The Three Evangelists

XXXIV

MARC RAN A LONG WAY, UNTIL HE COULD RUN NO MORE, AND HIS LUNGS were aching. Panting for breath, with his sweat-soaked shirt sticking to his back, he sat down on the first milestone he found. Dogs had pissed all over it. He didn’t care. His head was ringing as he sat there with his hands squeezing his temples, and trying to think. Sickened and distracted, he was trying to calm down sufficiently to get his thoughts in order. He must avoid stamping his foot as he used to over the plastic balls. Or letting tectonic plates wander round his head. He would never manage to clear his brain, sitting on a stone that stank of piss. He needed to walk, slowly, just to walk along. But first he needed to get his breath back. He looked around to see where he was. On the avenue d’Italie. Had he really run that far? He got up carefully, mopped his brow and went towards the nearest Métro station: Maison-Blanche, the white house. That reminded him of something. Ah yes, the white whale. Moby Dick. The five-franc coin nailed up in the refectory. That was typical of the god-father, playing games, when everything was ending in horror. He must go back up the avenue d’Italie. Walking with careful steps. Get used to the idea. Why didn’t he want Sophia to have done all this? Because he had met her one morning, in front of the gate? And yet Christophe Dompierre’s dying accusation was there, blindingly clear. ‘Siméonidis S’, even if the S was the wrong way round. Marc suddenly froze. He started walking again. Stopped. Went into a café for a cup of coffee. Took up his walk again.

It was nine that evening by the time he got home, with an empty stomach and a heavy head. He went into the refectory to get himself a piece of bread. Leguennec was there, talking to his godfather. Each of them had a deck of playing cards in his hands.

‘There’s this old clochard, Raymond, hangs around the Pont d’Austerlitz,’ Leguennec was saying. ‘He’s a pal of Louise’s. He says a la-di-da lady came to find her about a week ago, on a Wednesday. He’s absolutely sure it was a Wednesday. This woman was well dressed, and when she talked, she kept putting her hand to her throat. Spades.’

‘She made some kind of proposition to Louise?’ asked Vandoosler, putting three cards down, one of them face up.

‘Yes. Raymond doesn’t know what it was, but Louise was secretive about having a date with someone, and she was “bloody pleased with herself”. What a business! She was about to get bumped off in a car in Maisons-Alfort. Poor old Louise. Your call.’

‘No clubs. I’m discarding. What does the police doctor have to say?’

‘He thinks it fits, because of the teeth. He would have thought the teeth would have survived better. But the ancient Louise had hardly any left. So that explains it. Maybe that was why Sophia picked her. I’m taking your hearts, and I’m harpooning the jack of diamonds.’

Marc pocketed the bread and put a couple of apples in his other pocket. He wondered what strange game the two policeman were playing. But he didn’t care. He hadn’t finished walking yet. Nor had he got used to the idea yet. Going out again, he went down the other side of rue Chasle, passing the Western Front. It would soon be dark.

He walked around for another two full hours. He left one apple core on the parapet of the Saint-Michel fountain, and the other on the plinth of the Belfort Lion on the place Denfert-Rochereau. It was hard getting close to the lion and climbing up onto the plinth. There’s a little rhyme that says that the Belfort Lion comes down at night and pads around Paris. At least you can be sure that that really is a fairy story. When Marc jumped down again, he felt a lot better. He came back to rue Chasle, with his head aching a bit still, but calmer. He had digested the idea. He knew where Sophia was now. He had taken some time to work it out.

He came into the darkened refectory, feeling composed. Half-past eleven. Everyone must be asleep. He put on the light and and picked up the kettle. The horrible photo was no longer on the table. Instead there was a bit of paper with a message from Mathias: ‘Juliette thinks she knows where she is. I’m going to Dourdan with her. I’m afraid she might be going to help her run away. I’ll call Alexandra if I need to. Caveman greetings. Mathias.’

Marc put the kettle down with a bang. Oh God, the idiot!’ he muttered. ‘The bloody idiot.’ He ran up to the third floor, four steps at a time. ‘Lucien, get dressed!’ he shouted, shaking his friend by the shoulder.

Lucien opened his eyes, ready to retort something.

‘No, don’t ask, don’t start talking. I need you! Hurry!’

Marc rushed up to the fourth floor and shook Vandoosler awake.

