The Picture of Guilt Page 3

  They collected their notes and piled Ellen's materials neatly on the table. They left her apartment, closing the door carefully behind them. They stopped downstairs for their jackets before walking to the nearest station on the Paris m6tro, or subway. It was just a short walk in the direction of the Bastille. The sky was brilliant, | dotted with fluffy clouds. Over the rooftops at the far end of the street, Nancy could see, gleaming in the sunlight, the gilded statue atop the colunm in the center of the Place de la Bastille. As they walked past the coffee-roaster's shop, she took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh of pleasure.

  "I think I'm in love," George announced. "With Paris!"

  Nancy grinned at her. Words didn't seem necessary.

  The entrance to the metro was a green cast-iron structure in the form of twining branches and leaves, with tall lamps shaped like tulips at the corners. Downstairs, the girls bought a supply of tickets and passed through the turnstile, then studied the big wall map of the metro system.

  "All those tangled colored lines look like my grandmother^s knitting basket after the kitten got through with it," George said with a giggle.

  Nancy located a metro stop near Censier's gallery, then traced it backward with her fingertip. '*There we go—we only have to change trains once. Come on."

  Less than half an hour later, Nancy and George were riding an escalator back to street level. On the other side of a wide, traffic-packed boulevard was a squat, squarish church whose stone walls were scarred by the centuries. Across from it was a crowded cafe whose many tables were screened from strollers by neatly trimmed hedges. The sign over the door read Aux Deux Magots.

  "See that cafe? That was one of Solo's favorite places to meet people," Nancy said excitedly. "Fm starting to feel as if we're getting closer to her. And look, that's the rue Bonaparte. The gallery must be down that way."

  The girls crossed the boulevard and walked past the church into a narrow street. Every other shop seemed to be an art gallery. The one they wanted had discreet gold lettering on the window. The door was locked. Nancy pressed the bell. A moment later the door opened with a click.

  Nancy and George went in. As they were scanning the smooth white walls hung with many canvases, a young woman in what looked like a genuine sixties white minidress came out of the back. "May I help you?" she asked in French.

  "We'd like to speak to Monsieur Censier," Nancy replied.

  "I'm sorry," the woman said. "He is away for the moment. He should be back in an hour, if you would like to return."

  "Thanks, we'll do that," Nancy said.

  As she stepped onto the sidewalk, someone almost bumped into her. She glanced up and recognized Keith Astor, the art student they had met the evening before at Ellen's open house.

  "Hey, I know you," he said. "Nancy, right? And—"

  "George."

  Keith nodded at George's reply, without taking his eyes from Nancy's. Was he coming on to her, Nancy wondered, or was he simply one of those guys who couldn't help flirting with everyone?

  "Sure, George," he said. "How are you guys doing? Checking out the Paris art scene?"

  "Sort of," Nancy replied. "How about you?"

  "Oh, hey, this is my turf," he said. "I'm taking classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, just down there, near the river. It's a little stodgy, but it's still one of the best art schools in the world. Vm on my way to lunch. Want to join me?"

  Nancy hesitated. She and George had lots of work to do. On the other hand, Keith could be a valuable source of information about Jules and his friends—and enemies.

  '*Don't worry," Keith added. "For Paris, the place Fm going is super cheap. That's why all the kids from the Beaux-Arts hang out there."

  He stepped off the curb, then jumped back as a noisy motorbike came zipping around the corner, narrowly missing him. Nancy, afraid that he might lose his balance, grabbed his shoulder.

  "Those mobylettes!" he said angrily. "You have to watch yourself in this town. The people who ride them never pay attention to anyone!"

  Nancy and George followed Keith a couple of blocks to a comer restaurant with checkered cafe curtains in the lower part of the wide windows. As they made their way through the crowded front room, at least half a dozen people waved or called out to Keith, who waved back.

  The back room, like the front, was furnished with long wooden tables and benches. The tables were so crowded that Nancy didn't see any place for the three of them to sit. At one table a guy with a black beard was talking intently to a girl with bangs that came down past her eyebrows. Keith tapped the bearded guy on the shoulder, motioning for him to move over. The guy and his companion slid down, making room for three.

