Everything was as it once must have been. The purse was richly embroidered with silver thread …
‘The wound is from the left to the right,’ muttered Jean-Louis and, losing himself in that moment, said, ‘Excuse me, mademoiselle, but I must bring the light closer now just for a little.’
Concern and sympathy moistened Louis’s brown eyes. The Sûreté used a pair of tweezers to gently prise the edge of the cloak away from where it had become stuck. ‘Strength,’ he grimaced. ‘The one who did this has slaughtered sheep, Hermann. A ruthless cut and done continuously. One motion … and held against the assailant, her back suddenly arched. Something wide, something curved. Ah merde, could it be? Please look for the cork from an old wine bottle. It’s just a thought.’
Please leave me to talk to her.
Rigor would have set in from perhaps two to four hours afterwards, thought St-Cyr, but if she had been running through this empty place, her muscles would have been under extensive exertion and it could then have come on immediately.
The wretched frost of one of the coldest winters on record would prolong it.
Rigor there was. The fingers which clasped her little treasure would have to be broken.
‘There’s a wine cork, Louis. Maybe he flung it aside and didn’t give a damn if we found it.’
‘I’m not so sure it was a he, are you?’
‘Not really, but with a wound like that …’
‘There are bits of dried lavender on the floor, Hermann. Whoever did this also forgot to remove them.’
‘Lavender?’
‘Not from her person. Also winter grass and thyme.’
‘A shepherd?’
‘Or one who has to daily gather feed for rabbits and chickens.’
‘A sickle, then, with a cork to protect its tip when not in use,’ sighed Kohler. Louis had made a point of doing comparative studies of wounds in his early days as a detective. ‘Dead how long, Chief?’
‘At least twenty-four hours. The coroner can, perhaps, be more positive about it and the weapon. We’ll have to ask for Peretti. I want none of the préfet’s interfering, none of the bishop’s and certainly none of the Kommandant’s.’
Killed Monday night, the twenty-fifth. ‘Then you’d better speak to them,’ came the faltering words. ‘We’ve company.’
The Sûreté didn’t even take his eyes from the victim. ‘Please escort them to the entrance, Hermann. We will question each of them individually as necessary.’
‘A moment,’ said someone – the Kommandant, by the atrocious accent.
‘No moments, Herr Oberst,’ said St-Cyr. ‘This is a matter for the Sûreté and the Kripo. If in doubt, please consult Gestapo Boemelburg and Maître Pharand. You will find both at 11 rue des Saussaies in Paris.’
Formerly the Headquarters of the Sûreté Nationale and now that of the Gestapo in France and of the Sûreté. ‘It was myself who asked specifically for you both.’
‘Then please leave us to do what you asked.’
‘Verdammt! How dare you?’
There was a sigh and then, still not pausing in his work, the admonition of, ‘Herr Oberst, you of all people must be accustomed to delegating authority and to placing trust in those so chosen. Are you then also mindful of Orlando Gibbons, the English madrigal composer of the late sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘Fortunately, before leaving Paris I was able to find something on madrigals, since that word was mentioned in Gestapo Boemelburg’s directive to us. The book hadn’t been banned and burned by the List Otto.* I’ll give it to you then, shall I, in deutsch, this little quotation I discovered on the train?, and will ask you to listen to the question it forces us to consider, since the three of you are so anxious about this killing you would wait for us to arrive and would stay up more than half the night.
‘“The silver swan, who living had no note. / When death approached unlocked her silent throat:” did she have something to say, Herr Oberst, and is that why she was killed?’
There was no answer.
‘Now please leave, as I have asked. Find Peretti, Hermann. Maître de Passe, get me your best photographer and fingerprint artist, and we’ll want the Palais sealed and placed off-limits to everyone but those we wish to consult.’
They didn’t like it. They huffed and farted about but obeyed. And when he had them at the ancient door and under its Gothic arch, Kohler said, ‘He’s like that. Get used to it. We’re here to find out who did it, and we will, no matter what.’
