Without another word, he went into the classroom and without a sound the students left.
‘Monsieur.…’
‘It’s Inspector to you.’
Caught in the doorway, Jouvet looked like death. He wiped his brow with that crippled hand. ‘Please, I did not kill her. Ernestine, she … she always made a circuit of that little valley so as to see if it was free of others. If not, she would wait. Sometimes she would not even unpack the picnic hamper and lay things out or put the wine in the stream to cool and uncork the red to breathe.’
The man swallowed. Feeling lost at what he was saying, and calling himself an utter fool, Jouvet knew he had trapped himself into continuing. ‘Sometimes there were others in the cave, rooting around for things. Usually they left when she told them it was forbidden, though it wasn’t of course. Sometimes they drove her from it and she would come to us in tears saying they were ruining the site, taking everything her husband had wanted so much to record and preserve. Any one of them could have killed her. I … I have thought I should tell you. It could have been a rapist, a.… Well, you know what I mean.’
Kohler turned away to find the daughter facing him.
‘Mother would always be most distressed, Inspector. Before the war she would telephone the Museum of Culture and the Sorbonne, demanding that they listen to her. She would write letters to them, so many letters. They … they thought she was crazy. A shopkeeper, a postmistress from a little place like ours talking about things only they could know about but refusing always to give them the exact location until they agreed to excavate the deposits properly and give credit to my father. Her requests all fell on deaf ears. Money was always too difficult to find, the time too short, the staff too small and overworked, ours but one cave among so many.’
A tow-haired, skinny girl with freckles and reddened blue eyes, peeked uncertainly out at him from under the left arm of her mother. A hank of black hair hung down over the boy’s forehead. He had the dark brown eyes of Jouvet, a steady, searching look that asked, Is he really guilty?
Louis quietly slid in to one side of them to lean against the rear wall and remain as unobtrusive as possible.
‘My father was going to write a series of scientific papers about the site, Inspector.’
‘To startle his colleagues with his discovery. His, Juliette? Tell them that, please,’ demanded the husband.
She must remain calm. ‘André, let us be at peace for the moment. Mother is dead and we must help them find her killer. That site, as I have told you, is very special, Inspectors. An almost continuous record exists there from earliest Neanderthal times. A book was to follow and was to contain all his detailed notes and sketches. The discovery was to have been the making of his reputation as a prehistorian, that cave, his life’s work.’
‘And your mother found it for him?’ asked Louis gently.
She would not turn to look at him. She would keep her eyes on Herr Kohler and André. ‘Mother found the location in the diary of the Abbé Brûlé. The ink had run with the dampness. Some of the words, in the dialect of the Périgord, were unfamiliar to my father. Monsieur l’abbe came across the cave in 1856 and found some astounding pieces. Stone figurines, incised bits of bone, an amulet.… These and other artefacts were in the trunk he left in the safekeeping of my grandfather. The artefacts were all carefully labelled as to the levels from which they had come, locations my father was then able to confirm.’
A trunk … all Kohler could think of was the penchant of Paris trunk murderers to send their victims to Lyon with no traceable return address. ‘And this trunk …’ he began only to hear her take a deep breath and give a worried sigh.
‘The trunk had rested in the cellars of my grandfather’s house in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne for all those years, Inspector. It was covered with mildew when my mother showed it to my father in the early spring of 1912.’
The mother would have just turned sixteen.
‘Father had the trunk shipped to Paris, to the house of his parents. He … he forbade them and my mother to say anything of it because of the amulet and the figurines. Nothing so old had ever been found.’
‘The figurines?’ asked Louis, digging out his pipe and tobacco pouch only to realize he was on harsh rations.
‘Beautiful carvings in the soft yellow stone of these parts. Very primitive. An Adam and Eve, the abbe called them. Exquisitely executed but simplistically so, without details of the faces, the hands or feet.’
‘A bulge for the testicles and penis,’ snorted Jouvet, causing Kohler to turn on him and breathe, ‘Speak only when spoken to.’
