Cezanne's Quarry

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  Martin shook his head, painfully aware of the unread medical report on his desk. As the Englishman began to weep uncontrollably, Martin considered what to do with him. Sweat was tickling Martin under his beard and collar, as much from anxiety as from the heat. Never before had he felt his own lack of experience and imagination more keenly. He had run out of questions, and he had not come close to proving anything. At least he did know some things about the Englishman, and that he had two classic motives for murder: money and jealousy. And yet, without prompting or a struggle, Westerbury had revealed the existence of a possible witness, the little messenger. Would a guilty man have done that?

  Martin could, as he had threatened, throw Westerbury into prison. But that was Albert Franc’s world. A world where the inspector would feel free to beat a confession out of a foreigner without a family to stand by and protect him. That was not what Martin wanted. He wanted a valid confession and the real killer, who could easily be the artist who was the banker’s son. Since the man sniveling before him hardly seemed a danger to anyone, Martin decided to demonstrate that France was every bit as civilized as England.

  When Westerbury regained his composure, Martin asked, “What was Mme Vernet’s parish?”

  “Madeleine,” Westerbury whispered.

  “Then you will want to send a priest to arrange a burial. You may also want to bring some fresh clothes to the morgue.”

  The Englishman nodded.

  “You may go now.”

  Dazed, Westerbury pushed himself up from the chair and put his hat on his head. “That’s all?”

  “No, I can assure you that this is only the beginning,” Martin said, trying to sound cool and in command, while desperately hoping that he would do better in his next encounter with the Englishman. “Of course, you realize that if you leave town it will be taken as a sign of your guilt or complicity. And,” he added, “I also expect that you will not threaten your maid in any way.”

  Westerbury backed slowly into the foyer. When he reached the door, he gave a little bow to Martin and Joseph before opening it and rushing out into the hallway.

  Martin watched as the door swung shut. The next minute, Old Joseph was beside him, meekly offering his notes, pages and pages covered with spidery handwriting as wispy as the hairs on the old man’s head. Martin took them with a sigh. It would take him all afternoon to decipher and analyze them.

  “Would you like me to open the window, sir?” There was always a look of longing in the clerk’s yellowing brown eyes, as if he wanted to prove that he was still useful.

  “No, thank you, Joseph. I’d like you to go find Franc and tell him to have the Englishman followed. Then you can take the rest of the day off.” When his clerk retreated and began to put away his things, Martin pushed out the window that overlooked the Palais square, letting in the voices of those going home for their midday meal. He watched until he saw the erect figure of Charles Westerbury emerge from the narrow street at the side of the courthouse, walking slowly and stiffly, as if he were putting his innocence and dignity on display for all to see.

  3

  WESTERBURY WAS, INDEED, CONSCIOUS OF the deliberateness of his movements. Just one foot in front of the other, old boy, he kept repeating to himself, and soon you’ll be out of sight. Despite the wild pounding of his heart, he was not about to let them detect any signs of weakness. Especially not that brute of a detective. Nor that intolerable prig of a judge, always tugging at his neat little beard as if he fashioned himself to be some young Solomon. That clever glint in his eyes. Those little inquisitorial tricks up his sleeve. Well, monsieur le juge, monsieur le petit juge, has a lot to learn before he can drag anything out of me.

  So concentrated was Westerbury on walking a straight line that he almost ran into a woman returning from the market with a recalcitrant child in tow. He bowed to apologize for hitting her basket, tipped his hat, and put on what he hoped was a winning smile. The woman’s face was too blurred for him to know if she was one of his students. If not, who knew? For good measure, Westerbury patted the little brat on the head. Life goes on. Must keep charming potential customers. Geology, anyone? Geology for the ladies? Unfortunately, the woman drew her son away from him in a protective gesture and did not seem at all charmed. Westerbury knew then that he must look a sight.