Alone with her at last, St-Cyr apologized for the disturbance. ‘Murder invariably attracts the concerned and the curious,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘But sometimes the killer is among the first to appear and is most anxious to assist for reasons of his or her own. Tell me why you are here, dressed as you are? Did you come to meet someone?’
Her eyes, though glazed, were of the softest shade of amber. They couldn’t blink or appear to be evasive, of course, yet he swore the question had upset her.
Ancient keys of beautifully but simply worked iron hung from her belt. There’d be those for the linen boxes – closets and armoires were all but unheard of in those days – others for the pantry and storehouses. Keys for the money box, too. Keys for this and that. In total there were eight of them, and one was both longer by five centimetres than the longest of the others, and stouter. But these were the keys to a house or villa, not a Palais, and the original lock could no longer be in place here in any case.
Had she had a key to the present entrance, or had someone left the door open for her?
‘And if the former, then who gave it to you?’ he asked. ‘A lover? Were you to meet in the Palais, and if so, why? To sing?’ he hazarded.
Madrigals were part songs, the popular music of the day, and she … what would her voice have been? ‘A contralto?’ he asked. ‘A soprano?’ Had it been a lover who had killed her? A boy, a young man, a former shepherd, former altar boy, a baritone now, a tenor or bass among the madrigal singers?
‘You were dressed for your part,’ he said. ‘There were four, five or six of you in the group. Together you sang so well the préfet, the Kommandant and the bishop must have known of you and had their reasons for coming.’
There were so many things that needed looking into. Her belt, the cabochons, they’d tell a story with the enseignes and talismans. There were pewter scissors hanging from the girdle. There was a dirk in its richly tooled sheath of silver and leather. There was also a plain soft brown velvet pouch – needles and thread, no doubt. Did she carry the tools of her trade as well? he wondered.
Easing his back, he stood a moment. ‘You are begging us to become detectives of those times. For myself that may be possible, but for my partner, let me tell you he is definitely of the present. He lives with two women and enjoys them both but rarely, and never at the same time, or so I am given to understand. It’s curious, isn’t it, seeing as the one is almost twice the age of the other? Both are très gentilles, très belles, très differentes, yet are fast friends. War does things like that.’
He knew she would have been shocked – intrigued, but so modest her eyes would have ducked away. She was young – perhaps two years younger than Hermann’s Giselle – and pretty. Not beautiful, but lovely – très charmante. One could tell she’d been decent, honest, diligent, steadfast and true, but the detective in him had to say, ‘I mustn’t be a sentimental fool.’
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t avoid the gaping throat. Had she the voice of an angel? Just what had she known and had her killing really been to silence her?
Hatred, rage – so many things were evident in her murder, a total lack of conscience, a ruthless arrogance that frightened. She’d have been alone, must have been terrified. Had sex been denied? One always had to ask, and where, please, was the murder weapon?
Caught in the flesh there was another bit of winter-grey lavender. Bending closer, he teased it away, s
aid, ‘This clung to the haft of the sickle, if that really was the weapon.’ And furious with himself for not having any envelopes – the constant shortages these days – found a scrap of paper in a pocket, another of the leaflets the Allies were dropping to encourage resistance. Carefully he gathered the bits from the floor, then used yet another leaflet to hold the hairs that had fallen when her assailant or someone else had cut off a sample.
Though faint, there was the scent of coriander and cloves.
‘A toilet water,’ he said. ‘Did you make it yourself, according to a recipe from those times?’
Mon Dieu, but she was so of the past, her skin had even been anointed with one of the unguents of those days. ‘You’re a puzzle,’ he said, and then, ‘Forgive me.’
Abruptly he broke the fingers of her left hand. Her little treasure rolled away, and for a moment he was too preoccupied to say a thing.
‘A pomander,’ he managed at last. ‘Of gold and in the shape of a medieval tower with battlements, whose lid is hinged and with a fine gold chain and clasp.’
There were second- and third-storey windows in the walls, and embrasures for firing arrows – openings from which the scent could constantly escape in those times of plague to momentarily purge the stench of raw sewage and rotting refuse in the streets. But there were few of these openings and he had the thought that the pomander must have been modelled after an actual tower in the Palais.
