Old Scores

Chapter 14

I reached Tony at 11:20 a.m. Seattle time. The call was forwarded to him by his secretary.

"Well, well, Chris, how's everything in France?" he asked jovially. "Things going well?"

Tony Whitehead was a man of more than one telephone voice. I recognized this particular persona as the avuncular one that he used when speaking with staff members while important people-board members, donors, journalists-were within earshot. It was meant, I believe, to convey the impression (more or less accurate, give or take the occasional crisis) that we were one big, happy, problem-free family.

"Call me when you're free," I said. "I'll be in the rest of the night."

"I'll certainly do that," Tony boomed. "Wonderful hearing from you, Chris. Keep up the good work."

Sixty seconds later my phone chirped. "Calvin tells me you've run into some problems." He sounded like Tony again, not like Santa Claus. "Sorry to hear it."

"Well, you did tell me it'd be interesting."

"Do they know who killed Vachey?" "I don't think so."

I heard a familiar crik-crak over the line; the sound that my office chair made when it was tipped back. Tony had gone down the hall to make the call from my office. I imagined him leaning back, looking out over Elliott Bay, watching the green-and-white ferries pull into Colman dock.

"Calvin says you like the picture."

"It's beautiful," I told him enthusiastically. "It's a portrait of the old man they used to call Rembrandt's father. It's just about as fine as the one in Malibu, Tony."

"That's saying a lot," he said, and I could hear the suppressed excitement. "So-is it by Rembrandt?"

"Maybe. Probably."

"Not by Govert Flinck?"

"I don't think so, but that's not the main issue anymore, Tony. Now there are Vachey's wartime activities to think about. Even if this isn't the painting Julien Mann's talking about, it's still possible Vachey got it the same way. If he did, I don't think we'd want to touch it… would we?"

"Absolutely not," Tony said without hesitation. "I'd want to see it back where it belongs. "However-" He let out a long sigh. "I want to ask a big favor of you, Chris."

He paused for an affirmative response, but I held my tongue. When Tony skips the flimflamming and tells you right up front that he's about to ask you for a big favor-you can count on it being a big one, all right.

"We don't have to sign for it until Friday, is that right?" he asked when I didn't reply. "Three more days?"

"That's right. Vachey extended the time limit."

"Now, I know you want to fly home tomorrow-no, don't stop me-and I know how long it's been since you've seen Anne, and that she's only going to be here until Saturday, but… well, I'd like you to stay on in France a few more days."

"Tony-"

"I know, and, believe me, I hate to ask it. But this could be the most significant acquisition-"

"If it's authentic. And if it hasn't been extorted from Mann's father or anyone else."

"Right. Exactly. And that's my point. We still have three days. I'd like you to see if you can dig up anything at all on its provenance, look into Mann's claim, find out if there's anything else in the woodwork we need to worry about. Maybe you can find the junk shop where Vachey says he bought it. Go to Paris if you have to… uh, Chris, are you there?"

I was there. I was just wondering whether I ought to mention to Tony that Inspector Lefevre had made it plain that I wasn't leaving France for the next several days in any case, and that I had in fact already learned the name of the junk shop, and had made plans to go to Paris. Hearing this would certainly ease Tony's conscience. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have him thinking he owed me a favor.

It was an ethical dilemma, over which I agonized for almost two nanoseconds.

"Yes, I'm here, Tony," I said stoically. "All right, if you think it's for the best… I'll stick around."

"Thanks, Chris," he said warmly. "I knew you'd come through."

"Forget it." Now he was starting to make me feel guilty. "Anything else?"

"Just one suggestion. You might want to look up Ferdinand Oscar de Quincy and see what light he can throw on things."

I blinked stupidly at the receiver. "Ferdinand de Quincy is still alive?"

De Quincy was the man who had been the director of SAM in the early 1950s, the man who, a decade before that, had supposedly located and returned some of Vachey's paintings to him after they had disappeared eastward with the Nazis, the man because of whom Vachey was giving us the Rembrandt in the first place. It had never occurred to me that he might still be around.

"Yeah, I was surprised too. But it suddenly dawned on me that he was only about thirty in 1945, which would put him in his seventies now, so I asked Lloyd to see what he could find out. And it turns out he lives just outside of Paris."

