‘Baron, where is Toto Lemieux?’
‘Herr Kohler, how good of you to join us. Madame,’ said von Strade, offering her his glass and letting her quickly shake her head. ‘Madame, you keep good company in such difficult times but I would not place too high a value on it.’
Amen, was that it, eh? wondered Kohler.
‘Inspector,’ said Deveaux uncomfortably, ‘it would be wise to listen. Hen Oelmann, he … he has a little something in mind for you and Jean-Louis and you, also, madame. Please, I … I cannot make the warning any plainer since I could not possibly know of the existence of a Sonderkommando in our midst. One with explosives in its possession and perhaps highly trained assassins.’
‘I want the postcards,’ said von Strade, taking out a cigar. ‘Everything that partner of yours found. I’m willing to pay — yes, of course. It’s what I do best, but we can’t have rumours and we can’t have trouble. Find the stonekiller if you must and bring him to justice, but let us finish Moment of Discovery in peace. Let us say 100,000 marks between the two of you with another 50,000 for you, madame. None of you are experts in prehistory and none of you could ever gain the upper hand by trying to prove those paintings a forgery. If you cry foul, we will only cry all the louder and our voice, well, what can one say but that it is so infinitely greater.’
‘The postcards,’ said Deveaux. Would Kohler not be reasonable?
‘That’s not possible, Baron.’
Was Kohler really so foolish? ‘Oh, and why is that, please?’
‘Louis hid them in a cache and until we have the stonekiller, that’s where they will remain.’
‘A cache …?’ asked von Strade, startled and looking to Deveaux who had the good sense to shrug.
‘It … it is a place only my mother and father knew of, monsieur.’
‘And yourself, if I understood that husband of yours correctly, madame. To hide the postcards there, with your father presumably having returned, cannot have been wise of St-Cyr but it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘The paintings are a forgery and you know it!’ she said. ‘This … this whole business is a sham.’
‘And you?’ asked von Strade. ‘What will your children say when you fail to return to them? That you did the right thing by exposing this … this forgery, as you say, or by listening to reason and removing for ever all chance of want from their lives? Make no mistake, 50,000 marks is 1,000,000 francs. You need never work another day. They can go to the best schools and on to the university. They can study music, painting, medicine, whatever they wish. You could even take up residence in Paris. That, too, can be included with all the necessary papers thrown in for good measure.’
‘I … I cannot accept. I … I must do as mother would have wanted.’
‘Then that’s settled and I leave you both to the stonekiller and to Herr Oelmann.’
‘Baron.…’
‘No, Herr Kohler. The lady has spoken. The Reichsführer-SS Himmler, the Reichsminister Dr Goebbels and the Führer will doubtless hear whispers of your insubordination but, as in film so in life, truth is in the eye of the beholder. The people will believe what they want to because it makes them proud and happy and we will tell them that they have a heritage so great and grand it extends well back into Neanderthal times. And who is to say differently when you are gone? Think about it. Don’t make nuisances of yourselves like that woman did.’
Danielle Arthaud was distraught. She got up, sat down, fiddled with a copy of the replica of Vogue magazine the Germans produced in Paris, then grabbed the cinema pages from Aujourd’hui, Paris-Soir and several of the other Paris dailies and threw them down opened at bad or not so bad reviews of her last film.
‘Toto … Toto isn’t here. Look, I don’t know where the hell he is. How should I? Maybe he’s fucking some little thing down by the river, maybe he has simply gone for a walk. Neither of us are in on this shoot though Willi always makes us come along. We’re his, can’t you see? His!’
Kohler crowded into the tiny dressing room and, closing the door behind himself and Juliette, put the bolt on. ‘A few small questions. Nothing difficult.’
‘I can’t tell you anything!’ she shrieked and stamped a foot. ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ Willi, she begged. Willi, please help me.
‘I think you had better answer, mademoiselle. Postcards to tip off Madame Fillioux that …’
She gestured dismissively. ‘She was never anything to him. Just a foolish girl he had to fuck and use in other ways.’
