Caravaggio's Angel (4 page)

‘It belongs to her?’

Manu nodded.

So she was still alive: perhaps she was the J. Rigaut of the phone book. ‘I’d love to see her. Do you think that might be possible?’

‘Why not? She doesn’t come to Paris much, though.’

I opened my mouth to ask where, in that case, his grandmother
did
live, but before I could do so he moved the conversation on. ‘Did you want to look upstairs?’

Once again he’d sidestepped me. But I could hardly let the opportunity slip. ‘Of course.’

With an exaggerated, courtly gesture, he indicated the staircase.

The upstairs room – it was the middle floor of the house: the staircase, zigzagging back on itself, continued upwards – was as charming and impersonal as the salon. It was a bedroom, also white-carpeted, with wainscoting and built-in panelled cupboards in shades of pale blue-grey. There was a large bed with a bright green cover, over which hung a picture that might have been a small Chirico, of the early period. To the right a door opened into a bathroom; to the left, a window, curtained in the same green fabric as the bedcover, looked on to the little front garden. The ceiling was blandly white and smoothly plastered. Like everything about Robert de Beaupré’s fatal exploit, it had been efficiently covered over.

Manu’s voice floated up from below. ‘Are you going to take a photo?’

I always carry a little camera in my bag, but what would be the point? This might be the same space, but it certainly wasn’t the same room. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Fine, whatever you want.’

I tried to picture the room as it had been, with the swing-ing body. I wondered how tall Robert de Beaupré had been. Manu would have a job hanging himself in here.

Downstairs, the phone began to ring. I heard him answer it – ‘
Oui, allo?
’ Then, in the first display I’d heard of any-thing approaching emotion, he said, ‘
Quoi?
’ This was followed by a series of questions – ‘Where?’ ‘You’re quite sure?’ and a series of Yeses and Of courses. After a while he said, ‘
A bientôt, alors
,’ and I heard him replace the phone. Only then did I venture downstairs.

Manu was striding about the room, as though trying to gather his thoughts from its various corners and crevices. He looked stunned, thunderstruck. I said, ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’

He started – whatever the phone call had been about, it had completely overlaid all memory of my presence. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, there are some things I must do now.’

‘Bad news?’

He shook his head like a dog in the rain, as if to slough off what he had just heard. ‘My uncle’s died.’

‘I’m so sorry. Was he ill?’

‘No, not at all. It was an accident.’

‘God! Who found him – not your aunt, I hope?’

‘No, no, he wasn’t married . . . You knew him,’ Manu said, finally answering one of the questions I had failed to put. ‘He was head of the Italian department at the Louvre.’

‘Antoine Rigaut?’ I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. ‘Your uncle? When was this?’

‘When?’ Manu looked surprised. ‘I’ve no idea. Yesterday, today? They just found him. Why?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m so sorry. You’ve been very kind. If there’s anything I can do for you . . .’

‘What could you do?’ He held out his hand. ‘
Au revoir
.’

My head buzzed with questions I’d have liked to ask.
Who was that on the phone? What sort of accident? When did
you last see him? What was he like?
But I had to choke them back. Manu had joined the ranks of the bereaved, who operate in a space and time that prohibits these worldly intrusions. We shook hands, and the door shut behind me.

Before I’d reached the garden gate, however, it opened again and I heard him call out. ‘I didn’t give you my grandmother’s address, did I?’ And he came running after me, a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Here.’

I opened my mouth to thank him, but he was already back inside the house, and had shut the door.

So that impenetrable façade had been just that – a façade. It wasn’t my imagination – he had been hiding something. Before that call, he had not only shown no interest in giving me his grandmother’s address – he had actively avoided doing so. Nor had he told me Antoine Rigaut was his uncle. Then he had heard of his uncle’s death, and all that had changed.

To do with his father? That was something else I hadn’t asked. But unless there was another brother, he must be the Minister’s son. Of course there might be any number of reasons – privacy, shame – why he might not want to advertise that just now. I tried to remember what Jean-Jacques Rigaut had looked like on that television interview. I had an impression of elongation – but that might easily be post hoc, a consequence of meeting Manu. He had mostly been a huge talking head.

As the Eurostar sped northwards across the flat fields of the Pas de Calais, I took out Manu’s slip of paper and laid it on the table in front of me. It was torn from a telephone pad, and contained a scribbled name, a phone number, and an address with a 24 postcode. Madame Juliette Rigaut, Château de la Jaubertie, St Front d’Argentat, 24700 Meyrignac. Where could that be? Somewhere in the south-west, most likely, where all the towns end in –ac.