  "There's a fixed menu," Keith explained, indicating a blackboard on the wall. "Appetizer, main dish, cheese, and dessert. Do you like salmon steak? That's the main dish today."

  "Sounds terrific," George said as a waiter appeared with a basket of bread and three plates of ham, salami, hard sausage, and tiny pickles.

  Nancy waited until Keith finished his first bite, then asked, "Did you hear about Jules?"

  Keith's face grew sober. "Yes. One of the guys in the program called me this morning and told me," he replied. "How awful! People get killed in trafl5c accidents every day, but you never expect it to happen to someone you know."

  "He was working for Professor Mathieson, wasn't he?" George asked.

  "That's right," Keith said.

  "I heard that David was pretty upset when Jules got that job," Nancy remarked. "Apparently he thought he should have gotten it instead."

  Keith let his fork clatter to his plate. "A lot of people are too snoopy for their own good," he said, scowling. "Maybe they should try doing something worthwhile, instead of butting into other people's business."

  Apparently feeling he had been a little too rude, he added, "Have you seen much of Paris so far? You can spend years in this town without seeing everything worthwhile."

  The salmon steak was delicious, but Nancy felt too frustrated to enjoy it. Every time she or George asked Keith about people in the exchange program, he started talking about the attractions of Paris. He obviously knew the city really well— suq)risingly well for someone who had only been there since September.

  "You must have spent time in Paris before this year," Nancy remarked, after he gave them a list of four or five museums they shouldn't miss.

  "So?" he replied flippantly. "Oh, did I mention the Cluny Museum? It's just a few blocks from here. The medieval tapestries are among the most famous in the world."

  Nancy listened with interest, but she kept wondering why Keith was stonewalling. What was he afraid of giving away?

  As they were starting their dessert of apple tart, a cute guy in jeans and a leather jacket stopped at the table.

  "Keith," he said in accented English. "I was hoping I'd see you. There's a party Saturday night, at Didier's studio. You must come."

  He glanced at George and Nancy and added, "Hello, I'm Alain. It will be much fun if you come, too. Here, I write you the address."

  He scribbled something on a card and handed it to George, then walked away, giving them a casual wave.

  "You're in luck," Keith said. "Alain and Didier give great parties. Listen, I've got to run. Maybe I'll see you on Saturday."

  He stood up, put some money on the table and walked out, leaving his apple tart untouched.

  "Well!" George said after he was gone. "I wonder what got to him?"

  "I don't know," Nancy replied. "He certainly seemed to be hiding something, but what—"

  She broke off her sentence. Through the open doorway into the front room, Nancy could just see out the front window. She stood to see better when she noticed Keith talking to someone beside him. She caught only a glimpse of his companion's face, but it was enough to recognize Pamela Fieldston and identify her starry-eyed expression. Pamela was apparently in the grip of a powerful crush.

  "I think I found out one of the things that Keith was hiding," Nancy said, a
nd told George what she had seen after she sat down.

  "Pamela and Keith?" George mused. "Hmm —I didn't see anything between them at the party last night. I did notice that Keith and Pamela's brother didn't get along very well, though.

  Nancy shrugged. "Yes, I did, too. Well, come on, let's see if Censier is back yet."

  They paid the check and walked back to the gallery. Inside, the girl in the minidress was talking to a man in a fitted mouse-gray suit. His thick blue-gray hair formed three precise waves as it crossed his head, and his cheeks were freshly shaved and powdered.

  "I am Jean-Luc Censier," he said as he crossed the room toward Nancy and George. From his

  expression, it was obvious that he had already decided they were wasting his time. "You wish to see me?"

  "That's right," Nancy said, improvising quickly. "Fm an American college student doing a term paper on the artist Josephine Solo. I understand you knew her."

  "Knew her?" Censier said with a sniff. "My dear girl, I was her exclusive dealer for over fifteen years. It was on my advice that she gave up her early style to develop the one that made her name world famous."

