Strange Images of Death

Chapter Twenty-Six

‘And you’re right. I do look for credentials. Probity, honour, a useful role in life-these are all important to me. I choose to confide in you because I understand from others and I observe for myself that you possess all three in generous measure.’

She spiked this Victorian flattery with a mocking smile and passed her arm through his. ‘Why don’t we go along to my workshop for a few private moments? It’s not far. Just to the left down here. In the old stables. When the lord had his spacious new building put up for his horses he converted the old one into a studio. It’s lavishly equipped-no expense spared. Better than we can boast at the BM!’

The words were confident but the arm trembled slightly in his and she turned to take a swift glance over her shoulder. They started out together, two friends deep in conversation.

‘I offer reciprocal assurances, Joe. I hope you’ll find that you can trust me. On such a short acquaintance-why should you? But in dire circumstances, I believe honest souls recognize each other and it’s you I’ve chosen to burden with my foul suspicions. I can no longer keep them to myself. If there were to be another killing …’ Her words trailed away and then she started again, more firmly: ‘I have my faults-indeed my sole virtue I sometimes think is the ability to acknowledge this-but the fault people find most annoying in me is that I don’t suffer fools gladly. “Intolerant and intemperate girl!” I remember my father calling me when I was quite small. “You will never marry,” he raged some years later, “because the man has not been born who would come up to your expectations.” And here I am, Joe, thirty-one next month and still single.’

Joe was disarmed by her disclosure and saddened by her stout-hearted acceptance of her situation. And how on earth, he wondered, was a man supposed to respond when a woman revealed her age so baldly? ‘Perhaps he was born, this hero, but died in the carnage, destined never to meet his equal?’

She looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘Do they know, at Scotland Yard, Commander, that they are harbouring a Romantic in their brass-buttoned bosom?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I believe they have an inkling. Tell me, then, did you never set eyes on him-your beau idéal?’

He received another surprised stare. ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did find him. A man I could love. A man-strangely-imperfect in every way. How Pa would have laughed! But, you know, it’s been my father and my brother who have been much in my mind lately and pressing me to confide in you.’

At last she was coming to her point. Joe could only imagine that this preamble signalled a subject of some importance.

‘Doctors both,’ she explained. ‘My father is an eminent psychiatric practitioner …’

‘With a practice in Harley Street? Yes, he is well known in London.’ And now known to the police from a name on a label, he did not add.

‘And my brother intends to follow him after his medical formation. From family conversations and my own studies, I have acquired, over the years, some understanding of the diseases of the mind. Some have a psychological origin but others have a purely physical cause. I’ve learned to recognize the symptoms of a peculiarly distressing, badly understood and little talked-of disease. It’s one my father has been closely concerned with. His patient list reads like selected pages from Debrett and the Almanach de Gotha. Sufferers from this disease tend to seek treatment discreetly, abroad in a foreign capital, and he has many distinguished Europeans-men and women-on his books. Treating, but, sadly-and he would be the first to admit this-failing to cure.’

Finally, she came to her point. ‘Commander, I believe we are in the close company of a man who is in the throes of the third-and deadly-stage of this illness.’

They had reached her studio and entered to find an enchanting space, full of colour and activity. Jane spoke to the girl in maid’s uniform who was busy planing down a length of wood clamped in a vice, telling her to pack up and consider herself dismissed for the day. She moved two pieces of embroidery from a pair of Louis XVI armchairs and invited Joe to sit. He looked about him, intrigued. He was aware of an Aladdin’s cave of antique and lovely objects lined up, propped up or sitting in boxes on tables awaiting the attention of the latest scientific equipment. A German microscope, Bunsen burners, glass phials and a range of chemicals in jars spoke of a serious attempt to test, understand and repair the decaying contents of the château.

‘Tea?’ Jane invited. ‘I always keep a kettle going on the stove and I have some deliciously strong Assam. Would that suit?’

‘It certainly would. If you will serve it in a stout white porcelain mug. I wouldn’t want to risk one of those delicate china confections I see you have over there.’

‘The Limoges? Not even the lord is allowed to use those,’ she said. ‘Far too delicate. They’re here for repair.’

Joe watched her movements about the room with pleasure. He had at first sight wrongly assumed gawkiness in those long limbs. Her every gesture was neat and controlled. The cracked china cups would benefit from a passage through her capable hands.

