Strange Images of Death djs-8 Read online

  Orlando listened and, to Joe’s relief, didn’t make the all-too-easy Englishman’s scoffing objections. ‘Not much of a reader, I’m afraid, Joe, and I can’t say I’ve ever opened a book by any of those psychologist chaps you go on about. From what I hear, it all sounds a bit like common sense and I can’t see what the fuss is all about. Perhaps it sounds more impressive being expressed in German? But I can quite see why you-or anybody-would be on the alert. It rang a bell with me-what you had to say at luncheon yesterday-that stuff about progression.

  ‘There was a girl in the village-yes, a girl-who was a bit queer in the head, you know. Started sticking pins in her dolls, chopping off their limbs … the family cat had kittens and they all mysteriously disappeared one by one. No one noticed.’ Orlando breathed in and out slowly and shuffled his feet. ‘Her baby brother, six months old, was found dead in his cradle one day. Suffocated, the doc said.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Classic case. I do hope …?’

  ‘The doc is a clever man. He put two and two together and saw that the right thing was done.’

  ‘I don’t think your village gossip is going to be much help with the next problem. I have to ask-any dope-fiends in the neighbourhood?’

  ‘Dope? Not as far as I know. People say there’s a lot about these days. You can get anything you want in most Paris bars. You just go to the till with your cash. They even have a slang word for the till: la pharmacie! And the Riviera coast is Paris-by-the-Sea at this time of year. Bloody awful stuff! I’ve watched friends of mine … well, never mind. I drink too much and, yes, I’ve sniffed a little this and that. Lost my nasal virginity at a young age but never got addicted. I don’t think I’m the addictive type. Nothing clings to me and I cling to nothing. Everything and everybody rejects me in the end and moves on. Except for Dorcas. She’ll drop a tear on my coffin.’

  ‘So. Glad to hear you’re conscious of the dangers.’

  ‘I don’t want the evil stuff or any rum bugger under the influence of it anywhere near the children. It’s illegal here in France anyway. Throw your weight about, Joe. Lean on whoever it is you’ve flushed out and make them leave. Who? Give me a name!’

  Joe took two screwed-up pieces of paper from his pocket. ‘Let’s examine the evidence first. What do you make of these?’

  He handed one to Orlando.

  Orlando took it and opened it up carefully. ‘It claims to be face powder-shade, wild rose. My mama uses these. Dab, dab, dab on the cheekbones. Useful little things to slip into your handbag. They don’t leak or spill. But this powder’s white.’ He licked a finger, ran it along the creases and popped it into his mouth. ‘Definitely not cosmetic. It’s cocaine,’ he said.

  ‘Thought so.’

  ‘Some folk use a five-pound note for the purpose,’ Orlando offered.

  ‘All adds to the gaiety, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, it could have been worse, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean? Bad enough, I’d have thought.’

  ‘There are more deadly concoctions about. Until recently, this stuff was sold openly over the counter as a tonic!’

  ‘Here in France?’

  ‘Yes. Never heard of Mariani Wine?’

  ‘Of course. A tonic-as you say. One of my great-aunts swore by it. She imported it by the case.’

  ‘I bet she did! But she was in good company. Other advocates of this infusion of coca leaves topped up with red Bordeaux wine included Edison-he of the electric light bulbs-Jules Verne, the Prince of Wales and His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. His Holiness actually awarded them a medal! At nine milligrams of the hard stuff per bottle, no wonder they were enthusiastic!’

  Joe was entertained, as usual, by Orlando’s worldly knowledge. ‘Good Lord! I had no idea! Edison, eh? Isn’t he the chap who said genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration?’

  ‘He did. Failed to take the nine milligrams into his calculation, it seems.’

  ‘But someone a lot closer to home is getting supplies of much more serious stuff. I should like to find out how.’

  ‘If you’ll open up and tell me who, perhaps I might have an answer as to how.’

  ‘Estelle.’

