by Peter May
Enzo smiled wryly. ‘You’re a wind-up merchant, Hélène, you know that?’
‘Is that a technical term, or one of your quaint Scottish witticisms?’
He glared at her. ‘What’s the case?’
A smile divided her face, ear to ear. ‘I knew it.’
‘Hélène!’ The warning was clear in her growled name.
‘It’s an old one, Enzo.’
‘If Magali’s looking at it, it must be a very old one.’
‘Seventy-five years or more.’
He frowned. ‘That would make it Second World War. A lot of people died then. What makes anyone think it was a murder?’
‘The remains of a ranking officer of the Luftwaffe with a bullet hole in his skull, shallow-buried in a tiny medieval village on the banks of the River Dordogne, wouldn’t exactly fit a conventional wartime scenario.’
‘They’re not likely to catch whoever did it now.’ He was interested, in spite of himself.
‘I don’t think that’s the object of the exercise. Isn’t it the job of archaeologists to unravel the mysteries of history? I think she just wants you to cast a professional eye over the grave, if one could call it that. She’s been unable to visit the site herself.’
‘Where is it?’
‘The village is called Carennac. It’s in the north of the Département. Not much more than an hour away.’
The grey cast in the cold southern sky had been dispelled by the dark. Enzo came through from the kitchen to find Laurent sprawled in his father’s armchair by the light of a standard lamp at the window, idly picking out chords on his father’s guitar. He stopped in the doorway for a moment, gazing with unadorned affection at his son, who was oblivious to his presence.
He was a gangly kid, tall for an eleven-year-old, puppy fat shed during a recent sprouting. He took his hair from his mother, dark and falling across his forehead in luxuriant curls. He showed no signs of having inherited his father’s Waardenburg. Alexis, Enzo’s grandson by his Scottish daughter, Kirsty, had hearing issues, the faulty gene having skipped a generation. And although tests on Sophie’s unborn child had proved negative, it was still a niggling worry.
Laurent’s long fingers spidered across the fretboard of the guitar. He was showing real promise. Enzo approached silently from behind and suddenly lifted the guitar away.
‘Hey!’ Laurent protested.
Enzo arranged his fingers on the frets. ‘Try the A minor 7th diminished,’ he said. ‘It follows beautifully from the B.’ And he demonstrated by stroking his thumb across the strings.
Laurent sat up and looked at the shape of Enzo’s fingers, then snatched the guitar back. ‘Let me try it.’ He found the chord almost instantly, then slid down to it from the B. ‘Cool,’ he said.
‘It is,’ Enzo said and took the guitar away again.
Laurent reprised his objection. ‘Hey!’
‘You’ve got homework to do.’
‘Aw, Da-ad.’ And Enzo heard his own Scottish drawl in his son’s plea. They always spoke English together, and Laurent had quickly acquired his father’s accent. Like Sophie. But also like Sophie, he was truly French, culturally and linguistically.
‘Come on, Lo-Lo, I’ll give you hand with your maths.’ Dominique swept in from the hall and sat down at the table, placing both hands flat on its surface. She was well practised now at home-schooling. ‘Where’s your bag?’
‘In my room.’
‘Go get it, then.’
‘Aw, Mama, do I have to?’
She canted her head and raised one eyebrow, which was enough to force him out of his chair to slope off to his bedroom, hands pushed deep into his pockets.
Sophie, in coat and scarf, passed him in the doorway and went to the French windows that overlooked the square. She pressed her nose to the glass. ‘Bertrand’s late. I’ll expire from heat if he’s any longer.’ She turned back into the room. ‘So what are you going to do, Papa? Are you going to go and take a look at that burial site?’
Dominique cast an enquiring look in his direction. ‘Are you?’
He slumped into the chair that Laurent had vacated and strummed a chord on the guitar. ‘I don’t really feel like travelling far from Cahors during this bloody pandemic.’
‘You’ll be alright if you wear a mask,’ Sophie said.
‘It’s alright for you, Soph. You’re not in a high-risk age group.’
‘I’ll go with you, then,’ Dominique said. ‘We’ll go in the car. I’ll drive. We don’t have to mix with anyone.’
