Cezanne's Quarry (40 page)

Suddenly, the idea that Solange Vernet’s murder was connected to the kidnaping of little Louis Beriot took hold of Martin with the fierceness of a banshee howling in his brain. Unlike rape, there was no statute of limitations on murder, ever. It was a crime worth covering up at all costs. At the cost of changing your identity. At the cost of killing again, and again, and again.

Martin picked up the two pieces of thin, blue paper and examined the sparse, typed words, desperately hoping that they would dispel these bizarre suspicions.

And yet. How easy it would be to become someone else in the chaos of war. How easy to get a job as a constable in another part of the country when you were a heroic veteran. How easy it would be to fool someone as gullible, as naïve, as inexperienced as Bernard Martin. To keep him on a string, dancing to the rhythm of his master.

No! Martin slammed the telegram on the table. No! It could not be. He was just being too influenced by Clarie’s words, by her passion. Even she didn’t mean to imply that Franc had committed any serious crime. She had just told Martin to follow his instincts. And yet, and yet. . . .

Martin thought his heart would be squeezed dry as his brain overflowed with images of Franc. Franc, jolly as they drove back from the quarry. Franc, saying that Solange Vernet deserved what she had gotten. Franc, so cavalier about the strangulation of the poor little messenger. Franc, unable to discover the boy’s identity. Franc, so eager to blame Westerbury for the crime. Franc, who had murdered Merckx. Franc the chameleon, the would-be Vidocq, the man of a thousand moods and faces. Franc! This was instinct, all right. Instinct with a vengeance. It was mad. And it made sense.

Suddenly another image came to Martin. Charles Westerbury proudly displaying his hand as a badge of honor, a hand streaked with pomade from Franc’s dyed-black hair. What if the dark pomade was not meant to cover age, but to create a disguise? What if it wasn’t Cézanne’s paint on Solange Vernet’s missing gloves? What if they were stained with Franc’s hair dye?

Martin lowered himself onto his bed and crossed his arms tight across his stomach. He began to sway back and forth. During those last terrible moments, Solange must have recognized her tormentor. But did she know why she was being murdered? Did she realize that she had signed her own death warrant all those many years ago, when as a young girl she declared “I know who you are” even though she knew nothing, nothing at all, about the kidnaping? Did Franc tell her why he was killing her? Or did he just strangle and knife her, in brutal triumph?

Martin got up and began to pace. If this were true, if any of it were true, his own role, the stupid and innocent part he had played, was all too obvious. Franc had been watching Solange Vernet for months, and waited until Martin was in charge. He was Franc’s chosen dupe. These last two weeks—all planned and perfectly orchestrated.

Yes, Franc had been watching him, too. Otherwise, how did the inspector know where Martin was, always? How had Franc caught Merckx so easily?

Worse, not only had Martin been a dupe, he had stepped into a trap of his own making. Merckx’s futile attempt at escape had played right into Franc’s hands. If any of this were true, what a boon Merckx’s arrival must have been, giving Franc the opportunity to commit a righteous, patriotic murder, while, presumably, guaranteeing Martin’s continued pliability. Merckx! Martin’s eyes filled with tears of pure and impotent fury. Everything was a garish, hateful blur. He grabbed his chair and threw it against the armoire.

The sound of the crash brought him to his senses. Breaking the furniture would do him no good. Martin picked up his chair and slowly straightened one of its staves, making it usable again. If Franc was the murderer, how could he, a judge who had committed treason, proceed against him? Yet, if Franc was the culprit, Martin had to get him. In order to do that, he had to think it through. Every conversation, every gesture, every piece of evidence. Martin had gone over everything that Westerbury and Cézanne had told him again and again. Now it was time to reconsider the words and deeds of his intrepid inspector.

Then he looked at me, and I felt dazzled by the sensation of his eyes looking right into me, past me, deep in the future. There was a broad smile of resignation on his face.

Someone else will do what I haven’t been able to do. . . . Maybe I’m just the primitive of a new art.

Then a sort of bewildered indignation passed over him.

Life is terrifying!

And I heard him several times murmuring like a prayer as the dusk was falling:

I want to die painting . . . to die painting. . . .

—Joachim Gasquet,
Cézanne:

A Memoir with Conversations
, 1921
¹²

“
LISTEN,
E
NGLISHMAN. YOU MIGHT AS WELL
confess. We’re going to prove you did it. And then—” the brute made a chopping motion at the back of his neck. The guillotine.

“I did not do it.” Westerbury met the threat with calm resolve, despite the fluttering inside his chest and the fact that Franc’s head was almost touching his, smothering him with a miasma of rancid breath and spraying spittle. This time, at least, he knew there would be an end to it. Only hours to go. And when he got out, he had a plan. His bullish adversary had unwittingly given him an idea.

“I wish he’d let me knock it out of you! Any real judge would.” This time Franc held up his fist.

“I will not confess to a crime I did not commit.” After all, he
was
an Englishman, born to freedom and the rule of law.

The cell was stifling. Westerbury could hardly breathe, but he took pleasure in knowing that his inquisitor was sweating even more than he. The perspiration was practically dripping from Franc’s nose and shaggy eyebrows onto his own. The heavier man could not last much longer. He would go away, just like the other times.

“Then let me put it to you this way.” Franc stepped back at last. “Since it obviously was a crime of passion, all you have to do is confess to Martin and then tell the court how jealous you were. Tell them how that whore betrayed you with the artist. After all, no one around here really cares about your lover. She wasn’t one of them. They’ll probably let you off and send you packing back to England.”

