The Three Evangelists

XXX

GETTING BACK TO THE HOUSE AT ABOUT MIDNIGHT, MARC AND LUCIEN found Vandoosler waiting for them in the refectory. Exhausted and incapable of classifying the data he had collected, Marc hoped the godfather was not going to keep them up too long. Because it was obvious he was expecting a report. Lucien, on the other hand, was in fine form. He had carefully unloaded his rucksack, with its twelve kilos of equipment, and poured himself a drink. He asked where the Paris phone books were.

‘In the basement,’ said Marc. ‘Be careful, they’re holding up the workbench.’

They heard a crash from the basement and Lucien appeared, looking delighted, with a directory under each arm.

‘Terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Everything collapsed.’

He settled down with his drink at the end of the large table and started going through the phone book.

‘There can’t be all that many René de Frémonvilles,’ he said. ‘And with a bit of luck, he lives in Paris. That would make sense, if he’s a theatre and music critic.’

‘What are you two looking for?’ asked Vandoosler.

‘It’s just him that’s looking, not me,’ said Marc. ‘He wants to find a theatre critic whose father kept a lot of diaries during the Great War. He’s completely obsessed. He’s praying to all the gods past and present that the father was a peasant. It seems this would make it very rare. He was praying all the way back in the train.’

‘Can’t it wait?’ asked Vandoosler.

‘You know perfectly well,’ said Marc, ‘that for Lucien nothing to do with the Great War can wait. You wonder sometimes if he knows it’s over. Anyway he’s been in this state since this afternoon. I’ve had it up to here with his bloody war. He only likes violent action. Are you listening, Lucien? It’s not history, it’s sensationalism.’

‘My friend,’ said Lucien without looking up, as his finger ran down the columns of the directory, ‘investigation of the paroxysms of human activity obliges us to come face to face with the essentials that are usually hidden.’

Marc, who was a serious person, took in this statement. It quite rattled him. He wondered whether his own preference for working on the everyday aspects of medieval history, rather than on its most sensational moments, was blinding him to the hidden essentials. He had always thought hitherto that little things were revealed in big things and vice versa, in history as in life. He had started to think about religious crises and devastating epidemics from another perspective, when his godfather interrupted his train of thought.

‘Your historical reflections can wait too,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Did you or did you not find anything at Dourdan?’

Marc jumped. He came back across nine centuries and sat down in front of Vandoosler, visibly somewhat stunned by the time-travel. ‘What about Alexandra? How did the questioning go?’

‘As well as it could do, of a woman who wasn’t home at the time of the murder.’

‘So Leguennec knows?’

‘Yes. The red car wasn’t parked in the same place this morning. Alexandra had to withdraw her first statement, and got a serious talking-to. Then she admitted that she had been out between eleven last night and three in the morning. More than three hours, quite a spin, eh?’

‘That’s bad,’ said Marc. ‘And where did she go?’

‘Out along the motorway towards Arras, according to her. She swears she went nowhere near rue de la Prévoyance. But since she had already been caught out in a lie… They’ve narrowed down the time of the murder. Between half-past twelve and two o’clock. Right bang in the middle of the time she was out.’

Oh God, that’s bad,’ Marc repeated.

‘Very bad. It wouldn’t take more than a smidgeon now to make Leguennec wrap up the investigation and send his conclusions to the examining magistrate.’

‘Well, take care he doesn’t get his hands on that smidgeon.’

‘You don’t have to tell me. I’m holding him back by his braces as it is. But it’s getting difficult. So, have you come up with anything?’

‘It’s all on Lucien’s laptop,’ said Marc, indicating the rucksack. ‘He scanned a whole lot of papers.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Vandoosler. ‘What papers would those be?’

‘Dompierre consulted the file on a production of Strauss’ “Elektra” in 1978. I’ll fill you in on it. There are some interesting aspects.’

‘Got it!’ said Lucien, closing the directory with a bang. ‘R. de Frémonville is listed. Not ex-directory. That’s a stroke of luck. Victory in sight.’

Marc carried on with his explanations, which took longer than expected, because Vandoosler kept interrupting him. Lucien had had another drink and gone to bed.

