The Unknown Masterpiece

by John Brooke

  Aliette was feeling personally insulted. Which is, by definition, unprofessional. And dangerous. But it is an occupational hazard. The inspector hurried downstairs — a fast hobble, getting stronger every day — and grabbed a car. For better or worse, she knew she would enter that house in circle René-Descartes.

  The previous evening’s snow had fallen till the wee hours, covering everything. A magical Alsatian scene for early risers, but a hazardous, slushy mess for morning commuters. Her progress was marred by a regional plow tooling stolidly along the National. She turned off at the first exit, headed for the river road. No better — all motorists were on their guard and crawling through the humid grey mist. The radio was saying the expected rain would likely freeze.

  Her phone buzzed. Bernadette asked, ‘What kind of car was it?’

  Aliette wracked her memory for Hubert’s description. ‘Old, nothing special…blue.’

  ‘Navy-blue Opal hatch-back?’

  ‘Oui!’

  ‘Totally white and worried?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Went past as I was pulling in. Car’s filled up with something.’

  ‘Follow her.’

  Ten crawling minutes later, on the outskirts of Village-Neuf approaching circle René-Descartes, her phone buzzed again. ‘She’s going to the river.’

  ‘Can you tell me where? Is there a sign?’

  ‘A big factory…road going down opposite the gate. It’s not plowed.’

  ‘It goes down to the beach… our crime scene. Stay with her. I’m almost there.’

  Two minutes later. ‘She’s unloading paintings from her car and tossing them in the river.’

  ‘Paintings?’

  ‘I’m standing fifty paces away. I think she even knows I’m here — but she doesn’t care.’

  ‘See what you can do. I’ll be there in five. And leave your phone open. Please.’

  ‘I will.’

  She did. Trapped in crawling traffic, Aliette Nouvelle could hear Bernadette Milhau trying to engage Christine Charigot. ‘Madame?… Madame?…Madame! Police!…’ and a perplexed, frustrated, ‘sacré!… Madame, look at me!’ More quiet cursing…steps, ‘Madame, I am ordering you to — AGH!’ It was the sound of one solid object striking another. And pain.

  ‘Bernadette!’ The inspector slammed the blaring siren onto the car roof, stepped on the accelerator, swerved around the creeping cars. A minute later, she finally left the road. Her wheels spun in the mushy tracks. She stopped, got out and ran. Her shoes and feet were soaked in an instant. She felt her healing thigh complain. The rain that had started falling stung her face with icy pricks. She passed Bernadette’s car. No sign of Inspector Milhau.

  The blue car was parked on the verge, the woman, in her housecoat it appeared, was methodically pulling flat rectangular objects from the back of it and flinging them into the waters below. Aliette made an emergency call to the Municipal Police. ‘The beach?…Yes. Please hurry.’ Then approached. ‘Madame Charigot, I am commanding you to cease and surrender in the name of the law!’ She may as well have been screaming at the rain. The woman took not the least notice. Soaked and wretched, she was obsessed with her bizarre task.

  Aliette circled carefully wide. Bernadette Milhau was on the ground on the driver side of the woman’s car, there was blood in the snow. ‘Bernadette…can you respond?’ Ten steps away, Christine Charigot was all business. She pulled another smallish, elaborately framed painting from the boot of her car and flung it. It spun briefly like a stunned bird before dropping into the swirling current. Then bobbed up and floated. At a glance, the inspector thought there were a least two dozen, floating away in a line.

  But it was only a glance — because Inspector Milhau was on her knees now, struggling to her feet. Blood was pouring from a gash above her eye. Aliette hurried to help her colleague.

  It was another one of those moments when an inspector might have made productive use of her hand gun. But it was in her underwear drawer, in the forsaken house in the north end.

  Bernadette had hers. She muttered, ‘In the glove box.’

  Aliette did her best to support her much larger colleague as they moved around the fixated Christine Charigot — who continued unloading paintings and doggedly flinging them into the flow. It was pointless shouting at the woman. The gun was in the glove box. She fired it into the air. ‘Madame Charigot!’ To no effect.

