Cezanne's Quarry

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I was only suggesting a possibility.” Franc must have read the distress on Martin’s face. “Like I said before, all my experience tells me it’s a simple crime of passion. Nothing more. Committed by some weakling like your Englishman.”

  A possibility. A possibility that Martin needed to put out of his mind for the moment. He needed to stick to his plan. He fingered the medical report. At least Dr. Riquel’s findings seemed to confirm the hypothesis that Solange Vernet had been killed in a moment of rage. She had also been raped.

  “Did you tell Westerbury that Mme Vernet may have been violated?” Martin asked quietly. He was sure that Riquel had discussed the torn undergarments and traces of semen with Franc.

  “No, I just question suspects to find out what they know. I don’t give information unless I think it will get something out of them. As soon as he saw the body, he blubbered like a woman, and then he would not talk. Besides, who knows if it was really rape, considering the kind of woman she was?”

  Martin had considered the kind of woman Solange Vernet had been and had come to different conclusions than his inspector. “Nevertheless, before you go home,” Martin handed Franc a note, “could one of your men deliver this to Dr. Riquel? I am requesting that he not tell anyone about the rape. And I am asking the same from you. There is no reason why this has to be reported. It may only cause more panic, once the news of the murder gets out.”

  He had prepared this speech. The truth was that he did not want Solange Vernet to suffer this final public indignity unless absolutely necessary.

  “If you say so.” Franc paused for a moment, then said, “Sir, I was out of line—”

  Martin held his hand up to signify that no apology was necessary.

  “But,” Franc continued, “this is the case that could make your career and mine. And, no matter what I said before, I’m sure we can do it. Together, before the Proc comes back.”

  “Yes, Franc, that’s my hope too. But we have to be sure we have the right man.”

  The inspector hesitated before breaking the silence. “We’ll find him,” he said with quiet conviction, announcing an uneasy truce between them.

  Franc had left the box of material evidence on Martin’s desk. Martin did not dig deep to look at Solange Vernet’s torn undergarments. That would have felt like another violation. Nor did he unfold the dress. He had already seen her blood. He only retrieved the medal that lay on top of the parasol. Wrapping the white cord around his hand, he took it over to the window to get a clearer look. It was the same one his mother wore, an emblem of the Virgin standing atop the world with the rays of the sun emanating from her hands. Under this image ran the familiar words “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” Had Solange called out to her Virgin for help in those last horrible moments? Or to God? Or had she just cried out in the pain and horror?

  Martin clasped the medal hard in his hand, as if it could tell him what kind of woman Solange Vernet had really been. Had she been truly religious? Or a self-taught intellectual? Or, merely, a parvenu who had fashioned herself out of whole cloth, like one of the elegant hats she had made and sold to her wealthy customers? With a sigh, Martin dropped the medal into the evidence box and placed it in the wooden cabinet that stood against the wall across from his bookshelves. He closed the door, locked it, and carefully placed the key in his top drawer. He was done for the day. He had to find a way to forget for a while, to ignore the doubts that Franc had just aroused, about the boy and about Martin’s ability to see through the lies and be tough enough to face down a killer. He needed a respite and longed to be among people for a time before returning to his solitary room.

  So he headed to La Bonne Ménagère, a place where every evening bachelors gathered to enjoy the solid bourgeois fare, while they read the newspapers provided by the proprietors. When he walked in, Martin was relieved to see that at least here nothing had changed. Most of the diners were lost in their own thoughts, although a few acknowledged Martin’s arrival with a silent nod. A top hat or bowler—and, for the older men, a walking stick and gloves—occupied the empty seats at the small tables. The couple who ran the restaurant never asked questions and never left their post, even in the most fearsome August heat. Most customers showed their appreciation by appearing several times a week. Although he could hardly afford it, Martin usually found comfort in the little restaurant’s sedate atmosphere.

  Tonight, however, he could not concentrate on the narrow, austere columns of yesterday’s Le Temps. The case was stirring up his discontent. He was tired of being lonely and poor. He kept thinking about what “being among people” had meant only a few years ago in Paris, while he was studying at the Law Faculty.

