The Three Evangelists

XII

MATHIAS DUG IN ON THE EASTERN FRONT. WHEN LUCIEN WASN’T teaching, he and Marc crossed the line and ate their lunch at Le Tonneau to encourage him, and because they liked it there. On the first Thursday, Sophia Siméonidis ate lunch there too, as she had every Thursday for years.

Mathias operated steadily, carrying cups one by one, not trying to balance everything at once. After three days, he had worked out which was the customer who ate crisps with a fork. After a week, Juliette was giving him leftovers from the kitchen, and dinners in the disgrace had improved as a result. After nine days, Sophia invited the other two to share her Thursday lunch. The following Thursday, sixteen days later, she failed to appear.

Nobody saw her on the next day either. Juliette anxiously enquired of St Matthew if she might have a word with the ex-commissaire, after closing the restaurant. Mathias was rather put out that she called him St Matthew, but since the old man had used these ridiculous names the first time he had introduced his three fellow residents, she couldn’t think of them in any other way. So after closing Le Tonneau, Juliette accompanied Mathias to the disgrace. He had explained to her the chronological division of the lodgings, so that she would not be shocked that the oldest resident lived at the top of the house.

Out of breath from climbing the four flights of stairs so quickly, Juliette sat down opposite Vandoosler senior, who listened attentively. She seemed to like the evangelists, but to value even more the advice of the former commissaire. Mathias, leaning against a roofbeam, thought that in reality she was rather attracted by the features of the elderly ex-policeman, and this somewhat annoyed him. The more attentive the old man became, the more handsome he looked.

Lucien, back from Reims where he had been giving a well-paid lecture on ‘The Stalemate on the Western Front’, asked for a summary of the facts. Sophia had not reappeared. Juliette had been to see Pierre Relivaux, who had said not to worry, she would be back. He seemed concerned, but quite confident. Which gave one to think that Sophia had explained where she was going before leaving. But Juliette couldn’t understand why Sophia had not told her. It bothered her. Lucien shrugged. He didn’t want to upset Juliette, but after all Sophia was under no obligation to tell her everything she was doing. Juliette however insisted. Never before had Sophia missed a Thursday lunch without telling her beforehand. She always had a special dish, veal casserole with mushrooms. Lucien pulled a face. As if the veal and mushrooms would matter, if there was some sudden emergency. For Juliette, of course, the veal with mushrooms did matter. And yet Juliette was an intelligent woman. But that was the way of things, wasn’t it? Obsessed with one’s own little preoccupations such as veal with mushrooms, one ends up saying silly things. She was hoping that the old commissaire could get more out of Pierre. Although she had understood that Vandoosler was not exactly above reproach.

‘Still,’ she said, ‘once a policeman always a policeman.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Marc. ‘A flic who has been thrown out of the force might turn anti-flic, or monster.’

‘Doesn’t Sophia get fed up eating veal every Thursday?’ asked Vandoosler.

‘No, not at all,’ replied Juliette. ‘And she even has her own way of eating it. She lines up her little mushrooms, like notes on a stave, and eats her way through them bar by bar.’

‘An orderly woman, then,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Not the sort to vanish without explanation.’

‘If the husband isn’t worried,’ said Lucien, ‘he must have good reasons, and he’s not obliged to tell us about his private life, just because his wife has walked out and failed to eat her veal and mushrooms. Let it go. A woman has the right to go away for a bit if she wants to. I don’t see why we should be chasing after her.’

‘All the same,’ said Marc. ‘Juliette is thinking about something she’s not telling us. It’s not just the veal that’s bothering you, is it, Juliette?’

‘No, it’s not,’ she replied.

She appeared a pretty woman, as the glancing light from the attic windows fell on her. Having hurried up the stairs, she had taken no thought for her appearance. As she leaned forward, with clasped hands, her dress fell loosely open, and Marc noticed that Mathias had positioned himself in front of her, transfixed. It was worth it, he had to admit, for the glimpses of pale skin, rounded curves and bare shoulders.

‘But if Sophia comes back tomorrow,’ Juliette went on, ‘I’d feel awful to have been gossiping about her with neighbours who hardly know her.’

‘We may hardly know her, but we are her neighbours,’ Lucien pointed out.

‘And then there’s the tree, ‘Vandoosler reminded them gently. ‘The tree makes it more important to say something.’

‘Tree? What tree?’ asked Juliette.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Perhaps you could first just tell us what you know?’

It was hard to resist the old flic when he spoke in this tone of voice, and Juliette was no exception.

