Painter Palaver

by Curtis Bausse

  Before writing it down, he checked. There it was in the thicket – puke. And that’s when his memory brought it all back into focus: the dizziness as he got out of the car, the need to lie down, get out of the heat, the taste of bile in his mouth. He’d staggered up to the thicket and puked the remains of that pâté sandwich. Then he made a bed of leaves in the shade and slept. Simple as that.

  Even so it took him a while to be convinced, despite the physical evidence, and even now a nagging doubt remains. I had an absence. As if it’s something that comes to you like a headache or a cold. But an absence takes you away. That’s the frightening thing. When you have an absence, you’re nobody and nowhere. Yet you don’t cease to exist, so you have to be somebody somewhere. But who? Where? Doing what?

  They went to a restaurant afterwards. He wasn’t hungry but he had a glass of Perrier and Gabrielle had an omelette and they talked. Argued, accused, justified, held hands, swore they loved each other, cried. He told her – she’d never heard the full story before – about the day he tried to kill himself, and the hook came out of the beam and there was Auguste. She told him about the Mami Wata who grabbed her ankle and pulled her down, pinned her to the seabed till her breath ran out. He said he wasn’t fit to be a gendarme. He said he was going to resign. She told him not to be silly – he wasn’t the problem, but Sophie. The Mami Wata. The temptress. If you don’t look out, she said, that woman will destroy you. It brought to mind the lie he’d told to get where he is now; not just a lie, a whole statement falsified, invented, which Sophie could report to Pico anytime she wants. But he didn’t say that to Gabrielle. There are some things it’s better for her not to know.

  And what of Auguste? Has he been playing with Cyril all along, setting him up to teach him some sort of lesson? Making him think it’s all good, he’ll overcome his past and be a success, the modern day hero of Verdun, when in fact it’s the opposite?

  As he turns up the drive to Escarola’s house, Cyril decides that this is the ultimate test: come away empty-handed again and Auguste is treacherous; make a significant breakthrough and the future is bright – his great-grandfather is there, offering care and support, leading him ever onward.

  He rings the bell. A light comes on in the hall. The door is opened by a man about his own age, with flabby cheeks and dull, insolent eyes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Captain Eveno, Judicial Police Officer. I’d like a word with Gino Escarola.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  What? Can this be right? Cyril’s heart plummets. ‘And you are...?’ he asks.

  ‘Axel. His son.’ From inside the house comes the small of marijuana.

  ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘Toulon. He’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll tell him you called.’

  He closes the door. Cyril turns away. Nothing. The message couldn’t be clearer. What goes up must come down. The irresistible rise of Cyril Eveno turned out to be resistible after all. Flipped around by a constellation of dark, vengeful forces and sent plummeting back to earth. Great-grandfather, why hast thou forsaken me?

  Forsaken? I was never with you! Sucker! “Judicial police.” That’s a good one! Who the hell are you trying to kid? It took you this long to see? You don’t belong where you are, you’re -

  Wait. There was something in the hall. A few feet behind on the floor. A shopping bag, orange, that’s right. And a logo. The silhouette of a woman. He’s seen that logo before. He turns back.

  ‘What now?’ The son is surly, impatient.

  ‘That bag.’ Cyril points behind him. ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘A clothes shop in Moudiret. Milady. My wife went there today. Why?’

  Now he remembers. The back of a book in his grandmother’s house, that very same silhouette. Milady de Winter. The dastardly, scheming villain in The Three Musketeers.

  Chapter 40 The Ventilation Shaft

  Pico pointed at Gareth, ‘The interview room, please. I’ll be there in one minute.’ He snapped his fingers at Bondy, who appeared to be struggling to process this new development. Gareth Forster shredded the glove. Like a pack of hounds baying to be let loose, the implications dashed against the bars of Bondy’s logic, till finally the largest and loudest broke through: if Gareth got rid of the glove, then Martin Best was innocent. Finally snapping out of his gormless daze, he tugged Gareth’s shirt to get him to stand. As he was led away, Gareth thrust a malevolent finger at Isadora. ‘Bitch! I’ll fucking kill you for this!’ To further his point, he spat at her – but was still enough of a gentleman to aim at her feet. It could be supposed that neither the threat nor the spittle did his cause any good.

