by Fred Vargas
‘Every room has an outlet,’ he said, ‘and where there’s an outlet there must be some kind of surface underneath. This one is the yard with the dustbins in, which is better than the street. It’s reached the ground now.’
‘Someone’s coming up,’ said Marc.
Lucien let go of the string and closed the window without a sound. He returned to his armchair and took up his nonchalant pose once more.
The policeman came in with the satisfied air of one who has just shot a brace of pheasants.
‘It’s forbidden to make copies of anything or to consult any of these papers,’ said the policeman. ‘New orders. Bring your things and leave this room.’
Marc and Lucien obeyed, grumbling, and followed him. When they went into the sitting-room, Mme Siméonidis had laid the table for five. So they were expected to stay for dinner. Five, thought Marc, the stepson must be coming too. It would be good to set eyes on him.
They expressed their thanks. The young policeman frisked them before they sat down, and emptied the contents of their bags, which he turned inside out and examined every which way.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘You can pack it all up again.’
He left the room and went to station himself in the hall.
‘If I were you,’ said Lucien, ‘I would stand in front of the door to the archives until we leave. We might go back up again. Aren’t you taking a bit of a risk, officer?’
Looking annoyed, the policeman went upstairs and posted himself right inside the archive room. Lucien asked Siméonidis to show him the way to the yard with the dustbins and retrieved the bundle, which he stuffed back inside the rucksack. Dustbins seemed to be looming large in his life just now.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said to his host. ‘All your originals are still up there, I give you my word.’
The son arrived rather late to take his place at the table. A slow-moving, plump forty-year-old, Julien had not inherited his mother’s anxiety to appear indispensable and efficient. He smiled nicely at the two guests, but looked unprepossessing and indeed rather pathetic. This seemed a pity to Marc. He felt sorry for this so-called useless and indecisive character, stuck between his busy-busy mother and his patriarchal stepfather. Marc was easily impressed when people smiled nicely at him. And after all, Julien had cried when he heard about Sophia. He was not ugly, but his face was rather puffy. Marc would have preferred to feel distaste or hostility for him, or at least some more convincing emotion, to turn him into a murderer. But since he had never seen any murderers, he told himself that a malleable person, dominated by his mother and smiling sweetly, might very well be the type. Shedding a few tears was neither here nor there.
The mother might also be the type. She was fussing about, far more than was necessary to serve the meal, and was more talkative than necessary trying to make conversation. Jacqueline Siméonidis was tiring. Marc took in her neat chignon, her busy hands, her artificial voice and manner, her stupid insistence as she served everyone with their chicory and ham, and thought that this woman might stop at nothing to acquire more power, and more capital to help resolve her son’s precarious finances. She had married Siméonidis-out of love? Because he was the father of a famous singer? Because that would help Julien get on in the theatre? Yes, either one of them might have a motive for killing, and possibly a good opportunity. Not the old man though. Marc watched him cutting up his food with firm gestures. His authoritarian ways would have made him a perfect tyrant, if Jacqueline had not been well able to defend herself. But the patent distress of Sophia’s father ruled out any suspicion they might have. Everyone could agree on that.
Marc hated ham and chicory unless it was very well cooked, which was not often the case. He watched Lucien wolf it down, while he toyed with the bitter slimy vegetables that nauseated him. Lucien had taken a leading role in the conversation, which was now turning to Greece in the early twentieth century. Siméonidis was replying with short answers, and Jacqueline was showing an exaggerated interest in everything.
Marc and Lucien caught the 22.27 train home. Siméonidis took them to the station, driving fast and competently.
‘Keep me informed,’ he said as he shook their hands. ‘What’s that in your bundle, young man?’ he asked Lucien.
‘A computer with all we need on it,’ said Lucien, smiling.
‘Well done,’ said the old man.
‘By the way,’ Marc said. ‘It was the file for 1978 that Dompierre looked at, not 1982. I thought I should let you know, in case you find something we missed.’
