‘In full view of the citizenry,’ muttered Kohler sadly. ‘Instead, as a consolation, they took it down and used it from the Pont Saint-Bénézet with that first Mireille.’
‘But as a threat and a reminder of what was to come should she fail to recant and publicly confess to the harlotry they had accused her of.’
‘And after the dunkings in the river?’
‘She was taken back to the Bell Tower. This thing must then have been mounted up there when the Pope, the cardinals and the Papal Guard had assembled for her final moment.’
‘Dressed in all her finery,’ said Kohler, lost to it, ‘she chose to beat them, Louis, and leapt to her death.’
‘Now show me what else you’ve found, mon vieux, and then I’ll take you through the suicide of yet another.’
The bedroom, one of several on the second floor, had been rustically furnished with a curtained lis clos, writing table, chairs and one of those gargantuan walnut armoires so typical of rural Provence. But what struck the eye, thought St-Cyr, as one looked through the glass of the room’s carved and ancient door, was the study in oils that hung on the half-timbered wall.
Dressed only in the thin and transparent gossamer of a bath sheath, a girl of nineteen sat with her back turned towards two much older, tonsured men. Her hand was pressed to her chest in apprehension and she was facing the viewer and caught in the act of listening to what was being said about her.
Of the two men, the one who was tempted and tentatively reached out to touch her back was dressed in the scarlet robes of a cardinal; the other, in the simple coarse black cassock of a monk.
‘I’m certain this is Bishop Rivaille’s room when on the hunt or out fishing, Louis. That painting’s old, by about six hundred years.’
‘The hair is blonde—’ began the Sûreté, only to hear Hermann saying, ‘There are ends of rope on the back of this door.’
So there were. Cut short, and braided, they were looped about a coat hook that was of greenish bronze and in the shape of an exquisitely formed mermaid, a sirène who rose up from the sea with outstretched arms, a salmon caught in her hands by the gills and tail.
‘Was Adrienne de Langlade first strung up here, Louis? Did Rivaille have her to himself before she was cut down and put into that cage?’
‘Was he in a rage? Was he drunk on absinthe too?’
‘Did he beat her first, eh? Scourge her …’
‘Or flagellate himself with a martinet, Hermann, as he stood before her and as has been recorded in Mireille de Sinéty’s rebus?’
The girl had been a good four months pregnant. Accepted into the group, she had been living in the Villa Marenzio with the others, but wouldn’t have been allowed to continually go on tour, not in her condition, and would have thrown Simondi’s plans awry, especially since Genèvieve Ravier was to leave the group. Mireille de Sinéty had been helping the girl to hide things and had written of this in her private ledger. Adrienne had disappeared, had ‘gone to Paris’.
‘Did Rivaille then make mischief with her, Louis? Did he blame her for tempting him?’
‘The hair in that ruby ring …’
‘He must have really worshipped her, until shown what he came to believe she was really like.’
‘He’d have broken his vows. The dream would have been jeopardized …’
‘Did he rape her, damn it?’
‘We shall have to ask him, mon vieux, but for now had best get on to other matters. Come and I’ll show you what has happened to the monk in that painting.’
The attic was all but barren under a heavily timbered roof but at its northern end, the portal was open.
High above the river the body, dressed simply in a coal-black cassock, swung gently, now turning a little to the left, now turning the other way. Petechiae – blood spots – formed livid blotches on the bald pate. The head was crooked to one side. Rigor had set in. The grizzled, shell-battered face was dark blue in places and puffed. Warts on the prominent nose bulged as did the dark eyes, one of which was still partially closed. Curled-up lips gave a perpetual grimace, the tongue protruding and having all but been bitten through.
A bloodied froth of snot and saliva had drained from the lower corner of the mouth and had frozen fast. He had shat himself and this, too, had been frozen but to his boots.
Brother Matthieu hadn’t wasted his time. Having made up his mind to enter the next world, he had found the rope that must have been used to raise and lower the accabussade. He had tightened it about his neck and had walked out to the end of the beam, to its hoist pulley, and had simply stepped off.