‘If what I see about me are the sick men of the castle’s contents, I must concentrate and track down the real treasures. They must be quite an eyeful! Are they all Silmont heirlooms or have they been collected over the years?’

She answered him as she busied herself with the tea things. ‘Almost all authentic. Some very ancient indeed. But you know what these feudal castles are-“chivalric receptacles for stolen goods” I once heard them called! The aristocracy-and the priesthood-were allowed the luxury of a bit of banditry and got away with it for centuries. They were always above the law. It doesn’t make the objects themselves less admirable. Here’s your tea. I noticed you don’t take sugar. Oh, thank you, Louise, I’ll see you tomorrow after breakfast,’ she called to the girl, who bobbed by the door and left them together.

‘Louise,’ she explained, ‘has the makings of an excellent craftsman. I’m training her up. She’s quite wasted on bed-making and dusting.’ She looked about her with more than satisfaction-with love. ‘I have the delightful job of cataloguing the precious contents, Joe, as well as repairing the dicky ones-that is the ones I have the competence to tackle. I know my limits and the Aubusson tapestries I’ve sent to their factory for repair. They still have the skills. I have nothing to do with his art collection which I haven’t the knowledge to evaluate. Beyond anyone’s estimation I do believe!’

‘Guy de Pacy is a lucky man-heir to all this and his cousin breaking up fast on the rocks.’ Joe commented, a slight question in his tone.

‘If he is indeed the heir, I can only approve. He is a fine man and I can think of no one who would value it more,’ said Jane stoutly. ‘Always excepting myself and about six other aficionados at the Museum. It will be in safe hands at last.’

They sipped their tea companionably for a moment then: ‘You did some restoration on the effigy of Aliénore, I understand?’

‘Yes. That was entirely in my compass. I was horrified to see the damage. Guy took me in to examine it. I’d just regilded her hair! Hours … days of work lost, but that’s as nothing compared with the loss of the artwork. It really was exceptional, you know. Carved with love.’

She glanced at Joe. Trying to judge how receptive he might be to one of her theories, he decided. His alert and friendly grin clearly did the trick as she plunged into a confidence. ‘Do you know, I found something quite extraordinary under a fold of her dress-just under the neckline. It would only have been perceptible to someone peering very closely at it from an odd angle, as I did. I thought at first it was a flaw in the stone and ran a finger over it. No, it was smooth and intentional. It was a mole, Joe. A little brown disfigurement invisible to any onlooker during her life or after her death, in stone. It was a very personal touch.’

‘The artist had an intimate knowledge of the lady’s body, are you saying?’

‘Perhaps so intimate that their relationship was the cause of her death.’

‘And her husband, with a cruel turn of the screw, made her lover carve her effigy after death?’ Joe shuddered at his thought.

‘Yes. But the artist made his own secret farewell. He carved into her likeness a sign of his very special intimate knowledge. So special and heartbreaking that, here we are, Joe, six centuries later, understanding him.’ She leaned closer, emphasizing her point. ‘Just you and I. I never did speak of it to Lord Silmont. The knowledge would have inflamed his rage, I think.’

Knowledge to which Joe considered he himself had no right, outsider that he was. He saw in Jane’s earnest face the desire, often unconscious, certainly never acknowledged, of the expert for the objects in his or her care. ‘Was it yours to withhold, Jane, this discovery?’

She blushed. ‘No! You’re right, of course. A romantic whim of mine … I wanted to keep the lovers’ secret from him. I shouldn’t have. Not my place. I’m just a jobbing craftsman around here, after all.’

‘But a moving story,’ Joe murmured. ‘I wonder what happened to the artist.’

‘I’d guess that he didn’t long survive the completion of his work. The lords of the day were vindictive, possessive and cruel. And-believe me-they still are!’

‘You were about to speak of the present Lord Silmont and his problems, I think.’

Jane fell silent. The moment she had been working towards had come, an opportunity for free speaking to a receptive ear presented itself, and yet she hesitated.

