Gypsy

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Inspector, have you no conscience? This is a matter between Mireille and her God.’

  Not ‘Mademoiselle de Sinéty’, or even simply, ‘the mademoiselle’, but Mireille. ‘Murder is never private, mon père. God is as aware of this as He is of her needs.’

  ‘How dare you?’

  He wore no ecclesiastical rings, this bishop, not even a wrist-watch. The Cross he used was of black iron. ‘My child,’ he said, turning to the victim, ‘God forgives your sins as He forgives the one who did this and the one who intrudes upon our sacred moment.’

  He closed her eyes but couldn’t stop his fingers from lingering. Tender … did he think this of the touch of her skin? wondered St-Cyr. Seen from above, the bishop’s hair was thick and grey, cut short and unruly below and around a tonsure which hid neither blemish nor birthmark but was in need of a razor.

  Bishop Henri-Baptiste Rivaille anointed her body with the oil, made certain her soul was consigned to Heaven. He would take an hour at least to do it if necessary! he swore to himself. The rings were there on her fingers, the decade with its ten projecting knobs so that she could privately say an Ave as she touched each of them and then a Pater Noster at the bezel. Had she done so in her darkest moment? he wondered.

  A gimmel ring was there too – a pair of circlets and bezels that interlocked when worn together as now, but which could be separated so that each half of a couple could wear one as a sign of true affection, but would the Sûretè who was watching him so closely understand its meaning?

  The fleurs-de-lis of twin brooches were on either side of her wounded neck and mounted high on her chest to clasp the mantle she wore beneath her over-cloak. The brooches were of champlevé, with polished cabochons of ruby, emerald and sapphire which were set in collets or mounted à jour with claws to let the light shine through them.

  On a gold chain, fastened to her girdle, there was a pendant box, of two foiled crystals mounted in silver gilt, and Rivaille knew he mustn’t let his eyes dwell on the box, knew precisely what it contained.

  A jasper ring drew him as he continued, his lips so familiar with the sacrament that his eyes and mind could search undisturbed for the slightest detail of her person.

  The dark red jasper was banded with silvery-grey magnetite and he knew it was a type of loadstone and associated with earthly love, the stone worn so as to attract another.

  But would the one from the Sûreté discover this?

  Her kirtle was of Venetian silk, the colour of the finest La Mancha saffron. Her belt was of the softest suede but he mustn’t examine it too closely, mustn’t tremble at the sight of it.

  From high on her left hip a trail of gold and silver, of precious and semiprecious stones fell to lead buttons and pearls but began with her own sign. And he knew then beyond question that she had defied God and the Church and had left a rebus among the enseignes and talismans, the cabochons and zodiacal signs. But would the detectives be able to decipher it?

  Making the sign of the Cross over her, he gave a sigh whose sadness he hoped would not be misinterpreted. He touched her hair, her lovely hair …‘My work here is done, Inspector. The sisters are to stay with her until she is released for burial.’

  ‘They may have a long wait,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘That does not matter. This one was special.’

  * The works of Thomas Mann and 841 others, including those of all British authors except for the classics. Spy novels were considered a particular threat, as were histories and novels of WW1.

  2

  In the guardroom just inside the entrance to the Palais, the smell of roasting garlic was mingled with that of smoking kerosene. Bent over the lantern, the concierge had pushed up the globe to warm a tiny repast but was still unaware of company. ‘Putain de bordel,’ he hissed at the lantern. ‘Behave yourself!’

  The skewered garlic was withdrawn, smoke continuing to pour through the lantern’s vents. Brushing away the soot as best he could, he cut the clove in half and took to rubbing it into a twenty-five-gram slice of the National bread.

  With great deliberation he finally gave up and began to finely slice the garlic with an ancient, wooden-handled knife. The bread would be grey and full of sweepings best not eaten but when one is hungry enough to eat lunch a good six hours before noon, what could be said?

  ‘It helps, doesn’t it?’ Kohler indicated the garlic, startling him. ‘It stays with you longer than most things and gives the illusion of a stomach at work.’