Now that I had the information I’d wanted, I felt suddenly unsure what to do with it. This was hardly the moment to suggest a visit – the poor woman must be distraught. On the other hand, Manu clearly thought I should call her. And urgently. Why else had he come rushing out like that?

But perhaps I was reading too much into all this. Perhaps he’d been meaning to give me the address all along, and just thought there was no time to lose. Juliette Rigaut must be getting on. In her late eighties, perhaps even older. She might die at any moment, especially after a nasty shock like this.

Well, at any rate I’d have plenty to tell Joe. I thought how pleased he’d be, and wondered what he was doing. And realized with astonishment that I hadn’t thought of him – not really
thought
of him – all afternoon.

5

Meyrignac, July

I phoned Joe as soon as I got back to London. He wasn’t in the office, but I left a message saying I had news for him from Paris.

He called me that evening. ‘Reg? So, what’s this detective work you’ve been doing?’

I told him, losing confidence with every word I spoke. When it came down to it, it didn’t amount to much. Antoine Rigaut had indeed been the Minister’s brother, but he had died. I’d spoken to a boy who might be the Minister’s son.

‘Might be?’

‘Well, Antoine Rigaut was his uncle. So unless there’s another brother . . .’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘But you feel the death’s significant.’

‘I think it might be. Though I’ve no idea why, other than what I’ve told you.’

‘Will you go and see the old lady?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You suppose so! Where’s the spirit of the chase?’

‘She’s just lost her son. It hardly seems the moment to say I want to talk to her about the Surrealists.’

‘The Surrealists?’ Joe sounded mystified.

‘The Surrealists,’ I assured him. ‘She was married to one. Her brother was one. It’s to do with my exhibition. Remember?’

‘Yeah, of course, your exhibition. Well, if you do go, don’t forget to keep your eyes open. I kind of feel we may be on to something rather interesting.’

He didn’t suggest we met. But at least we were on terms again.

Next morning, when I opened the paper, there was Rigaut’s obituary.

Antoine Rigaut, who has died aged 58, was a fixture of
Parisian cultural life. His father, the Surrealist photographer
Emmanuel Rigaut, made his living after the war as
a picture dealer, so that Antoine grew up surrounded by art
and artists. He himself would have liked to be a painter, but
although he had some facility, it quickly became clear that
he was not talented enough to make his living in this way. Although it would have been easy for him to enter the fam-ily
firm, Antoine preferred instead to devote himself to
scholarship. He soon established himself as an expert on the
baroque, and by his mid-forties had become head of Italian
paintings at the Louvre, a post he held until his death.

Rigaut showed a particular facility for spotting master-pieces
in improbable settings, and although some aspects of
his career were controversial, leading to occasional fallingsout
amongst his colleagues, all would agree that he left the
collection distinctly stronger than when he arrived.

Rigaut never married. His mother and a younger brother
survive him.

I tore the page out. Naturally, it didn’t say how he’d died. For some reason, obituaries never do. You have to translate: ‘suddenly’ probably means an accident, ‘after a long illness’ equals cancer or alcoholism. But this one was giving even less away than usual. An accident, Manu had said. But what kind of accident? Perhaps the French press would be more forthcoming.

When I got to my computer at the office, I googled Rigaut’s name. There were a number of other obituaries, longer, but almost as uninformative. The French style is less direct than the English, oblique, allusive, given to tailing off in suggestive ellipsis . . . Both
Le Monde
and
Le
Figaro
hinted at an edgy attraction to rough trade. But they didn’t imply that this was related to Rigaut’s death. In any case, why would a quarrel with a boyfriend have prompted Manu to give me his grandmother’s address? There was also a short paragraph from the news pages of
Le Figaro
, stating that the body had been found at Rigaut’s home, and that foul play was not suspected – a phrase which probably meant suicide.

