Painter Palaver

by Curtis Bausse

  ‘My god, that’s... How?’

  ‘Cut his wrists with a razor blade. It’s not known yet how he got hold of it.’ He sighed. ‘The only remarkable fact – apart from the act itself – is what he wrote on the wall. “One for all, all for one.” With his own blood.’

  ‘A musketeer to the end.’

  ‘And Escarola rides again. Not on everything, but without Bondy’s testimony, the case against him loses much of its force. Unless it’s proved the razor blade came from him, but I’m not holding my breath.’

  ‘And Gareth? Has he confessed?’

  ‘No. But his DNA came back on the glove. Only to be expected given that he shared it with the gardener, but even more damning, it was on the fork as well. He’s admitted grabbing the fork to threaten Seibel, so...’ He spread his hands. ‘He’s been charged with murder. Released on bail but it’s not looking good for him.’

  ‘But he denies it.’

  ‘Vigorously. And there are a couple of points unexplained. If his DNA was on the fork, it means he wasn’t wearing the gloves, so what was he doing with them? Forster claims he didn’t have them with him but as we’ve said, Seibel could have fought back and grabbed one, which fell. And if he was innocent, why would he shred the second glove? Panic, he says. When he phoned Thibault to give his condolences, he was told we’d soon get the culprit thanks to a glove we’d found by the body. Forster saw one of his was missing so he shredded the other. That’s his story but the way it’s looking, he’ll have a hard time convincing a jury of that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if this will make any difference,’ she said, handing him her phone. ‘But I imagine it ought to be taken into account.’

  Sophie. You thought me a pedant and a bore. Everyone did. They were right. Anyone doing a PhD believes they have the right – and certainly has the potential – to bore any company into a coma. Most of the time they’ve gone so deep into their chosen topic that at least they know what they’re talking about. I can’t even claim that. A bore minus the expertise. Unbearable.

  I never told you how I started it, did I? When I was three, the body of an elderly woman, Doreen Wickley, was found on South Irvington Avenue, Tulsa. The culprit was arrested the same day. Joseph Carmichael. My father. They like their executions in Oklahoma, but by the time they got round to his injection, I was a moody, cynical loner on the cusp of adulthood.

  So I guess I can claim expertise in some things. Growing up with a father on death row. Shame and anger and confusion. Determination to be different. Fear that I might not.

  How did I get from resentful kid in Tulsa to pedantic bore in Provence? Books. Oh, not straightaway. After the execution, I left home and drifted, one town to the next, one lousy job to another, shacking up with a different girl each time, different but all the same, all like me, lost and empty and useless. My wasted years, twelve of them, before I discovered books. Or rather, my mother reminded me they existed. We’d once been middle class, we had books at home, at least till everything fell apart. For my thirtieth birthday I got a case full of the books she used to read to me and Ashley. The best present I ever had. I got my shit together, cleaned up my act. I’ve been cleaning it up ever since.

  I did a stint in construction, then in the showroom of a builders’ salesroom. Signed up at a local library in Chicago and one day came across the book that brought me to France. The Outsider. The title alone was enough. A portrait of myself. The story was anything but, of course, yet it felt like Camus had written it just for me.

  So there you have it. A wastrel saved by books. The magic of stories, the power of words. So here, to finish off, are a few more.

  Bumble smiles. She already has her plan. In the afternoon, she goes next door and puts the idea into Henri Seibel’s head. The Forsters are staking a lot on this course, she says. If you send the smoke again, it could ruin everything. Frankly, she wouldn’t mind herself – they treat her like shit. She does all the cooking and never gets any thanks.

  It’s true. Gareth, anyway. Dilly’s a different matter. It isn’t thanks she wants from Dilly. It’s her body.

  When the smoke comes over next morning, she doesn’t know that Gareth will go and speak to Henri, but it’s likely – he’s said to Dilly he’ll kill the bastard if he burns leaves again. When she sees him march up the path, she’s ready. She sneaks up after him, taking three gloves from the garden shed on the way. She puts on a pair herself, sticks the fork into the old man’s neck, and leaves the other glove there. She returns the pair she wore to the shed.

