‘Yes I would. Even without spectroscopic analysis, you can see that the paint here is titanium white. It first appeared in modern art in 1920. Gauguin painted with a compound of white lead, barium sulphate and zinc white. And the craquelure is not deep enough or advanced enough to be a one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old painting.’
Dupin ran his hand through his hair. There was still another possibility. He wasn’t finished yet. ‘Maybe this is just a copy. Like the other paintings. And the real painting is in a safe somewhere.’
‘And Monsieur Pennec had the expensive air-conditioning system installed for a copied, almost worthless painting?’
Dupin was silent for a long time now. ‘In the days leading up to his death, Pierre-Louis Pennec tried to get in touch with the Musée d’Orsay.’ Dupin had said this half-heartedly, as though this was a last ditch effort.
‘The Musée d’Orsay? Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think he would have… if there really had been a Gauguin that is… decided to tell someone about the painting? An expert? I mean, why now? And…’ Now Madame Cassel was at a loss.
‘At the beginning of the week, Pennec found out that he was terminally ill, liable to die at any moment.’ Again, Dupin was astonished at how much he was telling her. His inspectors didn’t know a thing about any of this.
‘He was terminally ill? And someone killed him?’
‘Yes. But please keep that confidential.’
Marie Morgane Cassel’s forehead creased. ‘Could I have a laptop with internet access please? I want to look up something about this particular year in Gauguin’s life. About the Vision and the preliminary work and studies for it.’
‘Sure, that sounds like a great idea.’
Dupin looked at his watch. It was half past eleven now. He suddenly felt like he couldn’t go on any longer. He was exhausted and didn’t know what to do next. He went to the door without a word and opened it.
‘Take all the time you need. We’ve booked you a room. I’ll ask one of my inspectors to bring up a laptop for you.’
‘That’s great, I didn’t think to bring mine with me.’
‘Why would you? It’s almost midnight. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then. Shall we meet for breakfast?’
‘Let’s! Eight o’clock. That way I’ll have a little more time.’
‘All right then.’
Dupin went out into the foyer. Labat was standing at reception.
‘Labat, Madame Cassel needs a laptop. Is there internet access in her room? We need it straight away.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now. It’s for important research.’ In a more confident tone, he added, ‘And I want to see Salou tomorrow morning.’
‘Salou called an hour ago wanting to speak to you about the break-in or whatever it was.’
‘I’d like to see him. At seven o’clock. Half seven. Here in the restaurant. I want him to bring his equipment with him.’
Le Ber, who had said nothing this entire time, seemed to want to ask something, but decided against it. ‘I don’t know, it’s –’
Dupin calmly interrupted Labat. ‘Half past seven.’
Marie Morgane Cassel was standing in the doorway looking a bit lost. Dupin turned to her. ‘Thank you so much for everything you’ve already done, Madame.’
‘No problem.’ The professor smiled. Dupin was very pleased to see her smile. It had been a long, stressful day. He felt drained.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning then, Madame Cassel. Sleep well.’
‘Thanks, I hope you sleep well too.’
‘Yes, I should think I will.’ And very soon, he hoped.
Labat had taken her bags and was making a show of climbing the stairs to the first floor. Madame Cassel followed him.
Dupin had started to get dizzy again in the last hour but he was going to drive back to Concarneau now. He’d be glad to be home.
Le Ber was standing in front of the hotel smoking when Dupin headed out into the night. Dupin looked at him just once, very briefly. He looked worn out too.
‘Bonne nuit, Le Ber. See you tomorrow morning.’
‘Bonne nuit, Monsieur le Commissaire.’
Dupin had parked his car on Place Gauguin itself, to the right of the hotel.
The journey home would take no more than fifteen minutes and he chose not to look at the speedometer. The streets were deserted. He had opened the huge sun roof on his XM to let in as much of the beautiful, mild summer’s air as he could and to see this incredible starry sky. The Milky Way beamed bright and clear. He wanted to be closer to all of it. It helped, a little.
