‘I like it,’ he said, grinning appreciatively in spite of his worrying. The film was being shown in the château’s Salon Bleu, a sumptuously gorgeous room whose mirrors and chandeliers added touches of psychedelic wonder to the young, the not-so-young and old alike. The one hundred or so gathered were spellbound. Since the dialogue was in English few could understand, cue cards were being held up over on the far side of the screen but few cared to read them. As Willi von Strade had said, keep the story simple. A tin woodman, a scarecrow and a lion were with the girl and her dog on a yellow brick road through a forest whose celluloid leaves trembled whenever the girl sang, and sing she could.
There was a witch, of course. One had to have that. ‘The British Board of Censors have ruled the film suitable only for adults,’ snorted the Baroness. ‘Apparently those antiquated octogenarians feel it is not good to show a young virgin all alone in a forest with three men.’
‘But that lion … he looks like a Neanderthal who has just awakened from his cave.’
‘A Neanderthal. Who’s to say what they really looked like?’ she said, searching the crowd for her Toto. ‘The British Censors also ruled Snow White forbidden to the under-sixteens. Again it was a young virgin in a forest but in that film she was asleep on a bed of leaves, having been discovered by seven lonely dwarfs who longed to awaken her when only her prince could do so.’
The sudden kiss was fiercely warm, wet and hungry. Pressed against the wall and trapped, Kohler had to succumb. Through half-shut eyes he saw Toto Lemieux sitting between two teenagers, pretty things with bright, shining eyes and soft lips. The nearest girl had her hand secretively on something she shouldn’t have but watched the film so raptly no one would have guessed.
‘More,’ grated the Baroness. ‘Let that bastard see that I have taken a new lover, yes? It’s good for my ego. Besides, Toto has to be taught a lesson.’
‘Just like Danielle?’
She pulled away to pout and stare across the audience at her dog. She pressed her seat against his hand and, catching it fiercely, held it to her thigh. ‘Toto can sustain an erection for nearly forty minutes if I give him just enough. Did you know that such a thing was possible? Neanderthal’s bones were massive — far thicker and heavier than our own — but what about the rest of him? Perhaps they died out long ago without a trace, as most prehistorians think. Perhaps, though, as Courtet and Herr Eisner now believe, thanks to the work of Henri-Georges Fillioux, they inter-mated with the Cro-Magnons and we are the result of both. That would have been the case, wouldn’t it, if our cave goes right back to the beginnings of time? But no matter. I like to think that just as they were so very strong, they, too, could sustain themselves and bring joy to their women.’
Ah merde again.… ‘Look, I’ve got to find Madame Jouvet. She might.…’
‘Need you? Is it that you fear for her safety in our Danielle’s hands?’
‘You tell me.’ He had no interest at all in her or in why Toto could sustain an erection for so long and yet not climax.
‘Go and find her then. See if I care.’
So Lemieux was also on cocaine, but as an aphrodisiac. ‘Look, I’ve got a job to do.’
‘And so have I.’
He left her then, but watched through one of the french doors as she, too, slipped away. When he reached the wine cellar, there was no sign of her, yet he swore she had led him to it.
Mould and cobwebs were everywhere and the racks of bottles yielded up the ages on labels, some almost too stained to read. Mercier … Bollinger … Krug and Heidsieck … Moët-et-Chandon, ah Gott im Himmel.
Crouching, Kohler wiped off a label. The 1912. He found another and then another.
When he found the 1889, there was only one bottle left but places where two had lain were free of dust.
The château’s silhouette stood above the trees against the night sky, its turrets and walls darker than the steeply pitched roofs and chimneys. Though far from the bombing routes, the black-out ordinance was being strictly obeyed as it was throughout the whole of France. Not a chink of light showed but because of this the place appeared all the more menacing.
Sous-préfet Deveaux reluctantly brought the Peugeot to a stop on a gentle rise before switching off the ignition. ‘Jean-Louis, listen to me. Go easy, eh? Herr Himmler and Herr Goebbels? Who wants to have breakfast with them if your chin is resting on a silver platter and a waiter has his thumb at the back of your head?’
