copper's cruise 3

 

Chapter 3 Paint by numbers

 

The run to Paris was trouble-free, and they ate a midday meal in the Paris Hôtel Meurice.  Alexander decided to take a nap, and Ida and Alma went shopping and sight-seeing.

They arrived back, bubbling with happiness with huge amounts of purchases.

“Basil was right, you can’t beat French art supplies,” said Ida, happily. “Alma and I are going to make journals to record everything in, with sketches and post cards as well as writing about things.”

“And Ida kindly sketched the Eiffel Tower for me, and told me how to add watercolour to it, and she’s learning me how to draw in perspective,” said Alma. “I never was much good at art at school, but Ida makes it sound easier than I thought, and how clearly she explains!”

“I am glad,” said Alexander. “I can draw a crime scene but I have to say, I’m glad of photography.”

“Oh, I am taking photographs too,” said Ida. “The Eiffel Tower all moody and brooding in the  rain with the gleam of street lighting and shop lights on the streets is delightful in black and white, and a nice counterpoint to the misty pastel sketch I also did, in the style of the impressionists.”

 

Alexander decided to let the ladies bond over shopping and sight-seeing, and to spend his afternoons relaxing, and brushing up his French.

He began to regret the decision when a knock on the door proved to be an agent de police.

“Monsieur le detectif Armitage?” said the policeman, saluting. “Your fiancée is at the Quay d’Orsay.”

“What is the problem, M.  Le Capitaine des Police?” asked Alexander, reading the insignia of the man a few years shy of his own age. He sported a full moustache and had eyes which appeared guileless on first appearance; and yet had the lugubrious tenacity of a basset hound. He was a young man, with a head of curly hair which made him look like an escaped cherub playing with a moustache from a theatre prop box; though without it he would have looked too absurdly young to be a policeman. Perhaps that was why he grew it, if his hair curled even more readily than Alexander’s did.

“Ma’mselle has uncovered a forger whom she has assaulted,” said the officer. “My name is Jules Maigret; I understand that the forger tried to pass himself off as one Basil Henderson, and Mam’selle is too hysterical to get any sense from her. I understand this painter has recently died, and is perhaps known to Ma’mselle.”

“Bloody hell!” said Alexander, in English, before slipping back into French. “Basil was her brother and was murdered most cruelly about eight or nine weeks ago. He was very close to Ida, and he was a close friend of mine, and I would also most assuredly assault anyone passing himself off as him.”

Capitaine Maigret nodded his head.

“That explains much,” he said. “The other lady speaks little French, but she wrote down your name and the hotel.”

“I’ll need my wheelchair if I’m coming with you; I was wounded in the line of duty, and I still tire,” said Alexander.

 

Ida was curled up in Alma’s arms in some kind of waiting room when Maigret wheeled Alexander in.

“Ida!” said Alexander. “Who has upset you like this?”

Ida uncurled and flung herself on him. Her teeth were chattering.

“That bastard, he said he was Basil Henderson, when I said that his style was similar!” she cried. “So I clocked him, and then we were arrested, and I told the gendarme to arrest the cochon of a forger, and, Oh!  Alex, how he had the gall....”

“Shhh,  I don’t think you are under arrest, but you need to swear out a complaint against the sales faussaire, and you cannot do that whilst you have hysterics, my lovely.”

Ida clung to him and sobbed.

Alexander spoke in fluent French to the officer who was sitting with her and with Alma,

“The lady’s French is good for a schoolgirl, but she is not fluent enough to explain the reason for her distress, which is to say, that she knows full well that this painter cannot be Basil Henderson, since she is Basil Henderson’s sister, and she found her brother’s body after he had been murdered. I am sure you have done your best, but you must forgive a young girl who has led a sheltered life for getting distraught over such a matter.”

“Oh, that is what she was saying! I wondered why she was so upset that Basil Henderson was supposed to be dead, I wondered if she had studied under him and felt herself romantically involved. But of course, a sister, and younger, surely... the poor little one!”

“Indeed,” said Alexander. “And one reason she is on this cruise, which was arranged before my own debility made my inclusion imperative, was to recover somewhat from the  awful situation she was in, living with a murderer in the household and nobody taking seriously the clue her brother had left her, or her fears until she was able to alert me. She is no child, but you understand, she is still young and has been through a terrible experience; she was drugged, she escaped a murder attempt on herself, and then the villain burned the house down.  Perhaps if she writes out what happened in English, you can have it translated?”

