Stonekiller

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Come on, my sweet,’ urged Kohler, clinging to her shaggy mane. Her hooves threw up the gravel. Startled peasants gaped. There was no sign of Oelmann yet. None at all. Ah Gott im Himmel, it was hopeless.

  Oelmann had taken the woman with him in the car and had left some time ago. By now he would be in that room with the contents of the drawer spread before him. Postcards … postcards, and Madame Jouvet still every bit his prisoner. And never mind the Baroness and the others. They wouldn’t say a thing or lift a finger if they were still around.

  A bend in the road drew near. No traffic. Clean as a whistle and not far now. Would Oelmann torture her again or would the drawer give him what he needed — proof of the cave’s authenticity or fraud and if the last, would he say a thing about it? Of course not. He’d simply kill Madame Jouvet to shut her up and then would destroy all evidence even torching the mother’s house.

  It was not pleasant to think of such things. Louis should be with him but Louis was nowhere near.

  When he saw the car ahead, Kohler tried to rein in the mare but she would have none of it. Madame Jouvet, freed at last, stood to one side of the road clutching the front of her dress closed and still terrified, poor thing. An overturned cart blocked the road. Chickens were everywhere and the front left wheel of the car was dead flat, its fender crumpled. Oelmann was in a rage and trying to get the owner of the cart to change the tire.

  ‘Run,’ cried Kohler. ‘Run, madame. I’ll try to stop her.’

  The wind was in his hair. As its hooves threw up clods, the mare left the road to scatter the chickens. A shot was fired. This only produced a further burst of speed.

  The damned thing headed straight for the river and a drink. Oelmann had caught up with Madame Jouvet. There was only one thing to do and quickly. ‘Come on, my beauty. Build a fire in your lungs again.’

  The mare’s chest was heaving. She tossed her head, flicked her tail and refused to co-operate. Wading out a little farther in the shallows, she again began to drink.

  Oelmann fired at them twice and that was enough. Thundering through the shallows, the mare broke back up onto the road and then in among the cluster of Renaissance houses. Her hooves clattered on the ancient cobbles. Marina von Strade stepped out from the shade of the café. Courtet reached for his hat.

  The mare raced past them down the lane between the houses to finally pull up sharply at the post office. ‘Ah nom de Dieu,’ swore Kohler. ‘You knew exactly where we were headed!’

  Standing on her back, he pulled himself up onto the balcony and once within the inn, went along the hall to the room at the head of the stairs.

  ‘Louis … Louis, we’ve done it!’ he cried breathlessly as the drawer popped open.

  There wasn’t a damned thing in it, not even a speck of dust.

  Hands folded in her lap, her dress pinned in places, Juliette Jouvet sat on the edge of the bed with eyes downcast in despair. There was the loss of everything — the postcards, yes, yes! The silver necklace and diamond pin, the few louis d’or, the savings of a lifetime, the 10,000 francs also.

  There was the presence of Herr Oelmann too, and she could still feel the nearness of him, the knife at her breast.

  Herr Kohler reached out to her from the chair he had drawn up. ‘Is this the only place your mother would have hidden things?’ he asked.

  His voice was very gentle and she knew he regretted terribly what had happened to her. The emptiness that was usually in his eyes was gone but her heart was hard. ‘This is the only place,’ she said stonily. ‘Search the rest of the house if you wish. It will do no good.’

  Kohler nodded. He understood only too well that she would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to forgive him, that he, too, as one of the Occupiers from the North, was as much to blame for what had happened to her as was Oelmann.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, and again there was a sincerity and concern that only made her want to scream at him to leave her alone. He asked about maman’s telephone call on that Thursday morning, and she had to repeat what she had told Hen Oelmann. ‘ “Them”, that is all mother said. She would “take care of them”! She … she could not tell me who she meant, could she? Monsieur Coudinec, the facteur in Domme, he always listens in. André could well have found out that … that mother intended to poison him. This … this is what I have thought.’

  There, now they knew for sure she herself had wanted André dead and that she felt he had killed maman.

  ‘The mushrooms,’ said Oelmann. ‘But “them” means someone else.’

  ‘The one Madame Fillioux went to meet,’ sighed Kohler evasively. ‘Someone from Paris perhaps.’

