“Is something the matter?” I asked. He said nothing. “Sherlock?”
He turned to me, revealing a triumphant smile on his thin face. “Nothing is the matter!” He turned and removed the round painting of the Madonna from the wall. He strode to the window and examined the back where the light was better. “Worm holes. It would make sense. Or would it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“There is a famous Botticelli painting, one discovered late in our own century—the Madonna of the Apple, a sort of sister version to the better-known Madonna of the Pomegranate. The Virgin, in offering the apple to the Baby Jesus, is purifying the fruit from the sin of Eve. The painting was hardly found before it was lost again. There was theft, murder, and scandal involved, all here in Paris, as I recall.”
“But surely it is only a copy?”
“Is it? The original was never recovered. You must know Poe’s story about the purloined letter. This is exactly the same: how better to hide something precious than to have it out in the open surrounded by others of its kind? The wood panel appears antique, and the tempera and colors look to be those of the late Renaissance. I dare not leave this here a moment longer. My visits to Lupin’s doctor and the lawyer can wait, although I shall have their names. What if the mysterious Mademoiselle Labelle were to reclaim this in my absence?”
“But you cannot just take it.”
“Can’t I? I shall give Barrault a receipt. Besides, we shan’t have it for long.”
“No? Whom will you give it to?”
“The Sûreté nationale, Henry, the French equivalent of Scotland Yard, and more specifically to Commissaire Juvol, an old friend of mine. We shall also take him the bottle of morphine for examination.”
He turned again and something fluttered slowly down to the floor. “What is that?”
“What?” Holmes asked.
I stood, stepped forward and bent over to pick it up. I turned it slowly to and fro. The feather was a dull black. “It must have been stuck to the back of the frame.” I turned it again. “What kind of feather is it, I wonder?”
“That is obvious, Henry—a crow or, given the size, perhaps a raven.”
My mouth pulled back in disgust. “I hate the noisy beggars. They feed on carrion, too.”
Holmes smiled ever so faintly. “They are the harbingers of doom, Henry. And perhaps…” His eyes grew thoughtful. “… familiars of the Devil.”
* * *
Juvol and Holmes shook hands, and then it was my turn to have my own fingers crushed in the commissaire’s massive paw. Juvol was almost as tall as Holmes, but he must have outweighed him by some fifty pounds. He was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested with a thick neck, square jaw, and an exuberant red-brown mustache which seemed to almost grow outward, rather than downward. His eyes were a clear cool blue. His navy-blue suit and waistcoat were well cut, and the jacket must have taken yards of material. All in all, he looked more like some stocky Scotsman than a Gallic policeman, but he spoke elegant French. As was also the case with the English, you could tell a French person’s social class from their language, and Juvol had obviously been well raised and educated.
We exchanged a few pleasantries. Juvol thought I was French, and when I told him I had lived in England for many years, he was surprised. “Monsieur Holmes speaks excellent French, but you, you have absolutely no accent!” I explained that I had spent my youth in France and learned both languages, since my English mother spoke mostly English with me.
“Ah, how I envy you!” he exclaimed. “So much easier than struggling with grammars and dictionaries.” He glanced at a satchel Holmes was holding. “I suspect this is not simply a social call, Monsieur Holmes. I believe you have something there to show me.”
Holmes smiled, set the satchel upright on Juvol’s desktop, then with a flourish pulled away a cloth, revealing the circular painting like some shield emblazoned with the Virgin’s image. Juvol’s smile vanished, mouth stiffening, eyes widening. “Mon Dieu,” he whispered.
“Do you recognize it?”
“I certainly do. La Madonna della Mela. It was some twenty years ago. I had only been on the force a year or two when it was stolen. The crime was a sensational one. The newspapers were filled with it for weeks, and it was a familiar topic amongst policemen and citizens alike. Where on earth did you find it?”
“At the home of Monsieur Gaston Lupin.”
“The artist?—the one who died? Ah, then perhaps it is only a copy.”