“Certainly, that would be perfectly acceptable,” said Maigret. “I know very little of the English tongue, and I would hate to swear a deposition against anyone impersonating one of my relatives in a foreign language.”

“Ida,” said Alexander, switching effortlessly back to English, “They want you to write down in your own words what happened, and someone can translate it for them.”

“Oh!” said Ida. “Yes, that is easy; I am so sorry, Alex, I don’t normally get so distraught.”

“I fancy if someone claimed to be Basil, I’d clock him, too,” said Alexander.

 

Ida wrote steadily.

Whilst sightseeing, I saw an artist, painting the Eiffel Tower, and it struck me that his style was similar to that of my late brother, Basil Henderson.  I asked the man if he knew Basil Henderson, and he flung out an arm, and said, ‘I am Basil Henderson.’  I had asked in French ‘Excusez-moi, connez-vous Basil Henderson?’ and he said, ‘Je suis Basil Henderson.’ And I screamed at him and called him a lying bastard and I hit him in the face.

 “That seems to cover it, nicely,” said Alexander. “Maigret, old man?”

“It is at least one of this gang caught,” said Maigret. “They work together to forge the work of others, and pass it off to tourists. Usually it is the impressionists that they fake. But he insists that he is Basil Henderson.”

“Well, he won’t mind someone standing hard on his empty boots, then, will he, since Basil’s feet were burned off when his plane crashed, and he dragged himself out of the wreckage; he’d been balloon strafing and was carrying ‘Buckingham’ ammunition, for collapsing and setting light to the bag. The permission chit to carry it should be on record, also his medical records. And of course, for a dead man, he appears very lively.”

“Thank you.  I will interrogate him.  It is a shame I know no art expert,” said Maigret.

Alexander flushed.

“Scotland yard calls me in on cases where art is involved,” he said. “And Ida is a fine artist in her own right; she might be able to help.  But Mrs. Barrett will need an English speaking escort to the sights if you want us to stay on a day or two as unofficial advisors. Ida is not usually an hysteric.”

“No, she is pulling herself together, I see,” said Maigret. “I will not turn down the aid.”

 

“So, you claim to be the  artist, Basil Henderson,” said Alexander, pleasantly, in  English.

“I hadn’t heard that France has a law against being an English artist,”, said the young man. He had dark hair, which curled crisply, and affected something which he apparently fondly believed to be an RFC moustache. It lacked the cheerful insouciance of Basil’s moustache and drooped at the ends with a look of guilty failure to meet RFC requirements of flying tips. “And that crazy dame hit me!”

“Remarkably good prosthetics you have,” said Alexander, stamping on one foot. The young man yelled.

“Funny, how your feet have regrown after they had burned right off, as I saw when I carried you across no-man’s land,” said Alexander. “And remarkable how you recovered from the autopsy on you, which I attended. Sunshine, Basil Henderson was my brother-in-law elect, and the ‘crazy dame’, you Yankee phony, was his little sister.”

“Oh, crap,” said the American.

“Now, you can tell me what you know of the forgery ring, and I won’t press charges for you upsetting my fiancée.”

“I know nothing of any smuggling ring,” said the American. “And you can’t charge me with anything.”

“You assaulted her hand with your face,” said Alexander. “I can see where your teeth grazed her knuckles. The French are accommodating people, and they will enable me to charge you with something.  Bear in mind, if you are part of the ring, speaking up now will mean that things go easier. They have the Code Napoleon here, which means that they don’t have to prove your guilt, you have to prove your innocence.”

The American gave Alexander to understand that he could take a ticket to the infernal regions, by route of his own nether passages. He used naughty words which might have shocked any gentleman who was not a policeman.

Alexander, who was not allowed to swear at his own professional victims, smiled beatifically, and gave the American a burst of vernacular military language which was infinitely more fluent and obscene than anything the American could manage.

It made a nice change to be able, as a private citizen, to answer back.

The young man did have papers, which gave his name as Elroy Marcus Rosinger the third. The address of a studio was on his papers, and he had a key.

 

“I like to absorb the atmosphere of a place, and get a feel for the suspect,” said Alexander.

Maigret grunted, and charged his pipe.

“Me too,” he agreed. “I don’t agree with rushing about like a mad thing.”

“Good, I am glad we work in the same way,” said Alexander. “What about your man, Lucas?”

“Oh, the boy is a bit excitable, but he is learning my ways,” said Maigret, waving his pipe.