  He waved a well-manicured hand toward a painting on the far wall. Nancy had already noticed it. In incredibly sharp detail, it showed a little girl lying on her stomach in tall grass, her chin cupped in her hands, seemingly unaware of the snake slithering across her ankle.

  "Why would anybody want that hanging on their wall?" George demanded with a shudder.

  "Last week a Japanese banker offered to buy it for more than the price of a very expensive sports car," Censier replied coldly. "The collector who put it on the market turned him down. So few paintings by Josephine Solo are on the market that their value is bound to increase dramatically in the next few years."

  "Why are there so few?" Nancy asked.

  "Solo took great pains with her work," the gallery owner replied. "Every small detail had to be exactly done. She never passed a painting on to me until she was absolutely satisfied with it. And sometimes, if that moment never arrived, she would destroy it. Some very good paintings ended up in her fireplace, alas.''

  "Was Josephine Solo a difficult person to work with?'' Nancy asked. "I heard a rumor that toward the end of her life, you and she weren't on very good terms."

  Censier narrowed his eyes at Nancy. "I thought as much," he said. **You are working for that American professor, are you not? When I refused to talk to the other person she sent, she decided to use your fresh young faces to charm me. Well, please tell her that it did not work."

  Nancy felt a wave of irritation at herself. Had she really been that obvious? **rm not sure I understand," she fumbled. "What other person?"

  Censier's face turned red. Clenching his fists, he took a step toward her. "You know who I mean," he said through tight lips. "Daubenton, he called himself. And if you do not get out of here at once, I will see that you receive the same treatment he did!"

  Chapter Five

  HIS FACE FULL OF MENACE, the gallery owner took another step toward Nancy and George, but Nancy refused to back down. Straightening her shoulders, she told him in a quiet but hrm voice, "I'd be careful what I say, if I were you. Do you realize that Jules Daubenton was killed less than twenty-four hours ago? Is that the treatment you're threatening us with?"

  "What?" Censier pulled his head back in surprise. "If this is a joke, I find it in very bad taste."

  "It's no joke," George quickly assured him. "Jules Daubenton was killed last night, hit by a truck. We saw it happen—well, practically."

  Censier was silent for a moment. "I am very sorry, of course," he went on. "Even if I did not appreciate that young man's impolite questions and insulting insinuations."

  "Questions and insinuations about your relationship with Josephine Solo?" Nancy asked.

  When she saw the cords in the man's neck stand out, Nancy got ready to face another burst of temper from him, but it didn't come. Instead, he took a deep breath and said, "Josephine Solo was never easy to deal with. Anyone who knew her will tell you that. And toward the end of her life, she came to hold the most outrageous suspicions about people who had only her best interests at heart. We all forgave her, of course, but in my case, I felt that I had no choice but to end our business relationship. But it is still a very sensitive topic for me. There—I have nothing to add to that. If you will excuse me . . .''

  As he started to turn away, George demanded, "What did you mean when you said we'd get the same treatment as Jules?"

  "What?" He hesitated for a moment, then said, "He refused to leave when I asked. I had to tell him that I would call the police and have him arrested. Now, please—I am a very busy man."

  Nancy and George left the gallery. "Let's find some place to sit down and share our reactions," Nancy said as they strolled down the sidewalk.

  They walked back toward the metro and stopped at a sidewalk cafe in the bright sunlight. A waiter in a white apron and black vest was at the table only moments after they sat down. Nancy ordered a cafe creme for herself and a tea with milk for George, and then, as an afterthought, she asked for two croissants as well. The waiter nodded and made a swipe at the marble tabletop with his napkin.

  "Censier's hiding something,'' Nancy said as the waiter walked away. "That note we found couldn't have been anything but a threat."

  "He seems to like making threats," George replied. "He threatened us, he threatened Solo, and he threatened Jules, too. But the important question is, does he do anything about his threats?"

