Murder in Lascaux Read online

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  Murder in Lascaux

  Betsy Draine

  and

  Michael Hinden

  Terrace Books

  A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

  Terrace Books

  A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

  1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor

  Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059

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  Copyright © 2011

  The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Draine, Betsy, 1945–

  Murder in Lascaux / Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden.

  p.     cm.

  ISBN 978-0-299-28420-6 (cloth: alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-299-28423-7 (e-book)

  1. Lascaux Cave (France)—Fiction.  2. Art teachers—Fiction.

  3. Americans—France—Fiction.  4. Murder—France—Dordogne—Fiction.

  5. Dordogne (France)—Fiction.  I. Hinden, Michael.  II. Title.

  PS3604.R343M87     2011

  813´.6—dc22

  2011015989

  ISBN 978-0-299-28424-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

  For our brothers and sisters:

  David

  Bob

  Patrick

  Michael

  Lucinda

  Katy

  Murder in Lascaux

  1

  THOUSANDS OF YEARS before there was history, human hands created a masterpiece: the cave paintings of Lascaux. The brilliantly colored bulls and horses that decorate the cavern’s walls are among the wonders of the world.

  Lascaux is the reason I became an art historian, a career that might not have been in the cards for someone like me. Neither of my parents finished college. But as a child, I received a picture book called Lascaux: The Story of Art, and while I was growing up, those magical pictures held me spellbound. For years I leafed through that book just for the illustrations, dreaming that someday I would travel to France and visit the cave itself. Now I was going to get my wish—though before the day was over, I’d regret it.

  It was a cool day in June. Toby and I had spent the night in Montignac, a bustling market town not far from Lascaux. After sleeping in and dawdling over breakfast, we still had hours to kill before our late-afternoon appointment at the cave. To fill the time, we decided to take a walking tour of the town. From our hotel, we headed down the main commercial street, passing old-fashioned shops with understated signage and attractive window displays. I dropped back at one point to admire the wares of a linen shop while Toby walked on ahead. I smiled at the thought that after six years of marriage, he still looked pretty good to me from behind.

  Montignac spreads out along the banks of the Vézère, a tributary of the Dordogne River. It’s the Dordogne that gives its name to the department, but the earliest human habitations were here, along the modest Vézère. I wanted to see the river, and soon we found our way to the balustrades of the quai. We stood there surveying the opposite bank, which was built up with tall, stone-and-stucco buildings. The bottom stories provided access to and from the river, and they were kept plain, with few windows, the better to withstand flood. The floors above were balconied and half-timbered, giving a medieval air to the whole ensemble. I tried to imagine what this bank might have looked like fifty thousand years ago, ranged with huts made of animal skins supported by wooden poles or maybe mastodon bones. I closed my eyes and pictured an ancient people—people like us—pursuing their domestic chores.

  “Look,” said Toby, pointing toward the lure of stone stairs leading down to the river level. Soon we were on a path that took us the length of the town, up a stairway to the bridge and over the river, along the bank we’d been watching from the balustrade, and back again. When we returned to our starting point, there was just enough time to buy bread and cheese, make a picnic at the quai, and get into our rental car for the drive to Lascaux.

  By then, Montignac’s main street was buzzing with tourists and bottled up with mid-afternoon traffic. We inched our way along, trying not to inhale diesel fumes from belching trucks. Worrying about the time, I didn’t relax until we finally reached the tiny bridge that led out of town to the southwest, the cliffs, and the cave.

  Those cliffs, I was thinking, provided shelter for the Cro-Magnon artists and may have been the reason why they settled here. They also provided building stone for the local houses, which blend in with the landscape and look so appealing to foreign eyes. As we left Montignac behind, we passed hamlets of limestone cottages whose harmonious colors changed with the light, from yellow to amber as the day grew overcast. How pretty, I thought; how serene it might be to live in one of those homes looking out toward the timeless cliffs.

  But then as we drove on and it got darker, the houses began to seem gloomy and isolated, with individual cottages secluded in fields or set atop hillocks. The stone took on a grayish tinge, and the countryside turned flinty. After a few more miles, the landscape changed again. Cultivated fields gave way to overgrown patches by the roadside and copses of gnarled oak. Suddenly dark branches loomed over the narrow road. Before it was renamed the Department of the Dordogne, this province was called Périgord and this part of it “Black Périgord” because of its dark forests. I began to see why, as we drove deeper into the woods.

  Our little Peugeot, no larger than a golf cart, by now was the only car in sight. The busy engine strained as the grade grew steeper. Had we veered off the main road? Were we lost? There were no markers along the way, no indication we were approaching a world-famous site. But after a long climb in second gear along a banged-up road where branches scraped the side mirrors, we came to a small sign with a wooden arrow, and following it, we arrived at a small parking area reserved for visitors to the cave. There were only two other cars in the lot. We looked at each other, got out, locked the doors and followed another arrow to a footpath, which led us into the forest.

