Lake Isle

by Nicolas Freeling

  Sarcasm. She wasn’t impressed, and she wasn’t curious: the cops would have to do better.

  ‘An officer is it, and judges of instruction, and enquiries into Madame Lipschitz and all: dies irae.’ Sniggering, little black eye agleam, pecking at him as though he were a sunflower-seed.

  ‘Were they kings of Ireland?’

  ‘Thomond, man. Ancient province, like Maine or Anjou. Now distressed and dismembered.’

  ‘You speak French very well.’

  ‘Oh, stop bullshitting, man.’

  He nearly said Ook, as though struck in the stomach by Bishop Odo’s massive club, to be observed in the Bayeux Tapestry. All these Irish saints – the poor old French had indeed had a hard time of it in the ninth century!

  ‘How d’you come to hear of me, anyhow?’

  ‘Monsieur Barde, I think it was.’

  ‘Barde, is it? No wonder you thought I was a sculptor! What would he know, outside his sad little nursery-maid existence? He gave you my name. A damnable liberty he took there. All right, I knew Sabine, and Vincent too. Good man, that. Silly woman, our poor Sabine. Merit in her verses. She will have died with God beside her.’

  ‘That,’ said Castang, ‘must afford us all considerable comfort. My job is to find out who else was present.’

  He’d succeeded in putting an end to the island of saints-and-scholars! Let the Irish civilise the rest of Europe by all means, but not stop him from working.

  ‘Mademoiselle Aubrienne – don’t bother correcting my pronunciation – I’ve been told that Madame Lipschitz went in for pious works. I mean no mockery. Perhaps she exaggerated. I attach little importance to it, but there’s a suggestion that she went in for fakirs and faith-healers and saw miracles. Gone all mystic, maybe. Maybe you’re a good person to ask whether there’s any truth in that.’

  She was sober and serious at once.

  ‘Ah. Yes, I am the right person. I think I can answer you. I think I might know too who implanted that suggestion, and why.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The children, maybe? Always frightened, you see, that Sabine’s credulity would be abused,’ with fierce sarcasm.

  ‘Go on, would you.’

  ‘Give me a second to collect myself. I’ll try and make a good witness for you. You might bear in mind that I don’t tell lies. I don’t steal, either, or read other people’s letters. I suppose I’m talkative,’ pathetically, ‘but I’m not malicious.’

  He sat stolid. The tea was very nasty, but it put blood into one. What was that stuff the Irish drank? – Guinness: what would that be like? She was thinking.

  ‘That’s not enough, is it? Look, I’m not a fool or a fanatic. I don’t like miracle-workers any more than you do.

  ‘I wasn’t close friends with Sabine Lipschitz; never have been. But I knew her well. I was, for many years, close friends with Vincent.’

  Wasn’t this what he wanted? Somebody who would bring Sabine back to life? A chattery little body, perhaps. But if an artist, could she draw Sabine for him?

  ‘He used to come in, sitting where you are. And in the workshop. One of the few people I’d let in, because he sat still, said nothing.

  ‘Here he talked. I was in his confidence. A man will confide in unlikely people. I imagine I need not tell you that.

  ‘I was in the house, fairly often. He was fond of little dinner parties. Sabine was not an especially good cook, but there were things she did nicely; she made a good hostess, oddly enough.

  ‘Bonds between us there were too. She was a craftsman in her profession, and so am I. We had no close intimacy, but we respected – trusted too – one another.

  ‘A bond of affection too for Vincent. A good man. Led a sad and disappointed life; died with a sense of inadequacy, shortcoming. Undeserved… No, I’ll tell you no more of that; that’s not your business. What perhaps is, though, Sabine was conscious that much of this sense of futility was her fault. She carried a bitter load of remorse. She was a tightly knit, obstinate woman. Fought battles with herself.

  ‘You could say too we shared our faith in our religion. Meant much to both of us.

  ‘In these years since Vincent’s death I’ve seen much less of her. We drifted apart too for other reasons I’ll come to. However, to finish with the religious maniacs.

  ‘Simple people – like Sabine – who believe, fervently, show it in emotional gushing language, often. They have antiquated silly little traditions and observances. And one finds people who turn this simple faith to profit. It has always been so. Anyone with a scrap of wisdom takes that lightly.

