by Aaron Elkins
"How interesting," she said. "And do his techniques include peeling paint?"
"Peeling—" I took a hard look at the painting and let out a long breath. "You're right."
Except that it wasn't the paint that was peeling, it was the gesso underneath; the smooth white undercoat that provided the actual surface to which the oil paints were applied. An inch-wide curl stood out from near the center of the canvas like a wood paring, with another crack just erupting a few inches away.
There were some blisters in the surface as well, and in two places along the edges the gesso, along with its film of paint, had begun to pull away from the frame. On the wooden floor at my feet there were flecks of sloughed-off pigment. It was as if the surface of the painting were molting. Underneath it, as Anne had said, another painting peeked through.
"I think the other shoe just hit," I said quietly, my eyes on the picture. "This is the stink bomb. It has to be."
"Vachey's stink bomb? Do you mean he knew this would happen? I don't understand."
I didn't either, not entirely, but I was getting close. Gingerly, I touched the curl of paint. It came away and spiraled to the floor.
Anne caught her breath. "Chris, be careful! It's so fragile!"
"Trust me," I said. "But tell me if you hear Pepin coming. I wouldn't want him to have a fit." I picked away a little more.
"Chris—"
"You're right, that's an ear, all right." A bit more judicious scratching and a few more square centimeters of the underpainting emerged. "And an eye."
Anne watched closely over my shoulder. "It's another Léger, isn't it? Or am I wrong?"
"You're wrong," I said. I shook my head slowly back and forth. "My God, have I been dense."
She looked in confusion from the painting to me. "You wouldn't care to tell me what's going on?"
"In a minute. I still need another couple of pieces." I grabbed her hand. "Come on, let's go find Clotilde Guyot."
* * *
Madame Guyot hadn't wasted any time in following my suggestion about taking over Vachey's study. We found her there behind a large but nondescript desk. (Christian, true to form, had removed all the furnishings of value.) She was in conference with Lorenzo Bolzano and Jean-Luc Charpentier. Madame Guyot, it seemed, thought that she might be able to arrange the purchase of a painting by Odilon Redon to add to Lorenzo's expanding Synthetist collection, and Charpentier was along to provide counsel.
Lorenzo, an old friend of Anne's as well as mine, leaped sprawling out of his chair to embrace her, then made her take his seat. "Don't worry, don't worry, we were getting ready to leave anyway."
"Is something the matter?" Clotilde asked, clearly puzzled by our barging in.
"There's seems to be a problem with the Léger," I said. Her friendly eyes became more alert, more expectant. "Oh?"
"The gesso's beginning to slip."
Lorenzo's jaw dropped. "Inherent vice!" he exclaimed.
This was not a mere Lorenzoism. "Inherent vice" is conservator-talk for the deterioration of a work due to the use of inferior materials.
"I don't think so," I said. "Not exactly."
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much," Charpentier said, looking at his watch. "These things can be remedied. Léger was not always the most painstaking of preparers, you know." He stood up, joining Lorenzo. "I think our business here is concluded. Madame, you'll let us know if Monsieur Boisson will consider our offer?"
"Of course," she said. "I have every hope." The two men bowed. "We'll find our own way out," Charpentier said.
Clotilde waited until they were gone. "So it's happened," she said. She was bubbling with excitement, her pink face glossy.
I took Charpentier's seat. "It's no accident, is it? That gesso was meant to crumble."
She beamed happily at me. I took it as a "yes."
"That's why the temperature in the gallery was kept so high, isn't it? To destabilize it. That was what Vachey wanted to happen, right?"
"Well, of course."
"What was he doing, settling some old scores?"
She continued to smile radiantly at me. "Tell me, Monsieur Norgren, do you intend to accept the Rembrandt?"
"What? Yes, why?"
"We'd like to have a small ceremony at the signing," she said. "Would five o'clock be convenient?"
