“He wasn’t.” Nicole’s tone was abrupt. I couldn’t blame her.
I struggled to find words to express how I felt. The sight of his body, slumped in the chair, remained fixed clearly in my mind. I found myself shedding tears too.
Nicole saw my despair. She decided I was telling the truth. I collapsed into a chair and lay back, my innocent eyes meeting hers. “Believe me, I had nothing to do with it.”
“I can’t see why you should have.”
“I didn’t.” I turned my face to the wall. I sensed her coming over to me, that slight movement that had often preceded our intimate moments, the touch of her hand on my arm,
light as a feather, then it pressing gently to comfort me, to invite me, often to lead me on. This time its intention was simply to calm my mind, not arouse me.
“I don’t think you did. But what explanation can there be?”
I was silent. The question seemed unanswerable. It might lie in his other notebook or the caverne, but had I read enough of his story yet to expose any new danger to him? Or us.
“A blast from the past.” I don’t know where those words came from. Instinct or were they the words of his history already forming conclusions in my mind? Had Giuseppe ever broken free of Marianne – or more likely her family?
vii
Normal order was resumed after a few days. The question of my guilt lay with the gendarmes, not with Nicole. I felt I had persuaded her of my innocence with the consistency of my protestations. Giuseppe was a real loss to the tiny community of the cove, and my temporary addition to the group was not balanced by his death. I think Nicole was grateful for my company, and maybe saw me as something of a protector in this difficult moment.
I was concerned for myself, and overlooked the implications of a murder on our doorstep by this self-interest. Nicole gradually thawed out and from time to time put her arm around me or leant against me in that intimate manner we had come to cherish. The bonding continued and I was able to get back to my work and progress my critiques as the deadlines moved closer. I reminded myself how lucky I was to have this summer break under the sun, and how idyllic this spot was. Normally.
Mandragora Officinarum, the mandrake – or Love Apple. This I found lying on the table and it stirred my imagination, my interest and analysis, lest this be a clue to lovemaking that was signalling its return. In classical times this plant was described as ‘shrieking’ when pulled from the soil. Short-stalked, long dark green leaves, with crisp, toothed edges. Bell-shaped flowers and orange berry fruit, with a curious smell. Felt by some to be a delicacy, but this fruit from the Bible is slightly poisonous and was much used in medicines in ancient times. Nicole must be trying again to find a use for it in her concoctions. Or is it that its fame in love-potions is a clue for me? Is it the aphrodisiac that can rekindle our passions, the painkiller of the Middle Ages? There was a confusion of possible meanings here.
That evening, after supper, I stood close behind Nicole and put my arms around her. I was guessing. She turned her head to one side but did not resist when my hands gently cupped her breasts, nor my pull of her body against mine. I kissed the nape of her neck and she gave a gentle nod as if I was making the right advances.
“The mandrake,” I said, ” is a plant that deadens pain. Is that what I should read into it?”
She stood still, not answering, but letting me hold her tight. “In ancient times,” I
continued, “it was the flower of seduction, a signal of acceptance for two lovers to take each other.”
Nicole remained silent, but then her hand dropped to my side, and explored my body, reaching quickly the tip of my interest and she held it whilst I continued my kisses. “Take me to bed,” were her simple words, and we moved into her room without further words. I lay her down on the bed and slipped her shift from her body, so that she lay naked and unmoving under my sight.
“You are very beautiful” I said, as if for the first time.
“You exaggerate.”
“I think not.”
“Stop wasting time,” Nicole’s riposte.
There was no reason to delay the passion she had aroused in me. After the interlude brought about by Giuseppe’s demise, I could not wait. He was not on my mind at this moment, and I lay beside Nicole, as she let me explore once again, afresh, her slim body, its gentle curves, its hidden corners. Alighting on sensitive places with what she had generously come to call ‘my magic touch’.
“Come inside me.”
The sensations I had briefly forgotten came back as I obeyed her wishes – and my desires – and we locked into a shared outpouring of giving and taking that made us as one again. I had to be thankful for the spirit of place, and the landscape that allowed me to taste its fruits, herbs and spices – and Nicole.
viii
The clothes of Giuseppe were sent back from Calvi by the police for my care – as if I was in some way the next-of-kin.
“We couldn’t think of anyone else to look after them,” the gendarme on watch at the cove said. Giuseppe’s body was being kept in the morgue, whilst investigations went on in other directions than me. What more could I say? Were they setting a trap?
The rough shirt, still blood-stained with the bullet hole in the chest - the clue that had been hidden by his oilskins – lay limply in my hands, as I felt again the guilt of my naïve – and ineffective discovery of his body. Should have touched the shirt now? Fingerprint evidence? I went over the ground again. I had assumed he had had a fall and cracked his head. The wound seemed to support this. That he must have managed to seat himself in the chair. With such a thesis I had attributed the state of his body then as a natural death, and compounded by the rigor mortis – jumped to the wrong conclusion. How stupid that seemed in retrospect. I now knew that someone must have knocked him out and then killed him as he lay unconscious. But why? Only the belief in my innocence kept me sane, though I began to question my own memory of events.