"But-then why wasn't he at the reception? Surely Vachey would have invited him, surely he'd have wanted to come-"

"I have no idea. Why don't you go find out? He's bound to have information on Vachey. His number's-"

"Wait. Pen. Okay, go ahead."

"His number's 43-54-23-31."

I wrote it on the flyleaf of a Wallace Stegner paperback I'd brought with me to pass the time when things got dull. Needless to say, this was the first time I'd opened it.

After I hung up, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared moodily at the telephone. My mind was still in Seattle, but not on Tony or SAM. I was thinking about the house I rented in Magnolia, about two miles from the museum. Anne would be arriving tonight, and I wanted to talk to her. It looked as if I was going to be stuck here until Friday, which meant I couldn't be back in Seattle until Saturday, which would leave us just a single day together. One day-and no nights; a dismal yield after all those months of anticipation and planning.

But I had an idea for salvaging something. Anne's conference was a one-day affair. It would be over at the end of tomorrow, Wednesday. What if she arranged for a military flight back to Europe tomorrow night? There were plenty of them to England, Germany, and Holland. She could be here in Dijon late Thursday. That would give us Friday together, and Saturday, and even a bonus of Sunday, because Kaiserslautern was only three hours from Dijon, and she wouldn't have to leave until late afternoon. What's more, my time limit for coming to a decision on the painting was the close of business Friday, so one way or another my work would be done the day after she got here. We could go back up to Paris for a couple of days, or rent a car and drive through Provence, or do whatever she wanted.

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. If she couldn't get on a military flight, we'd get her a commercial one. Maybe we'd do that anyway, and book her first class. It'd be my treat. What better way did I have to splurge?

But it was barely afternoon in Seattle, so she was still somewhere on the road, probably on the Olympic Peninsula near Kalaloch or Ruby Beach if she was taking the route we'd planned. It hurt to think of how much pleasure there would have been in showing her those wild, magical places. Still, something was better than nothing.

I sighed, punched in my own telephone number, and waited for my voice to come on. When she arrived, she would turn on the answering machine to see if I had left anything for her.

"Hello," said a sepulchral voice. "This is Chris Norgren." It paused to allow this complex message to be grasped, and proceeded somberly. "I'm sorry I can't come to the phone now, but if you will wait for the signal and leave a message, I will…"

I tapped my foot impatiently. Was that really what I sounded like, or was it some mysterious quirk of answering-machines that made everybody sound like a zombie?

Finally, the beep came. "Hi, Anne," I said, making an all-out effort to sound like a living person, "welcome to the Emerald City, and hope you had a wonderful drive. There are lots of good things in the freezer, and you know where the booze is. Everything in the fridge should be fresh, more or less. Listen, I just had a terrific idea. Call me when you get in. Don't worry about the time-"

Click. "Chris?"

It was a moment before I could reverse gears and get my voice going again. "Anne? What are you doing there?"

"I got in early. I swung over to Highway 5 at Portland. I wanted to save the Peninsula to see with you."

And bless you for it, I thought warmly. "Listen, I'm glad I caught you early. I'm going to have to stay over in France for another two or three days-"

"Three days! But that'd only leave us- Why do you have to stay three more days?

"Well, the police asked me to-"

"Police? What's going on there?"

And so I had to shift gears again and explain, which took some time; it had been an eventful couple of days. I even told her about getting pitched out the window, managing to minimize the more ludicrous aspects of it without playing down the dramatic, brush-with-death elements.

"My God, Chris," she said, gratifyingly shocked, "I'm just glad you're all right. You are all right?"

"I'm fine. And I have a great idea. I want you to come here to Dijon. Fly back to Europe early."

I told her about the marvelous fall weather northern Europe was having. I suggested driving to Languedoc and spending a night in one of the old inns in the walled city of Carcassonne, something she'd talked about wanting to do. I pointed out that the new plan would give us Sunday together, which we wouldn't get otherwise.

"Can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"If you knew the strings I had to pull to get my nights, you wouldn't ask me to change them."

"Well, don't change them. Come commercial. I'll arrange your tickets from here."

"Chris, I just can't. It would be too-well, too embarrassing to cancel, after the trouble I put them to. I just can't do it. They bumped people to get me on."

"Well, couldn't you-" But I didn't have anything to offer. "Oh, hell." I was feeling good and sorry for myself.

