Stonekiller

by J. Robert Janes

  Naked, madame? Is that it, eh? he demanded. Naked and with a handaxe?

  The trousers hung on another branch, the carpet-bag lay on the ground and up from them, only the darkened maw of a narrow cave entrance stared at him from the edge of the shelf.

  Like a savage, a trapped animal, she had retreated in there to draw him in and kill him.

  * * *

  Louis, he said. Louis … but there was no answer because Louis couldn’t hear his silent call and as for Henri-Georges Fillioux, there was as yet no sign of him.

  Fillioux, wondered St-Cyr. Everything centred around him. The wife, the daughter — how could any woman force her own flesh and blood to revere a dead father so much, the poor child had had to write letters to a man she had never seen and had no possibility of ever seeing because he was dead to her, dead. Letters he would never read until … until perhaps he’d stolen them from the mother’s house during a desperate search for a small handful of postcards.

  Fillioux had been married when he had met the sixteen-year-old daughter of a village innkeeper. He had had a daughter, Danielle Arthaud, whose mother had sued for divorce and so had known of the mischief in the Dordogne and that all had not been ‘research’ of the prehistoric kind.

  That wife must have instilled in Danielle a hatred of the man who had deserted her. His parents had disinherited the child. The inheritance had been clipped by the Germans requisitioning the house in Paris but still, if the parents wished to sell it, the Germans would pay handsomely. A fortune, particularly if invested wisely.

  Two daughters, then. The one, a schoolteacher, had not known of the other who had been all too aware of her half-sister’s existence. Both schooled in the use of stone tools, the one by her mother, the other from the notebooks and specimens in the trunk of her father and a long-dead abbot, or from the father himself, ah yes, but after a reconciliation of some sort or an agreement.

  Two daughters who, had the one not been disinherited, could quite possibly have shared the inheritance equally, a thing Danielle would most certainly not want.

  But was the father really dead, or was he alive, and had Juliette really been working with him on the forgery?

  Wiping sweat from his brow, he glanced up through the trees past the stagings and towers of a celluloid world to the mouth of the Discovery Cave.

  Toto Lemieux and the Baroness had obviously had a picnic beside the stream where she and her ‘prehistorian’ would soon be filmed drinking champagne to toast their success. Like many great but temperamental actresses — was she great? He did not know — Marina von Strade had patently ignored the crisis, the time and the necessity for her to be in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne to shoot the poverty scenes. The others — all the set crew, the cast, the cameramen, the directors and the producer could wait and to hell with them. She had had to come here.

  Totally without fear of Fillioux or anyone else, the couple had bathed under the waterfall and had laughed and caressed until, naked still, the Baroness had led her Toto up to the cave.

  He started out. By using the hoist rope the crew had strung to one side, he found the climb much easier but even so, his heart was pounding, his sweat blinding.

  Darkness soon enveloped him.

  ‘Toto … Toto, darling,’ came the urgent whisper. ‘Bitte, liebchen. Bitte. You enjoyed Danielle, didn’t you?’

  Danielle … Danielle … her voice echoed.

  ‘Damn you, Marina, he made me do it.’

  ‘Willi?’ she asked, her voice grating.

  Willi … Willi.…

  ‘You know he did.’

  ‘But you enjoyed her all the same?’ came the accusation, harsh and cruel … so cruel.

  Ah merde, they were in the second chamber. Like the neck of a funnel, the narrow passage Courtet had found would have revealed the light of their candles. Juliette must have stood here on that Thursday, hearing the sounds of their lovemaking just as he did but knowing the inner chamber to be very dangerous.

  She had come to collect the things for her mother but had not been able to enter the cave beyond the gisement, she had said.

  Not, madame? he asked as if she was here beside him. And where, please, is this cache only you and your mother knew of?

  It had to be in the main chamber and away from the gisement, for only here would it have been safe, so why, then, did she have to return on that Sunday when she could so easily have taken the things on that Thursday?

  To see the paintings for herself … was that it, then? Or to see that nothing had been done to spoil them?

