The whole thing’s a mess...”
Cromwell withdrew a small bag of tea from the teapot, thrust it back again, and then began to pound it with his spoon. He had insisted on tea. He always fled to it when a problem got on top of him. It comforted and inspired him, he said. The manager of their hotel had assured him that he was completely at Cromwell’s service in the matter of tea. They imported it from England for those who liked it that way. “What part of England?” Cromwell had asked when the brew arrived and he’d inspected it. All the same, he had to admit that it was good.
Littlejohn and Dorange were at the teacups, too. Dorange, with his customary courtesy, pretended to enjoy it. He smacked his lips over it, at the same time casting a longing eye on the Pernod being consumed by a man on the next table.
Audibert had gone to see Madame Labourel again. There was something fishy about the antique shop and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. He had instructed the local police to pull-in Madame Labourel’s nephew, Casimir, and to give him a good grilling about the way he’d been spending his time of late. Littlejohn had felt it would only embarrass Audibert if he and Cromwell went once again to the antique shop. So, with a promise to look up Audibert as soon as they returned from Pont de Veyle, they had made for their hotel. Dorange was waiting for them there. Whenever Littlejohn was within a hundred miles of Nice, Dorange seemed to regard himself as his host, and behaved accordingly.
“You look down in the mouth, Cromwell, my friend. What is it?”
They told him about the miniature and how it seemed that the little twister Cheever had, even from beyond the grave, lived up to his reputation for shady dealing.
Dorange drank all his tea in one gulp, like a child who takes his medicine quickly to get it over.
“Cheever said it was genuine and was anxious to get its history and sell it to Americans. Then, on seeing it, Berluc-Vidal wished to possess it. He must, therefore, have recognised the picture. Devard tells a tale, changes his mind, and says he and Rivaud faked the miniature. Our friend Audibert, a very clever man and of good taste, pronounces it second-rate. It is time we had the views of someone who understands these things.”
“You mean, an expert in a museum or art gallery, sir?”
“Exactly, my good Cromwell. One of the greatest experts on miniatures in France … in the world, in fact. Monsieur l’Abbé Caseneuve, of Apt. We will go to see him.”
“I seem to have heard the name Apt before. Where is it, Jérôme?”
“Forty kilometres, twenty-five miles, west of Manosque. You know Manosque?”
“I’ll say I do. I shall remember the St. Marcellin case as long as I live.”
Dorange looked at his watch.
“Four o’clock... It will take us just short of four hours. I will drive you over, we will stay the night there, and tomorrow, you can get the train for Mâcon and Pont de Veyle and I can return to Nice. Agreed?”
Time and space seemed nothing to this vital, good-tempered Niçois. Everything else went by the board when there were friends to help or cases to solve.
“Is there a comfortable inn there?”
“We will stay with Monsieur l’Abbé. He is my uncle. My mother’s brother. He has no church to look after. He is an archivist for the Holy Church and has living quarters in the old bishop’s palace at Apt. I must telephone the police at Apt to warn him we are coming. He refuses to have the telephone installed...”
Dorange’s driving was like his intellect, rapid. Cannes, Fréjus, Aix, Manosque, Apt. They flew through the countryside at an average of sixty miles an hour, Cromwell, sitting in the back of the car, reading the speeds, dividing by eight and multiplying by five, and then mopping his brow. Now and then, a policeman held them up, saluted, grew red, and made some fatuous remark when he saw Dorange at the wheel.
“Glad to see you, sir... What’s the weather like in Nice, M. le Commissaire … ?” One at St. Maximin was struck dumb altogether and stood gaping and saluting, until Dorange thrust one of his famous cheroots in his mouth and drove away.
It was dusk when they climbed the hills to Apt, set in its fruit trees, chestnuts and oaks under the towering Luberon. It was only then that Cromwell remembered where he’d seen the name before. His little girls had, last Christmas, given him a box of sugary preserved fruits for a present. It was marked Bonnieux, Apt. He rubbed his hands. He could eat preserved fruits until the cows came home.
