Murder in Lascaux

by Betsy Draine

  The strong suit of the academy was figure drawing, and Jenny’s sketchbooks from this period were filled with studies of models, both male and female, drawn from every conceivable angle and pose. But the young artists were exposed to newer trends in painting as well, including impressionism, now a generation old. In the most exciting entry in her journal, Jenny recorded a meeting with Berthe Morisot, the most prominent female painter in the movement. Morisot, who had married Manet’s brother, had her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1892, and Jenny Marie went to see it with her friend Aimée.

  3 December 1892

  The first thing we saw as we went up the stairs was a magnificent work in the style they call impressionism. The idea is not to get lost in details but to reproduce the sensation of seeing, and the approach creates startling effects. Here you see two young women sitting in a boat on a lake against a background of shimmering water. Nothing in the painting is sharp or clear. Next to the boat are several ducks, but you can barely make them out. Still, somehow you feel the pleasure of a lazy summer’s afternoon. You can see the sunlight in the choppy colors, and the brushstrokes are irresistible, free and thick, with no attempt to smooth them out. I found it very beautiful. The room was filled with such canvases. Everywhere you looked, the colors were so bright that you were taken aback. The artist paints mainly women and children in outdoor settings. It seems as if the colors are reflected from mirrors, with dancing beams of light.

  Imagine how excited we were to see Madame Manet herself standing in a corner, receiving visitors. We stood in line waiting our turn. When we introduced ourselves as students of the academy, she took an immediate interest in our work and asked us many questions. No longer young, she is still a handsome woman, slim and dark-haired, with a youthful bearing. Her manner is unaffected. She received our compliments with grace. We asked which other artists of the day she favored. She now thinks Daubigny’s works much too dark but remains devoted to Corot. Renoir is a favorite, and of course she idolizes Manet, who was her brother-in-law. He died some years ago. After speaking of these other artists, she grew serious, and looking very directly at the two of us, urged us never to waver in our devotion to painting. I know how difficult art is for women, she said. Consider my sister, Edma. She was as talented a painter as ever I was, but when she married, she renounced her career. Young ladies, do not let that happen to you. Continue on your course. So do you advise us never to marry? asked Aimée. Not at all, she replied. I married and now have a grown daughter whom I love dearly. But you must choose a husband who will value your talent and give you the freedom to use it. Never forget that.

  These words I have taken to heart. Afterward, Aimée and I had a long talk about marriage. Would you marry if to do so you had to give up your career, I asked. Aimée replied with a grave expression, yes, I think I would, if I deeply loved my husband and if he asked me to stop painting. Would you? No, Aimée, I said. You may do so, but I never shall.

  I pondered these words. Jenny Marie had never married. So far, her journal revealed nothing about a romance, and I wondered if there had ever been a man in her life. In any event, this entry documented Jenny Marie’s interest in impressionism and was of interest for that reason. I pushed back from the table and rose to take a closer look at the two paintings in the library, both done in the impressionist style. The ornately framed oil painting to the left of the window was identified by its nameplate as Parc Monceau au printemps. It depicted a bright scene of well-dressed women walking haughtily by an old couple trying to sell flowers from a park bench. The small painting hanging on the other side of the window was called Gamins au jeu. It showed two thin but lively youngsters playing a game with sticks and stones in a dirty cobblestone street. She had dated this one next to her signature, and it was the date given in the journal, 1894. Yes, I thought, the influence of Berthe Morisot was apparent.

  A rap on the library door interrupted my reading. “May I come in?” It was Marianne. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but Inspector Daglan is here and wants to speak to you and your husband. They are waiting in the salon. I’m afraid I have to get back to the class, so could you lock up here and meet the inspector as soon as possible? “

  “Of course. I’ll be there in a minute.” Frustrated, I marked my place, closed the journal, turned off my laptop, and picked up my purse. I was careful to lock the door behind me.

  When I entered the salon, Daglan was seated in an armchair with his legs crossed, talking to Toby. I sat down beside Toby on the couch and exchanged greetings with Daglan.

  “Will you take coffee?” he asked. I saw that he was nursing a small cup himself and that there was a pot and an empty cup beside it.

  “Yes, thank you.” I had missed my coffee this morning. “How may we help you, Inspector?”

  Before he could reply, Toby said he had just been telling the inspector about our meeting with Marc Gounot and how little we knew about him, despite appearances.

  “Yes, that is my question to you,” rejoined Daglan, handing me the cup he had just poured for me. “Would you mind telling me how long you and your husband have known Marc Gounot and how you met?”

  Just the right amount of anxiety coursed through me—not enough to make me glance up at Toby, but just enough to caution me not to. I didn’t want it to appear that we were coordinating a story. I kept my eyes on the inspector as I recounted how we had met Marc by chance at his mineral shop, consented to a drink with him at the nearby café, and then were sought out by him after our restaurant dinner with the cooking-school group.

  Toby jumped in. “I know it seems suspicious we would meet the nephew of Monsieur Gounot on the day after the murder, but that’s what happened. And we might not have met him if we hadn’t visited the library in Castelnaud. The librarian there told us not to miss the rock exhibit, which was in Marc’s shop.”