  It doesn’t quite work out the way she planned. Instead of going after Gareth, the gendarmes fix their sights on Martin Best. But there’s a Crow operating – she can make use of that. Zen And The Art of Mosquito Murder. Bumble knows how to write.

  It’s maddening though – they still think it’s Best! Has she done all that for nothing? But no – just when she’s thinking her plan has failed, along comes Sophie. Bravo! Gareth is led away and Bumble rejoices. She has Dilly all to herself.

  I leave you and the esteemed General to make of this what you will.

  Wishing you all the best,

  Lyle Carmichael, The Crow

  For a couple of seconds, Pico’s lower jaw jiggled left and right, causing his lips to take on curious shapes. He took a while before speaking, as he read through passages again. Finally he clasped his hands together, shaking his head sadly. ‘Writers. A curious bunch.’

  ‘You think it’s nonsense?’

  ‘No idea. People have all sorts of twisted motivations. He’s not presenting it as fact.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  He slid the phone back across to her. ‘You send it to me, it goes into the file. He gets called as a witness.’

  ‘All the way from the States?’

  ‘By video if need be. We have to know if there’s anything to it or it’s just his idea of fun.’ For several seconds he gazed at the ceiling with a faintly amused expression. Then abruptly: ‘The African mask thing. What’s that about?’

  ‘Uh...’ It took a moment for Sophie to switch to the reason she was there. ‘A superstition. A sort of good luck charm. I don’t believe it myself but Cyril takes it quite seriously.’

  ‘I see. And he gave you one because...’

  ‘He said it would protect me. There’s nothing at all going on between us except... well, he says we have a sort of spiritual bond and when we work on a case together, we’re more effective.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘More effective? The first two times, you could say we did all right. But this time – well, you saw for yourself.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him about this of course. He pointed out that neither of you was officially on the case.’ He stroked his chin, frowning. ‘How did he take it when I put Captain Praud in charge?’

  ‘He was very upset. He thought it meant you had no confidence in him.’

  Pico nodded. Sophie got the impression that everything she’d said merely confirmed what he knew already: Cyril was wacky as they come. The question was whether an unshakable belief in claptrap was a reason not to promote him. ‘Captain Praud came to see me one day – a year or so ago now – said he’d seen Eveno sitting at his desk in a sort of trance. Absent to the world, he said. Does that mean anything to you?’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ve never seen him like that myself. But I think he sometimes... communicates with spirits. Something like that. It’s part of the African thing. Animism.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He pulled a face, discontent, as if Cyril’s beliefs were a pile of litter that hadn’t been cleared up. ‘Shortly after, Praud requested to be transferred to Aix en Provence. I suspect that may be because I said I’d look into it and it slipped my mind.’

  Sophie was amazed that anything could venture into Pico’s mind without being hooked and reeled in. But then, this whole affair occupied just one nook of a mind that ranged over continents, so perhaps he could be excused.

  ‘He’s an odd fellow. One spots that straigh
t away. But he’s always been an excellent gendarme. A little aloof, perhaps.’

  Not surprising. He could hardly say, ‘Hi, I’m Cyril. And here – if you could see him – is Auguste, my great-grandfather who died in 1965.’

  ‘Respected rather than liked, not exactly popular with his colleagues. Seen as a little too ambitious, I think, the eager beaver type. But...’ He put out a hand, eyebrows raised: oddness, his expression implied, didn’t constitute a crime. ‘Are you familiar with Spinoza?’

  ‘Not really. He was an atheist, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Accused of being one anyway. But it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God. He just thought the way it was done in church obscured it with superstition. In that respect you could say there’s not much difference between an African mask and Holy Communion. Anyway’ – he placed his hands on the desk, a brief nod conveying that the conversation was over. ‘Thank you for your input, Madame Kiesser. It will be taken into consideration.’ He stood up and accompanied her to the door where he shook her hand. ‘I’ve mentioned before, I believe, that if the circumstances require it, I might call upon you again. Is that still all right?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’d be honoured.’