I wondered if everyone had as much trouble as I did keeping to the subject with Madame Guyot. "Fine, but right now it's the Léger—"
"You will come, too, my dear," she said to Anne, who replied with a smiling nod, although I wasn't sure how well her rudimentary French was tracking the conversation.
"Madame—" I began, but Clotilde had picked up the desk telephone.
"Marius, will you—ah, Marie. Please tell Monsieur Pepin that the little gala that we have been planning will be held tonight at five. Will you ask him to prepare accordingly? I'm sure he'll need your help."
She hung up and smiled at me. "Now, monsieur, you were saying . . . ?"
"I was saying that I'm beginning to understand what's been going on here. The scrapbook—it had nothing to do with Vachey's purchases during the Occupation or any other time, did it? That wasn't what was in it at all. Christian lied to me about it, you lied to me about it—"
"I beg your pardon," Clotilde said. "I did not lie to you about it. I didn't say anything at all to you about it."
"No, but you knew I was on the wrong track, you knew I'd completely misunderstood—"
There was a tap at the glass door, and Pepin put his head in.
"I wanted you to know, madame, that security has been turned off in the northeast wing for a few minutes."
"Why, please?" Clotilde asked.
"It's that damned Charpentier. Now he decides he's interested in looking at the back. I left him with—"
I was out of my chair so explosively it flew over backward. Pepin, startled into immobility, had to be lifted out of the way by the elbows so I could get past him. I ran through the deserted reception area and into the wing with the French paintings. There was no Charpentier. There was no Léger either. The wall where it had hung was bare, the metal supporting bars naked and forlorn.
I stood there agitatedly, trying to think. Charpentier—of course, Charpentier! How could I have failed to see it? I had walked into Clotilde's office and practically handed him the painting. But where was he? What had he done with it? He couldn't have had more than a minute or two alone with it, and he hadn't taken it down the front stairs or I would have seen him. And the back stairs led only to the living quarters and the basement, so there was no—
Christ, the basement! The basement with its capacious old cooking fireplace blazing merrily away, fueled by all that volatile packing material. I tore open the back door and raced noisily down the two flights, nearly pitching headlong down the lower one in my rush. The heavy oak door to the kitchen was closed. I pulled it open.
"Charpentier!"
He was standing with his back to me before the massive stone fireplace, his arms raised, poised to throw the painting into the fire. When I called his name, he twisted his head to glower ferociously at me over his shoulder. Backlit by dancing orange flames, with the painting in his lifted hands, he was like some titanic figure from the Old Testament, like Charlton Heston himself, about to hurl down the tablets from the Mount.
For what seemed an eerily drawn-out time we stared at each other, mute and unmoving. Then, with a grunt, and with more speed than I would have given him credit for, he skimmed thepicture at me, Frisbee-style, but with both hands.. All I could do was fling myself to the side and down, like a batter dropping out of the way of a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball.
The painting skimmed over me and through the open doorway with an ugly, whizzing sound, slammed heavily into the wall of the corridor, and clattered to the flagstone floor.
By the time I got to my feet, Charpentier was advancing with a rusty old kitchen tool he'd pulled down from the wall, probably something made to help turn a spit-roasting ox in t
he fireplace, but looking distressingly like a medieval foot soldier's pike; a five-foot-long pole tipped with a metal head consisting of a spike and an evil-looking hook. He was a big man, not athletic, but hulking and thick-boned, with a Mephistophelian cast at the best of times, and at this moment he was scaring the hell out of me.
I backed into the corridor, warding him off with upraised palms. "Jean-Luc, don't be ridiculous. You don't want to kill me."
"Yes," he said, "I do."
He did, too. He jabbed the spike at my eyes twice, first a feint and then a sudden, vicious thrust that was all business. I jumped back, managing to deflect the pike with my forearm, and stumbled into the corner of the corridor, floundering against some lengths of wood standing on end. Most of them went rattling to the floor, but clawing behind me with my other hand I got hold of one and brought it out in front of me.
