Da Easter Bunny Code -- chapitre quatre*
Jan. 14th, 2008 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
realthog[* Note for Ayn Rand Fans: This does not mean you'll find only 25% of a chapter here. Be reassured: there's a complete chapter, all right. The explanation for your confusion is that the French, for reasons best known to themselves, speak a different language from us. How inconsiderate! But they do. And in their language, the word quatre means . . .
Oh.
I've lost you already, haven't I?]
Yes, the moment has come for the fourth -- and so far final -- chapter of the gut-curdlingly enthralling saga of love, lust, bad theology, pseudohistory and appalling writing that is Da Easter Bunny Code. Accept no substitutes unless you must!!!!
If you are one of those fortunates who've managed to escape earlier instalments, fear not. You can find them as follows:
http://realthog.livejournal.com/6036.htm
http://realthog.livejournal.com/7386.htm
http://realthog.livejournal.com/9369.htm
http://realthog.livejournal.com/12927.ht
http://realthog.livejournal.com/16615.html (the official Chapitre Trois, which is so completely expensive and posh it doesn't even have a flipping label!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
I'm gasping -- as would you be if you'd just used as many gratuitous exclamation marks as I have.
Chapter 4
Inspector Gaston Cluedeaux of the Surete looked up at the
sound of footsteps echoing towards him along the long tile-
floored gallery, and winced. His knees were complaining from his
long session hunkered here beside the clerical cadaver,
observing, scrutinizing, reasoning, ratiocinating, letting ze
leetle grey cells do their work of first synthesis, then
analysis. They had to synthesize a self-consistent, coherent
picture of the situation from all the divergently disparate
strands of the unravelled tapestry that had unskeined itself to .
. . to . . .
He shook his head irritably. He was getting lost in his own
metaphor. He'd had le President on the cell phone for five
torturous and highly voluble minutes, and that sort of experience
tended to scramble his logical faculties.
The newcomers, Cluedeaux recognized as they came closer
under the bright klieg lights, were Escargau, the transvestite
undercover agent Gaulois, and a third man whom he assumed must be
the yanqui murderer Lapin.
If you had asked Cluedeaux why he was so certain the
American symbolatrist was the murderer of Cardinal Lebowski he
would have been unable to tell you, but that did not ameliorate
the certainty one iota. Call it Gallic stubbornness, if you will.
Or straightforward stupidity. Cluedeaux preferred to call it
investigative genius, and he was the senior officer in charge
here.
Introductions were soon made, and then Gaulois drifted off
in search of a spittoon. Rapidly, if slightly slurredly, Lapin
repeated once more the paltry tale of how he had come to Paris at
the behest of the late cardinal. Cluedeaux watched through his
habitually narrowed French eyes the way in which the
yanqui's yanqui eyes roved everywhere around him
except in the direction of the self-mutilated corpse. The
inspector remarked a slight widening of the pupils when Lapin
caught sight of the Corot painting on the wall, Still Life
with Bun, and noted the reaction for future reference. Once
the symbolatrist's explanation was done, Cluedeaux was tempted to
follow the procedure Gaulois had, unknown to the inspector,
prescribed earlier -- to wit, taking Lapin down to
headquarters and subjecting him to a plethora of peculiarly
Gallic sadisms, such as in the normal way happened only to geese
during the production of pƒte de fois gras. And, if that
didn't elicit the requisite response, there was always the
possibility of forcing him to drink white wine at room
temperature.
Yet something stayed his hand, and it wasn't just the
thought that Lapin, as an American, would probably be perfectly
content to guzzle warm white wine -- from the way the man's
breath had already started discolouring the nearby paintings he'd
been guzzling wine at all conceivable temperatures for some
considerable while before coming here. No, it was that widening
of Lapin's pupils at the sight of the Corot. The man was a
symbolatrist, after all -- the foremost in all the known
world, according to Escargau's hasty introduction.
"You 'ave seen something, perhaps, monsieur?" said
Cluedeaux into the redolent silence that followed Lapin's
recitation.
"That's 'professeur' to you, my man."
Cluedeaux inclined his head. "Bien sur.
Professeur." He spoke the word in such a way as to make it
perfectly clear that sooner or later -- probably sooner
-- Lapin was going to pay in blood and guts not only for his
offensive high-handedness but also for many years' worth of pent-
up resentment over the vile yanqui decision to inflict
EuroDisney upon the French.
Lapin was oblivious to such subtleties.
"There's something odd about this Corot painting," he said,
pointing.
Cluedeaux arched an eyebrow with exquisite insult. "Mais
oui?"
"Corot didn't paint still lifes. He painted landscapes."
"I 'ave already deducted as much, monsieur."
Lapin was too distracted by the rapid spinning of his own
intellectual gears to notice the use of the hated word
"monsieur".
"So either," he was continuing, "it has been mislabelled by
the Louvre staff -- not so improbable, considering their
country of origin -- or it is a forgery of some kind."
Cluedeaux bit back his fury as best he could. The goddamn'
American was going to get his white wine goddamn'
lukewarm. Ignoring the first of the fool's suggestions, he
latched onto the second.
"Why would someone wish to forge a Corot?" he asked,
reasonably enough. "And, if someone did indeed do so, 'ow come
the 'ighly skilled appraisal staff of the Louvre did not spot the
forgery at once?"
Lapin made a peevish little gesture with his hand. "I
misspoke," he admitted. "What I meant to suggest was not so much
a forgery as an overpainting."
