The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge

by Patricia Duncker

  * * *

  Almost a year after the massacre in Switzerland Schweigen’s initial meeting with the Judge took the form of a continuous monologue. He thundered unchecked over lunch, which happened outside in a shady inner courtyard. He blossomed like a desperate client confronting his psychoanalyst for the very first time. The Judge changed her glasses to an identical pair with blacked-out lenses, which, given their dimensions, were clearly adjusted to her sight. The courtyard around them smelt damp with watered pots, wet green leaves and hot stone. The paving was flooded every morning in summer and pockets of water remained, shimmering in the natural dips and crevices worn into the flagstones.

  Schweigen presented her with folders of papers, then took them all back to check they were the right ones. He radiated heat and discomfort. Yet he babbled courageously on; the Judge took notes. There had been no one left to interview and no living witnesses. The members of the Faith had hired a remote mountain hostel, just for themselves, and brought in all they needed: food, sheets, bedding, towels, soap.

  ‘The place looked like a stage. Very theatrical, all the props arranged. And what were they doing during their last days? What do you think? Walking, swimming, yoga and meditation. Pony rides for the children. A long weekend of bracing exercise, specially organised for people committed to the outdoor life.’

  They had been seen marching through the sunlit fields in groups, their arms around one another, singing. They left no suicide notes, and no explanations.

  ‘But the odd thing is,’ Schweigen argued away at an imaginary audience, ‘they weren’t the sort of people who go in for mad cures and diets. They weren’t lacking anything. They were all rich, educated professionals. Two were in medical research, an endocrinologist and a skin-cancer specialist. They had positions, money, prospects. They were people who’d made it. They had everything to live for.’

  The Judge laid down her pen and looked straight at Schweigen. He had taken off his jacket and there were damp sweat patches under his arms. He began waving his hands in an attempt to present his views in a manner that was more rhetorically persuasive.

  ‘They weren’t dropouts or hysterics. I don’t know – but the sects you deal with – don’t they just gather up the dross and the lost? People with no money and no future? Who want to be told what to believe?’

  The Judge nodded slightly. ‘But what makes you think these people were not among the lost?’

  ‘They had all the things of this world. Worldly goods, I suppose you’d say. Yet they wanted something more. Somewhere else.’ He glanced down at the fixed rictus of joy clamped across the dead faces spread out upon the tablecloth. His voice rose, incredulous, baffled. ‘And they believed they were going there.’

  ‘Apocalypse sects, or suicide sects if you like, always have a powerful vision of paradise,’ said the Judge. She scanned the list of names, counting entire families. ‘Or their ideal place, Utopia, Eden, the Golden Kingdom, whatever. The Faith probably conforms to this pattern. I assume you interviewed any surviving relatives? Employers? Friends?’

  ‘We did. Everyone we could dredge up.’ Schweigen sat fidgeting in the heat; he wiped his razored head, now damp with sweat; the black hair on his forearm stuck to his watch. The Judge observed him carefully.

  ‘Shall we go inside? They have air conditioning.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. It’s just that – I’m not really dressed for holiday weather.’

  The Judge lowered her glasses and looked at him over the top so that he could see her eyes. The pupils were huge and dark, the deep brown rings surrounding them appeared to widen. He shrank away, taken aback by the sudden intimacy of the gesture.

  ‘Monsieur Schweigen,’ she leaned towards him and lowered her voice, ‘why don’t you nip inside and take off your woollen vest? Here, put it in this.’

