“This Friday night until Sunday.” Angelique grinned, wiping her fingers delicately on a napkin. “I’ve even reserved a superb restaurant near the harbour for Saturday night, and during the day we can…”
“Love, love,” Jack interrupted, pushing his own plate away, “I can’t go this weekend, we’re in the middle of a murder investigation. Sorry, but you know how it is with my job. Any chance you can change the booking?”
The beautiful Frenchwoman clicked her tongue, biting her lip hard to prevent the anger and tears from spilling out, but failing miserably.
“Why can’t the famous Inspector Max Mallery take care of things for once?” she wailed. “It’s two days, Jack, that’s all, just two days!”
Before Hobbs could answer, his wife had pushed back her chair and hurried to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and leaving him feeling guilty.
A loud cry alerted Jack to the sound of his ten month-old son waking up from the disturbance and, instead of repairing the rift with Angelique, the father took one last look at the growing mound of washing-up and then diverted his attention to the little boy. The row that would inevitably follow would have to wait.
Max Mallery was lounging back against the soft pillows of his king-size bed, a glass of wine on the bedside cabinet next to him, the towel still in place over his midriff. Despite the free-flowing chatter between him and the caller, Max knew that he needed to tell her about the conversation with Ozanne.
“I’m thinking I might try to come down there again on Saturday,” the female caller trilled in French. “That workaholic husband of mine is away at a conference. I can only stay one night, but still, Max…”
Mallery took a sip of the dark red wine and swung his legs off the side of the bed, weighing up the best way to break his uncomfortable news.
“Vanessa, darling,” he told her sincerely, “you know I would love nothing more than to see you, but we have a murder investigation underway right now and I’m going to be working some crazy hours until it’s solved.”
“Come on, Max…” The woman giggled nervously, hoping that she wasn’t being given the cold shoulder. “It’s one night, that’s all. Just enough time to go out for dinner and warm your bed, then you can concentrate on your important case.”
An image of the pair caught on the traffic cameras again in Max’s sports car, flashed into the detective’s mind and he considered the scenario of yet another scathing conversation with his boss. That was the last thing he needed.
“No, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he explained softly, “I’ll be working late at night and need to give all my attention to catching the killer. Honestly, it’s just not on.”
Vanessa Chirac made a low purring sound as though she were put out, so Max continued, “If you were here, you would definitely require my full attention, wouldn’t you, my darling? Let’s wait until this is over.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I might not be able to get away for a few weeks...”
Mallery took the opportunity to flatter his lover a little bit more. “And then, when we are together, I shall spoil you. It will definitely be worth waiting for.”
A few more promises and sweet nothings later, the conversation ended, Max having failed to convey his worries to Madame Chirac and a stirring deep in his loins making sitting up uncomfortable.
Abbot Arnaud stirred in his hospital bed. He had slept deeply for most of the day and now, late into the evening, Brother Cédric had finally left the old man alone and returned to Saint Augustin’s monastery.
The abbot reached for a glass of elderflower and water, feeling parched and now rather hungry. His fingers lifted the plastic beaker carefully, trying not to spill the contents over the white starched sheets. As he turned to set the cup back down, Arnaud became aware of something on top of the covers, pressing against his right leg. With nimble fingers, he reached down and touched the object, feeling soft leather bindings and intricate lettering. He pressed the night-light, flooding the bed with a pool of yellow warmth and looked down.
“Oh, dear Lord, it cannot be!” he muttered, desperately trying to lift the Old Testament Bible into his arms. “Oh, my prayers have been answered.”
Managing to turn the ancient book over, Abbot Arnaud lifted the back cover, knowing exactly what to expect inside. His old, watery blue eyes scanned the square pocket as he slipped a trembling forefinger under the loose flap.
A dried and pressed yellow rose sat crisply in its paper hiding place, perfect as the day it was picked apart from a slight fading with the passing years. The abbot gently lifted it out and held the flower to his nose, half-expecting a blast of remembrance, or at least the aroma of a freshly picked bud in bloom. He held the rose to his heart, a trickle of tears turning into a torrent as recognition and memories flooded back.
A few minutes later, composing himself as best he could following the shock of his discovery, Arnaud flipped open the man-made pocket again, searching for the second item that he knew should be inside. Nothing. He felt again.
“Where is it then?” he murmured in French, checking the small pouch again and again. “It should be here. I know it should be inside here.”
In his city centre apartment, Jack Hobbs sat up late into the night, searching for any information that might give him the upper hand on the next day’s task. Now that the team knew what Noel Van Beek had been poisoned with, he hoped that it might narrow their search for the person who had prepared it. With his son sleeping soundly again in the next room, the red-headed detective felt fired up for the investigation ahead, despite the upset it had caused to his domestic life.
Jack remembered noticing the abundance of wild foxglove flowers growing up both sides of the driveway as they’d approached Saint Augustin’s monastery, which could perhaps mean that the murderer had chosen digitalis as a means of killing Noel Van Beek due to the convenience of its being right there on the doorstep, so to speak. However, Jack mused, the person who had extracted the natural drug from the plant must have had a good knowledge of botany.