"An 'overpainting'? What is zat?"
"It is, dear fellow," said Lapin with a maddening expression
of infinite patience, "where one painting has been, er, painted
over another."
The American crossed abruptly to the wall and put his face
close to the canvas of the Corot. "Just as I thought," he said as
much to himself as to Cluedeaux and the others, sniffing deeply.
"The paint on this is still relatively recent."
Despite the inspector's insuck of breath and Escargau's
reflexive reaching for the holster at his belt, Lapin touched a
fingertip quickly to the surface.
"It's fully dry, all right. These are acrylics, so if the
overpainting had been done within the last twenty-four hours
there would still be a trace of tackiness . . ."
"Are you suggesting a fine French forgery could be
tacky?" snapped Cluedeaux incredulously, also reaching for
Escargau's holster.
If Lapin was aware of the danger he was in, he gave no sign
of it. Instead he clucked testily and said, "Not that. I am
suggesting the paint would still be sticky if this had been done
earlier today. But it is fully dry. Yet there is still the whiff
of fresh paint in the air. Perhaps yesterday morning . . .?"
"I 'ad already deducted this as well, monsieur," said
Cluedeaux quickly. "The brush splashes on the wallpaper are, 'ow
you say, a doornail giveaway."
"Ah, yes, hadn't noticed them. Ahem. It's a good thing we
have the resources of symbolatrism on tap to back up your
hunches, isn't it?"
"As vous disez."
"Well then" -- Lapin put his hands on his hips --
"there is only one thing to be done, isn't there?"
"Quoi?"
"Strip the intruder paint off this canvas, of course, and
find out what's underneath it! Will it be a genuine original
Corot landscape, or will it be something else entirely?"
"Escusez moi," interposed Escargau.
"Yes, Constable?"
"Is it not an odd title for a landscape, this Still Life
with Bun?"
"I don't see what you . . . Hum, come to think of it, yes, I
do."
Lapin bent down to peer at the nameplate on the picture's
frame.
Oh, pined Cluedeaux, for a KICK MOI
sign!
"This is very mysterious," said Lapin softly, picking at the
corner of the nameplate with a fingernail.
There was a sudden cracking noise.
"Yeeearr -- owch!" said Lapin, sucking his finger.
"A secret booby-trap, per'aps a needle tipped with curare?"
enquired Cluedeaux hopefully.
"A broken fingernail. Either that plate is genuine or the
trickster secured it far more firmly than one might expect."
Cluedeaux beamed.
"So we do not 'ave to strip the paint off this masterpiece?"
he said drily.
"Of course we still must do that," snapped Lapin. "But first
I will with your permission continue my examination of this most
enigmatic picture frame."
It was typical of the yanqui, mused Cluedeaux, that
he didn't pause for the permission to be granted. With his face
pressed firmly to the panelling, Lapin was pulling the frame as
far away as he could from the wall -- which was not very far
-- and nosing behind it.
"Aha!" he said with an abrupt tone of fascination.
"You 'ave found something?" said the Frenchman before
recalling decorum. "I 'ad already deducted there would be
something there," he added, "but I decided to leave it for you to
find. As a matter of la politesse, you understand."
"Quite, quite, man," said Lapin absently, groping in the air
behind him as if reaching for a tool that wasn't there. "Do you
have a crowbar? A screwdriver would do, or a chisel."
"You have found something there." Cluedeaux said it as a
statement of fact.
"I have indeed." Lapin straightened.
Just then they were interrupted by the sound of another set
of approaching footsteps. This time they were markedly different
in tone from the earlier sets Cluedeaux had heard, and it took
his finely honed ratiocinative brain a moment or two to identify
the precise nature of the difference.
And then he had it.
Yes!
Or, rather, Oui!
He looked up and along the gallery, and confirmed his
deduction.
Coming towards them, her stiletto heels click-clicking on
the tiles, was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Her hair was long and auburn-red, falling in luxurious waves
around her shoulders and framing the most exquisitely oval face
that had ever been seen outside a Botticelli painting. In the
klieg lights the green of her flashing emerald eyes was clearly
visible, as were the ruby red of her lips and the coralline
pearliness of her high cheekbones and the entrancing opal of her
retrousse nose. It was a gem among faces -- several gems.
She was wearing a high-collared jacket of black velvet over
a thin polo-necked white sweater. Her trousers were of the same
black velvet as her jacket.
But Cluedeaux, his eyes narrowing yet again, had no time for
such ephemera. The leetle grey cells were observing, codifying,
analysing . . .
Nice tits. Does she have any rings on her left hand?
Perhaps I could accuse her of complicity with the yanqui
in this murder, and take her down to a 'olding cell for, heh
heh, interrogation? Those trousers look to have been sprayed on
-- must drop my pen or something and ask her to pick it up
for me. Probably une bonne idee if I bent over myself
pretty soon, come to think of it . . .
The woman, nearing them, looked directly into his eyes and
read his mind.
Oops.
"Qui est elle?" he demanded aloud of Escargau.
The flic shrugged his shoulders in a je-ne-sais-
pas fashion.
Before Cluedeaux could ask her directly, the newcomer spoke.
"Greetings. You must be Inspecteur Gaston Cluedeaux of the
Surete?"
Cluedeaux nodded in acknowledgement. "I am indeed. And you
are . . .?"
"I am the dead man's sole surviving relative."
Surprise rang through Cluedeaux like a bell.
"Pardon, m'amselle. I 'ad not known. My condolences
in your great loss."