  As soon as the woman continued on her way, he made a sharp turn to the right, toward the apartment. Force of habit. He could not bear the thought of being surrounded by Solange’s things. Nor did he want to listen to Arlette’s wailing. He had to find a way to think things through, to wipe the image of Solange out of his mind.

  Suspecting that he might still be under observation, Westerbury reversed his course with as much dignity as he could muster. When he got out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his face and dab at his eyes, he realized that he was still trembling. But he solemnly continued on, past the grand fountain in the center of the rectangle that divided the Palais square from the space in front of the Madeleine. This church, named for Jesus’s whore, was where Solange had done her bit for charity. With luck, if the priests were not too hypocritical, they would allow her to be buried here as well. He’d let Arlette pick out a suitable dress and send her to the police with it. She’d like that. Arlette would light candles and keep the vigil. He would figure out how to survive until they probated the will.

  But first he needed to find a drink. A strong one. Out of the way, where no one could see him.

  When Westerbury turned into a side street out of sight of the courthouse, he picked up speed. Head up. Chin out. Like a ship parting the water. He cut past laundresses and porters carrying their loads, even a gentlewoman or two. It did not matter. They all passed just under his line of vision. He did not even bother to press himself against the buildings to let the carriages and wagons go by. He had a mission.

  Finally, he reached the northern outskirts of the city. Just beyond what was left of the ramparts, he spotted a café, a workingman’s establishment. It was the kind of place that he and Solange had avoided since their arrival in Aix. No one would know him there.

  Once his eyes adjusted to the dark interior, he noted with relief that all of the tables were empty. The only inhabitant was a burly man in a dirty apron at the bar, busily wiping and setting up glasses for the afternoon clientele.

  Westerbury laid his palms down upon the cool zinc counter and ordered an absinthe.

  The barkeeper pushed a dish of sugar cubes and one of the glasses toward Westerbury, then reached under the bar for a spoon and a jug of water. Finally, he pulled down one of the brown bottles from a shelf behind him and poured out a few centimeters of green liquor. Westerbury took a sip. A small dose. But real. It burned a raw bitter path down his throat. “Good, very good,” he nodded as he reached for the water and stirred some into the emerald fire. Then he downed the cool opalescent mixture in one long draught. “Another,” he said, tapping his glass against the zinc.

  The barman poured a second round of absinthe. It was a beautiful drink. And dangerous. Just one of the many bits of French wickedness to which he had introduced his lovely Solange. Westerbury ran his cooled hands across his burning eyes. He had never understood Solange’s innocence. When he met her, she had seemed almost virginal. That had been part of the mystery, the enchantment. She was so beautiful and so innocent. Yet so French. Westerbury held up his glass to the light coming from the window. When he had first urged her to try it, he told her that absinthe, the green fairy, was the color of her eyes. “Hah.” He covered his mouth to smother this bitter laugh. “I’m the green-eyed one, remember, mon cher? Me, me!” she had shouted during their last quarrel. “Let me play the jealous part. You are the foreigner that all the women love.” Then she had pleaded with him, as if he were a child. “Listen to me. Sois raisonable. Please be reasonable!” He had never felt such rage before. And never had he been less reasonable.

  He drank the second portion of absinthe in one undiluted gulp.

  His coughing aler
ted the proprietor to his foolhardy transgression. Westerbury grabbed the jug and drank from it. The water dribbled down his neck. “Just a rough patch, old man,” he explained in English, “just a rough patch.” His companion lowered his arched eyebrows and shrugged, but he didn’t take his eyes off his customer. Yes, Westerbury thought as he started to take some money from his pocket, what do the natives care as long as you pay the bills and don’t break the pottery?

  Westerbury lifted the brown bottle. There wasn’t much left in it. “How much?” he asked.

  Another shrug. “Four francs.” Too much. “And—” the man pointed to the twice-emptied glass.

  Before the barkeeper could finish his calculations, Westerbury slapped a ten-franc note on the counter. He had not come here expecting consolation from a stranger. Grabbing the bottle by its neck, Westerbury set out into the bright sunlight and continued up a hill, toward the mountain, away from the city.

