The Three Evangelists

XXXI

THERE WAS NO-ONE ELSE IN THE DISGRACE WHEN MARC SWITCHED THE computer off at about eleven o’clock. Vandoosler had gone off to find out whatever he could. Mathias had disappeared and Lucien had gone in pursuit of his seven notebooks. For four hours, Marc had passed all the press cuttings across the computer screen, reading and rereading every article, memorising each detail, each turn of phrase, observing their convergences and differences.

The June sunshine was steady and, for the first time, it occurred to him to take a bowl of coffee out into the garden and sit on the grass, hoping that the morning air would get rid of his headache. Marc trod down a square metre of so of long grass, found a wooden plank and sat on it cross-legged, facing the sun. He could not see where to go next. He knew the documents by heart now. His memory was good and capacious, and it collected everything, uncritically, including odds and ends and the memory of past despairs. The trip to Dourdan had not produced very much in the end. Dompierre was dead and had taken his story with him, and it was hard to see how to go about resurrecting it. It was not even clear that it would be of any interest.

Alexandra went past in the street, carrying a shopping bag and Marc waved to her. He tried to imagine her as a murderer, but that pained him. What the hell had she been up to, driving her car around for three hours?

Marc felt useless, impotent, and sterile. He had the feeling there must be something he was not picking up. Ever since Lucien had come out with that sentence about the essential being revealed in the investigation of paroxysms, he had been ill at ease. It bothered him. Both in his research on the Middle Ages and when it came to the business in hand. Tired of having such vague and inconsequential ideas, Marc got up from his plank and observed the Western Front. It was curious how Lucien’s way of talking had got under their skin. Now they would never dream of calling that house anything except the Western Front. Relivaux was probably not back yet or the godfather would have said something. Had the police been able to account for how he spent his time in Toulon?

Marc put his bowl down on the plank and went noiselessly out of the garden. From the street, he studied the Western Front. As far as he had observed, the cleaner only came on Tuesdays and Fridays. What was it today? Thursday. The house seemed quite still. He considered the tall gate, which was well maintained and not rusty like theirs, and which had sharp and efficient-looking spikes along the top. The problem would be to climb up there without being seen by a passer-by, and then, with luck, to be agile enough not to get impaled on the way over. He looked up and down the street. He was fond of this little street. He went over to the big refuse bin, and as Lucien had the other night, he climbed on top. Holding onto the railings, he managed after a few false starts to reach the top of the gate and climb over it without getting snagged.

His agility pleased him. He dropped down on the other side, thinking that after all he might have made a good gatherer, if not a hunter, wiry and nimble. Feeling satisfied with himself, he adjusted his silver rings, which had twisted on his fingers during the climb, and walked lightly over to the beech tree. What was he hoping for? Why was he going to all this trouble to see this dumb tree? No reason, just that he had promised himself he would, and because trying to save Alexandra was becoming a more doubtful project every day. That stupid girl with her pride was doing all the wrong things.

Marc put one hand, then the other, on the tree’s cool trunk. It was still small enough for him to be able to encircle it with two handspans. He felt like strangling it, wringing its neck until it told him, between choking sounds, just what it thought it was doing in the garden. He let his arms fall, discouraged. You can’t strangle a tree. A tree just keeps quiet, it’s as silent as a fish, and doesn’t even make bubbles. All it produces are leaves, wood and roots. Yes, it makes oxygen too, that’s quite practical. Apart from that, nothing. Deaf and dumb. As silent as Mathias, who tried to make his flint fragments and bones speak to him: a silent guy conversing with silent objects. Yes, they suited each other. Mathias swore he could hear them speaking, that you just had to learn their language and listen to them. Marc, who only liked what texts had to say, his own or other people’s, couldn’t understand this silent conversation. And yet Mathias did end up finding things out, that was certain.