  ‘Sabine had no truck with charlatans. She had taste, brains, judgement. But the simple – the poor in heart – she felt kinship for.

  ‘We’ll leave the miracles and apparitions aside. Sabine was convinced of them. The Cardinal isn’t. We owe him obedience. He doesn’t like them, and neither do I, since they attract the silly, the credulous, and also the sharks. Is that enough?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sabine… Some years ago, twenty or thereabouts, Sabine had a deep movement of the heart. Guts. Nervous system. I don’t know what the quack calls it. To make no bones about it she’d been married years and never had a child, despite prayers, pilgrimages, and charms, and astrologers – funny, deep, peasant woman. It ate deeply into her. Because of the notion that she had never come up to the husband, who thought himself, good silly man, such a long way below her. So she decided to adopt a child, and did. Poor foolish Sabine, and my bright sensitive Vincent – never saw what a dangerous thing they were doing.’

  ‘Did anybody?’ asked Castang. He was interested. Not so much professionally as personally. He’d no children either.

  ‘Not me, in any case. Vincent spoke of all sorts of things, and when you knew him you could translate the code, but of this never. Superstition, no doubt. Never speak of what is close to the heart – very primitive. Like these Malayan peasants who think if you say “tiger” the dreadful beast will come for you.

  ‘He didn’t speak of it till much later, when it was too late, and too much to hold down. Convinced that he had failed in this as in all else. “What have I done?” – over and over. Killed him, of course,’ said Miss O’Brien, briskly.

  ‘But I’m rambling: Sabine – now to her dying breath she hadn’t ever understood. A trap with hard teeth. Thought it a good and charitable action to take a child from an orphanage and bring it up as one’s own. Lavishing every care and skill on it, pouring out all the love in one’s heart.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ asked Castang, wondering whether he was a sentimentalist.

  ‘The moment you tell yourself it is, it certainly is not,’ tart. ‘Do it unselfconsciously, then yes. One more won’t cost much. From simple goodness. Not beastly charity. Or do it professionally, like a nun. For God, not for her. Everyday work, devotion, being trained for that. Loving them and mothering them then is all right.’

  She’d given this thought. Castang felt respect for the ridiculous little woman.

  ‘Taking them to fill a gap, and then expecting them to be grateful – hopeless; fatal.’

  ‘That’s clear enough.’

  ‘Ought to be. In your profession how many horrors do you see caused by children who’ve had too little affection – or too much? Or the wrong sort?’

  ‘You’re a good witness,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘Garrulous,’ said the old girl, bleakly. ‘And now you’d like a drink. I’ve nothing much. The drop of paddy’s fearfully dear here. I’ve no opinion of that stuff the supermarket calls Scotch.’

  And so say all of us, and Monsieur Barde. We won’t mention him though; he’s supermarket-scotch in her eyes.

  What was the old dear hunting for now, like an Aberdeen terrier halfway down a rabbit hole?

  ‘Bottle of beer somewhere,’ muffled, backing out of cupboards. ‘The workshop can be hot and one hasn’t the time for tea.’

  Castang found it a nice change from Mum and her glass of port.

  ‘
Go on.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering whether I should. There; nothing is ever gained by not trusting people. Your face, by the way, doesn’t really do.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ a bit dashed. He’d always thought you could buy a second-hand car from that face, without too many fears.

  ‘Sorry; stupidly put. I have the habit of looking at faces in terms of models. Saints, you know. Nowadays one doesn’t have Jeromes and Sebastians from Correggio – they have to be modern.’

  A pity. He’d be quite flattered, to be a saint in a window. Peaceful existence, too.

  ‘Joan of Arc in a tank with a beret?’

  ‘No no, that’s altogether bad and sentimental. You might do in a Crucifixion. There’s a look of someone who does his job. Roman soldier. Guard to protect unpopular tax-collectors.’

  ‘I’m holding nails, and it doesn’t matter whether or not I believe it’s a false prophet?’

  ‘That, yes, but I absolve you from holding nails. An executioner’s assistant is a very low-grade sort of person. Condemned criminals, you know, who have purchased their freedom at an ignoble price. You’re holding back morbid onlookers, the kind that flock to aeroplane crashes.’