‘Ah, no … no, mademoiselle. Though our father did not mention my mother in his journals or give her credit for helping him, I still believe he fell very much in love with her. So much so, he told your mother of the relationship and she then demanded a divorce.’
‘He killed her, didn’t he?’ snorted Danielle. ‘He cut her to ribbons. Slashed her breasts, peeled back the skin, carved her buttocks, her mons, her … Ah no, no … I did not mean to say that.’
Merde, merde … ‘I think you did, Mademoiselle Arthaud,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Tell us what she said to you in that little glade. She was expecting to meet her husband after all those years of loneliness but instead of him, you turned up, high on cocaine.’
Ah no … ‘I … I found her after it had happened. I … I was in the cave. I really was. She … she couldn’t have cried out. You must believe me. You must!’
Then why the tears of remorse, why the agitation of betrayal and a need so desperate only von Strade can help? ‘But you were there at the cave?’ he asked, to pin her down.
‘Yes.’
Kohler dragged out his little black notebook. ‘Your timing’s impeccable, mademoiselle. On the 25th of May of last year you wrote to Madame Fillioux telling her the parents Fillioux were very ill and had had no news of her. The couple needed food and money desperately. You stated very clearly that you were returning to see them that day.’
‘I … Yes. Yes, I went to see them that afternoon.’ Would he let her have a cigarette?
‘Good, because my partner and me, we’re puzzled. You see, your name and “friend” appears in the visitors’ book at Lascaux on the same day the card was posted.’
‘That … that is a lie. I … I was never there. I was in Paris, I tell you! Paris! Until we began filming, I had never visited Lascaux.’
‘But you had visited the Discovery Cave?’
She ducked her head. ‘Only during the filming at Lascaux and not before it.’
A lie of course. Inwardly she was begging von Strade to help her. Kohler was certain of it. ‘Then let’s talk about the murder of Madame Fillioux. Take it right back to your first postcard.’
Ah damn that stupid woman! ‘I … I have nothing to say to you or to anyone except that I am innocent. I only tried to help my grandparents who are old and sick and not so well-off any more since they failed to declare the contents of their safety deposit boxes and these the Occupier has confiscated as well as their bank accounts. All they have left now are two houses — oh for sure it’s lots, yes, if either was sold, but they cannot dispose of even the smallest item of the furnishings in Paris and are constantly being watched. One more mistake for them and they will lose everything.’
She was really bitter about it and not without good reason. So many had failed to declare things, the SS and the Gestapo had had a field day, but could she be trusted to remain here in her dressing room? Of course not.
Kohler dragged out his handcuffs. ‘Let’s try these on for size.’
‘And the stonekiller, Inspector?’ she shrilled. ‘Our father, what of him?’
‘These will help you to stay put so that you don’t have to worry about him.’
‘Bâtard!’ She snatched at something and swung. Juliette shrieked, ‘A handaxe.…’
The thing fell to the floor at their feet. Blanching, Danielle said, ‘It … it’s not what you think. I.…’
‘Save it for later, eh? Now turn around and give me your wrists. Madame, that chair with the iron back. T
he one at the dressing table. Turn it so that she can sit and not get too tired.’
‘He’ll kill me, don’t you see?’ pleaded Danielle. ‘I had to tell him things. I had to help him. He knows the village and has been watching us. He can come and go as he pleases.’
‘She’s right,’ said Juliette. ‘Please let me stay with her. We’ll be safe enough if you give me the Professor’s gun.’
Ah yes, madame, said Danielle to herself, the Professor, we must not forget him. A loaded revolver from Dunkirk. Why, please, did he believe it to be necessary?
‘Are you sure you can handle this?’ asked Kohler doubtfully. ‘I’ve got to find Lemieux.’
‘I’ll manage. André … my husband. In his lighter moments he used to stick the barrel of just such a gun into my mouth and pull the trigger. He didn’t just have a Luger, Inspector. He had one of those and others brought back not just from Russia but bought also on the black market.’
Ah merde, was she telling him Jouvet could have sold the gun to Danielle?
