Strange Images of Death djs-8

by Barbara Cleverly

  ‘The tarte Tatin. There was something besides apples in there … a trace of something red … it enlivened the blandness of the apples and spiked the flavour of what can be a rather dull dish …?’

  She smiled and looked at him directly for the first time, her interest caught at last. ‘I wondered whether anyone would notice. It’s hard to tell sometimes. You have a spark of inspiration, try out a dish and your only clue that it’s a success is the clean plates at the end of the meal. And that’s not always a good indicator …’ Her sombre features lit up with a sudden flare of humour-or scorn. ‘You English are taught from the nursery always to clear up your plates. Whatever the slop they contain. Rice pudding! Oat por-ridge! Pouah! … Figs. It was figs. The first ones are just ready. They go well with the apples and a drop or two of fig liqueur helps.’

  ‘It certainly did.’ Joe began to make distancing movements and they parted company. Before he turned the corner, he caught her voice calling after him with a certain bold sarcasm: ‘Let me know when you’re leaving us and I’ll prepare a soufflé glacé, monsieur!’

  He bowed. ‘It will sweeten a bitter moment, madame.’

  He enjoyed the gust of girlish laughter that followed him down the dank corridor back to the hall.

  De Pacy had waited for him by the baize door. ‘How did you get on with the dragon of the castle?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Dragon? I thought Madame Dalbert was perfectly charming. We exchanged recipes and planned menus. That sort of thing.’

  De Pacy gave him a sideways look and changed the subject. ‘And next? Let me guess. You’d like me to look the other way while you sneak into the chapel to have a good poke about in the debris?’

  ‘If that’s an offer-how could I resist?’ said Joe.

  He walked off shoulder to shoulder with the steward back across the hall, amused to find they were unconsciously keeping step. They were followed by the speculative eyes and approving smiles of the guests who’d stayed behind to lounge at ease and chatter. Here were two decisive men in their prime, striding out together smiling and clearly already doing a lot of agreeing. The frisson which had interrupted their country idyll would soon be soothed away. This pair would stand no nonsense.

  ‘Young Padraic gave a stirring account of the unpleasantness but he was assessing the scene with the eyes, ears and nose of a Celtic troubadour rather than a London policeman,’ Joe commented.

  De Pacy nodded. ‘Whereas you’ll sniff the air, not so much to detect the decaying glamour of centuries, as to pick out the … um …’

  ‘… sweat, blood and hair oil of the last over-excited individual present at the scene,’ Joe finished for him. ‘At the Yard, they call me The Nose,’ he joked. ‘But however keen the old hooter, I’m afraid it’s too late by days to detect anything so ephemeral as scent. But there may be other clues. People sometimes leave behind the strangest things in the heat of the moment. False teeth-still clamped around a beef sandwich … a whalebone corset redolent of Nuit d’Amour perfume … I’ve even had a hotel door key with its name and number on it … They leave traces of their presence quite unwittingly.’

  ‘Wittingly too-if that’s a word,’ said de Pacy, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t want to anticipate your enquiry, Sandilands, but when I visited the scene I became aware of something that had clearly escaped the attention of the young Irish Romantic. Left behind intentionally, I do believe, by our hammer-wielding iconoclast.’ He gave Joe a sharp look. ‘You may find that nose of yours a mixed blessing!’ he said with a bark of laughter. ‘But I’m sure you’ll see it and interpret the message. Well-travelled and well-educated man of the world that you are. And the Latin should be no problem.’

  Joe recognized a manly challenge when it was thrown at his feet. Intrigued, he raised his brows and smiled his acceptance but didn’t pursue the matter. In any case, he preferred to come at a crime scene with a mind uncluttered by other people’s views.

  He nodded goodbye to Guy de Pacy and stood for a moment before the great oak door trying to work out how on earth to operate the unfamiliar foreign latch.

  ‘Turn the central knob and lift. It’s heavy!’ de Pacy called back over his shoulder.

  Strangely, it was exactly the troubadour’s soulful reactions that Joe found himself experiencing as the door clunked shut behind him and he was left alone.

