The Inquisitor's Key bf-7

by Jefferson Bass

  Talking in rapid-fire French with the man who’d placed the emergency call, the officer in charge — Sergeant Henri Petitjean, according to the ID bar on his chest — divided his attention (that is to say, his piercing glare) between the shell-shocked man, Miranda, and me. The unfortunate Passerby, who had probably been anticipating a leisurely Sunday-morning café au lait and baguette, was doing a lot of exasperated shrugging and indignant pointing — the shrugging at the policeman, the pointing at us; eventually, he gave a dismissive wave of his hand and turned to leave. In a flash, the policeman spun him around, pinned him to the wall, and made it crystal clear that he was not going anywhere except to one of the courtyard café tables, where he ordered the shaken man to sit.

  The soldierly sergeant turned to us. “Monsieur et madame. Parlez-vous français?”

  I knew enough French to know that he was asking if we spoke French. I also knew enough to say, “Non, pardon. Anglais?”

  He glared at me, then turned his hawkish eyes on Miranda. “Madame?”

  Miranda gave a regretful head shake. “Only a little bit. Seulement un petit peu. Nous sommes américains.”

  “Ah. Americans. Quel dommage.” Too bad for him, or too bad for us? He touched the radio transmitter on his shoulder and spoke rapidly into it. I could make out almost nothing of what he said, except for French-sounding versions of homicide and crucifixion. Amid the hissing, crackling reply, I heard “Crucifixion?” He touched the transmitter again and repeated it. “Oui, crucifixion.” The same question came over his receiver again. This time he practically smashed the transmit button. “Oui! Crucifixion, crucifixion, cru-ci-FIX-ion!” This time his meaning got through; I heard the dispatcher’s “Merde! Mon Dieu!”—“Shit! My God!”—and then, after a pause, what sounded like the English words “day cart.” This response seemed to satisfy the officer. He grunted by way of a sign-off and then led Miranda and me to another of the café tables, some distance from the glowering Frenchman whose morning we’d ruined, and motioned for us to sit. He posted one of the officers beside the French pedestrian and posted another, the vomiter, near our table. The queasy young man had regained his composure by now, but his face remained ashen, and the muscle at the corner of his right eye was pulsing as if it were hooked to an electrode.

  It wasn’t long before a forensic team — equipped with white biohazard suits, cameras, and evidence kits — arrived and entered the chapel. Not far behind them came a plainclothes officer, whom I took to be a detective. He looked to be about my age; his wavy black hair was going to gray, as were his bushy, tufted eyebrows. His brown eyes were deeply recessed beneath a prominent brow ridge. His complexion was the slightly sallow olive tone of Mediterranean peoples, and under his eyes were deep lines and dark circles, almost blue-black. His shirt cuffs and collar were frayed, his black pants had faded to a dull charcoal, and his shoes were badly scuffed.

  The detective and the uniformed sergeant conferred in low tones beside the chapel door; at one point the detective paused and leaned backward, peering around the sergeant to study Miranda and me, then straightened and continued the murmured conversation. After several minutes of this, he and the officer entered the chapel.

  The detective spoke briefly with the disgruntled civilian who’d gotten roped into the drama, then allowed the man to leave. Casting a final baleful glance in our direction, the man ducked under the crime-scene tape and vanished.

  “Good morning,” said the detective, nodding first at Miranda, then at me. “You two found the body, yes? I need to ask you some questions.” His English was crisp and fluent, with a hint of a British accent. “My name is Inspector René Descartes.” He took out a notepad and flipped it open, then uncapped a pen and began to write.

  “Like the philosopher?” asked Miranda. “The Descartes who said, ‘I think, therefore I am’?”

  “Yes, that one. We are related — by blood, or by wishful thinking. ‘I think I am a relative, therefore I am a relative.’” Miranda managed a slight, strained smile before he continued. “Tell me what happened. But first, your names, and spell them, please.” We did; his eyebrows lifted slightly when Miranda said “Lovelady,” but he didn’t comment. “You’re both Americans?” We nodded. “Are you traveling together?”

