This was designed to lodge visitors. She had asked Mon P’tit Dame, to put me in the bedroom next to hers in the Fortin itself. The other guests had their rooms in the Cinq Parties. They arrived on the next day.
When everybody had turned up, Madame Guérard offered us a small goûter or snack.
On the grounds outside the Fortin, an artificial promontory had been created. We sat around a massive table in weathered oak, on wicker chairs, and raised our glasses to Marie Madeleine. Sarah then made a brief speech and introduced me to everybody. Half an hour later, after we had partaken of her excellent buffet, without any preamble she said that she had an important announcement to make. Last year, she explained, after everybody had gone, she noticed that her prized Hugo’s skull had disappeared. The reaction was stunned silence.
‘You know how much I love you all. I would not bat an eyelid and stand between you and an assassin’s bullet. And I know you would all do the same for me. My heart tells me that none of you would have stolen even a pin from me, but my head tells me that if before you arrived the article was on top of the coffin in the Grand Salon, and after you had left it was no longer there, then one of you must have...’ She paused for a few seconds, unable to continue. The guests whispered sympathetically. She wiped a tear.
‘One of you must have…purloined it,’ she said in a quavering voice. She took a deep breath and looking at everybody in the eyes, she added, ‘Ee- reine Adler, my English friend is an associate of the great detective Sherlock Hol-mès. He has taught her everything about crime-detection, and as she came here on behalf of those good people in England who are campaigning for justice for Dreyfus, I have asked her to find the naughty one among you who has done this. Let me assure you of two things: When we find the guilty party, we will not tell anybody else. Two, I have already forgiven her- or him. I will continue to love her- or him, as much as before.’ The guests smiled and shrugged and all murmured the words, Ah, ça alors! or, Grand Ciel, c’est pas possible. Mais c’est déguelasse.(It’s sick-making.) Bon sang, c’est incroyable.
I saw no one blush. Nobody acted guilty. It was Gilberte who shook her head and opined that she did not believe that there was a single one among them who would stoop so low as to steal from someone they all loved and admired unreservedly. Sarah smiled in a non-committal manner. She looked at me. The ball was in my court.
I am aware of having more self-belief than expertise at crime solving. Is it a strength or a weakness? For over a year I have been assiduously studying Holmes learned monograph, Interpretations of the Truth From Body and Eye Movements, in which he analyses gestures and signs and what we can learn from them. I have naturally been watching people carefully and done a number of experiments which seemed to validate my mentor’s findings. I will have to rely quite considerably on these new techniques.
Before sundown, I found myself walking on the rocky beach with the coquettish Sophie Houellebecq. There was a cold wind which I found exhilarating. My companion said that she loved the elements in all their guises.
‘Really?’
‘So you have already started your investigations?’ she asked with a little laugh. I noticed that there was no tension in her bearing. We found a rock with a vestige of sunlight on it, which looked like a small low table, and sat down, facing each other, our hands round our knees. The combination of the cold wind and the dying sun was like a tonic to me.
‘You now Ee-reine, I have nothing to hide. I shall be grateful to you for discovering who stole dear Sarah’s piece.’ She went on in the same vein, and I watched her intently. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking. Never once did she turn away to avoid my eye. She spoke in a soft tone, at a uniform speed and in a voice in which I could not detect any quavering. She was perfectly relaxed.
A perfect example of candidness if Holmes’ criteria are to be trusted. Holmes had stressed that there are many people who were able to look you in the eye and lie like the fiend. When they do, the size of their pupils will betray them. Besides there were a good number of movements over which they had no control. Sophie had passed all the tests. I was already minded to take her name off the list.
‘Tell me about your relationship with Sarah,’ I prompted her, more out of curiosity. ‘How did you meet her?’ Sophie’s eyes immediately darted to the right. Her gaze tilted upwards as she described the effect the darling of the Comédie Française produced on her. She spoke of her stunning appearance, her self-assured bearing and her welcoming smile. Then lowering her gaze, but keeping her eyes in their rightward direction she spoke about her immaculate diction and her nightingale voice. I knew that the upward gaze to the right was indicative of invoking pictures and images, whilst the downward one pointed towards recalling voices and tones. Somebody preparing to tell lies, have no need to recall anything. It was clear that she was answering my queries sincerely and truthfully. Until now. Naturally I said nothing.
