Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [129]
Accounts of the trial say that this was one of the few moments when Perugia lost his composure. He glared around the courtroom, clenching his fists as if to do battle with his accusers.
“Me? I offered to sell La Gioconda to the English? Who says so? It’s false! Who says so? Who wrote that?”
Barilli pointed out that “it is you yourself who said so, during one of your examinations which I have right here in front of me.”
Unable to deny that, Perugia recalled going to England on a pleasure trip with some friends. He saw some postcards of the Mona Lisa, and that made him decide to get advice on how he could take the painting to Italy. “I was certainly not going to get this kind of advice in France! Therefore from this same postcard vendor, I got the name of an antiques dealer. That’s how I found out about Duveen. At the antiques dealer, I asked how I could take the Mona Lisa to Italy, but Duveen didn’t take me seriously. I protest against this lie that I would have wanted to sell the painting to London. If such a thing had ever been my intention… I would have knocked on the door of all the antique dealers and asked for money.… But I wanted to take it back to Italy, and to return it to Italy, and that is what I did.” 24
“Nevertheless,” said Barilli, “your unselfishness wasn’t total — you did expect some benefit from restoration.”
“Ah benefit, benefit —,” Perugia responded, “certainly something better than what happened to me here.” 25
That drew a laugh from the spectators.
The hearing took only two days — quite speedy, reporters noted, for an Italian legal proceeding. It was clear that the judges didn’t want the publicity generated by the trial to go on for long. Nor did they tarry over their decision: the next day, Barilli called the court to order and announced a sentence for Perugia of one year and fifteen days. As Perugia was led away, he was heard to say, “It could have been worse.” 26
It actually got better. The following month, Perugia’s attorneys presented arguments for an appeal. This time, the court was more lenient, reducing the sentence to seven months. Perugia had already been incarcerated nine days longer than that since his arrest, so he was released. A crowd had gathered to greet him as he left the courthouse. Someone asked him where he would go now, and he said he would return to the hotel where he had left his belongings. When he did, he found that the establishment’s name had changed. No longer was it the Tripoli-Italia; now it was the Hotel La Gioconda — and it was too fancy to allow a convicted criminal to stay there. Perugia’s lawyers had to vouch for him before the concierge would give him a room.
Was that the full story? Had the truth of the Mona Lisa’s disappearance been revealed? Many people did not think so. Though the romantic tale of the humble Italian workman falling in love with the painting and liberating it for his native country was charming, some felt that such a great theft required a larger explanation, a more elaborate plot — a mastermind, not an ordinary workman. Certainly the Sûreté would have preferred to have been outwitted by a criminal genius instead of having to explain why they had miserably bungled the investigation.
But Paris had many more crimes to offer — including two spectacular murder cases — and though few knew it, the Mona Lisa case was not quite closed, either.
9
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
It was Alexandre Dumas père, in a book called Les Mohicans de Paris, who first coined the phrase cherchez la femme (“look for the woman”) to suggest that at the heart of every crime there was a woman. His dictum made its way into the consciousness of French criminologists, and even Bertillon, who strove for the objectivity of a scientist, when faced with a mystery nevertheless could not resist asking, “Where is the woman?” 1
The female criminal was the subject of considerable theorizing among social scientists during the Belle Époque. Cesare Lombroso,