"He is -- was -- mon oncle." She looked sadly
at the mangled heap of flesh that lay on the floor, nude and with
arms outstretched, brain matter widely disposed. "He 'as changed
since last I saw him."
Cluedeaux pounced on the admission. "Changed in what way?"
"Well, for a start 'e 'ad clothes on."
"And?" Glowering.
"And 'is skull was intact."
"And?"
"He was not dead."
"Is that all?"
"Most of it." She gazed at the inspector expressionlessly,
challenging him. Mon dieu, but she was 'ot!
"Excuse me, old chappie," interrupted Lapin, "but I don't
think we have been introduced."
She turned her head slowly to look at him. "I think we have,
monsieur."
"Professeur, but I'm prepared to overlook it in your
case." The man hesitated, looking puzzled, and then his face
cleared. "It was you on the telephone?"
She nodded.
"But," the yanqui continued as Cluedeaux wondered how
he'd let the interrogation wriggle away from him, "you did not
tell me your name."
The woman shrugged. "Mon nom, it is not so
important."
"It's important to me," said Lapin with well oiled
smoothness.
Cluedeaux fought down the rising in his gorge, disguising
his nausea with a shrug. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that
Escargau was shrugging similarly. Out of the corner of his other
eye he saw that the American was looking smug and the Frenchwoman
was looking vaguely ill.
"I am, 'ow you say, Mademoiselle Natalie de la Fourche."
"You did not share your oncle's surname?" said
Cluedeaux aggressively, trying to regain mastery of the
conversation.
She shrugged again, setting off a sort of synchronized-
swimming display of articulate shrugs as everyone else joined in.
"'E was mon oncle on my maman's side."
The yanqui's mouth had dropped open in astonishment.
"Are you the Mademoiselle Natalie de la Fourche?"
"I am the only one I know."
"The world-renowned decoderizer."
"None other."
"The woman who singlehandedly revolutionized archaeology by
unpiecing the riddle of the Enigma Stones?"
She blushed. "I did that little thing, oui."
Cluedeaux observed the blush and his leetle grey cells spoke
to him: That is the blush of an accomplice to murder! She is
indeed the yanqui's confederate in this foul crime!
'Olding cell, 'ere I come!
"And the same Natalie de la Fourche who cracked the
notoriously impenetrable Napoleonic Code?"
"C'est moi. Mais . . ."
"And the same Natalie de la Fourche who won the
Observer Azed crossword prize four years in a row?"
continued Lapin.
"That petite chose also, yes. But the last of the
four years it was a fluke. I just 'appened to see the final word
upon which I 'ad got stuck, 'onanism', in a Jane Austen novel I
was reading. Otherwise I would never 'ave completed ze
puzzle. I still don't know what le mot means."
"You are too modest," said Lapin, sidling closer to her so
adroitly and imperceptibly that only Cluedeaux, whose job it was
to notice the adroit and the imperceptible, noticed it.
"Nom d'un chien!" exclaimed Escargau, interrupting
something that was about to become an episode from a Barbara
Cartland novel.
Everyone turned to look in the direction the youthful
flic's finger was pointing.
Something had dropped from behind the false Corot's frame,
where Lapin had been investigating scant moments before, and had
fluttered to the floor.
"Qu'est ce que c'est?" cried Cluedeaux.
"Zut alors!" said Natalie, throwing her hands up.
"Mon brave!"
"Quelque chose!"
"Por favor!"
"Tant pis!"
"Beau Geste!"
"Vraiment!"
"Removez vos mains de mon derriere, messieurs!"
"Voila!"
"Merde une brique!"
"Diable!"
Lapin, not to be left out, adjusted his unnecessary
spectacles on his nose and interposed, "Good heavens!"
"Sacre bleu!" agreed Escargau.
"It's a copy of Playboy," breathed Lapin, "but . . .
but . . ." -- squinting more closely at the gatefold that had
fallen open to reveal the words "Mademoiselle Septembre" and much
more besides, most of it silicone -- "it's in French!"
"'Ow can you tell?" said Cluedeaux, whose leetle grey cells
had inextricably failed to spot that there was lettering on the
page.
The American symbolatrist ignored him, and scooped up the
magazine just before Escargau could get to it. He began idly
leafing through the pages. "How come there are so many pictures
of marmosets?"
"Roger," said Natalie, pronouncing the name the French way,
laying a hand on his arm, "don't you see? This must be another
clue mon oncle 'as left for us."
"By jove, I think you're right!"
His thumb firmly jammed across two vibrator ads and the
telephone number of what claimed to be Paris's most discreet
escort service, Lapin suddenly paused and looked at her with his
mouth open.
"How do you mean, another clue?"
With a sweep of her arm she indicated the scene around them.
"Everywhere you look, Roger, there are clues! Mon
oncle was a clever man, and before he died he tried to leave
us indications as to the identity of his . . . what is the word?
Ah, yes: his assassin!"
Lapin stared Cluedeaux challengingly in the eye. "Now do you
see the value of having a world-renowned decoderizer in our
midst? She's right, goldarnit -- right!"
Returning his attention to Natalie, he continued: "Um,
what clues?"
"I will not tell you yet -- not until I am sure."
Cluedeaux looked around, screwing his eyes up. How come the
bimbeau was talking about clues? He could see some . . .
oddities, yes, there was no doubt of that. But clues?
