Thirty-seven

Early next morning, after Caspar had left for Paris, Rocco called and asked Claude to meet him at Cezard’s château. As he was about to leave, his phone rang. It was Dreycourt. He sounded sombre.

‘Petissier died last night,’ he said, ‘without regaining consciousness.’

‘Thanks for letting me know,’ Rocco replied. He wondered if it was his imagination or whether Dreycourt was depressed about losing a potential finger to point at Cezard.

He thanked the art expert for his help, then gathered the photos and copy letters together and headed for his car. He was tempted to check in with the office first, but he didn’t want to hear the news that he suspected was waiting for him: that the Ministry had called off the investigation. For now, he was out of reach and intended to stay that way. To make absolutely certain, he turned off his car radio.

The village was quiet as he drove out, the sun already warm and presaging another hot day. The only sign of anyone working was a heavy truck parked outside Maillard’s café, the driver puffing on a cigarette as he climbed into the cab. It reminded Rocco of Maillard’s offer to buy him a drink if he put in an appearance at the 14^th-July celebration. His first instinct had been to avoid it, but it would be difficult to think of a polite way of doing so. Maybe he didn’t want to. There were worse ways of spending a few hours than in the company of friends.

He lowered the car window to let in a breeze, revelling in the cool air. One way or another it promised to be an eventful day. Whether he’d get the result he wanted was open to question, but he was determined to file this investigation as a success if he could.

Claude was waiting on the front steps of the château when he arrived, with Sébastien Cezard wandering around kicking at some weeds on the drive, a drift of cheroot smoke following him like a cloud on a leash. The artist didn’t look a happy man.

‘Lucas,’ Sébastien greeted him when he got out of his car. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure? Should I get Laurent here?’ He tried a smile to reflect the joke but it was clearly a struggle.

‘Can we go inside?’ said Rocco. ‘I have something to show you.’

‘Of course. I’ll get Eliane to make coffee. Please go through.’ He led the way inside and disappeared down the hallway in search of his daughter.

Claude was eyeing Rocco with a faint frown. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked softly, when they reached the room at the back. ‘You’re planning to drop something on him?’

‘Hopefully, just the weight of the law,’ said Rocco. ‘I want him to feel under a bit of pressure. His daughter, too.’

‘Got it. Not too friendly, in other words.’

Minutes later, Eliane appeared with a loaded tray and invited them to help themselves. The smell of Sébastien’s cheroot was soon joined by the welcoming aroma of coffee.

‘Perhaps you could stay?’ Rocco suggested, as Eliane made to leave. ‘This will be of interest to you.’

‘That’s not necessary, is it?’ her father suggested. ‘I’m sure she has plenty of other things to be doing. Marking papers and so on.’ He scowled and sucked on his smoke as if it were the last drag he’d ever have.

Eliane looked from one to the other with an expression of puzzlement. ‘No, I’ve nothing on that can’t wait, Pa.’ She stared at Rocco. ‘What’s this about? Is something wrong?’

Rocco took an envelope out of his pocket and placed the three letters face down on the table between them. He spread out the photos of the paintings provided by Dreycourt for them all to see. He was watching Sébastien’s face as he did so, and saw the artist stiffen. He made a faint choking sound as if the smoke had gone down the wrong way.

‘You’ve seen these photos before,’ said Rocco. ‘They’re the subject of an investigation into three deaths. I wanted to ask you again, Sébastien, if you recognise them.’

There was a lengthy silence. Sébastien was staring at the paintings as if they were a trio of snakes. Nobody else said a word.

‘Well, I know them, as I told you before,’ he said gruffly. ‘Any artist worth his salt would.’ He pointed to each one in turn. ‘There’s a Chassériau, a Boucher and a Gérard, although as an aside, I prefer the earlier version of the Récamier by Jacques-Louis David.’ He looked apologetic. ‘Sorry. Can’t resist the temptation to show off a little. Madame Récamier was a famed society beauty and much sought-after as a subject for artists.’

‘Thank you.’ Rocco was slightly relieved. ‘I’m glad you recognise them.’ He turned to Eliane and Claude to explain. ‘These are copies of paintings, one currently residing in the Louvre, another in the Carnavalet in Paris and one in Cologne. I wonder, Sébastien, if you could show us the canvas you had here before, of a woman sewing. A Morisot, I think it was?’

Sébastien shrugged and looked around vaguely, scattering ash. ‘I’m sorry, I think I must have moved it.’

‘No, Pa,’ said Eliane. ‘It’s still there on the floor.’ She went over to the sideboard and picked up the painting, and laid it against a chair leg so they could all see. ‘This one?’

‘Ah, yes. Silly me.’ Her father pursed his lips and studied the end of his cheroot.

‘You mentioned before,’ said Rocco, ‘that when you produce a copy, you include a small addition to distinguish it from the original.’

