Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [97]
Neither Picasso nor Apollinaire was a French citizen, and thus they could expect harsh treatment from the authorities. Fernande wrote, “I can see them both now, a pair of contrite children, terrified and thinking of fleeing abroad. It was thanks to me that they did not give in to their panic; they decided to stay in Paris and get rid of the compromising sculptures as quickly as possible. But how? Finally they decided to put the statues in a suitcase and throw it into the Seine at night.” 49
Fernande thought that much of this was playacting. The pair ate dinner and then sat around nervously, not wanting to venture out with the statuettes until the streets were deserted. They whiled away the time by playing cards, but “neither of them knew the first thing about cards,” 50 Fernande wrote. They just thought it was something gangsters would do, so they did it to build up their courage.
Finally, at midnight, they left, carrying the statuettes in a suitcase. But as they walked through the silent streets, their nerve began to fail. They feared that they were being followed, “and their imagination conjured up a thousand possibilities, each more fantastic than the last.” 51 If they were seen throwing the statuettes into the river, the penalty would be harsher than if they simply tried to return them. Finally they decided that turning the statuettes in would be the best course after all. And so they went back to the apartment at two in the morning, exhausted and still carrying the suitcase.
Apollinaire spent the night at Picasso’s apartment and in the morning took the statuettes to the Paris-Journal, which by now seemed the proper place to turn in such stolen objects. The news of this latest recovery ran under the headline
WHILE AWAITING MONA LISA
THE LOUVRE RECOVERS ITS TREASURES
That was just the sort of publicity Apollinaire and Picasso did not want, but at least the newspaper did not mention their names. In fact, the “mysterious visitor” who returned these stone objects was described as “an amateur artist, fairly well-to-do, [whose] greatest pleasure is in collecting works of art.” 52 That, they felt, was surely enough to keep the police off their trail. Moreover, a curator at the Louvre had examined the statuettes, which were described as the heads of a man and a woman, and pronounced them genuine. If Picasso had damaged them in his investigations, it was not noticed. He and Apollinaire hoped the entire affair would now blow over, particularly since Pieret had left Paris — though not before sending a mocking farewell letter to the Paris-Journal, writing, “I hope with all my heart that the Mona Lisa will be returned to you. I am not counting very heavily on such an event. However, let us hope that if its present possessor allows himself to be seduced by the thought of lucre, he will confide in your newspaper, whose staff has displayed toward me such a praiseworthy degree of discretion and honor. I can only urge the person at present holding Vinci’s masterpiece to place himself entirely in your hands.” 53
Unfortunately, Pieret’s comments only made it appear more likely than ever that he knew something about the Mona Lisa theft, and the police intensified their search for those who had purchased his previous stolen goods. No one ever learned how they identified Apollinaire, but on the evening of September 7, two detectives from the Sûreté appeared at his door. A search of his apartment turned up some letters from Géry Pieret, which apparently