The Three Evangelists (29 page)

Thank goodness. He’d got past the worst bit. The bit about Sophia being buried under the tree. He needn’t pull up any more grass now. It was passing. And this was Sophia’s grass anyway.

He got up and walked about slowly, wrapping the blanket around him with his left hand. Lucien thought he looked like a Sioux with his dark straight hair damp from the water and his blanket over his shoulders. He walked to and fro, without going near her, turning without letting his eyes move in her direction.

‘So she wasn’t best pleased after that, to see this niece turn up with the little one. She hadn’t expected it. Alexandra had arranged to meet her aunt, and she didn’t accept that she had just disappeared into thin air. Alexandra was determined and headstrong, the police took it up, and they started looking for Sophia again. It was impossible and risky to try to recover the corpse from under the tree. This time she would have to produce a body, to halt the investigation before the cops started digging
up the entire neighbourhood. So the woman who went to find poor old Louise under the Pont d’Austerlitz, that was her. She dragged Louise off to Maisons-Alfort and set fire to her!’Marc was shouting again. He forced himself to take deep breaths from down in his stomach, and started again. Of course, she had Sophia’s little travelling bag. She put the gold rings on Louise’s fingers, put the bag beside her in the car and started the fire. A very big fire. Because there had to be no sign left of Louise’s identity, and the police mustn’t be able to tell which day she died. It was an inferno but she knew that the basalt would survive. And the basalt would point straight to Sophia. It would talk.’

Suddenly Juliette began to scream. Marc stood still and blocked his ears, the left with his hand, the right with his shoulder. He could hear only snatches of what she was screaming: basalt, Sophia, filth, deserved to die, Elektra, fucking critics, singing, nobody, Elektra …

‘Make her shut up!’ Marc shouted. ‘Make her shut up, take her away, I can’t stand to hear her any longer.’

There were more noises, more spitting sounds and the footsteps of the policemen who, at a sign from Leguennec, were leading her away. When Marc gathered that Juliette was no longer there, he let his arms fall. Now he could look at anything he liked, his eyes were free. She had gone.

‘Yes. She did sing,’ he said, ‘but only as a stand-in, an understudy, a second-best, and she couldn’t bear it, she needed her big break. She was mortally jealous of Sophia. So she pushed her luck, she got her poor benighted brother to attack Sophia, so that she would be able to take her place on stage, a simple idea.’

‘What about the attempted rape?’ said Leguennec.

‘The attempted rape? Well, that must have been something his sister told him to do as well, to make the attack look more convincing. The attempted rape was really nothing of the sort.’

Marc stopped speaking, and went over to Mathias, examined him, nodded and went on walking round, with long, unnatural paces, and his arm still hanging down. He wondered whether Mathias found the police blanket scratchy, as he did. Probably not. Mathias was not the sort of
person to make a fuss about scratchy wool. He wondered how it was he could go on talking like this, when his head was hurting so much, when he felt so sick, how he could both know all this and tell them about it? How was it? It was because he had been quite unable to swallow the story that Sophia had killed anyone. That had to be the wrong conclusion, he was sure of that, it was an impossibility. And that meant going back to the beginning, looking at all the evidence again. If it wasn’t Sophia, it had to be someone else, there had to be another history of how things had happened. And that history was what he had been telling himself in bits and pieces earlier that day, little bit by bit, working out the path of the whale, its instincts, its desires … By the Saint-Michel fountain … its favourite haunts, its feeding grounds … By the Denfert-Rochereau Lion, that comes down from its plinth at night … the lion that walks by night, that does lion-type things without anyone seeing it, the bronze lion, like her, coming back and lying down on its pedestal in the morning, turning back into a statue once more, stable, reassuring, far from any suspicion … back in the morning on her pedestal, back behind the counter, as usual, smiling, but without having any real affection for anyone, no little pang of the heart, no, not even for Mathias, nothing … But at night, it was a different story; at night, he knew her route now, now that he was on her back. Hanging on like Ahab, gripping the back of the whale that had taken his leg.

‘Let me see that arm,’ whispered Leguennec.

