Mopping his brow, the Sûreté’s little Frog dropped his suit jacket onto a slab of rock and took time out to use his necktie as a bandanna. There, that is better. Now you also.’
They continued on and up beneath the soaring of the honey buzzard, two fly specks in a bleached and broken land to which scattered scrub, a maquis of sorts, gave absolutely no comfort. Had they the vision of the hawk, they would have seen a well-treed plateau on high with an oak and chestnut forest and a stream that flowed to the head of a once much larger valley before leaping off its limestone cap to fall in a spray that glistened in the sunlight. They would have seen the railway line, a little to the south of them as it followed the flats along the north bank of the Dordogne. They would have seen that line turn to the north-west towards Sarlat. There was a road and a viaduct, a railway overpass. They had come in from the west. The woman had come in from the east, gathering her mushrooms until, at last, she had reached the valley and gone up it to the waterfall.
‘Louis, I’m going to have a bathe when we get back down there.’
‘Me also, but first, a moment, please, Hermann, for the quiet contemplation of what is now before us.’
The cave entrance was perhaps four metres wide by two in height but it had, originally, been much larger. In medieval times the cave could quite possibly have been used by shepherds to pen their flocks at night. More recently the layered deposits at its entrance, a hard breccia of broken bones, flints, sand, and rocky debris that had fallen from the roof, had been excavated. These dull reddish to pale yellowish deposits — some with sandy layers and some more bouldery — had a depth of about three metres. Down through the ages rubbish had been piled up at the cave mouth. These deposits had been cut into platform benches about a metre and a half high and perhaps three metres in depth and two in width. A trench ran through them to the darker recesses of the cave.
Spoil from the excavations had been thrown to the right and now lay behind a low retaining wall of dry-stone flags that extended out from the cave mouth and a little along that side of the valley. Rusting sardine cans, some so riddled with holes they must have been left before that other war, lay with shattered bits of wine bottle, nails and other trash. ‘Two-legged badgers,’ commented the Sûreté tartly. ‘Artefact plunderers. Why can’t people show respect and leave places like this to be studied? A prehistorian dug this excavation, Hermann, but that was years ago. They have even pulled the nails he used to mark the layers!’
Across a cleared span of the original cave floor, there was a ladder leaning against the innermost bench. The floor was littered with broken black flints, yellowish to reddish sand, ashes both grey and black, rock from the roof above, and broken, charred animal bones. Bones everywhere.
In one instant, standing at the entrance, how much history could they see? ‘Perhaps a hundred thousand years, Hermann. Perhaps more. From deep within the Pleistocene Ice Age to the present, from the severe cold of a world gripped by continental glaciation whose ice-front lay to the north near London, Rotterdam, Köln and elsewhere through countless cycles of cold and warm, the not-so-cold and not-so-warm, to what we have today. But always there was life here and a place to live. Sometimes permanently frozen ground and tundra vegetation, sometimes fir forests, grasslands or deciduous trees. Many of the flints show signs of having been worked. The bones … the bones are from animals some of which no longer roam these parts or, in some cases, even exist.’
Kohler stepped into the shade and at once the coolness of the cave beckoned. ‘A broken femur, Louis.’
Wolf, cave bear, Merck’s rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, reindeer and wild boar came quickly to mind, a smattering from across the ages.
‘A deer, I think. It’s a bit charred,’ said Kohler.
‘The red deer, a preferred food, as was the horse of those days, though it looked more like the Mongolian horse of the present or a large and shaggy pony.’ Reverently the Sûreté took it from him and ran a finger over its length. ‘Our victim,’ he said, and Kohler could detect the sadness in his partner’s voice. ‘These three, parallel incisions just above the knuckle.’ He held the bone upright with the knuckle down. ‘These are the marks made by a stone chopper as the meat was removed.’
Oh-oh. ‘Was she butchered that way?’
Yes, I think so.’
‘The bone was smashed after a brief roasting, Louis, and … and the marrow sucked out.’
‘But when? Thirty thousand years ago, or one hundred thousand?’
