Strange Images of Death

by Barbara Cleverly

  ‘So, we lure the audiences in,’ he explained. ‘No discordant bassoons, no dull-coloured sets, no ragged costumes to scare them off. We appeal to the world!’ He pointed to the first leaf of his painting.

  In the background, a white castle thrust its pinnacles up into a vividly blue sky and on the grassy expanse at its feet all was prepared for a wedding. White birds flew; branches and garlands framed the scene which would be filled by colourfully clad dancers. Frederick had painted in a few figures, resplendent in a form of medieval dress. Joe peered more closely at these and wondered whether anyone else would notice that perhaps the genius costume designer had been found. But this was no idealized Sleeping Beauty castle. His eye searched for the discords. A second glance showed, sneaking in already amongst the springtime colours, a more sinister palette of dark red and grey. The splendid white château had its roots in a soil the colour of blood or embers.

  ‘Explain the characters, would you. Be brief. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story,’ Jacquemin invited.

  Swallowing his offence, Frederick made the introductions. ‘On your left, gentlemen, the ducal parents of the groom, splendidly attired. These will be elderly dancers who won’t need to stretch their limbs or perform any vigorous steps so we can go to town on the costumes. On the right, the parents of the bride, likewise presented. The groom I have portrayed as a Nijinsky figure. Handsome with wonderful thighs. The central figure: the bride. We do not know her name. Dressed in white to conform to the old story and modern custom, though in medieval times I believe she would …’ The frosty eye of the Commissaire nudged him back on course again. ‘White. Yes. Clinging and simple. But glittering. Much frosting: silver and diamonds winking at her throat and wrists to indicate her wealth. And in this she is quite distinct from another girl over here in the half background, standing in the shadows—do you see her? The second female lead. The Odile to the bride’s Odette, if you will. This is Aliénore, the penniless cousin who is secretly in love with the bride-groom. She is wearing a dark blue dress, the replica of the one the bride wears, but she has no jewels. The two girls do a pas de deux which reveals the girlish innocence of the one, the calculating jealousy of the other—’

  ‘We’ll imagine that. Carry on to the second act, will you?’

  Their eyes followed Frederick’s pointing finger. They noted the red fissure in the castle’s foundations had increased in size. Ragged-edged, it oozed hellfire colours: thunderous purple, streaks of soot black, sparks of sulphurous yellow.

  ‘And the audience will suddenly see movement here. On stage, I plan to stretch a diaphanous curtain over the crack, red-lit from above, and have dancers writhing behind it,’ Frederick explained. ‘And then, the bride having been left behind on stage while everyone goes off inside for the ceremony, she does a solo dance which turns into a pas de deux when a second character makes his entrance. Up from the roots of the castle comes the Devil. At this stage he’s not terrifying but mesmerizing. Clad all in red, of course, handsome and charming. And—masked. Clearly he’s fallen in love with the bride. He woos her. Nothing doing. She skips off into the castle and he does a dramatic solo full of power and rage. Not a creature to be thwarted!’

  ‘And we can see what’s going on here,’ said Jacquemin, stepping on. ‘The party’s moved indoors. If I remember the story correctly, the bride encourages her friends to play a last game of childhood before she becomes a wife. A game of hide and seek. Which seems here to be going terribly wrong.’ He looked closely at the third leaf. ‘Looks exactly like the great hall we’ve just left. But decorated and en fête, of course.’

  ‘A wide stage so that we can put on the formal wedding dances, performed to the traditional tunes, and then the wild scurrying of the young folk as they play their game. And, in the same stage set, the discovery that the girl is missing—with the resulting turmoil. The lighting dies and one part of the stage only is illuminated: over here.’ Frederick moved aside and pointed to the bottom left-hand corner which they now saw to be the grey-painted outline of a dungeon. Two figures were standing hand in hand, in quiet menace. The bridegroom and his lover Aliénore were pitilessly watching the scene before them. Two further figures were dancing together, limbs entwined—amorously or in a frantic struggle—it was hard to tell. The Devil had the young bride by the waist and was wresting her from her hiding place to drag her down even deeper into the bowels of the château.