  This is where he would find his true consolation. From nature. If she could not help him at his time of greatest need, what good was she? Westerbury lurched as he climbed. He passed a few peasants and tinkers going to town. They made way for him, even though they had no idea who he was. Nor did they know the true history of the earth upon which they were treading. Besotted, priest-ridden lot.

  When he reached the crest, Westerbury leaned his back against a great oak and let his body slide down the trunk so he could sit and observe. This is how he and Solange had first seen Mont Sainte-Victoire. They had hired a driver the day after arriving in town and asked him to find them the best view of the mountain. When they first caught sight of it, Westerbury had been so overcome by its shimmering white magnificence that he cried out. “Look, my love! Upon this rock I shall build my church!” Solange smiled and laid two gloved fingers upon his mouth, shaking her head. It was one of her signals, not to give offense to the driver with his blasphemy. Never to give offense. Not to Arlette. Not to anyone who was incapable of understanding. How very polite, how very French. Yet she had never been offended. She had always wanted to understand.

  Westerbury took another gulp from the bottle. This is not why he was here: he was here to gain strength. To remember his purpose. To rid the world of ignorance and servile fear. Westerbury surveyed his surroundings. Sainte-Victoire, Holy Victory, indeed. The good Christians of Aix had named that great, beautiful mass of limestone after the triumphant slaughter of the barbarian hordes, whose pagan blood, they believed, still fertilized and colored their piece of the earth. They believed their God created the world in seven days. But Westerbury knew better. “No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”: that was what the great James Hutton, Lyell’s teacher, said. How often had he repeated that to Solange, and to their initiates? “Your French geologists imagine that we are all dropping bit by bit into the ocean. But we English hold for perpetual renewal.” “Comment, mon cher?” she would ask, right on cue. “How?” And he would explain: about the fiery center of the world. About the theories of vulcanists and plutonists. About the slow work of glaciers. About intrusion, upheaval, eruption. And, yes, about erosion. But only so that the earth could feed herself again in an endless cycle of renewal.

  And Mont Sainte-Victoire, rising so incongruously, all by herself, was going to help him. Since that first day, he had explored her every facet, seen her every mood. He watched her changing colors from afar, searched for fossils on her highest reaches, picked at her lower regions for clues to her mysteries. She was his. Someday he would reveal how many millions of years it had taken to reach her full glorious height and what great subterranean forces had brought her there.

  Westerbury drank more slowly. If he could just sit here for a while, watching the sun move over her face, he could regain his calm. He could think. In the noon light she shimmered white, silver, gray, blue. Just like—the memory invaded his consciousness with piercing clarity—just like Solange’s body, above him, as they made love, the shafts of morning light streaming across her pale skin. He had told her, as he ran his hand up her back, that she was his mountain. Strong and pure and slowly rising to a spectacular peak, like Mont Sainte-Victoire.

  “And what is this, mon amour?” She shook her hair and let it fall upon his shoulders, sheltering his face.

  “Red and gold, pink and orange, like the strange Provençal soil,” he answered. “You are the earth.”

  “And my eyes, mon amour?”

  “Like the hidden, purest, primeval sea.”

  Then she would kiss him, cup his face in her hands, and ask, “And, mon amour, what are you?”

  “I,” he explained, “I am Pluto, the god of earth and fertility. I am all heat. I am coming to you and will make you rise with my molten liquids.”

  She would kiss him again. “Mon sauvage,” she would say, “Come here, mon sauvage blond.” And her eyes would close as he thrust upward. Sometimes she would whisper her invitation again and again, until, finally, he would gasp. And she would fall upon him. Gently now. All soft and warm. Hands around his face again. Eyes open, smiling, loving him.

  “Oh God,” he cried aloud, as he threw the bottle away. “Oh God,” he covered his face with his hands. “How could I have been such a fool! What mere mortal deserved what we had? And I destroyed it.

