Then they sat down, the four of them, at one of the tables now cleared of its stone tools and watched over only by the two skeletons. With his black, horn-rimmed glasses, short, crinkly dark brown hair, blue eyes and compressed lips, Herr Eisner looked not like a molester of young boys but the professor in trouble that he was.
‘Ask what you wish and I will tell you what I know.’
Oelmann swore under his breath that he would see justice done. Kohler kept the Webley in his right hand, cocked and pointing at the Propaganda Staffel. The Radom had disappeared into a corner. ‘How did you become involved? Let’s start with that.’
‘Quite unexpectedly. Eugene Courtet discovered the trunk in an antique shop last year and wrote to me of its significance. He had by then already applied for a research grant from the Friends of Culture and, as one of its jurists, I saw that he received a grant of 250,000 marks.’
‘5,000,000 francs,’ said Kohler. It was enough for murder.
The swastika and the amulet, the figurines and my father’s journals,’ said Madame Jouvet, lost in thought only to have Herr Kohler shake his head. It’s not the time — she knew this was what he meant, yet she wanted so much to settle the matter now.
‘Who suggested the film?’
‘I did. I saw its potential and called on the Reichsführer-SS Himmler myself. Herr Himmler was ecstatic and immediately authorized me to go ahead.’
‘So, von Strade and Continentale were brought in and work began on Moment of Discovery. Who suggested the story line?’
‘Courtet … from memory. He told me of his student days with Fillioux and the young prehistorian’s love affair. Fillioux’s parents were adamant, madame, that your father not leave his wife and daughter to take up with your mother. He rebelled. He wrote to her from the battlefields, three letters I believe. Letters she subsequently used to support her claim for a marriage certificate which, incidentally, could then be granted after the divorce and remarriage had gone through.’
Four years it had taken. Four years.
‘So, he went missing in action and the former wife remarried,’ said Oelmann, not taking his eyes from the revolver in Kohler’s hand.
‘And now the one daughter is an actress who has been dispossessed,’ said Juliette sadly, ‘while the other, who did not even know she had a half-sister, has had her mother butchered and the man whom she always called a friend brutally murdered. Why is it, please, that Mademoiselle Arthaud did not tell me we shared a father?’
Eisner looked questioningly to Oelmann and then to Kohler before saying, ‘Perhaps because she knows her father is alive and that the two of them are working together.’
In spite of Jouvet’s shots, no one had come to investigate and now it was again quiet in the stables, the stall its own kind of prison.
The bloodied body of the pigeon lay among the scattered treasures from Madame Fillioux’s little hiding-place and near a superb black flint Mousterian handaxe, one too far away to reach.
The Luger, always steady, was still pointed at St-Cyr. Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, where the hell was Hermann?
‘“Am to work on film …”’ muttered Jouvet, reading the postcard. ‘But … but others would know of this? His papers, his carte d’identite and … and the laissez-passer he would have needed to cross the Demarcation Line?’
The shrug must be diffident and helplessly lost so as to augment Jouvet’s worry. ‘It’s what he has said, Captain, but I have to wonder was Henri-Georges Fillioux so badly wounded few would now recognize him? Age would help, of course, but disfigurement also.’
The papers would be false but she’d still have recognized him.’
‘Exactly, but.…’ A diffident hand was tossed.
‘But what, damn you?’ The walking-stick slipped, the gun wavered.
The helpless look, the wince, the shrug were given. ‘But she did not back away, Captain. She knew her killer and though she planned to murder that person, must have smiled forgivingly so as to allay suspicion. Who, please, was your contact with von Strade?’
He would grin widely at this flic from the Paris Sûreté and then he would kill him. ‘A girl … a woman … very nice, very pretty, and very persuasive but promiscuous, I think.’
‘Danielle Arthaud?’
‘Yes. She said von Strade needed certain information and that he would pay handsomely.’
‘Did she tell you to go to Sarlat on the Monday?’
‘So as to be out of the way?’ snorted Jouvet. ‘Inspector, what do you think?’