  ‘Good.’ Another brief nod and he walked back to his desk.

  Sophie was halfway through the door when she turned. ‘Will he get his promotion? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘No decision has been reached yet.’

  ‘Did you ever think Cyril had killed Captain Praud?’

  ‘Did you?’

  Sophie wondered if she should say how strong her doubts were but the fact was that Cyril hadn’t killed Praud, and suspecting that he might have weighed on her. She didn’t answer. He smiled and returned to his computer. He clicked the mouse a couple of times before looking up, and saying deadpan but with a twinkle in his eye, ‘His promotion? You could say that the other candidate being a corpse, he’s marginally the better choice.’

  Chapter 44 Scratching The Itch

  They were at the campsite farm, Chloé feeding a carrot to the donkey, when Lyle’s second email arrived, CCed to Pico.

  It almost comes as an afterthought: my father always claimed he was innocent. Mom believed him, and she brought us up to believe it too. As a kid I got into fights defending him. But teenagers see things differently, reach conclusions of their own – namely that she couldn’t bear the truth. But Ashley never stopped believing. I think at first it was just to support Mom, but after a while it gave her own life a direction, a meaning. I told her she was fooling herself, living in make-believe. After Mom died, we fell out and more or less stopped communicating.

  Two years ago, thanks to Ashley’s efforts, the truth came out: overstated forensic evidence, eagerness to prosecute, convenience of a black man right by the scene of the crime. Well, whaddaya know? My kid sister was right.

  You might think it came as a huge relief. It did to her obviously, and would have done to Mom if she’d been alive. But to me? It came as a slap in the face. From the system, of course, and the lies it engenders, but from my father too. He suddenly wasn’t the person I thought he was. It made no difference he was better than I thought, nor that it wasn’t his fault – it felt like a betrayal. He made me become who I am and then from beyond the grave told me I was wrong.

  Have you been wondering why I became the Crow? Well, it was a writing course, so why not write a story? Several in fact – one for each person there. As it turned out, I didn’t get very far, but enough to blur that line between truth and lies.

  Claire. You saw her stow her ‘sketchbook’ away in her bag when we were in the studio. Perhaps, like me, you wondered why she was in such a hurry to hide it. Later that day, when she was called for an interview, she left her bag in the leisure room. The book wasn’t in it but her bedroom key was. I found it in her desk – not a sketchbook but a diary. I read it hurriedly, afraid she’d be back any moment. The reference to Seibel was brief and confusing – a mention of rape and karma, and a rambling passage about her mother, how everything that happened, she brought on herself. I couldn’t tell who the victim was, Claire or her mother, but it didn’t matter. A few ambiguous lines were enough to form a story, and it’s not in the nature of the Crow to bother about accuracy.

  Ferrucci was easier. Dig around on the internet and you find him mentioned in connection with a fire in which his wife’s paintings were destroyed. I had to add a motive of course, so I settled on blackmail. For all I knew, it was plausible, but as I say, that’s not the Crow’s concern.

  Then Isadora. I liked her story the best. A lot of thought went into it. For once I was happy with something I’d written and I couldn’t take the credit! So I’m putting that right now – better late than never.

  My video audition is fixed for 4th Sept 11 a.m. CST. I have no doubt you’ve prepared a lot of questions. After reading this, I dare say you’ll have a lot more.

  “The only way to get into the mind of a killer is to be one.” Remember that, Sophie? Ah, but what about Dostoevsky, you said, surely he managed, didn’t he? Nice try, but I say again that words can never be a substitute for the experience itself. There was only one way to get into the mind of the person I believed my father was.

  Premeditated? Difficult to say. On the one hand, I didn’t think of it till I saw the smoke; on the other, I’d been thinking about it all my life. Did I have a plan at the back of my mind on arriving? Perhaps that’s why I signed up. A country house, secluded. The perfect opportunity.

  I was the first to arrive, so I was familiar with the layout of the property. And I went for a walk next door with Isadora. She told me about the leaves, how the old man hated the Forsters and how scared they were he’d do it again.