They drew up in the middle of the broad town-square. Beneath a low wall ran the River Coulon, almost dried up and yellow with the effluent of the ochre works. The last swallows were flitting about under the plane trees and men were playing bowls in the half-light. Thence, down narrow side-streets to another, smaller square, in which odd lamps were already lit and glinting through the leaves. Two elegant fountains, each with a small stone child astride a large dolphin, from the mouths of which jets of water poured into basins with a gentle splash. Behind the fountains, the large graceful palace of the last of the bishops of Apt, the bells of whose basilica, the cathedral of St. Anne, were now chiming the hour of eight. Dorange shepherded his friends up two flights of stone steps to a terrace with an iron balustrade overlooked by tall windows, and rang the bell of the front door. It tinkled in the hall beyond and then there was silence. There were no signs of life in the great building and the windows were shuttered.
Shuffling feet from the far distance and then the door opened. A little woman dressed in black, like a pew-opener, with a small pointed chin and shortsightedly wearing a pair of gold-rimmed oval spectacles, stood in the doorway. She raised her head and thrust out her neck, like a hen drinking, in order to see who was there.
“Good evening, Monsieur Jérôme.”
Her face creased in smiles as she thrust it up to be kissed.
“Good evening, Félicité.”
“Monsieur l’Abbé is expecting you.”
She switched on the light and they entered the vast hall, with heavy doors leading off it, and followed her up the fine staircase to the first floor. Everywhere, the smell of age; parchment, old stone, dust, and aromatic timber. Félicité entered the room without knocking.
Half a room and half a workshop and office at the back of the building. The shutters were drawn to keep out the mosquitoes and the place was lighted by a single large electric table-lamp. By its light an old man was scrutinising what appeared to be architectural plans of some kind. Books on shelves in every available place, on the walls, piled on the floors, and heaped on chairs. A large stove, the pipe of which pierced the outer wall, glowed on the hearth, beside which were two old armchairs, a small dining-table, and a stool on which a large sandy cat was asleep on a cushion.
The old priest laid aside his spectacles, slid from his high stool and came to meet them. A fine humorous face, with a generous mouth, long nose, and bright dark eyes. The thin grey hair, worn long at the back, swept from a great broad brow, with bushy eyebrows. He embraced and greeted Dorange in French and then spoke to Littlejohn and Cromwell in perfect English.
“Scotland Yard... Well, well. I remember it, though I was never inside. I’m afraid all my time, when I come to England, is spent in South Kensington or in Manchester Square at the Wallace collection.
“I’ve also been to Welbeck Abbey, Belvoir Castle, Montagu House... All about miniatures. Giving and begging for opinions about this one and that one, or merely to stand and stare at them in wonder... The art of the miniature is the most beautiful and the most personal of them all, from the illuminated manuscripts and missals of days long gone down to the portraits of the heroes and beautiful women of our own times. But, there I go... Come inside. It has grown chilly since the sun set. Félicité, may we have some wine while you prepare the meal … ?”
He was a small, chubby man, dressed in a soutane and spotless white bands. His general appearance was elegant and clean and his small fine hands well-kept. ‘A prince of the church,’ thought Cromwell, who didn’t know much about it, but who always remembered the Abbé Caseneuve afterwards as the finest Frenchman he’d ever met. The little priest even seemed to overawe his ebullient nephew.
“Jérôme,” he said, “you suggested all of you might stay here with me. You know better than that. There are only two bedrooms. My own and Félicité’s. Our English friends will, therefore, sleep at the mayor’s house. It is all arranged. You can share my room. A mattress on the floor...”
“Yes, uncle,” meekly replied the terror of all the criminals of the Midi.
Until dinner time, they left alone the business which had brought them there. Instead, they let the abbé talk about his hobby. He took them into the next room, which, instead of books, was this time draped in prints, pictures and miniatures of all shapes, styles, and sizes. In one corner, stood a large safe, which the priest opened, revealing a treasure of priceless enamels, ivories, large and small paintings...
“Some belong to the church, some I have bought, though very few. The rest have been given to me by my friends, many of them in England, including Sir Tollemache Sinclair, who had a magnificent collection and an even more magnificent knowledge of the subject.”
He unloaded many of the contents of the safe, carrying on a running commentary.
“Here are some Fragonards—he was from Grasse, you know. Carle Van Loo, Raspal … Peter Adolphe Hall—charming!—Rosalba Carriera, a woman... But you are interested in the English ones...”
Heavy opaques of Bernard Lens, Holbeins and Hilliards on the backs of playing-cards, a Samuel Cooper on cardboard, and on ivory, Cosway, George Engleheart, Ozias Humphrey, Andrew Robertson... The abbé praised and explained them, pointing out their merits and defects. Cromwell felt that his own modest little picture was quite outclassed.
