Strange Images of Death

by Barbara Cleverly

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ Joe agreed, ‘that the heights of human artistic achievement may be reached only to be countered moments later by a plunge to the depths of human behaviour. Jekyll and Hyde? Oscar Wilde’s portrait of Dorian Grey? Are these an allegory? A warning?’

  ‘Beethoven’s last works, those of Schubert … Guy de Maupassant … Baudelaire … Oscar Wilde perhaps, and Van Gogh’s late canvases. Those last, completed in a frenzy of inspiration within the madhouse itself.’

  In spite of himself, Joe found his voice dropping to a whisper as he revealed: ‘He has in his room—were you aware?—a self-portrait of Van Gogh. Three-quarter profile with a stare deadly enough to terrify the Commissaire.’

  ‘Has Jacquemin worked it out?’

  ‘No, not yet. In spite of compiling a list of the medicaments he found in his cupboards. Amongst the laxatives and painkillers and milk of magnesia tablets, I saw listed potassium iodide. The Commissaire understands this to be a prescription for heart disease.’

  ‘And so it can be.’

  ‘But, prescribed along with—salvarsan?’

  ‘Ah, yes. And there’s your proof—an arsenic compound that’s been in use for the past few years. Much trumpeted as a certain cure for syphilis. My father has reservations. And, I think you’ll agree, it doesn’t appear to be doing much good in this case. Shall we say, Joe, what even we have been tiptoeing around? Shall we say that the manic rages, the decay in personality and the delusions are symptoms of the tertiary stage of syphilis and, under its influence, Lord Silmont has launched himself on a mad course of destruction and murder?’

  ‘Jane, whilst I must agree with the first of your assertions—that the lord is in the throes of this disease—I cannot agree with the second. I spent the afternoon with his friends and his doctor, splendid men all three, and can tell you that the lord was in their company at the time Estelle was murdered. He has the soundest alibi I’ve ever encountered. Ill he may be in mind and body, deluded and certifiably insane, but he is not guilty of murder.’

  She made a small noise in her throat. Dissent? Surprise? Disappointment? It was not relief.

  ‘You’re perfectly sure of that?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  She shook her head in embarrassment.’Oh, dear! I have made a mess of that, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘Spreading doubt of the worst kind! You must think very badly of me.’

  ‘I’ve learned never to come up with a theory and stretch the facts to fit it,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s taken years but I’ve got to the point where I can let evidence, impressions and sound advice from well-meaning friends—such as I’ve just had from you—swirl about until the moment comes when they settle into a convincing pattern.’

  ‘And for you they’re still swirling?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps the pieces will begin to fall together tomorrow when Estelle has spoken to us.’

  ‘Estelle has spoken?’

  ‘I’m going to Avignon to see the pathologist. A task Jacquemin seems willing to delegate to me. By then there may be other indications. If I were at all fanciful, I’d say that the dead sometimes try to pass on a message. They stand about on the fringes of perception, unable to influence the living agents involved with their corpse but urging us on.’ Joe didn’t quite like the way her lip curled in disbelief so he pressed on: ‘You’d be surprised how often I’ve watched a pathologist put down his instruments and declare the job finished only to pause, uneasy, think a bit and say, almost to himself: “Hang on a minute … there’s something else I could look at …”’

  Jane sighed and this he identified clearly as a blend of derision and impatience.

  ‘And now I see in your eye what your father saw all those years ago! “Intolerant and intemperate girl!” I shall shout. And possibly stamp my foot. But I shall know that I’ve deserved your scorn.’

  She smiled and the hard expression melted away. Jane Makepeace was, indeed, a very pretty girl, Joe considered. But her father had known his own daughter.

  Becoming the dry detective again, Joe wondered aloud what—had the lord had the means and opportunity to commit the crime (which he hadn’t)—could possibly be his motive. What on earth would prompt him to attack first his own much-prized effigy and follow this with the murder of a strikingly similar victim? Could they ascribe this to complete, unreasoning dementia? It seemed to him that there was rather too much of a pattern to dismiss it as motiveless violence.

