The Remaining Voice by Angela Elliott Page B

pushed him aside.
    “Do you have a key? Of course you do. Have you been up there? Have you seen what has happened?”
    “What do you say?” He shoved his thumbs under his belt and hitched his trousers.
    “There is a painting. A very big, probably valuable painting… and it has been rendered completely worthless. Someone has cut it.”
    “Why do you come to me? I have not been in there for many years. Not since the problem with Madam Guinard’s salle de bain.”
    “But you have a key?”
    “ Mais oui … and it is here.” He shuffled into the kitchen and pulled open a drawer, lifted the key with its label on a string, and handed it to me.
    “ Voilà . You can keep it. It is rusty. Non ? But the same as yours.” He sneered at me and wiped his mouth the back of his hand.
    It was true; the key was exactly the same as the one I had.
    “Then someone broke in,” I said, enunciating clearly and as calmly as I could muster. I had not thought to check the windows. Was there a fire escape? Could someone have entered that way?
    “If you want, we call the police.” Armand shrugged. “If not… I do not know.”
    “No. No police. Not yet.” I had to think. I needed to check if anything was missing, or if anything else had been damaged, and that was going to be difficult because I had not inspected enough of the apartment to know of its contents in full.
    I ran out of the Pascal’s apartment, taking the stairs two at a time.
    “ Mon père…” Armand shouted after me.
    “Later,” I shouted.
    “ Toujours plus tard. Américains. Phhh ,” he spat.
    *
    I shut the door to Berthe’s apartment and leant back against it. First things first. Check the windows. The ones in the hall were locked tight. Those in the kitchen too. I had had the presence of mind to bring my camera with me this morning. I would photograph the painting and then try to get through into the other rooms.
    In the hall I tried the locked door again. It did not give. I went into the kitchen and rummaged around for a key that might fit, but found nothing. I went back to the door and kicked it hard. Damn it, but I would have to get a crowbar or something. No matter. I took my Leica and took a few shots of the hall, and then the drawing room before framing the painting in my viewfinder.
    The painting was whole. There was no sign of the slash through the middle. I reached up and touched where I’d felt the cut, but no… there was definitely nothing wrong with it. I could not believe it. Was I going mad? I used half a roll of film in an attempt to catch the picture just right. Then I took hold of the frame at the bottom and lifted it carefully off the wall, letting it slide down in front of me until it came to rest on the floor. I inspected the back of the canvas. There was a label, which I photographed, but no damage of any kind. I leaned the painting up against a chair and stood back.  I imagined the artist telling the sitter to turn a little, to spread out the folds of her dress, and to delicately touch her shoulder with her fingertips, while at her feet a drift of flowers dusted the floor with impressionistic petals.
    I let out a long sigh and whispered: “I will keep you in my heart like a treasure.”
    I used the rest of the roll of film on the contents of various boxes – mostly silver ware and crystal. I had a second roll in my bag and when I went to retrieve it heard the faintest of voices, singing softly, dreamily almost. I looked out onto the landing, and listened with cocked head, but the singing was even quieter here. I shut the door and followed the sound through the drawing room, past the painting (still entire) to the door on the far side. I fitted myself behind the chair and squeezed through into the hall beyond. It was much as I had first found the apartment: bathed in ghostly shadows and thick with dust. I heaved open a shutter and the glowering sky cast its half-light into the room. The singing faded away.
    There were two doors to my