The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne (25 page)

“Um, yes,” she answered.

“It will be long gone!” Antoine said. “Okay, let's go. There's an officer meeting us at the station. My commissioner doesn't trust me with the painting.”

“Well, he could now,” his father said, “since the thief is now with you.” He winked at Rebecca and she laughed.

 • • • 

Jamel drove remarkably slowly, and the city's buildings and bridges rolled by as if in slow motion. Verlaque could hardly remember growing up here, and yet back then he knew every street by heart. But the blues skies of Provence were his home now, with Marine.

The car pulled up in front of the station and they got out, bagless except for the painting of the girl, wrapped in a pillowcase, which Verlaque held on to. A tall, wide-shouldered bald man, dressed in a suit, suddenly appeared beside them and introduced himself as Officer Morice, quickly showing Verlaque his ID. Verlaque's father gave Rebecca the
bise
, and she politely turned toward the station, pretending to admire the building, so that father and son could say good-bye.

“Thank you for the bed, and the clothes,” Antoine said. “I had a good time, Papa.”

“So did I, Antoine.”

“Please give Maman my best,” Antoine said. “And I'm planning on coming back up to Paris next week, and I intend to see her.”

Verlaque Senior looked up at the giant clock above the station's main entryway. “You should go. I'll keep you posted.”

Antoine grabbed his father and hugged him for the first time in years. He felt his father's hands on his back, and then felt them gently pull away. Verlaque let go and looked over at Jamel, who was leaning against the car, smoking. “Jamel's a great guy to have around.”

“Indeed,” Verlaque Senior replied. “I'm thinking of giving him the ground-floor flat. It's half empty; we just use it for storage.”

“That sounds like a fine idea.” Verlaque called out to Jamel, “Take good care of my father.”

“Yes, sir,” Jamel answered, smiling.

“Thanks for everything!” Rebecca called out. She blew M. Verlaque a kiss and he put his hand on his heart.

F
ascinating,” Florence Bonnet said, setting down her pencil and rubbing her eyes.

Sylvie stretched. “I agree, Mrs. B,” she said. “At first glance, there's nothing here but the weather and price of flour, but then—”

“The more you read on, the more interesting all the little details become,” Marine said.

“Exactly,” Sylvie agreed.

“It was windier back then,” Anatole said, “according to Amandine's notes. More days of mistral.”

“Climate change,” Florence said, tapping her pencil on the table.

Marine looked at the blue sky and the sun streaming in her dining room's large window. From here she could see the tops of the enormous bare plane trees that filled the shared
gardens down below, and across to rears of the buildings that were on the rue Cardinale. This view hadn't changed much since Amandine's time, she thought. Saint Jean de Malte's spire was still here, separated from her top-floor apartment by the garden and a row of red-tile rooftops. A dozen or so illegally constructed balconies and terraces, including her own, had been built in the later half of the twentieth century, and the plastic, wood, or wrought-iron (in her case) furniture that sat out on those balconies brought the image back into the modern era. As did, of course, the satellite dishes and telephone wires. And her mother's voice.

“Marine?”

“
Oh oui, Maman
,” she answered.

“Earth to Marine,” Sylvie said, smiling.

“So, I've jotted down the names of women whom I think are other shopgirls,” Marine said, looking at her notes. “Clara comes up a few times.”

“Ditto,” Sylvie said. “Clara seems to be a whiner.”

“Yes!” Anatole agreed. “Amadine writes, and I quote, ‘Clara is always complaining about her sore back.' ”

“I've got some references to a Manon,” Mme Bonnet said.

“Me, too,” Marine added. “She comes in late on the sixth of January.”

“Fête des Rois,” Anatole said. “That would be a busy day at Michaud's.”

“Some things never change,” Sylvie said.

“In my notebook Amandine says that Manon is a poker face,” Florence said. “Do you think that could mean—”

“Perhaps,” Anatole said, pausing. “She might be referring to this girl Manon being sad, or angry, but it could refer to a skin imperfection . . .”

“Suzette, anyone?” Sylvie asked. “Amandine says of Suzette, quote, ‘Poor orphan girl . . .' ”

“I didn't find any Suzette references,” Marine said. “There's a funny mention of the wedding cortège of Countess Émilie de Saporta passing by Michaud's.”

“I found a reference to a Mme Frédéric buying cakes for the priests,” Florence said. “But it hardly seems that Cézanne would have an affair with the priests' housekeeper.”

“Stanger things have happened,” Sylvie said, winking.

“
Mais non!
” Florence tried to argue.

“Amandine certainly loves her job,” Anatole quickly said. “The lists, and tastes, and even textures of their cakes and candies are described with such detail—”

“Yes!” Marine agreed. “Even lovingly described.” She carefully turned one of the delicate pages of Amandine's notebook and read aloud: “ ‘Michel'—that must have been the baker, the current Mme Michaud's father—‘has had the idea to add the zest of precious, plump grapefruit to our calissons.' ”

“Lovely,” Anatole said. “I've marked a passage—where is it; oh, here—where Amandine writes of ‘chantilly whipped like a cloud,' and ‘sunshine-yellow butter.' ”

“There's a passage where she writes of caramels,” Sylvie said. “And she says, quote
,
‘There's nothing quite like the smell of thick cream and sizzling butter, bubbling away in Michel's favorite copper pot.' ”

“She could have been a food writer,” Marine said, smiling.

“Or a professional cook,” Sylvie said.

“Of course, as a woman, she never would have been allowed to,” Florence said.

“Absolutely,” Sylvie agreed. “Even today there are few female chefs in professional kitchens.”

“It's sad, thinking of Amandine's life,” Anatole said, setting down his reading glasses. “Here is a woman with a passion, but she has to amuse herself by ordering supplies—”

“And watching other peoples' weddings pass by,” Sylvie said.

