I could, but I didn't. He was right about the proof. What was I supposed to tell Lefevre, that I recognized Christian's cologne? So what? How many other men in France wore the same scent? Besides, I believed his story, at least in its general outlines. He hadn't set out to murder me; it had been the book, the record, he was after, and I didn't think there was any connection between his hapless attempt to get it and his father's death. Even the business about somebody else making off with it rang true to me. As for Mann's portrait, that hadn't been a police matter to begin with, and it wasn't now.
I supposed I'd ultimately have to tell Lefevre all about it, but I knew he'd classify it under the heading of Unsolicited Assistance, and I wasn't up to his reaction yet. It could wait one more day. Right now, I was ready for a drink and something to eat.
When I got to the Hotel du Nord, Gerard, the clerk behind the counter, called out to someone as I entered the small lobby. "Here he is now."
There was a movement on my left, in the corner where a group of easy chairs were arranged around a table. I turned toward it.
"Hi, Chris," Anne said.
The waiter laid out our breakfast, cafe complet for two: a big pitcher of hot coffee, a jug of hot milk, two six-inch chunks of baguette, croissants, hard rolls, butter, and foil-packed jams.
Anne did the pouring into the big cups. We tore off pieces of our croissants, littering the white tablecloth with flakes. We buttered our croissants. We took our first bites, our first sips. We looked at each other.
"Well," Anne said.
"Well," I said.
There is a way of saying "well" that means the small talk is over, and very pleasant it may have been, but now let's get down to serious business, if you please.
In our case it had been more than small talk, and it had been extremely pleasant. Once I'd come down off the ceiling the previous evening, Anne explained that she'd decided that my idea of a weekend in France was too good to pass up, and that maybe she could pull just a few more strings. She'd lined up a military flight to Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany. From the nearby Frankfurt Airport she'd caught a commercial plane to Paris, and then another flight on to Dijon. She'd arrived only an hour earlier, and she was starving.
We'd gone out for a simple, wonderful dinner of moules mariniere, bread, and the house Chablis at a plain little restaurant on the Rue Dr. Maret, two blocks from the hotel. I hardly remember what we talked about, but it wasn't anything important. Mostly, I just basked in the knowledge that I was going to have three days to be with her after all. I think I didn't so much listen to her talk as watch her talk, happily taking in everything about her: those lovely, near-violet eyes, the wide, friendly mouth, the ghost of a tic that came and went in the soft skin below her eyes when she was nervous or excited, and which never failed to move me.
Somewhere toward the end of the meal I began edging toward the question of her commission, but the time hadn't been right for it, and we veered back to less threatening topics. She told me about her conference, I told her about what had been happening in Dijon and Paris. We laughed about the dachshunds painted on the Parisian sidewalks.
Afterward, when we went back to the hotel, we didn't talk about much of anything; there was a lot of lost time to make up for. Then this morning I'd awakened with my face against her smooth, honey-colored hair, and there hadn't been a lot of talk then either. We'd taken particular pains to stay well clear of the topic of her commission. Right up until that pair of wells.
I forced down a hunk of croissant.
"So," I said.
"So," she said.
This was serious stuff, all right. Bull-by-the-horns time. "What's it going to be, Anne?" I said. "Are you resigning or not?"
She tore off a tiny piece of croissant and rolled it in her fingers. "Which do you want first, the good news or the bad?" I'd been hoping it was all going to be good. "Bad," I said.
"All right. I'm staying in, Chris."
"I see."
"Don't look like that, Chris. Can't you be happy for me? I'll be heading up my own training unit." She smiled, proud and shy at the same time. "I got my line number for major. I'm right up at the top."
"Of course I'm happy for you." I leaned forward, put my hand on top of hers. "You deserve it. Congratulations, Anne, it's wonderful news."
It was the lousiest news I'd heard all year.
I couldn't have been too convincing, because she went into a long explanation of how the new assignment would tap her potential in ways that the old one hadn't, and what a wonderful career opportunity it was for her, and how the old notions of a sexual dichotomy of labor no longer applied in today's world.
