Madonna and Corpse (3 page)

Chapter 4

Dubois

As he changes the CD in the Bose and begins squeezing white lead from a tube, Dubois laments the changing of the times. In the years since health agencies have banned lead-based paint in homes and offices, white lead—artists’ favorite primer for millennia, a white so dazzling it makes paintings glow from within—has become virtually impossible to obtain. It remains perfectly legal, of course, for expendable artists like Dubois to risk lead poisoning, but alas—in dutiful obedience to the law of supply and demand—paint manufacturers no longer find it profitable to make the meager amounts of white lead required by artists, and so stockpiles go steadily down and prices go swiftly up. The single tube he’ll use to reprime this one panel cost him a week’s grocery money, and he had to grovel to get it at all. Soon he may be forced to make his own white lead, the same way the ancient Greeks did, by suspending thin sheets of lead above a vat of vinegar (encased in fresh horse dung, for warmth!) until the lead is covered with white corrosion, then scraping off the corrosion, grinding it, and mixing it with linseed oil.
A damned nuisance,
he fumes,
and all because a few stupid babies ate too many paint chips
.

Once he begins applying the white lead to the panel, though, he forgets his irritation and, as always, falls under the spell of the work: the velvety feel and silky sound of the white lead gliding onto the panel. He turns and touches the Bose, and angelic voices fill the studio—a women’s quartet singing an eleventh-century polyphonic chant, “10,000 Virgins.” The soaring melodies infuse his studio and his paint and his
soul
with sublimity. At this moment, anything is possible; on this luminous, immaculate surface, he can be a Michelangelo, a Da Vinci, a Rembrandt, or any other genius of the ages. As it happens, he will be Botticelli, specifically, the Botticelli who painted the sweet
Madonna and Child.
This one, his third, will be his best yet—far better than the two that he’s foisted off on the old bat at the Petit Palais—for this time, he has a buyer willing to pay a price worthy of the work.

It’s taken three years to reel in the buyer, a British art dealer named Felicia Kensington. It began when she wrote to express her admiration of a Caravaggio painting—
Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist
—that he’d cleaned and retouched for the National Gallery in London. “The painting now glows with Caravaggio’s genius and your own,” she said. Dubois responded with an equally effusive thank-you note, and they passed a few more flattering messages back and forth. Eventually he mentioned, oh so casually, that occasionally he got lucky enough to unearth a work by an old master—a painting or drawing languishing, unsigned and unrecognized, in some junk shop or attic.

“If,” she’d swiftly responded, “you should happen upon any unsigned works in the style of Caravaggio—for instance, drawings or preliminary studies of the
Salome
painting, or other scenes in a similar vein—I should be most grateful for the opportunity to have them appraised, and to offer them to certain clients of mine.” Dubois, no fool, had instantly decoded the phrase “unsigned works in the style of,” and six months later, he wrote with the happy news that he’d “discovered” three unsigned studies “in the style of Caravaggio”: one of Salome’s face, one of the Baptist’s head on a trencher, and the third of the old woman (Salome’s mother, perhaps?) lurking in the background. Kensington had paid a thousand pounds apiece for them; a year later, he read that a rare group of three Caravaggio studies had been found and sold to a private collector, for the rumored sum of a million pounds!

Not long after producing the “Caravaggios,” he’d dined with Kensington in Paris at the King George V Hotel—a lovely, delicate piece of fish in white truffle oil, he recalled fondly—and she’d asked him to keep an eye out for other, similar finds. “My top clients are especially keen on Rembrandt, Titian, Michelangelo, and Botticelli,” she’d gushed. In that moment—the taste of the truffle oil vivid in his memory—Dubois had glimpsed a remarkable opening.

He’d just been hired by Avignon’s Petit Palais Museum to clean and restore their prized Botticelli, and it had occurred to him that the opportunity of a lifetime glittered before him, if he had the courage to seize it. “What do you think you could pay for a preliminary study of Botticelli’s
Madonna and Child
?” he inquired in an offhand tone. “First quality, of course; verifiable fifteenth-century materials.”

