‘Which one do you like?’ she asked of the eight or so wrist-watches that were wrapped around her left wrist under the sleeve she had pulled up. ‘I can never decide. Each morning I put them on. Xavier …’
The shouting continued from the corridor. ‘Xavier?’ prompted Kohler and saw her smile lewdly and then softly. ‘Xavier,’ she sighed. ‘He brings me little presents. He’s always very sweet to me.’
‘Madame, we have to talk,’ he said and took the glass from her, took away the bottle … the bottle … ‘Those are mine!’ she shrieked and lunged for them. ‘You can’t take them away. You can’t!’
Blows rained on the door. ‘Marceline!’ cried Simondi.
With bated breath she waited for Kohler to hand her the glass and when he didn’t, tried again to snatch it from him. ‘Please!’ she begged. ‘You don’t understand what it’s like for me without it. Christiane, tell him!’
‘The Palais,’ he said, ignoring the shouting.
‘An audition … Xavier, he … Please!’ she shrieked, and when refused, wept and tore her dress open. ‘You want me, don’t you?’ she wheedled, begging him to have sex with her. ‘Xavier, he … he said he would help me. He always does.’
When allowed to drink, she drained the glass and for a moment her dark eyes misted. Lost, she looked down at her withered breasts and slowly, deliberately, brushed droplets from them and wondered what was happening to her. ‘I tried …’
He waited. Simondi cried out her name. ‘I tried to be nice to Mireille. I really did,’ she wept, ‘but César, he was determined to have her and to … to get rid of me.’
‘You killed her, didn’t you?’ he sadly breathed and his voice, his words echoed in her head and the pain of them was excruciating.
The pounding had stopped. Her eyes were still open.
‘Inspector, she’s right out of it now,’ said Christiane, buttoning the woman’s dress. ‘She’ll sit like this for hours, sipping a little from time to time, but you’ll get nothing further from her today.’
‘And you?’ asked Kohler. ‘What about you?’ The girl had sounded relieved.
‘I wasn’t there. I was at the Villa Marenzio with the others as we all have told you and your partner.’
‘Tesoro, da quando sei qui?’ asked Simondi earnestly. Sweetie, how long have you been here?
‘Since early last night, César. You …’ hazarded Christiane.
He touched her arm in comfort. ‘Sì, sì, I remember now. I asked you and Genèvieve and Marius to spend a little time with Marceline. She’s all right, isn’t she?’
They were gathered in the corridor outside the bedroom.
‘She’s fine, César. Fine,’ said the Alto, her dark eyes full of concern for her singing master.
Lightly he kissed her on the cheek and held her a moment. ‘Bene. Try not to dwell on things. Keep the mind and voice clear, eh? We’ve the concert on the thirtieth and then the tour. Genèvieve and you had best spend an hour or two in practice. Verdolet, I think, and Constanzo Festa. Ispettores, this is terrible. Ah Dio mio, to think that you, Herr Kohler, thought my gardener and others were to assassinate you. Merda! How could such a thing have been possible?’
‘Maître, my partner and I will find our own way out through your Grand Tinel,’ said St-Cyr, ignoring the question. ‘There’s a portrait of the first Mireille I would very much like to examine more closely.’
‘That painting can tell you nothing, Inspector. Nothing!’
‘Perhaps, but then … ah mais alors, perhaps not.’
‘Bastardi, I’m warning you. Get out of my house this instant!’
‘Warn if you like, but unless you wish to prove your innocence after a lengthy incarceration while awaiting trial, I suggest you leave us to do as I wish.’
‘I won’t forget this.’
‘That is of no concern.’
They were in the car now and Hermann was rapidly thumbing cartridges into a spare clip for his Walther P38 while attempting to break open a packet for the old Lebel six shooter this Sûreté would be allowed and nothing else.
‘Verdammt, Louis, did you have to set Simondi off like that and then hang around like an art student in the Louvre? That girl was totally convinced cagoulards would knife me. De Passe must have threatened her with them if she didn’t cooperate and distract me.’
‘The bishop shows every indication of belonging to the Comité secret d’action révolutionnaire.’
‘De Passe is head of the Cagoule, mon enfant. That’s why he came running so hard to the villa to call out his boys, but … ah Gott im Himtnel, Boemelburg, Louis. The Chief must have sent us to Avignon hoping those bastards would take care of us once and for all!’
‘Calm down. You’ve been popping too much Benzedrine.’
‘I haven’t had the time, damn it! Nom de Jésus-Christ! Idiot, will you listen to me.’
Kohler told him of the partouse on the Îie de la Barthelasse last October. Louis found a cigarette and, breaking it in half, lit up and passed him his half. As was their custom at such moments, they began to go quickly through things.
‘Our singing master first tries to implicate his wife in the de Sinéty murder, Hermann, as does Albert Renaud — oh bien sûr, there’s plenty of reason. But when there might be doubt in our believing this, Simondi then confides that Genèvieve Ravier was to have been dismissed.’
‘Desperate, was he?’
‘The implication being that Christiane Bissert and Genèvieve would have lost everything had Adrienne de Langlade and Mireille replaced the Primo Soprano and Xavier.’
‘And there’s the bishop planting photos of Adrienne for me to find, so as to throw suspicion on to the boy and his mentor, Brother Matthieu.’
‘The fétichiste de cheveux our shepherd boy felt he might well need to blackmail.’
‘Xaviers swift like a fox, Louis. That little confident of Madame Simondi’s realized he’d be among the fingered and didn’t tell the others he had the reward money for turning Dédou in.’
‘Ah yes, but a murder, Hermann, that is linked to another which, in turn, is linked to a death six hundred years ago. The brocade, it keeps haunting me.’
‘What brocade?’
‘The painting Simondi didn’t want us to look at.’
‘The Papal Court and a bunch of randy old cardinals who had already stripped a girl naked and nearly drowned her!’
‘The front of our Mireille de Sinéty’s cote-hardie, Hermann, and that of the first Mireille. Did those two look-alikes who were so good with the needle hide something there as well as on their belts? Another rebus?’
A last drag was taken and the butt carelessly extinguished underfoot. ‘You tell me. You’re the one who had to stall when we should have got the hell out of there and fast!’
Kohler thrust the Lebel at him. ‘Use it. Don’t hesitate. That’s an order.’
Hermann always said such things. ‘If one looks closely at that painting, a pattern begins to emerge in slight relief among the gold brocade, but looking closely isn’t enough. One really has to think as they did in the Renaissance. They loved the play of light and shadows. Such things had tremendous meaning for them. Stand to the side of that painting as I did, and as light from the end of Simondi’s Grand Tinel passes obliquely across the tightly laced bosom, it reinforces that which the artist depicted and one sees that shadows make daggers across her heart. The broad ribbing of the bars of an accabussade becomes clearer, Hermann, though still in soft relief and incomplete of form.’
‘And?’ asked Kohler quietly. Louis sometimes got like this.