  ‘Come now, Joe!’ she said annoyingly. ‘You’ve thought this through, as have I. Of course there’s a pattern. And a motive too—a crazy one which might spring from a diseased mind. It comes down to blood.’

  ‘Blood? There was little or no blood spilled,’ he ventured.

  ‘You’re wilfully misunderstanding. I mean blood line. Descent. Silmont has never married—and now I think we can guess why—and therefore has no children. He has to deal with the problem of his imminent death and the inheritance of all this. It’s not quite like the English tradition where the name and position are inherited along with the property. A man of a different name, finding himself the owner of the estate, could call himself “de Silmont” and there you have it—yet another member of the aristocracy. Ten a penny but they still set some store by it. The writer, Voltaire, was a plain Monsieur Arouet until he bought the Voltaire estate. After a few years he was Monsieur de Voltaire and had quietly dropped his own family name. What’s the betting that Monsieur de Pacy will seamlessly become Silmont?’

  ‘Sounds like a good solution to me,’ Joe said.

  ‘Not if there is bad blood between the two men.’

  ‘Blood again? Did you use that term intentionally?’

  ‘Yes. You will have heard that the men are cousins.

  This is a polite acceptance. They are not. They are, in fact, half-brothers. Some sort of cousin as well, if you can be bothered to work it out, I suppose. Guy was born somewhat illegitimate.’

  ‘Somewhat?’

  ‘It’s not straightforward. He was brought up by Vincent de Pacy and his wife in their household, their acknowledged son. And why not—de Pacy was indeed his father. The man had quite a reputation locally for philandering apparently. But Guy’s mother? Well! Prepare yourself for a surprise. She was, in fact, Ariane, the wife of the Lord Silmont of the day, Bertrand’s own mother.’

  ‘Ah, here she is again—the Unfaithful Wife!’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was the nineties. La Belle Époque. There were many liaisons of that nature. But are you seeing a pattern? The Lord Silmont already had a son in Bertrand and had no use for another who wasn’t his own. He compelled his wife to hand the baby over to its father, de Pacy. Everything was hushed up and given a veneer of propriety as is the custom but I can only imagine what effect it must have had on both boys.’

  ‘And both women!’ said Joe, aghast. ‘I’m surprised there wasn’t murder done! I had no idea.’

  ‘And I trust you to keep it to yourself. Guy is a survivor, something of a stoic, and he’s adjusted to his circumstances. A man to be respected. But he would not be pleased … I feel I’ve betrayed a man who has befriended me. I have said too much.’

  ‘Not if it has a bearing on this case. But how did you manage to dig so deep?’

  She laughed. ‘Me? Bad-tempered, angular, unsympathetic me? I have acquired a certain skill, Joe, over the years. I have learned the techniques of the psychiatrist’s couch. I know when to be silent. I know which phrases will provoke a response. And I know how to interpret those responses.’

  ‘I suppose I must resign myself to being read by you?’

  ‘Not at all, Joe. I take you for a clear rock pool. The sunlight and clarity I see on the surface goes all the way down to the white pebbles on the bottom.’

  He didn’t believe her but made no denial or affirmation of her challenge, spotting her outrageous comment for the trigger it was. If he’d been lounging on a tapestried couch instead of perched rather gingerly on an ancient chair with a rickety leg he mig
ht well have given way to the temptation of sinking into an indulgent bout of self-analysis. Steered by Jane Makepeace in the direction of her choosing. He helped himself to another cup of tea from the pot.

  ‘So why the frenzied attack on womankind?’ he asked, wondering whether she had reached the same conclusion as himself.

  ‘Brought up with medieval notions of inheritance, the fascination for the treacherous wife, Aliénore, whom he adores and loathes in equal measure, he finds at an impressionable age that the family tradition continues. His own mother he discovers to be a strumpet—in his vocabulary. I despise the word and seek unsuccessfully for the male equivalent. At any event—a woman who has been unfaithful and given away the product of her unfaithfulness. His own brother. A heartbreaking loss? Or relief that a cuckoo has been pushed out of the nest?’

  ‘Your father would have a field day with all this,’ said Joe, bemused.

