Deadly Camargue: Provence Mystery #02

by Cay Rademacher

  Marius gave the art historian a knowing look. “Because Cohen was even more clueless than you had imagined?”

  “Because Cohen had read my book cover to cover, and it wasn’t just my book. He had already seen with his own eyes the most important places in Provence where Van Gogh had painted, even though he’d only been down in the Midi for a week. You know,” he said with a sigh, “most people think Van Gogh never sold a single painting in his lifetime. The stereotype of an unsuccessful painter. Most people are connards.”

  The way he said it made Blanc think the art historian was including him and Marius in this group. Which in his own case, at least in this respect, was true. “But Cohen knew Van Gogh had sold paintings?” he asked.

  “Indeed. In 1882, right at the beginning of his career, the artist had sold a few drawings, even if not for much money. But by 1890, just six months before his suicide, a Belgian woman collector paid him four hundred francs, a considerable sum in those days, for his Red Vineyard. There was a hugely positive review in a reputable newspaper, and an exhibition. Van Gogh had just about made it; he didn’t kill himself because he had lost all hope. And Cohen knew all that. He even knew how much the Red Vineyard had cost. He was very well informed, for a journalist.”

  “In that case what did he want to ask you about?”

  “He wanted to know the real reasons behind Van Gogh’s insanity and his self-destructive drive.”

  “That cost him his ear?”

  “And eventually his life. My theory, which I put forward vehemently in my book and has attracted a lot of comment, not all of it complimentary, is that the artist was always unstable, but the extravagance of light and color down here in the south was more than he could cope with. Van Gogh lived through his eyes, more than anyone else in the nineteenth century. Now imagine this child, who lives through his eyes, growing up in the damp gray north and then turning up as an adult in the Midi. The sky during the mistral! The sun! Cypress trees! Stars! The sea! And the light that unveils colors as if peeling them raw! It was Provence that more or less killed Van Gogh.”

  Marius gave Blanc a look. It was obvious he considered Boré an old windbag. “And that was all you spoke to Cohen about?” Blanc asked dubiously.

  “I gave him a few nice quotes, even better than the ones in my book. I explained the ‘Van Gogh myth’ to him. You see, I write a book about every artist I organize an exhibition in respect of. It’s a sort of homage. But I don’t have any illusions: six months later you’ll find my art books in the remainder section of every bargain bookstore, a great Christmas present for somebody who doesn’t want to spend too much money. It’s only Vincent van Gogh and the Light of the South that gets regularly reprinted. The self-mutilating artist exerts a fascination over us. If he had had success after success from 1890 onward, he would today be one of those worthy artists whose works fill our museums. Nothing more. It was the insanity that was at the same time destructive and creative that makes him one of the modern saints in our world lacking saints.”

  Marius cleared his throat. “Let me get this straight: If Van Gogh hadn’t sawn off his ear, he would never have become a pop star?”

  Boré gave him an irritated look. “I think Monsieur Cohen would have found a more elegant way of putting it.”

  “Was the mythical status of Van Gogh’s insanity all he wanted to talk to you about?” Blanc asked.

  The art historian hesitated again for a few moments. “He also asked me about photos of Van Gogh,” he eventually admitted in a quiet voice.

  “Photos?” Blanc queried skeptically.

  Boré got up without a word and disappeared into the next room, coming back with a copy of his own book. He flicked through the first few pages and then handed it across. “There are some forty self-portraits of Van Gogh extant. He had used himself as a model, in a manner of speaking, again and again.”

  “I know the picture of him with the pipe and the bandage on his mutilated ear,” Marius declared.

  Boré ignored him and tapped the open page. “Here are two photos. The only ones. The artist may have kept painting himself manically, but he had only two photos taken of him, one as a kid of thirteen and once again as a nineteen-year-old apprentice art dealer. It’s the light, you see? As if Van Gogh was afraid of the incorruptible, the clinical eye of the camera. There is no photo of him as a mature artist, but…” He fell silent.