There were the nails in the palms, the outstretched arms, the
fingers pointing at Siegel's Jessica at the Coney Island
Ferry and what was purportedly Corot's Still Life with
Bun, and now there was a copy of what by all rights should be
called Jouergar‡on were it not for filthy American
cultural imperialism. Oh, and there was the way Lebowski had
spread out gore above his head in the shape of what could almost
be thought of as . . .
"What's that?" said Natalie to Lapin, interrupting
Cluedeaux's train of thought.
Lapin, who had been absentmindedly browsing through the
magazine, replied: "A postcard of some kind, slipped between the
pages. Probably just a solicitation for subscriptions. I'll keep
it safely in case it's evidence," he added, midway toward stowing
the card away in his inside jacket pocket.
"Non, Roger!" exclaimed the decoderizer. "It is
something different!"
Lapin glanced down. "You're right," he said owlishly. "It's
not for the first time that I remark upon how fortunate we are to
have the world's foremost decoder . . ."
"What is it, Roger?"
He turned the card over in his hands, looking at it. "Must
have got here by accident, I guess. It's just a postcard -- a
souvenir. I imagine whoever bought the Playboy at the
museum shop also picked up a postcard to send to a friend. Or
maybe it was to cover up the fact that he was buying a copy of .
. ."
"Roger." There was strong reproof in Natalie's voice. "That
cannot be so. If that were the case, the postcard would be
wrapped around the Playboy, not the other way!"
"But you couldn't do that," said Lapin, still obviously
mystified. "The postcard's too small to . . . Oh, I see what you
mean."
"The postcard was inside the magazine. It was
the one that was 'idden!"
"I had already deducted that," remarked Cluedeaux
reflexively.
The other two paid him no attention.
"So it is the postcard that contains the secret
message," said Natalie triumphantly, her cheeks glowing. "Not the
magazine! You can throw the magazine away now."
"Waste not, want not," objected Lapin.
Natalie pressed forward, reaching out a hand. "What does the
postcard show?"
"Oh, just a reproduction. Of a man seated with his forehead
on his knuckles. And, uh, he doesn't seem to be overly attired,
if you catch my drift."
The Frenchwoman grabbed the card from him.
"It is Rodin's famous statue, imbecile! The one which
in your language is called Ze Thinker!"
"Could have sworn I'd seen it somewhere before," mumbled
Lapin.
"But you were not so far out, mon petit," added
Natalie charitably. "For with my keen decoderizing logical
faculties I can intuit that the message the postcard was trying
to give us is indeed related to being in a seated position,
pondering, and with a certain -- 'ow you say it? --
disposal of the culottes."
Lapin looked blank.
Cluedeaux looked blanker, but was unaware of doing so.
"Are you in need of la salle des hommes?" prompted
Natalie.
"La salle des . . .?" stuttered Lapin. Then
realization dawned as long-forgotten memories came flooding back
of being stuck in a dentist's waiting room with nothing but a
French phrase book to divert his apprehensions. "Ah, you mean,
um, la petits gar‡ons' salle?"
"Thereabouts. Would you require to use it?" said Natalie
very firmly indeed.
"No, I'm all right, thank you. Besides, I'm having fun doing
all this ratiocination with our good friend Cluedeaux here."
"You 'ave had a lot to drink. Are you sure you do not
need the employment of the pissoir?"
He gave her a fetching lopsided grin. "Nope. Got bladders of
steel, we Lapins have!"
The grin faded.
"Er, excuse me, but you're standing on my foot."
"I will stand on something else unless you get the hint,
comprenez?"
He paled. "Golly! Yes! Now you mention it . . ." He turned
pleadingly toward Cluedeaux. "I have the sudden urge to . . ."
Cluedeaux was not completely convinced by the genuineness of
what he had just witnessed. There seemed to him to be more than a
trace of play-acting involved. On the other hand, there are two
things it is cruel to stand between a man and, and the other is
relief when the bladder requires it.
"The plus petite chambre de la maison is along the
corridor," he said gruffly, pointing to his left.
"Many thanks," gasped Lapin, wriggling his toes free of
Natalie's clamp-like tread. "Erm, merci, I mean."
"I will come with you, Roger," said Natalie coyly.
"I think I can manage on my own." A tense response.
"You might get lost on the way," she expanded. "French
signings are so difficile for les Americains to
understand sometimes. I will be your native guide."
Yet again Cluedeaux's eyes narrowed suspiciously. On the
other hand, the woman's suggestion was perfectly reasonable.
Still, he would be wise to take precautions.
"Before you go, Monsieur Lapin . . ."
"Professeur."
". . . Docteur Lapin, I wish to give you something. In case,
even with la belle Natalie to guide you, you get lost amid
the labyrinthine galleries of the Musee de Louvre."
Cluedeaux reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell
phone. "If you find yourself irretrievably misplaced, use this to
call the police -- on the emergency number, 17. The message
will be passed through to me immediatement, and I will
send Escargau 'ere to fetch you."
"That seems like a good idea," said Lapin, accepting the
device gratefully and putting it into his own pocket.
Natalie looked askance at the vanishing cell phone as if she
suspected it might contain a tracer bug -- as indeed it did
-- so that Cluedeaux would always be aware of the exact
location of the visiting symbolatrist at any distance up to five
miles, assuming Lapin retained the phone on his person, which
there was no reason to think he would not do; it was, after all,
a useful gadget to have, even for purposes other than calling the
police. Indeed, even as he saw the cell phone go into Lapin's
pocket Cluedeaux was already beginning to wish he had not so
easily parted with it. He could just as easily have planted the
tracer bug in something else to give Lapin. A shoe, for example.