Her eyes took on a hungry gleam. “That would be quite a find,” she said, struggling to keep the excitement out of her voice. “I imagine I’d be able to pay somewhere in the range of, say, fifty thousand pounds?”

Dubois had nodded noncommittally. Then—after a moment’s pause—he delivered the coup de grâce: “And what if I told you that the museum that
thinks
it owns the finished painting has been deceived? That the painting hanging in Avignon is a modern fake ... and that the actual, authentic painting might—
possibly
—be available, for the right price, to a very discreet buyer?”

She’d stared at him, openmouthed, all pretense of nonchalance gone. “You can’t be serious.” Then, leaning forward, laying a hand on his hand: “Can you?
Are
you? Is it really possible?”

He’d played it cool. “Notice, I said ‘what if?’ But I gather you find the idea intriguing. Do you have any clients with ambitions—and budgets—as lofty as that?”

She regained her poise swiftly. “I believe I do,” she purred. “How soon do you need to know?”

“One month,” he’d answered.

Two weeks later his phone rang. “I have a client who is extremely interested in ... the painting you mentioned to me in Paris,” she said. “Needless to say, he’d want assurances that the work is authentic.”

“Of course,” Dubois had responded, his voice smooth as fresh varnish. “And, I assume, he’d want proof that the other—the one on display—is not authentic.”

“Yes. That, too.”

“Neither of those conditions poses a problem,” he went on. “
If
.”

“If what?”

“If the price is right. Bear in mind, only four paintings by Botticelli are in private hands.
Four.
For a true connoisseur, this would be the acquisition of a lifetime.”

“I understand.” She paused. “Did you have a figure in mind? A number I could relay to my client for consideration?”

“I like round numbers,” Dubois had answered. “Do you recall the figure you mentioned for a preliminary study? Fifty thousand, I believe?”

“Yes, that’s correct.” Her voice was hungry.

“Multiply that by a hundred.” He heard a soft gasp at the other end of the line. “It is,” he reminded her, “one of Botticelli’s finest early works. Simple. Sweet. Vibrant. I understand, of course, if it’s more than your client can afford ...”

“I didn’t say that,” she countered, perhaps more eagerly than she might have wished. “Let me run this past him, and I’ll ring you back.”

Two hours later, she’d called back. “If you can conclusively demonstrate the authenticity of what you’re offering, we’re in.”

Dubois was smiling as he hung up.

Now, months later, he smiles again as he finishes applying the white-lead primer, cleans his brush, and lays out the pigments with which he will paint the “authentic” Botticelli for Felicia Kensington and her wealthy, greedy, and gullible client.
Caveat emptor,
he thinks:
Let the buyer beware
.

Chapter 5

Descartes

Descartes’s stomach rumblings had been reverberating for hours in the museum’s workshop. Still, before leaving for lunch, he dashed upstairs to Gallery 6 for a look at the portrait whose entry-hall enlargement had caught his fancy. The original was even more vivid and striking than the reproduction. Mary Magdalene’s hair was long, wavy, and golden; her blue dress and red shawl were bright and cheery; her features, shown in three-quarter profile, were strong, anchored by a roman nose and eyes that were large, frank, and sensual.
No downcast, demure virgin, this one,
Descartes thought. John the Baptist was equally powerful. Over a furry animal pelt, he wore a full-length purple shawl trimmed in gold. His long hair and beard were dark brown and curly, and his sun-baked skin was a deep bronze verging on black, although the narrow, chiseled nose and cheekbones made it clear that he wasn’t African. Staring at the painting, Descartes finds himself entertaining inappropriately larcenous fantasies.
Hell, as long as the guy was inside,
he thought,
why didn’t he steal this one?