‘What about Laurent?’ The schools had been closed again after a spike in cases.
‘Bertrand and me can look after him,’ Sophie said. And they all turned at the sound of a whooping noise in the doorway.
A grinning Laurent, satchel hanging from one hand, punched the air with the other. ‘Yesss! Bertrand is ace at Resident Evil.’
Enzo glanced at the discarded PlayStation controller and thought that maybe escape from the house for a few hours might not be such a bad idea after all.
CHAPTER TWO
The old lady sits in her favourite rocker. To her listener it seems unyieldingly hard, softened for her fragile frame only by the thinnest of cushions at her back. Her hair, silver grey, has lost neither its lustre nor its abundance, but is pulled back into the severest of buns. The smooth, shiny-thin skin of her face is flushed from the heat of the fire, embers glowing in the blackened hearth of this vast cheminée that so dominates the end wall of the salon.
Her voice, like her frame, is slight, and he finds himself realising that at seventy-five she is really only ten years older than he. Will the next ten years reduce him as it has her?
But still, there is a clarity in her voice, confident and unwavering as she begins the story she has heard many times, and no doubt repeated as often for hushed gatherings of silent confidantes. Thought-through, honed and polished to a professional patina.
He crosses his legs in his comfortable armchair and folds his hands in his lap, mirroring the storyteller, inclining his head very slightly to one side as she relates her tale.
His name was Paul Lange. A man who never took life too seriously. I suppose he would have been in his forties. Forty-two or forty-three, perhaps, and so must have been born just after the turn of the century. I am sure that he had never expected, in his wildest dreams, to find himself in a peasant cottage in the north of France in the early hours of June 25th, 1940, on the day the Armistice took effect. But there he was, listening to Adolf Hitler’s account of negotiations in the Compiègne Wagon. And only there, apparently, because of his friendship with Hitler’s favourite architect, Albert Speer.
A group of them, adoring artists and architects, gathered around the Führer as he expressed his pleasure at reversing the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, forced upon Germany after its defeat in the Great War. Hitler explained how he had taken the very railway carriage in which that treaty had been signed from a museum, and had it placed on the very same stretch of line in the Compiègne Forest, where he then forced the French to accept defeat and sign an armistice that would cut France in two.
Herr Hitler was very pleased with himself.
Lange was impressed. He had fought briefly in the last war, then lived through the years of degradation and spiralling inflation imposed on the German state by the victors. Dark, troubled years, swept aside now by victory over the French in just six short weeks. Honour restored. But it was after one in the morning, and Lange was desperate for a cigarette as were, he was sure, many of the others. No one would smoke in the presence of the Führer, a former smoker himself who had issued strict non-smoking instructions to uniformed police, SA and SS soldiers when seen in public, even when off duty. There was nothing worse, Lange thought, than a reformed smoker. Perhaps he would be able to slip out later for a quiet smoke in the garden.
But no
t yet. It was almost 1.35 a.m. Hitler ordered the windows thrown open and a rush of warm humid air filled the house. In the distance, above a chorus of frogs and insects, they heard the rumble of thunder. A summer storm somewhere beyond the next valley, lightning crackling in an ominous sky. And then they all heard it. Clear and true, resonating in the night air. The bugle call that heralded the end of the fighting.
Drinks were filled, glasses raised, and some of the party slipped off for that cigarette that Lange so craved. But Hitler caught his arm, dark blue eyes shining with the dew of victory. ‘A moment, please, Paul. I may call you that?’
Lange was astonished that Hitler even knew his given name. ‘Of course, Mein Führer.’
Hitler steered him towards the drinks cabinet and refilled both their glasses. Scotch for Lange, sparkling water for himself. ‘In a couple of days,’ he said, ‘I’m going to take a little tour of Paris. No gloating, no triumphal procession down the Champs Elysées. Just a tiny group of us. A very private tour. You know the city well, I’m told.’
Lange was both surprised and a little disquieted that the German leader had been discussing him with others. ‘Yes, I’ve been many times.’ He glanced up to see Speer watching them, listening intently. ‘No reputable art dealer could call himself a professional if he weren’t familiar with the galleries and sale rooms of the world’s capital of art.’
