Death in Pont-Aven Read online

  Dupin’s phone rang. Private number. He had just paid and was almost back out on the street again. He answered without giving his name.

  ‘Monsieur le Commissaire?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Fabien Goyard here. I’m the mayor of Pont-Aven.’

  Dupin had heard of Goyard, but couldn’t remember the context. He hated politicians with very, very few exceptions. They always gave away the most important lines of inquiry. And they considered people like Dupin sadly naive.

  ‘I’m calling because I’m very interested in finding out whether you’ve made any progress with your investigation. What a horrible thing to happen in our little Pont-Aven – dreadful, absolutely dreadful, and this close to the tourist season. You’ve got to think about –’

  A sudden feeling of the worst contrariness came over Dupin. It is an inalienable truth that for the ‘important’ people of the world it’s always about two things: money and personal reputation. Not that Dupin would have cared, but it was annoy-ing and what’s worse, it wasted time. And his boss Guenneugues was no help – on the contrary in fact. The mayor was still talking, that typical mix of submissiveness and command in his voice. Dupin interrupted him:

  ‘We are doing our best, Monsieur le Maire. Believe me.’

  ‘Are you aware that not only have some guests from the Central left the village, but some tourists from other hotels too? Do you know what this means? And during this financial crisis too! We have fewer guests this year anyway. And now this.’

  Dupin didn’t say a word. There was a long pause.

  ‘So do you have a hunch, Monsieur le Commissaire? If I may say so: in a small village like this one, this kind of thing can’t happen without leaving significant clues.’

  ‘Monsieur le Maire, it’s not my job to have hunches.’

  ‘But who do you think murdered Pennec? A local or an outsider? That’s what you should be concentrating on.’

  Dupin sighed openly.

  ‘Do you think the murderer is still in the village? Could he kill again? It would cause such panic.’

  ‘Monsieur le Maire. I’ve just seen that an important call is coming in on my other phone. As soon as there are relevant developments I’ll be in touch. I promise.’

  ‘You’ve got to understand my position, I –’

  Dupin hung up. He was very proud of himself. He could rein in his emotions far more easily now than he could before. He did not want another relocation. Sometimes he had to keep his mouth shut, no matter how hard it was. In Paris he had found it extremely hard on a number of occasions. In the end, according to his file, his downfall had been the time he had chosen a very big public event to ‘seriously insult’ the mayor of Paris – who interestingly later became the president of France. And of course insulting his superiors, or as it was put in writing, his ‘sustained, malicious verbal abuse’ hadn’t exactly helped.

  By now he was quite good at holding his tongue, he thought, as he had just proven to himself. But he wasn’t pleased about it. He really resented having to keep his anger in check in these kinds of situations. And that’s also why he found it a bit sad, because he lacked some of the ‘hidden depths’, which now seemed a quasi-requirement for his profession: drug addiction, or at least alcoholism, neuroses or depression to a clinical degree, a colourful criminal past, corruption on an interesting scale or several dramatically failed marriages. He didn’t have any of those things to show off about.

  By now Dupin had reached his car. He would be at Fragan Delon’s more or less on time.

  Dupin had had high hopes for his conversation with Fragan Delon. But if he were to be honest, it hadn’t revealed anything particularly significant.

  It seemed to Dupin that Francine Lajoux and Fragan Delon were the people to whom Pennec had really been closest. If he had trusted anyone with his worries or anxieties then they would have been the most likely candidates. But Delon had not known anything about his serious health problems, and consequently nothing about whether Pennec had trusted anyone else with the knowledge. He knew nothing about any argument or disagreement that Pennec might have been having with anyone in the last few months or weeks, or even whether there’d ever been one, apart from with his half-brother. On this topic, Delon suddenly became animated, almost talkative. He had strong opinions on the cause of the rift in the Pennec family and he had an opinion on the relationship between Madame Lajoux and Pennec. He was sure that there had never been an affair – not that Pennec had ever said so in as many words, Delon was just sure of it. And he had expressed this – as he did everything in this conversation – in a few, sparing words, albeit in a friendly way. Delon didn’t think the relationship between Pennec and his son had been a close one. As with all private matters though, Pierre-Louis Pennec apparently hadn’t told him much about it. ‘We spoke about other things, not about ourselves.’ That was certainly not unusual for two Bretons, especially of their generation. And even though Delon hadn’t said a word about it, his profound sense of grief was apparent.