  I acted straightaway when I saw the smoke. I tucked a t-shirt into my trousers and ran up the side path. The previous day I’d seen Gareth at the shredder wearing green rubber gloves, and from what Isadora had told me, framing him would be easy. I grabbed one on the way up. I guessed there’d be a fork nearby, so the weapon was provided. When I saw Gareth there, I hid in the bushes. I watched him argue with Seibel, threaten him with the fork. It was all falling my way – he’d played right into my hands. I wrapped my t-shirt round the fork and plunged it into his neck. Maybe a second time in the chest, I don’t remember. Left Gareth’s glove there, ran back to my room, changed and showered. Came down to breakfast. Sat at the table with you.

  Suspicion fell on Martin. I observed. When Praud interviewed me, I answered as fully as possible. He seemed to dismiss me quickly as a suspect, though he noted that like everyone else, I would have had time to do it. Then he asked me about you, as if he was curious to know you better. He didn’t tell me you were a private investigator – when that came out, it was almost comical. But there was the problem of the sweat. The morning workout, I said, and I worked up a sweat in my room next morning and stopped at your table so you’d see.

  Is he much loss to the world, a crotchety old bigot like that? You spoke about Crime and Punishment – the victim there was despicable too, and I thought the same as Raskolnikov: nothing wrong surely in taking a life like that. But just like him, I see in the end it’s a life all the same, and the guilt and remorse catch up with you.

  So much for the crime. The final scratch of that itch to inhabit the mind of a killer. The time now comes for the punishment.

  Wishing you well for the future.

  Lyle

  ‘I think he’ll be sick if we give him any more carrots.’ Luc hoisted Chloé onto his shoulders. ‘Let’s go and see the pig, shall we?’

  What to make of it? He’d falsely accused Claire, then Eddy, probably Isadora. Could he now be falsely accusing himself? It wasn’t unheard of. As they strolled over to the pig sty, Sophie sifted it through in her mind, but reaching no conclusion, set it aside. Another of the Crow’s red herrings. Either way, the video audition would tell them. She wondered if Pico would consult her beforehand, maybe even invite her to sit in. She had a few questions she
wouldn’t mind putting to Lyle herself.

  But the message that came from Pico the next day was neither to consult nor invite her. It consisted of a single laconic sentence: Lyle Carmichael is dead.

  Chapter 45 Agatha Wouldn’t Like It

  ‘It’s not something we like. It’s something we get used to.’

  ‘So we’ll never know?’

  ‘The case isn’t closed. Far from it. Call it a temporary setback. But unless there’s a decent chance of prosecution, there’s no point pursuing it for the moment.’

  Late afternoon, early December. At General Pico’s request, a rendezvous in the Cambarou café in Aix, Sophie with a hot chocolate, he with a cup of tea. And the news that charges against Gareth Forster had been dropped. Lyle’s first email caused a crack to appear; the second made it wider; with his death all the certainty flowed out. Until the pieces could be glued back together, it was sensible to call a halt.

  Lyle, Isadora, Gareth: take your pick. Nor was Martin Best entirely out of the reckoning: without clear proof it was Gareth, he was back in the spotlight again. With so many candidates competing, singling out one of them was a hazardous affair.

  Sophie didn’t say so to Pico, but it brought a curious sense of relief. If it could be anyone, it was no one, and that idea pleased her. Personal feelings, of course, should have no bearing, but wasn’t that inevitable? Who would not be upset to learn that the person they’d befriended was a murderer? Yet if she didn’t want it to be Lyle, that meant one of the others, and she didn’t want that either. Not even Martin, who for all his bumptious posturing was a victim too in his way. So good at Punchy Portrait but incontestably the loser in whatever weird mind games he played with Penelope.

  Magali told her quite rightly that wanting doesn’t come into it. People do what they do whether you like it or not, and all that matters is proving. Sophie had brought her own little piece of evidence to bear: a trip to Grenoble to speak to students acquainted with Lyle revealed that he always started the day with a workout. In itself that proved nothing, but Sophie took it as confirmation of his innocence. Those drops of sweat hadn’t come from a sprint up the garden path to kill the neighbour.