Marc watched the old man for a reaction. It was offensive of him, a father doesn’t kill his daughter, unless he’s Agamemnon.
Siméonidis did not respond. ‘Keep me informed,’ was all he said.
The journey back took an hour, during which neither Marc nor Lucien spoke. Marc was thinking that he liked being in a train late at night, and Lucien was thinking about the war diaries of Frémonville senior, and how he might get hold of them.
XXX
GETTING BACK TO THE HOUSE AT ABOUT MIDNIGHT, MARC AND LUCIEN found Vandoosler waiting for them in the refectory. Exhausted and incapable of classifying the data he had collected, Marc hoped the godfather was not going to keep them up too long. Because it was obvious he was expecting a report. Lucien, on the other hand, was in fine form. He had carefully unloaded his rucksack, with its twelve kilos of equipment, and poured himself a drink. He asked where the Paris phone books were.
‘In the basement,’ said Marc. ‘Be careful, they’re holding up the workbench.’
They heard a crash from the basement and Lucien appeared, looking delighted, with a directory under each arm.
‘Terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Everything collapsed.’
He settled down with his drink at the end of the large table and started going through the phone book.
‘There can’t be all that many René de Frémonvilles,’ he said. ‘And with a bit of luck, he lives in Paris. That would make sense, if he’s a theatre and music critic.’
‘What are you two looking for?’ asked Vandoosler.
‘It’s just him that’s looking, not me,’ said Marc. ‘He wants to find a theatre critic whose father kept a lot of diaries during the Great War. He’s completely obsessed. He’s praying to all the gods past and present that the father was a peasant. It seems this would make it very rare. He was praying all the way back in the train.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ asked Vandoosler.
‘You know perfectly well,’ said Marc, ‘that for Lucien nothing to do with the Great War can wait. You wonder sometimes if he knows it’s over. Anyway he’s been in this state since this afternoon. I’ve had it up to here with his bloody war. He only likes violent action. Are you listening, Lucien? It’s not history, it’s sensationalism.’
‘My friend,’ said Lucien without looking up, as his finger ran down the columns of the directory, ‘investigation of the paroxysms of human activity obliges us to come face to face with the essentials that are usually hidden.’
Marc, who was a serious person, took in this statement. It quite rattled him. He wondered whether his own preference for working on the everyday aspects of medieval history, rather than on its most sensational moments, was blinding him to the hidden essentials. He had always thought hitherto that little things were revealed in big things and vice versa, in history as in life. He had started to think about religious crises and devastating epidemics from another perspective, when his godfather interrupted his train of thought.
‘Your historical reflections can wait too,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Did you or did you not find anything at Dourdan?’
Marc jumped. He came back across nine centuries and sat down in front of Vandoosler, visibly somewhat stunned by the time-travel. ‘What about Alexandra? How did the questioning go?’
‘As well as it could do, of a woman who wasn’t home at the time of the murder.’
‘So Leguennec knows?’
‘Yes. The red car wasn’t parked in the sam
e place this morning. Alexandra had to withdraw her first statement, and got a serious talking-to. Then she admitted that she had been out between eleven last night and three in the morning. More than three hours, quite a spin, eh?’
‘That’s bad,’ said Marc. ‘And where did she go?’
‘Out along the motorway towards Arras, according to her. She swears she went nowhere near rue de la Prévoyance. But since she had already been caught out in a lie … They’ve narrowed down the time of the murder. Between half-past twelve and two o’clock. Right bang in the middle of the time she was out.’
Oh God, that’s bad,’ Marc repeated.
‘Very bad. It wouldn’t take more than a smidgeon now to make Leguennec wrap up the investigation and send his conclusions to the examining magistrate.’
‘Well, take care he doesn’t get his hands on that smidgeon.’
‘You don’t have to tell me. I’m holding him back by his braces as it is. But it’s getting difficult. So, have you come up with anything?’
‘It’s all on Lucien’s laptop,’ said Marc, indicating the rucksack. ‘He scanned a whole lot of papers.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Vandoosler. ‘What papers would those be?’
