‘To the Babylonian Captivity, Inspectors, and to its return in this new and even brighter Renaissance,’ said Rivaille, lifting his cup. ‘These,’ he indicated the pewter, ‘are all that remain in Avignon of the personal effects of his Holiness Clément the Sixth. Each time I drink from one, I tremble at the thought of what must once have been and must return.’
Yet another warning they understood only too clearly, so bon, that was as it should be, thought Rivaille. He gave them a moment to satisfy hunger. The olives they would recognize as similar to those they had found in the girl’s rooms, the chèvre aussi. Each would realize they were eating like kings in these troubled times, and perhaps there were twinges of guilt, but both would make no mention of this, nor of the black-market origins of the bread, the ham and coffee. Neither of these two men could ever be bought and that, he told himself, could well be their downfall.
But one must always reveal enough to satiate curiosity and dull inquisitiveness, thus keeping hidden that which must never be exposed.
‘Brother Matthieu apologizes for misleading you about Xavier, Inspector,’ he said to Kohler. ‘The boy, as I’m sure you have discovered, didn’t run away but had returned to us on Monday at dawn.’
Did Rivaille know everything they’d discovered, wondered KohJer, uncomfortable at the thought of their being constantly watched.
‘You found a reed warbler’s nest in an alcove of the Grand Tinel, Inspector. Please don’t look so dismayed at my knowing. Salvatore is a most dutiful and loyal servant.’
‘The clochette …’ blurted Kohler.
‘I have Xavier’s absolute loyalty too, and that of Brother Matthieu. My Nino is such a trouble. Always she runs off by herself – it’s in a beagle’s nature to stray, is that not so?, but she’s such a wanderer. Repeatedly I tell myself I must put her down, but … ah!, we’re all mortal. She and Xavier are inseparable. When he first came to me at the age of five, I gave him to her as a puppy and let him name her. The boy hadn’t even realized her sex. Another of our little secrets.’
He had, you dummkopf, thought Kohler, and you’ve just contradicted yourself by saying you have their loyalty in an age when none can be trusted. But I’m an idiot, aren’t I? You’ve led me right to the trough and now I have to eat the swill by saying it. ‘Might I see the dogs, Bishop?’
Isn’t that why you’ve come? challenged Rivaille silently. ‘But of course. That door will lead you to them. Keep always to the left until you reach the bell, then pull its chain.’
The stone staircase was steep and of another time. The air was dank and held the smell of long-cut hay, of sage, sawn lumber, fermenting wine, horse piss, old harness and dogs. There was dust … the ever-present dust of a stables, and this filtered through the winter’s light from an iron-grilled window.
Kohler couldn’t help but think of the frightened little boy who would have had to climb these stairs in those first few weeks of his new life. The iron grille would have brought a meagre moment of relief but could the kid have even reached it on tiptoes to stare out into a courtyard no peasant could ever understand but only marvel at? The night sky too.
Then Xavier would have had to continue timidly on up the stairs to knock, wait and enter into what? Benevolence or rape? And never mind fingering the hair of some young girl while staring at a photograph of her breasts and dreaming of the Virgin Mary!
Rivaille didn’t look the type to bugger about with little boys, but then, priest or layman, they seldom did.
The cloister must at one time have housed a hundred or so. Now most of the storerooms were empty. Barrels of Côtes du Rhône were patiently waiting to be bottled, aged, kept, and the years of the bishop’s cellar went back. A fortune.
Rivaille had trusted Xavier. He must have for there was no lock on the wine cellar. Brother Matthieu, too, had been trusted.
Long before he reached the dogs, they barked, but the musical tinkle of their clochettes was silent, for they would only wear these when on the hunt.
A corridor off to the right led to the street. Easy access, then, and no one the wiser if you slept with the dogs. Trust again. Unwavering loyalty.
The boy didn’t appear, and there was no sign of the beagle, only of harriers whose kennels and run were clean and laid with freshly cut dried reeds, not winter grass or lavender or any of those things.
‘Bishop …’
It was now or never, thought Rivaille, and one must gradually raise the voice to shouting and give the Sûreté the look of one who is about to crush a scorpion. ‘No, you listen, mon cher detective. I know everything about you.’
