by T D Griggs
I realised how defensive I had sounded, but Felix waved away the moment of awkwardness and sat down on the end of the front pew, gesturing for me to sit too. We faced one another across the aisle.
‘I was also concerned for Katrine,’ he said. ‘People have been peddling stories about young Serge Baladier – I suppose you’ve heard – and the police haven’t done much to dampen that down. It must be very distressing for her.’
‘She won’t believe Serge had anything to do with it.’
‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘Surely you don’t?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t sure at first, but I’ve given it a lot of thought since then. No, I don’t believe he could hurt Dominic.’
‘Good. Wherever he is, he’ll need us to believe in him.’
I felt a rush of affection for Felix; sitting there half lost in his splendid robes, a sad, weary and loyal little man with a bald head. I thought now that I should have had more trust in his generosity from the start.
I said: ‘Thanks, Felix.’
He widened his eyes. ‘For what?’
‘For keeping the faith.’
I knew he wanted to say something in reply, and that he couldn’t decide how to proceed. I didn’t know how to help him. Doves fluted in the beech trees outside and the wind shivered among the spring leaves.
At length he said: ‘Shall we pray together? For Dominic?’
I stared at him.
‘It’s a priest thing,’ he said. ‘A lot of us do it.’
I had been so at ease with him over the past weeks, so seduced by his refusal to take himself seriously, that the idea of him formally practising the rituals of the church had never really crossed my mind.
‘Felix, do you actually believe all this stuff?’
‘Did you think I didn’t?’
‘I don’t know what I thought.’
‘We all need faith, Iain. Stories we can believe in. Myths, if you like. That’s what keeps the darkness at bay.’
‘Will any myth do?’
‘Meaning in life is created, my friend, not discovered. The answers may or may not be at the back of the book, but the best we can do in the meantime is find a myth that fits, and commit to it. I’m not a romantic. I don’t believe in things that go bump in the night. But to take a myth and make it real, that makes sense to me.’
‘Like the myth St Cyriac’s built up around itself since that night in 1944?’
‘Yes.’ He kept his eyes steadily on me. ‘Precisely like that.’
I got up and stood in the aisle, gazing up at the altar, the glorious light dazzling on the white cloth and on the silver and gilt of chalice and crucifix.
‘I’ve been exploring a little myth of my own,’ I said. ‘It’s not a very pretty one.’
‘I can handle ugly myths too.’
‘Felix, when I got to Dominic’s room last night it was ransacked. He wasn’t just burgled for a miserable wad of euros.’
He raised his eyebrows.
I said: ‘I think someone was looking for Father Thomas’ diaries. The missing ones.’
He kept his eyes on my face. ‘You’re serious?’
‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? At least a possibility.’
Felix put his head back and breathed deeply. Then he looked at me, but didn’t say anything. As the seconds dragged by I began to regret that I had spoken at all.
I said: ‘Sorry. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.’
I started to walk away down the aisle.
‘Iain?’
I swung round.
‘Have you told Inspector Sharif about this?’
‘No.’
‘You should. You must.’ He stood up. He tossed his rosary from one hand to the other. He looked harassed and tired. ‘Iain, I have to go. Would you look in on Papa in the chapel? I’m worried about him, and he’d appreciate seeing you, I know.’
‘Of course.’
He made to leave and then hesitated and opened his hands in appeal.
‘I’m just the parish priest, for Chrissake. What would I know? But out of our love for Dominic we shouldn’t leave any stone unturned. Speak to Sharif.’
He swept out past me, gripping my arm briefly as he went.
I heard his car start up and stutter away, but I stood for a while longer, savouring the sense of tranquil space around me. I had never had much time for the church, but it seemed to me now that this place, with its air of continuity and calm order, was indeed sanctuary from an incomprehensible world. I walked back down the aisle and past the Lady Chapel, its altar banked with early summer flowers, their fragrance floating on the still air between the pillars. The heavy door to Father Thomas’ chapel stood half open, and I could see the glimmer of candlelight from within.
