Murder in Lascaux

by Betsy Draine

  I bent forward, to try to catch the bird, but it flew away. I was leaning on the dovecote door when I felt myself grabbed from behind by both shoulders. Brute force twisted me round, and there was Fernando, preparing to march me off his property.

  “Qu’est ce que vous fâites?” he growled—What are you doing?— omitting the obligatory “Madame.”

  But Toby, who had observed Fernando coming toward me, was on his heels. He gave Fernando the same treatment Fernando had given me—grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him round. I was flung back and landed on my backside.

  “Take your hands off my wife!” said Toby in a steely voice, giving Fernando a hard shove, propelling him backward. Fernando’s legs went out from under him, and he went sprawling in the dust. It was over in a matter of seconds. Fernando scrambled to his feet and looked for a moment as if he were ready to give battle, but he thought better of it and retreated.

  “Those are my birds,” he said sullenly. “You have no right.”

  “And you have no right to touch my wife,” said Toby, helping me up.

  The two men glared at each other for a tense moment. Then, abruptly, Fernando turned and strode off toward his house. “You have no right,” he muttered again over his shoulder.

  Oh God, I thought, we’ve really done it now! What will Marianne think of us? “Toby, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What did you expect me to do?”

  “Look, we’re guests here, and he’s staff. He had a right to object to my snooping around his yard.”

  “But he doesn’t have the right to manhandle the guests. He’s lucky all I did was push him. What’s so awful about looking around his yard?”

  I told Toby of my discovery. “Look.” He followed my pointing finger. The two doves were perched again on the roof.

  “So that’s what made him so hostile. Maybe you’re on to something.”

  “Maybe. It’s just possible the dead bird in the cave came from that dovecote.”

  “It’s possible. But I’ll bet there are hundreds of dovecotes in the Dordogne. It could have come from any one of them.”

  “Even so, we’d better mention it to Inspector Daglan, don’t you think? I wonder if there’s any way of telling whether a bird came from a particular dovecote?”

  “I doubt it, but yes, we should mention it to Daglan. And look, if you’re worried about Marianne, you can say I apologize for pushing Fernando and I’ll be a good boy from now on. Say I’m overly protective or whatever.”

  “You think maybe you are?”

  “Not really. But the way you’re standing with your hands on your hips tells me you think so. Am I right?”

  “I could have handled the situation myself, Toby. Now you’ve created a problem for me.”

  “Do you want me to apologize to Fernando?”

  “It might help.”

  He paused and took a breath. “All right, I can do that. And meanwhile, I’m going to act as if nothing happened. I’m going off to scout antiques and leave you to your research for the afternoon. Are you still up to that?”

  “Yes. Just promise me there won’t be any more fighting.”

  “I promise not to start anything, how’s that?”

  “Toby …”

  “All right, I promise.”

  “That’s good. Now off you go.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I’m all right. Go on. I’ll see you later.”

  Marianne was waiting at the entrance to the library at two o’clock, as we had arranged, but she was not looking friendly. “Nora! What’s this I hear about your husband brawling with Fernando?” she demanded. “He told me you were trampling all over his bird pens and that when he asked you to leave, your husband threw him to the ground. I can’t have that sort of behavior from my guests. I’m surprised at you.”

  “I’m sorry it happened, Marianne. But Toby sometimes goes all chivalrous on me. He gets rather protective if he thinks someone is threatening me.”

  “What do you mean, threatening you? Fernando told me he found you trying to enter his dovecote, where you had no reason to be.”

  “I just wanted a closer look at a bird. I didn’t realize he would consider that breaking into his property.”

  “In fact the property belongs to me, but that doesn’t make any difference. My workers are entitled to their privacy.” Her eyes narrowed. “And what was so interesting about our dovecote?”

  Was it just my imagination, or was her anger turning into suspicion?

  “I’d never seen one before. And I thought you said we could take a look at the bird pens.”

  “A look is one thing. Going into them is another. Our doves aren’t for show; they’re valuable. Fernando has every right to keep people from disturbing them.”

  “Of course. But he had no right to grab me. That was wrong.”

  “What?”

  I explained what had happened and added an account of how menacing Fernando had been at the chapel.

  Marianne took a small step back. “Well, I’m surprised to hear that. He shouldn’t have touched you, on either occasion. I’ll talk to him. But in the future, please mind where you walk. We want our guests to enjoy their stay at the château, but you can’t just go anywhere you please. This is our home.”

  “I know, Marianne. I’m sorry. I thought when you said we should visit Fernando’s aviary, it would be okay if I looked around. I guess I got too close. And the men got too macho. It shouldn’t have happened. I’ll be more careful from now on.”

  I was doing my best to mollify her, and my efforts had some effect.

  “And what about your husband?”

  “Don’t worry. There won’t be any more trouble with Fernando.”

