Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eve
Paris, July 1946
The trial was scheduled to start at two o’clock in the afternoon. Lunch at Inès’s apartment was a horrid, nervous affair of stilted conversation. I forced myself to eat some potato and leek soup, which then sat uneasily in my stomach. It was decided that Georges would meet Serge as he arrived from the prison, while Kristina, Inès and I would go to the Palais de Justice by the Métro. We were surprised to find the carriages congested at that time of the afternoon. I sat squashed between a businessman in a suit and a chef in a white uniform, who left a trail of white flour on my black skirt where his leg pressed against mine. Then to our even greater surprise, everyone poured out of the train at the same stop: Cité.
‘ Mon Dieu ,’ Inès whispered to me. ‘They are all going to the trial.’
As we approached the monumental Palais de Justice with its fluted columns and statues of imperial eagles, we saw that a large crowd had already gathered in the courtyard in front. Georges had warned us that the trial would attract the public. The Foulds were greatly admired for their philanthropy and the French had not completely tired of letting the blood of collaborators. But I had not imagined anything like the spectacle before me. Because the Foulds had been murdered in Nice, the trial would normally have taken place there. But the Ministry of Justice had deemed the trial to be in ‘the public interest’, so it was taking place in Paris instead. Terrible pictures rose in my mind of the French Revolution and mobs cheering as aristocrats were led to the guillotine.
Kristina stopped in her tracks, afraid to go on. She had brought a large tapestry bag with her and was clinging on to it as if she was protecting a child. I took her arm, and we pushed our way through the crowd towards the massive iron gates along the Boulevard du Palais. Inside the building there were so many people waiting to get into the courtroom that there would be only standing room left. It was as if all of Paris society had turned up for the opera – the women magnificently turned out in silks and brocades, feathers and pearls. I spotted Marthe de Villiers and Madame Fouquet among them. It struck me how those women who had orchestrated my downfall were back again to see someone else condemned. Did it make them feel superior to stand in judgement of others? I was sickened that only a short time ago I had wanted to be accepted by them. I didn’t care about any of that now.
Georges appeared from the courtroom wearing a long black cloak with a white jabot. With his towering height he was impressive in appearance, and I hoped the jury would be swayed by him.
‘Come inside,’ he said, ushering us in front of him. ‘They have one woman on the jury, a nurse. The rest of them are men – bakers, factory workers, mechanics.’
I understood the significance of what Georges was telling me. The woman was one of the first to be selected for a jury under the new rights granted to women after the war. Something they had been denied for many years for many reasons, one of them being that it was argued women would be too soft on criminals. The nurse might feel she had something to prove. The men would have had to have been directly involved in the Resistance to serve on the jury, but would any of them believe Serge had been a genuine member of the cause too?
I followed Georges to the desk where he and I would be sitting for the defence. Kristina and Inès took their places at the front of the spectator seats. The press corps was already in place, eager to grab the starring by-lines of the day. One heavyset reporter elbowed his colleague.
‘Look, Camadeau has a pretty young woman with him. Do you know who she is?’
‘Mademoiselle,’ his companion called out to me. ‘What is your name and are you free for dinner tonight?’
Georges answered for me. ‘This is Mademoiselle Archer, my associate. And no, she is not free for dinner tonight or any night, thank you.’
Suddenly the doors opened and the public rushed into the room, pushing each other to get the seats that offered the best view. The prosecutor arrived in his red robe, and although he nodded courteously to Georges and me, I couldn’t forget that this was the man who was going to do everything in his power to have Serge condemned. A bell rang and two gendarmes led Serge into the accused box behind us. He was wearing a freshly pressed navy suit and silver tie that Inès had selected. Although he had been unjustly imprisoned, he had no air of bitterness about him. I admired him for his brave face, and I decided I would never show him the weight and worry I carried in me.
‘ Bon courage ,’ Georges said to him.
Serge’s appearance had stirred chatter among the spectators but he paid them no heed. Instead, he looked up at the ceiling. My eyes followed to where he was looking. It was a fresco depicting King Louis XIII, known as ‘The Just’, taking his vows.
‘It was commissioned during the occupation. The paint still isn’t quite dry,’ Serge whispered, as calmly as if he were taking in a painting at a museum. ‘And now I will be judged by the very men who served under the Germans.’
The presiding judge, named Clouzot, and the magistrates and jurists entered the room and everyone rose to their feet. Then the trial began.
Judge Clouzot turned to Serge and spoke gravely. ‘Your name is Serge Lavertu, you were born on the second of September 1893 in Barbizon. You are an art dealer, and you reside in Paris.’