“Perhaps. I am no expert, but the wood seems sufficiently aged. The colors of the tempera resemble those of the Botticelli works I have seen in the Uffizi.”
“May I?” Juvol grasped the painting by the golden frame and held it up before him, his long brawny arms extended. “It is a beautiful thing.” He set it down on the table. “We know a good deal more nowadays about the chemistry of paints and the nature of wood than we did twenty years ago. I shall have some of the experts in our crime laboratories examine this. Hopefully they will be able to tell if it is the original or not.”
Holmes nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know if the painting was ever formally examined in the past, ever authenticated?”
“No, I do not.”
“The crime was considered one of the major art thefts of the century,” Holmes said. “I was about to start my career as a consulting detective when it happened. What can you tell us about the case?”
“Well, it involved the murder of the Comte de Laval, its owner. He was found naked and stabbed to death in his bed. That first detail did not make it into the newspapers. His wife and children were away at the time. He had bought the newly discovered painting for several thousand francs three years earlier. The police received an anonymous tip by telegram and went to the apartment of a Mademoiselle Dujardin—la belle Mademoiselle Dujardin. She wouldn’t let them in, so they burst open the door. They soon found the count’s diamond ring in some hidden cranny, but she tried to tell them it was a gift from an admirer. The circular frame of the painting was discovered on top of her wardrobe.” He pointed at the painting. “If that is genuine, then one of the frames is not the original. Under questioning, Mademoiselle Dujardin began with one story, then switched to another. In the end, at her trial, she said she had been taken in by a man, an evil man who had deceived and betrayed her. She claimed that he had never told her he meant to murder the count. She said she was only an innocent victim, not an accomplice. Her voice broke, and she wept.
“I was there for part of the trial, attending whenever I had a few spare moments. I fear I used my policeman’s uniform to get myself in. There were not enough seats to accommodate the crowd, and like so many other male spectators, I was soon half in love with the woman. Dujardin might have gotten off lightly, but the prosecution made much of the ring. If she was not a willing participant, if she was as horrified as she claimed, then what was she doing with the count’s diamond? And why had she tried to hide it, then claim it was a gift? In the end she got twenty years at le Prison Saint-Lazare.”
Holmes’s forehead was creased. “You said she changed her story. What was the earlier version?”
“I’m not sure. Some preposterous tale involving a female accomplice, I believe.”
Holmes nodded slowly. “But there was never any mention of Gaston Lupin, never any question of him being involved?”
“No, I think not, but we shall find out for certain. I shall have the report pulled from our files, and we can go over it together. It cannot, of course, leave the building, but you are free to spend as much time with it as you wish. And there is another thing.” His big fingers stroked the end of his bristly mustache. “The detective in charge of the case has retired, but he will doubtlessly be happy to speak with you. I can write you a letter of introduction, although the name of Sherlock Holmes would be enough in itself. Georges Tabernet was one of the Sûreté’s finest, a wily and clever man with a truly first-rate intellect. He may know a thing or two which did not make it into the forma
l report.”
“Excellent!” Holmes exclaimed. “And can you also find out if Mademoiselle Dujardin is still at Saint-Lazare?”
“Certainly. It has been around twenty years, so perhaps she has regained her liberty.”
“How soon will it take to retrieve the file?”
“No more than an hour, and I can also send one of my men to Saint-Lazare to check on the woman. In the meantime, I insist you and the good doctor join me for lunch. There is an excellent restaurant two blocks away, close to Notre Dame. The escallops of veal are particularly exquisite.”
Holmes nodded. “An excellent suggestion, and you shall be our guest, I insist.”
“No, no.”
“Please. Besides, my expenses are being covered.”
“Well, we shall see. I must start the processes moving, and then we may depart.”
Holmes lifted his hand. “Wait—there is one other thing.” He took the morphine bottle out of the satchel. “I found this in Lupin’s room. Perhaps you could have your lab also examine the contents and see if the dosage matches what is on the label. I suspect it is considerably higher.”