‘Leave him be, for Christ’s sake,’ said Vandoosler.

‘She only sang for three nights,’ Marc said, ‘after her brother had made sure Sophia went to hospital. But the critics either ignored her or, which was worse, two of them, Dompierre and Frémonville, demolished her quite definitively. After that, Sophia changed understudies. It was all over for Nathalie Domesco. She had to give up opera, give up singing, and her fury and pride, and I don’t know what other emotions, stayed with her. After that, she just lived to take her revenge on those who had broken her career: she was intelligent, she was musical, she was mad, beautiful, and demonic, she looked so beautiful on her pedestal-like a statue, untouchable.’

‘Let me see that arm,’ Leguennec was saying again.

Marc shook his head.

‘She waited a year, so that people would have forgotten about “Elektra,” then months later, in cold blood, she killed the two critics who had massacred her. And to get Sophia, she waited fourteen years. She wanted a long time to pass, so that the murder of the two critics would be forgotten and no link found. And she waited, perhaps savouring the wait-I don’t know. But she followed her, and observed her, from the house she had bought close by, a few years later. Perhaps she even persuaded the previous owner to sell it to her, yes, it’s quite possible. She didn’t leave things to chance. She had let her hair grow back to its natural colour, which was blonde, changed her hairstyle, the years passed, and Sophia didn’t recognise her, any more than she recognised Georges. There wasn’t much risk. Top singers hardly know their understudies, and as for the extras …’

Leguennec had taken firm hold of Marc’s right arm without asking him again, and was putting on some powerful-smelling antiseptic. Marc let him do it; he couldn’t feel the arm any more.

Vandoosler was watching him. He would have liked to interrupt and ask questions, but he knew one shouldn’t interrupt Marc at a time like this. You don’t wake up a sleepwalker, because apparently it will make them fall over. Whether that was true or false he didn’t know, but it was certainly true of Marc. You shouldn’t wake Marc up when he was launched, trance-like, into his research. Or he too would fall over. He knew for certain that since Marc left their house that night, he had flown like an arrow directly to the target. It was just like when he was a child, and couldn’t accept something: he would run off somewhere. And when that happened, he knew from experience that Marc could travel very quickly, and become as taut as a wire until he found what he was after. Earlier in the evening, his nephew had come into the house and picked up a couple of apples, he remembered quite well. Marc hadn’t said a word. But his intense gaze, his far-off expression, his mute violence, all that had warned him. And if he hadn’t been deep in his game of cards, he should have noticed that Marc was in the process of searching, finding and homing in on his target, that he was engaged in unpicking Juliette’s
logic, uncovering it … and that he knew. And now he was telling them. Leguennec probably thought that Marc was telling them all this with incredible calm. But Vandoosler knew that this unstoppable flow, sometimes smooth, but always driven onwards like a vessel by a squally wind, had nothing to do with being calm. He was sure that by now his nephew’s thigh muscles would be feeling stiff and painful, so that they would need to be wrapped in hot towels as he had often done for him when he was a boy. Everyone else thought Marc was moving normally, but Vandoosler could tell that he was as if made of marble from his hips to his ankles. If he interrupted him, he would stay paralysed like that, and that was the reason he should be left in peace to finish, to reach harbour after this infernal mental chase. His leg muscles would only be able to relax at the end.

‘She told Georges never to say a word to Sophia, because he was in trouble too,’ Marc was saying. ‘And Georges would do whatever she said. Perhaps he was the only person she ever really loved, a bit, but I’m not even sure of that. Georges believed her. She may have told him she wanted to try again to be Sophia’s understudy. He has no imagination, he never dreamed she wanted to kill Sophia, or that she had shot the two critics. Poor old Georges, he was never in love with Sophia. That was a lie, a filthy lie. And that cosy little world of
Le Tonneau
was built on lies. Juliette was watching Sophia; she wanted to know everything about her and become her bosom friend in the eyes of the world, and then she was going to kill her!’