He could have told the American that it was always wise when
visiting a French restroom to take a spare shoe. He could have .
. .
"Shall we go, then?" said Lapin, smiling at Natalie and
patting the lump in his pocket that was Cluedeaux's treasured
cell phone.
"Mais, oui, monsieur." She took his arm in amiable
fashion, and pressed herself close against his side.
"Prof . . . On second thoughts, honeycake,
'monsieur' sounds just fine when it's coming from your
lips."
By the time Cluedeaux had finished gagging they were gone.
Inspector Gaston Cluedeaux of the Surete looked up at the
sound of footsteps echoing towards him along the long tile-
floored gallery, and winced. His knees were complaining from his
long session hunkered here beside the clerical cadaver,
observing, scrutinizing, reasoning, ratiocinating, letting ze
leetle grey cells do their work of first synthesis, then
analysis. They had to synthesize a self-consistent, coherent
picture of the situation from all the divergently disparate
strands of the unravelled tapestry that had unskeined itself to .
. . to . . .
He shook his head irritably. He was getting lost in his own
metaphor. He'd had le President on the cell phone for five
torturous and highly voluble minutes, and that sort of experience
tended to scramble his logical faculties.
The newcomers, Cluedeaux recognized as they came closer
under the bright klieg lights, were Escargau, the transvestite
undercover agent Gaulois, and a third man whom he assumed must be
the yanqui murderer Lapin.
If you had asked Cluedeaux why he was so certain the
American symbolatrist was the murderer of Cardinal Lebowski he
would have been unable to tell you, but that did not ameliorate
the certainty one iota. Call it Gallic stubbornness, if you will.
Or straightforward stupidity. Cluedeaux preferred to call it
investigative genius, and he was the senior officer in charge
here.
Introductions were soon made, and then Gaulois drifted off
in search of a spittoon. Rapidly, if slightly slurredly, Lapin
repeated once more the paltry tale of how he had come to Paris at
the behest of the late cardinal. Cluedeaux watched through his
habitually narrowed French eyes the way in which the
yanqui's yanqui eyes roved everywhere around him
except in the direction of the self-mutilated corpse. The
inspector remarked a slight widening of the pupils when Lapin
caught sight of the Corot painting on the wall, Still Life
with Bun, and noted the reaction for future reference. Once
the symbolatrist's explanation was done, Cluedeaux was tempted to
follow the procedure Gaulois had, unknown to the inspector,
prescribed earlier -- to wit, taking Lapin down to
headquarters and subjecting him to a plethora of peculiarly
Gallic sadisms, such as in the normal way happened only to geese
during the production of pƒte de fois gras. And, if that
didn't elicit the requisite response, there was always the
possibility of forcing him to drink white wine at room
temperature.
Yet something stayed his hand, and it wasn't just the
thought that Lapin, as an American, would probably be perfectly
content to guzzle warm white wine -- from the way the man's
breath had already started discolouring the nearby paintings he'd
been guzzling wine at all conceivable temperatures for some
considerable while before coming here. No, it was that widening
of Lapin's pupils at the sight of the Corot. The man was a
symbolatrist, after all -- the foremost in all the known
world, according to Escargau's hasty introduction.
"You 'ave seen something, perhaps, monsieur?" said
Cluedeaux into the redolent silence that followed Lapin's
recitation.
"That's 'professeur' to you, my man."
Cluedeaux inclined his head. "Bien sur.
Professeur." He spoke the word in such a way as to make it
perfectly clear that sooner or later -- probably sooner
-- Lapin was going to pay in blood and guts not only for his
offensive high-handedness but also for many years' worth of pent-
up resentment over the vile yanqui decision to inflict
EuroDisney upon the French.
Lapin was oblivious to such subtleties.
"There's something odd about this Corot painting," he said,
pointing.
Cluedeaux arched an eyebrow with exquisite insult. "Mais
oui?"
"Corot didn't paint still lifes. He painted landscapes."
"I 'ave already deducted as much, monsieur."
Lapin was too distracted by the rapid spinning of his own
intellectual gears to notice the use of the hated word
"monsieur".
"So either," he was continuing, "it has been mislabelled by
the Louvre staff -- not so improbable, considering their
country of origin -- or it is a forgery of some kind."
Cluedeaux bit back his fury as best he could. The goddamn'
American was going to get his white wine goddamn'
lukewarm. Ignoring the first of the fool's suggestions, he
latched onto the second.
"Why would someone wish to forge a Corot?" he asked,
reasonably enough. "And, if someone did indeed do so, 'ow come
the 'ighly skilled appraisal staff of the Louvre did not spot the
forgery at once?"
Lapin made a peevish little gesture with his hand. "I
misspoke," he admitted. "What I meant to suggest was not so much
a forgery as an overpainting."
"An 'overpainting'? What is zat?"
"It is, dear fellow," said Lapin with a maddening expression
of infinite patience, "where one painting has been, er, painted
over another."
The American crossed abruptly to the wall and put his face
close to the canvas of the Corot. "Just as I thought," he said as
much to himself as to Cluedeaux and the others, sniffing deeply.
"The paint on this is still relatively recent."
Despite the inspector's insuck of breath and Escargau's
reflexive reaching for the holster at his belt, Lapin touched a
fingertip quickly to the surface.
"It's fully dry, all right. These are acrylics, so if the
overpainting had been done within the last twenty-four hours
there would still be a trace of tackiness . . ."