  Stifling a sob, Adeline ran inside, and after looking around with a prim little smirk and uttering a curious ‘Hmph!’, Isadora strode briskly after. Several seconds of stunned silence followed, broken at last by Lyle. ‘Jiminy Cricket,’ he breathed. ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  ‘Enjoy your dinner,’ Pico said rather tartly to Martin, and then to Sophie, ‘Show me.’

  Without waiting for a reply, he marched off into the garden. Beneath the Aleppo pine, the wood pile had been scattered, but here and there the flecks of green were visible. He picked out a couple and turned back to the house, Sophie trotting beside him to keep up with his long strides. Halfway back, he surprised her by chuckling loudly. ‘Good. Very good.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Excellent. Couldn’t have done better myself.’ And he laughed again.

  ‘I shouldn’t have interrupted perhaps. But it seemed... I thought I had to.’

  ‘No, no, quite right. Just unexpected. Not part of the script at all.’

  His amusement had her perplexed. ‘Is there something I’m not grasping? I’m very sorry if I’ve –’

  ‘No, don’t worry, it’s fine. I’ll explain later. I’d better go and see what Forster has to say.’

  Round the dinner table, the scene was much as before, except that Penelope too had disappeared. ‘Phew!’ Slumped in his chair, Martin wiped his forehead. ‘Talk about a get out of jail card. It’s like... Fuck me, I was drowning there and now...’ He let out a whoop of triumph, knocked back a glass of wine, then sat up straight, surveying the table. ‘Dinner? What dinner?’

  ‘What did the leaflet say? Superb hospitality.’ Eddy snorted. ‘Meaning, my friends, we go help ourselves. Mind you,’ he added, slapping Martin heartily on the back, ‘can’t fault the entertainment. Top notch.’

  ‘For you lot maybe,’ said Martin. ‘Not so pleasant in the hot seat, I can tell you.’ Roundly lambasting imbecilic lieutenants and arrogant frog-sucking generals, he led the way to the kitchen.

  ‘One more minute, all right?’ Chloé having fed on barbecue-flavoured crisps and a banana, Luc was in the final phase of the bedtime negotiation. ‘And just one story tonight. It’s late already.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Sophie poured him a drink. ‘Have something to eat. You’ve been at it all evening.’

  A story, a kiss, and a few gentle encouragements later, she tiptoed out of the room, softly closed the door, and then, turning round, came face to face with a frantic, furious Gabrielle, primed for an all-out offensive. ‘He’s gone! Give me your car!’

  ‘What? I’m sorry, who –’

  ‘If you were sincere, you’d be out there helping. Down on your hands and knees in the grass. Wouldn’t you like that? Crawl in the grass with Cyril? But here you are hiding away pretending it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re –’

  ‘He’s gone! He’s not in his right mind. You’ve driven him to this! If you don’t –’

  ‘Gabrielle, calm down! Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know! He just drove off. The man who had the restaurant, got to see him, he said, but I don’t know –’

  ‘Escarola, OK, no need to worry, he’ll –’

  ‘Take me there!’

  ‘What? I don’t know where he lives. I can’t –’

  ‘You don’t want to help?
You stir up all this shit and leave me to sort it out while you have fun in the –’

  ‘Please – keep your voice down, my daughter’s just –’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about your daughter!’ Gabrielle demonstrated the truth of this by screaming it at the top of her voice before stomping away down the landing. Sophie started to follow, but then: ‘What’s happening, Mummy?’ called Chloé, and with an irritated groan, Sophie let Gabrielle disappear to deal instead with her daughter.

  ‘Nothing, dear, just a bit of a flap.’ She kissed Chloé’s forehead and smoothed out the sheet. ‘It’s still quite light in here. Let me close the shutters a bit more.’ As she leant out to do so, she glimpsed a figure stride up the path by the fence. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Gabrielle, and after making sure Chloé was settled, she hurried downstairs in pursuit. She didn’t know where Cyril’s wife was going, but in her current state of mind, Sophie feared she could be capable of anything.

