Murder in Lascaux

by Betsy Draine

  “My father wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes as many Frenchmen did during that period, and maybe he did some things I would rather not know about. But he was determined not to let the war interrupt his research, and that’s where the authorities had influence over him. Anders Voellmer especially, too much influence, I admit.”

  There was a lot more to be said on this score, but I held back. Right now I wanted to coax additional information from Marc, not drive him away. “What was their research about? Do you know?”

  “Ancient symbolism, the symbolism of prehistoric cave art, to be specific.”

  “Such as the tableau of the bird beside the falling man in Lascaux?”

  “Precisely. My father spent a lot of time trying to analyze those images.”

  “And did he reach any conclusions?” Toby asked.

  “Only that the drawings were made to illustrate a story, a myth, if you want to use that term—a myth that was as important to the Cro-Magnons as the stories in the Bible are to us. The difficulty of knowing what the meaning was is that we have no other references to the story except for the drawings. My father had a theory, though. It’s too bad he never lived to complete his work. Did I tell you I have kept all his notes and papers? Well, I have them, and one day I will complete his work and restore his reputation.”

  It would take more than a clever theory to do that. But I pressed on. “Are you willing to share his ideas with us?”

  “There’s no reason not to, now. His point was that images of birds appear very rarely in prehistoric art. But when they do appear, they are always painted in an abstract style, in the simplest of outlines without much detail, whereas all the other animals are drawn as realistically as possible. Why? He thought the answer must be that the bird was treated as a special creature, different from all the others, more sacred perhaps.”

  “But isn’t that true as well for the human figures in cave art?” I remembered that the falling man in Lascaux was presented as a stick figure without any suggestion of volume or dimensions.

  “That’s so,” replied Marc. “And that’s what my father noticed, too. So in the mind of the cave artists there must have been a special connection between birds and human beings, but what was it? As an anthropologist, my father knew a lot about comparative religions. In one of his papers, he argued that in almost every culture around the world, birds are associated with gods or spirits. It’s a natural association. Birds fly in the air, they inhabit the sky, and that’s where the spirits live. So the bird becomes a symbol of the soul.

  “That was one of his insights. Another was his recognition that for the Cro-Magnons, a human being wasn’t just another animal but a special being with a soul. And that’s why humans and birds are linked in cave art and why they are depicted differently from other animals. At least, that was his theory. But if I can ever prove him right, the world will have to recognize that my father was the first to show that the Cro-Magnons believed in the soul and that their art wasn’t merely about hunting. It was essentially religious.”

  “So you think the bird in Lascaux symbolizes the soul of the dying man?” asked Toby.

  “I do,” replied Marc.

  “It’s an interesting theory,” I said, “but how does Anders Voellmer fit into the picture?”

  “The Cathar Dove,” Marc answered flatly. “Another bird image meant to represent the soul, but this time the Holy Spirit in the Middle Ages. Voellmer convinced himself Périgord was somehow endowed with mystical properties that inspired both the Cro-Magnons and the Cathars to create similar images in their art and religion. But that wasn’t enough for Voellmer. On top of that, he came to believe the dove was associated with the Holy Grail. For him, the Grail was a code word for a sacred work of art, never named, that was entrusted to the Cathars until such time as humanity could rediscover its ancient wisdom and realize its potential. Possessing the sacred work of art would confer almost supernatural powers on those who could claim it.”

  “Namely, the Nazis?” Toby asked with irony in his voice.

  “Of course. That’s why Himmler was interested. And just what was this mystical object according to Voellmer, and where did he think it was hidden?”

  “I think I can guess the answer,” responded Toby. “It was hidden in the cave of Cazelle.”

