Death in Pont-Aven Read online

  ‘Do come in, Monsieur, please.’

  Dupin had only needed to hold the doorbell down for a second. The door had been opened almost immediately. Catherine Pennec was standing in front of him in a black, high-necked dress. Her voice was quiet and subdued but sharp too, it suited her wiry frame.

  ‘My husband will be down soon. We’ll sit in the drawing room. Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Yes. Yes please.’ Dupin wanted to get rid of the disgusting taste of the last one.

  ‘It’s just along here.’

  Madame Pennec led the way into the large drawing room.

  ‘My husband is just coming.’

  She left the room through a narrow door. The house was furnished in a very middle class way. Dupin had no idea if they really were antique pieces. Everything was in perfect order, it was almost painfully neat.

  Dupin could hear someone coming down the stairs into the hall, and a moment later Loic Pennec was standing in the doorway. He really did look astonishingly like Pennec senior. Dupin had seen photos of Pierre-Louis Pennec in his younger years in the lobby of the hotel, photos of him with famous guests in the sixties and seventies. Loic Pennec was as tall as his father, but a good bit heavier. He had the same short, very thick grey hair, the same distinctive nose, the mouth was just a bit bigger and narrower. Like his wife, Loic Pennec was dressed very formally, in a dark grey suit. He looked drawn and pale.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to –’ began Dupin.

  ‘No, no. Really. You have a job to do. We want you to make progress as quickly as possible. This is all so awful.’

  Loic Pennec also spoke in a subdued voice, stuttering a little. His wife had come back with the coffee and was sitting beside her husband on the sofa. Dupin had taken a seat in an armchair which was part of a set, dark wood, pale upholstery, lots of trimmings.

  This wasn’t an easy situation. Dupin hadn’t responded to what Pennec had said, busying himself with taking out his notebook instead.

  ‘So do you have any leads yet, anything from the initial forensic work? Anything that you’re following up?’

  Catherine Pennec seemed relieved that her husband had taken up the thread of the conversation again. She tried to look composed.

  ‘No, nothing. Not yet. It’s not easy to imagine what motives there could be for murdering a ninety-one-year-old man, apparently so loved and respected by everyone. A horrific crime. I’m terribly sorry. You have my sincerest sympathies.’

  ‘I can’t take it in.’ Loic Pennec’s voice was losing its clipped composure, becoming totally flat. ‘I don’t understand it.’ He buried his face in his hands.

  ‘He was a wonderful man. A great man.’ Catherine Pennec put her arm around her husband.

  ‘I wanted to tell you the news myself, and I’m really sorry that you found out some other way. In such a small town, I should have known.’

  Loic Pennec still had his face buried in his hands.

  ‘It’s not your fault, you have a lot to do.’ Madame Pennec held her husband even tighter as she spoke. It looked more like protection than comfort.

  ‘Indeed. Especially at the beginning of an investigation.’

  ‘You’ve got to catch the murderer quickly, he must be brought to justice for this barbaric act.’

  ‘We are doing everything in our power, Madame. And I’ll certainly drop in again soon. Or one of my inspectors will. There’s obviously a lot of information you could help us with, but for the moment I don’t want to impose on you.’ Dupin checked himself – he couldn’t end the conversation so abruptly. ‘Unless of course there’s anything you’d like to let us know at this stage, anything that you think might help in solving your father’s murder.’

  Only now did Loic Pennec raise his head again. ‘No, no, you shouldn’t have to wait, Monsieur le Commissaire. I want to help, if I can. Let’s talk now.’

  ‘I thought –’

  ‘I insist.’

  ‘It would be good if you could go over the hotel with one of my inspectors as soon as possible to see if anything strikes you. Whatever it might be. The smallest detail could be significant.’

  ‘My husband is going to take over the hotel. He knows every inch of that building, every nook and cranny. He practically grew up there.’

  ‘Yes. Of course, Monsieur le Commissaire. Just tell me when.’ Loic Pennec seemed to have composed himself somewhat.

  ‘But you should know that my father-in-law didn’t keep any valuables in the hotel. Or large sums of cash. There’s nothing actually worth stealing in the whole place.’

