The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [43]
Finally, Lipsey took out his small orange-covered notebook. The sheets were blank except for the first, which had written on it, in his own small handwriting, the address the girl was staying at in Paris.
He would not confront her immediately, he decided. He finished his coffee and lit a small cigar. He would pursue the other line of inquiry first.
He permitted himself an inaudible sigh. This was the tiresome part of his work. He would have to knock on every door in the street of the postcard, and hope to come across whatever had put Dee on the trail of the painting. He would have to try the side streets, too. His assessment of the girl led him to believe she probably could not wait more than about five minutes before telling someone of her discovery.
Even if he was right, it was a long shot. Her clue might have been something she saw in a newspaper; someone she met walking along the street; or something which happened to occur to her as she was passing through. The fact that her address was in a different part of Paris, and there seemed to be little in this area to attract her, was in Lipsey′s favor. Still, the probability was that he would spend a full day or more and get sore feet making a fruitless search.
He would make it all the same. He was a thorough man.
He gave another little sigh. Well, he would finish his cigar first.
Lipsey wrinkled his nostrils to exclude the smell as he walked into the old-fashioned fish shop. The cold black eyes of the fish gazed malevolently at him from the slab, appearing alive because, paradoxically, they seemed so dead in life.
The fishmonger smiled at him. ″M′sieu?″
Lipsey showed the photograph of Dee Sleign and enunciated, in his precise French: ″Have you seen this girl?″
The man narrowed his eyes, and his smile froze to a ritual grimace. His face said that he smelled cops. He wiped his hands on his apron and took the picture, turning his back to Lipsey and holding it up to let the light hit it.
He turned back, handed over the photograph, and shrugged. ″Sorry, I don′t recognize her,″ he said.
Lipsey thanked him and left the shop. He entered a narrow, dark doorway beside the fishmonger′s and climbed the stairs. The ache in the the small of his back intensified with the effort: he had been on his feet for several hours. Soon he would stop for lunch, he thought. But he would drink no wine with his meal—it would make the afternoon′s trudging insupportable.
The man who answered his knock on the door at the head of the stairs was very old, and completely bald. He appeared with a smile on his face as if he would be glad to see the person who knocked, no matter who it was.
Lipsey caught a glimpse, over the man′s shoulder, of a group of paintings on a wall. His heart jumped: the paintings were valuable originals. This could be his man.
He said: ″I am sorry to trouble you, m′sieu. Have you seen this girl?″ He showed the photograph.
The old man took the photograph and went inside the flat, to look at it in the light, like the fishmonger. He said over his shoulder: ″Come in, if you will.″
Lipsey entered, and shut the door behind him. The room was very small, untidy, and smelly.
″Sit down, if you want,″ the old man said. Lipsey did so, and the Frenchman sat opposite him. He laid the photograph on the rough wooden table between them. ″I am not sure,″ he said. ″why do you want to know?″
The wrinkled yellow face was completely expressionless, but Lipsey was now sure that this man had put Dee on the track of the picture. ″Does the reason matter?″ he asked.
The old man laughed easily. ″You are too old to be a wronged lover, I suppose,″ he said. ″And you are very unlike her, so it is improbable that you are her father. I think you are a policeman.″
Lipsey recognized a mind as sharply analytical as his own. ″Why, has she done something wrong?″
″I have no idea. If she has, I am not going to put the police on her trail. And if she has not, then there is no reason for you to pursue her.″
″I am a private detective,″ Lipsey replied.