‘It’s syphilis,’ Joe said bluntly to bump her over her hesitation. ‘Extraordinary how one hesitates to say the word. The French Disease, the Italian Swelling, the Scotch Fiddle, the Spanish Gout: the dose of nastiness we say we catch from whatever people we perceive to be our enemy at the time. The “great pox” is a term anyone would understand. All words for one ghastly, incurable scourge. And one may go about one’s daily life, suffering from it for years … decades.’

She nodded. ‘And it frequently goes undeclared or undetected. Even medical men are deceived into diagnosing a weak heart, high blood pressure, epilepsy, poor digestion. Indeed, it mimics all those ailments brilliantly. My father has been consulted by men regarding the mental damage they were experiencing, men who did not associate it with their “other complaints”. But in the end it shows itself in all its hideousness. The spirochetal bacterium that causes it may take thirty years to climb the spine and reach the brain but eventually the parasite will settle there and destroy whatever cells govern our personality. Mild-mannered men become demons overnight. They storm and rage and then become calm again. The end may not come quickly. There are recorded cases of men who have lingered for years, on the brink of death one moment and enjoying a normal life the next. Frequently, towards the end, the fury gives way to periods of intense creativity-artists, musicians, writers-all have revealed this.’

‘It’s extraordinary,’ Joe agreed, ‘that the heights of human artistic achievement may be reached only to be countered moments later by a plunge to the depths of human behaviour. Jekyll and Hyde? Oscar Wilde’s portrait of Dorian Grey? Are these an allegory? A warning?’

‘Beethoven’s last works, those of Schubert … Guy de Maupassant … Baudelaire … Oscar Wilde perhaps, and Van Gogh’s late canvases. Those last, completed in a frenzy of inspiration within the madhouse itself.’

In spite of himself, Joe found his voice dropping to a whisper as he revealed: ‘He has in his room-were you aware? — a self-portrait of Van Gogh. Three-quarter profile with a stare deadly enough to terrify the Commissaire.’

‘Has Jacquemin worked it out?’

‘No, not yet. In spite of compiling a list of the medicaments he found in his cupboards. Amongst the laxatives and painkillers and milk of magnesia tablets, I saw listed potassium iodide. The Commissaire understands this to be a prescription for heart disease.’

‘And so it can be.’

‘But, prescribed along with-salvarsan?’

‘Ah, yes. And there’s your proof-an arsenic compound that’s been in use for the past few years. Much trumpeted as a certain cure for syphilis. My father has reservations. And, I think you’ll agree, it doesn’t appear to be doing much good in this case. Shall we say, Joe, what even we have been tiptoeing around? Shall we say that the manic rages, the decay in personality and the delusions are symptoms of the tertiary stage of syphilis and, under its influence, Lord Silmont has launched himself on a mad course of destruction and murder?’

‘Jane, whilst I must agree with the first of your assertions-that the lord is in the throes of this disease-I cannot agree with the second. I spent the afternoon with his friends and his doctor, splendid men all three, and can tell you that the lord was in their company at the time Estelle was murdered. He has the soundest alibi I’ve ever encountered. Ill he may be in mind and body, deluded and certifiably insane, but he is not guilty of murder.’

She made a small noise in her throat. Dissent? Surprise? Disappointment? It was not relief.

‘You’re perfectly sure of that?’

‘Perfectly.’

She shook her head in embarrassment.’Oh, dear! I have made a mess of that, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘Spreading doubt of the worst kind! You must think very badly of me.’

‘I’ve learned never to come up with a theory and stretch the facts to fit it,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s taken years but I’ve got to the point where I can let evidence, impressions and sound advice from well-meaning friends-such as I’ve just had from you-swirl about until the moment comes when they settle into a convincing pattern.’

‘And for you they’re still swirling?’

‘Yes. Perhaps the pieces will begin to fall together tomorrow when Estelle has spoken to us.’

‘Estelle has spoken?’

‘I’m going to Avignon to see the pathologist. A task Jacquemin seems willing to delegate to me. By then there may be other indications. If I were at all fanciful, I’d say that the dead sometimes try to pass on a message. They stand about on the fringes of perception, unable to influence the living agents involved with their corpse but urging us on.’ Joe didn’t quite like the way her lip curled in disbelief so he pressed on: ‘You’d be surprised how often I’ve watched a pathologist put down his instruments and declare the job finished only to pause, uneasy, think a bit and say, almost to himself: “Hang on a minute … there’s something else I could look at …”’

Jane sighed and this he identified clearly as a blend of derision and impatience.