  “Yes,” said Miranda, at the very moment that I said, “No.” The pen hovered above the notepad. Descartes looked up, his gaze lighting first on Miranda, then swiveling to me, before returning to Miranda again. She flushed slightly. “We’re working together,” she explained.

  “But she got here before I did,” I added.

  “I see,” he said in a neutral tone. “Mr….” He checked his notepad. “Mr. Brockton, would you please wait here? Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.” Sure, I thought. Comfortable — no problem. Stefan’s dead, and this guy’s bound to consider us suspects. Very comfortable. “Mademoiselle Lovelady, would you come with me, please?”

  He led her to a table in the farthest corner of the courtyard, offering her a chair before taking one himself. He drew his chair close to hers, possibly so they could speak more privately but more likely so she would feel off balance, unsettled by the intrusion into her personal space — a favorite interrogation technique, I knew, of homicide investigators.

  He interviewed Miranda for what seemed an eternity — more than an hour, in any case, for I’m sure I heard a bell toll eleven, and later counted twelve. It tolls for thee, Stefan, I thought. Finally he brought Miranda back and motioned for me to follow him. Miranda’s eyes were wet and red rimmed. I offered her my handkerchief, but she shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze, then followed the inspector to the distant corner.

  “I’m sorry this takes so long,” he began. “As you can imagine, this is a very unusual crime. And a very disturbing one.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “A good murder investigation takes time.”

  He smiled. “Mademoiselle tells me you know a lot about murder investigations. In fact, I am somewhat familiar with your career. One of our big French newspapers, Le Monde, published a story about the Body Farm a few years ago. I still have it in my files. Very interesting work. Someday, if I visit the United States, I would like to see your research facility.”

  “Certainly.” I took out my wallet and fished out a business card. “Just let us know when you’re coming.” He took the card and read the front, then flipped it over and studied the back. “What are these lines and markings? It looks like a small measuring scale.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “If I’m taking pictures at a death scene and need to show the size of a bone, I’ve always got one of these, even if I don’t have a ruler or tape measure.”

  He nodded. “Very useful. Very clever.” He flipped a page in the notebook, which was half filled now with notes from his interview of Miranda. “So, please, Dr. Brockton”—I took it as a good sign that he’d promoted me from “Mr.” to “Dr.”—“tell me about the events of this morning. Start at the beginning. Take all the time you need.”

  He took copious notes as I talked, interrupting occasionally to ask me to slow down a bit, or to reword a phrase he didn’t fully understand, or to clarify a point.

  He bore down on me when I told how Miranda and I had looked around Stefan’s apartment. “Why did you go there?”

  “We were looking for him. He wasn’t at the palace; we hoped we’d find him at home.”

  “Why didn’t you just call him?”

  “We did. Many times. I’m surprised Miranda didn’t tell you that.” His eyes flickered almost imperceptibly, which I took to mean that she had told him, and that he was simply cross-checking our stories. “We also went to the police station, but we couldn’t get in. There’s probably a security-camera video of us knocking on the door, right?” He shrugged. “Anyhow, by that time, we were really worried about him. Looking at his apartment seemed like the only thing we could do.”

  “But you went inside the apartment. I have to sa
y, that was unfortunate. That looks suspicious. Why did you do that?”

  “We were worried,” I repeated, “and the door was open. We were afraid he might be sick, or hurt.”

  “Did he seem unhealthy to you, the last time you saw him?”

  “No. But people get sick without warning; people die without warning. I had a friend who was forty-six — my friend Tim, a strong, athletic guy — who had a stroke one day out of the blue, dropped dead instantly. I knew a healthy young woman, a television reporter, who dropped dead in the middle of her nightly news broadcast. Another friend of mine slipped and hit her head on the bathroom floor; she lay there for two days before she came out of her coma and managed to call an ambulance.”

  “Remind me not to become your friend,” he said. “It sounds very bad for the health.”