It was Louis who quietly said, ‘That cave was not a religious site, madame — at least I do not think it was from the little we have seen. It was an abri, a shelter that was used for daily living and whose layers of refuse had been built up over the millennia.’
This time she turned to face him. ‘An abri, yes, and not a grotte, not a religious site which would seldom contain the refuse layers, the gisement at its entrance.’
She released the children and urged them to have a wash. ‘We will eat in a moment,’ she said. ‘Jean-Guy, help your sister to set the table, please? The special dishes, yes? We … we must make it just as grand-mère would have wished. Please set a place for her, too, so as to remind us.’
Louis gave that nod his partner had come to know so well, but as the boy passed him, Kohler said, ‘Bring me your father’s rucksack. I want to have a look in it.’
Incensed, Jouvet darted into the kitchen and came out with the thing. ‘Then look, idiot! Look! It is not mine. It is hers.’
They took it with them. They promised to return it but a little of her died then, for they would begin to question things now. Ah yes. They would want to know more.
When André hit her, she fell back against the stove but did not cry out or try to defend herself.
Blood ran from her battered lips. The children raced upstairs to the attic. Some dishes fell.
He stood over her with his stick. He let her have one on the shoulder for good measure. ‘Kill me then,’ she spat. ‘Kill me too.’
‘Not before you have suffered.’
From the school to the Porte del Bos was not far, yet they could not make the journey unnoticed. Children whispered to their elders. Some tossed their heads. One boy was brazen enough to point.
A cartful of manure trundled by, its axle complaining in the noonday heat. Flies rose to worry the tail of the donkey. The driver did not even acknowledge the presence of the two visitors. They had flic written all over them, Paris too. A priest hurried past.
Kohler grinned. ‘I like it, Louis. We’re already famous.’
‘Let us find some shade.’
‘It’s good to be free of those two for a little. Marital strife gets to me.’
Louis hurried on ahead, tossing a hand. ‘Oh for sure, you ought to know, eh? Your wife Gerda’s going to dump you. You watch, my fine Bavarian papa, she’ll turn to someone else. When was it you last went home?’
Must Louis remind him? ‘After Holland, I think, and before Paris.’
The summer of 1940! August perhaps. Had Hermann really been in Holland? He had never said so before. ‘Admit it, you’re on holiday.’
‘Ja, ja, some holiday. She’ll just have to understand there’s a war on.’
‘And a pretty little whore in your bed.’
‘Quit having a guilt complex over your own wife. Stop playing God.’
‘It’s God I’m worried about because He’s frowning at us again. Did Madame Jouvet and that mother of hers cook up a little plan to poison that husband of hers, or did our victim plan it all by herself?’
Louis was really serious. They had stopped in the middle of the street just before the gate.
‘Did Madame Jouvet let slip their intentions, Hermann? During a beating perhaps? If so, our veteran would have killed his mother-in-law with relish.’
‘And with a stone chopper. He told me he could shave the female partisans
with flint. The water must have been ice.’
Trees crowded the base of the ramparts. A bastide, a fortified town which dated from 1283, Domme had three gates. This one was the most easterly and it was from here that the road Madame Jouvet had ridden her bicycle down took a tight S-bend before continuing eastward along the heights just outside and below the walls.
There were walnut trees to the left and below the promenade des Remparts, holm oak, chestnut, lime and mulberry. It was lovely in the shade and one had to think how nice it would be to live in a little place like this. Yet could one ever do so after Paris? asked St-Cyr of himself, heaving that sigh not just of a man whose holidays were long overdue — five years at least — but one who recognized his soul belonged to the countryside, his heart to the city.
The pungent scent of walnut leaves came instantly as he broke a leaf and brought it to a nostril. ‘So, bon,’ he said, dropping the leaf before moving into deeper shade. ‘Let’s have a look at her rucksack.’
Kohler undid the straps and dumped everything on the ground. ‘A towel, no soap, trousers, a work shirt … gloves … a short-handled pick, chisel and hammer, a knife. Eight small lumps of black stone and one flat rock. Pale yellow, Chief. Limestone, I think. The local stuff.’