  The south-westerly sun angled through the stained glass windows, stencilling the paved floor with a pattern of rich colour. Vert, gules and azure-it was the heraldic names that sprang first into Joe’s mind in this medieval setting. Green, red and blue. The fairy-tale colours illuminated the only thing that moved in this dim and quiet place-dust motes. Disturbed by the opening and closing of the door, they were eddying in the rays and rising to the sculpted roof above.

  Joe observed their dance. A police scientist had told him once-and demonstrated with a high-powered Zeiss microscope in the CID laboratory-that ‘dust’ was not a simple substance. Perhaps Joe was even now watching flakes of human skin mingling in the air with minute shards of pounded stone. Perhaps if he made his way in further he would breathe in a blend of aggressor and victim? Good Lord! Joe shook away the fanciful thought. But he could see how a young man like Padraic might get carried away by this atmosphere.

  He breathed in uncertainly. He doubted that ‘thick’ was a suitable word to describe a scent but it was the first one that came to mind. Centuries of devotion and incense clotted the air and there was something else. A base note. Joe’s nostrils twitched in distaste. Rotting lilies. He glanced towards the altar but failed to spot the wilting blooms. But of course the flowers would not have been changed following the ban on entering. There were jugs of water and empty flower vases standing ready on a table. No flowers.

  He began to make his way towards the object of everyone’s concern. There it stood, built up with one long side abutting the north wall. The table-top tomb of Lord Hugues de Silmont, famous survivor of some crusade or other. Joe resolved to fill in the gaps of his knowledge. And, lying by his side, his even more famous wife, the Lady Aliénore.

  Rendered widower in his lifetime by the early death of his young wife, the old boy was once more, after a sleep of six hundred years, bereft of her charming presence. There he lay all alone, calmly oblivious of the raw gap in the matrimonial bed. All vestige of the sweet girl had been hacked and broken away. At least, not quite all. Sir Hugues’ feet rested on the body of a carved lion. A docile beast looking much more like a Pekinese dog, Joe thought. Still, rendering the heraldic beast small enough to slip under a man’s size tens was an impossible task for any sculptor, Joe allowed. His wife’s feet had rested on the shape of a sleek little greyhound. A whippet perhaps? Were they known in those days or had the sculptor scaled it down in size as he had the lion? The dog remained untouched. Its tail curled down cleverly over the tomb top and at the other end its nose was slightly tilted in adoration of its mistress. The poor creature now gazed with sad eyes at the empty extent of white marble on which she had reclined. So realistic was the carving, Joe almost expected to hear a throaty whine of distress. He patted the sleek haunches and murmured: ‘I know-it’s a bugger, old mate!’

  He looked around him to spot the remains. And there she was as Padraic had described her. A pile of largish pieces placed in a careful pyramid in the corner between the north and west walls. Joe walked over to take a closer look. Two small slippered feet poked out from the bottom of the heap and from the top there extended vertically one slender white arm, its clenched, beringed hand appearing to offer a pathetic gesture of defiance.

  He approached, eyes scanning the thick layer of dust on the floor. He grunted in disappointment to see two or three different shoe patterns, all so scuffed as to be indistinguishable from each other. He paused on the fringe of the disturbed area and scanned the remains.

  On a red silk kneeling cushion carefully placed centrally at the bottom of the small cairn was Aliénore’s head. The luxuriant gilded hair shorn by hammer blows, the no
se smashed, the famous lips pounded into a gaping hole, none of her features remained intact. For a giddy moment Joe wrestled with a thought that had, he did believe, been seeded deliberately in him by the studied distribution of the remains. Celtic. The symbolism was connecting him with the head-hunting, head-worshipping Celts. But that was to do the Celts an injustice. The lopping off and triumphant display of an enemy’s head, if distasteful to a civilized man, was at least comprehensible. This vaunting, unreasoning destruction was beyond the realms of human understanding.

  Joe felt his limbs begin to twitch with disgust and rage. He could contemplate and draw evidence from the bodies of the recently dead and remain stolidly calm, so why this overreaction to a piece of old stone?