Ah merde, the Luger.… ‘Monsieur, a moment, please.’
‘It’s Captain to you.’
‘Does it not trouble you that there is proof that Henri-Georges is out there somewhere? That the day before her mother’s murder, your wife felt someone was watching her as she went into that cave?’
‘Fillioux … Fillioux,’ he said. ‘Why should I care if he’s back?’
The trigger finger tightened, the grip of a wasted hand caused pain to join that of a bullet-shattered leg.
‘FILLIOUX, AH MERDE!’ cried St-Cyr, looking past him as the gun fired and he leapt to grab the bastard’s crippled hand and to crush it … crush it. … They went over. They rolled about and tried to get at each other. Sharp fingernails tore at his eyes, his nose … the gun … the gun … the salty taste of blood … blood.… Must kill him … kill him … NOW … NOW … Smash him … smash him.…
Jouvet’s head went back, the gun went off, his throat came up, the flesh began to tear, to.…
‘Ah, no … No!’
The handaxe was in St-Cyr’s hand. Instinctively he had picked it up in the melee and had used it. ‘Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, he gasped, breathlessly straddling the bastard.
Blood trickled from Jouvet’s right temple where now the bone was broken. It beaded from fissures to sweat away among the greasy hairs; it poured from the throat.
Dropping the handaxe in revulsion at what it had betrayed — that primitive, hidden urge to kill that was in everyone — St-Cyr tried to get up but bowed his head. Ah merde … merde, it had happened so quickly. There had been no time to think. Of course he had killed before as a soldier and in self-defence as a détective but this … this was quite different. A moment of passion, one so savagely intense, it had reached far back to primordial instincts and all else had been forgotten.
‘We needed you, damn it. There were things only you could have told us.’
Even in death was there a use for Jouvet. Exhausted, desperately in need of sleep, St-Cyr heaved the body into the front seat of Herr Oelmann’s touring car so that the head slumped on to the steering wheel.
‘There, I give you Henri-Georges Fillioux, my friends,’ he said to the night and the château’s darkened silhouette. ‘Let us see what this brings.’
Pulling off the stained coveralls and bulky sweater he had borrowed, he tossed them into the wheelbarrow and tidied himself. Then, trundling the barrow back to the stables, he cleaned the stall, checked the Luger and collected the carpet-bag and its contents.
The sweater and coveralls went into a corner out of sight, the handaxe was washed. When he reached the great hall, he walked hesitantly among the tables with their piles of dirty dishes, the knives and forks, the half-eaten rubbish, empty wine bottles and bowls of salad et cetera, et cetera, a Lupercalian feast perhaps, but with the fertility rites now long passed into exhaustion and sleep.
Like a visiting abbot of old arriving late for the feast, he stood beneath a chandelier in the grand salon, seeing himself in the mirrors, shabby, pale and forlorn, a traveller down murder’s lane. He would have to get himself cleaned up, a shave at least, a haircut. A new fedora … could one be found?
‘Inspector …’
‘Baroness … Ah, forgive me. I seem to be lost.’ She was sitting all alone beside a film projector.
‘I thought you were in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne looking for things?’ Her voice trembled just a little. Was she dismayed to find him here with this bag in hand?
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‘Yes, yes, of course I was there but I couldn’t sleep. Some villagers. You know how they are at times. Hermann, Baroness? Have you seen my partner?’
‘Not in several hours. I wanted him to swim with me but … but he was too modest, I think.’
‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘Can’t you?’
‘Pastis or brandy … I need a little something,’ he said and she could tell by his tone of voice he was unsetded.
‘Too bad, then. All I have is this.’
She indicated a bottle and when he joined her, he saw that she had been crying but was not drunk.
‘Danielle,’ she said, ignoring the carpet-bag which he dumped at his feet. ‘Our princess has a passion for this wine, Inspector, so much so, my Willi allows her the key to his wine cellar and she comes and goes as she pleases and drinks all she needs but often carelessly leaves the cellars open to others. They have no shame.’
He found himself a chair. ‘Then I take it Danielle was recently here watching that film?’
