by Iain Pears
‘No reason,’ he said brightly, thinking about the previous evening and his decision about apartments. She was going to take some persuading. The old charm was going to be needed. Not that he mentioned any of this, with the result that Flavia was forced to conclude that he was going slightly wobbly on her. This sort of gushing he normally kept to himself. He was English, after all.
‘Do you have any money?’ she asked eventually. No point in pursuing this bizarre mood of his, after all. And it was early.
‘Yes. Not much.’
‘Enough to buy me breakfast?’
‘Enough for that, yes.’
‘Good. So take me somewhere. Then you can tell me what you’ve been doing in the few minutes I have before I fall asleep for ever.’
‘That’s not bad at all,’ she said, two coffees and a measly croissant later. A bit patronizing really, but she was too tired for subtlety. ‘If I grasp it right, you think that Muller may have contacted Besson after this exhibition, Besson pinched the thing and delivered it to Delorme. Then Besson gets arrested, Delorme panics and unloads it on to you. The man with the scar talks to Delorme pretending to be a policeman, finds out that you have the thing, and tries to pinch it at the Gare de Lyon. He then trails you to Rome, goes to Muller and wham. Exit Muller.’
‘An exemplary summary,’ Argyll said. ‘You should have been a civil servant.’
‘I, meanwhile, have discovered that Muller had been obsessed by this picture for the past two years, believing it contained something of value. He thought it belonged to his father who hanged himself. The trouble is this Ellman character. Why would he come to Rome as well? The Paris phone call could have come from your man with the scar, but why would both of them turn up in Rome?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s no chance the phone call came from Rouxel?’ she went on.
‘Not according to his granddaughter, no. That is, she’d never heard of Ellman and deals with all Rouxel’s mail and stuff. Besides, she said he’d given up hope of finding the picture. Wasn’t even looking.’
She yawned mightily, then looked at her watch. ‘Oh hell, it’s ten o’clock.’
‘So?’
‘So I hoped to have a bath and a lie-down, but there isn’t time. I have to get to the airport by midday. Ellman’s son is due back. I want to have a little chat with him. Not that I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Oh,’ said Argyll. ‘I was hoping to spend some time with you. You know. Paris. Romance. That sort of thing.’
She looked at him incredulously. His sense of timing was sometimes so bad it defied the imagination.
‘My dear demented art dealer. I have had four hours’ sleep in the past two days or something. I have not had a bath for such a long time I don’t know if I could remember how to run the water. People sitting next to me on the Métro get up and move away. I have no clean clothes, and a lot of work to do. I am not in the mood either for romance or sight-seeing.’
‘Ah,’ he said, continuing the monosyllabic style he had settled on. ‘Shall I come with you to the airport?’
‘No. Why don’t you take that picture back?’
‘I thought you wanted to examine it?’
‘I did. But you tell me there’s nothing to examine …’
‘There isn’t. I’ve been sharing a bed with Socrates for the past day or so. I know it inside and out, up and down. There ain’t nothing there.’
‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘You’re the expert. And I thought, now if you took it back, you might get to talk to Rouxel. See if he knows anything that might be of help. Ask him about Hartung. Ellman. Somebody must connect these two somehow. You know. Probe.’
Then, looking at her watch again and tutting about how late she was, she ran off, leaving Argyll to pay the bill. She came back a few moments later, just for long enough to borrow some money off him.
Getting to Charles de Gaulle is not the sort of thing you do in a taxi if your boyfriend has only grudgingly given you two hundred francs to last the day. Admittedly it was nearly all that he had on him, but not princely. So she took one as far as Châtelet, then wandered around, getting increasingly anxious, in the semi-lit subterranean corridors, wandering where, in this vast underground mausoleum, they actually kept the trains. By the time she’d tracked the right one down, hidden cunningly among the booths and leather-goods stalls, and got on board, she was in no mood to be soothed by the music which wafted across the platform to her ear-drums. She was in a sweat of anxiety which, considering her state, wasn’t a good idea. If she didn’t have a bath soon, she’d have to burn these clothes.
She got to the airport about twenty minutes after Ellman junior’s plane was due to land, and then had to wait for a bus to get to the right terminal. Then she ran all the way up to Arrivals, anxiously scanning the notice-boards. ‘Baggage in hall,’ she was told, damn it. There was not much point in just standing and staring at the tired and weary passengers as they trooped past, so she ran to the enquiries desk and got them to put out a message.
Then she stood around, stifling another fit of yawns, and waited. It wouldn’t be a disaster if she missed him, so she thought. But it would be a great shame, and involve not only her having to go back to Switzerland, but also subjection to Bottando’s ironic looks when he examined her expenses, coupled, no doubt, with muttered comments about attention to detail.
She was still thinking along these lines when she noticed the man on the desk pointing her out to a newly arrived traveller. She had formed a picture of Bruno Ellman from the description given by the housekeeper. Not a flattering one at all, despite her attempts to keep an open mind. A playboy type, was what she’d come up with. Expensive khaki trousers, safari gear, a large Nikon. Sunburnt, extravagant and bit of a parasite.