Cross, rosary, mégot tin and wooden-handled Opinel pocket-knife had been laid out for Xavier on a clean white napkin, but the boy hadn’t taken the legacy. Instead, Xavier had presented his mentor with the thick twist of Adrienne de Langlade’s hair he had taken from her corpse and had no doubt used it as a final warning to blackmail him into killing himself.
This hair was scattered over the montage of well-thumbed postcards that lay near the napkin. There were semen stains on some of them. Old stains, and many of them had been hastily wiped away long ago.
‘One wishes for more time, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr, ruefully shaking his head. ‘A good murder investigation should always be like a fine meal, savoured as each course arrives, the mind appreciatively striving to determine precisely what alchemy the chef has used.’
‘How can you talk of food at a time like this? I take it the meeting here was to settle Nino’s fate and this other matter. That brother’s been dead since yesterday before dusk, mein Kamerad. A good twenty hours.’
‘And the dog?’
There was no sign of it. ‘Hey, I’ll take a look around while there’s still light.’
‘You do that. There’s a reedy bay about two hundred metres along the shore. The flood will have buried some things and uncovered others. Look for a place where the dog has been at work.’
‘You’re getting to sound like me, you know that, don’t you? What about Xavier?’
‘Will be long gone by now, but clearly has much to answer for.’
Kohler snorted and clenched a fist. ‘He’ll have been promised his mentor’s job. Hell, he’ll even have some little unfortunate of his own to boss around and maybe do other things to as well.’
‘Two murders and two suicides, Hermann. Each so vastly different from its predecessor, yet bound to it by the centuries. Beyond the lies, there has to be the truth.’
Don’t squander patience on this Sûreté, thought Alain de Passe as he stepped into the loft. Put it to St-Cyr and get it over with, but first …‘Jean-Louis, where’s Kohler?’
Notebook in hand, postcards were being carefully examined but left exactly in place for the police photographer.
‘Ah, Préfet, it’s good of you to come. Hermann? Gone for help, I think.’
The grey eyes narrowed under their coal-black brows, the cleanly shaven chin stiffened belligerently. ‘Imbécile, don’t piss about with me! The car’s still here.’
‘Then my partner went on foot. The farmhouse, probably.’
‘Couillon, there hasn’t been anyone in that house since last autumn.’
Asshole … and he was already shouting at him. ‘Last October, Préfet? Right after the party, the “picnic”?’
‘Maudit salaud, what are you talking about? Parties? Picnics? When the harvest here is done, the family move on to another. That is the only reason there is no one in that house at present. Come spring, they will return.’
‘Then tell me what you make of this.’
‘This? A former transporté, an ancien du grand collège? He killed Mireille de Sinéty, idiot, and took his own life when he felt it prudent. I would have thought it obvious, but then you and that partner of yours never considered it worthwhile to spend a few moments consulting with me at the préfecture.’
If not Madame Simondi as the killer, or Genèvieve Ravier or Xavier, then Brother Matthieu. ‘A hardened criminal, Préfet? A former resid
ent of the Îies du Salut?’
The Islands of Safety, the penal colony that was just off the coast of French Guiana. More specifically, Îie Royale and Îie Saint Joseph. Notorious for the tiny triangle they formed with the Îie du Diable, Devil’s Island, there being no more than 200 metres of shark-infested ocean between each of them and only the immensity of a tractless jungle to tempt escape.
‘In 1922 Brother Matthieu violated and murdered a sixteen-year-old farm girl. Oh mais certainement, he vehemently denied having done so. He claimed to have come upon her quite by accident and after the fact, had been out collecting morels, and gave her the last rites. But you see, his rosary was found clutched in her fist and he hadn’t gone for help, nor had he told anyone about her. He’d been too afraid, he claimed. But with his history of wanting female hair and postcards like those, what was the examining magistrate to think, and then the court? Her blouse, shift and brassiere had been torn away and her throat opened with a pocket-knife not dissimilar to the one he has left on that napkin.’