Serge confirmed the details, and then it was the court secretary’s turn to read out the charges. I cringed as I heard the words ‘collaboration’, ‘theft’ and ‘murder’.
From there the trial proceeded like a macabre opera with its own overture, recitative, aria, chorus and ballet. Judge Clouzot questioned Serge at length, using the report the examining judge had prepared. In the Australian court system, only one judge presided over a trial to even-handedly orchestrate the proceedings. But in the French system, not only would the prosecutor question the accused, the judge would as well, and even individual members of the jury.
Nonetheless, Judge Clouzot’s questioning should have been impartial, with the aim of creating an atmosphere of ‘discovery’, but clearly it was not. He hinted that Serge was not a man who revered art and beauty, but a man who worshipped money enough to kill his friends.
‘Those who saw you at auctions at the H?tel Drouot describe you as a dealer who “salivated over a painting that he knew he could sell at three times the price for which he acquired it”. Other dealers were frightened to bid for a painting if they knew they were up against you.’
Serge showed no animosity in his answer. ‘No, the money was never the main thing,’ he said. ‘Although no dealer who wants to stay in business buys a painting without some consideration of a profit. If faced with two clients who desired the same painting, I usually erred to the side of the one who would appreciate the work more over the one who offered the highest price for it.’
The only time Serge became ruffled was when the prosecutor directly accused him of killing édouard and Beatrice Fould. ‘Never!’ he replied, raising his voice. ‘Why kill a man and his wife who entrusted me, their friend, with not only their artworks, but their lives!’
‘You have no proof of any of this,’ the prosecutor reminded him. ‘Judge Regis in his report wrote that you claim there was a letter from édouard Fould entrusting you with the collection, including the Botticelli, but that has mysteriously disappeared.’
‘The Germans looted everything at the Villa des Cygnes,’ Serge replied. ‘Including important documents.’
When Georges stood up it was like the opera shifted again. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the court, if Serge Lavertu murdered the Foulds and stole their artwork, where are all the paintings? Where is the money? It’s not enough to say, “Oh, he has them stashed away in banks in Switzerland,” when there is no proof. On the question of how he acquired a pistol, the prosecution claims that it could have been easily obtained from the Italians who discarded weapons as they left France. But such a claim is true of all the citizens of Nice! I object to how these proceedings are being run. The evidence is purely circumstantial. Serge Lavertu himself was robbed blind by both the Vichy government and the Nazis. He lost his gallery. His own inventory was looted by the Germans. Surely someone who has been an exemplary businessman, a good citizen and a member of the Resistance can hold his head up wherever he goes and not have to be burdened with such outrageous accusations...’
After a short intermission it was time for the witnesses. There was Sonia, who painted a picture of Serge as a money-grubbing dealer. ‘Serge Lavertu never liked me because I looked out for Kristina’s interests. I could see that he intended to exploit her. She was terribly na?ve. I warned her several times that he was trying to come between her and her husband. Do I believe that Kristina could have been persuaded to paint forgeries? Never!’
The testimonies of the Foulds’ two maids, who had apparently heard nothing the night of the storm, had clearly been written for them by the prosecution to collaborate with the theory that Serge had an opportunity and a motive to kill the Foulds. I had to force myself to think of something else when the police detective described the gruesome discovery of the Foulds’ bodies.
But the most damning evidence came from the Foulds’ gardener, who no doubt had been spurred on by the prosecution to put the most sinister spin on all Serge’s actions that fateful day. ‘He seemed keen for Madame Bergeret to return to her home as if he wanted to have her out of the way’ and ‘No, if anyone else had come to the villa that night I would have heard them arrive as my cottage is next to the gate.’
Georges had warned me the gardener and maids might give biased testimonies. ‘Honest people making statements in perfectly good faith constitute the worst danger. They may have good intentions, but they only saw part of what took place. While they seem to be reporting the facts truthfully, their recollections have been tainted by the prosecution, and by their own desire to see justice done.’
Then, with a renewed sense of drama, the paintings were brought into the court by attendants and set on easels – not only the Botticelli and the Rembrandt, but Kristina’s portrait of Max and her self-portrait in front of a dressing-table mirror that had been returned to Serge by the Artistic Recovery Commission.
When everything was in place, the prosecutor announced, ‘I now call on Monsieur Martin La Farge.’
Like a knight charging into battle, Martin swept into the courtroom. Whispers of delight were exchanged among the female spectators, forcing Judge Clouzot to call for order. Martin reached the stand and looked around the audience, giving nods and waves to his admirers.
