Strange Images of Death

by Barbara Cleverly

  ‘But how to persuade Estelle to make a victim of herself? Nothing easier. She is happy once more and in high good spirits. Her sense of fun leads her to agree to playing a silly joke on Cecily. “Imagine the scene—when she gets back home and Daddy has the film developed! What a souvenir! What a laugh!” You borrow the camera and arrange to meet Estelle at the chapel. But you gild the lily. You plan to have a fall-back position if things go wrong. The lord is to take the blame but he is a man with influence. You can’t be perfectly certain that he won’t come up with some defence you hadn’t anticipated. So Cecily is a reserve suspect.

  ‘A wise precaution, it must have seemed! Things did go wrong for you at first. It was your bad luck to find the crime being investigated by two competing detectives, one, at least, the star in his force’s firmament. But worse—the lord was inconveniently and unexpectedly away from the scene at the moment of the murder. And then the diligent police discover for themselves the contents of Cecily’s camera. You had decided these officers, since you’d been landed with them, could be of great use to you. A little nudge here, a dig of the spur there, and you’d have them moving wherever you wanted them to go. You didn’t have much respect for their detective abilities but you feared the possibilities of the new forensic sciences and took precautions. Fingerprints were …’ He paused and went on, ‘mostly … rubbed away. Pity. It is fingerprints we rely on for a conviction. More reliable than a confession, we find in England. Were you aware—I think you must have been—that a single print is enough to clinch a case? Juries adore them! They take the weight of responsibility from their shoulders. A scientifically arrived at conclusion is always more acceptable than a moral judgement to twelve good men and true. Circumstantial evidence, deduction, are as nothing compared with the cold scientific condemnation of a single print.’

  He broke off tantalizingly, leaving Jane Makepeace to wonder exactly where she had carelessly left a print.

  ‘The trousers you wore for their convenience in scrambling about in the moat were—just in case—stashed away amongst Estelle’s skirts, ready to be packed off and sent abroad unremarked. But …’ Deep in thought, Joe strolled to the window and flung it open, fanning his face.

  Jacquemin reached down and produced the black trousers. He handed them to Joe. Jane’s eyes followed them but still she did not break her silence.

  Joe now faced playing his two last cards.

  ‘You slid down a south-facing slope to get the incriminating shots you wanted. Leaving fragments of earth and plant matter on the fabric. These have been studied under the microscope in the laboratory and identified.’

  ‘Oh, really! I’ve heard enough! One: those are not my trousers. And two: Cecily who owns them is always crawling around in the undergrowth. Ask her where she’s been lately.’

  ‘I can tell you exactly where the trousers went on their last outing. There’s a tiny Provençal plant growing on the south side of the moat where we found boot scrapes. It is very rare. Thymus pseudolanuginosus. Are you familiar with it? It is vestiges of this plant that we were able to comb from your trousers,’ he lied convincingly.

  Jane Makepeace was convinced. But unimpressed. ‘I think you cannot have heard me clearly. Those are Cecily’s trousers. She wears the uncouth garments all the time. You must have noticed.’

  Such was her bored confidence that Joe was silent for a moment. He picked up the trousers, examining them once again. He looked up to see Dorcas mouthing a number at him, and went straight back on the attack. ‘Miss Somerset’s waist size is a generous thirty inches, I’m told. These are twenty-four inches. Exactly the same as yours. In any case, not difficult—merely time-consuming—to check sales receipts from Harrods.’

  A slight flicker of emotion across her face told him that she understood the seriousness of her position but she still refused him the satisfaction of a comment.

  A car screeched noisily up to the window and a door slammed. At an annoyed glance from Jacquemin, Joe got up and closed the window again. They listened as feet pounded down the corridor. There was a rap on the door and Martineau came straight in.

  ‘Yes, Lieutenant?’ Jacquemin greeted him.

  ‘It’s here, sir. They’ve just driven it over from Avignon. Urgent, the sergeant said.’

  He handed over an envelope to the Commissaire.