I sat there doing my best to look liberated, but all I could think of was the dreary routine of seeing her only three or four times a year, and all the logistical coordination it took to make even that much work out. My face must have fallen enough for her to take pity on me, because she broke off her spiel and laughed.
"Are you about ready for the good news?"
"Good news?" I'd thought her promotion to major was the good news.
She nodded. "I haven't told you where I'm being assigned." I frowned. "Not Kaiserslautern?
She shook her head, her eyes sparkling. She looked like a kid with a secret she couldn't hang on to for another second. "I'll be at the Air Force Academy. I just got it all worked out yesterday, at the conference. I still can't believe it."
"You mean in Colorado?"
"Colorado Springs, yes. Chris, we'll practically be next-door neighbors."
"Next door? Anne, Colorado's a thousand miles from Seattle."
"That's a whole lot better than six thousand. Denver's only three hours from Seattle by air, and less than another hour to Colorado Springs. It's practically commuting distance. We could have lots of whole weekends together-with no jet lag. We'd only be one time zone apart, Chris!"
Oddly enough, it was the time zone that got through to me. There is something about living nine time zones away from your significant other that brings home the fact that you are rather a long way apart. A single time zone sounded like just around the corner.
"I could get on a plane on Friday after work," I said slowly, "and be there the same evening."
"Now you're getting the idea." She smiled tentatively. The faint tic appeared below her eyes. "It is good news, isn't it? It's going to work for us, isn't it? At least for now?"
"It's terrific," I said softly. I put my hand on her cheek, just under her eye, and felt the tender, trembling flesh quiet down. "It'll be great. Just think of those frequent-flyer bonuses we're going to earn."
She laughed and went happily back to eating. "Well, then, let's finish up. I want to see the famous Rembrandt I've been hearing so much about."
Pepin welcomed us at the door of the Galerie Vachey with his customary bonhomie. "I cannot understand why you are unable to make your visits in the afternoons, when the exhibition is open. And you cannot see Monsieur Vachey-Monsieur Christian Vachey. Inspector Lefevre is with him."
"Take heart, Monsieur Pepin," I said. "It's Madame Guyot I want, and it's the last time I'll bother you." I lifted my head and sniffed the air. "Do I smell something burning?"
"Madame Guyot has asked me to get rid of some old packing material. I'm burning it in the kitchen fireplace downstairs. You needn't concern yourself; every precaution is being taken."
"I never doubted it," I said with a comradely smile. Now that I had Anne beside me, was I going to let Marius Pepin get under my skin?
Ten minutes later, with the necessary locks unlocked and alarms disarmed, Anne and I stood alone in front of the Rembrandt. I resisted the temptation to deliver an explanatory lecture and let her look at the painting in peace, which she did for a couple of minutes.
"It's wonderful, Chris," she said simply. "It's as if you're looking into that old man's soul. And he's looking into yours." She turned to me. "Are you going to accept it?"
"Yes, I think so. It's not the painting Mann was talking about. Now that I've seen the Flinck for myself, I can stop worrying about that."
"And you think this is really painted by Rembrandt?"
"I do, yes. Where Vachey did get it, I don't have a clue. I'm starting to wonder if he didn't actually pick it up in that junk shop."
"Is that possible? Do things like that really happen?"
"If they happened to anybody, they'd happen to Vachey."
She wanted to see the other pictures, too, so we walked around the gallery for a while. Her tastes being a bit more modern than mine, we spent most of the time in the French section, where the twentieth-century works were.
"And this is the Leger?"
I nodded. "Violon et Cruche"
"It's quite handsome, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said. She'd been gratifyingly appreciative of the Rembrandt. I figured I could afford to be generous about the Leger.
She stepped closer to it. "It's not in very good condition, though, is it? Look here, where the paint's come away, and you can see signs of another picture underneath. I think I can see part of an ear or something…"
I smiled indulgently. "No, you just think you see what's underneath," I explained. "The juxtapositions and perspectives can be a little startling if you're not familiar with his techniques, and sometimes you get the illusion that you're looking at more than one layer."
"How interesting," she said. "And do his techniques include peeling paint?"
"Peeling-" I took a hard look at the painting and let out a long breath. "You're right."
