‘Sir,’ said Joe, ‘in my pocket I have a guidebook to the region. It has an illustration of the carving as it was. Perhaps …?’
‘Yes. By all means. Show it to the officers.’
‘Great heavens!’ Jacquemin was intrigued and offended. ‘Someone’s gone to quite a lot of trouble to make the girl look exactly like … what’s her name? … Aliénore. Anyone can see there’s a superficial similarity between the women but it takes more than a chance resemblance to trigger a man into going to all this bother, I’d have thought? All artistically arranged, you’d say. A crime of placement rather than passion? Is that what we’re looking at? Something studied?’
‘The shoes, the dress … the hair,’ Joe agreed. ‘Good Lord! I hope we’re not being treated to an expression of the latest “-ism” … necroplasticism, perhaps?’ he heard himself say and instantly regretted it. Jacquemin didn’t strike him as being receptive to word-play or remarks of a fanciful nature. And now he would have him marked down as a facetious English lightweight.
The Commissaire turned his double-barrelled gaze on Joe for a moment. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ he said and then turned his attention back to the tomb top with its deathly offering. ‘You should see what they get up to in Paris in the name of art! Necrophilia, necromontage, necroplasticism … could well be the latest thrill. I’ll keep an eye out. And let’s admit, Sandilands, to this extent, whoever this sensation-seeker is-he’s succeeded! I, for one, am ready to admit I’ve spent rather longer transfixed by this display before us than I ever have by the Mona Lisa. Read what you like into that!’
‘Don’t you think, sir, it would take more than a flight of fancy and stage management to produce this?’ Martineau dared to object. ‘It would take a rush of energy … an outburst from a dam of pent-up hatred.’
‘You’re right, my boy,’ said the lord. ‘Look-let me show you something which may cast some light on what you’ve just said. A motive for murder which has remained alive and strong through the centuries. Will one of you give me a hand? I need to move this wooden superstructure, here on the side abutting the tomb.’
Martineau stepped forward and seized the wooden boards where the lord indicated and began to lever up the structure. Joe hurried to assist.
‘I discovered this when I was a very young man. I had fallen completely in love with Aliénore-everyone did. A strange thing to say of a lifeless effigy but-she was deeply alluring.’ He paused to cast a bleak look at the pile of rubble which had once been a glorious work of art. ‘Throughout my guardianship I’ve kept her in excellent condition. The image was originally decorated, you know. The locks of hair were gilded, her shoulder cape painted blue-a formula we have never been able to recreate-the jewels, though paste, gleamed convincingly. Miss Makepeace has been studying and advising. And restoring. Beautifully. And all to end like this …’
He tore his eyes away from the stone shards and resumed: ‘Aliénore’s husband employed the very best talent to carve her likeness, I would say the work of an artist brought in from Italy. A man whose style makes the leap from Gothic to modern before his time. The workmanship was worthy of a man of the calibre of Giovanni Pisano, the Tuscan artist. If you ever looked on the stately beauty of his Madonnas you would see the same sweetness and humour, the same human individuality. I made myself an expert on medieval carving, the better to appreciate her quality. I can tell you that the second figure, that of Sir Hugues himself, was done by a different and less skilled hand. I am assuming that the lady was portrayed by someone who knew her well in life. Or possibly someone who was allowed to work for his initial sketches from the sight of her dead body.
‘My yearning to know more about her led me to study the Latin inscription running around the three sides of the tomb. Here.’ He pointed. All three men nodded.
‘I was puzzled. I followed the words around and came up with uxor sua-his wife — and stopped, disappointed. No date of death. No flattering phrase. Was there more hidden away around the back?
‘Gentlemen, there was.
‘I had the stone shelving, which sat awkwardly, like an afterthought, between the tomb and the wall, hacked away and, when I’d viewed and copied down the rest of the accursed lettering, unseen for centuries, I had this wooden structure built on to replace it and prevent anyone else from seeing the shameful truth.’
With a wave of his hand, he invited them to inspect the rear of the marble tomb. By leaning over in turn, at a neckbreaking angle, they could just make out the two remaining words of tribute from Sir Hugues to his wife.
‘It says et meretrix,’ Joe, the last man to inspect, read out. ‘And harlot. Aliénore, wife and harlot.’
‘Harlot? What kind of man carves that word on his wife’s tomb?’ Jacquemin asked.
‘A man betrayed by the woman he loved?’ said Silmont. ‘Once I had read the shocking word and accepted that the effigy I adored was flawed, other things began to fall into place.’
‘Ah! The hair! I had wondered,’ said Joe. ‘My knowledge of medieval church sculpture-Provençal or otherwise-is sketchy but, from what I’ve seen, this hairdo strikes me as being a bit out of the ordinary. I’ve never seen a lady with her hair spread all about like this. Aren’t they normally tightly coiffed … you know … every lock swept up into a headdress?’
‘Quite right, young man!’ said the lord. ‘There are very few who remark on that. It’s been forgotten over the years. In the Middle Ages, all married ladies wore their hair under a coiffe. It was the mark of a virtuous wife. Which would lead one to wonder what on earth the lady Aliénore is doing lying on display with her golden hair spread all about her pillow, looking for all the world like a Venetian woman of easy virtue.’
‘It would seem a heartless sort of tribute to pay to your dead wife, sir,’ Joe commented since he seemed to be waiting for a response. ‘And double-edged, since any onlooker of the day would have known exactly how to interpret it. Her husband was, thereby, shaming himself into the bargain. And it was uncomfortable to have the horns of the cuckold pinned on you by public opinion in those days.’
‘The tomb would have been assembled here after his death. It’s my theory that he no longer cared about his own reputation in his determination to ruin hers for ever more,’ the lord suggested. ‘Perhaps he left the whole image behind as an awful warning. To future generations. Here’s the just reward for infidelity-an early death.’
‘How did she die?’ Jacquemin asked. ‘Is it known?’
‘Not for certain. It’s said she died in childbirth. Nothing unusual in that, many women of the time did. But her husband was a crusader. Here history deserts us and we must speculate. If he returned from two or three years’ absence in the Holy Land to find his wife in a delicate condition … Well, you can imagine. Neither she nor the child would have survived his wrath. And there would have been few to blame him. It was of paramount importance to keep the line of descent pure. A man could keep mistresses openly under his own roof and produce illegitimate children by the score but his wife had to be of proven virtue, her offspring undeniably those of her husband.’