  “Help me now!” he shouted at the mountain. Help me now. But a mountain could not take back his words. Or his deeds. She had given him everything. Except for one thing. And that, in the end, had driven him mad. Comment, mon amour, comment? That politesse, that kindness. What do you mean, mon cher? How would you like it? All, except for one thing. How he had longed to possess her completely. And when he found out about Cézanne, he had accused her. “What do you give him? Do you let him get on top?” That would be his eternal shame, the unkindest cut of all. Until the last knife thrust to her heart. Now nothing could be undone. Nothing. What a wretch he was. What a miserable, damnable wretch.

  He was sobbing openly now. Solange was gone. There was no one to help him. Westerbury rose, using the tree trunk for support. This was no good. There was no forgetting. At least not today. He had things to do. He must talk to Arlette, explain the quarrel, and send her to the priest. And he must find Cézanne, the cause of it all.

  4

  “YOU LET HIM GO?” Franc shouted. No “sir” this time, only angry disbelief.

  “I’m not sure that he is our man.”

  The inspector sank into the chair occupied six hours earlier by the sweating, fearful Westerbury. “Maybe we should find out where the Proc is hiding out and drag him here. Or get one of the other judges to help out.”

  The prosecutor was not due back for a week and a half and, as for another magistrate—“No,” Martin said flatly. Definitely not that. To be pulled off his first important case? It would ruin him. No. Martin was going to solve the case, and solve it his way. With a reasoned, even-handed inquiry. At the very least, he needed to see what Cézanne had to say before charging the Englishman.

  “I had Joseph put one of your men on Westerbury, thinking we could find out more that way than by having him rot in a cell.”

  “But by the time Old Joseph—”

  “Yes,” Martin put up his hand, “but he could not have gone far, and I did keep his identification card.”

  This precaution did not placate Franc, whose chest was still heaving with indignation. Martin decided to change the subject. “You searched the Vernet apartment?”

  Franc shrugged. “This morning, while you were questioning our suspect. Nothing helpful, I’m afraid.” He was beginning to retreat into a more appropriate attitude.

  “Did you speak to the maid?”

  “Tried to. She whimpered half the time, wailed the other half.” Franc imitated a woman’s high whining voice: “‘Mme Solange, poor Mme Solange.’” He blew air out of his mouth in disgust. “Maybe after she gets over her hysteria—”

  “Did she tell you that Mme Vernet received a note before going to the quarry?”

  “No.” Franc straightened up.
“Who told you that?”

  “Westerbury.”

  This small triumph was short-lived. “He could be lying.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Martin, standing his ground. “Did you look through any papers?”

  “Yes. Bills, calling cards, that’s about it.”

  “The purse?”

  “Only a few coins.”

  “And the quarry?”

  The inspector shook his head. “Me and the boys went over everything again. Found nothing. She was killed there, we know that. No trail of blood. But no knife either. And,” Franc raised his eyebrows in amusement, “no other works of ‘art.’”

  “Very well,” Martin said. In spite of the doubts that Franc had just aroused, he had to show who was in charge. “I’ve telegraphed Paris to see if they have anything on Westerbury and Vernet. Tomorrow I’ll need to question the maid, and then Cézanne. If you or one of your boys could keep track of Westerbury. . . .” At least Franc refrained from delivering another reproach. “And” Martin reiterated, “let’s not forget the note. Westerbury said that the message was delivered by a boy. We must find him. He may be a key—”

  “If there really was a note, and if the killer did not get to him first. . . .”

  “But if it was, as you say, a crime of passion, on the spur of the moment—” Martin stammered. He hadn’t thought until that moment that an unknown child might be in danger.

  “A murderer will do anything to cover his tracks.”

  And Martin had let Westerbury go. Cézanne was still out there. Martin’s mouth ran dry. His mind raced. If the killer had argued with Solange Vernet in the quarry, if she had rebuffed him, surely she would be his only victim.