Except that it wasn't the paint that was peeling, it was the gesso underneath; the smooth white undercoat that provided the actual surface to which the oil paints were applied. An inch-wide curl stood out from near the center of the canvas like a wood paring, with another crack just erupting a few inches away.
There were some blisters in the surface as well, and in two places along the edges the gesso, along with its film of paint, had begun to pull away from the frame. On the wooden floor at my feet there were flecks of sloughed-off pigment. It was as if the surface of the painting were molting. Underneath it, as Anne had said, another painting peeked through.
"I think the other shoe just hit," I said quietly, my eyes on the picture. "This is the stink bomb. It has to be."
"Vachey's stink bomb? Do you mean he knew this would happen? I don't understand."
I didn't either, not entirely, but I was getting close. Gingerly, I touched the curl of paint. It came away and spiraled to the floor.
Anne caught her breath. "Chris, be careful! It's so fragile!"
"Trust me," I said. "But tell me if you hear Pepin coming. I wouldn't want him to have a fit." I picked away a little more.
"Chris-"
"You're right, that's an ear, all right." A bit more judicious scratching and a few more square centimeters of the underpainting emerged. "And an eye."
Anne watched closely over my shoulder. "It's another Leger, isn't it? Or am I wrong?"
"You're wrong," I said. I shook my head slowly back and forth. "My God, have I been dense."
She looked in confusion from the painting to me. "You wouldn't care to tell me what's going on?"
"In a minute. I still need another couple of pieces." I grabbed her hand. "Come on, let's go find Clotilde Guyot."
Madame Guyot hadn't wasted any time in following my suggestion about taking over Vachey's study. We found her there behind a large but nondescript desk. (Christian, true to form, had removed all the furnishings of value.) She was in conference with Lorenzo Bolzano and Jean-Luc Charpentier. Madame Guyot, it seemed, thought that she might be able to arrange the purchase of a painting by Odilon Redon to add to Lorenzo's expanding Synthetist collection, and Charpentier was along to provide counsel.
Lorenzo, an old friend of Anne's as well as mine, leaped sprawling out of his chair to embrace her, then made her take his seat. "Don't worry, don't worry, we were getting ready to leave anyway."
"Is something the matter?" Clotilde asked, clearly puzzled by our barging in.
"There's seems to be a problem with the Leger," I said. Her friendly eyes became more alert, more expectant. "Oh?"
"The gesso's beginning to slip."
Lorenzo's jaw dropped. "Inherent vice!" he exclaimed.
This was not a mere Lorenzoism. "Inherent vice" is conservator-talk for the deterioration of a work due to the use of inferior materials.
"I don't think so," I said. "Not exactly."
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much," Charpentier said, looking at his watch. "These things can be remedied. Leger was not always the most painstaking of preparers, you know." He stood up, joining Lorenzo. "I think our business here is concluded. Madame, you'll let us know if Monsieur Boisson will consider our offer?"
"Of course," she said. "I have every hope." The two men bowed. "We'll find our own way out," Charpentier said.
Clotilde waited until they were gone. "So it's happened," she said. She was bubbling with excitement, her pink face glossy.
I took Charpentier's seat. "It's no accident, is it? That gesso was meant to crumble."
She beamed happily at me. I took it as a "yes."
"That's why the temperature in the gallery was kept so high, isn't it? To destabilize it. That was what Vachey wanted to happen, right?"
"Well, of course."
"What was he doing, settling some old scores?"
She continued to smile radiantly at me. "Tell me, Monsieur Norgren, do you intend to accept the Rembrandt?"
"What? Yes, why?"
"We'd like to have a small ceremony at the signing," she said. "Would five o'clock be convenient?"
I wondered if everyone had as much trouble as I did keeping to the subject with Madame Guyot. "Fine, but right now it's the Leger-"
"You will come, too, my dear," she said to Anne, who replied with a smiling nod, although I wasn't sure how well her rudimentary French was tracking the conversation.
"Madame-" I began, but Clotilde had picked up the desk telephone.
"Marius, will you-ah, Marie. Please tell Monsieur Pepin that the little gala that we have been planning will be held tonight at five. Will you ask him to prepare accordingly? I'm sure he'll need your help."
