Strange Images of Death djs-8 Read online

  She laughed. ‘Me? Bad-tempered, angular, unsympathetic me? I have acquired a certain skill, Joe, over the years. I have learned the techniques of the psychiatrist’s couch. I know when to be silent. I know which phrases will provoke a response. And I know how to interpret those responses.’

  ‘I suppose I must resign myself to being read by you?’

  ‘Not at all, Joe. I take you for a clear rock pool. The sunlight and clarity I see on the surface goes all the way down to the white pebbles on the bottom.’

  He didn’t believe her but made no denial or affirmation of her challenge, spotting her outrageous comment for the trigger it was. If he’d been lounging on a tapestried couch instead of perched rather gingerly on an ancient chair with a rickety leg he might well have given way to the temptation of sinking into an indulgent bout of self-analysis. Steered by Jane Makepeace in the direction of her choosing. He helped himself to another cup of tea from the pot.

  ‘So why the frenzied attack on womankind?’ he asked, wondering whether she had reached the same conclusion as himself.

  ‘Brought up with medieval notions of inheritance, the fascination for the treacherous wife, Aliénore, whom he adores and loathes in equal measure, he finds at an impressionable age that the family tradition continues. His own mother he discovers to be a strumpet-in his vocabulary. I despise the word and seek unsuccessfully for the male equivalent. At any event-a woman who has been unfaithful and given away the product of her unfaithfulness. His own brother. A heartbreaking loss? Or relief that a cuckoo has been pushed out of the nest?’

  ‘Your father would have a field day with all this,’ said Joe, bemused.

  ‘And then, we must assume somewhere in his early twenties-that is the most usual time, I understand, for young men to go off the rails, usually with an infected prostitute-he finds through the appearance of a chancre in the groin, and probably a fever, that he has been infected with the most hideous disease known to man. It is incurable. It is unbearably painful. It is transferable. No one is sure of the period of contagion but he knows that if he marries, he risks infecting his wife. And the disease may be passed from a mother to her child. She will bring into the world an infant covered in black pustules and condemned to a life of pain. Silmont does the honourable thing and forbids himself ever to marry.’

  ‘Which leaves him with a certain resentment against women,’ said Joe. ‘Unfaithful, diseased and dangerous creatures!’

  ‘The anger and bitterness grow over the years like the tumours. And now he’s reached the third stage and his diseased brain is no longer capable of exercising restraint or reason. He sees the statue of the ancient whore as the seed bed of vice and his own illness as destruction visited on him by an unclean woman. I think the arrival of Estelle with her incredible looks and her licentious reputation burst the boil of his venom. She was fated to pay the price. The moment she stepped over the drawbridge she-’

  Joe was anxious to discourage Jane’s doom-laden tone. He detected a trace of lip-smacking jubilation and, though he could understand, he could not sympathize.

  ‘Which was exactly when? Her arrival?’ he interrupted brusquely.

  ‘Let me think … I was already here. My six months’ secondment started in May. It would have been at the beginning of June. She came down with Nathan the photographer.’ Jane’s eyes narrowed. ‘I remember clearly the effect she had on the men that first day.’ She fell silent and let her remark hang in the air between them. She had taken her reprimand and this was her riposte: if Joe wanted to hear gossip, he was going to have to ask nicely.

  ‘Any man in particular seem smitten?’ he enquired because he needed to know. He was reluctant to hear an account seen through the prism of Jane Makepeace’s critical faculty but it would be interesting to compare her version with the one he already had from Orlando.

  ‘You want individual profiles-a barometer of lust? Let me see. Freddie was an obvious victim from the first moment. The mercury rose to danger level in seconds. Storm warnings hoisted. She treated him kindly, I think. He was her devoted swain, you could say. Poor chap! He was much ragged for it. Derek and Ernest were sat on hard by each other’s respective wife. Bubbling under, I’d say. Petrovsky? There was a blip from him until he discovered that she despised him and his level fell. Such a man thrives only on adulation. And his hands were rather full at the time, anyway. Nathan Jacoby watched all these fools manoeuvring from the sidelines, cynical and indulgent. But concerned. Definitely concerned. Your friend Orlando? Now, there’s a lovely man!’ she said surprisingly. ‘A pacifist and a reformer. And a fine artist. Far too good for her. He registered a certain warm interest and I thought at one point they might make a go of it. Wouldn’t have blamed her for trying-he’s easy and funny. Perfect man to spend a summer with.’