The policeman gave an appreciative nod. “The case grows more and more interesting, eh? Not only grand theft, but a possible murder as well.”
It was a short walk. The restaurant proprietor greeted Juvol warmly and gave us a quiet table in a corner before the window. The veal was everything the commissaire had promised. As the dish was prepared with white wine, we accompanied it with a cold white Alsatian poured from a tall thin green bottle. Juvol was clearly a man with an appetite for both food and drink, and he soon ordered a second bottle, a white Bordeaux. For such a big man, he handled a knife and fork meticulously, dabbing now and then with his linen napkin at his lips and mustache. He and Holmes did most of the talking. They discussed several recent noteworthy criminal cases in the two capital cities.
After the veal, the waiter returned with a large plate upon which were a round of Camembert, a wedge of Roquefort, and a thick yellowish cheese, Morbier, with its characteristic streak of gray ash running through the middle. Juvol smiled and nodded at the waiter, then used his knife to cut off a big piece of Roquefort. He mashed it upon a slice of baguette, making a mountainous smear of blue, white and gray, then bit off half the round.
“Ah, the queen of cheeses, the Roquefort! There is nothing else like it.” Holmes also took some, but I did not care for blue cheeses. I settled for the Morbier. Juvol refilled Holmes’s and my glass, then his own, finishing the bottle.
I sipped some wine, then covered my mouth to stifle a yawn. “I think I shall need a nap after this wonderful meal.”
“Nonsense.” Juvol cut off some Morbier. “This is only fortification for our look at the file.”
“Perhaps you would prefer to be a tourist again this afternoon, Henry,” Holmes said. “And you could return to the hotel for a brief nap, first. There is no need for you to join us in our examination.”
“I may take you up on that, especially the part about the nap.”
Holmes took another bite of the Roquefort. “This is very good. The sheep’s milk gives it a characteristic piquancy. We have discussed some recent events, Juvol, but not those of the past. You said you were present at Dujardin’s trial. What, by the way, is her prénom?”
“Simone.”
“Simone Dujardin. And were you really half in love with her, as you said earlier?”
Juvol shook his head, his smile bittersweet. “That was perhaps an exaggeration. All the same, she was an amazing beauty, one of those extraordinary French women a man cannot tear his eyes away from, one who makes you ache with longing. She had the face of an angel, one of those blond innocents you see alongside the Madonna in the paintings of Botticelli. Her hair was long and curly, and the plain gray prisoner’s smock somehow emphasized her beauty. She had large blue eyes, and when they filled with tears, you wanted to rush to protect her.”
Holmes stared thoughtfully at him. “Are you being ironic?”
He laughed. “I don’t know! She made quite an impression on me. I had some experience by then with the duplicity of women, and yet I must admit that, at the time, I was quite smitten. She was only eighteen years old and small in stature, which added to that air of vulnerability. But under cross-examination about the diamond ring, she revealed another side of herself. She showed flashes of rage and made contradictory statements. The lead prosecutor had considerable experience. He knew how to get under her skin.”
“Do you think she might have been the actual murderer?” Holmes asked.
“At the time, I was convinced that she was innocent and that her conviction was a dreadful miscarriage of justice. I was younger then and still somewhat naïve. Now I am not so sure. I would definitely not rule it out, but a part of me still wants to believe so beautiful a woman could not have committed so hideous a crime.”
“Surely if she had a male accomplice,” I said, “he must have been the murderer, not her—not a woman.”
Holmes and Juvol both gave me faintly pitying looks. “Ah, Dr. Vernier, if you were in my line of work…” Juvol shook his head. “Many a prostitute would kill a client for a few gold coins, and some actually do. It is fear of the guillotine that restrains the others, not the supposed softer temperament of their sex.”
I sighed. “My wife is also a physician, and she works so hard to save lives. It is difficult to imagine a woman who would kill.”
“Come now, Henry,” Holmes said. “You know better. You have seen women who kill.”
