Madrigal (3 page)

Mon Dieu
, but she was so of the past, her skin had even been anointed with one of the unguents of those days. ‘You're a puzzle,' he said, and then, ‘Forgive me.'

Abruptly he broke the fingers of her left hand. Her little treasure rolled away, and for a moment he was too preoccupied to say a thing.

‘A pomander,' he managed at last. ‘Of gold and in the shape of a medieval tower with battlements, whose lid is hinged and with a fine gold chain and clasp.'

There were second- and third-storey windows in the walls, and embrasures for firing arrows – openings from which the scent could constantly escape in those times of plague to momentarily purge the stench of raw sewage and rotting refuse in the streets. But there were few of these openings and he had the thought that the pomander must have been modelled after an actual tower in the Palais.

The pomander was filled with half-centimetre-sized spheres of grey, polished ambergris. Though hard to define, its scent was musty, earthy and still quite strong, though he had the thought the ambergris wasn't recent.

All over the walls there was the finely engraved design of an alternating upright lute, separated by a downwardly pointing needle, beneath which was an upended thimble to catch a single droplet of blood.

The pomander was very old and, in keeping with the riddles of those times, he wondered if in its design there wasn't a rebus, a puzzle with which she would tease others to discover its true meaning?

When he opened the purse, he found gold double dinars, base-silver dineros and silver pennies, gold écus and agnels, salutos, ducats and a Cretan coin, an exquisite piece, dating perhaps from the first century
BC.
Cast with all its imperfections of roundness, it held the beautifully executed, raised design of a maze.

‘
Le fil d
'
Ariane
,' he sighed. ‘Is this why you carried it?' Ariadne's clue. The thread Theseus used to escape the labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur. ‘Were you trying to indicate that should something happen to you, that others must find the thread and follow it?'

Among the hoard at the bottom of the purse there was a tin of sardines that had definitely
not
come from the very early Renaissance or from such a far distant time as the maze.

‘Hermann,' he said. ‘Hermann, what is this?' But his partner was busy elsewhere.

The corridor was dark except for the faint flickering of an ‘Occupation' fire in the room ahead. Kohler waited. Drawn by the smell of smoke that the mistral had driven down the chimney and throughout the palace's ground floor, he had at last found them.

Their voices were muted, the patois not easily understood and soon silenced, they sensing an intruder.

The monk, still with hood covering his head, sat to the left on a three-legged stool that must have been rescued from a medieval cowshed; the boy was to his right, sitting on the hearthstone, all but hidden under a filthy horse blanket and no doubt freezing.

‘Okay,' sighed Kohler. ‘Let's start by your telling me who the hell you are and why the kid's here, and don't tell me he's taken the vow of silence.'

Such impatience befitted Gestapo Paris-Central. ‘My name is Brother Matthieu. I am envoy to His Eminence, the Bishop. I do odd jobs.'

‘In sackcloth?'

‘It's my mistral coat. You'd be surprised how effective are the clothes of our departed brethren. Six hundred years ago the mistral was every bit as much of a curse. Now, please, Inspector, I must send Xavier back to the kitchens and to his bed. The boy knows nothing of the matter here.'

Neither of them had turned from the fire. Too afraid perhaps. The room was barren except for the stool, a wooden soup bowl, a wooden spoon and a small cast-iron stew pot whose lid had been set aside.

A thin litter of reeds barely raised the threat of a fire.

‘Xavier is a ward of the Church, Inspector, and was given into God's Holy Service by his parents as was I myself. We share much in common, and out of the great goodness of his heart he has brought me a modest repast for which I am truly grateful.'

‘
Un civet de lièvre
, eh?' snorted the Kripo. A hare stew. Both continued to stare at the tender flames. ‘Hey,
mon fin
, trapping hare and rabbit is illegal, and so is eating meat on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and it
is
Wednesday now.'

All spoils to the victor, even small game. ‘Are you threatening me with three years in prison, Inspector, or with forced labour in the Reich?'

The official and much-touted penalty.

The face that had turned to look up at him was in shadow but darker still and fierce, the nose prominent and scarred.

‘Pull the hood back. Go on, do it!'

