Noel

by A J Griffiths-Jones

  “Yes, Jacques, just follow the road,” Max muttered, seemingly deep in thought.

  “What is it, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” Mallery offered truthfully. “It just seems unlikely to me that someone would suddenly decide to dig up a body in the middle of November.”

  “You’re right there,” Jack concurred. “It would have been freezing last night. That wind was ice-cold by the time I got home.”

  “Also, why not plunder a grave of someone important, perhaps wealthier… a person who might have something worthwhile to steal on their body?”

  Hobbs tapped his fingers on the steering-wheel. “That’s what I was thinking. It’s like something from the nineteenth century, grave-robbing.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah, like Burke and Hare, the pair who stole bodies in Edinburgh, Scotland.”

  “And what did they do with them?” Max enquired, his curiosity piqued.

  “Well, they’d sell them to doctors at the university, to experiment on.”

  The inspector screwed up his nose, feeling nauseous at the thought of two men dragging dead bodies around the city. “I hope they were paid well.”

  Hobbs shrugged and turned on the radio. “Apparently so, sir. Yes.”

  “But this was an unmarked grave,” his boss pondered, gripping the edge of his seat as Jack navigated a tight bend at speed, “and it looks like nothing was stolen, although they seem to have opened the coffin to have a good look.”

  “Must have been searching for something, gold jewellery maybe.”

  The inspector closed his eyes against a bright ray of late autumn sunshine that penetrated the windscreen. “I agree. But we don’t have time to find out what the ‘vandals’ were searching for, as we have a murder case to solve, Jacques.”

  As the detectives drove on in silence, each absorbed by their own very different thoughts, the monastery of Saint Augustin loomed closer on the horizon, a grand sandstone creation standing erect and eerily orange in the mid-morning light. So, too, purple, pink and white foxgloves began to pop up their tall heads from the hedgerow as the car whistled past, reminding the men of their task at hand and the poisonous digitalis concealed in the pretty roadside blooms.

  “Leo Buchon must have driven this way home after his night out in Salbec,” Jack observed, suddenly realising that there was only one route to the next village, “so I’m guessing he picked up Noel Van Beek somewhere along here.”

  “Good point,” Max nodded, taking note of the narrowness and seclusion of the country lane. “It would have been very dark, and we know it was pouring with rain, so probably very little traffic along here on Saturday night. The Dutchman was lucky to get a lift.”

  The refectory at Saint Augustin’s had been converted into a makeshift interview room, with uniformed officers seated at eight of the ten scrubbed wooden tables, each with a serious-looking monk sitting on the opposite side. The questioning was naturally causing a bubble of chatter, male voices echoing through the eaves as each of the brothers gave their respective answers.

  Mallery and Hobbs scanned the large room for Luc and Thierry, finding the techie standing with a clipboard as he directed monks to each of the tables and Thierry at the far end of the dining hall, having what appeared to be a very animated conversation with Brother Cédric. Both men looked frustrated.

  “Cela cause beaucoup de perturbations,” the elderly monk was complaining. “Quand cela se finira-t-il?” When will it finish?

  Jack had already made his way over and smiled widely at the Benedictine monk. “Good morning, Brother, Thierry.”

  “Brother Cédric is unhappy about the presence of so many police officers,” Thierry sighed, “but, as I’ve explained, it’s completely necessary.”

  Thierry made his excuses and left Jack to converse with the troublesome old man, much to the Yorkshireman’s amusement.

  “Murder is a very serious matter,” he commented, looking down at the monk’s hands which were continually twisting a string of wooden rosary beads. “The officers will be as quick as they can, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”

  “I really must get to the hospital to check on Abbot Arnaud,” Cédric huffed, his beady eyes drinking in the activity before him. “I am already very, very late.”

  “Just a moment, Brother Cédric,” Hobbs sighed, “has my colleague had a chance to question you about Noel Van Beek yet?”

  “Well, no,” the monk replied, shocked that it should be necessary to include him in the intrusive interrogations. “Surely there is no need. In fact, I can assure you that every one of our brothers here is innocent. They cannot possibly be involved in the young man’s death.”

