The story of our miserable lives on this affair, quipped Kohler to himself.
Christiane hesitantly touched his right arm to get his attention. ‘The notes take time to travel,’ she said earnestly, ‘so you hear them one after another.’
Mein Gott, she was a beautiful creature …
‘There’s counterpoint, the simultaneous singing of two or more parts.’ Genèvieve had touched his left arm. Her fingers lingered.
‘Full and half-notes blend,’ said Christiane. ‘Perfect pitch is required.’
‘There’s resonance, Inspector. In turn, it produces notes of equal pitch. The pipe of an unplayed organ will resonate suddenly in unison with the note it has been given by one of our voices.’
‘Mine, I think,’ said Christiane, colouring quickly at the attention Genèvieve was giving him.
‘No, mine. A suit of armour or a shield will resonate perfectly in tune with its note. The metal of a cross, a candelabra … all such things will do the same.’
‘Wash my back, will you?’ he said to Christiane, handing her the bar of soap, she to search him out and earnestly say, ‘Each object in the hall is capable of picking up the note that suits it and of vibrating at the same pitch.’
His left arm was again hesitantly touched, a reminder Genèvieve gave of her presence. ‘Thus each of these objects contributes its echoing note. A fulfilment perhaps.’
A brittleness entered Christiane’s voice. ‘Hence what you hear are many more sounds than you would normally hear, were we positioned together.’
‘Up front, before the audience,’ interjected Genèvieve, smiling softly at him. ‘Yet all are united. Each voice is totally of its own but dependent on all the others for the life it gives the song.’
Verdammt, but Oona’s eyes were just as blue as this one’s and she was every bit as tall and beautiful and wouldn’t like it one damned bit if she knew he was here alone with them. Giselle neither. ‘And totally dependent on the singing master’s benevolence,’ he said flatly.
‘Of course,’ confessed Genèvieve.
Christiane began to use the soap on his back but suddenly leaned over to put a cheek next to his, she standing on tiptoes on the edge of the bath. ‘Unlike the present day, harmonic systems and chords were not available to medieval composers. Everything had to be built upwards from the Basso Continuo.’
‘The thorough or continuous bass, Inspector,’ acknowledged Genèvieve. ‘Very few keys were used and yet … and yet such a richness was obtained. It’s a totally different way of composing music.’
‘And very exciting,’ said Christiane, now soaping his neck and leaning over him to do his chest.
‘We have not only to think as the medievals did, but in some ways to live like them, Inspector. We learn to play their games and to sing their songs.’
And I’m way past my depth, aren’t I, thought Kohler ruefully. Louis … where the hell was Louis? ‘Okay, then let’s start with you both and with Brother Matthieu and his postcards.’
The centuries withdrew into themselves in the cellars, thought St-Cyr. Under vaulted ceilings that were low and dank, the refuse of the ages had been left as if forgotten. Crates, old leather trunks, bits of heavy furniture, porcelains and pewter … He passed the beam of his torch over them.
Crumbled plaster broke underfoot. Bare limestone was exposed. Mould was everywhere; frost too. Medieval iron rings, black iron hooks and sconces protruded. Water had seeped up through the floor to form sheets of verglas, black ice that was often unseen until too late. There were locks upon locks and when, finally, he had found what he was after, racks and racks of wine bottles, some so old the fingers trembled when mould and cobweb were brushed from stained labels.
There were cases, too, Pernod et fils having built a distillery at Tarragona in Spain when the production of absinthe had been banned in France on 16 March 1915. Banned not just because it had erroneously been blamed for having caused the drastic drop in the birthrate before and into the Great War, but because, beyond initial feelings of exaltation and abandon, it had excited the central nervous system in ways little understood. Violently antisocial behaviour in the bars and cafés had often culminated in knife fights — its addicts often succumbing to spasmodic fits of delirium, of which, when sober, they had no recollection.
Numbness and passivity had affected other addicts, often masking a mind tortured by violent hallucinations and delusions. Ringing in the ears — the disease of Van Gogh — had been another side effect, as had feelings of constant anxiety and unquenchable thirst.
‘A hundred and thirty-six proof,’ he said tartly to himself, examining a bottle upon which there was neither dust nor cobweb. ‘Sixty-eight per cent alcohol.’
In this most recent shipment, there were ten wooden cases, 120 bottles, each of a litre. Four bottles had been taken upstairs last night. At least two of those, he knew, had been consumed.
Jammed on to a rusty iron spike that dangerously protruded from the end of a nearby wine rack were bills of lading, all of them written in Spanish no French customs clerk, unless paid off, would ever have seen.
The earliest of the bills dated from 11 June 1941. To enter the country, the shipments would have to cross the zone interdite, the Forbidden Zone that extended along all frontiers and seacoasts and inland for a good twenty kilometres. And that meant, of course, with the willing cooperation of the Occupier. A bribe paid, a nod given.
Cast aside, but often gone through in a feverish search for dregs, were empties from Pernod’s factory at Montfavet. L’Extrait d’absinthe. ‘1892 …’ he muttered. Picking up another, ‘1907 …’ There were dozens of empties, and several of the labels gave the names of other distilleries in France. Even at the height of its popularity, over 10,000,000 litres a year had been imported from Switzerland alone. The canton of Neufchâtel had been its most important centre of production. But the Swiss had banned absinthe in 1908.
When he looked up, a shadow moved and he suddenly realized he was no longer alone.
They sat on the edge of the bath with legs dangling in the water and the gossamer of their sheaths clinging to them. Kohler could just touch bottom when standing in the middle of the pool facing them, and maybe it really was like it had been back then in 1343 or thereabouts.
‘Of course we sold photos of our breasts to that shop,’ confessed Genèvieve unsmilingly.
‘Locks of our hair, too,’ offered her playmate.
‘Inspector, students always need money. Brother Matthieu and others like him simply stare at the cards and finger the hair in private. What harm is there in our letting them?’
‘A kindness, I think,’ said Christiane. ‘After all, our gueule cassée has suffered much and feels deeply that no woman or girl would ever wish to be intimate with him. And he a man of the cloth, we mustn’t forget.’
‘And Adrienne de Langlade?’ asked Kohler, making them both feel uneasy.
‘She would never have agreed to such a thing,’ said Genèvieve.
‘She was too modest,’ echoed Christiane.
‘But Brother Matthieu wanted a photo of her breasts?’
‘Xavier …’ began the raven-haired one only to be nudged into silence by the blonde who said levelly, ‘What she was about to say, Inspector, was that Brother Matthieu had made things very hard for Xavier. Brutally so. Nothing Xavier did was right. The bishop’s kennels were never properly cleaned. Night after night we’d find Xavier scrubbing the floors. Control of the hounds when on the hunt was never satisfactory.’
‘Nino was always causing trouble, always going off somewhere,’ said Christiane earnestly.
‘You have to understand how compelling is the desire in Brother Matthieu. But his fétichisme de cheveux is never totally satisfying, never complete, n’est-ce pas? Not like a man with a woman,’ said Genèvieve.