‘And now I see in your eye what your father saw all those years ago! “Intolerant and intemperate girl!” I shall shout. And possibly stamp my foot. But I shall know that I’ve deserved your scorn.’

She smiled and the hard expression melted away. Jane Makepeace was, indeed, a very pretty girl, Joe considered. But her father had known his own daughter.

Becoming the dry detective again, Joe wondered aloud what-had the lord had the means and opportunity to commit the crime (which he hadn’t)-could possibly be his motive. What on earth would prompt him to attack first his own much-prized effigy and follow this with the murder of a strikingly similar victim? Could they ascribe this to complete, unreasoning dementia? It seemed to him that there was rather too much of a pattern to dismiss it as motiveless violence.

‘Come now, Joe!’ she said annoyingly. ‘You’ve thought this through, as have I. Of course there’s a pattern. And a motive too-a crazy one which might spring from a diseased mind. It comes down to blood.’

‘Blood? There was little or no blood spilled,’ he ventured.

‘You’re wilfully misunderstanding. I mean blood line. Descent. Silmont has never married-and now I think we can guess why-and therefore has no children. He has to deal with the problem of his imminent death and the inheritance of all this. It’s not quite like the English tradition where the name and position are inherited along with the property. A man of a different name, finding himself the owner of the estate, could call himself “de Silmont” and there you have it-yet another member of the aristocracy. Ten a penny but they still set some store by it. The writer, Voltaire, was a plain Monsieur Arouet until he bought the Voltaire estate. After a few years he was Monsieur de Voltaire and had quietly dropped his own family name. What’s the betting that Monsieur de Pacy will seamlessly become Silmont?’

‘Sounds like a good solution to me,’ Joe said.

‘Not if there is bad blood between the two men.’

‘Blood again? Did you use that term intentionally?’

‘Yes. You will have heard that the men are cousins.

This is a polite acceptance. They are not. They are, in fact, half-brothers. Some sort of cousin as well, if you can be bothered to work it out, I suppose. Guy was born somewhat illegitimate.’

‘Somewhat?’

‘It’s not straightforward. He was brought up by Vincent de Pacy and his wife in their household, their acknowledged son. And why not-de Pacy was indeed his father. The man had quite a reputation locally for philandering apparently. But Guy’s mother? Well! Prepare yourself for a surprise. She was, in fact, Ariane, the wife of the Lord Silmont of the day, Bertrand’s own mother.’

‘Ah, here she is again-the Unfaithful Wife!’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was the nineties. La Belle Époque. There were many liaisons of that nature. But are you seeing a pattern? The Lord Silmont already had a son in Bertrand and had no use for another who wasn’t his own. He compelled his wife to hand the baby over to its father, de Pacy. Everything was hushed up and given a veneer of propriety as is the custom but I can only imagine what effect it must have had on both boys.’

‘And both women!’ said Joe, aghast. ‘I’m surprised there wasn’t murder done! I had no idea.’

‘And I trust you to keep it to yourself. Guy is a survivor, something of a stoic, and he’s adjusted to his circumstances. A man to be respected. But he would not be pleased … I feel I’ve betrayed a man who has befriended me. I have said too much.’

‘Not if it has a bearing on this case. But how did you manage to dig so deep?’

She laughed. ‘Me? Bad-tempered, angular, unsympathetic me? I have acquired a certain skill, Joe, over the years. I have learned the techniques of the psychiatrist’s couch. I know when to be silent. I know which phrases will provoke a response. And I know how to interpret those responses.’

‘I suppose I must resign myself to being read by you?’

‘Not at all, Joe. I take you for a clear rock pool. The sunlight and clarity I see on the surface goes all the way down to the white pebbles on the bottom.’

He didn’t believe her but made no denial or affirmation of her challenge, spotting her outrageous comment for the trigger it was. If he’d been lounging on a tapestried couch instead of perched rather gingerly on an ancient chair with a rickety leg he might well have given way to the temptation of sinking into an indulgent bout of self-analysis. Steered by Jane Makepeace in the direction of her choosing. He helped himself to another cup of tea from the pot.

‘So why the frenzied attack on womankind?’ he asked, wondering whether she had reached the same conclusion as himself.

