48
It did not really matter who killed Martin Bettelman. It was about closing the book and moving on. Despite the several clearly unprofessional mistakes deduced at the scene, a frustrated inspector was ready to let an anonymous professional carry the killing at the ‘beach’ and send the beautiful Robert back to the Swiss to face the music there. He would be punished for stealing art. She would be long retired before there was even the smallest chance of seeing his face again in the street. An old angel out on probation. It would depend upon where he served the last of several probable terms. Italy. Germany. France… Robert’s suffering maman would likely still be suffering, might even be dead on account of it, but how much did an inspector who’d smashed her usually sympathetic head against the Charigot wall really care? Aliette wasted two days writing a report and recommended charges that fudged and in some instances revised or omitted facts she knew to be true, and accompanying circumstantials that framed the truth with utter clarity.
Then she pressed Delete and put on her coat.
No, it did not matter who killed Martin Bettelman. The cheap blue slippers were still in the shopping bag — taking them home and wearing them would have added to her sense of failure. She’d left them on the floor beside the shoemaker, still in his bag. Two items waiting in limbo.
She had only the vaguest vision for the one. Now she had a definite use for the other.
She did not need clarity, just movement, like a traveller on an all-night train.
She walked. She stopped at a favourite patisserie where she paid top price for their justly famous cake. Whatever else, it was Christmas. It might warm a heart to receive some cheer.
It might warm hers to offer it. She proceeded to Hôtel Dieu.
Christine Charigot looked every inch a wretched creature who could not even expect a Christmas kiss from the son she had protected and adored. But her empty eyes reacted when the visitor unwrapped a seasonally decorated kugelhopf. It may have been the sharpening effect of suspicion. Or the sudden sight of something deliciously wonderful. Christine’s true position was still a mystery. At Aliette’s suggestion, Christine’s nurse brought a pot of tea.
Nibbling cake, the inspector went slowly, gently, a style and voice she was good at. Alone with Christine Charigot, in woman-to-woman mode, Aliette told her about the changes coming to her life, how it was painful but she was looking forward to moving on. Everyone had to move forward. Christine could too if she approached it with a hopeful heart and mind. A confiding cop even said some nice things about Robert she did not really believe.
Christine Charigot could not resist the offered treat — several pieces, refills of tea with milk, though she remained on edge, as if waiting for the police officer to emerge and attack.
Aliette talked on, confiding about the difficulty in going home for Christmas with the parents and her sister. ‘My mother especially. She doesn’t really agree with my life, you know?’
Some of it seemed to be getting through. She knew Christine also had a sister and a mother.
The kugelhopf was half gone, the teapot almost empty when Christine Charigot pushed back the covers, indicating it was time to pee. Since no males were present, she was quite casual as she eased herself off the bed. Her nightgown rode up to the top her thigh. Her thigh was white, muscled — she had spent a career on her feet. An inspector’s eyes processed all these bits of personal information in a micro-second, even as she extended a hand to help the unsteady woman negotiate the space from bed to floor. It was impossible not to notice a scar about four inches above the knee on Christine Charigot’s left thigh. About four inches long. It had healed but was plainly recent — Aliette had a recent wound of her own to compare. But where hers was a bullet wound, professionally mended, Christine’s looked more the result of a fall against something hard and sharp, leaving a serious gash requiring extensive stitching. At a glance, about twenty. But an uneven line. Messy work. Homemade?
A veteran triage nurse would know how.
More clarity. Still no proof.
When Christine returned from the toilet and got herself back inside her bed, Aliette reached for the other bag. ‘And I brought you these…’ smiling flatly, presenting the blue slippers.
Lulled, bewildered, the woman took them in her veiny hands.
Aliette said, ‘I know you were there. I know it was probably you… You came home from your shift and Robert was gone, and you knew where and you went straight to the beach in your slippers. And you found them, Christine, and you hated that, and you killed Martin Bettelman.’
No… Christine Charigot was blinking, fighting tears, clutching her blue slippers.
‘Yes. I think so. But if you won’t talk, I can’t prove it.’
The tears started. The silence held.
‘But it seems unfair, it really does. I mean, you were only trying to protect your child. That’s worth something…to me, at any rate.’ She reached for a last morsel of cake, put it between her lips and savoured it. Then washed it down with the last of her tea. ‘So what I’m going to do is tell them Robert did it. Robert killed Martin. He’s going away for a long, long time, in any event. Adding in a murder charge won’t matter much at all. Mm? More to the point, you are a caring mother. He seems much more like a murderer than you. By which I mean to say, it fits.’ She got up to leave. ‘So that’s what will happen. It’s Robert who’s the killer… Sorry, it’s not the best, Christine, but it’s the best I can do.’ And she bowed, withdrawing.
‘No.’ Christine Charigot had closed her eyes. She seemed to be reciting when she stated, ‘I killed him. I killed that gross man… Martin Bettelman.’ And she added, ‘It was me.’
Then the heart-rending noise began, piercing, inarticulate, but filled with truth.
It brought the nurses running. It gave Aliette, weepy herself now, a chance to slip away.
It was not sympathy for poor Christine. It was the release of pressure on herself.
***
It was given to J-P Blismes to present the picture, build a frame for Christine Charigot, and help her talk her way to a confession: How she had come upon Robert and a man, naked and doing things she did not want to remember — but she did, and how she took the man’s gun and chased him, both of them falling and stumbling along the rocky bank, and killed him — finally; what did she know about shooting guns? — then broken the godforsaken painting over her knee, and yes, over his horrible head. And how she had dragged her Robert home.
Several nurses on the ward reported patients becoming dangerously agitated by the shrieking Christine Charigot unleashed in the process of unburdening herself. The head nurse called security. When they arrived, J-P held them off. He was used to anger. It was normal. Christine had to let it out. He advised that she should be tried as not criminally responsible for what she’d done. A half-dozen psychiatrists eventually agreed.
But all that was not till after Aliette Nouvelle was long gone. Direction: south.