The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (12 page)

A nerve throbbed in the Composer’s throat. The two men screeched at one another. The Judge, certain that the Composer had never even seen her, picked her moment carefully and slipped away. As she pattered past the orchestra she noticed their amused relief that his rage had settled upon another, different victim.

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‘Where have you been? I looked everywhere. Reception said you’d gone out. Why don’t you ever leave messages?’ Gaëlle, surrounded by empty crisp packets and Coke cans, crouched indignantly amongst her scrunched duvet and cushions. ‘I’ve watched two hours of cartoons on TV
5
and four lots of news on CNN. Are we ever going to eat? And don’t you want to do some preparation for the interview? Where have you been?’

The Judge sat down on the edge of the bed and offered her Greffière a boiled sweet. Gaëlle, now aged twenty-eight, could still revert to torrents of childish demand when they were alone together. Now she bristled at the Judge, but accepted the sweet as a peace offering.

‘I have been doing a little unexpected preparation for tomorrow. The Composer was rehearsing in the cathedral and I went to watch.’

‘Really?’ Gaëlle’s eyes widened. ‘What’s he like? Schweigen says he’s a monster.’

‘A perfectionist. Short-tempered. Choleric. Lots of white hair. Physically very powerful for a man of sixty-four.’

‘Ughhhh. You didn’t tell me he was so old.’ Gaëlle put out her tongue and revealed a large silver spike, solid enough to endanger the enamel on her teeth.

‘Hmmm,’ said the Judge, ‘you’d better not smile tomorrow. And don’t wear that T-shirt with the slogans.’

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The Composer’s house in the Effengrube stepped upwards into a Gothic red-brick gable, a little lopsided, but still elegant and luminous, pierced by a steeple pattern of tiny windows. The unshuttered squares on the lower floors were larger, double-glazed and utterly clear, so that the sombre costumes of Gaëlle, now in a long, dark-purple coat, purchased that morning, and the Judge in flat shoes and Lincoln green, with tiny creases in her skirt, were reflected back, mirrored again in segments. They stood looking at themselves carved and divided up into oblongs of white wood. Two dark columns on either side of the double doors were decorated with modern wooden carvings of haunted faces and strange musical instruments, one of which resembled an elongated harp. An odd key lodged in the wood generated an electric chime. There was no name on the door. Large Italian pots, presumably frost-proofed and filled with rising bulbs, pushed outwards, colonising the pavement, and a torrent of winter jasmine, still heavy and golden with blossoms, nudged the doorway. The Judge calculated that the vegetation in Lübeck flowered at least two months after it had done in the Midi. The jasmine in her mother’s garden expended all its force and beauty at the same time as the mimosa. Just to the left of the house a small dark tunnel led into the illuminated Gang, the courtyards and passages with small gardens and tiny squares behind the houses on the street fronts. The Gänge contributed to the city’s charm and were often full of tourists, ogling the tiny squares and pretty houses. The Judge peered down the dark shaft and saw, at the far end, framed by the red-brick archway, a different world of early flowers, sharp light, cobbles and tiny fences, sandpits, tricycles and climbing frames, a small domestic haven, well swept, exclusive, painted, polished. Gaëlle bent down to look; the curved brick vault brushed her spiked hair.

‘Why don’t the bicycles get nicked?’ she demanded.

The Judge stood tense, expectant, her eyes screwed up against the sun that was licking long straight lines through the melting frost. She raised her hand to her tortoiseshell clip and checked that her black hair was firmly locked in place. I want to look neutral, plain; should I have changed my glasses?

‘Do you think he’s in there?’ Gaëlle rang the bell again and stepped back; the Judge confronted the locked doors.

Both carved wings of the entrance suddenly opened and the Composer stood before her, slightly hunched in his own doorway, his rimless glasses catching the glare. They both drew back, startled, unprepared for the masked glimmer of each other’s faces.

‘Vous êtes Madame Carpentier? Entrez donc. Entrez.’ He stood aside and waved them into his kingdom. He did not offer to shake hands with either of them.

They had expected the house, given the pierced Gothic front, to be filled with dark spaces, but once past the coats and boots in the vestibule they entered a great arc of light and green. A conservatory had been built at the back of the house, its roof rising to the second floor. The glass room extended into a walled garden, already flourishing with spring. The forsythia mutating from yellow into green; huge red geraniums standing proud of their earthen pots bolstered up the red-brick walls with even stronger colours. Then the Judge realised that the geraniums were actually inside the glass. They were standing in a greenhouse.

The high, lighted space oozed a strange mixture of wealth and austerity and promised neither comfort nor welcome. There were rows and rows of books, untidy, uneven, clearly often consulted, on either side of an open fireplace and a cold, unused grate. There were no ornaments and no personal photographs of any kind. A small pale painting of a sandy landscape appeared to be the only framed object on the walls. There were no curtains, no fabrics, no shutters; all around them arose solid surfaces of wood, brick, glass. The great double walls of glass climbed upwards, without fleck or smudge, so that they appeared to be waiting outside in the hard, bright light. The Judge let out her breath, resolved to be quite silent, and then realised, discomfited, that she could hear herself breathing. They could hear no sounds at all, other than their own. The space was sealed away from the outside world. The silence contained something uncompromising, habitual, terrible; as if they had stepped into a pocket of cold air. A giant piano, covered in sheets of music, crouched in a domed alcove, out of the light. All the chairs promised to be uncomfortable, but the Composer indicated that they should install themselves at the long table. He took his place at the head, his back to the illuminated garden. Gaëlle faced him out, frowning across the pale scrubbed wood.