  “Oh? What makes you so sure?”

  “We take a vow of purity, detective,” Brother Cédric said indignantly. “We live a pious and honest life here. It is beyond belief that one of Saint Augustin’s Order would commit such a terrible crime. The death of the stranger must have been accidental.”

  “I’m afraid not, Monsieur. According to the Coroner, Noel Van Beek was most definitely poisoned. Now, perhaps you’d take a seat for me and I’ll interview you myself. Get it over and done with, as they say.”

  Steering the old monk towards a vacant bench away from the others, Hobbs caught the inspector’s eye across the room and winked. If there was anything to be learned from Brother Cédric, Jack was certain he’d be able to wangle it out of him.

  Mallery had come to stand at Luc’s shoulder, looking down at the long list of names and assessing how many more still needed to be questioned.

  “It will take most of the day,” he told the computer whizz in French, “and every single one of them looking innocent. What a mess.”

  Luc shrugged. “At least, if we can narrow it down to a dozen, that would be something, sir.”

  Max slapped his colleague on the back. “Bonne chance.”

  “By the way,” Luc sighed, “It seems Brother Benedict made the chicken broth that was given to Noel Van Beek, so if he knew it was poisoned, the monk would hardly have tried to resuscitate the young man himself, would he?”

  Max shook his head, “No, most certainly not.”

  “I’m sorry my French isn’t up to scratch,” Jack was telling Brother Cédric, “but I’m grateful that your English is so good. So, shall we begin?”

  The monk rubbed his bald head with one liver-spotted hand. “Yes, yes, can we just get on with it? What do you need to know?”

  Hobbs flipped open his notebook and looked the older man in the eye. “I need to know your movements in the hours leading up to Noel Van Beek’s death.”

  The monk sniffed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did so, and closed his saggy lids for a moment. Jack hoped that the man hadn’t fallen asleep.

  “Well, let me see. I was at morning service, then had breakfast here in the dining room. I went to the Infirmary to check on the young man and he was sleeping, so I...”

  The monk blushed, his cheeks reddening.

  “Yes?” Jack urged, waiting patiently for the old man to continue.

  “Well, I took the opportunity to look in the man’s bag for something to contact his family with. It was Abbot Arnaud who had asked me to look…”

  Hobbs flipped his notepad over, reading the information from a few days earlier. “But, by this time Abbot Arnaud was already in hospital, correct?”

  Brother Cédric nodded. “Yes, it was in the ambulance that he asked me. In fact, he was quite upset that we hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone.”

  “The police already had Mr Van Beek’s passport, so why didn’t the abbot just wait for them to contact the family?”

  Cédric’s eyes looked weary and a small blob of spittle had formed at the corner of his mouth. “I honestly don’t know. It seemed important to Arnaud and if Our Father asks something of a Brother, we do it without question.”

  Jack sat back, stretching his legs out underneath the wooden table. “Did you find anything, Brother Cédric?”r />
  There was a pause while the old man adjusted the prayer beads in his fingers. “Yes, there was an old Holy Bible in the bag.”

  “A Holy Bible. And where is it now?”

  Another moment of silence, one more flush of pink skin. “With Abbot Arnaud.”

  Having managed to excuse himself from the refectory and Jack Hobbs’ subtle line of questioning, Brother Cédric hurried to the abbot’s office, where he found Brother Bénédict standing facing the arched window whilst Alberon sat in silence near the coffee table. The latter looked pale and weak, having not long been released from hospital.

  “So, they questioned you, too?” Alberon sighed, his French words slow and morose. “It is such a tragedy.”

  Cédric flexed the bottom of his spine and shook his head. “It is only what the police have to do, Brother Alberon. Have you both been spoken to?”

  Bénédict turned, the hem of his cassock swooshing gently on the stone floor as he did so. “Yes, naturally. But neither of us had much to tell.”

  “The English detective – Hobbs, is it? He is insisting that the young traveller was poisoned. Have you ever heard such a thing? There is surely some mistake.”

