Madrigal (25 page)

Beneath a life-sized poster of a dancer of a far different sort, Marceline Simondi lay on a divan among scattered cushions and little treasures, next to a headless classical nude that was wrapped in chains.

There was no sign of Marius Spaggiari.

‘The baths,' warned the housekeeper. ‘He may have fallen asleep. Please, I must go to him at once. Avail yourself …' She indicated a deep and shabby
fauteuil
from the thirties. ‘Use it. She will not even be aware of your presence and will sleep now until noon if not longer.'

‘Cover her.'

‘You do it. I must hurry.'

Gaunt, her wiry, raven hair unpinned and all over the place, the former dancer from the Cabaret Pigalle, the Narcisse and the Alhambra had lost her charms. A false eyelash had come loose. The once alluring mouth was slack. The cheeks were pinched as, deep in the recesses of her mind, another nightmare had begun to build.

She frowned. She twitched. Self-inflicted scratches marred the bony buttocks and thighs.

‘Were you there at the Palais?' asked St-Cyr, but had to answer, ‘How could you have been, since your present state shows every sign of being your usual?' Yet Simondi had made a point of suggesting to Hermann that she might well have mistakenly gone to the Palais on the night of the murder.

A long strand of crimson chorus-girl beads had been broken and she lay among them as if, in her struggle to piece the necklace together, she had fallen into a stupor, her body absolutely numb.

The absinthe drip glass was in two parts. Into its thick-stemmed bottom he poured a jigger, not bothering to measure with the
dosette
.

Into the top, he placed a lump of sugar over the drip hole, then, there being no longer any cracked ice, added water only.

Drop by drop, the deep emerald green of the absinthe became cloudy and he remembered vividly his first sight of this magic and how, as a boy, he had seen
grandmaman
St-Cyr compress her thin lips in anticipation as she silently steeled herself to be patient. ‘It is, when taken, like ascending to the gods,' she had said, hardly conscious of him. ‘One is free of all cares and casts aside the weight of these frightful garments a widow must constantly wear.'

Apart from the classical nude, the ogive vaults in the ceiling and the tiles of an early Renaissance floor, the room was totally what one would have expected of a Parisian chorus girl who had depended for much of her life on the flea markets of Saint-Ouen.

‘Ah! I must correct myself,' he said on examining another of the posters. ‘By sheer force of will, and talent, too, you rose to become the
vedette
at the Alhambra.' The top of the bill.

Removing the dripper, he stood with glass in hand looking down at the shell of what had, in the early twenties, been the toast of the rue de Malte and the quartier Folie-Méricourt. Though now in her forties, she looked much older. The legs that would have commanded avid attention, lust, too, were mere sticks. The stomach, whose navel would have drawn the eye for more reasons than a thumb-sized sequin, was wrinkled with excess skin. The breasts whose nipples had once been tassled or bare, were shrunken and withered.

‘
À Paris et à votre santé
, madame,' he said, ‘and to the far more recent past. For the first time since arriving in Avignon, this humble servant of justice senses that here, at last, we have come upon an element of unquestionable truth.'

Tossing off his drink, he prepared another and then, having downed that, yet another. But was it wise to have done so, he wondered, as she began to dance from the posters.

The water was hot, and as Genèvieve eased herself into it, the bath sheath she wore drifted outwards like a slowly settling cloud, its fine white gossamer mingling with the steam. She swam a little, using gentle breaststrokes. Her blonde hair was pinned up, exposing the graceful slenderness of her neck. Always when seeing her like this, a reassurance came to Christiane. ‘Your eyes are very clear this morning,
chérie
. Their blue is perfect.'

‘Don't worry so much,' said Genèvieve, her voice soft beneath floor-to-ceiling frescoes of women bathing with their children during the Babylonian Captivity. Of couples, too, and men and boys and girls. ‘Don't do anything foolish. Trust me,
petite.
'

They came together in the centre of the bath, where all around their little ocean the marble of six hundred years ago was grey and wet and variegated. They held one another. Lips brushed those that were nervous. Genèvieve's fingers lingered to trap the tears that were falling and to brush them away. ‘What are we going to do?' blurted Christiane. ‘The detectives will find out everything. They'll destroy what we have. They won't stop. Where will we go; how will we live?'

