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FOUR

T he Place Masséna was one of the busiest squares in Nice, mainly thanks to the art deco bus station that had been built to one side, its neon sign – GARE MUNICIPALE D’AUTOBUS – blazing out the fact that it had been given pride of place. Without all the attendant traffic, buses, coaches, taxis and cars, the square might have been beautiful. There was a thick border of trees on one side and a row of classical colonnades on the other, with several old-fashioned shops and boutiques tucked away behind. This was where the Galerie Werner-Waysmith was located. It was at the very heart of the old town, surrounded by cafés, easy to find for dedicated art buyers and perfectly placed for passing trade – not that casual tourists often looked in. The gallery was too austere, lacking anything of the colour and life that tourists would find just a few minutes away on the Promenade des Anglais.

It was also far too expensive for anyone except a dedicated collector. Very little that was sold there cost less than five thousand francs and there were pieces priced at twenty times that amount. A single work would be displayed in each of the two windows on either side of a forbidding, iron-rimmed door and the absence of any price tag was more than enough to suggest that what was on sale here would probably be out of most people’s reach.

Those who passed through the door would find themselves in a dark, expensively carpeted room with an antique table and two chairs surrounded by a small selection of paintings and sculptures exquisitely displayed. Very little daylight entered the gallery. The artworks were picked out by carefully placed spotlights that lifted them out of the shadows.

Visitors would find themselves confronted by the gallery’s directrice , a woman in her late sixties, usually dressed in dark colours. Madame Dubois had no first name that anyone knew and had worked there both before and after the war. She had never explained what she had done during the hiatus, but had turned up for work on 28 August 1944 (a Monday), three days after the liberation of Paris.

Tourists or passers-by were dealt with swiftly but politely. Madame Dubois had a way of dismissing them that somehow never gave offence. If the caller seemed serious or came with the right credentials, she would look after them with perfect efficiency. Finally, if they had purchased an artwork from the gallery in the past – and Madame Dubois never forgot a name or a face – then she would offer coffee or a coupe de champagne while she went to the back office to summon the younger Monsieur Waysmith or his father.

Robert Waysmith was sitting in the back office now. He had entered through a door that opened into a narrow street behind the gallery and taken his place at one of the two desks that faced each other across the room. Given that both father and son were in the business of selling art, the office was surprisingly bare. There were many canvases, framed and unframed, leaning against the walls but none on the walls themselves. A single window would have given a view of the square but even this had been blanked out by frosted glass. A long shelf ran from one end of the room to the other. It contained a series of box files, colour-coded and dated. An old-fashioned safe stood in a corner. It didn’t look as if it had been opened for years.

Robert was holding a framed oil painting that showed a stream on a summer’s day. A woman, holding a parasol, was walking along one of the banks. This was the work that his client, Lucas Dorfman, had purchased and which he was about to deliver. He examined the image one last time, marvelling at the play of light and colour, the perfectly captured landscape, the delicate brushstrokes. Not for nothing had Alfred Sisley been called the purest of the Impressionists.

And now it was going. Robert wrapped it carefully in thick brown paper, which he secured with string. He had already prepared a copy of the invoice and had written a detailed description of the work that included its subject matter, the medium (oil on canvas), the size and the provenance. It had been purchased from the Fischer Gallery, a highly respected arthouse in Lucerne. Before that, it had been in a private collection. Finally, Robert had provided reports by two art experts attesting to the painting’s authenticity, condition and artistic significance.

Carrying the picture under one arm, Robert left the office and went into the gallery. Madame Dubois was on her own.

‘I’m driving to Antibes,’ he told her. He spoke in English. Madame Dubois was fluent in three languages and would have been offended if he had used his faltering French. ‘I’ll be back at half past twelve. I’m meeting my father for lunch.’

Madame Dubois glanced at her watch. ‘The traffic may be difficult,’ she sniffed. ‘All this construction! This new autoroute they are going to build …’

‘It’ll make life easier in the long run,’ Robert said.

‘It will destroy the region. You mark my words, Monsieur Robert. Hotels, apartments, new houses, motorways … One day there will be nothing left.’