‘Divide and conquer, is that how it’s to be, Bishop? Hermann to look in on the dogs, myself to face the music of the Church? That black woollen cassock you wear may be of the hills and centuries, and doubtless it is warm, but frankly what you say is out of place.’
‘Bâtard, do you think you can trifle with me? You, a cuckold? A man whose second wife fornicated repeatedly with a German officer and moved in with him? In, mon fin. Taking your little son with her.’
Ah merde, he was serious. ‘The couple were secretly filmed by Gestapo Paris-Central, Bishop, but only last week my partner saw to the destruction of those films. Now she rests in peace and that is how it is to be.’
‘She was naked! They copulated! The films were seen by many! She begged for more, St-Cyr. More! In … in with the thrusting. The child was witness to it!’
Nom de Jésus-Christ! How had he come by this? A courier from Paris? Oberg, Head of the SS in France … Gestapo Boemelburg, Hermann’s boss, or simply through Alain de Passe? And certainly too many knew of it but …
Rivaille was watching him closely, the hatchet of condemnation fierce. ‘Bishop, let us calm down and set the matter straight. First, Philippe was in a nursemaid’s care at all times and had found in the Hauptmann Steiner the friend I couldn’t be due to the constant and lengthy absences both common crime and the Occupier demand. Second, as a Breton living in Paris, Marianne was terribly lonely, the depths of which, I readily confess, I didn’t realize until it was too late. Third, she knew I would forgive her and that I loved her far too deeply not to have understood. When Steiner was sent to Russia—’
‘By his uncle, the Kommandant von Gross Paris!’
‘Who is a prude and a stickler for the morals of his family and its honour, Bishop, which, incidentally, was why the Gestapo’s Watchers took interest in the couple. Their interest had really very little to do with our battles with crime, but stemmed from their constant need to get the better of the Wehrmacht’s High Command.’
‘Steiner was killed in action.’
‘My wife was coming home—’
‘Home, yes, and to a Resistance bomb that, though you are no collaborator and loud about it, was meant for you. Oh bien sûr, it was a mistake, but—’
‘A tripwire. I—’
‘Get down on your knees, my son. Beg God’s forgiveness before it is too late.’
‘You hypocrite! I won’t! I can’t! Gestapo Paris-Central, though they knew of that wire, had deliberately left it in place for me, Bishop. For me!’
‘And?’ asked Rivaille softly.
‘I … I hadn’t been able to warn her. I was too late in returning to Paris, damn you.’
There were tears. Overwhelmed by what he had failed to do a good two and a half months ago, St-Cyr was trembling and couldn’t hide his outrage at being so savagely driven into a corner. Both he and his partner were still reviled by many in Gestapo Paris-Central, and this one was still hated by some of the Resistance whose internal communications were, at best, paltry. ‘Ah bon, we understand each other perfectly. You and Kohler had defied the SS. Someone had to pay.’
And was that the crux of it? For pointing the finger of truth at them, the SS had used a rawhide whip on Hermann and had left a bomb in place.
‘That partner of yours lives in sin with two women, one of whom is a Dutch alien without proper papers.’
Hermann should have been
here. ‘Bishop, the threat is understood. Oona Van der Lynn, the woman of whom you speak, lost her two children during the blitzkrieg to Messerschmitts that were clearing the roads of refugees. Her husband was then taken in Paris two months ago by the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and murdered.’
‘A Jew … She was married to a Jew she had kept hidden.’
Hermann had taken her in for her own safety. ‘You don’t fool around, do you, Bishop?’
‘I can’t afford to. There’s far too much at stake.’
Crumbs had fallen on the Sûreté’s waistcoat, he looking old and defeated, but had the message finally registered? Would he now be very careful not to touch the Church?
‘Bishop, why not state what you have in mind?’
