Madrigal (14 page)

Two faces only, thought Kohler, and this one still fingering the bodice as if to now seduce the lady-in-waiting.

‘
Basso Continuo
,' said Spaggiari.

‘
Baritono
,' said Galiteau, his chin resting on pale white hands atop a mannequin's wooden neck-knob and wearing wire-rimmed spectacles that made his cherubic face appear rounder, the inquisitive smile even more mischievous.

‘E
io sono il Tenore
,' said Guy Rochon, the third and youngest of the three, suddenly appearing.

‘Look, let's just find us a place to talk.'

‘But we are of this?' hazarded Spaggiari.

‘And this is what you must understand,' said Galiteau.

‘Slaves to the past, we can never leave it.'

St-Cyr resisted the urge to show the postcard to Christiane Bissert. He let her worry over how he and Hermann had found out about the strawberry blonde, would leave her now.

‘Inspector …?' she blurted as he reached the door to her bedroom. ‘Don't you want to know the girl's name?'

The white, laced bodice of the cote-hardie rose a little as she took a deep breath and held it.

‘Very well,' he said. ‘If you must.'

She cringed at the put-down. ‘Adrienne de Langlade. Like Genèvieve, her family lived in the north but not in Beauvais, in Paris. They still do, I guess. She and Madame Simondi used to talk about the city for hours. Fouquet's, Maxim's, the rue Royale …'

‘Hédiard's?' he asked.

The delicatessen. ‘Yes.'

A wary answer …

The Inspector stepped out into the corridor and softly closed the door behind him, suddenly leaving her alone and feeling abandoned. Long after he had gone she stood uncertainly before the windows. Fog clouded the bevelled diamond glass whose leading was so old it made her think of the Catacombs and of Adrienne's descriptions of them as given to the devouring ears of Madame Simondi who yearned constantly for news of Paris, her Paris … Hédiard's, ah damn.

‘They know about Adrienne,' she said when Genèvieve came into the room to stand behind her. ‘They'll soon find out everything.'

‘Not if we're careful.'

‘She shouldn't have had to drown.'

‘It was the only way.'

‘It was cold. It was foggy. The river was swollen. There'd been heavy rains in the Cévennes. The Ardèche had become a raging torrent. Everyone had been warned. A flood …'

‘
Calme-toi, chérie. Calme-toi
. Here, let me help you out of those things.'

‘He saw the books, Genèvieve. He knows I took some of them to Madame Emphoux. That bitch told him about César's wife.'

Arms encircled her waist and drew her tightly. Lips brushed a cheek, then embraced it firmly, the two of them looking down into the courtyard, brocade upon brocade, velvet upon velvet. ‘
Courage
,' whispered Genèvieve. ‘
Courage
. You know we have to put up with a lot, the two of us. You know how much we mean to each other and exactly how much we might lose.'

‘Everything,' managed Christiane. ‘Just everything.'

When Brother Matthieu, in grey sackcloth with hood up and wearing black trousers and boots, hurried across the courtyard through the wind, they knew exactly what he was after. Xavier had missed an audition before the bishop.

‘In the Cathedral,' said Genèvieve, her arms still encircling Christiane's waist.

‘The Requiem for Mireille.'

‘His voice is changing to that of a cicada and the matter can no longer be hidden. Even God has refused to intervene.'

‘The tonsils could be removed,' quipped Christiane, feeling a little better, a little more secure.

‘The testicles, I think, but Monsieur le Maréchal would never allow such a thing.'

Not with over 500,000 dead so far in this war, 1,500,000 locked up in POW camps in the Reich and still others away with the British or in Africa. So many had died in the Great War of 1914 – 18, the birthrate had remained disastrously low, and as a result, Maréchal Pétain and his government in Vichy preached the code of the family, rewarding fruitful mothers, frowning on birth control and denying abortion on pain of imprisonment and even death.

‘Today women need servicing, no matter how young the sperm,' offered Genèvieve.

‘But will the widow's basket take his head before a harvest has been sown that lasts?' asked Christiane softly.

The guillotine …

They looked at one another steadily and each reached out with a forefinger to tenderly silence the lips of the other.