‘She’s going to get away!’ Marc said, panting. ‘Quick! Juliette and Mathias have gone! That idiot Mathias doesn’t realise the danger. I’m going with Lucien. Go and get Leguennec out of bed, and make him bring his men to Dourdan, number 12 allée des Grands-Ifs!’

Marc rushed out again. His legs ached from all the walking he had done. Lucien was coming downstairs, drowsy from sleep, pushing his feet into his shoes, a tie in his hand.

‘Come and find me in front of Relivaux’s house,’ said Marc, pushing past him.

Hurtling down the steps, he ran across the garden and shouted up at Relivaux’s house. Relivaux appeared at the window, looking wary. He was only lately returned, and the news about the name Dompierre had written on the car had apparently left him in a state of collapse.

‘Throw me the keys to your car!’ yelled Marc. ‘It’s a matter of life and death!’

Relivaux did not stop to think. A few seconds later, Marc caught the keys as they sailed over the gate. Say what you like about Relivaux, he was good at throwing.

‘Thanks,’ Marc yelled.

He turned on the ignition, moved off, opening the passenger door to pick up Lucien. Lucien tied his tie carefully, put a small flat bottle on his thigh, adjusted the angle of his seat backwards and settled comfortably.

‘What’s in the bottle?’ asked Marc.

‘Cooking rum. Just in case.’

‘Where d’you get that?’

‘It’s mine. Got it to make cakes.’

Marc shrugged. That was Lucien for you.

Marc drove fast, gritting his teeth. In Paris at midnight you could generally get through very quickly. But it was Friday night and the traffic was heavy. Marc was sweating with anxiety, overtaking, jumping traffic lights. Only when he got out of Paris and onto the empty main road did he feel able to talk.

‘What the hell does Mathias think he’s playing at?’ he exclaimed. ‘He believes he can manage a woman who’s already liquidated tons of people. He doesn’t realise. He’s worse than a bison!’

As Lucien didn’t reply, Marc glanced across at him. The dope was fast asleep again.

‘Lucien!’ Marc shouted. ‘Come on, look lively!’

But there was nothing to be done. Once he had decided to go to sleep, you couldn’t wake him if he didn’t want you to. Same as with the Great War. Marc put his foot down even harder.

He braked to a halt in front of number 12 allée des Grands-Ifs at one o’clock in the morning. The big wooden gate to Sophia’s house was closed. Marc hauled Lucien out of the car and propped him up.

‘Atten-shun!’ he shouted at him.

‘OK, OK, don’t shout so loud,’ said Lucien. ‘I’m awake. I always wake up if I know I’m really needed.’

‘Hurry up,’ said Marc. ‘Give me a leg-up like the other time.’

‘Take your shoe off then.’

‘Good grief, Lucien! We may be too late already. Just help me up, never mind the shoes.’

Marc put his foot on Lucien’s linked hands and hauled himself to the top of the wall. He had to make an effort to get astride it.

‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Bring that dustbin over, and stand on it and grab my hand.’

Lucien found himself alongside Marc, astride the wall. The sky was cloudy and it was pitch dark. Lucien jumped down, with Marc behind him. Once on the ground, Marc tried to find his bearings. He thought of the well. He had been thinking about the well for some time. The well, water. Mathias. The well, the place where so many medieval crimes were committed. Where was the fucking well? Over there, a pale patch. Marc ran towards it, with Lucien behind him. He couldn’t hear anything, no sound except his own footsteps and Lucien’s. He was beside himself with fear. Frantically, he pulled away the heavy planks across the coping. Shit, he hadn’t brought a torch. Anyway, it was ages since he had owned a torch. Two years? Yes, about two years. He leaned over the coping and called Mathias’ name.

No reply. Why was he so sure about the well? Why was he not going to the house or the wood behind it? No, he was absolutely certain it had to be the well. It’s easy, it’s clean, it’s medieval, and nobody ever finds out. He lifted up the heavy zinc bucket and lowered it gently down. When he heard it touch the surface of the water, far below, he wedged the chain and put one leg over the coping.

‘Make sure the chain stays in place,’ he told Lucien. ‘Don’t move away from the goddamn well. And, whatever you do, take care. Don’t make a sound, don’t alert her. Four, five, six corpses, she’s past counting. Give me the rum.’

Marc began the descent. He was scared. The well was narrow, dark, slimy and cold, like all wells. But the chain was strong. He thought he had gone down about six or seven metres when he felt the bucket, and icy water on his ankles. He let himself slide in up to his thighs and his skin almost burst with the cold. He felt the inert mass of a body against his legs and wanted to scream.