Carrying the painting, Robert exited the gallery by the front door and crossed the square to where he had left his car. He did not notice the silver Peugeot 203 parked nearby, nor the driver, watching him intently through the front window. The man was alone in his car and as Robert emerged, he lifted a German-made Voigtl?nder 35 mm camera and adjusted the lens. The sun had clouded over and he wanted to be sure that the images would be as clearly defined as possible. He took several shots.

Satisfied, he placed the camera on the passenger seat beside him and waited until Robert had driven off.

Then he followed him.

*

The Pharmacie Lafayette was named after the street in which it was located, about a twenty-minute walk from the Place Masséna. It was a small, old-fashioned establishment in a narrow street hemmed in by flats that rose five storeys on each side, with a run-down café at one end and a family-run hotel at the other. The only other shop anywhere close was a grocery full of bottles and cartons that looked years out of date. The pharmacist who ran the shop and spent seven hours a day behind the mahogany counter was a man called Hector Brunelle. He had inherited the business from his father. His wife nagged him. His children ignored him. This was all he had.

Approximately two hours after Robert Waysmith had left the art gallery, the door opened, jangling a bell on a metal spring, and an elderly man walked in. It would have been difficult to tell his age from his appearance. He was wearing sunglasses and a panama hat and moved slowly, supporting himself on a stick. There were tufts of white hair showing under the hat, and when he spoke, his voice gave away his advancing years. He was also a foreigner. His French was good but heavily accented. He was surely American. The man was wearing a crumpled pale blue suit that was a little too big for him. There was something else that Brunelle noticed: a smell, perhaps of surgical spirit.

‘ Bonjour, monsieur. ’ Brunelle spoke no language other than his own. Both his eyes had a cloudy, white sheen to them, evidence of cataracts. He gazed uncertainly at his customer. ‘ Comment puis-je vous aider? ’

‘I wish to buy two grams of aconitine,’ the man said. He used the French word, aconit . The pharmacist recognised it at once. If used very carefully, aconitine could act as a painkiller – for the relief of headaches or toothache, for example. Too large a dose, however, would simply kill.

‘I’m afraid I cannot help you, monsieur.’

‘You do not have any?’

‘I do. But you will require a prescription from a doctor. May I ask what it is for?’

The bell clanged a second time and another customer came in, a young woman wearing a light raincoat and clasping a handbag. She was evidently in a hurry and looked annoyed to find that she would have to wait.

‘I am a doctor,’ the man said and Brunelle nodded. That might explain the smell of surgical spirit. ‘I have a patient in Nice who is suffering from gout.’ As he spoke, he had taken out a document with his name, address and other details, dated and marked with official-looking red and blue stamps.

‘What age is your patient?’

‘He is in his fifties. An Englishman. I have prescribed the same medicine in the past.’ He was beginning to sound annoyed.

The woman, too, had been listening to all this with growing impatience and edged forward. ‘ Pardon ,’ she said. She addressed the customer in front of her. ‘ Je suis un peu pressée . As-tu l’heure? ’ Excuse me. I’m in a hurry. Do you have the time? She was obviously French.

The pharmacist was wearing a watch, but his eyes weren’t up to the task of reading it. The man who had introduced himself as a doctor answered for him. ‘ Il est midi quinze, madame. ’ Twelve fifteen.

With an apologetic glance, she addressed the pharmacist. ‘ Je cherche le shampooing Dulsol. ’

‘ Je ne l’ai pas, madame …’

He didn’t have the brand she was looking for. The woman turned and left. Throughout all this, the man in the sunglasses had done his best to keep his face out of sight.

‘Two grams, monsieur le docteur ?’ he said. ‘I can do this for you. But you will have to sign the register.’

‘Of course.’

The pharmacist put on a pair of glasses with thick lenses and perched them carefully on his nose. Then he unlocked a display cabinet and took out a small, sealed flask containing a white powder. He unscrewed the lid and carried it over to a set of scales. Meanwhile, the man who claimed to be a doctor laid a ten-franc note on the counter and watched, expressionless, as the poison was weighed out.