“… Many, of course, give Richard Cosway first place. He is easy of touch, graceful, delicate, but I’m sure that, faced with the subjects of the miniatures in the flesh, you would never have recognised them. A flatterer, if a skilled one. I prefer John Smart … sturdy, honest John. Or else … look at this robust, full, fleshy one by Andrew Robertson...’
“Dinner’s ready and getting cold...”
Félicité stood looking at them over her spectacles. She was used to this kind of thing.
They ate a chicken done on the spit. Where the spit was, or the kitchen, for that matter, the visitors never knew. Like Félicité’s virgin bedchamber, it was secret and inviolate. Sauté potatoes, and the crisp little truffles which are found in the hills above Apt. They drank a rose wine from Tavel. And then followed, from Cromwell’s point of view, at least, a perfect Christmas party of the products of Apt. Sugared fruits, almonds, jellies, nougat, marrons glacés, jam...
Cromwell mentioned his own recent present from his daughters.
“I’m inundated with them, Cromwell. So many of my friends here are in the trade, one way or another, and are always sending me little presents. It seems that if I approve the samples, the rest of the world will follow suit! You must take a parcel of them home with you. Advertise the delicacies of Apt for us. And a bottle of lavender essence for your wife. We make that here, as well.”
Then, over coffee and brandy, the local marc, they turned to Cromwell’s miniature, the business which had brought them there.
L’Abbé Caseneuve took it to the light, turned it over delicately in his small hands, examined it under a lens, then carefully took the ivory from the frame. He handled it all like a watchmaker scrutinising the intricate inside of a valuable timepiece. Then he gave his verdict.
“My dear Cromwell, you have nothing to be ashamed of in this little work of art. You have not been ‘done’, as you say in England. It is perfectly genuine. The date is right. About a hundred years ago. The ground, the guache, is hard and dry. In no circumstances would it be thus if, as your man in Cannes said, he or his friend had faked it during the past few years. The back has been considerably tampered with and there isn’t much there to guide us. It would need microscopic study to identify clues from there, and we don’t need to take so much trouble. I also know of Joseph Lepont, the artist...”
He rose and took one of the folios from the shelves. It was a handwritten dictionary or encyclopaedia of art.
“I have collected this at various times in my life. One day perhaps it will see the printer’s... Really, Jérôme, you must learn English. It’s an awful nuisance talking to my friends here in their own language and you hardly understanding a word. It wastes time carrying on a bilingual conversation all the time.”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Well, see to it, my son. A clever man like you ought to know half a dozen languages, instead of French and all the local dialects between Lyons and the Mediterranean.”
“Provençal isn’t a dialect, uncle.”
“Now don’t begin that argument again, even if you are a félibre—a Provençal laureate. Let us attend to the work in hand.”
“Very good, uncle.’
The priest thumbed through his scrap-book and finally found what he was seeking.
“I was saying, Lepont, of Mâcon, was a landscape painter on fairly large canvasses. I’ve seen some of his work. In the case of this little miniature, he was obviously painting in an unaccustomed medium. He may have loved this young woman or have been doing someone a favour in making her portrait. He was not used to the fine brush technique of small ivory. The work is good. I’ve no doubt that, unlike your English Cosway, he made a true, unflattering likeness. No frills, no suppression of the blemishes. He just lacked the smooth technique, that is all. He seems to have vanished. He wasn’t heard of again after 1838.”
“He ran away with the lady in the picture and died of cholera in 1838, sir. Or that’s what we’ve gathered in the course of our investigations.”
“Did he, indeed? Then that explains it. Your little find, however, is most pleasing. Perhaps Lepont’s lack of smoothness was due to emotion or to constantly desisting from his work to embrace the sitter. Whatever it was, it is most interesting. One might almost say, historic. A very desirable item indeed for your collection.”
The abbé paused with a puzzled expression on his face.
“But one thing I cannot understand. This miniature has great character and is a most important collector’s piece, both historically and intrinsically. It is the kind of thing the French antique dealer usually keeps in the room behind his shop for sale to initiates, special collectors, who will treasure them, not to little casual vulgar dealers who seek bargains, as seems to have been the case of your unlucky Cheever. I know Madame Labourel, of Cannes. A woman of good taste who would be reluctant to deal in treasures with upstarts, although miniatures are not her speciality. Her nephew, who owns the shop, would, however, know a good thing. I am baffled.”