  Nancy thoughtfully stared out at the sunlit square, then leaned back to allow the waiter to put their croissants and beverages on the tiny table. She added a sugar cube to her coffee with cream, then took a sip before saying, "That's one question. Another is, what did Solo accuse him of that led to the threats? My hunch is that she thought he was embezzling money from her."

  "That fits," George said excitedly. "And then he killed her to keep the truth from coming out and ruining him!"

  "Whoa! It's a long way from making vague threats to killing somebody," Nancy pointed out. "Even if Solo did find out that Censier was cheating her, that doesn't mean he murdered her."

  George nodded regretfully. "No, I guess not. But it is possible. And what if Jules found evidence that Censier had been swindling Solo and let Censier know it? Censier could have decided to silence Jules."

  Nancy shook her head. "I don't know—it seems like a pretty flimsy motive to me. What if Censier did cheat Solo, and the facts came out now? It wouldn't help his reputation, but is that enough to turn him into a murderer?"

  "Do you think Solo was getting a little dotty?" George asked. "Censier seemed to say that he wasn't the only one of Solo's friends to be having problems with her."

  "That we can check out," Nancy replied, taking out the list of names she had compiled from Solo's datebook. "Let's find a phone and see if we can talk to any of these people."

  The waiter directed them to a coin phone on the lower level of the caf6. Twenty minutes later Nancy brushed her hair back from her forehead with an ink-stained hand and ruefully perused the scattered notes on her memo pad.

  "Three out of five," she said. "That's not too bad, I guess. So, our first appointment is with somebody named Roger Henderson, who runs an American bookstore near Notre Dame Cathedral."

  They walked down to the Seine, then strolled along it past one open-air bookstall after another. George wanted to stop and rummage through a bin of antique postcards, but Nancy took her arm and dragged her away. They arrived at the book-

  Store as it was reopening after a long lunch break. Henderson, a tall man with thinning white hair and lots of laugh lines around his blue eyes, was wheeling out a table loaded with used paperbacks. Nancy introduced herself.

  "I'm glad to see so much interest in Josephine," he said. "It's a little late to help her peace of mind, but her work deserves the recognition."

  Nancy and George followed him inside the shop. The shelves of books reached all
the way to the high ceiling and seemed to lean inward, as if they were about to tumble to the floor. Nancy could see dust motes in the air. George sneezed.

  "Sorry," the bookdealer said, smiling. "It's all I can do to keep the place in some kind of order. Dusting it would take an army. Now, what can I tell you about Josephine? We were friends for twenty years, but I never knew from month to month if she was speaking to me."

  "Did she pick a lot of fights with people?" asked George.

  Henderson hesitated. "Not exactly—but she was always moody and touchy, especially about her work. I don't think she was ever really happy with it, especially in the last ten years or so, but if anyone said anything about it that sounded like a slight, she went off like a rocket."

  "Censier, the gallery owner, told us that he pretty much made Solo's career. Is that a fair statement?" Nancy asked.

  Henderson pursed his lips and made a little popping sound. "Not exactly," he repeated. "Jean-Luc's the one who turned her toward that hyperrealist stuflf, true. But if you look at where her paintings are now, it's the early abstracts that are in museum collections. Because they're better and more honest, if you ask me. And of course, late last year they had a huge blowup and Jo broke off with him totally."

  "What was it about?" Nancy asked.

  "I hate to repeat vague rumors," the book-dealer replied. "All I know for sure is that Jo thought Jean-Luc was using her work in some sort of scheme that she didn't approve of When she confronted him, he denied it, which simply made her madder than ever. Jo hated liars. I can't tell you more than that."

  Nancy and George continued to question him, but he had little to add. Finally Nancy thanked him and they left. As they rode the metro to their next appointment, Nancy wondered whether Censier had broken off relations with Solo, as he had claimed, or whether she had fired him, as Henderson had implied. Henderson's version sounded more likely. He had no reason to distort the truth. Censier, on the other hand, would obviously prefer to hide the fact that a prestigious artist like Solo had quit his gallery.