“She was not a whore. And I had no reason to be jealous.” Westerbury had to defend Solange’s honor. He was determined to prove, despite all that had happened, that he was still worthy of her.

“Really? She’d probably been a whore for a decade before you knew her.”

This accusation was so beneath contempt that Westerbury did not even deign to respond.

“You’re done talking, huh?” Franc moved away from the bed and shouted for the guard. When the door swung open, he delivered his parting shot. “Next week, when the prosecutor returns, it will be all over. There’s nothing soft about him. So, if I were you, I would confess to the little judge right away, before they reassign the case. In fact, I’m going to insist that they do. They’ll find a judge that will keep you here, with me, until you give in. And then,” Franc grinned as he repeated the chopping gestures at the back of his neck. Finally, he slammed the door shut.

Westerbury slumped against the stone wall. Would they really take Martin off the case? At least he was honest and decent, if totally lacking in passion and imagination. Westerbury shook his head slowly; no, it was up to him. Charles Westerbury was going to show all of them how a man of passion, imagination, and science finds out the truth.

Westerbury got up and walked toward the ray of sunlight emanating from the tiny square window above his head. He raised his right fist and opened it slowly, revealing the long dark streaks that stretched across the fingers and palm of his hand. The gloves. Now he knew that there were two possible reasons for hiding them. They might indeed be stained with paint. Or—Westerbury shuddered—with pomade grasped from Franc’s hair during Solange’s final, terrible moments. This would explain why the inspector was so eager to make him confess, and why the bastard seemed to know so many details about how he and Solange had lived since their arrival in Aix.

Still, it didn’t explain why Franc would need to kill her. Or what would drive Cézanne to murder Solange. Westerbury had to know, and was about to risk everything to find out. Risk his life, like a true gentleman, for Solange’s honor. As soon as he got out, he planned to buy two pistols for the duel.

He stepped back and gazed at the window. If only he believed in heaven, then he’d have the solace of knowing that his angel was there, waiting for him. If only. But it was his great burden to be a man of science. The only thing he could be sure of was the existence of the world that lay right outside his cell. That was where he must seek his revenge.

M
ARTIN STOOD STARING AT THE LAW
books that lined one wall of his office. These were the heavy tomes that his mother had sweated, saved, and begged for, the books for which she had mortgaged his life to the DuPont family. He had no time to make any provision to pack them, and he was not sure he would ever be able to come back for them. It couldn’t be helped.

Before sitting down at his desk again, Martin peered out his window at the Palais square. No gendarmes, no Franc. Just ordinary people going about their noontime business. Had Franc put someone on his trail this morning? Martin had no way of knowing. He had only taken precautions once—when he had gone off to Mont Sainte-Victoire in search of Solange Vernet’s letter. At all other times—Martin slammed his fist against the window frame in frustration—he had been completely careless, unaware and gullible.

He was working on two completely different reports. The first was to go into the official dossier, a catalogue of the material evidence and summaries of all the interviews and interrogations. He’d leave it for Old Joseph to deliver to the prosecutor on Monday morning. Martin planned to end this report with the argument that the evidence was inconclusive, that neither Westerbury nor Cézanne should yet be charged with the crime.

The second notebook was going with him, his personal record of the investigation, and of each and every encounter with Franc.

He should have had no trouble in putting together these reports. They were the
sine qua non
of his profession: the ability to gather, analyze, and synthesize evidence and present detailed, logical arguments. Nevertheless, he was stalled. The argument for inconclusiveness in the dossier was a half-truth. The conclusions he was coming to in his own notes were deeply humiliating. Each passing minute made him more and more certain that Franc had murdered Solange Vernet, the boy, and Merckx. By Monday afternoon he’d be searching through the police records in Paris to find out more about Alain Duprès, the dastardly constable of Bennecourt. Then he’d go to the military registry to trace the career of the self-proclaimed hero, Albert Franc, and the presumably “dead” Duprès. If Martin established that Franc and Duprès were one and the same man, he intended to bring the proof back to Aix, no matter what the consequences.

Hearing noises in the hall, Martin slipped his personal notebook into a drawer. He was rolling down the sleeves of his shirt when Franc entered the room.

“One of the boys said that you wanted to see Westerbury before we released him. I’ve got him here.”

“Right. Please bring him in.” It must be three o’clock, the hour when the Englishman’s sentence was to be completed. Martin needed to hurry if he were going to finish before nightfall. “I didn’t notice the time,” he explained, without looking up, afraid that any expression on his face might give him away. “I’ve been summarizing for the Proc.”

“I can see that,” Franc said, as he scrutinized the papers that covered the desk.

Martin ignored this rudeness. If he did not talk, Franc would eventually have to go away. Tomorrow, Martin thought, tomorrow when I get on the train, I will finally be free of him.

“Jacques,” Franc called out to the young gendarme, who was guarding Westerbury in the hall. Franc took hold of the prisoner in the foyer and gave him a shove into the office.

“Mr. Westerbury, sit for a minute.” Martin kept his head down, going through the act of organizing his papers.

Westerbury complied, silent for once.

“Franc, I assume the release is in order and Westerbury can leave from my office?”

“Yes. But I don’t understand why.”

“Very well.” Martin fashioned his face into a mask of immobility before facing his adversary. “I just need a moment to ask our witness a few questions for clarification. You may leave.”

As he had done forty-eight hours before, Franc lingered stone-faced in order to convey his disapproval. When he got no reaction, he left, shutting the door to Martin’s chambers with a bang.

Franc’s departure revived the Englishman. “You don’t look well,” he observed, with a tone of inexplicable satisfaction.

“I’m fine.” Martin did not need solicitude from a man who had certainly done his part to make life difficult.