‘I do, that’s correct. One can’t be too careful these days. Some people are quick to accuse artists of fraud.’

Like Dreycourt, thought Rocco. ‘Can you tell us what that difference is?’

‘Well, I’m not sure I can. Artistic confidentiality, you might call it, even mystery, and–’

‘It’s a marguerite, silly!’ Eliane said with a laugh. ‘See, here.’ She pointed at the bottom right-hand corner, where a small daisy lay on the bench alongside the woman’s sewing basket. ‘You can just see it if you look carefully.’

‘Interesting,’ said Rocco. He hesitated before moving on. He hated doing this, especially in front of Eliane, but he had a feeling that nothing else would work. He still wasn’t convinced that Sébastien was part of the blackmail scheme, simply because he didn’t appear to have the right instinct. But he’d been fooled before by accomplished actors. He reached into his pocket and produced three more photographs and laid them on the table.

‘What’s this?’ said Eliane. ‘You’ve already shown us these.’

Rocco looked at Sébastien. ‘Is that correct?’

The older man said nothing for a moment. Then he tossed his cheroot into the fireplace and the air seemed to go out of him like a punctured balloon.

‘No. It’s not.’

Eliane leaned forward. ‘Pa?’

Rocco said softly, ‘You should look at the photos more closely. Compare them one by one.’

Eliane and Claude both leaned forward and scanned the photos. The silence in the room was intense. Rocco was looking at Sébastien, and when the artist looked up, he did so with an expression of resignation, but also of puzzlement.

Eliane was first to see the difference. ‘These three are of your copies, Pa,’ she murmured, and looked at her father, then at Rocco. ‘I don’t understand – he painted these a long time ago.’

‘I’m confused,’ muttered Claude. ‘You’ve lost me.’

For a moment nobody spoke. Rocco was hoping Sébastien would do so without his hand being forced further. He waited him out.

‘He’s right,’ Sébastien said at last. ‘I painted those three … but as you say, chérie, it was a long time ago. I did them for a promising client but he reneged on the deal.’ He sighed and brushed some ash off his front. ‘Hours and days and weeks of work, all for nothing.’

‘How long does it take?’ asked Rocco.

‘Long enough. You can’t rush these things. I can always work on other projects in between, but it’s not a quick process if you have any pride in your work. And you have to study the originals with great care.’

‘You take photographs?’

‘I do. But it’s better to see them in the flesh.’

‘How did you do that for the Boucher painting? Did you travel to Cologne?’

Cezard shook his head. ‘I was lucky: it came to Paris on loan for an exhibition, so I haunted the gallery for days, studying the paint, the brush strokes, the light, the application.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘The staff got quite used to me in the end, although they probably thought I was an obsessive old goat. The thing is, you have to get in the artist’s mind, to understand how he went about it. I do, anyway.’

Rocco detected a fierce pride in Cezard’s voice, and understood a little of what drove him. ‘It must have been a huge disappointment not to sell them.’

‘The gallery owner who commissioned them was an important contact in the art world. He said he had a client who would take all three or, if not, that he could sell them individually at a good price. It was an ideal way of getting my name out there, so I took a chance on him. Then he called me to say the client had changed his mind and he didn’t have any other takers for them.’ He shrugged. ‘He paid me a small fee for my trouble but it wasn’t the same. In the end he went bust before we could do anything about it. End of story.’

‘We?’

Sébastien’s eyes were moist as he looked up, and Rocco saw the pain of the memory written on his face. But there was something else, too: a look of disbelief, as if realising that something completely innocent had caught up with him.

‘You said “we”,’ Rocco repeated.

Eliane had also seen the look on her father’s face, and stood up, her face flushed. ‘Will someone tell me what’s going on? Pa? Lucas?’ She looked at Claude but he shook his head.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘I’m a simple rural cop. This is all well over my head.’

Sébastien shifted in his chair. ‘I let Laurent have them,’ he said at last, with evident reluctance.

‘So what?’ Eliane queried. ‘I wish he wasn’t but he’s your agent, isn’t he?’

He nodded. ‘I told him about the gallery owner backing out of the deal and he offered to go after him in the courts, but I didn’t want that. Later on, he said he might be able to find buyers for them. It probably wouldn’t bring in what had been originally promised, but it would be better than having them lying around gathering dust.’ He looked at Rocco. ‘I know what you’re going to ask: who did he sell them to? He never told me.’

Eliane was looking at Rocco with dawning realisation and, he thought, a hint of accusation. ‘You know, don’t you?’

‘Yes. There were three high-profile buyers involved: Secretary of State Bourdelet bought the Gérard, assize judge Jules Petissier bought the Chassériau and former head of the Sûreté Nationale, Jean-Marie Gambon, bought the Boucher. There was no obvious criminal intent, apart from in one case, but that doesn’t involve your father.’

