‘Leguennec telephoned your mother. She knew you were coming to Paris. She knew the reason. Heartbreak, we call it, a sort of shorthand. Too small a word for what it stands for.’
‘You know all about broken hearts, do you?’ said Alexandra, who was still frowning.
‘Oh yes,’ said Vandoosler slowly. ‘Because I have caused some in my time. One rather serious one in particular. Yes, I do know about heartbreak.’
Vandoosler ran his hands through his black and white hair. There was a silence. Marc had rarely heard his uncle speak so simply and seriously. Vandoosler, his face calm, was quietly drumming his fingers on the table. Alexandra was watching him.
‘Let’s move on,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know the score on that one.’
Alexandra bowed her head. Vandoosler asked whether tea was compulsory, or whether one was allowed to drink something else.
‘That is to say,’ he went on, pouring himself a drink, ‘that I believe you when you say you ran away. I knew it was true from the start. Leguennec checked up, and your mother confirmed it. Since you had been on your own with Kyril for a year, you had been wanting to go to Paris. But what your mother did not know was that Sophia had agreed to put you up. You had told her you would go to friends.’
‘My mother has always been a bit jealous of her sister,’ Alexandra said. ‘I didn’t want her to think I was leaving her for Sophia, I didn’t want to risk hurting her. Us Greeks, you know, we imagine all kinds of things, and we like to. Or so my grandmother used to say.’
‘A generous motive,’ Vandoosler replied. ‘OK. Let’s go on to what Leguennec might be imagining. Alexandra Haufman, unhinged by distress, desperate for revenge…’
‘Revenge?’ whispered Alexandra. ‘What revenge?’
‘Don’t interrupt me, please. A policeman’s strength lies either in a long monologue that crushes the opposition, or in a rapid response that kills it dead. You should never deprive a policeman of these well-rehearsed pleasures. Or he might turn nasty. When you see Leguennec the day after tomorrow, don’t interrupt him. So, as I was saying, desperate for revenge, disillusioned, embittered, determined to find a way of getting on top, short of cash, envious of your aunt’s fortunate style of life, looking for a way to avenge your mother who has never succeeded, in spite of a few pathetic attempts at singing, now lost to memory, you plan to eliminate your aunt, and get your hands on a big share of the inheritance, through your mother.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Alexandra, through clenched teeth. ‘Didn’t I tell you already that I was very fond of Aunt Sophia?’
‘That’s both childish and naïve as a defence, young lady. A police inspector doesn’t listen to that kind of talk, if he has pinpointed both the motive and the means. Especially since you haven’t seen your aunt for ten years. That doesn’t quite fit the picture of an affectionate niece. OK, let’s go on. You had a car in Lyon. Why did you come by train? And why, the day before you left, did you take the car to the garage and ask the garage owner to put it up for sale, saying that you thought it was too old to take all the way to Paris?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Your mother told me that you had sold your car. I telephoned all the garages in your district until I found the right one.’
‘But what’s wrong with that?’ cried Marc suddenly. ‘What are you on about? Leave her alone, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Look, Marc,’ sighed Vandoosler, looking up. ‘You wanted to help her rehearse for Leguennec? That’s what I’m doing. You want to play the policeman, and you can’t even take the first set of questions. I know what she really will be up against on Monday. So shut up and listen. And you, St Matthew, can you tell me why you are slicing the bread as if you were expecting twenty people to dinner.’
‘To make me feel comfortable,’ said Mathias. ‘Anyway Lucien eats the slices. Lucien likes bread.’
Vandoosler sighed again and turned back to Alexandra, whose tears were welling up as her anxiety grew. She wiped her eyes with a tea towel.
‘You’ve already done all that?’ she asked. ‘You’ve made all those phone calls, asked all those questions. Is it such a crime to sell your car? It was clapped out. I didn’t want to risk driving it all the way to Paris with Kyril. And anyway it brought back memories. I got rid of it. Is that a crime?’
‘Let me pursue the same line of reasoning,’ said Vandoosler. ‘The week before that, let’s say on the Wednesday, you leave Kyril with your mother, and you drive to Paris in your car, which isn’t, by the way, as clapped out as all that, according to the man at the garage.’
Lucien, who was as usual pacing round the table, took the tea towel out of Alexandra’s hands and replaced it with a handkerchief.
‘It wasn’t very clean,’ he whispered.
‘… not as clapped out as all that,’ repeated Vandoosler.
‘I told you, the car brought back memories!’ said Alexandra. ‘If you can understand why people run away, you can surely understand why they might want to sell their fucking car!’
‘Yes, indeed. But if these memories were so painful, why didn’t you get rid of the car sooner?’
‘Because… because you think twice about dumping the fucking memories!’ cried Alexandra.
‘A word of advice, Alexandra. Don’t say “fucking” twice to a policeman. With me, it doesn’t matter. But on Monday don’t do it. Leguennec won’t react, but he won’t like it. Don’t say “fucking” to him. Anyway you should never say it to a Breton, the Breton gets to say it to you. That’s the rule.’
‘So why did you call in Leguennec in the first place?’ asked Marc. ‘If he isn’t going to believe a blind word anyone says, and if he doesn’t like people saying “fucking” to him?’
‘Because Leguennec is a good officer; because he’s a friend; because it was on his patch; because he will pick up all the possible clues for us; and because at the end of the day I’ll be able to do what I want with the clues. I’m talking about me, Armand Vandoosler.’
‘So you say,’ cried Marc.
‘Stop shouting, St Mark, it won’t get you to heaven, and stop interrupting me. I’ll continue. Alexandra, you gave up your job three weeks ago, because of your plan to leave Lyon. You sent a postcard to your aunt with a star on it, and a rendezvous in Lyon. The whole family knows about the old affair with Stelios and they all know what a star would mean to Sophia. You get to Paris in the evening, you intercept your aunt and you tell her some story about Stelios being in Lyon, you take her off in your car, and you kill her. Right? You dump the body somewhere, in Fontainebleau forest, for instance, or Marly forest, whatever, in some remote spot, so that she won’t be found too quickly-because that will make it harder to date the time of death and alibis will be hard to disprove. And you go back to Lyon the next morning. Days pass, nothing in the papers. That’s fine, it’s what you wanted. But then you start to get anxious. The spot is too remote. No body, no inheritance. It’s time to come back again. You sell the car, you take care to explain that you would never take it to Paris, and you come up by train. You make sure somebody notices you, by sitting stupidly in the rain with the little boy, without even going to the nearest café for shelter. You certainly don’t want anyone to think that Sophia disappeared voluntarily. So you make a fuss, and the police enquiries start up again. You borrow your aunt’s car on Wednesday night, you go off to fetch the corpse, taking great care to leave no traces in the boot of the car-and that’s a painful task, you need plastic bags, protective material, various grisly details-and you transfer it to an abandoned old car in some street in a low-class district. You set it on fire, so as to destroy all trace of the handling, the transport and the plastic bags. You know that Sophia’s little good-luck stone will survive the fire. It had already survived the volcano that spewed it up. So, the job is done, the corpse is satisfactorily identified. You don’t officially borrow the car your uncle offers you until the next day. And then the story is that you just want to drive round in the night, without any special purpose. Or perhaps you wanted to cover up for the night when you were driving with a very precise purpose, just in case somebody saw you. And one more thing. Don’t look for your aunt’s car. It went off to the forensic lab to be examined yesterday morning.’