Cezanne's Quarry (15 page)

“No,” Franc shook his head and wiped a bit of the garlic mayonnaise from his shiny black mustache with his checkered napkin. “I like someone who is real, who really lived, who really changed things. He’s been my hero ever since I read his autobiography. But you know, sir,” Franc leaned forward, “this does not mean that I would ever dream of breaking the law. It’s just that you have to understand how criminals think. Talk to prostitutes in their own language. Pay a beggar who might have something to tell you. Sometimes even look like one of them. And if necessary, get tough. That’s what I’m going to do tomorrow after we bring back Cézanne, if they haven’t found the boy yet.”

As Franc kept talking, Martin was trying to recapture a memory. “Vautrin! That’s it. That’s what I remember best about Vidocq.”

“Sir?”

“Balzac befriended Vidocq, admired him, I think, but made him seem rather despicable as the notorious Vautrin, no?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. I’m not a novel-reader. Too much dirt, too much fantasy.”

“Ahh.” Martin sipped on the strong sour wine. How had Balzac described Vautrin? A spy, a wearer of wigs, a master of disguises. Even Satanic. Vautrin’s unmasking in
Père Goriot
had sent chills down Martin’s spine when he was a boy. And Franc? That could explain the hair dye and the bluster. Martin once again covered up his amusement by holding his glass up to his lips. It had to be difficult to maintain one’s image as a Vidocq in this backwater town.

“Coffee?” It was Mme Choffrut. Clarie was clearing off the tables vacated by the laborers, who had consumed their meals at a hard and fast pace.

“Two please.” Franc’s expansive mood continued, “and—”

“I’ll bring the pear tarts too,” she said in a high lilting voice as she headed back toward the kitchen.

Franc sat back and patted his stomach. “How do you like the food?” he asked Martin.

“Very much.” No reason not to show his enthusiasm for the moment. Martin knew that he would never have the nerve to come back to a place where he had been the object of such obvious interest.

When Mme Choffrut brought the coffees to the table, she was accompanied by the cook, who was carrying the tarts and wearing an apron covered with the colors of the evening’s offerings. She introduced him to Martin as her husband, Michel. He was not much taller than his wife, almost as wide and just as cheerful. As Martin watched Mme Choffrut while he ate, he had thought of his mother in those happy days when his father was still alive, managing everything and everybody who came into their clock shop. As the Choffruts began to tell the story of their move to Aix, Martin was reminded of the way his parents had seemed to be part of a single being, always touching each other, agreeing with each other, finishing each other’s sentences. He was not surprised to learn that the Choffruts were childless—and that they had found an outlet for their excess of affection in their only niece.

“The only girl of seven boys. The only child of Giuseppe. He married Henriette’s sister after her husband died—”

“Yes, he took over my brother-in-law’s smith shop and the burden of all those boys!”

“They only had one kid together, Clarie, many years later—”

“And then last year my sister—” she drew her handkerchief to her mouth.

“Died—and you know that Henriette could not bear to pass her house, so we decided to start over again.”

“That saint of a man!” Henriette Choffrut was back to the subject of Giuseppe Falchetti. “When his only girl, his little
benjamine
, said she wanted to go to that new school in Paris, he agreed.”

“But only as long as she tried out being away from home for a while, to see if both of them could stand it.”

“That’s why she’s here. An experiment, he said.” By this time the weight of it all—her sister’s death, Giuseppe’s goodness, and Clarie’s independence—brought tears rolling down Henriette Choffrut’s cheeks and required the comfort of one of Michel’s strong arms. It even drew in Clarie, who could hardly have escaped hearing everything. She gave her aunt a hug and kiss.

“Papa will be fine. It’s only a few years. And besides,” she said to Martin with an apologetic smile, “everyone does not need to hear the whole sad story.” She steered her aunt back to the kitchen. Michel also withdrew with a smile and shrug.

Martin finished the meal with mixed emotions. For some reason, it pleased him to see Clarie’s affectionate response to her aunt’s tears. It made her seem more warm and womanly. But the entire scene also evoked bittersweet memories. His own mother had always found many reasons for tears, and his father had often enlisted Martin’s support in comforting her with hugs and kisses. Their little circle of affection had been broken only by death. As the years stretched out, Martin found it harder and harder to open his heart to his mother’s woes. Perhaps this was because he suspected that if she really knew what he was becoming—an agnostic, a republican, a man of reason—
he
would become the major source of all her sorrows. Clarie Falchetti was leaving her father to attend an experimental school; he had left his mother and her beliefs far behind him. Were children always destined to disappoint their parents?

Martin was brought out of his reveries by the business at hand. The Choffruts were refusing to take any money. He joined the fray, insisting on paying the bill, but they resolutely rebuffed his offers. “When you come back and bring your friends, you can pay then,” Mme Choffrut said as she gave him a motherly pat. “And this old fellow,” Michel slapped Franc on the back, “he’s promised to bring us many customers and to keep an eye on our place all year.” Franc was beaming. He seemed to have no trouble accepting the generosity of these newcomers to Aix. Martin had to wonder how many other shopkeepers and restaurateurs felt beholden to the inspector.

In any case, the Choffruts did not seem to mind. They accompanied Martin and Franc to the door and shook their hands warmly and vigorously. As Martin was leaving, he caught a glimpse of Clarie Falchetti, busying herself, ignoring their departure. He felt an unexpected twinge of regret as he realized that he might never see her again, for he did not want to be any more entangled with Franc or his plots than he had to be.