  He was being manipulated and had felt the pull on his strings, the pressure on his back, the opening of a path from the moment he arrived in this frightful place. The thought that pushed all others aside was that here, amongst a group of people who would all declare themselves dedicated to the creation of beauty, was concealed a soul who could take an obscene pleasure in destroying something more lovely than anything their hands were capable of producing. Surely such a soul would stand out like a block of black iron amongst these tinkling, golden, ephemeral but well-meaning daubers? A hornet amongst the butterflies?

  Unsettled, Joe breathed in cautiously and wondered. The stink here was strong. And he wasn’t detecting lilies. Had the steward not been so firmly in control of his stomach as the experienced Joe and vomited in some dark corner? No. The man had survived four years of war. He would have recognized rotting flesh as easily as Joe and not been physically perturbed by it. But perhaps the flesh, wherever it was, had not yet begun to rot at the time de Pacy visited?

  Joe followed his nose back to the tomb. His eye ran along the Latin engraving that encircled the three sides of the monument exposed to view. Hic iacet Hugus Silmontis, it read, under a swag of twining ivy, along the short west end facing the door, followed by armiger honoratus Provinciae along the long side. Four words completed the statement and acknowledged his wife: et Alienora, uxor sua was engraved across the short east end.

  Dangling from a projecting curl of ivy was the source of the stench.

  Chapter Eight

  Marseille, Monday lunchtime

  Commissaire Francis Jacquemin of the Paris Police Judiciaire, lean, attractive and gallantly moustached, was enjoying a rare moment of unbuttoned ease. Two buttons to be precise. It was as far as decorum would allow. He had released his waistcoat to this extent under cover of the voluminous table napkin that defended his white shirt from the unctuous saffron-coloured sauce of the dish he was just finishing.

  He ran a finger round his starched collar to release a surge of body heat created by the spices and sighed. ‘Bliss! Utter bliss, my friend! Damned good idea to take ourselves off the hook and come out and celebrate. This is my first taste of bouillabaisse and-I’m sure you’re right-the best in Marseille. Nothing like this to be had in Paris!’ He took another sip of his chilled champagne.

  ‘All the same, I think you’re glad to be going back to the capital?’ his companion said carefully.

  The men grinned. Each was quite aware that the Parisian’s departure was welcome on both sides. Inspector Audibert had been accommodating and polite when presented with the unrequested assistance of the big noise from the Paris PJ. Many would have objected. It was a fact that the authority of the Paris Brigade Criminelle ended with their geographical boundaries and technically Jacquemin had no jurisdiction whatsoever down here in the south. Only the local force had the authority to slip on the handcuffs and haul the miscreants off to court.

  The criminal fraternity knew this too.

  In his clean-up of the Paris underworld, the Commissaire had torn through the gangs formed with the release of men after the war. Modelling themselves on the vicious ‘Bande à Bonnot’ they’d rampaged through the streets, robbing and murdering with a callousness and skill acquired in four years of killing.

  In the end, virtually wiped out by Jacquemin’s tenacity and his ruthless methods, they had succumbed. But one gang, more astute than the rest, had survived and moved on. Had moved south in fact. Had learned to steal fast motor cars and use them effectively to get away from the crime scene. And get to the next. They’d discovered that there were richer and easier pickings on the Riviera coast. After centuries of peace, the roving plunderers were back in business and based in Marseille.

  Jacquemin the pitiless had pursued them.

  Working under the aegis of the Marseille police, he had located, lured into a trap and confronted the gang in double quick time. He’d shot three of them dead and the rest had been scooped up by the Inspector’s force. Neither officer spoiled the occasion by mentioning the assistance they’d had from a local underworld boss who’d infiltrated the newcomers’ set-up and served them up on a plate.

  The Commissaire and the Inspector were taking all the credit that was going and treating themselves to a celebratory lunch to close the case. The morning had been spent very agreeably dictating their experiences to a reporter from Le Petit Journal and offering their better profiles to his artist. A considerable triumph for both forces.

  ‘So, what now, sir?’ Inspector Audibert asked dutifully.

  He received the answer he was hoping for from this smarty-pants intruder with his well-barbered hair, neat moustache, hand-made shoes and unfathomable grey stare: ‘An earlier than expected departure! The train to Paris tomorrow morning and two weeks’ leave.’ And then, with unexpected camaraderie, Jacquemin leaned across the table and confided: ‘To be spent in Brittany with my wife’s mother.’