  “Yes. Lascaux and Cazelle, two caves that shared a common destiny. In Lascaux, Voellmer saw a bird next to a falling man, predicting, he thought, the end of the Cro-Magnons, who were supposed to be the first Aryans. In Cazelle he saw a bird perched atop a pedestal ready to soar, foretelling the glory of the renewed Aryan race! Well, that’s what Voellmer made of it, anyway; that’s not what my father thought. When Voellmer saw the statue of the dove, the fool actually thought he had found the Holy Grail. And he dragged my father down with him, discrediting a theory that otherwise might have made sense.”

  “A lot of things are beginning to make sense,” said Toby. “So you do know about the statue underneath the Cazelle chapel. That’s what Voellmer was sketching, isn’t it? He was sending pictures of it back to Himmler.”

  “I’ve never seen the dove in person, but yes. I know about the statue from my father’s notes and from what my uncle has told me. Only members of Guillaume’s cult are allowed inside the cave, and joining up would have been too high a price for me to pay. Besides, as I’ve told you, I don’t buy the parallels between the cave artists and the Cathars. All that was Voellmer’s idea. What I want to do is pursue my father’s study of Cro-Magnon bird imagery. I think I can do that without bothering about the Holy Grail.”

  I had been mulling things over while listening to Marc’s description of his father’s theory and the crackpot views of Anders Voellmer. “Marc, how much do you think Marianne knew about the interest taken by the Nazis in the Cathar statue?”

  “She must have been aware of it.”

  “What about Guillaume?”

  “Of course, what she knew, he knew.”

  I now had the last piece of the puzzle, and it meant Daglan was wrong. “The inspector told us Marianne left the bird by the corpse to throw the police off her trail, to send them looking into Malbert’s old cases rather than investigating the family. But the real reason was that she was leaving a message for Guillaume! Who else would understand the connection between the Lascaux bird and the Cathar Dove? She was telling him someone who knew the Cathar secrets had taken care of Malbert and stopped him from violating the shrine.”

  “And the garrote was another part of the message,” added Toby. “Didn’t you tell me it was a method of execution used against the Cathars?”

  “That’s right.”

  Toby frowned. “So that means Guillaume knew all along that someone from his cult or his family had killed Malbert.”

  “They all knew,” I said, “including the old baron.”

  We said our goodbyes and returned to our room to pack. I took Jenny Marie’s notebook out of my drawer and, after a moment’s silent debate, brought it to the dining room to give to Madame Martin. Finding she wasn’t there, I wrote a note saying that since the notebook had last been in her mother’s hands, it seemed right to entrust it to her. I guessed she would give it to Guillaume, but in my mind’s eye I pictured her returning it to the offering box in the chapel where her mother had placed it when Jenny Marie died. I left the note and the notebook in the center of the table where Marianne had served us our first meal together.

  On our way out the gates of the grounds, I asked Toby to make a stop. I wanted to visit the ancient church on the opposite hill. Toby drove our little car up the winding dirt drive and then joined me in walking round to the back of the building, where the graveyard lay. Rows of headstones fell away, down the sloping hill behind the church. Any visitor to those rows had a magnificent view of the two châteaux, Cazelle and Beynac, and the Dordogne River sparkling beneath them. I suspected, though, that what I sought would lie in the other direction, at the top of the hill. That’s where we found it, built right against a chur
ch buttress: a small mausoleum marked “Cazelle.”

  There was no door, no latch, to deter anyone who might wish to enter the marble enclosure. Inside, resting against the mossy walls were four stone caskets carved with flowers, the forms of which were now worn down. Near the entrance was a metal sign, of modern vintage, listing family members placed here since the beginning of the nineteenth century. One was Jenny Marie Cazelle, 1870–1944.

  “Some day,” I said, “Marianne and Guillaume will rest here, alongside their ancestors. Well, with most of them. Did you notice, there’s no entry for Jenny Marie’s brother, Antoine?”

  “They didn’t have a body to bury. It’s too bad the one hero in the family won’t be remembered.”

  “I’m going to try to see to it that he is remembered. Jenny Marie’s story isn’t complete without Antoine. She was devoted to her brother, and he gave his life trying to help her in a good cause. The essay I want to write won’t be just about her art. It will be about her relationship to her brother and to this place.”