  When she reached the pool, there was no one. On the other side of the fence a ghostly glimmer bobbed in the thickening dark, and the shadowy figure of Gabrielle flitted between the trees. Next door? What’s she doing? The next moment, as Sophie craned to watch, it became clear: she was heading for Henri Seibel’s cabin.

  Driven now by curiosity, by the wish to get an explanation as much as to explain herself, Sophie kept on to the top of the garden, then through the gate and down the other side till she came to the cabin. The light was on, a weak yellow glow spilling out from the windows; peering through, Sophie saw Gabrielle on her knees, rummaging in a wooden chest, wildly tossing stuff out: strips of polythene, packets of string, metal rods, a pair of overalls, boots. Sophie crept round to the door; not wanting to startle her, she tapped gently. ‘Gabrielle? It’s me, Sophie.’ She pushed open the door. ‘What’s going on?’

  Gabrielle got to her feet. ‘So you’ve come to help, have you? Or spy. Yes, that’s more like it. Why don’t you stay out of this? No one needs you. So do me a favour – piss off once and for all.’

  ‘Look, I’m not...’ Sophie held out a hand. ‘Can we be reasonable here? I didn’t want any of this. Can we talk? I’d love to help honestly. But I don’t know what you want. How did you get the key to this cabin? I thought Lieutenant Bondy had it.’

  Gabrielle hesitated, her anger weakening; from the look in her eyes, she would have liked to transform Sophie into a thing of contempt, a centipede or a worm, and feel the joy of crushing its squishy nothingness underfoot. ‘I don’t know. Cyril gave me everything.’

  ‘I don’t follow. What do you mean, everything?’

  ‘In the restaurant. Except for his gun, he left that at home this morning. He was afraid if he took it, he might use it.’ With a weary sigh, she closed the lid of the chest and sat down on it. ‘He’s resigning.’

  ‘What? He can’t do that! Just because –’

  ‘That’s what I told him. He took everything out of his pockets – his card and epaulette, you know, what they carry to prove who they are, and his badge, and he told me to give it all to Pico. He’s going to write a letter of resignation.’

  ‘He can’t be serious, surely? He’s just –’

  ‘I don’t know. I took it all, otherwise he’d have left it on the table. And there was the key. I asked him what it was and he said they’d come here to look for the glove, this vital clue he had to find and I thought...’ She hung her head, slumping forward on the chest. ‘I’m crazy too. I thought if I find it, I can make everything right.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? To search? For what? If it’s the glove, we’ve found it, Gabrielle. The whole thing’s been –’

  ‘What?’ The crying stopped abruptly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Sophie sat down next to her. ‘You didn’t give me much chance. I didn’t even know you were looking for it.’

  For a moment Gabrielle sat frowning, uncertain. She turned to Sophie, sadness shining in her eyes. ‘I want him to succeed. He’s so driven. But he screwed up.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Right from the start. He couldn’t bear being given orders by Praud. It’s all jumbled up in his head, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he...’ Her breath came in short gulps, her words barely distinguishable between the whimpers and sobs. ‘... had an absence, he... it’s all over he’ll never... be what he wants to be, I... it’s my fault, I encouraged him, I told him, yes, they’re good, the spirits can help you, I said, Auguste, his great...’ She hid her face in her hands and now the sobs became a wail as the full force of the horror came down on her: his career, his sanity, their marriage, gone forever, dissolved in the tears that glistened on her cheeks.

  Sophie placed a hand on her elbow. ‘It’s not your fault, Gabrielle. None of it. He’s overwrought, he’s fragile. He needs help.’

  ‘It’s what I...’ She looked around distractedly, as if she couldn’t remember why she was there. ‘He didn’t look properly, he said. He came in here and didn’t look, it was Praud’s idea so he didn’t bother, a waste of time, he said, but he knows he screwed up and now...’ The words trailed off into another succession of sobs.

  Sophie reached out to hold her in an embrace, but with a brief, violent shake of her head, Gabrielle shook her off. Then she stood up, muttered something inaudible, and ran out of the cabin.

