My Chocolate Redeemer (21 page)

We wait for the medical opinion without any hope that it will be anything more than conventional. But that's wrong. Because when the little doctor scampers downstairs he has clearly thought about his diagnosis. He's considered his position and is determined that both should be respected.

‘Angina, arthritis, old age. You'll appreciate I can't do much more than alleviate any of these conditions. She's old, sick, stubborn. She won't listen to me. So I tell you that if she's too excited or overly stressed it may be fatal. No, I correct myself, it will be fatal.'

Terse and even impressive as this is, it doesn't help him much. One cannot threaten an angel with death and a physicist devoted to entropy is used to such things and Father Duval long ago dissociated himself from death as a form of political scandal. So Monsieur Cherubini's silent nod is also a gesture of dismissal and the little doctor scurries away back to his big wide bed where Louise waits for him willing, warm and wet.

‘Well, we've decided, Bella,' the Angel announces, ‘you will have to go to the man whom you call Brown and find out what he's doing here.'

‘Why me?'

‘Because you're the only one he's willing to see. He's invited you to take tea with him. We didn't even get past the door,' says Uncle Claude. ‘The family honour depends on it.'

‘He's up to something, Bella. We know that,' says Father Duval.

‘Go,' says my uncle shortly.

‘But I thought you had objections. You don't like me seeing him. And Monsieur Cherubini says he's a cannibal.'

‘He was and maybe still is,' says the Angel. ‘The world is full of strange tastes. Only time will tell. I admit my information is disturbing.'

‘Tell her about the lions,' says Father Duval.

‘He fed his opponents to the lions,' the Angel says. ‘And then one day he tried to feed their keeper to them. But the animals recognised their friend and refused the morsel offered.'

‘And so he fed the keeper to his crocodiles instead – what d'you say to that?' asks Uncle Claude, with a look very like satisfaction.

‘It sounds too good to be true. Stories to frighten children.'

‘Bella, this man killed without compunction. He's a monster. An animal. He sliced his opponents into pieces and kept some of them in the refrigerator to adorn the presidential menus. Human corpses stuffed with rice and ready to be served. Prepared meals, you might say. He killed children, and first he poked their eyes out. There was nothing he wouldn't do!'

When Father Duval tells me this he walks about throwing his hands to left and right as if getting rid of the little bits of the Redeemer's menu that have somehow stuck to his fingers.

‘He was a good friend of my papa's.'

‘Bella, Bella' – the Angel is all kindness and at his most reptilian when he softens into kindness – ‘it is precisely this connection with your father that worries me. If he involved your father in any of his attempts at bribing officials, if this news came out, here, now, it wouldn't look good. It would kill your grandmother.'

‘You mean it wouldn't look good for you. And for Uncle Claude, the Mayor. For your rally on Saturday. And for your new party. You talk of my family – what family? My father's dead and my mother is missing somewhere in America. And then I make a friend of Monsieur Brown, who is kind to me, and who knew Papa, they were very dear friends, together almost to the last. But my uncle warns me about him, he tells me to keep away from him. Now you tell me he eats people and in the same breath you say I must go and find him and see what he knows. I don't understand.'

‘I don't want to be blamed for my brother's errors of judgement,' says Uncle Claude. ‘This is guilt by association and I am not guilty. But someone has made the connection. Who do you think those men at the gate of the hotel are? They come from Paris! Government people. There's something dark and troubling about this. I don't like it, I don't like the way that he has some kind of official protection, a bodyguard maybe. They're tough guys sitting in the parking lot. They're after something. We've had trouble in the family, we don't want any more.'

‘They've taken everything already, our apartment in Paris, my mother's jewels, even my Bapuna mask which Papa brought for me. Gone. What more can they possibly want from us?'

‘What more do you have to give?' the Angel asks. ‘Because if one thing is clear about this it is that someone has got something that someone wants.'

Before we can work out the interesting convolutions of this last comment the door opens and Clovis enters in fine high spirits, clapping his hands and beaming. He's been helping the police plan the parking arrangements for Saturday's rally and insists on telling us everything immediately.