The Third Day
Salou was already there when Dupin walked into the Central. He was alone, no team with him. He was standing at the end of the bar and looked shattered. Dupin walked over to him.
‘What’s the news? What’s going on?’ asked Salou.
Dupin had expected Salou to take a more aggressive line with him. He had been convinced Salou would consider it an affront to be called in at this hour for no apparent reason. Not that Dupin was overly upset about having called him in so early. But Salou actually looked more nervous than anything else. Dupin had to focus, this was important.
‘I want you to tell me how long the painting over there by the door has been hanging in comparison with the others. Or have they all been hanging here for the same length of time? Is there any trace evidence on this painting or the frame?’
‘How long the painting has been hanging here? You want to know how long this cheap copy has been hanging in this room? That’s what I came here for?’
Dupin walked over to the wall very calmly and positioned himself in front of the painting. ‘I’m talking about this painting in this frame in comparison to the others. And yes, I want to know whether this painting has been hanging here as long as the others.’
‘You’ve already said that. I have no idea what you’re trying to get at. What’s your hunch?’
Salou deserved an answer. But Dupin had no desire to give away even the slightest bit more. ‘I want to know whether this painting here could, potentially, have been hung in the last few days. Surely that’s not too difficult. This place must be dusted on a regular basis. Since the last dusting all of the paintings must have a certain –’
‘I am quite familiar with how to do my job. Nothing in this room changed between yesterday and today. Nothing at all. And apparently not for a long time before that either. We compared the current room with photographs from recent years. We looked at the paintings too. They’re hanging in the same arrangement as they have been for the last few years at least.’
‘I know. No, I mean very specifically this painting.’
‘And why do you want it compared to all the others? This is a nonsense task.’
‘One or more paintings might have been replaced in the last few days.’
‘I still don’t know what you’re driving at, particularly as this is the most idiotic of all the paintings here. Gauguin never painted a piece like that; some amateur came up with it. It doesn’t get much more stupid than that. A mangled imitation of the Vision after the Sermon.’
Dupin couldn’t hide his surprise at Salou’s knowledge of Gauguin. ‘So you know a lot about art?’
‘Gauguin is my great passion, the whole artists’ colony movement, I –’ Salou broke off. He seemed to be asking himself why he was telling Dupin this. ‘That’s really neither here nor there of course. I’m asking you this formally and officially: is it essential for the Pennec murder case to know whether this painting was hung here for the first time a few days ago?’ He was confrontational again.
‘Absolutely, this question is of the utmost importance.’ Dupin was sure that Salou wouldn’t accept that from him and would take the way he’d phrased it as a further provocation – but it was true. That’s exactly what it was.
‘Then we’ll get to work immediately, I’ll call my team.’
Salou had excellent self-restraint
, Dupin had to admit that.
‘You don’t know of any painting like this painted by Gauguin either?’
‘No. As I said, the imitator has made ludicrous mistakes. A complete misrepresentation.’
‘But overall. In theory. What do you think, couldn’t this be a painting by Gauguin?’
‘That question doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I know.’
Salou looked the Commissaire in the eye. He thought about it. Then he said: ‘Well in a way, I suppose it’s possible he painted it. It looks like a Gauguin.’
Now Dupin was confused. He felt very awkward – he had been readying himself for an attack. ‘Thanks. I mean, thank you for sharing your opinion.’ He cleared his throat.
‘All right then. I’m going to call my colleagues now.’ Salou reached into his jacket pocket. Without another word he left the room, clutching his mobile in his hand. Dupin didn’t say anything either.
Dupin walked into the breakfast room a little before eight. He had asked that the other guests not be allowed in until half past. Marie Morgane Cassel was already sitting at one of the little tables, right in the corner by the window, a grand crème in front of her. There was a big basket on the table full of croissants, pains au chocolat, brioches and baguettes, along with various jams and butter. There was also a whole gâteau breton with its distinctive taste – extremely salty butter and a lot of sugar. There was even a huge basket of fruit and some yoghurt. Madame Mendu had made a real effort. In the midst of all these delicacies lay an open laptop.