It gets worse and worse, said St-Cyr to himself, but is it yet another part of the song they must sing?
De Passe took out a cigarette case and offered one and a light, as a chief administrator should to a detective of long standing. ‘They gave Brother Matthieu fifteen years, but reduced the sentence to twelve in consideration of his war wounds and his being a man of the cloth. The girl had been seen teasing him about his face and had been known to flaunt herself in front of the boys, but by rights he should have got the guillotine.’
The islands were tiny – the Îie du Diable being less than two square kilometres in area and flat under the blistering equatorial sun but, unlike the other two, it had been reserved for the politicals. The penal colony had been closed in 1938 but several had been left to languish, the war having delayed their repatriation indefinitely for all they knew, since no news of its progress would likely have reached them.
‘The Church couldn’t turn its back on him, Jean-Louis. I myself always felt the bishop too kind. I warned him of repeat offenders. I cautioned prudence, but …’ He gave a tiny shrug. ‘Henri-Baptiste is a true servant of God. He said that it wouldn’t be right of us to condemn a man beyond the years of his sentence.’
The cigarettes were American and had, no doubt, been confiscated from a downed airman. ‘But why should Brother Matthieu kill Mireille de Sinéty, Préfet? Oh for sure he had a key to the Palais and couldn’t be found when the concierge went looking for him, but a girl with the voice and fingers of an angel … one whom everybody revered and admired? What possible reason could he have had, since she wasn’t sexually interfered with in any way?’
Jean-Louis wasn’t going to take the proffered help and leave the matter well enough alone thought de Passe and said, ‘You know the de Sinéty girl intended to confront Henri-Baptiste and the other judges with what she mistakenly felt had happened to Adrienne de Langlade.’
It was time to put out the cigarette and to do so carefully. ‘And what did happen to Adrienne, Préfet?’
Would they now attempt to stare each other down? wondered de Passe. St-Cyr and Kohler had seen the police photographs of the girl’s body but had told the clerk not to notify him of this. ‘She disappeared.’
Such levelness of tone was all too clear. ‘And when, please, did she “disappear”?’
‘Maudit salaud! Did you think that file deliberately thin – is that it? It is! But you … you think I’m hiding things from you? Me?’ He tapped his chest. ‘How could you when I want more than anything to clear this matter up?’
It would be best not to shout as well. ‘Thin? There is so little in it, Préfet, Adrienne de Langlade’s passing hardly drew breath.’
The bastard! ‘Then understand, mon fin, that we couldn’t pin things down. César came to me on the thirtieth of October last. He couldn’t understand her having left without telling anyone. He felt betrayed but thought she could well have paid her parents in Paris a little visit.’
That could have been so easily checked with the Kommandant. ‘And did she?’
‘Jean-Louis, listen to me. These things … You know how they are. A pretty girl goes missing. We wonder what could have happened to her and, yes, we think the worst. Telegrams are sent to the district prefecture of the family but … Ah! What can one say, but that they revealed she wasn’t there.’
There’d be a record of those as well as the Kommandant’s issuing of the necessary laissez-passer for such a trip, and he could see St-Cyr thinking this but couldn’t stop now. ‘Nearly three weeks later her body turns up, but the flooding is so extensive we hardly have a moment. There are no signs of violence other than those of the flood. Decay is advanced – you yourself saw the state the corpse was in. What were an overworked, exhausted préfet and his men to have done?’
There’d been the frayed end of a rope tied to her right ankle but he’d leave that for now, thought St-Cyr, and so much for there having been ‘no signs of violence’. ‘Yet Mireille de Sinéty suspected Brother Matthieu of the killing, Préfet? This is what you’re saying.’
Jean-Louis still wasn’t going to look the other way. Pride was one thing, stubbornness another, misguided patriotism yet another.
‘That girl was mistaken. Tragically so.’
‘Then how, please, did Brother Matthieu learn of her intention to accuse him if, as we have been given to understand, she only confided in a very few?’
