by John Harris
Because of the warmer weather, the Baronne had discarded her husband’s sheepskin jacket but she still looked cold. Klemens gestured to a chair and she sat in it as straight-backed as if it were a bed of nails. Klemens started off gently. ‘We’re not receiving the co-operation we’re entitled to, madame,’ he said.
‘You can hardly expect it,’ the Baronne snapped. ‘Unless, of course, you were to decide to leave, and then we’d willingly help you pack.’
Klemens smacked the table with his hand. ‘You realize that as maire you could be held hostage for the good behaviour of the village,’ he said. ‘How would you like that?’
The Baronne was quite unmoved. ‘At my age. it wouldn’t bother me at all. My only regret would be that I wouldn’t be here to see you all trailing back to Germany in defeat.’
Klemens scowled. She was so old his threats were meaningless. He changed the subject. ‘The pictures,’ he said.
The old woman looked at him blankly. ‘Which pictures?’
Klemens reddened. ‘You know damned well which pictures, madame!’ He waved the telegraph flimsy. ‘It’s taken a little while to check your statement that they’d been stolen because, as you know, we expect the British and the Americans to try to land in France and, due to the allied bombing and the disruption of communications, Colonel Marx has taken some tracking down. However, we have tracked him down, and he states in his message that the paintings were here when he left.’
The old woman pulled a face. ‘Perhaps he took them himself and doesn’t want anyone to know.’
Klemens scowled, knowing she despised him. ‘That’s not all, madame!’ His voice rose as he began to lose his temper. ‘What you don’t perhaps realize is that paintings have to have something called provenance. Do you know what provenance is?’
The Baronne shrugged and Klemens smiled. ‘Provenance, my dear lady,’ he said, ‘means pedigree, I’ve been, in touch with General Dannhüber, who’s an expert, and he was kind enough to provide a catalogue of the paintings and artifacts in this house. It’s an old one, of course, produced before the war, but it lists nineteen pictures as well as a number of etchings and several sketches. With this list I’ve contacted art dealers in Munich, and General von Stülpnagel in Paris put me in touch with one or two of your compatriots who are more friendly to us than you are. I now have descriptions of every one of these paintings. In some cases, even photographs. I now know all there is to know about them and when I find them - ‘
‘When’ the Baronne reminded him.
Klemens ignored the comment, ‘ - when I find them, I shall know if they’re the ones I’m looking for. They’re all listed here, madame: Five Greuzes - five, madame! - a Nattier, a Watteau, a Lancret, a Fragonard, a Vigee Lebrun, a Corot, a Troyon, a Daubigny, a Monet, a Kucharski, a Prud’hon, a Desvosges, a Quantin and a Traat. There’s also a small pencil drawing by Rembrandt, engravings by Legros. a red chalk sketch on green paper attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, a folio of pencil drawings of rocks by Dali, a charcoal drawing of washerwomen by Degas, and water colours by Dufy and Orissa. To say nothing of framed chromos of one of your family at Abd el Kader and the defence of the legation at Peking by another of them; drawings by Detaille and de Neuville, three Nîmes vases, a set of Rouen plates, a Chippendale mirror, four Louis XIII chairs, a surveyor’s compass used in America during some war against the British, an 18-carat gold fob watch, English, French and American antique toys and automata, and various items of jewellery on red velvet in flat glass cases.’ He turned to Tamera. ‘Have you seen any jewellery in flat glass cases, Tarnera?’
‘None, Herr Oberst.’
Klemens laid a folder on the table and leaned forward, his hands on the desk, to stare with narrowed eyes at the Baronne.
‘This catalogue, madame, was issued by your husband. It bears out what I’ve been told.’ He opened a page. ‘For instance: the Lebrun. Two metres by one and a half.’ He flipped the page. The Monet. Two and a half by two. These are big paintings. Where are they hidden?’
The old woman’s face remained blank. I’ve told you. They were stolen.’
They’re in this house!’ Klemens’ bottled-up frustration came out in a shout.
The Baronne didn’t even blink. ‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘We’ll search the place!’
The thin shoulders lifted in a shrug and the Baronne stood up. ‘Then, monsieur, I suggest you get on with it.’
