Sobbing, she clung to her brother and shook so hard he had to hold her tightly until he noticed, ah yes, that they had a visitor.
From a rat-hole shack outside the stone-and-iron fence of the Basilica, the old woman who was the caretaker’s wife sold black-market candles and other religious nick-nacks in the plunging darkness. Kohler let her serve the frozen customers she seldom greeted with anything more than a grunt of distaste or a scathing remark. Though not blind, she could have done as well, for she knew the feel of each bill and coin. ‘Another, monsieur,’ she said to one, sucking on her cheeks. Age had made her small and bent and when he stood before her in the darkness, she tossed her shawled head back as if struck by the size of him. ‘Monsieur …?’
‘Madame Philomena Cadieux?’
Hastily she crossed herself but said nothing and said it defiantly. ‘Look, Madame Cadieux, I’m like Jesus. I come in peace, eh? Here’s five hundred francs to prove it.’
‘The Christ Child would have come with more,’ she said doggedly. ‘An old woman whose bladder is full but frozen. A bishop who hoards his silver on this day of giving and takes not the half as agreed these past countless years, but three-quarters.’
Ah merde, a family feud! ‘Then here’s another and another, eh, to warm the bones and the heart.’
‘What is it you want?’ Suspicion was in every particle of her and he had to grin, had to say to himself, What a delight it was to deal with the French.
‘Why not let me help you close up. Here, let me buy the rest of your stock and we’ll leave it right here for another time.’
The Germans were fools, but God had made them that way and who was she to question Him? ‘Five thousand then, and I will allow you to close down the front shutter. It’s too heavy for me but my husband will not listen.’
There was no thought of her inviting him into the two rooms she begrudgingly shared with that husband. This little stucco building was at the front and just to the right of the Basilica’s entrance-joined to the main body as if a growth of accident, the builders having realized at the last that there had to be some place to dump the caretaker.
‘It’s too cold in there,’ she said. ‘Come with me. Come into the bishop’s study. Let that one’s fire take the ice from us even though he will be furious and will say it is the last straw, that that useless husband of mine and my good self have been dismissed!’
So much for the bishop and the husband. Kohler found her the half of another bottle of Calvados and wished her a happy Christmas. Her button eyes were fierce and full of rheum. Both nostrils ran. She sipped, wiped and wiped again with fingerless black woollen gloves that were frayed.
‘Tell me about the gasoline,’ he said. He would not grin. She was freezing and could hardly keep her fingers still enough to clutch the glass with both hands.
‘The gasoline …’ She clucked her tongue. ‘Yes. Yes, I warned Auguste not to leave it where he did but that one never listens. You should have let this Salamander torch the place, monsieur. Rats … mice … vermin … lice and fleas … You’ve no idea. It takes forever to wash that floor in there and I’m the only one who does it.’
She had to pee, and he had to turn his back while she used the bishop’s best potted begonia and felt good about it.
‘The gasoline was not taken by a woman, monsieur, but by a man. I have seen the footprints in the snow myself but no one has bothered to consult me. He was wearing Father Adrian’s shoes, the ones with the cracked soles but it could not have been that one, could it, since he was already dead.’
Kohler tossed back his Calvados. ‘Then who knew Father Adrian well enough to have taken his shoes and gained access to where he lived-where is that, by the way?’
‘In two rooms, not far from the bishop’s quarters in the manse that is next door. Oh yes, I have thought he may well have borrowed a cassock too.’
‘And this person?’
She would let him have it, since to have a crumb was not to have the loaf but only a taste. ‘Someone who knew Father Adrian had oiled his way among the women, though may God forgive me for saying it.’
‘Was Mademoiselle Aurelle one of those women?’ he asked.
The slut had been tied to her bed, thought Madame Cadieux, but there was no need to remind this one of it. ‘And others, monsieur. Oh mais certainement, the good father had the Church in mind when he visited them and asked for donations and did whatever else he did to encourage them in the Blessed Sacrament, but me, I have seen the evidence no priest should ever have in his rooms.’
Jesus! ‘What evidence? Here, your glass is empty.’
And you are eager for another few crumbs, said the woman to herself. This time she would drink it all. She would drain the fine glass of the bishop who knew only too well what his secretary had been up to but had turned a blind eye. ‘Oil, in a small bottle. Perfumed.’
‘Condoms?’
She would duck her head aside to indicate a speck of modesty. ‘The capotes anglaises, monsieur. I have counted them and noted when some were missing.’
The English bonnets, hoods, greatcoats or ‘riding’ coats. ‘Who knew Father Adrian so well that person was aware the priest would be visiting Mademoiselle Aurelle the night of the fire?’
‘But … but Father Adrian was not supposed to visit her, monsieur, ah not on such a busy night.’
‘He received a call?’
‘Oh but of course, from one of his women. Madame Beatrice, that slut of a housekeeper for the bishop, that one says it was Mademoiselle Aurelle who telephoned Father Adrian in urgency for a visit, yes? But me, I do not personally think it was Mademoiselle Aurelle at all. I think it was someone else who only said she was Mademoiselle Aurelle.’
‘Are there two telephones?’ She was making him feel totally out of his depth.
‘There are three, monsieur. Extensions here in the study and two in the manse.’
‘And you listened in.’
She held out her glass. ‘At about five thirty the new time, the German time.’
‘And it wasn’t Mademoiselle Aurelle?’
He was so eager for the crumbs. ‘That one always called in tears, monsieur. There were none. Indeed, for myself, I felt the voice too educated.’ There, she had said it and may God forgive her.
Too educated … ‘And Father Adrian, did you see him before he left?’
‘How was he-is this what you wish?’ She would wet her lips and stare at the bottom of her glass, and she would give him a last crumb and hope he would find the loaf. ‘Agitated.’
Kohler looked away to the book-lined shelves and gave his thoughts aloud and with a sigh. ‘Then he really did know what was up and that’s why he took the cross with him.’
The cross was lying on the coffee table between herself and her brother, thought Martine Charlebois. Diamonds and rubies and sapphires and Henri looking so distressed. Tall and thin, and sitting up stiffly, for his back was bothering him again. Wan and almost jaundiced-looking now that the cold had left his cheeks, poor darling. Tired from working so hard-the train from Dijon had been late, held up by another of the interminable delays. And now this, a detective from the Surete with the cross from the Family Rouleau once more in this room.
The same light that was thrown back by the diamonds was absorbed by the rubies until they glowed with fire and the sapphires were warm.
As always, when there were others present, Henri did the talking.
‘Our grandfather came across it years ago, Inspector. A very wealthy family with land-holdings in the Rhone Valley to the south of here. Five farms in excess of a total of two hundred hectares. Vineyards and orchards, cattle, sheep and pigs. I was with him when he broke up the estate and we found the cross tucked away in the back of a kitchen drawer.’