  Toby took my hand. “Good. That’s a story worth telling. You know, it’s odd, when you stop to think about it.”

  “What?”

  “This brother and sister thing. They’re awfully close in this family. Look at Guillaume and Marianne. Maybe Antoine sacrificed his life for his sister, but Marianne killed for her brother. That’s way too close, if you ask me.”

  It was true. Each woman lost a lover, and like a homing pigeon, flew back to the family for comfort. Then as the years passed, each grew closer to her brother. In Jenny Marie’s case, the relationship was noble, but in Marianne’s case it led to murder.

  Could I kill for my brother or sister? Would I sacrifice my life? I found it hard to think along those lines. Life in my family was fraught enough, but I was thankful it wasn’t lived at that pitch.

  A low late afternoon sun spread its orange rays across the hills. As we headed toward Sarlat to spend the night, I was struck, not for the first time, by the beauty of this gentle valley—its tranquil river, golden cliffs, the lush greenery of its fields—and by the violence of its inhabitants. Not only Marianne de Cazelle. I thought of the Cro-Magnons, who lived here thousands of years ago and created art but who spent their brutish existence battling predators. I thought of the Cathars, whose quest for perfection was crushed by a pitiless crusade that wiped them out. I thought of Jenny Marie’s landscapes and of her lover lying dead on a battlefield of the Great War. I thought of villages burned to the ground in 1944 and of a Nazi scholar’s obsession with a statue of unearthly grace. I pondered why blood and beauty are so often expressed in tandem.

  We humans are a mysterious breed.

  Then I recalled the road sign that had greeted us upon entering the Dordogne, and I thought how fitting its words were, after all. Bienvenue au pays d’homme.

  “Welcome to the home of man.”

  Authors’ Note

  At this writing, Lascaux remains completely closed to the public for reasons of conservation, but some years ago, we had the privilege of visiting the authentic cave when five people a day were allowed in. Our guide was Jacques Marsal, who as a boy had helped discover Lascaux. He was a charming and urbane man, then in his sixties, and the tour he provided was memorable. He bears no resemblance to our fictional guide, who is purely imaginary, as are the other characters in this novel.

  We wish to thank our editor at the University of Wisconsin Press, Raphael Kadushin, for his steadfast support and helpful suggestions during various stages of this manuscript. His guidance was essential, though any remaining shortcomings are our own. Thanks to Aaron Elkins, our favorite mystery writer, for his encouragement and generosity; to Owen Pell for information on missing art during the Holocaust; to Lynn Miller for revision suggestions; to Maria Duha, Shaina Robbins, and Barb Flaherty for background information; and to friends and relatives for good wishes and support.

  For historical background, we gratefully acknowledge the usefulness of the following sources: Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (New York: Basic Books, 1997); Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Heather Pringle, The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust (New York: Hyperion, 2006); Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasure in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Vintage, 1995); Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (New York: Walker Company, 2000); Otto Rahn, Crusade against the Grail: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the Church of Rome, trans. Christopher Jones (1933; reprint, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2006); Gabriel Weisberg and Jane R. Becker, eds., Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999).

  A final note: although Lascaux is closed to tourists, a number of other caves in the Dordogne containing Cro-Magnon art remain open. Among these are Bara-Bahau, Bernifal, Les Combarelles, Commarque, Font-de-Gaume, La Mouthe, and Rouffignac, which we describe in the novel. Lascaux II (the replica) is worth seeing, as well, but nothing compares with visiting one of the original caves. Our memories of such visits led to the writing of this book.

  Here’s a preview of The Body in Bodega Bay, the next book in the Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler Mystery series.

  1

  I’LL BE DAMNED. There’s a body on the boat.” We were sitting in The Tides having crab cakes for lunch when the news came in over Captain Andy’s CB radio. He relayed the information from the table next to us. Andy’s a commercial fisherman who works out of Bodega Bay. His mooring is opposite our house.