He sat down by the tree. The grass had not yet grown back properly around it because it had twice been dug up. There was just a little covering of new grass which he touched with the palm of his hand. Soon it would be more plentiful and there’d be nothing to see. People would forget about the tree and the earth it stood in. Angrily, Marc pulled up a few tufts. Something was odd. The soil was dark, heavy, almost black. He remembered very well the two days they had spent digging and then filling in that pointless trench. He could see Mathias standing up to his thighs in the trench, saying that that was enough, they could stop because the lower layers of earth were undisturbed. He saw once more Mathias’ feet, bare in sandals, covered with earth. But the earth had been yellowish-brown, light soil, the same as in the stem of the white clay pipe he had picked up, muttering, ‘eighteenth century’. Light-coloured crumbly soil. And when they had filled it in, they had mixed leafmould with the same light soil. Not at all like the stuff he was kneading between his fingers. Was it new leafmould already? He scratched away some more. Black earth again. He walked round the tree, examining the topsoil the whole way round. No, there was no doubt, someone had disturbed the earth beneath the surface. The layers of soil were not as they had left them. But the police had come digging after them. Perhaps they had dug deeper, reaching a layer of black earth that was lower down. That must be it. Not being archaeologists, they had not been able to distinguish the layers and had dug into the black earth and then spread it around on the surface. No other explanation. Nothing to to get excited about.

He stayed there a few moments more with his fingers furrowing the soil. He picked up a little piece of pottery that looked more sixteenth than eighteenth century to him, though he didn’t really know much about it, and put it in his pocket. He got up, patted the tree trunk to tell it he was leaving and went back to climb over the gate. He had just touched down on the dustbin when he saw his godfather arriving.

‘Very discreet,’ said Vandoosler.

‘Any objection?’ said Marc, wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘I only hopped over to look at the tree.’

‘And what did the tree tell you?’

‘That Leguennec’s men dug much deeper than we did, right down to the sixteenth century. Mathias is not altogether wrong, you know, the earth can talk. What about you?’

‘Come down off that dustbin so I don’t have to shout. Christophe Dompierre was indeed the son of the critic Daniel Dompierre. So we’ve sorted that one out. As for Leguennec, he’s started going through Siméonidis’ archives, but he’s as baffled as we are. His only satisfaction is that the eighteen missing Breton fishing boats are all safe back in port.’

Crossing the garden, Marc found his coffee bowl with a few cold drops left in it, which he drank.

‘Almost midday,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get the mud off and then to have a bite at Le Tonneau’

‘That’s a luxury,’ said Vandoosler.

‘Yes, I know, but it’s Thursday. Out of respect for Sophia.’

‘Are you sure it isn’t to see Alexandra? Or perhaps the veal casserole tempts you?’

‘That’s not what I said. Do you want to come?’

Alexandra was at her usual table, trying to get her son to eat his lunch, but he was in an unco-operative mood. Marc ran his fingers through Kyril’s hair and let the boy play with his rings. Kyril liked St Mark’s rings. Marc had told him that they had been given him by a magician, and that they had a magic secret, but he had never been able to find it. The magician had flown away out of the playground without telling him. Kyril had rubbed them, turned them, blown on them but nothing happened. Marc went over to say hullo to Mathias, who seemed to be stuck behind the counter. ‘What’s the matter?’ said Marc. ‘You look paralysed.’

‘I’m not paralysed, I’m stuck. I got changed in a rush and put on my shirt, waistcoat, bow tie, and everything, but I forgot to put on proper shoes. Juliette says that I can’t serve at table in sandals. It’s funny, she’s very fussy about it.’

‘I can see her point,’ said Marc. ‘I’ll go and fetch them for you, if you like. Can you organise me a veal casserole?’

Marc came back a few minutes later with the shoes and the white clay pipe.

‘Remember this pipe and the earth it was in?’ he asked Mathias.

‘Of course.’

‘This morning I went to see the tree. The soil on the surface isn’t the same. It’s much darker and more sticky.’

‘Like there is under your fingernails?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well it means the police were much more thorough than we were.’

‘Yes. That’s what I thought.’