Klemens stared after her as she closed the door. ‘Tamera,’ he said, his voice bitter. ‘She knows those damned paintings are here! But she also knows they’re sufficiently safe for her to challenge us to find them. Very well, well show her what we’re made of. Turn the place inside out. And, to make sure that while you’re in one room they’re not passing something
through the ceiling to the next, we’ll have the whole damn lot of them out on the gravel in front.’
Half an hour later, they were all out on the drive - the Baronne, Euphrasie, Joseph, and the cook. It took another half-hour to find Psichari, the gardener. He was in the lavatory at the back of the house, enjoying a smoke, and being half crazy, refused to leave until he’d finished. With them all finally standing in an indignant group by the great front door, Unteroffiarier Schäffer prepared to send his men through the house.
‘What are we searching for, Herr Oberst?’ he asked.
‘Canvases. Paintings. They may be flat. They may be rolled.’
‘Not the ones on the walls, Herr Oberst?’
‘No, you idiot! Search every room. Every cupboard. Every carpet. Every mattress.’
An hour later it began to rain and the indignant Baronne demanded to be allowed inside. Unwillingly, Klemens moved them into the hall. They were there until late afternoon by which time Schaffer’s men had to admit defeat.
‘The damn things must be somewhere,’ Klemens scowled. ‘They wouldn’t destroy them out of spite.’
‘They just might, Herr Oberst,’ Tarnera pointed out.
‘Have they searched the place properly ?’
‘From top to bottom.’
‘Attics?’
‘Every one. I checked.’
Klemens stamped up and down, his hands clamped behind his back. ‘They were here when Colonel Marx was here,’ he insisted doggedly. ‘He even says that if he’d been on his way home, he might have helped himself to one or two.’
‘Perhaps they’re in the village,’ Klein-Wuttig said.
‘Very well,’ Klemens slapped his hand down on the table. ‘Tomorrow we search the place with a fine-toothed comb.’
The following morning, Klein-Wuttig and his men surrounded the village. At first there was a certain amount of panic, but when one of the soldiers actually handled papers with a list of the members of Reinach’s réseau and did no more than glance at it, it dawned on them that the Germans weren’t looking for weapons and they began to enjoy themselves.
In Reinach’s house, there was great excitement when Schäffer gave a shout and Klein-Wuttig was inside the house in a moment, yelling for Klemens.
Klemens was waiting near the church, alongside a rusting iron crucifix that clawed at the sky next to the notice board announcing the times of the masses. Behind him was the cemetery, at the end of a small dusty path which had been stirred by the feet of countless mourners and the hooves of generations of scrawny horses. It was desolate and full of frugal crosses of cast-iron, beadwork wreaths and marble slabs supporting yellowing photographs under glass. Among the stonework, the edgings of granite chips, weeds and lachrymose angels, there was a large family vault inscribed ‘Famille St Angéac-Brieuc de Frager’. It was giving Klemens the creeps, and he was glad to go into action as Klein-Wuttig called.
Schaffer had discovered an ancient frame, its gilt blackened with age, from which the canvas had been cut. A further search had produced from under a bedroom rug a canvas of a man and a woman.
Klemems stared at it joyously. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’ He glanced at his list and Tarn
era saw him frown. ‘I’ve no mention here of a painting of a man and a woman,’ he said. ‘You’re sure that’s a man and a woman.’
‘One of them has a bust and the other a beard, Herr Oberst,’ Tarnera pointed out.
Klemens scowled and looked again at the painting. It was a deep brown in colour. ‘What’s its pedigree, do you think?’ he asked.
‘By amateur out of dud, I imagine,’ Tarnera said. ‘If that’s an old master, Herr Oberst, I’m the Führer’s dog.’
‘Fetch Reinach in.’
As the carpenter was brought in, his face blank and stupid, Klemens jerked a hand at the canvas. ‘Where did you get that?’ he snapped.
‘From my father, monsieur.’
Klemens turned to Tarnera. ‘Get him!’
Reinach’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You’ll have a job, monsieur. He’s in Heaven. He died in 1936.’
Then what the devil was he doing with the Baronne’s painting?’
