Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

‘Utter lies and fabrication.’

‘Fortunately we don’t have to rely on your being truthful. There is proof.’

Here she had their full and undivided attention; until then it had been a battle between Flavia and Rouxel. Now everyone else dropped the role of spectator and jerked to attention.

‘What proof?’ asked Janet.

‘The only proof that remains,’ she said. ‘The rest has been systematically hidden, maybe destroyed. Muller’s files. The classified ministry files. I told Janet I’d go to the Jewish documentation centre and someone swept down before me. You, I suppose, Monsieur Montaillou. And that leaves Hartung’s evidence, the stuff he was convinced would clear him. The material all this has been about.’

‘I thought we’d established it didn’t exist.’

‘Oh, it exists. Muller worked out it had been hidden in the last picture of a series of pictures on justice. Of judgements. The Judgement and Death of Socrates, Judgement of Alexander, Judgement of Jesus, Judgement of Solomon . I think those were the four. The Socrates was given to Monsieur Rouxel when he passed his law exams. But there was also the Judgement of Jesus bought and delivered when he was still living at Henriette’s parents. That one there,’ she said pointing at the painting hanging in the corner. ‘ Christ and the Apostles in Glory. The Last Judgement . Not Jesus being tried, but Jesus sitting in judgement. Which was hanging in the office where Rouxel and Hartung had their talk in 1943. The least likely place, Hartung said in his letter. And so it was. Do you think we should take it down and look?’

It was a gamble. After all, she didn’t know that there would be anything at all. So she imbued the comment with all the force and conviction she could muster. The next few minutes would prove her correct, or see her make a complete fool of herself.

This time it was Jeanne Armand who broke the silence. She burst out laughing: a harsh, humourless laugh that was all the more disturbing for being so unexpected and inappropriate.

‘What’s the matter?’ Janet asked.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘All that work, all that covering of tracks for decades, to be finally brought down by something that’s been in your own study for forty years. It’s funny. That’s what it is.’

‘Do I take it you accept my explanation?’ Flavia said quickly, hoping to keep her talking.

‘Oh, God, of course.’

‘You asked Ellman to get the painting back?’

‘Yes. I knew who Muller was, and I was damned if he was going to sweep in here and deny me my rights. I’ve slaved for that man for years. He begged me to work for him, saying he needed me so much, an old man like him with no one else in the world. He’s very persuasive, you know that. So I did; to honour the family hero. I gave up everything and all I got in return was reproach that I wasn’t a grandson he could be truly proud of. To carry on the Rouxel name, as though that meant anything. And then this man turns up. I could see it: the tear-filled meeting, the formal adoption, the gracious welcoming into the family bosom. A son: the final crowning of a golden life of achievement. Oh, no. I wasn’t going to be shoved out of my deserved place like that. I knew about this man Ellman.’

‘How?’

‘I told you. I organized grandfather’s life. All his letters, all his finances. All his old papers. I knew about these payments but couldn’t work out what they were for. So I stopped them a year ago. A month or so later Ellman turned up. He told me a great deal about my heroic grandfather. I did a little looking around in Grandfather’s papers; enough to know that Ellman was the sort of person who could do a job like that and would have good reason to keep quiet. I didn’t think Montaillou would do it for me. What if Montaillou visited this man, and got a full explanation? Do you think he would have destroyed the evidence about who Muller was? Not a chance. That wasn’t what his job was. He would have considered that a harmless domestic matter and left it alone. I needed someone who would get the evidence and destroy it. And I didn’t know that he was going to commit murder. I never wanted that. I just wanted Muller’s proof.’

‘So why was he killed?’

‘Because I underestimated how nasty a man Ellman was. He didn’t want a rival muscling in on his territory, I think. He was worried Muller might be some investigator who’d go to the newspapers. And, of course, if that happened he might be discovered and prosecuted as well.’

‘And you killed Ellman in turn?’

‘Yes, I did,’ she said perfectly calmly. ‘He deserved it. He told me he had recovered the painting and, if it was so important, I would have to pay a million francs. I had no choice. I didn’t know he was lying and had found nothing. So I shot him with his own gun. So what? Does anybody here think he deserved to live? He should have been hanged years ago. Would have been, had the scourge of injustice here not protected him.’

She nodded to herself, then looked at Flavia as though she was the only person who really understood. What else could any reasonable person do? she seemed to be asking.

‘You say Ellman told you about your grandfather?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t believe it. The great man, you know. So upright and honourable. And the government had never done anything about it...’

‘They knew, of course,’ Flavia said. ‘That’s why Montaillou was given carte blanche .’

‘I knew nothing of the sort,’ Montaillou said stiffly. Good. He was wavering as well.

‘There I believe you,’ Flavia replied. ‘I don’t think you did. Your superiors probably did, though.’

‘Schmidt, Ellman, whatever his name was,’ Jeanne continued, ‘told me that in 1942 or something, Grandfather was arrested and threatened with torture. He caved in immediately. Didn’t even try to put up a fight. Ellman held him in total contempt. Said he would have done anything to be let go. And did. In return for his freedom, he offered to hand over the names of everybody he could think of.

‘The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. And now you tell me there’s proof. Good. I’m glad of that. At least it clears up any uncertainty. I can be sure I didn’t do anything so wrong. Not in comparison with everyone else.’

Flavia breathed an enormous sigh of relief. But she got no satisfaction from having proven her case. ‘Monsieur Rouxel? If you want to prove me wrong, you can.’

But Rouxel had abandoned the struggle as well. He knew as well as Flavia that it didn’t matter now whether there was any proof or not. Everybody in the room knew that what she’d said was correct.

‘One mistake,’ he said wearily after a while. ‘One failing. And I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to make up for it. I have, you know. I’ve worked hard — tirelessly, I might say — for this country. That’s what this prize was for. And I earned it. I deserved it. You can’t take that away.’

‘Nobody is—’

‘It was the pain. I couldn’t stand it. Even the idea. I was arrested by accident. Stupid bad luck, that was all. And I was handed over to Schmidt. He was a terrible man; a monster. Really, I’d never dreamt that people like him existed. He liked hurting people. It was his natural calling. I think it was realizing that interrogating me would give him pleasure that I couldn’t stand. And I knew I’d break eventually. Everybody did. So I gave in. They let me go — pretend to escape — in return for information.’

‘There was no need to co-operate quite so fully, was there?’

‘Oh, yes. They knew where I was. If I hadn’t, they could have come and got me at any time.’

He looked around him to see if what he was saying was having any impact. Evidently he decided he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘Then the war began to turn. The Americans had come in and everybody knew the Germans were going to lose. I met Schmidt, and he offered a deal. Not that I had any chance of refusing. He’d keep my secret, and I’d keep his. He knew that when the Allies won he’d be a wanted man; we needed each other.