  She handed him a blue plastic carrier bag and shunted him off to the Gents as if he were a little boy. The lavatory turned out to be unisex and tiny, smelling of face powder with an undertow of bleach, and as he stood there, wrestling with his unsuitable layers, he shuddered with embarrassment, as if he were undressing in front of the Judge. She had a reputation for being disconcerting and direct, but he had not quite imagined the mixture of arctic formality and the almost physical familiarity of her manners. How did she know that the thing was made of wool? He suffered from the uncomfortable sensation that an unwritten line had been crossed. She was surveying his body, assessing his garments, giving him the once-over. He turned on the cold tap and splashed his naked chest, face and neck with cold water. Then he took off his watch and placed his wrists under the chilled stream, as his mother had taught him to do. He cooled down at once and peered into the mirror. He still looked disconcertingly pale and hot. He noticed the odd grey hair among the black at the centre of his chest and pulled on one of them. They proved to be much longer than the black ones and sprang back into a damp coil. Schweigen shook out his slightly crumpled shirt, then put it back on, turning up the sleeves and smoothing down his ruffled sense of dignity.

  When he got back to their table he found that the Judge had ordered a pitcher of iced water for him and was sticking Post-its on all the documents she needed immediately.

  ‘Vous allez mieux?’ She pulled back his chair and made him welcome at the table. Now, for the first time, he looked hard at the Judge, discounting her reputation and her intransigent opinions; he studied the woman herself. She had been observing him like a laboratory specimen, sweating under the lights, now he returned the compliment. The quality that struck him most forcefully was her stillness. She was reading fast, absorbing both the details and the larger shapes revealed in the documents before her; she gutted his careful paperwork, as if peeling the flesh off a fish. He could not see her eyes and wasn’t sure that he wanted to see them so nakedly again. She was lizard-smooth, her bare arms hairless, olive-skinned, no rings at all, just two gold studs gleaming in her ears, and a thin gold chain with a tiny disc and a small wrought charm barely visible beneath the folded collar of her blouse. What did the charm represent? Unless he buried his face in the small dip below her collarbone, he would never know. As the thought crossed his mind he shivered slightly and at that moment the Judge looked up. There was a strange pause. He still could not make out the expression in her eyes; Schweigen stared at her, transfixed. Slowly, slowly, as if her entire body was unfolding from its coils, the Judge began to smile. She handed him a broad, generous smile, like a luminous gift.

  In all the years to come, when André Schweigen tried to recall every moment he had spent with Dominique Carpentier, every reverie eventually condensed into that extraordinary slow smile.

  ‘You look much better already. Here, drink this.’ Cold drops ran down the perspiring glass. As he began to drink the virgin glass of pure, cold water she lowered her dark glasses, as if to encourage him, and meeting her gaze, he drank the lot, an unflinching Tristan to her Isolde.

  ‘Santé,’ said Schweigen, setting down the empty glass. And the languid, erotic smile metamorphosed into a merry, childish grin.

  ‘Santé, Monsieur le Commissaire,’ she laughed, raising her glass to him. Had he already fallen in love with her? Or was this just the moment when he noticed that he had? That smile, full of humour and affection, doomed to be Schweigen’s undoing, ensured that from then onwards his every third thought was dedicated to the black-haired, dark-eyed Judge, whose ruthless efficiency, terrifying discipline and legendary self-control drove her colleagues to drink.

  ‘You mustn’t get so worked up, Monsieur Schweigen. I know it’s frustrating. But it wasn’t your investigation. You would have done things differently. But consider – what we have here are the threads. If we follow them carefully we’ll soon have the whole tapestry before us. Be patient. Listen. Wait.’

  But that was her method, not his. Schweigen needed to calculate the advantage and the risk, then to act.

  ‘Tell me all you know about the founders of the Faith,’ she said, and the invitation was a
s gentle and reassuring as if she had proposed an afternoon in bed.

  * * *

  What did they actually know? Not much, in fact. A central figure, which they had identified from the sparse existing literature, was known simply as the Professor and another as the Guide. The Faith appeared to conform to a classic pattern common to many religions: a complex mysticism of eternal transcendence whose followers nevertheless believe that it is meet and right to intervene in the kingdom of this world. The reactions of the surviving relatives, and the statements given by colleagues and employees to Schweigen and the Swiss police, made it clear that no one who knew the dead had any idea whatsoever that their friends were involved in a religion at all, let alone a suicide sect. The same phrases came up again and again: she never talked about this – we had no hints, no indications – but he appeared to be quite normal, happy, full of plans – they were doing well, he had just been promoted to a better post – but they loved their home and family – she was devoted to her children, I can’t believe she would have let them come to harm – it’s simply not possible, we would have known, she would have told me, this cannot have happened to us. So they were looking at a secret sect, a hidden fellowship. There were no public lectures, no proselytising, no published gospels. But what became clear immediately was the fact that these members of the Faith were hand-picked: they were the chosen.

