Anselm got back to Larkwood just after Vespers, in time for a brief conference with Father Andrew before supper. They sat in the Prior’s study, looking out over the cloister garth. It was a calm evening and long shadows lay on the neat grass like canvas sheets of scenery fallen flat.
Father Andrew asked, ‘How did they respond when you said the police were powerless?’
‘With inspiring equanimity. I’d prepared myself for bewildered anger.’
‘Those close to politics often understand better than most the limits of the law’
‘There was something between them though, coming I think from the mother, something like an accusation. That is where the anger lay, the confusion. And by accident I think I trespassed upon it:
‘. Anselm,’ said the Prior dryly, ‘most of your accidents stem from intuition let loose. What did you say?’
‘We were talking about Pascal and I mentioned Agnes, that she had had a child, and I asked if she’d ever been known to the family’
‘And?’
‘The mother said absolutely nothing but the father said Jacques never knew anyone called Agnes… we weren’t talking about Jacques but he made the link.’
‘And you call that an accident?’
Anselm remonstrated, ‘Not far off. My best cross-examinations were always by mistake. I didn’t realise how clever it looked until it was done:
The Prior smiled with faint indulgence. Anselm continued, ‘Anyway I then had a most peculiar encounter with the butler. Throughout he pours the tea, sidles in, says nothing, sidles out… but when he shows me the door he tells me he knew Agnes and held her child. He then gives me a letter to deliver to Agnes from Jacques, a letter he’d guarded since the war on the off-chance she survived.’
The two monks pondered in silence. Frowning, Father Andrew said, ‘It is clear from what Max Nightingale said to you that his grandfather, somehow, knew both Jacques and Agnes. In this whole tragic business they seem to be the only ones to have reduced him to a state of panic. So they must have come across each other during the war…’ He rounded on Anselm: ‘What was that riddle you were told about Schwermann at Les Moineaux?’
‘That he had risked his life to save life.’
The Prior tilted his head as though straining to catch distant voices. His glittering eyes vanished behind long creases… but whatever he’d sensed was slipping out of reach.
The bell rang for supper. Anselm said, ‘The strange thing is, how do Etienne Fougeres and his wife come to know about Agnes and her child?’
They rose and entered the corridor. The busy sound of other feet heading down to the refectory echoed from a stairwell. The Prior replied, ‘Jacques’ family must have passed it on after his death’ – he followed his insight through – ‘and in due course Etienne told his wife… but they did not tell their son, Pascal… a secret known by a paid servant, a butler… now, why’s that?’
Intuition failed them both and they went into the refectory.