Rivaille helped himself to more of the anisette. Without asking, he refilled the Sûreté’s cup. ‘This girl, this murder in our Palais … oh bien sûr it’s a tragedy, a terrible loss and one I could ill afford. She was to be my assistant here, in addition to her other duties – trusted implicitly – but we can’t let her death cloud negotiations with the Holy See and the Reich. Go carefully. Steal eggs if you must but do not awaken the hens.’
Or the rooster. Had Hermann been here, he would have had the son of a bitch up against the wall or down on his knees with a Walther P38 jammed against the back of that tonsured head. But Hermann was of the Occupier, and when in Avignon, all others had best do as the Avignonnais.
‘Begin, then, by telling me where and with whom you were on Monday evening between six p.m. and curfew.’
‘I could refuse.’
‘You won’t. Not if you want to keep the hens quiet. I would simply go to the District Magistrate for an order making you comply, and though he’s no doubt a good friend of yours, it still would be difficult for him to say no.’
‘I could then ask the Kommandant to rescind it.’
‘A request, I’m certain, he would ignore, given that he and his wife much admired the victim.’
Having been suitably prepared, St-Cyr would now begin to scrape the mould from the bread, but would he eat from the loaf? wondered Rivaille. Would he accept what he would be allowed to discover? And what of Kohler? Had that one stepped in the shit he was supposed to find?
The photograph, one of several Kohler had found in Xavier’s trunk, was of Adrienne de Langlade and there was no mistaking that the girl had been at least four months pregnant at the time. Her breasts were beginning to swell, her bellybutton to protrude. The pulled-up white cotton underpants emphasized her state. A pleasing young girl with good, square shoulders, good legs, her head cocked to one side, the shoulder-length hair thick and worn with an almost eyebrow-length fringe, looking at herself in an unseen mirror with a quizzical expression.
The right hand grasped the leg of the tripod which came between her slightly parted legs and on which was mounted a bellows camera whose black headdress, like that of a nun, was thrown back to keep the film from the light, framing the lens and box.
She had taken the photo herself in front of what must have been a full-length mirror, the snapshot revealing all but her ankles and feet. Her left hand rested on her tummy, as if she was asking, How could this be?
All of the other photographs had been taken near the mas of Mireille de Sinéty’s mother in early June of last year. He was certain of it, certain, too, that the girl definitely hadn’t looked pregnant in any of them. There’d been no shots of the petite lingère and he had the thought that she hadn’t been invited along for the picnic and the swim.
Naked, Adrienne de Langlade lay fast asleep on a bed of lavender that had been freshly cut in swaths which had fallen all around and under her. Time and again she’d been photographed that way. Bits of lavender clung to her hair. Her skin was very fair and, with the strong sunlight, fairer still. The left leg was crooked. Her arms were extended languidly above her head which was turned on its side away from the sun as if by instinct.
The mouth was slack, the hair caught the light and, even in the photos, he could see that it would have had a coppery sheen.
That of her underarms and pubes was darker. A pretty girl Xavier might well have lingered over, ogling the photos night after night in secret. But that couldn’t have been, he told himself, and wished Louis was with him. Louis had an eye for things detectives weren’t supposed to see.
The prints had been cared for. Yet he’d found them loose between a rumpled old sweater and a pair of sweat-stained trousers.
Twelve-by-fifteen-centimetre prints, a dozen of them, including the most recent.
They had rolled her over and had photographed her backside, and likely she’d got more than a sunburn out of it, for there were the shadows of at least two of those who had stood over her. An initiation into the singers, had that been it, eh? Spaggiari, Galiteau and Rochon, with Genèvieve Ravier and Christiane Bissert as witnesses?
Had the girl been dead drunk or drugged? Had the singers, or one among them, then given the photos to the bishop? They must have, but why would they have done so?
To torment him? To show him what the girl was really like – was that it, eh?
And why had Rivaille then put them here for this Schweinebulle to find? To take the heat off himself and throw suspicion on to the boy and the rest of the singers?
Xavier didn’t have much. His rucksack was years old. Kohler took it down and emptied it out. Wire snares, a much used slingshot, fishing lines, lead weights and hooks, dried apricots, garlic too …
The empty medicine bottle the boy had drained of its grappa, ‘for the toothache, Inspector’.
