Death on the Riviera Read Online Free PDF Page A

M’sieur.” He stepped aside obsequiously. “You like it, perhaps?” He gesticulated. “The composition, M’sieur?”
    Paul studied the half-finished painting with a critical eye.
    â€œIt’s an improvement. I can recognize some cypress trees, a church and a stone wall.”
    â€œIt is ‘ Le Monastère de l’Annonciade ’, M’sieur.”
    â€œGood. I know where I am with a picture like this. But this other…this horror…what does it mean? What am I to tell people when they ask me what it’s about? Can you tell me that, you bone-head?”
    The hunchback considered the point for a moment, scratched his dark greasy hair and spat deftly through the open window into the courtyard below. Then abruptly his swarthy, hook-nosed features cracked into a grin.
    â€œThat is simple, M’sieur. Call it Le Cauchemar, the nightmare. For that is how it will doubtless appear to the ignorant and the stupid. Shall we say, perhaps, to your friends, M’sieur? But to those of us who see beyond, who have the vision…” Jacques Dufil shook his head sadly. “You will call for your new picture next week?”
    â€œNext week,” nodded Paul.
    The hunchback raised three fingers in the air and gazed at Paul enquiringly. Paul scowled, shook his head and with an insulting gesture jerked two fingers in the little fellow’s face.
    With a fatalism born of much adversity, Jacques Dufil lifted his tortured shoulders and threw wide his hands. The obsequious smile was back on his twisted features, but as he thought of this nincompoop’s ignorant remarks about his beautiful pictures there was black hatred in his heart!
    III
    Since Paul had gone to see the hunchback, Dilys got no answer when she knocked on the door of his studio. She’d planned a visit that morning to L’Exposition de Peinture Méditerranéene and, thinking his professional criticism might prove instructive, she wanted Paul to escort her. Dilys knew very little about painting, but being at heart a serious-minded young woman she was determined to seize every opportunity to widen her knowledge. Just because her aunt insisted on keeping her in idleness there was no reason why she shouldn’t attempt to improve her mind.
    The galleries, which looked out over the trim and exotic public gardens, were not particularly crowded. A few holidaymakers were trailing around with that sanctimonious look that is usually reserved for churches, museums and places of historic interest. An official was sitting on a Louis Quinze chair, viewing their progress round the place with the lynx-eyed apprehension of a private detective presiding over a valuable collection of wedding-presents. Dilys couldn’t imagine why, because most of the canvases couldn’t have been filched from the building without the aid of a hand-cart.
    She bought a catalogue and, with typical conscientiousness, began to study the pictures in their proper numerical order. A few names were familiar to her—Matisse, Bonnard, Dufy and Utrillo, for example. These were the star performers, and before their work she stood earnestly and solemnly impressed. But what was she to make of the lesser lights? Was she to display amusement, scorn, horror or delight? It was all very difficult and she wished Paul could have been there to guide her safely through this aesthetic maze. In particular she would have valued his comments on a vast and vivid canvas labelled Fiesta, whereon a bevy of magenta-faced gargoyles were drinking and dancing in a grove of monstrous emerald cabbages against a savage purple sky. Arriving opposite this picture, she was suddenly aware of a tall, square-shouldered young man staring blankly at it over her left shoulder. And it was he who put into words, with admirable and virile brevity, her own instinctive reactions to the work.
    â€œMy God!”
    Just that—clearly and vigorously articulated in what is