  ‘And then, we must assume somewhere in his early twenties—that is the most usual time, I understand, for young men to go off the rails, usually with an infected prostitute—he finds through the appearance of a chancre in the groin, and probably a fever, that he has been infected with the most hideous disease known to man. It is incurable. It is unbearably painful. It is transferable. No one is sure of the period of contagion but he knows that if he marries, he risks infecting his wife. And the disease may be passed from a mother to her child. She will bring into the world an infant covered in black pustules and condemned to a life of pain. Silmont does the honourable thing and forbids himself ever to marry.’

  ‘Which leaves him with a certain resentment against women,’ said Joe. ‘Unfaithful, diseased and dangerous creatures!’

  ‘The anger and bitterness grow over the years like the tumours. And now he’s reached the third stage and his diseased brain is no longer capable of exercising restraint or reason. He sees the statue of the ancient whore as the seed bed of vice and his own illness as destruction visited on him by an unclean woman. I think the arrival of Estelle with her incredible looks and her licentious reputation burst the boil of his venom. She was fated to pay the price. The moment she stepped over the drawbridge she—’

  Joe was anxious to discourage Jane’s doom-laden tone. He detected a trace of lip-smacking jubilation and, though he could understand, he could not sympathize.

  ‘Which was exactly when? Her arrival?’ he interrupted brusquely.

  ‘Let me think … I was already here. My six months’ secondment started in May. It would have been at the beginning of June. She came down with Nathan the photographer.’ Jane’s eyes narrowed. ‘I remember clearly the effect she had on the men that first day.’ She fell silent and let her remark hang in the air between them. She had taken her reprimand and this was her riposte: if Joe wanted to hear gossip, he was going to have to ask nicely.

  ‘Any man in particular seem smitten?’ he enquired because he needed to know. He was reluctant to hear an account seen through the prism of Jane Makepeace’s critical faculty but it would be interesting to compare her version with the one he already had from Orlando.

  ‘You want individual profiles—a barometer of lust? Let me see. Freddie was an obvious victim from the first moment. The mercury rose to danger level in seconds. Storm warnings hoisted. She treated him kindly, I think. He was her devoted swain, you could say. Poor chap! He was much ragged for it. Derek and Ernest were sat on hard by each other’s respective wife. Bubbling under, I’d say. Petrovsky? There was a blip from him until he discovered that she despised him and his level fell. Such a man thrives only on adulation. And his hands were rather full at the time, anyway. Nathan Jacoby watched all these fools manoeuvring from the sidelines, cynical and indulgent. But concerned. Definitely concerned. Your friend Orlando? Now, there’s a lovely man!’ she said surprisingly. ‘A pacifist and a reformer. And a fine artist. Far too good for her. He registered a certain warm interest and I thought at one point they might make a go of it. Wouldn’t have blamed her for trying—he’s easy and funny. Perfect man to spend a summer with.’

  Joe hid a smile. He wondered whether he should warn Orlando that he had a secret admirer.

  ‘And the Frenchmen? You’re saving them till last?’

  ‘I appreciate a crescendo. Guy de Pacy … Handsome, competent, stand-offish Guy. He was amused, I’d say, by the reactions of the other men. But she was the type who would go for the unattainable. He was much too old for her. Too experienced. Too choosy. She tried hard—to everyone’s embarrassment. It didn’t take long for her to get the message and she stopped pursuing him. Very abruptly. One day she was all over him, the next she was glowering from the other end of the table. Something emphatic happened to make her change her mind.’

  Jane seemed genuinely puzzled and not fishing for a reply from him. Could it be that this modern, so well-informed young woman had no knowledge of the possibility of male inversion? He decided not to raise the subject.

  ‘This message that Estelle got? Any idea of what it consisted?’

  ‘Lord no! I’m on good terms with Guy but he doesn’t confide. He’s not approachable in that way—you must have noticed. Not a gossip. But it might not have been Guy who spoke to her. Had you thought of that?’

  ‘Not Guy?’

  ‘The Lord Silmont. If he noticed her interest, he would have taken steps to discourage it.’