It was only when they began to examine the walls of the innermost benches that they saw that some layers contained worked flints, ashes and bones, while others contained none of these but were of sand that had been blown or washed in or debris that had fallen from the roof of the cave. All of the layers had been cemented by lime that had been deposited from percolating groundwaters.
Beyond the benches, the floor of the cave remained littered with broken bones, flints, ashes, sand and bits of stone but this litter was shallow and lessened as the floor extended into deeper darkness. Lights would be needed to probe it further. Lights and ropes.
The roof was perhaps three or, in places, even four metres high, the walls curved outwards and perhaps ten metres apart. A cave of long but not always continuous habitation then, thought St-Cyr, one that would have formed the home base for several people at a time. Neanderthals first and then, more recently, Cro-Magnons.
They shared a cigarette as they stood in the cool darkness looking out towards the entrance. They began, as they so often did in such instances, a rapid exchange of thoughts. ‘Madame Fillioux leaves Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne by train, Hermann, perhaps four or five days ago. Let us give putrefaction its chance but concede that the heat of summer would have speeded things up.’
‘She gets off at a siding, dressed in everyday clothes and with stout walking shoes, her coat, picnic hamper and basket in hand. She must have been seen by several people yet no one has thought to mention this nor has anyone reported her missing.’
‘Madame Fillioux then walks along the tracks following the departing train but soon turns into the woods and begins to climb. She knows her way — she has done this before many times.’
‘She must have, mustn’t she?’ The cigarette was passed back.
‘Yes, yes, of course. She collects mushrooms, becomes completely absorbed in the task — ah, some edible morels are deep in the refuse of a rotting stump.’
‘Fly agaric and death cap go into the collecting bag. She feels a sense of what, Louis? Relief at finding them — she’d been so worried there wouldn’t be any — guilt, fear, you tell me.’
St-Cyr inhaled deeply. ‘It’s too early for such things. She reaches the valley, had stopped collecting at some point distant from it.’
‘She lays things out for the picnic, has a bathe and puts on the dress.’
‘And the pearls. Pearls that are really quite valuable but were ignored by her killer. Hey, it’s your turn with the cigarette. Don’t take all of it.’
‘I won’t. You can trust me. She crosses the stream and follows it downstream a little, Louis, then goes into the woods, leaving the valley, climbing its gentler slope. She passes through the woods and up a little hill, then down into a shallow hollow and through the forest to another hill. There are trees and underbrush all the way until she comes at last to that glade.’
‘To find her assailant waiting for her, Hermann. She pauses. She does not retreat in fear.’
The cigarette was handed back. ‘Did he watch her having a bathe? Did he follow her but reach the glade from the other direction?’
‘Apparently she knows this person and suspects nothing. Nothing! She advances towards the assailant, is hit hard and goes down. She is hit again and again, and then … then is crudely butchered with … with one of these, I think, though I cannot yet say for certain nor can I yet fully come to grips with the horror of it.’
Plucking at his partner’s sleeve, St-Cyr pulled him forward until they had reached the innermos
t bench. There he knelt and ran a forefinger over one of the layers of habitation. ‘A stone tool, Hermann. A handaxe, perhaps. Something with both sharp and ragged edges, a point as well but also blunt.’
Kohler swallowed dryly. Champagne always did that to him. Louis found his pocket-knife and, opening it, began to pick at the layer but all he got were little bits of flint, ash and sand.
The cigarette clung to his lower lip until it had burned down to all but nothing and had finally gone out. A half hour of struggling ensued before he had what he wanted. ‘Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, Hermann, it’s magnificent.’
Almond shaped and showing clearly the shallow, conchoidal hollows where the flint had been spalled away when struck hard by a hammer stone, the handaxe was no more than seven centimetres in length, perhaps four or five in width and two or three in thickness.
