The Three Evangelists

Matthew, two for St Mark, three for St Luke, and four for himself. Seven for everyone all together. Vandoosler had devised the system because everyone was fed up with coming downstairs and back up again for nothing.

Mathias who had come home after lunching quietly with Juliette, heard the seven bangs and repeated them for Marc, before going down. Marc in turn passed the message to Lucien, who tore himself from his reading, muttering, Ordered to the Front. Reporting for duty’.

A minute later, they were all in the refectory. The broom handle system was efficient, except that it made a mess of the ceiling and didn’t allow you to communicate with the outside world as a telephone would.

‘Is it all over?’ Marc asked. ‘They’ve caught Gosselin, or he’s killed himself?’

Vandoosler swallowed a glassful of water before replying.

‘Say you’ve got someone who’s been stabbed and knows he’s dying. If he still has the strength and the means to leave a message, what will he write?’

‘The murderer’s name,’ said Lucien.

‘All agreed?’ asked Vandoosler.

‘Yes, it’s obvious,’ said Marc.

Mathias nodded.

‘Right,’ said Vandoosler. ‘I share your view. And I’ve seen a few cases in my career. The victim, if there’s time, and if they know the murderer’s name, always writes it. Unfailingly.’

Looking preoccupied, Vandoosler pulled out of his jacket pocket the envelope containing the photograph of the black car.

‘Christophe Dompierre wrote a name in the dust on the body of a car before he died,’ he told them. ‘The name has been driving round Paris for three days. The driver has only just noticed the writing.’

‘Georges Gosselin,’ said Lucien.

No, said Vandoosler. What Dompierre wrote was Simeonidis S.

Vandoosler threw the photograph onto the table and sat down heavily on a chair.

‘Dead and alive,’ he murmured.

Wordlessly the three men approached the photograph to look at it. None of them dared to touch it, as if they were frightened. The writing was wobbly and irregular, and Dompierre must have had to raise his arm to reach the car. But there was no doubt about it. It looked as if the writer had tackled it in spurts, as if summoning up his final strength. The only odd thing about it was that the last capital S was the wrong way round, so that it looked more like a 2.

Devastated, they all sat back in silence, shying away from the terrible accusation in black and white. So Sophia Simeonidis was alive, and had murdered Dompierre. Mathias shivered. For the first time, fear and distress settled on the refectory early that Friday afternoon. The sun was shining in through the windows, but Marc felt his fingers growing cold and a prickling in his legs. Sophia still alive, arranging a false death, having somebody else burnt in her place, leaving her piece of basalt as evidence. Sophia, the beautiful singer, prowling in Paris by night, in rue Chasle. Dead yet alive.

‘What about Gosselin?’ Marc asked in a low voice.

‘It can’t have been him,’ said Vandoosler, also speaking low. ‘I knew that already yesterday.’

‘You knew?’

‘Remember those two hairs of Sophia’s that Leguennec found in the boot of Lex’s car?’

‘Of course,’ said Marc.

‘Well, those hairs weren’t there the day before. When we heard about the fire at Maisons-Alfort, I waited for nightfall and I went out to vacuum Lex’s car. I’ve kept a little gadget from my police days. It’s a battery-operated vacuum cleaner, with clean bags. There was nothing in the boot, no hair, no nails, not a shred of cloth. Only sand and dust.’

Dumbfounded, the three men stared at Vandoosler. Marc remembered now. It was the night when he had been sitting on the seventh step, thinking about tectonic plates. The godfather had gone outside to take a leak, carrying a plastic bag.

‘It’s true,’ said Marc. ‘I thought you were just going out for a pee.’

‘Well, that too,’ admitted Vandoosler.

‘I see,’ said Marc.

‘So,’ Vandoosler went on, ‘when Leguennec requisitioned the car the next day and said he had found these hairs, it made me laugh. I had proof that Alexandra was not responsible. And proof that somebody had gone to the car, after me, in the night to put this bit of evidence in the boot to implicate the niece. And it couldn’t have been Gosselin, because Juliette said he only came back at Friday lunchtime. And that’s quite true, because I checked.’

‘But for Christ’s sake, why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Because I was operating outside the law and I needed to keep in with Leguennec. And also because I wanted the murderer, whoever it was, to know that his plan was working. I wanted to let out as much rope as possible, and to see where the beast would go if it was let free without being tied up.’

‘Why didn’t Leguennec take the car in on the Thursday?’

‘He did waste some time, that’s true. But cast your mind back. We didn’t think it was Sophia’s body until quite late on that day. And the initial suspect was Relivaux. It’s simply not possible to think of everything, impound everything and so forth on the first day of an investigation. Actually Leguennec knew he hadn’t been quick off the mark. That’s why he didn’t charge Alexandra. He wasn’t absolutely sure about those hairs.’

‘But what about Gosselin?’ asked Lucien. ‘Why did you tell Leguennec to bring him in for questioning, if you knew he was innocent?’

‘Same idea. Let things run their course. And see what the real murderer would do. You have to leave murderers free, so that they make some mistakes. You will have noticed that I allowed Gosselin to get away by warning Juliette. I didn’t want him to be questioned about the ancient history of the attack in the dressing- room.’

‘That was him?’

‘Must have been. You could tell, from Juliette’s face. But not the murders. In fact, St Matthew, you could go and tell Juliette that she can tell her brother now.’

‘d’you think she knows where he is?’

‘Yes, bound to. I guess he’s somewhere in the south of France, Nice, Toulon or Marseille, ready to be off across the Mediterranean at a word from her, with false papers. You can tell her about Sophia Simeonidis too. But everyone should be very careful. She’s still alive and still out there somewhere. But where? I’ve no idea.’

Mathias tore his eyes away from the black and white photo on the polished table and went out quietly.

Marc felt weak and shattered. Sophia dead, Sophia back from the dead.

‘When the dead awaken,’ murmured Lucien.

‘So,’ Marc said slowly. ‘It was Sophia who killed the two theatre critics. Because they were both so vicious about her, because they were destroying her career? But things like that don’t happen, do they?’

‘With singers, who knows, anything’s possible,’ said Lucien.

‘She killed them both?… And then later someone found out… and she preferred to disappear rather than face arrest?’

‘Maybe not somebody,’ said Vandoosler. ‘It might have been the tree. She was a killer but at the same time, superstitious, anxious, perhaps living in fear that one day she would be found out. Maybe the tree that appeared in her garden so mysteriously sent her over the edge. She thought it was a threat, a blackmailer perhaps. She got you to dig underneath it. But the tree wasn’t concealing anything or anybody. It was just there to send her a message. Did she receive a letter? We don’t know. But she must have chosen to disappear.’

‘But then all she had to do was stay disappeared. She didn’t need to burn someone else in her place!’

‘She certainly meant to stay disappeared. To have people think she’d gone off with Stelios. But when she planned her flight, she’d forgotten all about Alexandra. She only remembered too late, and knew that her niece would think it impossible she had vanished without telling anyone, so would surely start enquiries. So she would have to provide a corpse, in order to be left in peace.’

‘And Dompierre? How did she know he was asking about her?’