TWENTY

Mademoiselle Aubrienne, the noted sculptress, proved difficult to find. This was explained after diligent enquiry, when she turned out to be neither Aubrienne, nor a sculptress.

     ‘O’Brien, my dear man. Irish – no you obviously don’t know how much this benighted continent owes to poor old Ireland. Never had the curiosity to read history.’

     ‘Nobody’s telling me I lack curiosity,’ said Castang. ‘Takes different directions, that’s all.’

     ‘I forgive you. I’m so used to being Aubrienne I no longer notice, but I refuse to apologise for French incapacity. O’Briens were kings before police forces were invented, and it’s not a sign of progress.’

     A fierce little thing, sprightly and talkative. Intelligent, even if dotty. Castang would take the one with the other.

     A tiny woman with a dried-up, Indian face, grey hair in an untidy bun, bifocal glasses giving her a peering look, a combative manner. One of those persons, often charming, to whom a day without a row, it doesn’t matter much with whom, is a day without salt.

     Drinking tea, strong and black-looking, from a round brown teapot with a crocheted cosy. She lived in a little cottage with polychrome painted furniture: birds and flowers in primitive motifs flitted over the panels. Vera would have felt at home: a Czech look. The walls were a jumble-sale of watercolours, cut-out silhouettes, collages of feathers. Real birds, in cages, occupied whatever space there was over.

     Miss O’Brien was not in a cage, but a rocking-chair. She pulled a portfolio off another chair, for him to sit on. Instead of a shawl with bobbles, like the tea cosy, she was wearing a workman’s dungaree overall, on top of a scarlet sweater.

     He looked for signs of sculptor’s clay or stuff. There wasn’t any.

     ‘What’re you gazing about for?’

     ‘Oh, busts and things.’

     ‘Oh dear; the police… Know anything about art?’

     ‘No.’

     ‘So much the better, and no need of that “I’m afraid” tone. And d’you want to know anything?’

     ‘Not in the least.’

     ‘God and His Saints be praised. Not a namby-pamby. So I don’t have to explain about art. Gloria laus et honor, as we sang before we lapsed into heresy.’

     Ah. One of the religious maniacs Mum had complained of: good.

     ‘I’m not a sculptor. Work in stained glass. Difficult technique. I’ve not the remotest intention of trying to explain, so don’t bother thinking of intelligent questions to show how cultivated you are.’

     ‘I’m not.’

     ‘Be grateful. The French insist on being cultivated, and on everyone knowing it. Spiritual pride.’

     It wasn’t a blow: he got the same from Vera.

     ‘It’s that infernal being in the right all the time that’s maddening about them.’

     ‘Do you think I could have some tea?’ he asked humbly.

     ‘You may indeed. Irish tea, though, not tisane. Probably lay you on your back. So you’re Police Judiciaire, oh oh. And you want information, oh oh.’

     Sarcasm. She wasn’t impressed, and she wasn’t curious: the cops would have to do better.

     ‘An officer is it, and judges of instruction, and enquiries into Madame Lipschitz and all: dies irae.’ Sniggering, little black eye agleam, pecking at him as though he were a sunflower-seed.

     ‘Were they kings of Ireland?’

     ‘Thomond, man. Ancient province, like Maine or Anjou. Now distressed and dismembered.’

     ‘You speak French very well.’

     ‘Oh, stop bullshitting, man.’

     He nearly said Ook, as though struck in the stomach by Bishop Odo’s massive club, to be observed in the Bayeux Tapestry. All these Irish saints – the poor old French had indeed had a hard time of it in the ninth century!

     ‘How d’you come to hear of me, anyhow?’

     ‘Monsieur Barde, I think it was.’

     ‘Barde, is it? No wonder you thought I was a sculptor! What would he know, outside his sad little nursery-maid existence? He gave you my name. A damnable liberty he took there. All right, I knew Sabine, and Vincent too. Good man, that. Silly woman, our poor Sabine. Merit in her verses. She will have died with God beside her.’

     ‘That,’ said Castang, ‘must afford us all considerable comfort. My job is to find out who else was present.’

     He’d succeeded in putting an end to the island of saints-and-scholars! Let the Irish civilise the rest of Europe by all means, but not stop him from working.

