Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  Fanette nearly drops her brush.

  “What?”

  “It’s an old painting from 1891, a famous painting that shows the brook stemming from Epte, the bridge over it, the Moulin des Chennevières. In the background you can see a woman in a dress, her hair knotted in a scarf… and in the middle of the stream is a man watering his horse. That’s the title of the painting, by the way. Père Trognon and His Daughter at the Bridge. That was his name, the horseman, he was from Giverny…”

  This time Fanette has to struggle not to laugh.

  Sometimes, James really takes me for a complete fool.

  Père Trognon—he says the first thing that comes into his head!

  James is still studying the little girl’s painting. The old painter’s beard is practically poking her in the eye. His fat finger passes barely an inch from the still-damp paint.

  “It’s good, Fanette. I like the shadows around your mill. It’s very good. It’s a symbol of your fate, Fanette. You are painting the same scene as Theodore Robinson did, and I have to say I think your version is better. Trust me, you are going to win this competition! A life, you know, Fanette, is just two or three opportunities that you mustn’t allow to slip by. That’s what’s at stake, my pretty one, a life! Nothing less.”

  James sets off to move the easels again. You would think he spends more time moving his canvases than he does painting on them. You would think that the sun is too quick for him.

  He doesn’t care.

  Almost an hour has passed when Neptune comes and joins them. The German shepherd sniffs suspiciously at the paint box, then lies down at Fanette’s feet.

  “Is that your dog?” James asks.

  “No, not really. I think he belongs to pretty much everyone in the village, but I’ve adopted him. He likes me best!”

  James smiles. He is sitting on a stool by one of the easels, but every time Fanette looks at him, he looks as if he’s dropping off onto his canvas. His beard is going to end up looking like a rainbow.

  No. No, I’ve got to concentrate.

  Fanette continues with her study of the Moulin des Chennevières. She twists the shapes of the little half-timbered tower, reinforces the contrasts, the ochre, the tiles, the stone. James calls the tower “the witch’s mill.” Because of the old woman who lives there.

  A witch…

  Sometimes James really treats me like I’m a baby.

  Except that Fanette is a little bit scared. James has explained to her why he doesn’t like that house very much. He says that because of the mill, Monet’s water lilies nearly didn’t exist. The mill and Monet’s garden are built on the same stream. Monet wanted to build a dam, introduce locks, divert the water to create his pond. No one in the village wanted him to do it, because of illness, marshes, all that kind of thing. In particular his neighbors. In particular the people who lived in the mill. There were lots of problems. Monet got angry with everyone, he put lots of money into his campaign too, he wrote to the prefect, another man she’s never heard of, a friend of Monet’s, Clemenceau was his name. And in the end Monet got it, he did, his lily pond.

  It would have been such a shame…

  But it’s still stupid on James’s part not to like the mill because of that. That stupid fight between Monet and his neighbors was ages ago.

  Sometimes James can be silly.

  She shivers. But what if the person who lives in the mill really is a witch!

  Fanette goes on working awhile longer. The light fades, making the mill look even more sinister. She loves it. James has been asleep for a long time.

  Suddenly Neptune leaps to his feet. The dog growls nastily. Fanette turns around with a start toward the little clump of poplars just behind her, and catches the silhouette of a boy of her age.

  Vincent! A blank look.

  “What are you doing here?”

  James wakes up with a start. Fanette is shouting:

  “Vincent! I hate it when you turn up like that, as if you’re spying on me. How long have you been there?”

  Vincent doesn’t say anything. He studies Fanette’s painting, the mill, the bridge. He looks hypnotized.

  “I’ve already got a dog, Vincent. I’ve already got Neptune. He’s enough for me. And stop looking at me like that, you’re scaring me…”

  James coughs into his beard.

  “Erm… umm. All right, children, it’s good that there are two of you. Given the light, I think it’s time to pack away all our materials. You can help me. Monet said that wisdom was getting up and going to bed with the sun.”

