Harriet wheeled her from the room, while James sat and took in the wreckage of their meal. The destruction seemed to have gone deeper than that. Ellie and Raf were at war and it was evidently a battle that preceded recent events. Was it her standing out against him on the question of marriage to Olympe that had made Raf so irascible? Yet he must see her side, the family’s side. And he had always been so patient with Ellie, so solicitous of her needs, far more generous than James himself towards her eccentricities and her directness. He remembered when they all still lived at home, that Raf’s first point of call on returning from school was always Ellie. They would read books together, pass them between each other, talk or sit silently in each other’s company, play complicated word games. And later too, when Raf was at Harvard, he would bring his friends home to meet the sister he so patently admired, depended on, almost as if she were a twinned soul in a body of the opposite sex.
A knock at the front door intruded on his thoughts. He heard women’s voices, Violette’s and another, speaking French, and then Violette’s quick step. ‘Monsieur Rafael?’ her voice sounded.
James got up, saw the blowsy form of Raf’s housekeeper at the entrance and Raf himself following her across the corridor. With a guilty look at the table behind him and a sense of his own bad manners, he quickly went after them.
Raf’s apartment was the mirror image of Elinor’s, yet James felt he might have travelled to a different planet. Where Ellie’s was a dense hive of curios and bric-a-brac, patterned rugs, brocades and velvets, here light and air poured from curtainless windows onto gleaming parquet and the barest essentials of furniture. A single large painting in dabs of almost garish colour dominated the space, though for the moment its drama was shrouded by Monsieur Arnhem.
He was pacing the bright emptiness of the room as if it were Lear’s blasted heath. His eyes were haunted, darting this way and that in search of invisible objects. His shaggy eyebrows moved dramatically accompanying unspoken speech. When they greeted him, he stopped with the abruptness of a man caught out in perfidious thoughts
He bowed in their direction. ‘So sorry to intrude like this.’
Raf waved aside his apologies. ‘You had my note?’
‘Note?’ Incomprehension played over Arhnem’s gaunt face. He shook his grizzled head. ‘I … I came because … what was in your note?’
‘Let’s sit down, Monsieur Arnhem. Arlette, bring some coffee for everyone.’ Raf addressed the woman whose eyes James had still not been able to meet. At least she wasn’t holding the babe today.
Arnhem perched at the edge of the proffered chair and eyed them warily. ‘Has there been some news from Chief Inspector Durand? One of his men came to see me yesterday. His questions were perfunctory. It seemed to me they wanted to draw a line under Rachel’s death.’
‘No, no.’ Raf was adamant. He met James’s eyes for a moment as if to signal an ‘I told you so.’ ‘We won’t let that happen. I wanted to see you because in speaking to an old friend of Olympe’s … of Rachel’s, she mentioned that a man called Isak had suddenly turned up in Rachel’s life again after many years. Rachel wasn’t pleased. She felt threatened.’
James stopped himself from intervening. Raf was putting words into Louise’s mouth. This time he was leading the witness.
‘Isak?’ Arnhem looked into the distance. He met his own face in the mirror over the mantle and as if he had confronted an unwanted double, he swerved away. ‘You mean Isak Bernfeld. No, no.’ The man eyed them in visible confusion and then like a tortoise withdrew into the shelter of his jacket collar.
‘Yes, Isak Bernfeld. Isak Bernfeld.’ Raf repeated to etch the name in his mind.
‘Isak moved to Toulouse many years ago.’ It was a mumble.
‘Well, it seems he’s back. Rachel wasn’t happy about it.’
‘You say she felt threatened by him … Who told you this?’ There was a sudden edge of anger in Arnhem’s voice. ‘Are these her new friends casting doubts, vilifying an old friend of the family? Is that it?’
Arnhem moderated the shrill rise of his tone. ‘What I mean to say is that Rachel may not have wanted to … to link her future to Isak’s, but she agreed that he was a good man. Isak is … how do you say … a traditional man. He wished to protect her, to look after her. But to feel threatened by him … that is not in his nature. Nor hers.’
‘His nature to you may not be what it appeared to Olympe.’ Raf grunted.
