Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  “When exactly?”

  “Nineteen hours. Today.”

  “Impossible.”

  “He’s dead, my Lord. That is fact.”

  “But Doctor Foucaude was seeing him tomorrow, to arrange a Barium Meal test.”

  “Too late for that. It’s irrelevant, anyhow. Nothing to do with cancer.”

  “What on earth do you mean, Father?”

  “He said he’d been poisoned. Also, not so long ago, he gave you a letter. One addressed to me, at home.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Toussirot then paused, not from discomfiture but to think quickly and draw his pursuer away. “My friend has got it quite wrong. All very sad, but there it is. What has been vexing me is the vandalism at your church. First our silver is stolen, then the Blessed Virgin is despoiled. It’s quite appalling. If I had a molecule of Paganism in my body, I’d say that place of God is cursed.”

  Vidal kept the phone at arm’s length, letting him prattle on until he saw his watch.

  “There’s something else too, isn’t there?”

  Toussirot then fell silent. Let the plug out with his big toe.

  “Look, if it’ll help, I’ll come on over. You stay there.”

  “No. Moussac told me everything, loud and clear. Someone wanted him out of the way.”

  “You’re being quite hysterical and illogical, Father. And he may well have been delirious.”

  “It was his final confession, my Lord. He wouldn’t lie.”

  “May I just remind you how much time and effort I put into damage limitation on your behalf, and also how reasonable my office has been over your requests for future absence?”

  His tone different, unbending but Vidal hadn’t finished.

  “Who’s the girl he had with him?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Well, she’s gone. Vanished.” He saw the SAMU estate car creep into the Avenue Dornay, a red light spinning on its roof. The Bishop was abandoned as he directed the driver to Number 9.

  The neighbourhood began to stir with curiosity. Voyeurs hovered like dung beetles around the 2CV, and Vidal nimbly sidestepped those who asked questions. No time to go through any of Moussac’s drawers, but a quick glimpse upstairs showed portions of the heavy country furniture gaping, already disembowelled.

  “Damn.”

  A choirmaster was dead while his bishop lived. But who was lying?

  He couldn’t do everything. Besides, back in the makeshift bedroom, there was his old colleague staring a farewell, accusing him with his dead eyes.

  ***

  Vidal got the name of Moussac’s usual housekeeper from the Bar Tabac. She’d come in there once to ask if someone could wash her car – a Jeanne Laurent from Troismoulins – exact address unknown, but there were only six houses in the hamlet.

  It was the wind that finally brought tears, but couldn’t clear the pain suffusing his whole body, slowing his journey. Vidal murmured the Ave as the road opened out towards Troismoulins across low farmland razed of trees, but nothing was going to help now.

  He had his questions ready but the only living inhabitant seemed to be a dog which railed against the double gates of the Maison de Mâitre. Vidal checked the name near the bell and moved on.

  Dusk was now surreptitiously reducing everything to a dark oneness, and himself a vulnerable stranger. Each house the same, defying him. No longer the caring parish priest on a mission of mercy, here the mission of death rendered him dangerous and not one car slowed to help him out. Even the dog had disappeared. He, Father Jean-Baptiste was a pariah, and it hurt.

  He decided then to lob the ball back into Toussirot’s court, after all, the old cunt could handle it. Could float his way out of a bottomless cesspit if he cared and now was his chance. There was still the St. Sébastien concert to rehearse, and the Bishop would have to find a replacement. Urgently. Father Anselme was the only one he could think of. A lover of Conductus, but over seventy and ailing.

  Merde twice over.

  Vidal remounted his machine, the familiar and unfamiliar sharing his body. Anger and despair in equal parts as he circled round to make Lanvière by 22.00.

  XXVII

  The moon cast the town in a liverish glow and no matter where he looked, it was there, in Vidal’s wing mirror, the windows over the chemist’s shop, but worst of all the bile of God lay in his heart.