‘Odilon, my partner’s in there and so is Madame Jouvet.’
‘Yes, yes, that’s just what I’m saying. That bag of yours — ah! you know I can’t keep it in the car for you. It’s my neck if I do. Postcards Herr Oelmann wants? Sketches of cave paintings that woman may have subsequently forged? Do you still refuse to understand what you’re dealing with?’
Damn the weakness of the civil servant! ‘Is there still something you should tell me?’
Ah Paris, why the hell did he have to be so difficult? ‘That place, there are rooms and rooms, staircases few will know of, bolt holes and secret panels behind which are hidden passages because that’s the way the people that built it had to live.’
‘Fillioux won’t know of them. How could he?’
A call to the préfecture in Sarlat had established no one of that name had registered among the cast and crew. ‘It’s not just him that worries me. These old places. Lovely, of course. Quite splendid if you can heat them and do the repairs but steeped in history and deceit’
‘Just tell me, Odilon. Prepare me.’
‘Good! Yes, it’s good you should ask! Its first owner, the Due de Montignac, was murdered by his youngest daughter. A beautiful child, a princess who loved to listen to their troubador on into the night. She drove a nail through her father’s eye — you know the kind I mean. They normally put them through the timbers of their gates. He was drunk and asleep on one of the dining tables and probably didn’t feel a thing but to avoid her mother’s wrath, the child thought it best to kill herself by leaping from the roof.’
‘A happy household but nothing out of the ordinary.’
A hand was tossed. ‘No, of course not. Now, with the most recent of past owners, ah there is a slightly different story. Jews, a wealthy banker, an old and much respected family. Yes, yes, of course. Passage to Morocco via the Vieux Port de Marseille. What could be cleaner, eh? First the wife disappears while doing a little last-minute shopping with her two daughters, lovely girls, very capable musicians. One played the harp, I think, the other the flute or was it the cello? All three were found in an abandoned warehouse, the girls both naked, bound, gagged and violated, their throats slit, the mother forced to watch but dead and missing all the jewellery she so stupidly thought best to carry with her.’
‘And the father?’ he hazarded, not liking this new development.
‘The father, ah yes, you will have wondered why I was cognizant of the filming at Lascaux and touring around with the Baroness and her friends when we arrived in Domme the other day. The father was found dead of knife wounds near a brothel in the Vieux Port, stripped of everything including his underwear and left to kiss the cobblestones as was the couple’s only son. Perhaps their baggage was sent on, perhaps it simply disappeared. One thing is certain, my friend, no trace of the money he was paid for that place was ever found and no blame can ever come back to rest on the new owner. I’ve tried. I’ve had to think it all through and wonder if I had missed something but Marseille is satisfied and so is the Vichy Sûreté. Enjoy yourself. I only tell you this for your own good. Don’t cross von Strade. You’re a long way from Paris and I have only so many men at my disposal.’
‘Is the Baroness aware of what he did?’
‘Perhaps. Though she hates von Strade’s philandering, she’s intensely loyal to him.’
‘And Herr Oelmann?’
‘I’m sure he knows or suspects but will say nothing. The rest probably don’t even bother to question the matter since it little concerns them.’
�
�And Danielle Arthaud?’
‘That actress? It’s hard to say. She’s a strange one. Very knowledgeable with the stone tools. An expert.’
‘Is she on cocaine?’
Merde, what was this? ‘Yes … yes, I believe she must be.’
‘Will you get that restraining order on Jouvet? It’s necessary.’
Ah! Jean-Louis would still not take the hint. ‘Don’t be a Neanderthal, eh? I’ll ask — yes, yes, of course. It’s my duty. As soon as I get back to Sarlat I will visit the magistrate between his meals but old Lantôt, he’s going to want some proof.’
‘The word of a police officer is not enough?’
‘You know what he’s like. He will still remember the last time you applied to him and yes, certainly you were right, but to Lantot it was a slap in the face.’
‘That was five years ago.’
‘Please don’t sound so dismayed. Five is not enough and you know it.’