*

Thirty minutes later, Elmer Waysmith and his son were having lunch at a restaurant close to the gallery. Le Poisson d’Or was a typical bistro, cosy and unpretentious. It specialised in seafood but was set back from the Promenade des Anglais, with no view of the sea. This was one of the reasons Elmer liked it. As he often said, move it twenty steps further south and the prices would double and it would also be a lot more crowded. He liked the simplicity of the decor and the fact that the manager and waiters knew him well. They didn’t fuss around. For Elmer, lunch was just another part of the business day, even when he was eating with his son, and he wanted to get on with it.

They had been given their usual table in the corner and had both ordered the fish of the day – red mullet – with pommes frites and salad. There was a chilled Pouilly-Fuissé on the table; the half-empty bottle had been returned to the fridge after Elmer’s last visit. They would have no more than one glass each and perhaps half a glass of red wine with the cheeseboard, which they preferred to dessert.

‘Did you see Dorfman?’ Elmer asked.

‘Yes, Pa. I told you I was going over.’

‘You told me you were going over, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he was there.’

‘Yes, I saw him,’ Robert said, with a visible sigh.

‘Did you talk to him about the View of Louveciennes or the Bridge at Saint-Martin ?’

Robert hesitated. These were two other paintings by Alfred Sisley that had been in the gallery for some time, but his father hadn’t mentioned them recently. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Mr Dorfman was very happy with Woman with the Parasol and I didn’t think he was in any mood to talk about anything else.’

‘That’s a pity.’ Elmer had a particular expression when he was unhappy, a sort of petulance that didn’t suit him at all. Back at the gallery, Madame Dubois knew it well. She called it his bad-weather face. ‘Maybe you could see him next week.’

‘Why?’

‘I might be able to offer them to him at a special price. You could tell him we’re having a summer sale.’ He did a mental calculation. ‘Thirty per cent reduction.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ Robert was genuinely surprised. A thought occurred to him. ‘Did you get them from Mr Werner?’

Werner was Elmer Waysmith’s business partner and the other half of the gallery’s name. He lived in Zurich and these days the two of them seldom saw each other.

‘No. It’s got nothing to do with Werner!’

‘Then why do you want to get rid of the paintings?’

Elmer glowered at his son. ‘I need the cash. I’ve told you – I want to buy those Kleins.’

‘The blue canvases …’

‘That’s not what they’re called, Robert. Give them their proper name.’

‘The propositions monochromes .’

‘Exactly. If we move quickly, we could get all eleven of them. It’s the sort of opportunity that never comes twice.’

‘I don’t understand, Pa.’ Robert paused, not wanting to annoy his father. ‘The Sisleys are beautiful. They’re his best work and you’ve always said that when he’s at his best, he’s better than anyone. But Klein! He doesn’t paint anything! They’re just blue squares.’

‘Klein creates colours that have never been seen before.’

‘But they’re only colours! His paintings have no subject.’

‘The colours are the subject.’ Elmer threw down his fork and picked up his glass of wine. ‘The trouble with you, Robert, is that you have no understanding of this business. Even if you’re too blind to appreciate the work for yourself, you might ask yourself why Colette Allendy has agreed to exhibit all the works in Paris next October …’

‘In the sixteenth arrondissement. It’s hardly very central.’

‘But she is central to everything that’s happening in modern art right now.’ Elmer emptied his glass in one swallow. ‘It’s no wonder you didn’t succeed as an artist. You have no vision. You’re looking backwards. Believe me, Robert. Impressionism is over. Yes, Sisley will continue to fetch high prices … like Monet and Pissarro and all the rest of them. But if you want to make real profits, you must look to the unknown, and trust me, one day everyone in the world is going to know Yves Klein.’

‘I didn’t succeed as an artist because you stopped me,’ Robert said dully.

‘I did you a favour, son. You didn’t have the talent. You weren’t going to get anywhere. I put you into law school and when that didn’t work out, I brought you into my business. I won’t be running Werner-Waysmith for ever and I’d like to see you at the helm, but maybe it’s time you started pulling your weight. Go and see Dorfman!’

Elmer picked up his knife and fork and continued easing the flesh off the skeleton of his red mullet. Robert sat in silence. He was used to being treated this way. It had happened often enough. But there were also times when he hated his father, when everything in his life – the failure of his career, the death of his mother, the hours wasted in a world that meant nothing to him – came to the boil and he would do anything – anything – to break free.

It was just such a time right now.