Marc put the clay pipe back in his pocket and felt the little piece of pottery. He was always transferring bits and pieces from one pocket to another without getting rid of them. His pockets were like his memories, they would never leave him in peace.

Having put his shoes on, Mathias laid places for Marc and Vandoosler at Alexandra’s table: she had said that was alright. Since she did not bring the subject up, Marc avoided asking her any questions about what the police had said to her the day before. Alexandra asked instead how the trip to Dourdan had gone, and how her grandfather was. Marc glanced at the godfather who nodded imperceptibly. Marc was cross with himself for asking Vandoosler’s approval before talking to Lex, and realised that doubt had crept further into his mind than he had suspected. He told her in detail about the contents of the file for 1978, not knowing now whether he was doing so with sincerity or whether he was ‘letting out rope’ to watch her reactions. But Alexandra, looking pretty much at a low ebb, was not reacting at all. She simply said she ought to go and see her grandfather that weekend.

‘I don’t advise it at the moment,’ said Vandoosler. Alexandra frowned, and stuck out her chin.

‘Is it really that bad? Are they going to arrest me?’ she asked, in a soft voice, so as not to upset Kyril.

‘Let’s say Leguennec is suspicious. Don’t go away anywhere. Stick to the house, the school, Le Tonneau, the park, nowhere else.’

Alexandra looked sulky. Marc guessed that she didn’t like taking orders from anyone, and it made him think for a moment of her grandfather. She was capable of doing the opposite of what Vandoosler asked, for the sheer pleasure of disobeying.

Juliette came over to clear their table, and Marc stood up to kiss her. He described what had happened at Dourdan in a few words. He was getting tired of the wretched 1978 file, which had only made things more complicated without making anything clearer. Alexandra was getting Kyril ready to go back to school when Lucien burst into the restaurant, out of breath, and letting the door slam behind him. He took Alexandra’s place at table without seeming even to notice her leaving, and asked Mathias to fetch him a large glass of wine.

‘Don’t worry,’ Marc told Juliette. ‘It’s the Great War that winds him up like this. It comes and goes. You have to get used to it.’

‘Give it a rest!’ said Lucien, still panting.

From Lucien’s tone of voice, Marc realised that he was mistaken. It wasn’t the Great War. Lucien did not have that delighted expression he ought to have if he had discovered the war diaries of a peasant in the trenches. He was in a state of high anxiety and running with sweat. His tie was crooked, and two red spots had appeared on his forehead. Still panting, he looked round at the customers eating their lunch, and motioned to Vandoosler and Marc to come closer.

‘This morning,’ he said between two deep breaths, ‘I tried René de Frémonville’s number. It had changed, different number, different address, so I went over there.’

He drank a large gulp of wine before going on.

‘His wife was there. “R. de Frémonville” was the wife, Rachel, a lady of about seventy. I asked if it was possible to speak to her husband. Really put my foot in it. Hold on, Marc, wait till you hear this. Frémonville has been dead for years.’

‘Well, what of it?’ said Marc.

‘He was murdered, that’s what! Shot twice in the head, one night in September 1979. And, wait for this, he wasn’t alone. He was with his old friend, Daniel Dompierre. Also shot twice. Bang bang, two theatre critics, final curtain.’

‘No Shit!’ said Marc.

‘You may well say that, because my war notebooks disappeared in the commotion after that, what with moving house and so forth. Frémonville’s wife wasn’t bothered about them. She’s no idea what became of them.’

‘And was he a peasant, the soldier?’ Marc asked.

Lucien looked at him in surprise. ‘Do you really want to know?’

‘No, but you’ve gone on about it so much…’

‘Well, yes, he was,’ said Lucien getting even more excited. ‘He really was a peasant. See? Isn’t that fantastic? If only…’

‘Never mind about the war diaries,’ ordered Vandoosler. ‘Carry on with the story. There must have been a police investigation, surely?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Lucien. ‘Rachel de Frémonville didn’t want to talk about it, but I was very persuasive and wormed it out of her. Frémonville kept the Parisian theatre world supplied with cocaine. And his friend Dompierre too, no doubt. The police found a packet under the floorboards in Frémonville’s house, just where the two men had been shot. The investigation concluded that it must have been gang warfare between dealers. The evidence was clear in Frémonville’s case, though less obvious for Dompierre. All they found in his place was a few sachets of coke stuffed up the chimney.’

