Doctor Death (33 page)

“He said that he was only shortening the priest’s suffering,” I offered. “Could that be a motive? A sort of mercy killing?”

“Unfortunately that is a justification, not a motive,” said Marot.

The Commissioner rubbed the corner of a drooping eye. The bags were even more pronounced than usual, after yet another far too wakeful night.

“We know that he had reason to kill Mother Filippa, but we
don’t know that he actually did it, at least not yet. We know that he
did
kill Father Abigore, but not why. Is that how the case may be summarized?” he said, and did not sound all too thrilled at the diagnosis.

“Yes, that is reasonably accurate,” admitted Marot. “Luckily the préfecture requires only that I can prove who. It is not necessary to explain why.”

The Commissioner looked even more tired, and I understood him. To determine the cause of death was the focus of all his efforts. He most definitely concerned himself with
why.

“Mademoiselle Karno, I actually came to ask if you would speak with Imogene Leblanc for us,” said the inspector. “If possible today? It would be a great help if you could convince her to come out of the enclosure.”

I thought of the diary pages that now lay in the drawer of my dressing table up in my room. Oh, yes, I would like to speak with Imogene Leblanc. Very much so.

“I will do what I can,” I said virtuously. “Should we go at once?”

Imogene Leblanc’s arthritis-twisted hand rested on the head of a large spotted mixed-breed hunting dog.

“I borrowed it from Vabonne’s gamekeeper,” she said. “Michel Carreau. This is a large house to be alone in, so it is comforting to at least have a dog with me.”

She was no longer dressed in the convent’s postulant attire but was wearing a high-necked white blouse and an ill-fitting skirt in dark blue serge. A black ribbon around her right upper arm was the only sign of official mourning, but her eyes were red rimmed, and she dabbed them regularly with a handkerchief. The eczema on her face flared red against her pale skin.

At the convent, we had learned that she had gone home as soon as she received word of her father’s death, and that they did not know if she was coming back. There were two travel trunks on the parlor floor, which she was apparently in the process of unpacking, one with various items of clothing, the other full of books and papers.

She had let us in herself. There were no longer any servants at Les Merises, it seemed, which was also obvious from the layer of dust on the dark mahogany furniture and the heavy smell of wet dog and old pipe tobacco that hung in the carpets and the drapes. Imogene Leblanc apologized for neither.

“What is it you want?” she said, with a harshness in her voice that teetered on rudeness.

“Allow me to express my condolences for your loss,” said Inspector Marot.

Imogene nodded briefly. “Thank you.” She pressed the handkerchief against the edges of her nose and sniffed a little.

“And forgive us if we are intruding. But there are certain circumstances that must be clarified before we can close this tragic case.”

She did not say anything, just let her free hand slide across the dog’s brown-and-white head, only waiting, it seemed, for us to finish and leave. The inspector took out Vabonne’s Bible and placed it on the dusty tea table. He opened it to the passage from Revelation, marked with an inexpertly embroidered bookmark that I suspected was a gift from his daughter.

“Mademoiselle Leblanc, is this your father’s handwriting?”

She stared at the page for what seemed to me quite a long time. It was the longest comment, the one that contained the despairing cry: HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE HELP ME PREVAIL NOT SUCCUMB FILL MY MIND WITH WISDOM GIVE ME COURAGE.

“Yes,” she said at last. “That is my father’s hand.”

“Thank you. Can you, for the sake of thoroughness, give me another example of his handwriting?”

“If you insist.”

She got up, with a bit of difficulty, and left the parlor with the dog at her heels. Luckily it was not a “devil” like the deceased Iago but a rather more amiable creature. It had barked at us when we arrived but its tail had been wagging at the same time.

“She is not particularly pleasant,” I said quietly. My eye had been caught by one of the books that stuck out of the trunk.
On Bacteria: The Theory and Practice of Louis Pasteur
.

“We are here to obtain proof against her dead father,” answered Marot. “Why should she be pleasant?”

I took the book and opened it. On the title page was a dedication, written in a confident and easily legible hand: “To Imogene Leblanc, from Louis Pasteur, in hopes of a rapid recovery. Endure. We conquered the Mad Dog, one day we will also conquer the Wolf.”

Louis Pasteur
himself.
He was the one who had written this inscription.
Pasteur.

Imogene Leblanc returned with a few scraps of paper just as I was putting the book back into the trunk.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to rifle your personal belongings. But did Pasteur really write this?”

Her gaze did not become any warmer, but she nodded briefly.

“When I was fifteen, I was very ill for a time,” she said. “My father took me to Paris for a consultation at Pasteur’s institute. As you can see, he was very kind.”

I was seized by jealousy. It was not very noble of me, and definitely not particularly mature, but I did in fact feel a moment’s regret that I had never suffered an illness deemed sufficiently interesting for a consultation with the Great Man.

“But you are better now?”

She held up her free hand so you could see the knots of arthritis. “I still suffer from occasional rheumatism.”

She had not mentioned the eczema, and perhaps it did not have anything to do with her more serious illness. Still, I could not help but begin to speculate. If arthritis was only one of the symptoms . . .

She handed the papers to the inspector, whose age luckily rendered him so farsighted that he had to hold them at a certain distance, giving me the opportunity to peek.

“Papa must have thrown away most of his papers,” she said. “But I found this.”

One was something as prosaic as a shopping list, the other a crumpled and unfinished letter.

Dear Madame Arnaud,

it said.