‘Good morning, Madame Cassel. Did you sleep well?’
The professor smiled pleasantly at Dupin, her head tilted slightly to one side. Her hair was still damp; she must have just come out of the shower.
‘Good morning. I’m not a good sleeper actually, never have been.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘But it’s not too bad. It was a very quiet night here, if that’s what you mean. I was able to do my research in peace.’
Marie Morgane Cassel didn’t look at all tired – on the contrary, in fact. She looked wide awake.
Dupin sat down at her table. ‘Did you find anything?’
‘There are no indications of a second Vision after the Sermon, a second painting that dealt with this theme, or even that Gauguin had worked on a different version.’ She was really on top of things. ‘But, in theory, it’s not impossible.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For one thing, Gauguin certainly did occasionally undertake multiple studies of a single subject if it was something that preoccupied him. Sometimes he did several paintings of one subject, which varied in certain things, motifs or viewpoints. There’s a huge number of sketches, studies and even smaller preliminary studies for most parts and motifs of the The Vision. Many elements were varied across these. I’ve looked at everything again very carefully and found something quite astonishing.’ She was beaming now.
‘Look at this. I found something in the special archive of the Musée d’Orsay. A scientific databank, they scanned in all of Gauguin’s material recently, a lot of the personal stuff too, which had been unknown or little known.’
She turned the laptop around. Dupin looked at the screen. There really wasn’t much to see in the image.
‘This is a sketch, fifteen centimetres by twelve. The quality of the scan isn’t very good here. But you can see everything that matters.’
There were patterns all down the left hand side and along the bottom of the painting. They looked three-dimensional but were in fact just flat and white, heavily contoured in black. Right in the middle there was a tree trunk looming steeply upwards, with a few hints of branches along the top towards the right. But the most striking thing about this sketch was the colour. The whole background was a garish orange, as though it were the base colour of the piece of paper.
‘He tried it out. Gauguin tried out this orange. It’s unbelievable.’
Dupin wasn’t sure what Madame Cassel meant.
‘Now that I’ve seen this, a painting like the one hanging here in the restaurant – I mean a potential original of this painting – has become a bit more, how should I put it, more conceivable.’
‘A lot more conceivable?’
Suddenly there was a loud knock. Dupin wanted to respond with a grumpy ‘Not now’, but Labat was already standing in the room. He was completely out of breath and deathly pale. His voice shook strangely.
‘There’s,’ he gasped for breath, ‘there’s another body.’
For a moment neither Dupin nor Madame Cassel knew whether to laugh. Labat’s entrance had looked like a bad scene in a bad play.
‘You’ve got to come immediately, Monsieur le Commissaire.’
Dupin leapt up in the same theatrical and absurd way that Labat had burst in, and still didn’t know what to say. ‘Okay, yes. I’m coming,’ he murmured.
The corpse was in bad shape. The arms and legs stuck out unnaturally from the body; the bones must have been broken in many places. His trousers and jumper were ripped in some places, tattered, like his skin and the flesh on his knees, his shoulders, his chest. The left hand side of his head had caved in. The storm-tossed cliffs were treacherous at this part of the coast. Towering upwards, thirty or forty metres above sea level and dropping away steeply, so rugged, so sharp-edged and cavernous with so many interlocking crags that even a short fall was disastrous. Loic Pennec must have hit a few of the narrow ledges before eventually landing on the huge rocks right at the breakwater. Nobody would ever know whether he had survived the fall, spending hours and hours simply waiting for help to come. The heavy rain and the storm had swept away the blood and everything else along with it. The sand was dyed red between the large stones.
