The Three Evangelists (24 page)

‘Don’t worry,’ Marc told Juliette. ‘It’s the Great War that winds him up like this. It comes and goes. You have to get used to it.’

‘Give it a rest!’ said Lucien, still panting.

From Lucien’s tone of voice, Marc realised that he was mistaken. It wasn’t the Great War. Lucien did not have that delighted expression he ought to have if he had discovered the war diaries of a peasant in the trenches. He was in a state of high anxiety and running with sweat. His tie was crooked, and two red spots had appeared on his forehead. Still panting, he looked round at the customers eating their lunch, and motioned to Vandoosler and Marc to come closer.

‘This morning,’ he said between two deep breaths, ‘I tried René de Frémonville’s number. It had changed, different number, different address, so I went over there.’

He drank a large gulp of wine before going on.

‘His wife was there. “R. de Frémonville” was the wife, Rachel, a lady of about seventy. I asked if it was possible to speak to her husband. Really put my foot in it. Hold on, Marc, wait till you hear this. Frémonville has been dead for years.’

‘Well, what of it?’ said Marc.

‘He was murdered, that’s what! Shot twice in the head, one night in September 1979. And, wait for this, he wasn’t alone. He was with his old friend, Daniel Dompierre. Also shot twice. Bang bang, two theatre critics, final curtain.’

‘No Shit!’ said Marc.

‘You may well say that, because my war notebooks disappeared in the commotion after that, what with moving house and so forth. Frémonville’s wife wasn’t bothered about them. She’s no idea what became of them.’

‘And was he a peasant, the soldier?’ Marc asked.

Lucien looked at him in surprise. ‘Do you really want to know?’

‘No, but you’ve gone on about it so much …’

‘Well, yes, he was,’ said Lucien getting even more excited. ‘He really was a peasant. See? Isn’t that fantastic? If only …’

‘Never mind about the war diaries,’ ordered Vandoosler. ‘Carry on with the story. There must have been a police investigation, surely?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Lucien. ‘Rachel de Frémonville didn’t want to talk about it, but I was very persuasive and wormed it out of her. Frémonville kept the Parisian theatre world supplied with cocaine. And his friend Dompierre too, no doubt. The police found a packet under the floorboards in Frémonville’s house, just where the two men had been shot. The investigation concluded that it must have been gang warfare between dealers. The evidence was clear in Frémonville’s case, though less obvious for Dompierre. All they found in his place was a few sachets of coke stuffed up the chimney.’

Lucien drained his glass and asked Mathias for another. Instead, Mathias brought him some veal casserole.

‘Eat,’ he said firmly.

Lucien looked at Mathias’ expression and started on the food.

‘Rachel told me that at the time, Dompierre’s son, Christophe, refused to believe his father could be mixed up in anything like that. The mother and son both made a big fuss to the police, but it got them nowhere. The double murder was filed under drug dealing. They never caught the killer.’

Lucien was calming down and his breath was becoming regular. Vandoosler had his
commissaire’s
face on, a thrusting nose and narrowed eyes under lowered eyebrows. He was tearing apart pieces of bread from the basket Mathias had put on the table.

‘In any case,’ said Marc, who was rapidly trying to get his ideas into some kind of order, ‘that has nothing to do with our business. These two guys were shot over a year after “Elektra”. And drugs were involved as well. I presume the police knew what they were talking about there.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Marc,’ said Lucien impatiently. ‘Young Christophe Dompierre didn’t believe that. Was it just out of loyalty to his father? Maybe, but when Sophia gets killed fifteen years later, he reappears and starts looking for new clues. Do you remember what he said about his pathetic “little sliver of belief”?’

‘If he was wrong about it fifteen years ago,’ objected Marc, ‘he could still be wrong three days ago.’

‘Except,’ said Vandoosler, ‘that he got himself murdered. People who are wrong don’t usually get killed. It’s people who are on to something who get killed.’

Lucien nodded agreement and mopped his plate energetically with his bread. Marc sighed. He felt his brain was slowing down recently and that bothered him.

‘So Dompierre was on to something,’ Lucien continued in a low voice. ‘Therefore he was already on to something fifteen years ago.’

‘And what was that?’