‘Brought up with medieval notions of inheritance, the fascination for the treacherous wife, Aliénore, whom he adores and loathes in equal measure, he finds at an impressionable age that the family tradition continues. His own mother he discovers to be a strumpet-in his vocabulary. I despise the word and seek unsuccessfully for the male equivalent. At any event-a woman who has been unfaithful and given away the product of her unfaithfulness. His own brother. A heartbreaking loss? Or relief that a cuckoo has been pushed out of the nest?’

‘Your father would have a field day with all this,’ said Joe, bemused.

‘And then, we must assume somewhere in his early twenties-that is the most usual time, I understand, for young men to go off the rails, usually with an infected prostitute-he finds through the appearance of a chancre in the groin, and probably a fever, that he has been infected with the most hideous disease known to man. It is incurable. It is unbearably painful. It is transferable. No one is sure of the period of contagion but he knows that if he marries, he risks infecting his wife. And the disease may be passed from a mother to her child. She will bring into the world an infant covered in black pustules and condemned to a life of pain. Silmont does the honourable thing and forbids himself ever to marry.’

‘Which leaves him with a certain resentment against women,’ said Joe. ‘Unfaithful, diseased and dangerous creatures!’

‘The anger and bitterness grow over the years like the tumours. And now he’s reached the third stage and his diseased brain is no longer capable of exercising restraint or reason. He sees the statue of the ancient whore as the seed bed of vice and his own illness as destruction visited on him by an unclean woman. I think the arrival of Estelle with her incredible looks and her licentious reputation burst the boil of his venom. She was fated to pay the price. The moment she stepped over the drawbridge she-’

Joe was anxious to discourage Jane’s doom-laden tone. He detected a trace of lip-smacking jubilation and, though he could understand, he could not sympathize.

‘Which was exactly when? Her arrival?’ he interrupted brusquely.

‘Let me think … I was already here. My six months’ secondment started in May. It would have been at the beginning of June. She came down with Nathan the photographer.’ Jane’s eyes narrowed. ‘I remember clearly the effect she had on the men that first day.’ She fell silent and let her remark hang in the air between them. She had taken her reprimand and this was her riposte: if Joe wanted to hear gossip, he was going to have to ask nicely.

‘Any man in particular seem smitten?’ he enquired because he needed to know. He was reluctant to hear an account seen through the prism of Jane Makepeace’s critical faculty but it would be interesting to compare her version with the one he already had from Orlando.

‘You want individual profiles-a barometer of lust? Let me see. Freddie was an obvious victim from the first moment. The mercury rose to danger level in seconds. Storm warnings hoisted. She treated him kindly, I think. He was her devoted swain, you could say. Poor chap! He was much ragged for it. Derek and Ernest were sat on hard by each other’s respective wife. Bubbling under, I’d say. Petrovsky? There was a blip from him until he discovered that she despised him and his level fell. Such a man thrives only on adulation. And his hands were rather full at the time, anyway. Nathan Jacoby watched all these fools manoeuvring from the sidelines, cynical and indulgent. But concerned. Definitely concerned. Your friend Orlando? Now, there’s a lovely man!’ she said surprisingly. ‘A pacifist and a reformer. And a fine artist. Far too good for her. He registered a certain warm interest and I thought at one point they might make a go of it. Wouldn’t have blamed her for trying-he’s easy and funny. Perfect man to spend a summer with.’

Joe hid a smile. He wondered whether he should warn Orlando that he had a secret admirer.

‘And the Frenchmen? You’re saving them till last?’

‘I appreciate a crescendo. Guy de Pacy … Handsome, competent, stand-offish Guy. He was amused, I’d say, by the reactions of the other men. But she was the type who would go for the unattainable. He was much too old for her. Too experienced. Too choosy. She tried hard-to everyone’s embarrassment. It didn’t take long for her to get the message and she stopped pursuing him. Very abruptly. One day she was all over him, the next she was glowering from the other end of the table. Something emphatic happened to make her change her mind.’

Jane seemed genuinely puzzled and not fishing for a reply from him. Could it be that this modern, so well-informed young woman had no knowledge of the possibility of male inversion? He decided not to raise the subject.

‘This message that Estelle got? Any idea of what it consisted?’