What she got instead was very different. For a start, he was in his forties, if only his early forties. A bit paunchy, with too much starch in his diet. Rumpled clothes whose condition could not be attributed solely to an overnight flight in an aircraft. Hair thinning on top, with what remained turning a little grey.
Must have made a mistake, she thought, as the man came up and introduced himself and proved her wrong. It was Bruno Ellman.
‘I’m so glad you heard the message,’ she said in French. ‘I was afraid I’d missed you. Is French OK?’
He inclined his head. ‘French is fine,’ he replied with a better accent than hers. ‘And here I am. Standing before you, and at something of a disadvantage.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and introduced herself, producing her identity card for good measure. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news. Could we go somewhere quiet to talk?’
‘What bad news?’ he asked, standing his ground.
‘It’s your father.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said with the air of someone almost expecting it. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m afraid he’s dead. Murdered.’
Now this was curious. On first impression – of which Flavia was particularly fond – Ellman held up well. The sort of person you’d trust to give you directions if you were lost. The type who would be a good son, whatever that was. The sort who would be upset to hear of his father dying, and devastated to hear of his being murdered.
But this was not the reaction. Ellman pursed his lips as he digested the information, but produced no further response at all. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We should go somewhere quiet to talk.’
And he led her off to the bar on the ground floor of the vast concrete building, then disappeared to get coffee.
If he was in any way disconcerted by the sudden fashion in which he was given the news, he had put himself back together by the time he returned. ‘Right,’ he said in a businesslike way. ‘Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s been going on.’
Flavia had no reason not to, so she produced a fairly full account, followed by her increasingly standardized set of questions. Was his father interested in pictures? No. Did he know someone called Muller? No. Or Hartung?
No. What about Rouxel?
‘Not such a rare name,’ he said non-committally.
‘It strikes a chord?’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘Jean. A businessman and politician, in his seventies,’ she said succinctly.
‘French?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has he been in the news recently?’
‘He was awarded something called the Europa prize. It’s quite a big deal, so I’m told, so it was probably reported.’
‘Yes,’ Ellman said. ‘That’s the one.’ He thought for a moment, trying to pin the memory down. ‘That’s right,’ he said eventually.
‘Go on.’
‘There’s nothing else to say,’ he said apologetically. ‘I heard about it on the news.’
‘That’s all? No connection with your father?’
‘Not as far as I know. My father was not the sort of person someone like Rouxel would ever associate with, I think. I didn’t myself, normally, except when there were money problems.’
‘Like your allowance being late.’
He looked at her with surprise, noting the faint tone of disapproval that had crept in. ‘You have been doing your work. Been talking to Madame Rouvet as well, I see.’
She nodded.
‘Yes, my allowance, if you want to call it that. Did Madame Rouvet tell you what I do, by the way?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose you got the standard story. Good-for-nothing lay-about. Well, if you like …’
‘OK then. What do you do?’
‘I work for a charity. It sends aid to Africa, mainly francophone. Africa and areas with problems. I’ve been in Chad for the last couple of weeks. There’s an epidemic there.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not on safari, if that’s what you were thinking. My, ah, allowance funds an orphanage for kids so starved they become brain-damaged. If there’s nothing else to be done, we bring them out and try to do what we can in Switzerland. A drop in the bucket, and the money I get from my father – got from my father in fact, as I’ve no doubt it’ll all go to his housekeeper now – was a mere molecule in the bucket.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I got the wrong impression.’
‘At least you’re honest about it. Thank you. Apology accepted. I wouldn’t have brought the subject up at all …’
‘Except for the fact that you thought maybe I was wondering whether you had organized your father’s death for the money.’
He nodded. ‘If it helps you can see my passport. The village I was in was so out of the way that it would have been impossible to sneak out, kill my father and sneak back in anything under five days. My main defence is that he didn’t really have enough money to be worth killing.’
‘I believe you,’ said a chastened and somewhat surprised Flavia. ‘Do you know anything about your father’s finances?’
‘Not a thing. Nor do I want to know.’
‘There was a bank statement and cheque-book in his apartment with monthly payments of money. Quite a lot of money. Where did it come from?’
Ellman sighed. ‘I really don’t know or care. I just know that when it was late, last year, I mentioned it and he said not to worry, he was going to sort it out the next day. The next day I rang and Madame Rouvet said he’d gone on a trip. Sure enough, the money came in regular as clockwork after that. That’s all I can tell you. We barely communicated, except when we had to.
‘My father and I did not get on too well,’ he said. ‘In fact we hated each other. He was a vicious and mean man. A monster in his small-minded way. He didn’t even have the grandeur to be a big monster. He as good as killed my mother through his neglect and cruelty, and I remember my own childhood as being one long nightmare. He sucked people dry. I loathed him.’
‘But you asked for money, and he gave it.’
‘And didn’t he hate it.’
‘But if he was as bad as you say, why did he give it?’
Ellman gave a smile which Flavia thought initially was apologetic, until it became clear that it was a smile of pure pleasure at the memory. ‘Because I was blackmailing him,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘I was blackmailing him. The Swiss are very punctilious people, and my father concealed certain matters when he got his citizenship. Like what his real name was. Had they found out, he would possibly have been prosecuted, and would certainly have lost his citizenship and his job. About a decade ago I found out about it, and suggested then that he started contributing to my charitable work. By way of recompense.’
