Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [127]
The police took the Lancelottis and Séguenot in for questioning. When Vincent heard that Perugia had accused him of hiding the Mona Lisa, he vehemently denied it. He admitted knowing Perugia and also acknowledged that he and his brother had gone to the railway station when Perugia left for Italy, but that had been no more than a friendly gesture toward their fellow Italian.
Séguenot was emphatic as well. “I work at home as a washerwoman,” she said. “Nothing, however small, could have been brought into our miserable little room without my noticing it immediately.… If I had seen [the painting] in Perugia’s possession, I would have torn it fom his grasp and rushed it back to the Louvre.” 21 In fact, she added under further questioning, “It was only when Perugia was arrested that I even learned that the painting existed!” The police official who questioned her expressed some surprise at this, as well he might have, for it seemed unlikely that anyone living in Paris in 1911 could have been oblivious to the theft.
Despite their denials, Magistrate Drioux ordered all three suspects charged with receiving and concealing an art object stolen from a state museum. He released Séguenot and Michael, ordering only Vincent to be held at La Santé Prison.
Those who believed that Perugia could not possibly have acted alone felt that the Lancelotti brothers did more than merely conceal the painting. It was suggested that they could have been his accomplices in physically removing the painting and its heavy frame from the wall of the museum. The argument against this scenario, of course, is that the only two people known to have seen the thief — the plumber who opened the stairway door for him and the passerby who saw him throw away a doorknob outside the museum — both told police that there had been only one man.
In any case, Drioux eventually dropped all charges against the trio when it became clear that Perugia would not be returning to France to testify against them. His testimony was the only evidence of their involvement, though many accounts of the case since then have mentioned them as co-conspirators.
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In January 1914, Perugia’s hopes of receiving a reward for returning the painting were finally dashed. Alfredo Geri collected the twenty-five thousand francs that had been offered by Les Amis du Louvre, a society of wealthy art lovers, for information leading to the return of the painting. The grateful French government also bestowed upon him its most prestigious decoration, the Légion d’honneur, as well as the title officier de l’instruction publique. Geri showed what were perhaps his true colors when he promptly turned around and sued the French government for 10 percent of the value of the Mona Lisa. His contention was that a Gallic tradition gave the finder of lost property a reward of one-tenth the value of the object. In the end, a court decided that the Mona Lisa was beyond price and that Geri had only acted as an honest citizen should. He received no further reward.
Perugia, meanwhile, was growing depressed in jail. Perhaps it bothered him that Geri collected the reward he had hoped to get, or merely that the authorities insisted on keeping him locked up, not willing to accept him as a hero. Guards reported that he occasionally wept. A psychologist came to see him, but Perugia at first refused treatment, insisting that he wasn’t crazy. After a little coaxing, however, he began to discuss his feelings. By the time his trial began on June 4, he was again calm and self-possessed, insisting that he had acted as a patriot.
Since there was no question of guilt, the legal proceedings were more like an inquest intended to establish the truth, if such a thing were possible. Three judges presided in a large room that had been remodeled to provide space for journalists from around the world. The designer of the room