne in thirty minutes!”

“I'm surprised to hear you so overjoyed by trains.”

“What do you mean?” Manon asked. She stopped playing with the ribbon.

“Because the train tracks are wrecking the bloody landscape, that's why.”

“That's better than roads zigzagging all over the hills,” she said. “And soon the roads will all be paved.”

Cézanne laughed out loud, setting his brush down and standing with his hands on his hips. He loved Manon's opinions; it reminded him of spending time with Zola.

“And,
Monsieur le Peintre
,” she said, shaking a finger at him, “more people can travel on a train than by horse and cart. So one line of track can serve many more people than a dozen roads.” She looked around the apartment that he had rented. It was small, but with a lovely view onto a small square that housed a fountain and two olive trees. She did not ask Paul, as she now called him, whose flat it was, or how he found it. She had told her mother that Michaud's needed her to work all day, and told Amandine, when asked if she could fill in for another girl, that her sister needed her to babysit. Amandine had looked at her with a smirk and then said, after a pause that seemed to Manon to last an eternity, “
Bon
. I'll find someone else.”

Cézanne had picked his brush back up and was painting, frowning as he worked. Manon straightened her back and watched him, smiling. “Are you frowning because of the trains?” she asked.

“No,” he answered, poking his head around the canvas to look at her. “I'm wishing that you'd keep still and stop grinning.” He then smiled, giving her the sign that he was joking and not annoyed. With Paul, she sometimes couldn't tell the difference.

And then, before she could stop herself, she blurted out,
“Your usual sitters don't laugh?” She had not wanted to remind him of Hortense.

“No,” he answered, seeming not to have noticed her blunder. “You know,” he went on, “I learned to paint people at the Musée Granet, when I was young. Those Eustache Le Sueur and Jean Restout paintings of saints.”

“I remember those,” Manon said. “They're very melancholy.” Once again, she bit her lip. She hadn't wanted to suggest that Paul's portraits were sad, or that she didn't like them.

“Well, this portrait of you won't be like those, that I'm sure of. You can't keep still, and you keep grinning like a fox.” He wished he could show this portrait to his friends in Paris. Perhaps he would take it with him, on his next visit to Claude's in Giverny. His friends wouldn't ask questions about Manon, or judge him. “At least we have peace and quiet here,” he said, continuing to paint. “Even Aix is getting too noisy for me.”

Manon laughed and then began to cough, bringing her handkerchief up to her mouth. Cézanne looked up from his canvas. “I want you to see my doctor,” he said. “I'll pay for it.”

“Tell me about Paris,” she said. “Please, Paul.”

He turned back to his canvas, trying to hide the tears that were filling his eyes. “The women wear the most enormous hats,” he began, “with broad brims, and some women look like they might topple over from the height of their hats, so piled high with silk flowers they are. Nothing simple like your lace bonnet.”

“And their clothes?”

“Dull,” he said. “None of our sunny colors. And if you are unlucky enough to be near Les Halles in the early morning, it is wretched for the eyes, and even worse for your nose.” He tapped the side of his nose with his free hand. “The ground is
covered in an ankle-deep filth that mingles with the steam that rises up from the animals' bodies. And there are people, yelling, everywhere: butchers, buyers, thieves, errand boys, vagabonds . . .”

“There
must
be some lovely things in Paris,” she said. “I think you exaggerate all that is negative so I won't feel bad that I'll never have the chance to go.”

He frowned, setting his brush down. “The bridges,” he said. “Each one is beautiful. It's a good thing if you live on one side of the Seine but have business on the other side. That way, part of your working day involves crossing a bridge, and looking down the length of the river, watching the barges trudge past, and the fishermen . . .”

“I've never lived in a town with a river, or the sea, like in Marseille.”

“That's why you're so sensitive to the countryside,” Cézanne said. “Your color is green: the green of pine and olive trees.”

“Amandine Michaud went to Paris last summer,” Manon said. “She talked an eternity about a big department store—”

“Le Bon Marché,” Cézanne replied as he began painting once again. “I'll loan you Zola's new book.”

“
Au Bonheur des Dames?
” Manon asked. “Mme Michaud told us about it.”

“Sit still, Mlle Solari! Yes, I have it at home.”

Manon smiled, realizing that they still sometimes addressed each other in formal terms, especially if Cézanne was painting, or frustrated. “M. Zola based the store in his book on Le Bon Marché?”

“More or less,” Cézanne said. “The big department store who buys up all the little buildings on the block, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger, like a monster.”

“And the little shops close?”

“
Oui, bien sûr
.”

“So the cities are changing as quickly as the countryside,” she said.

He applied yellow to her forehead, and her mouth, and the wooden buttons on her blouse. “I wish you wouldn't be so wise,” he said. “It can make an old man weary.”