  The same cars, the same eerie silence about his house. In three leaps he was in the bedroom and tipping out the drawer on to the bed. Colette’s photo fell free of the rest, she was smiling up at him, offering him a sausage.

  How had that little fucker of hers got in? There’d been no window opened or broken, no damage anywhere. And then as he sorted through Parish details of births, marriages, and deaths, the answer dawned. Either Colette had given him her key. Told him to have a snoop, see what he could find out about his other interests, or she herself had gone in and passed the letter to her adoring boy. Whatever, Moussac was right. The Opération Judas letter had gone.

  Vidal searched again but knew it was fruitless. He felt unsteady, disorientated. There were too many other Judases already swimming in the pool. The pool of blood. And one of them wore a skirt. Then he realised he’d forgotten to get the church’s new key off the dead man.

  Crétin.

  Moonlight intensified as he reached the square, while above the steps to the Apartments Cornay where he left the bike, street lamps struggled into life.

  23.00 hours exactly. His boots mute on the mock marble. No sign of the Jew that Colette kept going on about. He’d told her not to keep calling on her and giving her things. That they’d had enough already, but after the way she’d looked at him, he’d let the matter rest. He wasn’t going to push it.

  As he reached the sixth floor he stopped and sniffed. A cigarette in the darkness, someone’s breath, then the sudden rush of escape – invisible until a light somewhere came on.

  Blackness again, too soon. He wasn’t alone.

  “Who’s there?” His diving sense still his best ally. Breezeblock grated on his skin as he braced himself. A gush of air and someone was on him, a fist hard on his mouth. His head fell strangely soft against the wall.

  He rebounded, forcing his assailant to the ground, then rode him until the cries became silence. Tessier all over again, except this creep was after something else. He felt in the pockets. Nothing but matches and a pack of Gitanes. Vidal took one, lit it, and saw a skinhead half his age, and a nostril ring bedded in blood. Saw too they were outside Colette’s door.

  “What you doing here, you arsehole?” His own head throbbing out a new rhythm. “You planning on nicking something?”

  The youth tried to run but Vidal clamped his throat.

  “Tell me, or in five seconds you’ll be cold.”

  “Jus’ obeyin’ orders.”

  “Not good enough, Monsieur. That’s insulting.”

  “’s true.”

  “Who then?”

  “Dunno.”

  Vidal eased his grip.

  “I happen to have a special friend who lives here. OK? and I take it very personally if some piece of scum starts interfering with the property.”

  “I wasn’t doing nothing. Honest to God.”

  “God doesn’t even know you exist, my young friend.” The priest lit another match and hauled the boy up for a closer look. “But I know you from somewhere – Gilles Ferey – you came just the once if I remember, to my Confirmation class last year...”

  “I’m starting again, honest...”

  “Oh, really?” Vidal sneered, letting him go. “Well that’s awfully decent of you, but I think Confession is more à-propos, don’t you? Eleven o’clock sharp. Tomorrow.”

  “I might.”

  The youth was too quick, head-butting and galloping clear down the mausoleum stairs to the safety of the street. Vidal swore after him then felt his way to the door, his thoughts all questions and no answers.

  The hum of a TV and
a cat, near or far he couldn’t tell, marking the night with fear. No other sound. Her key on his key ring next to those for the Church, was guilt in his hand. He slid the bolts behind him and drew the curtains, sealing in her perfume. Still eloquent – Je Reviens. He’d even bought her a bottle of it on her last birthday but it wasn’t amongst the other things on her dressing table. His photo in an Art Deco frame stood behind baby lotion and a snap of Bertrand as a toddler with her in some park. He picked it up but when the serious eyes made contact, put it down again.

  You poor bloody fools.

  His mind on hold as he prowled the neat orderliness. Lingerie folded between pot pourri sachets and other drawers of mementoes caught up with coloured ribbons...

  Nothing of any interest except that her parents looked remarkably composed the day before they’d gassed themselves. Nothing of his, not even in Le Bébé’s room. That particular shrine repelled him and he quickly shut the door. He should pray for them, wish them everything he would wish himself but could not, and when he saw her flowers dried and drooping in chaos, left them untouched.

