Strange Images of Death (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘Easy enough to check whether the lad’s telling the truth or not,’ said Martineau when they returned to the office. ‘Shall I go and collar his lordship, sir? That was as good a denunciation as I’ve ever heard! Shall I haul the blighter down and make him answer up?’

‘It’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,’ Jacquemin replied. ‘That valet of his …’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Léon something …’

‘Bédoin,’ supplied Joe. ‘Old retainer type. Been looking after his master for decades.’

‘Bossy old bugger! He’s given the lord a stiff dose of something to send him to sleep. Without reference to me! Or to the hospital nurse I’ve sent up to keep an eye on things. The valet’s uttering dire warnings of seizures to come. This fellow appears to be in charge of the pharmacopoeia. Which he keeps under lock and key in his own lair. He’s got a room next door to the master’s in his suite in the south tower.’

‘You’re saying you’ve—?’ Joe began to ask.

‘First thing I did. On the assumption that not a lot goes on under a roof of this sort without the knowledge of the owner, I stepped out and inspected his rooms. He raised no objection but I had to batter down the valet to gain admission.’

‘Anything of note? I should particularly like to hear of what his medication consists. I was fortunate enough this afternoon to have a concerned discussion with his doctor. He confirmed my suspicions regarding the lord’s health. But it would be interesting to hear what the man is actually being prescribed.’

Jacquemin passed Joe a sheet of paper. ‘Here you are. I took an inventory.’

Joe glanced down the list. ‘Can you tell me why you’ve divided this into two distinct parts?’

‘Because that’s how we found them,’ said Jacquemin. ‘In two different cupboards and—this is extraordinary—with two different labels. The first group and the largest in number are the bottles and tins marked with the local doctor’s details. The second, amounting to three or four items in all, bear the address of a Harley Street, London, medical establishment. With a name on the label we all recognize. Makepeace. Do you have a comment to make?’ He looked keenly at Joe who had fallen into a silent perusal of the list.

‘Er … not yet. I should like to take the time to check up on one or two of these items. I’m noticing that the London doctor and the local chap have one prescription in common. Both have decided to supply him with potassium iodide. Anything known?’ he asked carefully.

‘Heart and lungs. My predecessor swallowed them down like cachous,’ said Jacquemin with satisfaction. ‘Quite useless. It got him in the end.’

‘May I borrow this? Take a copy and return it?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And, tell me Jacquemin, was there anything that took your attention in his quarters? What sort of set-up does he have there?’

Jacquemin pulled a sour face. ‘Austere to the point of monkishness, I’d say. Fixtures and fittings and furnishings all of the very best but simple. Apart from some pretty fancy artwork on the bedroom walls.’ He gave a knowing smile. ‘Artwork which would surprise you, Sandilands. I expect it says a lot about the occupant of any room—the choice of pictures—if you think about it. A man can fill his public rooms with whatever he thinks will impress his guests. That’s the face he wants to show to the world but it’s the image he chooses to rest his eyes on before he goes to sleep that tells you who he really is.’

Joe and Martineau were suddenly thoughtful.

‘Passing in review your own walls, gentlemen?’ Jacquemin grinned. ‘Let me guess. The Lieutenant lives with his widowed mother. I’d expect a reproduction of a suitably pious religious scene—an Annunciation or something similar.’ And, as Martineau coloured and shuffled his feet, added: ‘With something more recreative under the bed, I’d guess. Now, Sandilands …’

Joe’s annoyance at this invasion of his privacy bristled in his voice: ‘Before you venture out on to another creaky limb, Jacquemin, I’ll reveal the secrets of my bedchamber walls: horses and angels. Find fault with
them
if you can. I managed to acquire one of Alfred Munnings’ paintings of the Canadian cavalry horses at war behind the front line before they were much collected. The angels—so buxom and bonny their gilded frame can scarcely contain them—are the subjects of an Italian renaissance drawing left to me by an uncle.’

Jacquemin’s smile was self-congratulatory. ‘Horses and women. One might have guessed.’

‘Please, let us have no further confidences,’ Joe begged. ‘We’ll let you off
your
round in the revelation game, Commissaire. Some things it’s kinder not to ask, don’t you agree, Martineau? Now, we’re eager to hear what you made of Silmont’s pictorial laudanum.’

‘Ghastly taste! Simply ghastly! They tell us he’s one of Europe’s authorities on modern art—he could have his pick! And what does he choose to surround himself with? Medieval visions of hell!

