‘The child’s mother,’ said Kohler, watching her closely.
‘Yes.’ Was the look in his eyes always so empty? she wondered. Not cold or brutal – he was not like any other Gestapo agent Victor had ever come across – but Herr Kohler was to be watched all the same. ‘Don’t misgauge either of those two,’ he had warned her only this afternoon. ‘Keep your wits about you at all times. I’ll do what I can.’
Poor Victor, he had so many, many worries not the least of which was herself.
‘Inspectors,’ she would give them a tight grin, ‘I had best check the stew. Angélique does like to eat. Let us hope the trust I have in her good sense has not been misplaced.’
‘Mein Gott, Louis, she’s one hell of a woman,’ said Kohler when she had left them alone. Nearly always restless, he got up to study the painting. No connoisseur of art, but of female flesh, he ran his eyes appreciatively over Adèle Charbonneau’s slender figure. Then he took to studying the new wife. The artist had even captured the dark burnished copper hues in her hair. Her tummy was tucked in, her long legs were crossed. The hands were demurely clasped above the right knee. Slender … a glimpse of a nice, plump breast … a good back, lovely neck and ears … She was sitting on her towel with her back to the sun, this woman the Préfet said was being fucked against her will by the Captain.
Kohler breathed in deeply. The eyes were dark, the nose was prominent … It was all shit the Nazis spouted but one had to ask or else suffer the consequences. ‘She’s not Jewish is she, Louis?’
Hermann had spoken in German but hadn’t turned from the painting. A sigh would be best. ‘We’re in Brittany, idiot. The Far Right, yes? The Church here calls the shots and if it doesn’t, the people do. They would have got rid of her long ago.’
‘I was only asking. Hey, your German’s pretty good. I’m pleased you haven’t lost it.’
‘Nor have I, Inspector,’ she said, causing poor Hermann to turn suddenly from the painting and self-consciously try to grin and shrug off his comment.
‘You speak it well,’ he said, giving her that same empty look.
‘It was a part of my education. Adèle and I both spoke it and both of us visited Vienna and your country too, several times in the thirties when Victor was on tour.’
Touché, was that it? wondered St-Cyr. Had she really had sex with the Captain against her will or even with it?
‘How’s the stew?’ asked Hermann and gave her such an unnervingly boyish grin, she had to grin in reply.
‘Fine. Angélique is becoming a first-class chef. It’s her stew, not mine. If you like, we could spare a little. Please, she wants you to join us. She insists. We don’t often have visitors. It does get very lonely.’
‘We haven’t any ration tickets to leave you,’ cautioned St-Cyr.
‘That doesn’t matter. The rabbit wasn’t living in hopes of a ticket and neither were the two pigeons. They are sacrifices on her altar of necessity and it was she who decided to end their simple lives. There’s bread as well and honey or jam for dessert. We’ll not wait for her father. Please don’t mention him just now. Maybe later you can ask her whatever it is you need to know.’
‘And of yourself, madame,’ he hazarded.
‘Of course. Whatever you need I will give but later, yes? Let us try to make things as they were before this lousy war. She’s always been with adults. Tell us about Paris and what it’s like now. Tell us about your work. Angélique is secretly itching to ask. Please don’t disappoint her but be truthful. Lies instantly put her off. One can never lie to her. She is like truth in crystal, captured in a treasured paperweight.’
The copper pots and pans were hanging above the old black iron stove among the ropes of onions and garlic. The dishwater was warm but there was no soap. Instead, there was fine sand for the difficult spots, sphagnum moss for the others. It had been the child’s turn to do the washing-up but Angélique had let him wash since he would not know where things went and ‘everything must be in its rightful place,’ she had said. ‘Place is so important.’
Had it been a warning of things to come?
Harsh words had obviously been spoken in the kitchen just before supper. Because of these words, the child had insisted Hermann and himself stay to eat. Intuitively she had known that if she could not convince them one way, she could try another.