He called him, but Mathias didn’t reply. Now that Marc’s eyes were used to the darkness, he lowered himself further into the water, up to the waist. With one hand, he felt the body of the hunter-gatherer, who had allowed himself to be tipped into the well, like a complete cretin. His head and knees were still above water. Mathias had managed to press his long legs against the walls of the well. It was lucky the well was so narrow. He had succeeded in wedging himself in place, but how long had he been in this freezing water? How long had he been here, sliding, centimetre by centimetre, downwards, till he was swallowing that black water?

He couldn’t haul Mathias to the top if he was a deadweight. Mathias would have to be able to hold on.

Marc wrapped the chain round his right arm, and pressed his legs against the bucket, confirmed his grip, and began to pull Mathias up out of the water. He was so big and heavy. The effort was exhausting. Gradually Marc managed to pull him clear, and after a quarter of a hour’s effort, Mathias’ head and shoulders were resting on the bucket. Marc held him up with his leg, by bracing it against the wall, and with his left hand managed to pull the bottle of rum out of his jacket pocket. If Mathias still had some life left in him, he certainly wouldn’t like the cooking rum. He poured it as best he could into his friend’s mouth. It was going everywhere, but Mathias spluttered. Not for a second had Marc allowed himself to think that Mathias would die. Not the hunter-gatherer. Marc gave him a few clumsy slaps and tipped more rum into him. Mathias groaned. He was coming up from the depths.

‘Can you hear me? It’s Marc.’

‘Where are we?’ asked Mathias in a croaking voice. ‘I’m freezing. I’m going to die.’

‘We’re in the well? Where do you think?’

‘She pushed me in!’ stammered Mathias. ‘She hit me and pushed me in. I didn’t hear her coming.’

‘I know,’ said Marc. ‘Lucien is at the top. He’s going to pull us up.’

‘He’ll rupture himself,’ muttered Mathias.

‘Don’t worry about him. He’s good at front-line jobs. Come on, drink this.’

‘What the fuck is this stuff?’ Mathias was almost inaudible.

‘It’s cooking rum for cakes, it’s Lucien’s. Is it warming you up?’

‘Have some yourself. This water’s paralysing.’

Marc swallowed a few mouthfuls. The chain around his arm was biting and burning into his flesh.

Mathias had closed his eyes again. He was breathing, that was as much as you could say for him. Marc whistled and Lucien’s head appeared in the little circle of light far above.

‘The chain!’ said Marc. ‘Start hauling it up, but very gently, and whatever you do don’t let it go down again. If it jerks, I’ll have to let go.’

His voice sounded echoing and deafening in his ears. But perhaps his ears were frozen.

He heard a clanking sound. Lucien was releasing the chain, while holding on so that Marc did not fall lower. Lucien was a trooper, alright. The chain started to go up, slowly.

‘Pull it up link by link,’ Marc called. ‘He weighs as much as a bison.’

‘Has he drowned?’ Lucien called down.

‘No! Haul away, soldier!’

‘What a bloody shambles!’ came the reply.

Marc was holding onto Mathias by his trousers. Mathias kept his trousers up with a thick cord which was handy to grip on to. That was the only advantage that Marc could see for the time being of Mathias’ rustic habit of holding his trousers up with string. The hunter-gatherer’s head banged from time to time against the walls, but Marc could see the parapet approaching. Lucien heaved Mathias out and laid him on the ground. Marc climbed over the parapet and let himself fall to the grass. He unwound the chain from his arm, pulling a face. The arm was bleeding.

‘Take my jacket to put round that,’ said Lucien.

‘Did you hear anything?’

‘No, but here comes your uncle.’

‘He took his time! Slap Mathias on the face, and rub his limbs. I think he’s lost consciousness again.’

Leguennec was the first to arrive, at a run, and knelt down by Mathias. He did have a torch.

Marc got up, nursing his arm, which seemed to have turned to stone, and went to meet the six policemen.

‘I’m sure she’s hiding in the copse,’ he said.

They found Juliette ten minutes later. Two men brought her over, holding her by the arms. She appeared exhausted, and was covered in scratches and bruises.

‘She…’ panted Juliette. ‘I ran away…’

Marc rushed at her and grabbed her shoulder.