Dr Pasqual sat on one of the hardback chairs towards the back of the little stone cell. His hands were clasped in his lap and his head bowed, and candlelight glinted on his white hair. He must have heard me, but he made no move of any kind as I stepped quietly into the room. I sat on a chair close to the door, unwilling to interrupt him.
An uneven row of candle stubs stood in the sand tray at the foot of Father Thomas’ plinth. I recognised the stubs of Dominic’s candles – pink and green and yellow, and a pool of hectic violet studded with silver spangles where one had melted quite away. Also in the tray stood a few conventional and austere tapers of ivory wax. I glanced up at Father Thomas’ bronze bust in its alcove. It was as unsettling as I remembered. The face was gaunt, the eye sockets black pits.
‘You must not give up,’ Dr Pasqual said from his chair. His voice had a disembodied quality. ‘You must not abandon your quest for the truth. Especially not now.’
I turned towards his shadowy figure. He got stiffly to his feet and walked the length of the room, his eyes on Father Thomas’ bronze face. He stopped and faced me.
‘I heard you talking to Felix,’ he said. ‘You know, Iain, the older I get, the less I know about anything. I seem, after all, to be just an old fool like all the other old fools. I allowed myself to believe I understood this village and the people in it. But the St Cyriac I knew, the St Cyriac I fought to preserve and protect, could never have done this thing to poor harmless Dominic.’ He was standing very erect, as if on parade, a small neat terrier of a man with only his eyes betraying the pain he felt. ‘Don’t give up now, Iain. Your father would not want you to.’
‘My father never wanted me to start this in the first place. I’m coming to think he was right.’
‘It is a son’s duty to make his father proud,’ he said, ‘even if it’s despite both of them.’
48
I sat opposite Inspector Sharif at the window table in Henri’s café. He was immaculate in a midnight blue shirt, charcoal jacket hung carefully over the free chair between us, and I felt scruffy and unshaven. He set his cup down gently, taking care that it made no sound as it settled in the saucer.
‘Naturally, I understand that you’d very much like to prove that Serge Baladier isn’t guilty of anything. The idea that the love of your daughter’s young life…’ He brushed his perfect moustache with the tip of one finger, checking unnecessarily for flecks of cappuccino foam.
I said: ‘You haven’t been listening to me.’
‘Oh, but I’ve listened to every word.’
Sharif made a serious face and tapped his notebook with his slim gold pen as if to emphasise how much attention he had paid me. The notebook was a handsome leather affair which seemed unlikely to be regulation police issue. As far as I could recall, he had not opened it once while I had been talking.
‘Monsieur Madoc, do you honestly believe in these missing diaries?’
‘I’m not the only one who does.’
‘Dominic confirmed their existence, did he?’
‘He certainly never denied it.’
‘Ah well, of course that settles it.’
‘Inspector, during the War he used to sit and watch Father Thomas writing his journal. If there w
ere more diaries, nobody was more likely to have them than Dominic. Or at least to know where they were.’
‘That’s a big if,’ he said.
I made to rise. ‘I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time.’
‘Sit down, please, Monsieur. I mean no offence. But you must know how these folk tales grow in a community like this. For Dominic, those diaries were a harmless bit of make believe. He had the intellect of a child. Children make up stories.’
‘You didn’t know him, Inspector. He wasn’t like that.’
I looked around the café, so that I wouldn’t have to see the pity in his eyes. There were a score of people in for breakfast and morning coffee, a couple of tourist families and several locals whose faces I recognised – one of the check-out girls from the minimarket, the pharmacist, the chain-smoking bus driver. None of them looked at me. At first I had told myself that I was being too sensitive, but a few moments earlier Sylvie Bertrand had put her head round the door, caught sight of me, and immediately left again without a word. Henri was standing by the bar. He met my eye but kept his expression blank.