She hung up and smiled at me. "Now, monsieur, you were saying.. .?"
"I was saying that I'm beginning to understand what's been going on here. The scrapbook-it had nothing to do with Vachey's purchases during the Occupation or any other time, did it? That wasn't what was in it at all. Christian lied to me about it, you lied to me about it-"
"I beg your pardon," Clotilde said. "I did not lie to you about it. I didn't say anything at all to you about it."
"No, but you knew I was on the wrong track, you knew I'd completely misunderstood-"
There was a tap at the glass door, and Pepin put his head in.
"I wanted you to know, madame, that security has been turned off in the northeast wing for a few minutes."
"Why, please?" Clotilde asked.
"It's that damned Charpentier. Now he decides he's interested in looking at the back. I left him with-"
I was out of my chair so explosively it flew over backward. Pepin, startled into immobility, had to be lifted out of the way by the elbows so I could get past him. I ran through the deserted reception area and into the wing with the French paintings. There was no Charpentier. There was no Leger either. The wall where it had hung was bare, the metal supporting bars naked and forlorn.
I stood there agitatedly, trying to think. Charpentier-of course, Charpentier! How could I have failed to see it? I had walked into Clotilde's office and practically handed him the painting. But where was he? What had he done with it? He couldn't have had more than a minute or two alone with it, and he hadn't taken it down the front stairs or I would have seen him. And the back stairs led only to the living quarters and the basement, so there was no-
Christ, the basement! The basement with its capacious old cooking fireplace blazing merrily away, fueled by all that volatile packing material. I tore open the back door and raced noisily down the two flights, nearly pitching headlong down the lower one in my rush. The heavy oak door to the kitchen was closed. I pulled it open.
"Charpentier!"
He was standing with his back to me before the massive stone fireplace, his arms raised, poised to throw the painting into the fire. When I called his name, he twisted his head to glower ferociously at me over his shoulder. Backlit by dancing orange flames, with the painting in his lifted hands, he was like some titanic figure from the Old Testament, like Charlton Heston himself, about to hurl down the tablets from the Mount.
For what seemed an eerily drawn-out time we stared at each other, mute and unmoving. Then, with a grunt, and with more speed than I would have given him credit for, he skimmed thepicture at me, Frisbee-style, but with both hands.. All I could do was fling myself to the side and down, like a batter dropping out of the way of a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball.
The painting skimmed over me and through the open doorway with an ugly, whizzing sound, slammed heavily into the wall of the corridor, and clattered to the flagstone floor.
By the time I got to my feet, Charpentier was advancing with a rusty old kitchen tool he'd pulled down from the wall, probably something made to help turn a spit-roasting ox in the fireplace, but looking distressingly like a medieval foot soldier's pike; a five-foot-long pole tipped with a metal head consisting of a spike and an evil-looking hook. He was a big man, not athletic, but hulking and thick-boned, with a Mephistophelian cast at the best of times, and at this moment he was scaring the hell out of me.
I backed into the corridor, warding him off with upraised palms. "Jean-Luc, don't be ridiculous. You don't want to kill me."
"Yes," he said, "I do."
He did, too. He jabbed the spike at my eyes twice, first a feint and then a sudden, vicious thrust that was all business. I jumped back, managing to deflect the pike with my forearm, and stumbled into the corner of the corridor, floundering against some lengths of wood standing on end. Most of them went rattling to the floor, but clawing behind me with my other hand I got hold of one and brought it out in front of me.
Compared to that pike it wasn't much: about three feet long and the thickness of a piece of one-by-two lumber, probably part of the bracing for a picture crate. I brandished it in Charpentier's face like a cop's baton to keep him off, but he swept it angrily aside with the pike and closed in. I feinted at his face, then jabbed him in the abdomen with the wood, just below the end of his breastbone, but it was a tentative thrust, and mistimed besides. It occurred almost off-handedly to me that this was the first time I had ever used a weapon on a fellow human being-on any living thing bigger than a housefly-and it wasn't my kind of thing. The savage exultation of combat was not raging in my veins. I didn't want to hurt Charpentier, I didn't want to fight him. All I wanted was out.
