Stonekiller

by J. Robert Janes

  As if the chosen one of a very large family, Danielle Arthaud leaned over the head table to a stack of dinner plates and gathered the necessities, then went from dish to dish with complete self-assurance. ‘Les truffes sous la cendre?’ she asked. ‘They’re so good, so fantastic I have discovered a passion for them and will take another two for myself.’

  Spiced truffles wrapped in thin slices of pork, heavy brown paper and roasted under the ashes, the truffles first seasoned and then sprinkled with brandy, and to hell with rationing.

  ‘A few oysters, a little of the ballotine de dinde, or would you prefer the rillettes de pore? The ballotine? Ah yes, I thought so.’

  The white meat of turkey stuffed with foie gras.

  Just a spoonful of the eggs en cocotte à la périgourdine was taken, eggs on a layer of foie gras baked in a saucepan with a rich brown sauce in which there were thick, round slices of truffles. Some salad was added from one of several bowls. ‘And yes, a bottle of the Monbazillac, you do not mind? It is my favourite since I have come to this marvellous département of yours.’

  A golden dessert wine, an apéritif too, perhaps.

  ‘Sweet, fragrant and heady,’ confided the Baroness to Kohler. ‘Our petite Parisienne has acquired a taste for it also. It owes its special fragrance to the pourriture noble, the noble rot which reduces the acid of the raisin.’

  ‘A Renaissance wine to go with this house,’ indicated Danielle with such a generous grin it banished all thought of spite. ‘It keeps for thirty years but this one, ah it is not so old, I think.’

  Ah Gott im Himmel, she was electrifying. Beautiful, exciting and very, very sure of herself.

  She and Juliette moved away from the table to pass below a tapestry and coat of arms high on the ancient stone wall. They went up the staircase, and as all eyes watched, she turned at the balcony to give them the briefest of glances as if she owned the whole damned place. The perfect exit.

  ‘Come,’ said Marina von Strade, taking him by the arm. ‘You must be tired and hungry. We will eat and then we will view the rushes and afterwards you can meet everyone. For tonight you are mine.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Kohler.

  ‘Danielle? Ah, you are interested? You find her attractive? Until the war came, she was a nothing actress. Impoverished, struggling, always trying to meet the rent — you know the type. Now she has blossomed so much, she can toss away promising work in two other very good films to accept a far lesser part with us. But she is clever. She knows that this is the film that will be her moment of discovery.’

  ‘No boyfriends?’

  ‘Don’t be so curious. Ah! what is a woman to do? Strip before you? She has lots of boyfriends. They sniff at her heels. She picks, she chooses. It’s her privilege but … ah but she has only one love.’

  ‘Your Willi?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Willi is a businessman. To him sex is just a function like any other and everything can be settled with cash. It’s only a matter of the price.’

  * * *

  ‘A litre of the vin paille de Beaulieu, please,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘And for dinner, monsieur?’ asked madame la patronne. The place was absolutely quiet, though several of the village regulars were seated at their customary tables. There were also two guests, salesmen by the look of them.

  ‘Dinner … ah, I have no ration tickets. Give me whatever you can.’

  ‘But … but that is impossible. Without the tickets, one is lost.’

  ‘Even in a little place like this and in the zone libre, madame?’

  The generous waist drew in, the aproned bosom swelled. ‘An officer of the law and you demand the black-market meal? Ah no, no, monsieur. Here in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne we do things legally or not at all!’

  ‘A police officer, ah yes, of course one has to be careful but…’

  ‘Marie … Marie … what is all this commotion? My cooking, my customers, chérie …’

  ‘All right, all right. Forgive me,’ motioned the Sûreté. ‘It is only that I have had a long day and no sustenance and still have much work to do. When sous-préfet Deveaux arrives with his men at first light, he will give you all the tickets you require.’

  ‘Deveaux?’

  Was it such a calamity? ‘Yes. Your sous-facteur has been murdered but the sous-préfet cannot come until dawn.’

  The couple went into a huddle, the others cautiously laid down their knives and forks or set their glasses aside.

  Florid, round-faced and perplexed, the patron blurted, ‘Murdered? But that is not possible, monsieur.’