‘A mortar stone, Hermann. No thicker than a normal lauze and a little longer than my hand. Its edges have been worked but not perhaps in twenty thousand years.’
‘There’s that sooty black stuff again.’
‘Yes, yes. The mortar was used to grind the pyrolusite. Our teacher has been collecting lumps of a mineral her ancient forebears used to paint the walls of their caves.’
Kohler took up the mortar and ran a thumb over it. The stuff was not slippery like graphite or shiny. ‘So, what’s she been up to? Painting that cave?’
‘Hiding something from us. She mentioned the mushrooms but only in memories too dear to lose. The mother always brought them. Always one of the local chefs would be required to cook some under her directions but Madame Fillioux also cooked them herself at the house of the daughter. The husband, along with the rest of the family, ate them.’
‘A half of the omelette, eh? and an end to the bastard.’
‘Madame Jouvet made no mention of the champagne, Hermann. Surely if it was a part of the ritual, she would have included it.’
The sound of a well-tuned engine came to them. Cars were so few these days, one had to be curious. Even here in the zone libre, gasoline was all but impossible to obtain.
The car took the grade easily. Its engine hummed then throbbed as it sped uphill. An open touring car. Grey. A Mercedes-Benz.
‘Four men and one woman, Louis. No uniforms.’
‘The sous-préfet of the Périgord Noir.’
‘Is the woman his mistress?’
‘Idiot, you’re slipping.’
‘And the other three?’
‘They don’t all look like SS or Gestapo with false papers but then … ah then, Hermann, it is often so hard to tell with those, is it not, and they would need false papers to venture into the Free Zone under cover.’
‘Piss off! They’re just friends along for the ride.’
‘Then let us see what they want.’
3
SUNLIGHT STRUCK THE PLACE DE LA HALLE AND glared from the tiled roof of the town’s seventeenth-century covered market. It made the air above the car’s bonnet vibrate and brought the smell of vaporizing gasoline.
The only shade was under the timbered balcony of the market or within its expanse, the only sound, that of a flight of homing pigeons. Perhaps one hundred and sixty people were gathered. Shopkeepers, café owners, waiters and chefs stood in aprons at the doors of their premises. Mayor Pialat, florid and in a hurry in a black homburg, heavy black woollen suit, black tie, vest, gold watch chain and stomach, paused half-way between the Governor’s House, with its shuttered first-storey windows and its second- and third-storey side turret, to stare up at his precious pigeons and wet his lips in apprehension.
Mopping his brow and grey bush of a moustache, he continued on across the stony square where tufts of weeds and wedges of stunted grass had suffered the ravages of drought and tethered goats.
He disappeared into the shady recesses of the market. Not a word was said. Though the crowd listened intently, all they could hear were those damned pigeons.
No swastika flew from the grey-roofed turret of that lovely sixteenth-century house. No German sentries stood on either side of its french doors, no patrols tainted the air with the smell of sweat and saddlesoap or the sound of their rifles as they fired at a post and white-targeted ‘terrorist’ or hostage and saw him suddenly slump.
No swastika pennant flew from the front left wing of the car yet it could just as well have done so, such was the mood of the crowd. The South was haven to far too many the Germans wanted. Homing pigeons such as those might carry secret messages and were forbidden in the North.
Like tourists from the other side of the moon, the five visitors waited impatiently for the mayor to unlock the old iron gates to the stone staircase that led down into the warren of caves and tunnels beneath the town. Used as a hiding place during the Hundred Years’ War and then in the Wars of Religion, the caves would be pleasantly cool.
But why the interest? wondered St-Cyr. Why the impatience? And why the hell was sous-préfet Deveaux playing tour guide and host when he knew very well there was a murder to attend to?
The visitors were swallowed up, the woman going first in that hip-clinging white silk dress of hers and a big, floppily-brimmed and beribboned chapeau, the mayor bringing up the rear and bleating, ‘The lamps, madame et messieurs. You must each take one so as not to get lost.’