Arnhem stood up and started to pace again. James could almost follow his thoughts from the dramatic turns of his expression, the suspicious glances he cast at them. The man was astute. He had recognised as soon as Raf had mooted the word ‘threat’ that they assumed Isak Bernfeld was somehow mixed up with Olympe’s death. Which would mean that they would blame her murder on one of his own. He couldn’t allow that and not only because it couldn’t, in his eyes, be true. It would compound the tragedy. It would throw an even more hostile light on his community. The police would jump on it as a way of forestalling any hunt for the real criminal.
‘Monsieur Arnhem,’ James began in his slow, careful French. ‘No one is saying that Monsieur Bernfeld is involved in Olympe’s death. It is simply that he was mentioned as one of the people who had seen her, had also written to her, in recent weeks. We need to trace anyone who can give us a hint about her last days. Louise Boussel mentioned Monsieur Bernfeld and it would be useful simply to talk to him. If you have an address, we would be grateful for it.’
‘You saw Louise?’ Arnhem’s features were still tinged with mistrust.
James nodded. ‘A sweet young woman. She said Olympe had been very kind to her. She was trying to find her a new job.’
Arnhem nodded, as if that were altogether a generosity that could be expected of his daughter.
Arlette had brought in a tray with coffee. She poured it slowly, her face avid with curiosity.
‘Thank you, Arlette.’ Raf dismissed her and as if his own impressions had tracked those of his brother, he said in a gentler tone. ‘Yes, Monsieur Arnhem, we only want to ask this Bernfeld a few simple questions about Olympe.’
‘I do not have an address for him. We lost touch over the years.’
‘Perhaps you have mutual contacts. Perhaps you could trace him,’ James suggested. ‘Everything helps, particularly if – as you imply – the police are not being over-vigorous in their investigations.’
Arnhem studied them. ‘I will try to locate him,’ he said at last. ‘I will try.’ He emptied his coffee in a single gulp, seemed about to rise, then changed his mind. A prickly silence fell over them. In it, James could feel a gulf growing to what would soon be an unbreachable expanse. He cleared his throat.
‘Do, Monsieur Arnhem. Please. I know my brother did not mean to offend Monsieur Bernfeld in any way. It’s only that he feels so passionately about the tragedy your daughter has suffered that his emotion seeps into impatience.’
Arnhem gave him the glimmer of a yellow-toothed smile. ‘This is something I understand.’
‘You came here, you said, not because of the note Rafael had left you, but for another reason …’
Arnhem fidgeted. He seemed to be weighing something up. ‘Perhaps it is not so important. Like you,’ he gestured towards Raf, ‘I allow myself to get carried away with suspicions. Everything, everyone becomes suspicious. When one is in a situation of weakness, of a lack of knowledge, it is perhaps inevitable.’
‘So tell us your suspicions.’ Raf said.
‘No, no. It is nothing.’
‘It was enough to make you come here, damn it. It must be something.’ Raf suddenly banged his fist on the table. ‘Look, Arnhem. We’re on your side. All this shilly-shallying is just a waste of time. If you can’t trust me and my brother here, forget it. There’s no one you can trust. I’m not even a bloody Frenchman. Olympe trusted me. She introduced me to you. If your own daughter’s not enough of a recommendation, I don’t know what is.’
A twinkle appeared in Arnhem’s eye o
nly to disappear as quickly, as if for a moment in Raf’s heated declaration, he had forgotten the situation.
‘All right. I will tell you. But now as I think about it here’ – he looked round the large, bright room with its polished floors, its sparsity of furniture – ‘I have the feeling it is just ramblings. It is something my daughter said.’
‘You mean little Juliette?’ Raf intervened.
‘No, no. Not Juliette. Judith.’
‘Judith?’ Perplexity settled on Raf’s face.
‘Yes, Judith. My eldest daughter. You have not met her, I imagine.’
It was clear from Raf’s expression that he had also never known of the existence of a Judith.
‘I see.’ Arnhem frowned. ‘It is probably best to forget I ever mentioned any of this.’
‘No, go on. Go on.’ Raf leapt from his chair and walked towards the fireplace, coming back a moment later with a silver box. He offered them cigarettes, lit one quickly himself and inhaled deeply. ‘Go on.’