  ‘Possible or not he has had his head bashed in a week ago. Late in the afternoon, I think, but of course I cannot yet be positive.’

  ‘Last Sunday?’

  ‘Did anyone not from this area pass through the village? At dawn perhaps, or at any time up to, let us say, noon.’

  The hotel, in a big provincial house, was on the place du Champ-de-Mars right in the heart of the village and well above the river and the streets around Madame Fillioux’s house.

  Both shook their heads, an automatic response. The woman hesitantly smoothed her apron. ‘The vin paille,’ she said warily, ‘l’omelette aux champignons, salade à l’huile de noix, grand-jeans, sweet cherries and the ersatz coffee since no other is available these days. The prix fixe, monsieur.’

  The chefs special if incomplete but the very same meal as Madame Fillioux had planned. A meal that had, no doubt, been one of several stand-bys for the past thirty or more years until the Defeat and had captivated the young prehistorian so much, Madame Fillioux had repeated it every year since then.

  ‘No mushrooms, please,’ he said, giving the woman a suitably pained look. ‘The stomach, madame, the ulcers perhaps. A detective’s life.…’

  ‘No mushrooms,’ she said tartly. ‘You offend the chef.’

  The husband had vanished to his frying pan. ‘All right, then, the omelette too.’ He was in God’s hands.

  So, thought the woman sharply, Ernestine, she has picked her harvest a little differently this time and the detective, he is only too aware of this and is squeamish. It could only mean she had intended to kill her son-in-law.

  ‘Our mushrooms are not poisonous, monsieur,’ she said sweetly.

  They exchanged a look so knowing he winced. ‘Tell me about Madame Fillioux. What was she like?’

  Suspiciously she looked at him. ‘As facteur, shop owner and innkeeper?’ she asked.

  ‘As a girl, madame. One of sixteen or seventeen.’

  The chest swelled. The lips were compressed. ‘Far too ambitious for a little place like this. That father of hers should not have been tempted by the few miserly francs her future “husband” offered for her … her services. Letting her stay at the farm of a relative nearby the cave so that those two could spend every waking moment without supervision? Pah! what did the imbecile think he was doing but putting the teat into the lamb’s mouth?’

  ‘Had she no friends in the village?’ Everyone was listening.

  ‘Not after throwing herself away like that and being so stubborn and proud. Paris … an intellectual, a student-assistant to some professor at the Sorbonne. It only goes to show what schooling like that does to a young man. Handsome … oh yes, Inspector. Henri-Georges Fillioux was very handsome.’

  Several of the regulars nodded agreement.

  ‘Already married, if you ask me,’ she went on tartly, ‘and keeping that choice little bonbon to himself. This hotel was too expensive for the likes of him. Hah! he was only after something else and had an eye for it.’

  ‘The trunk.’

  ‘Those old stones, yes, and whatever her little capital was worth to him.’ Her virginity. ‘She … she used to be my dearest friend, Inspector. We shared our every confidence until that one came along and now … now she has been murdered!’

  Everyone in the place could hear Madame weeping as she went into the kitchens. Giving a futile but apologetic shrug to the other diners, St-Cyr took to fuss
ing with his napkin and to self-consciously rearranging the cutlery. These little villages … one had always to be so careful.

  When the stoneware jug of wine was thumped down, a little of it spilled out to stain the cloth. ‘All right, then,’ said the patron fiercely. What has really happened to Ernestine, eh? For years I have had to put up with those two not speaking a word unless necessary and now, suddenly, we may all have to launch a boat to escape the flood.’

  ‘Dead of multiple stab wounds from a flint handaxe and repeated slashes with a flint knife or some other such tool. Disembowelled and left to rot in the little glade where love was first consummated.’