Merde alors, the son of a bitch! ‘A few? What few, please?’
Bon! ‘For now that information must remain confidential, Préfet. But I can tell you Dedou Favre knew what she intended to do.’
One had best look away and drop the voice. ‘The Favre boy. Another tragedy.’
‘For which you are not to get off so lightly. You had that boy arrested before dawn last Monday, Préfet. Did you use the coal shovel on him?’
Kohler had still not appeared. Jean-Louis had his back to the portal and was dangerously close to it. A slip … A step backwards? wondered de Passe. ‘The boy gave us what we wanted.’
‘The location of his maquis? We know this because you sent the Kommandant out to bring him in, certain he’d bag a few but not the one you had in custody.’
Four steps, possibly five, separated them. ‘I did what I had to. These are difficult times. Von Mahler would have been far too soft on the boy.’
‘Of course, but you desperately had to find out exactly how much Mireille de Sinéty really knew and then … then you had to make certain the girl was silenced.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You heard me.’
A fist was clenched. Spittle erupted. ‘How dare you? He killed her. A former resident of the grand collège. No examining magistrate will argue with this, Jean-Louis, only with what you and that partner of yours think is the truth!’
De Passe had inadvertently stepped on the artichoke hearts. He seemed not to have noticed as he wiped his mouth.
‘Then listen to me most carefully, Préfet. Adrienne de Langlade was murdered. You know it, we know it, and so did Mireille de Sinéty, Dedou Favre and the others she confided in.’
‘What others? I ask it again, damn you!’
‘That’s not for you to know yet. You were present here during the picnic at which she was drowned in that iron accabussade. You were a part of what happened to her, Préfet. Admit it!’
You fool, said de Passe, silently cursing him. ‘I was not present.’
‘You were! With all the arrogance and stupidity of privileged men who think they can hide what they’ve done, you and your companions left telltale things.’
‘Nom de Jésus-Christ, bâtard, what things?’
‘Photographs.’
‘There are no photographs. None were taken.’
‘But then you must have been here, Préfet, and have just admitted it.’
From the crest of a low hill near the eastern shore of the island, Kohler watched as de Passe’s car left in one hell of a hurry. Long lines of spindly po
plars crossed the bocage at regular intervals, hiding the car and there to shield the cropland from the worst of the mistral. Idly he wondered if he could calculate the préfet’s speed, given the width of the strips of land between the rows of trees and the time it took to cover five or ten of them.
Mathematics – that kind – he’d had enough of in the Great War. Where more shelter was needed – for melons, strawberries and other tender crops – woven screens of reeds had been used. But the landscape was a tangle. The flood hadn’t been kind and Simondi had thought it best to leave well enough alone and not call in the clean-up crews.
Hence the préfet’s speed? he wondered, knowing Louis must have said something.
De Passe hit a washout and very nearly left the road. Long before he would have reached the bridge, Kohler had lost sight of him, yet kept on gazing that way.
‘Mein Gott,’ he said. ‘How the hell are we to find anything in this?’
The poplars looked bleached and old in the sharp, cold light of the afternoon. Some still had a few dead leaves clinging to their branches and these mirrored the sunlight so that as he looked across the fields, he saw these lights blinking at him.
Longing for a gentler time, he started out towards a tangle of battered, woven screens of reeds. When he found the dog, it was chained to the trunk of one of the poplars and all but hidden among the mats of reeds. Ice was thickly clumped about its paws. It didn’t bark, didn’t whine. It just shook hard, was so tired after twenty-four hours or so of trying to break free that it could only raise its sorrowful deep brown eyes to him. Frost clung to its whiskers.
‘Nino,’ he crooned and grinned like a schoolboy in spite of the state the poor thing was in. ‘Hey, you’ve found a friend. Come on, let me get you out of this.’
Undoing the chain, he lifted the dog and soon had her tucked inside his greatcoat. Freezing, she shivered constantly while he had a little look around.
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