‘Madame needs to be taken home, Inspector.’
‘Why don’t you do that, Labrousse? I’ll stay on here to explore a little, and keep Madame Tellier and the constable company. I’m sure Madame will do the honours of the property for me, won’t you, Madame Tellier?’
‘Of course, Inspector. The company will be most welcome.’
‘Remember, Madame. No alcohol. Even if he begs.’
‘Maybe just a little drink for the inspector and myself.’
Watching the gracious smile that now played over her face, Marguerite began to wonder if she had imagined all the rest.
TWENTY-TWO
Freshly whitewashed, the ancient church stood square and fortress-like beneath its black sloping roof and rounded cone of a steeple. Its stolid aspect, its heavy bells, its very lack of beauty served to remind that it had been there for longer than anyone could remember – longer than most of the small hamlet that surrounded its bulk, longer than the trees that stood bare and wintry at its side. It would undoubtedly abide whatever the whimsies of its sometimes errant, more often faithful congregation.
Or perhaps this was simply the meaning Marguerite chose to attribute to the church today. She had effectively been coerced into attendance by Olivier. In a voice that brooked no dissent, he had announced at breakfast that it really was more than time the wife of the Catholic candidate came to Mass with her husband.
She was happy enough to join him. She had an ulterior motive. She wondered, too, whether the drive in the carriage, which provided no easy escape, might offer the right moment in which to confront him directly about Gabriel.
But she wasn’t thinking very clearly about all that. She was still too deeply shaken by yesterday’s experience of the Marchand house. She hadn’t wanted to accompany Inspector Durand back there this morning. Her dreams had been filled with the slow repetition of scenes, memorised despite herself. Amandine, P’tit Ours, Madame Tellier and the monster: their words and actions played themselves over and over in her mind, as did imagined scenes of Xavier Marchand bumping down a staircase. In one version he was dead, his body unfeeling but, for some reason, already one-eyed. In another, he was screaming, his hand clinging to Danuta the Dancer, whom he pulled behind him.
For all their repetition, neither of the scenes altogether gelled. Nor did what she had witnessed in the house. There was something she wasn’t grasping. Then, too, despite Napoléon Marchand’s depths of depravity, she had felt his surprise at learning Danuta was dead was genuine.
She grappled with what he had said about Yvette as well and with the look that had passed between the doctor and Madame Tellier. She wished Martine were here to talk it over with. There was still no word from her, but she wouldn’t allow herself to imagine the worst. She trusted the girl would turn up as soon as the police had apprehended P’tit Ours and Amandine Septembre in the house next door to the Tellier’s. The youth certainly wouldn’t do Martine any harm in the Creole woman’s commanding presence.
The restless night had brandished another possibility. It had brought with it the notion that Martine, like Marguerite’s one-time protégée, Olympe, might have been troubled enough to abscond in a walking trance, a fugue state in which she was no longer aware of her surroundings or indeed who she was. She hoped this was her own ghosts and worry speaking, the after-effect of wanting to run from the corrupt monster’s presence.
Preliminary police searches, instigated by Durand in the Montoire and Vendôme area, had so far brought no sighting of Martine. Nor had she been seen by old family friends.
Marguerite had now written to the priest, Père François, who had so troubled Martine at the party, though she had little faith that she would elicit much from him in this way. He had seemed too doddery. She would go and see him as soon as she could.
Bonneted peasant women and a few old men in caps walked through the church doors. The more affluent members of the congregation were already in their pews, as was a gaggle of children from the local primary school. Marguerite allowed Olivier to lead her in. He stood very tall and straight, the astrakhan collar of his coat high and splendid over the glistening white of his shirt and his dark cravat.
The scent of incense pricked at her nostrils. The invisible organ played above and around them, its rich chords forming their own architecture as solid as the church walls. The wood shone, the pads on the kneeling stools were new, the altar was dressed with a rich cloth and the old frescoes above it had grown brighter, whether with paint or cleaning she couldn’t tell from her distance. She nodded at the fellow members of the congregation as Olivier and she took their places.