  “The young woman who has provided Marc Gounot with an alibi?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Very convenient. So Marc Gounot can claim you never would have met him without her suggestion.”

  Toby countered with the facts, but the inspector seemed determined to believe, or to pretend to believe, that we had met Marc by prearrangement. He just wasn’t sure for what purpose. After fruitlessly grilling Toby again on his antique business and his knowledge of paleontology, he took another tack.

  “Madame, did you think it advisable to socialize with one of the possible suspects in this murder investigation?”

  “No, I didn’t, Inspector. In fact, it made me uneasy. But Marc was insistent. We agreed to have a drink with him, that’s all, and we said we wouldn’t discuss the murder. But then when Marc started talking about himself, he seemed so vulnerable. I felt sorry for him.” At the quizzical rise of the inspector’s eyebrows, I retold the story Marc had related of his father’s disgrace.

  “So, you know something about that, eh?” Inspector Daglan looked down at his shoes. “I wonder if you really know the whole truth about the father, Henri Gounot. He behaved very badly during the war.”

  “What exactly did he do?” Toby asked.

  “Evidence wasn’t collected formally, because he committed suicide as soon as the charges against him were brought to the head of the Bureau of Monuments and Antiquities. But the evidence is right there in the personnel files of the bureau.”

  “Evidence of what?” I pressed.

  Daglan considered a moment. “First, Henri Gounot systematically purged from the bureau all employees of Jewish extraction. For this we have ample proof. His letters of denunciation were found in the bureau’s personnel files. There were only three cases of dismissal, but this was not a small matter. All three—two men and a woman—were later deported and died in concentration camps.”

  Toby looked as stunned as I felt.

  “But that’s not all. Henri Gounot also served his German masters by spreading their racial propaganda, and he ended by compromising his profession.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.
r />   Daglan sat back and sighed. “How much do you know about the ideology of the Nazi SS?”

  “A little,” said Toby.

  “Do you know what attracted their interest in the Dordogne?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, then, let me tell you. No doubt you know Herr Hitler believed in a race of superior ‘Aryans’ that supposedly went back to prehistoric times. Well, he gave his friend Himmler the assignment of finding archaeologists sympathetic to that view. Their mission was to prove that the cave art discovered at the turn of the century in France and Spain was Aryan—that the cave men had come from Northern Europe, not from Southern Europe, or worse, Africa.”

  “You’re not saying,” I asked in shock, “that the French Bureau of Antiquities collaborated with Himmler’s project?”

  “Unfortunately, Madame, for some in Périgueux that was the case, both before the war and later during the Vichy regime. And Henri Gounot was the principal liaison between Himmler and the bureau. He personally escorted Himmler’s emissary to Les Eyzies at the end of the thirties. His correspondence with his Nazi counterparts documents their arrangements to tour the caves of the Dordogne and to meet with French archaeologists. He even arranged for them to meet with the venerable Abbé Breuil. But this brush with evil could not stain that good man’s long career.”

  “But it did stain Henri Gounot’s,” I stated, as flatly as possible.

  “Exactly, because with him it was not a brief contact. His association with Himmler’s entourage lasted from 1938 to 1945. And his nemesis in the bureau, Michel Malbert, had the documents to prove that.”

  “When did Malbert make his accusations?” I asked.

  “Not until 1969. That is what gives the son a bit of ground on which to stand. He claims Malbert was motivated by his ambition to replace Henri Gounot as head of the archaeological section. That could be true. But the documents show the accusations were accurate. I tell you this to warn you about Marc Gounot. He is in his own way a fanatic, blinded by loyalty to his father.”

  “Do you really think Marc would murder Monsieur Malbert in revenge for his father’s death? If that was the motive, why did he wait nearly forty years to do it?”

  “The answer may be as simple as opportunity. Consider this: All his adult life, Marc Gounot resents Michel Malbert. Then let’s say he becomes involved with foreigners in a project to traffic in prehistoric artifacts. Once again Malbert appears on the scene threatening the plan. His uncle, the guide, reveals that Malbert’s name appears on his visitors’ list for Lascaux on a certain day. Marc finds his opportunity to eliminate Malbert, and voilà.”

  It was maddening the way Daglan shifted from lulling conversation to potshots of insinuation. With the word “foreigners” he raised his eyebrows and darkened his tone. Again we protested the implication that we were involved in any plot to sell artifacts. For a while Daglan stubbornly gnawed on this subject like a dog with an old bone in his mouth, but then, just as abruptly, he let it go and the conversation took a new direction.

  “Tell me. How long have you known the other members of your stage de cuisine, Madame Dexter in particular?”

  “Dotty? We met for the first time here at the cooking school,” I replied, “and that’s when we met the others as well. Why do you ask?”

  “Because Madame Dexter visited Marc Gounot at his mineral shop yesterday, and I would like to know why she did.”

