Strange Images of Death djs-8

by Barbara Cleverly

  Joe and Martineau exchanged smiles.

  ‘But first, Sandilands, I’m going to give you a résumé of the case as I see it. I expect you to add anything you feel necessary.

  ‘We seem to have a classic case. We’re looking for a man suffering from some form of … er … psychopathy.’ He glanced at Joe to judge his reception of his modern view.

  ‘C’est un cinglé!’ Martineau ruined his effect.

  ‘A nutcase!’ It was what Joe’s own sergeant would have said.

  ‘Possibly a man who has suffered damage to the brain or emotions in the war,’ Jacquemin said repressively. ‘A misogynist at all events. That much is clear. We’re looking at the work of a man with a deep dislike and murderous grudge against women. He announced himself with his first attack-I refer to the smashing of the effigy. A clear statement of intent. A known harlot gets her comeuppance. And just in case anyone’s missed the point-here’s a rabbit to underline it. As Sandilands has pointed out. And we should listen to his view-Sandilands, after all, is familiar with this style of multiple killings. It was London, was it not, which gave the world Jacques l’Éventreur? And we have a gallery of Englishmen here on site from which to choose.’

  He waved Joe’s list.

  ‘I fear you may be right,’ Joe conceded. ‘I see no end to this until he is caught. There will be further victims unless we can stop him.’

  ‘So, the man we are looking for was (a) on the premises on the night of the attack on the statue … date, Sandilands?’

  ‘Friday the 20th of August.’

  ‘Thank you; (b) he was possibly injured in the war; (c) as a hater of women, he is most likely unmarried; (d) he is able to come and go about the building without arousing suspicion-or a bedmate. Probably has a room to himself.’

  ‘One character comes to mind straight away, sir,’ commented Martineau. ‘But he’s not English.’

  ‘Look, before you go putting the cuffs on de Pacy-consider this,’ said Joe. ‘Estelle was clearly attacked by someone she knew well. Someone she spoke to in English and laughed with. This much is known from the child’s testimony, as I told you. Therefore there may have been a personal reason behind the killing. Someone wanted Estelle to die for a very particular reason. Because she was Estelle Smeeth, not just a stand-in for the female sex.’

  ‘Could anyone have got in from outside?’

  ‘Nothing easier. Anyone could have scaled the dip which we call a dry moat of sorts. All the children know the way. And you could stay out of sight of the rest of the castle by keeping the bulk of the chapel between you and it. We shall need to know more exactly when Estelle died but I was hazarding a guess at six o’clock.’

  ‘Any sightings of the girl at about that time?’

  ‘Yes. We have a sighting by Jane Makepeace of Estelle and the child by the bridge at about that time so that seems likely. Our dagger-wielder simply watches from the chapel door after the act-it’s perfectly possible to stand in the shelter of the ornate door surround and be completely hidden from the rest of the castle. He nips over to the hall when he’s sure the coast’s clear.’

  ‘You heard the child speak. Did he have a contribution to make?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ Joe filled in as much as he could remember of the interview conducted by Dorcas and summarized: ‘So, we have a dispatch by an apparent friend, with speed and without resistance on the part of the victim. We know that the aggressor spoke in English to Estelle-though everyone here speaks English, whatever their nationality-and he was wearing black trousers and shoes.’

  ‘Now who wears that sort of outfit at six o’clock in the south of France?’ the Commissaire wondered aloud.

  ‘A priest?’ Martineau suggested.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Joe. ‘But also any of the Englishmen gathered under this roof. And their hosts. The French keep early hours in the country for dining but we English keep to our customs regardless. We dress for dinner. Drinks at six fifteen, first course served at seven. Every man would have scrambled into black trousers and dinner jacket by half past six at the latest, possibly before. I had done so myself. So, suitably attired, our chap strolls off into the hall for a drink when the gong sounds. Looking as though he’s just drifted downstairs fresh from the hands of his valet.’

  ‘Thank you for that. Very helpful. So-it’s an intruder or a resident, a priest or not a priest, an Englishman or some other nationality we’re looking for.’ Jacquemin glowered.

  ‘Afraid so! And here’s something else to chew on,’ said Joe, taking a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Evidence. Three pieces. Sorry-no useful little bags available at the time I made the discoveries.’