She saw him thinking this and nodded. She tried to smile and said, ‘When you found it in the Professor’s room, my mind was too preoccupied with other things but now I’m certain of it’
‘There are two positions, the half and the full cock.’
‘Two clicks. I remember them well.’
It was his turn to nod and he did so but reached out to brush three fingers against her cheek. ‘I’ll be back. Don’t worry.’ Louis … where the hell was Louis?
The village’s café had never seen business like this. Only with difficulty was it possible to push a way through to Courtet and Eisner, two very worried prehistorians whose eyes leapt at the Sûreté’s approach.
Courtet’s glass went over. The hand that had hit it ignored the spill. ‘Inspector, why haven’t you apprehended Henri-Georges? He hates me. He’s going to kill me. A stonekiller …’
‘Professor, please try to calm yourself.’
‘He’s killed again! This time the husband of that woman’s daughter. The throat xsxs… a savage cut. Cognac … more cognac, please,’ he gasped at Eisner, and tossed it off. ‘Merci. You see the state I’m in.’
‘Good. Now perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me why you failed to alert my partner and myself to the danger?’
Alert … alert … danger … danger, ran the whispers, electrifying the café into silence while Herr Eisner fastidiously tried to avoid the spill which had found its way to his edge of the table.
‘I … I did not know for sure,’ confessed Courier, his gold-rimmed spectacles winking in the naked light. ‘I worried — yes, yes, of course. Unlike that foolish Fillioux woman, I had thought him dead long ago but now the cave, the paintings, the.…’
‘These?’ asked the Sûreté, dangling the amulets in front of him while Herr Eisner watched at the ready perhaps, to sacrifice his fellow prehistorian.
‘That Jouvet woman stole the real one from the trunk,’ seethed Courtet. Why, please, did she do such a thing? Is she working with that father of hers? Is she, Inspector? Ah damn, you do not even know!’
The amulets were swept into a decisive fist, the accusations ignored. ‘A chair,’ said the Sûreté, and when one was shoved into place, he sat down firmly opposite the two of them.
Opening his fist, he made a great show of indecision. ‘They are so perfect, I cannot remember which was which. No, please, Herr Eisner, I want the Professor to choose.’
If I can, is that it? wondered Courtet acidly. Ah damn the Sûreté.
‘A forgery, Professor,’ said St-Cyr. ‘A few more engraved lines made with a flint stylus — yes, yes, most certainly. But why question the matter too closely when Herr Eisner here held the purse strings and the Reichsfuhrer Himmler was so determined to prove the claims of Aryan conquest extended back into the earliest of times? Fillioux did not note the presence of a swastika in his journals, Professor, though it would have been well known to him even then, nor did he indicate there were paintings in that second chamber but when the trunk became available, it was too good an opportunity for you to miss.’
‘He’s alive. He’s come back. She said he would.’
‘Madame Fillioux?’
Courtet gave a nod, a swallow but continued to stare at his hands. ‘I … I thought the engravings genuine. I found the paintings. I really did. The wall was closed, there was no opening into that chamber but then, there it was. At first I could not believe Henri-Georges had been so stupid and arrogant as to have missed such a thing but … but … a major discovery. My moment at last.’
‘So you fell for the forgery. You believed it absolutely.’
‘If it is one, Inspector,’ interjected Eisner, ‘you will have a very hard time proving it.’
‘Please don’t be tiresome. Confine your tongue to silence lest you become an accessory to murder.’
‘I did not kill her,’ mumbled Courtet, still staring at his hands which now opened and closed and felt so useless. ‘We met at the house here and I drove her to the railway line near the cave. The leaves were turning. The truffle hunt was starting. We came across only one hunter with his sows but she did not know him. “He’s new,” she said. “Since the war, things have changed so much.”’
‘Go on, Professor,’ urged the Sûreté.
‘She … she was a little nervous — unsettled. Yes, yes, that’s how she was but I thought it due only to my presence. Here I was taking over the work she had tried so hard to keep for Fillioux. I … I told her she had nothing to fear from me and that due credit would be given. A bronze plaque with their names.’
One must go very carefully now. ‘Did she ask how you had come by the trunk?’