The studio was approached up an outside staircase, and was a top floor apartment, a curtain hung over one end where there appeared to be an unmade bed, a small sink and cookstove to one side, and a tiny bathroom. There was a door to a roof area, and Alexander wandered out, and reflected that an escape over the roofs would not be impossible for a fugitive; or for some one to easily and quietly break in on the peace of the artist.

Alexander had no idea how much Lucas had to suppress a snigger watching his boss and the English detective, the one pulling on his pipe, the other taking a dry smoke on his pipe. Maigret had offered tobacco to Alexander, and had nodded in understanding when Alexander had flushed, and disclaimed being a smoker, but explained this was Basil’s pipe. Maigret understood what words could not say.

Various canvases were stacked against the wall. Alexander studied them whilst Maigret went through the rickety desk.

“There’s a girl whose face appears several times over,” said Alexander. “Here with bouffant fin de siècle hairstyle with one exposed leg up on a stool, very much Toulouse Lautrec; here, as a ballerina after the style of Degas. Another in demure costume, a Renoir lady at the opera.  I think this is also she, as a peasant in the most unattractive style of Gauguin, and, looking at the legs, I  fancy she may be this cubist nude, very reminiscent of Picasso’s early Demoiselles. And here she is in modern dress against the Eiffel tower as a Basil Henderson, which is sliding into the style of Desgas, but then, Basil did do museum copies, or paintings tongue in cheek in the style of others.  I have a Géricault of his in parody of ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ of several small boys on a raft on a pond as their skiff goes down.”

“A man of rare humour,” said Maigret, coming over. “Ah, ah, it is Angèle Les Guibolles.”

Alexander was sufficiently familiar with vernacular French to translate that as ‘Angela the Pins’ or ‘Angela the Legs.’

“Prostitute of your acquaintance?” he asked. “No, I should rephrase that....”

“I take no offence; prostitutes are often good witnesses. Angèle dances in cafés; I do not ask if she takes anyone home with her, or whether the continued good will is subject to a fee. If I do not know, I do not have to book her. If she extends her goodwill to take a few francs as a model, that is her business. She is no part of any bawdy-house, nor does she solicit on the street; enfin, that is all I need concern myself about.” 

 

oOoOo

 

The petite, dark-haired dancer sashayed over to the table where Maigret and Alexander sat.

“M. Maigret! Who’s your handsome friend?”

“Congratulations, Angèle! You have the undivided attention of an English detective,” said Maigret.

“Oh? They say the English are cold, but he does not look it,” said Angèle.

“But, mademoiselle, my passion is unabated, but though you have a look of my beloved, it is for she for whom I reserve it all,” said Alexander.

Angèle sighed.

“Just my luck; I was hoping for a live one before this job gives me varicose veins,” she said. “Has your lady legs as lovely as mine?” she displayed a dancer’s leg, muscled in the right places.

“But yes; though she dances only for pleasure,” said Alexander.

“Lucky lady,” sighed Angèle again.

“Perhaps you will be the one to get the reward for information,” said Maigret.

“I don’t think I know anything,” said Angèle, looking suspicious.

“You have a friend, perhaps a cher ami who is an artist, who has painted you in costume, and, ah, out of it,” said Alexander.

Angèle made a moue.

“You cannot call that rubbish a painting of me unclad; it is altogether too childish a daub to be considered obscene. Me, I repudiate it.  This M. Pissant or whatever the fellow’s name is that Elroy paints in the style of, he does not love women.”

“Picasso,” supplied Alexander, politely. “But he does not respect women, certainly. I expect that my good lady would like to paint you; you have good bones. But Elroy is under arrest for posing as the wrong artist.”

“Oh?”said Angèle. “Is she any good? Would I be famous in England?”

“She is good,” said Alexander. “Better than Elroy, anyway, and I am not partisan.  He tried to pass himself off as her brother who was an artist starting to achieve fame when he died.”

“Oh! How like Elroy to be so insensitive! La pauvre, what must she have thought!”

“She hit him,” said Alexander.

“Vraiment? Good for her,” said Angèle. “I would like to hit him at times, he is a cochon  at times, and he is no great lover. A few thrusts and grunts, and he is done. What is this reward?”

“Do you know his associates, and also, who sells his work?” asked Alexander.

“Oh, yes!” said Angèle. “There are four of them, and they think a model is blind and deaf.  Will your lady friend want to paint me nude? I’m not comfortable with a woman doing that.”

“I think she would want to do a full portrait of you, perhaps with the Eiffel Tower in the background, to show that you are the spirit of  Paris,” said Alexander.

“Not my legs?” asked Angèle.