When he found beneath the paillasse, and under the floor-boards, the boy’s private little hidey-hole, Kohler discovered what he felt could not have been left by the bishop for him to find.
‘A hundred thousand francs,’ he said, sadly looking at four bundles of used banknotes, in five-hundreds, one-hundreds and fifties. ‘Xavier is trouble,’ Salvatore Biron had said.
Had the choirboy with the broken voice sold Mireille de Sinéty’s boyfriend to the préfet?
‘He must have, and so much for Dédou not having been waiting on the ramparts last Monday before dawn.’
What had it been that Xavier had claimed she had said on hearing Dédou hadn’t come as promised? ‘I have to go through with it anyway. I must.’ But of course the little bastard could well have been lying about that too.
Instinct said otherwise.
The Parabellum rounds had been for the Luger Dédou was supposed to have had. Thérèse Godard had been sent to the mas on Monday with a letter, but hadn’t been able to give it to Dédou and had left it in the mill.
The couple had used that letter box before, but had Xavier learned of it? The petite lingère had been ‘special’ to him. ‘The costumes,’ he had said.
The 100,000 franc reward.
Xavier hadn’t slept with the dogs. He had slept with his pal Nino up here. There were dog hairs in plenty, and Kohler took several for Ovid Peretti to compare with the one that had been caught in the girl’s fingernail.
Some of Nino’s treasures lay in a far corner. Pig bones, beef bones, duck eggs now in the half-shell and in bits and pieces, a bit of driftwood, a strap of leather … Rubbish all of it.
Crammed into the toe of a tennis shoe was one of the high heels from a pair of dress shoes. Jade green to go with the strawberry blonde hair and sea-green, smashing eyes, no doubt. Prewar and Italian-made by the look but purchased in Paris, for that’s where Adrienne de Langlade had come from. Very classy, very expensive and overlooked by the bishop. Ah yes!
Again he turned to the photos and only then noticed what Louis would have seen straightaway, that in three of them the girl’s nipples had been stiffened. ‘Wetted with alcohol?’ he wondered, she so out of it otherwise. ‘Absinthe?’ he asked. Drinking it had excited the central nervous system – in the addict, it had often caused fits of delirium, violent fist-fights and generally highly antisocial behaviour; in others, a blissful contentment, a numbness,
a passivity.
If drunk on it, she wouldn’t have felt a thing or remembered much. And as sure as he was standing here, someone had taken close-ups of her breasts and had cut off a few curls of her hair. Enough for how many postcards? he wondered, and decided Louis and he had better find out. But Louis was still busy.
Drawing on his pipe, St-Cyr took out the little black notebook that had always served him well, both for the apprehension it induced in a suspect – and Rivaille was most certainly that! – and for the record that would be made.
‘Bishop, pardon a simple detective, but could you state absolutely for me that there was an audition on Monday evening, 25 January 1943?’
So it was to be like this after all, the pedantic, cleat-booted mind of the Paris flic St-Cyr had once been. ‘Even such as yourself can rise up through the ranks to attend the Police Academy and earn laurels as a pugiliste.’
A boxeur who had won acceptance not just for the fists. ‘Bishop, please answer the question.’
‘Then, yes, at ten o’clock that evening.’
‘Wasn’t that a …’
‘A little late? It was the earliest that could be arranged.’
‘You dined out, I gather?’
‘With the Kommandant and Maître Simondi.’
Offer nothing more than asked – was that it, eh? ‘You had details to discuss about an upcoming concert and a tour the singers were to make.’
‘Schedules, laissez-passers, sauf-conduits only the Kommandant could issue. The singers don’t just entertain our citizens, Inspector. We have to think of our friends as well.’
The Occupier. The troops, their officers, and yet another warning …‘Was Frau von Mahler present?’
‘During the meal or before it?’
‘Both, and just afterwards. Let’s get things straight so as to save time.’
‘Then, yes. For this occasion only. It … ah, mais certainement it wasn’t that dear lady’s custom to dine with others than her immediate family, or to show her face in public. The burns, the terrible scars most of which are not those of the skin but of the …’
Madrigal Page 13