  “I hope not. She held my gaze steadily for a moment, then sighed, leaving me with the impression Fernando had caused her difficulties in the past. “All right, let’s say no more about it. We’ll go into the library and I’ll show you to your work.” She opened the heavy oak door and led the way in. “And where will your husband be while you are working?”

  “Toby is out looking for antiques this afternoon. He’ll be busy, too.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it.” She gestured for me to follow her into the room.

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your help with my research,” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “I want to learn as much as I can about your great-grandmother—that is, if I’m right about her relationship to you.”

  “No, Jenny Marie Cazelle was what I think you would call my great-great-aunt. But you’ll see for yourself when you look at the family records. I’ve already pulled things together for you.”

  The library was comfortable rather than imposing, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls crammed with all types of volumes: old leather-bound tomes, more recent hardcovers, even paperbacks and some cardboard document files. Three brown leather armchairs ringed the room, each accompanied by a standing lamp. A well-worn oriental rug covered the stone floor. On the fourth wall, a tall window with leaded panes was cranked open to admit the afternoon air. Hanging on either side of the window were two beguiling paintings in a style I immediately recognized.

  “Are those by—”

  “Yes, of course,” interrupted Marianne. “I thought they would interest you.”

  “They certainly do.” I walked over to study one, then the other. The one on the left showed several figures strolling in a park. The other featured children playing in a city street. “They’re lovely,” I said. Marianne waited a few moments while I took them in. Near the window were an oak table and a matching desk chair. On the table several books and boxes were carefully laid out. In spite of a pleasant breeze from the window, a whiff of old tobacco smoke hung in the air.

  Marianne bent slightly at the waist and placed both palms on the table as I sat myself in the chair. “Here, first of all, is the family Bible, with records of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths. I’ve put bo
okmarks on the pages that refer to Jenny Marie.” The Bible was oversized, old, and covered in black cloth. “In the boxes on the left you will find some old letters and documents that might be useful.” She paused briefly. “But I think the sketchbooks and journals will interest you most.” She pointed to a small stack on the right side of the table. Sketchbooks and journals? This was more than I expected.

  “We have some, not all of them,” Marianne continued, “which means the record is incomplete, but even so, you are welcome to look through these and to use whatever may be important for your research. I’ve gone through them all several times, but you are the first person outside the family to look at them.”

  “It’s a privilege. Thank you so much.” My day, which had started so badly, now held real promise.

  “If you like, you may borrow any of the books in here, but I would ask you not to remove Jenny Marie’s records from this room. For safety’s sake, you understand.”

  “Of course, Marianne. I’ll handle everything with care.”

  “I am sure you will,” she said, without warmth.

  “Thank you again,” I said, meaning it. She walked away, closing the door behind her.

  I took a breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. I needed to stay in Marianne’s good graces if I wanted to accomplish my research. But now that I was here, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I had been hoping to find sufficient material for a journal article. There was more than enough here for that. My challenge was to sort through the documents and decide what to use, given the limited time I’d be here. I was so excited to find a cache no one else had ever examined that my anxieties melted away, and I reverted to type: Nora Barnes, sleuth of archives.

  Like most academics, I have my tics about getting down to work. I shuffle papers, rearrange my desk, stack items in their order to be read, and so forth. I even have a ritual for opening a new book. I start with the cover blurbs and descriptions on the book jacket. I look at the flyleaf and prefatory material—all of it. Then I flip to the back to see if there’s a biographical squib on the author. Finally, I zip through the table of contents, and only then do I turn to the first page. I guess this procedure gives me context for what I’m about to read. It’s also a warm-up, like a pianist stretching her fingers before playing.

  True to form, I started with a quick inventory. The records in the family Bible were the obvious place to begin, but first I couldn’t resist a quick thumb-through of the sketchbooks. Pictures before words: the art historian’s mantra. Many of the drawings were in pencil or charcoal, and some were in ink that had started to brown. There were studies for portraits—though nothing resembling the one outside our bedroom that had disturbed me so much—as well as figure studies, anatomy drawings (dozens of hands were painstakingly rendered), sketches of animals, trees, and plants. Some drawings were partial or unfinished, others quite polished. One of the pads held a number of spatial compositions that might have been studies for large paintings. Each of the sketchbooks was dated on the upper left-hand corner of its inside cover, which would make them useful for tracking the artist’s development. For now, I stacked them in chronological order (the oldest was dated 1888, the latest 1924) and moved the long pads to a corner of the table.

  Next I gathered the four thick, blue-covered notebooks Marianne had left for me and looked to see whether these too had been dated on the inside cover. Yes, in a careful hand, the artist had noted the beginning and ending dates covered in each volume, and the individual entries were dated as well. I stacked the four journals in front of me too, with the oldest on top. It would be easy enough to correlate the journal entries and sketches by dates. The earliest journal was dated 1886–1892, the next volume 1892–1905, the next 1905–1917, and the last 1917–1938. But Jenny Marie had died in 1944, so the series didn’t cover the last six years of her life. That was a pity. I wondered if there had been a fifth volume, now lost, perhaps, or located elsewhere. I’d ask Marianne.