‘Shut up!’ he shouted at her. ‘Just shut up, d’you hear!’

‘Should I stop him?’ Leguennec asked Vandoosler.

‘No,’ whispered Vandoosler. ‘There’s no danger. Let him alone. This was his discovery. I suspected something like this, but…’

‘You should have told me, Vandoosler.’

‘I couldn’t be sure. But medieval historians have special ways of thinking. When Marc gets his mind in gear, he gets straight to the answer. He takes it all in, important stuff and rubbish, and then all at once he goes for it.’

Leguennec looked at Marc, who was standing stiff and pale, his hair soaking wet, and still gripping Juliette’s shoulder with his left hand, covered in shining rings, a large hand close to her throat and looking dangerous.

‘What if he does something stupid?’

‘He won’t do anything stupid.’

Leguennec, all the same, motioned to his men to stand close around Marc and Juliette.

‘I’m going to see to Mathias,’ he said. ‘It looks as if he had a close shave.’

Vandoosler remembered that when Leguennec had been a fisherman, he had also been in offshore rescue. Water, water everywhere.

Marc had let Juliette go now and was staring straight at her. She was ugly, she was beautiful. He felt sick. Maybe it was the rum? She wasn’t moving a muscle. Marc was shaking. His wet clothes were clinging to him and turning his body to ice. Slowly he looked around for Leguennec among the men clustered together in the darkness. He saw him further off, alongside Mathias.

‘Inspecteur,’ he said hoarsely, ‘give orders to have the tree dug up back in rue Chasle. She’s underneath it, I think.’

‘Under the tree?’ said Leguennec. ‘But we’ve already dug there.’

‘Exactly,’ said Marc. ‘The place we’ve already searched, the place nobody will open up again. But that’s where Sophia is.’

Now Marc was shivering all over. He found the little bottle of rum and drank what remained in it. He felt his head swimming and wanted Mathias to make a fire for him, but Mathias was lying on the ground. He wished he too could lie down, and scream perhaps. He wiped his forehead with the wet sleeve on his left arm, which was still functioning. The other arm was hanging limp, and blood was running onto his hand.

He looked up. She was still staring at him. Of all her plans, now in ruins, all that remained was that rigid body and the bitter resistance of her gaze.

Feeling stunned, Marc suddenly sat down on the grass. No, he didn’t want to look at her any longer. He even regretted what he had already seen.

Leguennec was hoisting Mathias into a sitting position.

‘Marc…’ Mathias was saying.

His croaking voice reached Marc, shaking him into speech. If Mathias had had more strength he would have said: ‘Tell them, Marc.’ That’s what he would say, the hunter-gatherer. Marc’s teeth were chattering and the words came out in fragments.

‘What Dompierre wrote…’ he said.

Head down, cross-legged, he was pulling out the grass in tufts, as he had under the beech tree. He scattered the tufts all round him.

‘He wrote Sophia’s name in a funny way: Siméonidis S. We thought he had written that last S the wrong way round, because he was trying to summon up strength. We said it looked a bit like a 2, and we were right, it wasn’t an S at all, it was a figure 2.’

Marc shivered. He felt his uncle pulling off his jacket and his dripping wet shirt. He didn’t have the strength to help him. He was still pulling up grass with his left hand. Now someone was wrapping him in a coarse blanket, which he felt against his skin, one of the blankets from the police van. Mathias was draped in one as well. It was scratchy, but warm. He relaxed a bit, huddled himself into it, and his jaw became less clenched. He kept his eyes fixed on the grass, instinctively so as not to have to look at her.

‘Go on,’ came Mathias’ voice.

Now his voice was coming back, he could speak more easily and compose his thoughts more clearly as he went along. But he still couldn’t say her name.

‘I worked out that Christophe didn’t actually mean to write “Sophia Siméonidis”. But what the hell did he write? He’d written Siméonidis 2, Siméonidis number 2, the double of Siméonidis. His father, in the review of “Elektra”, had written a rather odd phrase, something like “Sophia was replaced for three days by her understudy, Nathalie Domesco, whose pathetic imitation finished off the opera”: and imitation was an odd choice of word, as if the “double” was not just replacing Sophia, but imitating her, mimicking her, with hair dyed black and cut short, red lipstick, and a scarf round her neck-that’s how she did it. Sophia’s “double”. And “the double” was the nickname that Dompierre and Frémonville gave the understudy, probably to mock her, because she was overdoing it. And Christophe knew that, he knew her nickname, but not her name, and he found out-but too late-who she was, and I guessed it too, but almost too late.’