I frowned. “You cannot mean Violet—that was self-defense—almost an accident.”
Holmes recoiled slightly, almost as if he had been struck. “No, no—not her, but Constance, Constance Grimswell.” He swallowed once. “She had her own cousin killed by that monstrous son of hers.” He glanced at Juvol. “A most interesting case. I must tell you about it sometime.” His cheeks had a slight flush. “But returning to the matter at hand, you said that in an earlier version of her story, there was no evil man who had led Dujardin astray. Her accomplice was a woman?”
“Yes, I believe so, but again, Tabernet would know best.”
“And they were after the painting?”
“Dujardin said she knew nothing about the painting, and that, I believe, was true. When the police found the empty circular frame in her room, she apparently did not even know what it was. Unlike with the diamond ring, she did not understand its significance. I remember Tabernet saying she could not believe a mere thing of wood and paint could be worth so much.”
“I suspect the prosecution must have tried to claim she was a prostitute.” Holmes used the French euphemism fille de joie—“girl of joy.”
“Well, she was definitely no common street whore registered with the police—she would have had to have been a courtisane, the high-class variety instead. However, her background was spotless: a respectable upbringing, education and employment. Still, the obvious question was what would a respectable young woman have been doing in the count’s bedroom that evening?—especially in the absence of his wife and children. A woman’s seductive silk nightgown was also found in the bedroom, one which fit Mademoiselle Dujardin perfectly.”
Holmes rubbed his long thin hands together. “I am eager to see the file. Can we leave now or…?”
Juvol gave him an incredulous stare. “Without dessert? There are several superb choices. One must not rush a meal such as this.”
Holmes smiled. “I suppose not.”
Juvol swirled his wine in the glass, then took a sip. “By the way, perhaps I might ask a rather obvious question, one which I have politely postponed.”
“Yes?”
“What brought you to Paris in the first place, my dear Holmes, and more specifically, to the home of Lupin?”
“Ah, well, I have a client who knew the artist, and she was… distraught by his death. I always mistrust a diagnosis of heart failure, so I thought I would have a first-hand look.”
�
�And who is this client?”
The corners of Holmes’s mouth slowly rose, but he did not speak.
Juvol shrugged. “Well, I had to ask.”
“And I have to remain silent.”
“What with the painting and all, we shall certainly have to open an investigation into Lupin’s death—especially if the analysis of your bottle shows a higher dosage of morphine.”
“I wish you luck. He was probably a morphinomane, a confirmed addict, and unless the woman confesses to murdering him, it will be hard to prove the overdose was deliberate. Chemists bungle things all the time.”
“Would suicide be a possibility?” Juvol asked.
“His valet said he was in good spirits.”
Juvol shook his head. “Damnation. You are right. One never knows with these blasted morphinomanes and their needles.”
After dessert, I took Holmes’s advice and returned in a cab to the hotel for a nap. My lunches back in London were spartan ones accompanied only by water; the large quantity of wine had made me very drowsy. When I woke up, I walked to the Louvre and spent the afternoon wandering the vast halls. As usual, I was bedazzled by the museum’s sheer abundance. One could spend days there and not see everything.
Around six I met Holmes again before Notre Dame; it was only two blocks from the Prefecture of Police. This time he was his usual self. There was none of the stupefaction of two nights before. He was whistling some Gilbert and Sullivan air and twirling his stick, obviously in the best of spirits.
“It is too early for dinner,” he said, “especially after our gargantuan lunch, but we might still find Miss Dujardin at home. She was released from prison about a year ago.”
We walked to the Left Bank. Holmes was full of restless energy. Anyone with shorter legs than I would have had difficulty keeping up the pace. He paused before a battered-looking old building, then opened the front door. Sitting at the entrance to his loge was the concierge, an old man in a drab dark jacket and trousers with a folded newspaper upon his lap. He stared up at us from beneath the spectacles perched on the end of his narrow nose. Holmes asked him for the number of Mademoiselle Dujardin’s room.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Devil and the Four Page 9