The pomander was filled with half-centimetre-sized spheres of grey, polished ambergris. Though hard to define, its scent was musty, earthy and still quite strong, though he had the thought the ambergris wasn’t recent.
All over the walls there was the finely engraved design of an alternating upright lute, separated by a downwardly pointing needle, beneath which was an upended thimble to catch a single droplet of blood.
The pomander was very old and, in keeping with the riddles of those times, he wondered if in its design there wasn’t a rebus, a puzzle with which she would tease others to discover its true meaning?
When he opened the purse, he found gold double dinars, base-silver dineros and silver pennies, gold écus and agnels, salutos, ducats and a Cretan coin, an exquisite piece, dating perhaps from the first century BC. Cast with all its imperfections of roundness, it held the beautifully executed, raised design of a maze.
‘Le fil d ’Ariane,’ he sighed. ‘Is this why you carried it?’ Ariadne’s clue. The thread Theseus used to escape the labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur. ‘Were you trying to indicate that should something happen to you, that others must find the thread and follow it?’
Among the hoard at the bottom of the purse there was a tin of sardines that had definitely not come from the very early Renaissance or from such a far distant time as the maze.
‘Hermann,’ he said. ‘Hermann, what is this?’ But his partner was busy elsewhere.
The corridor was dark except for the faint flickering of an ‘Occupation’ fire in the room ahead. Kohler waited. Drawn by the smell of smoke that the mistral had driven down the chimney and throughout the palace’s ground floor, he had at last found them.
Their voices were muted, the patois not easily understood and soon silenced, they sensing an intruder.
The monk, still with hood covering his head, sat to the left on a three-legged stool that must have been rescued from a medieval cowshed; the boy was to his right, sitting on the hearthstone, all but hidden under a filthy horse blanket and no doubt freezing.
‘Okay,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Let’s start by your telling me who the hell you are and why the kid’s here, and don’t tell me he’s taken the vow of silence.’
Such impatience befitted Gestapo Paris-Central. ‘My name is Brother Matthieu. I am envoy to His Eminence, the Bishop. I do odd jobs.’
‘In sackcloth?’
‘It’s my mistral coat. You’d be surprised how effective are the clothes of our departed brethren. Six hundred years ago the mistral was every bit as much of a curse. Now, please, Inspector, I must send Xavier back to the kitchens and to his bed. The boy knows nothing of the matter here.’
Neither of them had turned from the fire. Too afraid perhaps. The room was barren except for the stool, a wooden soup bowl, a wooden spoon and a small cast-iron stew pot whose lid had been set aside.
A thin litter of reeds barely raised the threat of a fire.
‘Xavier is a ward of the Church, Inspector, and was given into God’s Holy Service by his parents as was I myself. We share much in common, and out of the great goodness of his heart he has brought me a modest repast for which I am truly grateful.’
‘Un civet de lièvre, eh?’ snorted the Kripo. A hare stew. Both continued to stare at the tender flames. ‘Hey, mon fin, trapping hare and rabbit is illegal, and so is eating meat on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and it is Wednesday now.’
All spoils to the victor, even small game. ‘Are you threatening me with three years in prison, Inspector, or with forced labour in the Reich?’
The official and much-touted penalty.
The face that had turned to look up at him was in shadow but darker still and fierce, the nose prominent and scarred.
‘Pull the hood back. Go on, do it!’
‘If it pleases you,’ came the mild rebuke. The harshness of a perpetual smile registered in once broad lips, the lower of which had been tightly folded up and in by the surgeons of twenty-five years ago. The rugged, scarred cheeks, with the grey-black bristles of a thin and closely clipped beard, hid nothing. Not the terrible shrapnel wounds of that other war; not the fear, the pain of knowing one had been about to die – that never left a person; not the reprieve and the disfigurement. Une gueule cassée, one of the Broken Mugs.