Marc looked towards Mathias who was sitting on the ground between Leguennec and another policeman. He also saw Lucien, who had taken a position standing behind the hunter-gatherer, providing him with a support to lean on, Lucien with his tie in shreds, his shirt filthy from the parapet of the well, his childlike face, his parted lips and frowning eyebrows. A closely knit group of four silent men, clearly outlined by the light from Leguennec’s torch. Mathias seemed dazed, but Mathias was listening. Marc had to go on talking.

‘Will he be OK?’ he asked.

‘He’ll be OK,’ said Leguennec. ‘He’s starting to move his feet now in his sandals.’

‘Ah, he’ll be OK, then. Mathias, did you go to see Juliette this morning?’

‘Yes,’ said Mathias.

‘And you talked to her?’

‘Yes. I’d felt warm, remember, when we were out in the street, the night when we found Lucien out there wandering about drunk? I didn’t have any clothes on, but I wasn’t cold, I felt some warmth on my back, I thought about it later. It must have been the engine of a car. I’d felt the warmth of her car, parked in front of her house. I understood then, when Gosselin was accused. But what I thought was that he’d taken his sister’s car out, the night of the murder.’

‘So you were in the shit, if you told her that. Because sooner or later, once Gosselin was exonerated, there would have to be some other explanation of why you felt warm. But when I came back to the house tonight, I knew all about her, I knew why she did it, I knew everything.’

Marc was scattering grass all round him, tearing up the little patch of ground he was sitting on.

‘Christophe Dompierre had tried to write “Siméonidis number 2” or Siméonidis’ double. Why? Georges had certainly attacked Sophia in her dressing-room and somebody benefited from that. Who? The understudy, of course, the stand-in, who would replace her on stage-in other words number 2.I remembered then… the music lessons… she was the stand-in, for years-under the name Nathalie Domesco. Only her brother knew about it, her parents thought she was doing cleaning jobs. Perhaps she was out of touch with them, or had quarrelled with them, or something. And I remembered something else, yes Mathias, Mathias who didn’t feel cold that night when Dompierre was murdered, Mathias who was standing in front of her gate, just by her car… and I remembered the police when they were digging under the tree, I could see them from my window, and they were only up to their thighs in the trench… so they didn’t dig any deeper than we did… someone else had dug after them, and had gone down deeper to the layer of black earth… and then I knew enough to plot the course of events, like Ahab with the whale, and like him I knew the route she had taken-and the one she would take.’

Juliette looked at the men posted around her in a semi-circle. She threw back her head and spat at Marc. Marc let his head fall onto his chest. The fair Juliette, with her smooth white shoulders, with her welcoming body and welcoming smile. The pale body in the moonlight, soft, round, heavy, and spraying foam. Juliette, whom he used to kiss on the forehead, the white whale, the killer whale.

Juliette spat again, at the two policemen holding her, then nothing came from her but loud hoarse breathing. Then a short cackle of laughter, then the breathing again. Marc could imagine her gaze fixed on him. He thought of Le Tonneau. How happy they had all been there… the cigarette smoke, the beers at the counter, the sound of clinking coffee cups. The veal casseroles. And how Sophia had sung just for them, that first night.

Pull up more grass. By now he had made a little pile on his left.

‘She planted the tree,’ he went on. ‘She knew that the tree would worry Sophia and that she would talk about it. Who wouldn’t be worried by it? She sent the card, supposedly from Stelios. She intercepted Sophia that Wednesday night, as she was going to the station, and brought her back to the damned restaurant with some pretext or other, I don’t know what, and I don’t care how she did it, I don’t want to hear anything from her! She probably said she’d heard from Stelios, got Sophia inside, took her to the basement, killed her, trussed her up like a side of beef, and that night she drove her to Normandy, where I’m sure she put her in the old freezer down in the cellar.’

Mathias was wringing his hands. Oh God, how he had wanted that woman, in the cosy proximity of the restaurant at night when the last customers had left, or even that very morning when he had brushed against her as he helped her tidy the house. A hundred times, he had wanted to make love to her, in the cellar, in the kitchen, in the street. He had wanted to tear off the clothes that constricted him. He wondered now what obscure prudence had somehow always held him back. He also wondered why it was that Juliette had never seemed attracted to any man.

