The driver’s side door was yanked open. Breathlessly Louis crammed himself behind the steering wheel and jammed the key into the ignition. The tyres screeched. He made a sharp U-turn on the boulevard Maillot and they shot eastwards towards Charonne. There were a few bicycles and bicycle-taxis, a gazogene lorry … Tiny blue-blinkered red brake lights, a pedestrian crossing, a traffic cop …
The horn was leaned on and they were through.
‘The grandmother paid up, Hermann. Étienne de Bonnevies has come home and Danielle will try to reach him before we do or the SS take her. There’s also a gun, the service revolver belonging to Captain Henri-Alphonse Vallée, madame. A Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance.’
A gun … Ah Scheisse! ‘The black-powder cartridges, Louis?’
They might be damp because of their age. ‘Perhaps, since Vallése is definitely of the old school, but if not the 1873, Hermann, then the 1892 and the 8mm smokeless. Madame, where is it hidden?’
‘I … I don’t know. How could I? Alexandre …’
‘Come, come, madame, we’ve no time to lose. Please understand that if the SS or anyone else should arrest your daughter and find that on her, there will be nothing my partner and I can do to save her.’
9
At 8:10 they gathered in the kitchen of the beekeeper’s house. The gun was gone; the girl was gone. Louis held the oilcloth the Lebel had been wrapped in while hidden under the floorboards of the honey-house.
A broken-open packet of 11mm cartridges revealed that a handful had been hastily pocketed. The suit, stockings, sweater, blouse and shoes the girl had worn to the meeting had lain in a crumpled heap on the floor of her bedroom. She had dressed warmly in her khaki trousers, and no doubt a flannel shirt, two sweaters, woollen knee-socks and hiking boots, and had taken her rucksack, with what food, matches, blankets and money she could grab.
The Terrot bicycle was also absent.
‘An hour’s start, at most, Hermann, but it’s a good fifty kilometres to Soisy-sur-Seine. The road follows the river for some distance to Villeneuve-Saint Georges, then moves inland and doesn’t return to it until south of Draveil. There are short cuts she will know of and use. The Forêt de Sénart also presents a problem, since it will offer easy retreat should she and her half-brother feel it necessary.’
An hour in this weather … Ten kilometres, fifteen at the most since she was used to winter cycling, thought Kohler. ‘But the snow … Louis, she might have to ditch the bike. If so, we’ll never find her.’
‘Inspectors, sometimes I would find the two of them at a hunters’ hide near the Carrefour du Chêne-Prieur. My husband always thought the worst; I knew the truth but could not bring myself to tell him for fear of his hurting the boy.’
The Crossroads of the Prior’s Oak … ‘Your son must havecome into the city, and finding that bottle, added the poison, madame,’ said Kohler. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but that’s how it appears.’
‘And Danielle, who loves him dearly and understands him totally, has finally realized this and is trying to save him – is this what you mean?’
‘You know it is.’
‘Sacré nom de nom, why couldn’t Madame de Trouvelot have told me she had secured his release? I could have spoken to him, calmed him. He’d have listened to me.’
‘Madame, would your daughter have written to your son about how terrible things were for you at home?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Yes, and often, I think.’
‘And did you tell Herr Schlacht of the country house?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Louis, that SS major will have let our Bonze know the kid’s on the loose.’
‘And that waiter at Maxim’s, Hermann, would have contacted him as soon as Madame de Trouvelot had paid the first fifty thousand.’
‘Schlacht knows the boy has come home, then,’ sighed Kohler, ‘and exactly where the girl will run.’
‘But do the SS?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Has he told them of the house?’
‘Drive, damn it! Drive! We’ve still got to get Oona.’
‘Calm down. Have courage, Hermann. Courage!’
‘Louis … Louis, why the hell would Schlacht have to get to Danielle before we do?’