‘You did that to your own father?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Why not?’
‘But why did he change his name?’
‘Nothing terrible, you know. He wasn’t a bank-robber on the run or anything. At least, I don’t think so.’
He said it with the tone of someone who had almost certainly made some enquiries. It’s the way it was, it seemed; people wanting to find out about their fathers, the good and the bad. What a lot of trouble it caused.
‘It was the need for a job. The original Ellman was a comrade killed in the war. A childhood friend, I gather, although it’s difficult to imagine my father having friends. My father was the town layabout and thug, Ellman was the studious, hardworking type. Before they both went into the army, my father drank and chased girls, Ellman studied and got a degree. He was killed, so when he came to Switzerland in 1948 my father assumed his name, and the degree, and got a well-paid job on the basis of it. Jobs were short after the war. He reckoned he had a right to all the help he could get. He was like that.’
‘What was his original name?’
‘Franz Schmidt. About as common a name as you can get, really.’
‘I see,’ she said. A new variety of family life, she thought. Which was worse, a father like that, or a son like him? Maybe they deserved each other. Ellman seemed untroubled by what he said; he lived in a topsy-turvy world where bad means corrupted good ends and he was incapable of noticing. What made such a man tick, she wondered after she’d ended the interview and gone back to the train. Did he end up working for an African charity to cancel out his father? Didn’t it occur to him that maybe he was re-creating his father behind a smoke-screen of virtue? It would have been so much easier had he been a simple, straightforward, no-nonsense playboy she could have disliked.
By the time Argyll got back from his errand, Flavia was making up for lost time. She’d bathed, collapsed on the bed, and was so profoundly unconscious she could well have been in advanced rigor mortis. Argyll found her, breathing softly, her mouth open, her head resting on her arm, curled up like a hamster in full hibernation and, much as he wanted to prod her and tell her his little stories, he let her be. Instead, he watched her awhile. Watching her snooze was a favourite occupation of his. How you sleep is a good indication of what you are like: some people thrash around and mutter to themselves, constantly in turmoil; or regress to childhood and stick their thumbs in their mouths; some, like Flavia, manifest a deep-seated tranquillity that is often disguised when they are awake. For Argyll, watching Flavia sleep was almost as restful as sleeping himself.
As spectator sports go, however, it could command the attention for only a short time, and after a while he left to go for a walk. He was feeling quite pleased with himself. See if you can talk to Rouxel, Flavia had instructed and, obedient as he was, that was exactly what he’d done. When he’d left Jeanne Armand, he’d promised to bring the picture round the next day; the implication was that he would take it round to her apartment. But there was no reason why he shouldn’t indulge himself in a little misunderstanding so, taking the picture, a taxi and what money he had, he’d gone out to Neuilly-sur-Seine.
A suburb just outside Paris proper, Neuilly is very much a place for the rich middle classes who have the funds to indulge their tastes. Apartment blocks began to spring up in the 1960s, but many of the villas built there still survive, small monuments to France’s first flirtation with the
Anglo-Saxon ideal of gardens and privacy and peace and quiet.
Jean Rouxel lived in one such villa, an 1890s’ rusticated art nouveau affair, surrounded by high walls and iron gates. When he arrived, Argyll rang the bell, waited for the little buzzer indicating that the gate had been unlocked, then marched up the garden path.
Rouxel had taken the possession of a garden seriously. Although the English eye could fault the excessive use of gravel and look a little scornfully at the state of the lawn, at least there was a lawn to look scornfully at. The plants were laid out with care as well, with a distinct attempt at the cottage-garden look of domesticated wildness. Certainly there was none of the Cartesian regimentalism with which the French so frequently like to coerce nature. Just as well; however geometrically satisfying, there is always something painful to the English eye about French gardens, creating a tendency to purse the lips and feel sorry for the plants. Rouxel was different; you could tell at a glance that the owner was inclined to let nature take its course. It was a liberal garden, if you can attribute political qualities to horticulture. Owned by someone who was comfortable with the way things were, and didn’t want to tell them how they should be. Good man, thought Argyll as he crunched up the path. It is dangerous to form an opinion about someone merely on his choice of wisteria, but Argyll was half inclined to like Rouxel even before they’d met.
He was even more so inclined when he did. He found Rouxel outside, around the side of the house, looking pensively at a small flower-bed. He was dressed as people should be on a Sunday morning. As with gardens themselves, there are two schools of thought on this: the Anglo-Saxon, which prefers to slope around looking like a vagabond, in old trousers, crumpled shirt and sweater with holes symmetrically located at both elbows. Then there is the Continental school which dons its best and presents itself to the outside world in a haze of eau-de-Cologne after hours of preparation.
However much he was the epitome of French values, Rouxel belonged, sartorially, on English territory. Or at least on an off-shore island: the jacket was a bit too high-quality, the trousers still had a crease in them and the sweater only had one, very small, hole in it. But he was trying, no doubt about it.