  Sophie didn’t follow this time. Whatever was happening between them – ties of love and fears of madness – was not her business. She hadn’t fully explained to Gabrielle, but at least they’d spoken. It was a start.

  Poor Cyril. Gabrielle could be vastly relieved she hadn’t married a murderer, but as far as Sophie could see, a meltdown like this was only marginally better. When the dust died down, General Pico would demand to know what sort of person Cyril really was.

  But that was still to come. With Gabrielle gone to salvage what she could from the wreck of her husband, Sophie turned her thoughts to the question of Gareth. What confession was Pico hearing now? He was burning leaves so... well, I killed him. It seemed preposterous, but as Praud had said, people have murdered for less. Did it automatically follow that Gareth had killed Praud as well? Nothing pointed to that. Nothing except what Bondy had said – Praud had found out something which meant he was close to the truth. But he’d said that about Martin, not Gareth. And Martin was the one who’d been up there arguing with Seibel. What truth? Had he then conspired with Gareth, asked him to shred the glove?

  Something didn’t add up.

  She sat down on the crate thinking it over, but hadn’t got far when her phone rang. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Magali. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Fine, yes. I’ve just been speaking to Gabrielle. Why, what’s up?’

  ‘Nothing really. Not compared to the glove, anyway. But the woman from the museum got back to me with her report. It wasn’t the picture itself that aroused her suspicion but the authentication documents.’ It took Sophie a moment to reconnect to Magali’s fixation. ‘They had it as coming from a private collection, but according to her the whole lot had been bequeathed to the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin.’

  ‘OK, so... What are you saying? Durvez isn’t be as reputable as Praud thought?’

  ‘Not if she’s right. And if the documents were fake, there’s a good chance the painting is too.’

  Sophie couldn’t help smiling at the glee in Magali’s voice. You didn’t think of her as someone who bore a grudge; for her to pursue the matter with such relish, those visits to the Borellys must have been traumatic indeed. ‘Looks like your next step is a trip to –’ She stopped. A rustle outside. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she said, and putting down the phone, she moved to the window and peered through the mesh. Nothing. Must be a dog sniffing about. Or just her imagination.

  On turning round, the smell came again, the one she hadn’t recognised. Perhaps it was because she’d just been speaking to Magali but now she did. That mix of paint and turpentine in Magali’s studio in Sentabour. The smell of a painter at work, a faint waft of it rising f
rom a ventilator shaft by the window. She squinted into the shaft but saw nothing. Yet there had to be a cavity below, a storage space of some sort requiring ventilation. No opening, though – very strange. Looking round, she noticed a scratch in the lino – the crate she’d been sitting on had been dragged to its present position, where it partially covered a rectangle cut to form a flap. She drew back the flap to reveal a trapdoor, its metal ring inviting her to pull. She opened the trap door. A flight of concrete steps led into darkness below. She went half way down, fumbling for a light switch on the wall. Finding none, she reached in her pocket for her phone. Damn. Left it on the chest. She turned to go back up.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said Valentin Bondy. ‘I’ve got it.’ He held up her phone in one hand, while the other aimed a gun in her face.

  Chapter 41 Aramis Admits

  ‘Carry on down,’ said Bondy. He felt for a switch on the ceiling next to the trap door and the cellar filled with light. She went down the steps and found herself in an underground bunker. What she saw took her breath away.

  An artist’s studio. Table in the middle with tubes of oil paint, palette, wax paper, rags, brushes, turpentine. Sink in the corner. Three easels, each with a canvas in different stages of completion. And on the wall, six finished paintings of the early Provençal School.

  Henri Seibel: landscape gardener, orchid collector, burner of leaves. And forger.

  The lighting came from a row of powerful spotlights on the ceiling. Artificial, but that’s not a problem when you’re copying. On the contrary, you want the tiniest details to show up. Besides, Seibel wasn’t copying any more. He’d gone beyond the painstaking task of reproducing what hung on the wall. The subject matter now was his own – all he needed to copy was the style. And of course, most important of all, the signature.