‘Look at it from my point of view,’ Sharif was saying. ‘I’ve got an old man dead and forty-odd thousand euros missing from his flat. Oh, and that head injury was a skull fracture, by the way, so now I’ve got not just a robbery but a homicide. And I have a boy on the run – a boy with a record of violence who was seen visiting the victim the night he died. I’ve got the kid’s fingerprints from inside the flat, and I’ll give you fifty-to-one that his DNA turns up there too. I’ve got everything except a home movie of Serge Baladier committing the crime. I ask you, Monsieur Madoc, what conclusion would you draw from this?’
‘I hope I wouldn’t jump to any conclusion at all.’
‘Well, touché. But it’s not as if I’d have to jump very far to reach this one. And you’re not offering me any kind of alternative.’
He shifted his notebook to one side, placed his pen neatly on top of it, and tugged down his crisp cuffs, signalling that he was ready to leave.
‘Inspector, do you think it’s likely that Father Thomas would suddenly give up writing his diary at the end of 1941, and not record the biggest thing that had ever happened in St Cyriac?’
‘Which was, in your opinion?’
‘The arrest of the Rosen family.’
Sharif narrowed his eyes but he remained seated.
I said: ‘Father Thomas sent Rachel Rosen away when she came to him for help. When she told him the Statuts des Juifs would bring death to the Jews, he wouldn’t believe her. So when the SS arrived to arrest her and her family, how do you think Thomas felt? That was 1942, and I’d say it’s no coincidence he joined the Resistance that year. He confided everything to those little black books, Inspector. Everything. Do you think he’d have left all this out?’
‘Even if the diaries did exist, no one would care about them now.’
‘Someone might, if they revealed who’d betrayed the Rosens.’
‘The Nazis arrested all Jews. Nobody needed to betray them.’
‘The Rosens were French citizens. Gustave was a war veteran. They should have been safe at least until July ’42, and probably beyond that. They might have got out of the country in that time. But somebody had them taken away in May. Why?’
‘I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me.’
‘Did you know La Division was confiscated from Gustave Rosen, and handed to the Garniers? Gustave might have reclaimed it after the War, if he’d lived.’
‘You’re suggesting that over sixty years ago old man Garnier sold the Rosens out?’ Sharif made incredulous eyes. ‘And the connection with Dominic is…?’
‘The Rosen affair is in the diaries. But nobody except Dominic knew where they were. Then, all these years later, I come along, asking questions, reopening old wounds. I get friendly with Dominic. So somebody makes a last ditch attempt to find the diaries before he gives them to me.’
He looked at me steadily. ‘M’sieur, it’s a beautifully constructed theory. The trouble is, you’ve absolutely no proof of anything. No proof anyone betrayed the Rosens. No proof the diaries ever existed. All you’ve got is a small town legend and some hints dropped by a simple minded old man. This is a house of cards. Remove a single doubtful premise, and the whole structure collapses.’
‘Father Thomas wasn’t the only one who knew the Rosens’ story,’ I said stubbornly. ‘I think my father did too.’
‘Your father? Back in England?’
‘He was hidden here by Father Thomas in 1944.’
‘Yes, I know the story. But that was two years after the Rosen affair.’
‘There’s a reason he drew a map of La Division. Perhaps, while he was in hiding, the priest told him what had happened to the Rosens. All I know is, something’s haunted him ever since. Perhaps that was it.’
‘Perhaps. And perhaps you should ask him.’ Sharif raised a hand to silence me. ‘No, let me guess. He won’t talk about it.’ He removed a shred of cotton from his perfectly tailored sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur. I know you mean well, but why don’t we do a deal? You play Sherlock Holmes on this imaginary crime of sixty years ago, and leave the real investigation to me.’
I didn’t watch him leave.
I was grew dimly aware of an argument taking place on the pavement immediately outside the window, a woman’s belligerent and tearful voice, and a man’s weary responses. Then the woman shoved open the door open and Henri moved swiftly across from the bar to try to intercept her. He was too late.
