by Morris West
‘That’s not enough.’ Mather was beginning to be angry. ‘It doesn’t explain why he would frame Danny Danziger. As the act of a man who’s just about to make his exit from life, it doesn’t make sense. It’s too…too cold-blooded!’
‘By me,’ said Bechstein, ‘it’s a common enough syndrome: rejected lover, rejected rapist, male unsatisfied for whatever reason demands revenge by the humiliation or destruction of the female.’
‘Loredon was a born liar; I called him so to his face.’
‘His answer, Mr Mather?’
‘All he said was, “Prove it”.’
‘And that’s exactly what we’re saying.’ Sam Hartog was back in the talk. ‘For Pete’s sake, we’re not trying to crucify the girl, but you must give us more than we’ve got. Bayard’s suicide leaves us in a worse mess than before. He didn’t leave a single scrap of paper – no goodbyes, no whys or wherefores.…’
‘We’re about to show you why,’ George Munsel told him, ‘and this evidence is documented.’
‘Then please let’s have it,’ said Bechstein wearily.
‘You lead, Max.’
Mather spread out before him the diaries, the sketchbooks, the notebook and the bundles of letters, identifying each as he did so. Beside them he laid his own notes on the Amsterdam talks and his analysis of the manuscripts. Then with academic care he began.
‘We distinguish first between internal evidence – that which is recorded or implied in the documents – and external evidence, which is available elsewhere. When the two coincide, we are on very solid ground. You’ll agree that proposition?’
Hartog and Bechstein nodded.
‘Let’s begin with the period just before Madeleine’s death. Internal and external evidence coincide on the following points: the Bayard marriage is a mess; Madeleine is living a highly promiscuous life with lovers of both sexes; Hugh Loredon is one of the males, Danny Danziger is one of the females. Why don’t the Bayards divorce? All the evidence points to a strange perverse dependence on each other…the vices of one excuse the failures of the other.’
He read them a series of brief passages from his conversations with Bayard and from Madeleine’s diaries, then he asked, ‘Are we agreed, then, that what we have is an apparently stable but highly explosive situation both in the marriage and in Madeleine’s private world?’
‘I’d agree that,’ said Bechstein. Hartog nodded.
‘Now,’ said Mather, ‘let’s take a very careful look at the internal evidence. Bayard’s conversations first. He’s a lawyer. He’s trained to be very careful about the form of what he says. He tells me, for instance, that he holds no rancour against Loredon or any other of his wife’s lovers for taking what she offers. He says he has unreserved admiration for Madi’s talent. But his actions belie what he is saying. He won’t let Madi exhibit. In domestic life he is querulous, bitter and destructive. Now turn to Madi. The diaries, the notebook and the sketchbooks each tell us the same story from a different angle. They tell us the truth. They don’t necessarily give us a truthful rendering of fact.’
‘A nice point.’ Munsel approved.
‘You’ve lost me,’ Sam Hartog said.
‘My uncle is a rabbi,’ remarked Bechstein cryptically.
Mather picked up the thread of his argument once more.
‘Madeleine was an artist. Like every artist, she rearranged things – in her own mind, on the canvas. She changed the light, the emphasis, the composition, the order of events and their emotional tone.’
Turning back to his notes, he read both the diary version and Danny’s version of the invasive episode with Peter. Then he turned the pages of the sketchbook and showed them her pictorial version of the same incident. All the ugliness was gone out of it. All that was left was a beautifully drawn slightly comic version of Priapic frenzy.
‘Do you see my point, gentlemen?’ Mather asked.
‘We do,’ said Bechstein. ‘It’s well taken. But think about it a little longer. Madeleine has staged her pornodrama. She’s got her picture. Peter has got his model’s fee and his fun. But Danny Danziger has effectively been raped – and acquired a very good motive for murder.’
‘Which she didn’t commit,’ Munsel put in.
‘Prove it to me,’ challenged Hartog.
Mather pointed to the male figure in the drawing. ‘That’s your witness, isn’t it? That’s the guy who’s prepared to swear he saw Danny arriving an hour later than she actually did.’
Bechstein and Hartog looked at each other. Bechstein said, ‘That’s the one.’
‘Now,’ said Mather, ‘let me read you what Madi writes about him.’ He gave them Madeleine’s version of Peter’s attack on her line for line, then turned back to his Amsterdam notes. ‘With all that in mind, I want you to listen very carefully to Loredon’s version of Madeleine’s death in which he casts Danny as the killer.’ As he read them the notes they listened intently, sometimes exchanging covert glances. Then he began to comment on the story.
‘Hugh Loredon is very clever, because Madi is still the one setting up the encounter but this time the partner is a woman. Listen to the description of the scene. It’s very carefully worked up – two glasses smeared with lipstick, the dregs of a bottle of champagne. Did you find those when you first went in? I’m damned sure you didn’t. The police photographs prove they weren’t there. Then there are the nice details about the rubber gloves and the dagger and Danny’s disposal of it. I note all that’s in the letter he sent you. According to his version, all this took place between two-thirty and three in the afternoon. Right?’
‘Right,’ agreed Bechstein.
‘When Bayard called to report the murder of his wife, what time was it?’
‘About six-thirty.’
‘And you got there when?’
‘Fifteen minutes later, more or less.’
‘Bayard was nursing his wife’s body and was covered with fresh blood?’
‘That’s right.’