  Orlando spent a few moments absorbing this information before shaking his head sadly. ‘Now you come to mention it … Yes, I can see there were signs there for those sharp enough to pick them up. The eyes! The mistimed gestures! The surges of jollity! Oh, Lord! What am I supposed to think now? I like the girl. So do the children. Why couldn’t it have been that appalling pseudo-Russian? That impresario or whatever he is … Director of the Ballet Impérial de Lutèce-that’s what he calls himself … Pretentious twerp! I’d have enjoyed watching you kick him out. I shall look forward to handing him the keys of his Hispano-Suiza and waving goodbye.’

  ‘So that’s his car? I had wondered. Well, on the subject of Monsieur Pederovsky-’

  ‘I think it’s Petrovsky.’

  ‘Thank you. You may well yet have the pleasure of watching him depart in double-quick time. I’m sure his chiselled profile is known to the Vice back home. And if he’s who I think he is, believe me, you wouldn’t want him under the same roof as the children. But I make accusations without proof. I want you to come along with me to his quarters while he’s at lunch and we’ll look through his drawers.’

  ‘Oh, I say! Poking about in a chap’s privacy? Not sure I could do that.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Just stand in the doorway, and keep watch while the Law gets its hands dirty. I don’t think we’ll need to look further than his passport.’

  ‘What colour are Russian passports? Do they have passports or do the poor blighters still just escape over the border and head for Paris?’

  Joe groaned. ‘Go back to your painting when we’ve finished here. At the lunch table, make sure that our ballet-loving friend is sitting there in best bib and tucker and then make a vague statement about regretting sending me off on a wild-goose chase somewhere about the place-I’ll leave that to your invention-excuse yourself and come after me. We’ll roll up, arm in arm, ten minutes later making apologies. Got that?’

  ‘Got it!’ Orlando tried to get to his feet in relief that his ordeal was over.

  ‘Not so fast, blood brother!’ Joe put his hands on his shoulders and pushed him down again. ‘There’s more I want from you. And you’re not leaving until I get it! There’s another little mystery I’ve been asked to clear up. I know you have the answers to my questions. There are just two of them. First: Who is-or was-Dorcas’s mother? And second: Where is the lady now?’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘No good, I suppose, telling you the answer to both your questions is: “I don’t know”? Thought not. And if I added: “None of your bloody business! Go away and leave me in peace, you nosy bugger …”’

  Orlando got to his feet rebelliously and made for the door, to find that Joe was already blocking his way.

  ‘Why don’t we take a walk down to the stables, old man?’ Joe said, unruffled. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard horses somewhere in the distance. I’d like to take a look. You can always get the measure of a man by checking his horses-I’ve heard you say it. And, as the lord himself seems to be eluding me, it’s the best I can do.’ He knew that Orlando loved horses even more than art and would never raise an objection to strolling out to admire a selection. Orlando fell into step willingly enough. ‘We can get a bit of fresh air before the day heats up,’ Joe persisted cheerily. ‘If you care to burble a few confidences into a sympathetic ear as we go, I can assure you of my utter discretion. And it is my business, I’m afraid. I’ve been engaged by Dorcas to find her mother. She seems very certain that she’s to be found down here in Provence.’

  Orlando sighed. ‘And that’s all the information you can count on. Why do you suppose I come down to this part of the world every summer? I’m still hoping to find her again. Laure. The love of my life. Well, the first love of my life.’

  ‘Laure?’

  ‘Yes. Like the
name of the poet Petrarch’s inamorata. We met in Avignon. Half the girls there are called Laure. The half that aren’t are called Mireille. I’m not even sure that was her name. She was a bit of a storyteller. And secretive. Dorcas is very like her.’ His smile was tender.

  ‘Dorcas tells me all she knows is that her mother was a gypsy and a dancer and that she abandoned her at the age of one year and returned to France.’

  ‘Village gossip. She wasn’t a gypsy-just dark as the Provençaux are. Ancient Greek and Roman ancestry, of course, and it shows-the straight nose, the lustrous eyes, the black curling hair … But, of course, to the good Saxon folk of Surrey, dark equals gypsy. She was slim and lithe and looked like a dancer but she wasn’t one. Not professionally. As far as I know. I found her in a state of destitution. On the street, sleeping in a doorway near the Pope’s Palace. She’d fled her village and come to the big town looking for work.