She was clever, and she was playing a very dangerous, very adult game, but also she was betraying that very trust the stepmother had placed in her.
Merde, what were they to make of it? he wondered. ‘When will your father return?’ he asked. The supper had been quite pleasant. After an initial awkwardness, the daughter and the stepmother had become quite animated – oh for sure the one had accused the other of murder but there had been laughter, and it had been easy to see that they had once got on fabulously.
‘Papa will come when he feels he can do no more. Sometimes, if the digging is good, he stays away for days. He digs all over, often in the most unsuspected of places.’
Ah Nom de Dieu, child, go carefully for your stepmother’s sake, he begged her silently but she would have none of it.
‘There is a map in his study. That is where he keeps his things, his discoveries. Well, some of them. Others are in the barn with the bicycles.’
And now, he thought, you are making me feel very guilty at questioning you because, my dear Angélique, you need your stepmother desperately.
St-Cyr squeezed the handful of sphagnum and let the water drain away before wiping the sink clean. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘It even imparts a mild soapiness.’
‘It’s my invention. She didn’t want to use it at first but now she does. She even uses it as a sponge when she has her bath. I have to do her back!’
I’ll hate myself if it was your father who killed that shopkeeper, he said to himself. Is it that you are so terrified of this, Angélique, you would blame the one person who loves you more than all others?
‘Does your father no longer play the piano?’ he asked quite pleasantly.
She shook her head. ‘He’s too busy. Besides, where are the concert halls in a place like this? Who would come to listen? He won’t play for the Boches. He refuses absolutely though the Captain has asked him many times.’
‘The critics were very harsh with him after his last concert in Paris. I myself was there. He was magnificent.’
‘You should hear him play Chopin then. You would see that he is not just magnificent but a genius!’
‘He cuts his hands sometimes?’
‘Who told you this?’ she asked suspiciously. Her frown was fierce.
‘Please just answer the question.’
She had told him. Therefore it would be wise to give him the shrug of indifference and then lead him like a dog to his breakfast. ‘Sometimes, yes, but it is not so much, though once she had to perform the surgery and stitch his palm.’
Go easy, he warned himself as he dried his hands. ‘And when was that?’
He was like a mush of wet clay in her fingers but she would not make it so greasy for him after all. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. Maybe it was a long time ago. Yes. Yes, it was last summer. She cried. She held his hand as if it was made of ancient glass. She could hardly keep the needle still. I had to help her. It was an interesting operation. The result was good.’
‘Why did she cry?’
We were getting near the breakfast now, Monsieur le Détective. ‘She said he was ruining his hands for the silliest of reasons and that he mustn’t do it no matter the cost, that Adèle – my mother – would be greatly troubled if she knew.’
‘And your father, Angélique,’ he asked gently, ‘what did he do?’
‘Gazed at her with his wounded eyes and said, “I loved you.”’
Oh-oh … ‘It was only the other day, wasn’t it? The day of the murder.’
‘Yes. Now come and I will show you his study and his map so that you will have the proof of the location. Later we can examine her bicycle tyres. The
re is still some of the white clay caught among the treads.’
Hermann, he silently pleaded, why did you have to choose to interview the woman? Why could you not have chosen the child?
Hélène Charbonneau sat forward in her chair with arms resting on her knees and hands clasped before her as she stared at the fire. Etched into her face there was that look of deep intelligence but also a sensuality Kohler found disturbing. Kaestner must be in love with the woman but what of herself? he asked. She looked so sad.
He offered a cigarette but she absently shook her head, didn’t even turn to notice the proffered package. ‘It’s something I never took up. Like too much of the sun, tobacco causes wrinkles. Adèle and I both agreed the sun was far more valuable and that, if we had to take our chances in life’s little lotteries, we would choose it.’
The soft cream cashmere throw was wrapped loosely about her neck and worn over the left shoulder. The ribbed blue-grey cardigan suited, though it had been twice mended at the elbows and had mismatched buttons. The dark green skirt didn’t match a thing, nor did the rose-coloured woollen knee socks. The low-heeled brown leather shoes had been mended with fishing line, he thought.
