‘Very discreet,’ said Vandoosler.
‘Any objection?’ said Marc, wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘I only hopped over to look at the tree.’
‘And what did the tree tell you?’
‘That Leguennec’s men dug much deeper than we did, right down to the sixteenth century. Mathias is not altogether wrong, you know, the earth can talk. What about you?’
‘Come down off that dustbin so I don’t have to shout. Christophe Dompierre was indeed the son of the critic Daniel Dompierre. So we’ve sorted that one out. As for Leguennec, he’s started going through Siméonidis’ archives, but he’s as baffled as we are. His only satisfaction is that the eighteen missing Breton fishing boats are all safe back in port.’
Crossing the garden, Marc found his coffee bowl with a few cold drops left in it, which he drank.
‘Almost midday,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get the mud off and then to have a bite at Le Tonneau’
‘That’s a luxury,’ said Vandoosler.
‘Yes, I know, but it’s Thursday. Out of respect for Sophia.’
‘Are you sure it isn’t to see Alexandra? Or perhaps the veal casserole tempts you?’
‘That’s not what I said. Do you want to come?’
Alexandra was at her usual table, trying to get her son to eat his lunch, but he was in an unco-operative mood. Marc ran his fingers through Kyril’s hair and let the boy play with his rings. Kyril liked St Mark’s rings. Marc had told him that they had been given him by a magician, and that they had a magic secret, but he had never been able to find it. The magician had flown away out of the playground without telling him. Kyril had rubbed them, turned them, blown on them but nothing happened. Marc went over to say hullo to Mathias, who seemed to be stuck behind the counter. ‘What’s the matter?’ said Marc. ‘You look paralysed.’
‘I’m not paralysed, I’m stuck. I got changed in a rush and put on my shirt, waistcoat, bow tie, and everything, but I forgot to put on proper shoes. Juliette says that I can’t serve at table in sandals. It’s funny, she’s very fussy about it.’
‘I can see her point,’ said Marc. ‘I’ll go and fetch them for you, if you like. Can you organise me a veal casserole?’
Marc came back a few minutes later with the shoes and the white clay pipe.
‘Remember this pipe and the earth it was in?’ he asked Mathias.
‘Of course.’
‘This morning I went to see the tree. The soil on the surface isn’t the same. It’s much darker and more sticky.’
‘Like there is under your fingernails?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well it means the police were much more thorough than we were.’
‘Yes. That’s what I thought.’
Marc put the clay pipe back in his pocket and felt the little piece of pottery. He was always transferring bits and pieces from one pocket to another without getting rid of them. His pockets were like his memories, they would never leave him in peace.
Having put his shoes on, Mathias laid places for Marc and Vandoosler at Alexandra’s table: she had said that was alright. Since she did not bring the subject up, Marc avoided asking her any questions about what the police had said to her the day before. Alexandra asked instead how the trip to Dourdan had gone, and how her grandfather was. Marc glanced at the godfather who nodded imperceptibly. Marc was cross with himself for asking Vandoosler’s approval before talking to Lex, and realised that doubt had crept further into his mind than he had suspected. He told her in detail about the contents of the file for 1978, not knowing now whether he was doing so with sincerity or whether he was ‘letting out rope’ to watch her reactions. But Alexandra, looking pretty much at a low ebb, was not reacting at all. She simply said she ought to go and see her grandfather that weekend.
‘I don’t advise it at the moment,’ said Vandoosler. Alexandra frowned, and stuck out her chin.
‘Is it really that bad? Are they going to arrest me?’ she asked, in a soft voice, so as not to upset Kyril.
‘Let’s say Leguennec is suspicious. Don’t go away anywhere. Stick to the house, the school, Le Tonneau, the park, nowhere else.’
Alexandra looked sulky. Marc guessed that she didn’t like taking orders from anyone, and it made him think for a moment of her grandfather. She was capable of doing the opposite of what Vandoosler asked, for the sheer pleasure of disobeying.
Juliette came over to clear their table, and Marc stood up to kiss her. He described what had happened at Dourdan in a few words. He was getting tired of the wretched 1978 file, which had only made things more complicated without making anything clearer. Alexandra was getting Kyril ready to go back to school when Lucien burst into the restaurant, out of breath, and letting the door slam behind him. He took Alexandra’s place at table without seeming even to notice her leaving, and asked Mathias to fetch him a large glass of wine.
‘Don’t worry,’ Marc told Juliette. ‘It’s the Great War that winds him up like this. It comes and goes. You have to get used to it.’
‘Give it a rest!’ said Lucien, still panting.
From Lucien’s tone of voice, Marc realised that he was mistaken. It wasn’t the Great War. Lucien did not have that delighted expression he ought to have if he had discovered the war diaries of a peasant in the trenches. He was in a state of high anxiety and running with sweat. His tie was crooked, and two red spots had appeared on his forehead. Still panting, he looked round at the customers eating their lunch, and motioned to Vandoosler and Marc to come closer.
‘This morning,’ he said between two deep breaths, ‘I tried René de Frémonville’s number. It had changed, different number, different address, so I went over there.’
He drank a large gulp of wine before going on.
‘His wife was there. “R. de Frémonville” was the wife, Rachel, a lady of about seventy. I asked if it was possible to speak to her husband. Really put my foot in it. Hold on, Marc, wait till you hear this. Frémonville has been dead for years.’
‘Well, what of it?’ said Marc.
‘He was murdered, that’s what! Shot twice in the head, one night in September 1979. And, wait for this, he wasn’t alone. He was with his old friend, Daniel Dompierre. Also shot twice. Bang bang, two theatre critics, final curtain.’
‘No Shit!’ said Marc.
‘You may well say that, because my war notebooks disappeared in the commotion after that, what with moving house and so forth. Frémonville’s wife wasn’t bothered about them. She’s no idea what became of them.’
‘And was he a peasant, the soldier?’ Marc asked.
Lucien looked at him in surprise. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘No, but you’ve gone on about it so much…’
‘Well, yes, he was,’ said Lucien getting even more excited. ‘He really was a peasant. See? Isn’t that fantastic? If only…’
‘Never mind about the war diaries,’ ordered Vandoosler. ‘Carry on with the story. There must have been a police investigation, surely?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Lucien. ‘Rachel de Frémonville didn’t want to talk about it, but I was very persuasive and wormed it out of her. Frémonville kept the Parisian theatre world supplied with cocaine. And his friend Dompierre too, no doubt. The police found a packet under the floorboards in Frémonville’s house, just where the two men had been shot. The investigation concluded that it must have been gang warfare between dealers. The evidence was clear in Frémonville’s case, though less obvious for Dompierre. All they found in his place was a few sachets of coke stuffed up the chimney.’
Lucien drained his glass and asked Mathias for another. Instead, Mathias brought him some veal casserole.
‘Eat,’ he said firmly.
Lucien looked at Mathias’ expression and started on the food.
‘Rachel told me that at the time, Dompierre’s son, Christophe, refused to believe his father could be mixed up in anything like that. The mother and son both made a big fuss to the police, but it got them nowhere. The double murder was filed under drug dealing. They never caught the killer.’