‘No.’
‘There are two young people, a man and a woman, who go every day’ Anselm described them.
‘Yes, I know who you mean. They sometimes sit either side of me.’
‘You sit between two extremes. They’ve even met privately, on the day Pascal Fougères was killed. The man is Max Nightingale, a grandson of the Defendant.’
Salomon Lachaise stiffened and snapped his fingers. ‘I thought
I recognised him. The lad was there in the woods, by the lake when you and I first met …’ He seemed caught off-guard by a kind of wonder.
‘The woman is the granddaughter of Agnes Embleton. She was a member of The Round Table. She’s dying. Why no statement was taken from her defeats me.
‘The names of the smuggling ring were read out this morning. That one was not among them.’
‘At that time she was called Aubret.’
Before Salomon Lachaise could reply the raddled waiter reappeared, his eyes fixed on the passing world outside the window He delivered, in something approaching a song, what seemed like the entire contents of the menu. They listened with awe, like a claque. When he’d finished Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Thank you very much indeed, but I have to leave.’ Turning to Anselm he said, regretfully, ‘The court reconvenes in ten minutes.’
‘It’s my fault, I’m so sorry.
‘No, no. We will do this another time.’ He bowed slightly and left, running as if the building were on fire. Anselm surveyed the table, his appetite gone. He’d chosen this restaurant because it had been a favoured place in his days at the Bar when blessed by an accidental victory. He’d now brought to it a subtle type of failure. That was not something to celebrate. With due ceremony he ate the bread and drank the wine, and quietly slipped out.
4
Lucy sat in the public gallery, absorbed by Father Anselm’s words. They repeated themselves in a jumble, as though she were swiftly scanning radio stations, catching partial trans-. missions. A letter from Jacques Fougères … Mr Snyman … Victor Brionne … Agnes … Pascal … death … reconciliation … and that the evidence to come might disappoint her. It was an unusual thing to say, reminiscent of what Myriam Anderson had said about another possible grieving, over the death of a final hope. Her reflection was disturbed by a quiet cough.
‘May I introduce myself? We sit here every day, and we don’t even know each other’s names. I am Salomon Lachaise.’
The remark was addressed to both herself and Max Nightingale.
‘I thought you might like to join me for tea one afternoon.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
It struck Anselm as a rather peculiar request, though not unprecedented. A guest had arrived unannounced while he had been in London. He’d asked, in broken English, if Anselm, and only Anselm, would hear his confession. He’d said he’d say who he was afterwards. Brother Wilfred had left a note on Anselm’s door giving the time arranged — 8.15 p.m., forty-five minutes before Compline.
Anselm sat in the dark of the confessional, slightly uneasy He didn’t notice when the faint grating noise began. It was dispersed by the vast, empty nave and seemed to come from all around, but quietly, without definition, and yet coming closer. The sound of feet moved swiftly over the polished tiles. The door to the confessional opened. A man swore, stumbling on to the kneeler by the grille. A fluid heaving of breath, curiously familiar, rose and fell. The French voice jolted Anselm out of Larkwood on to a landing without a light:
‘I haven’t been in a confession box for nigh on fifty years.
‘We never got rid of them.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Sorry. Rather silly of me.’
‘I’m not here to confess my sins.’
‘There aren’t any others you can confess.’
‘I’ve come to reveal the sins of my church, and yours. And if you can still raise your hands in absolution after I’m done, you’re a braver monk than me. I’d rather leave it to God himself.’
‘Father Chambray,’ exclaimed Anselm. ‘How on earth did you get here?’
‘It took a lot of planning, at my age and in my condition. I could not leave it any longer. I’ve been following the trial and nothing of what I know has come out. I’ll stay for a few days and then I’ll go home. First, I’ve got a question for you. On your life, tell me: have they told you what happened in forty-four?’
‘They?’
‘Rome.’
‘No.’
‘Is that why you came banging on my door?’
‘Yes.’
Chambray stopped to think. He mumbled, ‘Just as I thought…’
Anselm leaned towards the grille. ‘What are you here to say?’
‘They know, and they’ve kept it quiet, even as the trial has opened up what that bastard did. But I told them. Everything. In forty-five.’ Chambray pulled himself off the kneeler and slumped back on a chair. Anselm squinted at the grill. There was nothing but shadow, black as a pit. The breathing grew calmer.
‘Now I’ll tell you. Because you, too, have been duped.’
‘How?’
‘Wait,’ he snapped, coughing. He paused, settling back. ‘They came in the middle of the night, towards the end of August 1944. We didn’t find out until the morning Chapter. The Prior, Father Pleyon, said we were going to hide them both until their escape from France was arranged. No explanations given.
A Nazi and a collaborator. Imagine that. In a place that smuggled Jewish children away from their grasping hands.’
A shadow seemed to move in the darkness towards the grille. Chambray closer, rasped, ‘To understand anything you have to look back … it’s the same here …’ The presence withdrew, leaving the harsh inflection of the last words.
‘It probably begins about 1930 with the election of a Prior, well before my time.’ He was tapping his fingers slowly against wood. ‘Priory lore had it down as a spat between Father Pleyon and a dark horse, Father Rochet. One an old aristocrat, the other a republican. Pleyon was known as “Le Comte” because he was a popular confessor with a few well-known royalists, and Rochet was “Le Sans-culotte” because he was ― always banging on about the Revolution, Rights of Man and all that. It was a Priory tradition to have nicknames.’
Anselm, sensing a softening with the opening of memory, asked, ‘What was yours?’
Chambray chuckled. “‘Le Parieur”, because I took bets on decisions made by the Prior.’
The thinning laughter turned to rumbling breath, in and out, in time to the soft tapping of old fingers. He found his thread:
‘There were two candidates: Le Comte was the favourite, with a simple but clever chap called Morel as a rank outsider:
Anselm knew the name. It lay engraved on a plaque on a Priory wall, commemorating an execution yet to come.
‘Things turned nasty. Rochet took against Le Comte, which surprised no one because he was from the other end of the pond. The shock was what he did. Everyone said you had to be careful with Rochet.’ The voice in the dark was confiding, educating. ‘He had some wild ideas, but there was always something in what he said. He saw connections in things most people missed. Read too much. So I’m told, anyway And looking back on his opposition to Le Comte, he had a crazy suspicion that could never have mattered. But then, ten years later, he was shown to have been right. At the time they just thought Rochet had gone one step too far.’
‘What did. he do?’
‘He disclosed that Le Comte had connections with Action Française and the Camelots du Roi,’ Father Chambray replied significantly
‘I see,’ breathed Anselm appropriately
‘Does that mean anything to you?’ His voice sharpened.
‘Sorry, no.
‘Lord…’ Chambray waited, gathering what patience he could find. ‘Extremists, wanting a restoration of the monarchy, with Jews and Freemasons shown the door. Rochet’s objection was that they represented the worst aspects of the Middle Ages.’