“On that sad note,” Marine said, “I took the liberty of buying some candies at Michaud's on my way home from school.” She got up and opened a drawer in the buffet and pulled out two small bags.

“Research!” Anatole said, rubbing his hands together.

“Caramels,” Marine said. “And candied lemons.”

 • • • 

Verlaque and Rebecca sat across from each other, both being careful not to touch the other's knees. Officer Morice sat beside Verlaque; the seat opposite him was mercifully free, so the pillowcase and its contents lay there, reminding Verlaque of all he had to do when he got back to Aix.

Rebecca looked out of the window and then said, “We should have a fast train on the East Coast. Connecting NYC and Washington to Boston.”

“We're lucky here,” Verlaque answered. “And as many times as I take this ride, it's never boring.” They spoke in English, as if, unconsciously, they had decided to be secret, so that Officer Morice wouldn't understand. The policeman flipped through a TGV magazine, pretending to read an article about Bordeaux, but he was listening to every word. He had taught himself English watching Clint Eastwood movies.

“Unless it's at night,” she said. “Then there's no view.”

He laughed. “You're right. My favorite part is exactly half-way to Aix: Burgundy.”

“Ah,” she said. “Rolling hills and vineyards.”

“And cows. I like cows.”

She looked at his eyes again. In Aix she had been frightened of their blackness, but in Paris they had turned wet, and sad. Cow eyes, she thought.

“If the painting is really a Cézanne,” Verlaque said, “you know it has to be turned over to the state. Rouquet had no living relatives.” He thought of his dinner conversation with his father, and Enrique's stolen eagle, stolen for honor, prestige, not money.

“I know,” she answered. “I wasn't planning on stealing it. I just wanted to be with it . . . her . . . for a while.”

“Who
is
she?”

Rebecca leaned forward, putting her forearms on the small white table that separated them. “I have it narrowed down to a few possibilities. Cézanne was nervous around women, right?”

“That's what everyone says.”

“I think he would have been introduced to this mysterious Aixoise somehow,” she explained. “He wouldn't have met her in a café, say, or in the park. He would have needed an excuse to strike up a conversation with her.”

“A maid?” Verlaque asked. “That's someone he would have seen every day, and felt comfortable around the working classes,
non
?”

“That's a good guess,” she replied, “and I've gone that route, too. But he was a thinking man, and unhappy with Hortense, so I think his mistress would have understood him, and his art.”

“Sounds like a good theory. A fellow painter?”

Rebecca shook her head back and forth. “There were very few female painters back then, and they were all in Paris, not
Aix. Besides, Berthe Morisot was already the mistress of Manet.”

“Really?” he asked. “I didn't know that.”

“It's common knowledge,” Rebecca said. “At least we're 99 percent sure.” She smiled. “No, I think our sitter was a sister of a friend. Cézanne was incredibly loyal to his buddies. Zola was an only child, but Jean-Baptistin Baille and Philippe Solari, both solid friends, and both from Aix, had sisters. Baille, Zola, and Cézanne called themselves the Inseparables.”

“Sounds like the title of a Hollywood movie.”

Rebecca laughed. “But my bet is on Solari. He was a sculptor, and had six sisters. So they would have grown up with an artist brother. Like Cézanne, Solari died in 1906, also of pneumonia, but unlike Cézanne, he died a pauper. On his way to the hospital he muttered, ‘What a pity about the weather.'”

Verlaque thought about his mother, and wondered if she were dying. “Why is her identity so important to you?” Verlaque asked.

“Oh, for many reasons,” she said. “I'm sure it's partly because I always feel like I have to prove myself to my colleagues.”

“Because you grew up wealthy?” he asked, thinking of his own personal history.

“Not wealthy,” she corrected, “but surrounded by priceless art. And then I go and get my doctorate in art history, so colleagues mumble—I know they do—about how lucky I was growing up.”

“So by identifying Cézanne's mistress—”

“I prove myself, yes.”

“But you couldn't have imagined that Cézanne painted her,” Verlaque said, trying to go over the events of the evening of René Rouquet's murder in his head.

Now you're getting somewhere with all your questioning
, thought Officer Morice as he turned a page of the magazine.

“I had fantasized about that,” Rebecca said. “And when I saw how nervous M. Rouquet was whenever I said the year 1885 . . .” Her voice trailed off and she looked out of the window, then at her watch. “Almost in Burgundy.”

Verlaque's cell phone rang and he answered it, trying to whisper. Cell phone conversations were forbidden in the train's cars, but he didn't want to have to squeeze past the policeman to go out into the hallway to speak. “
Oui, Marine
,” he said. “
Ça va?
”

“We're taking a break from going over all of those notebooks that Mme Michaud loaned to us,” she said, “the ones I told you about this morning on my way to class.”

“Any luck?”

“Not yet,” she answered. “But we have some possibilities. But listen, there's something more important. On our break, my father and I have been going over some of the aspects of this case, and the various people involved. Just answer yes or no, okay?”

“Yes.”

Verlaque could hear her say, “
Oui, Papa, oui!
” “Are you sitting across from Dr. Schultz?” she asked, trying to stay calm.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the case of Martin Guerre?”

“Yes.”

“That's what my father and I have been talking about,” Marine said.

“Martin Guerre or Gérard Depardieu?”

“Antoine! Yes or no only!” She went on, hurriedly, “Martin Guerre was an imposter.”

“Yes . . .” He looked up at Rebecca Schultz, who was now leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed.

“Antoine, Anatole Bonnet here,” Marine's father said. Verlaque could hear Marine protesting in the background. “This is very important,” the doctor said. “We've been duped by an imposter.”

“Yes,” Verlaque answered.