With it there had lain a smaller flint, much more finely worked and with a convex cutting edge that was serrated. There was also a scraper that had once been used to clean the flesh from animal hides. ‘Pressure flaking,’ mused the Sûreté, ‘with a bone or wooden stylus that had first been hardened by fire. This handaxe is far too small for what I want. It’s of too recent an origin — perhaps only twenty thousand years. For our murder weapon, we must go back in time to those lower layers where the tools are simpler, the handaxes far chunkier, yet still very effective.’
From the cave entrance they looked down over the valley and off towards the site of the murder. Shadows now cooled the lower slopes. Night was coming but would take its time. At peace with the world and left largely to itself, the little valley exuded only the gentle hush of its waterfall and then the sound of birds awakening after the heat.
Kohler sensed his partner needed this moment. They were standing in the footsteps of ancestors who would have looked out on a quite different valley, yet it was the same. Pristine.
Louis heaved a sigh. Kohler held his breath. It was at times like this that the bond between them only grew stronger, more welcome, more.…
A scream shattered the silence. Long and hard and high pitched, it was ripped right out of the person who uttered it. Again and again it came, shrill as it raced across the trees to them.
For perhaps ten seconds there was a pause. Eyes riveted on the distant spot, their whole attention focused, they waited. Then again it came. Again! Anguish and despair and then … then … ‘MAMAN! MAMAN! AH NO! NO!’
They leapt off the edge and went down the talus flinging their arms out for balance, racing … racing … No time … no time … Got to find her. Got to stop her. Got to get her away from that thing. That thing.…
2
DAWN CAME AT LAST, AND FROM THE RIVER FAR below the ancient fortified town of Domme, mist in tendrils hugged the lowlands along the Dordogne.
St-Cyr heaved a sigh. The view, among the finest in France, was fantastic, yet try as he did, he could not keep from hearing that poor woman’s screams and feel, as he had yesterday, the profoundness of the encompassing silence. Had screams like that echoed in that little valley one hundred thousand years ago?
The mist lay in a whitish-grey gossamer over the deep, dark shadowy blue of the river and the green of ordered fields and poplars. Not a swastika showed, not a Wehrmacht convoy or patrol, not even the open touring car of some SS bigwig or Gestapo ‘trade commissioner’. He was in the Free Zone, in Vichy-controlled territory, yet conditioned by the Occupied Zone in the North, one always had to look for such things, one always had to ask, How long can this last?
In the distance, the same bare escarpment rocks as those beneath his shoes boldly faced the sun to glow a soft yellow-grey under forest cover. Behind them, the wooded hills, valleys and plateaus of the Périgord Noir continued on to Sarlat and eastwards to the site of the murder and well beyond. Mist would cloak that little valley too, even as at the dawn of prehistory.
They had found the victim’s daughter on her knees hugging herself and rocking back and forth in grief beside that corpse. They had dragged her from it even as she had fought with them to be left alone until, in compassion only, he had clipped her under the chin and into oblivion.
Juliette Jouvet née Fillioux, born Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, 3 April 1914, age now twenty-eight, and only child of the victim. Married and with two children of her own, a boy of seven years and a girl of five. A schoolteacher. Husband, a former colleague and now a disabled veteran of the Russian Campaign, one of the LVF, the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchévisme. A sworn enemy of Russia and a member of the PPF, the Parti Populaire Français, violently anti-Communist, anti-de Gaulle, anti-Jewish, anti-everything including the police, and now … why now a very bitter man. Ah yes. The war in Russia had not been kind. Few acknowledged the bravery of the wreckage that had retumed. Most simply ignored him and felt uncomfortable in his presence.
Jouvet had not been co-operative nor had there been one word or gesture of compassion for his wife.
Sedated by the cognac Hermann had forced her to drink and had found God knows where, the woman had slept. Sour on vin ordinaire, the husband had retreated into a brooding, surly silence. The children had watched their father in alarm before casting warning glances at each other and retreating to bed.
It was not good. Ah no, it wasn’t. Murder and domestic problems so often went hand in hand. Madame Jouvet had had a painful welt and bruise from a fist high on her left cheek — now her lower jaw might well be swollen, a worry. The skin had also been yellow and dark around the half-closed eye, a massive shiner that was at least five days old.
