Emmanuel Obein, master craftsman, didn’t come to the palais de l’Élysée alone. The little red-haired man was accompanied by a colleague who specialized in restoring period floors. The decoration work in the salon Pompadour had provided the ideal opportunity to refresh the wooden parquetry, which had not aged well. Emmanuel’s primary task had been to straighten a pillar. However, when he had inspected the site the week before, he had concluded that he would have to remove the column in question to reinforce the anchorage that secured it to the structure. The handiwork was shoddy and unworthy of a place like this. “A job half done is as good as none! The people who installed this had no clue what they were doing,” Emmanuel had thought.
With infinite care, taking great pains not to touch the other decorative elements, he had therefore proceeded to extract the fluted pillar, embellished with gold motifs, and the wood panel that had hidden its foundation. Still, before he could continue with this project, the floor had to be stripped with steel wool and coated with hot beeswax the old-fashioned way. As the site supervisor, he was responsible for overseeing the project early the next morning.
This specific treatment for eighteenth-century flooring was just one of the many time-honoured techniques that Emmanuel took pride in mastering to perfection. As a maître compagnon, he felt he had been entrusted with a mission to perpetuate French savoir-faire, born of the great traditions to preserve the heritage of the decorative arts. Whether refinishing for the Vatican a baptismal font in Varennes porcelain without altering the original pigments, reproducing thousands of imperial bees with a chiqueteur brush and gold leaf on a ceiling at the École militaire de Paris, refurbishing from top to bottom a residence in Limousin that belonged to Lafayette, or restoring to its former glory an entrance to the royal palace in Madrid, he was equally in his element. No matter how vast or how delicate the task, Emmanuel undertook it with all his science and art. His talent had garnered him the prestigious title Meilleur ouvrier de France, and from there, had seen him named Meilleur ouvrier d’Europe.
It therefore wasn’t surprising that he was the one summoned to the most pre-eminent building in France. The palais de l’Élysée was growing old. In some ways, the presidential palace resembled an aging lady who needed constant care to retain her former splendour. This time, it was the marquise de Pompadour’s parade room, now known as the salon Pompadour, that had required his attention.
The morning’s work was going smoothly until a sander glided to the base of an exposed wall and touched a floor plank in front of the work site. The herringbone piece sank, as if a foot had pressed down on a pedal. The men initially thought the parquetry was simply damaged. When they looked more closely, though, they noticed that, not only had the herringbone been lifted by a hinge, but also the adjoining wall had opened. Like a lever, the moving plank had activated a door. A small, shuttered enclosure, hidden until then by rough plaster, was revealed.
Emmanuel immediately knew what it was: a cache, a hollow wall, a secret recess obscured all that time by the decorative column. Although the master craftsman had made several unexpected discoveries over the course of his career—a stash of louis d’or gold coins in the hôtel de la Marine, church-censored works forgotten in the walls of a bourgeois apartment—the possible content of this vault raised red flags. This was the centre of the State’s power. The discovery had to be treated with the utmost caution.
He knew the protocol for dealing with historical and museum officials, yet he didn’t know what to do in this case, in this highly political context. Call palace security? Alert the Élysée’s curator, Jean-Pierre Borde? That man, as stiff as his overly pressed suit, never lowering himself to show an ounce of courtesy to anyone but his equals and superiors, wasn’t someone the master craftsman enjoyed talking to. He didn’t like the way the curator looked down on him from the height of his stature and status. He didn’t want to tell him about his find, which he sensed could be important.
In addition to his exceptional dexterity, Emmanuel had another quality that contributed to his unimpeachable reputation: a level of discretion that was particularly appreciated by his distinguished clients. He never gossiped about the day-to-day or inner lives of the prominent personalities whose properties he restored. Court secrets, deviant behaviour, wild parties, suspicious transactions, deep sorrow and private drama … he knew a great deal about people in high places. In this era of merciless paparazzi and journalists without conscience, his demonstrated reserve was highly prized by the pontiffs, crowned heads, government leaders and wealthy celebrities he worked for. Today, confronted with this still mysterious cache, he knew he had to act with complete confidentiality until he had more information. He decided to first determine what was inside the recess. Cautiously, he further separated the narrow shutters. What he saw inside left him baffled.
“It looks like a shroud,” the floorman exclaimed in fear as he shamelessly peeked over the master craftsman’s shoulder. Emmanuel hoped the white cloth wasn’t hiding a corpse. A few years before, he had found human remains sealed in the walls of a provincial castle. Imagine the scandal if there was a skeleton in the closet of the Élysée. His deft hands found the seam where the edges met on the sheetlike cover. With infinite care, his fingers, practiced in operations requiring immense agility, parted the swaths of the visibly ancient fabric.
The French doors leading to the garden illuminated the scene from behind. Struck by the morning sunlight, a rich blue material appeared, with a floral pattern brocaded in gold and silver thread. It was a dress—a lavish dress—perhaps ceremonial or court attire. The master craftsman, somewhat emboldened, continued his inspection. Then, suddenly, he recoiled, and the ginger hair on his forearms stood on end.
“Is there a body?” his colleague asked upon seeing Emmanuel’s involuntary reaction.
“Close. There seems to be blood all over the dress, as if the person wearing it had been murdered. It may be compromising proof that was stashed away,” he speculated under his breath.
Unclear on the steps to take next, he decided to offload the problem onto an acquaintance he trusted implicitly. He took out his cell phone and hastily made the call. “Monsieur Le Hideux, this is Emmanuel Obein,” he said in a voice that commanded attention with a firm tone and controlled volume. The last thing he wanted was to be overheard. “I just came across something that requires your expertise as a fashion historian. You must come immediately.”
Emmanuel suspected he couldn’t keep the cache and its contents a secret for long. There was a lot of hustle and bustle at the Élysée. Furthermore, as an expert in decorative motifs, he thought he had detected a detail in the fabric that could very well trigger strong reactions and intense envy.
Wow. Jean-Pierre Borde would be beside himself if he could see this, the artisan thought.
He knew the curator’s involvement would slow the work to a crawl. Nothing was ever simple with that man. The master craftsman pictured a battalion of bureaucrats descending on his site under Jean-Pierre Borde’s command. He didn’t like anyone meddling with his carefully laid plans. All he wanted now was for Geoffroy Le Hideux to get there quickly.