  ‘Ah? I find the northern seaside most uncongenial,’ said the Inspector tactfully.

  ‘I find my northern mother-in-law most uncongenial.’

  They exchanged rueful smiles. Jacquemin’s faded as he remembered that his current mistress also had plans for him-and Rachel’s plans threatened to pull him in a different direction. He sighed. Rachel was beginning to behave more like a wife these days. Always a disappointment. And then there was that promising girl he’d taken to tea at the Ritz … That little vendeuse from the tie counter at the Printemps. Adèle? That was it! Adèle would be expecting a follow-up. And he wouldn’t be averse to making a further move.

  ‘Nothing much happening in Paris in August,’ Jacquemin summarized lugubriously. ‘Lost pugs, defaulting gigolos, false insurance claims … The silly season, you know. And you?’

  The man from Marseille shrugged. ‘I only wish I could say the same. You’ve seen my schedule. Up to my ears. I blame you! You’ve made it too tough for the villains up north. All your riff-raff comes down here to get into trouble. Our serious problems come from Parisians and wealthy foreigners-not so much home-grown crime around these days. Foreigners! Huh! I was feeling so elated at getting that gang of yours behind bars I did something really regrettable the other day …’

  He reached under the table for the briefcase which never left his side and took out a notebook. ‘Here we are … three murders, no-that’s five after last night … several robberies on my plate and what did I hear myself expansively agreeing to do? Take a day off up in the Lubéron to investigate the hacking to bits of a young lady.’

  He enjoyed the surprised lift of Jacquemin’s expressive eyebrows and added: ‘I deceive you! The lady is … was … of alabaster and not so young-six hundred years or there-abouts. Why did I agree to go?’

  ‘Send one of your chaps. Any of them would welcome a drive into the country,’ said Jacquemin comfortably. ‘Why not reward one of the bold fellers who assisted the other night? What about the young lieutenant who risked life and limb when I was pinned down on that fire escape? He was impressive, I thought.’

  ‘Martineau, you mean? Yes, he’s keen. But it’s not possible, I’m afraid. Big gun required to deal with the crew up there at the château. Here, look.’ He opened his book at a page of pencilled notes and passed it over. ‘For a start-note the address-it’s
the seat of some local bigwig-one who still clings to his aristocratic title. Recognize it? Yes, that Count! Known to you up there in Metropolitan circles, is he? I’m not surprised. Doesn’t cut much ice with me but-they’ve all got friends in the real world, these musical-comedy types. Political mates in high places and they’ll get you a kick up the bum or the sack if you upset them. And, to go on-half the people swanning about the place are foreigners. Half are artists. Some must be both!’ He quivered with distaste.

  ‘Silmont? Le Château du Diable, does this say?’ Jacquemin pointed and gave a bark of scornful laughter. ‘Aristide-they’re having you on!’

  ‘No, I checked. It’s actually plain old Château de Silmont and the other rubbish is a nickname. A little local joke that stuck. I’m wary of jokes that stick-there’s usually a good reason for it.’

  ‘Romantic though? You have to say it has a certain allure.’ The Commissaire smoothed down his moustache and placed his napkin on the table. His mind already moving ahead to Paris, he caught the eye of the waiter who came forward to clear away. ‘I’m not surprised you agreed to go.’

  ‘You could say romantic, I suppose. The château is full of summer guests according to the maître d’hôtel with whom I spoke …’ He paused. ‘Funny-the chap sounded quite capable of sorting out any nonsense himself without dragging in the Brigade … Army type, you’d say. Authoritative. Economical with his words. Used to getting his way. I can only imagine he’s been put up to calling us in by all those foreign women he’s got up there twisting his arm.’

  ‘Foreign women?’

  ‘It’s some sort of artists’ colony. Half the number are young ladies … models, mistresses, Russian dancers-posers of one sort or another. Intoxicating substances freely available, no doubt. You can imagine the squabbling and hair-tugging that goes on … the bed-hopping … Too much time on their hands and not enough clothes on their backs-you know the sort of thing.’