How had she borne the shame of it, a teacher in a little place like this? Had the argument, preceding the death of the mother-in-law, signalled trouble?
Fortunately transport had arrived with two flics from Sarlat. They had soon got the woman home and it was then that Hermann and he had discovered what had transpired.
Word had reached Domme that a body had been found but that its identity was still unknown. Abruptly she had left her students without explanation, had run frantically outside to grab her bicycle and pedal the twenty-five or so kilometres. First downhill to the bridge across the river, then on to Vitrac, Montfort and Carsac-Aillac before turning northwards towards Sarlat and then east. Tears, prayers, perhaps exhortations of remorse and then … then the dropping of her bicycle on the railway track, the running through the woods. They had found one of her shoes. She had known exactly where to find her mother. Exactly.
Longing for his pipe and tobacco, he studied the distant terrain noting every little nuance as his mind probed the murder until a stick whacked a tombstone behind him, a throat was cleared. Spittle darted to one side. ‘Monsieur …?’ he began. The set of his lips was grim.
‘It’s Captain,’ spat Jouvet. Hammered by the early-morning light, the veteran stood stock-still in the graveyard. There was a stout walking-stick in his left hand and he leaned heavily on this to relieve the constant pain of the bullet-wasted leg the Russian partisans had given him. Once handsome, now grey with fatigue and unshaven, he wiped his nose with the back of a right hand that was far from good. ‘So, you have some questions. Why not start asking them, eh? She’s still sleeping it off but will have to do her duty. No replacement can be found and I cannot be expected to fill in for her. Not yet. We need the money.’
‘The money, ah yes.’
The grey-green trousers the Germans had given the husband in lieu of the promised French Army uniform, were unpatched in places, the wooden sabots and faded blue denim jacket with open-collared dress shirt disrespectful of his former status as a teacher who had once had students to command. An Iron Cross Second-Class clung defiantly to the left breast. A frayed rope had replaced the belt whose buckle would have borne the words Gott mit uns, God with us. The black beret was filthy.
He made no move to come closer. The no man’s land of the esplanade separated them.
‘Captain, was your mother-in-law to visit with you and your family after first going to that valley?’
‘To
the cave, Inspector. Why not say it?’
‘All right, the cave.’
‘Madame Fillioux could well have been on her way here afterwards. I would not have known. Lies … all I get from that wife of mine is lies. I’m not well. I can’t get around easily.’
‘Then why bother to convince me of it?’
The smile was crooked, the stick was waved. ‘Only that I could not possibly have killed her.’
There, does that satisfy you? St-Cyr could see this clearly written in the man’s expression but he calmed his voice and kept control. ‘Tell me about her then. She was a shopkeeper.’
‘Her papers will have told you that. Why waste my time?’
‘Yes, but what kind of a shop?’
‘An auberge-épicerie, what else in a lousy little dump like Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne? With the PTT of course — she couldn’t have survived without it. Half our rural shopkeepers couldn’t’
The post office, telephone and telegraph exchange. An inn and a grocery shop — tinned and dry goods mainly, and half-empty shelves for there were shortages here, too, in the South. Extreme shortages.
‘She was always bitching about the parcels. Meat stinks after a few days,’ taunted Jouvet.
No letters were allowed to cross the Demarcation Line between the Occupied and Unoccupied zones. Only postcards with minimum words now instead of gaps to fill in within the printed message that had had to serve everyone no matter what. But in one of those quirks of Germanic control, parcels had been overlooked in the Defeat of 1940 and postal clerks the country over had simply shrugged and carried on. Forgotten relatives had suddenly been remembered, especially if they had a farm or access to one. Deals had been struck: the tobacco ration every two weeks in exchange for a chicken, a bit of goose liver, some fish perhaps or butter.…
The meat and other perishables often stayed in the post offices for days on end. Months in several cases, for the second-class postal service paled against that of the postcards which wasn’t all that good either but could sometimes be very efficient.
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