  Alberon’s eyes widened, his dark lashes beginning to flutter. “The dish that Brother Francis found! It contained something dark, do you remember?”

  The elderly men looked at one another, reluctant to answer. It was Brother Cédric who broke the silence.

  “We should have reported it straight away, it was a mistake not to. However, if we take the bowl to the police now, it will look as though we were conspiring together. What do you say we do, Brothers?”

  The pair were quiet, faces as white as ghosts. Having hidden the only piece of possible evidence, they would be in dire trouble if they were to reveal it now, yet it may also hold clues to the identity of the poor young man’s murderer.

  “I say we get rid of it,” Bénédict finally decided. “Without it, the authorities have nothing to convict anyone here. To bring it to their attention now would also cause the finger of suspicion to be pointed at us, my dear Brothers.”

  Alberon coughed, making a slight squeaking noise in his throat. “But what if there is a murderer here amongst us at Saint Augustin’s? Who could it be?”

  “Enough!” Brother Cédric snapped, raising his hands high to silence the younger man’s wittering voice. “There is no murderer here. We each have taken a vow to serve Our Lord, and that is what we do. If one of our Order has broken that vow, then he alone shall answer to God. His day of reckoning will come.”

  “But what if we, too, are in danger?” Alberon whispered, his voice quivering. “Suppose the murderer is not content with just one victim?”

  “When Abbot Arnaud is fully recovered, he can offer his services of confession. The guilty man may atone for his sin in the eyes of our Father and punishment may be handed out in accordance with our belief.”

  Two heads nodded in agreement, but an icy chill fell over the stark room. It was as though each man stood alone, regardless of the bond that connected the Order of Benedictine Brothers.

  “Why were you guys so late arriving?” Luc asked Jack, as they wandered over to where the techie had set up his laptop. “We’ve been here hours already.”

  Hobbs briefly explained about the incident at Saint Magdalena’s in Salbec.

  “Cool!” Luc grinned. “Creepy, too. Did you see a skeleton? What was it like?”

  Jack punched his colleague playfully on the arm. “Yes, the top was pulled off the coffin and it was far from cool, in fact it was quite gruesome.”

  Luc straddled the long bench with his skinny legs and typed his password into the computer, ignoring Jack’s frown.

  “Okay, so if you look here,” the detective pointed, making room for Hobbs to get closer, “I’ve made a grid of all the different areas in the monastery and keyed in the information after each monk’s interview, showing where they were in the hours leading up to Van Beek’s death.”

  Genuinely intrigued, the Yorkshireman hopped over to join Luc in front of the screen. “Almost like a game of Cluedo…”

  Luc ignored the confusing remark and pointed at a toolbar. “See, we can cross-reference each man on the graph here and hopefully, after everyone has given their statement, we’ll be able to cross-reference the locations and select the few people who were closest to the Dutchman before his death. That’s presuming that they’re all going to tell the truth!”

  “So, you’re not just a pretty face!” Hobbs joked, causing Luc to pout his lips in a feminine pose. “Well done, mate.”

  “Oui, and also, Jack, with the information we have from Coroner Theron, I can now set an almost exact time when the poison was administered, which also lessens the number of suspects further, as some of the monks were far from the infirmary at that time.”

  Jack felt the familiar buzz of genuine excitement that always stirred up inside him when a murder investigation was in progress. He looked around the room full of bodies, police officers, elderly monks, novices, and wondered who the culprit could be. If indeed it was anyone here.

  “They all look like butter wouldn’t melt…” he started, before realising that Luc wouldn’t have a clue what he was referring to. “They all look so innocent.”

  Luc pushed back from the table, satisfied that he’d got some answers and that the computer programme had done its work. “So, there are now only four names left on our list, so it has to be one of these monks that gave Noel Van Beek the poison.”

  Hobbs made an ‘O’ shape with his mouth and turned the silver laptop around to read the information. “Oh, my giddy aunt,” he muttered, causing Luc’s furrowed brow to deepen further, “I don’t bloody believe it!”