‘So,’ Marc finished, ‘the most urgent thing is to find out whether Christophe Dompierre was related to this critic, Daniel Dompierre, and if so how. You can do that, first thing tomorrow. If he was, the answer might be that the critic had found out something unsavoury about this production, and told his family about it. But what? The only thing out of the ordinary was the attack on Sophia. We need to check the names of the bit players who didn’t turn up for work next day. But that’s virtually impossible. Since she refused to lodge a formal complaint, there was no police enquiry.’

‘That’s very odd. That kind of refusal is nearly always for the same reason: the victim knows the attacker-husband, cousin, boyfriend-and doesn’t want a scandal.’

‘Why would Relivaux want to attack his own wife in her dressing-room?’

Vandoosler shrugged.

‘We don’t know who it was. It could be anyone. Relivaux, Stelios…’

‘But the theatre was closed to the public.’

‘No doubt Sophia could let in someone if she wanted to. And then there was Julien. He was in the show, wasn’t he? What’s his surname?’

‘Moreaux, Julien Moreaux. He looks like an old sheep. Even fifteen years ago, I can’t see him as a wolf

‘You don’t know much about sheep, I see. You told me yourself that Julien followed Sophia around in her productions for five years.’

‘Sophia was trying to get him launched. He was her father’s stepson, after all, and her stepbrother. Maybe she was fond of him.’

‘Or he of her, more likely. You said he pinned photographs of her up in his bedroom. Sophia was about thirty-five then, she was a beautiful woman and famous. That’d be enough to turn the head of a young man of twenty-five. A smouldering passion, but frustrated. One day, he ventures into her dressing-room… Why not?’

‘Do you think Sophia invented the balaclava?’

‘Not necessarily. This Julien character might have wanted to hide his face when he followed his sexual urges. But it’s quite possible that Sophia, who already knew he had a crush on her, recognised the attacker, balaclava or no balaclava. A police enquiry would have caused a major scandal. Better if she wiped out the incident and refused to talk about it. And as for Julien, he gave up playing walk-on parts from that point.’

‘Yes,’ said Marc. ‘It’s possible. But it still doesn’t explain why someone should murder Sophia.’

‘He might have had another go, fifteen years on, but this time it went wrong. So Dompierre’s arrival would have panicked him. And he decided to strike first before Dompierre could speak to anyone.’

‘That doesn’t explain the tree.’

‘Still on about the tree?’

Marc was standing by the fireplace leaning on the mantelshelf and looking into the dying embers.

‘There’s another thing I don’t understand. If Christophe Dompierre read the articles written by this relation, maybe his father, I can see why. But why did he read Frémonville’s articles too? The only thing they had in common was that they both slated Sophia’s performance.’

‘Perhaps they were friends, or confided in each other. That would explain their having the same opinions about music.’

‘I’d really like to know what got them started in their vendetta against Sophia.’

Marc went over to one of the tall windows and looked out into the night.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘I’m trying to see if Lex’s car is there.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Vandoosler. ‘She won’t be going anywhere tonight.’

‘Did you persuade her not to?’

‘I didn’t try. I clamped her car.’ Vandoosler smiled.

‘A clamp? You could get hold of one?’

‘Of course. I’ll remove it first thing tomorrow. She won’t know it was there-unless she tries to go out, that is.’

‘Christ, you really do think like a policeman,’ said Marc. ‘And if you’d thought of that yesterday, she’d be off the suspect list. You’re a bit late in the day with your bright idea.’

‘I did think about it, actually,’ said Vandoosler. ‘But I didn’t do it.’

Marc turned round, but his godfather stopped him with a wave of his hand before he could get launched.

‘Don’t get worked up. I’ve already told you it’s a good thing sometimes to let out a bit of rope. Otherwise we might just get stuck, learn nothing at all, and the whaler will go down with all hands.’

He smiled as he pointed to the coin nailed to the beam. Preoccupied, Marc watched him go out of the room and heard him climb his four flights of stairs. He still did not understand what his godfather was up to and he was not even sure they were on the same side. He took the shovel, and collected a little pile of ash to cover the embers. However much you cover them, they still go on glowing underneath. If you put out the light, you can see that at once. That was what he did, and sat on a chair watching the glow of the red-hot cinders. He fell asleep in this position. At four in the morning, stiff-limbed and cold, he went up to his room. He did not have the willpower to get undressed. At about seven, he heard Vandoosler going downstairs. Ah yes, the clamp. Sleepily he sat up and switched on the laptop Lucien had left on his desk.