J. Janes - Madrigal

‘Six parts.’

‘Three young men, two girls, and the boy, Xavier. Mademoiselle Mireille would fill in when the soprano or the shepherd boy was ill or away. She could also play the lute beautifully and sometimes was allowed to accompany them.’

‘And Brother Matthieu … does he have any part in looking after the group?’

Biron’s head was tossed as if struck.

‘Him? Why should he have?’

‘I’m simply asking.’

‘Then the answer is he has nothing to do with the singers. Hah! He sings his own tune and makes a big noise of it, but he ran, you know. His God deserted him on the battlefield and ever since then he has been trying to find Him.’

‘And the shepherd boy?’

‘Xavier is trouble, but has a voice that enraptures the bishop.’

‘Just like our victim’s.’

Biron fussed with the lantern. He clucked his tongue and muttered impatiently, ‘I really wouldn’t know, Inspector. The grenade left me deaf in one ear.’

And blinded in that eye. ‘Come on. Let’s take a little walk. Show me through the palace. I want to get the feel of it.’

As she must have had — was this what the detective was implying? ‘What are you looking for, Inspector?’

‘Reasons as to why she was here at that hour and obviously not alone.’

The morgue was across town, near the Porte Saint-Lazare, deep in the cellars of the hospital and adjacent to ramparts that had been built in the fourteenth century. It wasn’t pleasant, thought St-Cyr. Hearing that the exemption for students was soon to be annulled and that all Frenchmen born between 1 January 1912 and 31 December 1921 would have to register for the Service de Travail Obligatoire — the forced labour in Germany — medical students had spent the night dissecting corpses to fulfil assignments before they escaped to join a maquis or resigned themselves to fate. Preservative jars yet to be removed held every imaginable organ. The younger of the sisters vomited repeatedly into a deep stone basin which had, unfortunately, been used for other things.

‘Sister Marie-Madeleine, I really must insist. Please get a hold of yourself!’ scolded the elder of the two.

‘I can’t! Sister, what is this place? Hades?’

‘Now listen, she’s dead, do you understand? Dead . Take two deep breaths and hold them until your stomach settles.’

‘Sister Agnés …’ hazarded St-Cyr.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Why not take her upstairs? A tisane of linden blossoms or of camomile?’

The Chief Inspector was simply trying to get rid of them. ‘That is impossible. The Holy Father told us to remain with the child.’

Could nothing turn her stomach or her mind? ‘But surely not when Coroner Peretti cuts into her?’

‘Cuts? But … but why should he do such a thing?’

‘The stomach contents, Sister. The large intestine. What she last ate and drank. Such things can tell us much.’

In tears, Sister Marie-Madeleine rushed to the nearest drain to empty whatever remained in her own stomach. Wrenching on the tap, she splashed her face. Pale and shaking, she turned to confront them but steadied herself against the stone pallet. ‘Sister, you’re used to the slaughterhouse but me … Mireille was not an animal!’

She wept. She clenched her fists in rage at herself, and begged the sister to release her from her duty.

Finely boned, her face thin, the large dark brown eyes revealing the depths of her despair, she was only twenty-one, if that, thought St-Cyr. The elder sister, in her mid-sixties, stepped up to her charge and let her have it across the face, once, twice and …

‘ Doucement !’ he exclaimed. Now just a moment.

The last slap resounded. It knocked the tears from the young one, causing her to grip her cheek. ‘Forgive me,’ she blurted. ‘I needed that, didn’t I, Sister?’

They faced each other, these two who were married to God. Her dark eyes livid, the older sister’s jowls quivered at the retort. An attendant in a filthy, bloodstained smock snickered joyously through the silence from across the room.

‘She has nerves of steel,’ said the younger one bitterly.

‘Sister Agnés, let’s all go upstairs,’ cautioned St-Cyr. ‘No one will touch the body, but if you wish, I’ll have the attendant put her into one of the lockers and will personally present you with the key.’

Touché , was that it? wondered Sister Agnes, folding her arms across her ample bosom and drawing herself up. ‘Leave if you wish. For myself, I will remain and so will she.’

The bare hands with their bony knuckles were thickly calloused and raw from constant work in the kitchens and fields.

‘Very well,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what you know of the victim.’

It was Sister Marie-Madeleine who, finding an inner strength that was admirable, answered, ‘She was of the lesser nobility from the provinces — what the Parisian nobility used to derogatively call les hobereaux after the little falcon that is satisfied with small prey — but her family had fallen on hard times.’

‘When?’

A fleeting smile revealed the stomach, not the grief, had been conquered. ‘Six hundred years ago. De Sinéty was a name to be proud of in the Avignon of those days, Inspector, but there were some who were jealous of such wealth and position and took steps to remove it.’

‘The girl was from the hills,’ spat the older nun.

‘She was not , Sister, and you know it. She was very well brought up and, as a result, was an elegant seamstress who could work wonders with very little. Oh bien sür her mother fell on hard times and had to move out to a mas to try to eke out an existence by buying a flock of sheep others would then have to tend, but Mireille … She came to live and work in Avignon, Inspector, for Maître Simondi, and took home every sou she could.’

‘And this farmhouse and farm, where are they?’ he asked.

‘In the hills behind Saint-Michel-de-Frigolet,’ said Sister Agnes, glaring defiantly at her companion who gazed right back at her with the sympathy of one who was trying to understand and to forgive such venom.

‘Fifteen or so kilometres to the south of Avignon, Inspector,’ said Sister Marie-Madeleine. ‘Mireille lived here in the Balance Quartier which is just below the Palais.’

‘A place of slums and gypsy hovels,’ seethed the older nun.

‘Rooms of her own, Sister,’ entreated the younger of them, ‘whose rent was paid each week and always on time.’

‘You know it was sinful of her to live in that house. You know the Holy Father wanted her to move out of that quartier and had arranged far better lodgings.’

‘But she had refused his offer?’ hazarded the Sûreté, startling them both and causing the younger one to blurt, ‘Forgive me, Sister,’ and to silence her tongue.

‘There are no more gypsies. It’s all over with those people,’ said Sister Agnès. ‘They’ve been sent away just like the Jews.’

To camps in Eastern Europe and in the Reich, said St-Cyr sadly to himself, he, too, falling into silence but adding, Hermann, I don’t like this. The younger one knows too much, and the older one is now only too aware of it and will be certain to inform the bishop.

Kohler let the concierge continue ahead of him. They were upstairs again, on the first floor, and had passed through and beyond the room where the girl had been killed. The chamber they were now in, the Grand Tinel, was huge. Light from the still-smoking lantern made a feeble pool about Biron but seldom touched the walls and not the vault of the ceiling above.

‘What is it?’ asked the concierge uneasily as he sensed he was no longer being followed and turned to look back.