Outside the tiny family chapel in La Rochambert, this church was the closest one to the house and one of three in the rural parish over which Père Benoit presided. There he was now. Pristine, lace-encrusted white covered his black habit. He took his place in front of the altar, stretched out his arms. His Latin voice was sonorous. His eyes gleamed. His plump face was composed in a mask of goodwill. She suddenly saw him not as himself, a wily priest intent on boosting his place in the hierarchy, but as someone who incarnated a role that had passed through time and which was larger than himself, larger than his pettiness.
She stole a glance at Olivier. Was this how he saw the curé? She hadn’t understood. She had utterly missed a ritual significance that transformed the priest into someone other. He was a medium between a terrestrial and a heavenly sphere.
She watched her husband surreptitiously through the length of the Mass. With the scripture reading from Paul’s epistle to the Romans, a change came over him.
‘God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves…’ the curé intoned.
Olivier gripped the seat in front of him with such force that his knuckles turned white. His lips curled into a snarl. He was staring at Père Benoit with an intensity of hatred, like a man staring at an enemy, or worse, a friend by whom he has been utterly betrayed. Had she missed some cues? Had there been a startling row between the men? It made no sense. It was Olivier, after all, who had insisted they come here this morning.
The sermon, forcefully argued, invoked them to a purity of body and spirit. Marguerite was fascinated by the way in which everyday politics entered its core so naturally as to make the secular part and parcel of the spiritual sphere. The Republic, too, must be pure and expunge its alien elements, the curé argued, giving his congregation a political brief that seemed to come from God. Why, in their very midst they had seen what havoc debauchery could bring: a lewd gypsy dancer had invited murder, had been struck down; a man, too, a stranger in their midst.
So that was the way the Church yielded its influence, Marguerite thought: the line came down from the centre and made itself felt in the smallest congregations in the land, in the most mundane and local of community responses. She had never felt the everyday workings of churchly power quite so nearly.
She stole a glance at Olivier. The strain in his face was intense. It was as if he felt each and every one of the curé’s words was directed only at him. She thought he might leave. He didn’t. A kind of rigour, or perhaps it was fear, kept him in his place until the curé raised the host aloft.
Père Benoit did it with striking operatic gestures that underlined the importance of his task. His legs were astride, his head flung back, his shoulders straining as his arms rose to bear their sacred weight. He was holding high the body and blood of Christ, not an ordinary receptacle.
Again, it was as if she were observing the rites of an unknown tribe for the first time. She felt both distant and impressed, irreverent and admiring. Whatever the curé’s personal failings, he had a marked talent for the theatre of his profession. She could see him officiating in a grand Gothic cathedral, his robes resplendent, his sacred vessels encrusted with jewels, his voice resonant with his sacral mission.
Olivier didn’t take Communion. That surprised her. Was it that after the curé’s sermon he didn’t
feel pure enough today for the Eucharist? She certainly wasn’t. She hadn’t been to confession since her wedding. Nor was she about to bare her soul to Père Benoit, whatever her transient sense that his office made him greater than his mere person.
Yet she needed to speak to the priest alone. She followed Olivier out and waited her moment. The cold, clear air seemed to snap her husband from some painful reverie. He paused on the porch and was quickly at the centre of a small gaggle of parishioners she didn’t recognise. She stepped back into the church. As the last of the congregation trailed down the aisle, she saw Père Benoit disappear through a door on the side. She followed quickly, her shoes now setting up an echo in the empty space.
She knocked on the door and without waiting for a reply allowed herself in. Père Benoit was standing behind a large desk and looking out through a mullioned window.
‘I wanted to speak to you, Father.’
‘Oh?’
He turned towards her, his face stern with youthful self-importance.
‘Yes. I found your service … well … impressive.’