‘The plan is proceeding wonderfully,
patron
. Clovis is in control! We've been having a full dress rehearsal tonight with the fire brigade standing by and a band, a great big band blowing brass instruments, made up of all the local hunters. We've worked out how many cars may be parked by the lakeside so as to keep all traffic from the centre of town. The dais on which you will speak is draped in red and blue and there are patterns on it arranged in chevrons and many flowers of different kinds are ordered. Poinsettias and lilies predominate, according to your orders. We're now ready to check your position on the platform for security and for camera angles. Clovis is here to escort you, chief!'

And with that he does a strange thing, he balls his hands into fists, crosses his arms at the wrists and bangs himself on the chest. Once, twice, bou-boum! For a hollow-chested boy he gives off quite an echo. It's some sort of salute, I realise, and I don't like it. Not one bit.

‘Not now, not now,' Uncle Claude snaps, waving him away, ‘come back later.'

‘No, no,' says Father Duval coming forward, ‘he's been told to escort Monsieur Cherubini to the podium and it would be very bad for his rehabilitation if he were to be encouraged to disregard orders. Can't he perhaps just wait awhile? Can't he go upstairs?'

I can see Uncle Claude is about to refuse when the Angel says, ‘Yes, it will be better if we briefed Miss Bella in private and the parking must wait until that's done. She must go and she must be told what to do.'

‘Yes, she must be briefed,' says Father Duval, ‘it's a special mission.'

At the mention of the words ‘brief' and ‘mission' I can see my Uncle Claude stiffen slowly to attention. Perhaps it's because scientists always must stand passive before the workings of the universe unable to do anything more than observe helplessly, however happily, the immutable operations of unshakable laws, that they must sometimes ache to push somebody around.

‘Very well, young man,' Uncle Claude says to Clovis, ‘you may continue on up the stairs, go to the very top of the house and there you'll find my den. Go quietly, mind, for Madame is ill and may not be disturbed. And nor may any of the equipment in my study. It's all very important. Top secret. Dangerous! It can kill silly people who touch it!' And here Uncle Claude throws up his arms and locks them, fingers rigid and hisses like a cat, his blue eyes wild and staring, then his body shudders as if he's having a fit. It is his way of warning Clovis what will happen if he messes around with his equipment. It's really strange that he should go into this man-in-the-electric-chair routine to suggest danger. I mean, why doesn't he just draw a skull and cross-bones on the door of his room? And anyway what is a man who understands the significance of Feigenbaum's Constants and the mysteries of Quantum Chromodynamics doing putting on this show as if Clovis were some brain-damaged monkey instead of a very intelligent, if somewhat flighty boy with a bad limp. Indeed my Uncle Claude's horror of sex and disease are such as to make me wonder whether modern scientists are not perhaps plunged so deeply into the miasma of superstition and dogma as to make the most hide-bound medieval theologian seem positively skittish by comparison.

But all this is happily lost on Clovis who, with a skip and a grin, dances, no
flies
up the stairs, his salmon-pink overall clashing so weirdly with his staring white face beneath the glowing pampas of hair, and his flashing perspex boot, which hits the wooden walls of the staircase as he ascends with a hard, satisfying sound, and, leaving behind him a trailing and cheerful ‘Yessir!' he disappears aloft.

‘Now, Bella, let's talk,' says the Angel. ‘Let's go through the factors that make it essential that you do as I ask. Something very strange is happening. The man you call Brown, the dictator of Zanj, as we know, was until recently retired in the South of France, where he has lived since his overthrow. Without family as far as I know, without friends. In all that time he's not been heard of. He dropped out of sight, went underground, disappeared. I suspect the politics from which he emerged makes it essential that he keeps his head down. If you spend a good deal of time murdering your opponents and stripping bare the treasury of your country, then I suppose there are always going to be those who wish to complain.

