Barbara Cleverly - Strange Images of Death

A car screeched noisily up to the window and a door slammed. At an annoyed glance from Jacquemin, Joe got up and closed the window again. They listened as feet pounded down the corridor. There was a rap on the door and Martineau came straight in.

‘Yes, Lieutenant?’ Jacquemin greeted him.

‘It’s here, sir. They’ve just driven it over from Avignon. Urgent, the sergeant said.’

He handed over an envelope to the Commissaire.

‘Ah! At last!’ Jacquemin exchanged meaningful glances with Joe and slit open the envelope. ‘From the laboratory.’ He studied a sheet of paper with an expressionless face, stared at Jane Makepeace for a moment and passed the sheet to Joe, ensuring that Miss Makepeace caught a clear glimpse of the police letterhead.

‘Now what have we?’ Joe began to mutter. He summarized for his audience: ‘The fingerprints lifted from the enclosed object were clear. Photographs reveal, apart from smudged prints-possibly those of the owner-one thumb and one first finger. The thumb provides fifteen distinct points of agreement with that of one of the people whose prints were sent in from the château. Fifteen! Remind me, Jacquemin, how many you require in France for a conviction. Twelve, you say. Will you show Miss Makepeace the object on which her fingerprints were so clearly evident?’

Jacquemin opened the smaller envelope and placed the lens cap on the desk.

‘You gave it to Estelle to hold. She still had it clutched in her dead hand on the pathologist’s slab. I told you the dead could speak, Jane.’

Joe held his breath. If this was not Jane Makepeace’s breaking point, she didn’t have one.

The room fell silent, all eyes turned on her.

Pale with stress or anger, she rose to her feet and, ignoring Joe, spoke to Jacquemin in clear French. ‘This cap is the bit that comes at the front of the camera that Cecily’s so proud of. She didn’t exactly pass it around for the appreciation of the crowd-she is rather possessive and secretive about it. But I managed to get my hands on it on one occasion. If you’ve developed the film, you’ll have noticed a picture of a group of us posing in the courtyard. I’m on the front row. Cecily asked me to hold the lens cap for her while she took the photograph … she didn’t want to put it down on the gravel … always treading on it, she said. You can ask any one of the others who were there at the time. They’ll tell you. Of course my prints are on that thing! I’m always the one who gets asked to hold things, find things, sort things out! And now I’m being expected to bear the responsibility for this nonsense? Not on your life, Commissaire!’

Enjoying Jacquemin’s consternation, she drew herself up to her full height and with the cool, amused expression of a Greek Kore added: ‘And now I’m leaving to go about my lawful business. I suggest you get on with yours.’

Joe and Jacquemin looked at each other, unable to conceal a flash of dismay. Each understood that the case against her was so weak as to be laughed out of court in France or in England. Jacquemin had been right-a confession was essential. It was clear that nothing less would bring her to justice. It was equally clear that she would never deliver one.

‘No! Make her stay, Joe!’ A shrieking, stamping Fury dashed forward and blocked her path. Dorcas delivered to her face a torrent of cursing in Romany, as far as Joe could follow a word. ‘You’re a murdering, hard-hearted witch! And why,’ she turned to Joe, ‘do you keep saying she took one life? Doesn’t Estelle’s baby count for anything? Two!’ she yelled at Jane. ‘They were brought in as an offering-like a cat’s kill in the night. “There, see what a loving cat I’ve been. Blood on the carpet? You should be grateful. I did it for you … Pat my head and tell me how clever I am …” She can’t just walk out of here … Joe? Commissaire?’

Before they could speak she was rattling on: ‘Give her a choice. She can either make an oral confession here, at once in front of us, and then get straight into a police car to take her to Avignon or-’ her tone chilled and she spoke emphatically-‘we make her face a much more terrible authority.’

Joe was mystified. ‘You’re calling on God?’ he asked.

‘No! Divine retribution takes far too long. And the thunderbolts never land where you’d like them to land. Not God-Guy! You could summon Guy de Pacy to have an interview with her. Here in this room. When you’ve told him exactly what she’s done-leave them alone together. Let him ask the difficult questions: Why did you kill the woman I loved? Why did you kill the child I would have loved? Why did you think I would spend the rest of my days with a conscienceless killer?’

‘No! No!’ Joe protested. And, seeing his way through: ‘Impossible! Guy is wounded to the heart and suffering dreadfully. The words he delivered over the corpse of Estelle constantly come back to me: “I want this killer, Sandilands,” he said. “I want his guts. I want to see the light die in his eyes; I want to hear his last gasp.” He has a filthy temper. And-let’s remind ourselves-he’s something of a killer himself. We couldn’t leave her alone with him, the woman who murdered his child.’ Joe shuddered. ‘Out of the question! I won’t be held responsible! This woman’s ruined his life. In the grip of a red rage he would throttle her!’

Jacquemin picked up his cue. ‘It would be a crime passionnel , Sandilands. Crimes of passion! I am aware that we French are generally condemned for our too ready understanding and forgiveness of such uncontrollable flare-ups!’

He pursed his lips, shook his head and came to a decision.

‘Martineau, go and fetch de Pacy.’

Joe settled down at the table in the deserted hall with a cup of tea brought to him by Nathan Jacoby and, in return for the kindness, launched again into an account of the confession and arrest of Jane Makepeace.

Nathan’s reaction of: ‘Good Lord! I don’t believe it! But she was kind to Estelle! None of the others were. A fine woman, I’d have said,’ was completely at odds with the rest of the reactions he’d listened to. Everyone else, on hearing the news, suddenly put on an expression of omni-science. Of course, they’d always had their suspicions. She was just too good to be true, wasn’t she? Oiling her way into the lord’s confidence like that. And what a way to treat poor Guy who’d been so good to her …

‘A fine woman,’ Nathan had insisted. ‘Are you quite sure, Joe?’

‘She admitted her crime to the Commissaire rather than face Guy de Pacy and account for her foul act,’ said Joe.

‘But why?’

‘She loved him. As far as that woman is capable of finer feeling, I truly believe she did. For the first time-and quite late-in her life, she found a man she could admire. But I don’t think he would have come in for such close attention had he not been on the brink of inheriting all this.’ Joe waved an arm around. ‘She really fell with a bang for Silmont. And for the wonderful things it contained. For their own sake, I’m sure. Greed of a monetary kind was not, I think, a spur to murder. She handled the silver, the china, the tapestries every day … knew them better than their owner possibly. She wanted them for her own. Quite desperately. And was ready to sacrifice three lives she considered worthless to have them.’

‘Glad to hear you’re counting correctly, Joe.’

He turned to find Dorcas had come up silently behind them.

‘But it was very nearly four, you know,’ she pointed out.

‘Marius?’

‘Yes. When she found out he’d caught a glimpse of her in the chapel, she decided to get rid of him too, didn’t she?’