‘And the countess?’ asked Kohler.
‘Perhaps she would be able to offer coffee and the services of a small burial detail, all of whom will be sworn to silence. It’s a pity the horses were killed. They both looked like decent animals.’ Horses … ‘Oh, by the way, that reminds me, Hermann. Osias Pharand has a small job he’d like you and Louis to handle. A carnival operator in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, one of those guys who runs a carousel. Some bastard tied him to one of his painted horses or something and slit his throat from ear to ear. They found him in the morning. An old woman noticed that the thing was still going round and round when it should have been mothballed for the winter. She wanted to give her grandson a ride and was quite pissed off when they wouldn’t let her. It’ll keep Louis busy and give him a rest from all this.’
‘But … but that’s a matter for the Prefet of Paris and his boys?’
‘You leave Talbotte to me. Scrape the surface, Hermann. Find out what’s underneath.’
‘Full reports?’
‘Yes, yes, full reports. The son-of-a-bitch had a girlfriend.’
The bell that summoned the monks from their toil rang hollowly in the ice-bound air but struck a note of urgency. Kohler looked up the hill towards the monastery whose stone walls seemed to drift eerily out of the fog like the prow of a derelict ship. ‘It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, eh, Louis? A place like that. No gloves – no woollies either. Must be a bugger at night without a woman to cuddle up to.’
‘God wraps His cloak about them, Hermann. He is their Great Protector.’
‘How’s the tobacco supply?’
A note of warning, that? ‘Fine … Yes, fine, Hermann. I’ve hardly had a chance to use it.’
‘Not thinking of home are you, Louis? That wife of yours, eh? Gabi’s sure some chick. I couldn’t help noticing how she tossed you little looks of gratitude.’
‘She’s a chanteuse and a lady, Hermann, and me, I suppose when all is said and done, I’m a dry old stick who hungers for his slippers by the fire.’
‘There’s no coal in Paris, unless you’ve …’
‘Hermann, what is it? What has happened? Ever since you and Boemelburg had your little chat, it’s you who have been giving me the funny looks.’
‘Nothing. I just wondered. Gabi would suit you, Louis. You couldn’t do better – you know that, don’t you? You both work nights – no sweat about that. You could sleep in the odd morning and … well, you know. A fag?’ offered Kohler lamely. Things simply weren’t going well.
They trudged onward, steadily climbing the road, as the bell continued its lament.
Louis stooped to pick up a pebble of flint. Still had his mind on the case probably – a rehash of things. He hefted the stone and cleansed off its surface.
‘A small souvenir, eh, Hermann? A good murder case. A close thing, eh, my friend? Glotz giving you all that trouble. Me running into a girl whose shoe was broken …’
‘Look, let’s just find out what the hell that bell’s for.’
Had something also happened to Marianne and Philippe? ‘It’s not for the Angelus, Hermann. It has the ring of something else and, unless I am mistaken, that is the Brother Michael coming to meet us.’
They both waited as the monk strode towards them in his cassock and sandals.
Bare feet no less! Gott in Himmel, hard as nails … ‘Brother,’ began Kohler by way of greeting.
There were no tears in the wine maker’s eyes, only a savage, unrepentant discipline. ‘Please follow me, Inspectors. The Reverend Father has commanded that I be the one to lead you.’
Were there onions or leeks on his breath? wondered St-Cyr. All things came to him in a rush then. The set of the monk’s shoulders, the strength of his stride – the utter defiance of Nature in the splayed footpads, bare ankles and clenched fists. No boots today.
The way the rocks, some broken by the frost, crowded both sides of the road yet thinned rapidly upslope in the pastures. The way the sheep cried out as if lost and in despair. Lonely … did the place have to engender such a desperate feeling of loneliness, of memory? Marianne …
The slope increased substantially once they’d left the road and taken a path into the hills. The breeding hives,’ grunted the monk without stopping or turning. ‘We are going up to the hives where the queen bees are bred in isolation. Brother Sebastian was a lay brother, an amateur scientist, a naturalist.’
‘We’re only after his statement,’ said Kohler who was second in line.
‘That you shall have,’ spat the monk fiercely. ‘God is Grace and God is all-forgiving but will God provide us with another beekeeper as wise and experienced as the Brother Sebastian?’
It was as though the monk were blaming them. The hives stood about on an upper slope like miniature alpine huts in the fog. There were no trees from which the good brother could have hung himself, so that was ruled out. St-Cyr hunted the shrouded terrain until he found the sandals and the cassock well to their left. The sandals lay on top of the cassock which had been carefully folded. ‘Brother Michael,’ he hazarded, glancing quickly at Hermann, ‘what has happened here?’
‘Not another murder, I hope,’ breathed Kohler exasperatedly. ‘My chief won’t stand for it. He’ll dear the area and turn it back to desert.’
‘Look for yourselves,’ said the wine maker, anxiously crossing himself before dragging out his rosary and beginning to mumble prayers.
‘Louis …? Shall you or I go over the ground?’ asked Kohler.
‘I think we walk carefully, Hermann, me treading in your footsteps until we can both have a look at him.’
The path became a goat run. The hives were perched on protected ledges and on flat slabs of rock that had been laid solidly atop small platforms of boulders.
There was blood beneath the fast-dwindling rime of ice on the boulder that was clenched in Brother Sebastian’s right hand, bringing reminders of the death of Jerome Noel.
The monk had hit himself so hard in the face that he had broken his nose and most of the front teeth. He was doubled up as if in pain. The face also bore the mask of agony.
A small pewter cup lay on top of one of the two hives between which the Brother Sebastian had crawled while still clutching that boulder as if he couldn’t give it up.
St-Cyr looked at the boulder, at the body again, and then at Hermann. ‘First the poison and then the rock.’
‘But why take off his clothes, Louis?’
‘Why indeed?’ said St-Cyr sadly. ‘Unless he had been disowned.’
He reached for the cup and, swirling the dregs, gingerly brought it to his nose. ‘Conium maculatum Lumbelliferae, Hermann. Commonly called Mother Die or Poison Hemlock. Death is from paralysis and asphyxia due principally to the alkaloid coniine which attacks the central nervous system. The mousy odour is particularly strong, suggesting perhaps that the draught was made from the fresh grinding of dried seeds, which are the plant’s most toxic part. The question is, did the abbot grind the seeds or did the Brother Sebastian?’
They both turned to look at Brother Michael who had found reason to study the soles of his sandals.
Back came the words, ‘A lay brother turned amateur scientist, a naturalist.’ Had they been given on purpose?
‘Let’s leave it,’ said Kohler.
‘Yes … yes, I think that would be best, eh, Brother Michael? Death by his own hand.’
‘May God forgive him.’
‘And be your Judge, I think, Brother. Please make sure he is buried in your hallowed ground.’
‘Yes … yes. To this the Reverend Father has agreed.’
‘Inspector, I must speak with you.’
St-Cyr absently tossed the stick he’d been fiddling with into the river. She’d found him at last, sitting with his back against the wall of the mill, staring into the past.
‘It’s not a good time for you to be alone, Inspector. You need friends. Me, I know that I should not intrude, but I would like you to consider me as a friend.’