  ‘My father didn’t much care for expensive things. He never did. He was only ever interested in the hotel. It was his calling in life. He had a savings account at the Crédit Agricole for sixty years, that’s where the money was and whenever he’d amassed a certain amount, he bought another property. That’s how it was for the last few decades. He invested all his money in real estate. He wasn’t big on saving or anything like that.’

  Pennec almost seemed relieved to be able to talk now. Madame Pennec was looking intently at her husband. Dupin wasn’t sure what that look meant.

  Loic Pennec continued, ‘Otherwise he never bought anything big. Apart from his boat – he never stinted on boat maintenance. There may have been a certain amount of money in the restaurant till in the evenings, I don’t know. I’m sure that’s something you could check.’

  ‘My colleagues have looked at everything, the hotel till, the restaurant till. Nothing unusual so far.’

  ‘Anything is possible these days!’ Madame Pennec said indignantly. ‘He owns four houses in Pont-Aven. And the hotel of course.’

  ‘He was obviously a good businessman, your father. He’s made a considerable fortune.’

  ‘Some of the houses need basic work done. A lot ought to have been renovated years ago, certainly the roofs on two of them. And you’ve got to bear in mind that the tourists want houses by the sea. The prices are far lower here, but he only ever wanted to buy in the village. The rents are lower, too.’

  ‘He didn’t put up the room prices for twelve years – or the rent on his houses.’ Madame Pennec sounded scornful. A moment later she looked embarrassed and promptly fell silent again.

  ‘What my wife is trying to say is that my father could definitely have made more profitable business decisions. He was a very generous man. Like his father – and my great-grandmother. A patron of the arts, not some greedy businessman.’

  ‘And more generally, has anything occurred to you that you think might be significant? People whom your father might have had a dispute with, who had annoyed him or were annoyed by him? Anything your father told you in the last few weeks or months, anything that was playing on his mind.’

  ‘No. He had no enemies,’ Pennec broke off, ‘as far as I know. Why would he? He rarely had disagreements with people. I mean serious disagreements. Apart – apart from with his half-brother – they’d had a falling out. André Pennec. A successful politician, he built his career in the south. I hardly know my half-uncle.’ He broke off again for a moment. ‘He didn’t talk much about his emotions. My father, I mean. Our relationship was very good. But he never said very much. I don’t know the story of what happened with his brother.’

  ‘Does anyone else know it?’

  ‘I don’t know if my father ever really told anyone. Maybe Delon. Maybe his half-brother’s wife knows the story. His third wife. Much younger than him. My father and his brother haven’t spoken much for the last twenty or thirty years. André is twenty-two years younger than my father.’

  ‘So your grandfather had an extra-marital affair?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what happened. With a woman from the south of France, still young, in her early thirties. It didn’t last long.’

  ‘It lasted long enough though. It went on for over two years,’ Catherine Pennec added.

  Pennec gave his wife a withering look. ‘Anyway, the woman got pregnant and moved back to the south, to be near her family. My
grandfather didn’t see his son very often. And then he died. André couldn’t have been more than twenty at the time. I really wouldn’t know who even knows this story still, except for André.’

  Dupin made copious notes. ‘And Fragan Delon was your father’s closest friend?’

  ‘They were old friends, yes, since childhood. Old Delon is a private man. He’s been on his own for a long time too, I don’t think life has been too kind to him.’

  He had to speak to Delon, that’s something he’d already resolved to do during his interview with Madame Lajoux.

  ‘Do you know Fragan Delon well?’

  ‘Not particularly well, no.’

  ‘And are you familiar with your father’s will?’

  The question came without warning. There was a look of mild indignation on Pennec’s face. ‘You mean the document itself? No.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever speak about it?’

  ‘Well of course we did. But I never saw the will. He wanted me to take over the hotel. We’ve spoken about that a lot over the years. Time and time again.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear that. Such a famous establishment.’

  ‘It’s a… it’s a huge task. My father took it on sixty-three years ago when he was twenty-eight years old. My great-grandmother, Marie-Jeanne, founded it in 1879. I’m sure you already know that.’