  ‘The father?’ asked Oelmann sharply.

  Ah merde … ‘Perhaps. Look, I really don’t know, do I?’

  ‘Mother … Mother must have been trying to keep me out of things,’ said Juliette. ‘After she said she would take care of them, she begged me to go to the cave to remove the mortar and the lumps of pyrolusite. She did not tell me specifically what it was she wanted taken from the cave, only that I was to remove the things from our little cache. “I put them there some time ago,” she said.’

  ‘When?’ demanded Oelmann only to see her shrug and hear her say, ‘Hurt me if you like. It will gain you nothing.’

  ‘Either before or after she visited the cave with Professor Courtet,’ offered Kohler. ‘Look, there’s no sense in questioning madame further. She doesn’t know anything else.’

  Could he leave it? wondered Oelmann. Kohler wouldn’t tell him everything unless he felt the fear of repercussions.

  The Bavarian said, ‘Don’t be asking the SS of the avenue Foch to put the squeeze on me, my friend. All they’ll do is start asking questions of their own and thinking those paintings in that little cave of yours are a fraud and the film a bust. Egg on the Führer’s face and in Technicolor — is that what you want? Don’t be a dummkopf.’

  ‘There is always the Sonderkommando-SS we have in the Périgord,’ said Oelmann quietly. ‘I have only to call them.’

  ‘For help? Ah Gott im Himmel, Herr Obersturmführer or whatever your rank is, you know only too well each undercover special commando in the zone libre reports daily to the avenue Foch.’

  Up close, the threatening muzzle of the Radom pistol felt just like any other. ‘It’s simple,’ shrugged Kohler. ‘Their little grapevines are everywhere and each of them runs right back to Berlin as well and the ears of the Führer. Let Louis and me handle this. We’ll fill you in. No problem.’

  ‘Even after what I did to that one and my shooting at you?’

  Oelmann couldn’t be such a fool as to believe they’d cooperate, but there was no harm in pretending. ‘Hey, it’s all in a day’s work. Louis and I don’t ever want trouble with the SS.’

  Kohler was just gassing about. The SS of the avenue Foch and Gestapo Paris Central had little good to say about him but could he and his partner be used?

  Oelmann cocked the pistol and gave the Bavarian’s temple a nudge. ‘Perhaps what you say is true, perhaps not. We shall have to see.’

  The bastard curtly nodded at Madame Jouvet, causing her to shudder. He would now rejoin the world of film and be as smooth and charming as ever, if a trifle silent.

  The door closed. They waited and when, finally, they heard Herr Oelmann’s car start up, the détective heaved such a grateful sigh, she had to look questioningly at him.

  The smile he gave was warm and conspiratorial. ‘For now he’s satisfied, madame. If it helps, I think he’ll leave you alone and seek his answers elsewhere.’

  ‘Are they all like that, the SS?’

  She’d go to pieces if he didn’t offer hope but she had to hear the truth. ‘Most of them. The only good ones are the dead ones.’

  Tears began again. Her lower lip quivered. ‘But … but are you not also of the Gestapo and the SS, monsieur?’

  ‘Only under duress and only as a détective, and not SS. Louis and me, we hate the very thought of what they do and are just
itching to get back at bastards like that.’

  Once more she could see that what had happened to her was a great sadness to him but so, too, was his connection to those agents of terror. When his hand was extended, she found she had to accept it. He had a way with him and that was good. He did not accuse or blame her for having kept to herself that maman had intended to poison André, even though she had also meant to kill someone else, someone whose name might well have been on one of those postcards. Her father’s. ‘All right,’ she said and found the will to smile. ‘Let us help each other.’

  The cavalry were down in the river in shirt sleeves, bare feet and rolled-up trouser legs, laughing and tossing water from a wooden bucket over a horse that loved it. A tattered crowd of children had gathered and now squatted on their haunches or stood along the bank amused and passing judgment as the giant with the Fritz haircut shouted sweet endearments to a plough-horse.

  ‘You’ve found a friend, I see,’ said St-Cyr, having walked in from the farm.

  ‘She’s a beauty, eh, Louis? What took you so long?’

