THE VANISHING MUSEUM ON THE RUE MISTRAL

The theft of an immense collection of porcelain provokes utter bafflement among the Aixois police.

The Musée Quentin-Savary in Aix is in some ways emblematic of the laid-back ways of Provence. Unlike the mammoth Musée D’Orsay in Paris, which occupies an entire decommissioned train station, Quentin-Savary, tucked into the block-long Rue Mistral, shares its compact three-story building with two apartments. The top floor is occupied by Gilbert Quentin-Savary, great-great-great grandson of the museum’s original patron. The middle floor is tenanted by a chocolate salesman. The ground floor is the museum itself, which offers half a dozen rooms of porcelain vases, figurines, and dinnerware. Most of the visitors to the collection are either scholars of the ceramic arts or schoolchildren like Léa Paulik, who visits with her middle school class. Museum director Achille Formentin has so few opportunities to show off the collection that rival curator Aurélien Lopez has the nerve to suggest merging the Quentin-Savary with his own Musée Cavasino. But Formentin will hear of no such thing, at least not until he discovers his entire collection gone, vanished, stolen. Léa’s father, police commissioner Bruno Paulik, is stunned by the news. He and examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque share dozens of questions. Who would steal not just a single prized item, but the museum’s entire contents? Did the thief covet a single bauble and make off with the rest as a smoke screen? Is the collection more valuable en masse? Is the theft a ploy by Lopez to discredit Formentin? And how on earth could anyone steal an entire museum’s worth of fragile porcelain from a residential neighborhood without making a sound?

Extreme puzzlement in a lush French setting.