A rasping sound made him jump.

‘Make her shut up,’ shouted Marc, still looking down at the grass.

He drew breath. There was no grass left in reach of his left hand. He shifted position. To make another pile.

‘Once Sophia had disappeared,’ he went on, in a shaky voice, ‘everyone began to get worried, and she was the first to raise the alarm. Like a loyal friend. The police were sure to dig under the tree. So they did, and found nothing there, so they filled it in again. And then everyone ended up thinking Sophia had gone off somewhere with Stelios. So the… the place was ready. Now she could really bury Sophia where nobody, not even the police, would ever look for her, because they’d already done it once. Under the tree. And nobody would be looking for Sophia any more, they all thought she’d gone swanning off to some Greek island. Her body, sealed in by a beech tree nobody would touch, would never come to light. But she needed to be able to bury her unobserved, without any nosy neighbours around-without us there to see.’

Marc stopped again. It was taking him so long to tell all this. It seemed to him he wasn’t telling things in the right order, the proper sensible way. Well, the proper sensible account would have to come later.

‘She took us all off to Normandy. And that night, she got into her car, with her frozen bundle, and drove back to rue Chasle. Relivaux was away, and we like complete nitwits, were sleeping peacefully in her country cottage, a hunded kilometres away! Then she did her disgusting job, and buried Sophia under the beech tree. She’s a strong woman. In the early morning, she came back to the cottage, on tiptoe…’

Thank goodness. He’d got past the worst bit. The bit about Sophia being buried under the tree. He needn’t pull up any more grass now. It was passing. And this was Sophia’s grass anyway.

He got up and walked about slowly, wrapping the blanket around him with his left hand. Lucien thought he looked like a Sioux with his dark straight hair damp from the water and his blanket over his shoulders. He walked to and fro, without going near her, turning without letting his eyes move in her direction.

‘So she wasn’t best pleased after that, to see this niece turn up with the little one. She hadn’t expected it. Alexandra had arranged to meet her aunt, and she didn’t accept that she had just disappeared into thin air. Alexandra was determined and headstrong, the police took it up, and they started looking for Sophia again. It was impossible and risky to try to recover the corpse from under the tree. This time she would have to produce a body, to halt the investigation before the cops started digging up the entire neighbourhood. So the woman who went to find poor old Louise under the Pont d’Austerlitz, that was her. She dragged Louise off to Maisons-Alfort and set fire to her!’Marc was shouting again. He forced himself to take deep breaths from down in his stomach, and started again. Of course, she had Sophia’s little travelling bag. She put the gold rings on Louise’s fingers, put the bag beside her in the car and started the fire. A very big fire. Because there had to be no sign left of Louise’s identity, and the police mustn’t be able to tell which day she died. It was an inferno but she knew that the basalt would survive. And the basalt would point straight to Sophia. It would talk.’

Suddenly Juliette began to scream. Marc stood still and blocked his ears, the left with his hand, the right with his shoulder. He could hear only snatches of what she was screaming: basalt, Sophia, filth, deserved to die, Elektra, fucking critics, singing, nobody, Elektra…

‘Make her shut up!’ Marc shouted. ‘Make her shut up, take her away, I can’t stand to hear her any longer.’

There were more noises, more spitting sounds and the footsteps of the policemen who, at a sign from Leguennec, were leading her away. When Marc gathered that Juliette was no longer there, he let his arms fall. Now he could look at anything he liked, his eyes were free. She had gone.

‘Yes. She did sing,’ he said, ‘but only as a stand-in, an understudy, a second-best, and she couldn’t bear it, she needed her big break. She was mortally jealous of Sophia. So she pushed her luck, she got her poor benighted brother to attack Sophia, so that she would be able to take her place on stage, a simple idea.’

‘What about the attempted rape?’ said Leguennec.

‘The attempted rape? Well, that must have been something his sister told him to do as well, to make the attack look more convincing. The attempted rape was really nothing of the sort.’