‘Monsieur La Farge,’ said the prosecutor, ‘you are considered one of the foremost art dealers in Paris. You have been in the art business for how long?’
‘Thirty years.’
‘Thirty years!’ repeated the prosecutor. ‘So you are certainly no novice. In November 1943, you bought the painting on the right, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife , from Madame Bergeret, which you believed came from her father’s collection. The defendant claims it is a forgery painted by Madame Bergeret. Do you agree that it is a forgery?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Martin, jutting out his chin. ‘If I had, I should not have paid the sum of money I did.’
‘And how much did you pay for it?’
‘One million francs.’
Gasps sounded around the room at the mention of such a substantial amount. I glanced at the jury. One of the men, grey-haired with long sideburns, folded his arms and frowned. Another looked with disdain from Martin to Serge. In the minds of men who would never earn that amount of money in their lifetimes, and in a country where people were still dying from malnutrition, one million francs was an obscene amount of money to pay for a painting.
I took a piece of paper and wrote down: The jury is becoming alienated by the sum of money involved. Martin La Farge is a rich man. Make sure they know Serge has nothing. He sacrificed it all for the Resistance. He is a Jew who had everything taken away from him – by Martin La Farge who presently lives like a king!
I passed it to Georges, who nodded. He probably didn’t need legal coaching from me, but I was beginning to feel powerless in the face of the calamity that was unfolding before my eyes and had to do something.
‘Indeed, I very much doubt anyone would pay that amount of money if he thought he was purchasing a fake,’ said the prosecutor, looking around the room for effect. ‘But could you explain to the jury why you are so certain?’
Martin smirked in a way that riled me. ‘Look at it,’ he said, pointing to the portrait. ‘Rembrandt is the most renowned painter of the past four hundred years. A master. See the detail in the bouquet the subject is holding, the way her gaze is not direct but looking at someone just to the right. It’s intimate and moving.’
‘And you don’t believe Madame Bergeret could have made an excellent copy of the painting?’ asked the prosecutor.
Martin turned to Judge Clouzot. ‘May I?’
‘Proceed,’ said the judge.
Martin approached Kristina’s paintings and gave a faint sigh. ‘And here we have the work of Madame Bergeret painting as Kristina Belova. Not a master by any means, not even close. She’s a good enough modern painter, but she doesn’t have the technical skill to reproduce a Rembrandt. At least one that would get past me.’
Laughter arose from the audience. For the first time since the ordeal began, Serge looked angry. I understood why. Martin was going further than proving his point. He was trying to destroy Kristina’s revived career by publicly dismissing her talent.
‘Objection!’ said Georges, standing. ‘Those portraits were painted at the very beginning of Madame Bergeret’s career, when she had only just started her studies in Paris. Why not look at her later works, like The Joy of Life ...’
‘Or The Flight of Eve ,’ I said under my breath.
‘Objection overruled,’ said Judge Clouzot. ‘Please proceed, Monsieur Prosecutor.’
‘The defendant also claims that Madame Bergeret added a certain element to each painting so they could be detected as forgeries. And yet you have not found any such element on examining these paintings, have you, Monsieur La Farge?’ He then indicated Kristina. ‘And Madame Bergeret has no memory of it.’
‘Objection!’ called Georges. ‘Madame Bergeret has no memory of it because, as confirmed by the doctor’s examination in Judge Regis’s report, she is suffering amnesia.’
‘Convenient for Lavertu!’ muttered one of the press reporters.
‘Order!’ said Judge Clouzot. ‘I am warning you, Monsieur Camadeau, if you persist with these unnecessary interruptions I will have you removed from the court.’
Judge Clouzot’s clear bias inspired Martin to even greater arrogance. He took out a magnifying glass from his pocket and waved it for effect. ‘Neither I nor the two other experts from the Louvre could find any such element as a supposed “time bomb” in either painting. We have gone over the works several times, inch by inch, and found nothing. It’s a ridiculous notion.’
‘Thank you, Monsieur La Farge,’ said the prosecutor. ‘That is all.’
It was Georges’s turn to question Martin. ‘Monsieur Lavertu claims that he used certain processes to make sure the canvases passed through the standard alcohol and X-ray tests to detect a forgery. He also says it was impossible during the war to obtain the exact paint pigments that Rembrandt or Botticelli would have used, and that the paintings can be proved to be forgeries if they are submitted to a proper chemical test. Yet both you and the Louvre have refused such tests.’