There were pouches under the dark grey eyes, one of which was permanently half closed, but the intensity of the gaze had mellowed a little as sympathy had registered starkly in the face of the detective.
Without a word, Kohler dragged out the apology of cigarettes and, offering each of them a smoke, reached into the fire to take up a light.
‘Inspector,’ said Brother Matthieu, ‘you must forgive my recent absence, but you see, I was worried. Xavier is my responsibility and I was certain you might think his presence untoward when the préfet and the bishop had ordered that no others were to enter the Palais. The repast also had to be shared. It’s our custom, and I knew the stew would not keep hot and he’d be hungry.’
Ravenous, no doubt, and probably fresh in from trapping game in the countryside, and with a corpse up there on the first floor neither of them seemed to care to mention.
The remains of a salad of Belgian endive, marinated green beans, sweet red peppers and chopped chives lay on a soiled napkin before the boy, as did a half-eaten round of goat’s cheese that had been wrapped in a grape leaf, marinated in olive oil and dusted with herbs.
The kid had tried to hide the cheese. Oil glistened on the slender fingers. He was nearly thirteen years old, tall for his age, old beyond mention, willow-shoot thin and with blue eyes that, though stunningly wide, held a peasant’s watchfulness and were otherwise empty of all feeling.
He smoked his cigarette like a pro. He’d flick the butt away when done. He had that insolent look about him.
The dark brown hair was parted in the middle, cut in a pageboy style and bobbed about the ears. The lips were wide and sensuous, the cheeks thin, the bone structure fine, the brush of the eyebrows full and wide. A pretty boy, one might have said, if his clothes hadn’t been so worn and filthy. The lashes were long and curved upwards, the nose was aquiline and of some passing nobility deep in his family’s ancestry, the skin that soft shade of brown so typical of the Midi.
‘Ihre Papiere,’ breathed Kohler, hating himself for getting Gestapo-like, but somehow he had to get through to them. ‘Your Ausweis, too. Bitte, eh? Schnell!’ Hurry! He snapped his fingers.
The monk threw the boy a warning glance and blurted, ‘Inspector, is this necessary?’
‘It is, if we’re ever to
find out where he’s been, Father, why he’s really here, and what connection if any he has to the murder. Oh by the way, what was her name? You haven’t forgotten it, have you?’
‘Mireille de Sinéty. That … that is all I am permitted to tell you for the moment.’
‘The bishop’s got your tongue, has he? Hey, mon fin, refusing to give information is a criminal offence.’
With vegetable slowness, the boy hauled out a dog-eared ID, a residence permit and ration booklet from which, since it was close to the end of the fortnight, virtually all of the tickets had been removed. One thousand one hundred and fifty calories a day if one could get them.
Kohler held the ID photos to the light. An altar boy’s white surplice had been worn for the head-and-shoulders and profile shots. The kid had been scrubbed clean and looked like an angel without its wings.
‘They made me bathe,’ he taunted insolently.
‘Who?’
The boy indicated his mentor. ‘Les pères de Jésus. Mon père.’
‘Inspector …’ began Brother Matthieu only to hear the Kripo shriek, ‘Silence! Let him do the talking. So, empty your pockets, Xavier. Let’s see what you’re carrying.’
‘Inspector …’
‘Sei still, Priester! Look, don’t force me to get rough. I simply want the truth. Neither of you appears to be shedding a tear over the dearly departed.’
‘Our tears are already dry,’ muttered Brother Matthieu sadly. ‘She was God’s gift, an example to us all.’
Tears fell and there were plenty of them as the broken lips quivered in silent prayer and the fingers trembled, but at memory’s touch of what? wondered Kohler uneasily.
As if on cue, the boy suddenly turned out his pockets. A mégot tin held a connoisseur’s pick of cigarette and cigar butts that had obviously been gleaned from the courts of the high and mighty. There were a dozen dried apricots, some almonds and cloves of garlic to stave off hunger.
A flat, brown, hip-pocket-sized bottle from prewar days was half-filled with home-distilled brandy, the fierce grappa of the hills.
Madrigal Page 2