‘She hates me,’ snorted the countess.
‘I do not! I have never hated you, Jeanne. I simply don’t like the way you feel I’m not good enough for you and your son.’
‘The son, ah yes,’ said Ackermann with a smile. It was all working out perfectly. The Surete was leading them down the garden path.
‘A small matter to which we will come,’ countered St-Cyr. It had been a good exchange, an opening volley which the abbot and Brother Michael had watched with fascination while Brother Sebastian had studied, and still did, his neglected wine.
‘So, a confession to protect the countess and save Rene Yvon-Paul perhaps.’ St-Cyr tossed a nonchalant hand. ‘Let us pass on quickly. Mademoiselle Arcuri believed, and still believes, her life in great danger. Next to Yvette, she is the only one who really knows the substance behind the killing of Jerome. She is afraid, Countess, that she will be murdered.’
‘That is simply not true. Who would do such a thing?’ asked the woman. An excellent performance for one who knew only too well who’d do it.
The abbot’s look was one of incredulity. ‘Murder? Another murder? Perhaps you’d get on with simply telling us who killed the girl and the boy, Inspector. We have our prayers …’
The old fox knew damned well whom he’d meant! ‘The Angelus, ah yes. Forgive me, Reverend Father. I know how demanding a task such as yours must be but you do see, don’t you, that the web of Jerome and Yvette has been spun to include others, eh? All those who might know even a hint of why those two tragedies have happened stand in jeopardy of losing their lives.’
They’d think about that. The countess and the abbot exchanged hurried glances, she shaking her head ever so slightly even though she must have known the gesture would be noticed by others.
Mademoiselle Arcuri sat very quietly with her hands folded in her lap and her son, equally subdued, sat beside her.
Ackermann was waiting. So be it then. Ah yes. ‘No, Mademoiselle Arcuri did not kill Yvette. But could it have been the Resistance? Black coffins were received in the mail by them both but only after Yvette had already been killed. General, you were there at the flat when I opened them.’
‘I believe you also received one.’
Could nothing unsettle the man? ‘Yes, a sad mistake, General, but a horse of a different colour, I think. It is possible, I suppose, that the Resistance should wish to make an example of Mademoiselle Arcuri and her maid. After all, she is extremely popular with the Wehrmacht’s troops and makes lots of money.
‘But it is also far too convenient. On the night Yvette died, she received a telephone call and left a message which said, “Tell Mademoiselle Arcuri it’s all going to be fixed.”
‘What, you might well ask, Reverend Father, and you also, Brother Michael, but not, I think, Brother Sebastian.’ Ah no, not him …
‘“It’s all going to be fixed,” my friends. She changed her clothes – wished to look her best at short notice for a meeting with the Resistance? How could that be? She knew with whom she was going to meet. She’d settle things.
‘Once in the car, she was taken to Fontainebleau Woods. Her wrists were tied behind her back. She was pushed – shoved up the trail – brutally hustled into the forest and thrown to her knees. Weeping, my friends. Begging for her life and for forgiveness.
‘Ah yes, Reverend Father. Forgiveness. You see, she’d done a very brave but foolish thing. Yvette had kept a diary of her brother’s travels over the past several months – since early in April, I believe, the fifth to be precise – and that diary, my friends, had fallen into the hands of the Surete and, what was more important, those of the Gestapo.’
St-Cyr paused to take a sip of wine. It was not a time, however, to give them opportunity to think, nor was it a time for him to worry too much about their individual reactions, but simply to put the run on them.
‘Word gets round in those circles, isn’t that right? Word got to Berlin. Himmler and the Fuhrer became genuinely concerned. The wires started buzzing. Hermann, my partner, received marching orders for Gestapo Kiev; I was to be sent to Silesia.’
‘Where you’ll go in any case,’ said Ackermann quietly. He’d had about enough of this. Gabrielle was looking at him. So many questions in her eyes, so many doubts and worries.
St-Cyr saw that his pipe had gone out. He’d relight it and talk at the same time … ‘Perhaps I will go to Silesia, General. But it is to the diary we must turn, is it not?’
He waved the match out and puffed in. ‘You see, General, it really does detail liaison after liaison. It even details a chase from Marseilles to Angers.’
Nothing could be read in Ackermann’s look. ‘I was using the boy to find the truth about Gabrielle’s husband.’
Merely performing his duties, was that it? St-Cyr gestured expansively with the pipe. ‘Of course you were, General.’
‘I really don’t see what this all has to do with us,’ complained the abbot.
‘Everything, Reverend Father. A little patience, eh? That is all I ask. So, General, you were investigating the whereabouts of Captain Charles Maurice Theriault. And perhaps, my friend, that is why Yvette’s entry for 13th July read, “After the chase there is resignation and acceptance.”’
‘The boy agreed, finally, to assist me.’
St-Cyr tossed the hand of dismissal. ‘Then Hermann’s accusation is incorrect, General, and you may well shoot him in this duel you insist is so necessary.’
‘That is correct, although I would have said, I will shoot him.’
‘Ah yes, were it not for two things, General. First, the murder of Brother Jerome – the catalyst, I think – and second, the weapon that was used and the manner of his killing.’
‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Of course not. A rock? A flint boulder from the perruches, eh, Reverend Father? A crime of passion, my friends. A sudden impulse after a violent argument in which voices that should have been discreet were raised in anger and, in the case of one of them, jealousy, such jealousy.
‘A crime of passion,’ said St-Cyr, letting his voice climb sharply to startle them all. ‘Not a simple matter of the Resistance having shoved the muzzle of a 9 millimetre pistol against the back of some young girl’s head, eh?’
His voice fell to quietude. ‘No, my friends, it was much more than this. Berlin would not have taken so much notice and you, Brother Sebastian, would not have lost your rosary.’
As he drained his glass, he watched them all. St-Cyr refilled the glass and offered the bottle.
There were no takers. The countess began to say something … ‘Countess, a moment, please. You have said that this strand of beads was not the Brother Sebastian’s and that it was the one you gave Jerome when he first entered the monastery. Yet Jerome had his rosary wrapped around his hands?’
‘That was the one he had as a child. I also gave that to him.’
What a marvellous woman! She should have been born two hundred years ago. ‘Forgive me, Countess, if I say that you are like the lawyer whose client is guilty. You have an answer for everything but if I have to, I will have that casket dug up and the rosary examined. All the brothers have similar ones, is that not so, Reverend Father?’
He yanked the thing out of a pocket and thrust it at the abbot. The answer he would leave to the gods. ‘This one was accidentally left with the body of Jerome Noel on the road that lies below the monastery. When you found the boy dead and realized what had happened, Countess, you kept it until the funeral. A crime of passion, Brother Sebastian, for which God will be your judge but for which I charge you with the murder of Alain Jerome Noel.’
St-Cyr moved swiftly to stand over the monk whose head was still bowed. What prayers were going on in that mind, what guilt, what shame …
The voice was tortured. ‘He wouldn’t listen. I tried to tell him …’ began the monk.
‘It’s all right, Brother. Me, I am certain there were reasons enough. Keeping bees must be a solitary vocation and God’s love is, after all is said and done, a little distant for most of us.