A small smile settled on his lips. He nodded once, accepting her acknowledgment as his due, yet evidently pleased.
‘Yes … Something kept troubling me, however.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. Yes. You see I visited your … is it grand-uncle, yesterday, or your cousin? Napoléon Marchand. And he said something…’ She looked down at her gloved hands, played with the soft leather of her fingertips.
‘What?’ The question was a bark.
‘I’m not sure the word is appropriate in these premises.’ Marguerite stared at the desk. The pen and inkwell stand were in gold, the leather-rimmed blotter unmarked.
‘What word?’
She shot a glance at him, touched the brim of her hat and looked down again.
‘Blackmail,’ she murmured almost beneath her breath.
‘Blackmail,’ the curé repeated. ‘Blackmail,’ his voice rose, forcing her to look up. His smooth cheeks were tinged with red.
She nodded once.
‘If that scoundrel names it blackmail for me to take just a little from his ill-gotten gains in order to pay back the Church for the amount it has given to sheltering his bastard and that whore of a mother, then so be it.’
‘Your uncle was involved with a whore?’ Marguerite murmured in a shocked tone.
‘Servant girls, whores … is there really a difference, Madame? You of all people must know that.’
‘Still, mon père, blackmail in a man of the church so close to my husband, and his campaign…’ Marguerite shook her head with regal weariness. ‘It won’t do. It will certainly not do Olivier any good.’
‘So that’s it, is it?’ He clamped his hand down on hers, imprisoning it on the desk. ‘If you think, Madame, that your husband has any chance at all without me behind him, you are hardly as intelligent as I have always estimated.’
His eyes gripped hers as fixedly as his hand still pinned down her fingers. ‘There are things I know about your husband, Madame, things which, believe me, would not sit well in the public eye.’
He had come very close. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek.
‘Matters extracted in the privacy of the confessional, I imagine. I had always been told it was a secret place.’
‘Not only in the confessional.’ His voice grew low with hissing menace. ‘If Madame places so little value on my role in exorcising her husband’s demons, if she rushes to convey to him what she has learned from an ogre of depravity, than I shall be forced to do that which I would loathe. I should be forced to expose him.’
‘I see.’ Marguerite released her hand from the one that still clenched hers. ‘Blackmail again. I suspect, Monsieur, that in shaking off what you call his demons, my poor Olivier has saddled himself with ones that are no less tractable. I may in all honesty have to say this to him. And remember, Monsieur, his demons break no laws of our Republic. I fear that yours may.’
She nodded once, brusquely, and turned on her heel before he could again lay a hand on her.
Olivier was waiting in the carriage. He didn’t ask her where she had been. He barely greeted her. He was consumed in his own thoughts.
‘Do you want to tell me what’s troubling you?’ she asked softly, once the bump and roll of the road had started.
He shook his head with abrupt emphasis.
‘Has that priest begun to blackmail you?’ The question had involuntarily come to her lips. She hadn’t intended it now. She turned to look out of the window.
His eyes were on the back of her head. She could feel them. Hot. She didn’t want to meet them.
Spring would bring all its lost beauty back to the gentle roll of the countryside. She hoped she could experience it again without seeing Napoléon Marchand rise in front of her. So much had been lost in this last year.
‘How did you know?’ Olivier’s question rose above the voices inside her and startled her out of her reverie.
She turned back to him.
His face was ravaged. ‘He made me come to you. It was him. I wouldn’t…’ His clenched knuckles grew white.
She nodded. She didn’t want to hear this. Not now. He looked like a frightened, distressed boy in need of a mother. She knew he was about to cry.
‘Let’s leave it, Olivier. Never again.’
‘No, you have to understand. He scared the young musician. Forced him away. I had become pure, he said. Cleansed of evil. Free of sin. I had to prove it. Prove it that very night.’ He paused, his eyes filling. ‘I thought he was doing it for … for God, for me … Now he humiliates me, even in public. And he insists on Paul going. He hates Paul. He has threatened…’
‘Did he talk you into keeping Gabriel, too?’
