Free Cezanne's Quarry by Barbara Corrado Pope Page A

murderer.”
    “What?” Killed Solange? Was it possible that the witch was dead? And that someone had murdered her?
    “He kept shouting that I was responsible. That I should come out and face him like a man. I would have, except Maman begged me not to.”
    Paul looked up at her, tears in his eyes. It took all her strength not to slap him.
    Hortense struggled to keep her voice even. “She’s dead?”
    “How would I know!” Cézanne’s fist came down on the table, bouncing and clattering the cups. “How would I know? Do you think I killed her? Do you think I strangled a woman with my own hands?”
    Hortense’s eyes traveled from the scowling face to those strong hands, curled, ready for a fight. Paul had never struck her, but she had watched those hands tear up his canvases, break his paint brushes, rage against the fates, the furniture, even the walls of every place they had lived.
    “I did not kill her!” He was shouting in her face, and she was shrinking from him. Why should she think he had? Why was he threatening her?
    Cézanne stood up. “All I want is to paint. I don’t want entanglements. Everyone trying to catch me in their webs, their little plots.” His hands made furious little knots in front of her face as he said this. She shrank back further. What had gotten into him? Her throat was tightening, almost choking her, and her heart began to pound. “All I want is to be left alone!” he shouted, as he moved away from her. “Do you hear? No family! No women!”
    “Papa!”
    As soon as she heard the voice calling out from the bedroom, Hortense dropped her head into her hands and began to breathe more slowly. The boy. The boy would calm him.
    Cézanne left her at the table as he went into the bedroom to greet his son.

6
    A FTER ANOTHER NIGHT OF TOSSING AND TURNING, Martin woke up with a plan. If he pulled it off, he would finally begin to understand what kind of woman Solange Vernet really had been, and what had gone on between her and her lovers.
    Martin was leaving the Picard house filled with a sense of purpose and direction, when the postman stopped him and handed him a letter. Martin recognized his mother’s handwriting at once and, with a sigh, put the envelope in his pocket. He did not need to open it to know what the message would be. His failures as a son and suitor were old stories.
    When he got to the courthouse, things did not improve. Old Joseph was waiting to deliver a most unwelcome message.
    “M. Franc told me to tell you that they were not able to find Paul Cézanne.” Barely had Martin digested this piece of bad news when he heard shouts coming from somewhere inside the Palais.
    “I believe that’s the maid,” Old Joseph explained in an unnecessary whisper. “M. Franc said he was going to get her right away.”
    Martin gave his frail clerk a weary pat on the back and walked out of his chambers in time to watch two gendarmes drag a woman by her arms and shoulders up the main staircase. Following this struggling trio, cap in hand, was Franc. “I won’t go. I have nothing to say. Don’t send me back. Let me go! Let me go!” The woman’s cries echoed through the cavernous building. Her limbs kept hitting against the hard edges of the stairs, adding to her anguish. There was no easy way to stop this brutal procession midstream, so Martin did not even try. At the top of the stairs, the journey became easier for the police as they hurried down the hall with their burden between them and threw her on the hard wooden bench in front of Martin’s office. She was still flailing, but her words had dissolved into sobs.
    Franc caught Martin’s eye. “Arlette LaFarge.”
    Martin stared at the small, sallow creature. A “true Parisian,” as the inhabitants of the capital liked to say, meaning that she was an offspring of the densely packed central quarters, raised without benefit of sunshine or fresh air. Her male relatives were a favored constituency of the Third Republic, the kind