Hard times had cut into everything but then even the women in Paris were beginning not to care. Were they all giving up? he wondered. Everyone was tired of the Occupation, even some of the Occupiers.
‘You must miss her terribly,’ he said, betraying an unexpected sensitivity in one who looked so like a storm-trooper even in a shabby grey business suit. The duelling scar down the left cheek from eye to chin was at odds with the suit – how had he really got that thing? she wondered. Victor hadn’t told her of it.
‘I miss her, yes, of course,’ she said, unsettled by his look, for it gave no hint as to where his comment might lead. But would it hurt to tell him how it really was? He ought to know. ‘I held her in my arms on the road beside the car. The sun was very bright. It was such a beautifully clear day. Clothes, suitcases, wagons and baby carriages were all piled high with things. There were dead and wounded horses, smashed-up cars, yes, because we had money then but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. No one stood around. Oh mon Dieu no. Just the dead and us and the screams of those poor horses. Blood all over my hands and front. Her blood. She’d been hit in the chest. Those who still lived, hid along the roadside in the ditches or out in the fields if they could find a place, which wasn’t likely. Your people didn’t just machine-gun the road, Inspector.’
Was bitterness her first line of defence? he wondered. It very nearly got to him. He wanted to stand up and tell her he hadn’t been there, that if it had been up to him, there wouldn’t have been a war. He’d seen it all before, had seen far too much of it.
‘The Messerschmitts came over again, a second pass. Yes, that’s the way it was, Inspector. Like angry wasps. Adèle and I watched them. Yvon yelled at me to leave her but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. Not then, not at any time. Bullets peppered the road and smashed into the car and things all round us. I screamed – I know I did. I cringed and tried to shield her and only when the fighters had left, did I realize she had already been dead for some time.’
‘The child?’ he asked.
‘She still has nightmares.’
What else did you expect? – he could see this in the look she gave him.
‘Does she have friends of her own age?’ he asked.
Herr Kohler was a father with two sons at Stalingrad. Victor had said this might be used to distract him. He would want to know how the boys were, but she wouldn’t ask. It would not be right of her to take advantage of another’s worry.
‘I teach her, Inspector. I won’t have her going to the local school and coming home with head lice and whooping cough or some such thing. It’s selfish of me, of course, but she’s also far too intelligent for them. There is …’ She paused to look again into the fire. ‘… the language barrier as well. Since the Occupation, the Bretons here in the Morbihan have been returning to their roots. It’s something your people encourage so as to divide them from the rest of France and set them at our throats.’
She was really bitter but not without good reason. ‘How is it you can entertain the Captain? We know you’ve been seeing him.’
Ah no. Had Victor told them or had Johann? ‘The Captain …’ She must try to flash a sad smile but do so to the fire since the Inspector Kohler was concentrating so hard on her. ‘He comes here, yes, and we let him do so under duress. He’s of the Occupier, isn’t that so, Inspector? Oh mon Dieu, how could I ever forget what you … you people did to us, to me, to Adèle and, yes, to poor Yvon who is still so broken-hearted he cannot get her out of his mind and we have yet to make love?’
There, that ought to shut him up. She would shrug it off. She would say, ‘A meal, a talk, a few hours about books, music, films we might have seen … What harm is there in that? So what if we speak German and it makes Herr Kaestner feel like he is at home? So what if it’s a lie for me? I do so only because he asks. The Captain brings us food, Inspector. Food the child needs.’
‘And the dolls?’
‘You’ve seen them?’
Why was she alarmed? ‘Yes. The one of your stepdaughter – the head. Louis has seen others in the shop.’
‘Dolls,’ she said hollowly and felt so helpless. How could she begin to tell anyone what it had really been like for her?
I mustn’t, she said to herself, but Angélique will tell them. Angélique will make certain they know everything.