Lucien drained his glass and asked Mathias for another. Instead, Mathias brought him some veal casserole.

‘Eat,’ he said firmly.

Lucien looked at Mathias’ expression and started on the food.

‘Rachel told me that at the time, Dompierre’s son, Christophe, refused to believe his father could be mixed up in anything like that. The mother and son both made a big fuss to the police, but it got them nowhere. The double murder was filed under drug dealing. They never caught the killer.’

Lucien was calming down and his breath was becoming regular. Vandoosler had his commissaire’s face on, a thrusting nose and narrowed eyes under lowered eyebrows. He was tearing apart pieces of bread from the basket Mathias had put on the table.

‘In any case,’ said Marc, who was rapidly trying to get his ideas into some kind of order, ‘that has nothing to do with our business. These two guys were shot over a year after “Elektra”. And drugs were involved as well. I presume the police knew what they were talking about there.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Marc,’ said Lucien impatiently. ‘Young Christophe Dompierre didn’t believe that. Was it just out of loyalty to his father? Maybe, but when Sophia gets killed fifteen years later, he reappears and starts looking for new clues. Do you remember what he said about his pathetic “little sliver of belief”?’

‘If he was wrong about it fifteen years ago,’ objected Marc, ‘he could still be wrong three days ago.’

‘Except,’ said Vandoosler, ‘that he got himself murdered. People who are wrong don’t usually get killed. It’s people who are on to something who get killed.’

Lucien nodded agreement and mopped his plate energetically with his bread. Marc sighed. He felt his brain was slowing down recently and that bothered him.

‘So Dompierre was on to something,’ Lucien continued in a low voice. ‘Therefore he was already on to something fifteen years ago.’

‘And what was that?’

‘That one of the extras had attacked Sophia. And if you want my opinion, his father knew who it was, and had told him. Maybe he had seen the man running out of the dressing-room with his balaclava off. So that would explain why the extra didn’t come back next day. He was scared of being recognised. That must have been the only thing Christophe knew: that his father had seen who Sophia’s attacker was. And if Frémonville was a dealer, it certainly wasn’t the case for Daniel Dompierre. Three sachets stuffed up the chimney is a bit obvious, isn’t it? The son told the flics all about the attack on Sophia. But this old story about the theatre didn’t interest the police. The drugs squad was running the investigation and the Sophia incident didn’t have a drugs angle. So Dompierre’s son had to let it drop. But when Sophia in turn was killed, he got back on the case. The affair was still alive. He had always believed that his father and Frémonville had been killed not because of the cocaine, but because somehow their paths had crossed that of the attacker. And that he’d shot them to stop them talking. It must have been terribly important for him.’

‘Your story doesn’t make sense,’ Marc said. ‘Why didn’t this attacker shoot them straightaway afterwards?’

‘Well, because he probably had a stage name. If you were called Roger Prune for instance, you’d probably change it to something like Franck Delmer, or some fancy-sounding name that might appeal to a director. So he disappears under his stage name, his real identity can’t be traced and he’s out of danger. Who’s going to connect Franck Delmer with Roger Prune?’

‘Well, so what? I still don’t bloody get it!’

‘You’re on edge today, Marc. Well, imagine that a year later, the guy meets Dompierre under his real name and is recognised. Then he has no choice. He shoots them both, him and his friend, who almost certainly knows too. He knows that Frémonville deals in cocaine and that suits him fine. He plants the sachets at Dompierre’s, the police buy the story and the case is referred to the drugs squad.’

‘And why would your Prune-Delmer kill Sophia fourteen years later, since Sophia didn’t even identify him?’

Lucien, looking excited once more, produced a plastic bag which he placed on the chair. ‘Don’t move, pal, don’t move.’