  It had been the only period in his life when he had given himself over to moments of pure frivolity and to previously unthinkable possibilities of pleasure. His fellow students, all richer and more sophisticated than he, had introduced him to the cafés of the Latin Quarter and to the grisettes, the working-class girls who vied to become their eating and drinking companions. Martin fell in love with one right after another, but had been too shy to do anything about it. Until Honorine. For almost a year, until he had to leave Paris, this pretty dressmaker’s assistant had been “his” grisette. What an exotic creature she seemed, wearing bracelets that jangled on her plump little arms, showing her sharp teeth when she laughed, flirtatiously twisting her black curls around her fingers, and leaning over the table to show off her little round breasts. All this directed at him. She had been generous. So generous. An ever-willing listener and an unimaginably eager teacher. Martin closed his eyes and sipped the wine, remembering.

  Before Honorine, his only experience with women had been a stilted courtship with his distant cousin Marthe DuPont. When Martin’s mother had finally realized the calamitous state of the family finances, she had thrown herself on the mercy of the DuPonts, who sponsored Martin as a day student at the Jesuit high school and helped to finance his law school expenses. M. DuPont had even gotten Martin his first post as a prosecutor’s assistant in Lille.

  Early on, M. DuPont and Martin’s mother had also decided that he would make a suitable match for the rich industrialist’s eldest daughter. Marthe was a product of the fashionable Sacre Coeur boarding school, the perfect training ground for the perfect bourgeois wife. When he was younger, Martin’s mother had forced him to go with her to tea on Wednesday afternoons, when the nuns opened the school to visitors. In the last few years, he had been thrown together with Marthe in the DuPonts’ grandiose salon and dining room.

  Raised in this environment, Marthe would never dream of revealing the flesh of her arms, wearing curls, or laughing at his feeble jokes. Indeed there had been little humor in their solemn, hushed conversations. And pleasure, never.

  Martin stabbed at a piece of beef in the dark, thick stew. The only ornamentation that Marthe wore was a large, heavy medal announcing that she was, truly and officially, a Child of Mary. The medal was not hidden like Solange Vernet’s, but on full display, a shield against a godless world and a challenge to any man who dared to think that a willing body lay beneath all that proper female armature. Marthe would be a good mother and a faithful wife and, God knows, as the daughter of Lille’s richest textile manufacturer, she’d be a great match for a penniless magistrate. But would there be any pleasure, any true happiness, between them? Would Martin ever be able to talk with her about what was in his heart?

  Martin took the last bite of the boeuf bourguignon. Westerbury and Solange had loved each other. That is what the Englishman had insisted. They loved and understood each other. They were making a new life together. They were capable of that, a new life. Of talking about science and religion. Of discussing all the great issues of the day. If everything the Englishman had said were true, he had been a very lucky man.

  But what if Solange Vernet had changed her allegiance and had set her heart on Cézanne, the local banker’s son? Or what if s
he had rebuffed the artist’s advances? The key might be—Martin chewed slowly—the key might be finding out which man Solange Vernet really loved, and why.

  Thursday, August 20

  The Murder, 1868-70, and The Woman Strangled, 1870-2, are bewildering in their expression of fury, their excess of emotion. . . . Even if the sources of their imagery were to be found, we would still have to account for Cézanne’s interest in them. What we seek is the source of his own violence.

  —Sidney Geist, Interpreting Cézanne3

  5

  CÉZANNE WOKE HER FROM A DEEP SLEEP. Even before she completely roused herself, Hortense Fiquet could hear the agitation in his movements—the search for the pitcher of water, the fumbling through the cupboards for a glass, the scrape of the chairs.

  Hortense grabbed her robe and pushed back her hair. Because of the heat, the early morning hours were the only good ones for sleeping. She was very tired. She glanced at her thirteen-year-old son snoring in the bed next to hers before entering the other room in the house.