It was a good question to which Frau Hillebrand offered no answer, and neither did Honoré de Saussine. Only Father Michel had anything to say as they raced out of the city. ‘I was afraid of this tragedy. When we first spoke, Chief Inspector, I feared the boy had come home and that Juliette had not yet learned of it, but that Danielle not only knew her half-brother had returned but that her father would have him arrested. I knew I couldn’t let it happen and begged God to intervene.’
‘And did God listen, Father, or merely guide your hand?’ demanded Louis, negotiating a difficult bend in the road.
‘God doesn’t choose to notify the messengers of His will, Inspector. Men like myself are simply here to pick up the pieces and salvage what we can.’
‘As you did with Héloïse Debré and with the rapists of Angèle-Marie?’ asked Louis sharply.
‘Héloïse was being punished and so were the others. My position has always been not to interfere but to counsel patience, hear confessions, and beg all to make their peace with God and those they have wronged.’
‘That custodian wants you dead.’
‘He’s a weak man, and I have known for years of his disregard for me.’
‘Then don’t go into the catacombs, Father, or he’ll do what he tried to do to me!’
Just south of Saint-Mandé, they cut through the Bois de Vincennes and then crossed the Marne before returning to the Seine. There was so little traffic, the road was like a blind, dark tunnel across which the falling snow tried only to obscure everything. Left to themselves, the three in the back seat had clammed up. Frau Hillebrand went to offer Hermann a cigarette from her case only to find it empty. ‘My purse, Herr Kohler,’ she said, trying to reach for it. ‘It’s on the floor at your feet.’
‘Let me,’ interjected St-Cyr. ‘I have to get out anyway to remove the black-out tape from the headlamps. A moment, please.’
The purse was heavy, and as he handed it to the woman, she held her breath, and he had to wonder if she’d a gun of her own.
To the south of Choisy-le-Roi there were railway freight yards. Here they were stopped at a control and their papers demanded, and it was all Herr Kohler could do to keep them from having to get out of the car, thought Käthe. But then they were on their way again. Forty … fifty kilometres an hour, often less. St-Cyr knew the roads and was an excellent driver. They were so different, these two, and yet … and yet that same intuitiveness existed between them. When Kohler, impatient at their progress, drummed his fingers on the dashboard, St-Cyr was ready and calmly said, ‘Oona will be all right, mon vieux. Schlacht won’t touch her, not after Oberg has said she’s to go to Spain.’
‘And since when could the SS ever be trusted?’ scoffed Kohler, and took to irritably scraping the frost from his side window. ‘Our Bonze wants Giselle in exchange, Louis, and the SS have agreed.’
‘Then we must settle things for the good of all.’
But how? wondered Käthe, as the two of them dropped into silence and only the throb of the engine was heard. Danielle de Bonnevies knew too much as did her mother. If taken before the Kommandant von Gross-Paris and questioned, either one or the other, or both, could so easily destroy everything. The Höherer SS Oberg had been adamant about this when he’d given her the pistol.
And what of the priest? she asked and told herself, it would be best if he, too, were silenced. But would Oskar really go back to Uma? Oberg would insist on it until this whole business had blown over and he had made up his mind what to do about the woman. Uma knew things the Führer must never hear; Oberg would want all the account and safety deposit box numbers and keys, especially those Uma had used for Oskar. He had said, ‘Don’t fail me, Frau Hillebrand. Do it for the Fatherland and as a loyal SS should.’
‘We are entering Draveil,’ sai
d St-Cyr companionably to her. ‘Once beyond it, you will find one of the finest stretches of the river. A gentle peace before the storm of the city, a reprieve for those wanting to get away for the weekend. On the Left Bank there are the smokestacks, cranes and loading docks of increasingly crowded industrial complexes; on the Right Bank, as if by pure magic, the villas with their expansive lawns and tennis courts, the sailing clubs and quaint little hotels of the bourgeoisie.’
‘My father loved our country house, Inspector,’ said Juliette from behind them, ‘but it was far from being a villa!’