‘Thanks. Thanks a lot! Hey, I’ll try to remember it when someone is attempting to slice my jugular in the dark with a wedge of flint!’
‘Just don’t get hit on the head. I wouldn’t want to have to pick up the pieces.’
Hermann … Where the hell was Hermann? Eating, drinking and playing around with the girls or simply looking out for trouble?
Softly the sounds of swimming came to Kohler in the cellars of the château and he cursed the Baroness for playing games with him because he absolutely had to find Juliette and had left it too long. The woman was down at the end of a narrow passage in pitch darkness — she had taken the fuses from the electrical switch-box on the wall. Back and forth she went, the water dripping from her arms as she did the breaststroke but used the scissors kick so as to make less noise.
When he found her clothes, they were in a tidy mound above her high heels on the rocky platform that surrounded the pool. A natural cavern? he wondered. The spring-fed water was ice cold; she was a real Nacktkultur addict then, the naked body taut with goose pimples, the mind alert.
Arching herself, she went over backwards, he thought, to gracefully touch her heels and surface smiling near to him, only to then swim away.
Though she said absolutely nothing, he crouched and waited, heard her roll over to do the backstroke, heard her dive right to the bottom probably. Naked … naked like some beautiful siren calling out to him through her bubbles, beckoning … beckoning.…
When no further sound came, he hazarded anxiously, ‘Baroness?’
Hurriedly he found two matches and in their lonely light saw the stalactites hanging from the roof above, the grey of limestone walls that curved, the pool. ‘Baroness?’ he asked again and cursed as the matches burnt his fingers and plunged him back into darkness. ‘Baroness, two brutal murders have been committed. I’d just as soon there wasn’t another.’
Myself? she seemed to say though she was gone from him.
The fuses were in the toes of her shoes. Under overhead lights that shone among the stalactites, he could see the bottom clearly now, the water emerald green and with round, white pebbles on the floor of an ancient channel perhaps three metres down. No sign of her anywhere. Where … where the hell is she? he wondered, seeing her in his mind’s eye caught on something, her mouth open, her body floating face up, no movement now.…
When he saw a rocky ledge just above the bottom at the far end of the pool, he followed the channel below it back to the pebbles and understood. She was challenging him to join her. She wanted him to swim under that ledge to find the channel and then the cavern she must now be in.
You fool, he said. To swim alone in such a place, in darkness, is not wise. Had she things to tell him that demanded such privacy or was she simply trying to seduce him?
‘Both,’ he said but did not grin. ‘Be careful, Baroness. Where one can swim, so can two but the next time the visitor might not be myself.’
The door was of massive oak with iron drift pins and a lock that must be three centuries old. Kohler knocked but there was no answer. He pounded, and the sound of his fist splintered the air. A girl giggled, another too, but the door and walls were far too thick for sounds like that to escape.
When he glanced over a shoulder, he saw two naked teenagers clutching flimsy shawls of silk that webbed their nubile breasts but left the rest exposed. ‘Monsieur, are you joining the party?’ asked one, whose dark red hair brushed loosely over pale white, freckled shoulders.
‘The party?’ he bleated.
‘Yes,’ whispered the other one, a brunette, her breath warm on his lips as she lightly explored them.
‘Ah no, I’ve work to do. Juliette Jouvet, the schoolteacher. …’
Both tossed their heads to indicate the staircase at the far end of the corridor. Both flicked their shawls away to coil their arms about the giant’s neck and whisper, ‘Couchez avec moi, mon grand détective.’ Fuck me.
‘A partouse,’ whispered the redhead. An orgy. ‘There are six of us girls tonight. Toto Lemieux and a few others are coming. In there,’ she said. Tou have only to knock once, yes? It is the signal.’
‘I’ll try to remember.’
They left him then and he stood out in the corridor like the Tin bloody Woodsman gaping through the now open doorway into a haze of tobacco smoke and naked female flesh, wondering if Juliette was still alive.
‘Don’t keep us waiting,’ breathed the brunette, beginning to close the door. ‘One knock, that is all it takes to experience everything.’
