The Forest Secret - Chapter 10

Altogether,  there were 87 leather-bound journals, all unmarked on the outside so as to be indistinguishable, but replete with marvellous details in their contents.  The dates to the entries were clear and concurrent.  Occasionally there were sketches, presumably drawn by Caron, detailed and almost always of images of Notre Dame, inside and outside, along with the occasional street-scape or from holidays he must have taken to the north coast of France.  Some locations Stephanie identified as Normandy.

But it was the amount of writing, and the sheer quality of it, that attracted the two women. Every paragraph was full of rich prose, interspersed occasionally with some quote from literature or verses of poetry. The cursive writing was old fashioned and precise, the flourishes accentuated by the use of a fountain pen.

On a whim, Charley went through the later volumes starting in the new century, while Stephanie began with the first entry in 1959. “It’s amazing,” she noted, “that Caron began these reflections when he was only 19.”

Charley agreed. “Does he have anything to say about where he received his education?” she asked.

“Not that I’ve come across yet, but I remember something about it in the material Denis gave us on the first day.”

Charley scolded herself for the oversight.  Things had been so busy from the get-go that she should have perused the researcher’s findings more closely.  

After a full 30 minutes, she sighed, rubbed her eyes, and said to Stephanie: “Going through these will take forever - time which we might not have.  Let’s concentrate on the decade you are in - the sixties - and see if he identifies the special woman in the picture.”

“That’s what I’ve been going through.  He mentions some girls he dated, even about kissing one of them under a tree in a park somewhere, but nothing more serious.”

They opted to get a coffee from the street below and were just leaving when Denis entered the front door. “I may have identified her,” he said, gasping slightly.  “O, and I brought some coffees and croissants for us.”  The women smiled at each other at the quaintness of the timing.

They sat at the kitchen table - a lengthy piece of furniture with gouge marks and ink stains that themselves would likely tell a lengthy story.  Stephanie found some small plates in one of the cupboards for the croissants and then sat down with the others.

“So, here’s what I discovered,” the researcher began, a certain excitement in his voice.  “The foundation possessed lots of material about Claude Baudin’s street paintings and when I showed them the picture of the woman on my phone there was some excitement.  Apparently, they have a couple of draft versions of the painting and always wondered what happened to the final product.  They had just assumed he had never followed through on finishing it. They immediately began asking how they might acquire it but when I informed them of the circumstances, they realized there was a process that must be gone through first, saying they are used to such things.”

“So, they didn’t know the woman?” asked Stephanie, disappointment in her voice.

“Actually they did, and quite a bit of information at that,” replied Denis.

“What?” Charley gasped.

“Baudin was fastidious in the notes he kept regarding his works - place, time, name of subject, length of time for the creation of the work, etc. - similar to our Aramis.”

“And?” Charley pressed, smiling at the word ourAramis.

“Her name was Mary Weatherby, from Canterbury in southern England.  Her father was William, assigned as Deputy Head of Mission for the British government during the turbulent sixties  - wild years for both Britain and France.  He was stationed with his family in Paris from 1959 to 1967 and was then reassigned to the High Commission in Australia following that. He had two daughters, and Mary was the oldest.  The younger finished her education in Paris, whereas Mary had graduated from University College London prior to her father’s posting.  Her mother was Elizabeth, also a University College graduate who had met William prior to the war.”

“So, well established, intelligent, affluent and likely prim and proper,” Charley noted.

“Most definitely. According to the Baudin Foundation researcher - there’s only one of them working there - the painter and Artemis Caron because friends while both were at school together at the Sorbonne.”

“Aramis went to the Sorbonne?” asked a surprised Charley.

“Yes, in part because his own parents were affluent and well-connected,” added Denis.  Though Baudin excelled in the arts, Caron fell in love with writing and delved heavily into the philosophers.”

“That’s great Denis, but what about this Mary Weatherby?  That’s what you went there for, right?”  He felt slightly miffed at Stephanie’s tone of impatience, but cast it off.

“The foundation had no idea how Mary first came into the picture, or how she initially met Aramis, but it was clear that by 1962 they were fervently in love, even talking plans of marriage and travel.  It was during this period that Baudin, according to his notes, asked if he could paint Mary as a gift he wanted to give to his friend Aramis.  The assumption was that it would serve as something of a wedding gift.  His form of painting wasn’t really suitable to portrait work.  He liked to develop street scenes with a rather, for wants of a better term, ‘splotchy’ effect in his strokes. It worked for the broader scenes of the city, but not for the finer work of facial features.”

“Well, it seems to me that it worked beautifully, judging from the painting in there,” Charley observed, jerking her thumb towards the study behind them. 

“By their own admission, it was an oddity - a one and only.  They felt that he didn’t like the process of mixing disciplines and merely abandoned the project after a time.  Clearly, he didn’t”

The two women thought over the news Denis had just brought them, wondering as to next steps.

Denis decided to speak up again.  “Look, the painting is unique and could probably fetch a tidy sum, not because of its quality but that it is a work of Baudin.  They acknowledged that much at the foundation.  But that isn’t really what we’re concerned with as a newspaper, is it?  Our focus has always been Aramis Caron, and it now appears clear that if we are to understand him, we must somehow dig deeper into the story of that woman in that painting.  Everything about Caron seems to be here, likely within a few block radius of the cathedral.  But this woman, Mary Weatherby, is not only a mystery, but one that we’ll never find out about by remaining in Paris.”

Without saying so, both women knew the researcher was right.  Discovering the life of Caron would likely be a matter of poring through his journals and pulling out the relevant bits.  But Weatherby?  How would they proceed?

“Let me make a suggestion, if you’re okay with that?  It’s your story after all.”

Charley smiled before saying, “You know I’d be lost without the help of all of you.  Please, just speak your mind.”

Denis sipped his coffee while scanning the notes he brought from his brief time at the foundation. “I think we should all sit down as a team and plan next steps.  But I am going to suggest that you and Stephanie be dispatched to Canterbury a.s.a.p. What’s odd about suggesting this is that, really, unless something emerges from those journals, Mary Weatherby is more or less an incidental player in this drama.  Any researcher would tell you that.”

Denis suddenly seemed to be struggling with his words, as if what he was trying to say ran at crosscurrents with his training.  To buy some time, he took another sip of his coffee, his croissant already finished.

“But the truth is that none of us really feel that way, do we?  Something about him just can’t be uncovered  without her.  There is something in her eyes that seem to represent a world of humanity, a reality that seemed to come to life with Caron.  But we don’t have one single bit of evidence for that fact, other than what we are sensing, and I think that is a strong enough urge for us to follow.”

Unexpectedly, Charley put her hand on his arm.  “Thank you, Denis.  What you just said is what I’ve been feeling since I got here, even before I knew of Mary. There is something not being revealed at present, something insightful and likely compelling.  I think my editor in New York feels the same.  I wanted to suggest following Mary’s trail but believed that to be a stretch for the Paris team, for all the proper reasons.”

“But journalism, good journalism, doesn’t work like that, does it, Charley?” he suggested.  “It’s not an emotional trade because we are interested in facts and evidence.  But if done well, especially the way you write your longform pieces, the ultimate outcome is emotional and compelling.  I think we have enough evidence to go with our hunch.”

After a moment’s silence, Stephanie burst out: “Then that’s it.  Let’s all synchronize our watches for a meeting in our commander’s office later this afternoon.”  They all burst out in laughter.