  Fanette hasn’t taken her eyes off Vincent.

  Vincent scares me when he appears like that out of nowhere. Behind me. As if he were spying on me. Sometimes I think he’s insane.

  16

  Inspector Laurenç Sérénac’s cup is frozen in his hand. His deputy is like a student who has written an extra piece of homework and is paralyzed, caught between the desire to show it to his teacher and the fear of doing so. Bénavides’s right hand has disappeared into a thick file. He takes out a sheet of A4 paper.

  “Look, Chief. To get a clear view of things, I’ve started doing this…”

  Sérénac takes another brownie, sets down his cup of coffee, and leans forward, surprised.

  “It’s just a way of organizing my ideas. I’m obsessed with this kind of thing, writing notes, pulling summaries together, drawing sketches. I’ve divided the sheet into three columns. In my view, there are three possible scenarios: the first, that it’s a crime of passion, somehow connected to one of Morval’s mistresses. In which case his wife would be a suspect, of course, or a jealous husband, or another mistress… We have no shortage of leads in that direction.”

  Sérénac glances at him. “Thanks to our anonymous letter… Go on, Sylvio…”

  “The second column focuses on art, his collection of pictures, the paintings he was looking for, the Monets, the Water Lilies. Couldn’t the murder be connected to stolen goods? A black-market sale? Something to do with art and money…”

  Bénavides looks up at the ten or so pictures on the wall of the office that his boss hung up as soon as he arrived. Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro. Gauguin. Renoir…

  “Which is a stroke of luck, if I may say so,” Sylvio adds. “Painting seems to be your area, Inspector.”

  “Pure coincidence, Sylvio… If I had suspected, when I was transferred to Vernon, that my first corpse would be found dunked in the stream at Giverny… I was already interested in art before I started at the police academy, which is why I spent most of my training in Paris with the art unit. You’re not into art, Sylvio?”

  “Just cookery…”

  Laurenç laughs, his mouth still full of brownie.

  “Well, I can certainly attest to that… I’ve alerted my former colleagues in the art unit to the case. They’re going to look into thefts, stolen goods, shady collections… parallel markets… I was able to dip my toes into that world, back then, and you wouldn’t believe the business—there are millions and millions at stake. Anyway, I’m waiting to hear from them. So, your third column?”

  Sylvio Bénavides peers over his page.

  “As far as I’m concerned, the third area of investigation—and don’t laugh at me, Chief—is the children. Eleven-year-olds, in particular. There’s no shortage of clues either: that postcard and the quote from Aragon. Morval might have had a child with one of his mistresses, and not told his wife… Also, according to the experts who have analyzed the physical properties of the card found in Morval’s pocket, it is quite old. About fifteen years old, perhaps more. The typed text, ‘ELEVEN YEARS OLD, HAPPY BIRTHDAY,’ is thought to date back to the same period, but the addition, the quote from Aragon, is more recent… Now that’s weird, isn’t it?”

  Inspector Sérénac whistles with admiration.

  “I stand by what I said, Sylvio. You’re the ideal deputy.” He gets abruptly to his feet and heads for the door. “Even if you are a little… persnickety. Come on, then, Sylvio
, shall we go to the lab?”

  Bénavides follows him without a word. They walk along the corridors and down a badly lit staircase.

  “One of the things that needs to be done as a matter of urgency is to look for witnesses. You can write that down on your page, Sylvio. It’s hard to believe that in a village where everyone paints from morning till night not one person claims to have seen anything on the day of Morval’s murder, and that the only witnesses who have come forward are an anonymous paparazzo, sending us dirty photographs, and a dog that just wants to be stroked. Have you found out anything about the house beside the washhouse? That crooked old mill?”

  Sérénac takes a key from his pocket and opens a red fire door bearing the words LAB ARCHIVES DOCUMENTATION.

  “Not yet,” Bénavides replies. “I’ll go there as soon as I have a second.”