  ‘Not so bad,’ said Castang. ‘Prevention of conduct likely to occasion a breach of the peace.’

  ‘But I’m also concerned with seeing justice done. Towards a dead woman.’

  ‘In spite of the face, and in spite of the job, so am I. We don’t go in for that much these days: it’s out of fashion, like public executions. Justice being done might disturb public tranquillity.’

  ‘When was it, the last one in public?’

  ‘In 1939, in Versailles. The public behaved badly. There were breaches of the peace. It wasn’t a very good year, taken all round.’

  The bird hopped on the branch, pecking eagerly at fruit.

  ‘I want you to do a little better, you know, than repressing idle gossip.’

  ‘Miss Aubrienne,’ said Castang, ‘I’m not far advanced, in this enquiry. I feel pretty convinced of one thing. If I can understand this woman, and what went on in her mind, I’ll get somewhere with it. So I listen to you. I hope on the whole, patiently.’

  She looked at him for some time. The realisation was slowly dawning that she too was a curious onlooker, held back by his arm.

  ‘Let’s go on, shall we?’ said Castang.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘The child,’ said Miss O’Brien soberly, ‘came into the lives of two people, who were advancing into comfortable middle age, and stiffened in their little ways. The movement, the natural turbulence of a child, made for strain.

  ‘Picture Vincent, a man accustomed to quiet and unbroken concentration. A pot, broken by medieval carelessness and vandalism, would not worry him. That people would empty their dustbins for a hundred years on top of a mosaic pavement seemed to him natural. But the breakage of today’s mustard pot threw him into a frenzy.

  ‘Sabine was not perturbed in the same way. She had small interest in housekeeping, and few precise notions of time and place. And she enjoyed playing Mama; this new fascinating game of torn trousers and toothbrushes. It was exciting and demanding: she could fuss about compensations and deprivations. I think myself she had a fine time. That’s not meant to sound spiteful.

  ‘I’m not myself much of a witness to those years. I saw relatively little of her, and she was so wrapped up in the child that she thought of little else. Much of this comes from a friend now dead.’

  ‘François-Xavier Martigues, Poet of Our Region?’

  ‘Yes. Who told you?’

  ‘The notary. Sorry.’

  ‘Dear old man. Responsible though for foolishness. He encouraged them. Thought it just the thing for Sabine; deepen and enrich. He was thinking, you see, of literature.

  ‘I was foolish and tactless myself. I told them I disagreed, in a rigid, opinionated manner. I told them it was blah. Full of good sense and righteousness. I did harm: we had a foolish quarrel.

  ‘It’s that, now, which I have to try to repair. How silly intelligent women can be – myself and Sabine both. If I were foolish enough to try to apportion blame in percentages, like a magistrate, I would judge myself harshly.

  ‘My sympathies were with Vincent. He was in poor health. He’d been imprisoned by Germans, in two wars. Coping with an adolescent boy takes youth and energy, and he had neither. And his character needed care and consolation, to be made much of by women. Try and see him, pottering among his little ethnographic studies, doing good work. Living in hope of making an important discovery, finding a really outstanding archaeological piece. A fine early statue, say.’

  ‘And never finding it.’

  ‘That’s correct. Say that the child became the early statue. Into it went all his hopes. He was terribly proud of it, and continually disappointed.

  ‘Tragic, perhaps, that the child showed much promise. Instead of being a stolid little peasant he was a bright, nervous boy, who did all sorts of bizarre things. And they hung, and doted. I’ve one or two old drawings.’

  She darted over to a corner, pulled out an old portfolio, undid faded ribbons, pulled out a sheet.

  ‘As a witness, it’s passable. Not too bad a drawing, and shows a certain likeness too.’

  Red chalk. Recognisable the half-starved look, hangdog and drowned-rat. Also the fine mouth, the high beautiful forehead. But already the suspicious glare.

  ‘Judas as a teenager?’ he suggested.

  ‘Not bad. He’s the most interesting, isn’t he? Apostles are dull. But the traitor – it’s a truism. A fatal intelligence, and perhaps a passion for politics. Perhaps he decided that Christ was a traitor.