‘May we speak in English? My French is not particularly sophisticated. I understand from my secretary that you wish to record this interview and I trust that you will send her a copy of the transcription. As you know I am very busy with the Festival here in Lübeck. I can offer you an hour, perhaps an hour and a half of my time, but no more. Now, what did you wish to ask me?’

The house smelt of fresh coffee and cinnamon, but the Composer was clearly not intending to offer them anything to drink. The table was swept clear apart from one large candle in a blue dish at the centre beneath the lowered white dome of the lamp. The Judge relaxed and allowed the utter silence to grow around her. I have not travelled nearly two thousand kilometres to be intimidated by a probable madman who may, or may not, be a murderer. Gaëlle’s insolent fearlessness also proved useful. She slapped her pad down upon the polished table with a resounding smack, produced her pen with the death’s head spiked on the tip, and began to tap two fingers gently on the empty paper. The sound boomed like a drum.

Dominique Carpentier manoeuvred her chair gently on the flagstones so that she was facing the Composer and arranged her ring-binder file with all her notes upon her lap so that her attitude was more informal, and she could look at him directly. For a long moment they stared at one another, and she watched the curiosity mounting in his eyes. For the first time she acknowledged not only his power, but also his beauty. Behind the rimless glasses his eyes were a terrible cold blue. The eyebrows still shone golden, a pale reddish brown, and the white hair, thick and rummaged, fell across them. His lined strong face gathered itself up into a grimace of concentration. He is recording me, weighing me up, in the same way that I am assessing him. The Judge instantly sensed an equality of strength in her antagonist and coiled every muscle, ready to spring.

‘Well?’ prompted the Composer. And so the Judge began.

‘We know that you are an intimate friend of the Laval family. Both Anton and Marie-Cécile Laval. Were you aware of their involvement with the Faith?’

‘Yes, of course. I am godfather to Marie-Cécile’s two children. Ever since their father’s death I have been a father – or perhaps a grandfather – to them. Marie-Cécile always had a religious bent. She was very ‘‘catholique pratiquante’’ as she used to say, when she was a girl. I think Anton must have first introduced her to his beliefs. She remained true to her church. But she loved her brother. She studied his faith. She wanted to understand him.’

‘Did they ever talk to you about the Faith and try to involve you?’

‘There is something you must understand, Madame Carpentier, the Faith is not a proselytising religion. It is not some sect invented for financial gain, like the charlatans you spend your time investigating. It is not a religion at all in the ordinary sense. It is a chemin, a pathway towards knowledge. You cannot discover the Faith on every street corner. You must be selected, initiated, chosen.’

‘Many sects present themselves in that way,’ said the Judge slowly, considering her words with great care. ‘It’s an effective selling point.’

‘Comme vous dites,’ said the Composer, refusing to rise to her jibe.

‘So the Lavals never tried to involve you in the Faith in any way?’

‘We spoke about it. It wasn’t a secret. I knew how they felt, and I respected their views. But, Madame Carpentier, if you are as thorough as your reputation suggests that you are, you probably know as much about the Faith as any ordinary person who is not an initiate. Members of the Faith do not, as a rule, ever discuss the details of their beliefs with outsiders.’

He’s not answering my questions, thought the Judge. Change tack.

‘Where were you on the night of New Year’s Eve,
2000
?’

‘I’ve already told your brutal Commissaire all this. I was in Berlin, preparing a New Year’s Day concert to celebrate the millennium.’

‘Did you make any attempt to contact Marie-Cécile Laval or her children on New Year’s night?’

‘Yes. I rang to wish her une bonne année.’

‘And did you speak to her?’

Here came the first hesitation. The Judge looked down at the times and texts of the messages on her lap and counted the five missed calls: two before midnight, two well afterwards and one at four in the morning. He must have suspected something. Or known for sure.

‘No. The lines were all occupied. I couldn’t get through.’

‘Did you try more than once?’

‘Yes. I can’t remember how many times.’

‘Did you have any reason to believe that she would commit suicide that night?’

Was it suicide? Does he think it was suicide? Has he any idea what happened that night in the snow? Does he know she was shot? Does he know about the gun?

‘None whatever.’

The Judge listened to his cool, measured replies and conjured the anxious urgency on the tape.
Cécile. Ring me today. I beg you. Ring me as soon as you can
. The apprehension in that voice confessed a thousand things, but one fear above all else. Don’t go. Be there. Stay with me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me here alone. Don’t go.

‘What are your views on suicide, Monsieur Grosz?’

‘My views? In what way is that relevant?’

‘I merely ask. Were you angry that your friends – your closest friends by your account – were so ready to kill themselves and to leave this world behind?’

‘Angry? Why should I be angry? I miss them. I was – I am deeply grieved at their departure.’

He paused and the Judge registered his use of the word ‘departure’ rather than ‘death’. She suspected that only members of the Faith would describe their collective massacre as a departure. Yet even this slip sounded inconclusive. If she pounced on that one word he could simply claim to respect their religious convictions and demonstrate his affection by using their terminology. The Composer looked up; he fixed her with his blue glare and she heard the truth in his voice.

‘Sometimes I can accept their decision. Sometimes I cannot. I take my responsibilities towards Cécile’s children very seriously. I am their legal guardian now.’

‘Ah, yes.’ The Judge appeared to remember. A copy of Marie-Cécile Laval’s last will and testament rested in the briefcase beside her. ‘Paul and Marie-Thérèse. But surely they are adults?’

‘Were you capable of taking adult decisions at the age of seventeen, Madame Carpentier? Of managing a vineyard with dozens of employees? Or running a complex business?’