"Chris, it's not the end of the world. It's just a logistical snag, that's all. We've had them before."

I smiled. "That's what I was telling you last week." A snatch of that conversation came back to me. "Did you have a chance to do your thinking?" I asked.

She hesitated. "Did I tell you I wanted to do some thinking?"

"Yes." Now I hesitated. "You didn't say about what, though."

I heard her swallow some wine. "I think you know."

"Your commission," I said.

Anne was at a crossroads of her career. After ten years in the Air Force, she had been thinking about the possibility of resigning her commission and coming back to civilian life. But she was also up for early promotion to major, and I knew how much that meant to her.

"Yes, my commission."

"And?"

"And I came to a decision. Sort of." I heard her drink some more. I heard her put the glass down.

"And are you planning to let me in on it?"

"Well, it's still not completely made. I have to… there's more to it."

"Do I get a hint?"

"No, you don't get a hint," she said with sudden sharpness, "because if I discuss it with you, you get all self-sacrificing and reasonable, and then I start taking your needs into consideration, and I just think that this is one decision I ought to be making for myself."

"It's important to me, too, Anne, that's all I'm saying," I said. Reasonably, of course.

"Ah, Chris, I know that." I could tell that she was already sorry about the flare-up. "But let's drop it for now. I don't want to talk about it on the telephone."

"Of course," I said, "if that's what you want."

I was being so reasonable that I was starting to irritate me. But underneath, I wasn't feeling reasonable at all, and both of us knew it. I wanted her to resign. I wanted her to come back to the States and find a real job. I wanted her to live near me, where she belonged damnit. I wanted her to live with me.

But apparently it wasn't going to work out that way. Why would she worry about breaking that to me on the telephone? I didn't say anything more for a long time, for fear of saying something decidedly unreasonable and not in the least self-sacrificing.

Finally, she spoke, very quietly. "Well, then, I guess I'll see you Saturday?"

"Yes. I'll get back earlier if I possibly can. I-I love you." "I love you, Chris."

There was a click and a hum, and I was sitting alone on a hotel bed in a room "lit" by three 25-watt bulbs, six thousand miles from home and from the only person who really mattered to me. I put the receiver back in its cradle.

All things considered, I didn't think it was going to go down as one of my better nights.

Clotilde Guyot's eyes were bright and brimming. "Rene Vachey was a saint."

I had brought this jolly, affable woman close to indignant tears with what I'd thought was a reasonably innocuous question: Could she tell me anything that might throw some light on Julien Mann's charges?

"Can you have any idea," she asked, "what it was for him to hide a family wanted by the Nazis? It wasn't only the risk of our being heard or seen, or of a surprise visit by the Gestapo, you see. It was the number of people whose goodness had to be relied on-the milkman who pretended to take no notice when a bachelor began buying three liters of milk a week, the doctor who asked no questions about a six-year-old 'nephew' never seen before, who had come down with whooping cough. We never knew when someone might take offense at a fancied slight and drop a vindictive word to some petty functionary. There was never a knock on the door when our hearts wouldn't stop."

She looked at me accusingly. "And he didn't have to do it, monsieur. He did it out of pity, out of kindness."

"I'm sorry, madame," I said sincerely. "I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I'm only trying to find out whatever I can about the Rembrandt and where it came from."

She shrugged. "I wouldn't know anything about his private purchases. I know where he bought it, that's all, as I told your friend."

"Yes," I said, careful not to tread too heavily, "but Julien Mann says it's actually a Flinck that-"

"I know what he says," she said tightly. She folded her hands on her desk. "I am quite sure he is mistaken."

"I think so, too, but I thought perhaps you might remember something about him-about his father, I mean-"

She jerked her head no. The tears were very close now. "It was fifty years ago, monsieur," she said through a throat that had all but closed up. "I don't recollect him at all."

"Well, then, anything at all that you can tell me about-about the way Monsieur Vachey conducted the business of the Galerie Royale, anything that might-"

The brilliant eyes finally overflowed, the tears running copiously down her cheeks and dripping from her soft chin. A crumpled handkerchief was pulled from somewhere to mop up, but the flood kept coming. She cried without sobs or snuffles, silently except for the accompaniment of long, hollow sighs. I began to apologize and get to my feet, but she waved me back into my chair, and after a while she was able to take a final dab at her reddened nose and tuck the handkerchief away again. A last, shaky sigh, and then came the flood of words.