  “Touché, Inspector.” I smiled. “The point is, unexpected things happen. If we’d known Stefan was dead, we wouldn’t have gone in. And if we were his killers, we certainly wouldn’t have left fingerprints on the doors and light switches and who knows where else. I know better than to contaminate a crime scene, Inspector. We just didn’t know it was a crime scene.”

  He wasted no time pouncing on that. “What makes you say that the apartment is a crime scene?”

  “Drawers were dumped out, Inspector. Furniture was cut open. If it’s not a crime scene, it’s the messiest apartment in France. Before we saw his apartment, I was just worried; after we saw it, I was sure something bad had happened. That’s when I thought to come here, to the chapel. If we hadn’t gone into his apartment, the murder wouldn’t even have been discovered yet.”

  He was still frowning. “But why did you think to come here, to the Templar chapel? How did you know he would be here?”

  “I didn’t know he’d be here. But I thought it was worth looking.”

  “Why? What made you think that?”

  “I’m not sure. For one thing, I suppose this was the only place that I knew Stefan had some sort of…connection to, besides his apartment and the Palace of the Popes. But that’s not all. This place seemed important to him for some reason. He brought me here one night last week — I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a walk. It was very late — almost midnight — but I ran into Stefan on the street. We walked around for a while, and he brought me here, showed me the chapel, took me inside. He had a key; said he was friends with the owner. It was strange, though. Almost like he was letting me in on a secret.”

  “What secret, Dr. Brockton?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I knew. I just got the feeling that this place was more than an old building to Stefan.” I picked at my memories and intuitions a bit deeper. “There was something about the way he was behaving,” I finally managed. “When we first got here, it was almost like he was checking the place out — he looked up and down the street very carefully before he led me through the passageway, and he checked the courtyard before we went inside the chapel.” And then, when we left, he sent me away, but he stayed behind. It was almost like he was eager to get rid of me.” A realization finally crystallized. “Almost like he was expecting someone else to show up very soon.”

  He leaned forward, his gaze intensifying. “Any idea who he was expecting?”

  “None. Sorry. I wish I did.”

  He leaned back, obviously disappointed, and studied his notes. Then he rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath, followed by another. “Inspector? Are you okay?”

  He gave his head a shake, blinked hard, and raised his bushy eyebrows high, as if to open his eyes as wide as possible. “I’m just a little tired,” he said. “I put in some long hours on a case recently. An art forger who committed suicide.” He suppressed a yawn. “Tell me about Mademoiselle Lovelady.”

  The request caught me by surprise. “Miranda? She’s great. Smart as hell. Hardworking. Strong-minded. Funny. Spunky.”

  “Spunky? What is spunky?”

  “It’s slang. It means feisty. Brave. Tough.”

  “Ah. In French, we say plein de cran. ‘Full of guts.’”

  “Oh, yes, gutsy. Miranda is very gutsy.”

  “Do you trust her, this gutsy assistant?”

  “Miranda? Completely. I’d trust her with my life.”

  Descartes flipped back through his notes, twirling his pen between his fingers. He had just looked up to ask another question when his cell phone rang. Excusing himself, he stood up and walked toward the mouth of the passageway to take the call. He was gone for several minutes. When he returned, he sat, looked me square in the eyes, and said, “Your assistant — what was her relationship with Monsieur Beauvoir?”

  The question caught me off guard, and Descartes would have to have been blind not to notice. “Fine, I think. He asked her to come help with this excavation, so he clearly thought well of her. She came, so I assume she thought well of him, too.”

  “Do you know why they thought so well of one another? And for how long a time?” Crap, I thought, not this.

  “I think they met six or eight years ago. When she was an undergraduate student. Miranda was on a dig in Guatemala that Stefan organized.”

  He chewed absentmindedly on the end of a fingernail, still eyeing me closely. “Did you know that they were lovers?”

  There, the shoe had dropped; I had known that question was coming. “It wasn’t any of my business if they had a personal relationship.”

  He shrugged. “But did you know?”

  “Yes. She told me shortly after I got here. She felt awkward about it.”