  Martineau pointed an accusing finger at the groom and Aliénore. ‘There they are—the guilty pair. In a moment, they’ll spring to life, clang shut the door and nothing more will be heard of the bride for a hundred years. Death! The Devil is Death! But this devil has a face. Look! Can you see what I’m seeing?’

  With his free hand the Devil was tugging the mask from his face.

  ‘Good Lord! I hadn’t noticed!’ said Joe in surprise. ‘But we know him! Isn’t that …’

  ‘Monsieur Guy de Pacy. Masquerading. Or not,’ said Jacquemin with satisfaction. ‘Interesting, and we look forward to hearing more from you on what prompted your choice of subject, Ashwell. But at last, here we are at the fourth and final setting. Will you unveil it, or shall I?’

  Frederick shrugged truculently. ‘I left it covered over because … well, in the circumstances … respect … sensibilities …’ he mumbled and seemed unwilling to proceed. ‘Not because I had anything to hide!’

  Martineau moved forward to attend to the drapery.

  ‘This is experimental, you understand. The ballet could well end with the third act. I’ve added this scene as the final chapter in the folk story. An awful warning—the wages of sin and all that.’

  ‘And can you tell us at what precise time you put the last brushstroke to it? I’m assuming that the last flourish could well have been your signature?’ Jacquemin leaned over and pretended to examine the scrawling black letters in the corner. ‘It’s always a puzzle to me—that men who have superb control over their fingers and their brushes seem to be incapable of forming their letters with any elegance. F. J. Ashwell, it says,’ he reported unnecessarily. ‘And it bears yesterday’s date. I’m assuming that whatever time you give us will, of course, correspond to the time the laboratory comes up with when they examine the sample of plaster I’ve sent them.’ He pointed to a gap six inches square chiselled from the bottom of the painting.

  ‘All this has been reported also by Miss Jane Makepeace who observed Estelle Smeeth and the child Marius some yards away on the other side of the courtyard at the same time. Estelle—the young lady who had become, unwittingly, the subject of your last act. A piece devised and worked on for some hours before the young lady died. Completed, down to the signature, minutes before her death. Now, Sandilands, you see why I demand an explanation at the very least. Though a confession is, in fact, what we’re looking at!’

  Joe turned wondering eyes on the painter and then looked back at his vision of death on the wall before them.

  The scene in the chapel was exactly as he remembered it. The table-top tomb was there bearing its grotesque burden. The crusading knight lay, unchanged, and at his side, his wife. But this figure was not Aliénore. The features were clearly those of Estelle. And the dagger in her heart was a faithful rendering of the misericord.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Easy enough to check whether the lad’s telling the truth or not,’ said Martineau when they returned to the office. ‘Shall I go and collar his lordship, sir? That was as good a denunciation as I’ve ever heard! Shall I haul the blighter down and make him answer up?’

  ‘It’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,’ Jacquemin replied. ‘That valet of his …’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Léon something …’

  ‘Bédoin,’ supplied Joe. ‘Old retainer type. Been looking after his master for decades.’

  ‘Bossy old bugger! He’s given the lord a stiff dose of something to send him to sleep. Without reference to me! Or to the hospital nurse I’ve sent up to keep an eye on things. The valet’s uttering dire
warnings of seizures to come. This fellow appears to be in charge of the pharmacopoeia. Which he keeps under lock and key in his own lair. He’s got a room next door to the master’s in his suite in the south tower.’

  ‘You’re saying you’ve—?’ Joe began to ask.

  ‘First thing I did. On the assumption that not a lot goes on under a roof of this sort without the knowledge of the owner, I stepped out and inspected his rooms. He raised no objection but I had to batter down the valet to gain admission.’

  ‘Anything of note? I should particularly like to hear of what his medication consists. I was fortunate enough this afternoon to have a concerned discussion with his doctor. He confirmed my suspicions regarding the lord’s health. But it would be interesting to hear what the man is actually being prescribed.’

  Jacquemin passed Joe a sheet of paper. ‘Here you are. I took an inventory.’

  Joe glanced down the list. ‘Can you tell me why you’ve divided this into two distinct parts?’