  He opened it up on the table to show the contents. ‘Now-this screw of paper was used by the victim. You may like to check the powder.’ The Frenchmen listened as he told of his time spent with Estelle on the roof platform.

  ‘She saw the statue-smasher and he saw her watching him? That’s another reason for getting rid of her, are we thinking? No, we’re not! He was disguised. No reason to think she saw through it. Is there, Sandilands?’

  ‘She certainly didn’t seem to have made an identification.’

  ‘And cocaine? Where was she getting it? Did she bring supplies from Paris? How long had she been here?’

  ‘Since the beginning of the season. Three months. I believe she was a girl who was easily bored and would seek stimulation. Her mood swung while I was here in the castle. I think she was getting supplies. From someone with access to the exterior, clearly.’

  ‘They’d get it in any city along the Rhône. Along the drug-smuggling route from the port of Marseille and up north to Paris. There are places … people in Avignon who would oblige. We must find out who’s been making trips out into the world.’

  ‘You’d need a vehicle, sir,’ said Martineau thoughtfully. ‘It’s thirty kilometres to Avignon. Would you like me to take the Hispano-Suiza apart?’ he offered with relish.

  ‘It’s not the only car around. There’s a car available for hire by the day down at the village,’ said Joe. ‘A scheme run by the enterprising garage owner. And a charabanc for group outings-they’re an adventurous lot and like to get about. And motorcycles. And even horses. Many of the guests make use of them. It’s wonderful riding country. They go out all over the place, singly or in groups. We might make enquiries.’

  ‘Still-the girl was a drug-fiend. So what? Not much of a reason to kill her, is it?’ said the hard-boiled Parisian.

  ‘Cocaine …’ Joe mused. ‘It’s a sociable drug-where I come from. People sniff it up in company usually. At parties. In jazz club cloakrooms. To put themselves in a jolly mood.’

  ‘Agreed. She’s unlikely to have been sniffing the stuff all on her lonesome. So who was keeping her company?’ Jacquemin pencilled a note in his book.

  ‘And with the girl’s contacts in mind, Commissaire, may I ask you, when the time comes to interview each of the denizens, to enquire which of them has a camera and what type it is? It may not be important but I should like to know.’

  Jacquemin scratched in a further note. ‘And what’s this here?’ he asked, poking at the sliver of gilded stone in the centre of the handkerchief with the end of his pencil.

  ‘Ah yes! Pickings from the robe I think the perpetrator wore on the night he hammered Aliénore to bits. From low down near the hem. It could have brushed on during the attack and clung to the rough wool. It’s a piece from the hair, judging by the gold paint. We brought a sample from the chapel for comparison.’

  Martineau produced a white paper bag from his crime case and handed it over.

  ‘Mmm … we’ll get these put under a microscope-but clearly they’re from the same source,’ agreed Jacquemin. ‘And what’s this here?’

  ‘The cigar end also comes from the robe. It was in the pocket. Orlando Joliffe and I found it hanging on the back of the door to a guest’s room.’

  ‘Guest? Which guest?’

  ‘Petrovsky, the ballet-meister. Director of the
Ballet Impériale at present performing in auditoriums all over Provence. Avignon this week.’

  Jacquemin looked down his list. ‘Personal guest of the lord. Frequent visitor. Accompanied by two dancers and a chaperone. Russian?’

  ‘No, he’s as British as I am. Name of Peters. Rich. Dilettante. Known to the Vice Squad. History (suspected only as far as I know) of keeping company with young girls.’

  ‘Professional hazard in his line of work, I’d have thought,’ said Jacquemin reasonably. ‘Still-in possession of a vehicle … trips to Avignon … and all the arty-farty places where the sophisticated gather … We’ll grill him. Now-tell me about this half-smoked El Rey del Mundo.’

  ‘Is that what it is, sir?’ Martineau peered with interest.

  ‘So it declares itself,’ said Jacquemin, pointing to the gold and red band it still carried. He picked it up, holding it by the smoked end, and squeezed gently. He sniffed the tobacco. ‘Though I’d have known it without the hint. Very expensive. Smooth, light tobacco. The best Havana. I’ve only ever smoked three of them. Very expensive.’ He turned to Martineau who was already rising from his chair. ‘De Pacy. He’ll know.’