What Julien Mann had told Les Echos Quotidiens was an unfounded distortion of a patriot's life. Yes, Vachey had worked with the Nazis, all right, but not for them, never for them. Yes, he had bought up Jewish collections that he'd known the Nazis would be interested in. No, he couldn't pay what they were worth, how could he? He paid what he could. And yes, he sold them to the Nazis, if you can call such transactions sales- sometimes he was paid a few francs more than he had paid himself. Just as often, not as much. And sometimes, if they felt like it, they would "pay" him with worthless modern paintings that even Hitler didn't want. One did not try to negotiate with the Nazis.

"I know these things for facts, monsieur. I was there." "I'm sure you do," I said humbly.

"And if he hadn't done this, then what?" Madame Guyot went steadily on, her voice dignified and steady now. "Goering and Rosenberg and the rest of them would have seized the art directly from the Jews, simply walked in with their hooligans and taken it away, as they did in so many other cases, with no thought of paying anything at all for it. What Rene Vachey did in these matters, he did for the Jews, and for France, not for the Nazis. Because of him, many received the money they needed to flee, to save themselves. My own mother, my small brother…" Her eyes shone.

"I know, madame," I said softly. "My friend told me about it." I was embarrassed: uncomfortably aware of the privileged, painless life I'd led; and aware, also, of how quickly I'd leaped to accuse Vachey, if only in my mind. It was good to hear another side of the story. I was starting to wonder how many more there were.

Madame Guyot, her face a shiny pink, seemed embarrassed too. Effusive and talkative she might be, but I didn't think that these deep, raw emotions had very often been put on public display. But she appeared to be relieved as well, purged by the deluge of memory and tears. A terminal sigh that lifted and dropped her shoulders was followed by a sweet, proud, almost playful smile, and a change of subject. "So, Monsieur Norgren, how do you like the office of the new proprietor of the Galerie Vachey?"

I looked around me, ready to change the subject myself. Clotilde Guyot's workspace made my office in SAM look like the grand ballroom at Fontainebleau. Located at the back of the house, behind the gallery, it was more like a utility room (which was probably what it had once been) than an office; a windowless, closetlike cubicle about twelve feet by twelve, with fuse boxes, fire extinguishers, and alarm system displays on the walls instead of artwork. There were metal file cabinets in two of the corners, and fiberboard storage boxes stacked up on the floor. A small table against one wall held a copier and a fax machine.

It was, in other words, still a utility room, except for the student-sized desk and two chairs that had been sandwiched between the copier and one of the cabinets.

I smiled back at her. "You must be looking forward to moving into Monsieur Vachey's office."

She goggled as if I'd made an indecent proposal. "Oh, I could never do that. I-no, that wouldn't be right at all."

But I could see that the idea simply hadn't occurred to her before, and that even while she was instinctively rejecting it, she was beginning to turn it over in her mind.

"Well, perhaps after a respectful interval," she allowed, trying the thought out on me. "Naturally, I wouldn't ask for the furnishings; they would be Christian's…" For a few seconds she floated off among bright images of Vachey's large and airy study. Then she blushed, distressed at the impropriety of such notions, and blurted: "Oh, monsieur, who would kill a man like that?"

"I don't know," I told her gently. "I know the police are doing their best to find out."

"Of course," she said without conviction.

"Madame, perhaps you can help. There are some things…"

Her eyes lit up again. "Yes?"

I leaned toward her over the cluttered desk. "There was a blue book in Monsieur Vachey's study, a scrapbook with clippings pasted into it. You know it?"

She nodded.

"You know what's in it?"

"Oh, yes."

I tried not to sound excited. "Yes? What?"

She smiled charmingly at me, her plump cheeks dimpling. "Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that."

I stared at her. "But-is there anything about the Rembrandt?"

She shook her head.

"The Flinck, then?" I said after a moment. She shook her head.

"But it is a record of how he came by his collection, isn't that right?"

But she just went on wagging her head from side to side, sweetly smiling all the while. She wasn't saying no, she was telling me I wasn't going to get an answer out of her.

My lips were dry. I licked them. "Madame, I know that's what it is. Perhaps I haven't been clear; I think it may have had something to do with his death."