  Dupin had already learned from Le Ber that Delon had not seen Pennec in the three days before his death. Delon had been staying with his daughter in Brest, so he wasn’t any help in reconstructing how Pennec had spent the days since Monday and his visit to Dr Pelliet.

  What Dupin had established was this: the hotel had been the centre of Pierre-Louis Pennec’s life. This legacy and all of the duties that went with it. Pennec had been involved in many committees and clubs in the community that tried to ‘preserve tradition’ and was equally involved in encouraging young artists in Pont-Aven.

  Crucially, Dupin had also learnt a bit more about Pennec’s life and personality. He’d learnt about his tastes and habits, things he was passionate about and discussed with Delon. They had played chess for over fifty years, ever since they had been young men, mostly in the evenings. Sometimes pétanque too of course, down by the harbour with the other local men. He and Delon took Pennec’s boat out together once a week to go fishing, whatever the weather. Spring and autumn were best, when the big shoals of mackerel were passing by the coast. They had drunk a lambig together one or two evenings a week at the hotel bar.

  All in all Dupin left feeling a little disappointed. But he liked old Delon.

  Now that the streets around Place Gauguin in the old town centre were filling up with people again, it was pandemonium. Most of the holiday-makers were back from the beach and they wanted to wander through the shops and galleries a little longer before looking for a restaurant. There was an incredible number of art galleries here. It was only now, during the tourist season, that it really became apparent. They seemed to have shot up out of the ground like mushrooms. Although most of the galleries were near the museums, Dupin had counted twelve on the rue de Port alone, a quiet little road that wound down to the harbour. Reproductions of all the paintings from the Pont-Aven School were on sale of course, ranging from cheap to extremely valuable, but also for sale were numerous originals by contemporary painters who sought their fortune here in this epoch-defining place. Dupin found all paintings quite repulsive.

  He couldn’t see any sign of the holiday-makers deserting Pont-Aven in large numbers or deciding to avoid it. At the Central itself, a few little groups were standing around, speaking in a somewhat subdued manner and pointing here and there. Only in the morning had there been signs of something approaching irritation for a few hours; by the evening the place seemed to have returned to the old familiar tourist routines.

  It was seven o’clock now and Dupin was feeling slightly dizzy again. He hadn’t eaten anything since that sandwich in the afternoon. There were still things he needed to do today. He took out his phone.

  ‘Nolwenn?’

  Dupin had called her on the office number, he knew she would still be there.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur le Commissaire?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to the notary who looked after Pierre-Louis Pennec’s will tomorrow morning. And please could you get us access to Pennec�
��s bank accounts? I want a clear picture. Of his properties too.’

  When he followed ‘official procedure’ with these kinds of things, it always got more complicated and technically they’d need a warrant. Given a few hours, Nolwenn could have it sorted without a fuss.

  ‘Duly noted. Le Ber tried to reach you a few times and wants you to call him back. He’s got some news.’

  ‘Is he still in Pont-Aven?’

  ‘He was still there half an hour ago.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be at the hotel soon and we’ll speak then.’ He hesitated. ‘Labat and the two police officers from Pont-Aven should also be on standby.’

  He hadn’t intended that at all, but it was good to stay in the loop. Maybe they had made some progress, especially on the issue of what Pennec’s last days looked like.

  ‘André Pennec called. He heard what happened from Loic Pennec. He arrived here in Pont-Aven in the early afternoon.’

  ‘He came straight away? He dropped everything and came?’

  ‘He’d like to see you tomorrow morning. He suggested eight o’clock.’