‘Right there on the wall, facing him as he lies in bed, there’s a painting on wood, over two metres in height. He told me it’s the right-hand panel of a pair commissioned to go over an altar.
The Descent into Hell
. Funny—from a distance you’d find the colours and composition intriguing but when you focus on what’s actually going on … well! Torture, rape and slaughter by the most inventive means is what’s going on! All being perpetrated by devils equipped with tridents as well as more outré pieces of equipment, but, I can tell you—nothing like the dashing Devil in red that our young set designer envisioned.’

‘I expect the church it was destined for refused to take delivery. You wouldn’t want to expose a congregation to a sight like that for hours on end. Could give them unwelcome ideas,’ Joe suggested. ‘But the artist? Did he say who the artist was?’

‘Some Dutchman with an unpronounceable name … Bosch!’

‘Hieronymus Bosch?’

‘You’ve got him! Strange thing—the other painting that took my eye—and crushed it—was by a Dutchman too. Vincent Van Gogh. A self-portrait painted, I was told, when he was an inmate in the lunatic asylum—quite near here—in St Rémy de Provence. Turned out dozens, apparently, and gave them all away.’ Jacquemin shuddered. ‘I know they’re collected these days but I can tell you, I wouldn’t say thank you for this one! I’ll never forget it. It’s a roughish painting—layers of livid colour slapped on, radiating outwards, and in the centre, a face. What a face! Green and yellow, emaciated flesh. You can tell the man was near death when he did it. Now, the sight of a corpse to me—and I suppose it’s the same for you fellows—long since ceased to stir the emotions, but this was no piece of dead flesh awaiting the pathologist’s attention. It was a living corpse. Sounds barmy, I know, but, if someone you knew had just died and you bent over him to murmur your farewell and he suddenly opened his eyes wide and stared at you … well … you can imagine the effect. Frightful! The eyes pin you to the wall! Dark, dull, blue-black, like a pair of ripe olives. They don’t ask questions, they don’t tell you anything, they don’t accuse. They look at you but don’t know you’re there. And, of course, they wouldn’t know. The man was looking in a mirror when he painted it. You’re standing in the way of a man who’s interrogating himself, judging himself, and finding himself guilty of some appalling sin. A man full of self-hatred and on the edge of death.’

A forceful painting, Joe thought, to have aroused such feelings in the apparently unemotional Commissaire.

‘Those eyes burn with pain,’ Jacquemin added, still enjoying his subject. ‘No wonder he has trouble sleeping. A nice Corot or two—that’s what I’d prescribe for his walls. Much more effective than the laudanum-based sleeping draught—item number six on the list I’ve given you.’

‘Books? What about books? I’ve inspected the lord’s library but it would be interesting to hear what he has by him.’

‘The usual line-up of novels. Hugo … Dumas … Tolstoy. Nothing more recent than Proust whom he seems to have read. A lot of poetry … classics … history … much local history … everything Mistral’s ever written about Provence. A history of the château, privately printed. Numerous photographs of the building including some of the chapel and tomb. I have to say, there’s no element we couldn’t accept in the lad Frederick’s story. He was definitely put up to it,’ his voice curdled with suspicion, ‘whatever
it
was, by his lordship. The books Ashwell showed us—the blueprint for his designs—were pressed on him by Silmont. The gaps were still to be seen on the shelves between Perrault’s fairy tales and the Almanach de Provence. Martineau measured them.’

‘So, just as Ashwell claims, he was handed his subject, his scene and his model—her services paid for in advance, on the house so to speak. All complete, on a palette, by the man commissioning the work,’ Martineau summarized. ‘And it was the lord who first put into his head the similarity between the statue and the live model, Miss Smeeth. The lord who gave him the keys to the armoury and invited him to study the daggers. The lord who, jokingly, suggested he paint the Devil with his cousin’s features. And—wouldn’t you know it?—who was known to be ten miles away himself at the time of the killing? His lordship! What’s going on, sir? Murder by some sort of hypnotic influence? By proxy? By witchcraft?’ He pursed his lips, uncomfortable with his suggestion. ‘Do you suppose money changed hands?’