  ‘Toto … Toto,’ came the earthy demand so softly there was no echo, only shadows on the walls and roof that flickered and fled across the tapestry of animals.

  When the Baroness cried out in ecstasy, St-Cry turned away until the couple began to talk earnestly in whispers.

  The handaxe was on the ground before Kohler, and Juliette was sitting demurely on a mossy shelf with arms clasped about her knees and her chin resting on them.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now are you convinced I did not want to kill you or anyone else?’

  Ah Gott im Himmel, she was like a softly tanned forest nymph. ‘You could have told me,’ said Kohler earnestly. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘Good!’

  The cave, such as it was, had soon broken through to ground level above and that is where he had found her.

  ‘I only wanted to see the postcards of my father because you both were blaming me for everything. Admit it, please. You thought I was the stonekiller! He has named me in those postcards — yes, I can see this. What did he say, that I had helped him? If so, it’s a lie. It’s all lies, I think. That part of the cave, the paintings, the ages of the figurines the abbe found and this … this,’ she said, plucking at the amulet and inadvertently letting him see a breast she quickly hid.

  Chin again on her knees and arms, she said, ‘Well, what is it to be, Inspector? The bracelets for my wrists so that Herr Oelmann can perhaps question me again, or yourself as my friend and protector?’

  She was putting it right on the line. ‘Where is your father?’

  ‘My father,’ she said. ‘The stonekiller. Perhaps you had best ask my half-sister for I, poor simple thing, do not know. Mother went to meet him, yes. She must have believed firmly that he would be there. She had no fear. Finally after all those years, what she had waited so long for had come true. They would meet again and make love perhaps but this time she would kill him. She didn’t tell me anything, Inspector, only that she would take care of them. Of my husband and my father.’

  ‘I’ll get your clothes.’

  ‘Does the sight of my nakedness offend you so much?’

  ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Then I will get my clothes myself and leave you to pick up the handaxe I did not use to kill you though I could have, couldn’t I?’

  Ah merde, there was not a thing wrong with either of her ankles. Not a thing!

  ‘Toto … Toto, darling, you must say nothing. Oh for sure you know things, yes? but just keep everyone believing you are simply my stud, my grand godemiche whose stiffness lasts for as long as any woman could ever want. With a little help, of course.’

  ‘Damn you, Marina. What makes you say things like that?’

  ‘Your cock and the white angel that feeds it. Now listen to me. Willi is in trouble — trouble like he has never had before so we must help him.’

  ‘Three murders … Fillioux, was it really him, eh, Marina?’

  ‘I did not hear that, Toto. I really didn’t.’

  ‘Fillioux could be out there somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it exactly! Danielle and her father, they are working together. She was so anxious to visit the cave to see the paintings on the Friday before that woman’s death, she led us to them. She behaved exactly as she would have had she been here many times before.’

  ‘They’re fakes. They’re all fakes.’

  ‘And that is why my Willi needs our help and your co
ntinued silence.’

  ‘Danielle,’ he said. ‘Why did he make me do that to her in front of the others?’

  ‘To teach her a lesson she must never forget. To break my heart — yes, he’s done it lots of times. You and she, how could he have been so cruel? Now make love to me again. It may be the last time we have the animals to watch us. I like to see them up there when you’re in me. It makes me feel so powerful, Toto. Supreme. An earth goddess of fertility.’

  ‘And the daughter, the schoolteacher, what of her?’

  ‘Let us hope her father finds her.’

  10

  NIGHT HAD BEEN TURNED INTO DAY IN BEAULIEU-sur-Dordogne, shadows banished where not wanted. Arc lights brought the sun at noon to windows still leaded in spite of the centuries of wear and the poverty of an auberge-épicerie and PTT which could not possibly have replaced them. Giant fans produced a gentle breeze to stir the grape leaves and the potted geraniums of the balcony railing while songbirds chorused from hidden cages on the floor at Marina von Strade’s feet and doves roosted on the shabby tower where not so long ago St-Cyr had been trapped on the roof.