The wind came in brutal gusts, whipping the rain in front of it over and over again. It was half past eight but not yet light. The sky was a dramatic black, and huge clouds swarmed above the surface of the sea. Pennec was lying perhaps two hundred metres from Plage Tahiti, Dupin’s favourite beach, with its two small islets just off the coast like a landscape painting. The beach was around ten minutes from Pont-Aven by car. Just yesterday holiday-makers had been enjoying a perfect summer’s day, children playing in the calm, blue-green water and on the fine, dazzlingly white sand. In good weather it looked just like a bay in the South Seas. Today it looked like the End of Days.
A small path led up through the cliffs from the east end of the beach and then wound along the coast in crazy loops (an old smuggler’s path as the locals so proudly claimed), to Rospico and on to Port Manech. The area was sparsely populated, a nature reserve zone. A breathtakingly beautiful path. Dupin sometimes came for walks here.
Salou and Dupin had come straight here. They had taken Dupin’s car. Le Ber and Labat had followed in a second car and arrived at almost the same time.
A jogger had found Pennec and called the police. The two officers from Pont-Aven had set out immediately and had been first on the scene. They were now securing the path above, which you could barely make out any more from down here, the clouds were so low in the sky. Monfort had waited for Dupin in the car park and led them to Loic Pennec’s body.
There were four of them standing around the body. Le Ber, Labat, Salou and Dupin, already soaked through after the walk from the car park. It was a gruesome scene. Salou was the first to say something. ‘We should secure the forensic evidence on the path now. We can look for traces of a second person straight away.’
‘Yes we need that confirmed as soon as possible.’ Dupin had to admit Salou was right. Everything depended on whether there had been a second person.
‘We have to hurry. Most of the evidence will have been swept away already, if it wasn’t stamped right down into the ground. I’ll have my team come down.’
Salou turned around and skilfully, but with evident care, began climbing back up over the rocks. The rain and the spray had made everything extremely slippery. Le Ber, Labat and Dupin stayed by the body, silent again, just standing and looking as they had befor
e, as though they were holding some strange vigil.
Labat was the first to snap out of it. He made an effort to sound professional. ‘You should inform Madame Pennec of her husband’s death, Monsieur le Commissaire. That’s definitely the most important thing.’ He looked vaguely upwards, to the spot where Salou had disappeared. ‘We should cordon off this whole area.’
‘Fucking hell.’ Dupin had been talking to himself, but very loudly. He ran his hand right through his horrible hair, which was wet and plastered to his head. He needed to be alone. To think. Things had taken a serious turn. Not that it had been an innocuous case before, but now it had gone from being a backwater affair – which had initially seemed to be about inheritances or maybe serious illnesses – to being a violent case. A case of completely different proportions. Especially with this fantastical sum, the forty million which might be the basis of the case. And the second death. If Dupin had felt that everything in some vague way had become strangely surreal in the last two days, this bizarre murder in this perfect summer idyll, everything had taken on a sudden, inescapable and brutal reality with this second body.
‘I’m going to make a few calls. Stay here at the scene. Both of you. And get in touch straight away if there’s news.’
Not even Labat protested. Dupin had no idea where he was going, especially not in this rain. He clambered a short distance across the rocks along the shore, which was impossible to do without looking ridiculous. It wasn’t easy to stay upright on the slippery rocks and stones, but he had no desire to take the direct route up and meet his colleagues again. Only at the next big rock ledge did he climb up onto the coastal path. Then he walked a bit further and turned left when the path forked, the right fork leading to the car park, the left towards the deserted beach below.
Even when he strained his eyes, the other end of the beach and the islets that lay so picturesquely off the coast were only dimly visible. His jacket, his polo-shirt, his jeans, everything was saturated and water was running into his shoes. The rain was being blown sideways by the storm coming off the sea and mixing with the bursts of spray. Powerful waves, three or four metres high, rolled relentlessly onto the beach, breaking on the sandbank with ear-splitting crashes. Dupin had gone so close to the water that the waves were lapping his shoes. He took a deep breath and started walking slowly along the beach.
Death in Pont-Aven Page 14
