There was a moment of stunned silence, broken by a single bark of laughter from Descartes. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “He’s not looting your collection; he’s adding to it!”
“This is very ...” Mme. Clergue began vaguely, but Descartes was already out the door, moving at a ponderous, middle-aged jog toward the spiral stairs. When Mme. Clergue caught up, he was in the middle of Gallery 11 staring at the wall. Hanging directly in front of him, where it had hung for years, was Botticelli’s Madonna and Child. Hanging alongside it was ... Botticelli’s Madonna and Child.
“Your mystery donor has a knack for copying,” Descartes said finally, alternating his gaze between the museum’s new acquisition and the original. The likeness was so perfect that the detective could not have said which was Botticelli’s handiwork and which was the copy. And it wasn’t just the images; even the frames—gilded wood with ornately carved borders—were twins. “A remarkable knack.”
“Indeed,” spat Mme. Clergue.
Descartes turned his attention from the Madonna’s face to Mme. Clergue’s. The inspector was intrigued; the director seemed furious. “What’s wrong, Madame? You still have your Botticelli, and now you have a superb backup, if something happens to the original. Why the sour face?”
She glowered at the freshly hung painting. “But what’s he doing?” she finally snapped. “Is he just having fun at our expense? What if he comes back and does take something valuable?”
“Madame, a word in private?” It was a command, not a request. She shot him a look, then spun and walked toward the doorway. “Very well,” she said. “My office is just around the corner.”
“Everyone out,” Descartes ordered over his shoulder. The two uniformed police officers, Pascal, and another museum staffer whom Descartes had successfully ignored so far looked at him blankly. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t even look at anything. Everybody go back downstairs.” They stared, unmoving, as rooted as Michelangelo’s Prisoners in their blocks of marble. “Out,” he barked. “Now.” They scurried like shooed pigeons.
In her office, Madame Clergue sank into a high-backed chair behind the library table that served as her desk. Descartes drummed his fingers on the edge and studied her face, his eyes narrowed. Suddenly he demanded, “Who is ‘he,’ Madame?”
She blinked and shifted in the chair. “Who is who, Inspector?”
“Don’t play games with me. A moment ago, in the gallery, you said, ‘What’s he doing? What if he comes back?’ Who did you mean by ‘he,’ Madame?”
A deep crimson penetrated the chasmic depths of her wrinkles. “I ... I meant ... the thief.”
“There was no theft,” Descartes pointed out. “Therefore, no thief.”
“Very well, the intruder, then,” she snapped, “if you want to split hairs.”
Descartes lunged forward in his chair, as if to hurdle the table and shake her by the throat. “I don’t want to split hairs!” he roared, slapping the table with a sound like a rifle shot. The old woman gasped and shrank back, and her right eye began to twitch. “I want to know the truth, Madame. You were thinking of someone. Some particular ‘he.’ Tell me who.”
“I was not,” she quavered, slowly drawing herself up. They glared at each other. Finally, steeling her voice, she said, “Since, as you say, there was no theft, there is no need for an investigation. I do not wish to press charges for the break-in, Inspector.”
Descartes’s surprise gave way to suspicion. Only a fool—or someone with something to hide—would drop the matter here. “That’s not how it works, Madame. If I suspect a crime—and I do, criminal trespass—I am obliged to investigate. And you are obliged to cooperate.”
“I have no information that could possibly help.”
“What are you keeping from me, Madame?”
“Nothing, Inspector.”
“Then why is your eye twitching like that? And why are your hands shaking?”
She turned her face to the right, so he could no longer see that eye, and folded her arms resolutely across the raincoat.
Descartes glowered. Finally he rose, anger emanating from him in waves. “Stay,” he commanded sternly, shaking a finger at her as if she were a wayward spaniel. “If you move from that chair before I get back, I’ll arrest you for obstructing an investigation.” He spun and stalked from the room. Ninety seconds later he returned. “Now come,” he said harshly. He led her back to the gallery.
Both paintings were gone.
She seized his arm with both hands, a pair of buzzard’s claws clutching at a tree branch. “What have you done?” she gasped.