  Apparently everyone was here — Herr Oelmann looking grim and worried, the cast, the crew, the villagers who stood well back like sheep at a hanging. Would the cinema ever be the same for them or for himself?

  He searched the crowd as Hermann and Madame Jouvet did. Film personnel came and went or stood in earnest discussion as sound booms, reflectors and screens were positioned for the take and a silk-screened blue and puff-cloud sky was raised above the roof. It would look so real on film.

  Generators softly throbbed in the distance, cables were strung. Two tall wooden towers, looking as if left over from a Roman invasion, held the massive arc lights which could instantly plunge the set into darkness or blind the eyes if one was not careful. The first, second and third cameras would film from the ground, the side and above. Distance shots, pans to this and that, then close-ups to automatically engender empathy in the audience, then shots of the visitor, the actor-prehistorian, the second camera moving in and staying with him as he walked towards the inn and gave a wave, a smile, the sound of his voice.…

  ‘Louis, I can’t find Lemieux.’

  ‘Maybe the rutting has tired him out. Maybe the season is over for him.’

  Oh-oh. ‘Odilon might have something. He’s playing co-producer with von Strade.’

  Lorries and vans filled the narrow streets behind the Baron. In surrealistic semi-darkness, dressing-rooms, make-up, hairdressers and costumiers competed for space with a mobile canteen. Everything that could foreseeably be needed was there and if not available, then readily made on the spot in the workshops.

  ‘That one, he is like a voyeur driven out of madness to watch the behaviour of others,’ said Juliette bitterly of von Strade. ‘He pulls the strings and they all dance because they have to but I will not dance for him or for anyone else. Not now. Not ever again.’

  ‘Stay with Hermann, madame. Don’t let him out of your sight’

  ‘A forgery,’ she said. ‘All this has been mounted to perpetrate an untruth. Two hundred, three hundred — five hundred must be gathered here but at a signal, the whole place will shut up and no one — absolutely no one — will move until the clapperboard comes down.’

  ‘The Professor will want his amulet returned, madame. Please let me have it for safe-keeping. I want to hear what he has to say.’

  ‘And Danielle?’ she asked hotly.

  Would such a sharpness not lead her into trouble? ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud also, yes, and Toto. Both have much to tell us, as do the Baroness and her husband and your father, madame. Your father.’

  ‘I … I would not recognize him if he was standing right where you are.’

  ‘But this is the world of film and anything is possible.’

  ‘Even a mature thirty-five-year-old Austrian with the mind of a fille de joie playing a sixteen-year-old périgourdine virgin who airs the bedding as she greets the prehistorian who’s about to come into her life,’ snorted Kohler. ‘From Essen of all places and bearing rucksack and hammer, no loose change, and holes not only in his pockets but in his socks!’

  ‘It’s magnificent, Hermann, and exactly as I had imagined it would be. Ah some changes, yes, since the days of the silents but mere refinements.’

  ‘As in war, so in film, my friend. Most of the time people are simply standing around wondering what the hell to do. Then whoosh, eh? Lights, action and camera and it’s all over in about thirty seconds or else two hours. The story of our miserable lives. She looks the part, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Ah yes, she does.’

  Side by side, and dangling from their leather thongs, the two amulets, the real and the replica, were identical to the untrained eye. And certainly the deerhorn of the one was a trifle darker, a touch more of that deep bluish cast old bone often acquired, a few more of the hairline cracks, but really the match was quite remarkable. Line for line, the short, sharp, seemingly randomly arranged incisions of the flint engraving burin were so similar one could even see where it had first been pressed into the bone and then forced away or drawn towards the artist.

  ‘I worked largely from photographs and detailed drawings,’ said the propsman-cum-carpenter he had found all alone in the cluttered workshop where the smells of sawdust, paint and resin were pungent.

  ‘I commend you, mein Herr,’ enthused St-Cyr in deutsch. ‘Even Professor Courtet will be hard pressed to tell the difference.’

  The man grinned and accepted a cigarette of thanks. ‘Take two,’ urged the Sûreté. ‘The Baron forgot and left the package at the château. He won’t mind.’