‘Xavier!' came the thunderous shout. ‘Xavier, you little bastard, don't you dare defy me!'

‘Be quiet,' said St-Cyr. ‘Sit down, shut up and let the rook crow.'

‘
Maudit salaud
!' hissed the boy. ‘If that cocksucker lays another hand on me I'll kill him!'

‘
Doucement
! To admit to such a desire in front of a detective is foolish.'

The blue eyes narrowed, the sensuous lips compressed. ‘Foolish or not, I mean it! I've taken all the crap I'll ever take from him.'

Xavier yanked off the white surplice he had been wearing when found rooting around in the props room. Crumpling it into a ball, he defiantly waited for his mentor to kick the door in.

They heard Brother Matthieu encountering Hermann upstairs, heard Christiane Bissert and Genèvieve Ravier laughingly calling out, ‘But he left us ages ago, Father.' ‘To the Cathedral, I think.'

When the double doors finally opened, it was a subdued but still distrustful brother who entered, searched among the props, and finally confronted them in a far corner. ‘Xavier, the bishop is angry. You know how important this funeral is to him. The Kommandant has to see the full strength of the Church, its magnificence, its power.'

‘Forgive me,
mon père
. The detective detained me. I … I couldn't leave.'

Liar
! hissed St-Cyr silently, we had only just met.

A nod passed from brother to boy. Sadness filled the elder's dark grey eyes. The rugged cheeks and chin, with all their scars and grey-black bristles, were gripped in thought, a decision soon made. ‘Go now. Apologize as only you know how. Tell His Eminence you'll sing your heart out for him tonight, no matter what happens to your voice, and that you and I have spoken. Beg him to choose whatever time is most convenient.'

The surplice was dutifully untangled by the boy. Clucking his tongue, and automatically sucking at his twisted, wounded lips to stop himself from slobbering – a constant problem so many of the Broken Mugs had to face – the brother tugged the garment down, smoothed it over the boy's shoulders and sadly shook his head. ‘How many times must I tell you your future is with God? Xavier, your voice will return as that of a man, and will be perfect in every way. A tenor, I have it in my prayers and God listens, believe me.'

‘You should've come earlier,' said the boy softly.

The
gueule cassées
head was tossed as if struck. ‘I was detained. An errand, idiot! Now don't defy me any more!'

‘A moment, Brother,' cautioned the Sûreté. ‘A few small questions.'

‘Must you?' leapt the priest.

‘Unfortunately, yes. You lied to my partner. You told him Xavier had run off home at news of the murder when, really, he had returned to the city well before dawn on the very day she was killed. Was it a week or ten days at the harvest, Xavier?'

Warning glances passed between the two. ‘Ten days.'

The boy would offer little; the brother even less. ‘You stopped in to see the victim,' said St-Cyr.

‘I took her some things.'

Must he always be so insolent? ‘Olives, a bottle of oil, a rope of garlic, another of sun-dried tomatoes. She was “special”, Xavier, but in what way, please?'

‘She made me nice outfits. One always massages the neck of those who make one look good.'

The little bastard, thought St-Cyr.

‘Inspector, is this necessary?' asked Brother Matthieu.

‘You know it is.'

‘Then can't it wait?'

Folding screens, their paint flaked and ancient, crowded closely. Fourteenth-century scenes of gardens, villas, turtledoves and bathing nymphs appeared – trysts under moonlight along the river with lutes and shawms, the Palais in the background or the Pont Saint-Bénézet. Carved fruitwood panels were festooned with carnival masks, banners and ribbons, heraldic shields and crossed horns, a cittern …

‘We're like
marchands forains
,' spat the boy on noticing how sharply the Sûreté had stepped over to the wooden-tined rakes, flails, scythes, hoes, shovels, butter-churns and cartwheels supposedly from a
mas
of some six hundred years or less ago.

Like travelling stall-keepers …‘Your sickle's missing,' said the Sûreté flatly. ‘Where is it, please?'

Ah dear
Jésus
…‘The sickle?' blurted Brother Matthieu.