  ‘Ah! At last!’ Jacquemin exchanged meaningful glances with Joe and slit open the envelope. ‘From the laboratory.’ He studied a sheet of paper with an expressionless face, stared at Jane Makepeace for a moment and passed the sheet to Joe, ensuring that Miss Makepeace caught a clear glimpse of the police letterhead.

  ‘Now what have we?’ Joe began to mutter. He summarized for his audience: ‘The fingerprints lifted from the enclosed object were clear. Photographs reveal, apart from smudged prints—possibly those of the owner—one thumb and one first finger. The thumb provides fifteen distinct points of agreement with that of one of the people whose prints were sent in from the château. Fifteen! Remind me, Jacquemin, how many you require in France for a conviction. Twelve, you say. Will you show Miss Makepeace the object on which her fingerprints were so clearly evident?’

  Jacquemin opened the smaller envelope and placed the lens cap on the desk.

  ‘You gave it to Estelle to hold. She still had it clutched in her dead hand on the pathologist’s slab. I told you the dead could speak, Jane.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Joe held his breath. If this was not Jane Makepeace’s breaking point, she didn’t have one.

  The room fell silent, all eyes turned on her.

  Pale with stress or anger, she rose to her feet and, ignoring Joe, spoke to Jacquemin in clear French. ‘This cap is the bit that comes at the front of the camera that Cecily’s so proud of. She didn’t exactly pass it around for the appreciation of the crowd—she is rather possessive and secretive about it. But I managed to get my hands on it on one occasion. If you’ve developed the film, you’ll have noticed a picture of a group of us posing in the courtyard. I’m on the front row. Cecily asked me to hold the lens cap for her while she took the photograph … she didn’t want to put it down on the gravel … always treading on it, she said. You can ask any one of the others who were there at the time. They’ll tell you. Of course my prints are on that thing! I’m always the one who gets asked to hold things, find things, sort things out! And now I’m being expected to bear the responsibility for this nonsense? Not on your life, Commissaire!’

  Enjoying Jacquemin’s consternation, she drew herself up to her full height and with the cool, amused expression of a Greek Kore added: ‘And now I’m leaving to go about my lawful business. I suggest you get on with yours.’

  Joe and Jacquemin looked at each other, unable to conceal a flash of dismay. Each understood that the case against her was so weak as to be laughed out of court in France or in England. Jacquemin had been right—a confession was essential. It was clear that nothing less would bring her to justice. It was equally clear that she would never deliver one.

  ‘No! Make her stay, Joe!’ A shrieking, stamping Fury dashed forward and blocked her path. Dorcas delivered to her face a torrent of cursing in Romany, as far as Joe could follow a word. ‘You’re a murdering, hard-hearted witch! And why,’ she turned to Joe, ‘do you keep saying she took one life? Doesn’t Estelle’s baby count for anything? Two!’ she yelled at Jane. ‘They were brought in as an offering—like a cat’s kill in the night. “There, see what a loving cat I’ve been. Blood on the carpet? You should be grateful. I did it for you … Pat my head and tell me how clever I am …” She can’t just walk out of here … Joe? Commissaire?’

  Before they could speak she was rattling on: ‘Give her a choice. She can either make an oral confession here, at once in front of us, and then get straight into a police car to take her to Avignon or—’ her tone chilled and she spoke emphatically—‘we make her face a much more terrible authority.’

  Joe was mystified. ‘You’re calling on God?’ he asked. />
  ‘No! Divine retribution takes far too long. And the thunderbolts never land where you’d like them to land. Not God—Guy! You could summon Guy de Pacy to have an interview with her. Here in this room. When you’ve told him exactly what she’s done—leave them alone together. Let him ask the difficult questions: Why did you kill the woman I loved? Why did you kill the child I would have loved? Why did you think I would spend the rest of my days with a conscienceless killer?’