‘The rushes, yes. She was being punished for not having attended the evening’s mandatory viewing but has now taken herself back upstairs.’ To beg, she said to herself, to be fucked and used in other ways if necessary until she gets what she so earnestly desires, a little more cocaine.
The wine was warm and he judged she had been holding the bottle in her lap for some time.
‘It’s too sweet for me,’ she said, and he caught again the faint quaver in her voice, ‘but Danielle is a slave to it.’
And to other things? he thought and let her see this. ‘The rushes, Baroness. I’m a great lover of the cinema, starved of course these days for so many of the great films are denied us. Please, take no offence. I didn’t mean to say that’
‘You did. Willi would agree. He has a fantastic collection. Everything from the Lumiére brothers’ first attempts to The Jazz Singer and The Wizard of Oz.’
‘Charlie Chan in Shanghai? Modern Times? Captain Blood?’
From cops and robbers in China Town to Chaplin and the wheels of industry to pirates, all released in 1936. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said and could not help but smile faintly. ‘Are there others you like?’
‘Camet de Bal — it’s not as good as pépé le Moko but Duvivier still stands out as a great director, another Jean Renoir perhaps. That’s hard to match but … but, ah I go on. Please, your rushes. I would like very much to see them.’
‘Then see them you shall.’
In frame after frame he saw the paintings at Lascaux then, like all the others, was fascinated by the sight of Danielle and her Cro-Magnon ‘husband’ on that primitive scaffold.
‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?’ said Marina von Strade tighdy. ‘Watch how she disembowels a doe.’
Ah merde … blood … blood on her thighs and arms, her breasts, neck and face.
‘Danielle, Inspector. Danielle is the one you want.’
When Kohler and Madame Jouvet found it quite by chance, the room was in darkness but then Danielle came along the corridor in a hurry, swearing softly in French, crying, wiping away the tears perhaps and saying more loudly, ‘Bastard … that bastard … Oh mon cul, mon pauvre cul.…’
She tripped, she cried out, ‘Ah no!’ and went down on her hands and knees to grope about the carpet and beg God to give it to her until at last she had it.
A light on the dressing-table went on. Behind the heavy drapes, Kohler clasped a hand over Juliette Jouvet’s lips to smother her gasp, then eased his hand away.
Naked but for a leather thong about her slender waist and her skin bag of stone tools, Danielle Arthaud stood a moment to calm herself. A lower drawer was opened and a silver disc, perhaps ten centimetres in diameter, was taken out.
The disc was polished and held up to the mirror. Trembling, she searched for the flint blade with which she had so carefully divided the truffes sous la cendre and when she had it, licked it and used a crumpled blouse to dry it.
From a cigarette case, she took a straw of cobalt-blue glass and for a moment, delicately fingered this as if in the waiting there was heightened excitement.
Two halves of a walnut shell, the thing she had dropped, were carefully prised open and again Danielle sat there looking as if temptation’s call was only enhanced by waiting. ‘I can still stop myself,’ she said and sighed. ‘I’m still not a slave to it.’
Cocaine was dipped out of the walnut shell with the point of the flint blade and carefully tapped onto the centre of the disc. Spreading the snow-white powder, she smoothed it into a square that was divided into ten lines. She waited again for so long it seemed she really might be able to stop herself.
Two lines were taken, drawn through the tube and into each nostril, the head thrown back each time, the eyes shut, lips parted in a gasp, then a grin and a slow smile that grew until the lips parted in another sudden gasp.
Blood pounding, she sat there and, fingering the glass tube, held it to the light and watched herself in the mirror.
Grinning, she took some more and then a little more. ‘It’s enough!’ she said. Enough for what? wondered Kohler. Enough to kill?
Everything was packed away. Worth far more than gold these days, the rest of the cocaine was carefully returned and the halves of the walnut shell closed to safely hold their little treasure.
Von Strade … said Kohler to himself. The giver of all gifts.
‘Toto … I’ll fix him,’ breathed Danielle. ‘He enjoyed doing that to me while the others watched and Willi … Willi sat in that goddamned chair of his and made me beg. Me to whom he owes so much!’