‘To be honest with you, Ee-reine, I cannot imagine how you are going to find the culprit by putting innocuous questions to them…well, us. A whole year has gone, there are no witnesses.’
‘Of course there were witnesses,’ I said. ‘There’s at least one. That person saw everything.’
‘Really?’ The frown was one of surprise but not of consternation. It was clear to me that the guilty person would have been alarmed to hear that there was someone who had seen everything, and started sweating, or stammering. Instead the furrowed brow metamorphosed into a smile of relief. I peered at her.
‘Then I am reassured. Why don’t you begin by talking to her...or him? Surely it can’t have been dear sweet Honoré?’
‘The culprit obviously saw herself, or himself, carrying out the theft. That’s our witness.
And when I question that person, trust me, they wont be able to lie to me,’ I said with a mischievous smile. Sophie looked at me dubiously, frowned, smiled, and finally shrugged.
‘Sarah will be sad though. You know she is so ruthless when it comes to her work. She will fight like a tigress for a part she thinks has got her name on it, but no one I know is so devoid of artifice when dealing with her friends. She is putty in our hands. Which is why, I, who am a wellknown kleptomaniac- oh yes I am- will never wear make-up if I ever betrayed her confidence.’ I did not understand the allusion, and she answered my unvoiced query.
‘Oh,’ laughed Sophie. ‘Do you put your make-upon without looking in the mirror.’ I laughed, but Sophie thought I needed a full explanation.
‘You see, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror. Ergo no more rouge or lipstick.’ I was drawn to her pupils. They had become three or four times bigger. A sure sign of someone at ease with herself. Holmes expresses the certainty that no one could exert control over their pupils, however much they tried. The monograph clearly reveals that this component of the eye can be an excellent indicator of the state of mind of one’s interlocutor. In someone who is pretending something he or she is not, the pupils would be at their smallest, often just a small black dot, and by the same token, a truth teller, or someone who is speaking under no constraint will have enlarged pupils. No, Sophie was definitely not involved in the theft. I chose not to tell her what my findings were, but urged her not to tell the others how our interview went.
‘So you must have exonerated me?’ I said nothing.
‘Why would you wish to interview the others unless you had?’ I smiled.
‘Sophie, you obviously know whether you are blameless in this affair or not. I know no different from you.’
Obviously with the paucity of modus operandi available to me, I had hoped that Holmes’ study might be enough. Deep down I had been far from sanguine about my chances of success. Over-confidence in one’s ability is not always commensurate with achievability. However, after no more than an hour’s work, I was feeling buoyed up by this one concrete result. I was now convinced that I would solve the mystery.
It was next morning
after breakfast that Honoré Morton and I found ourselves walking on the beach. He had become aware of my presence behind him, and had waited to let me catch up with him. That could either mean that he was pretending that he had nothing to fear, or that he might indeed have a clear conscience.
‘Might it not be a good idea to interrogate me now that we are on our own?’ He ventured. It was true that the others were nowhere to be seen.
‘Oh, I don’t know about “interrogation”, ’ I said. ‘I just want to talk.’ That was an asinine response, and I knew it. As we walked, Honoré picked specimens of coral or broken shells, examined them absently and threw them into the sea. It was obvious that he had no real interest in these, and was only doing it to hide his nervousness. We found the bark of a fallen chestnut tree, and made for it. We straddled it so as to face each other.
‘Tell me about you and Sarah,’ I suggested to him. Without hesitation he told me much the same story that I heard from the Divine one. As he spoke, I watched his eyes, the movement of his head, his hands. They revealed nothing suspicious. He never covered his mouth or touched his nose.