  Ah nom de Dieu, how terrible! ‘He’s come back then, has he, that “husband” of hers?’ stormed the patron. ‘A coward, if you ask me. “No soldier,” she said and meant it too. “Amnesia,” she would say. Amnesia! Shell-shocked, eh, and wandering about for nearly thirty years? A deserter! A weakling who crumpled under the first barrage!’ He thumped the table, sloshing more of the wine. ‘She waited only for his return. She always swore he would come back. She was very pretty, monsieur, but far too intelligent and ambitious for her own good — he did that to her. “He frees my mind,” she used to say.’ A hand was tossed, the puffy eyelids were narrowed fiercely and then widened with sincerity. ‘But the interest she had in those old things, ah let me tell you, never have I heard one speak of them so convincingly and with such passion. And speak we did, at times.’

  ‘Antoine, get in here!’

  ‘Marie, she’s gone! Can you not find it in your heart to forget and forgive what I once felt for her?’

  Ah merde, a full public disclosure with more tears and a scorched omelette!

  The patron hunkered down over the table. ‘No one came through the village on that Sunday, Inspector, but I will ask around just to be certain. Perhaps one of the children saw something. Perhaps whoever murdered Monsieur Auger knew only too well the places where one can pass unseen. Nothing has changed much in these past thirty years. Nothing.’

  Henri-Georges Fillioux did it, so okay, we’ve got that firmly, said St-Cyr to himself. ‘Did no one question the sous-facteur’s absence?’

  A shrug was given. ‘Several of us tried to find him but without success. It was not a pleasant feeling. The incoming mail was piling up. We were all very alarmed, especially when Ernestine did not return from her little holiday. Two days, three at the most were usual, never more.’

  ‘And the PTT, why was it left locked up for a week? No telephone, no mail service?’

  ‘We were afraid to break in. Ernestine.…’

  St-Cyr gave an audible sigh. ‘She would have pressed charges.’

  Ah, trust the Sûreté! ‘Her hatred was only the result of our blaming her for something that, had the young man been from these parts, would have soon been taken care of and forgotten.’

  ‘But Fillioux was from Paris and of good family. One of the little aristocracy.’

  ‘He made us feel inferior, Inspector. When Ernestine got pregnant, we rejoiced, to our shame. She was a good woman in spite of what everyone thinks.’

  ‘And her daughter?’

  The large brown eyes filled with moisture. ‘Blamed for everything though it was no fault of hers, poor thing. It was wrong, though, of Ernestine to force that girl into a marriage Juliette did not want. My son, he was killed in the Ardennes, in the invasion of 1940, but Juliette and he, they were always in love. Even after she went to Domme to teach, they would write to each other in secret at least once a week, and when she and her children came home for the summer holidays, they would walk along the river bank with the children. Nothing … nothing ever happened to stain their relationship. Nothing. It was pure.’

  A nod would be best to indicate he understood. ‘Was there anything to suggest that this most recent trip of Madame Fillioux’s was any different than all the others?’

  ‘Nothing. Ernestine kept to herself about such things. Her private life was her fortress.’

  ‘But you have said the two of you spoke of the past?’

  ‘Years ago and never of her private life.’

  ‘Then was there anything unusual about last year’s visit?’

  ‘Last year’s …? But … but she made two visits, Inspector. One at the usual time and the other in mid-October, the 15th, I think.’

  The visit with Courtet. The payment of 10,000 francs.

  ‘Did Juliette know of this second visit?’ asked St-Cyr calmly.

  The shoulders were shrugged. The patron simply didn’t know.

  ‘And the visit of 17th June of last year?’ The day the trunk had turned up in an antique shop in Saint-Ouen.

  ‘For several days after her visit Ernestine was preoccupied and forgetting things she would not normally have forgotten. Little things, you understand. It was as if she had either done or seen something she regretted, something she could tell no one, not even Juliette.’

  When, please, did the husband leave for Russia?’

  ‘Ah! not until September of last year. Ernestine was so happy when she heard the news, she forgot the past and tried to mend all fences. “It is a gift from Heaven,” she said. “He won’t come back. They will kill him for us.”’

  ‘And when did he come back?’

  ‘In the third week of March.’