"Are you suggesting a fine French forgery could be
tacky?" snapped Cluedeaux incredulously, also reaching for
Escargau's holster.
If Lapin was aware of the danger he was in, he gave no sign
of it. Instead he clucked testily and said, "Not that. I am
suggesting the paint would still be sticky if this had been done
earlier today. But it is fully dry. Yet there is still the whiff
of fresh paint in the air. Perhaps yesterday morning . . .?"
"I 'ad already deducted this as well, monsieur," said
Cluedeaux quickly. "The brush splashes on the wallpaper are, 'ow
you say, a doornail giveaway."
"Ah, yes, hadn't noticed them. Ahem. It's a good thing we
have the resources of symbolatrism on tap to back up your
hunches, isn't it?"
"As vous disez."
"Well then" -- Lapin put his hands on his hips --
"there is only one thing to be done, isn't there?"
"Quoi?"
"Strip the intruder paint off this canvas, of course, and
find out what's underneath it! Will it be a genuine original
Corot landscape, or will it be something else entirely?"
"Escusez moi," interposed Escargau.
"Yes, Constable?"
"Is it not an odd title for a landscape, this Still Life
with Bun?"
"I don't see what you . . . Hum, come to think of it, yes, I
do."
Lapin bent down to peer at the nameplate on the picture's
frame.
Oh, pined Cluedeaux, for a KICK MOI
sign!
"This is very mysterious," said Lapin softly, picking at the
corner of the nameplate with a fingernail.
There was a sudden cracking noise.
"Yeeearr -- owch!" said Lapin, sucking his finger.
"A secret booby-trap, per'aps a needle tipped with curare?"
enquired Cluedeaux hopefully.
"A broken fingernail. Either that plate is genuine or the
trickster secured it far more firmly than one might expect."
Cluedeaux beamed.
"So we do not 'ave to strip the paint off this masterpiece?"
he said drily.
"Of course we still must do that," snapped Lapin. "But first
I will with your permission continue my examination of this most
enigmatic picture frame."
It was typical of the yanqui, mused Cluedeaux, that
he didn't pause for the permission to be granted. With his face
pressed firmly to the panelling, Lapin was pulling the frame as
far away as he could from the wall -- which was not very far
-- and nosing behind it.
"Aha!" he said with an abrupt tone of fascination.
"You 'ave found something?" said the Frenchman before
recalling decorum. "I 'ad already deducted there would be
something there," he added, "but I decided to leave it for you to
find. As a matter of la politesse, you understand."
"Quite, quite, man," said Lapin absently, groping in the air
behind him as if reaching for a tool that wasn't there. "Do you
have a crowbar? A screwdriver would do, or a chisel."
"You have found something there." Cluedeaux said it as a
statement of fact.
"I have indeed." Lapin straightened.
Just then they were interrupted by the sound of another set
of approaching footsteps. This time they were markedly different
in tone from the earlier sets Cluedeaux had heard, and it took
his finely honed ratiocinative brain a moment or two to identify
the precise nature of the difference.
And then he had it.
Yes!
Or, rather, Oui!
He looked up and along the gallery, and confirmed his
deduction.
Coming towards them, her stiletto heels click-clicking on
the tiles, was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Her hair was long and auburn-red, falling in luxurious waves
around her shoulders and framing the most exquisitely oval face
that had ever been seen outside a Botticelli painting. In the
klieg lights the green of her flashing emerald eyes was clearly
visible, as were the ruby red of her lips and the coralline
pearliness of her high cheekbones and the entrancing opal of her
retrousse nose. It was a gem among faces -- several gems.
She was wearing a high-collared jacket of black velvet over
a thin polo-necked white sweater. Her trousers were of the same
black velvet as her jacket.
But Cluedeaux, his eyes narrowing yet again, had no time for
such ephemera. The leetle grey cells were observing, codifying,
analysing . . .
Nice tits. Does she have any rings on her left hand?
Perhaps I could accuse her of complicity with the yanqui
in this murder, and take her down to a 'olding cell for, heh
heh, interrogation? Those trousers look to have been sprayed on
-- must drop my pen or something and ask her to pick it up
for me. Probably une bonne idee if I bent over myself
pretty soon, come to think of it . . .
The woman, nearing them, looked directly into his eyes and
read his mind.
Oops.
"Qui est elle?" he demanded aloud of Escargau.
The flic shrugged his shoulders in a je-ne-sais-
pas fashion.
Before Cluedeaux could ask her directly, the newcomer spoke.
"Greetings. You must be Inspecteur Gaston Cluedeaux of the
Surete?"
Cluedeaux nodded in acknowledgement. "I am indeed. And you
are . . .?"
"I am the dead man's sole surviving relative."
Surprise rang through Cluedeaux like a bell.
"Pardon, m'amselle. I 'ad not known. My condolences
in your great loss."
"He is -- was -- mon oncle." She looked sadly
at the mangled heap of flesh that lay on the floor, nude and with
arms outstretched, brain matter widely disposed. "He 'as changed
since last I saw him."
Cluedeaux pounced on the admission. "Changed in what way?"
"Well, for a start 'e 'ad clothes on."
"And?" Glowering.
"And 'is skull was intact."
"And?"
"He was not dead."
"Is that all?"
"Most of it." She gazed at the inspector expressionlessly,
challenging him. Mon dieu, but she was 'ot!
"Excuse me, old chappie," interrupted Lapin, "but I don't
think we have been introduced."