Spiraling back down, he emerged, bleary-eyed, blinking, and famished, into the dazzling Provençal day, the sun nearly overhead. A leftover sandwich awaited him in the refrigerator at police headquarters, but he was far too hungry for that now. Swimming against a tide of tourists, he angled across Avignon’s main square in search of a more satisfying lunch.

The museum was on the narrow, northern end of the long, thin plaza. Flanking the long eastern side was Avignon’s main tourist attraction, the Palace of the Popes, an immense Gothic fortress where a series of pontiffs had reigned during the fourteenth century.

Descartes had lived in Avignon for nearly two decades—ever since graduating from the academy—but he’d never set foot in the palace. He regarded Old Avignon as a museum or a stage set—
mausoleum,
in fact, might be the word that best expressed his sentiments. The papal palace and the art museums were fine for the flocking tourists, but Descartes couldn’t be bothered to care about power-hungry priests and self-indulgent artists who’d lived half a millennium ago. But now, the fact that a crime had occurred at the museum—not just spray-paint graffiti or rock-throwing vandalism, but something offbeat and baffling—suddenly made the museum itself intriguing. It was as if he’d discovered a youthful, racy photo of an elderly spinster aunt. Perhaps, he thought, there were similar mysteries, unknown depths to be plumbed, within the soaring walls and mighty towers of the papal palace.

Descartes’s hunger pangs brought his mind back to the primal exigencies of the body. He needed to eat, he needed to take a dump, and he needed to take a nap. For need one and maybe need two, he angled toward a Moroccan couscous place a block beyond the Palace of the Popes. The food was simple but tasty, and the prices weren’t bad, especially if you flashed your badge to remind the manager that you were a cop. Descartes’s mouth began to water as he imagined the restaurant’s chicken tagine, the succulent, tangy meat—seasoned with green olives and lemons and sweet, plump raisins—falling off the bone, the savory juices saturating the small pearls of couscous.

A few doors before he reached the restaurant, he passed Cinema Vox and paused to see what was playing. Leaning against the theater’s large front window, he cupped his hands around his eyes to block the glare and peered in at the posters.
The Avengers, Battleship,
and
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Foreign crap,
he thought, conveniently overlooking the fact that he actually preferred foreign crap—especially American action thrillers—to the depressing, pretentious fare French filmmakers produced.

Just as he was pulling away from the window, something he’d glimpsed shifted from his subconscious, and he leaned back in for another look. For some reason, the cinema had a large print of Botticelli’s
The Birth of Venus
hung over the refreshment stand, but the picture wasn’t quite right. Descartes stared, then laughed out loud. Instead of Venus, Marilyn Monroe perched on the clamshell, her feet in stiletto sandals, her pleated white dress swirling around the tops of her thighs, her mouth open in her signature vampish smile. It was an unprecedented experience for the detective: seeing a modern painting that was a playful riff on a classical masterpiece—one of the few classical masterpieces Descartes actually knew. With the force of an epiphany, he realized that art itself—like the museum he’d just left—was both more intriguing and more sexy than he’d ever dreamed.

After chasing his lunch with two strong hits of espresso, the inspector decided to forgo his nap and gut it out until bedtime, so as not to wreck his sleep cycle even more thoroughly. Instead, he spent several hours in Avignon’s library—a spectacular old building, he noted with newly appreciative eyes, housed in what had been a cardinal’s palace back in the fourteenth century, when the popes called Avignon home. Situated in the vast reading room, surrounded by ancient frescos, hand-glazed floor tiles, leaded windows, and an ornate coffered ceiling, Descartes scanned a stack of books about art restorers and art forgers. He learned, to his surprise, that the line between restoration and forgery was not as bright a line as he’d assumed, and that in practice, the two endeavors were often separated by only the narrowest and most slippery of slopes. A restorer hired to repair a flaked-off Virgin Mary here, a water-stained Jesus there, might eventually be asked to re-create entire scenes, repaint entire canvases ... and might well be tempted to sell similar re-creations for more than the paltry wages museums paid for restorations. The more Descartes read, the more flooded with fakes the art world seemed—and the more gullible and foolish art “experts” appeared. One British forger, a cheeky Cockney named Tom Keating, had such scorn for the experts that he planted blatant clues in his fakes. He used modern materials, included modern images in his backgrounds, and even went so far as to scrawl the word
FAKE
in lead-based paint beneath the primer of his “masterpieces,” so that any dealer, auction house, or museum that bothered to X-ray the work would see, instantly and beyond a doubt, that it was a modern counterfeit. Astonishingly, Keating managed to pass off some two thousand fakes before he was caught.