In the darkened study there were baby spiders in a clear glass fruit sealer and when the torch was pointed at them, they threw their tiny shadows on the map.
Forced to watch the game of silhouettes terribles, the detective took in short, sharp breaths of impatience and interest, ah yes.
‘There,’ she said, a sigh. ‘I told you so. There are megaliths at the clay pits. The Ancients sometimes, but not always, cremated their dead in pits at the base of these standing stones, then buried the bones with pots and tools and occasionally bits of jewellery. My father was digging right near the clay pits on the day of the murder. She knew he would be working there.’
The bicycle tracks … the shed, the little bits of clay she had spoken of. Had the Captain been aware he wasn’t alone? Had the watchman seen the father too?
‘Does your father always let you and your stepmother know where he will be working?’ he asked.
She could hear the hesitation in his voice. Were detectives always so cautious? ‘This time he did. You see, the Captain sent us a message from Paris that he would be returning on New Year’s Day and would drop in after he had been to the pits.’
‘When was this message delivered?’
‘On the 30th of December but you should ask first who delivered it, I think.’
She was making him feel completely out of his depth. ‘Very well, who was it?’
‘The Obersteuermann, Herr Baumann. Both my father and that … that woman he has married were present. Both read the note and thanked Herr Baumann. He had a cup of the acorn coffee and two of my biscuits, the flat ones with the sprinklings of crushed walnuts and watered honey on top.’
‘They’d be very tasty.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, they were. And now, if you like, I will switch on the overhead lights.’
He touched her arm. ‘A moment, please, Mademoiselle Charbonneau. I wish to experience the study as you have first introduced me to it.’
The room, with heavy dark beams across its ceiling, occupied perhaps more than half the ground floor of the oldest part of the house. As in the living-room, there was a massive stone fireplace with granite mantelpiece, but no fire. On either side of this, and stretching into darkness, there were superbly carved Breton armoires and cabinets, tables and shelves – everywhere he looked there was both the ordered and disordered pilings of antiquity.
‘It was once the billiards room,’ she said, swinging the torch round. ‘That is the table over there under all those things from the pa
ssage graves. The entrances are where the good finds are sometimes made. The Ancients blocked up the entrances to seal their dead in and stop them from coming out at night, I think, and in the blockages there are many things of value and broken things as well. A kind of garbage heap. A midden perhaps. Yes, it must have been like that,’ she nodded severely. ‘After working hard all day they would eat their supper and then throw the oyster shells and pig bones in too.’
There were shards of terracotta with simple decorations of dots in parallel lines or slanting dash strokes, zigzags occasionally and even on one reassembled piece, a swastika among its intricate designs.
Knives, spear-points and arrowheads of flint, copper and bronze lay with ceremonial axeheads of polished stone, all scattered in little collections among the shards – perhaps two thousand years of prehistory on the forgotten green baize of a late nineteenth-century billiard table.
‘There are a few gold coins and some of silver,’ she hazarded softly. ‘Coins are very rare but those I like best all have the horse and chariot racing madly on the back, with the driver of course. The Armoricans fought naked, Chief Inspector, and were taken as slaves that way to Rome, or had the dagger plunged by themselves straight down into their hearts from the base of the throat. Then their heads were cut off.’
They did not always fight naked – this much he did know, but no matter. ‘The Veneti,’ he managed. ‘The Celts and the last great battle in Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. A … a naval battle, I believe. Off the coast of the Morbihan in …’
‘In 56 BC, in the Bay of Quiberon. Caesar is said to have watched from Port-Navalo but that’s impossible. It simply does not agree with the geography of the times. The sea was not so close and only came in to flood the Gulf of Morbihan well after the event. At least, that is what the experts say. Perhaps careful readings of Caesar’s Gallic War might bear this out, or the Greek historian and geographer Strabo’s Geography. They are both in languages I cannot yet read, you understand, but my father has copies, as he has of most other things.’
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