  One had best remove the shoes and socks and give the feet a little cooling. ‘Another murder,’ he confided discreetly so as not to set the village abuzz too soon. ‘The possibility of two assailants, one to divert, the other to make the kill — it’s just a notion. I must ring up Deveaux and ask for the troops and a photographer. If possible, I will wait here for them.’

  ‘Good. Yes, that’s good, Chief. You can catch a meal and a glass of the vin paille at the café of the beautiful walnut, or whatever they call it. I’ve bummed a ride to Domme for Juliette with Marina and friends. I’m not just sure which of those gorgeous creatures is going to have to sit on my lap, but I’ll be sure to behave myself.’

  ‘You do that. Now inform me, please, of what has transpired.’

  ‘An empty drawer, no postcards. Nothing. Sautéed mushrooms for two but not for herself. No, Madame Fillioux would have wanted to see the results of her little plan and would have gone to prison and the guillotine quite gladly.’

  ‘She meant to poison the one she was to meet in the glade as well as her son-in-law,’ sighed St-Cyr, wetting a handkerchief to bathe his face and neck.

  ‘A visitor from Paris, Louis? A recipient of some of the good madame’s parcels? The father perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, yes, the father. Then it is as we have thought, Madame Fillioux expected to meet him.’

  Kohler pulled off his shirt, handed it and the halter rope over, then took to dry land to remove the rest. With a bellow, he ran joyfully into the water to splash about and seek depth.

  As naked as at the dawn of time, his voice filled the valley and broke the children up until they laughed and cried and clapped so hard their sides were cramped. The giant finally lay down in the shallows and let the water pour over him. ‘He’s like that sometimes,’ said St-Cyr to one of the littlest. ‘He has had a hard day and is trying to forget it, if only for a moment.’

  Marina von Strade was ecstatic. ‘Oo, he should be in our film,’ she said with bright green eyes still hungering after the savage, her hands clasped beneath her chin. ‘Next to him, I could really play the part I have been given. Toto? Toto, darling, don’t you think so too?’

  Gérard Lemieux only grunted disparagingly as a jealous and lonely young Neanderthal buck might have done in a darkened cave.

  ‘He’s magnificent,’ enthused the woman. ‘He’s exactly what we need.’

  Later they sat alone on the bank and shared another cigarette. ‘To chase with a boulder requires strength and speed,’ offered Kohler.

  ‘Unless the boulder had been placed at the site of the killing ahead of time and a handaxe first used. The footprints, I believe, were those of a woman.’

  ‘Why cut the fishing line and free the worms?’

  ‘A last touch. An act of supreme detachment and defiance perhaps but done after the hiding of the body, after the killer had carried the boulder well out into the river and had bathed.’

  ‘A straight stalk, chase and kill.’

  ‘But perhaps with two assailants. The father and … and someone else, a woman. Auger must have known too much. Perhaps he could have identified one of them.’

  ‘No one’s stayed in that inn of hers for ages, Louis. I took a look through her register.’

  ‘And what of Herr Oelmann?’

  ‘Forgery is a bad word and Berlin has ears. Russia’s too cold but so is the concentration camp at Dachau.’

  ‘And our Madame Jouvet?’

  ‘Scared out of her wits yet still not telling us everything. Has no immediate plans for suicide. Will see it through if friend Oelmann will let her.’

  ‘She’s the third one, then. She’s the next victim.’

  ‘Hey, I think maybe you’re right, Chief. I’ll try to keep it in mind.’

  6

  RUEFULLY ST-CYR SURVEYED THE GREASY PARcels they had laid out on the sorting table. Three kilos of unsalted butter — could it be derancified? he wondered. The same of cheese that had gone so mouldy in the heat, the mice had had a feast. Two fat geese and, lastly, a loin of pork — perhaps five kilos of it and worth a fortune in Paris on the black market but never seen in the boucheries these days.

  Every one of the parcels had been destined for the family’s address in Paris. Running a fingertip back through the ledger, he could find no other record of Madame Fillioux’s ever having sent parcels to that Paris address or to the one in Monfort-l’Amaury. Perhaps a few postcards, yes of course. Negative responses to the earnest pleas of her dead husband’s parents for help. Negative until the Saturday before she died.

  Again he went through the ledger. It was infuriating not to find a thing. The stench was getting to him. He was tired. He needed time to think things through.