  ‘But poor Sabine saw only sentimentality. Infant Francis of Assisi collecting butterflies. I sketched what I saw. Much good, some bad. Character at war with itself. Much would depend,’ with emphasis, ‘on the hands he fell into.’

  Sabine. And then Janet.

  Don’t let’s have any imaginative reconstructions, thought the cop. As Vera says, pictures which tell little anecdotes aren’t worth much. Stick to realities. Sabine hit on the head. The Rue d’Aboukir. A harsh smell of dust and rags. Shots fired, missing him by precious little.

  It didn’t take much to kill people. A momentary loss of reason. What’s that? Exasperated nerves, a scrap of bad luck, a momentary failure of discipline. Or self-defence. Two cops had fired at the man in the Rue d’Aboukir. They’d hit no one. If they had, everybody would have been pleased. One less to cause trouble and extra work.

  Who had killed Sabine? And had it been in self-defence? Had Sabine committed crimes or felonies ‘against the person’?

  There are only two crimes, against the person.

  Killing. Subdivisions: mutilation, torture, rape, wounding.

  And stealing. Subdivisions: taking as hostage, kidnapping, imprisoning, enslaving.

  Everything else is just a misdemeanour.

  To understand Sabine dead one had to see Sabine alive. Anything else was a police photograph of a corpse, with a touch of glycerine on the eyes to make them shine.

  Sabine as a saint. The police detested saints. Crucifixions were bad enough. Cross-examining disciples even worse.

  ‘What d’you mean he went up in the sky? You on heroin or something? Roll your sleeves up; let’s have a look at your forearms.’

  Sabine as the dim-witted pious female, intoxicated by superstition. That might suit Mum’s book: it was hardly the impression he’d received.

  Sabine as a well-intentioned criminal. Well well, avoid literature.

  ‘I shouldn’t have shown you that,’ said the old dear. ‘This isn’t the Rogues’ Gallery: give it back, please.’

  She thought the boy had killed Sabine. Not that she’d say so. And not that he’d ask!

  A bit literary. A cop disliked that. A bit too much like the Massacre in the Rue Transnonain, Daumier’s too-well-known political and literary picture, slanted and sentimental, of a piece of bad police work.

&nbs
p; One of Vera’s stories. The painter Renoir, sketching the actress Hortense Schneider. The writer Zola looking on, gassing away interminably about social justice. Renoir fed-up.

  ‘This is all very boring. Show us your tits, Schneider.’

  Example, said Castang, of good police work.

  He lit a cigarette and finished his beer.

  ‘We were talking about Vincent,’ he said.

  ‘Vincent… He looked forward to retiring. Had it all planned. No more dust, or smells of municipal cheeseparing. That’s a nice house. Sabine’s fault that it never became properly habitable. He was going to cultivate that lovely great garden. And there’d be a bottle of white wine down the well, to cool, and it would all be the Lake Isle of Innisfree.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Oh, literature. Never mind. A poem. Yeats – Irish poet. A poor thing. Nine bean-rows would he have there, and a hive for the honey-bee. You see? – stupid Vincent! And stupid Sabine. A toshy poem, in my opinion, and I go and quote it: that’s the Irish for you!’

  This old girl had seen the false, feeble self-indulgence.

  ‘Left to themselves, you see, they understood art. Sabine was a good poet, Vincent a good archaeologist. But that damn boy there, like a bad imitation Renoir, playing in the garden, chasing butterflies, sunlight on the fair hair and blue eyes.

  ‘Vincent there drinking it in, mapping out in his mind the brilliant career the boy would have, so much better than his own. First prize in Latin composition.

  ‘Bright enough, of course. You’ve understood that by this time. But he didn’t want to be a literary portrait or an archaeological discovery. Unconcentrated, impatient, uncoordinated – and of course, never forget it, basically an abandoned child. Wary and suspicious as all hell. So last in the class, and damn the Latin composition.

  ‘And Vincent would come here, and drink weak tea, and mumble out a lot of tosh about how he’d read Madame Bovary for pleasure at the age of ten, while this horrible boy just read comics.

  ‘I tried to dig him out of it, but no use. Groaning away there about how idle and spineless the boy was. Wasn’t in the least spineless, but once they decided he was going to be, by God he would be.