  “But Monsieur Cohen showed you one?” Blanc suggested.

  “No, no, no. I mean, yes, he paid so much attention to asking me about photos of Van Gogh that I came to believe—even though he denied it—that he had in the course of his research seen a photo. A photo of Van Gogh that nobody knows about.” He looked at them as if he expected the two gendarmes to gasp with incredulity.

  Blanc’s heart rate was, however, unaffected by the number of existing photos of Van Gogh. “Did Cohen also ask you about the time you worked at the Musée Maly?” he asked in a congenial tone but allowing just the slightest touch of suspicion to creep in.

  Boré stared long and hard at him before clearing his throat and answering, “I was obliged to promise Monsieur Cohen that that part of our conversation would remain confidential. He had done some research and didn’t want anything to slip out prematurely. I had to promise him I wouldn’t say a word to anyone about it.”

  “I’m quite certain Cohen won’t be angry with you if you no longer keep your promise,” Blanc replied drily.

  “Eh bien,” Boré began resignedly, opening a cupboard and taking out a glass, a carafe of water, and a bottle of Ricard. “I’d offer you a glass, too, if you weren’t on duty,” he said apologetically, pouring himself a good two fingers’ worth of the pastis. Blanc waited until the art historian had knocked it back.

  “Cohen was here for a good half hour,” Boré said at last. “Up until then we had had a really interesting discussion about Van Gogh. And then he suddenly mentioned the theft from the Musée Maly.” He shook his head, filling his glass again. “I was rather taken aback. I don’t exactly think back to those days on a regular basis. I started working there back in 1988, my first job as a curator. What a commotion there was when the Van Gogh was stolen!”

  “And Cohen was researching this old cold case,” Blanc interjected.

  “Yes, and he wanted to go over all the details with me.”

  “I would be very grateful if you could go over all the same details with me.”

  Boré sighed. “I couldn’t tell Cohen anything more than I’d told the police at the time. And I can’t tell you any more now. I had taken a vacation that week to go and look at the big yachts that had all come down to Saint-Tropez for the regatta. Me and a colleague,” he hesitated a moment, “I was very close to at the time. Anyway, we only heard about the theft the morning after, on the radio. We rushed to the museum, but the cops had already closed off the whole area.”

  “Were you interrogated?”

  “Of course.”

  “Inside job,” Marius murmured.

  “In my opinion they let the caretaker off the hook far too fast.”

  “Olivier Guillaume?”

  “If you already know it all, why bother asking me? It was just the same with Cohen. He already knew what I was going to tell him.”

  “I enjoy watching reruns on television,” Marius said honestly. “Go on, tell it all to me again. It’s just as interesting the second time around.”

  Boré gave him an irritated glance and downed the contents of his second glass. “For someone who loves art—really loves art, if you know what I mean—a theft like that hurts as much as…”—he looked out of the window—“a blow to the head. It really hurts, more than any layman can understand. Most thieves aren’t the clever criminals you see in the movies.”

  “Our experience with criminals doesn’t just come from the movies,” Marius interjected. He was really in a bad mood now.

  “Art thieves are either weirdos, for whom a painting is a bit like a little boy to a pedophile, or else they’re
connards, who only realize later that the work they’ve stolen is practically unsellable. Then they rip the painting out of the frame, sometimes even fold it up, damaging the canvas, rubbing off the colors. Sometimes priceless ancient artworks are hidden away in damp cellars or in lofts exposed to the sun and heat. When they’re eventually found—if they’re found—they look as if they’ve been in a street riot.”

  “Why did you suspect Guillaume? Which category did you place him in? The connards or the weirdos?”