Sherlock claims that liars tend to cover their mouths, as if subconsciously trying to stop the lie coming out. He also writes at great length about the Pinocchio effect. He quotes learned sources which claim that telling lies cause stress which releases some chemicals which affect the nose. The astute observer will notice a hardly perceptible swelling of the olfactory organ.
‘Would you say you were devoted to Sarah?’ He opened his eyes wide, and speaking very quickly assured me that all these years they had known each other, they had never exchanged a cross word.
‘Our relationship has always been peerless and transparent.’ I couldn’t help noticing that his right foot which was almost within touching distance of mine, had suddenly and involuntarily moved away, pointing now towards the Fortin. According to the monograph, this could well be a sign of unease. Subconsciously he wished that this conversation were at an end so he could go back to the house. I had rattled him.
‘Honoré, you seem discomfited,’ I said, taking his hand in mine in a comforting gesture. I noticed that it was much colder than I expected. He started blinking, and assured me that he was perfectly calm. Whatever gave me the idea? I did not tell him, but his pupils had shrunk visibly. I was convinced that I had stumbled on something. I pressed him.
‘My dear Honoré, I can feel that you are uneasy about something. At the moment I have no suspicions about you, rest assured. But I would like you to tell me the cause of your unease.’ He bit his lips, nodded absently and smiled.
‘Yes, I am an idiot. I truly love Sarah like my own sister.’ His smile was unaffected. He clearly meant this. ‘She and I have always had a beautiful friendship. I would happily give my life for her. We all know that she has a heart as big as Brittany. She would not think twice about throwing herself in shark-infested waters to save any of her friends.’ After a pause, he added, ‘I am not even sure if she can swim. That’s our Sarah.’
‘But?’
‘Yes. I am so ashamed. But trust me, I will make a clean breast of everything.’ These words may have been ominous, but somehow I did not think that he was going to confess to the theft. ‘She did something once which I cannot forget. I keep telling myself that it happened so long ago that it should not matter any more, but it does. You know what Pascal said: Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.’
‘Pascale Cottard?’ I asked foolishly.
‘No,’ Morton laughed, ‘Blaise Pascal.’ I felt stupid as I suddenly remembered the saying:
The heart has its reasons which reason ignores.
‘Les Pensées?’ I said, in a weak attempt to make up for my lapse. Not an unreasonable one, after all I am not a Frenchwoman, nor do I claim to be a fount of erudition. He nodded.
‘Sarah had done me so many kindnesses, I couldn’t even begin to remember half of them.
But I remember a slight. It was not even one.’ I noticed that he was beginning to hesitate. I prompted him.
‘Honoré, you can trust me. If you reveal a secret to me, I will bind myself not to divulge it to anybody. Unless you’re about to tell me that you’re guilty of the theft, in which case I’d have no choice but to inform our hostess.’ Honoré burst out laughing, shaking his head merrily. No, he assured me, he may be many things, but he’s not an ingrate. I know he was an actor, but no one could have emitted such a bare-faced lie with such a clear conscience. His head was turned towards me, underlining the rapport between us. His eyes had suddenly steadied. Not one blink. His voice was firm and untrembling, but what was he ashamed of though?
‘As I said, it was many years ago. I am telling you nothing that you don’t know. If Sarah wanted a man, she had to have him. She will sleep with her best friend’s lover if she suddenly had the hots for him. She loved Rosemonde Rostand like a sister, but that did not stop her seducing the author of Cyrano de Bergerac. Mind you Rosemonde bore her no grudge. She is reported to have said that if her husband was unfaithful to her with a woman, she’d have scratched his eyes out. But when Edmond slept with Sarah Bernhardt he was sleeping with History. In Sarah’s book, people do not belong to each other. We’re all free agents.’ It occurred to me that he was not too keen to reveal the slight. I had to prompt him.