Ni Dieu Ni Maître

(Neither God Nor Master)

—Masthead of a revolutionary socialist newspaper 1880–81
⁴

T
HE GREAT
S
AINT-
S
AUVEUR
C
ATHEDRAL BELLS
were tolling six o’clock as he strode through the square. The morning was fresh and so, for once, was Martin. He was beginning to think that going to Chez l’Arlésienne with Franc last night had been a good idea. It had provided pleasant distractions, like his inspector’s braggadocio, good food, and a pretty Arlésienne girl. Martin even suspected that he had imbibed some of Franc’s optimism. If all went well today, they’d catch the artist. Then Martin thought, with a little bravado of his own, he might just be able to look him in the eye and see if he was a killer.

This good mood carried Martin only to the back entrance of the courthouse, where Jacques, one of the younger gendarmes, waited with a note. Martin unfolded the piece of paper slowly, and his zeal congealed into a hard lump in his chest. “We have found the boy. Come to the morgue. Franc.” Though his mouth had suddenly run dry, Martin managed to thank the officer and cross the narrow street to the prison. By the time he reached the door, he barely had the strength to open it. He stood for a moment, his hand pushed hard against it, as frenzied questions whirled about in his mind. Could he have prevented the death of the child? Had Westerbury murdered the little messenger after Martin released him? Or, had the artist managed to find and kill the boy on his way out of town? Clinging to the railing with a clammy hand, Martin made his descent into the basement where Riquel set up his operations. Franc was there, talking to the doctor, who had on his blood-stained working apron.

“Do you want to have a look?” Riquel turned to him. “We just found him, and I haven’t had time to clean him up.”

Coming from Riquel, the science professor who reveled in his part-time police work, this was a warning. But Martin needed to see the disastrous consequences of his own failings. He nodded, and Riquel uncovered the body. It was worse than he imagined. Insects had left black liquid holes where the boy’s eyes, nose and mouth had been. The body was bloated beyond all recognition. The smell was overwhelming. Martin’s stomach lurched. He went to a corner and vomited, without forethought, and without shame.

The convulsions shook his entire body again and again. He was wracked with guilt, for the boy, for Solange Vernet, for his own stupidities, and for the little bits of vain ambition that had begun to move him. If the same man who killed Solange Vernet had murdered the boy—and how could it not be so?—he was up against a monster. How was he going to reason this out? What good were his paltry untested talents to him or to anyone else, dead or alive? By the time Martin’s heaving shuddered to a halt, he was hanging on to the cold stone walls for support. He forced himself to stand up and wiped off his mouth with his handkerchief.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, we’re used to that in here.” Riquel barely glanced up from his own calm examination of the body, before covering it again with the sheet. “Franc, get one of the prison guards to bring a mop.”

Martin avoided meeting the inspector’s eyes as he started up the stairs. They both knew that Franc would never show such weakness.

“When?” Martin asked Riquel.

“Probably about the same time as the woman, give a day this way or that.”

“Before? After?”

“I can’t be sure.”

Martin sucked in air through his mouth, as he covered his nose with his hand.

Riquel put a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “I don’t think this happened after you released Westerbury.”

Franc and the professor had obviously covered that territory before Martin arrived.
If only that were true.
Career be damned. The courthouse be damned. The ridicule they would all heap on him be damned. How could he continue to be a judge, knowing that he had abetted the killing of a child?

“We don’t know who it is?” Martin dropped his arm and kept his voice as steady as possible.

Riquel shook his head. “Not until someone reports him missing.”

Martin took one last look at the white mound that had once been a boy. Controlling his trembling, he shook hands with Dr. Riquel and went up the stairs, out into the fresh air.

Martin headed up the narrow cobblestoned street that divided the prison from the courthouse, to the fountain on the square. He stumbled a bit over the three low steps that led to the spouting water. When he reached his destination, he dipped in his hands, splashed his face and swiped at his frock coat, cleaning himself off. All too soon Martin heard a wagon and men on horseback clatter to a halt behind him. The search party to Gardanne was ready. Martin gritted his teeth and closed his eyes before turning to face them. He hoped to God that they would not ask him whether he was all right.

The rest of the morning went by in a daze, as Martin fought hard to keep the images of grotesque, bloated, dead bodies out of his thoughts. Sitting with Franc on the driver’s seat of a horse-drawn wagon, he tried to concentrate on what lay ahead in Gardanne. Franc had enlisted four mounted gendarmes to go with them. He had the sense not to be solicitous, but he made it clear that he was not a man to be defeated by another murder. He encouraged the horses cheerfully and directed the few remarks he felt compelled to make to the men in uniform on either side of the wagon. The horses pulled them through a forest, over the river Arc, and onto an unshaded plain. Off to the east, a long line of limestone hills dogged their path, their rugged faces looking like chalk-white death masks, staring at Martin, mocking him. What in the world was he doing in this place?

H
ORTENSE HEARD THE COMMOTION AND RAN
to the window. The gendarmes were slowly making their way up the narrow stone street. They looked like overgrown Napoleons with their horizontal hats and military dress, only these Napoleons wore black uniforms with white braiding and carried rifles slung over their shoulders. Agents of death, she thought, or, at least, messengers of disaster. Behind them she saw two other men, one broad-shouldered and stocky in a jacket and cap; the other younger, more slender, more formally dressed. They were knocking on doors, asking directions. They were coming for Paul, she was sure of it. Soon, all the nosy heads would be popping out of windows, watching and talking about them. She had little time to figure out how to protect Cézanne.

Paul Jr. was on the sofa, reading. “Quick, son. Go find Papa. Tell him that some people from Aix are looking for him.” She did not want to alarm the boy by telling him the police were after his father.

“Oh, Maman, I was just—”

“Now!”

Her thirteen-year-old, her darling, started for the door. “No, wait.” She grabbed one of his arms. “Climb out the back window, I think he is painting up by the church.”