I would speak of my personal knowledge of the Poitan murder, including unusual facts in the case never made public. These dire matters occurred during that long hot summer of 1933. It was the silly season in Paris, with the government quaking and rocking again as the factions scrambled to form another disintegrating coalition, with more riots in the streets flaring with fires, looting, shots and bombings. The Germans were acting up once more, their recurrent pastime, this phase seemingly just a little noisier than most, enough to make news even during the local turmoil. Such the background, which fortunately failed to trouble most of us, seldom distracting us from more pleasant pursuits.

At that time I frequented the company of Jules Laval. I call him not a friend, though I treated the young man as such, and he could behave as a pleasant companion when the mood struck him. Indeed, I believe he lacked friends of enduring quality, for he was a most self-centered fellow whose bizarre and ferocious enthusiasms must needs ultimately repel those not determined to accept him on his terms. I did so in those days, for he amused me, and at times I confess he offered flashes of curious enlightenment.

On that particular afternoon, at his behest, we toured the Louvre, a regular recreation of ours. Laval fancied himself an art critic, which he might as well, for a modest legacy from an otherwise disregarded relation allowed him to do pretty much as he pleased, within limits. This was the most defining of those enthusiasms to which I referred, and the most pertinent, in roundabout fashion, to the present tale. A new Expressionist exhibit having called him to the galleries, he condescended to include me in his ruminations on those unusual works.

There we strolled, Laval slight of stature, overly thin and disheveled (an artistic pose), punctuating his quick pacing with shakes of the head, clucks of the tongue, and ostentatious sighs. Said he, “It is all the same, Gaston, in this benighted age of ours. The artists, they let down our culture, our civilization. All the same! Look at it, Gaston. Have you ever seen such a dreary spectacle?”

“I confess, Jules, to discerning elements of value, perhaps sparks of greatness, among this collection. After all, these are painters of eminence.”

“You are a fool, Gaston. The artists are hacks to a man, and their glorified doodles rubbish, all of them, and for the same reason I daily confront. Forfeiture of imagination! They see with the fleshy eyes, rather than the eyes of the soul, recording the crudities of the mundane instead of the soaring heights of fancy.”

“So you say, Jules, yet these paintings suggest to me nothing of dull reality. I go so far as to declare them wholly divorced from the commonplace.”

“Thus speaks a little mind, Gaston. These pathetic works do not transcend norms; they merely distort them. Behold this lame effort by Dorosch. He toys with faces and structures, jumbling them as does a child with his blocks, lacking an aesthetic goal. Have you ever seen a piece so devoid of vision?” I forbore answering, for my reply at best would have antagonized, at worst unstopped a flow of invective.

A general strike had shut down our favorite shops in the city, and I feared for our evening meal, but my good companion came to our salvation by announcing his invitation to a dinner party at the mansion of the esteemed industrialist Alexandre Poitan. Laval claimed an invitation at least, and when we presented ourselves at that splendid estate in the countryside he harangued his way in, and I with him, so perhaps he was truly expected. It gratified me that I had fortuitously dressed adequately for the occasion, while my associate could pass as the bohemian critic, which in some circles excused a great deal. I have seen big men fawn over the lesser, when the latter bragged of intellectual superiority. Laval, I privately thought, often had more luck along those lines than he deserved.

A grand place that Poitan manor, and grand the people who filled it. Leading lights of society graced its halls and chambers, grandest of all Alexandre Poitan himself. M. Poitan was well into middle age, nicely graying and fit, wealthy beyond normative conceptions of extravagance. He owned a lovely young wife, his third, this Mme. Poitan of remarkable comeliness, blonde and shapely, to the eye a catch more than worth the expense. Both of them ought to have been exceedingly fortunate in their fortunes.