Reinach’s eyebrows shot up again. ‘That doesn’t belong to the Baronne, monsieur! It was painted in 1934 by my brother who was taken prisoner in 1940. It’s supposed to be my parents, only he was never very good at painting and his colours were always muddy.’
Klemens glared. ‘If it’s of no value,’ he yelled, ‘what was it doing under the carpet? And why did you cut if from the frame?’
‘Because we heard, monsieur, that you were collecting things to take back to Germany. It hasn’t any value, but it means a lot to my family.’
Klemens shoved him aside and stamped out.
Two houses further along, Dréo’s one-legged son appeared holding a small picture of a battle. It showed French troops in red trousers and kepis driving off a group of Prussian soldiers in spiked helmets with a great deal of slaughter. It was a very bad painting. ‘It shows our people defeating your people north of Tours in 1871,’ he said to Schaffer, his face serious. ‘You can have it for fifty francs.’
In the street Klemens conferred with Klein-Wuttig and Tamera. ‘They’re shifting the stuff along,’ he said, ‘from one house to the other. Split your men up. One lot to start at the east, the other at the west. Where they meet, that’s where the pictures will be.’
But they weren’t, though they searched the decaying environs of the church, the bell tower, the barns and sheds, and even broke open the de Frager vault because one of Schaffer’s men said he thought he detected the marks of a crowbar on the stone. All they got for their trouble was a vituperative complaint from the Baronne, spat into their faces with all the venom she could muster.
‘Didn’t you find anything at all?’ Klemens asked wearily.
‘A few hidden bottles of wine,’ Tarnera said. ‘An odd bottle of brandy. No guns. No paintings. No jewellery.’
12
The Germans hadn’t even found Balmaceda’s copies that he’d painted during his long love affair with the Baronne. He’d sent them to Dijon ages before to raise the wind and, since no Frenchman had enough money to spend on paintings and he refused to allow them to be sold to Germans or collaborators, they were still there and his studio was empty.
Néry enjoyed the joke immensely and began to think they were winning, because this was the second time they’d put something across the Germans. They were in such good spirits Reinach even made himself a rubber stamp with the words ‘Read but not approved - Charles de Gaulle’ with which he crept round the village after dark and stamped all the Occupation notices the Germans had put up. There was a new feeling of defiance abroad. Glued every night to their radios, trying to hear in spite of the fading batteries and the static, they were far more worried that they’d miss the message about their parachute drop than they were about the Germans catching them listening to the BBC.
In the meantime, the forest behind the village had suddenly become of great interest to everyone. There were always mushrooms to look for - chantrelles d’automne or the shy little trompettes de mort, black shapes under the leaf mould. Others went with ferrets after rabbits or, if the evening was warm and they were young, with girl friends. What Klemens didn’t know was that, deep in the undergrowth, Urquhart had started giving instructions on the weapons they’d rescued from Rolandpoint.
It wasn’t easy because the villagers liked to preserve their individuality and since there were forty million Frenchmen there were also forty million different political parties and forty million different ways of absorbing knowledge.
The Bren’s an ideal gun,’ Urquhart intoned, in his North of England dourness looking and behaving almost like the high-country Burgundians themselves. ‘Strong, portable and
accurate, while the Sten’s just the thing for street fighting, wood clearing or anywhere the enemy might appear suddenly at close quarters.’
‘I wish I were at close quarters with those filth,’ Sergeant Dréo growled.
‘Or better still with the Widow Bona in Rolandpoint,’ Guardian Moch grinned.
Urquhart drew a deep breath. ‘It’s easily handled,’ he struggled on, ‘and can be fired in single rounds or in bursts from the shoulder or waist. It’s easy to hold and fits snugly into the hand.’
‘There are other things that fit snugly in the hand, too,’ Moch said and Ernouf rounded on him.
‘There’s a Frenchman for you!’ he snorted. ‘It’s weapons he’s talking about!’
Moch grinned. ‘It’s weapons I’m talking about!’
At the end of May, de Frager and Lionel Dring returned. ‘The area round Besançon’s stuffed with armed men,’ they reported. ‘They could stop a whole German division. On the Vercors massif they’re receiving weapons all the time.’