‘We are not going to scrape paint from valuable masterpieces in order to substantiate what we already know,’ replied Martin irritably. ‘All the other evidence combined is enough to say that both the Botticelli and the Rembrandt are authentic.’
‘You are not prepared to risk minute damage to a painting, but you are prepared to have a man condemned to death by denying him the evidence that may save him?’
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Kristina staring at the paintings, willing herself to remember something. The tapestry bag on her lap moved. At first I thought it was a hallucination brought on by the strain I was under, but then two long ears appeared, followed by a furry caramel head and a pink twitching nose. Kristina must have brought Flora to the court with her for comfort. Unnoticed by Kristina, the rabbit wriggled out of the bag and onto her lap. From there it leaped to the centre of the court.
People whispered and tittered when they spotted Flora. ‘Look, somebody brought their dinner,’ said one of the reporters, eliciting laughter from the room.
I stood up to retrieve Flora but before I could grab her, she hopped straight towards Martin. A look of horror came to his face and his whole body jerked. A cry that sounded like something between a yell and a sneeze came out of his throat. It was then I remembered he suffered from leporiphobia, an irrational fear of rabbits. He tried to run away but tripped in his effort to flee and knocked over the Rembrandt.
‘Get it away from me,’ he screamed.
One of the gendarmes made a grab for Flora but she slipped from his hands. Luckily, Inès caught her and managed to carry her back to Kristina, who pressed Flora to her chest.
‘It’s a rabbit!’ Kristina cried out.
Her claim brought jeers and laughter from the spectators, while an attendant hurriedly righted the Rembrandt portrait and helped Martin to his feet.
‘Order!’ demanded Judge Clouzot. ‘It’s quite obvious it’s a rabbit, Madame Bergeret. Now please remove it from this courtroom immediately.’
But the look on Kristina’s face told me there was something else she wanted to say. ‘Monsieur President, I meant that the clue in the painting is a rabbit. I can prove it to you.’
Judge Clouzot looked outraged, but with all eyes on him it was impossible for him to refuse. Kristina handed Flora to Inès and picked up the magnifying glass Martin had dropped.
The entire courtroom held its breath while she examined the Rembrandt.
‘There in the bouquet!’ she said triumphantly. ‘A rabbit’s face and ears painted in white with a single line.’ She moved to the Botticelli painting. But as much as she scanned the magnifying glass over the painting, she couldn’t seem to find the same clue in it. The courtroom was silent, their attention riveted on Kristina. But the pressure flustered her and I could see she was beginning to panic.
‘Well, get on with it,’ said Judge Clouzot.
Kristina’s face suddenly lit up. ‘And there!’ she said at last. ‘In the fold of Flora’s drapery. Exactly the same rabbit.’
The prosecutor took the magnifying glass from Kristina and looked to where she pointed. The astonished expression on his face confirmed her claim. The magnifying glass was then passed to Judge Clouzot and each member of the jury as they filed past the painting to look at the new discovery.
‘Once you see it, you can’t not see it,’ said the female jurist.
The press corps went wild. Camera bulbs flashed like lightning strikes.
Kristina looked at Serge and smiled. Both of them were trembling with excitement.
Judge Clouzot returned to the platform and banged his gavel. ‘Order! Order in the court!’ He glared at Georges and then the prosecutor. ‘In my chambers at once!’
*
While the rest of us waited in the courtroom, I listened to the two journalists debate about what was most likely to happen next.
‘The fact that Lavertu insisted from the beginning that the paintings were forgeries, and that the experts were wrong, strengthens the case that he’s telling the truth.’
‘Not necessarily,’ replied his colleague. ‘It could be argued that he kept the originals to sell later while taking advantage by selling forgeries of them. It simply means the charge of national disgrace will be dropped, but the charge of murder will proceed.’
‘But that would be all circumstantial, with no evidence to support it at all. If they follow that line, it would be obvious that Judge Clouzot and the prosecutor are building a dubious case against Lavertu and they have already decided the outcome of this trial.’
I waited in tense anticipation for what seemed like an eternity. Then the door to the courtroom opened and Judge Clouzot, the prosecutor and Georges returned. Georges would not meet my eye when I looked at him.
‘The trial for the charge of murder will proceed,’ announced Judge Clouzot. ‘Prosecutor, please give your closing statement.’
Shocked and surprised murmurs sounded through the courtroom.
Georges stood up. ‘Monsieur President, I object. The enormity of the charges against the defendant should guarantee the strictest and most impartial of trials. Why in France, of all countries, would we pervert the process of justice that has defined our soul for decades!’