  Joe hid a smile. He wondered whether he should warn Orlando that he had a secret admirer.

  ‘And the Frenchmen? You’re saving them till last?’

  ‘I appreciate a crescendo. Guy de Pacy … Handsome, competent, stand-offish Guy. He was amused, I’d say, by the reactions of the other men. But she was the type who would go for the unattainable. He was much too old for her. Too experienced. Too choosy. She tried hard-to everyone’s embarrassment. It didn’t take long for her to get the message and she stopped pursuing him. Very abruptly. One day she was all over him, the next she was glowering from the other end of the table. Something emphatic happened to make her change her mind.’

  Jane seemed genuinely puzzled and not fishing for a reply from him. Could it be that this modern, so well-informed young woman had no knowledge of the possibility of male inversion? He decided not to raise the subject.

  ‘This message that Estelle got? Any idea of what it consisted?’

  ‘Lord no! I’m on good terms with Guy but he doesn’t confide. He’s not approachable in that way-you must have noticed. Not a gossip. But it might not have been Guy who spoke to her. Had you thought of that?’

  ‘Not Guy?’

  ‘The Lord Silmont. If he noticed her interest, he would have taken steps to discourage it.’

  ‘Steps?’

  ‘Yes. Here my theory begins to crumble.’ Jane frowned and looked to Joe for help, her confident assertions suddenly faltering.

  ‘Because he could just have sent her away, couldn’t he? A hanger-on, a potential trouble-maker, a girl who represented everything he despised, why wasn’t she on the next train back to Paris?’ Joe wondered.

  ‘You’re right. Young, unconnected and foreign, you could add. He’s unpredictable. I’ve seen him dismiss a servant for squinting at him. But he kept Estelle on.’

  ‘Could he have been fascinated himself?’

  Jane nodded slowly. ‘Not obviously so. His visits to the dining room didn’t increase with her arrival. He didn’t seek her company. But when they were in the same room he watched her. Hardly a word exchanged but he was always … conscious of her, I’d say.’

  ‘Jealous of Guy?’

  ‘Probably. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? Younger man, attractive, healthy, and being besieged by the girl you’ve a fancy of some sort for yourself? Yes. It could have been the lord who warned her off. Another reason for him to want to get rid of her permanently. Had it occurred to you, Joe, that the table-top tomb looks very like an altar? He could have cleared the stone strumpet away to make space for a flesh and blood victim. Sacrificing her symbolically-all in the throes of his diseased urges, of course.’

  They had come around full circle. ‘But I told you, Jane, he could not have stuck the dagger in Estelle yesterday.’

  ‘You haven’t quite got there, have you?’ she said, annoyingly. ‘Well, I leave you to work it out for yourself. I don’t intend to put ideas into your head. I have no concrete evidence to present yet to back up my suspicions but I’ll let you have it the moment I uncover it.’

  Joe very much doubted that she had. Miss Makepeace, he thought, had shot her bolt, exhausted her evidence. But he was mistaken.

&nb
sp; ‘I’ll leave you with another thought,’ she said, as one turning in the saddle to fire off a last Parthian arrow. ‘You only ask me about her relationships with the men in the party. She was not popular with the women in the dorm, you know. They’re mostly quite open-minded-as females go-but when they’re cooped up together! Well! They can behave no better than schoolboys … or hens … The most awful bullies! They choose one of their number to be the sacrificial one, the poor specimen all agree to peck at. They chose Estelle. She was easy to despise and a threat. Cecily, in particular, could get into a froth of rage at the mention of her name. There was bad blood between those two. Cecily tormented her. The second night Estelle was with us, I caught the appalling Cecily making an apple-pie bed to trap her. Reverting to schoolgirl behaviour.’

  ‘What did you do, Jane?’ Joe asked, trying not to smile.