She turned her head slowly to look at him. "I think we have,
monsieur."
"Professeur, but I'm prepared to overlook it in your
case." The man hesitated, looking puzzled, and then his face
cleared. "It was you on the telephone?"
She nodded.
"But," the yanqui continued as Cluedeaux wondered how
he'd let the interrogation wriggle away from him, "you did not
tell me your name."
The woman shrugged. "Mon nom, it is not so
important."
"It's important to me," said Lapin with well oiled
smoothness.
Cluedeaux fought down the rising in his gorge, disguising
his nausea with a shrug. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that
Escargau was shrugging similarly. Out of the corner of his other
eye he saw that the American was looking smug and the Frenchwoman
was looking vaguely ill.
"I am, 'ow you say, Mademoiselle Natalie de la Fourche."
"You did not share your oncle's surname?" said
Cluedeaux aggressively, trying to regain mastery of the
conversation.
She shrugged again, setting off a sort of synchronized-
swimming display of articulate shrugs as everyone else joined in.
"'E was mon oncle on my maman's side."
The yanqui's mouth had dropped open in astonishment.
"Are you the Mademoiselle Natalie de la Fourche?"
"I am the only one I know."
"The world-renowned decoderizer."
"None other."
"The woman who singlehandedly revolutionized archaeology by
unpiecing the riddle of the Enigma Stones?"
She blushed. "I did that little thing, oui."
Cluedeaux observed the blush and his leetle grey cells spoke
to him: That is the blush of an accomplice to murder! She is
indeed the yanqui's confederate in this foul crime!
'Olding cell, 'ere I come!
"And the same Natalie de la Fourche who cracked the
notoriously impenetrable Napoleonic Code?"
"C'est moi. Mais . . ."
"And the same Natalie de la Fourche who won the
Observer Azed crossword prize four years in a row?"
continued Lapin.
"That petite chose also, yes. But the last of the
four years it was a fluke. I just 'appened to see the final word
upon which I 'ad got stuck, 'onanism', in a Jane Austen novel I
was reading. Otherwise I would never 'ave completed ze
puzzle. I still don't know what le mot means."
"You are too modest," said Lapin, sidling closer to her so
adroitly and imperceptibly that only Cluedeaux, whose job it was
to notice the adroit and the imperceptible, noticed it.
"Nom d'un chien!" exclaimed Escargau, interrupting
something that was about to become an episode from a Barbara
Cartland novel.
Everyone turned to look in the direction the youthful
flic's finger was pointing.
Something had dropped from behind the false Corot's frame,
where Lapin had been investigating scant moments before, and had
fluttered to the floor.
"Qu'est ce que c'est?" cried Cluedeaux.
"Zut alors!" said Natalie, throwing her hands up.
"Mon brave!"
"Quelque chose!"
"Por favor!"
"Tant pis!"
"Beau Geste!"
"Vraiment!"
"Removez vos mains de mon derriere, messieurs!"
"Voila!"
"Merde une brique!"
"Diable!"
Lapin, not to be left out, adjusted his unnecessary
spectacles on his nose and interposed, "Good heavens!"
"Sacre bleu!" agreed Escargau.
"It's a copy of Playboy," breathed Lapin, "but . . .
but . . ." -- squinting more closely at the gatefold that had
fallen open to reveal the words "Mademoiselle Septembre" and much
more besides, most of it silicone -- "it's in French!"
"'Ow can you tell?" said Cluedeaux, whose leetle grey cells
had inextricably failed to spot that there was lettering on the
page.
The American symbolatrist ignored him, and scooped up the
magazine just before Escargau could get to it. He began idly
leafing through the pages. "How come there are so many pictures
of marmosets?"
"Roger," said Natalie, pronouncing the name the French way,
laying a hand on his arm, "don't you see? This must be another
clue mon oncle 'as left for us."
"By jove, I think you're right!"
His thumb firmly jammed across two vibrator ads and the
telephone number of what claimed to be Paris's most discreet
escort service, Lapin suddenly paused and looked at her with his
mouth open.
"How do you mean, another clue?"
With a sweep of her arm she indicated the scene around them.
"Everywhere you look, Roger, there are clues! Mon
oncle was a clever man, and before he died he tried to leave
us indications as to the identity of his . . . what is the word?
Ah, yes: his assassin!"
Lapin stared Cluedeaux challengingly in the eye. "Now do you
see the value of having a world-renowned decoderizer in our
midst? She's right, goldarnit -- right!"
Returning his attention to Natalie, he continued: "Um,
what clues?"
"I will not tell you yet -- not until I am sure."
Cluedeaux looked around, screwing his eyes up. How come the
bimbeau was talking about clues? He could see some . . .
oddities, yes, there was no doubt of that. But clues?
There were the nails in the palms, the outstretched arms, the
fingers pointing at Siegel's Jessica at the Coney Island
Ferry and what was purportedly Corot's Still Life with
Bun, and now there was a copy of what by all rights should be
called Jouergar‡on were it not for filthy American
cultural imperialism. Oh, and there was the way Lebowski had
spread out gore above his head in the shape of what could almost
be thought of as . . .
"What's that?" said Natalie to Lapin, interrupting
Cluedeaux's train of thought.
Lapin, who had been absentmindedly browsing through the
magazine, replied: "A postcard of some kind, slipped between the
pages. Probably just a solicitation for subscriptions. I'll keep
it safely in case it's evidence," he added, midway toward stowing
the card away in his inside jacket pocket.