‘If it pleases you,' came the mild rebuke. The harshness of a perpetual smile registered in once broad lips, the lower of which had been tightly folded up and in by the surgeons of twenty-five years ago. The rugged, scarred cheeks, with the grey-black bristles of a thin and closely clipped beard, hid nothing. Not the terrible shrapnel wounds of that other war; not the fear, the pain of knowing one had been about to die – that never left a person; not the reprieve and the disfigurement.
Une gueule cassée
, one of the Broken Mugs.

There were pouches under the dark grey eyes, one of which was permanently half closed, but the intensity of the gaze had mellowed a little as sympathy had registered starkly in the face of the detective.

Without a word, Kohler dragged out the apology of cigarettes and, offering each of them a smoke, reached into the fire to take up a light.

‘Inspector,' said Brother Matthieu, ‘you must forgive my recent absence, but you see, I was worried. Xavier is my responsibility and I was certain you might think his presence untoward when the préfet and the bishop had ordered that no others were to enter the Palais. The repast also had to be shared. It's our custom, and I knew the stew would not keep hot and he'd be hungry.'

Ravenous, no doubt, and probably fresh in from trapping game in the countryside, and with a corpse up there on the first floor neither of them seemed to care to mention.

The remains of a salad of Belgian endive, marinated green beans, sweet red peppers and chopped chives lay on a soiled napkin before the boy, as did a half-eaten round of goat's cheese that had been wrapped in a grape leaf, marinated in olive oil and dusted with herbs.

The kid had tried to hide the cheese. Oil glistened on the slender fingers. He was nearly thirteen years old, tall for his age, old beyond mention, willow-shoot thin and with blue eyes that, though stunningly wide, held a peasant's watchfulness and were otherwise empty of all feeling.

He smoked his cigarette like a pro. He'd flick the butt away when done. He had that insolent look about him.

The dark brown hair was parted in the middle, cut in a pageboy style and bobbed about the ears. The lips were wide and sensuous, the cheeks thin, the bone structure fine, the brush of the eyebrows full and wide. A pretty boy, one might have said, if his clothes hadn't been so worn and filthy. The lashes were long and curved upwards, the nose was aquiline and of some passing nobility deep in his family's ancestry, the skin that soft shade of brown so typical of the Midi.

‘
Ihre Papiere
,' breathed Kohler, hating himself for getting Gestapo-like, but somehow he had to get through to them. ‘Your
Ausweis
, too.
Bitte
, eh?
Schnell
!' Hurry! He snapped his fingers.

The monk threw the boy a warning glance and blurted, ‘Inspector, is this necessary?'

‘It is, if we're ever to find out where he's been, Father, why he's really here, and what connection if any he has to the murder. Oh by the way, what was her name? You haven't forgotten it, have you?'

‘Mireille de Sinéty. That … that is all I am permitted to tell you for the moment.'

‘The bishop's got your tongue, has he? Hey,
mon fin
, refusing to give information is a criminal offence.'

With vegetable slowness, the boy hauled out a dog-eared ID, a residence permit and ration booklet from which, since it was close to the end of the fortnight, virtually all of the tickets had been removed. One thousand one hundred and fifty calories a day
if
one could get them.

Kohler held the ID photos to the light. An altar boy's white surplice had been worn for the head-and-shoulders and profile shots. The kid had been scrubbed clean and looked like an angel without its wings.

‘They made me bathe,' he taunted insolently.

‘Who?'

The boy indicated his mentor. ‘
Les pères de Jésus. Mon père.
'

‘Inspector …' began Brother Matthieu only to hear the Kripo shriek, ‘Silence! Let him do the talking. So, empty your pockets, Xavier. Let's see what you're carrying.'

‘Inspector …'

‘
Sei still, Priester
! Look, don't force me to get rough. I simply want the truth. Neither of you appears to be shedding a tear over the dearly departed.'

‘Our tears are already dry,' muttered Brother Matthieu sadly. ‘She was God's gift, an example to us all.'

Tears fell and there were plenty of them as the broken lips quivered in silent prayer and the fingers trembled, but at memory's touch of what? wondered Kohler uneasily.