Folding the shirt in with the oilskins, I made one last instinctive check on the pockets and was surprised to find a small piece of torn paper caught in the seam at the bottom of one trouser pocket with a few words scrawled on it.
Pè schioppetto morte al nemico.
By the gun death to the enemy. Vendetta. Old Corsican venditta. He had no enemies other than Marianne’s family. Had they finally tracked Giuseppe down after all these years? Had a member of her clan had been sent to execute him for dishonouring their daughter, even though she had been complicit? I had assumed the world had moved on.
ix
Antoine did not want to speculate further when I next went down to the taverne. I wasn’t sure whether he knew more than he was prepared to say, or if he sensed some threat to him and Angelique as a result of Giuseppe’s murder.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” his simple response to my questioning.
Angelique came out to the terrace and they exchanged glances. She turned towards me. “You must take this place as you find it. Don’t stir up trouble for us. You are only here for a short time. We have to live here.”
She wiped a tear from her eyes.
“The point is,” Antoine started, “that the island has a chequered history. Nothing can be taken for granted even in this day and age. We think vendettas and banditry are finished, but this year there have been over twenty murders.”
“Nationalists fighting for independence?”
“Some, but not all.”
“The curse of drugs is with us. Criminals from Marseilles. And Calabria. Cigarettes too are still profitable, smuggled in, make for a good payday.” He was smoking his usual coarse cigarettes as he spoke.
“But murders, on the streets?”
“Rival gangs. Unless a policeman or politician is the victim.”
“Their trade?”
“Arms. For the Nationalists.”
“Surely it is easy to cover the airport, ferries and harbours against smuggling?”
“Are you going to finish your work in time?” he enquired.
I had not really discussed this with him before, and I was surprised at his concern. Except I quickly understood he was not interested. He wanted to draw my attention away from the harsh reality that could impinge on life here. He knew I had been captivated by its charm – and Nicole. I made some feeble remark about hoping to do so.
Angelique brought us a pot of coffee and sat down as if to enforce a further change of subject. Her wrinkled face in the sun showed the years of toil and hardship that had preceded their arrival here.
“We have all come here to escape,” she volunteered, “it is hard to find somewhere that can offer a quiet place, away from the cruelty of life.”
I wanted to agree, but the deaths of two men – and even the dog – on our doorstep made me hesitate.
“There will always be some dangers on this island,” Antoine interrupted. “Old customs die hard. You forget that the island has always been at the crossroads of the western Mediterranean. So many countries have claimed it for themselves over the ages. Greeks, Romans, Pisans, Popes, Genoese, British, French. Are you not surprised that some Corsicans resent that even today?”
“But the Genoese did much to develop the island.”
“Wrong. They kept their forts around the coast in defence of their possession, but they did little inland, for the mountain areas.”
“Which didn’t want to change.”
“Yes, that’s true. They preferred their traditional ways.”
“Feudal.”
“Families, clans effectively. Villages that kept themselves to themselves. Tight communities.”
“Which the two World Wars finally broke down.”
“After the Second World War much changed. With the help of the American soldiers, malaria was tackled. The swamps and lagoons on the east coast infested with mosquitos - these were eliminated with DDT.”
“Which meant the mountain people didn’t move?”
“The young ones, the more adventurous, could move down to the plains and plant new crops, grow wheat on a larger scale, increase the olive groves and vineyards.”
“And find work as the towns expanded,” Angelique injected. “You can have no idea what an opportunity this was to escape the drudgery of shepherding against the elements. It was the time we started hoping.”
“What did you do?”
Antoine took another puff, “We thought about changing the work we did, but we had no money to invest in a vineyard or orchard, let alone a farm. We couldn’t face working in a big town. The only solution was to move our flocks north in a traditional transhumance, a way of life that had been done for centuries. Shepherds chased grazing areas in line with the seasons over mountains and valleys up the spine of Corsica.”
“Except,” Angelique interrupted, “one year we didn’t go back. We broke the custom and stayed in the Balange area around here. There was just enough land to support us, and we found an abandoned bergerie that we managed to repair and make habitable. It wasn’t as cold as in the mountains and that suited our old bones better.”
“We made enough from our sheep, goats – their milk and cheese too, to survive. It wasn’t perfect but was sufficient until running flocks became too much for us.” Antoine flexed his arms as if to show how his limbs had weakened with time.
Their weather-beaten faces, the stooped shoulders, the white hair all reinforced their aged bodies without words. They had had a hard life, but were survivors.
Antoine’s last words were philosophic, “You see the island as it is now, with tourists its main income and little else. Yet there was not even that much in the past. The occasional traveller marvelling at the mountains, the dramatic landscape captured by Edward Lear, but there was little work, and the traditional ways kept villages isolated and immune to new ideas. Little pockets of civilisation shut away, fending for themselves, a danger to each other. Yes, much may seem to have changed on the surface, but much lingers from that past under the surface.”