“Why, there is more to you than your legs; like my Ida, you have a lovely sweet face and clever eyes,” said Alexander. Shrewd, anyway, he excused his hyperbole.

“Oh!” said Angèle. “I am sorry you are taken. You are lovely.” She considered. “I will let your Ida paint me.”

“And you will speak of Elroy’s friends, and where he sells?” asked Alexander.

“Oh! I carry his paintings to M. Fleury for him,” said Angèle.  “He says he must not be seen approaching the shop.  His friends are pigs too, but they also pay me to carry their paintings.”

Maigret gave a grunt of satisfaction.

“I’ll want you to take the next batch then, and be ready to vouch for the paintings having been done whilst you modelled,” he said.

“Will I be famous?” asked Angèle.

“You will have your picture in the paper,” said Maigret.

“And I am sure it can be said that you are a professional model, who has worked for the artistic sister of Basil Henderson on his recommendation,” said Alexander. “He’d have recommended you if he had met you; a man with a good eye for good bones.” He looked shrewdly at Maigret. “And I, the English tourist, to go and see if I can purchase a Lautrec so he is caught in the lie?”

“Precisely my thoughts,” said Maigret.

 

oOoOo

 

The shop was cosy and inviting, set out like the salon of someone of fashion, save that there were more pieces of art than most people might have on display in their salon. An assistant was brushed to one side by the man Alexander knew by description as M. Arsène Fleury, proprietor, who had taken personal delivery of the paintings of Elroy Marcus Rosinger from Angèle. M. Fleury knew a wealthy young Englishman when he saw one, and Alexander’s suit screamed loudly to the discerning both declaiming his wealth, and his patronage of Savile Row.

“How may I help you?” asked M. Fleury, in more than passable English.

“Well, I was rather hoping to be able to take home an authentic  French painting; something perhaps a little bit saucy, like that fellow Too-loos La Trek,” said Alexander, mangling the artist’s name after the manner most English managed to do.

“Ah! You may be in luck,” said Fleury. “I have something an old lady asked me to sell, to buy her some home comforts; I fancy she may have been given a small canvas to pay for her own modelling, before the artist was so successful. It’s not a very large canvas, but it is quite saucy.”

“I would not wish to deprive her of a memento...” murmured Alexander.

“Oh! She has her memories, but wishes to continue to feed herself, to survive to recall them... the war, you know, it has made paupers of so many....”

“Oh, quite so,” said Alexander, admiring the technique that made him an accomplice to the Hun in starving the anonymous, and mythical, old woman if he did not buy.

“I have had it cleaned, of course, so that the colours are fresh, and look like new,” said Fleury.  “It leaves a smell, of course, like oil paint and turpentine.”

“Oh?  I know nothing about such things,” said Alexander, innocently, giving Fleury more mental marks for covering the smell of a new painting.

Fleury brought forth the canvas of Angèle with her foot on a stool, buttoning a boot. Her skirt, pushed right up, so that a flash of the other thigh was visible, hinted at only hiding by shadow any privacies between the thigh. It was cleverly done, and one had to credit Rosinger with being carefully yet legally titillating. Not one light stroke in the shadow hinted of what lay there, but many a man would swear he could almost smell arousal from the model, whose bowed head was turned to look out of the picture with her smouldering dark eyes.

“And this is a genuine Lautrec?” asked Alexander.

“It is, indeed – see the signature, and I have had it verified,” said Fleury.

Alexander paid the outrageous price he was asked, so that fraud had been perpetrated, and could be charged as such.

And then Maigret walked in.

“Ah, monsieur, may I see that painting?” he said.

“M. Fleury assures me it is a genuine Toulouse Lautrec,” said Alexander.

“He’d be a genius indeed to rise from his grave twenty years after his death to paint M’lle Angèle Lebrun,” said Maigret, in his laziest drawl.

“I... any resemblance between some woman of today and the subject must surely be coincidence,” said Fleury.

“Since M’lle Lebrun identified it from a photograph, I suggest you just come clean, laddie,” said Maigret.

He had picked up the other artists, and now it was up to him and Lucas to sweat them until they talked; and in the meantime, Ida and Angèle had forged a strong friendship, and if Angèle might use her imagination to see herself as close to being Ida’s sister-in-law, if Basil Henderson had only known her, Ida smiled indulgently on this flight of imagination.

Basil had had a thing about blondes, but it hurt nobody for this girl to dream.

Next morning they might be away on the Blue Train, and headed finally for the south, and warmth.