"Oh, I think not. You must trust me, I'm afraid."

"But-" I paused to settle myself down. "I think it's pretty obvious to everyone," I said with a knowing, encouraging smile, "that Monsieur Vachey had some kind of plan in mind in connection with the gallery's current exhibition. Some kind of-of game. Everything about these two paintings-the Leger, the Rembrandt-has been peculiar, right from the beginning. You must see that."

"Certainly, I see it," she agreed.

"Well, that book might give us some clue as to what that game was."

"Ah, but I already know what it was." "

You do? What?"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that either." She was being positively coy now. I tried to think just where it was that I'd lost control of the conversation. Or had I ever had it?

"But he may have been killed over it," I said.

"Oh, I doubt that very much."

"If you won't tell me, you have to tell the police."

"I have to do no such thing, Monsieur Norgren."

"Madame Guyot," I said, doing what I thought was an excellent job of keeping my voice down, "surely you see that his murder could have been related to-to whatever he was planning."

"Well, I don't see how. It hasn't happened yet."

"All the same…"I stared at her. Yet? "Do you mean that it's still going to happen?"

Her smile was at its most grandmotherly and serene. "I certainly hope so, young man."

Good work, Norgren. Your skillful interrogation, disguised by a clever facade of bumbling incoherence, had pried from the elusive Madame Guyot a significant fact: "It" hadn't happened yet.

Whether "it" really had any connection with Vachey's death, I didn't know. Despite her supreme confidence that it didn't, I was reserving judgment. As to whether it had any bearing on the Rembrandt, I didn't see that there was much room for doubt. What else was there but the Rembrandt and the Leger?

There was, of course, one little thing I hadn't quite managed to find out: What was "it"? All I knew now that I hadn't known before was that the fireworks weren't over yet. Whatever kind of stink bomb Vachey had lit, there was a delayed-action fuse on it. But for the moment, there wasn't much to be done about it. All I could do, in effect, was wait for another shoe-dropped by a dead man-to hit the floor. And something told me it was going to make a hell of a noise.

On leaving the Galerie Vachey I went back to the Hotel du Nord and called the prefecture of police to let them know that I would be in Paris overnight, staying at the Hotel Saint-Louis. I left the message with a clerk, getting off the line before Lefevre could come on to hector me about keeping my nose out of official police matters. Not that my Paris plans had any direct relation to Vachey's death. I was going there to see what I could learn that might be relevant to the Rembrandt, and that was all. If I did happen to find out something that seemed pertinent to the murder, I would pass it right along to the inspector, braving the abuse I would no doubt receive for my trouble.

I threw a change of clothes and some toiletries into an overnight bag, stopped at the hotel desk to tell them I'd be back late the next day, and walked three blocks along the Avenue Marechal-Foch to the railway station, where I was twenty-five minutes early for the 12:16 train for Paris. There wasn't time for lunch in the crowded buffet, but I went downstairs to where the coffee bar was, to get a quick double-espresso (I'd been away from Seattle too long; my blood was starting to thin) and a ham-and-cheese-stuffed croissant. Taking them to a circular stand-up counter with room for four, I glanced up at the tall, stooped, balding man across from me. We both spoke at the same time.

"Lorenzo! I thought you'd gone back to Florence."

"Christopher! I didn't know you were still here."

"Yes," I said, "I'm still trying to decide what to do about the Rembrandt. But what about you?"

"As long as I'm here in France- ah, mi scusi, signora -I thought I would visit some dealers. You know, I'm- scusi, signore-"

When Lorenzo Bolzano spoke, arms and elbows were likely to fly anywhere. The people on either side of him scowled at him, gathered up as much of their drinks as hadn't been spilled, and went elsewhere, muttering.

Lorenzo, grandly unaware of their withering glances, continued: "You know, I'm making some big changes in the collection, Christopher."

"Oh?" The "collection" was the great assemblage of paintings, rich in Old Masters, that had been begun by his father, Claudio, a man who made Rene Vachey seem almost like a penny-ante dabbler.

"Yes, I want to develop some real depth in the Synthetists. What do you think?"

What did I think? I thought it sounded like Lorenzo. The Synthetists-or Symbolists or Cloisonnistes-were a school of French artists who rejected naturalistic interpretation for a more "expressive" style in which objects were represented by areas of flat, brilliant color bounded by heavy swaths of black. Open-minded though I am, I've never been able to make much sense of them. They were Lorenzo's cup of tea, all right.