  The rushes were being shown in the grand salon of the château where magnificent crystal chandeliers, gilded mirrors and deep blue velvet drapes rose to elegantly formal soft blue swirls and cream mouldings of plasterwork. Louis XIV sofas, settees and armchairs were lined up together with much-used wooden and canvas folding chairs. Several of the cast and crew sat up front on the Aubusson carpet or to the sides on the harpsichord, on the grand piano, and the tables with their fantastic marquetry and clutter of porcelain figurines and clocks. Some smoked cigarettes or small cigars, others sipped wine, nibbled pastry or, arriving late and still in work clothes and boots, dined on huge sandwiches crammed with pâté and roast goose. The youngest of the cast ran rampant, a game of hide-and-seek. The older teenagers browsed, looked bored, held hands or slipped away to explore each other.

  ‘The owners must be tearing their hair,’ snorted Kohler, still searching for a sign of Juliette.

  ‘Willi simply bought the place lock, stock and barrel. It was easier,’ confided the Baroness. ‘Besides, they were Jewish and he arranged things for them.’

  Jewish, ah yes, the lucky ones. Passage to Tangier, Alexandria or Tel Aviv, perhaps even New York. Anything was possible if connections suddenly opened up and the price was paid.

  Juliette had not come downstairs, not yet, a worry, thought Kohler.

  Taking him by the hand, Marina von Strade guided him through the crowd until they reached the far side of the room and could see at a glance where her husband sat in the middle, smoking a cigar. With von Strade were the two directors, one French and the other German, the two lead cameramen, lighting men, casting directors, story and film editors.

  ‘Lascaux,’ she said. ‘Can you not feel the sense of anticipation? It is like the prelude to orgasm, yes? Everything builds, everything must be perfect or all is lost. There is that exquisite tension, that mounting which then suddenly bursts with revelation which both overawes and overcomes. Never have they worked so hard and on a film of such importance.’

  The lights were dimmed, the projector’s lamp came on. A hush settled. One couple left off kissing to stare at the screen. A glass of the red toppled over, too late to be saved.

  Flickering, the film’s leader ran through a series of letters and numbers. Moment of Discovery, Scene Twenty, Take One...

  A clapperboard arm crashed down on the chalked slate and suddenly the hush became a gasp as the screen filled with colour — deep red, brownish red, rusty brown, yellow and dark sooty black. In outline after outline, with some of the figures filled in, giant aurochs roamed beside reindeer and shaggy ponies across the white roof and walls of the cave.

  Back-lit so as to give the effect of the a
nimals rushing to overwhelm the viewer, the figures were life-sized and sometimes much larger, and often they overlapped. A red ochre aurochs bull with sharply curved horns preceded a black bison. Shaggy black or red ponies galloped in succession while deep red reindeer with huge spreads of antlers looked on and one had to seek out and follow every line. There was so much, they were so beautiful.

  There was still no sign of Juliette, ah merde. … ‘Fantastic,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Oh mein Gott, Louis has to see this.’

  It thrilled her to hear him say so. ‘The Chamber of Bulls we are calling it,’ confided Marina with a whisper whose warm breath caressed his ear. ‘This part of the Lascaux Cave is more than seventeen metres long but there are two other passages, you will see.’

  She squeezed his fingers and pressed her hip against his.

  About a metre and a half from the floor, the paintings began where the walls and roof had been naturally coated with a fine white crystalline deposit of calcite. Again and again the camera moved in for detail, sucking up colour and silhouette to reveal dusty spots of black or red beneath and within some of the ponies. Each rise and fall of the rock had been used to emphasize some feature, a powerful shoulder, a stampede-driven eye, the swollen belly of a pregnant mare, the figures moving with each contour, so much so that in some the artist could not have seen the head while drawing the hindquarters, yet the thing was perfect.

  ‘Very simple, very stylistic and yet so full of life you feel you are standing in the midst of them. There is a sense of uplifting, godlike purity that is hard to define.’

  Kohler could not help but feel humbled and said so.

  The cameras panned the walls, came in close or stood well back and used changes of lighting so that very quickly, within perhaps two minutes, the viewer realized the silhouettes could not have been executed unaided. The walls and roof were simply too high. The passage narrowed to half a metre at floor level but broadened upwards. It twisted through the dark grey limestone until, distant now as one approached, one saw a light all but hidden around a corner. Softer, more amber and flickering. Shadows on the wall. A man … a woman.…