Ah merde.…
The road was dark, the wind was in her hair and it felt so good to be leaving that place Juliette wanted to shout for joy but found only despair. Herr Kohler was ahead of her; St-Cyr behind. Caught between the two of them, they would ride through the rest of the night until, at last, they could walk the bicycles up through the woods and into that little valley to leave them by the stream and climb to the cave.
It all made sense. Everything. The trunk coming to light after all these years, the film, the visit of Courtet, the payment of 10,000 francs and André’s … André’s working for Danielle Arthaud and telling her things and then … then for Herr Oelmann … Herr Oelmann.…
André would kill her. He would relish the beating he would first hand out. Her face, her lips, her eyes and nose, and why … why is it, please, that he felt such a need to take out all of his bitterness on her?
Her father had come back. Maman had wanted her kept out of it and that is why she had told her nothing. Nothing of the paintings, the forgery. Nothing of what she had been up to, the unexpected, the impossible, in a cave she knew so well. Ah yes.
The tears were brushed away. The road went downhill and she hurried to catch up only to realize she was alone … alone.
Apprehensively her heart hammered. Disturbed, upset that the détectives had not told her to stop, she stood astride the bicycle Herr Kohler had stolen for her from the château and waited — listened — tried hard to find them.
Nothing … only silence and then … then that feeling of closeness, of his caring she had experienced, now the loss of it … the loss. He had really cared about her, she said. He had!
Her spirit was wounded and, yes, it hurt to know they still did not trust her completely. Hesitandy she began to walk the bicycle back up the hill.
A cigarette was being shared. Dark against the night sky, the two détectives had paused just on the other side of the hill so as to be alone, and when in dismay she called out to them, they stopped talking and waited for her to join them. Did they sigh inwardly with impatience?
‘Your husband, madame,’ began St-Cyr and it was clear that they had been discussing André and her father. Were they working together, was that it, eh, messieurs? Has André been telling Henri-Georges all about maman and her annual visits, visits that never changed until the last? And all about the daughter who secretly dreaded each of her mother’
s visits to the house afterwards yet had to show the brave front and the bruises, the smashed lips, the shame of a marriage that had gone so wrong?
‘Your husband, madame. Hermann and I were simply discussing how best to protect you and return you safely to your children.’
‘André is dead, madame. Louis had to kill him.’
‘Dead …? Please, what is this you are saying?’
St-Cyr told her then and in the silence of the night, they heard her suck in a breath and say, ‘A stone.… Killed with a stone.’
Kohler reached out to her. ‘Oelmann,’ he said. ‘He’ll realize where we’ve gone. He may feel he has to get help this time from the Périgord Sonderkommando. Louis and me, we … we were wondering if it might not be best for you to go home to Mayor Pialat, madame. He’ll do his best to hide you. Think about it, eh? The two of us could ride on together and then I could come back to help Louis.’
She squeezed the hand that had taken hers. She said, ‘You both are kind. Merci but, please, you will need me at the cave, yes? The paintings? The second chamber Professor Courtet claims to have found all by himself. The postcards, too, I think.’
‘They’ll come after us, Louis. They’ll have to,’ said Hermann grimly. ‘Oelmann won’t be able to leave things now.’
She rode on ahead, but on the downhill slope they soon caught up with her and she felt first one put a comforting hand on her shoulder and then the other, and she laughed aloud because she had to tell them how relieved she was to know they trusted her.
But at the bridge over the stream that would, some fifteen or twenty kilometers to the south, find its little waterfall, they again stopped to listen to the night.
Its stillness was of that other time and she knew they each listened as Neanderthal would have done, wondering why it was that just before dawn the night was always at its darkest. ‘I love you both for the way you have made me feel,’ she said. ‘Just give me a handaxe and I will show you what I can do with it.’
9
IT WAS LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF TOTO AND THE Seven Dwarfs or Snow White and the Yellow Brick Road, thought Kohler. It was not real — oh mein Gott, no. It was weird and horrific.
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