  There was also a rudimentary first-aid box. Easing Bernadette into the passenger seat, the inspector did what she could to stanch the blood. Then, apart from shooting her down in cold blood, two cops could only watch helplessly from fifty steps as the woman tossed the paintings.

  Two pairs of local uniforms arrived almost simultaneously a long five minutes later. Several more in short order after that, sirens screaming. Christine Charigot was surrounded.

  But she carried on, oblivious, as if unloading long forgotten basement crap at the village dump… until one brave officer lowered his stance, charged and tackled her to the ground.

  Christine Charigot struggled silently, pounding at the man’s thick shoulders.

  Then stopped. Completely silent. The two of them lay in a wet heap in slushy snow.

  A wailing firetruck finally bounced down the path.Two pompiers came running with medical aid. Aliette left Bernadette in their care and went to the water’s edge to have a look. There were easily forty or fifty paintings — a flotilla of fine art drifting out past the mouth of the canal and into the open river.

  Part 5

  Effects of Angels

  37

  Robert’s Things

  There was no sign of Robert Charigot ‘in his room with his things,’ as the wretched Christine had phrased it. But the irritating letdown of not finding Robert at home was instantly displaced by baffling wonder. The bolted door off the basement stairs had been crudely smashed with a hammer by a crazed and angry mother determined to enter at any cost. Inspector Nouvelle stepped into an expansive recreation room transformed into a private suite and exclusive gallery. The sunken windows had been painted over. The space was lit by banks of track lighting. There was a vacuum cleaner waiting by the desk. When he arrived, Magistrate Gérard Richand noted that the barometer/humidifier installed was top-line. Though the walls had been stripped bare — their contents now drifting toward Germany — everywhere else was art. In the cupboard, along the floors and on every shelf: paintings. Robert had also commandeered the laundry room adjacent, accessible only through his room. (Which partially explained the washer and dryer in the dining room upstairs.) The inspector found it crowded with carefully arranged lines of framed works, all small enough to fit under an arm inside a coat, and three pyramids of larger canvases which had been cut from their frames and rolled like scrolls. The distraught nurse would have needed at least another fully loaded trip to the river, probably two, if she hoped to rid her home of all the incriminating evidence. It was difficult to believe, let alone fathom.

  But there it was. Somehow Robert Charigot had amassed it all — and locked it in his room.

  How? For how long?

  One hears tell of rich collectors who construct hidden, highly secured subterranean galleries, where they imprison their treasures, whether ill-gotten or legitimately, for solitary viewing. Whether through paranoia, grotesque greed or misplaced passion, the message of such stories is the tragic waste of beauty. Beauty doomed to an airless, antiseptic place cut off from the life that inspired it. There was a definite echo of that sad need in the basement of the house in circle René-Descartes.

  Leaving Gérard Richand to browse and marvel, Aliette Nouvelle stepped outside. She had a feeling that Robert Charigot had fled from his mother’s meltdown and would head for the source of his love. She made a call to the Kunstmuseum, hoping to find Della Kypreosus working the Friday afternoon shift.

  A bit of luck: Della was on duty and eager to help. She would keep an eye out for the very white boyish man. Helpful Della also mentioned in her halting way that
FedPol would have been supplied with documentation and video images related to all thefts in recent years.

  ‘Merci, Della. And perhaps don’t mention this request to Herr Taub? Please.’

  ‘You trust me, Inspector. I do.’ Meaning she would not.

  Not without misgivings, Aliette punched in another number. Agent Bucholtz had left for the weekend. She had that number too. A woman answered, in German, she stumbled in the shift to French. There were sounds of a gathering in the background. A party? Rudi sounded surprised and not a little offended to receive a call at home on the weekend from the French police.

  Surely he’d calmed down by now. Their moment together had been months ago — at least it felt that way to her. Forgiveness. Line of duty. An older woman… a more experienced cop, Aliette Nouvelle was ready with a wise word or two to help Rudi put it in perspective. Because he had to come. He had to. She needed him.

  Rudi’s first response was a knee-jerk ‘No!’

  ‘I assume you’ve seen the evening news.’ When the pause at the end of the line continued, she added, ‘A line of paintings floating in the Rhine like ducks — did Basel TV not show that?’

  Of course it had. But Rudi resisted. Tomorrow he was expected back at Biel.