  The chewing stopped. The mouse-brown, unblinkered eye began to moisten.

  Salvatore Biron dragged off his beret, the garlic chips tumbling from the bread to lie sweating their juice under the flickering light. ‘Forgive me,’ he said and ducked his good eye down.

  Immediately he began to tidy things, the left hand busy, the hook that served as the right hand unoccupied. One of the anciens combattants from the last war, like Brother Matthieu, he was, in addition, a grand mutilé, an amputee. ‘Verdun,’ he muttered, not looking up. ‘Your side’s machine-gun nest. In the carelessness of my grenade attack the bunker was removed but so was my forearm, and fortunately for me, but a portion of my parties sensibles. One testicle, not the member.’

  ‘A fag?’ said Kohler, hauling them out only to see Biron shake his head and hear him mumble, ‘I have my own and because tobacco is so severely rationed, must limit myself lest the desire become too great.’

  ‘Nicht deutschfreundlich, eh?’

  Not friendly to Germans. ‘Should I be?’ he asked, looking up at last but not defiantly. ‘They removed my right leg below the knee. Another mistake of mine, but no matter.’

  The face was pinched, the hair dyed jet black, as were the eyebrows to match the layers of cloth that had been glued to the inside of the right lens of his specs.

  ‘And yet you’re here, guiding “tourists” through the Palais, seven days a week at their command.’

  ‘One has to live, and since the pension is small, we Avignonnais tend to take care of one another. The bishop has a kind heart.’

  Had Biron turned grey overnight during the war? wondered Kohler. Many of the boys had. ‘So, okay then, start telling me about the girl.’

  ‘I found the child on Monday night at about ten minutes before the curfew started.’

  At 10.50 p.m. on the twenty-fifth. The wire summoning Louis and himself to Avignon had arrived in Paris at about 8.00 a.m. on the twenty-sixth. ‘What made you go up there at that hour?’

  ‘The bishop always requires that I go through the Palais to make certain all is well and no one has remained behind to make mischief.’

  ‘But someone did.’

  ‘Our “tourists” often throw stones at the statues or yell so as to hear the echoes of their voices.’

  ‘Soldier boys will be boys. When do you usually check through?’

  Salaud! Son of a bitch! ‘After closing. At … at five thirty in the afternoon, unless, of course, there is one of the concerts. The madrigal singers perform here and when they do, la chambre de la grande audience is always full. A crowd, some of whom like to wander off, especially in summer when it’s warm outside, but cool in the darkness here.’ If the Inspector thought anything of this, he gave no indication.

  ‘What detained you from five thirty until ten minutes before the curfew?’ he asked.

  Jésus, merde alors, why must he persist? ‘A film. It’s not often I get to see one but …’

  ‘But on Monday evening you just had to go to the cinema,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Which one, eh? The film, I mean, and then, the cinema.’

  ‘The … The Grapes of Wrath.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘An American film left over from the evacuation.’

  The Occupier had moved into the Free Zone to occupy the whole of France on 11 November 1942. On the 8th the Allies, the Americans, having joined them, had landed en masse in Algeria and Morocco. On 27 November the French had scuttled the French fleet in Toulon Harbour – over seventy ships – and on 17 Dece
mber General Niehoff, now based in Lyon, had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the France-Sud military region.

  ‘The cinema?’ asked Kohler, a breath held.

  The detective would find out anyway – he had that look about him. ‘L’Odyssée de la grande illusion. It’s one of your Soldatenkino but Monsieur Simondi, the owner, turns a blind eye sometimes.’

  ‘Nur für Deutsche, eh?’

  Only for Germans. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you spent the evening watching The Grapes of Wrath.’

  ‘It’s … it’s supposed to show your soldiers what things are really like in America. Such poverty, Inspector. Such dust. Do they have the mistral there too?’

  Had there even been subtitles to tell the boys what was being said? ‘I’ll ask my partner to check into it. He’s a film buff. Simondi, did you say?’

  ‘César Simondi.’

  ‘Any connection to the victim?’