‘Dompierre consulted the file on a production of Strauss’ “Elektra” in 1978. I’ll fill you in on it. There are some interesting aspects.’
‘Got it!’ said Lucien, closing the directory with a bang. ‘R. de Frémonville is listed. Not ex-directory. That’s a stroke of luck. Victory in sight.’
Marc carried on with his explanations, which took longer than expected, because Vandoosler kept interrupting him. Lucien had had another drink and gone to bed.
‘So,’ Marc finished, ‘the most urgent thing is to find out whether Christophe Dompierre was related to this critic, Daniel Dompierre, and if so how. You can do that, first thing tomorrow. If he was, the answer might be that the critic had found out something unsavoury about this production, and told his family about it. But what? The only thing out of the ordinary was the attack on Sophia. We need to check the names of the bit players who didn’t turn up for work next day. But that’s virtually impossible. Since she refused to lodge a formal complaint, there was no police enquiry.’
‘That’s very odd. That kind of refusal is nearly always for the same reason: the victim knows the attacker-husband, cousin, boyfriend-and doesn’t want a scandal.’
‘Why would Relivaux want to attack his own wife in her dressing-room?’
Vandoosler shrugged.
‘We don’t know who it was. It could be anyone. Relivaux, Stelios …’
‘But the theatre was closed to the public.’
‘No doubt Sophia could let in someone if she wanted to. And then there was Julien. He was in the show, wasn’t he? What’s his surname?’
‘Moreaux, Julien Moreaux. He looks like an old sheep. Even fifteen years ago, I can’t see him as a wolf
‘You don’t know much about sheep, I see. You told me yourself that Julien followed Sophia around in her productions for five years.’
‘Sophia was trying to get him launched. He was her father’s stepson, after all, and her stepbrother. Maybe she was fond of him.’
‘Or he of her, more likely. You said he pinned photographs of her up in his bedroom. Sophia was about thirty-five then, she was a beautiful woman and famous. That’d be enough to turn the head of a young man of twenty-five. A smouldering passion, but frustrated. One day, he ventures into her dressing-room … Why not?’
‘Do you think Sophia invented the balaclava?’
‘Not necessarily. This Julien character might have wanted to hide his face when he followed his sexual urges. But it’s quite possible that Sophia, who already knew he had a crush on her, recognised the attacker, balaclava or no balaclava. A police enquiry would have caused a major scandal. Better if she wiped out the incident and refused to talk about it. And as for Julien, he gave up playing walk-on parts from that point.’
‘Yes,’ said Marc. ‘It’s possible. But it still doesn’t explain why someone should murder Sophia.’
‘He might have had another go, fifteen years on, but this time it went wrong. So Dompierre’s arrival would have panicked him. And he decided to strike first before Dompierre could speak to anyone.’
‘That doesn’t explain the tree.’
‘Still on about the tree?’
Marc was standing by the fireplace leaning on the mantelshelf and looking into the dying embers.
‘There’s another thing I don’t understand. If Christophe Dompierre read the articles written by this relation, maybe his father, I can see why. But why did he read Frémonville’s articles too? The only thing they had in common was that they both slated Sophia’s performance.’
‘Perhaps they were friends, or confided in each other. That would explain their having the same opinions about music.’
‘I’d really like to know what got them started in their vendetta against Sophia.’
Marc went over to one of the tall windows and looked out into the night.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘I’m trying to see if Lex’s car is there.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Vandoosler. ‘She won’t be going anywhere tonight.’
‘Did you persuade her not to?’
‘I didn’t try. I clamped her car.’ Vandoosler smiled.
‘A clamp? You could get hold of one?’
‘Of course. I’ll remove it first thing tomorrow. She won’t know it was there-unless she tries to go out, that is.’
‘Christ, you really do think like a policeman,’ said Marc. ‘And if you’d thought of that yesterday, she’d be off the suspect list. You’re a bit late in the day with your bright idea.’