‘It was stolen in Aix on our last tour,' said Xavier, only to see the Sûreté look away through the maze of props past the andirons of a Renaissance farm kitchen to the shoulder-high candlesticks of a sixteenth-century villa and a mirrored trumeau. Sheaves of wheat and barley, dried lavender, sage, thyme and winter grass met the detective's eye until at last that one said coldly, ‘Does your God excuse lying? Must an examining magistrate decide?'

‘Inspector …'

‘Brother, let the boy answer. You may, however, remind him that my partner found him with two nine-millimetre rounds in his pockets. Sufficient, as you and I both well know, for the Kommandant or the District Gestapo to send him into deportation.'

‘The killer must've taken our sickle, Inspector,' said Xavier blandly. ‘Wasn't it found with the other things in the Latrines Pit?'

The page-boy styled dark brown hair had been smoothed in place by the brother, but the boy had shrugged off the hands and had moved aside.

‘Did you tidy up after the killing,' asked the Sûreté, ‘or did your mentor?'

‘Inspector …'

‘
Silence
, Brother!'

The boy found his
mégot
tin and, selecting three choice butts, crumbled them into a palm and proceeded to deftly roll himself a forbidden cigarette.

‘I “tidied” nothing. Why not ask Salvatore, since he was the one who found her a moment after the killing when he could so easily have found her a moment before?'

‘Now listen, you …'

‘Xavier, tell him.'

A drag was taken and held until exhaled through the nostrils, the boy sizing the two of them up as if they were already old men whose time had passed.

‘The rounds were for Dédou Favre who was to have met her in the Palais that night. Dédou had a stolen Luger but no bullets, so Mireille took a couple from the Kommandant's house when he wasn't looking. When I got to her place on the rue du Rempart du Rhone, it was well before dawn and freezing, but Dédou never showed up. Mireille was worried about him coming to the Palais to meet her after her audition as they'd planned. She felt the préfet might somehow have found out about the meeting. She wanted me to give Dédou the rounds and to tell him not to come if he felt it best, but I couldn't find him.'

A member of the
maquis
… The 100,000-franc reward for all such betrayals would have had to be forgone, thought St-Cyr, so too praise from the préfet, the bishop and the Kommandant. It just didn't seem possible. The urge to accuse the boy of lying was very strong but it would be best to draw in an impatient breath and leave the matter for now. Brother Matthieu looked as if searching the Sûreté to see if the lie had taken hold.

‘You arrived at her flat at about what time?'

‘Five-thirty, the new time.'

Berlin Time. 4.30 a.m., the old, and after walking all night from les Baux, lugging a heavy rucksack.

‘She was really pleased to get the soap,' hazarded the boy. ‘She'd asked for it especially.'

He was grinning now at the thought of her naked, no doubt, but Brother Matthieu looked as if ready to smack his charge's face for being so cheeky. ‘How long did you stay with her?' asked St-Cyr.

‘Not long. I had to find Dédou, remember? There's a hollow along the ramparts not far from the Porte du Rhône – I'll show it to you if you like. I knew he'd be waiting there because that's where she said he'd be.'

‘And when you didn't find him?'

‘She was most distressed and said, “I have to go through with it anyway. I must.”'

‘With what, apart from the audition?'

The Sûreté was like a dog after a scent. Well this one would cock its leg, thought Xavier.

Cigarette ash was insolently flicked aside.

‘I've no idea. She had her little secrets. One didn't press.'

I'll bet! scoffed St-Cyr inwardly. ‘You took her a
grive
last autumn, in November.'

One must match tone with tone. ‘Nino had brought it to me instead of to His Holiness, so by rights it was mine. One less would not have mattered.'

The memory was savoured, a touch of softness entering until asked who Nino was.

‘One of the hounds. A beagle bitch with the name of a male.'

‘A friend?' asked the Sûreté softly.

‘They're all ‘friends'. Each one of the pack is special. They'd only get jealous of one another otherwise. Don't you know
anything
about dogs?'

Nino. ‘When was the
grive
taken?'

‘In October. The first week, I think. I can't remember.'

‘But you kept it for a while?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then that's all for now. You're free to leave. Get out, the two of you.' But when they had reached the door, he called to them from well within the room and barely in sight. ‘A moment. I almost forgot. Who gave her a key to the Palais or left the entrance door open for her since the concierge was attending a film?'