‘Well, all of a sudden, out of his hidey-hole he pops, he takes off one day and comes here, to La Frisette. Why, and more to the point, why now? What does he want? We know that Paris know that he's here because it is undoubtedly they who have effectively commandeered the Priory Hotel where dear André plays the unwilling host to the Redeemer. Paris have also supplied a guard. Which means that they must worry about his safety. Paris also know, and would prefer to keep quiet, the links between this Redeemer Brown and your Papa. We know something happened out in Zanj and we know it's something that our government wants to conceal. Remember that they were sufficiently worried to move in on you and your mother after your father's death; as you pointed out, they forced the sale of your apartment, they took your mother's jewels. And here I have to point out that we must remember that diamonds are one of the few treasures of the curious country of Zanj. The clear implication of all this is that this man had some hold on your father, perhaps some unpaid debt. And now maybe he's run out of money. So he comes here, looking for the family. He wants something, Bella. You must find out what it is.'

‘And then?'

‘Then we can fight him,' says Father Duval. ‘The
patron
has plans.'

I have returned to the Priory to find out why
he
is here. Not for the Angel, but for my own sake. I've taken the precaution of dressing carefully for the part I'm to play: the innocent enquirer. I'm wearing a dress of blush-pink velvet with a low neck, flat white shoes, and my hair is elaborate but chic. It's a style damn difficult to fix on your own; first it has to be spritzed then scrunched, moussed and dried naturally, and finished with a little wax rubbed through it for control. Two tortoiseshell combs complete the effect. It took all of an hour with Uncle Claude and the Angel muttering impatiently downstairs while they waited to drive me to the Priory. It was only when we got to the Priory that I remembered Clovis, upstairs in Uncle Claude's den.

‘I locked him inside,' says Uncle Claude.

‘He won't come to any harm,' the Angel promises as I leave the car. ‘Father Duval is standing guard.'

André shows little surprise when I tell him what I know about Monsieur Brown.

‘They may plan to fight the Redeemer,' André says solemnly, ‘but first they want to finish with me. Have you seen this?'

He holds up a copy of
La Liberté
, the house organ of the
Parti National Populaire
, and with a trembling finger he points to an unsigned editorial:

a strange perfume from
the garden of the carthusians?

… A troubling, foreign and unhealthy cosmopolitanism has begun to invade the precincts of our dear village. Not only do strangers from abroad find it increasingly easy to take up employment in the local industries, such as the nougat factory, thus depriving native-born Frenchmen of their rights of employment, but there now comes from the garden of the Carthusians a most provocative scent, a perfume androgynous, unhealthy and, moreover, one which would not be recognised by the good fathers who once inhabited the holy house by the lakeside. The present Prior of this establishment has a somewhat unusual taste in novices, or acolytes, a band of mendicants drawn from the lesser suburbs of Lyons, who together practise a brand of heresy which once drew down on its protagonists the cleansing fires of the stake …

‘It's sad, Bella. The old cures for sin and suffering are not available any more. This ancient monastery, once the house of Carthusians, had its little punishments, its flagellations, its mortifications, its routes to salvation. All off limits to us now. You know the story of St Benedict, who founded the Cistercian Order? It was said that he was very troubled by lust and when his lust became apparent in company –'

‘Do you mean he had an erection?'

‘Yes. He cured himself of it by jumping into a bed of nettles. It never troubled him again. The simplicity of the very holy ones is quite frightening, isn't it? Everything final seems too easy. After all,' – his smile is awful – ‘it's not the fault of the dear boys who come to work for me in the summer – all the way from Lyons. They're good boys …'

I can't resist it, I say: ‘I'm glad some good comes out of Lyons.'

‘So you know my family story? Your grandmother has told you about our branch in Lyons?'

I nod. ‘You should have told me yourself. I wouldn't have blamed you.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it wasn't your fault.'

André's eyes roll and he begins to tear the newspaper.

‘When a child discovers his inheritance is a death sentence, he must go on living under it! And he must live
on
it! Won't you even allow me to feel pain? To refuse to help those who suffer is never kind, but to refuse to allow someone to suffer! – Bella, is that why you've come, to bait the bear?'