Arnhem’s frown still furrowed his brow. Pain shadowed his features. ‘Yes, Judith is my eldest. She … she is in a hospital. The Salpêtrière.’ He let the name hang as if nothing more needed to be said.
‘The Salpêtrière?’ James echoed, after too long a pause.
Raf crushed his barely smoked cigarette into the ashtray. ‘That’s an asylum, Jim. Few leave it.’
Arnhem was studying them, clearly wondering whether to say any more.
‘I’m listening, Arnhem.’ As if to contradict his words, Raf got up again, his long limbs visibly restless. ‘Go on. I just need to move. To take this in.’
‘Yes, Judith has been there for many years. Too many. I can understand that Rachel would not want to mention her to … to her new friends. But she was loyal to her sister. She visited her not infrequently. Judith is sometimes lucid. Often, I regret that I took her there. But at the time there seemed no other solution. I wanted to … to protect her. And I thought they could help her. That it would pass.’
‘She tried to … to kill herself?’ James asked.
Arnhem nodded once, abruptly. ‘Several times. But don’t think that Rachel … no … no, in that they are very different, whatever those doctors’ theories. They are completely different. Suicide is not in the blood.’
James wanted to argue with him, but the moment was wrong. Instead he asked, ‘What did Judith say to you?’
‘I needed to tell her about Rachel. When I did, to put it very briefly, she said, “So they got her. They’re going to get me, too. So many of our people gone.” She went on in the same vein.’
‘Do you know who she means by “they”?’ Raf’s eyes glinted like fiery coals.
Arnhem shook his head. ‘No. But the only people she sees are hospital staff. Doctors, nurses … Or perhaps Rachel said something to her.’
‘Didn’t you question her more precisely?’
‘It is not easy to question Judith. One just has to listen.’ He shrugged. ‘But as she was speaking, I believed her. I believed that her fear was real, not an imaginary one.’ He rubbed his eyes as if it might help him to see better.
‘Shall we go and visit her now?’ James pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘It isn’t too late.’
‘No, she has had enough visits for one day. She wasn’t … what I mean is that when I left her … she had scuttled back into her shell of silence. It takes her by turns. We should give her a day or two. But it would be useful to interview some others. Some of the doctors, too … Vaillant, maybe. Monday would be best for that.’ He looked beseechingly at Raf. ‘They will not talk to me in the same way.’
‘I don’t understand how this has anything to do with Olympe’s death.’
‘If you’ll permit me to say, Monsieur Norton …’ Arnhem squared his shoulders and stood to his not inconsiderable height. His face took on the severity of an ancient patriarch. ‘I don’t understand how Isak Bernfeld has anything to do with my daughter’s death, either. Yet I shall try my best to discover his whereabouts for you.’
SEVEN
The house where Olympe Fabre rented a small apartment stood on one of the steeply winding streets of Montmartre which abutted the unfinished flank of the Sacré Coeur. Remote from the hub of Paris, some of the streets of this mount of martyrs were still unpaved. Gaps between houses showed vineyards, the rise and dip of countryside and patchy waste ground. Stout women in black hauled buckets from neighbouring wells. An occasional chicken clucked and scrambled through dust at the passage of thick-booted feet or donkey’s hooves. Young men with unsavoury expressions and large hats lounged against door jambs and smoked, at once indolent and poised for action like so many cowhands. From the late afternoon gloom of a tavern came the sound of a guitar and a baritone drawling a slang of insolent inflection.
Olympe’s building stood a little apart from the poverty of its neighbours. A plaque bolted into the pale stucco boasted ‘eau et gaz’ – water and gas. Flower-filled boxes adorned the first-floor windows, their colour spilling out into the grime of the street.
Before they could cross the threshold, Raf pushed James back and gestured him towards the corner. ‘Durand is in there. He’s talking to Madame Ribot. Better to wait.’
‘Why?’
James was about to object at greater length, but Raf’s arm was a barricade, pinioning him into the shadows.
‘He may not like us coming here,’ Raf mumbled.
A moment later, they saw the policeman emerge. He walked briskly past them, his short quick steps clacking with officious determination on the cobbles. As soon as he was out of sight, they hurried back to the front door.
