“I think she might well have had some dealings with Addens, Durant, and Firmin, as well as Xavier Bertrand, while in Belgium. Perhaps she recruited them. She was working for resistance groups even before La Dame Blanche, so I believe earmarking good and willing fighters was one of her specialties—a young woman, praising those boys, who might well have wanted to impress her. I do not believe she knew Gervase Bertrand—Lambert, as he’d presented himself to her—was connected to those boys. His surname had been changed, and he seemed a good candidate for a job at the Belgian embassy. And I don’t think she knew he was the killer. But I have every confidence that she knew, the moment she came to speak to me about the case, that there was a connection between Addens and one of her earlier recruits—she just didn’t know what it was, and how the threads of evidence were woven together. And I believe she was quite happy that the police had hit a dead end—excuse the pun, if you will. She wanted the killer found before he caused any more damage, but she didn’t want the police to find him. She wanted to get there first, probably for reasons of security.”
MacFarlane sighed. “Don’t think poorly of her. She had a tough job—a very hard job, and it isn’t going to get any easier. She’s loyal to Britain and to Belgium, and I have to work with her.”
“She could have been honest with me.”
“And that’s exactly what a certain Detective Inspector Caldwell is going to say to you, Maisie.”
“I know.” Maisie looked at her hand, rubbing a ridge mark on her skin where she had clutched the Ruby.
“One or two more things, Maisie, and then we’ll be off. How do you know all this—and what happened to Gervase Bertrand to spark this stream of murders? You can’t tell me he was planning this from the time he was six years old.”
She shook her head. “No, though he might have known by the time he applied to work with Dr. Thomas. I found out most of this from a man named Father Bonhomme, a priest in Belgium. It upset your man that I took time to see him, but it was worth it.”
“He mentioned that. I told him I had to trust you.”
“Anyway, I learned that Carl Firmin had been to see him about eighteen months ago. He had returned to Belgium, a sort of pilgrimage, I suppose—possibly a journey of atonement. The man was clearly in distress; memories had returned in sharp relief as he journeyed through his home country. The priest encouraged him to speak of what ailed him.”
“Nice priest—what about the confessional?”
“Father Bonhomme told me he met Firmin outside the church, and though by dint of being a priest, it was a confessional of sorts, he knew I was in great need of discovering the truth. And one thing more—Bonhomme told me he had received a letter from Firmin not long after the exchange. It seems he was filled with gratitude because he had been given sufficient courage to find and then to confess to Xavier’s brother. Now, did Gervase remember anything of the actual event? I believe not, because he was taken away by a woman, out of sight of Xavier’s final minutes, and far from the sound. However, when you question him, I think you will come to believe, as I do, that once he’d heard from Firmin—who had told Father Bonhomme he would recount the exact chain of events to Xavier’s brother—the story grew and grew in Gervase’s imagination to the extent that the truth was twisted beyond all proportion.” She rubbed her forehead. “When I think of the damaging thoughts that must have crossed his mind, it’s all so very sad. I believe Gervase wanted to be his brother’s hero—after all, hadn’t he been told by the others that Xavier was a hero to them all? If Maurice were here, he might well argue that Gervase Bertrand’s experiences as a child had left him with a dormant imbalance of the mind. He would suggest that those experiences of loss and dislocation had impaired his thinking—despite the fact that there were people who cared enough to give him a good chance in life. If—as I suspect was the case—those damaging thoughts flourished, he would have been increasingly tormented by Firmin’s confession as he went over it again and again in his mind. I believe he reached a point where he believed there was only one avenue available to him—to avenge Xavier’s death by taking the lives of the men who had ended his brother’s life.” Maisie looked up at MacFarlane. “Remember, even though they were all so young when this happened, to Gervase they were always grown men. And somewhere inside he was the child who had lost his brother, his hero. If this is how it happened, then all the persuading in the world would not have convinced Gervase that bringing Xavier’s life and suffering to an end was an act of love.” Maisie felt her breath catch. “Those boys shouldered an unfathomable weight. And Gervase was blinded by grief, loss, and the lingering vision of a child.”
They stood for a moment, then MacFarlane broke the silence.
“It’s a bloody shame. A bloody shame. The suffering of war, that’s what it is—and it goes far beyond the trenches.” He blew out his cheeks. “Anyway, we’d better get along. I’ve to report to every bloody government office you can think of this afternoon.”
MacFarlane stood back, allowing Maisie to depart first, but stopped and sniffed the air.
“I’ve been meaning to ask—what’s that terrible smell? It’s like the air force mess in here, with a load of lads having a drink and ready to go out on the make.”
“It’s Brylcreem. Lambert—Bertrand—wore it when he was going about this terrible business of killing. It’s almost as if he were creating another person to be the murderer, or a stamp that could be left behind, and the stamp was this fragrance. You might find that his brother, Xavier, experimented with using brilliantine, or some sort of hair pomade—you know how boys do these things. But it’s also something that could put an investigator off the scent.”
“Scent? Oh dear, I think you should go home and rest, Maisie.”
“I can’t—I’ve important work to do. This isn’t my only urgent case.”