  ‘No honest work available for a homeless girl. She’d been earning a crust or two singing outside cafés. There was a sort of folklore festival on. Gypsies and other performers in town. People were more willing to open up their purses for a pretty girl singing the old tunes. But it was clearly not going to last. I was going through my Modigliani phase at the time and here was a girl my idol would have smacked his lips over. Thin, dramatic, enigmatic, beautiful …’

  ‘Get on, Orlando!’

  ‘She became my model and my mistress and I took her back home to England with me. I was very young myself … and the money soon ran out … By then, she was pregnant with Dorcas.’

  Joe recalled the acid remarks, the hard slaps he’d seen meted out to Dorcas by her grandmother, and cringed. He could imagine the impression that flinty nature and unyieldingly aristocratic bearing would have made on a young and pregnant foreigner.

  ‘A year? She survived a year under your mother’s roof? A happy time was had by all, then?’

  ‘You know my mama! I have tried to sell her to the Devil but he’s having nothing! Hatred at first sight! She made Laure’s life a misery. Tormented her, rejected the child when she was born. I did what I could. But, after a year, the moment the child was weaned, Laure disappeared. Left me a note asking me not to try to find her and to take care of Dorcas. I haven’t even got a portrait of her. She burned all the canvases. Made a bonfire of them in the orchard while I was away in London. Not that you’d have recognized her from those pictures.’ Orlando grimaced at the memory of his early work. ‘And that’s it. It was the year before the war broke out. For the next five years there was no possibility of travelling through France but every year since then, I’ve done my best.’

  ‘And your other children?’

  ‘All illegitimate like Dorcas,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Never married any of their mothers. Or rather they wouldn’t have me. I told you-nothing and nobody ever sticks to the smooth surface of the life and character of Orlando Joliffe. Money, lovers, children, friends, they all lose their foothold in the end and they drift away, heaving sighs of relief. You will too …’

  ‘Stupid, self-indulgent sod!’ said Joe mildly. ‘What about that angel, Nanny Tilling? That tower of strength, your groom, old Yallop? They’ve given their lives to you and your progeny. My sister Lydia is not unconcerned and it’ll take more than a bit of self-deprecating hand-wringing to dislodge me, mate!’

  ‘A good kick then? Will that work?’

  ‘Not even. Would you like to hear what I’m planning?’

  Orlando groaned. ‘I don’t want Dorcas to be hurt. And there’s every chance that she might be if you go on with this ferreting. Hopes may be raised only to be dashed. Even worse-you may find her mother and discover that the woman herself has changed. Hadn’t it occurred to you? What do you think life will have been like for a fallen girl with no protector? She’ll be something quite other after thirteen years. Dorcas has a picture in her mind of a young and lovely dancer. Laure might look by this time more like that raddled pouter-pigeon of a duenna that Petrovsky hauls about with him. Did you notice her at the dinner table?’

  ‘Spanish-looking? Blue-black hair, wearing something purple and rather décolleté?’

  ‘That’s the one. Half a ton of gaudy stones cascading down the slopes of an ample bosom!’ Orlando shuddered. ‘Suppose my lovely Laure had turned into her! And she could have, you know! She’s the right age. Doesn’t bear thinking about. And, anyway, it’s the last thing she would want-to be presented with a grown-up daughter and an ageing ne’er-do-well foreign lover she discarded in disgust before the war. Listen! If we’re going to do this, and I see from that granite-jawed, mulish expression on your ugly mug that we are, there’s a proviso. A sine qua bloody non!’

  ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

  ‘If you find her … I insist on being the first to be told. Before Dorcas has any inkling. I insist on the right to assess the woman she is now before you start making the introductions.’

  ‘I understand. I too would place Dorcas’s peace of mind above all else. Including yours.’