  Aliette heard subtext. She would bet Agent Bucholtz had found another door to the romantic world of cold-blooded murder — this one through the heart of Basel Lands Inspector Hilda Gross. Well, good for him. And maybe for Hilda. But lovers come and go; this was something he had to see. ‘Come, Rudi. You won’t regret it. You’ll be amazed, I promise.’

  ‘Do I need another promise from the French Police?’

  Had she offered him a first one? Men, Swiss and otherwise, they made these wildly wrong assumptions, then they compounded it by turning them into ‘promises’ somewhere inside their little minds. ‘We have a house full of stolen art — I would say the vast majority of it comes from your side. And we have a very clearly marked suspect on the run — I would bet on your side.’

  ‘My side, your side. Who is this person?’

  ‘Name of Robert Charigot.’

  ‘Where would I find this man?’

  A sigh. ‘I’m not suggesting you attempt such an operation, Rudi.’ A gentle but pointed reference to his hapless performance at Agent Perella’s flat. ‘It’s these paintings. I need you.’

  ‘Ah, my eyes. Of course.’ Touché. And not at all gentle. ‘Is there no one on your side who could handle this, Inspector? I really do have a busy weekend ahead of me.’

  ‘Swiss-owned art, Rudi. Swiss patrimony. If you can verify even one of them, you’ll have the people in Geneva kissing your hand. But there are dozens!’

  ‘I can’t believe you.’

  ‘My only other contact is Inspector Morenz at Basel City. I believe you know him? He’ll take all the credit, Rudi. I’d much prefer to work with you… What time shall we say?’

  ‘You really are the worst kind of person.’

  ‘You could end up a hero. A national hero.’

  ‘Scheiße!’ Shit! This very discreetly in German. Aliette could hear steps across a hardwood floor, animated voices in the background. Guests for supper on Friday night.

  Even quieter: ‘I’ll come tomorrow and have a look. Don’t you dare ask me for anything before I have a look.’

  ‘Bon.’ She gave him directions to circle René-Descartes. ‘See you tomorrow. Say, ten?’

  38

  New Life for Rudi

  On his first pass through the collected works in the Charigot basement, FedPol Agent Rudi Bucholtz immediately identified twenty paintings listed as missing in his files. They included an Auberjonois, Hodler, Leinwand, Berber, Sperini, Herbst, Lenbach, Nattier, Remy — most of them names that meant little or nothing to a French cop, but left the Swiss flabbergasted. These paintings had been lifted from different galleries in Basel over the past few years, slowly, one here, one there, ‘though I can show you video of that one walking out the front door of the Kunst’ (the Lenbach) as well as galleries in Zurich, Geneva and Bern. ‘We assumed they were gone. I mean, gone.’ Adding, ‘He has to be part of a gang.’

  Aliette demurred. ‘I believe Robert Charigot works alone, one painting at a time.’ When Rudi raised a hand in protest, she qualified her statement. ‘A gang certainly may have removed a large portion of them. ‘This one on your video, leaving the musée, is it our waif in a hoodie?’

  Rudi thought about it. Indicated negative.

  ‘No… And Monsieur Charigot may well have taken advantage of one gang member’s romantic interest in him. Martin Bettelman, to be specific. But he’s not the type, this Robert.’

  ‘What do you mean not the type? Look at it all!’

  ‘Not the type to be in a gang.’

  ‘What type is he?’

  ‘A sensitive boy who prefers staying in his room with his things?’

  ‘Right…’ Rudi let that argument ride. What mattered right here and now was compiling an inventory. His inventory. His finds. His press conference. Rudi was not that hard to read. And Aliette was pleased that he was excited. (Hadn’t she promised?) But she was compelled to break Rudi’s self-induced spell for one hard moment: the trove of recovered works (including most from the river) were still on French territory. And while a flotilla of paintings in the Rhine canal made for a quirky item on the weekend news, the circumstances attached to the sad woman arrested for putting them there had been left vague — by design. (Fudging was one of Claude Néon’s newfound and very necessary talents.) She needed Rudi to understand that with the help of all the available tools of legal game-playing, the treasure would remain here in France until well after Rudi’s retirement if he or anyone in his office so much as uttered a word in public that did not fit with her timing and priorities. There was a French murder to be solved. First.