‘All urges,’ confided the other one, ‘until they are satisfied even for those who do not wish to participate and come only to watch.’
Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, von Strade? he wondered. Von Strade.
When he found Juliette, she was on her knees frantically going through the trunk Courtet had guarded so jealously. The espadrilles were her own. The grey flannel trousers rolled above the ankles, and pin-stripe shirt, indicated she had helped herself to the Professor’s wardrobe. Cast aside was the borrowed dress she would never wear again.
From time to time she irritably brushed a tear away and when, with a frightened gasp, she turned to look up at him, her blue eyes registered fear, not relief. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
She swallowed hard. ‘My father’s come back! He’s alive. Everything fits. The death caps, the champagne, that … that flask of his. Her.…’
‘Not suspecting he would harm her.’
‘The blow, the … the slashings, the.…’
Kohler went down on his knees to wrap his arms about her. ‘Hey, easy, eh? Easy.’ She buried her face against his shoulder and wept, ‘That bitch Danielle has indicated to me my father is alive. He’ll kill me, Inspector. I’m next. Don’t you see, she’s right? He must! I’m the only one who can prove those paintings are a forgery.’
A forgery … ah merde, so it was true.
Clumsily he searched his pockets for a handkerchief and, finding none, got up to look in one of the Professor’s dresser drawers and found instead a loaded .455-calibre Mark VI Webley, ex-British Army revolver. ‘Dunkirk,’ he said as if struck.
Through her tears she saw the gun and was sickened because it could only mean the Professor was afraid of her father too. ‘My father despised Courtet who hated him in return. Each was very jealous of the other and many times his student colleague tried to get at the contents of this trunk until now … now, finally, he has it.’
Her agitated fingers hurriedly wiped the tears from her cheeks. A shirt-sleeve was yanked out in which to blow the nose and dry the eyes, then rolled above the elbow. ‘Excuse me,’ she said and tried to smile. ‘I’m a wreck and freely admit it.’
Herr Kohler gave her a few seconds. The emptiness that had so often been in his eyes was not there. He turned to rummage in the top drawer of the dresser and when he had it, emptied a packet of cartridges into a pocket. ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud,’ he said, and she knew by his look that there was more trouble. ‘Danielle was in contact with your mother. A parcel in April to Paris. The sous-fact
eur Auger’s name was on the return address.’
Ah no, maman, she cried inwardly, what is this he is saying? ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud is not very nice, Inspector. Brilliant perhaps but cruel and demanding and utterly selfish. André should have her. They deserve each other. He would be so mentally outclassed, she would kill him with a little something from her bag of stone tools, and if not that, her bitchiness would make him hit her once too often.’
Herr Kohler asked about the stone tools and she told him they were supposedly from the film, and that André had probably been secretly meeting Danielle or Henri-Georges. ‘But I have to ask myself, were the tools not also used on my mother?’
‘There’ll be postcards from Mademoiselle Arthaud …,’ he said, his voice trailing off in thought.
‘She has asked for them. When I told her they had been stolen, she was very upset — unreasonably so.’
Still lost in thought, he said, ‘We saw no evidence of there being two assailants at the murder of your mother.’
‘But at that of the sous-facteur Auger, monsieur? Were there not two perhaps? This is what your eyes, they are telling me.’
‘Come on, we’d best leave here while we can.’
She reached out to him. ‘A moment, please. First you must see the journals of my father. It is what I have been after. There is not one mention of the paintings, nor is there a complete description of the cave. That is also missing.’
In page after page and sketch after sketch, Henry-Georges Fillioux had demonstrated not only where the tools had been found among the layers of the gisement, but how each had been made and used.
‘There … there is also not one mention of my mother,’ she said, holding back the tears, ‘It is as if the father I worshipped as a child had done it all — found the cave, seen the light and expounded on the brilliance of his theories when many of his ideas were hers. Hers! He … he has even listed among his accounts the cost of the two bottles of champagne and has marked them down to necessity. A mere forty-five francs? But … but I must ask myself, are these journals not where Mademoiselle Arthaud learned so well how to use the tools?’
Stonekiller Page 18