They had carried Lucien upstairs to the apartment and sat next to the bed where he lay as still as death.
“Perhaps if there were more blood?” said Régine. “The way we allow just a touch of the fruit to show by venting the piecrusts.”
“No,” said Madame. “I think the blow was perfect. She went out like a candle, and not a drop of blood. She
is
very pretty, and blood would have stained her dress. No, I think that conking someone on the head is like the sex: a thankless task we must perform to keep the peace.” She sighed, wistfully, as she looked at the photo of Père Lessard on the bedside table. “The joy is in the threatening. Threats are like the love poems of head conking, and you know what a romantic I am.”
“Mais oui,
Maman,” said Régine. She stood and cocked an ear toward the doorway. “There is someone on the stairs.”
“Take the
crêpe
pan,” said Mère Lessard.
Régine got to the top of the stairs at the same time as did a bull-shouldered man in work clothes, who caught her around the waist with one arm, spun her around, then pressed her to the wall and kissed her unmercifully while she squirmed, his three-day stubble scratching her face.
“My sweet,” said Gilles, her husband. “My flower. I thought to surprise you, but you are ready to make
crêpes
for me. My little treasure.”
“The pan is for hitting you. Put me down,” said Régine. She wriggled in his embrace and he pressed her harder against the wall. “My little love pig, I missed you.”
“It’s Gilles,” Régine called to her mother.
“Hit him,” said Mère Lessard. “He deserves it for coming home early.”
“Oh,” said Gilles, dropping Régine like a poisoned apple. “Your mother is here.”
“Good evening, Gilles,” said Mère Lessard, a dismissive chill in her voice, for although she liked the burly carpenter very much, there was no advantage in letting him know that.
Gilles stepped into the bedroom. “What is wrong with Lucien?”
“That woman,” said Régine.
“What woman?” Gilles had been blissfully oblivious of the goings-on around the bakery for the last month, as he had been away most of the time, working on a public building in Rouen.
“There is a girl lying unconscious in the doorway of the storeroom,” said Mère Lessard. “You were supposed to bring her in.”
“Of course,” said Gilles, as if he’d been a complete cad for not realizing how utterly useless he was. “I will go now.” To Régine, he said, “Keep my
crêpes
warm, my sweet.” And he was off down the steps.
“The pan was for hitting you,” Régine reminded him.
“I’m sorry,” said Mère Lessard. “I have failed you, my child. I let you marry a complete dimwit.”
“Yes, but he’s strong, and he doesn’t care at all about art,” said Régine.
“There
is
that,” said Madame.
Downstairs, in the storage-shed-turned-studio, Gilles stood before the painting of Juliette. While it was true he didn’t give a toss about art, he was a great enthusiast when it came to the naked female form.
“Sacré bleu!”
he exclaimed, with no irony whatsoever.
“Do you need help?” Régine’s voice came from the bakery kitchen.
Gilles backed away from the painting. “No. She’s not here. There’s no one here.”
“She was right here,” said Régine, now standing in the studio doorway.
Gilles turned so quickly he nearly lost his balance.
“Chérie,
you startled me. Did you know this shed had a skylight? I’ve never seen a shed with a skylight. Why would you have a skylight here?” He shrugged at the mystery of it all.
Régine held her hand to her mouth as if suppressing a sob, then said, “Come inside, Gilles. I need to tell you something.”
T
HE
C
OLORMAN HEARD THE KEY RATTLING IN THE LOCK AND OPENED THE
door for her.
Bleu entered the apartment and gingerly pried up the brim of her hat. “Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.”
“You need to finish with him,” said the Colorman. “Someone is getting suspicious.”
“Ouch!” said Bleu with a great blast of air as she pulled off her hat and tossed it to the hall tree. She bent over until she was eye to eye with the Colorman, whose deep-set eyes bulged out a bit as he got a good look at her puffy, purple forehead. “You think?” she said.
“What happened?”
“What do you think happened? Someone hit me.”
“The baker?”
“No, not the baker. His mother, I think. I didn’t see it coming.”
“Did you kill them?”
“Yes, I don’t know who hit me, but I killed them all the same.”
“You’re cranky when you’re bruised. You want wine?”
“Yes, wine, food.” She collapsed on the divan. “Do we have a maid?”
The Colorman turned to her, sheepishly, and shrugged.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Fine, bring me some wine, then. Who do you think is suspicious?”
“The dwarf. The little painter. He was here. He bought color from me. He was asking about the Dutchman, about Auvers.”
“Surely he hasn’t connected us with the Dutchman. How would he do that?”
The Colorman shrugged again, then handed her a heavy crystal goblet of wine.
“I don’t know. A letter maybe? The Dutchman was mad. And not in the usual way. Maybe we should kill the dwarf, just to be safe.”
“How is that safe? He wouldn’t even be suspicious if you hadn’t murdered the Dutchman.”
“Accident. Couldn’t be helped,” said the Colorman.
“Well, we’re not going to kill him. We’ll hide.”
“What about the baker? He suspects?”
“No, he doesn’t suspect anything. He’s exhausted. I had him in London for a week today. It’s his family.”
“Did you get the painting?”
“Does it look like I got the painting? I brought this.” She threw a partially used tube of paint on the coffee table. “This is all the blue that is left.”
“Why didn’t you get the painting?”
“Because someone just brained me and the painting is fucking huge, isn’t it? It’s still wet, I couldn’t cut it from the stretchers and roll it up. And I might have been noticed, making my way across Montmartre with a bigger-than-life-size nude of myself, don’t you think?”