  ‘A real Pennec, she could see what the future would hold: tourism. And the artists of course. She knew them all. All the artists. She was buried in the same grave as Robert Wylie – an American painter. That’s the status she had.’ Madame Pennec’s voice was solemn with pride.

  Dupin had the feeling that he would be hearing the story of the Central and the Pont-Aven School again during this case. Every Breton schoolchild could recite the story about the hotel and the artists in their sleep. Marie-Jeanne really had recognised the signs of a new time: the invention of ‘summer retreats’, an emerging preference for the coast and the sea, the beach and the sun, and she’d opened a simple hotel on the Place Municipale. Robert Wylie had been the first artist to come here, arriving in Pont-Aven as early as 1864 and bringing his friends with him soon after. Everyone was mesmerised by the ‘perfect idyll’. The Irish, the Dutch, the Scandinavians and then the Swiss followed – and more than a decade later, French painters came for the first time; the locals just called them all ‘the Americans’. Gauguin came in 1886; the artists’ colony turned into the Pont-Aven School, and it invented radical new art.

  There were of course many things that drew the artists to Brittany and Pont-Aven, to the ancient Celtic land, Armorica or the ‘Land in the Sea’ as the Gauls called it. There was the ever enchanting landscape with its traces of the mysterious eras of menhirs and dolmens, hints of the land of the druids, great legends and epics. They certainly also came because Monet had been working on Belle Ile for a number of years and you could just about see Belle Ile from the mouth of the Aven. Or maybe it was because they were looking for the untouched, the simple, the unspoiled, and here they found the agricultural and rural, the old customs and festivals, and because they had an unbretonic tendency to be drawn towards anything wonderful or mystical. These were all reasons but in fact the two manageresses, Julia Guillou and Marie-Jeanne Pennec, and their incredibly generous hospitality had played an important role. They had seen it as their mission to make the ‘biggest open-air studio’ as comfortable as possible.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur Pennec, you really do have to have a calling for it. It’s so much more than a business.’ Dupin surprised himself with how dramatic he sounded. Recalling such greatness was visibly doing both of the Pennecs good. ‘When will you see the will?’

  Loic Pennec cast an irritated look towards Dupin. ‘I don’t know yet. We will have to make an appointment with the notary.’

  ‘Apart from you, was anyone else mentioned in your father’s will?’

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’ Pennec hesitated. ‘I obviously don’t really know.’

  ‘Will you change a lot?’

  ‘Change? Change what?’

  ‘At the hotel. In the restaurant.’

  Commissaire Dupin realised his question had sounded a little crass, even to him. He had no idea how he had hit upon it just then. This conversation had gone on for too long, and it was time he wound it up.

  ‘I mean, it’s perfectly correct – and also necessary, for every generation to innovate. It’s the only way to preserve the old, the only way to keep tradition alive.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. You’re right. But we haven’t thought about that yet.’

  ‘Of course. I understand. It wasn’t an appropriate question to ask anyway.’

  The Pennecs looked expectantly at him.

  ‘Do you think your father would have told you about serious disputes or conflicts he might have had?’

  ‘Yes, of course… At least I think so. He was a very stubborn man. He always had his own ideas about everything.’

  ‘I have taken up enough of your time. Please excuse me. I really will go now. You are grieving. This is a terrible crime.’

  Madame Pennec nodded firmly. ‘Thank you, Monsieur le Commissaire. You are doing your best.’

  ‘If anything else occurs to you, please get in touch. I’ll leave you my number. Don’t hesitate, no matter what it might be.’ Dupin placed his card on the coffee table and put away his notebook.

  ‘We will.’

  Loic Pennec stood up. His wife and Dupin rose to their feet too.

  ‘We hope you make progress quickly, Monsieur le Commissaire. I would be more than a little relieved if you were to catch my father’s killer very soon.’

  ‘I’ll let you know as soon as there is any news.’