  ‘Steps?’

  ‘Yes. Here my theory begins to crumble.’ Jane frowned and looked to Joe for help, her confident assertions suddenly faltering.

  ‘Because he could just have sent her away, couldn’t he? A hanger-on, a potential trouble-maker, a girl who represented everything he despised, why wasn’t she on the next train back to Paris?’ Joe wondered.

  ‘You’re right. Young, unconnected and foreign, you could add. He’s unpredictable. I’ve seen him dismiss a servant for squinting at him. But he kept Estelle on.’

  ‘Could he have been fascinated himself?’

  Jane nodded slowly. ‘Not obviously so. His visits to the dining room didn’t increase with her arrival. He didn’t seek her company. But when they were in the same room he watched her. Hardly a word exchanged but he was always … conscious of her, I’d say.’

  ‘Jealous of Guy?’

  ‘Probably. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? Younger man, attractive, healthy, and being besieged by the girl you’ve a fancy of some sort for yourself? Yes. It could have been the lord who warned her off. Another reason for him to want to get rid of her permanently. Had it occurred to you, Joe, that the table-top tomb looks very like an altar? He could have cleared the stone strumpet away to make space for a flesh and blood victim. Sacrificing her symbolically—all in the throes of his diseased urges, of course.’

  They had come around full circle. ‘But I told you, Jane, he could not have stuck the dagger in Estelle yesterday.’

  ‘You haven’t quite got there, have you?’ she said, annoyingly. ‘Well, I leave you to work it out for yourself. I don’t intend to put ideas into your head. I have no concrete evidence to present yet to back up my suspicions but I’ll let you have it the moment I uncover it.’

  Joe very much doubted that she had. Miss Makepeace, he thought, had shot her bolt, exhausted her evidence. But he was mistaken.

  ‘I’ll leave you with another thought,’ she said, as one turning in the saddle to fire off a last Parthian arrow. ‘You only ask me about her relationships with the men in the party. She was not popular with the women in the dorm, you know. They’re mostly quite open-minded—as females go—but when they’re cooped up together! Well! They can behave no better than schoolboys … or hens … The most awful bullies! They choose one of their number to be the sacrificial one, the poor specimen all agree to peck at. They chose Estelle. She was easy to despise and a threat. Cecily, in particular, could get into a froth of rage at the mention of her name. There was bad blood between those two. Cecily tormented her. The second night Estelle was with us, I caught the appalling Cecily making an apple-pie bed to trap
her. Reverting to schoolgirl behaviour.’

  ‘What did you do, Jane?’ Joe asked, trying not to smile.

  ‘It’s not funny, Commander! Girls, even hard-boiled ones like Estelle, can be psychologically damaged by such evidence of rejection by their peers, you know … I told her if she didn’t undo it at once and be nice, someone might think of putting a snake in hers.’

  ‘That was telling her,’ said Joe.

  ‘If it was, she wasn’t listening. Cecily did it anyway as soon as my back was turned.’

  Joe swallowed uneasily. ‘And …?’

  ‘There’s a nest of adders on the fringes of the woodland.’ Jane grinned. ‘We’ve had no trouble with Cecily since.’

  ‘I sincerely hope the snake suffered no psychological damage,’ said Joe faintly. ‘An enforced appearance in Cecily’s bed could leave its mark on man or beast.’ He instantly regretted his startled aside.

  Jane considered him through narrowed eyes. ‘I say again, Commander—it’s not funny.’ She waggled a finger at him in joking reprimand. ‘Interview over, I think.’

  She began to collect up the teacups in a marked manner and added: ‘But I was forgetting—when it comes to gathering information, Joe, you hardly need to listen to me. You’re on the inside of the bend! Estelle’s cold lips may yet whisper into your attentive ear. I’m sure you’ll listen to her.’

  Jacquemin would not appreciate a second female corpse appearing on his patch, Joe judged, so he decided to put off strangling Jane Makepeace for the moment. Really, he’d rather listen to the dead Estelle than the very much alive and unfortunately named Miss Makepeace.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Avignon, Friday