  “The weirdos. He was no idiot. He understood something about art. His father was an important collector. Olivier Guillaume practically grew up with art. He was cleverer than the rest of us put together, but”—Boré searched for the right word—“just somehow, weird. I’m sorry I can’t find a better way of putting it. Strange. He had never graduated, never taken a course or anything, despite his brilliance. He never went out, never drank a glass of wine. He was the museum factotum. He knew all about the security system, how to turn off the alarm systems; he had the keys to every door. If there was one man who could rob the Musée Maly without setting off an alarm, then he was that man. But your colleagues just let him walk free almost immediately. The directors fired him straightaway, because nobody trusted him anymore. But that was his only punishment, if you look at it like that. And the Van Gogh has not been seen since.”

  “When did you leave the Musée Maly?”

  “Not long after Guillaume. Of my own accord,” Boré added quickly. He glanced briefly at the Ricard bottle, as if he was tempted to pour himself a third pastis, but decided against it. “My female colleague and I left for Paris because that’s the only place you can really make a career in our business. I soon got to launch my first major exhibition. And my colleague got to know somebody else. We lost sight of each other. I had too much else going on in my head. I simply didn’t think about the Musée Maly and the theft anymore.”

  “Until Monsieur Cohen came knocking at your door. Do you think the journalist might really have had a lead on the case?”

  “He made hints, nothing more.” Boré looked as if he was struggling with himself, then gave a sigh. “Look,” he started. “I am responsible for the most successful art exhibitions in the country. But amid art historians I’m nonetheless—no, precisely because of that—considered to be a fraud. A lightweight. Do you have any idea what it’s like when people at conferences roll their eyes whenever your name is mentioned? The way they snort snobbishly? With a single one of my exhibitions I introduce more people to art than les messieurs professeurs do with all the seminars in their entire dreary lives! But they despise me because I have a popular following. And then all of a sudden somebody bursts into my house telling me he can explain the case of a stolen Van Gogh. The first painting of the Saintes-Maries fishing boats series that disappeared two decades ago is rediscovered. And I’m part of it! Name any of les messieurs professeurs who’ve ever found a missing Van Gogh.”

  “Do you think Cohen also suspected Guillaume?”

  “He didn’t show his cards. Didn’t say anything that clearly. But I am sure that Cohen had his suspicions. He told me he wanted to talk to Guillaume. But he didn’t say anything more than that.”

  Blanc remembered the note in Cohen’s file that mentioned Guillaume by name. “What did the town of Saint-Gilles have to do with Van Gogh?” he asked.

  Boré gave him a surprised look. “Nothing. The painter never went there. There is no museum there with any of his works. All Saint-Gilles has is its famous church with the medieval entrance. Why do you ask?”

  Blanc ignored his question. “Does Guillaume work there now?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about the guy for the past twenty years.”

  “You didn’t meet Cohen a second time?” Blanc asked.

  “No. Cohen was going to call me. As far as I understood, he wanted to see me again this week. When I heard on the radio about his terrible accident I almost swerved into an oncoming car.”

  “You were in the car when you heard the news?” Blanc asked. “On the day of the accident?” He was thinking of Boré’s absent friend’s yellow Renault Laguna parked outside the house.

  “Yes. I’d been in Marseille where I’d finally gotten to see the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, the so-called MuCEM. It was evening before I got back. I was just outside Eyguières when I turned on the eight o’clock news. You don’t think Cohen’s investigations had anything to do with his gruesome death, do you?”

  “So far it just looks like an accident,” Blanc lied, and gave a reassuring smile. “But as a cop, when you hear a story about an old, unsolved theft, then obviously you get a bit suspicious.”

  “Keep me in the loop,” Boré requested. “Like I said, it would mean a lot to me to rediscover the disappeared Van Gogh.”

  The two gendarmes got to their feet and the art historian accompanied them to the door. He placed his feet carefully like someone frightened of stumbling. When they stepped out into the harsh sunlight, Blanc turned back to him and said, “Could it be that the female colleague you used to be so close to and who went with you to Paris, went on to marry Monsieur Leroux?”