‘Objection overruled,’ said Judge Clouzot. ‘Monsieur Prosecutor, proceed with your closing argument.’
The prosecutor, who had seemed so confident at the beginning of the trial, now looked unsettled. He stuttered as he repeated the same arguments he’d used in his opening statement. It was as if he had lost the conviction that Serge was guilty or that justice was being done.
Now everything rested on Georges’s closing argument. ‘How is it possible that a respectable and honest man may find himself accountable before the court?’ he asked the jury. ‘It would take some wretched stroke of fate that he should find himself mistaken for a dubious character, let alone a murderer. Yet, ladies and gentlemen of the court, I can assure you that such unthinkable incidences do occur and there is a name for them – miscarriage of justice!’
I was proud of Georges, so eloquent despite the dire turn of events. The eyes of the reporters and the spectators were glued to him.
‘France will bear the scars for many years of the épuration sauvage , when a desire for revenge got the better of our ideals of truth, equality and justice. All that was required to see an innocent person wrongfully convicted was a vengeful crowd. But there can be no miscarriage of justice today, since the guilt of the defendant, far from being confirmed, remains seriously in question. There is no evidence other than circumstantial, no witness to the actual crime, nothing in the defendants’ longstanding relationship with édouard Fould and his wife to suggest such a heinous crime would be committed. There are no money trails to Swiss bank accounts, or even a lavish lifestyle, that might indicate that Serge Lavertu profited from the crime he is accused of. Rather, before you stands a hero of the Resistance. A man who sold a fake painting to Hitler to gain funds for an escape line to help his fellow citizens. He deserves the Légion d’honneur not the farce that has been this trial.’
I knew Georges had given his argument everything. It was out of his hands now. He sat down next to me and we watched Judge Clouzot, the magistrates and jurists file out of the room. Serge was escorted out by the gendarmes and Georges indicated for me to follow them. Inès stayed with Kristina, who looked bewildered, as if wondering why the very thing she had come to Paris to do hadn’t seemed to have made any difference.
‘What happens now?’ I asked Georges as the guards closed the doors behind us.
‘The magistrates and the jury will go to Judge Clouzot’s chambers, where he will explain the implications of an innocent or guilty verdict.’
‘Will he be fair?’ I asked.
Georges acknowledged my doubts with a grim nod of his head. ‘We must remain steadfast in hope, Eve,’ he said, indicating the room where Serge was being held. ‘For his sake. Now let’s go see him.’
But no sooner had we stood up than the bell sounded calling us back to court. Was it possible that a verdict had been reached so quickly? I knew that in France the jury’s decision did not have to be unanimous and there was no such thing as a ‘hung’ jury, but even so, I would have expected a much longer deliberation.
We took our places in the courtroom and Serge was brought back in.
Silence fell over the assembly. The pens of the journalists were poised above their notepads. The court secretary’s fingers stayed suspended over the keyboard of his stenograph machine. The jurists stared blankly in front of them. The spectators leaned forward in anticipation while Kristina and Inès clung to each other. I stopped breathing. The courtroom had turned into a painting – an impression of a moment in time.
Judge Clouzot turned in Serge’s direction. ‘Will the defendant please rise.’
Serge stood as he was directed. Judge Clouzot cleared his throat. ‘The court has given its declaration by a majority that you, Serge Lavertu, have rendered yourself guilty of murder
I felt myself blanch. My mind went blank. I saw the judge’s mouth moving but I didn’t hear another word of what he said. The court broke out in pandemonium. Some cheered when Judge Clouzot pronounced a sentence of death, while others swayed on their feet as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
When Judge Clouzot asked Serge if he had anything to say, Serge only looked him in the eye and said, ‘You have misjudged me.’
The two gendarmes took him by the arms and led him from the courtroom.
Georges turned to me, his face ashen. Then standing head and shoulders above everyone, he said in a booming voice, ‘This is a travesty of justice! We have forty-eight hours to appeal. And appeal we will!’
He turned to me. I knew that no matter what we did to save Serge, we were fighting something beyond the course of justice. Something corrupt and tainted. The trial should not have happened in the first place. Serge had been set up. But was forty-eight hours enough time to find new evidence that would change anything?
‘I must see him. I must tell him that he’s my father,’ I said.
Georges nodded. ‘I will arrange it.’
I turned to Kristina who was weeping in Inès’s embrace.
Kristina , I inwardly prayed. Please, please remember something else of significance. Something that can exonerate Serge completely .