  “Paul? Paul, dear, you’re early.” The endearment was meant to soothe, but she could see that Paul, already in one of his moods, was beyond appeasement. “Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head, staring into space. His face belied his denial. He had taken off his cap and settled into the old sofa in the large rectangular living room that opened onto the kitchen. His kept his paint supplies and canvases there, tucked in the corner behind an armchair. Cézanne had chosen this house, halfway up the low hill that was all there was to Gardanne, for the light. She hated it, and everything else about the town.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  A nod. He got up and took one of the three wooden chairs at the kitchen table.

  Hortense lit the fire under the pot and reached into the cupboard for the sugar and milk. She stopped and looked for the hundredth time at the sorry assortment of cups and dishes they had gathered in Paris, in Marseilles, in Aix, in l’Estaque. They lived like nomads, like fugitives.

  “Paul, did your father find out?”

  “No, no, no.” He pounded the table. “Nothing like that.”

  “Quiet, you’ll wake the boy.” It came out more like a hiss than a whisper.

  “Then stop with this father nonsense. He’s not to know. He wouldn’t approve. And then—”

  Then Paul would lose his inheritance. That was always the threat hanging over her head. If Paul lost his inheritance, they would never be able to marry. All the years of waiting would be wasted.

  “Tell me what happened,” Hortense said, joining Cézanne at the table. “You must have walked all this way in the dark. That can be dangerous.” She reached for him, but his hand stayed clenched, resolutely refusing to meet hers.

  “Don’t worry, I waited for the sun to start. I even had time to post a note to Zola.”

  “About?”

  “Nothing. At least this month we don’t have to ask him for money.”

  “Then what? What is it?” She was used to his dark moods, his fierce, frowning eyes. This was different.

  “The Englishman.”

  “Westerbury?”

  “Yes.” He looked at her. “Your famous professor Westerbury,” he said.

  Hortense ignored his sarcasm. She had borne enough of Paul’s disdain when she told him she’d attended one of the geological lectures while they were still living in Aix. “I don’t understand. You told me you stopped seeing them months ago.”

  “I didn’t go to see them. He came to the Jas. Late last night. Shouting. Crazy. Tried to break the windows with stones. He even disturbed Papa.”

  Precious, never-to-be-disturbed Papa. Rich, stingy Papa. Sometimes Hortense dreamed of throttling “Papa”with her own hands to get it over with. But why had the Englishman come looking for Paul at his parents’ home? Had Paul taken up with Solange Vernet again? Hortense got up and stirred the coffee into the boiling water. It always smelled burnt and stale here in this hovel. Not like in the cafés of Paris, where they had met. Hortense slapped the lid on the pot and poured the coffee into two chipped cups. When she turned again, Paul had his head in his hands. His bald forehead looked so vulnerable that she almost reached over to pat him, but stopped herself in time. If only they could be tender with each other again, everything would be more endurable. She sat down across from him and took a sip of the hot, dark liquid. She needed to know what had happened, even if they argued again. Anything was better than his silences.

  “Tell me, before our son wakes up. What is this all about?”

  “Westerbury says that I killed Solange. That I was the real murderer.”

  “What?” Killed Solange? Was it possible that the witch was dead? And that someone had murdered her?

  “He kept shouting that I was responsible. That I should come out and face him like a man. I would have, except Maman begged me not to.”

  Paul looked up at her, tears in his eyes. It took all her strength not to slap him.

  Hortense struggled to keep her voice even. “She’s dead?”

  “How would I know!” Cézanne’s fist came down on the table, bouncing and clattering the cups. “How would I know? Do you think I killed her? Do you think I strangled a woman with my own hands?”

  Hortense’s eyes traveled from the scowling face to those strong hands, curled, ready for a fight. Paul had never struck her, but she had watched those hands tear up his canvases, break his paint brushes, rage against the fates, the furniture, even the walls of every place they had lived.

  “I did not kill her!” He was shouting in her face, and she was shrinking from him. Why should she think he had? Why was he threatening her?