  ‘It’s not funny, Commander! Girls, even hard-boiled ones like Estelle, can be psychologically damaged by such evidence of rejection by their peers, you know … I told her if she didn’t undo it at once and be nice, someone might think of putting a snake in hers.’

  ‘That was telling her,’ said Joe.

  ‘If it was, she wasn’t listening. Cecily did it anyway as soon as my back was turned.’

  Joe swallowed uneasily. ‘And …?’

  ‘There’s a nest of adders on the fringes of the woodland.’ Jane grinned. ‘We’ve had no trouble with Cecily since.’

  ‘I sincerely hope the snake suffered no psychological damage,’ said Joe faintly. ‘An enforced appearance in Cecily’s bed could leave its mark on man or beast.’ He instantly regretted his startled aside.

  Jane considered him through narrowed eyes. ‘I say again, Commander-it’s not funny.’ She waggled a finger at him in joking reprimand. ‘Interview over, I think.’

  She began to collect up the teacups in a marked manner and added: ‘But I was forgetting-when it comes to gathering information, Joe, you hardly need to listen to me. You’re on the inside of the bend! Estelle’s cold lips may yet whisper into your attentive ear. I’m sure you’ll listen to her.’

  Jacquemin would not appreciate a second female corpse appearing on his patch, Joe judged, so he decided to put off strangling Jane Makepeace for the moment. Really, he’d rather listen to the dead Estelle than the very much alive and unfortunately named Miss Makepeace.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Avignon, Friday

  Estelle was a silent sheeted figure, conveying nothing when Joe was shown into the room of the institut médico-légal where her body lay on a channelled marble slab. The pathologist had accepted the handwritten note of introduction from Jacquemin with a surprised and slightly amused lift of the eyebrow.

  The hand he extended to Joe was rough and warm, the eyes friendly, as he introduced himself. Lemaître was an ex-army doctor, middle-aged, confident and direct. The perfect antidote to his gloomy and dripping surroundings.

  ‘Ah! The Entente Cordiale at work at last,’ he said. ‘I wondered if we would ever see such a thing.’

  ‘Well, it’s not much of an entente and I would hardly call it cordiale,’ said Joe with a rueful grin.

  ‘No. We Frenchmen are fond of the sea. We particularly appreciate the bit that separates us from Albion.’ The doctor returned his grin. ‘And I’ve worked with Commissaire Jacquemin,’ he added and was content not to embroider on his comment.

  ‘First things first.’ The doctor took a bulky paper bag from a locker and handed it to Joe. ‘The Commissaire asked us to return to you everything we found on her body for his further inspection instead of putting it into storage here. You’ll find everything in there. All the items found were removed, catalogued and put away by my assistant before the autopsy. He’s meticulous. They’ve been finger-printed, combed and swabbed, as appropriate. Make what you will of it.’

  He drew the sheet down to uncover Estelle’s face. ‘Well, here she is. All done. I’ve even got the report typed out. I had my secretary come in at six this morning. I had the impression that there was some urgency?’

  ‘There may be danger of a repeat performance,’ said Joe.

  ‘Ah? The English crime? Multiple slayings? Slaughter on the streets? I wouldn’t be so sure. Your bloke is no Jack the Ripper! I’ve never seen a neater, more effective wound. If anyone back there needs to know-she didn’t suffer. Was probably hardly aware of what was happening to her. What you haven’t got here is a maniacal sex-driven disembowelling and mutilation. But tell me, detective-served up on an altar tomb top? How can that have come about?’

  ‘We have some theories which I won’t expound in case what you have to tell me subsequently makes them sound ridiculous,’ said Joe. ‘You go first! And perhaps we could well start with how she got there. Was she was stabbed in the place and position in which she was discovered?’

  ‘No doubt about that. The blood had sunk down and found its level.’ He delicately turned the sheet down further and pointed. ‘Gravitational discoloration. You see the dark blue tide line? The lividity shows the body had not been moved after death. She died where you found her. And the estimated time of death Jacquemin gave me is as exact as is possible to give. He rightly calculated that she died in the late afternoon or early evening of the day before. I was informed of the ambient temperature of the chapel and took that into consideration. It’s all in my report. Calculations and all. Do I need to mouth the usual caveats?’