He was certain of himself. It would be easy to find the evidence now, and witnesses. He looked at what Leguennec was doing. He was putting a dressing on the arm. It wasn’t a pretty sight. His legs were hurting terribly, much worse than the arm. He forced them to carry him, automatically. But he was used to that, it had happened before and he knew it was inevitable.

‘And fifteen years after “Elektra”, she laid her trap. She killed Sophia, she killed Louise, put two of Sophia’s hairs in Alexandra’s car, killed Dompierre. She pretended to protect Alexandra’s alibi for the night of the murder. In fact, of course, she had heard Lucien yelling his head off
in the street at two o’clock in the morning, because she had just got back from the Hôtel du Danube after stabbing that poor guy. She was sure that the alibi for Alexandra wouldn’t hold water, and that I would be bound to realise it was a lie. So she could “admit” that Alexandra had gone out, without seeming to betray her. It was disgusting, in fact worse than disgusting.’

Marc recalled the conversation at the bar: ‘You’re very kind, Juliette.’ Not for a moment had the thought crossed his mind that Juliette was manipulating him in order to incriminate Alexandra. Yes, worse than disgusting.

‘But then suspicion fell on her brother. It was getting too close for comfort. She persuaded him to run away, so that he couldn’t give anything away under questioning. And then it was an extraordinary piece of luck for her that they found the message from the man she’d killed. She was safe! Dompierre seemed to be accusing Sophia, who was dead, but was then believed alive! It was too perfect. But I just couldn’t swallow that. Not Sophia, no, Sophia would never have done those things. And what about the tree? It didn’t explain the tree. No, I couldn’t swallow it.’

‘Oh, what a dirty war,’ murmured Lucien.

When they reached the house again at about four in the morning, the beech tree had been dug up, Sophia Siméonidis’ body had already been exhumed and taken away. This time the tree had not been replanted.

The three evangelists, worn out, didn’t feel like going to bed. Marc and Mathias, still wrapped in blankets instead of clothes, were sitting on the little wall. Lucien was perched up on the big dustbin opposite them. He was growing fond of it. Vandoosler was smoking a cigarette and walking up and down. It felt warm. At least compared to the well, Marc thought. The chain would leave a scar on his arm in the shape of a coiled snake.

‘It’ll go well with your rings,’ said Lucien.

‘Wrong arm.’

Alexandra came round to say good night. She had not been able to get back to sleep after the police had been to dig up the beech tree. And
Leguennec had been round. To give her the piece of basalt. Marc looked at her. He would have been so glad if she could have fallen in love with him. Just like that, to see what happened.

‘Tell me, Mathias,’ he said, ‘when you whispered in her ear to make her talk, what did you say?’

‘Nothing. I just said “Go on, Juliette, talk to them”’.

Marc sighed. ‘I might have guessed there wasn’t any magic trick. It would have been too good to be true.’

Alexandra kissed each of them and went away. She didn’t want to leave her son on his own. Vandoosler followed her slim figure with his eyes as she walked away. Three little dots. The twins, the woman. Shit. He looked down and stamped out his cigarette.

‘You should get some sleep,’ Marc said.

Vandoosler started off towards the house.

‘Does your godfather usually do what you tell him?’ asked Lucien.

‘No, never,’ said Marc. ‘Look, he’s coming back.’

Vandoosler tossed the five-franc piece into the air and caught it. ‘Let’s chuck it away,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we can’t cut it into twelve.’

‘There aren’t twelve of us,’ Marc said. ‘Only four.’

‘Ah, that would be too simple,’ said Vandoosler.

He swung his arm and the coin tinkled to the ground a long way off. Lucien had climbed onto the dustbin to follow its trajectory.

‘Company dismissed!’ he cried.

FRED VARGAS was born in Paris. A historian and archaeologist by profession, she has now become a bestselling and award-winning novelist. She is the author of many novels.
Have Mercy on Us All
and
Seeking Whom He May Devour are
available in English.

VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2006

Copyright © 1995 Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris
English translation copyright © 2005 Siân Reynolds
Published by arrangement with Harvill Secker, one of the publishers
in The Random House Group Ltd.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, a division of The Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2005. First published in France unnder the title
Debout les morts
by Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris, in 1995. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.