‘Well,’ Juliette began, ‘she came over from Greece with her boyfriend. He was called Stelios. According to Sophia, he was a loyal, protective sort of man, but as far as I could see he was a fanatic, an attractive but temperamental guy, who wouldn’t let anyone near her. He watched over Sophia, guarded her, kept her close. Until, that is, she met Pierre and walked out on her guardian angel. Evidently this caused the most awful drama, and Stelios tried to kill himself, or something like that. Yes, that’s it, he tried to drown himself, but it didn’t work. Then he ranted and raved and made threats, but finally he went off and she didn’t hear from him again. That’s all. Nothing really remarkable. Except the way Sophia talks about him. She never seems to feel safe. She thinks one day Stelios is going to come back, and that will mean big trouble. She says he’s “very Greek”, brought up on Greek tragedies and that’s something that never goes away. Sophia says we forget that in the olden days the Greeks were really a big deal. And then, oh, about three months ago, or a bit more, she showed me a postcard she’d had, from Lyon. It just had a star drawn on it, not even very well drawn. I couldn’t see what was wrong with it, but it upset her. I thought it meant a snowflake or Christmas, but she was convinced it meant Stelios, and that it wasn’t good news. It seems that Stelios was for ever drawing stars, because the Greeks had been good at astronomy and all that. But nothing happened, so she forgot about it. That’s all. But now I’m wondering, well, whether she’s had another card. Maybe she was right to feel afraid. Things we can’t understand. The Greeks, after all, they were something special.’

‘How long has she been married to Pierre?’ asked Marc.

Oh, a long time, fifteen or twenty years. Frankly the idea of someone wanting revenge twenty years on seems pretty far-fetched to me. Life’s too short, to nurse a grudge so long, you know what I mean? If everyone who’d ever been jilted plotted their revenge for years, we’d all be at each other’s throats, wouldn’t we?’

‘Well, you can go on thinking about someone for years, you know,’ said Vandoosler.

‘Killing someone right away, OK,’ Juliette was going on, without hearing him, ‘I know these things happen. A sudden rage. But getting murderous twenty years later, no, I can’t see it. But Sophia does seem to believe in some sort of delayed reaction. Perhaps Greeks are like that, I don’t know. But if I’m telling you all this, it’s because Sophia took it very seriously. I think she’s rather sorry she let her Greek go, and since Pierre’s turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, maybe this is her way of remembering Stelios. She said she was afraid, but actually I think she rather likes thinking about Stelios, the long-time lover.’

‘Pierre’s a disappointment?’ asked Mathias.

‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘Pierre takes no notice of anything any more, that is, he doesn’t take any notice of her. He just says yes and no, that’s all. He converses, as Sophia puts it, he reads the paper for hours on end, and doesn’t look up when she goes past. Apparently that’s how he is from first thing in the morning. I told her it was pretty normal, but she thinks it’s sad.’

Oh well,’ said Lucien, ‘if she’s decided to run off with her Greek, what’s that to us?’

‘Well, for a start, there’s the veal and mushrooms,’ insisted Juliette obstinately. ‘But anyway, I’d just like to know what’s happening. I’d feel better about it if I know.’

‘It’s not so much the lunch that bothers me,’ said Marc. ‘It’s the tree. I don’t know if we should just do nothing, when we have a wife who disappears without warning, a husband who doesn’t give a damn, and a tree popping up in the garden. What do you think, commissaire?’

Armand Vandoosler raised his finely wrought profile. He was looking like a policeman now. He had a concentrated expression which seemed to draw his eyes in under his eyebrows; his nose appeared somehow more commanding. Marc recognised the look. The godfather had such an expressive face that you could tell the kind of thoughts he was having. When he looked serious, it was the twins and their mother, lost somewhere in the world; when it was medium-serious, it was police business; when it was sharp, it was some woman he was trying to seduce. At least that was the simple reading. Sometimes they all got mixed up together and then it was more complicated.

‘I’m concerned, yes,’ said Vandoosler. ‘But I can’t do much on my own. From what I saw of him the other night, Pierre Relivaux isn’t going to bare his soul to the first disgraced policeman he meets. Certainly not. He’s the kind of man who will only respond to officialdom. Still, we do need to know.’

‘What?’ asked Marc.

‘Whether Sophia did give him a reason before going off, and if so what it was, and also whether there is anything under the tree.’

‘Oh, not that again!’ cried Lucien. ‘There’s nothing under the bloody tree. Just old clay pipes from the eighteenth century-or rather bits of them.’

‘There wasn’t anything under the tree,’ Vandoosler said carefully. ‘But what about now?’

Juliette was looking at them in puzzlement.

‘What’s all this about a tree?’ she asked.

‘A beech tree,’ said Marc impatiently, ‘close to the back wall in her garden. She asked us to dig under it.’

‘The beech tree?’ said Juliette. ‘But Pierre told me himself he’d had it planted to hide the wall.’