  “In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about another mission to keep the whole station busy. I’ll need a team of several men to do it… Now, chef’s surprise!”

  He walks into the dark room. There’s a cardboard box on the first table. Sérénac opens it and takes out a plaster cast.

  “Size ten,” he announces proudly. “It’s the sole of a boot. There can’t be two the same anywhere in the world! According to Maury, this mold is more precise than a fingerprint, freshly imprinted in the mud on the banks of the brook a few minutes after Morval’s murder. To make a long story short, the owner of this boot is, at the very least, a direct witness to the crime… if not a candidate for the title of murderer.”

  Sylvio opens his eyes wide.

  “And what are we going to do with it?”

  Sérénac laughs.

  “I hereby officially launch Operation Cinderella!”

  “I swear, Chief, I’m trying, but sometimes I really do have trouble with your sense of humor…”

  “You’ll get used to it, Sylvio. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worrying. To be honest I don’t really care. So what’s this Operation Cinderella?”

  “Well, this version is a little more rural, and a bit muddier… The mission will be to recover all the boots belonging to the three hundred inhabitants of Giverny.”

  “Is that all?” Sylvio runs his hand through his hair.

  “So, that will probably come to… how many?” Sérénac goes on. “A hundred and fifty boots? Two hundred at most…”

  “Christ. Inspector… it’s a surreal idea.”

  “Exactly! I think that’s why I like it.”

  “But in the end, Chief, I don’t understand. Surely the killer will have thrown his boots away? In any case, unless he’s a total cretin, he’s not going to hand them over to a policeman who comes and asks for them?”

  “Exactly, my fine fellow. It will be a process of elimination. So the good inhabitants of Giverny who say that they don’t have any boots, or who say that they’ve lost them, or who offer us very new boots that by chance were bought only yesterday, will be very high on our list of suspects…”

  Bénavides looks at the plaster boot sole. A big smile spreads across his face.

  “If I may say so, Chief, you do have some totally ridiculous ideas… But worse than that, they might actually work! And Morval’s funeral should be in two days. Imagine if the whole place is flooded… Every person in Giverny is going to curse you!”

  “Because you go to funerals in your boots, in Normandy?”

  “Well, if it’s completely pouring down, then yes.”

  Bénavides bursts out laughing.

  “Sylvio, I think I have trouble with your sense of humor too.”

  His deputy doesn’t respond.

  “Five hundred boots,” he murmurs. “Which column will I put that in?”

  They say nothing for a few minutes. Sérénac looks around the room, at the thick shelves of archives covering three out of the four walls, the corner with a tiny makeshift laboratory, the fourth wall reserved for documentation. Bénavides picks up an empty box, a red one, and writes “Morval” on the side. Suddenly he turns toward his superior.

  “Inspector, did you pick up the list of eleven-year-olds? That would give me something else for my third column… It’s the one with the least information, and yet…”

  Sérénac interrupts him. “Not yet. Stéphanie Dupain is supposed to be putting it together for me. Given the nature of the photographs we’ve received, I’d say she’s no longer the top suspect in terms of the lineup of Morval’s mistresses…”

  “Except that I’ve done some investigation into her husband,” Bénavides says. “Jacques Dupain. And he has pretty much the ideal profile.”

  Sérénac frowns.

  “Tell me more. What do you mean by the ideal profile?”

  Bénavides consults his notes. “Ah, well, sometimes it can be useful to have a deputy who’s a bit persnickety.”

  Sérénac seems enormously amused by the remark.

  “So, Jacques Dupain. Forty years old. Real estate agent in Vernon, and quite a mediocre one at that. An occasional huntsman with some other Givernois, and pathologically jealous as far as his wife is concerned. What do you say to that?”

  “I want you to keep him under close surveillance.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a kind of intuition. No, more than that, a premonition.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sérénac runs his finger along the boxes on a shelf. “E, F, G, H…”

  “You’re not going to like it, Sylvio…”

  “All the more reason for you to tell me.”