‘I don’t know how you can face yourself in the mirror!’ Marie-Louise spat at me, placing both hands on my table and pushing her square face aggressively into mine. ‘Didn’t I ask you to leave the poor old man alone? Didn’t I beg you? And now look what’s happened!’
‘Marie,’ Daniel pleaded. He hurried up behind her and took her arm.
‘Don’t Marie me!’ she shouted and shook herself free. ‘I will have my say!’
‘Marie-Louise,’ Henri said, jovially. ‘How wonderful to see you! Why don’t you both come on over to the bar and have a drink?’
She swept Sharif’s empty coffee cup into my lap. I clutched at it clumsily and the saucer shattered as it hit the floor. The café fell silent.
‘Dominic was just a child. Why couldn’t you leave him alone instead of stirring up poison from the past? If only you hadn’t come here!’ She was screaming at me now. ‘If you’d just left us alone!’
She barged past her husband and back out onto the esplanade. Daniel hovered by my table for an anguished moment, on the point of going after her.
‘Let her go,’ Henri told him gently. ‘You can’t help. Gunther will make sure she’s all right.’
Daniel’s shoulders slumped.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ I said.
‘No. No.’ He passed his hand distractedly over his short cropped hair. ‘I’m sorry about that exhibition, Iain. Dominic was like a little boy to her. The son she never had.’
‘I understand.’
He looked at me. ‘You don’t understand at all. How could you understand?’
‘Daniel, I grieve for him too.’
He didn’t answer, but gave an incredulous shake of his head, a gesture which seemed to say that it wasn’t my place to claim a share of the communal grief, but that if I didn’t realise that, there was no point arguing about it.
The door behind us jangled again as another customer left the restaurant, and someone else called for the bill.
‘You’re going to have to do something about the boat,’ he said abruptly.
‘Something like what?’
‘Get her moved away from my yard. Marie can’t bear seeing her there. Every time she catches sight of that old wreck it reminds her of Dominic. It’s too painful.’
‘Daniel, what’s this all about? Move the boat after sixty years? How am I supposed to do that?’
‘I’m doing you a favour,’ he said. ‘For your father’s sake I’m giving y
ou the chance of saving her. Otherwise I’ll take a torch to her. It’s as simple as that.’
‘I don’t know a damned thing about boats. I wouldn’t have a clue how to get her moved.’
‘That’s not my concern, is it?’ But then some of the fight went out of him. ‘All right, Iain, all right. I don’t want to be unreasonable. I’ll move her myself if you really can’t get it done. On this afternoon’s tide. There’s an inlet we use for temporary moorings, out near the point. By that old blockhouse. You can get to her by the footpath that leads from the bridge around the back of our place. But I don’t want any more to do with the damned boat after that, you understand? She’s your responsibility now, as far as I’m concerned. Have her towed away. Sink her.’
‘Christ, Daniel.’
‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’ He straightened his back, relieved to have said his piece. ‘I’ll see that she’s properly moored up. But you’ll have to do something about her before long. If any kind of weather comes through I’m not sure how much punishment she’ll take, and if she slips her moorings she’ll end up on the Shoals inside an hour and that’ll be the end of her. If I were the superstitious kind I’d say that might be best.’
A taxi driver and a mechanic from the Citroen garage got to their feet, tossed money onto the counter top and walked out. Daniel nodded curtly to me, and strode out after them, catching the door before it closed. After that it was so quiet in the café that I could hear the halyards tinkling from the harbour. In the hush Henri cruised up with two gleaming silver tankards on a tray. He banged one down defiantly in front of me, and raised his own.
‘Iain,’ he said, with a toss of his head, ‘we must drink a toast.’
A group of half-a-dozen men at a table on the far side of the room began to get to their feet. I recognised most of them – two crewmen from the charter boats, a deckhand from Le Toque’s trawler, the manager of the marine chandlery. They left their drinks half-finished, feeling in their pockets for change.
‘It’s on the house!’ Henri boomed at them with magnificent disdain. ‘And if that’s your attitude, you can take your miserable custom somewhere else!’