‘Ah! Now you’re being fanciful, Lieutenant,’ sneered Jacquemin. ‘The English are known to be unbribable. But it will be entertaining to hear the lord’s version of events when he comes to the surface again. Meanwhile …’ He shuffled his papers and invited the two men to pull their chairs closer. ‘Just in case any further murders by suggestion are being planned, it will be sensible to reduce the number of potential victims. Can we take blonde young females as his preferred prey? I think we must. It’s the only pattern we’ve got—if two attacks constitute a pattern. Taking the smashing of the alabaster image as a statement of intent, it seems reasonable. Accordingly, I’m getting the remaining two possible victims out from under our feet. That little strawberry bonbon … what’s her name?’

‘Clothilde?’

‘Her and her Parisian mother. Blonde woman. Artist. Paints Madonnas and suchlike. I’ve ordered up a taxi to take them into Avignon and from there they can get a train back to Paris. Both very ready to go. I thought we’d take a chance on the redhead. What was she now? … Flower portraitist, she calls herself.’ His lip curled. ‘Big and overblown, like her subjects.’

Joe thought he recognized Cecily. ‘Jacquemin—the other children. I believe Marius Dalbert to be in some danger. When word gets out—and it most likely has by now—that he was hidden in the chapel with a murderer on the loose, steps might be taken to silence him.’

‘Already thought of, Sandilands. The older boy also. I’m sending the pair of them down to the village to the safety of their grandmother’s house in the high street. I’ll post one of the gendarmes they’ve sent us to stand guard at night.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘They’re due to start off after their tea. In about half an hour. Miss Makepeace has volunteered to escort them down and their mother is very agreeable. Nothing much I can do about the Joliffe children. Father Joliffe insists they’ll be safe enough in his orbit. He’s promised to keep them on a tight rein. I’m not letting
him
leave. Reported to have had a certain relationship with the deceased. He’s on my list.

‘Now, here you are.’ He passed a sheet of paper to Joe. ‘You asked for the names of all those in the castle who have cameras, I believe. Didn’t take long to compile.’

Joe looked at the Commissaire in surprise. ‘I say—I’m impressed. And thank you for taking the trouble. I don’t think you’ll have wasted your time.’

He began to read out: ‘The lord—a two-year-old German one. Zeiss-Tessar lens, quarter plate reflex.’

‘Good but barely used, his valet tells me,’ said Jacquemin. ‘He keeps it to record works of art he’s interested in. Not one for filling the family album. His cousin borrows it occasionally.’

‘Nathan Jacoby. Great heavens! Can the man really own so much photographic gear? Three plate cameras and the Ermanox?’

‘I haven’t had time to check his version yet. A visit to his dark room is called for, I think. And soon. Those powders and chemicals may not be all they’re said to be.’

‘Petrovsky. A large plate camera.’

‘He takes shots of the ballet sets, portraits of the ballerinas for release to the press as well as for his own records. He last used it to photograph Ashwell’s set paintings.’

‘Two Kodak pocket front-folders. One belonging to the Whittlesfords, the other to the Fentons.’

‘Each with an exposed film inside. I’ve asked Jacoby to develop them.’

‘Cecily Somerset. Ah! Sweet Cecily has a brand new Leica. One of those tiny 35 millimetre, thirty-six exposure jobs. Goodness, how smart!’

‘And not much of an idea how to use it. She hardly knows which way up to point the thing. Martineau, who’s sensitive to mechanical devices, had to take it out of her hands to stop her wrecking it. I asked her nicely to remove the film for our inspection and she was nonplussed. No idea where the lever was. “Oh, but I always get a man to do that sort of thing,” she said and batted her eyelashes. “I was going to wait until I got back to London to do that. And Daddy wouldn’t be best pleased if he knew you were opening it up. It was a birthday present.” And then she noticed, in all this argy-bargy, that her lens cap was missing. Flew into a temper and accused me of losing it. “You’ve dropped it! Yes, you have! You were fiddling with it!” Made us both check our turn-ups! What was that English name you called the woman just now?
Sweet
Cecily?’

‘I was being sarcastic. It’s a shy wayside flower in England. Smells delicately of aniseed.’

Jacquemin chortled with laughter. ‘Nothing delicate about this specimen! We had to take the camera from her hands. But it was worth the effort—it had the bonus of a part-used film in it. With Jacoby’s assistance—he’s as good as a laboratory—we got it wound back and he’s busy developing it. Are you going to tell me why you want to have this information?’

‘Not just yet. Call it an unformed thought. Look—call them all in, will you? These cameras. The whole lot.’