  It was unmistakably an oak grove—I know that leaf shape. But these were scruffy specimens, with thin trunks and low-arching branches. Whitish scales and gray moss made a mess of each tree’s base. The atmosphere was creepy, and we felt our solitude uneasily. The modern world seemed far away.

  In a few minutes, though, to my relief, we reached our destination, a clearing next to a small hut. Waiting there was another American couple, judging by their dress. An older man stood apart from them. Unsure of this other man’s nationality, T
oby greeted everyone in French; he speaks it better than I do. I struggled with French in college, but Toby picked it up during a summer in Quebec. Whether in Montreal or in Paris, he gets by pretty well on gumption, if not always on grammar.

  The man who looked American replied in French.

  “Bonjour! My name is David Press,” he said, stepping forward. “This is my wife, Lily. We’re from New York.” Lily smiled and extended her hand. They were a bit younger than we were (early thirties, I guessed) and dressed for a suburban outing, in new jeans and cashmere sweaters. David was tall and broad, the massiveness of his frame countered by a boyish face. As we exchanged a few pleasantries, he seemed proud of both his competent French and his beautiful wife. She was ivory-skinned and jet-haired, with delicate features. She seemed shy, but perhaps it was just that, like me, she wasn’t that confident in a foreign language.

  We had nothing more than a curt “Bonjour” from the remaining member of our group. Everything about him looked world-weary, from his wrinkled suit to his deeply lined face. He made no attempt to join us and looked vaguely into the distance while dragging on a foul-smelling Gauloise. That told me he was French—nobody else can smoke those things. Out of deference to him, we continued to make small talk in his language, but after a few minutes, as he drifted away, I decided to relax into English.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it, that four of us are Americans when only five people a day are allowed in. Are you here to do research?” (In recent years, the cave has been closed to prevent pollution, allowing only brief visits by scholars and VIPs. I couldn’t easily ask David, are you a VIP?)

  “Oh, no,” David shot back. “I’m a lawyer—intellectual property. We had to pull strings to get in. One of my partners does legal consulting for the French government. He used his connections to get us permission, as a wedding gift. We were just married in March. In fact, we’re on a belated honeymoon.” He glanced toward his wife, as if seeking confirmation. One corner of her mouth tightened slightly, as her eyes lifted to his and then sought the ground.

  Uh-oh, I thought to myself, trouble already on the honeymoon. Not a good sign. Of course it wouldn’t do to notice. I offered my congratulations.

  “What about you two?” David asked me.

  I explained we were here under false colors as well. As an associate professor of art history at Sonoma College, I had the right letterhead for an application. It’s just that I never mentioned my field. Now I felt guilty about it.

  David laughed, acknowledging that our mutual grounds for admission were shaky. “So what’s your research area if it’s not prehistoric art?”

  “Nineteenth-century painting.”

  David nodded and looked inquiringly at Toby, who said dryly, “I’m here in my capacity as the husband.” His plan was to thoroughly enjoy our excursion. Toby, I should say, has about as much guilt as a radish. “At home,” he added, “I sell antiques.” In fact, he runs a very successful gallery. There’s nothing he likes better than being on his own, driving from place to place on a scouting expedition and bringing home some special piece he’s pried from a seller’s hand.

  There was a slightly awkward pause.

  “And you, Lily?” I asked.

  “I work in publishing at the moment,” she said softly, “but I’ve been thinking of going back to school.”

  She gave us a weak smile, and David looked ill at ease. Why? I wondered. But any further conversation was forestalled by the entrance of our guide, who now appeared from inside the reception hut. It was precisely four o’clock, the hour for the tour. The dour Frenchman, who hadn’t bothered to share his name with us, loped slowly up the path to rejoin our group. The guide gave him a disapproving glance and then stood grim-faced until he arrived within hearing distance.

  The guide was thin, pale, and hunched-over. His gray hair was slicked straight back and looked wet. He announced his name as Pierre Gounot and set about checking our admission papers and spelling out the rules of the visit. No smoking (a glance at the French puffer, who crushed his cigarette underfoot). No photographs. No touching the walls or rock formations. No flashlights or other means of illumination apart from his own equipment. And we must stay together at all times. Understood? This recital of the regulations was punctuated by an alarming cough. Then, straightening up a bit, he announced: “Bon. On y va.” Let’s go.

  Toby and I donned the jackets we had been advised to bring, and we followed the guide up a trail leading from the reception area toward a grass-covered mound resembling a bunker. As we neared our destination, Toby took my elbow and hung back a little, so we lagged behind the others.