They had another session among the abbé’s treasures, until the cathedral clock struck twelve. Cromwell, especially, was fascinated. He tried hard to acquire some of the knowledge which cannot be conveyed in words, but which arises from a lifetime of experience.
“We are keeping M. le Maire and his wife out of bed, I’m afraid. I will take you over and introduce you whilst Jérôme prepares his mattress on the floor...”
The priest was reluctant to break-up the party and shepherded his friends away with diffidence.
“You’ll find me in your bed when you return, uncle.”
They crossed the silent square, in which everything except the tinkling water issuing from the mouths of the dolphins seemed petrified in a sleeping world. The lights shone through the trees, the houses were shuttered and dark, the old bishop’s palace, haunted by the squabbles and ambitions of past prelates, looked down solidly and scornfully on it all.
The Mayor and his wife received the two detectives like honoured guests and the abbé left them together. As he wished them good-night, Cromwell drew the priest aside and taking out the miniature in its velvet wrapping pressed it in his hand.
“It will be better if you keep this, sir. It will be more at home in your collection.”
There was a pause, and Cromwell wondered if he’d offended the little man. The Abbé Caseneuve thrust the parcel back in Cromwell’s pocket.
“I am very touched, my son, but you must take this with you. I have hundreds of them and this is … it is your one ewe lamb, to quote the scriptures. One day you will have two, and then three, and then four... A whole collection. And if you like Apt, come to see me again. In fact, come in the summer or autumn and bring your family. We will fill you and your wife and the little girls with our sugar plums. We will open two more rooms for you in the old episcopal palace. Let me know in good time. Jérôme never gives me enough time; always in a hurry...”
After a morning of seeing Apt, the detectives left for Manosque again, Cromwell carrying a large parcel of delicacies for his family. They parted from Dorange there; the French officer making for Nice, and the Englishmen for Lyons and Mâcon.
A melancholy twilight settled over everything as they neared Mâcon. Unhealthy mists rose from the great plain of Bresse, alive with poultry, looking like a vast farm-yard. The innumerable ponds of the Dombes marshes glowed in the setting sun. Cromwell, as ever, passing his time between the guide-book and Comment-ça-va?, now and then read passages to Littlejohn, who snoozed over a book, watching with amusement Cromwell’s delighted reactions to the lovely land of France.
“It says here, ‘There are ten thousand ponds in the Dombes, extending from ten to two hundred acres each, and all full of fish.’ They drain the ponds, put the fish in tanks, and send ’em all over France.”
Hereupon, a man in the opposite corner, who had been dying to start a conversation, opened out in full spate, obviously about the fish, and he and Cromwell’s complete conversational guide, Comment-ça-va?, kept the sergeant busy till they pulled up at Mâcon.
Audibert had promised to let the police of Mâcon know of any developments in the cases, and the Scotland Yard men called right away at the police station there.
There certainly was a message.
Féraud has confessed to murder of Davso.
Please meet me at Arles to-morrow. Wire time.
Audibert.
They consulted time-tables and finally Littlejohn sent a reply arranging to get the train arriving at Arles about two in the afternoon next day. By this time it was dark. They had seen nothing of Mâcon.
“It means getting our business done right away, and leaving first thing in the morning.”
“There’s nothing much at Pont de Veyle, sir,” the inspector at Mâcon told Littlejohn. “The crossroads; a bridge over the River Veyle, a tributary of the Saône; a few houses; an inn at which you won’t want to stay the night; and the big house, two miles out, a sort of château that belongs to the Berluc-Vidals. Pont de Veyle’s only a mile or two away. We’ll lend you a car and I’ll see that you have rooms at a good hotel when you get back.”
“I’m very grateful for your help, inspector.”
Littlejohn didn’t know quite what he was after. Certainly he hadn’t bargained for a night trip to Pont de Veyle. “You aren’t missing much not seeing it in the daylight, sir,” the inspector at Mâcon had told them. “It’s marshy and misty there, the Saône’s often in flood and makes it one big lake, and when it dries up, it’s just flat meadow-land full of henhouses.”
All they wanted to know was, had Cheever been to Pont de Veyle and what had he done there? The best place of call was probably the inn. They asked the driver to drop them there.
Le Chapon Gras. The Fat Capon. They might have expected that in the Bresse country. A small place, with one large room. Iron tables and chairs here and there and a long seat covered in what might have been moleskin running round the room. A dim light over the bar, little variety in the way of drinks. Everybody seemed to be drinking red wine or local brandy.
