Barbara Cleverly - Strange Images of Death

She heaved a sigh of relief and started to skip away.

Oddly, she hadn’t even asked him to tell her what her mother’s name was.

He hoped his quick compliance with her wishes at least hadn’t raised her suspicions. He called her back: ‘Dorcas! I forgot to say-it’s good to have my assistant back. I’ve been missing you!’

She turned a suspicious face on him. ‘What do you want, Joe?’

‘Well, if you’re offering, there is one small thing. Could you, before you get involved with the circus you’ll find in the great hall, just sneak upstairs? There’ll be no one about. There’s something I want you to check for me …’

Jacquemin was all smiles and efficiency when Joe returned. He patted the neat pile of pathologist’s notes in front of him on the desk with satisfaction.

‘Well! All just as we expected. And the bonus of a motive for murder. Blackmail. It’s a blackmail attempt that turned sour. Someone didn’t want to be revealed as the father of this child. Or to pay Miss Smeeth to keep her mouth shut. A child conceived-let’s say-at the beginning to the middle of June. Eight weeks gone out of a forty-week pregnancy.’

‘Oh, you have forty weeks in a French pregnancy?’ Joe enquired, smiling. ‘In England it’s generally reckoned to be thirty-eight.’

‘Whatever it is, we’re thinking that the perpetrator had to be one of the men-or menservants … there are some very well-set-up young fellows amongst the ranks, had you noticed? — who were in residence here in the fortnight or so after her arrival. I’ve compiled a list. The Lord Silmont heads the list of runners and riders, as you see. Though physically he carries quite a handicap. Can you imagine-’

‘Let’s not try,’ Joe interrupted.

‘Well, let me have your guesses. Go on-tell me which bloke your money’s on, Sandilands.’

Joe took the list from him, picked up a pencil and circled a name.

‘Guy de Pacy? Bugger me! What makes you say that?’

‘I don’t say that- he does. Pin your ears back, Jacquemin, and hear the confidences and confessions I’ve just had thrust at me by these two warring gentlemen. You’re going to enjoy this!’

After twenty minutes of question, answer, speculation and reference to Jacquemin’s copious notes, Joe caught the Commissaire’s eye over the littered desk and risked a sly smile. The smile was reciprocated. At least the moustache twitched briefly in a not unfriendly manner. An acknowledgement, finally, that the two men were working together. At different rhythms and with different methods but working satisfyingly towards the same objective.

‘We’re nearly there, Sandilands,’ the Commissaire said. ‘It’s a jigsaw and we’re looking for the last piece. Where to look?’

‘I usually find it down the back of the sofa or under the table,’ said Joe. ‘You have the notes on interviews with the inmates? Did you have time to get through them all? There are two witnesses in particular I’d like to hear from.’

Jacquemin indicated a box packed with notebooks and papers. ‘Yes, everyone. Ready to be typed up at HQ. I thought we’d keep them here in case we need to check something. We’ve got sketches of the crime scene-Martineau has a flair for that sort of thing-everybody’s fingerprints have been taken and rushed off to Avignon. Photographs also have gone to the laboratory. Everything done by the book. The answer’s in there.’ He sighed. ‘We’re just going to have to grind through it again.’

‘Did you check the contents of the brown attaché case?’ Joe asked. ‘What have you done with it? Nathan Jacoby and I didn’t disturb the contents when we found it at the scene. Left it for you. I just noted that it contained the red dress and espadrilles she’d taken off in the chapel. I presumed she’d smuggled the white nightdress and satin slippers in that way. Jane said she’d seen Estelle carrying it minutes before she disappeared-she remarked that the girl looked as though she was taking off for the weekend, case in hand. Too much to hope for a note in the dress pocket- Meet me at six in the chapel, your lover, Pierre-Auguste, head stable-lad , or some such?’

Jacquemin scrabbled about under the table, picked it up and passed it to Joe. ‘Here, check for yourself. We found nothing.’

Joe eased the shoes and the folded dress out of the case and examined it. It smelled delicately of her perfume. The rest of the case contained no surprises. He replaced it on the floor next to the package he’d brought back from the hospital.

‘I say-did you have time …?’

‘No. Not yet,’ said Jacquemin. ‘Shall we do that now?’

He cleared a space on the table top and carefully upended the bag. Out spilled the white garment, folded to show its bloodstained section on top, and a pair of knickers. The garments were accompanied by a sheet of paper and a brown envelope. The brief note, typed by the pathologist’s assistant, listed three items. Jacquemin read it swiftly: ‘One: dress … Two: undergarment (one piece only) … and Three …’ He froze and looked across at Joe.

‘Open up the envelope,’ he snapped. ‘Something odd going on here!’

Joe tore open the flap, tipped out the contents and stared. ‘That’s it!’ he muttered. ‘The missing piece. It was under the table, Jacquemin. Let’s hear what the good doctor has to tell us, shall we?’

Jacquemin began to read out the accompanying notes. ‘He starts with an assurance that we may handle the object-it’s been tested for fingerprints, revealing three different subjects. These are being compared with records of prints they’ve been promised from the force at the château and they’ll send word when they have a result. It was found grasped in the victim’s left hand. Unremarked by the officers discovering and transporting the body because rigor had preserved it clenched in her palm. It fell to the floor when the period of rigor relaxed her limbs on the pathologist’s table. Well, bugger me! Remind me, Sandilands. How were her arms placed when you found her?’

‘Like this.’ Joe demonstrated. They were crossed over each other just underneath her bosom, exactly imitating the statue. He picked up the small round object in his left hand and crossed his arms again, left under right. ‘Well tucked up, you see. Quite invisible.’

‘It wasn’t hypnosis or mesmerism that got her on to the slab, lying perfectly still, eyes closed, smiling gently, was it?’ said Jacquemin. ‘It was something much more simple. All the killer had to do was ask nicely.’

‘Nathan Jacoby had it right, you know,’ said Joe thoughtfully. ‘While we were standing looking at her, he said Estelle would do anything for a joke. He sneered at her English voice … Oh, do let’s! What a cracking jape! or something like that. And that’s the only impulse that would have led her to offer herself up without resistance. She was all co-operation! Imagine-someone suggests to you what a laugh it would be to make use of the cleared space on the altar top to stage such a scene. A beautiful girl lying in exact imitation of the alabaster lady, next to the sixhundred-year-old knight. But this one, recognizably someone known to whoever their chosen audience was to be-someone still very much alive … at least at the moment the shutter clicked-that would be entertaining. Because that’s what it was all about. A sick English joke.

‘It’s just the sort of nonsense you see printed in the society magazines every week back home. It’s all the rage to have yourself photographed in some surreal pose in fancy dress. Inside a mummy case, on top of a gatepost … Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray-they wouldn’t have been able to resist either. So, laughing together, Estelle and the would-be photographer meet in the chapel.’