Read Online Madrigal by J. Robert Janes - Free Book Online

her, Jean-Louis. Go and warn him to be very careful. I’ll lock everything up. No one will touch a thing.’
    â€˜Just let me go over it once more. I must see if something, other than her papers, is missing. I must find what the bishop was looking for when he gave her Extreme Unction.’
    And sent two of his nuns to police the corpse and have a look themselves or to thieve an item or two! thought Peretti. ‘He’s one of the Black Penitents, as is de Passe.’
    â€˜Hence his wearing a simple black cassock when giving her the last rites?’
    Peretti indicated the microscope slide. ‘Unless he was trying to tell you any one of them could have killed her, including himself.’
    Several brotherhoods, including les Pénitents Noirs , dated back to the Baylonian Captivity when there were no fewer than sixty churches and thirty-five monasteries and Rabelais had described Avignon as the bell-ringing city, while Petrarch had called the Palais ‘the habitation of demons’.
    â€˜Some of them practise flagellation,’ snorted Peretti. ‘Our bishop happens to be one of them and regularly scourges himself, or so it is rumoured.’
    â€˜With a martinet? ’
    A small but many-thonged whip that some parents used to discipline delinquent children …‘Two of his fellow “brothers” hold him while he thrashes himself, Jean-Louis, but to purge himself of what sins, I know not.’
    â€˜The Black Penitents also were and are men dedicated to good works,’ countered St-Cyr.
    â€˜But for whom, Jean-Louis. For whom?’
    The bishop, the préfet and others of the establishment were implied. ‘There’s a tiny silver martinet among her jewels.’
    â€˜Then perhaps you have your answer.’
    Dawn broke, and from the battlements of the Trouillas Tower some fifty-two metres above ground and next to the Latrines Tower, the view was of those ancient times. Eerie, steeped in mystery and deceit, damned cold and utterly heartless.
    Kohler tugged the collar of his greatcoat up and crammed bare hands into its pockets. He was dying for a fag but the wind put paid to any such notion.
    â€˜Inspector …’
    The word, though shouted, was ripped away and pelted southward.
    â€˜In a moment, Préfet. I have to get the lie of the land.’
    Bâtard ! cursed de Passe silently. ‘You find things at the base of the Latrines Tower. You do not immediately inform me in the proper manner. Instead, you demand my presence here in this wind? What is it you want? I haven’t all day.’
    â€˜Nor have I.’
    The gun-metal grey of a thickly layered ice-fog was being swept down the Rhone Valley and from distant hollows among the hills. Faint touches of pastel pink were beginning to intrude but offered no promise. The bitterly hard air took the breath away.
    Would it have been like this in Russia? wondered Kohler. Would the boys have watched the fog lift or hug the ground to remain as they waited for the battle to begin again?
    Everyone said the mistral had its origins in Russia. ‘My sons were within a year of her in age,’ he shouted.
    â€˜Could we not go inside?’
    Ah damn you, eh? ‘This wind makes people edgy, doesn’t it?’
    â€˜What is it you want of me?’
    â€˜A word, that’s all.’
    The coal-black eyebrows arched under the grey snap-brim fedora. The cleanly shaven chin and wind-burned cheeks stiffened as the grey eyes swiftly narrowed. ‘Get to it, Inspector.’
    â€˜Answers. That kid lived right down there in a slum next to the ramparts and by that four-legged bridge that looks as if it still might like to cross the river but can’t quite make up its mind.’
    â€˜You’ve found her papers.’
    De Passe was of medium height and build and immaculately dressed in a grey overcoat whose thin and perfect collar wasn’t turned up to ward off the wind. The blue silk of a