  ‘Well, that’s honest enough!’ Orlando looked thoughtfully at Joe. ‘The child knew what she was doing, I’m thinking, when she decided to sink her hooks into you. She saw Sir Lancelot riding over the hill, flashing warrant cards, clinking handcuffs and reading the Riot Act to her granny and thought, “That’s for me!” Watch it, Joe … she’s a manipulative rascal.’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’ Joe agreed easily. ‘Now, come on! The story! And I’ve never enjoyed the love duets from La Bohème much so spare me all the romantic rubbish. I want facts. Names. Locations. A village, you said? Near Avignon? Which village? Think! In the Lubéron hills, is that all you know? Vast area. Did she mention her parents? Why had they thrown her out? Did she mention her school life? The name of a teacher? A best friend?’

  ‘Crikey! Do leave off! I feel like a rat between the jaws of a terrier. You’re shaking me to bits!’

  ‘I’ve barely started. The girl was with you for two years, Orlando. She must have got a word or two in edgeways in your conversations. No one can talk without giving away something about themselves. Just one name or one fact remembered could give us the key. Life in village France is organized around the parish-the town hall, the school and the church. Let’s start there. Was Laure religious?’

  ‘Not very. Occasionally she’d ask me to take her into the local Catholic church for confession. She insisted on having Dorcas christened.’

  ‘Then she was certainly a communicant. On somebody’s parish records. Look-every French girl talks of her first communion-did she mention the name of her village church? We could check the rolls if we had a name.’

  Orlando stopped walking abruptly. ‘Good Lord! Sometimes I see why they call you a detective … It was the only photograph she had. I brought it with me … in case. I keep it here, in my wallet.’

  He took a leather note-case from his inside pocket and produced a dog-eared sepia print. Joe had seen hundreds like it in every photographer’s studio window. Four twelve-year-old girls were standing together in a row, wearing long white dresses and veils. Downcast eyes looking shyly in the direction of the camera, they were clutching a white book in one gloved hand and a small bouquet of flowers in the other. A communion group. And taken by a professional photographer in a studio, judging by the painted backcloth showing the inevitable ruined temple on a wooded hillside. Joe looked for the photographer’s name and found to his annoyance that it had been scratched out.

  He pointed to the defacement.

  ‘I told you-she was determined I shouldn’t know anything of her former life. I think she had something to hide.’

  Joe was beginning to enjoy the challenge set so many years before by this unknown dark Provençal girl.

  ‘Well, we could start by showing this to the photographic establishments in the nearest big town which would be Avignon and asking if anyone recognized the scenery-’ Joe began.

  ‘I’ve done that. And the photographers of Arles and Aix and Marseille. You’d be surpr
ised how many shut up shop in the war. The ones who struggled through didn’t recognize it.’

  ‘It’s all we’ve got. There must be … Hang on! Only four girls! Four!’

  ‘So what? Four friends. All the same age and size.’

  ‘But not the same in looks. I’d say these two here on the left are twins. This beauty next to them rather fancies herself as a dancer-do you see how she’s standing-quite deliberately, I’d say-with her feet in the at-ease ballet position?’

  Orlando peered over his shoulder. ‘Oh, yes. Never noticed. And now I can’t see anything else of course. The photographer must have been a bit miffed when he developed it.’

  ‘But she’s not your Laure. I’m going to guess she’s the one on the right.’

  ‘You’ve got her!’

  ‘It’s a very small number for a communion class. That tells us it was a very small village. She was how old when you met her? … Seventeen? … In 1911? And she would have been twelve when this was taken. So we’re looking for a village in the Lubéron which had in 1906 a tiny class of communicants. Every young girl remembers the priest who instructed her. Think, Orlando, did she ever mention the name of-’

  ‘Ignace. Father Ignace.’ The words fell, leaden, from Orlando’s lips before Joe had finished his sentence. He closed his eyes in a childlike effort to remember or squeeze back an unmanly tear. ‘She once said, “Father Ignace would not approve.” And I’m sure she was quite right,’ he added with a haunted and melancholy smile. ‘It was the first of many things she did that would have raised a priestly eyebrow!’

  ‘May I keep this?’

  Orlando began to splutter, clearly not keen to have the photograph leave his possession, but Joe was already sliding it away into his own wallet. As the last girl in the row, the small one at the end, the only one of the four not to have looked down in modesty, disappeared from sight, it seemed that she caught his eye and he knew he’d seen that look of mock innocence before.