Then where are the ones we asked for?’ Reinach demanded indignantly, ‘We’ve heard nothing and there’s a full moon due.’
Sergeant Dréo rubbed his bottle nose and twanged his moustaches. ‘I thought they were going to give us the message last night,’ he said wistfully. ‘There was something in his voice, I thought. As though he were looking directly at me.’
It was decided that Urquhart should cycle to St Seigneur to demand action and, to Neville’s surprise, Marie-Claude insisted on accompanying him to make it look like a shopping expedition. It was a long ride and they took a satchel containing bread and cheese and wine and stopped at midday to eat it.
The summer was on them now and there was a breathless stillness about the air and a heat haze over the valley. The trees were in full bloom, thick and heavy, and the roadside where they sat was dotted with flowers. Marie-Claude was quiet, as she had been with Urquhart ever since they’d snatched the Rolandpoint weapons from under the noses of the Germans. He knew what was troubling her, but he made no effort to help her and after a while it came out - cautiously at first, then in a rush. ‘When you were in Rolandpoint those nights,’ she said, ‘I prayed for your safety. That you returned unharmed was due to my constant prayers to the Virgin.’
Urquhart grinned. ‘How about giving Ernestine some of the credit?’ he said. ‘She worked hard at it, too.’
Her lips tightened and she tried a different tack, aware of a strange new loneliness, and a sense of uncertainty and insecurity such as she’d never known before. She looked at Urquhart but, as usual, his face was secret and enigmatic. He always puzzled her because, while he could smile - and when he did his whole face lit up - he was nevertheless a reserved man not given to showing his feelings much.
‘While you were there I had a long talk with Neville,’ she said. ‘He’s a very rich man.’
‘Very.’ Urquhart was still not being helpful.
‘He talked a great deal about luxury and wealth.’
He looked at her. She was wearing a faded blue dress that was spread about her strong thighs as she sat in the grass beside the bicycles. The breeze had blown wisps of dark hair loose and her face was pink with exertion. As his gaze travelled over her, a blush coloured her cheeks further.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Trying to impress you. Who wouldn’t? You’re splendid.’
The words br
ought a still deeper colour to her cheeks and her body glowed. But then Urquhart’s face was empty again and she found she was suffering from a restlessness that harried her to distraction. After a while he spoke again, his mouth twisted in a smile.
‘Was he offering them to you ?’ he asked.
She brushed an insect off her leg. ‘It seemed so.’
‘Marriage?’
‘That’s what I thought.’
Urquhart said nothing and she went on in an off-hand manner. ‘We have many strange marriage customs in Burgundy,’ she said. ‘In the middle of the wedding feast the people bring in pieces of silver or things for the house; and with the dessert someone fires three shots under the table, like when they knock three times on the stage at the theatre before the performance.’
Urquhart listened politely - a strong, nerveless man who could never be pushed into anything he didn’t want - and she went on doggedly. ‘If you were going to marry a girl, Urk’t, what would you offer her?’
Urquhart grinned. ‘Same as I’ve always had,’ he said. ‘Hard work.’
She sniffed. ‘I already have plenty of that.’ Her face set in a frown. ‘Why aren’t you married, Urk’t? You’re strong and capable. Do English girls not attract men?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He sat, still as a rock, watching her. ‘They attract men.’
‘I think perhaps English girls are not aware of what they have to offer.’
‘The ones I’ve met seemed to be.’
She frowned but persisted. ‘Why, then, did you not marry?’
Urquhart seemed untouched by her worry. ‘Because I haven’t met the right girl,’ he said.
‘It’s wrong not to many I’ She was beginning to grow irritated by his calm. ‘God created Eve out of Adam’s rib so that when she’s not at his side he feels the loss! I was married at seventeen!’
Urquhart still showed no reaction and, torn by her emotions, she struggled on, throwing out hints like confetti and trying to pretend it was all just a joke. ‘Love’s a violent emotion,’ she went on. ‘Men sometimes fight over a girl. Sometimes with fists and sometimes with knives. If it were you and Neville, unfortunately, the police would have to take away the winner to languish in the Tower of London.’