‘There are riding trails throughout the forest and along the river bank, Frau Hillebrand,’ he went on, ignoring Madame de Bonnevies as if he was a tour guide for some low-priced agency, thought Kohler. ‘Peaceful walks, picnics and diligent hunts for morels, but always the river which here flows quietly. No barges these days, of course, but do you know, Hermann, I have yet to investigate a murder along this stretch of the river. Such contentment has to mean something.’
‘He’s overtired. Ignore him. If you don’t, he’ll soon be going on about the little farm he wants to retire to!’
‘Messieurs, please! It is not a joking matter. The turn-off to the house is but a few kilometres now. Once past a little wood on your right, Inspector, you take the first turn towards the river, but … but we will have to walk in, I think.’
And Étienne? wondered Juliette. Should she cry out a warning? Would he then attempt to escape or use the gun to defend himself?
The road was even lonelier than the one they’d come along and it was covered with about fifteen centimetres of snow. As light from the headlamps passed quickly over the house and then returned to settle on it, the two detectives searched the ground ahead for footprints and tyre marks but could see none.
‘Wait here,’ breathed St-Cyr softly. ‘Make a sound and you will answer for it. Hermann, let me go in alone, but follow at a distance.’
‘Then take my gun.’
The head was shaken; the Lebel Louis carried was preferred. Danielle de Bonnevies had stated that she had stayed overnight here on Thursday and Friday, arriving well after dark and leaving well before dawn.
Finding her footprints under the fresh snow would take time, the tyre marks of her bike also.
But had she really stayed here on Thursday night? wondered Kohler. Had the kid not lied about that, too?
It was not good walking in here alone, thought St-Cyr. Though a dark shape on a moonless night, he would still show up against the snow-covered ground. Fruit trees, old, many-branched and left to nature, marked the remains of a small orchard and offered cover. Four beehives had been set out in a tidy, well-spaced row among the trees and as his gaze passed quickly over them, he realized Danielle and her father had kept one of their out-apiaries here. A logical place, a perfect location, but there were no recent tracks under the snow when he crouched to brush it away, and perhaps it was true what she had said, that she tried not to use the house often, so as to keep attention from it. ‘I arrived well after dark, Inspector, and left well before dawn.’
From the hives, it was but a short walk to the house whose dark silhouette gave a sloping-roofed shed, a ground-floor wing, with attic dormer, and then, at a right angle, the main two-storeyed part of a stone building that probably dated from about 1850. Peering through a window revealed only a lack of black-out curtains. Trying the doors as stealthily as he could yielded only a decided need for their keys. But there were recent tracks, though not since this snowfall or the one before it. The prints were those of the girl’s hiking boots.
‘Thursday and Friday nights, then,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Merde, I wish Hermann was with me. Hermann is far better at this and can see things I don’t.’
The door to the shed wasn’t locked. Danielle had pushed her bike in here on those two nights but there was no bike. There were garden tools as old as the centuries, fishnets, two pairs of oars, and he couldn’t help but admire Juliette de Goncourt’s father for both having kept the house as a family retreat and making sure Étienne de Bonnevies had the use of it and perhaps even its ownership.
Soisy-sur-Seine had been lovely. Marianne had adored the little holiday they had managed when Philippe had been six months old. They had left him nearby with a farm woman and had danced to an accordion on the grand porch of one of the fabled guinguettes, the rustic riverside restaurants and dancehalls. They had gone out on the river in a skiff, he with his shirtsleeves rolled up and wearing an old straw hat, Marianne in a brand-new flowered print dress that had been so light and gay, he could remember it still. The fritures, the deep-fried little fish from the river, had been superb. They had shared a chocolate mousse and she had spilled some on the dress and been so worried about it he had bought her another the very next day.
‘But such holidays were always too rare and brief, and now she’s gone and so is Philippe,’ he reminded himself and, passing the torch beam over the remainder of the shed, felt his heart sink.
On the other side of a wheelbarrow, hidden as if set out of sight in haste, there was a tattered khaki rucksack. Atop this, tightly rolled and tied with linked bits of old boot laces, was a darkly stained French Army trench coat that still bore a frayed and faded Red Cross armband. A metre-long, stiff, leather-covered map tube from the Great War lay on the stone floor and beside it there was an artist’s paintbox. Étienne de Bonnevies had indeed come home.