  When he saw an entry from Auger, he stopped cold and held his breath.

  The sous-facteur had sent a parcel of seven kilos on the 15th of April of this year to place des Vosges, number seven, apartment five. Rundown, but still one of the loveliest and certainly the oldest square in Paris. Its symmetrical two-storeyed houses of soft rose-coloured brick with white stone arcades had formerly been the town houses of the fashionable but had long since lost out to the Palais Royal, the place Vendôme and, yes, streets like the boulevard Richard Wallace overlooking the Bois de Boulogne. Now it was the address of those who wished to rise above such a station but could not yet find the wherewithal to do so.

  A Mademoiselle Danielle Arthaud, a niece? he wondered. A goose perhaps, judging by the weight.

  Search as he did, he could find no other instance where sous-facteur Auger had sent anything to Paris, let alone to this Danielle Arthaud. Though he would perhaps never be able to prove it, he was certain Madame Fillioux had done the sending but if so, why had she not used her own name since she had used it on the other parcels?

  Perhaps to let others know she was not alone — it was a thought most certainly. And Auger would have seen that his name had been used. It would have appeared on the return address, so she must have asked him if he would not mind.

  ‘Bitte, everyone,’ announced the Baroness. ‘Please, Madame Jouvet has escaped from her dreary life as a teacher. Has anyone a spare dress that would fit her? Something a little dangerous but not too much. The timid awakening, yes? The freeing of the dove if only for an evening. She has two children, has just left a husband who beats her terribly. It is the story of her mother and father we are filming.’

  Work at Lascaux had been completed. It was time for a little rest and recreation. A hush fell over the baronial hall of the château that housed the film crew and cast in their off moments. Perhaps some two hundred were crowded at long tables, all eating, drinking and until now, engaged in umpteen conversations or simply brooding and wanting to kill a latest rival over some trifling slight.

  ‘Please,’ said the Baroness, ‘her dress has been torn — a little accident. She will only be embarrassed when we want her to be happy and welcomed as one of our own.’


  ‘Hey, it’s okay, eh?’ whispered Kohler to Madame Jouvet. ‘She means to be kind. I’ll see you get home.’

  Concerned blue eyes flashed up at him. ‘Where is Herr Oelmann? I do not see him among all these.…’ She was at a loss as to what to call them. ‘Men, women, girls of fourteen and boys of the same age, younger ones too.’

  ‘Gone elsewhere, I think.’

  ‘Back to the house of my mother perhaps?’

  ‘Ah merde … Don’t worry. Louis can take care of himself. The sous-préfet and his men will soon be there.’

  Instead of taking her to Domme, the Baroness had insisted they come here ‘at least for a bit of supper.’ A slender arm, bronzed by the sun and bare to a finely moulded shoulder, gracefully waved from the back of the hall, electrifying those around it.

  ‘Ah! Danielle,’ sang out the Baroness. ‘Merci, ma petite. You are very kind, very beautiful and exactly the twin of Madame Jouvet.’

  The twin … Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, what was this? wondered Kohler. Svelte, fluid, and wrapped in a clinging white halter-sheath with finely pleated skirt, dark blue beads, bangles, ear-rings and high heels, the actress made her way among the crowded tables evoking strident cheers, hand-clappings and whistles and not just from the men.

  She was about thirty or so but looked one hell of a lot younger, had thick, wavy auburn hair that fell to soft curls over coyly half-hidden ears, had large, deep dark brown eyes — stunning eyes — long lashes, beautiful eyebrows, high cheekbones and, up close, a generously wide, very engaging, very brave and open smile.

  ‘Danielle.’

  She and the Baroness kissed. A hand was extended. Kohler felt the silk of fingers as they slipped into his own. ‘Inspector,’ she said and her voice, her accent was like a caress, like a salutation.

  ‘Madame,’ she said. You poor thing. These people — oh they are such creatures,’ she tossed a dismissive hand. ‘Everything, it is a spectacle to them, isn’t that so, Marina? Everything but their little lives which are only spectacles to others. Come … let me find you something to wear. It is not nice what has happened. Two murders. Your mother … you must be in shock but you must also eat, yes, to regain your strength.’