‘Good, good. So many places to go, so much to see, but so little time. The Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and of course Napoléon’s tomb at Les Invalides. Where would you recommend I begin?’
Lange drew a deep breath. This seemed like an onerous responsibility. ‘I would start with the Opéra, sir. It’s one of the most beautiful buildings to be found anywhere in the world.’
Hitler grinned, and Lange saw why this apparently insignificant little man had inspired such loyalty and following. A charisma finding extraordinary expression in a smile that seemed only for you, eyes that held you unwavering in their gaze. It made you feel special somehow. ‘Good man. That’s exactly the start I would have chosen myself. And, of course, we’ll finish with a visit to the Louvre. It’s been a lifelong ambition to become personally acquainted with the Mona Lisa. Whatever one might think of the Italians, da Vinci was undoubtedly one of the greatest artists in human
history.’
Lange felt a knot of dread anticipation tighten in his stomach and he flicked a quick glance in Speer’s direction. He could see his own foreboding mirrored in the tightness around his friend’s mouth. Clearly no one had told the Führer.
It was three days later, on June 28th, that Hitler’s little entourage landed at the tiny airfield of Le Bourget, north-east of Paris, at 5.30 in the morning. Lange and the others had been provided with field-grey army uniforms to lend this disparate group of artists and architects and sculptors a military air.
Awaiting them on the tarmac were three black sedans, including Hitler’s specially built Mercedes-Benz Tourenwagen with its three rows of seats and fold-down roof. Hitler sat up front beside his driver, SS Officer Erich Kempka, while Lange sat on the jump seats with Speer and a sculptor called Breker. Hitler’s adjutants perched in the back.
Lange gazed in wonder at the bleak, deserted suburbs of this fallen city as the little procession drove through the drab early morning light. Soon, more familiar Parisian landmarks began to grow up around them and Lange found it oddly depressing to think of it having fallen under German control. It was such an irrepressibly French city. German utilitarianism could only take the shine off it, the joy out of its joie de vivre.
Kempka took them straight to the Palais Garnier in the Place de l’Opéra, in the ninth arrondissement, where a colonel of the German Occupation Authority awaited them at the entrance. Lange knew Charles Garnier’s great neo-baroque building well, and took delight in Hitler’s pleasure at the great stairway with its excessive ornamentation, the resplendent foyer, the elegantly gilded parterre. Before they left, Hitler caught Lange’s elbow and whispered, ‘Splendid choice, Paul.’
Afterward, they drove past the Madeleine, down the Champs Elysées and on to the Trocadero, before Hitler ordered a stop at the Eiffel Tower to have photographs taken. At Napoléon’s tomb he stood, head bowed, in solemn contemplation for several minutes. One dictator’s reverence for another.
Finally, they arrived at the Louvre, with its vast Place du Carrousel, and twin galleries linking the original palace with the Tuileries. Lange and Speer had not spoken since that night at the peasant cottage, and they shared now a silent tension as Hitler strode off across the Cour Napoléon demanding to know where he could see the Mona Lisa, or La Joconde as the French called her. The colonel from the Occupation Authority struggled to keep up with him, head tilted down to one side, speaking in hushed and rapid tones. Lange and the rest followed behind apprehensively.
Suddenly Hitler stopped, his eyes darkening with fury. ‘Why was I not told?’ he shouted. And he turned towards his little coterie of artists. ‘Who knew?’
‘Knew what, Mein Führer?’ Lange thought Speer’s disingenuousness was horribly transparent.
‘The bloody French have emptied the entire museum. Ten months ago! Shipped every last piece of art off to châteaux in the Loire. In the Free French Zone. La Joconde among them.’
Lange watched the spittle of Hitler’s anger gather at the corners of his mouth. He said, ‘I imagine, sir, that they moved the art out of Paris to protect it from possible bombing. Who could have guessed that we would defeat them in six weeks with barely a fight?’
But Hitler was not to be mollified. His anger seethed in a long, dangerous silence, before he turned and marched back through his band of artists, dividing them like the Red Sea, shadows cast long across the cobbles as the sun rose above the skyline. ‘This tour is over! We will not be back to this accursed city.’ The royal we, it seemed.