‘I did think about it, actually,’ said Vandoosler. ‘But I didn’t do it.’
Marc turned round, but his godfather stopped him with a wave of his hand before he could get launched.
‘Don’t get worked up. I’ve already told you it’s a good thing sometimes to let out a bit of rope. Otherwise we might just get stuck, learn nothing at all, and the whaler will go down with all hands.’
He smiled as he pointed to the coin nailed to the beam. Preoccupied, Marc watched him go out of the room and heard him climb his four flights of stairs. He still did not understand what his godfather was up to and he was not even sure they were on the same side. He took the shovel, and collected a little pile of ash to cover the embers. However much you cover them, they still go on glowing underneath. If you put out the light, you can see that at once. That was what he did, and sat on a chair watching the glow of the red-hot cinders. He fell asleep in this position. At four in the morning, stiff-limbed and cold, he went up to his room. He did not have the willpower to get undressed. At about seven, he heard Vandoosler going downstairs. Ah yes, the clamp. Sleepily he sat up and switched on the laptop Lucien had left on his desk.
XXXI
THERE WAS NO-ONE ELSE IN THE DISGRACE WHEN MARC SWITCHED THE computer off at about eleven o’clock. Vandoosler had gone off to find out whatever he could. Mathias had disappeared and Lucien had gone in pursuit of his seven notebooks. For four hours, Marc had passed all the press cuttings across the computer screen, reading and rereading every article, memorising each detail, each turn of phrase, observing their convergences and differences.
The June sunshine was steady and, for the first time, it occurred to him to take a bowl of coffee out into the garden and sit on the grass, hoping that the morning air would get rid of his headache. Marc trod down a square metre of so of long grass, found a wooden plank and sat on it cross-legged, facing the sun. He could not see where to go next. He knew the documents by heart now. His memory was good and capacious, and it collected everything, uncritically, including odds and ends and the memory of past despairs. The trip to Dourdan had not produced very much in the end. Dompierre was dead and had taken his story with him, and it was hard to see how to go about resurrecting it. It was not even clear that it w
ould be of any interest.
Alexandra went past in the street, carrying a shopping bag and Marc waved to her. He tried to imagine her as a murderer, but that pained him. What the hell had she been up to, driving her car around for three hours?
Marc felt useless, impotent, and sterile. He had the feeling there must be something he was not picking up. Ever since Lucien had come out with that sentence about the essential being revealed in the investigation of paroxysms, he had been ill at ease. It bothered him. Both in his research on the Middle Ages and when it came to the business in hand. Tired of having such vague and inconsequential ideas, Marc got up from his plank and observed the Western Front. It was curious how Lucien’s way of talking had got under their skin. Now they would never dream of calling that house anything except the Western Front. Relivaux was probably not back yet or the godfather would have said something. Had the police been able to account for how he spent his time in Toulon?
Marc put his bowl down on the plank and went noiselessly out of the garden. From the street, he studied the Western Front. As far as he had observed, the cleaner only came on Tuesdays and Fridays. What was it today? Thursday. The house seemed quite still. He considered the tall gate, which was well maintained and not rusty like theirs, and which had sharp and efficient-looking spikes along the top. The problem would be to climb up there without being seen by a passer-by, and then, with luck, to be agile enough not to get impaled on the way over. He looked up and down the street. He was fond of this little street. He went over to the big refuse bin, and as Lucien had the other night, he climbed on top. Holding onto the railings, he managed after a few false starts to reach the top of the gate and climb over it without getting snagged.
His agility pleased him. He dropped down on the other side, thinking that after all he might have made a good gatherer, if not a hunter, wiry and nimble. Feeling satisfied with himself, he adjusted his silver rings, which had twisted on his fingers during the climb, and walked lightly over to the beech tree. What was he hoping for? Why was he going to all this trouble to see this dumb tree? No reason, just that he had promised himself he would, and because trying to save Alexandra was becoming a more doubtful project every day. That stupid girl with her pride was doing all the wrong things.