Strange Images of Death

Chapter Nine

At the moment the two French policemen were settling their new-found agreement and their delicious fish lunch with a brandy, Joe, in the chapel, was working hard not to throw up his rabbit stew into some available urn.

The tiny body was hanging by the neck. Dead for some days, it was already being consumed by wriggling maggots of various kinds and giving off a revolting odour. Joe took a pencil from his pocket and poked at it. It gave signs of spongy resistance and was not yet dried out. A fly buzzed bad-temperedly from the throat and Joe swatted it away in disgust. Where in hell did they come from, these lousy flesh-eaters? He answered his own question: beetles and flies in the ancient woodwork aplenty no doubt. Some might well have been carried into the building in the animal’s own fur.

And what was the significance? ‘A message’, de Pacy had hinted.

What was one dead creature dangling from a vandalized tomb trying to tell him? What had it said to de Pacy?

Joe was seized for a moment by a healthy rush of indignation and an urge to laugh at his ludicrous situation. His last case in London had involved multiple corpses, eviscerations, and disposal of limbs and heads in packing cases left at St Pancras station. It had involved the talents of the clever men who worked with test tubes, swabs, microscopes and Bunsen burners to establish blood groups and identify fingerprints. He heard himself gleefully recounting his exploits in France to his friend, Chief Inspector Ralph Cottingham, on his return to London: ‘Equipped only with a pencil, I examined the entrails of a rabbit for a clue as to who’d smashed up a statue …’ The story would grow in absurdity as he told it.

He remembered with a flash of guilt the statement he’d been provoked into making after lunch. ‘They start with small animals … work their way up to children and weaker members of society’ or some such guff he’d spouted.

And here was stage one, as predicted.

Or was it? Might it be no more than just-a message? De Pacy had clearly interpreted it as such. Joe couldn’t leave the chapel and meet the steward’s quizzical eye still unaware.

He stared on at the pathetic form willing it to speak. Hanging up in pairs outside a game butcher’s shop, he’d have admired rabbits. He’d have known just which ones to choose. Served up to him in a dish with one of Madame Dalbert’s wonderful sauces, he’d have scoffed the lot and dabbed up the juices with a hunk of bread. And complimented the cook. So why was he finding this one little corpse so sinister?

Sinister. There flashed into his mind a woodcut he’d studied with horror when he was a boy. He’d no idea what his age had been at the time but he had certainly been too young to be exposed to such a graphic image. Not exposed exactly! His own cunning and curiosity had led him to the discovery and he’d never confided it to anyone. Left alone with a head cold while on holiday with his London uncles one day, he’d gone along to the library to entertain himself and had straightaway headed for the section his uncles had banned him from approaching. He knew where the key was and in minutes had unlocked the bookcase and wedged the library door in case Simmons should come and thoughtfully offer him a glass of honey and lemon.

And there they were, to be pored over at his leisure: German, French and Italian publications with copious illustrations of naked ladies. And just the kind he liked. Large-breasted, long-legged beauties, sometimes goddesses, always smiling a welcome. He had imagined himself a Paris, Prince of Troy, in possession of a golden apple and, in order to give his illicit scrutiny a more acceptable motive, decided he was going to be the ultimate judge, making, in a classically acceptable manner, the award to the one who he decided was the most lovely. He unwrapped a disc of Sharpe’s Toffee, popped it into his mouth and smoothed out the shiny gold wrapper. He folded it with his thumbnail into the shape of a crown and decided he’d leave it, as his prize, marking the page of the winner. So far Botticelli’s Roman goddess Flora was in the lead. She had all her clothes on but he liked her naughty face. She looked straight out at him from the book, golden and lovely and about to tell him a joke or throw him a flower. But, strangely, he could never remember who had received the Sandilands Prize for Pulchritude.

It had been a drawing of the most revolting woman he had ever set eyes on that had stayed with him over the years. Lucky it didn’t ruin him for life, he sometimes thought.

