The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers

the paper and held it out quite pointlessly, since Agnès could not read. ‘Here. The woman was out with a baby. Her charge. She’s a nanny. Not the mother of the child.’
    To his dismay two great tears began to roll down Agnès’ thin cheeks. ‘He is my baby.’
    ‘Agnès, did you attack this young woman? Please consider your answer carefully because if you tell me that you did I am bound to report it.’
    There was no time for him to pray that she would keep silent. ‘He is my baby,’ Agnès repeated. ‘She had my baby.’
    Nothing so dreadful had ever before happened to Denis Deman.
    ‘He is not your baby, Agnès,’ he pursued weakly. ‘That baby is called Louis, I mean Caspar.’ It crossed his mind that Caspar Louis Bonaparte was a terrible conjunction of names.
    Agnès stared at him in wonderment. ‘He is Gabriel.’
    ‘No, Agnès,’ Dr Deman was almost crying himself, so furious was he with himself for allowing this catastrophe to have occurred. ‘Not Gabriel. Caspar, Caspar, Caspar. He is not your son.’
    He was by no means a bad man. Indeed, he was, by and large, a good man and a conscientious doctor. But a part of him was now concerned that his carefully prepared paper on the re-visioning of psychotic care through diet, air, rest and gentle exercise would be laughed to scorn once word about the consequences of his treatment got out.
    ‘He is my son,’ Agnès said simply. ‘He was waiting for me.’
    •   •   •
    The report of the psychiatrist appointed by the court, after extensive police questioning, confirmed that Agnès was of unsound mind. She could not be safely permitted to continue at the clinic under Dr Deman’s care. Although nothing concrete had been found to connect her to the assault, patently she was a danger. A danger to herself and, quite possibly, to others.
    Dr Deman saw her once before she was taken to the psychiatric hospital where she was to be detained. He had set himself two tasks and the first was to apologize. ‘Agnès, forgive me. If I had been more watchful this would never have happened.’
    Agnès, now heavily sedated again, merely looked at him with dulled leonine eyes.
    But there was a further torture Dr Deman had prescribed himself. ‘Agnès, can you tell me. Where did you get the address?’
    Silence.
    ‘Agnès, was it from me? Was it from your file you got it?’
    But for all his stricken pleas he could get nothing out of her and he left, more sick at heart than he could remember, before Agnès was taken off to a secure hospital in Le Mans.

15
    Chartres
    Agnès had come to expect to find Alain somewhere in the cathedral when she arrived there to clean. At whatever hour she came through the North Door he seemed to be before her, his presence signalled by cheerful whistling or humming. She tried a couple of times to beat him there, but even at 5 a.m. as she entered she heard the now-familiar sound of his whistle. He appeared to have taken to heart his pledge to keep out of her hair. A couple of times she saw his shadow reflected in the arches above the ambulatory, alongside the white overalls of his later-arriving mates. But she didn’t for some while re-encounter his solid person.
    The effect of this was to make her curious. She almost regretted his reticence now it was so readily granted. So it was not entirely an unwelcome surprise to find him once again sitting on the dais of the silver altar when she arrived one Friday at her usual hour of 6 a.m.
    ‘You’ve caught me at breakfast again. Want some sausage?’
    Agnès shook her head.
    ‘Well, it’s here if you change your mind.’
    ‘You get here early,’ Agnès suggested. For her the remark was a bold one and she blushed.
    ‘I sleep here.’
    ‘In the cathedral?’
    ‘I have a sleeping bag up there.’ His expression reflected her solemn one for a moment and then broke into a grin. His slightly pointed eye-teeth gave him the look of some feral animal. ‘I’m teasing. I’ve a little