  He tried Duvivier’s number. No reply, not even an answerphone. Where the Hell was he? He checked his luminous watch again, removed his gloves and helped himself to a torch from under the sink and two finger scoops of paté from the fridge. Still fresh.

  He let himself out. The cat’s racket was even worse and liable to attract attention, so he followed the din back down to the ground floor and checked all four doors. Number 3, the only one not shut tight. It opened on his boot, but before he could defend himself a rush of stinking fur hurled itself at his chest, tearing through his clothes. Vidal squeezed the cat’s neck until the thing went limp and fell away whimpering. He used both feet to finish the noise for ever then dropped it over the side.

  This flat was different from Colette’s, with the kitchen just a cubby hole off the one room. Likewise the sleeping area and bathroom with a shower that had rarely been used. Cheap soap, cheap everything, except there must have been something worth taking as darker oblongs showed up where pictures had recently been hung. Someone had got there first.

  “Anyone here?”

  A Mizrah on the wall that faced east. This must be the widow Levy’s place.

  You’re nothing special, Madame. We’re all exiles from the love of God...

  But no sign of her. The place was deserted.

  The rug rucked up under his boots as he tried all the cupboards. The best stuff had already gone, leaving dustless remains on the shelves and crumbs from packets of matzos and bourekas. No need to worry the lock on the one wardrobe – its doors fell open from the weight behind.

  Vidal pulled the body out, no heavier than a bundle of rags, smothered by dingy clothes fallen from the hooks.

  Dirty and foul smelling. Exactly. Der Ewige Jude...

  She was still warm, her furred slippers part of her feet, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her face. He covered it with a cardigan that smelt of stale lavender, and arranged the wayward arms as though in death, she stood to attention.

  Then he dribbled water on to his gloves and rubbed them clean like the surgeon in Metz had washed after the birth – his birth – before pulling the mask from his face to say he had done all he could.

  Amélia Vidal, née Cordonnier.

  The memories curdled as the water looped round the plug hole. And the blame of it all had never left him.

  “You tore her womb, son” was all his father would say whenever he’d asked, and that was his only true inheritance. He’d violated so terribly that place of safety where the boxer’s fists and diving legs had grown, where her sounds had been his sounds, her voice the softness he would never hear again and, as the waste pipe toyed with his leavings, Father Jean-Baptiste began to sob.

  XXVIII

  After the lunchless rendezvous at the Gare de l’Est, Michel Plagnol had lingered in the city, taking in Boucher’s work – his favourites – and the Fragonards in the Cognacq-Jay, then a walk down to the tree lights along the Seine where the Bateaux Mouches’ evening cruises were filling up with punters.

  He’d bought a paper and sat for an hour just watching, absorbing the minutiae of loading and unloading, the staffing arrangements and most important of all, the pick-up place where he’d be waiting.

  Then he’d dropped in on the Revue des Amazons in the Boulevard de Sebastopol with its worn velveteen seats and mini-binoculars. For two hundred francs the whole thing proved drab and disappointing. Thongs, spurred boots on lardy flesh and nipples hung with pearls and, to add insult to injury, the attentions of a tart, whom the good Lord must have put together during a bout of amnesia. No breasts, unlike Diana’s budding delights so perfectly formed in oils.

  He’d emerged unaroused and instead bought a porn magazine for later from a kiosk near the car park.

  ***

  Now back in Drancy, on home ground, he waited until the area around the apartments was clear, then slipped in through the front door. The banister felt cold and damp as though someone’s wet hand had got there first, and all the while, the blind woman’s wailing eked out from under her door.

  Give it a rest old Bellechasse, or there’ll be no wafer next time...

  Number 15a. And a few things to check over. He had to pick up a spare soutane and extra shirts. As for his almost-new white Laguna with a better silhouette than any woman, she was going to stay. Fact. Besides, the colour red in his book, was unlucky. Duvivier had a bloody nerve…

  He felt the salami still in his throat. It lodged like one of the small weights his grandmother had used when baking, but he daren’t cough in case that old crow Madame Suzelle was listening.