The book had been an Italian publication. Heavy red leather and gold lettering. The pages had a rich waxy feel to them as he turned them slowly. Italian beauties of the thirteenth century onwards had delighted him one after the other, until he came upon her. ‘Luxuria’ was her name. A drawing by Pisanello from the fifteenth century. She had everything that ought to have been alluring: youth, a smile, a distant expression of satisfied pleasure, an abundance of golden hair that waved its way like a cloak right down to her bottom. Her only jewellery was a chain about her left ankle. But she was skinny. Her flesh was wasted and her elbow bones poked through the skin. Her knee caps were prominent as was a bone on her right buttock. Joe had turned the book this way and that, using all his scant knowledge of female anatomy to decide huffily that the artist had never seen a naked woman before. Surely? Women didn’t have bones in that place. And the breasts? A pair of small Scottish baps too widely spaced. The belly was all wrong too. Distended. The poor lady clearly had some kind of disease. He’d seen sheep out on the hill with the same symptoms.

Before turning on in disgust his eye had been caught by the animal crouching at Luxuria’s right foot.

The painter reinstated himself somewhat in Joe’s estimation by the quality of his portrayal of the rabbit. Joe knew about rabbits. He’d shot, skinned and jointed many a one ready for the pot and appreciated them in all their forms. So what was this witch-like hag doing alongside a perfectly drawn rabbit? Curiosity always won through with Joe and, sighing, he went to fetch an Italian dictionary to decipher the script that accompanied the strange picture. Half an hour later he had it.

The lady Luxuria was in fact Lust. One of the Vices. She was shown reclining in the manner of Venus but this was a parody. (A trip to the English dictionary eventually cleared up this notion.) So-a ‘no better than she ought to be’ lady. The commentator obligingly explained that her skeletal state was due to an overindulgence in the pleasures of the flesh. Joe decided to remain mystified by this. He was more intrigued to learn that the rabbit was known to be a ‘harlot’s familiar’. On account of its ‘mating proclivities’. Joe took a guess at that one. Well, he understood that in fairy stories cats were the familiars of witches so the rabbit must play the same role for harlot women.

Poor creature. Round, sleek and furry, it would have made a beautiful pet. Unfair to give it to a bony frightening woman like the one in the picture. He decided suddenly that he was feeling hot and thirsty. A drink of honey and lemon would be very welcome. He’d replaced everything in order, locked up, removed the wedge, placed The Swiss Family Robinson open on the library table and rung for Simmons.

Joe peered more closely at the dead animal. How dead? No sign of blood on the corpse or surrounding area. The man who’d brought it here had not, evidently, wanted to leave a messy trail to mark his passage. There was no sign that it had been killed on the spot. Broken neck? Most likely. Killed elsewhere and brought in, then strung up. He wondered whether there was any significance in the positioning of the string. Of course there was. The creature had been put to dangle over the words et Alienora uxor sua. The rabbit, the familiar of the whore. A comment on a woman so long dead? Why?

At least he’d have views to exchange with de Pacy when he returned. Even though what he had to say was largely unintelligible.

Joe looked up, suddenly uncomfortable. He didn’t believe that emotions could leave an imprint on a scene beyond the dispersal time of sweat and other bodily fluids. He wasn’t quite certain, in spite of all the evidence he’d gathered to the contrary, that Evil with a capital E existed. But he knew that if anyone had asked him at that moment to give an opinion he’d have said: ‘This is a bloody oppressive place. Not good. There’s something ancient and wicked here that the sanctity of centuries has done nothing to dispel. And it’s chasing me out.’

The hairs on the back of his neck told him he was being watched. He stood up sharply, right hand going instinctively to the waistband where he usually carried his service revolver. Everywhere hidey-holes met his eye. Flounces of velvet drapery, carved wood ornament, pews and cupboards, even a confessional with a half-curtain pulled across. Places enough to hide a battalion. And then he saw the innocent cause of his concern. Innocent? Perhaps not entirely!

He exchanged glares with a trident-wielding devil that seemed to be taking an interest in him. Carved in dark wood and dulled by the candle-soot of ages, he was still clearly playing a robust part in a representation of the final judgement on the west wall. And keeping the visitor under surveillance. Joe gave him a cynical salute and left the chapel.