  ‘Because that’s how we found them,’ said Jacquemin. ‘In two different cupboards and—this is extraordinary—with two different labels. The first group and the largest in number are the bottles and tins marked with the local doctor’s details. The second, amounting to three or four items in all, bear the address of a Harley Street, London, medical establishment. With a name on the label we all recognize. Makepeace. Do you have a comment to make?’ He looked keenly at Joe who had fallen into a silent perusal of the list.

  ‘Er … not yet. I should like to take the time to check up on one or two of these items. I’m noticing that the London doctor and the local chap have one prescription in common. Both have decided to supply him with potassium iodide. Anything known?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘Heart and lungs. My predecessor swallowed them down like cachous,’ said Jacquemin with satisfaction. ‘Quite useless. It got him in the end.’

  ‘May I borrow this? Take a copy and return it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And, tell me Jacquemin, was there anything that took your attention in his quarters? What sort of set-up does he have there?’

  Jacquemin pulled a sour face. ‘Austere to the point of monkishness, I’d say. Fixtures and fittings and furnishings all of the very best but simple. Apart from some pretty fancy artwork on the bedroom walls.’ He gave a knowing smile. ‘Artwork which would surprise you, Sandilands. I expect it says a lot about the occupant of any room—the choice of pictures—if you think about it. A man can fill his public rooms with whatever he thinks will impress his guests. That’s the face he wants to show to the world but it’s the image he chooses to rest his eyes on before he goes to sleep that tells you who he really is.’

  Joe and Martineau were suddenly thoughtful.

  ‘Passing in review your own walls, gentlemen?’ Jacquemin grinned. ‘Let me guess. The Lieutenant lives with his widowed mother. I’d expect a reproduction of a suitably pious religious scene—an Annunciation or something similar.’ And, as Martineau coloured and shuffled his feet, added: ‘With something more recreative under the bed, I’d guess. Now, Sandilands …’

  Joe’s annoyance at this invasion of his privacy bristled in his voice: ‘Before you venture out on to another creaky limb, Jacquemin, I’ll reveal the secrets of my bedchamber walls: horses and angels. Find fault with them if you can. I managed to acquire one of Alfred Munnings’ paintings of the Canadian cavalry horses at war behind the front line before they were much collected. The angels—so buxom and bonny their gilded frame can scarcely contain them—are the subjects of an Italian renaissance drawing left to me by an uncle.’

  Jacquemin’s smile was self-congratulatory. ‘Horses and women. One might have guessed.’

  ‘Please, let us have no further confidences,’ Joe begged. ‘We’ll let you off your round in the revelation game, Commissaire. Some things it’s kinder not to ask, don’t you agree, Martineau? Now, we’re eager to hear what you made of Silmont’s pictorial laudanum.’

  ‘Ghastly taste! Simply ghastly! They tell us he’s one of Europe’s authorities on modern art—he could have his pick! And what does he choose to surround himself with? Medieval visions of hell!

  ‘Right there on the wall, facing him as he lies in bed, there’s a painting on wood, over two metres in height. He told me it’s the right-hand panel of a pair commissioned to go over an altar. The Descent into Hell. Funny—from a distance you’d find the colours and composition intriguing but when you focus on what’s actually going on … well! Torture, rape and slaughter by the most inventive means is what’s going on! All being perpetrated by devils equipped with tridents as well as more outré pieces of equipment, but, I can tell you—nothing like the dashing Devil in red that our young set designer envisioned.’

  ‘I expect the church it was destined for refused to take delivery. You wouldn’t want to expose a congregation to a sight like that for hours on end. Could give them unwelcome ideas,’ Joe suggested. ‘But the artist? Did he say who the artist was?’

  ‘Some Dutchman with an unpronounceable name … Bosch!’

  ‘Hieronymus Bosch?’