Hands gripped her by the shoulders and, forcing her under, legs entangled hers until … until, arms thrashing, lungs bursting, she was released and rose suddenly to the surface. ‘I'm sorry,' she gasped.

‘Then understand that what we do must always be done together.'

‘We keep silent,' blurted Christiane.

‘We know nothing,' said Genèvieve.

‘The one was drowned, an accident.'

‘The other thought she knew things about her.'

‘But wouldn't tell us.'

‘We were together on the night she died.'

‘We were at the Villa Marenzio.'

They swam a little, these two gorgeous creatures with gossamer sheaths clinging to them. Christiane Bissert stood on the lowest step to brush water from her face and clear her eyes. Genèvieve Ravier looked up at her.
Primo Soprano
and
Alto
.

The black-haired one brushed water from her breasts and flicked it at her friend.

They laughed now, and the sound of this echoed musically.

When they began to soap each other as they stood on the steps Kohler hated to disturb them but, what the hell, he needed a bath. Louis should have been with him to enjoy the scenery, but the Sûreté had still been snoring on the floor of Madame Simondi's room with tumbled glass next to hand and had only himself to blame.

Unaware of the visitor, Christiane asked, ‘Where's Marius?' of Genèvieve who smiled and touched the tip of the girl's nose with the soap, then said, ‘In César's little cinema where he went last night after we were finished with her.'

‘A duty done,' confessed the
Alto
.

‘As it always must be.'

‘If we are to continue.'

‘As we have.'

‘Secure.'

‘And warm.'

‘Content.'

‘Our voices chasing one another's.'

‘Throughout the song.'

‘The madrigal.'

The film had long since wound itself on to the take-up reel. The screen was blank, the projector beam focused down the length of the corridor between flanking suits of armour.

Shields, swords, pikes and lances lined the walls right up to a second-storey vaulted, ogived, ornamented gallery. There were helmets, too, and in the silence of the corridor, the muted clicks the projector made were constant.

Wrapped in slumber and in the colours of Avignon's Papal Guard, Marius Spaggiari was slumped into a folding Renaissance armchair. His mouth was open, his legs were too. The stone-sculptor-like chest, groin and thighs were dark and hairy, the flaccid penis was uncircumsized.

Both glass and bottle lay on their sides on the chequered, black-and-white tiles of the floor.

Simondi had written the name of the film in Italian on the canister.
L'informatore
, The Informer.

‘An American film,' softly mused St-Cyr, dredging it up from prewar memories. ‘The Irish Troubles well before the partition, a truly diabolic tale of betrayal. If I remember it correctly, the informant gave away a boy who was then arrested by the British and made to talk.'

But why had the film been on the projector? Spaggiari would have been far too inebriated to have fed its leader through the sprocket. Simondi must have had it out earlier.

When he switched off the machine, the
Basso Continuo
instantly awoke but immediately stilled himself in alarm. ‘Inspector …'

There was only one way to get the truth and that was to put the run on him. ‘Where were you on Monday night between the hours of eight and midnight?'

‘Water … I'd better have a little. That stuff is hellishly bitter.'

‘So is this Sûreté when perturbed.'

‘I was at the Villa Marenzio.'

‘And Madame Simondi? Where would she have been?'

‘Where else but here? You've seen how she is, haven't you?'

‘How often does she get like that?'

‘Constantly.'

‘But if the supply should run out?'

‘Why should it?'

‘Please, let's not kid ourselves, monsieur. There may well have been French absinthe in the cellars at one time, but that bottle and the ones I saw in her room were from Spain.'

‘Where it's still legal to make it.'

‘So, if the supply should temporarily run out?'

‘Pastis, then.'

‘But it never satisfies, does it?'

‘She becomes highly agitated, yes.'

‘Unmanageable?'

This one wanted everything. ‘She's tied down until the doctor comes to give her a shot of morphia. Inspector, she craves absinthe. Surely, having lived through the days when it was freely available, you must have seen its addicts?'