‘Yes. I told her I had received a telephone call from a dealer I frequented in Saint-Ouen. When I saw it, I realized right away what I had stumbled upon.’
A fortuitous discovery, was that it, eh? Hardly. ‘And the amulet?’ asked St-Cyr gently.
‘It’s that one and you must not handle it so carelessly. When … when I had it under my microscope and had done the tracing, I could not believe what I had found and for days I kept the secret to myself. I had to see the cave. At last, all those years of wondering what Henri-Georges had discovered were over and it was all mine.’
‘And you had no hint that he was alive?’
‘Only Madame Fillioux’s firm belief.’
‘Then why, please, did you think it necessary to keep a loaded gun at the château?’
Ah damn the Sûreté. ‘You had no right to take it.’
‘We had every right. A weapon from Dunkirk, Professor? How, please, did you come by it?’
‘Danielle, damn you. Danielle thought it best for me to have it. Suggestions in that woman’s hesitation to respond to my postcards and requests led us to believe he could well have returned and now we find he has. First she and her sous-facteur are murdered and then Jouvet. It’s too much to deny. The evidence is clear.’
‘Danielle … ah yes. So now we are getting somewhere at last. Your former student, the daughter of your former colleague, a cave painter par excellence and a stone-user of note — ah, please do not think I said stonekiller yet, Professor. Or yourself either, Herr Eisner. A forgery, a lot of money, a research grant worth — how much was it, please?’
‘250,000 marks,’ said Eisner.
‘5,000,000 francs.’
‘And a film,’ said Franz Oelmann coming to join them. ‘You put Jouvet’s body in my car, Inspector, so as to make us all believe Fillioux had really returned.’
There were two men with Oelmann. Tough-looking, grim and brutal. Still, he would have to say it and hope Hermann was near. ‘But Fillioux hasn’t returned, has he, Herr Oelmann? Henri-Georges has been dead for years. Madame Fillioux refused to believe it. Very early on in this Occupation, postcards began arriving from the parents but all they ever mentioned was food and money, then Danielle added her pleas and soon was writing to tell that poor woman the trunk had not only been sold, Professor, but to yourself.
’
‘Danielle …?’ stammered Courtet, caught unawares and sickened by the news.
‘Yes! She warned Madame Fillioux it was you who had the trunk.’
Ah no … ‘But … but that’s not possible! Danielle said she would keep in the background. All I wanted her to do was to convince the parents to put the trunk up for sale. 5,000 francs — I paid her that much, and another 2,000 to the shop.’
St-Cyr let out a sigh. ‘And she took you and everyone else for a ride. An amulet like this, a cave whose paintings surpassed even those of Lascaux. Swastikas at the dawn of prehistory and then, as her crowning touch, the return of the dead husband.’
‘Danielle,’ swore Oelmann. ‘Get Danielle.’
‘Ah no, monsieur, a moment please. Jouvet’s Luger, it is loaded.’
The crowd vanished. People dived for cover. Chairs fell, tables were tipped on to their sides. There was a mad rush for the door, the sound of breaking glass, a scream, a plea to get out.
Then silence. Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, two Schmeissers were facing him in addition to the Radom pistol Herr Oelmann had reacquired. ‘All right, you win. The cave isn’t a forgery.’
At a toss of Oelmann’s head, St-Cyr put the Luger carefully down on the table and raised his hands. Hermann had not come to the rescue. Hermann must be busy elsewhere.
Moving diagonally away through the crowd, Kohler tried to keep out from under the arc lights. The German director was shouting in deutsch through a megaphone to Marina von Strade up on the balcony. A little more of her cleavage, more of a winsome smile. ‘You’re an ignorant peasant wench, Marina. Christ, you’re going to want to seduce him, eh? Tease the bastard!’ Her prehistorian.
Kohler ran. Clinging to the periphery of the set, he made it to the first camera, tripped over a cable, pulled the bloody thing down, was up and away to shouts and curses. Got to keep going, he told himself. Got to get Louis out of their clutches. First have to get Juliette and Danielle away before it’s too late … too late.…
Stonekiller Page 24