  ‘She was one of his singing students in addition to her being the group’s costumière. Still, for her there were the auditions, the constant need to prove herself when she … she was ten times better than any of the others.’

  ‘A golden voice?’

  ‘That of an angel.’

  This time the offer of a cigarette was accepted. The concierge’s fingers trembled. He coughed twice, shook some more, and finally got to inhaling the smoke.

  ‘When I found her, Inspector, there was no one with her – I swear it – but the blood was still hot. It was running down the wall and from that terrible gash in her slender throat, a throat I …’.

  ‘You what?’

  Ah Jésus! ‘I admired as much as did many others. It’s no sin, is it, for a broken man to admire a pretty girl?’ The detective would file- the remark away. He had that look about him constantly.

  ‘Did you touch anything – apart from dipping a finger?’

  ‘Touch …? I heard a sigh but it couldn’t have come from Mireille, this I know, for I’ve seen death often enough.’

  A sigh …‘At ten fifty p.m., or very close to it.’

  ‘Yes. I … I went at once to inform Brother Matthieu but couldn’t find him. I then went to see the bishop.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. Was there any sign of the murder weapon?’

  ‘The weapon? No, I … I didn’t look closely, though.’

  ‘But you definitely heard someone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A man or a woman?’

  ‘I … All right, I didn’t hang around to find out who it was.’

  ‘You went to inform the bishop. Where was he?’

  The eyeglasses were removed and the good eye wiped with a handkerchief. ‘Bishop Rivaille was out – that is what his housekeeper told me when I woke her. A dinner engagement, things to discuss. The concert on the thirtieth. The singers. This new tour they are planning – Aix, Marseille, Toulon, Aries also, I think. The bishop takes a very special interest in the madrigal singers because they also sing the Masses, the Magnificat and other canticles. Simondi is choirmaster and director of music at the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame-des-Doms.’

  Right next door to the Palais. ‘Either that girl had a key to the front entrance here or someone left the door open for her. Who has keys?’

  ‘Only the bishop, myself and Brother Matthieu. The door wouldn’t have been left open, Inspector. How could it have been? Are you certain she had a key?’

  ‘Not certain, but why doesn’t Simondi have one? If the group sings here, they must practise here.’

  ‘All right, he has one too.’

  ‘Good. Now tell me a little about our victim.’

  ‘There isn’t much to tell. She made the costumes as well as doing sewing for others. Right from when she started working for Maître Simondi, and it’s some years now, I think she had it in mind to join the singers, but theirs is a tight little group, you understand. They’re very possessive of their positions and guard them well. Jealous of one another, oh bien sûr, but fiercely united too. Simondi is very particular who he lets in and they know this and govern themselves accordingly. She had a very high voice, clear and sweet, but the Italians are fussy when it comes to Monteverdi and others of their composers, and the six-part singing places terrible demands on its participators, or so I am often told.’

  ‘Six parts.’

  ‘Three young men, two girls, and the boy, Xavier. Mademoiselle Mireille would fill in when the soprano or the shepherd boy was ill or away. She could also play the lute beautifully and sometimes was allowed to accompany them.’

  ‘And Brother Matthieu … does he have any part in looking after the group?’

  Biron’s head was tossed as if struck.

  ‘Him? Why should he have?’

  ‘I’m simply asking.’

  ‘Then the answer is he has nothing to do with the singers. Hah! He sings his own tune and makes a big noise of it, but he ran, you know. His God deserted him on the battlefield and ever since then he has been trying to find Him.’

  ‘And the shepherd boy?’

  ‘Xavier is trouble, but has a voice that enraptures the bishop.’

  ‘Just like our victim’s.’

  Biron fussed with the lantern. He clucked his tongue and muttered impatiently, ‘I really wouldn’t know, Inspector. The grenade left me deaf in one ear.’

  And blinded in that eye. ‘Come on. Let’s take a little walk. Show me through the palace. I want to get the feel of it.’

  As she must have had – was this what the detective was implying? ‘What are you looking for, Inspector?’

  ‘Reasons as to why she was here at that hour and obviously not alone.’