A nod would suffice. ‘The physician, Legrand, stated in his papers that there were two types of
absinthisme
. Those who repeatedly drank to violent excess, and those who constantly tippled. Which is she?'

‘What do you think?'

‘I'm not here to reveal to you my thoughts, monsieur.'

‘The latter, then.'

‘How often does Simondi illegally have the supply replenished? Come, come, you had best answer.'

‘Often enough.'

‘And recently?'

‘A shipment came in a week ago.'

‘
Bon
! For now that is all I want from you. Please be ready to make yourself available when requested.'

‘That's the story of our existence, Inspector. Ours is but to sing at the command of others.'

‘And to have sex with her, eh?'

A gigolo …

The faint smile on Spaggiari's lips lingered only to fade suddenly under Sûreté scrutiny as St-Cyr said, ‘You were told to give her absinthe last night, weren't you?'

Maudit salaud
, cursed Spaggiari silently. ‘I thought, Inspector, that was just what I said.'

‘Then prepare yourself,
mon fin
, for our next interview. Practise the part you must sing but always have the truth on those vocal cords of yours. My partner and I are singing masters of a far different sort from Maître Simondi, yet our ears are equally keen.'

‘All our parts must be memorized, Inspector,' said Genèvieve Ravier, coyly laughing at him, for Herr Kohler had come upon them suddenly as they stood on the steps of the bath and had blithely asked if they used sheet music during auditions and concerts. ‘Music stands and part-books would only get in the way.'

‘I thought as much,' he said, nodding sagely. He seemed oblivious to bath sheaths that hid nothing, and to his own nakedness.

Her fingers were prised open and the soap taken, she to gaze questioningly into faded blue and empty eyes, he – to see what in her, she wondered. Lies, deceit, intrigue and murder … Could it be murder?

‘Such things as part-books would simply detract from the illusion César wishes to create,' interjected Christiane, coming to the rescue, she standing close … so close to him, a girl could not help but notice the scar that crossed his chest. It ran from the right shoulder to the left hip through curly greying hairs. A livid wound and much longer than the one on the left side of his face. A few centimetres lower and it would have deflowered him. A giant. A rawhide whip, César had said. The SS had done it.

‘The illusion …' he said, she self-consciously averting her gaze from the scar but not daring to meet his eyes, and saying diffidently, ‘That of grandeur and of the past.'

‘When singing, we are sometimes not positioned together,' interjected Genèvieve, ‘but are placed apart and often separated by considerable distances.'

Again he nodded sagely. ‘All the more reason, then, for you to have memorized things,' he said, letting his eyes seek out Genèvieve whose gaze was frank and calm … so calm, thought Christiane, and said earnestly, her dark eyes meeting his at last, ‘It's the way part songs were often sung. A
château
, a villa such as this, a great hall, cathedral or
théâtre de I'opéra
. Only one or two of us will be in front of the audience.'

‘Another will be at the back of the hall,' said Genèvieve, not smiling, just looking steadily into those eyes of his. Meeting challenge with challenge. ‘Another will be positioned up in a gallery or balcony. Maybe two of us, each to a side or together in the centre, but, again, at the back.'

‘Another and another will be placed in far corners, but downstairs,' said Christiane, trembling a little at the look he gave her.

‘Our voices constantly move, Inspector,' hastened Genèvieve. ‘Note chases note but as each voice sounds, another has already begun.'

The story of our miserable lives on this affair, quipped Kohler to himself.

Christiane hesitantly touched his right arm to get his attention. ‘The notes take time to travel,' she said earnestly, ‘so you hear them one after another.'

Mein Gott
, she was a beautiful creature …

‘There's counterpoint, the simultaneous singing of two or more parts.' Genèvieve had touched his left arm. Her fingers lingered.

‘Full and half-notes blend,' said Christiane. ‘Perfect pitch is required.'

‘There's resonance, Inspector. In turn, it produces notes of equal pitch. The pipe of an unplayed organ will resonate suddenly in unison with the note it has been given by one of our voices.'