Another Brit, Eric Hebborn, became a one-man assembly line for “old master” drawings. Unlike Keating, Hebborn—a classically trained artist of considerable talent—was careful to use antique paper, centuries-old recipes for inks and paints and varnishes, and historically authentic techniques to create his pieces. By Hebborn’s reckoning—he published a boastful memoir shortly before he died—he’d passed off hundreds of his drawings as the works of old masters before he was exposed ... and hundreds more afterward, once unscrupulous dealers knew he was the go-to guy for high-quality forgeries.

Thus forearmed with knowledge of the wiles of fakers, Descartes felt prepared to take on Dubois. He would trick the artist, ensnare him in a trap from which there could be no escape. Leaving the library, which occupied a clogged artery in the ancient heart of Avignon, the detective threaded the Peugeot police sedan through the maze of streets, then out through a portal in the medieval city wall. He took the Daladier Bridge over the Rhône, then midway across, veered onto the exit ramp for Barthelasse Island—“the largest river island in France!” the Tourism Office liked to boast, though the competition was not particularly fierce, as best Descartes could tell. Still, the island—mostly public parks and private farms—was a pretty piece of pastoral land, with great views of Avignon’s medieval skyline, and Descartes had had good luck bringing dates here on pleasant weekends. Take the water taxi over—
women love that shit,
he reflected with a smile—and pack a picnic lunch. Plenty of wine and a big blanket, those were the essentials.

The GPS was worthless out here—there wasn’t a numerical street address for Dubois—and it took Descartes twenty minutes and a half-dozen map checks to find the artist’s place. It was a renovated farmhouse in the northern, less developed part of the island, set a half mile down a narrow lane that led to a handful of other farmhouses. The lane was tightly hemmed in on both sides by stone walls, and while Descartes wasn’t much prone to claustrophobia, he heaved a sigh of relief when the walls widened and Dubois’s property hove into view on his right. A semicircular drive arced past a wooden fence with trellised gate, and Descartes parked behind a rusting Citroën that was pulled off the driveway just ahead of the gate. Descartes felt the car’s hood and found it cool, but he noticed that the tires had left fresh tracks in the mud, which meant the car had been driven home and parked sometime after yesterday’s rain shower.

Inside the fence, the property seemed more botanical garden than yard, with riotous red beds of poppies, dangling clusters of violet wisteria, and enough lavender to turn the whole yard purple-blue and supply the Chanel perfume factory, come midsummer. Somewhere behind all that foliage, he felt sure, was a house.

When he found it, he rapped the weathered brass knocker three times without getting an answer. He peered through a side window, saw no signs of movement, and cocked his head to listen. Rock-and-roll music—an English band, Dire Straits, if he wasn’t mistaken—floated up from somewhere behind the house. Descartes followed the sound around to the back, through an orchard of blooming fruit trees, and up to the door of a building that was simultaneously rustic and sophisticated: rough stucco walls into which large, many paned windows had been set, the roof composed of clay tiles, supported by exposed rafters whose carved ends curved upward slightly: a French peasant of a barn that had acquired an aristocratic Japanese accent somewhere along the way.