Compared to that pike it wasn't much: about three feet long and the thickness of a piece of one-by-two lumber, probably part of the bracing for a picture crate. I brandished it in Charpentier's face like a cop's baton to keep him off, but he swept it angrily aside with the pike and closed in. I feinted at his face, then jabbed him in the abdomen with the wood, just below the end of his breastbone, but it was a tentative thrust, and mistimed besides. It occurred almost off-handedly to me that this was the first time I had ever used a weapon on a fellow human being—on any living thing bigger than a housefly—and it wasn't my kind of thing. The savage exultation of combat was not raging in my veins. I didn't want to hurt Charpentier, I didn't want to fight him. All I wanted was out.
Charpentier bellowed, more surprised than hurt, and with an almost casual flick of the pike caught the wood in the hook and jerked it out of my hands and over his shoulder.
Stunned, I watched it go flying end over end down the corridor. Did he actually know how to handle that thing, or had he been lucky?
Fortunately, he'd been lucky. His next thrust was clumsy and badly aimed. The rusty point grated against the stone wall a foot from my head. I even managed to grab hold of it as he pulled it back, but only got a couple of fingers on it, and he dragged it back out of my grasp. His clumsiness I saw as no particular cause for optimism. How many more times could he miss?
I was wedged into the corner with no way around him, and not much room for maneuvering. As for reasoning with him, the look in his eyes made the issue moot. I was groping blindly in back of me, trying to find another upright piece of wood when he feinted again, this time at my midsection. I flinched sideways and he came sharply around with the butt end of the pike, clubbing me alongside the right eye. I saw a pinpoint shower of sparks and at the edges of my vision a sudden, queer, wavering blackness like the fluttering specks and smudges in an old movie. For a horrible instant the darkness closed in entirely, but by the time my shoulders sagged against the rough wall I could more or less see again, but I was queasy and weak.
Charpentier was peering at me, as if to see how bad off I was. My appearance must have been satisfactorily dismal, because he raised the pike, tightened his grip, and set himself for a final thrust. When I'd gotten hold of another one of those one by twos I didn't remember, but it was in my hand, and almost automatically I swung it up and around, as hard as I could, cracking him on the side of the head just over the left ear.
I must have been improving with experience because he froze this time, then growled and shook himself—not just his head, but all over, like a bear. And he fell back—a single uncertain step to keep his balance. If I was going to get myself out of this alive, now was the time to do it. I dropped what was left of the one-by-two—it had broken when I hit him—and made a grab for the pike. This time I managed to wrench it out of his hands and had already started to bring the butt end around for another whack at his head when I sensed a change in him.
The heart had gone out of him. His shoulders drooped, his eyes had lost their crazy brilliance and turned opaque. I couldn't begin to read his expression except to know he had given up the fight. There was blood welling from his ear, where the skin had split. He touched it abstractedly but never bothered to look at his fingers, then turned his back on me and walked into the kitchen, heading for a back door that opened onto a row of off-the-street vegetable and flower gardens running the length of the block.
No, I didn't try to stop him. What was I supposed to do, yell at him to halt? And if he didn't (and he wouldn't have), what then? Run up and club him unconscious with the butt of the damn pike? Impale him with the point, perhaps transfixing him to one of the heavy wooden tables for safekeeping? Sorry, not my metier. Besides, the fight had gone out of me, too. I was woozy and nauseated, and my head had started hammering, and I'd had enough.
When he disappeared through the back door, leaving it open behind him, I sank back against the stone wall of the corridor and closed my eyes. I realized that I'd been hearing the sounds of pounding feet for the last few seconds—people running down the stairs—and opened my eyes to see Inspector Lefevre, accompanied by Sergeant Huvet and another man, burst into the corridor and practically skid to a standstill when they saw me.
I gestured toward the kitchen. "Jean-Luc Charpentier," I said, surprised to find myself short of breath. "He just went . . . out the back. He's your murderer."