Charpentier bellowed, more surprised than hurt, and with an almost casual flick of the pike caught the wood in the hook and jerked it out of my hands and over his shoulder.
Stunned, I watched it go flying end over end down the corridor. Did he actually know how to handle that thing, or had he been lucky?
Fortunately, he'd been lucky. His next thrust was clumsy and badly aimed. The rusty point grated against the stone wall a foot from my head. I even managed to grab hold of it as he pulled it back, but only got a couple of fingers on it, and he dragged it back out of my grasp. His clumsiness I saw as no particular cause for optimism. How many more times could he miss?
I was wedged into the corner with no way around him, and not much room for maneuvering. As for reasoning with him, the look in his eyes made the issue moot. I was groping blindly in back of me, trying to find another upright piece of wood when he feinted again, this time at my midsection. I flinched sideways and he came sharply around with the butt end of the pike, clubbing me alongside the right eye. I saw a pinpoint shower of sparks and at the edges of my vision a sudden, queer, wavering blackness like the fluttering specks and smudges in an old movie. For a horrible instant the darkness closed in entirely, but by the time my shoulders sagged against the rough wall I could more or less see again, but I was queasy and weak.
Charpentier was peering at me, as if to see how bad off I was. My appearance must have been satisfactorily dismal, because he raised the pike, tightened his grip, and set himself for a final thrust. When I'd gotten hold of another one of those one by twos I didn't remember, but it was in my hand, and almost automatically I swung it up and around, as hard as I could, cracking him on the side of the head just over the left ear.
I must have been improving with experience because he froze this time, then growled and shook himself-not just his head, but all over, like a bear. And he fell back-a single uncertain step to keep his balance. If I was going to get myself out of this alive, now was the time to do it. I dropped what was left of the one-by-two-it had broken when I hit him-and made a grab for the pike. This time I managed to wrench it out of his hands and had already started to bring the butt end around for another whack at his head when I sensed a change in him.
The heart had gone out of him. His shoulders drooped, his eyes had lost their crazy brilliance and turned opaque. I couldn't begin to read his expression except to know he had given up the fight. There was blood welling from his ear, where the skin had split. He touched it abstractedly but never bothered to look at his fingers, then turned his back on me and walked into the kitchen, heading for a back door that opened onto a row of off-the-street vegetable and flower gardens running the length of the block.
No, I didn't try to stop him. What was I supposed to do, yell at him to halt? And if he didn't (and he wouldn't have), what then? Run up and club him unconscious with the butt of the damn pike? Impale him with the point, perhaps transfixing him to one of the heavy wooden tables for safekeeping? Sorry, not my metier. Besides, the fight had gone out of me, too. I was woozy and nauseated, and my head had started hammering, and I'd had enough.
When he disappeared through the back door, leaving it open behind him, I sank back against the stone wall of the corridor and closed my eyes. I realized that I'd been hearing the sounds of pounding feet for the last few seconds-people running down the stairs-and opened my eyes to see Inspector Lefevre, accompanied by Sergeant Huvet and another man, burst into the corridor and practically skid to a standstill when they saw me.
I gestured toward the kitchen. "Jean-Luc Charpentier," I said, surprised to find myself short of breath. "He just went… out the back. He's your murderer."
Lefevre and Huvet looked at each other.
"… tried to burn the painting," I said, or rather panted. "… caught him… tried to kill me with this… this…"
But I couldn't think of the word for it, and besides, the blackness had begun to dance at the edges of my sight again, and with it came another sickly wave of dizziness. I tipped my head back against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to steady myself. I would have put my head between my knees but I didn't want to do it in front of Lefevre.
"All right, have a look out there for him," I heard him tell his subordinates.
"… gone by now," I said.
"If he's not there," Lefevre told them, "go to his hotel."
After a few more seconds the queasiness passed. I opened my eyes to find Lefevre silently studying the litter of wood strewn across the floor. Then he looked at the painting lying on its face, its frame knocked awry. Finally, he looked at me, clutching my medieval pike and leaning, bruised and battle-weary, against the stone wall.
He sighed. "Some things don't change, do they, Mr. Norgren?"