     ‘Mademoiselle Aubrienne – don’t bother correcting my pronunciation – I’ve been told that Madame Lipschitz went in for pious works. I mean no mockery. Perhaps she exaggerated. I attach little importance to it, but there’s a suggestion that she went in for fakirs and faith-healers and saw miracles. Gone all mystic, maybe. Maybe you’re a good person to ask whether there’s any truth in that.’

     She was sober and serious at once.

     ‘Ah. Yes, I am the right person. I think I can answer you. I think I might know too who implanted that suggestion, and why.’

     ‘Yes?’

     ‘The children, maybe? Always frightened, you see, that Sabine’s credulity would be abused,’ with fierce sarcasm.

     ‘Go on, would you.’

     ‘Give me a second to collect myself. I’ll try and make a good witness for you. You might bear in mind that I don’t tell lies. I don’t steal, either, or read other people’s letters. I suppose I’m talkative,’ pathetically, ‘but I’m not malicious.’

     He sat stolid. The tea was very nasty, but it put blood into one. What was that stuff the Irish drank? – Guinness: what would that be like? She was thinking.

     ‘That’s not enough, is it? Look, I’m not a fool or a fanatic. I don’t like miracle-workers any more than you do.

     ‘I wasn’t close friends with Sabine Lipschitz; never have been. But I knew her well. I was, for many years, close friends with Vincent.’

     Wasn’t this what he wanted? Somebody who would bring Sabine back to life? A chattery little body, perhaps. But if an artist, could she draw Sabine for him?

     ‘He used to come in, sitting where you are. And in the workshop. One of the few people I’d let in, because he sat still, said nothing.

     ‘Here he talked. I was in his confidence. A man will confide in unlikely people. I imagine I need not tell you that.

     ‘I was in the house, fairly often. He was fond of little dinner parties. Sabine was not an especially good cook, but there were things she did nicely; she made a good hostess, oddly enough.

     ‘Bonds between us there were too. She was a craftsman in her profession, and so am I. We had no close intimacy, but we respected – trusted too – one another.

     ‘A bond of affection too for Vincent. A good man. Led a sad and disappointed life; died with a sense of inadequacy, shortcoming. Undeserved… No, I’ll tell you no more of that; that’s not your business. What perhaps is, though, Sabine was conscious that much of this sense of futility was her fault. She carried a bitter load of remorse. She was a tightly knit, obstinate woman. Fought battles with herself.

     ‘You could say too we shared our faith in our religion. Meant much to both of us.

     ‘In these years since Vincent’s death I’ve seen much less of her. We drifted apart too for other reasons I’ll come to. However, to finish with the religious maniacs.

     ‘Simple people – like Sabine – who believe, fervently, show it in emotional gushing language, often. They have antiquated silly little traditions and observances. And one finds people who turn this simple faith to profit. It has always been so. Anyone with a scrap of wisdom takes that lightly.

     ‘Sabine had no truck with charlatans. She had taste, brains, judgement. But the simple – the poor in heart – she felt kinship for.

     ‘We’ll leave the miracles and apparitions aside. Sabine was convinced of them. The Cardinal isn’t. We owe him obedience. He doesn’t like them, and neither do I, since they attract the silly, the credulous, and also the sharks. Is that enough?’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘Sabine… Some years ago, twenty or thereabouts, Sabine had a deep movement of the heart. Guts. Nervous system. I don’t know what the quack calls it. To make no bones about it she’d been married years and never had a child, despite prayers, pilgrimages, and charms, and astrologers – funny, deep, peasant woman. It ate deeply into her. Because of the notion that she had never come up to the husband, who thought himself, good silly man, such a long way below her. So she decided to adopt a child, and did. Poor foolish Sabine, and my bright sensitive Vincent – never saw what a dangerous thing they were doing.’

     ‘Did anybody?’ asked Castang. He was interested. Not so much professionally as personally. He’d no children either.

     ‘Not me, in any case. Vincent spoke of all sorts of things, and when you knew him you could translate the code, but of this never. Superstition, no doubt. Never speak of what is close to the heart – very primitive. Like these Malayan peasants who think if you say “tiger” the dreadful beast will come for you.