  ‘No! No!’ Joe protested. And, seeing his way through: ‘Impossible! Guy is wounded to the heart and suffering dreadfully. The words he delivered over the corpse of Estelle constantly come back to me: “I want this killer, Sandilands,” he said. “I want his guts. I want to see the light die in his eyes; I want to hear his last gasp.” He has a filthy temper. And—let’s remind ourselves—he’s something of a killer himself. We couldn’t leave her alone with him, the woman who murdered his child.’ Joe shuddered. ‘Out of the question! I won’t be held responsible! This woman’s ruined his life. In the grip of a red rage he would throttle her!’

  Jacquemin picked up his cue. ‘It would be a crime passionnel, Sandilands. Crimes of passion! I am aware that we French are generally condemned for our too ready understanding and forgiveness of such uncontrollable flare-ups!’

  He pursed his lips, shook his head and came to a decision.

  ‘Martineau, go and fetch de Pacy.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Joe settled down at the table in the deserted hall with a cup of tea brought to him by Nathan Jacoby and, in return for the kindness, launched again into an account of the confession and arrest of Jane Makepeace.

  Nathan’s reaction of: ‘Good Lord! I don’t believe it! But she was kind to Estelle! None of the others were. A fine woman, I’d have said,’ was completely at odds with the rest of the reactions he’d listened to. Everyone else, on hearing the news, suddenly put on an expression of omni-science. Of course, they’d always had their suspicions. She was just too good to be true, wasn’t she? Oiling her way into the lord’s confidence like that. And what a way to treat poor Guy who’d been so good to her …

  ‘A fine woman,’ Nathan had insisted. ‘Are you quite sure, Joe?’

  ‘She admitted her crime to the Commissaire rather than face Guy de Pacy and account for her foul act,’ said Joe.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘She loved him. As far as that woman is capable of finer feeling, I truly believe she did. For the first time—and quite late—in her life, she found a man she could admire. But I don’t think he would have come in for such close attention had he not been on the brink of inheriting all this.’ Joe waved an arm around. ‘She really fell with a bang for Silmont. And for the wonderful things it contained. For their own sake, I’m sure. Greed of a monetary kind was not, I think, a spur to murder. She handled the silver, the china, the tapestries every day … knew them better than their owner possibly. She wanted them for her own. Quite desperately. And was ready to sacrifice three lives she considered worthless to have them.’

  ‘Glad to hear you’re counting correctly, Joe.’

  He turned to find Dorcas had come up silently behind them.

  ‘But it was very nearly four, you know,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Marius?’

  ‘Yes. When she found out he’d caught a glimpse of her in the chapel, she decided to get rid of him too, didn’t she?’

  ‘She certainly volunteered to walk the boys down to their grandmother’s house. And perhaps that was out of character.’

  ‘It certainly was! The boys can’t stand her. She could just have intended to question Marius on the way down and check that he hadn’t remembered anything incriminating. She was safe from suspicion as long as he held to the story he was telling everyone that it was a man who’d come into the chapel. In his village world, women just don’t wear trousers. And, being a tall woman, her feet are larger than the average woman’s. But had he heard her voice? She couldn’t be certain and had to find out.’

  ‘We’ll never know exactly what her intentions were. But what I do know is that you stepped between them, Dorcas, and put a stop to it. I begin to think you have a more insightful knowledge of the human mind than the psychiatrist’s daughter!’

  Joe had waved goodbye to the charabanc party with disguised elation. He was staying on for a day, he told them, to catch up with his notes and help Commissaire Jacquemin. Orlando and his mob would be on their way to Aix when he’d finished a painting sometime in the next few days. Petrovsky and his merry band were staying the night also, held over not through duty but necessity. The diligent Martineau had taken it upon himself to crack open the boot of his grand car and discovered there many items of interest to the local PJ. Cocaine, rude pictures, even a rude ciné film in which certain faces at least were clearly recognizable. He and his party were being detained until the morning when he could give a full statement of his activities to the Avignon police.

  And Joe had settled to closing down the murder case for any of those guests who wished to speak of it.