A heavy, gap-toothed woman in an ancient bonnet stood on the step. When she saw Raf, she shrugged and shook her equine head in consternation. ‘Ah, Monsieur Norton. Quelle histoire. Voilà encore la police.’ She proceeded to explain to Raf in an agitated manner, that the police had already been twice and now this man, claiming he was their Chief and what did they expect to find in any case in poor Olympe’s rooms. There was little enough there to begin with.
Raf consoled her, introduced James and said they’d like to go up too.
Swirling her capacious skirts, she barred their way and exclaimed that she had just been told not to let anyone up, no one at all.
‘But that could hardly include us,’ Raf protested. He dug into his pocket and brought out a note which he tucked discreetly into Madame Ribot’s apron. ‘We’re working with the Chief Inspector. And I must bid Olympe’s rooms adieu, Madame Ribot.’ His face took on a stricken look as his tone fell. ‘You understand.’
The woman looked into Raf’s handsome features and softened visibly. With a superstitious glance down the street, she nodded and whisked them towards the stairs. She breathed audibly as they climbed to the top floor and unlocked the far door. ‘You won’t touch anything. And no souvenirs,’ she admonished Raf. ‘Not because of me, mind. But the Chief Inspector …’
James took in the long narrow room, partitioned by a flowing muslin curtain, half-drawn. One end served as a dining and sitting area, complete with a sink and a small gas ring, the other as a bedroom. The walls were unpapered. Their whitewashed purity gave the space the aura of a convent, which the images they held belied. There were some garish playbills and drawings, studded here and there with a wash of blues and reds. He examined these more closely and saw that they depicted a young woman in various poses. They were executed in the modern style, almost but not quite caricatures. In all of them, whether a gloved hand arced the air or the figure lay curled on a divan, the face had a sweet serenity, a pensive seriousness which both captivated and took him aback. He hadn’t imagined Olympe like this, had conjured up a more open, a more actressy appeal. The dead body had given no clues as to expression or stance or character.
‘Yes, that’s her.’ Raf had come up behind him. His voice held a tremor. ‘Come next door.’
On a mantle stood a photograph in a curving frame. The image was of a young woman, al
most a girl. Her wide-set eyes were cast downward in a look of shy gravity. Lips and nose and cheekbones and hair arced in fluid harmony above the cup of her hands. Sadness haunted beauty.
His eyes strayed to the mantlepiece. It was covered in a fine grey powder. Not dust, no. He looked round. The powder clung to all flat surfaces. His mind raced. Dactyloscopy. Emile Durand was indeed versed in the latest scientific methods.
Raf had sat down on the bed’s edge. His hands covered his face.
As James murmured that Durand was being thorough, he sprang up. ‘Look, Jim, I don’t really want to be here.’ His eyes were moist, his expression brooding. ‘No. You stay. I’ve got things to do. Too many things. I’ve got to check out the Patriot’s League. Did I tell you about Antoine. That sharp-eyed scoundrel found a charm on the ground of the metro site. It had a Hebrew character on it. Which means the girl must have been a Jewess.’
As if he still hadn’t heard James, he fingered the jewellery in a small open case on the bedside table, holding up earrings to the light, rubbing a ring.
‘You’re not paying attention, Raf. I said Durand has had the place dusted for fingerprints. You shouldn’t touch anything. Not with bare hands. Or he’ll know we’ve been here.’
‘What?’ Raf clamped the box shut. ‘Oh I see. Yes, well, I’m off. Can’t stomach this place now. Can’t bear it without her.’ He looked round him in panic, swallowed what seemed to be a sob. ‘We’ll meet up tomorrow some time. Or the next day.’ Before James could say anything, he was out the door.
James had a sudden memory of his father admonishing him. ‘You really have to look out for your little brother, James. He’s spending too much time with his sister. She’s stuffing his head full of poetry, silly emotional stuff. Women’s stuff. Get him out into the open air. Toughen him up.’
James had patently not succeeded, despite the reputedly cold and paternal role into which he had been cast. Raf was as mercurial as ever. A disquieting sensation crept up on him, like a longing, but one that churned his stomach. It was almost as if he envied his brother his ability to feel – to feel deeply, to be swept beyond the bounds of propriety.
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