     ‘He didn’t speak of it till much later, when it was too late, and too much to hold down. Convinced that he had failed in this as in all else. “What have I done?” – over and over. Killed him, of course,’ said Miss O’Brien, briskly.

     ‘But I’m rambling: Sabine – now to her dying breath she hadn’t ever understood. A trap with hard teeth. Thought it a good and charitable action to take a child from an orphanage and bring it up as one’s own. Lavishing every care and skill on it, pouring out all the love in one’s heart.’

     ‘Isn’t it?’ asked Castang, wondering whether he was a sentimentalist.

     ‘The moment you tell yourself it is, it certainly is not,’ tart. ‘Do it unselfconsciously, then yes. One more won’t cost much. From simple goodness. Not beastly charity. Or do it professionally, like a nun. For God, not for her. Everyday work, devotion, being trained for that. Loving them and mothering them then is all right.’

     She’d given this thought. Castang felt respect for the ridiculous little woman.

     ‘Taking them to fill a gap, and then expecting them to be grateful – hopeless; fatal.’

     ‘That’s clear enough.’

     ‘Ought to be. In your profession how many horrors do you see caused by children who’ve had too little affection – or too much? Or the wrong sort?’

     ‘You’re a good witness,’ he said, laughing.

     ‘Garrulous,’ said the old girl, bleakly. ‘And now you’d like a drink. I’ve nothing much. The drop of paddy’s fearfully dear here. I’ve no opinion of that stuff the supermarket calls Scotch.’

     And so say all of us, and Monsieur Barde. We won’t mention him though; he’s supermarket-scotch in her eyes.

     What was the old dear hunting for now, like an Aberdeen terrier halfway down a rabbit hole?

     ‘Bottle of beer somewhere,’ muffled, backing out of cupboards. ‘The workshop can be hot and one hasn’t the time for tea.’

     Castang found it a nice change from Mum and her glass of port.

     ‘Go on.’

     ‘I’ve been wondering whether I should. There; nothing is ever gained by not trusting people. Your face, by the way, doesn’t really do.’

     ‘Doesn’t it?’ a bit dashed. He’d always thought you could buy a second-hand car from that face, without too many fears.

     ‘Sorry; stupidly put. I have the habit of looking at faces in terms of models. Saints, you know. Nowadays one doesn’t have Jeromes and Sebastians from Correggio – they have to be modern.’

     A pity. He’d be quite flattered, to be a saint in a window. Peaceful existence, too.

     ‘Joan of Arc in a tank with a beret?’

     ‘No no, that’s altogether bad and sentimental. You might do in a Crucifixion. There’s a look of someone who does his job. Roman soldier. Guard to protect unpopular tax-collectors.’

     ‘I’m holding nails, and it doesn’t matter whether or not I believe it’s a false prophet?’

     ‘That, yes, but I absolve you from holding nails. An executioner’s assistant is a very low-grade sort of person. Condemned criminals, you know, who have purchased their freedom at an ignoble price. You’re holding back morbid onlookers, the kind that flock to aeroplane crashes.’

     ‘Not so bad,’ said Castang. ‘Prevention of conduct likely to occasion a breach of the peace.’

     ‘But I’m also concerned with seeing justice done. Towards a dead woman.’

     ‘In spite of the face, and in spite of the job, so am I. We don’t go in for that much these days: it’s out of fashion, like public executions. Justice being done might disturb public tranquillity.’

     ‘When was it, the last one in public?’

     ‘In 1939, in Versailles. The public behaved badly. There were breaches of the peace. It wasn’t a very good year, taken all round.’

     The bird hopped on the branch, pecking eagerly at fruit.

     ‘I want you to do a little better, you know, than repressing idle gossip.’

     ‘Miss Aubrienne,’ said Castang, ‘I’m not far advanced, in this enquiry. I feel pretty convinced of one thing. If I can understand this woman, and what went on in her mind, I’ll get somewhere with it. So I listen to you. I hope on the whole, patiently.’

     She looked at him for some time. The realisation was slowly dawning that she too was a curious onlooker, held back by his arm.

     ‘Let’s go on, shall we?’ said Castang.