Chasing Cezanne by Peter Mayle Read Free Book Online Page A

bought some lavender essence for Noel, and—smiling at the thought of her wearing it—a genuine, made in the Pyrenees, guaranteed
-imperméable-à-l’eau
beret for Lucy.
    It started to rain on his way back to Saint-Paul, a steady light drizzle that persisted through the night and into the morning, a change in the weather that Andre welcomed. He always found it hard to leave the south of France; harder still if the sun was high and hot; less of a wrench under dripping gray skies.
    The palm trees along the road to the airport, moist and morose, seeming to huddle under the rain, gave way to the glass and steel and concrete of the terminal. Andre returned his car to Avis and took his place in the check-in line among the businessmen (were they the same weary gypsies who had flown over with him from New York?) and a scattering of holidaymakers bearing sun-pink cheeks and noses.
    â€œHi! How you doing?”
    Andre turned, to find his window-sensitive neighbor of the flight over beaming at him. He smiled back and nodded at her. It wasn’t enough.
    â€œSo. How was your trip? I’ll bet you had some great food. I went to this really neat place in Cannes, maybe you know it, Le something Rouge? Wait, I have the card somewhere.” She produced from her bag a swollen Filofax. The line moved up one. Andre prayed for a full flight and a seat well away from his new friend.

4
    LATE afternoon at JFK, a red sun dropping and the air like a knife, the banks of soiled snow a dismal contrast with the bright flower beds of Nice. Andre detached a hardened gobbet of lurid green chewing gum from the seat of the cab as he got in, and tried to make himself understood to the driver. It had been a smooth and mercifully crowded flight, the only distraction a movie in which one of Hollywood’s steroid heroes had systematically wiped out the rest of the cast. There had been ample encouragement to close the eyes and think.
    The scene at Denoyer’s villa returned to nag at his thoughts, as it had several times during the flight. The incongruity of what he knew to be a very valuable painting being loaded, however carefully, into a local workman’s van was impossible to forget. And there had been something else, which he had paid no great attention to at the time: The intercom set into the stone gatepost had been dead when he’d pressed the button. Normal enough, if the house had been closed up and there had been no one to answer. But Claude had been there. It was as thoughthe property had been deliberately disconnected from the outside world.
    He felt a sudden impatience to see the photographs he had taken, a record more reliable than memory, and decided to go straight to the processing lab and get the film developed. Leaning forward to make himself heard over the swirls and torrents of sitar music, he gave the address to the back of the cabdriver’s turbaned head.
    It was almost seven by the time he pushed open the front door of his apartment. Dropping his bags, he went over and switched on the viewing box set into the top of his worktable. The glow flickered and spread into a sheet of pure white light as he laid the transparencies in vivid rows across the glass. The tiny images shone up at him—Claude, the Cézanne, the Zucarelli van and, presumably, Zucarelli himself. Andre rearranged the transparencies, putting them in chronological sequence, telling the story. The details were clear, the focus perfectly sharp even under the magnification of a loupe. As evidence it could hardly have been more conclusive.
    But evidence of what? An innocent errand? Andre sat back on the stool, shaking his head. It wasn’t right.
    He stared at the bulletin board on the wall above his table, a jumble of Polaroids, bills, newspaper clippings, numbers and addresses on scraps of paper, a menu from L’Ami Louis, expense claim forms, unanswered invitations, unopened envelopes from the IRS, and, like a shaft of sunshine