  In the Lieutenant’s absence he went on studying the cigar. ‘Carefully guillotined at the mouthpiece,’ he observed. ‘As you’d expect. A man who can afford these is hardly likely to bite the end off with his teeth!’

  ‘Don’t you take the band off in France?’ Joe asked. ‘We do in England. One tries to avoid flaunting one’s taste.’

  ‘Some do. Most, if they’ve any experience, puff away until the cigar has warmed through. It melts the glue on the band and you don’t risk tearing it and the wrapper and looking a fool. And very useful for us! Men hold a cigar by the band. Between forefinger and thumb.’ He demonstrated with an imaginary cigar. ‘This’ll have prints on it. If they’re Petrovsky’s we’ve got him! Any ash left at the first scene in the chapel, Sandilands?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Did he put his hammer down and pause to enjoy a soothing, post-climactic cigar?’

  ‘Conveniently stuffing the unsmoked half away in his pocket? I don’t think we’re dealing with that kind of careless mind. No, what we’ve got is someone calculating, evil and yet … I search about and come up with the unsatisfactory word-playful. No, it’s not as straightforward as it might appear,’ Joe said thoughtfully. ‘If he’s gone to all that trouble staging the scene in the chapel, he’s not going, casually, to leave his disguise on the back of his own bedroom door. For the English copper to find. They all knew I had permission to roam about poking my nose into drawers and pockets. And besides-on display like something you’d find in the lingerie department at the Printemps store, there was another little item … rather surreal …’

  ‘Surreal? Can’t say I’m an habitué of the department you mention but I’d have said depraved,’ was Jacquemin’s response to Joe’s account of the contents of the gown’s pocket. ‘Ballet tights doing an entrechat? What’s his point?’

  ‘I don’t think Petrovsky was making a point. I think the whole little display was put on for my benefit. The man who really wore the cloak knew he’d been seen by Estelle and that he could no longer make use of the garment. So he abandons it, flamboyantly.’

  ‘Hoping for what? To incriminate Petrovsky?’

  ‘Yes, giving us the hint in case we hadn’t already twigged: here’s a man you wouldn’t want anywhere near your daughters, he’s saying. If we’d nabbed Petrovsky on various charges, I’m sure that would have been a very acceptable outcome-he clearly dislikes the chap-but I flatter myself he has more respect for my detective abilities!’ Joe shrugged. ‘He was surrendering the garment. No further use for it. And, almost as a joke, he left it where it would furnish evidence pointing the finger at our Russian friend. If I wasn’t taken in by that here’s another try-a very distinctive cigar end. A double bluff! The bloke who smoked that may be involved, he’s suggesting. Another poor sod it entertains him to throw suspicion on? When we know the name of the smoker of the best Havanas we can put it down, second on the list of our perpetrator’s denouncements. He’s laughing at me or he’s time-wasting.’

  ‘And where is the cloak now?’

  ‘It was impossible to make off with it at the time, under the scrutiny of Orlando Joliffe and his lordship, as I was! And I’m perfectly sure it will have been removed and destroyed many hours ago.’

  Martineau entered smiling. ‘Found him, sir. Yes, de Pacy knows who smokes those things. The chap leaves the stubs about all over the place in ashtrays. And, wouldn’t you guess-it’s Lord Silmont.’

  ‘No surprise!’ said Jacquemin. ‘Second on our stool-pigeon’s list, are you thinking?’

  ‘And his first mistake,’ said Joe. ‘If we go haring off, following the second false trail laid by the cigar end, and arrest Lord Silmont, we’re going to run into what I suspect is a cast-iron alibi. The villain we’re dealing with could not have known that the lord was about to take the whole day off and spend it with his friends some ten miles away. It was an arrangement made just that morning. So our informant has chosen to set in the frame for murder an innocent chap who was playing cards ten miles away at the time.’

  ‘Which indicates that he can’t be in the inner circle, so to speak. Not privy to the lord’s confidences and diary entries.’ Jacquemin was thinking aloud. ‘Someone recently arrived? Or on the fringes of the Silmont social scene?’