And he never did return.
The old lady is silent for a long time, then, before turning to her listener. ‘Could you put a couple of logs on the fire, please? I feel the temperature falling.’
‘Of course.’ Her listener eases himself out of his armchair to take three fresh logs from the basket and throw them on to the embers. Red sparks fly up against the black, tarred stone, and the new logs crackle and spit and issue smoke into the upper reaches of the chimney.
When he sits down again, she watches the logs until the first flames lick up around them, and, satisfied that they have caught, settles back to continue her story.
It was a week later, after their return to Germany, that Lange received an unexpected summons to a meeting with Hitler at the Führer’s mountain residence, the Berghof, in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps.
He made the journey by rail from Berlin, arriving in the early afternoon at Berchtesgaden, where Hitler’s Tourenwagen was waiting for him. If Erich Kempka remembered him, he gave no sign of it, taking Lange’s overnight bag to place it in the boot before setting off on the relatively short drive up into the pine-clad foothills of the Hoher Göll mountain that straddles the border between Bavaria and the Austrian state of Salzburg.
It was hot, the summer mountain air alive with flying things, and Lange removed his hat and jacket to roll up his shirtsleeves, and enjoy the soft wind in his face. The road was narrow, and Kempka had to employ all his driving skills to manoeuvre the big Tourenwagen around the bends in it as they climbed higher and higher. On his right, Lange saw the tree-covered slopes fall away to the valley below, tiny conurbations like clusters of toy houses following its contours towards a misted horizon. The land seemed to rise up all around them in both soft and jagged peaks.
Ever since receiving his invitation to the Berghof – a private messenger had arrived at his door with an envelope bearing a seal of the state, a handwritten note from the Führer within – Lange had experienced a gradual tightening of the muscles of his stomach. Increasing in sev
erity now to a vice-like cramp. You wouldn’t have known it to look at him, but his mouth was desert-dry and his heart rate almost off the scale. He had no idea what Herr Hitler could possibly want with him, but he feared the worst. Especially after the debacle at the Louvre.
Why had nobody warned the Führer in advance? No doubt the evacuation of the Louvre would have been well documented by German intelligence in advance of the invasion of Western Europe, but perhaps it was judged that Hitler had more pressing matters on his mind. The invasion of Poland, the declaration of war by Great Britain, the sabre-rattling of the Russians. Art seemed like such a low priority. And yet the Nazis placed so much store by it, trading in the international marketplace to augment their private collections, as if its civilising influence could somehow mitigate their inherent barbarity.
Finally, they turned off on to an even narrower private road and pulled in at a stone gatehouse beneath a shallow, tiled roof where a uniformed guard checked their papers. Hitler’s chalet perched proud on the rise above them, and Kempka only just made the hairpin before the final climb to the foot of the steps leading up to Hitler’s front door.
Lange slipped his jacket back on, donned his hat and ran quickly up the stone steps to a flagged terrace where Hitler stood waiting to greet him. Each raised his palm in the Nazi salute before Hitler extended his hand to shake Lange’s. ‘Glad you could make it, Paul. Welcome to my little retreat.’
Lange glanced up at the impressive building, with its terraces and balconies, and thought it anything but little. And acceptance of Hitler’s invitation to visit was not, he knew, a matter in which he’d had any choice. ‘It’s my pleasure, sir.’
Despite the temperature, Hitler was wearing a brown suit with a stiffly pressed white shirt and a blue tie. His complexion was ruddy, and his mood a great deal more convivial than when they had last met. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, and led Lange into the cool of the house. The walls of the entrance hall were hung with paintings, some of which Lange recognised with surprise. Portraits of Hindenburg, and Frederick the Great, and Bismarck. A Canaletto reproduction. There were numerous family portraits. ‘My niece,’ Hitler said. And pointing to another, ‘My mother.’ This, a muddy painting illuminated only by a pale, sombre face and a white ruff. Either her hair was cut short, or pulled back from her face and tied behind her head. But Lange was struck by the family resemblance.