One evening after a performance of Adrienne Lecouvreur, who would turn up backstage, but Marcel Proust himself. Afflicted as he was with so many ailments, he did not often leave his bed, let alone his bedroom. Morton had every reason to believe that it was on his account that he had made an exception that night. They had recently met and the romancier had promised that he’d come watch Honoré play, some time soon. ‘Let us not go into the details,’ the actor suggested. As Marcel appeared, Honoré was over the moon. The writer had made his intentions towards him clear. He was all over him, had offered to take the young actor home, to the Boulevard Haussman where supper would be waiting. The actor had fallen madly in love with the author of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. First it was with his divine prose, then when he met him, he knew that he could never love anybody but Marcel. All the signs showed that the two of them would live a great idyll, albeit for a few months. He was a realist. He knew that the literary genius, though slowly dying of consumption, was nevertheless quite promiscuous.
‘We never aim high, we’re satisfied with crumbs,’ said the young thespian wistfully. ‘A few months was all I asked for. I would have been satisfied with a week.’ He wiped a tear before adding,
‘I’d have wallowed in the memories for the rest of my life afterwards.’
‘But it wasn’t to be?’
‘Non, Ee-reine. The Gods did not will it.’ Did I detect a faint echo of the great Coquelin?
‘Because of Sarah?’ Honoré wiped another tear. Sarah had burst in on them and made a beeline for the young author.
‘Monsieur Proust ceci, Mon p’tit Marcel cela. What an honour to drop in on me unannounced. How terribly sweet. It was as if I were transparent. And Marcel is human after all. He worshipped La Berma from afar...that’s what he calls her in his opus, but as an avowed Uranian, he had no sexual interest in her. He had been looking forward to a night of love with yours truly. I can swear to that. But I think he was flattered by the attention of France’s greatest thespian. The most famous Frenchwoman alive. He let himself be swayed by her magnetism, and of course by his love of art.’ After a short silence, he added wistfully, ‘Who wouldn’t be?’
‘You’re telling me that afterwards it wasn’t the same thing?’
‘Afterwards? Non, Ee-reine, there was no afterwards. I had a nervous breakdown. When he sent word to me later, I refused to respond. Sarah was completely unaware of the hurt she had caused me. She never apologised. Mind you, in all her other dealings with me, you could never hope to encounter greater generosity. They say she’s a money-grabber. Nothing’s further from the truth. I’ve seen
her sell a much-loved piece of jewellery – one given to her by Monsieur Haas – you know, the model for Charles Swann in Recherche- to help a friend. And she wasn’t even an intimate friend.’
Honoré regained his composure and kept saying that he was an old grudge, and had often wished he were less intense.
‘How do I define my relationship with the Divine one now? It’s love and peerless devotion.
I wouldn’t want to see a single tear in those blessed eyes of hers. To me, whatever she might have done, she will always be a saint. I love her more than myself. Twenty-three hours and fifty nine minutes every day I worship her, but there’s one minute when I loathe her. Le coeur a ses raisons...’
No, Honoré was not the guilty one.
***
‘Mademoiselle Adler,’ the portly Monique Bourgeois said in a theatrical whisper as I was walking on the beach later, a towel round my neck. ‘Grand ciel! You aren’t going for a swim in this cold?’ I did a Gallic shrug. I was learning fast.
On an impulse she said she was going to join me if that was all right. We undressed and Monique wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her shivering body for the bitter cold, hissing like a locomotive.
‘My advice to you, Monique, is that once you’ve made up your mind, you go right in. The sooner you confront the obstacle, the better it will be.’
‘Good blood. You’re right,’ she said, and with determination she turned towards the ocean. She went grrr as her body hit the water, but laughter took over readily. I followed suit. We swam for a bit, and when we came out we dried each other. We got dressed and sat on a small sand mound, exulting in the glow that overtakes the initial chill.
‘This business of Sarah’s skull,’ she shuddered as she said the word. I noticed that her eyes were directed downwards to the left, a sure sign that she was recalling images of some sort, in all likelihood the skull. ‘Are you making progress with your enquiries?’ I pursed my lips and raised my eyes upwards, hunching up my shoulders, a sign of my refusal or inability to answer. I found myself liking Monique, but it might have been because we had braved the cold together. I had better not drop my guard.
The Adventures of Irene Adler : The Irene Adler Trilogy Page 4