‘Well, well,’ said Vandoosler. ‘That’s not what he told Sophia.’

‘Why on earth would someone plant a tree in the middle of the night, without telling his wife? Getting her all worked up about nothing? That’s idiotically perverse,’ said Marc.

Vandoosler turned back to Juliette.

‘Did Sophia say anything else? About Pierre? Any hint that she had a rival?’

‘She doesn’t know,’ Juliette said. ‘Pierre is sometimes away a lot on Saturdays or Sundays. Getting a breath of fresh air, he says. That sounds suspiciously like an excuse. So, as anyone would, she has wondered about it. That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about, I must say. It may not seem much of one, but it’s a distinct plus.’

She laughed.

Mathias, still not moving, looked intently at her.

‘We need to know,’ announced Vandoosler. ‘I’ll try to fix a meeting with the husband, somehow get to see him. What about you, St Luke? Are you teaching tomorrow?’

‘His name is Lucien,’ muttered Marc.

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow,’ said Lucien. ‘A day off for saints, soldiers on leave, and some of the rest of the world.’

‘You and Marc, follow Pierre Relivaux. He’s both busy and prudent. If there is a mistress somewhere, he will have timetabled her in classic style: Saturdays and Sundays. Have you ever had to tail someone? Do you know what to do? No, of course you don’t. Apart from following clues through history, you’re good for nothing. But three historical detectives, who manage to work their way into the unfathomable past, ought to be able to stalk someone in the here and now. But perhaps you don’t like the here and now?’

Lucien pulled a face.

‘Think of Sophia,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Don’t you care what happens to her, is that it?’

‘Of course we do,’ said Marc.

‘OK then. St Luke and St Mark, you get on the trail of Pierre Relivaux all weekend. Don’t let him out of your sight for a minute. St Matthew will be working, so he can stay in Le Tonneau with Juliette and keep his ears open. You never know. As for the tree…’

‘What is there to do about that?’ asked Marc. ‘We’ve already played the card of being council workmen. But you don’t seriously think…’

‘Anything’s possible,’ said Vandoosler. ‘With the tree, we’ll have to tackle it head on. Leguennec will help. He’s tough.’

‘Who’s Leguennec?’ asked Juliette.

‘Man I play cards with,’ replied Vandoosler. ‘We invented this crazy game called “Whaling”. Great game. He knows a whole sector of the sea like the back of his hand, because he used to be a fisherman in his youth. A trawlerman, Irish Sea and so forth. Good guy.’

‘What’s the use of a card player who knows his way round the Irish Sea?’ asked Marc.

‘The card-playing fisherman joined the police.’

‘Like you, is he?’ asked Marc. A bit dodgy?’

‘Not at all. And to prove it, he’s still in the force. These days he’s inspecteur en chef of the 13th arrondissement. He was one of the few people who stood up for me when I was chucked out. But I can’t get in touch with him direct, that would put him in an awkward position. The name Vandoosler still raises hackles in the police. St Matthew will have to handle it.’

‘On what pretext?’ asked Mathias. ‘What am I supposed to say to this Leguennec? That a lady we know didn’t come home one day, and her husband doesn’t seem worried? Far as I know, grown-up people have a right to go where they want, for heaven’s sake, without the neighbours calling in the police.’

‘A pretext? Easy. It seems to me, now I think about it, that a couple of weeks ago, three men came and dug up the lady’s garden, claiming to be council workmen. They were impostors. There’s your pretext: it’ll do fine. You provide the other elements, and Leguennec will catch on. He’ll be round.’

Oh, thanks very much,’ said Lucien. ‘The commissaire encourages us to go dig up the tree, then the commissaire sets the police on to us. Terrific.’

‘Use your brains, St Luke. I’m setting Leguennec on to you, that’s different. Mathias doesn’t need to give the names of the diggers.’

‘Well, Leguennec will soon find them out, if he’s any good.’

‘I didn’t say he was good, I said he was tough. Yes, he will find out the names, because I’ll tell him myself, but only later. If necessary, that is. I’ll tell you when to call him, St Matthew. And for now, I think Juliette is tired.’

‘You’re right,’ she said, sitting up. ‘I’m going home. But do we really need to call in the police?’

Juliette looked at Vandoosler. His words seemed to have reassured her. So she looked at him and smiled. Marc glanced at Mathias. The godfather’s good looks were ancient, they had done good service, but they were still quite effective. How would Mathias’ regular features be able to compete with the older man’s faded but powerful beauty?

‘I think it’s time for bed,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Tomorrow morning, I’ll pay a visit on Monsieur Relivaux. After that St Luke and St Mark will take over.’

‘Mission logged,’ said Lucien. And smiled.