Descartes held his police credentials in his left hand and rapped the door with his right—moderately at first, to no effect, then harder, so as to be heard over the throbbing bass and drums of the music. Putting on a stern face, he rehearsed the steps that would lead Dubois slowly but inexorably into his snare. Dubois beat him to the punch, though, flinging himself into the trap the moment he opened the door and saw Descartes’s credentials. “Welcome, Inspector,” he said with a smile that actually seemed genuine. “I’ve been expecting you for hours. Have you come to ask why I was crazy enough to sneak a fake Botticelli into the museum ... or why I was stupid enough to return an original masterpiece I’d managed to make off with?”

Descartes was taken aback, but only for a moment. He gave a half smile, a compliment to an adversary whom he realized he’d been underestimating. “Which question
should
I be asking?”

Dubois shrugged. “If I knew that, it would mean I knew which painting was which. And the sad truth is, I don’t.”

“Excuse me? Don’t
what
?”

“Don’t know. Come in, Inspector. Take a look around my studio. Have a cup of tea, or a glass of wine. And hear my mortifying confession.”

Two hours and two bottles of wine later, the inspector’s head was spinning with pigments, fixatives, sizings, solvents, brushstrokes, and discourses on the unique, unmistakable, inimitable, yet easily aped techniques of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and—last but not least—Botticelli. “Botticelli was the Andy Warhol of his day,” pronounced Dubois. “You’ve seen Warhol’s posters of Marilyn Monroe’s face, yes? He transforms her into a cartoon character with rainbow-colored skin. Look at Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus.
The goddess is almost a cartoon. A beautiful, sexy cartoon, but a cartoon nonetheless. I tell you, Inspector, if Botticelli were alive today, he’d be making his art with cans of spray paint on city walls.”

Descartes tried to recall the trap he’d designed for Dubois, but the vision was gone, dispersed by the painter’s preemptive strike of erudition and wit—or erased by the second bottle of wine—a delicate rosé that packed a deceptive punch. “But wait,” the detective said, raising an index finger to halt Dubois. “What about
Madonna and Child
? You said you had a confession.”

“Ah, yes.” Dubois looked chagrined. “The terrible truth, Inspector, is that I abused Madame Clergue’s trust.”

Descartes leaned forward eagerly, taking the notepad and pen from the inner pocket of his jacket. “In what way? Tell me everything.”

“I talked her into letting me bring the painting here to do the restoration. I convinced her that I couldn’t do as good a job there, in that horrid shop of theirs.”

Descartes pounced triumphantly. “And that was a lie!”

“No, no, that was completely true. Have you seen the shop? Dreadful! Those fluorescent lights would have given me the shakes in a matter of minutes, Inspector. No, I did a beautiful job of restoration here, just as I said I would. I’ve brought at least a dozen of their paintings here to work on. But—
but
—once I finished restoring the Botticelli, I took the liberty of making a copy. As exact a copy as was humanly possible.”

Descartes’s eyes shone in bloodshot triumph. “And you gave the museum the copy and kept the original!”

“Here’s the thing, Inspector. I just don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? One was five centuries old; the other had a ‘wet paint’ sign on it. How could you not tell them apart?”

Dubois shrugged. “I’d just removed the old varnish from the original and put on a new coat, so it looked and smelled new. And I treated the copy to make it look older than it was. Then, disaster struck. The day before I was to return the Botticelli to the museum, the wind tore the roof off my studio. Remember how fierce the mistral was last March? It blew down buildings all along the Rhône Valley.”

“I remember. It blew a tree onto my neighbor’s car.”

“You see? So when it started to rip the roof off, I scooped up all the paintings and put them in the cellar of the house. I was lucky nothing blew out of my hands when I was crossing the yard. But in the confusion, I didn’t keep track of which was the Botticelli and which was the copy. So the next day, when Madame Clergue called and demanded the Botticelli back, I panicked. I couldn’t tell the paintings apart. So you know what I did, Inspector?”