Lefevre and Huvet looked at each other.
"... tried to burn the painting," I said, or rather panted. "... caught him . . . tried to kill me with this . . . this ..."
But I couldn't think of the word for it, and besides, the blackness had begun to dance at the edges of my sight again, and with it came another sickly wave of dizziness. I tipped my head back against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to steady myself. I would have put my head between my knees but I didn't want to do it in front of Lefevre.
"All right, have a look out there for him," I heard him tell his subordinates.
"... gone by now," I said.
"If he's not there," Lefevre told them, "go to his hotel."
After a few more seconds the queasiness passed. I opened my eyes to find Lefevre silently studying the litter of wood strewn across the floor. Then he looked at the painting lying on its face, its frame knocked awry. Finally, he looked at me, clutching my medieval pike and leaning, bruised and battle-weary, against the stone wall.
He sighed. "Some things don't change, do they, Mr. Norgren?"
Chapter 19
Lefevre led me a few steps down the corridor into Pepin's office, sat me down in Pepin's padded, high-backed chair behind the desk, and took a wooden armchair for himself. He telephoned upstairs to ask Madame Guyot to see that we weren't disturbed, and to request a cup of coffee laced with cognac for me, then waited for it to come before starting in on the inevitable grilling. He'd been upstairs himself, talking to the domestic staff, when he'd heard the commotion down below, he said. Now, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, perhaps I would tell him what all this was about?
"And I think you can put your pikestaff down now. You're safe with me."
I wasn't so sure about that, but I put it down anyway, surprised to find that I'd hung on to it all this time.
"Are you all right?" he asked when I took another sip without speaking.
I was all right—the brandied coffee was helping considerably—I was just trying to figure out where to begin. It had been no more than fifteen minutes since I'd put all the pieces together myself, and I didn't know yet what kind of a fit they made.
"Let's start with the painting," I said.
"The Léger?"
"It's not a Léger. It's two paintings, one on top of the other, and neither one of them is a Léger."
"Not a Léger?" Frowning, he went out to the corridor and brought the picture back, laying it on the desk and leaning over to study it. In addition to its being twisted from the rough treatment, some more of the overpainting had flecked away, and much of it had slipped an inch or two, crinkling up like the skin on a pan of scalded milk. The violon could have passed for an accordéon.
Gingerly,
Lefevre pushed at the film of paint. "Let us hope you're right," he said. "No one could repair this." He looked up. "It's a forgery, then?"
"An extremely good forgery—painted on top of another extremely good forgery."
He leaned back in his chair, pulled a pack of Gauloises from his pocket, and lit up. "I feel confident that there is a reason for this, and that you are going to tell me what it is."
"I can tell you what I think it is." I had another swig of the fortifying liquid and told him what I believed had happened. The underlying painting had been covered with a coat of gesso to create a satisfactory working surface for the Violon et Cruche that would be painted on top, a common enough procedure in overpainting. The difference was that this particular gesso had been purposely made to slough off. My guess was that a thin coating of linseed oil had been put on the surface of the original painting before brushing on the gesso, which would tend to make the gesso slip. Then, the gesso itself had been applied as a single, thick layer instead of building it up in several thin coats, which would make it tend to split and curl—especially in a warm environment, as many a fledgling artist has discovered to his grief.
Lefevre listened skeptically. "And Vachey knew this?"
"Vachey planned it. That's why he ordered the gallery kept so warm. Otherwise it could have taken months for the gesso to start breaking up. But he didn't want it to happen later, he wanted it to happen right when it was getting the most publicity—during the two weeks of the exhibition. And the way to do that was to turn the heat up. The warmer it was, the faster it would deteriorate." I shook my head ruefully. "I noticed right away that the temperature was too high. Damn, I should have figured out what was going on."
Actually, I didn't really believe that anybody could have figured out what was going on, but I thought Lefevre would appreciate thinking that I'd missed something obvious.