  “That,” said Toby, “explains the commotion in the harbor.”

  For months, a sailboat had been wedged in shallow water out by the mudflats, a good distance from either shore. From our dockside table we could see a launch make its way to the grounded boat. It stopped about fifty yards short of the sailboat, and two men emerged. They wore the familiar brown uniform of the Sonoma County sheriffs, but they had on waders—the right footgear for walking the muddy distance to the boat.

  The gossip in town was that the old boat, a decrepit nineteen-footer with a single mast, belonged to a bankrupt real-estate speculator from the city. Around here that means San Francisco. For a very long time, he hadn’t paid his mooring fees, and he hadn’t been seen, either. One night in a storm, his boat broke free and was driven by wind into the shallows of the harbor, where it sank into the mud and tilted to one side. Since then, no one had been willing to pay for the derelict’s removal, so there it has remained.

  “Do they know who it is?” asked Toby, as we both stood to get a better look. Everyone in The Tides was pushing toward the windows, which wrap around the restaurant on three sides, with views over the water.

  “Naw. But it isn’t an accident—the guy was stabbed,” Andy replied, pushing back his chair and joining us at the window. “It’s a hell of a thing to happen in Bodega Bay.”

  Bodega Bay (population 950) is just sixty miles north of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast Highway, better known as Highway 1. We think it’s one of the prettiest sites on the coast. True, it straddles the San Andreas Fault, but that didn’t stop us from buying a small house overlooking the marina.

  My name is Nora Barnes. I teach art history at Sonoma College in Santa Rosa, a short commute from the bay. My husband, Toby Sandler, runs an art and antiques gallery in Duncans Mills, which is up the coast and a few miles inland on Highway 116. We chose Bodega Bay because it’s on the water, rural, about equidistant from our jobs, almost affordable by California standards, and—until now—peaceful. Nothing much has happened here since 1962, when Alfred Hitchcock came to town to film The Birds. Framed photos of the actors pass for décor at The Tides, where some of the scenes were shot, though the restaurant is a reconstruction of the original, which burned down after the movie was made. These days our little village is home to a dwindling fishin
g fleet, a swanky golf course, a few restaurants and motels, and us.

  “A hell of a thing,” repeated Andy.

  We could hear sirens wailing outside, as sheriffs’ cars veered into the parking lot. The morning had been foggy, but the sky had cleared by eleven and now the sun glinted on the water as we peered out toward the harbor. Officers were walking onto the wharf behind the restaurant. One was gesturing toward the boat. Another was talking into some device in his hand as a small crowd began to gather, mainly tourists who had come up from the city for the weekend.

  “They’re waiting for the deputy sheriff before they can bring the body out,” reported Andy, who was monitoring communications on the police band. That would be Dan Ellis. Dan is married to my friend Colleen, and both are members of our Gourmet Club, four couples who meet for dinner every other month. Dan is Bodega Bay’s resident deputy, attached to the sheriff ’s office in Santa Rosa.

  Maybe it was telepathy, but no sooner did I think of Dan than Toby’s cell phone rang. He put it on speaker so I could hear.

  “Toby? It’s Dan. Where are you right now?”

  “We’re at The Tides watching what’s going on in the harbor. Your men are all over that boat that’s been stuck in the flats. What’s it about?”

  “Stay right there. I just turned onto Highway 1. I’ll be there in a minute. I may need you.”

  “Need me for what?”

  “Just wait for me at the entrance.” He rang off.

  “He’s on his way,” said Toby.

  “Yeah, I heard, but what’s it got to do with you?”

  “I don’t know, but he sounded worried.”

  Andy complained, “That’s it. It’s gone dead on me.” He scowled at the CB in disgust. Reception is weak on this stretch of the coast. Neither radios nor cell phones can be counted on, especially after dark, in the fog, or when there’s cloud cover. It’s a pain.