  ‘Excellent. I’d like to see him too.’

  ‘I’ll set it up. Will you meet him at the hotel?’

  Dupin thought about it for moment. ‘No. Tell him the police station. My office. Eight is fine.’

  ‘Are you coming back here, Monsieur le Commissaire? I’m actually just about to head home.’

  ‘Go ahead. I won’t be coming in again today.’

  ‘It’s going to be busy in Concarneau tonight; the first festival pre-events are on. Bear that in mind when you’re coming back… The Prefect has asked that you call him back and so has the mayor of Pont-Aven. I told them both you were in wall-to-wall meetings until late tonight.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  Dupin admired Nolwenn. She was unshakably pragmatic and determined. Nothing was too much for her; it always just seemed to be a question of the – correct or incorrect – approach to something. What had won him over immediately on first being introduced were her alert eyes, sparkling with strong-willed intelligence. She was a good-looking woman, late fifties, rather short with cropped blonde hair. Nolwenn was indispensable to him in general, but particularly because of her practically limitless local and regional knowledge. She was born and brought up in Concarneau – in Konk-Kerne, as the Bretons called the town – and never left. She was a Breton woman through and through, still fundamentally suspicious of France. After all, Brittany had only been a part of France since 1532, ‘for a piffling five hundred years’ – an annexation! Nolwenn helped him to understand the soul of Brittany and its people. In the beginning he’d had no idea how essential this would be for his work. Since his first day she had been giving him lessons in Breton history, language, culture and Breton cuisine (no olive oil – butter!). She had put up two phrases in little blue frames above his desk for him. First, the famous quote from Marie de France in the twelfth century: ‘Brittany is poetry’; second, an entry from an encyclopedia in tacky decorative lettering: ‘The Breton may have the same appearance as his storm-tossed, rugged land, a melancholy disposition and a cautious nature, but he also has a lively, poetic imagination, inner sensitivity and often great passion, hidden behind external roughness and calm.’ Dupin thought the phrase itself was evidence of their lively, poetic way with words. Yet it had become clear to him over time that there was a ring of truth to those words.

  One of their private jokes was that Nolwenn made up for the – somewhat difficult – traits of the Bretons: their infamous stubbornness, their pig-headedness, their cunning, their taciturnity on the one hand and garrulousness on the other, and that distinctive preference for Breton comparatives and superlatives. The biggest producer of artichoke in the world, the second greatest tidal range in the world (up to fourteen metres!), the region with the most traditional costumes in the world (1,266 sub-varieties), the biggest tuna harbour in Europe (Concarneau), the world’s biggest accumulation of seaweed and algae, the most read daily paper in France (Ouest France), the highest concentration of historical monuments, the most canned fish producers in the world, the most seabird varieties in all of Europe. Not forgetting of course the 7,770 saints invoked (with varying degrees of devotion) to cure all aches and pains (saints that neither the world nor God has ever heard of). Some of the statistics weren’t very impressive in themselves, but did sound very impressive when delivered in emphatic Breton tones; for example that there were four million Bretons or that Brittany made up a sixth of the landmass of France – Dupin didn’t actually think it was very much, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Even if Dupin had found the move from Paris to the end of the world very difficult at first, he had long been ‘a bit of a Breton’ at heart. Nolwenn complimented him on it whenever he made progress under her beady eye (even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself or to anyone else because he was seen as a dyed-in-the-wool Parisian here in the back of beyond). And Nolwenn was doubly strict when judging a ‘Parisian’, which she was convinced was for Dupin’s own good. Of course this praise remained very superficial; Dupin mustn’t go getting any ideas. Because in fact even if he married a Breton woman, had Breton children and spent his twilight years here, he would always remain an ‘outsider’. Even after two or three generations, his great-grandchildren would be sure to hear murmurs of ‘Parisian’.