  The morgue was across town, near the Porte Saint-Lazare, deep in the cellars of the hospital and adjacent to ramparts that had been built in the fourteenth century. It wasn’t pleasant, thought St-Cyr. Hearing that the exemption for students was soon to be annulled and that all Frenchmen born between 1 January 1912 and 31 December 1921 would have to register for the Service de Travail Obligatoire – the forced labour in Germany – medical students had spent the night dissecting corpses to fulfil assignments before they escaped to join a maquis or resigned themselves to fate. Preservative jars yet to be removed held every imaginable organ. The younger of the sisters vomited repeatedly into a deep stone basin which had, unfortunately, been used for other things.

  ‘Sister Marie-Madeleine, I really must insist. Please get a hold of yourself!’ scolded the elder of the two.

  ‘I can’t! Sister, what is this place? Hades?’

  ‘Now listen, she’s dead, do you understand? Dead. Take two deep breaths and hold them until your stomach settles.’

  ‘Sister Agnés …’ hazarded St-Cyr.

  ‘Well, what is it?’

  ‘Why not take her upstairs? A tisane of linden blossoms or of camomile?’

  The Chief Inspector was simply trying to get rid of them. ‘That is impossible. The Holy Father told us to remain with the child.’

  Could nothing turn her stomach or her mind? ‘But surely not when Coroner Peretti cuts into her?’

  ‘Cuts? But … but why should he do such a thing?’

  ‘The stomach contents, Sister. The large intestine. What she last ate and drank. Such things can tell us much.’

  In tears, Sister Marie-Madeleine rushed to the nearest drain to empty whatever remained in her own stomach. Wrenching on the tap, she splashed her face. Pale and shaking, she turned to confront them but steadied herself against the stone pallet. ‘Sister, you’re used to the slaughterhouse but me … Mireille was not an animal!’

  She wept. She clenched her fists in rage at herself, and begged the sister to release her from her duty.

  Finely boned, her face thin, the large dark brown eyes revealing the depths of her despair, she was only twenty-one, if that, thought St-Cyr. The elder sister, in her mid-sixties, stepped up to her charge and let her have it across the face, once, twice and …

  ‘Doucement!’ he exclaimed. Now just a moment.

&nb
sp; The last slap resounded. It knocked the tears from the young one, causing her to grip her cheek. ‘Forgive me,’ she blurted. ‘I needed that, didn’t I, Sister?’

  They faced each other, these two who were married to God. Her dark eyes livid, the older sister’s jowls quivered at the retort. An attendant in a filthy, bloodstained smock snickered joyously through the silence from across the room.

  ‘She has nerves of steel,’ said the younger one bitterly.

  ‘Sister Agnés, let’s all go upstairs,’ cautioned St-Cyr. ‘No one will touch the body, but if you wish, I’ll have the attendant put her into one of the lockers and will personally present you with the key.’

  Touché, was that it? wondered Sister Agnes, folding her arms across her ample bosom and drawing herself up. ‘Leave if you wish. For myself, I will remain and so will she.’

  The bare hands with their bony knuckles were thickly calloused and raw from constant work in the kitchens and fields.

  ‘Very well,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what you know of the victim.’

  It was Sister Marie-Madeleine who, finding an inner strength that was admirable, answered, ‘She was of the lesser nobility from the provinces – what the Parisian nobility used to derogatively call les hobereaux after the little falcon that is satisfied with small prey – but her family had fallen on hard times.’

  ‘When?’

  A fleeting smile revealed the stomach, not the grief, had been conquered. ‘Six hundred years ago. De Sinéty was a name to be proud of in the Avignon of those days, Inspector, but there were some who were jealous of such wealth and position and took steps to remove it.’

  ‘The girl was from the hills,’ spat the older nun.

  ‘She was not, Sister, and you know it. She was very well brought up and, as a result, was an elegant seamstress who could work wonders with very little. Oh bien sür her mother fell on hard times and had to move out to a mas to try to eke out an existence by buying a flock of sheep others would then have to tend, but Mireille … She came to live and work in Avignon, Inspector, for Maître Simondi, and took home every sou she could.’