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Authors: Alexander Campion
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supply of Brennekes in case things got really out of hand.
CHAPTER 9
C apucine squirmed in what she guessed was an original Breuer Wassily chair. The hard black leather straps were as slippery as an over-waxed hardwood floor and bit painfully into the backs of her knees. The day, she thought to herself, the Paris police received the same budgets as those designer cops on American TV, she would be sure to buy a whole set of Bauhaus furniture for her interrogation rooms.
David perched perfectly comfortably in the chair’s twin, lazily twirling a feathery lock around his index finger, preening for the two victims, who sat decorously draped on a Le Corbusier sofa in poses that left no doubt of their vocations as dancers. The two men had eyes only for him. For the hundredth time Capucine wondered if the entirety of David’s sensual life didn’t consist of sparking erotic attraction. Isabelle glowered at the scene, awkwardly balanced on a Gerrit Rietveld Z chair that looked like it would collapse into kindling at her first brusque movement.
“She knew we absolutely loathed the damn thing,” said one of the dancers.
“It was a bronze statuette of a deer. A deer, of all things, can you imagine? The only thing my horrible father left me,” added the other dancer. “He was a career army officer. Saint-Cyr and all that. Besides the army, the only thing that interested him was wearing ridiculous outfits and massacring deer with hounds. He certainly didn’t give a damn about his children. The day I told him I was gay, he disinherited me and never spoke to me again. When he died, he left me that fucking statuette as a pointed reminder of the virtuous life I should have led.”
“So you encouraged her to take it?” Isabelle asked.
“Now, wait a minute,” the first dancer said. “That piece is very valuable. It’s an original Pierre-Jules Mene. His work sells for quite a lot. We had it appraised at over ten thousand euros.”
“Bertrand, don’t be silly. You know perfectly well that we both detested the ghastly thing. You only kept it on the Saarinen table so you could stick your bills on the antlers and laugh at it. And what’s stolen is stolen whether you cry over it or not, isn’t that right, Officer?” The latter directed exclusively at David.
“Oh, you’ll get the insurance money, no doubt about that,” Capucine said. “I’m more interested in your relationship with the perp.”
“What a vulgar term,” the dancer called Claude said. “Her name is Célestine. We found her collapsed at the Marché de Grenelle last Sunday. She’s a poet. She had run away from a lover who was abusive and did horrible things to her. She’s so noble she stayed with that terrible man out of a sense of duty until finally she could stand it no longer and then she bolted. She spent the whole night wandering around and found herself in the market in the morning. She had fainted just the instant before we arrived. Isn’t that right, Bertrand?”
“A beautiful and moving story. We brought her home with us, of course,” Bertrand said. “She needed to be nursed back to health. After a day it was as if we had known her all our lives. She fit right in. She became happy. She made us happy. It was a wonderful moment for all of us.” He paused, as crestfallen as a children’s cartoon character. “Then one day Claude and I came home from rehearsal and she had gone. Poof.” He waved his fingers limply but gracefully in the air. “Just like that.”
“And she stole the Mene. We didn’t give it to her. Let’s be perfectly clear,” Claude said.
“Oh, how can you talk like that?” Bertrand said.
“Look, no one’s going to question your goddamn insurance claim,” Isabelle said irritably. “You’ll get every centime of the appraisal value, even though the perp is sure to have sold it for less than a third of that.”
Isabelle paused and consulted a piece of paper. “Did this woman have a long, melancholy face, which
CHAPTER 9
C apucine squirmed in what she guessed was an original Breuer Wassily chair. The hard black leather straps were as slippery as an over-waxed hardwood floor and bit painfully into the backs of her knees. The day, she thought to herself, the Paris police received the same budgets as those designer cops on American TV, she would be sure to buy a whole set of Bauhaus furniture for her interrogation rooms.
David perched perfectly comfortably in the chair’s twin, lazily twirling a feathery lock around his index finger, preening for the two victims, who sat decorously draped on a Le Corbusier sofa in poses that left no doubt of their vocations as dancers. The two men had eyes only for him. For the hundredth time Capucine wondered if the entirety of David’s sensual life didn’t consist of sparking erotic attraction. Isabelle glowered at the scene, awkwardly balanced on a Gerrit Rietveld Z chair that looked like it would collapse into kindling at her first brusque movement.
“She knew we absolutely loathed the damn thing,” said one of the dancers.
“It was a bronze statuette of a deer. A deer, of all things, can you imagine? The only thing my horrible father left me,” added the other dancer. “He was a career army officer. Saint-Cyr and all that. Besides the army, the only thing that interested him was wearing ridiculous outfits and massacring deer with hounds. He certainly didn’t give a damn about his children. The day I told him I was gay, he disinherited me and never spoke to me again. When he died, he left me that fucking statuette as a pointed reminder of the virtuous life I should have led.”
“So you encouraged her to take it?” Isabelle asked.
“Now, wait a minute,” the first dancer said. “That piece is very valuable. It’s an original Pierre-Jules Mene. His work sells for quite a lot. We had it appraised at over ten thousand euros.”
“Bertrand, don’t be silly. You know perfectly well that we both detested the ghastly thing. You only kept it on the Saarinen table so you could stick your bills on the antlers and laugh at it. And what’s stolen is stolen whether you cry over it or not, isn’t that right, Officer?” The latter directed exclusively at David.
“Oh, you’ll get the insurance money, no doubt about that,” Capucine said. “I’m more interested in your relationship with the perp.”
“What a vulgar term,” the dancer called Claude said. “Her name is Célestine. We found her collapsed at the Marché de Grenelle last Sunday. She’s a poet. She had run away from a lover who was abusive and did horrible things to her. She’s so noble she stayed with that terrible man out of a sense of duty until finally she could stand it no longer and then she bolted. She spent the whole night wandering around and found herself in the market in the morning. She had fainted just the instant before we arrived. Isn’t that right, Bertrand?”
“A beautiful and moving story. We brought her home with us, of course,” Bertrand said. “She needed to be nursed back to health. After a day it was as if we had known her all our lives. She fit right in. She became happy. She made us happy. It was a wonderful moment for all of us.” He paused, as crestfallen as a children’s cartoon character. “Then one day Claude and I came home from rehearsal and she had gone. Poof.” He waved his fingers limply but gracefully in the air. “Just like that.”
“And she stole the Mene. We didn’t give it to her. Let’s be perfectly clear,” Claude said.
“Oh, how can you talk like that?” Bertrand said.
“Look, no one’s going to question your goddamn insurance claim,” Isabelle said irritably. “You’ll get every centime of the appraisal value, even though the perp is sure to have sold it for less than a third of that.”
Isabelle paused and consulted a piece of paper. “Did this woman have a long, melancholy face, which
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