  ‘No. Not at all. Bodies cool in the same way in London. At annoyingly variable rates.’ Joe smiled. ‘And the wound itself? Anything of interest?’

  ‘As I say-neat. Strong wrist on him, whoever it was. Though perhaps I should stress the precision? We should remember that her flesh offered little resistance-rather a skinny girl-and the nightdress she was wearing was old and fragile. The blade, being some eight inches long, wasn’t engaged to the hilt. Just the right length of steel used. All the same-we have a transfixing wound. In the region of the right ventricle. Death within seconds, possibly hastened by cardiac tamponade.

  ‘But now you’re here you can tell me: on which side of what we will call “her husband” was she lying?’

  Joe explained that she was on the warrior’s right side and that the girl’s right lay next to the aisle of the chapel. He demonstrated.

  ‘I see. Then we can add-precise right wrist. I’m assuming the killer stood in the aisle and leaned over her prone body-up to you to find out why she kept still and let him-and dealt the blow like this.’ The doctor mimed. He transferred an imaginary dagger to his left hand and tried again. ‘Awkward. Unnatural. And you’d expect a corresponding change in the orientation of the blade. East-west instead of north-south. A left-hander could have approached from behind, I suppose …’ He changed position and repeated the killing stroke over Estelle’s head. ‘It seems very unnatural to me. But then, sticking a blade into a lovely girl like this from any angle seems unnatural to me.’

  ‘Could the blow have been delivered two-handedly, like this?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Yes. Entirely possible. The handle is quite long and stout, you see, with a good grip on it. To allow for use by a gauntleted hand. But I was assuming that your bloke would need to keep one hand free to control the victim and stab with the other. Why would the girl just lie there and watch a blade descending on her? She’d have rolled away. She’d have tried to defend herself. You noticed there were no scratches or cuts on her hands and arms?’

  He took the murder weapon from a tray under the table and handed it to Joe. ‘Take it. It’s clean. The print chaps have finished with it. Nothing apparent-rubbed clean, they say. It’s not as old as you might have thought, by the way. These things came into use in the 1300s but this is a copy. Probably Italian work, 1600 or so.’

  ‘Yes, it falls naturally and comfortably into one’s hand,’ said Joe. ‘Excellent quality.’

  ‘Had to be. Those things were in the hands of butchers. Battlefield executioners who’d spend hours despatching the enemy wounded. Delivering the coup de
grâce.’ The pathologist smiled. ‘But I’m not telling you anything you haven’t worked out for yourself yet, am I? Never mind. I’ll plough on with the reassuring thought that I have at least one surprise for you …

  ‘Death came within seconds. The aorta was penetrated with precision. Sketches and copious Latin references of the report, you’ll find. Whoever it was seems to have had all the time in the world to focus on his spot and line up his blade. He knew what he was about … He had a knowledge of anatomy and a certain strength of arm. That’s as much as I can say.’

  From the cause of death the doctor moved on to general comments on the state of the body. He confirmed that toxicology tests had revealed the victim to have no traces of drugs or poisons in her system.

  ‘No cocaine?’

  ‘That’s right. None. She was fit and healthy and completely compos mentis at the time of her death. And you will need to know that there was no trace of sexual attack. There had been sexual activity some hours before, we can assume the previous night, but nothing unnatural. No sign of violence.’

  Joe sensed they were coming to the end of the interview. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. It occurred to me there was something else I perhaps ought to look at …’

  Joe smiled to hear the casual warning. Pathologists, in his experience, liked to do this. The few words added as an ‘oh, by the way,’ at the end of a discussion so often shredded his theories or set him off on a completely different tack.

  ‘She was pregnant. Ah! That you didn’t know! Yes. Undetectable to the eye of the general public, but there was a foetus. Two months … nine weeks … thereabouts.’

  ‘Sounds a bit ridiculous but-would she have been aware?’ said Joe.

  ‘Oh, yes. I think we could bet on that! She was no ingénue. She’d know the symptoms, I’m sure. And she would have missed two monthly indications. She’d probably gone off her food. There was very little in her stomach …’

  Joe stood in silence, dumfounded and deep in thought.