An image of purple and pink foxgloves filled the screen of the young detective’s laptop, and a side bar with information about ‘digitalis’ sat at the bottom of the taskbar. He was determined to find a connection before retiring to bed; there were so many ‘whys’ and ‘ifs’ that remained unanswered. The inscription on Noel Van Beek’s spine had thrown him a curveball, too, but Hobbs was determined to stay focussed, working on one clue at a time to methodically narrow down the list of suspects.
He could hear Angélique listening to music on the radio in the bedroom and promised himself that within half an hour, he’d summon the effort to make the peace. It was the least he could do.
Though poisonous in large amounts, in small doses digoxin, extracted from foxgloves, can be used to manage some heart conditions, Jack read. Cases of death from digitalis poisoning are rare but they have been documented.
He took a sip of lukewarm bottled beer and opened a new window on the screen, reading about the case of a German doctor who murdered his girlfriend with digitalis poison, the detective’s eyes growing wider as he took in the method of administration. Apparently, the psychotic medic had injected the deadly dose through the woman’s rectum, causing a painful and degrading death. Jack Hobbs gave an involuntary shudder.
“Charming,” he concluded, closing the laptop down for the night and picking up the empty beer bottle. “Not a nice way to die at all. Right, then. I guess I’ve got some grovelling to do.”
He switched off the living room light and looked at the clock. It was midnight.
CHAPTER NINE – SACRED SYMBOLS
It was a few minutes past nine o’clock on Thursday morning when Inspector Mallery made his fragile way up to the Incident Room, head throbbing from copious amounts of wine the previous evening and mouth as dry as sawdust.
Jack Hobbs couldn’t help but look up at the ticking clock as his boss strode in, a quip right on the tip of his tongue, but, after a glance at Max Mallery, he thou
ght better of it and settled for the usual courteous greeting instead.
“Good morning, sir.”
Gabriella Dupont was too engrossed in a phone call to notice her boss’s presence. She was scribbling furiously as she took down notes, her silky hair falling forward as she questioned the caller.
Max headed to the communal coffee machine, so desperate for caffeine that he couldn’t face the extra few steps to his own personal office, but kept one ear on the animated phone conversation that his youngest detective was holding.
“What is it?” he asked, stifling a yawn as the blonde set down the receiver.
“Can you believe it? Somebody has been trying to dig up an old grave!” she replied, throwing her pen onto the cluttered desk and reaching for a coffee mug. “And I’ll have a white coffee, no sugar, if you’re making one, please, sir.”
Mallery grunted, took the mug and raised an eyebrow at Hobbs. “I suppose you want one too, Jacques?”
The redhead nodded and scooted his chair over to where Gabriella was pulling up a map on her computer. “Where is it?”
“At Saint Magdalena’s in Salbec,” his colleague answered, pointing to the image of a cross which represented the village church. “Just here, see?”
Max wandered over, setting the drinks on Gabriella’s desk. “That’s a job for uniformed officers. We’re busy trying to catch a murderer, remember?”
The blonde detective blew lightly on her coffee and took a sip. “And, if you remember, most of the men are at Saint Augustin’s interviewing monks with Thierry and Luc.”
“Merde,” Mallery grumbled, flopping into Luc’s empty seat. “It’s probably just, erm… what’s the word in English, Jacques? Young people, destroying things…?”
“Vandals?” Hobbs supplied.
Max clicked his fingers. “Exactement! Vandals.”
Jack looked at his watch as though to further hint that they were running late in making headway with the morning’s investigation. “We could always stop off in Salbec on the way to the monastery. Who called it in, Gabriella?”
“Father Pierre Pelletier, he’s the priest at Saint Magdalena’s.”
The inspector nodded, shoulders hunched. “Okay, okay, I guess it won’t take long. Can you look after everything here, Gabriella?”
The woman rolled her eyes around the room in an exaggerated manner. “Well, it’s going to be tough, but I think I can just about do it.”
The two occupants in the blue Ford Mondeo were silent as they travelled towards the village of Salbec, one still nursing a hangover and the other trying to remember the shortest way to reach the sparse community. Jack had been there just once, a few months before, during the Cecile Vidal murder investigation, and their destination that time had been only in the vicinity of the railway station. From what the Yorkshireman could remember, Salbec was very different to Saint Margaux, with grey buildings and a sense of gloom hanging over it, as though anyone with a sense of vitality about them had moved away. With the grey clouds in the sky that morning, it certainly felt no different.
“Do we turn right here?” Hobbs tentatively asked his boss, pointing at an upcoming fork in the road.
Mallery inclined his head slightly, before searching his jacket pockets for a packet of painkillers. “Yes, the church is at the far end of the village.”
“In there,” Jack indicated, pointing to the glove-box, “some tablets.”
Max clicked open the compartment and reached for the aspirin inside. “Always prepared, eh, Jacques?”
“I have a baby,” the detective laughed, “so naturally headaches are part and parcel of life as a parent. What is it with you? Too many beers?”