Olivier stared at her, his face taut, as if he hadn’t considered this. His handkerchief was to his face. A sob cracked his stony features.
There was one more question she wanted to put to him, but it would wait. Wait until he had pulled himself together. She sensed it would be better for her not to witness too much of his discomfiture. Olivier was not a man who wanted compassion. He hated to display weakness.
She concentrated on the window once more.
They had not quite reached the house, when Olivier called to the coachman to halt.
‘Forgive me, Marguerite. I need to walk. To think.’
She nodded. He was already out of the coach when she called after him. ‘I was planning to have a word with his superiors in any event, Olivier. Now I certainly will. I don’t think he’ll trouble you much longer.’
No sooner had the carriage pulled up at La Rochambert than Madame Solange herself came to the door and alerted her.
‘The chief inspector wants you, Madame. At the Marchand house.’
‘Why? Did he say?’
‘The messenger said something’s happened. To the Tellier woman. He needs your help.’
‘I see.’
Marguerite didn’t really see. But she knew she had to go immediately. Yet something unfinished played through her mind, something that had displaced the thrum of her rage against Olivier.
Armand, Madame Solange’s son, was running across the terrace. He had a ball in his arms and coming up behind him was the wet nurse pushing Marguerite’s old pram. The pudgy boy and the babe had become inseparable.
‘Do you think your son could run an errand for me, Solange?’
‘Of course, Madame.’
She called out and the boy puffed towards them.
‘How are you, Armand?’
‘Fine, Ma’am.’ The child was shy with her.
‘Will you do something for me?’
He nodded.
‘I dropped Monsieur by the river. I think he’ll do his usual walk. Towards where you found baby Gabriel. I’d like you to run and keep him company.’
The boy nodded.
‘And Armand. Don’t say I sent you. Just keep him company.’
‘Yes, Madame.’
>
He rushed off on his stocky legs. Marguerite watched him for a moment. The river was high because of the snow and then the driving rain. In her imagination, she saw the reeds swirling in the waters, the new depth beneath them hungry, eager to encircle a body.
Solange was staring at her, her brow furrowed. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine, Madame. And Armand will keep watch. They get on surprisingly well.’
TWENTY-THREE
The police wagon stood in front of the Marchand house, a public warning that the forces of the law had taken over. Durand opened the door to her himself. The dank gloom of the hall behind gave him an added spruceness, as if the little man with the well-trimmed moustache and business-like suit had travelled through time as well as space to arrive at this dour spot in the ancient valleys.
He didn’t mince his words. ‘Marchand is dead.’
‘What?’ Marguerite stepped backwards, only noticing now that the box with the snake in it had vanished.
Durand joined her on the porch for a moment and lowered his voice.
‘Apoplexy, probably. According to Madame, when she came to find him in the morning, he didn’t respond to her calls or questions or ministrations. He must have died in the night. Not altogether surprising perhaps, given his exertions of the last days. And the amount of alcohol that man pours down himself. I found both carafes of whisky empty and a number of half-consumed bottles of rum lying about.’
Marguerite stared at him. She hadn’t expected this. Not this. Nor could she tell from Durand’s unreadable public face how much of his account was to be taken at surface value. ‘Really, Inspector? You mean he drank himself to death! But Labrousse said specifically, he wasn’t to drink. Is Labrousse here? What does he say? And your constable?’
‘He neither heard nor saw anything. He was asleep. Asleep as only these country folk seem to manage. The sleep of the righteous,’ the inspector drawled. ‘He neither heard nor saw anything. As for Labrousse, he’s just arrived. I wanted you here, Madame la Comtesse, because I thought you might be able to help with Madame Tellier. She’s inconsolable.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She’s also in the way. She won’t keep her nose out.’
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