  The carpet had been cleaned to perfection. He’d told his mother there’d been a party, and she’d dutifully obliged with her usual thorough cleaning routine on all fours with her little birdy arms moving backwards and forwards, her hips poking through her skirt.

  He’d been a proper birth, through the usual place, not excised from her stomach like some tumour. So she’d said on the rare occasions they’d talked about such matters. But he’d wondered sometimes, looking at her, how God in his infinite wisdom had granted him safe passage into the world of light.

  Air freshener and Cif in the air. Excellent. He sniffed deeply in all corners, looking for any tell-tale smears or scuffs, but she’d even been handy with a paintbrush. “May I with grace, grant her a special Benediction,” he half prayed, keeping his ears on full alert.

  He let himself out. The stairwell was empty, no doors breathing, no lights, but suddenly someone was behind. Someone reeking of stale perfume. Madame Suzelle.

  “Well Father Jérôme, it’s good to see you back. We all thought how inspired you looked for the Holy Father at Longchamp. Very, very nice.” But she still kept her clammy hand on his, and lowered her voice in unnerving intimacy. “I’ve got to tell you, though; there’ve been some rum goings on here. To be honest I didn’t know what to do...”

  “Oh?” The salope wore too much make up. A mouth red and cracked like an old floor. But that didn’t stop it working.

  “Monsieur Cendrier said we should call the police. That you’d got immigrants shut up in there.”

  Plagnol put on his priestly face.

  “And did you?”

  “No. I said it was your property and none of our business.”

  He breathed relief and smiled.

  “Thank you, Madame. I appreciate your courtesy. If I may say so,” he kept a wary eye on the stairs in case the old busybody should appear, “Monsieur Cendrier is old and befuddled.”

  Plagnol recoiled from her puffed up skin, her thin, dyed hair and wanted to be away. “And I’d remind you that your curé is not just a man of words. God will judge us more truly on our actions. In my absence I provided shelter for, how shall I say, one of my more unfortunate fellows. He had no money, no home, as so many today. Better a Samaritan than a Levite, hein?”

  She smiled, no teeth.

  “You’re ri
ght, Father, of course. When your heart is weighed against the feather you’ll, surely to God, be spared from Damnation.”

  She’d followed him down the stairs still promising a happy and rewarding hereafter, but as he was about to leave, she grabbed him again. “I must tell you before you go. The other night there were two men fighting round your door, Father. I’d swear one was trying to break in, and the screaming was something awful. Monsieur Cendrier was round at his daughter’s, so you can imagine I was scared out of my wits, but the really strange thing is, when I said I’d call the police...”

  “Go on.” Plagnol’s pinkness had noticeably whitened.

  “The younger one shouted that was exactly what he wanted. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Plagnol’s face lay pleated by soft furrows as he tried to think.

  “Then there were these other two. About three minutes later. Bigger men.” She went on. “Didn’t like the look of them one bit, but the electricity had gone on the landing, it was difficult to see...”

  Plagnol flicked the switch.

  “Everything’s all right now, Madame Suzelle. No problem. Probably addicts. They’re everywhere, I’m afraid, these days. They may even have known him. That’s the price one pays for doing a good deed, after all remember Our Saviour. He mingled with the unfortunates of this world.”

  “What we need is a proper concièrge.” She said. “Someone to keep an eye on things.” And then the old woman asked if he fancied a pastis.

  “Most kind, Madame, but I must be away. I need to brief my replacement. Father Florian. He’s always most accommodating. Far more so than myself, I might say.”

  “Will you be staying somewhere else then, Father?” She eyed his clothes and the carrier bags.

  “My mother’s not one hundred per cent. I thought I’d go and help her out for a while.”

  “I’m not surprised, all the cleaning she does. And she’s got your old mamie. So she was telling me.”