Sébastien swore softly, eyes closing. Eliane’s mouth opened but no words came out for several seconds. Rocco could see the names registering in her mind, and one by one the identities of the buyers hit home.

‘But … Bourdelet’s dead,’ she said softly. ‘And Gambon, too, isn’t that right? I heard it on the news.’

‘And Petissier, too,’ said Rocco. He didn’t want to be unkind, but he needed to explain to Sébastien what had happened, that he wasn’t to blame for how the paintings had been used. He turned over the letters. ‘Each man bought them purely to show off to their friends and families. There’s no crime in doing that, but they did so using stolen or criminal money. Each one received one of these blackmail letters, and shortly afterwards took their own lives. They must have known for certain that had they lived they would have gone to jail in disgrace.’

Eliane was staring down at the letters, flicking through them. She dropped them back on the table. ‘But who sent these?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Pa – he couldn’t do something like this. Tell him, Pa!’

Rocco said, ‘I know it wasn’t your father. The only thing we’re certain of is that whoever’s behind the letters used a Paris criminal contact to deliver them. It had to be someone who was acquainted with all three men. Someone who knew their backgrounds, their foibles and weaknesses … and who knew how they had got their money. A friend, in other words, or at least an acquaintance who knew how to get close.’ He produced two more photographs and laid them on the table. Petissier and Gambon, pictured with their friend, Maître Laurent Vauquelin. ‘These are two of the men. You’ll recognise one of the faces. Bourdelet has similar photographs in his home.’

‘Vauquelin?’ Eliane’s voice was a whisper. She looked at her father, then Rocco. ‘My God, I knew I didn’t like the repulsive man! But why?’

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ said Rocco.

‘I know why.’ Sébastien spoke quietly. He was looking at his daughter with an expression of regret. ‘Lucas is right: Laurent knew all three men from various meetings and conferences over the years. He cultivated prominent people by instinct, the way some people cultivate flowers. If they were potentially useful, he made a point of getting to know them, to get inside their inner circle. But these three … He told me they’d betrayed him, cutting him off after the allegations that he was involved with criminals and had manufactured evidence against certain police officers to win cases.’

Rocco could believe it. After what he’d heard from Santer, Vauquelin must have been highly resentful of the men who’d failed to leap to his defence, adding to his loss of prestige. It could have been enough for him to decide to get revenge in any way he could. And having found out their secrets he’d plunged the knife in deep.

‘So it wasn’t just for the money?’ Claude asked.

‘No,’ said Rocco. ‘If he couldn’t get money, he was happy to settle for their humiliation and ruin.’

‘He was drunk when he told me,’ Sébastien said softly, as if in a trance. ‘He’d arrived in a terrible state and demanded more alcohol.’ He shrugged. ‘I tried to put him off and said he’d be better off sinking a litre of strong coffee instead because he’d probably kill himself on the local roads if he got any worse. He wouldn’t have it; he was very emotional and angry and I was getting worried. Eliane was due back home at any time and I didn’t want him in that state when she was here. When it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere willingly, I gave him some brandy, hoping he’d fall asleep.’

‘It didn’t work?’

‘Quite the opposite. He became almost hysterical, raging against all the people who’d abandoned him and swearing he’d get his own back in the end.’ He waved a hand. ‘I didn’t realise he’d do it this way.’

‘All the people?’ said Rocco. ‘There were more?’

‘That’s the impression I got, but maybe he was just sounding off. He did mention some names but I’d never heard of them and forgot them immediately.’

‘Are there other paintings out there?’ Claude asked.

‘A few, yes. Maybe half a dozen. I sent him a batch to see if he could find buyers.’

‘Do you have any receipts for them?’

‘I’m afraid not. I was never very good with that kind of thing.’ He looked worried. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘Probably not. Has Vauquelin ever said what he did with the paintings?’

‘No. I always trusted him to do the right thing. Clearly I shouldn’t have been so gullible.’ He paused, then, as if finding a glimmer of hope, said, ‘They’ve all got the marguerite on them, though. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?’

Rocco nodded. ‘It should kill off any suggestions that you produced them for reasons of fraud.’

He wondered if this was what had got Yuri Serban involved. The promise of a long-term source of income from people in authority who’d got their hands dirty must have appealed to the gang leader on a financial level. More than anything, though, he would have liked the idea of having such powerful people in his pocket and terrified that he could drop the axe on them and expose their little secrets. To a gangster with ambitions it would have seemed like a dream come true.

‘What do I say if Laurent calls me?’ Sébastien queried. He lit another cheroot, his hand shaking, as the full implications of what he’d got involved it hit home.

‘Nothing. For you it’s business as usual. Tell him we’re nowhere with the investigation and leave it at that.’