It is with deep
regret
sorrow that I must inform you that Lisette
is not among
gave up the ghost
passed away in her sleep Sunday evening after some week’s

It stopped in midsentence and showed the effects of having been crumpled up. Presumably Leblanc had started again with a fresh sheet, and the letter, or, perhaps more correctly, the draft, had remained undated and unsigned. It was not written in capitals like the exclamations in Vabonne’s Bible, but the angular, clumsy handwriting was still recognizable.

“A sad message, it appears,” said Marot.

“We lost our old cook some months ago,” Imogene explained. “My father wrote to her sister.”

“What was the cause of death?” I asked.

Imogene Leblanc looked at me expressionlessly and still managed to indicate that she found the question inappropriate.

“She was past sixty,” she said. “At that age death needs no excuse to come calling.”

“Mademoiselle Leblanc, do you know if your father knew the priest at Espérance, Father Abigore?”

“No. I don’t think so. Is he the one who was killed?”

“Yes. But you know of no connection between them?”

“My father was a man of faith. He might of course have sought out Father Abigore, but our usual church is Trois Maries down in the village.”

“Was he the one who drove you and the students to Espérance for Cecile Montaine’s funeral?” I asked.

Once again that expressionless look. She did not care for my interference, I could feel that quite clearly.

“Yes. That is in fact correct.”

“Then he might have spoken with Father Abigore on that occasion?” Marot grasped at this straw with a certain eagerness.

“It is possible. I did not notice.”

“Mademoiselle Karno observed a confrontation between your father and Mother Filippa,” said the inspector. “Do you have any idea what that might have been about?”

“My father did not support my decision to seek admission to the convent. I think he believed Mother Filippa was an . . . inappropriate abbess.”

“In what way?”

“He understood, of course, that the convent had to keep a wolf pack for historical reasons. But that it was necessary to live with these animals as the abbess did . . . even to keep a wolf in
her cell at night . . .” A deep blush spread under the eczema, the first sign of human emotions I had seen her express. “It was . . . improper. Unclean. That is what he called it.”

“Did you share his opinion?”

She hesitated. Dabbed her eyes and nose and cleared her throat loudly before she continued.

“I . . . I cannot deny that I found it disturbing. One could come up against that animal in the halls at any time. It was . . . wrong.”

“Why, then, did you wish to become a nun there?”

“When God calls, one does not question, Inspector.”

“But there must be other convents?”

“Not like this one. I attended the school myself as a child and a young woman, and have taught there for three years now. Believe me—that was where my mission lay.”

“Mother Filippa told me that your father tried to prevent you from returning to the convent,” I said. “Is it true?”

“Yes. He did not understand how important it was. I tried to make him accept my calling and my mission, but I was never successful. It made him terribly upset that I set God’s authority above his. Finally he even tried to . . . lock me up. Until I ‘got better,’ he said. As if my calling was a kind of illness. But that is not how it is, little miss.” Her voice suddenly became strangely accusatory. “You arrive with your loupe and your pipettes and think you can tell the healthy from the sick. But not until one is called does one understand that the world is sick, and that one has now been healed.”

She had not liked being examined, I remembered. Only Mother Filippa’s calm authority had made her submit.

One day we will also conquer the Wolf
, Pasteur had written.

“Do you suffer from lupus?” The words flew out of my mouth before I had considered the wisdom of speaking them.

She stared at me with hostile eyes. “I cannot see how that is any business of yours.”

I suppose I should have been polite and dropped the subject, but I could not help observing her with a certain clinical interest. Lupus was such a mysterious illness. It crept up on the sufferer in widely different forms—the catalog of symptoms included fever, dermatitis, edemas, hypersensitivity to sun, stomatitis, muscle aches, arthritis, chest pains, cramps, temporary dementia or depression, personality changes, organ failure, hair loss, anemia . . . The list was long and confusing. Some patients had only one symptom, others a whole array, and the illness could lie dormant for years only to reappear with entirely different symptoms. As far back as the 1100s, Rogerius called it
le loup
—the wolf—not only because some of the skin lesions that might occur were reminiscent of wolf bites, but also because of its lurking, inexplicable behavior.

“Do you have symptoms other than the arthritis and your eczema?” I asked.

“Madeleine . . . ,” Marot protested. But Imogene Leblanc just continued to look at me with the same cold expression.

“No,” she said. “Was that all you wanted to know?”

“It is a difficult condition,” I said. “I am sorry.”

“Are you? It seems more as if you are curious.”

Inspector Marot got up quickly. “I think that is all for now,” he said. “We will not disturb you any longer.”

“When may I bury my father?”

“Presumably in a few days, mademoiselle. The inquest will take place either tomorrow or the next day. You will, of course, be duly informed. But forgive me—is there no one to support you in this difficult time? A relative or a friend of the family?”

“My uncle is on his way from Bordeaux. I do not have any siblings, so he will inherit Les Merises.”

It was probably insensitive of me, but it was actually only now that I felt a stab of compassion. I had had trouble seeing
Leblanc’s death as anything but a blessing, even to her. A liberation. But I had not considered that his death also made her homeless and entirely dependent on the whim and mercy of her male relatives.

“Madeleine? We are in a bit of a hurry. I have to be at the préfecture at one, and I would like to be there to present your father’s report regarding Emile Oblonski.”

I realized that I would need to follow him despite all my unanswered questions. If she was the Imo Cecile was referring to in her diary, then she had visited them. She had spoken with Cecile. They had lain down together, whatever that entailed. I wanted to know why, wanted to know what she thought and felt about Cecile, and about Emile. But I could not ask without revealing that I had the diary pages, and I was not yet prepared to do that. The urge to protect Cecile and her secret confidences was oddly strong.