  ‘Are we clear on that, Agent?’

  ‘Mm.’

  She hoped he heard her beyond a doubt. She would hate to disappoint him a second time.

  Rudi made a call to a colleague. It was odd and somehow touching to hear Rudi ordering the person at the other end of the line to drop his Saturday plans and get himself to the office. Here was a boy turning into a man… Indeed, Rudi put down the phone, glowing with importance.

  He immediately picked it up again, announcing to all present — Aliette and one very uninterested uniformed officer — that on second thought, two… no, three would better than one. Yes. He would need a team searching the files and working phones at the office if they wanted to make some decent headway. He made more calls, issued more commands. Aliette Nouvelle was impressed. She felt Rudi was finally ready to work with her in a meaningful way.

  Then Rudi Bucholtz got down to business. It was a time-consuming process, calling in each item, describing it as thoroughly as his education permitted, waiting while his colleagues proceeded with a search: first through the FCP data base, then via their many InterPol links. But the calls trickled back. Many of the works on the Missing lists were here. And the thief’s — or thieves’ — range was increasing. Düsseldorf. Baden-Baden. Strasbourg. Churches, schools, city hall and court house lobbies along both sides of the Rhine in France and Germany, and upriver, deeper into Switzerland — Agent Bucholtz called in his descriptions, and urged them on. A very big day for the art squad.

  It soon occurred to the inspector that there was no real need of her presence here at all. She had no idea what Rudi was saying as he passed his information and instructions along to his people in Basel. All in brisk, idiomatic German. The local gendarme assigned to monitor would hear much more of Rudi’s communications. But she stayed. Of course she did. Coming up from Robert Charigot’s subterranean hideout for some fresh air and natural light — and to look at a normal Saturday being lived outside, the inspector announced to no one, ‘This is my case.’

  A mother pushing a pram in circle René-Descartes looked, gave a slight, puzzled smile. There were four uniformed officers assigned to keep watch on the house; the neigh
bours were obviously aware of the police in their quiet close, even if they did not know why they were there. More trouble at poor Christine’s.

  Aliette enlisted one of the uniforms to order some lunch. She received and served it.

  She made her own notes as Rudi received details on each work.

  She paced from room to room among the collected paintings.

  At a certain point, a revelation: all of these stolen paintings were images of the human form. No landscapes, no city streets or parks or ports, no flowers in vases. No dogs, licking themselves or otherwise. And each and every one of these humans was alone. The figures rendered had been placed in nature, or in a room. Working. There were many of these mundane yet somehow essential scenes of people working, male or female, working with their hands or with their minds — a woman at her piano, a medieval cleric at his desk. There were the purely contemplative, some enclosed in interior shadow, others exposed to the will of nature. Some were set in heavily symbolic poses: she, naked in her boudoir; he in anguish at the base of a wintry mountain. The inspector recalled that stressful Saturday in October, in the monitoring suite at the Kunst. Agent Bucholtz’s initial assessment that the pale-skinned thief loved the naïf strains of Art Nouveau and the more ultra-metaphysical Romantics was not wrong, just limited. There were many genres represented — she heard Rudi muttering terms like neo-Expressionist, Baroque and even Modern as he guided his searchers. Robert Charigot had preferences, but, bottom line, he was not fussy as to period or style. Or setting. It was the person. Each of these human beings was solo, and eternally so.

  Like the shoemaker they had found with Martin Bettelman.

  The shoemaker was not beautiful in any Romantic or naïf sense of the word, but he would definitely fit in this hidden room of solitary souls. It cast the French cop back to the original conundrum: Was the shoemaker a gift from an adoring Martin to a beautiful Robert? Or was he a purchased theft being delivered that night? Was there a gang? Or at least a backer? Rudi wasn’t guessing wildly — how could one boyish man possibly amass all this alone? Those men will hurt you, Robert… The inspector’s ‘cousin’ had assiduously reported, sworn it was word for word, straight from the mother’s mouth. Or, par contre, was the shoemaker in the process of being stolen from Robert when Martin Bettleman was killed?