He fished around in it and pulled out a roll of paper held by a rubber band. Vandoosler was looking at him, visibly impressed. Luck had favoured Lucien, but he had also very skilfully harpooned his lucky chance.

‘After our talk,’ Lucien said, ‘I was a bit shaken. And so was the old lady. It had upset her to dredge up her memories. She didn’t know that Christophe Dompierre had been murdered and as you can guess, I didn’t tell her. We had a cup of coffee at ten o’clock to restore ourselves. And then, that was all very well, but I was still thinking about my war diaries. I’m only human after all, you can understand that.’

‘OK, I understand,’ said Marc.

‘Mme de Frémonville had a good look for the war diaries, but she couldn’t find them anywhere, they really were lost. But while she was drinking her coffee, she gave a little cry. You know the kind of thing, like in old movies. She remembered that her husband, who was very attached to these war diaries, had had them photographed by his magazine’s photographer because the paper was fragile and starting to disintegrate. She told me that with a bit of luck, the photographer might have kept the negatives or proofs of the photographs, because he had taken a lot of trouble over them. The diaries were written in pencil and not easy to reproduce. She gave me the photographer’s address, in Paris luckily, and I rushed straight over there. And there he was, making prints. He’s only about fifty and still in business. And get this, Marc. He had kept the negatives and he’s going to print a set for me. I kid you not.’

‘Great!’ muttered Marc crossly. ‘But I was talking abut Sophia’s murder, not your notebooks.’

Lucien turned to Vandoosler and pointed to Marc. ‘He’s really edgy, isn’t he? Too impatient.’

‘When he was little,’ Vandoosler said, ‘if he dropped a ball from the balcony into the courtyard, he would stamp and cry until I fetched it. It was all that mattered to him. The number of times I went up and down the stairs. Just for those little cheap plastic balls with holes in, you know.’

Lucien laughed. He was looking pleased again, but his brown hair was still dark with sweat. Marc smiled as well. He had entirely forgotten about those plastic balls.

‘Listen,’ said Lucien, still in a whisper. ‘This photographer, as you might expect, accompanied Frémonville on his assignments. He did the press photos for shows they covered. So I thought he might have kept some old prints. He knew about Sophia being killed, but he hadn’t heard about Christophe Dompierre. I told him about it and he thought this sounded so serious he went to look for his file on “Elektra”. And here,’ said Lucien, waving his roll under Marc’s nose, ‘we have a set of press photographs. Not just of Sophia. Of the whole company.’

‘Come on then, show us!’ said Marc.

‘Patience, patience,’ said Lucien.

Slowly he unrolled the photos, and took out one picture which he laid on the table.

‘The whole company on parade the first night,’ he said, using wineglasses to press down the corners of the photograph. ‘Everyone’s on it. Sophia in the middle, with the tenor and the baritone either side of her. They’re all made up and in costume of course. But can you recognise anyone? Commissaire, do you recognise anyone else?’

Marc and Vandoosler leaned over the photo. The faces were made up, small but clear. It was a good photograph. Marc who had been feeling himself falling way behind, as Lucien became more and more ebullient, felt all his strength draining away. His brain was muddled and confused. He looked at the little white faces, but none of them rang any bells. No, wait a moment, there was Julien Moreaux, looking young and thin.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Lucien, ‘but that’s hardly surprising. Look again.’

Marc shook his head. He felt almost humiliated. No, he couldn’t see anything. Vandoosler equally baffled, pulled a face. However, he pointed to one face with his finger.

‘That one,’ he said in a low voice, ‘but I can’t put a name to it.’

Lucien nodded. ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘But I can put a name to it.’

He looked quickly towards the bar and round the rest of the room, then drew even closer to Marc and Vandoosler.

‘It’s Georges Gosselin, Juliette’s brother,’ he whispered.

Vandoosler clenched his fists.

‘Pay the bill, St Mark,’ he said curtly. ‘We’re going home at once. Tell St Matthew to join us as soon as his shift’s over.’