The inspector smiled faintly, popping the white pills into his mouth as they pulled up outside a grey stone church. He hadn’t intended to drink so much the previous night, but, after the conversation with Ozanne followed by his failure to explain everything to Vanessa, things had just got out of hand. Max jumped out of the car and took a deep breath, inhaling Salbec’s fresh but foggy morning air.
Pierre Pelletier was the epitome of a local parish priest in Jack’s eyes. Short in stature, with thinning grey hair and round silver-framed spectacles, the man was of average build and had a face that suggested he would rather have his head in a book than be standing outside in the cold waiting for the two policemen to arrive.
“Bonjour,” Max called as they strode up the narrow path, ancient gravestones lining either side of the frosty grass verge. “Je suis Inspecteur Mallery.”
The detective explained the situation of his English colleague, as he always felt obliged to do when they arrived at the scene of a crime, causing the priest to look Jack up and down with curiosity before he spoke.
“I can speak English, not too badly. Hello, Monsieur Hobbs.”
After a brief explanation of the man’s discovery, Mallery and Hobbs followed Father Pierre around a circular gravelled path to the rear of the building, their shoes crunching on stone as they walked. This appeared to be where the oldest of the tombs were arranged and all but one stood undisturbed in the shade of a row of enormous yew trees.
“Only this one?” Max asked, stooping down to get a closer look at where a considerable mound of earth lay piled up next to a simple stone marker.
“Yes, it really is terrible. Nothing like this has ever happened before,” the priest explained, stepping over to point at the area of fresh soil.
“If you don’t mind, Father Pierre,” Hobbs jumped in, putting out an arm, “could you keep back, just in case there are any clues, footprints or the like?”
The clergyman stopped in his tracks. “Yes, of course, I didn’t think.”
“Whose grave is this?” Mallery queried, running a hand over the green, moss-covered stone. “There’s no name.”
Pelletier pulled his coat tighter. “I have no idea without looking at the records, there are many such graves here without names. Most of them would have been pauper graves, or perhaps people without family or money to pay for a proper gravestone.”
The two detectives leaned over the gaping hole, trying to get a better view of the uncovered coffin that sat in its dark, damp burial site. A wooden casket filled most of the space, the splintered wood rotten and decaying. It was clear that the lid had been prised open and skeletal remains could be seen inside. A few traces of dark hair covered the bare skull and fragments of worn sackcloth lay over the chest bones. Empty eye sockets stared up at the men, as though the occupant of the coffin were indignant at being disturbed from his never-ending sleep.
Inspector Mallery dusted off his brown Oxford brogue shoes and turned to the priest, who was watching the detectives with great concern.
“How long would it take for you to locate the record for this particular grave?”
The little man stiffened, sniffing as cold wind blew around his prominent ears. “Just a few minutes, Inspector Mallery. All of the parish records are kept here inside the church.”
Inside the vestry was no warmer than it had been in the graveyard and Max wished he’d had the foresight to wear a thicker jacket. He glanced over at Hobbs, who was pink-faced and snug in his double-layer navy parka.
“After this, we had better go straight to Saint-Augustin’s,” he whispered, as they both watched the Salbec cleric turn pages in a huge, leather-bound volume.
Pierre Pelletier’s ears twitched slightly, the man eager to glean information about the murder scene reported in the local newspapers.
“I believe there was a death at the monastery,” the priest ventured, keeping his bespectacled eyes trained on the pages in front of him. “How terrible.”
Max ignored the comment, realising that, no matter what a man’s vocation in life, it didn’t make him immune to natural inquisitiveness. Human nature was like that, always on the look out for scandal.
Realising that the inspector wasn’t going to give any more details than had been written about in the tabloids, Pelletier let a page fall open in full, running h
is slender index finger down the side column.
“Here you are, gentlemen,” he announced presently. “The body in the grave is that of Vincente Berger. He died in 1750, aged forty-three, penniless and insane.”
“No family?” Hobbs pressed, leaning forward to read the full entry.
“Nothing written here, therefore we can presume that it was down to the parish to bear the cost of this man’s burial. Hence, no proper headstone on the grave.”
Max rubbed his head, both thinking deeply and trying to clear away the remnants of the alcohol’s after-effects.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Pelletier… Father, but it looks as though the grave is nothing more than the unfortunate result of local… vandals.”
Hobbs stood tight-lipped, pleased that his boss had picked up a new English word that day, but the clergyman, however, looked completely bewildered.
“So, what do I do about the body?” the priest cried.
“Cover it back over,” Max shouted as they made their way back towards the car, and then added under his breath, “or the poor soul will freeze in this weather.”
Pulling away from the church of Saint Magdalena’s, Jack Hobbs glanced at the surrounding houses. They were in stark contrast to the pretty cottages of Saint Margaux, the village with which he was more familiar, and most had been constructed with dark grey stone and slate roofs. The residents didn’t seem to care for their homes, either. Unlike St Margaux, there were no window-boxes or brightly painted front doors and although the gardens looked well-tended, they lacked the attention to detail that the other village’s residents had brought to their plots. Even the shops looked drab and silent, with the only noticeable activity centred around a small bar, even at this early hour.
“So, straight on from here, sir?” Jack asked, seeking direction from his boss as he put his foot on the Ford Mondeo’s accelerator.
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