  They lit up. Though young, the man had seen enough of life to shrewdly give him the once-over.

  ‘The Baron doesn’t forget anything, Inspector. Is the cave really a forgery?’

  ‘A forgery?’ came the startled reply.

  ‘Rumours … there are rumours circulating that we’re all to be let go and blacklisted if we say anything.’

  Ah merde … ‘Until we find the stonekiller, the authenticity of the paintings must remain in question, though who are my partner and I to care so long as we apprehend the killer? Ours is not the task of patiently defining prehistory but of uncovering the identity of the murderer.’

  ‘But that was why the woman was killed, wasn’t it? She thought the paintings were fake and he couldn’t have her saying that. She’d have only made trouble for him.’

  ‘Perhaps, but then, perhaps not. Two persons may have been involved in the killing of the assistant postmaster but only one in that of the woman.’

  ‘And of Jouvet, the husband of the daughter?’ hazarded the man.

  ‘One most definitely. A small struggle perhaps and then the throat viciously opened with the stone. A handaxe, I believe.’

  ‘We could have faked those paintings easily. Danielle showed us how they were done. She’s really very good at it.’

  ‘Yes, she is, isn’t she?’

  ‘While she was at the university she used to work in props. That’s how she got into acting.’

  ‘And the stone tools, how is it she learned so well how to use them?’

  So it was Danielle who was under suspicion. ‘She was a student at the Sorbonne. Courtet was one of her professors. She was working towards her final degree in prehistory but had to give it up. Too broke, I guess. It’s odd, though. Really it is. Courtet doesn’t know as much about the tools as she does. If you ask me, I don’t think he has ever made one. Experimented with them of course, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it?’

  ‘No … No, it isn’t, is it?’ Was Courtet held in suspicion by the crew and cast or did they simply not like him? Too arrogant, too demanding and covetous of his precious trunk. ‘My thanks. You’ve been most helpful. Please …’ St-Cyr indicated the amulets. ‘I would like to deliver these to the Professor. I know how anxious he must be to get them.’

  ‘Then I’d better come with you.’

&nb
sp; ‘Ah, no. No, that would be most unwise. Stay here. Have that other cigarette and consider yourself lucky.’

  ‘I’ve not done anything.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t. It’s just that we are dealing with a particularly desperate killer and it would be safest if you were not seen in my company.’

  ‘Is it her father?’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Danielle’s.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m asking.’

  ‘Perhaps but then, ah then, either he has come back from the dead as everyone has been led to believe, or he hasn’t. Now, please, I have much to do. Will they continue all night with the filming?’

  ‘We work straight through until we’re finished, then go to the cave until the film is in the can.’

  St-Cyr was at the door when the man stopped him. ‘Here, you’d better take these too. The figurines the Professor wanted. The Adam and Eve.’

  ‘Ah! yes, the couple. Cro-Magnon, I believe.’

  ‘Neanderthal … the professors say they are at least from fifty to seventy thousand years old.’

  ‘But these have only just been made so they could not possibly be of that age. Imagine it though. Lovemaking at the very dawn of prehistory. Kissing and doing all manner of things in a cave whose paintings look down on the couple as a child is conceived. Wild, yes, and like the animals above but also tender and caring when required or demanded, it’s a miracle the swastika was ever thought of.’

  Toto and the Baroness, was that it then? wondered the propsman. They’d been screwing in that cave and everyone knew it too. Screwing when she should have been working. No sign of Toto, though. No sign of him at all.

  ‘A swastika. Yes, it’s a miracle. Who would ever have thought it possible?’

  ‘Only a student or a professor,’ said St-Cyr with the toss of farewell. ‘Someone with an eye for it and a damned good reason.’

  Von Strade and sous-préfet Deveaux sat in canvas deck chairs with a bottle of the vin paille between them. And the street, with its half-shadows and its overcast light from the arc lamps, was a clutter of cables and dressing rooms that bore the names of Marina von Strade, her prehistorian, and that of Danielle Arthaud and others.