  Loic and Catherine Pennec went with him to the door. They were emphatically polite in their farewells. It had turned into a truly beautiful summer’s day. By Breton standards it was positively hot, just nudging over the thirty degree mark. It had been stuffy in the Pennecs’ villa and Dupin was glad to be outdoors again. He loved the constant, gentle, almost imperceptible breeze from the Atlantic. It was already much later than he had thought it was, the morning was long since over. In this weather people went to the beach so that Pont-Aven itself was quite peaceful down here by the harbour.

  It was low tide now and the boats lay on their beam ends on the muddy ground as if at rest. It was like a still life. Dupin kept forgetting. Little Pont-Aven was made up of two unlikely halves: the upper part and the lower part by the harbour. Or to be more exact: the river and the sea. And although they were so close together there was a different feel to each one and they had completely different landscapes and atmospheres. He was sure that this had fascinated the artists too. He could clearly recall coming here from Concarneau for the first time and parking on Place Gauguin. It had been such a change. Even the air was different. Inhale in Concarneau and you tasted salt, iodine, seaweed, mussels in every breath, like a distillation of the entire endless expanse of the Atlantic, brightness and light. In Pont-Aven it was the river, moist rich earth, hay, trees, woods, the valley and shadows, melancholy fog – the countryside. It was the contrast of ‘Armorica’ and ‘Argoat’, or as they were called in Celtic, the ‘Land of the Sea’ and the ‘Land of Forests’. Dupin had learnt that the world of the Bretons essentially consisted of these extremes, as it had done throughout Brittany’s lengthy history. Before he moved to Brittany, he wouldn’t have been able to understand how these two worlds could be so close together and yet so far removed from one another, so very different from one another. Pont-Aven was mainly Argoat, it was countryside, farmsteads, agriculture; but it was Armorica too, down here at the port that is, where the high tide brought everything with it, the sea, everything it contained, its whole atmosphere. Sometimes you could see magnificent sailing boats along the – as a proud sign declared – 320-metre-long quay, leaving you in no doubt you were by the sea.

  Dupin was ravenous. He realised he hadn’t eaten anything since the croissant that morning. He often forgot to eat when he was c
aught up in a case, but only noticed when he started to feel dizzy. He decided, albeit reluctantly, to nip up to Place Gauguin and try one of the cafés there. They had looked a bit more like proper restaurants. And what’s more he could keep an eye on the hotel from there.

  At the top of the hill he chose the café on the other side of the little square, opposite the Central. There wasn’t much going on. Dupin sat down at a table on the very edge of the square. A handful of people were still standing in front of the Central, deep in conversation. The sun was beating down on Place Gauguin now, so that Julia Guillou’s sycamore trees really came into their own. Dupin ordered himself a grand crème, a jambon-fromage sandwich and a large bottle of Badoit. A very friendly waiter confirmed his order with a nod. Dupin had actually fancied a crêpe complète; he loved them, especially the runny egg on top of the ham and cheese in the middle, but he was strict with himself about following Nolwenn’s rule: only have crêpes in good crêperies.

  Dupin sank deeper into his surprisingly comfortable chair. He watched the comings and goings in the square. Suddenly a huge black limousine caught his attention. It inched across the square, almost mocking in its slowness.

  His phone rang. Dupin looked at the number: it was Nolwenn. But he answered a little gruffly anyway.

  ‘There have been lots of calls for you, Monsieur le Commissaire.’

  ‘I thought there might be.’

  Whenever he turned off his mobile – as he had just now at the Pennecs – all calls were forwarded to the office.

  ‘I’m just eating something. Trying to, anyway.’

  ‘Bon appétit. Prefect Guenneugues, Le Ber, three times, Doctor Lafond, Doctor Pelliet, Fabien Goyard, the mayor of Pont-Aven. And – your Laure. The Prefect is very concerned –’

  ‘Mon Dieu. He can take his stupid committee and go… And it’s not “my Laure”.’

  His relationship with Laure was over, as far as he was concerned. Probably. At least he was almost sure it was. Like all those other flings he’d had since he ‘fled’ Paris, at some point they just fizzled out for whatever reason. He was still persuading himself it was over, what he’d had back then with Claire, those seven years in Paris. He was still trying to convince himself of that. But this wasn’t the moment.