  I tried explaining that Dotty probably went just to flirt with Marc, but Daglan continued to look skeptical. Exasperated, I encouraged him to ask our fellow students at the school about Dotty. He would soon learn how plausible my explanation was.

  “Inspector, Dotty doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Toby declared. “But there’s someone else you should be looking at. The handyman here, Fernando, had as much reason to murder Malbert as Marc had. We’ve been told Fernando once served prison time for stealing findings from an archaeological site, and Monsieur Malbert came to Cazelle on Monday morning to see Fernando—perhaps to accuse him of other thefts.”

  The canny inspector smiled wearily. “He was not here expressly to see Fernando. And yes, we know all about Fernando’s past. We also know from the authorities at the Bureau of Monuments and Antiquities that this was Monsieur Malbert’s third meeting with the baron and his children. They were engaged in discussions about opening their private cave to archaeologists and scholars.”

  “What cave?” Surprise showed in my voice.

  “There is a long and complex history about a cave located on the property. Inside there may be markings that would be of interest to the authorities, or so Monsieur Malbert thought, on the basis of a rumor. But the family denies it. At any rate, they oppose any examination of the cave.”

  Now that was interesting. There was a cave located somewhere on the grounds of the château, and the family was jealously guarding it. Were they merely trying to protect their privacy, or something else?

  Daglan seemed to read the expression on my face. “You can be sure we are questioning members of the family about the visit, but that doesn’t concern you. Right now I’m more interested in what you can tell me.”

  Toby bristled. “There’s something else you should know about Fernando. He keeps a dovecote, and his doves look exactly like that bird that was speared and left at Monsieur Malbert’s feet on Monday. Would it be possible to determine whether the bird came from Fernando’s flock?”

  “I doubt it. There are few large properties in the Dordogne that lack a dovecote, and the doves all look very much alike. There was nothing unusual about that particular dove except the manner of its death.”

  “Do you know anything more about it that you could tell us?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I am told the symbol is quite well known by the experts.”

  “Yes, we know that much. So perhaps Monsieur Malbert had other enemies in the profession,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, he certainly did. But only Gounot and his nephew Marc had access to Lascaux,” snapped Daglan. His eyes narrowed. “And what if this bird is merely a distraction, something that was left to throw us off the track?”

  “Are you saying that the dove may have had nothing to do with the killer’s motive?” asked Toby.

  “I have to consider that a possibility,” replied Daglan. He was about to say something else when he was interrupted by a knock on the door. Marianne entered, looking more than a little flustered.

  “Inspector, we have finished the lesson, and the students are almost through with their meal. Do you want me to ask Monsieur and Madame Press to wait, to talk with you after you are finished talking with Toby and Nora?”

  “Yes. Would you be so good as to ask all the members of the class to go to their rooms? I will talk to each one shortly.” Marianne looked disturbed but walked quickly back toward the kitchen to execute her orders. “We are finished here for now,” Daglan said to us. “I must ask you to say nothing to the others about any part of our conversation.”

  “Of course,” said Toby. “Actually, we have plans for this afternoon. Do you mind if we leave now?”

  “You may go. I know where to find you.”

  We managed a cursory goodbye as we hurried away to our rooms to get a few belongings before going out to the car.

  In Montignac we stopped at a busy café for a late lunch (ham sandwiches on baguettes) and claimed our reservations for Lascaux II at the ticket office in the center of town. The lines were intimidating. Luckily, since we had reserved in advance, we went through the pick-up line in a reasonably short time. Lascaux II has become a popular attraction. Visits are staggered at half-hour intervals, and the daily operation of shuttling hundreds of tourists to and from the artificial cave is planned with military precision.

  With tickets in hand, we killed some time by window-shopping on the main street of Montignac before driving to the well-marked site on a wooded hill on the outskirts of the town. Arriving at the parking lot, we claimed one of the few open spots and jo
ined the line waiting at the entrance. There were picnic tables scattered about and kiosks selling soft drinks, ice cream, souvenirs, and booklets.

  From a professional standpoint, I had my doubts about Lascaux II. A copy can never replace an original. I scold my students who rely on reproductions instead of looking at original art when they can. But that’s just it: because of conservation worries, the real Lascaux is no longer accessible to the public. So wasn’t it reasonable for the government to construct a facsimile to satisfy their curiosity? Tour books tout it as an amazing technical achievement, faithful in every respect to the contours of the original cave and to the size, placement, and colors of the paintings. That may be, said a competing voice in my head, but after all, it is still just a copy. It’s a pity the fake cave has been seen by far more people than will ever see the original.

  Those were my first thoughts as we waited in line, but it wasn’t long before my mind reverted to the murder. Then I began to worry that this visit might trigger memories of the violent scene we had witnessed only days ago. Toby seemed to sense my disquiet, and he placed an arm around my shoulder.

  “They move these groups through pretty quickly. We won’t be in there long, and we need to make the most of our time inside. I want to check out the size of the space and see if we can re-create where we were standing when Malbert was attacked. Try to look around and get a feel for any hiding places someone might use to conceal himself. Are you up for it?”