“I was just asking. London makes you cranky.”
“London does not make me cranky. Losing months of work, getting knocked on the bloody head, and having to talk to you makes me cranky.”
“Oh,” said the Colorman. “I don’t like London.”
“Noted.” She drained her glass. “There’s food?”
“Roast chicken. I saved you half. So, we get the painting, then kill the baker and his family to cover our tracks.”
“No, we don’t kill them. What is with you and the killing? Did you get a taste of it with the Dutchman and now you want to keep trying it? This isn’t like scaring away the maids with your penis. If you keep murdering artists someone will notice, you know?”
“You think I can scare painters away with my penis?” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling at the wonder of the possibility. Bleu didn’t know that he had tried it once with the painter Artemisia and she had threatened to saw his head off; insane Italian tart.
“No, but you can’t kill them, either. Not all of them. Not that way.”
“We’ll use the color. And if you go with me they won’t remember.”
“Of course they won’t bloody remember, they’ll be dead.” Then she called him a name in a dead language that translated, roughly, to “poop on a stick,” but sounded more succinct, like this: “Of course they won’t bloody remember, they’ll be dead, Poopstick.”
“We can move, hide. The dwarf asked about the redheaded laundress. Maybe you should find her again for him. He paints fast.”
She shook her head. “No, we’ll hide, but I have to finish with Lucien.”
“You want a bath?”
“Food.”
“Then a bath? I lit the heater. The water will be hot.”
“You can’t watch.”
“Just a little? Your forehead is turning Tyrian purple. I like it against the white skin.”
“Tyrian purple? That specific? Really?”
He shrugged eloquently, his
Oops, I accidentally frightened the maid with my penis and shot the one-eared Dutch painter, couldn’t be helped
shrug.
“Colorman,” he explained.
“Bring me food, Poopstick,” she said.
“I
S HE GOING TO DIE?”
R
ÉGINE ASKED HER MOTHER.
They sat at Lucien’s bedside. Gilles stood in the doorway of the tiny bedroom.
Mère Lessard did not answer Régine but turned directly to Gilles. “If he dies, you must find that woman and strangle her.”
Gilles knew he and Régine should have found their own house. If they had moved to that little apartment near Gare Saint-Lazare that his boss had offered, he wouldn’t be in this position. Régine could have walked to the bakery in less than twenty minutes, there were good markets, and most of the trains to the west, where he had been working, left from Gare Saint-Lazare. He could have belched without being scolded, asked for what he wanted for supper, and most important, no one would be asking him to strangle a pretty girl. He had never stood up to his mother-in-law, but in this case, he might have to. Was he not a man? Was he not the master of his own house? Régine was his wife, this was his house, and he was finished taking orders, damn it.
“Did you throw some water on him?” Gilles asked.
“No,” said Mère Lessard. “We dragged him up the stairs, undressed him, and got him into bed. He didn’t wake up through that, a little water isn’t going to wake him.”
“I’ll get some water,” said Gilles. Perhaps if he showed he was useful for other things, she would forget about having him strangle the girl.
Régine followed him to the kitchen and took the pitcher from his hand. “Forget the water. You sit.”
She sat across the table from him and took his big, rough hands in hers. There were tears in her eyes. “Gilles, when I tell this thing that I must tell you, you have to promise not to leave me.”
“I promise.” He was not a man of great imagination, but what could she say that would be so horrible? He had shared a house with her mother, after all, what could be worse than that?
“I have killed my sister, my father, and now my sweet brother, Lucien,” she said.
Although that hadn’t at all been what he expected, Gilles nodded knowingly. “Your pot roast?” he said.
In an instant she was on her feet, snatching up a tea towel, a trivet, a sugar bowl, and flinging them at his head. “No, not my fucking pot roast, you idiot. What a stupid thing to say, ‘pot roast’!”
“Don’t kill me,” said Gilles. “I love your pot roast.”
When Mère Lessard came out of the bedroom to check on the commotion, Régine attenuated her tantrum, took Gilles by the hand, and dragged him back down the steps to the bakery to confess what she felt were her crimes.
M
ARIE HAD NOT JUST BEEN HER SISTER, SHE HAD BEEN HER BEST FRIEND
, and every time she was reminded of her, Régine had to fight back tears, which was difficult in a city where every fourth or fifth woman you met was named Marie.
“Papa loved painters and painting,” said Régine. Gilles had fetched the tall stool from behind the counter in the front, and Régine perched on it by the heavy, marble-topped table where much of the pastry was made. “Maman was always scoffing and teasing Papa about his artist pets, and Lucien, even when he was little, told him that he should paint, but Papa always resisted. The two of them had their own little religion built around the artists on Montmartre—like the painters were a canon of saints. Saint Monet of Le Havre, Saint Cézanne of Aix, Saint Pissarro of Auvers, Saint Renoir of Paris—sometimes it felt like we were feeding every artist on the butte.
“Finally, when I was about nineteen, something happened. I came downstairs one morning and Papa was sitting right here at the pastry table, with a paint box open on his lap, just looking at the colors like they were holy relics. Lucien was at his side, and the two of them seemed like they were in a trance. They hadn’t even fired the ovens yet, and we were about to open. I don’t know where the box of paints had come from. It was too early for them to have gone down to Père Tanguy’s shop in Pigalle, and it hadn’t been there the night before. Lucien looked at me and said, ‘Papa is going to be a painter.’