  ‘You’ve got him! Strange thing—the other painting that took my eye—and crushed it—was by a Dutchman too. Vincent Van Gogh. A self-portrait painted, I was told, when he was an inmate in the lunatic asylum—quite near here—in St Rémy de Provence. Turned out dozens, apparently, and gave them all away.’ Jacquemin shuddered. ‘I know they’re collected these days but I can tell you, I wouldn’t say thank you for this one! I’ll never forget it. It’s a roughish painting—layers of livid colour slapped on, radiating outwards, and in the centre, a face. What a face! Green and yellow, emaciated flesh. You can tell the man was near death when he did it. Now, the sight of a corpse to me—and I suppose it’s the same for you fellows—long since ceased to stir the emotions, but this was no piece of dead flesh awaiting the pathologist’s attention. It was a living corpse. Sounds barmy, I know, but, if someone you knew had just died and you bent over him to murmur your farewell and he suddenly opened his eyes wide and stared at you … well … you can imagine the effect. Frightful! The eyes pin you to the wall! Dark, dull, blue-black, like a pair of ripe olives. They don’t ask questions, they don’t tell you anything, they don’t accuse. They look at you but don’t know you’re there. And, of course, they wouldn’t know. The man was looking in a mirror when he painted it. You’re standing in the way of a man who’s interrogating himself, judging himself, and finding himself guilty of some appalling sin. A man full of self-hatred and on the edge of death.’

  A forceful painting, Joe thought, to have aroused such feelings in the apparently unemotional Commissaire.

  ‘Those eyes burn with pain,’ Jacquemin added, still enjoying his subject. ‘No wonder he has trouble sleeping. A nice Corot or two—that’s what I’d prescribe for his walls. Much more effective than the laudanum-based sleeping draught—item number six on the list I’ve given you.’

  ‘Books? What about books? I’ve inspected the lord’s library but it would be interesting to hear what he has by him.’

  ‘The usual line-up of novels. Hugo … Dumas … Tolstoy. Nothing more recent than Proust whom he seems to have read. A lot of poetry … classics … history … much local history … everything Mistral’s ever written about Provence. A history of the château, privately printed. Numerous photographs of the building including some of the chapel and tomb. I have to say, there’s no element we couldn’t accept in the lad Frederick’s story. He was definitely put up to it,’ his voice curdled with suspicion, ‘whatever it was, by his lordship. The books Ashwell showed us—the blueprint for his designs—were pressed on him by Silmont. The gaps were still to be seen on the shelves between Perrault’s fairy tales and the Almanach de Provence. Martineau measured them.’

  ‘So, just as Ashwell claims, he was handed his subject, his scene and his model—her services paid for in advance, on the house so to speak. All complete, on a palette, by the man commissioning the work,’ Martin
eau summarized. ‘And it was the lord who first put into his head the similarity between the statue and the live model, Miss Smeeth. The lord who gave him the keys to the armoury and invited him to study the daggers. The lord who, jokingly, suggested he paint the Devil with his cousin’s features. And—wouldn’t you know it?—who was known to be ten miles away himself at the time of the killing? His lordship! What’s going on, sir? Murder by some sort of hypnotic influence? By proxy? By witchcraft?’ He pursed his lips, uncomfortable with his suggestion. ‘Do you suppose money changed hands?’

  ‘Ah! Now you’re being fanciful, Lieutenant,’ sneered Jacquemin. ‘The English are known to be unbribable. But it will be entertaining to hear the lord’s version of events when he comes to the surface again. Meanwhile …’ He shuffled his papers and invited the two men to pull their chairs closer. ‘Just in case any further murders by suggestion are being planned, it will be sensible to reduce the number of potential victims. Can we take blonde young females as his preferred prey? I think we must. It’s the only pattern we’ve got—if two attacks constitute a pattern. Taking the smashing of the alabaster image as a statement of intent, it seems reasonable. Accordingly, I’m getting the remaining two possible victims out from under our feet. That little strawberry bonbon … what’s her name?’

  ‘Clothilde?’

  ‘Her and her Parisian mother. Blonde woman. Artist. Paints Madonnas and suchlike. I’ve ordered up a taxi to take them into Avignon and from there they can get a train back to Paris. Both very ready to go. I thought we’d take a chance on the redhead. What was she now? … Flower portraitist, she calls herself.’ His lip curled. ‘Big and overblown, like her subjects.’

  Joe thought he recognized Cecily. ‘Jacquemin—the other children. I believe Marius Dalbert to be in some danger. When word gets out—and it most likely has by now—that he was hidden in the chapel with a murderer on the loose, steps might be taken to silence him.’