Kohler leaned on his crutches and listened hard to the night. Louis had been gone too long. There wasn’t a sound, save that of the wind in frozen reeds now dry and old along the bank. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let him go in there alone,’ he softly swore. ‘Verdammt! What the hell am I going to do if something’s happened to him and I haven’t his help?’
Try to get Oona to Spain, no matter what? Try to outrun the SS with this foot? And what about Giselle, eh? Giselle …
Sickened by what would surely happen to both of them if he tried and failed to get them to freedom behind Oberg’s back, he started out again. Louis had often paused, and that was good. He had done the wise thing and had approached the house obliquely.
When he came to the shed, Kohler leaned the crutches against the wall and hobbled inside. Only then did he switch on his torch and curse Gestapo stores for the lousy batteries they supplied. Striking two matches which flew apart in a rush of sparks, he again cursed, this time the State-run monopoly Vichy now managed but no better than the Government of the Third Republic. The French had been putting up with the same lousy matches ever since the damned things had been invented!
Finally one of them lighted and his frost-numbed fingers added two more. As though it were yesterday and he still deep in that other war, he saw the map tube and rucksack. He remembered the battery of field guns he had commanded, the fierceness of the shelling, the constant stench of cordite, wet, mouldy earth and death, of opened French bunkers and upheaved trenches, the scatterings of last letters from home. ‘Ah Scheisse,’ he said. ‘Louis …’
Hobbling as quickly as he could, he raced to find the main door of the house and bang on it. ‘Open up!’ he yelled. ‘Police!’
‘Louis …’ he bleated. ‘Louis, I heard no shot. Has the kid killed herself?’
Only silence answered, and as he nudged the door, it swung open.
It was freezing in the car, the endless waiting an agony, and when Honoré de Saussine got out, Juliette did so too.
Then Father Michel decided to stretch his legs. ‘It is not good, this silence,’ he said. ‘I think we’d best go to the house and find out what has happened. I might be needed.’
‘Suit yourselves,’ said de Saussine. ‘For me, I will walk back to the main road. There must be a small hotel or restaurant nearby – is there one, madame?’
‘All will be closed. It’s nearly curfew,’ she answered emptily. Had Danielle done something terrible; had Étienne?
‘You’ve no laissez-passer or sauf-conduit, monsieur,’ cautioned Father Michel. ‘If I were you, I would
stay with the rest of us.’
‘What makes you so certain the German woman wants to remain here?’ asked de Saussine.
‘We’ll ask her, shall we?’ countered Father Michel swiftly.
‘A moment, mon Père,’ cautioned de Saussine. ‘She knows far more than she’s letting on. Herr Schlacht had keys to Alexandre’s gates and study. Since I did not take them when offered, who, obviously, do you think he gave them to?’
‘Madame de Bonnevies and myself were in the kitchen, monsieur. We would have heard Frau Hillebrand. And please do not forget that from the window there is a clear view of the honey-house and garden. I myself sat facing that window; Madame de Bonnevies with her back to it.’
‘And you didn’t look away, didn’t go into any other room, Father?’ scoffed de Saussine.
‘We spoke in earnest.’
‘And couldn’t have done much looking up and out of that window, eh?’ taunted de Saussine.
‘But … but, Father, you do remember that I went upstairs to Étienne’s room to bring you his last letter,’ said Juliette in distress. ‘I couldn’t find it on his writing table. I searched the drawers, searched Alexandre’s bedroom and only when I went into Danielle’s room, found it beside her bed. It was so censored I … I wanted your opinion as to how it must originally have read. You do recall this, don’t you?’
Merde, why had she had to mention it? cursed Father Michel silently, only to hear de Saussine sigh and say with evident delight, ‘Then madame was away sufficiently, mon Père, and I will be certain to inform the detectives of this.’
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