‘That one of the extras had attacked Sophia. And if you want my opinion, his father knew who it was, and had told him. Maybe he had seen the man running out of the dressing-room with his balaclava off. So that would explain why the extra didn’t come back next day. He was scared
of being recognised. That must have been the only thing Christophe knew: that his father had seen who Sophia’s attacker was. And if Frémonville was a dealer, it certainly wasn’t the case for Daniel Dompierre. Three sachets stuffed up the chimney is a bit obvious, isn’t it? The son told the
flics
all about the attack on Sophia. But this old story about the theatre didn’t interest the police. The drugs squad was running the investigation and the Sophia incident didn’t have a drugs angle. So Dompierre’s son had to let it drop. But when Sophia in turn was killed, he got back on the case. The affair was still alive. He had always believed that his father and Frémonville had been killed not because of the cocaine, but because somehow their paths had crossed that of the attacker. And that he’d shot them to stop them talking. It must have been terribly important for him.’

‘Your story doesn’t make sense,’ Marc said. ‘Why didn’t this attacker shoot them straightaway afterwards?’

‘Well, because he probably had a stage name. If you were called Roger Prune for instance, you’d probably change it to something like Franck Delmer, or some fancy-sounding name that might appeal to a director. So he disappears under his stage name, his real identity can’t be traced and he’s out of danger. Who’s going to connect Franck Delmer with Roger Prune?’

‘Well, so what? I still don’t bloody get it!’

‘You’re on edge today, Marc. Well, imagine that a year later, the guy meets Dompierre under his real name and is recognised. Then he has no choice. He shoots them both, him and his friend, who almost certainly knows too. He knows that Frémonville deals in cocaine and that suits him fine. He plants the sachets at Dompierre’s, the police buy the story and the case is referred to the drugs squad.’

‘And why would your Prune-Delmer kill Sophia fourteen years later, since Sophia didn’t even identify him?’

Lucien, looking excited once more, produced a plastic bag which he placed on the chair. ‘Don’t move, pal, don’t move.’

He fished around in it and pulled out a roll of paper held by a rubber band. Vandoosler was looking at him, visibly impressed. Luck had favoured Lucien, but he had also very skilfully harpooned his lucky chance.

‘After our talk,’ Lucien said, ‘I was a bit shaken. And so was the old lady. It had upset her to dredge up her memories. She didn’t know that Christophe Dompierre had been murdered and as you can guess, I didn’t tell her. We had a cup of coffee at ten o’clock to restore ourselves. And then, that was all very well, but I was still thinking about my war diaries. I’m only human after all, you can understand that.’

‘OK, I understand,’ said Marc.

‘Mme de Frémonville had a good look for the war diaries, but she couldn’t find them anywhere, they really were lost. But while she was drinking her coffee, she gave a little cry. You know the kind of thing, like in old movies. She remembered that her husband, who was very attached to these war diaries, had had them photographed by his magazine’s photographer because the paper was fragile and starting to disintegrate. She told me that with a bit of luck, the photographer might have kept the negatives or proofs of the photographs, because he had taken a lot of trouble over them. The diaries were written in pencil and not easy to reproduce. She gave me the photographer’s address, in Paris luckily, and I rushed straight over there. And there he was, making prints. He’s only about fifty and still in business. And get this, Marc. He had kept the negatives and he’s going to print a set for me. I kid you not.’

‘Great!’ muttered Marc crossly. ‘But I was talking abut Sophia’s murder, not your notebooks.’

Lucien turned to Vandoosler and pointed to Marc. ‘He’s really edgy, isn’t he? Too impatient.’

‘When he was little,’ Vandoosler said, ‘if he dropped a ball from the balcony into the courtyard, he would stamp and cry until I fetched it. It was all that mattered to him. The number of times I went up and down the stairs. Just for those little cheap plastic balls with holes in, you know.’

Lucien laughed. He was looking pleased again, but his brown hair was still dark with sweat. Marc smiled as well. He had entirely forgotten about those plastic balls.

‘Listen,’ said Lucien, still in a whisper. ‘This photographer, as you might expect, accompanied Frémonville on his assignments. He did the press
photos for shows they covered. So I thought he might have kept some old prints. He knew about Sophia being killed, but he hadn’t heard about Christophe Dompierre. I told him about it and he thought this sounded so serious he went to look for his file on “Elektra”. And here,’ said Lucien, waving his roll under Marc’s nose, ‘we have a set of press photographs. Not just of Sophia. Of the whole company.’