I had to agree I had only seen the modern face of the island, and how easy it was to have a superficial view of it. I knew very little.
I climbed back up to the house and, as Nicole was out on the mountainside somewhere, I went to my room and began to shuffle my work papers. But the mood was not with me. Only then did I fully realise that Antoine had told me nothing of any significance about either murder. The man on the buoy or Giuseppe. Both on his doorstep. That struck me as odd.
x
The patrol boat of the Gendarmerie Maritime returned to the cove on schedule and anchored. I was sitting at the taverne, sipping a rosé wine after a swim. The duty gendarme greeted their dinghy as it came to the jetty. Inspector Girard got out and came straight up to me. I did not know what to expect, or indeed whether they had decided to arrest me.
“We have had the lab report on the gun, the pistol used to kill Giuseppe. Or rather the bullet. They found it embedded in his spine, ” he announced.
Whilst Antoine brought him a beer, he challenged me again. “We need more information, are not finished by a long way. You don’t look a shooter but perhaps you know someone who is and can be hired?”
“I don’t.”
“Time will tell. You must stay here. We’ll want you to come to Calvi and make a report at some point.”
I said nothing, fearing to implicate myself unwittingly and invite a formal interrogation. In due course I would need to get my passport back.
“What is odd,” Girard continued, “is that analysis of the bullet suggests it came from a very old pistol. From the war. Not all were handed in. Army issue, 7.5mm, a low calibre high velocity weapon. Though old it would have kept its effectiveness, as we’ve seen . These sorts of weapon were replaced as far back as the 1960s.”
“So how would it have found its way here?”
“Many were stolen from, or lost, by the armies - and the police of course as well, before and during the war. Bandits and locals would have been able to get hold of them. In the old days every household had weapons, particularly in the more remote areas. They were used to settle vendettas and other crimes passionelles.”
In anxiety I blurted out, “I have never had a pistol.”
“You were the only one here.”
“Apart from the boat.”
“Yet you can’t remember anything about it.”
“Other than what I said.”
“A white boat with a blue hull line. Hardly enough for us to progress.”
I had to admit the stalemate continued. Once again I felt helpless, and could see myself being detained here for ever.
“What will you do now?” I asked nervously.
“We’ll take another look over Giuseppe’s place along the shore, then continue to analyse everything, to keep an eye on this place. It seems to be becoming an area of interest to some people, speculators, those that want to hide their money in property perhaps. There are a number of people making enquiries.”
I now wondered if the drunken strangers off the boat that time had been as innocent as we imagined, when they came up to the house, trying to persuade Nicole to sell. An early reconnaissance? It had seemed a clumsy attempt at the time, but was there more to it than we realised? My original pleasure in finding such an isolated spot was now being put under even greater pressure. I was uneasy about the future. Nothing appeared as it seemed.
The Inspector took his time to finish his beer. Antoine waved away his attempt to pay for it. I waited, expecting a possible summons to Calvi, but it did not come. Girard took a report from the gendarme that had been left to keep an eye on us. There was much sh
aking of heads. I guessed the man had nothing of substance to report. We were innocent until proved otherwise. The pair of them walked up and down the shoreline wrapped in conversation, none of which we heard.
Then they went in to Giuseppe’s grotte, setting aside the tarpaulin that had been erected to protect the scene of the crime. They spent twenty minutes inside but returned apparently empty-handed, and gave no sign of having achieved anything. I observed that it had not occurred to them to look at the area around the back of the grotte. Perhaps to them it was simply the edge of the garrigue, a rocky hill of scrub and scree, inviting only a slippery slope on which to clamber. It meant they hadn’t looked closely at the dry stone wall in which Giuseppe kept all his spare ammunition. As I had taken his gun with the small number of bullets inside on the day I discovered his body, this meant the gendarmes had not found any evidence of Giuseppe’s armoury. I wasn’t sure whether this helped or hindered my cause.
We watched Girard return to the patrol boat, which immediately weighed anchor and swept round the headland out to sea.
Antoine was unsettled. He didn’t like having a duty gendarme on his premises. I wanted to go over the circumstances again with him, to establish whether he had other theories about Giuseppe, about the new interest in the cove, but he was reluctant to entertain my ambition. He looked anxiously in the direction of the gendarme and averted my gaze. I noticed this time he hadn’t produce any cigarettes until the Inspector had gone. Did he know something I didn’t?
Only then did I realise I had not mentioned to Girard the tiny piece of paper I had found in Giuseppe’s oilskin. Perhaps my defences had developed an instinctive reluctance to prompt anything that involved me in events, in the matter of death. Would they believe I had found it in his oilskin trousers, which his own gendarmes had taken off, handled and kept as evidence for over a week? Or that possibly I would have written the note (in Corsican?) as a decoy? The moment had passed, and on balance I felt better for keeping this secret, though I was not in any position to act as judge – or jury. I determined to go to Giuseppe’s caverne de sécurité. I felt any useful clues, that might exist, would lie there.
The Dark Side of the Sun Page 13