‘Lord no! I’m on good terms with Guy but he doesn’t confide. He’s not approachable in that way-you must have noticed. Not a gossip. But it might not have been Guy who spoke to her. Had you thought of that?’

‘Not Guy?’

‘The Lord Silmont. If he noticed her interest, he would have taken steps to discourage it.’

‘Steps?’

‘Yes. Here my theory begins to crumble.’ Jane frowned and looked to Joe for help, her confident assertions suddenly faltering.

‘Because he could just have sent her away, couldn’t he? A hanger-on, a potential trouble-maker, a girl who represented everything he despised, why wasn’t she on the next train back to Paris?’ Joe wondered.

‘You’re right. Young, unconnected and foreign, you could add. He’s unpredictable. I’ve seen him dismiss a servant for squinting at him. But he kept Estelle on.’

‘Could he have been fascinated himself?’

Jane nodded slowly. ‘Not obviously so. His visits to the dining room didn’t increase with her arrival. He didn’t seek her company. But when they were in the same room he watched her. Hardly a word exchanged but he was always … conscious of her, I’d say.’

‘Jealous of Guy?’

‘Probably. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? Younger man, attractive, healthy, and being besieged by the girl you’ve a fancy of some sort for yourself? Yes. It could have been the lord who warned her off. Another reason for him to want to get rid of her permanently. Had it occurred to you, Joe, that the table-top tomb looks very like an altar? He could have cleared the stone strumpet away to make space for a flesh and blood victim. Sacrificing her symbolically-all in the throes of his diseased urges, of course.’

They had come around full circle. ‘But I told you, Jane, he could not have stuck the dagger in Estelle yesterday.’

‘You haven’t quite got there, have you?’ she said, annoyingly. ‘Well, I leave you to work it out for yourself. I don’t intend to put ideas into your head. I have no concrete evidence to present yet to back up my suspicions but I’ll let you have it the moment I uncover it.’

Joe very much doubted that she had. Miss Makepeace, he thought, had shot her bolt, exhausted her evidence. But he was mistaken.

‘I’ll leave you with another thought,’ she said, as one turning in the saddle to fire off a last Parthian arrow. ‘You only ask me about her relationships with the men in the party. She was not popular with the women in the dorm, you know. They’re mostly quite open-minded-as females go-but when they’re cooped up together! Well! They can behave no better than schoolboys … or hens … The most awful bullies! They choose one of their number to be the sacrificial one, the poor specimen all agree to peck at. They chose Estelle. She was easy to despise and a threat. Cecily, in particular, could get into a froth of rage at the mention of her name. There was bad blood between those two. Cecily tormented her. The second night Estelle was with us, I caught the appalling Cecily making an apple-pie bed to trap her. Reverting to schoolgirl behaviour.’

‘What did you do, Jane?’ Joe asked, trying not to smile.

‘It’s not funny, Commander! Girls, even hard-boiled ones like Estelle, can be psychologically damaged by such evidence of rejection by their peers, you know … I told her if she didn’t undo it at once and be nice, someone might think of putting a snake in hers.’

‘That was telling her,’ said Joe.

‘If it was, she wasn’t listening. Cecily did it anyway as soon as my back was turned.’

Joe swallowed uneasily. ‘And …?’

‘There’s a nest of adders on the fringes of the woodland.’ Jane grinned. ‘We’ve had no trouble with Cecily since.’

‘I sincerely hope the snake suffered no psychological damage,’ said Joe faintly. ‘An enforced appearance in Cecily’s bed could leave its mark on man or beast.’ He instantly regretted his startled aside.

Jane considered him through narrowed eyes. ‘I say again, Commander-it’s not funny.’ She waggled a finger at him in joking reprimand. ‘Interview over, I think.’

She began to collect up the teacups in a marked manner and added: ‘But I was forgetting-when it comes to gathering information, Joe, you hardly need to listen to me. You’re on the inside of the bend! Estelle’s cold lips may yet whisper into your attentive ear. I’m sure you’ll listen to her.’

Jacquemin would not appreciate a second female corpse appearing on his patch, Joe judged, so he decided to put off strangling Jane Makepeace for the moment. Really, he’d rather listen to the dead Estelle than the very much alive and unfortunately named Miss Makepeace.