As if on cue, the boy suddenly turned out his pockets. A
mégot
tin held a connoisseur's pick of cigarette and cigar butts that had obviously been gleaned from the courts of the high and mighty. There were a dozen dried apricots, some almonds and cloves of garlic to stave off hunger.

A flat, brown, hip-pocket-sized bottle from prewar days was half-filled with home-distilled brandy, the fierce grappa of the hills.

‘For the toothache, Herr Detektiv,' offered the boy, with no feeling in his gaze or voice.

Two 9mm Parabellum rounds were confiscated. ‘We'll get to these. Now tell me where you got the goat's cheese?'

‘From home, from les Baux.'

A village some twenty-three kilometres to the south.

‘Inspector, he ran away,' confessed Brother Matthieu lamely. ‘When he heard of what had happened here, Xavier left us and has only just returned by way of our kitchens and at the bishop's command.'

‘Afraid, was he? The boy, that is.'

‘Upset, yes. All of us were and are.'

Kohler gave the brother a curt nod. Towering over them, he said, ‘Is that why he hasn't quite emptied his pockets, Father?'

The monk silently cursed this Bavarian from the Kripo as a small brass bell,
une clochette
, fell to the hearth to ring and roll into the ashes.

‘The boy sleeps with the dogs for warmth, Inspector. They are a modest duty he undertakes.'

‘For whom?'

May God forgive me, said Brother Matthieu to himself. ‘His Holiness, the Bishop.'

Each dog, when out hunting, would wear a bell whose sound was different from those of all the others. And when the dogs drove game towards their master, he would know exactly where each of them was.

The tin of sardines had come from the firm of D'Amelio et fils in Marseille and it would have cost a fortune on the black market, thought St-Cyr. At least 1200 francs, the equivalent of a kilo of butter or five kilos of potatoes, if one could find them, and half a month's wages for a department store clerk or minor government official. Its presence was so incongruous he drew in an impatient breath. Always there were questions, and always under the Germans virtually no time was allowed to sort such things out.

The label carried an artist's romantic view of the Vieux Port with the slumbering industry of beached and anchored trawlers whose burnt ochre sails held their inverted triangles to the intense blue of the sky. Twin sardines, swimming away from each other, were superimposed on the label in a softer, greyer blue but he thought no more of them.

Not two weeks ago, from 13 to 15 January, the Germans had destroyed the warren of slum housing that had occupied the whole of the first arrondissement of Marseille. Hitler had been in a rage. On the third of the month German security forces had attacked a brothel hoping to arrest
résistants
in hiding, and several of the Occupier had been killed.

Avignon could not help but have shuddered at the news, and this one must certainly have been aware of it.

There were several rings on each of her fingers – one of plain gold had round projections, others were of polished cabochons: a superb jasper of deep red was thinly banded by silvery-grey magnetite; there was a sapphire …

Three spare rings hung around her neck on a fine gold chain. There was a zodiacal ring on the fourth finger of her right hand, with garnet rings placed before and after it. This fourth fingernail had been broken, a painful tear she had not had a chance to attend to. What had she torn it on?

‘I don't even know your name,' he said apologetically. ‘Forgive me.' And lifting the hem of the cote-hardie, the gown and sheath, examined her hose for tears, for pulled-down garters, for bruises and scratches.

There were none, and the hose, which came to just above her knees, was also of the very early Renaissance, of a soft, crocheted wool and white in colour – grey had been preferred for practicality but this one had spared no expense. She had come to the Palais, to a rendezvous perhaps, and had worn nothing but the finest of raiment.

But how had she come by such clothes in these times of extreme shortages, and who had she really been?

‘You lived in your imagination,' he said. ‘You were a creature of it. You must have been.'

‘Her name was Mireille de Sinéty, Louis.'

‘Ah! Hermann. You took your time.'

‘It's nearly five a.m. The photographer and fingerprint artist is waiting. The
flics
have brought a van with two of the sisters to guard her virtue.'

‘
Bon
. I'm staying with this one. I'm not letting her out of my sight until I'm satisfied we have a record of the trinkets she wears and where they are located. Each item may have meaning.'