Marc stopped speaking, and went over to Mathias, examined him, nodded and went on walking round, with long, unnatural paces, and his arm still hanging down. He wondered whether Mathias found the police blanket scratchy, as he did. Probably not. Mathias was not the sort of person to make a fuss about scratchy wool. He wondered how it was he could go on talking like this, when his head was hurting so much, when he felt so sick, how he could both know all this and tell them about it? How was it? It was because he had been quite unable to swallow the story that Sophia had killed anyone. That had to be the wrong conclusion, he was sure of that, it was an impossibility. And that meant going back to the beginning, looking at all the evidence again. If it wasn’t Sophia, it had to be someone else, there had to be another history of how things had happened. And that history was what he had been telling himself in bits and pieces earlier that day, little bit by bit, working out the path of the whale, its instincts, its desires… By the Saint-Michel fountain… its favourite haunts, its feeding grounds… By the Denfert-Rochereau Lion, that comes down from its plinth at night… the lion that walks by night, that does lion-type things without anyone seeing it, the bronze lion, like her, coming back and lying down on its pedestal in the morning, turning back into a statue once more, stable, reassuring, far from any suspicion… back in the morning on her pedestal, back behind the counter, as usual, smiling, but without having any real affection for anyone, no little pang of the heart, no, not even for Mathias, nothing… But at night, it was a different story; at night, he knew her route now, now that he was on her back. Hanging on like Ahab, gripping the back of the whale that had taken his leg.

‘Let me see that arm,’ whispered Leguennec.

‘Leave him be, for Christ’s sake,’ said Vandoosler.

‘She only sang for three nights,’ Marc said, ‘after her brother had made sure Sophia went to hospital. But the critics either ignored her or, which was worse, two of them, Dompierre and Frémonville, demolished her quite definitively. After that, Sophia changed understudies. It was all over for Nathalie Domesco. She had to give up opera, give up singing, and her fury and pride, and I don’t know what other emotions, stayed with her. After that, she just lived to take her revenge on those who had broken her career: she was intelligent, she was musical, she was mad, beautiful, and demonic, she looked so beautiful on her pedestal-like a statue, untouchable.’

‘Let me see that arm,’ Leguennec was saying again.

Marc shook his head.

‘She waited a year, so that people would have forgotten about “Elektra,” then months later, in cold blood, she killed the two critics who had massacred her. And to get Sophia, she waited fourteen years. She wanted a long time to pass, so that the murder of the two critics would be forgotten and no link found. And she waited, perhaps savouring the wait-I don’t know. But she followed her, and observed her, from the house she had bought close by, a few years later. Perhaps she even persuaded the previous owner to sell it to her, yes, it’s quite possible. She didn’t leave things to chance. She had let her hair grow back to its natural colour, which was blonde, changed her hairstyle, the years passed, and Sophia didn’t recognise her, any more than she recognised Georges. There wasn’t much risk. Top singers hardly know their understudies, and as for the extras…’

Leguennec had taken firm hold of Marc’s right arm without asking him again, and was putting on some powerful-smelling antiseptic. Marc let him do it; he couldn’t feel the arm any more.

Vandoosler was watching him. He would have liked to interrupt and ask questions, but he knew one shouldn’t interrupt Marc at a time like this. You don’t wake up a sleepwalker, because apparently it will make them fall over. Whether that was true or false he didn’t know, but it was certainly true of Marc. You shouldn’t wake Marc up when he was launched, trance-like, into his research. Or he too would fall over. He knew for certain that since Marc left their house that night, he had flown like an arrow directly to the target. It was just like when he was a child, and couldn’t accept something: he would run off somewhere. And when that happened, he knew from experience that Marc could travel very quickly, and become as taut as a wire until he found what he was after. Earlier in the evening, his nephew had come into the house and picked up a couple of apples, he remembered quite well. Marc hadn’t said a word. But his intense gaze, his far-off expression, his mute violence, all that had warned him. And if he hadn’t been deep in his game of cards, he should have noticed that Marc was in the process of searching, finding and homing in on his target, that he was engaged in unpicking Juliette’s logic, uncovering it… and that he knew. And now he was telling them. Leguennec probably thought that Marc was telling them all this with incredible calm. But Vandoosler knew that this unstoppable flow, sometimes smooth, but always driven onwards like a vessel by a squally wind, had nothing to do with being calm. He was sure that by now his nephew’s thigh muscles would be feeling stiff and painful, so that they would need to be wrapped in hot towels as he had often done for him when he was a boy. Everyone else thought Marc was moving normally, but Vandoosler could tell that he was as if made of marble from his hips to his ankles. If he interrupted him, he would stay paralysed like that, and that was the reason he should be left in peace to finish, to reach harbour after this infernal mental chase. His leg muscles would only be able to relax at the end.