"Jean-Luc Charpentier is helping me. We're off to Lyon today to look at an Anquetin and a couple of Bernards." He poured the last of his Orangina into a paper cup, sipped from it, and smacked his lips. "It comes at a good time, you know. I finally managed to sell off those two Bronzinos, remember them?-brr, so cold, so formal-so I can afford to expand in other directions. When are you coming to Florence, Christopher? I want you to see."

The idea of finding Bronzino's elegant, exquisitely finished figures and limpid, enameled colors replaced by the turbid mush of Redon and company was enough to make me shudder. Lorenzo's discriminating father, I imagined, would be turning over in his grave about now. Of course, this is not to say that Claudio Bolzano had not been been lacking in certain respects. He had been a crook and a murderer, for example. Lorenzo, for all his nuttiness, was as honest and open as anyone could be.

"I'd like to do that, Lorenzo. Can I ask you about something else?"

"Sure, ask."

"It's about Vachey-"

His mobile face darkened. "Ah, Vachey. How terrible."

"You've bought a fair number of paintings from him, haven't you?"

He nodded, sipping the Orangina.

"Look, you're aware that I've got good reason to think there might be something fishy about this Rembrandt-it might not even be a Rembrandt. What I want to know is: Have you ever had any reason to doubt the authenticity of anything he sold you? Could you always rely on his attribution?"

Lorenzo's coffee-bean eyes gleamed; I had given him the kind of opening he loved. "But wherein does an attribution lie?" he asked in his rhetorical singsong. "Entirely in the perception of the attributer, no? Ah-ha-ha. Your question presupposes a simple dichotomy of possibilities that are inherent in the object-authentic or inauthentic, and nothing else, yes? And yet, surely you would not deny that the levels of attributional certainty are unlimited, and that they pertain more to the artificial and predetermined constructs of the attributer's perspective-"

I let him warm up long enough to allow me to swallow some of the croissant, then held up my hand. "Lorenzo, believe me, I'd like nothing better than to argue this out with you, but I have to catch a train in a minute. You know what I mean: Did he ever knowingly try to sell you a fake?" I drank some coffee. "Or unknowingly, for that matter."

The struggle was apparent in his face. Answering a yes-or-no question with a yes or a no didn't come naturally to Lorenzo. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "No," he said, practically sweating with the effort.

"Do you usually run your own tests on the objects you buy?"

"Certainly not. You don't need tests if you know what you're doing."

Maybe not, but did Lorenzo know what he was doing? In all the years I'd known him, I'd never resolved that question to my satisfaction. As a professor of art criticism and as a collector, he demonstrated formidable breadth. On the other hand, if you really believed that there wasn't any difference between fake and genuine, then how were you supposed to tell one from the other? Someday I'd have to pursue that with him.

"Once, years ago, my father began to have questions about a Ferdinand Hodler we'd gotten from Vachey," he admitted.

"They were unsubstantiated, as it turned out, but Vachey offered at once to take it back, without hesitation. This was five years after it had been purchased. So I think we can say he was a man of honor, in that regard at least."

Maybe yes, maybe no. A willingness to take back a dubious painting didn't say much one way or the other. Art dealers necessarily work hard to protect their reputations. They flinch from even the insinuation that a fake has ever passed through their hands. Rather than let the issue publicly arise, they will leap to refund money or make a quiet exchange at the first sign that a buyer is beginning to have doubts.

Naturally, that doesn't mean the next pigeon won't get stuck with it.

But at least I knew that Lorenzo and his father, who between them had been buying from Vachey for three decades, had never found anything, explicit or otherwise, to link Vachey with a fake, and that was something.

"However-" Lorenzo said, and I knew by the quickening of his voice that our descent into the concrete was over; we were off and running again, Lorenzo-style. "However, doesn't the very framing of your question assume, a priori, the existence of a unidimensional pole of reality entirely at odds with the precepts of Einstein's theory of the unified field-"

I was saved from the unimaginable consummation of this thought by the appearance of Jean-Luc Charpentier, who dragged Lorenzo off for the Lyon train. I waved them on their way, gulped the last of my croissant, and ran for the train to Paris.