  ‘Look at this pattern. They nearly all have higher degrees or advanced qualifications. Some of them went to the same universities – all well-known prestigious institutions. They’ve all achieved an exceptional level of education. Most of them are not just experts in their fields – they are the sole expert. That’s why you have such a cautious lot of obituaries. And why the Swiss hushed the whole thing up. They were famous people. It’s embarrassing, peculiar. Hmm, predominantly scientists. Only a few come from the arts, and when they do they are always linked to music. Gerhart Liebmann. He was Swiss, an opera producer and director of the Berliner Staatsoper. I’ve seen his work discussed in the papers.’ The Judge was already pulling at the threads. ‘So that explains the patterns of recruitment. They draw in the people they already know, and recruit from the circles in which they move.’

  ‘And this mass suicide took place on the summer solstice. So they operate on a system that is linked to the moving cosmos.’

  ‘All religions do,’ said Schweigen, sugaring his coffee well beyond the normal dose.

  ‘Exactly. Well, nearly all. Noël is simply the winter solstice festival left over from the pagans. The Muslims generate their holy days through the lunar calendar, as do the Jews. But this Faith seems to have a closer union with the stars than either the Muslims or the Catholics. What’s this?’

  The Judge drew forth a grubby photocopy of a smeared graph, traversed by two undulating lines and covered in random dots. She could see no writing on the chart at all. It looked like a musical score for some complex form of Gregorian chant. She turned it several ways up, trying to read the paper from different angles. Suddenly her face cleared.

  ‘I know what this is. Look. It’s a chart of the middle heavens. This curved belt contains the stars of the zodiac – it’s that part of the sky where you can always see the sun, the moon and the bright planets. And these marked dots are star clusters. Look – these are the stars in Taurus, here is Orion, and this group here are the Pleiades. Where was this found?’

  ‘It was pinned to the noticeboard in the kitchen. It’s not the original. That was clearer and some of the stars were highlighted.’

  ‘Do the Swiss still have this chart?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Find out. I want a colour photograph. As clear and detailed as possible. The original would be better. And it’s only going to rot in a box if the Swiss have wound up their investigation.’

  ‘There was a full moon on the night they died,’ ventured Schweigen, alarmed by this astrological development. ‘How will this chart help?’

  ‘We can’t assume that they were all killed off in Switzerland. More of them may be out there. And this chart may tell us if and when the next departure is due to take place. And it may also tell us where they think they’re going.’

  She peered again at the faces of the dead, framed as portraits, with their names, ages, professions, next of kin listed below, but now she was looking for something unambiguous, a face she expected to find.

  ‘One of them must spend all his time peering down a telescope or looking at charts on his computer. Which one is the astronomer? Or the astrophysicist?’

  Schweigen flicked over the pages in the file, unhesitating.

  ‘This one. And he’s the man who didn’t take the poison. He was shot.’

  Anton Laval, aged 56, born Lyon, senior researcher with the CNRS at Grenoble, often featured as one of the consulting scientists in the popular late summer television programme, La Nuit des Étoiles. The Judge studied the calm handsome face for some time. If she recognised him, she gave no sign.

  ‘Maybe that’s our Professor,’ said Schweigen. ‘On the other hand at least twelve of them were Professors.’

  ‘It says here he wasn’t married. Who was registered as his next of kin?’