‘She told Georges never to say a word to Sophia, because he was in trouble too,’ Marc was saying. ‘And Georges would do whatever she said. Perhaps he was the only person she ever really loved, a bit, but I’m not even sure of that. Georges believed her. She may have told him she wanted to try again to be Sophia’s understudy. He has no imagination, he never dreamed she wanted to kill Sophia, or that she had shot the two critics. Poor old Georges, he was never in love with Sophia. That was a lie, a filthy lie. And that cosy little world of Le Tonneau was built on lies. Juliette was watching Sophia; she wanted to know everything about her and become her bosom friend in the eyes of the world, and then she was going to kill her!’

He was certain of himself. It would be easy to find the evidence now, and witnesses. He looked at what Leguennec was doing. He was putting a dressing on the arm. It wasn’t a pretty sight. His legs were hurting terribly, much worse than the arm. He forced them to carry him, automatically. But he was used to that, it had happened before and he knew it was inevitable.

‘And fifteen years after “Elektra”, she laid her trap. She killed Sophia, she killed Louise, put two of Sophia’s hairs in Alexandra’s car, killed Dompierre. She pretended to protect Alexandra’s alibi for the night of the murder. In fact, of course, she had heard Lucien yelling his head off in the street at two o’clock in the morning, because she had just got back from the Hôtel du Danube after stabbing that poor guy. She was sure that the alibi for Alexandra wouldn’t hold water, and that I would be bound to realise it was a lie. So she could “admit” that Alexandra had gone out, without seeming to betray her. It was disgusting, in fact worse than disgusting.’

Marc recalled the conversation at the bar: ‘You’re very kind, Juliette.’ Not for a moment had the thought crossed his mind that Juliette was manipulating him in order to incriminate Alexandra. Yes, worse than disgusting.

‘But then suspicion fell on her brother. It was getting too close for comfort. She persuaded him to run away, so that he couldn’t give anything away under questioning. And then it was an extraordinary piece of luck for her that they found the message from the man she’d killed. She was safe! Dompierre seemed to be accusing Sophia, who was dead, but was then believed alive! It was too perfect. But I just couldn’t swallow that. Not Sophia, no, Sophia would never have done those things. And what about the tree? It didn’t explain the tree. No, I couldn’t swallow it.’

‘Oh, what a dirty war,’ murmured Lucien.

When they reached the house again at about four in the morning, the beech tree had been dug up, Sophia Siméonidis’ body had already been exhumed and taken away. This time the tree had not been replanted.

The three evangelists, worn out, didn’t feel like going to bed. Marc and Mathias, still wrapped in blankets instead of clothes, were sitting on the little wall. Lucien was perched up on the big dustbin opposite them. He was growing fond of it. Vandoosler was smoking a cigarette and walking up and down. It felt warm. At least compared to the well, Marc thought. The chain would leave a scar on his arm in the shape of a coiled snake.

‘It’ll go well with your rings,’ said Lucien.

‘Wrong arm.’

Alexandra came round to say good night. She had not been able to get back to sleep after the police had been to dig up the beech tree. And Leguennec had been round. To give her the piece of basalt. Marc looked at her. He would have been so glad if she could have fallen in love with him. Just like that, to see what happened.

‘Tell me, Mathias,’ he said, ‘when you whispered in her ear to make her talk, what did you say?’

‘Nothing. I just said “Go on, Juliette, talk to them”’.

Marc sighed. ‘I might have guessed there wasn’t any magic trick. It would have been too good to be true.’

Alexandra kissed each of them and went away. She didn’t want to leave her son on his own. Vandoosler followed her slim figure with his eyes as she walked away. Three little dots. The twins, the woman. Shit. He looked down and stamped out his cigarette.

‘You should get some sleep,’ Marc said.

Vandoosler started off towards the house.

‘Does your godfather usually do what you tell him?’ asked Lucien.

‘No, never,’ said Marc. ‘Look, he’s coming back.’

Vandoosler tossed the five-franc piece into the air and caught it. ‘Let’s chuck it away,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we can’t cut it into twelve.’

‘There aren’t twelve of us,’ Marc said. ‘Only four.’

‘Ah, that would be too simple,’ said Vandoosler.

He swung his arm and the coin tinkled to the ground a long way off. Lucien had climbed onto the dustbin to follow its trajectory.

‘Company dismissed!’ he cried.