‘Come on then, show us!’ said Marc.

‘Patience, patience,’ said Lucien.

Slowly he unrolled the photos, and took out one picture which he laid on the table.

‘The whole company on parade the first night,’ he said, using wineglasses to press down the corners of the photograph. ‘Everyone’s on it. Sophia in the middle, with the tenor and the baritone either side of her. They’re all made up and in costume of course. But can you recognise anyone?
Commissaire,
do you recognise anyone else?’

Marc and Vandoosler leaned over the photo. The faces were made up, small but clear. It was a good photograph. Marc who had been feeling himself falling way behind, as Lucien became more and more ebullient, felt all his strength draining away. His brain was muddled and confused. He looked at the little white faces, but none of them rang any bells. No, wait a moment, there was Julien Moreaux, looking young and thin.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Lucien, ‘but that’s hardly surprising. Look again.’

Marc shook his head. He felt almost humiliated. No, he couldn’t see anything. Vandoosler equally baffled, pulled a face. However, he pointed to one face with his finger.

‘That one,’ he said in a low voice, ‘but I can’t put a name to it.’

Lucien nodded. ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘But
I
can put a name to it.’

He looked quickly towards the bar and round the rest of the room, then drew even closer to Marc and Vandoosler.

‘It’s Georges Gosselin, Juliette’s brother,’ he whispered.

Vandoosler clenched his fists.

‘Pay the bill, St Mark,’ he said curtly. ‘We’re going home at once. Tell St Matthew to join us as soon as his shift’s over.’

XXXII

MATHIAS RAN HIS HANDS THROUGH HIS MASS OF BLOND HAIR GETTING
it even more tousled, if that was possible. The others had told him everything and he was shattered. He had not even changed out of his waiter’s costume. Lucien, who felt he had done more than his bit for the time being, had decided to let the others get on with it and to move on to something else. While waiting to go and meet the photographer at six o’clock to pick up the first prints of the promised notebooks, he had decided to polish the big dining table. He had brought the refectory table into the house when they moved in, and did not want it spoilt by cavemen like Mathias or careless people like Marc. He was putting beeswax on it now, lifting the elbows in turn of Vandoosler, Marc and Mathias to get under them with his bulky cloth. Nobody protested, because they knew it would have no effect. Apart from the sound of the cloth polishing the wood, the silence lay heavy over the refectory as each of them tried to sort out and digest recent events.

‘If I’ve got it right,’ Mathias said at last, ‘Georges Gosselin attacked Sophia and tried to rape her in her dressing-room fifteen years ago. Then he ran off and Daniel Dompierre saw him. Sophia didn’t say anything, because she thought it must have been Julien-is that right? A year or more later, the critic met Georges Gosselin and recognised him, so Gosselin shot him along with his pal Frémonville. But the way I see it, it’s far worse to kill two guys in cold blood than to be charged even with assault and attempted rape. A double murder is out of all proportion.’

‘The way you see it maybe,’ said Vandoosler. ‘But for a weak, secretive sort of person, to be put in prison for assault and rape might seem like the end of the world. He’d lose his image, his reputation, his work, and his peace of mind. What if he couldn’t bear to be seen for what he was, a brute, a potential rapist? He panics, acts instinctively, and shoots the two men.’

‘How long has he been living in rue Chasle?’ Marc asked. ‘Do we know that?’

‘Must be about ten years, I reckon,’ said Mathias. ‘Ever since the old grandfather with his beet fields left them his money. Juliette has been running
Le Tonneau
about ten years, so I guess they bought the house at about the same time.’

‘Well, that would make it five years after “Elektra” and the attack,’ said Marc, ‘and four years after the murder of the two critics. So why, after all that time, should he come and live near Sophia. Why was he so keen to stick close to her?’

‘Obsession, I suppose,’ said Vandoosler. ‘He was obsessed. He wanted to be close to the star he had tried to beat up and rape. Return to the scene of his crime, call it what you like. He wanted to come back, to watch and wait for her. Ten years waiting, with his secret violent thoughts, then one day he would kill her. Or have another go, and then kill her. A maniac, under the guise of an unobtrusive nobody.’

‘Does that actually happen?’ asked Marc.