'And are you planning to let me in on it?'
'Well, it's still not completely made. I have to… there's more to it.'
'Do I get a hint?'
'No, you don't get a hint,' she said with sudden sharpness, 'because if I discuss it with you, you get all self- sacrificing and reasonable, and then I start taking your needs into consideration, and I just think that this is one decision I ought to be making for myself.'
'It's important to me, too, Anne, that's all I'm saying,' I said. Reasonably, of course.
'Ah, Chris, I know that.' I could tell that she was already sorry about the flare-up. 'But let's drop it for now. I don't want to talk about it on the telephone.'
'Of course,' I said, 'if that's what you want.'
I was being so reasonable that I was starting to irritate me. But underneath, I wasn't feeling reasonable at all, and both of us knew it. I wanted her to resign. I wanted her to come back to the States and find a real job. I wanted her to live near me, where she belonged damnit. I wanted her to live with me.
But apparently it wasn't going to work out that way. Why would she worry about breaking that to me on the telephone? I didn't say anything more for a long time, for fear of saying something decidedly unreasonable and not in the least self-sacrificing.
Finally, she spoke, very quietly. 'Well, then, I guess I'll see you Saturday?'
'Yes. I'll get back earlier if I possibly can. I-I love you.' 'I love you, Chris.'
There was a click and a hum, and I was sitting alone on a hotel bed in a room 'lit' by three 25-watt bulbs, six thousand miles from home and from the only person who really mattered to me. I put the receiver back in its cradle.
All things considered, I didn't think it was going to go down as one of my better nights.
Clotilde Guyot's eyes were bright and brimming. 'Rene Vachey was a saint.'
I had brought this jolly, affable woman close to indignant tears with what I'd thought was a reasonably innocuous question: Could she tell me anything that might throw some light on Julien Mann's charges?
'Can you have any idea,' she asked, 'what it was for him to hide a family wanted by the Nazis? It wasn't only the risk of our being heard or seen, or of a surprise visit by the Gestapo, you see. It was the number of people whose goodness had to be relied on-the milkman who pretended to take no notice when a bachelor began buying three liters of milk a week, the doctor who asked no questions about a six-year-old 'nephew' never seen before, who had come down with whooping cough. We never knew when someone might take offense at a fancied slight and drop a vindictive word to some petty functionary. There was never a knock on the door when our hearts wouldn't stop.'
She looked at me accusingly. 'And he didn't have to do it, monsieur. He did it out of pity, out of kindness.'
'I'm sorry, madame,' I said sincerely. 'I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I'm only trying to find out whatever I can about the Rembrandt and where it came from.'
She shrugged. 'I wouldn't know anything about his private purchases. I know where he bought it, that's all, as I told your friend.'
'Yes,' I said, careful not to tread too heavily, 'but Julien Mann says it's actually a Flinck that-'
'I know what he says,' she said tightly. She folded her hands on her desk. 'I am quite sure he is mistaken.'
'I think so, too, but I thought perhaps you might remember something about him-about his father, I mean-'
She jerked her head no. The tears were very close now. 'It was fifty years ago, monsieur,' she said through a throat that had all but closed up. 'I don't recollect him at all.'
'Well, then, anything at all that you can tell me about-about the way Monsieur Vachey conducted the business of the Galerie Royale, anything that might-'
The brilliant eyes finally overflowed, the tears running copiously down her cheeks and dripping from her soft chin. A crumpled handkerchief was pulled from somewhere to mop up, but the flood kept coming. She cried without sobs or snuffles, silently except for the accompaniment of long, hollow sighs. I began to apologize and get to my feet, but she waved me back into my chair, and after a while she was able to take a final dab at her reddened nose and tuck the handkerchief away again. A last, shaky sigh, and then came the flood of words.
What Julien Mann had told Les Echos Quotidiens was an unfounded distortion of a patriot's life. Yes, Vachey had worked with the Nazis, all right, but not for them, never for them. Yes, he had bought up Jewish collections that he'd known the Nazis would be interested in. No, he couldn't pay what they were worth, how could he? He paid what he could. And yes, he sold them to the Nazis, if you can call such transactions sales- sometimes he was paid a few francs more than he had paid himself. Just as often, not as much. And sometimes, if they felt like it, they would 'pay' him with worthless modern paintings that even Hitler didn't want. One did not try to negotiate with the Nazis.
'I know these things for facts, monsieur. I was there.' 'I'm sure you do,' I said humbly.
'And if he hadn't done this, then what?' Madame Guyot went steadily on, her voice dignified and steady now. 'Goering and Rosenberg and the rest of them would have seized the art directly from the Jews, simply walked in with their hooligans and taken it away, as they did in so many other cases, with no thought of paying anything at all for it. What Rene Vachey did in these matters, he did for the Jews, and for France, not for the Nazis. Because of him, many received the money they needed to flee, to save themselves. My own mother, my small brother…' Her eyes shone.
'I know, madame,' I said softly. 'My friend told me about it.' I was embarrassed: uncomfortably aware of the privileged, painless life I'd led; and aware, also, of how quickly I'd leaped to accuse Vachey, if only in my mind. It was good to hear another side of the story. I was starting to wonder how many more there were.
Madame Guyot, her face a shiny pink, seemed embarrassed too. Effusive and talkative she might be, but I didn't think that these deep, raw emotions had very often been put on public display. But she appeared to be relieved as well, purged by the deluge of memory and tears. A terminal sigh that lifted and dropped her shoulders was followed by a sweet, proud, almost playful smile, and a change of subject. 'So, Monsieur Norgren, how do you like the office of the new proprietor of the Galerie Vachey?'
I looked around me, ready to change the subject myself. Clotilde Guyot's workspace made my office in SAM look like the grand ballroom at Fontainebleau. Located at the back of the house, behind the gallery, it was more like a utility room (which was probably what it had once been) than an office; a windowless, closetlike cubicle about twelve feet by twelve, with fuse boxes, fire extinguishers, and alarm system displays on the walls instead of artwork. There were metal file cabinets in two of the corners, and fiberboard storage boxes stacked up on the floor. A small table against one wall held a copier and a fax machine.
It was, in other words, still a utility room, except for the student-sized desk and two chairs that had been sandwiched between the copier and one of the cabinets.
I smiled back at her. 'You must be looking forward to moving into Monsieur Vachey's office.'
She goggled as if I'd made an indecent proposal. 'Oh, I could never do that. I-no, that wouldn't be right at all.'
But I could see that the idea simply hadn't occurred to her before, and that even while she was instinctively rejecting it, she was beginning to turn it over in her mind.
'Well, perhaps after a respectful interval,' she allowed, trying the thought out on me. 'Naturally, I wouldn't ask for the furnishings; they would be Christian's…' For a few seconds she floated off among bright images of Vachey's large and airy study. Then she blushed, distressed at the impropriety of such notions, and blurted: 'Oh, monsieur, who would kill a man like that?'
'I don't know,' I told her gently. 'I know the police are doing their best to find out.'
'Of course,' she said without conviction.
'Madame, perhaps you can help. There are some things…'
Her eyes lit up again. 'Yes?'
I leaned toward her over the cluttered desk. 'There was a blue book in Monsieur Vachey's study, a scrapbook