  CHAPTER TEN – THE GRIEVING GRANDMOTHER

  “She’s arrived,” Gabriella announced, putting down the phone with one hand and taking a salmon and cream cheese baguette from Jack with the other.

  “Who?” Max asked, placing a cappuccino on the young woman’s desk.

  “Oooh, this looks delicious. Have you been to Monsieur Fabron’s boulangerie?” she gushed, biting into the crunchy bread and licking a stray blob of cheese.

  “Who has arrived?” Max pressed, shaking his head as he watched the female detective drooling over her unexpected lunchtime treat.

  “Oh, sorry, Noel Van Beek’s grandmother,” Gabriella finally supplied. “She’s staying in a suite at the Intercontinental Grand Hotel.”

  Mallery made a mental note of the location and then sat down to attack his own ham salad baguette. As the team ate in silence, all eyes were trained upon the whiteboard at the front of the room. Noel Van Beek’s smiling face looked back at them, a young man in his youth, all hopes and aspirations cut short.

  “I wonder what she’s like?” Jack finally said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and then taking a sip of frothy coffee.

  “We’ll soon find out,” Max told him, checking his watch. “We’ll give Madame Van Beek an hour to settle in and then I’ll call her to arrange a meeting.”

  Gabriella and Jack nodded in unison.

  “Luc and Thierry should be back in a bit, sir,” Hobbs pointed out. “That system Luc’s created for cutting down the suspects is amazing. There were only four names left after he’d inputted all the interview data.”

  “That’s assuming that every monk told the truth,” Max told him, cynically. “It’s not unusual for murderers to also be liars, you know.”

  “That’s true, but hardly in keeping with the monks’ Holy vows, though, is it?”

  “Let’s hope that one of them decides to confess his sins very soon.”

  “What’s that funny saying you told me last week, Jack?” Gabriella giggled. “About a horse drinking water?”

  “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

  For the first time that day, Inspector Mallery burst out laughing, causing the two younger detectives to start chuckling heartily, too.

  At tw
o o’clock, Max sat in the privacy of his neat office and dialled the number for the Grand Hotel, asking to be put through to Madame Van Beek. The conversation was brief and the handsome Frenchman returned to the incident room within a few minutes, having sneaked a cigarette first.

  “Madame Van Beek wishes to go to the morgue first,” he reported to the team, “in order to identify the body. She’s still not convinced that her grandson would have travelled to this area.”

  Jack Hobbs was surprised by the comment and stood up to retrieve his jacket from the coat-stand. “Want me to drive, sir? If we’re picking her up, we won’t all fit in your two-seater car.”

  Max pondered the dilemma for a second or two. “Mmm, very true, but your old Mondeo isn’t really the best image to present to her, is it, Jacques?”

  Jack blushed, the freckles on his pale skin becoming prominent against the pink-tinged flush that was spreading across his cheeks. “It’s paid for,” he muttered.

  Mallery ignored the comment and pulled on his navy blazer, choosing appearance over practicality as he always did when meeting someone for the first time. “I’ll pick her up, and you can meet us at Paul Theron’s office, give him the ‘heads-up’, as you English would say. Okay?”

  Hobbs nodded and checked his pocket for the car keys, still smarting at the Inspector’s remark but also admitting to himself that his boss did have a valid point. He’d been driving the old Ford Mondeo for the best part of six years and it was way past its best. Maybe it was time to talk to Angélique about foregoing a holiday next year in favour of a new motor. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d agree; it was all he could do to curb his wife’s shopping addiction.

  The Intercontinental Grand Hotel Bordeaux stood as bold and majestic as its name suggested, the elongated sash windows looking out onto the most fashionable part of the city. As Max pulled up in his flashy red BMW sports car, a valet hurried over to offer his services but, on seeing the dark-haired driver place a police badge prominently on the dashboard, he quickly stepped back onto the kerb and folded his hands in front of him, but not before glancing at the doorman who was similarly interested in the inspector’s arrival.