  Cézanne stood up. “All I want is to paint. I don’t want entanglements. Everyone trying to catch me in their webs, their little plots.” His hands made furious little knots in front of her face as he said this. She shrank back further. What had gotten into him? Her throat was tightening, almost choking her, and her heart began to pound. “All I want is to be left alone!” he shouted, as he moved away from her. “Do you hear? No family! No women!”

  “Papa!”

  As soon as she heard the voice calling out from the bedroom, Hortense dropped her head into her hands and began to breathe more slowly. The boy. The boy would calm him.

  Cézanne left her at the table as he went into the bedroom to greet his son.

  6

  AFTER ANOTHER NIGHT OF TOSSING AND TURNING, Martin woke up with a plan. If he pulled it off, he would finally begin to understand what kind of woman Solange Vernet really had been, and what had gone on between her and her lovers.

  Martin was leaving the Picard house filled with a sense of purpose and direction, when the postman stopped him and handed him a letter. Martin recognized his mother’s handwriting at once and, with a sigh, put the envelope in his pocket. He did not need to open it to know what the message would be. His failures as a son and suitor were old stories.

  When he got to the courthouse, things did not improve. Old Joseph was waiting to deliver a most unwelcome message.

  “M. Franc told me to tell you that they were not able to find Paul Cézanne.” Barely had Martin digested this piece of bad news when he heard shouts coming from somewhere inside the Palais.

  “I believe that’s the maid,” Old Joseph explained in an unnecessary whisper. “M. Franc said he was going to get her right away.”

  Martin gave his frail clerk a weary pat on the back and walked out of his chambers in time to watch two gendarmes drag a woman by her arms and shoulders up the main staircase. Following this struggling trio, cap in hand, was Franc. “I won’t go. I have nothing to say. Don’t send me back. Let me go! Let me go!” The woman’s cries echoed through the cavernous building. Her limbs kept hitting against the hard edges of the stairs, adding to her anguish. There was no easy way to stop this brutal procession midstream, so Martin did not even try. At the top of the stairs, the journey became easier for the police as they hurried down the hall with their bu
rden between them and threw her on the hard wooden bench in front of Martin’s office. She was still flailing, but her words had dissolved into sobs.

  Franc caught Martin’s eye. “Arlette LaFarge.”

  Martin stared at the small, sallow creature. A “true Parisian,” as the inhabitants of the capital liked to say, meaning that she was an offspring of the densely packed central quarters, raised without benefit of sunshine or fresh air. Her male relatives were a favored constituency of the Third Republic, the kind politicians called, with a mixture of affection and cynicism, the “little people.” What an appropriate name, Martin thought, for men and women shrunken and bent by ceaseless labors in dank, dark shops. Because of his friend Merckx, Martin had known many such laborers in Lille. As a judge, he had become well acquainted with their counterparts in Aix. The “little people” never liked his chambers very much.

  Martin leaned over to address the sobbing woman. “Mme LaFarge. Mme LaFarge.”

  She knelt down, clinging to his leg. “Don’t send me back, sir. Please. He’ll kill me. I know he will.”

  “Who will kill you?” Martin forced the woman off of him and back onto the bench.

  “He beats me terribly.”

  “Who? M. Westerbury?” Martin was holding onto Arlette’s shoulders trying to get her to look at him.

  The name caught her attention. “Oh, no, sir. Not M. Westerbury. No. Never. My husband, Jacques, who’s waiting for me in Paris.” She broke into sobs again. “Mme Solange promised, she promised I’d never have to go back.”

  “The poor woman is terrified,” Martin said to Franc.

  The inspector shrugged. “She doesn’t want to have to face a judge and tell the truth.”

  “Did anyone threaten her?”

  “No, no,” Franc seemed disgusted by the question. “We just told her she would have to tell us everything she knows. And that she would have to talk to you. And,” he added, directing his words toward Arlette, who had flattened herself against the marble wall, “she has chosen to tell us nothing, except to give us a description of the messenger that would fit about a hundred street urchins in Aix alone.”