  As evening came on, the light became more and more bewitching. The colours of witchcraft: everything shone brightly, warm, soft and golden. It always seemed to Dupin as though the sun mysteriously made everything glow for a few hours before it set. Things weren’t simply lit up: they radiated light from within themselves. Dupin had never seen this kind of light anywhere else in the world, only in Brittany. He was sure this must have been one of the main reasons the painters came here. He still found it a bit embarrassing when he caught himself – the city slicker par excellence – in sentimental raptures over nature like this. And he had to admit that it was happening to him more and more.

  Dupin was approaching the Central. Someone had erected a large, handwritten cardboard sign at the entrance to the restaurant: ‘The restaurant is temporarily closed. The hotel is open.’ There was a note of despair to it. He turned into the little alleyway to the right of the hotel and walked up to the cast-iron door at the entrance to the courtyard of the hotel. Suddenly he was completely alone. Nobody strayed here from the main square, and no noise reached this far. The door was closed and locked, in accordance with regulation; the scene of crime team had done their job. It didn’t look like the door was used much anyway.

  ‘Monsieur le Commissaire. Here – I’m over here.’

  Dupin raised his head glumly. Labat was standing just a few feet away in the courtyard of the hotel.

  ‘Ah. Let’s go inside.’

  It was eerily quiet inside the hotel. One of the chambermaids was hanging around the reception desk looking lost. Dupin hadn’t even tried to remember her unpronounceable Breton name. She was in her own little world, twisting a strand of hair round and round her finger, only briefly looking up as they walked past her.

  Dupin turned to Labat. ‘Where are the officers from Pont-Aven – the ones that were here before, I mean? And did you get hold of Derrien?’

  ‘They still haven’t got through to Derrien, unfortunately. They are trying to get in touch with him via the first hotel he stayed in. Pennarguear has just left. He had been on duty since midday yesterday. Monfort is still here, he’s still doing interviews. They’ve both got a lot done today. The cooperation is fantastic.’

  ‘Very good. Very good!’ Dupin practically sounded triumphant. At least Derrien had left good people here.

  ‘We’ve built up a provisional picture of Pierre-Louis Pennec’s last days, and a bit more besides. Shall we start there?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  The door to the room they had chosen as their headquarters was open. For some reason it looked quite pathetic now in the evening light. Le Ber was sitting at a small desk, t
he only one there was in the room. He looked pretty shattered – Labat did too if truth be told. They went in. Dupin sat down on one of the many chairs.

  Labat took up the thread of their conversation again. ‘Maybe we should in fact begin –’

  ‘The daily routine, Pierre-Louis Pennec’s last four days!’

  ‘I just wanted –’ Labat composed himself and reported: ‘Usually his days went like this: Pennec got up early, at six every morning. In recent years he has mostly slept here at the hotel. He’d come downstairs at half past six.’

  Labat was now completely and utterly in his element. Dupin couldn’t stand Labat’s pride in his own meticulous legwork. He spoke in an artificially concise way, ridiculously solemn over the most banal details. But Dupin paid close attention.

  ‘He used to have his breakfast in the small breakfast room, usually alone, sometimes with staff or with Madame Lajoux in order to discuss hotel and restaurant matters. He would stay there when the first guests arrived. There is a large group of regular guests who happily come every year for years on end, decades in some cases.’

  ‘Do you have all their names?’

  ‘Yes. Pierre-Louis Pennec would be there or somewhere around the hotel until nine or half past nine, pottering around doing this and that. Then he used to go for a walk. He only started doing that a few years ago.’

  ‘On his own?’

  ‘Yes, usually alone.’

  ‘Where did he go?’ Dupin wasn’t particularly interested in the answer, but Labat’s being such an unbearable know-it-all always made Dupin want to test him. But Dupin always seemed to draw the short straw.

  ‘Pierre-Louis Pennec’s walk took him up the main street, then right, back down to the river and along the right hand bank. At the outskirts of the village –’

  When Dupin’s mobile rang, even Labat and Le Ber jumped. Dupin picked up automatically.

  ‘Yes?’