  Next I checked the family Bible. A page at the back separated by a leather bookmark opened to a neatly drawn genealogical chart. Additional pages recorded dates of baptism, marriage, and death for each member of the family going back to the eighteenth century. I was right about Jenny Marie’s dates. She was born in 1870, the eldest of two children born to the Baron Émile de Cazelle, and she died in 1944, without children of her own. In fact, she had never married. (That didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t easy in the nineteenth century for a woman to combine a full-time career with a family. I wondered, though, about possible suitors and hoped I would find out more about her private life in the journals.) Jenny Marie’s younger brother, Antoine (1875–1944), inherited the title and passed it on to his son, Pierre de Cazelle (1900–1965). Pierre’s son Charles, the current baron, was born in 1924, and his two children were Guillaume (born 1949) and Marianne (born 1952). And so, I calculated, that made Jenny Marie the aunt of the current baron’s father, and therefore the great-great aunt of Marianne, as she had correctly stated. Complicated, yes, but reasonably easy to follow with the genealogical diagram in front of me.

  Now that the family lineage was clear, I realized the old baron was the one remaining member of the family to have known Jenny Marie during her lifetime. He would have been twenty years old at the time of his great-aunt’s death, during the war. Come to think of it, didn’t Jenny Marie’s brother, Antoine, die in the same year? Yes, according to the records. So were their deaths related, and were they connected to the war? What had been the experience of the family during the German occupation? I wondered if the old baron would be willing to talk about that period. I knew many French families were reticent when it came to talking about the war years, since France had capitulated so easily (or at least that’s how it looked to the Brits and the Yanks). Still, he had mentioned the war to Toby and David the first night, so it would be worth asking.

  I was taking notes on my laptop as fast as I could. Even though I knew there would be no Internet connection for guests at the château, I had brought my computer along for this purpose.

  I hadn’t yet peeked into the boxes of letters and documents Marianne had provided. I did now and was relieved to discover that someone, Marianne no doubt, had already sorted the letters by date. Most of the correspondence was business-related, with letters to the artist from clients or galleries, art juries or professional societies. However, a few handwritten letters appeared to be personal, and those might be interesting. I scanned through the letters to the back of the pack, curious to see whether the correspondence continued through the war years, but again the last item was dated 1938. It was a letter from a collector acknowledging receipt of a portrait of his wife.

  By now I had finished my inventory and arranged my materials. The next step was to start reading methodically, and this was the point at which I always get up from my desk. As the French say, “Reculer pour mieux sauter”: “take a step back, the better to jump.” (It’s plain old fidgeting, really, but that’s how I work.) I edged my chair back, careful of the carpet, and took a turn around the room. I paused again in front of the two paintings, delighting in their details. Then I let my eyes sweep the bookshelves, checking whether Marianne could have missed the final volume of Jenny Marie’s journals. Unfortunately, I found no prize. My tour ended in front of a bookcase crammed with volumes about Périgord and local history, including several old volumes on the Cathars. I’d been hoping to learn more about the sect but didn’t want to get side-tracked, so I glanced through the tables of contents quickly and chose The Heretics of Southwest France for later reading. I tucked it into my purse.

  My goal for the remainder of the afternoon was to speed through the first volume, which covered the period of Jenny Marie’s life from ages sixteen to twenty-two. Her handwriting was large and flowing and not very difficult to read. However, she was not regular in her entries. Sometimes she jotted thoughts on sequential days, but sometimes weeks and months went by without a note, and when she was eighteen, there was a halt for more than a year.
But for my purposes, even this early notebook was useful. From the start it was clear she treated her journal as a work diary—there were few entries about bruised emotions, crushes, or the other usual teenage subjects. Instead, she wrote about her ambitions as a young artist and her struggles to master various techniques. By sixteen she was already serious about her drawing, and at seventeen she was locked in debate with Monsieur Chaliflour, her art teacher. Even at that age, she showed an independent spirit, complaining that her school exercises were too rigid.

  3 May 1887

  He tells us art is made by the hand and eye, but I think art is also made by the heart. I find it hard to like M. Chaliflour, he is so cold. Plan for today: I will draw the trees and pathways leading to the chapel. There is an old man who visits there every day at noon. I will ask to draw him, and what I want to capture is the sorrow in his face. For that is what is important about him, not the length of his fingers. What does M. Chaliflour know about sorrow? Or life? He has no wife or children. He lives by himself. I should feel sorry for him, yet there is no sorrow in his face, nor joy, either, come to think of it, nothing but sternness. Maybe that is because he is an art teacher and not a true artist. That’s what I want to be—a true artist or nothing. And I will work as hard as needs be to become one.

  The more I read of Jenny Marie, the more I liked her. On an earlier page there was an affectionate description of her younger brother, Antoine, who must have been about ten at the time.