  “I have a feeling that another drama might be brewing…”

  I, J, K, L…

  “You’ll have to give me more than that, boss. As a general rule, I’m not keen on police intuition. I’m more of a fan of collecting evidence. As much as possible. But you’ve intrigued me.”

  M, N, O, P…

  Sérénac suddenly says:

  “Stéphanie Dupain… She’s the one in danger.”

  Sylvio Bénavides frowns. “What makes you think that?”

  “I told you, intuition…”

  Laurenç Sérénac takes three photographs from his pocket and throws the one of Stéphanie Dupain on the table. It lands just beside the plaster sole. Bénavides looks at him quizzically.

  “I don’t know. When she takes your hand, her grip is too tight, and there’s a look in her eyes that’s slightly too intense. I sensed a cry for help. There, I’ve said it!”

  Bénavides approaches the table. He is smaller than Sérénac.

  “A cry for help? With all due respect, Chief, and since you like straight-talking, I think what you’re saying is absolute rubbish. You’re getting all mixed up.”

  Sylvio picks up the photograph from the table and studies the graceful outline of Stéphanie Dupain walking hand in hand with Jérôme Morval.

  “In a pinch, Chief, I can understand where you’re coming from. Just don’t ask me to agree with you.”

  DAY FIVE

  May 17, 2010

  (Giverny Cemetery)

  Burial

  17

  It’s raining, as it always does at funerals in Giverny.

  A fine, cold rain.

  I’m alone by the grave. The freshly turned earth all around makes the place look like an abandoned building site. Tiny trickles of muddy water sully the marble plaque. To my husband. 1926–2010.

  The gray concrete wall nearby gives me a bit of shelter. Right at the top. Giverny Cemetery is built on a slope behind the church, in terraces. It has been progressively extended, stage by stage, the dead gnawing away at the hill, little by little. The celebrities, the wealthy ones, the glorious ones, are still buried down below, near the church, near the village, near Monet.

  There’s no mixing: they’re all together, keeping each other company, the patrons, the collectors, the more or less famous painters who have paid a fortune for the privilege of resting there for all eternity. Idiots. As if they could hold a ghostly little gallery opening
when there was a full moon…

  I turn round. Right at the bottom, at the other end of the cemetery, they’ve nearly finished burying Jérôme Morval. A lovely grave in the finest of spots, among the Van der Kemps, the Hoschedé-Monets, and the Baudys. The whole village is there, or nearly. A hundred or so people, all in black, bare-headed or under umbrellas.

  A hundred people, plus me, all on my own. No one cares about an old man or an old woman dying. All in all, if you want to be mourned, you’re better off dying young, in your full glory. Even if you’re the biggest bastard of the lot, if you want to be grieved for, you should make sure you go out first. For my husband, the priest got the whole ceremony over with in less than half an hour. He’s a young fellow, from Gasny. I’ve never seen him before. Morval, on the other hand, got the Bishop of Évreux! A relative on his wife’s side, apparently… That one’s taking about two hours.

  I know it may seem strange to you, two funerals happening in the same cemetery, and not that far apart. Does the coincidence seem disturbing to you? A bit too much? Be sure of one thing, then, and one alone: nothing is a coincidence in this scenario. Nothing is left to chance—quite the contrary. Each element is in its proper place, at exactly the right moment. Each piece in this criminal chain of events has been cleverly arranged, and believe me, I swear on my husband’s grave, nothing’s going to put a stop to it.

  I raise my head and I can tell you, from up here it’s a tableau worth looking at.

  Patricia Morval is kneeling by her husband’s grave. Inconsolable. Stéphanie Dupain stands a little way behind her, a serious expression on her face, her eyes red too. Her husband is supporting her, his arm around her waist, his face closed, water dripping from his large eyebrows, his mustache. Around them is a crowd of nameless people, relatives, friends, women. Inspector Sérénac is also there; he stands a little apart from the others, near the church, not far from Monet’s grave. The bishop is finishing his eulogy.