‘Toto, darling,’ came the earnest female voice up from the darkness, rich and deep and musical, the accent exquisite and one hundred per cent of the salons along the rue Royale. ‘Toto, light one for me. There’s a good boy. Willi … Willi, how can we possibly get a crew in here?’ The switch to deutsch maintained the richness. ‘Franz, it’s fascinating — were the English slaughtered or did they hide in these caves?’
‘Baroness, I believe the Huguenots captured the town in 1588.’
‘Did they slaughter the French Catholics or did they, too, escape into these caves? It’s marvellous what holes in the ground can tell us about history. Willi … Willi, make a note of that. Oo, darling, there’s such a lovely breeze. It’s blowing right up my dress. It’s like the bathe I had under that little waterfall. It’s delightful.’
A short, stocky Périgourdin of sixty years, sous-préfet Odilon Deveaux returned from the depths and as he came up the stone steps in his banker’s suit, he was caught in the half-light by the two from Paris Central and shrugged. ‘Jean-Louis … ah, a moment. Yourself also, Haupsturmführer. Please.’ A stumpy forefinger touched the grim-set lips of a cop who had seen it all and had just lost patience. The gaze was hooded, the nose massive, the warts, moles, scars and clefts pronounced, the eyebrows a bushy, unclipped iron-grey.
Out of breath, he had to pause at the top of the stairs. ‘The asthma,’ he managed. The pollen and the dampness. Cats … she has a cat. Her perfume … ah, it may be marvellous but it’s giving my lungs a seizure! A moment.’ And then, ‘Come … come away for a little privacy. Give me a cigarette, please.’
Gathering them in, he guided them across the covered market to a line of benches against the far wall where a helmeted Wehrmacht corporal held a carbine in poster-paper over the words, Give your labour in the fight against Bolshevism. ‘Paris …,’ he wheezed in again. ‘Only one of them is Parisian — an ex-waiter, ex-boot-black, I think. The rest are originally from Berlin and Vienna. Very famous, very connected and very demanding. The cigarette?’ he repeated.
Kohler shrugged, I’m fresh out. Louis found his mégot tin. Consternation registered. ‘But … but what is this?’ managed Deveaux. ‘No tobacco but those? I would have thought.…’
‘It’s the way things are,’ shrugged Louis apologeticall
y. ‘We beg, we borrow, we pick up like everyone else but we cannot steal.’
‘Or be caught doing so,’ offered Kohler, the chief tobacco thief whenever possible.
Hermann chose five of the butts and began that painful process of first trying to free the tobacco and then of finding paper and spittle enough to roll one. Though a former bomb-disposal expert and prisoner of war, he could not roll a cigarette. It was God’s little irony. ‘Here, Louis, you do it. I’m all thumbs. It’s that dress and a bathe under that waterfall. Our princess must have paid the valley a visit.’
‘Baroness … she’s a baroness and Austrian. That site, my friends.… That site has to be “cleaned”.’
‘Pardon?’ managed Louis.
‘“Cleaned”, as I have said. The film crew, they are shooting at Lascaux but are to descend on the valley in a matter of days. Two perhaps or three. It depends on the weather and the shooting.’
‘A film crew?’
The cigarette was handed over. Deveaux couldn’t wait for a match and hauled out a battered lighter with a flamethrower’s torch. ‘Ah!’ he said, narrowly missing his eyebrows. ‘Fucking gasoline. One has to be careful, eh? These days one has to make do in so many ways. It’s desperate. I once took my eyelashes off.’
He coughed. He inhaled again and rested his back against the wall. ‘They are shooting a film, yes. A docu-drama — please don’t try my patience with questions. Let them tell you themselves. I will give you the essence of it.’
Another moment passed. The rise and fall of his chest began to lessen, though God knows why, thought Kohler. That ‘tobacco’ could be anything. Sweepings of manure and herbs, dried linden blossoms or carrot tops.
‘It’s about a cave, a trunk of artefacts that was found in a Paris antique shop, and a woman — please don’t ask me to explain how their minds work, these creative people. The film is to be called Moment of Discovery. She’s the female lead. The boy from Paris is just an assistant on the “dig”.’
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