  ‘I’m hoping, Nathan, you’ll fetch up in London one of these days,’ said Joe. ‘Let me give you my card. We’ll spend a boozy evening remembering Estelle.’

  He took out his note-case to find a card and the photograph of Laure and her friends slipped out. Nathan seized on it at once and began to identify and criticize the unknown photographer’s equipment and technique. The men were startled to hear a gurgling exclamation of surprise and amusement behind them.

  A hand reached out over Nathan’s shoulder and took the photograph from him. ‘But how on earth, Mr Jacoby, did you come by this? I last saw one of these ten years ago on my mother’s mantelpiece. I hardly recognize myself!’

  Joe turned to find Petrovsky’s duenna laughing down at them. ‘Nathan found it in an old postcard sale in Avignon,’ he invented.

  ‘That’s right. The fair in front of the Pope’s Palace,’ Nathan added, puzzled but gallantly decorating Joe’s lie. ‘I collect old photographs.’

  ‘Anyone you know on this, Madame … er?’ Joe asked with a show of polite interest.

  ‘Carla is my name. I know everyone! Gracious! How dreadful to be a collectable item! It’s my confirmation class. Can you guess which one is me?’ she asked with a touch of flirtation in her voice.

  ‘Easy,’ said Joe. ‘I’d recognize those handsome features anywhere. But it’s the feet that are the real give-away!’

  ‘I got a ticking-off from the other girls, I can tell you! Showing off and spoiling the line like that. And they were right—I was showing off. My parents could afford the ballet lessons, you see.’

  ‘And do you remember the names of the others?’

  ‘Of course! There’s the twins Babette and Berthe on the left. They married neighbouring farmers and I still see them from time to time. And my best friend, Marie-Jeanne Du rand, on the right. Poor Marie-Jeanne. She got into a spot of bother and we none of us spoke to her for years. Unkind. But after the War to end War, a little thing like a romance that turned sour seemed not so dreadful … water under the bridge. She’s fine now and I always make a point of coming up here to see her again when the company’s in the neighbourhood. I’d never volunteer for this tedious duty otherwise!’

  Joe cleared his throat. ‘She’s still here in the region, are you saying, your friend?’ he asked in a strangled voice.

  ‘Of course. Like me, she’s much changed. Married—to a veteran of Verdin, widowed, two children … life leaves its mark. But she’s right here. And happy now. Come with me and meet her, show her the photograph. She’d be very interested …’

  ‘No, no! Thank you.’ Joe’s refusal was more brusque than he would have wished. ‘Water under the bridge, as you say,’ he murmured. ‘Kinder to let it flow away.’

  A footman appeared and looked about him in surprise. No lord, no steward, no Miss Makepeace. His eye lighted on Joe.

  ‘Sir. The kitchen would like to know the numbers for dinner tonight. Have you
any idea …?’

  ‘Make that eight adults and three children. That would be safe. What have we on the menu, Marcel?’

  ‘There’s boeuf gardiane. Oh, and cook told me to tell you, sir—she’s made a soufflé glacé à la framboise for dessert. “A bitter-sweet send off”, she said I was to say. If that makes any sense?’

  ‘Tell Marie-Jeanne it makes a good deal of sense, will you? Thank you, Marcel.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Surrey, England, late September 1926

  ‘Lord! Rotten Bramley time again!’ said Joe, trampling over the windfall apples in the grass. ‘What are you doing, Dorcas, mooning about down here in a damp orchard? You ought to be indoors packing your trunk. Socks to be counted, pencils to be sharpened. Look—I’ve brought you the geometry set I promised. Aren’t you in the least little bit excited at the prospect before you?’

  ‘Of course! I’m terrified but looking forward more than I’m scared. Just. I was saying goodbye to my youth. It’s the right season for it, isn’t it? Every leaf that plops on to the ground reminds me. Four years of school to come. Intensive years. I’ve got a lot to make up before matriculation. If I want to get into Imperial College I shall have to work through every holiday as well.’ She turned a determined face to Joe. ‘I shan’t see you again for …’