  ‘One sister. I saw her yesterday.’ The Judge raised her darkened eyes to his face, her mouth remained inscrutable. ‘She lives about eighty kilometres to the north-east of here, a huge domaine, beyond Nîmes. She was still distraught with grief when I asked about her brother. I had to stop and wait while she pulled herself together. She couldn’t tell me much. No more than she gave to my colleagues last year, just after the event. They were asking very silly questions though. Did he have any enemies? Who might want to shoot him? There were nearly seventy other people lying dead all around him. It looked like he was just following the fashion.’

  ‘And as far as the secret sect is concerned she seemed to think it quite extraordinary that he could believe in anything to the point of sacrificial martyrdom. She’s the devout Catholic and he’s the sceptic. Or that’s more or less what I gathered. She’s in the local curé’s pocket. She kept saying how much she missed her brother, but she’s absolutely convinced that she will see him again and that they will be reunited. I thought she was a bit mad.’

  ‘She’s a widow, but she always kept her nom de jeune fille because she runs the estate. She’s on that list. Marie-Cécile Laval.’

  * * *

  But five years earlier neither Schweigen nor the Judge had suspected Madame Marie-Cécile Laval of being a member of the Faith. She cooperated willingly with the investigation, talked frankly about her brother, unfailingly loving in everything she said. Her unflinching tenderness seemed odd. When someone commits suicide the reaction of disbelief is usually followed by rage against the person who has so brutally slammed the door and gone. Madame Laval’s gentle, emotional forgiveness disarmed her interrogators. She opened her house to them, handed over her brother’s papers, presented a countenance of such cultivated intelligence that all suspicion faded.

  Schweigen always remembered Madame Laval as he had first seen her, surrounded by beautiful eighteenth-century furniture, gilded mirrors with dusty Cupids, a cabinet inlaid with rosewood and mother-of-pearl, family portraits by once famous artists, stiff sofas covered with replicated material, exactly matching the original patterns but too bright to be genuine. The Domaine teetered over the edge of fading splendour; the baroque fountain was beginning to lose its shells, moths had nestled in the drapes. Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. Madame Laval sat quietly in a corner of her depleted elegance, weeping over the corruption of all earthly things. Her sole desire was to bring her brother’s body home. Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.

  Schweigen had indeed called upon Madame Laval the very day before he first met the Judge in the flesh, and those days, which he now thought of as the first days, seemed private, secret. Madame Laval lurked in the middle distance, an unknowing, sile
nt witness to what had taken place between André Schweigen and the Judge. Two weeks after that first meeting in May 1995 the Judge called him at work.

  ‘Monsieur Schweigen? Dominique Carpentier à l’appareil. Thank you for the map of the stars. Very clever of you to get hold of the original.’

  ‘Well, that wasn’t hard. The Swiss didn’t want it.’

  There was a pause. Schweigen clenched his left fist. He had sounded ungracious. How could he keep her on the line? But she had already moved on to the next step of the dance.

  ‘I’ve discovered that Madame Laval has at last managed to secure the release of her brother’s body and she is bringing him back to the Domaine for burial. I thought we might attend the funeral together and pay our respects.’

  ‘The funeral?’

  ‘Ah yes. She is holding a full-blown Catholic requiem Mass at the church in the village, then the cortège will retreat to the family mausoleum for a private burial in the vaults. The curé is up for the full Mass with choir and speeches, because she hasn’t asked for burial in the graveyard. I’m not sure he could have accepted a suicide.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘The curé is my uncle.’

  ‘You actually know the Laval family?’

  ‘Not so well any more. But I did once. My family are also vignerons – in the same commune. Everyone will be there at the funeral, including my parents. It would look very odd if I wasn’t.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ Schweigen snapped. He felt cheated. He suspected that his temper might not be reasonable, but he couldn’t stop himself. The Judge sounded faintly amused.

  ‘It wasn’t relevant before. Now it is. So I’ve told you.’

  Schweigen became even more incensed. His investigation had been hijacked. ‘But you knew who Marie-Cécile Laval was and you didn’t say anything.’