  “Awkward about telling you? Or awkward about being lovers with him?”

  “Both, I guess. But it was very brief, and it happened a long time ago, Inspector. I think lovers is too strong a word. It was a quick fling at a field school. It happens all the time.”

  “All the time?” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly.

  I flushed at the innuendo. “Not all the time, but it happens. It doesn’t necessarily mean very much. I thought the French were very tolerant about casual love affairs.”

  “Sometimes. Not when one of the lovers ends up crucified. Tell me, was she angry with Monsieur Beauvoir? Resentful?”

  “Resentful? About what?”

  “About anything. About what happened in Guatemala. About what happened — or what didn’t happen — in Avignon.” Good God, did he actually think Miranda might have nailed Stefan to that beam?

  “Look, Inspector, Miranda and I have worked together for six years. I never heard her mention this guy until she told me she was coming here. If she were burning with rage for years — or longing for love — I think I’d have heard about it.”

  He shrugged again, and I found the gesture annoying; it might simply mean “Who knows?” but it might also mean “What the hell do you know?” “Do you know where Mademoiselle Lovelady was last night?”

  I returned the shrug. “I assume she was in her hotel room.”

  “And do you know where Monsieur Beauvoir was last night?”

  I flung up my hands in exasperation. “Well, if I were guessing,” I said sarcastically, “which is all I can do, I’d guess that for the first part of the night, he was in his apartment, and for the rest of the night, he was here in the chapel dying.”

  He smiled slightly, ironically. “Actually, he was in Mademoiselle Lovelady’s hotel room until almost midnight.” His words felt like a punch in the gut. He studied my reaction. “You seem surprised.”

  “I…Yes. I’m surprised. But as I said, whatever personal relationship they might have had — or might not have had — it’s none of my business.”

  “I disagree, Dr. Brockton. Normally, no. But now — with Monsieur Beauvoir hanging there in the chapel — I think it is very much your business. You are involved, in some way, with a murder. You are swept up in the tide of events. You do not have the luxury of detachment.”

  His words were confirmed by a sinking feeling in my gut. Somehow, for reasons I could not begin to fathom, I had turned a fateful corner in t
he labyrinthine streets of Avignon, and I wasn’t at all sure I could find my way out of the maze again.

  “Excuse me? Dr. Brockton?” His voice sounded faraway; I felt as if I were swimming up from deep water to reach it, and I had the impression he’d called my name more than once.

  “I’m sorry. Yes?”

  “Dr. Brockton, where were you last night?”

  “Me?” I stared at him in astonishment. He nodded. “I was in my hotel room.”

  “The same hotel as mademoiselle?”

  “No. A different one. A little inn near the ramparts. It’s called Lumani.”

  “Ah, oui, Lumani. You found a beautiful place to stay.”

  “Actually, Stefan found it for me. I think he knows the owners. Knew the owners.”

  “Docteur, were you angry with Monsieur Beauvoir?”

  “Why on earth would I be angry with him?”

  “Perhaps you were jealous of his attentions to your assistant.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “I wasn’t. But even if I was, I certainly wouldn’t kill anyone over something like that. Besides, I didn’t even know that he went to see Miranda last night until you told me just now.”

  “Perhaps you were angry that he tricked you into coming to Avignon. That was very manipulative, non?”

  “It was, and I didn’t like it. But once I found out the reason for the trick, I understood.”

  “And what, exactly, was the reason for this trick?”

  “Didn’t Miranda explain it to you?”

  “She did give me her explanation. Now I’m asking for your explanation.”

  “She and Stefan had uncovered some very old bones in the Palace of the Popes,” I said. “The ossuary — the bone box — was engraved with an inscription that might cause big news.” He said nothing; simply waited. “The inscription claimed that the ossuary contained the bones of Jesus Christ. If that inscription proves to be true, this is the most sensational find of the past two thousand years.”

  He stopped writing. “But how can you prove whether they are real or fake? You can’t use DNA testing, I think. Because you don’t have DNA from Jesus to compare.”