An unsavoury looking lot, too. A postman with one eye, a man with a wooden leg, two or three yokels, and two tables filled with not very prosperous hen-keepers playing cards and making their calls in thick, loud voices.
The landlord was standing at the bar, half asleep, but he awoke when Littlejohn and Cromwell entered. He wasn’t used to their kind and wondered what was going on. A fat man, dressed in trousers, shirt and braces and with espadrilles on his feet. His paunch hung out of the top of his trousers like a pneumatic tyre.
“Yes?”
“Two brandies, please.”
“We haven’t any Cognac. Just the local …”
“That will do.”
They paid him and he didn’t say another word, but just kept giving them sidelong looks.
“We’re English, landlord. Do you get many Englishmen around?”
“No. This isn’t a health resort.”
Another pause and another brandy apiece. The card-players had stopped their noise and were listening suspiciously. The man with the wooden leg stumped off.
“Have you had an Englishman, a man wearing a blazer—a jacket with a coat-of-arms on the pocket—here during the last month?”
“You from the police?”
“Yes. English police. The Mâcon police told us to call on you.”
“Well, English or French police, it’s all the same to me. They’ve nothing on me. I’m well within the law...”
He was half-drunk himself and swanking in front of his customers.
“Nobody denies it. All I asked was, have you had any Englishmen around during the last month?”
“Why should I?”
It was hopeless. The only thing to do was to bring in the driver of the police-car, himself a sergeant, and that would probably start a row.
Then, Littlejohn suddenly became aware that the man with one eye was making signals to him. He couldn’t wink, on account of his disability, but he was pulling his face hideously and jerking his head in the direction of the door. Littlejohn paid again and he and Cromwell left the place. Almost at once, the postman was at their elbow. They could hear his heavy breathing in the dark.
“He’s drunk,” said the man with one eye, and, judging from his own breath, he didn’t need to go far to be that way himself, too.
“You’ll get nothing out of him. His wife’s run off with a local poultry-farmer. He thinks they’ve gone to Paris. He’s taken to drink and he’s always awkward when he gets one over the eight. Is there anything I can do? I heard you say you were police. Well, I’m a government official. We’ve got to hang together, haven’t we?”
“I suppose we have. It’s good of you to take this interest. I was just asking if there’s been an Englishman … a little fattish fellow with a coat-of-arms on his breast pocket?”
“Le blazer?”
“That’s right.”
“Yes. I saw him. Didn’t get a word with him, though. But he went in the Chapon and got the same treatment as you did. Incivility. He crossed over to the doctor’s and I saw him going in. That’s Dr. Matthieu. His surgery’s just across the way there. See the light? Well, go along the path through the gate and ring. He’ll be in. He’s a bit past it now. Eccentric, you know, and a real caution. Still, half a doctor’s better than none, isn’t he? He’ll talk to you. Matter of fact, he never stops talking. Good night...”
Littlejohn had hardly seen what the monoculous postman looked like. He just knew he was medium built with one eye. It had been too dark in the inn to make him out in the shadows where he’d stood drinking. And outside, it was almost pitch black. Just a voice, and an alcoholic breath.
They crossed to the house over the way. An enamelled plaque on the gate. Cromwell shone his torch.
DR. MATTHIEU
CONSULTATIONS 10.0-12.0, TOUS LES MATINS.
They rang the bell. Shuffling feet, the door flew open, and there was the doctor. Carpet slippers, smoking cap, and he looked around eighty. A square-built, wiry, robust man, with a fine head, but completely bald, or totally shorn; they couldn’t make out which. A clean-shaven face, with heavy folds of skin hanging from his cheek-bones. A huge Roman nose and a large sarcastic mouth. Probably a very clever man whose declining faculties had put him on the shelf.
“Come in... Come in,” said Docteur Matthieu after they had made themselves known. “I thought sooner or later either the French or the English police would be here. It’s about Cheever, isn’t it? I read it all in the papers. It’s taking the police a long time, isn’t it? And it’ll take longer till they’ve found out who the second chap was. I mean the one who followed him. That was a murderer, if I ever knew one. A killer. But don’t stand there in the dark. Excuse me keeping you there. Come in, come in. Marie-Louise! Marie-Louise! Bring the brandy and three glasses. We’re in for a long session!”