Despite this frustrating lack of direct information, I did manage to glean a few references to old scandals – pre-sumably, the ‘controversial’ career aspects mentioned in the English obit. There was a dubious provenance regard-ing a Titian – Rigaut had insisted the painting was genuine, a view which had eventually prevailed, to the extent of its being bought by the Louvre, but which was still, it seemed, strongly contested in some quarters. Also, there had been a string of lucky finds in Switzerland, apparently an improbable venue for such serendipities. Why, I could not quite make out. If you were rich and wanted to conceal the extent of your wealth, wasn’t Switzerland the place to go, or at any rate to send the excess, knowing that no awkward questions would be asked? And why, in that case, should the odd escaped picture not find itself floating around Zurich, waiting to be identified by a knowledgeable eye? But these were hardly more than hints – a sense that all was not what it might have seemed. Whatever the story (and maybe there was no story) I would not find it here. The obliterating hand of
nil nisi bonum
saw to that.

The necessary phone call to Madame Rigaut loomed ineluctably. But if I didn’t make it, my new line to Joe – that tender shoot – would wither irretrievably. Manu’s bit of paper seemed for one horrendous moment to have vanished, but proved, after a short panic, merely to have slipped inside a lurking file. However, when I rang the number, the woman who answered told me, in an accent so broad I could only just make out what she said, that Madame Rigaut was not home.

I said I’d been very much hoping to speak to her, and wondered when she’d be back.

In a week, said the woman. She was staying with her son.

I thought: her son’s dead. But of course she had another son – Manu’s father. ‘The Minister?’

‘The Minister.’

That, at least, was one question answered. I said, ‘I’m going to be in Meyrignac in a couple of weeks. Do you think she’d be able to see me then?’

The woman, who must have been a housekeeper – no secretary would speak so broadly, she pronounced ‘madame’ as three distinct syllables – said, ‘You can try, madame.’ And we left it at that.

Meyrignac’s nearest airport was Bergerac. Joe offered to stand me the ticket, but I was interested in art, not politics. If any interesting facts turned up – interesting, that is, to him – then fine. But this was my trip, not his. In any case, the fare was so cheap that even my exhibition’s tiny budget would probably stand the strain.

The day before my departure I called Madame Rigaut again. This time she answered the phone herself. In a dry little voice thin with age she agreed that yes, she would be home the day after tomorrow, and that yes, I could, if I wanted, come and talk to her then about the Surrealists.

‘It’s kind of you to see me, madame. I know it’s not a good time for you.’

‘Frankly, at my age it all feels much the same,’ she said. ‘Bad, mostly. I don’t have a great deal to tell you. I hope you realize that.’

I assured her I was happy to take my chances, and we agreed that I would call on her at 10 a.m. the day follow-ing my arrival.

The south-west was a part of France I’d never been to, but airports are airports – the same wherever you go. Bergerac’s was smaller than most, a tin shed and a tent set amid flat fields of maize and sunflowers. But it possessed a car hire shack, at which in theory I’d made a reservation. Although Meyrignac had a train station, and was only fifty kilometres distant, there was no direct line from Bergerac. I’d have to change at Libourne, then wait three hours for a stopping train. We arrived just after ten; taking the train I’d arrive in Meyrignac at three, an average of ten kilometres an hour. It would almost be quicker to walk – far quicker to cycle. But there was no bike hire counter, so a car it had to be. I signed for the smallest vehicle on offer – a Fiat Panda – checked the route on the map, and set off into the shining countryside.

Unlike England’s permanent traffic jam, the roads seemed almost empty, and on the back lanes into which I soon turned there was no traffic at all, give or take the odd tractor. A perfumed waft blew in the open window from a field where new-mown hay lay in neat green rows. I stopped the car, got out and luxuriously inhaled the fra-grant, fume-free breath of summer. High in the sky two big hawks rode the updraughts, calling to each other like lost souls. An oak wood at the field’s edge photosynthesized in the sunshine. I was filled with an unfamiliar feeling that I couldn’t at once name, but which I eventually identified as calm.

A little less than an hour later, I arrived at Meyrignac. When I got there, I could see why there’d been no cars on the road. They were all here. Tuesday was market day, and the only free parking space almost on the town’s edge, beside the station – not that that placed it very far out. The station itself was standard ministry issue: three arched and glazed double doors placed symmetrically in a flat cream façade, neat seats and shelters, planked pedestrian gang-way leading across the rails, stationmaster’s vegetable garden. At my grandmother’s there had been a model town set with a station just like this, and as soon as I saw it I knew exactly what the rest of the place would be like. There’d be a grey-shuttered Hôtel de la Poste, a Café du Commerce with brown plastic tables outside, a gravelled champ de Mars where they played pétanque under the plane trees, a church, a mairie with a tricolour and
Liberté
Egalité Fraternité
over the grand front entrance, a square with a fountain. There they would all be, and there, as I made my way into town, they were, so that this place, which I’d never seen before, felt oddly familiar, as though it was already part of my life.