‘If it had been lying in one place for nearly four hours, wouldn’t the blood have congealed enough to be sticky and viscous?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘That the murder took place much later than three – and Hugh Loredon staged it. He stripped Madi, who was still in a drugged sleep, then laid her clothes neatly on the chair and wrapped her in the quilt to prevent any spurting of blood. He rifled her purse, scanned the studio to find the diaries and sketchbooks, killed her just before Bayard arrived and left by the back door, taking the weapon with him.’
‘You can prove that?’ It was Hartog’s question.
‘Yes. When I accused him of lying and he admitted it, he told me that he himself took the weapon and later got rid of it by putting it in an auction of antique arms at Christies. He said it brought two thousand dollars.’
‘That should be easy enough to check,’ said Bechstein.
‘I’ve already checked it,’ Mather told him. ‘The piece was bought by a collector of antique arms in Connecticut. He will make it available for police examination.’
‘It won’t show anything. The important thing is whether Loredon put it up for sale.’
‘He did. That’s in the record.’
‘So there’s a good break for your client. What else can you give us?’
‘A motive for Loredon to kill her.’
‘Which was?’
‘Money. He was broke, or nearly broke as he always was; but now there was a difference. He had received a death sentence and wanted to leave something for Anne-Marie. It shamed him to think he couldn’t.’
‘But he was Madi’s lover.’
‘By this time a very bitter one. I have some notes on that too.’
‘Don’t bother, just tell me about the money – how much and who paid and when?’
‘Two hundred thousand dollars,’ said George Munsel, ‘paid by Ed Bayard seven days after Madeleine’s death into a trust fund administered by Lutz & Hengst to the benefit of Anne-Marie Loredon.’
‘You can prove that?’
‘Chapter and verse,’ Munsel said. ‘And Bayard knew I could.’
‘How would he know?’ Bechstein was as persistent as a ferret.
‘Because,’ said Munsel patiently, ‘when Lutz & Hengst gave me the information they told me they would, as a matter of protocol, report my inquiry to Bayard.’
Hartog weighed in with a comment: ‘And Bayard, being an old-fashioned gentleman, decided enough was enough and took himself out of the game.’
‘He wasn’t a gentleman.’ Bechstein, it seemed, was the old-fashioned one. ‘The bastard left someone else to clean up his mess.’
‘Enough.’ Mather was suddenly sick of the argument. ‘He’s dead. Leave him to God.’
‘I’m happy to do that,’ said George Munsel, ‘but first I need a clean bill for my client.’
In the courtyard of Tor Merla, where once the pikemen had drilled and the cannoneers had lit their braziers, the first sun was warming the old stones and blackbirds were stirring in the chestnut tree. On the further hills the cypresses stood black against the dawn. Down in the valley the campaniles thrust themselves up through the mist and the Angelus rang, now clear, now muffled, in a counterpoint of chimes.
Max Mather stood at the window of the tower, breathed in the damp morning air and looked over the landscape – familiar in every peak and fold and farmhouse. It was a moment poignant with tenderness and regret, yet somehow luminous and healing.
Claudio Palombini had insisted that he come…Claudio, confident, restored in fortune, yet somehow changed, not half so arrogant as he used to be. On settling day in Zurich, with certified cheques changing hands and the bank official, sombre as an undertaker, presiding at the ceremony, Mather had felt ill at ease, vaguely ashamed. Claudio had seen his discomfort and said, ‘No arguments, Max. We’re quits. The documents say so, I say so. What you have, you earned. If you don’t take it, the tax man gets it.’
Mather had shrugged and grinned uncomfortably. ‘In that case, I’ll buy the lunch.’
But for Claudio that had not been enough. Suddenly he had become the hard-head, the gonfalonier marshalling his minions into line.
‘I refuse to leave it like this, Max. This isn’t money any more; this is honour, family, fratellanza. But I am not going to stand here and argue with you. You must come back to Tor Merla. You must bring your girl. You will both need that.’
‘We’ll get round to it, Claudio, but I’m not sure I can face a sentimental journey just now. Matrimony alone is a scary project.’
‘You have no choice. I shall invite Gisela myself – she will understand how important it is. No more discussions now. You buy me lunch.’
All that had been weeks ago in Zurich. Now Gisela was awake, standing barefoot beside him, waiting to be kissed.
When the kissing was done, she asked, ‘What do you see out there, my love?’
‘A lot of yesterdays. I’m not sure it was wise to come.’
‘I’m glad we did. Claudio was right. It was a journey we both had to make.’
‘I’m still not sure.’
‘Why?’
‘How can I say it?’ The words were hard to find, harder still to say. ‘The best of me is in this place, sitting down there in the courtyard with Pia – reading to her, listening to her music, brightening the small time she had left.…The worst of me is here too, driving out of that gate and down the road with the Raphaels in my luggage, a rogue – that’s right, a rogue – scared of losing what I didn’t own. Now I’m back; rich with money I haven’t earned, gifted with a woman I don’t deserve.’
‘Are you too proud to accept them, Max?’
‘Proud? My God, if only you knew.…’
‘I do know. I know that unless you can forgive yourself and accept yourself, you’re going to go on hating the man you see in the mirror. When that gets boring – as it will – you will start hating me; and then it will be Bayard and Madeleine all over again.’
‘God forbid!’
‘That’s right, Max. God forbid!’
‘But don’t deceive yourself. It isn’t as easy as it sounds to love Max Mather.’
‘Whoever said loving was easy? Wait until you’ve been married to me for six months!’
Whereat the blackbirds broke out of the chestnut tree and flew off in a ragged black cloud towards the mountains, while the last nine strokes of the bells rose and fell and faded into the silence of the Tuscan dawn.