"Non, Roger!" exclaimed the decoderizer. "It is
something different!"
Lapin glanced down. "You're right," he said owlishly. "It's
not for the first time that I remark upon how fortunate we are to
have the world's foremost decoder . . ."
"What is it, Roger?"
He turned the card over in his hands, looking at it. "Must
have got here by accident, I guess. It's just a postcard -- a
souvenir. I imagine whoever bought the Playboy at the
museum shop also picked up a postcard to send to a friend. Or
maybe it was to cover up the fact that he was buying a copy of .
. ."
"Roger." There was strong reproof in Natalie's voice. "That
cannot be so. If that were the case, the postcard would be
wrapped around the Playboy, not the other way!"
"But you couldn't do that," said Lapin, still obviously
mystified. "The postcard's too small to . . . Oh, I see what you
mean."
"The postcard was inside the magazine. It was
the one that was 'idden!"
"I had already deducted that," remarked Cluedeaux
reflexively.
The other two paid him no attention.
"So it is the postcard that contains the secret
message," said Natalie triumphantly, her cheeks glowing. "Not the
magazine! You can throw the magazine away now."
"Waste not, want not," objected Lapin.
Natalie pressed forward, reaching out a hand. "What does the
postcard show?"
"Oh, just a reproduction. Of a man seated with his forehead
on his knuckles. And, uh, he doesn't seem to be overly attired,
if you catch my drift."
The Frenchwoman grabbed the card from him.
"It is Rodin's famous statue, imbecile! The one which
in your language is called Ze Thinker!"
"Could have sworn I'd seen it somewhere before," mumbled
Lapin.
"But you were not so far out, mon petit," added
Natalie charitably. "For with my keen decoderizing logical
faculties I can intuit that the message the postcard was trying
to give us is indeed related to being in a seated position,
pondering, and with a certain -- 'ow you say it? --
disposal of the culottes."
Lapin looked blank.
Cluedeaux looked blanker, but was unaware of doing so.
"Are you in need of la salle des hommes?" prompted
Natalie.
"La salle des . . .?" stuttered Lapin. Then
realization dawned as long-forgotten memories came flooding back
of being stuck in a dentist's waiting room with nothing but a
French phrase book to divert his apprehensions. "Ah, you mean,
um, la petits gar‡ons' salle?"
"Thereabouts. Would you require to use it?" said Natalie
very firmly indeed.
"No, I'm all right, thank you. Besides, I'm having fun doing
all this ratiocination with our good friend Cluedeaux here."
"You 'ave had a lot to drink. Are you sure you do not
need the employment of the pissoir?"
He gave her a fetching lopsided grin. "Nope. Got bladders of
steel, we Lapins have!"
The grin faded.
"Er, excuse me, but you're standing on my foot."
"I will stand on something else unless you get the hint,
comprenez?"
He paled. "Golly! Yes! Now you mention it . . ." He turned
pleadingly toward Cluedeaux. "I have the sudden urge to . . ."
Cluedeaux was not completely convinced by the genuineness of
what he had just witnessed. There seemed to him to be more than a
trace of play-acting involved. On the other hand, there are two
things it is cruel to stand between a man and, and the other is
relief when the bladder requires it.
"The plus petite chambre de la maison is along the
corridor," he said gruffly, pointing to his left.
"Many thanks," gasped Lapin, wriggling his toes free of
Natalie's clamp-like tread. "Erm, merci, I mean."
"I will come with you, Roger," said Natalie coyly.
"I think I can manage on my own." A tense response.
"You might get lost on the way," she expanded. "French
signings are so difficile for les Americains to
understand sometimes. I will be your native guide."
Yet again Cluedeaux's eyes narrowed suspiciously. On the
other hand, the woman's suggestion was perfectly reasonable.
Still, he would be wise to take precautions.
"Before you go, Monsieur Lapin . . ."
"Professeur."
". . . Docteur Lapin, I wish to give you something. In case,
even with la belle Natalie to guide you, you get lost amid
the labyrinthine galleries of the Musee de Louvre."
Cluedeaux reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell
phone. "If you find yourself irretrievably misplaced, use this to
call the police -- on the emergency number, 17. The message
will be passed through to me immediatement, and I will
send Escargau 'ere to fetch you."
"That seems like a good idea," said Lapin, accepting the
device gratefully and putting it into his own pocket.
Natalie looked askance at the vanishing cell phone as if she
suspected it might contain a tracer bug -- as indeed it did
-- so that Cluedeaux would always be aware of the exact
location of the visiting symbolatrist at any distance up to five
miles, assuming Lapin retained the phone on his person, which
there was no reason to think he would not do; it was, after all,
a useful gadget to have, even for purposes other than calling the
police. Indeed, even as he saw the cell phone go into Lapin's
pocket Cluedeaux was already beginning to wish he had not so
easily parted with it. He could just as easily have planted the
tracer bug in something else to give Lapin. A shoe, for example.
He could have told the American that it was always wise when
visiting a French restroom to take a spare shoe. He could have .
. .
"Shall we go, then?" said Lapin, smiling at Natalie and
patting the lump in his pocket that was Cluedeaux's treasured
cell phone.
"Mais, oui, monsieur." She took his arm in amiable
fashion, and pressed herself close against his side.
"Prof . . . On second thoughts, honeycake,
'monsieur' sounds just fine when it's coming from your
lips."
By the time Cluedeaux had finished gagging they were gone.