My route brought me into the main square, today filled with market stalls. Beneath a plaque marking the spot where twelve
meyrignacois
had been executed by the Germans in 1944, an ancient man in faded denims and a beret stood beside crates of farmyard fauna, cheeping chicks and ducklings, round brown quails, baby rabbits, fluffy grey goslings, all oddly interspersed with ropes of garlic, possibly a serving suggestion. Further on a row of stalls sold monstrous bras and girdles, violently coloured tops, low-cut dresses in deeply artificial fabrics, and arrays of curiously unfashionable shoes.

It was hard making headway through the throng. Judging by their faces everyone in Meyrignac was related to everyone else, and market day a big family party devoted primarily to gossip, with buying a poor second. The summer’s invading foreigners stood out like light-houses. Meaty, lobster-pink sweating men and straw-hatted, pastel-bloused women towered blondly above the indigenous gnarled ancients and orange-frizzed house-wives. Dodging a wall of slow-moving baby-pushers, I made for the church tower, which could be glimpsed at the end of a winding street beyond an ancient stone archway flanked by cheese-stalls. Here was another small square, filled today by a farmers’ market. Wandering in a sort of daze, I found myself at a stall announcing its produce as ‘
biologique
’. I was beginning to feel hungry: perhaps this would be the place to buy a picnic. Cherries, for example. Though the cherries here weren’t as big and black as on one or two of the doubtless less wholesome heaps I’d noticed elsewhere. Still, size isn’t everything. At least you could eat this stuff without worrying about washing off the chemicals.

By the time I reached the tourist office it was almost mid-day, and the girl at the counter, like everyone else in the market, was looking at her watch preparatory to closing up. She nodded when I mentioned La Jaubertie, and marked its position for me on a map: it was just south-west of the town, near a hamlet called St Front. She gave me the map, along with a list of local bed and breakfasts. ‘This one’s near St Front,’ she said, pointing to the list. It was called Les Pruniers – The Plum Trees. ‘Try it, it’s very nice. Madame Peytoureau.’

By now I was famished, though it was only just past midday. That was only eleven o’clock, London time, but I’d made a ludicrously early start – up at four thirty to get a seven thirty plane. I found a street that ran sharply down-hill to a river between ancient half-timbered houses. To the left, stone steps descended to a low embankment with a pair of benches shaded by a large willow tree. A fisherman sat immobile, cradling his rod, while the fish, ignoring his bait, drifted sideways on the current through glittering green flags of weed. Overhead, leaves twinkled hypnotic-ally in a light breeze. I ate my lunch, lay back, and dozed.

When I awoke it was nearly two. The fisherman had dis-appeared, and the sun had shifted, leaving me in deep shade. Moving out into the sunshine, I called the bed and breakfast recommended by the tourist office. After five rings a woman answered. Yes, she had a room free; yes, I could come round now. She gave some complicated directions, but I knew, even as I heard them, that I was not taking them in. I’d just have to go to St Front and see what I found.

My map did not show the smaller country roads I’d now be using. For that I’d need one of the large-scale IGN maps, where even individual houses are drawn. Unfortunately, the
papeterie
where I might have bought it would not reopen till three. Still, the general direction was clear enough. Setting out, I followed a series of increasingly improbable signposts and at last found myself driving along a green-lit single-track road between thick chestnut woods. Even smaller tracks led off on either side, each with a crop of signposts bearing names that might indicate a house or a hamlet.

Eventually, to the left, a sign read
St Front
. The road, sloping steeply downhill, led, after numerous twists and turns, to a scattering of more or less dilapidated houses grouped around an ancient fortified church, buttressed and blank-walled, a relic of the religious wars that once raged across this region. A volley of barks greeted the arrival of an alien car. However, not a soul moved – even the bar looked shut. Reasoning that bars never shut, I parked, got out and tried the door, but it was locked, and a sign announced that Tuesday was its half-day.

Les Pruniers must be somewhere nearby, but where? I hadn’t passed it on the way in, and only one road led out of the village. I drove up it, and a little way along, at a left turn, found a number of signs nailed crookedly to a tree. One read:
Les Pruniers 2 km
. Three minutes later another signpost pointed down a gravelled track that led between tall horse chestnuts to a stone arch set in a high wall.