  ‘Unless there’s something wrong with the lord’s alibi,’ was Martineau’s tentative offering. ‘He’s a clever bloke. That history lesson he gave us in the chapel! And all that guff about a horse going lame … how often do you hear about that happening these days?’

  ‘Particularly to horses of the quality of those I saw in his stable,’ said Joe. ‘You could have ridden any one of them thirty miles before it laboured. The very best animals, in peak condition and several attentive grooms to check the state of their hooves and limbs before they set out … hmm … We have no sighting of his lordship between my own-when he appeared in riding gear and outlining his plans for the day … rather carefully, I now come to think … and his reappearance just before eleven this morning in a chauffeured Delage. I wonder what exactly the lord got up to in the last twenty-four hours … Perhaps he arrived late for his bridge appointment? If he arrived at all? It would be interesting to find out …’

  Jacquemin replied with the decisiveness Joe was coming to expect from him. ‘Sandilands. Check his alibi. In depth. Take your car.’

  Joe smiled to have got his own way. ‘Delighted, Commissaire.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘This is a wild-goose chase you’re bringing me on!’ Orlando grumbled as they drove out over the drawbridge. ‘Why did you ask for me?’

  ‘Because you told me you’d paid a visit. You know the way and your face will gain us entry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it. And anyway, I ought to be back there giving a hand with the children or assisting with the enquiry, not gallivanting with you about the countryside. Through the village and go left at the fork … I want to do what I can to catch the murdering sod who’s killed Estelle. We all do. She was a wonderful girl and when I get my hands on whoever-’

  ‘Shove it, Orlando, will you! I know you’re upset but you’ll have to join the queue of people who want to wreak revenge. And, at the moment, you’re way behind me and Guy de Pacy.’

  ‘And Dorcas,’ Orlando said surprisingly. ‘She’d got fond of her, you know. Estelle was like that-you liked her or loathed her at first sight. Mostly people liked her. Anyway-his days are numbered-the joker who did it. Dorcas has put a gypsy curse on him. And, believe me, you wouldn’t want that! I know the old crone who taught it to her some summers ago in Surrey … The guilty party’s probably shitting worms and spitting scorpions as we speak!’

  ‘Tell me, Orlando-because I’m an inquisitive so and so, and I’ll beat your brains out if you don’t-about Estelle’s love-life. I have reason to believe you have first-hand experience of it.’

&
nbsp; Orlando, the pacifist, visibly struggled to prevent himself from tearing Joe’s head off. He replied in a strangled voice: ‘None of your bloody business! What is this unhealthy fascination with my love-life? I’m not a fellow who talks lightly about the women he’s involved with. If I answer your impertinent question at all it is through gritted teeth and with the slim hope that you will use the evidence to bolster any detective powers that remain to you to bring this hideousness to a conclusion.’

  After a little more harrumphing he added: ‘I played a walk-on part only. Well, it was more of a walk-off part, when you come to think of it. Er … once only. Soon after we both arrived here. In June. She was, I would guess, an experienced player in the Ars Amatoria. She was kind enough to pose for me one day and the inevitable happened.’

  ‘Inevitable?’ Joe was angry enough to interrupt his flow. ‘How can you say that? Do artists have some unchallengeable droit de seigneur over the girls who sit bored out of their brains before them, day in, day out?’ He regretted his outburst instantly but consoled himself with the thought that Orlando would have suffered a much worse tirade from Lydia.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ said Orlando mildly. ‘You can’t always depend on it. But it’s not the out and out exploitation you suggest, Joe. You’ve never painted a woman, have you? You wouldn’t understand the feeling that develops between artist and model. It’s a very special one. Fraught with difficulties but rather intimate. It’s more than just the clothes that come off. And it’s not all one way! You can talk to each other while the painting’s going on, you know. Pour out your troubles, air your fantasies. You’d pay five guineas an hour for the sympathetic ear of one of those psychiatric chappies in London. And he wouldn’t be so easy on the eye.’ Orlando pursed his lips, sighed and confided: ‘She was a generous girl. Her emotions were not involved. Unless you count pity as an emotion. Is it? Anyway, her urge to compassion fulfilled, I think she quickly found someone else to occupy her time. Yes. I’m pretty sure there was someone else … someone important to her. I can usually tell when a woman’s in love … And Estelle, I would say, was in love.’