Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [126]
The police branded Perugia’s romantic and patriotic declarations as sheer invention. In Paris, detectives had revisited the boardinghouse room where he had stayed, this time giving it a more thorough search. They came up with some interesting finds. First were two notebooks in which Perugia kept a kind of diary. Under a date in 1910 he had made a list of art collectors and dealers in the United States, Germany, Italy, and England. Among the collectors were John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie. Geri was among the Italians listed. Pretty clearly, Perugia had money on his mind at the very time he was helping to put the Mona Lisa inside a protective case — almost a year before the robbery. Perugia tried to deflect the new evidence — and Geri’s account of their discussions about money — by claiming he was being a dutiful son: “I was anxious to ensure a comfortable old age for my parents.” 19
Something else the police found in Perugia’s room, however, only added to his romantic appeal. This was a bundle of ninety-three love letters, bound with red ribbon, sent to him by a woman who signed herself “Mathilde.” Somehow the police, or enterprising reporters (it was never quite clear), developed the story that Perugia had attended a dance where Mathilde had been stabbed by the man who had brought her. Perugia carried her to the house of an old woman, who nursed her back to health. Afterward, Mathilde and Perugia fell passionately in love. The icing on the cake, for the newspapers, was that Mathilde was said to have borne a remarkable resemblance to Mona Lisa.
An intense hunt began to find this mysterious young woman. Analysis of the letters showed that her French was not very good. From that fact alone, speculation arose that she must be German, and that fueled the idea, never abandoned in some quarters, that the theft had all along been a German plot to embarrass France.
Meanwhile, two detectives from the Sûreté had arrived in Florence to question Perugia. His legal situation was uncertain, for the French government had made no move to extradite him — and never would. It seems possible that the Italian government, recognizing Perugia’s popularity, willingly gave the painting back in exchange for France’s agreement to allow Perugia to remain in Italy. At any rate, since he freely confessed to the crime, the French detectives were more interested in identifying any accomplices he might have had.
Apparently trying to convince his questioners that he had taken good care of the painting, Perugia said that because he feared it was too cold in his lodgings, he had stored it with a friend named Vincent Lancelotti. That sent French police in search of Lancelotti, another Italian who had come to Paris to find work. Here too they turned up information that proved embarrassing for the French authorities. Shortly after the robbery, Lancelotti had actually been questioned by Magistrate Drioux, and acting on a tip, Drioux had ordered Lancelotti’s rooms searched. When nothing was found, Lancelotti was released.
Now the police returned to his apartment house on the rue Bichat, across the street from the Saint-Louis Hospital in the tenth arrondissement. Lancelotti’s mistress, Françoise Séguenot, answered the door and said he was out. Asked when he would return, she shouted, “You’re not going to start these annoyances again,” 20 and protested that Vincent had already been cleared of any involvement in the theft. The police left but staked out the building and were rewarded a few minutes later when a man with his collar turned up and a cap pulled over his eyes emerged. One of the detectives recognized him as Michael Lancelotti, Vincent’s brother. Michael was apparently not the brains of the family, for when the police stopped him, he let