  Boré made a gesture that simultaneously suggested regret and a relaxed resignation. He reminded Blanc of a tennis player who considered his sport to be only a hobby and had just lost an irrelevant game. “Marie-Claude Elbaz was the prettiest and cleverest colleague in the museum, but she was somehow untouchable. Even though I spent more than a year with her virtually day and night, I somehow never had the feeling of getting to know her. When she went in another direction shortly after we arrived in Paris together, I never really felt it as a loss. There were so many women in Paris…” For a moment or two he lost himself in his memories. “To this very day I have not met the woman of my life, never married, but of all the women I’ve had relationships with over the years there was never one I knew as little as Marie-Claude.”

  “Did Cohen ask you about Marie-Claude?”

  The art historian looked astonished by the question. “No. I haven’t seen Marie-Claude for years. Cohen worked for Leroux. It can only have been Marie-Claude who set him on the scent of this old theft. I imagine she told him personally everything she knew about it.”

  “Bon après-midi, Monsieur Boré,” Blanc said as they left. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” Blanc wondered as they reached the Mégane. They opened all the doors to let the hot air out before eventually sighing and getting in.

  “Madame Leroux admitted it was her idea to give Cohen the inconsequential Van Gogh in Provence story,” the captain went on. “A story about the painter and his life down here in the south to accompany the exhibition in Arles, organized by her former lover.”

  “Madame Leroux neglected to mention that detail?”

  “Her husband was standing next to her at the time. In any case she made not the slightest reference to the theft twenty years ago.”

  “But she knew what kind of a reporter Cohen was. There was every possibility that as soon as he started doing research about Van Gogh in the south he would find out about the theft. Was Madame Leroux so naive as to think Cohen would overlook something like that? Or was she putting him onto this harmless-sounding little story in the hope that he would stumble upon the old scandal? Maybe she even thought Cohen might come up with a lead?” Marius speculated.

  “If that was the case, then her husband knew nothing about her plan. It seemed to me that the publisher believed Cohen was going to deliver the story they’d agreed on, not a smoking gun.”

  Marius laughed. “If the potential for a job in journalism wasn’t even worse than that for a cop, I’d be asking Leroux for a job! After all we heard talking to Boré, I could write the story for L’Événement myself. How much do you think they’d pay?”

  “Right now, not very much,” Blanc guessed. “Are you short of money?”

  “For the vet.”

  Blanc gave his c
olleague a puzzled glance. “Dog? Cat? Parrot? Or do you have a herd of goats at home?”

  “A tomcat. Don’t look at me like that. Everybody needs someone to look pleased when you open the door in the evening. You’ll end up with a four-legged friend, too.”

  “A cat’s only pleased because it can’t manage the can opener on its own.”

  “My cat can’t even find his own food bowl. Brain tumor.”

  “You’re joking? About the brain tumor, I mean?”

  Marius looked out of the passenger window as they drove past a field of olive trees, the leaves of which reflected the sunlight like tiny shards of glass. “When the cat began wandering around the living room for half an hour solid, banging its head into the same table leg every time, I had him looked at. The thing in his skull is as big as a marble. Really, I need to put him down out of kindness, but I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger.”

  Blanc thought about the fact that Marius hadn’t been promoted since he had accidentally fired at a colleague in a nighttime operation years ago. But then there were other rumors that went around the Gadet gendarmerie station, too, rumors among the old-timers who shut up whenever they saw Blanc, Marius’s partner, the new guy, the Parisian, the cop whose career had also been dumped in the trash. Still at the wheel, he managed to pull out a fifty-euro note from his wallet and handed it to Marius, who gave him a nod of thanks.

  “I’ll drop you off at Le Soleil. But you’ll have to have lunch on your own. I have another engagement.”

  “Where?”

  “Salon hospital. I need to talk to the pathologist.”

  “Maybe Dr. Thezan will roll you a joint. I’m told that reduces hunger.”