  “Okay, who does he remind you of ?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “The guide? I don’t know.”

  “Come on. The long face, the batlike ears?”

  “Who?”

  “The children of the night,” drawled Toby in his best rendition of Bela Lugosi. “They make such music!” Toby does two imitations, both out of date; the other is Groucho Marx.

  Gounot did look a lot like Dracula, now that I thought about it. Besides the pointy ears, he had the pallor of someone who spent his days underground. Stifling a laugh, I shushed Toby, and we caught up with the rest of the group. We had walked about two hundred yards up the wooded trail. Now a stone staircase of about a dozen steps led down into the mound, where a huge iron door marked the entrance to the cave. The guide punched some numbers on a security pad next to the door, produced from his pocket a dungeon-sized key, and introduced it into the lock. The massive door swung open with a whisper, which surprised me: I had expected creaks and groans. On the other side of the door, the guide punched a few more buttons and then ushered us in. As he shut the door behind us, we had a moment to sense the chill. Not so cold, I thought. Those warnings about the need for a jacket were overdone. But in fact this was just the first of a series of temperature-controlled antechambers, each smaller and colder than the last.

  In the third chamber, we had to step into a shallow tray filled with a chemical solution that would remove algae or pollen from our shoes. Ahead of me, Lily hesitated, and I sensed her reluctance to stain the leather of her expensive-looking flats. She winced as she waded through. I had come in rubber-soled running shoes and felt no compunction in complying. Toby splashed through after me, followed by the grim-faced Frenchman, who stepped lightly in and out of the tray as though he had gone through this strange ablution any number of times.

  Then we were on the landing of a dimly lit stairway leading down into the dark. At once the air was different, with a cool smell of earth and rock. Gounot led the way. The steps were uneven, and I grasped the cold iron railing as tightly as I could. At the bottom, a smooth clay surface sloped gently down and away from us. I shivered, not so much from the cold as from the sense of entering a forbidden place.

  “Come closer, please,” Gounot wheezed. He detached a battery-powered lamp from his belt and announced he was going to turn off the lights strung along the stairwell. “For the paintings, the less light, the better.”

  Huddled together, we shuffled forward through a narrow passage, following the dancing beam of the guide’s hand-held lamp. As the neck of the passageway opened onto a wider space, he turned off the lamp, encouraging us to inch forward in the dark. That’s when I felt my first pang of fear. There was no reason for it, yet I reached out and grabbed Toby’s hand. “It’s okay,” I heard David say to Lily. Our group stood for a full minute in the inky blackness, absorbing the alien silence. Then, with a theatrical flair, Gounot threw a switch, and a rack of floodlights lit the cavern.

  “Mesdames, Messieurs, regardez! These paintings that surround you have existed for seventeen thousand years.”

  The effect was breathtaking. We were standing inside the entrance to the Hall of Bulls, a low rotunda perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty wide. A natural domed ceiling rose only a few feet above our heads, obscured by deep shadows. But all eyes were on the glistening walls. On either side of us, rows o
f magnificent animals galloped away toward the back of the chamber. There were bulls, horses, and stags, arrayed as if in a procession. Above my left shoulder was a strange-looking beast with a pair of long, straight horns. There was movement everywhere, and the colors were amazing: reds, yellows, browns, and blacks looking as fresh as if they had been painted yesterday.

  Whereas the floors and ceiling of the rotunda were a rusty ochre streaked with yellow, the uneven walls were lightened by a whitish mineral that must have invited the imprint of images. And what images! All the animals were in profile. The herd was dominated by four enormous bulls, two on each side of the hall, the largest at least five yards across. On the left wall, one giant bull faced off against the other, while a line of red and brown horses fled toward and past him. That was the picture from my childhood art book, more spectacular in reality than in dreams.

  Gounot had been consulting his watch as we stood in silence, taking in the spectacle. He now moved toward the back of the hall, where he flipped a switch. The lights went out. As he approached us again, in darkness illuminated only by his jiggling lamp, the images leaped to life. Now I could see how the artists had used the contours of the rock to create a sense of three dimensions. Where a boss on the wall protruded, the cave artist saw a haunch or a shoulder, and the rest of the animal followed. The images seemed even more alive emerging out of the dark, as the weak beams of Gounot’s lamp created shadows, which defined the figures.

  “Mesdames, Messieurs, this is how the Cro-Magnons saw Lascaux. They used torches for light, or they made sandstone lamps and burned animal fat, with moss for a wick. One of those lamps was found deep in this cave.”

  I strained to take in visual information, while listening as our guide recounted the story of the cave’s discovery. Toby and I were able to follow along in French, but I could hear David whispering as he provided a running translation for his wife.