Caravaggio's Angel by Ruth Brandon Page B

were waiting, I told him more about the exhibition – about the three pictures and the various stories associated with them.
    ‘A very small exhibition, then.’
    ‘Oh, very. Though of course there’ll be other stuff too – some drawings, and some other paintings. But I can’t afford to lose any of the central stuff. And the Rigaut brothers seem – seemed – determined to make sure it won’t happen.’
    Olivier swallowed his last oyster. He was silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. ‘I wonder if there’s a connection?’
    ‘Between what? Them both saying no?’
    ‘Did you hear anything about how Antoine died?’
    ‘Not really. I was with his nephew when he heard about it’ – Olivier looked up abruptly: I enjoyed his astonished expression – ‘but all he knew was that his uncle had been found dead. The papers said they don’t suspect foul play.’
    ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ he said dismissively. ‘You can kill people without actually murdering them.’
    ‘What are you saying, that Jean-Jacques murdered his brother?’ That seemed to me to be taking obsession to the point of fantasy.
    ‘I’m not saying anything . . . You say you were with Manu?’
    ‘You know him?’
    ‘A place like St Front, everyone knows everyone. Everyone’s related to everyone, pretty much. He’s a little younger than me, but we kind of grew up together . . . How did you meet him?’
    ‘You remember, I was telling you about that strange affair with the Surrealist who committed suicide. It’s become a sort of legend and I wanted to see the place where it happened. It turned out Manu lived there. The house belongs to his grandmother now.’
    ‘You say you went to see her?’
    ‘Yes, Manu gave me her address. The idea was we were going to talk about her husband. And then – there was the picture. I couldn’t believe my eyes.’
    ‘He didn’t tell you it was there?’
    ‘No. I knew it existed – it appeared in an exhibition fifty years ago – but it seemed to have vanished.’
    ‘Strange that Manu didn’t say anything about it.’
    ‘Isn’t it? When I first got there he wouldn’t tell me a thing – not even where his grandmother lived. I managed to drag out that she’d been married to Emmanuel Rigaut, and that Robert de Beaupré was her brother. But every time I asked him about her he changed the subject. Then just when I was on the point of leaving he heard about his uncle’s death, and for some reason that changed every-thing . . . Did you know about it? The picture?’
    ‘I think I vaguely remember it. A great big thing. But it’s years since I went there.’ Olivier tapped his teeth thought-fully. They were unnaturally white, like a toothpaste ad or an American college girl. Untrustworthy teeth, I always feel, at any rate in a man. ‘So what next?’
    ‘That’s where I hoped you might help,’ I said pointedly. You had to admire his interview technique. So far, I’d learned almost nothing, while he now knew almost as much about the Caravaggio affair as I did. ‘I want to find out about the Rigaut family. See if I can find some clue to what’s going on.’
    He raised his eyebrows. ‘For instance?’
    He was doing it again! But this time, he might be able to supply some information. ‘For instance, I gather Juliette had a romance with an uncle of yours.’
    ‘My great-uncle Arnaud,’ he agreed. ‘But her family weren’t having it. Not rich enough. I remember her mother – a dried-up stick of a thing, always hanging round the curé. A collabo, naturally. They all were, that family.’
    ‘But Emmanuel Rigaut was a Resistance hero. He was a Communist. They all were, the Surrealists. That was part of being one.’
    ‘So? People don’t necessarily agree, even if they’re married. It was a civil war. Brother against brother . . .’
    And it hadn’t necessarily ended, I reflected. Hadn’t Joe been talking about just that – a low-level civil war?
    ‘Even if they agreed to start