by Allan Massie
‘Thank you,’ Lannes said. ‘You make it all very clear, and it seems probable the matter may be allowed to rest. There is one other member of the family living with you, I understand. Your nephew. Maurice, is it?’
‘Edmond’s boy. A mere child. A foolish adolescent who plays at being a poet. He counts for nothing, I assure you. And now, since, as you say, the matter may be forgotten, I must ask you to return the letters to me.’
‘Return the letters?’ Lannes sighed, theatrically. ‘I wish I could. But it’s impossible. They have now become official documents,’ he said, confident that she would not understand they were no such thing. ‘Were your father himself to request their return, that would be another question. But even he would be required to enter an official request, through the proper channels, you understand. I am sorry, Madame, but my hands are tied. I could no more do as you ask than I could fly out of that window.’
She wasn’t pleased. She tried to argue the case, puffed up with indignation.
Lannes became more polite, still more apologetic, but remained adamant. He spread his hands – it was impossible. When at last she departed in a high temper, he smiled. Tiresome woman.
To Lannes’ surprise Rougerie seemed uninterested in his report of his meeting with Grimaud, listening with ill-concealed impatience.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I see,’ and took snuff, sneezed, blew his nose into an dark-blue handkerchief, and treated himself to another pinch. ‘It’s not important, a foolishness, you’ve made that very clear, and in any case asking you to call on him was a mere matter of courtesy, courtesy, no more than that, towards a gentleman of good birth and some distinction, even if, for reasons we needn’t elaborate, somewhat tarnished distinction. Least said about that the better. No, superintendent, it’s that murder, that very distasteful murder, of Monsieur Chambolley. I’ve read your report, admirably lucid as ever, and it’s evident you have arrived at a dead end, an impasse. As I expected, as indeed I warned you. Not necessarily to be deplored, indeed not at all, not at all. As the Mayor said to me yesterday, when it’s a question of a man of good family who has, as you might say, fallen into degeneracy, then in these troubled times, with the Communists eager to stir up disaffection, there are things better kept from the public view. I agree entirely. So I think you can turn your attention elsewhere. Put the Chambolley case on ice, file it as “unsolved, no further action to be taken”. Yes, that’s it: gone to earth, as the huntsmen say.’
Lannes was furious, tried to argue his case, to no avail. The judge took snuff in what he no doubt thought of as a decisive manner, and said, ‘This is no time to open a can of worms. That’s official, superintendent, official and final.’
He didn’t often swear. When he was a child his father had told him that swearing was unworthy of a man, showed a contempt for language. It had been different of course in the trenches. He had acquired a fine array of oaths there. Even so, he rarely employed them. Marguerite, like his father, deplored the habit. But now, leaving the judge, collecting his coat and stepping out of the building he felt savage and allowed his tongue free rein. He smacked his stick against a lamp-post and wished it was the judge’s head. Then he stopped at a bar and drank a demi to wash the taste of dirt out of his mouth.
It was almost as an act of penance that he made his way to the rue des Remparts, splashing through the puddles like a small boy out of temper with the world.
‘You’ve a face like thunder,’ Henri said.
‘How I feel. I’m ashamed, Henri, ashamed and angry. I’ve failed you, got nowhere, and have just been instructed to close the case down.’
‘It’s what I expected. I don’t know why.’
He led the way upstairs, opened a bottle of St-Emilion and poured them each a glass, told Lannes to sit down, relax, take it easy.
‘You’re too much on edge.’
He put a record on the gramophone: Kirsten Flagstad singing the Liebestod from Tristan. They listened in silence.
‘Wonderful,’ Henri said. ‘Such a beautiful voice. I play it every afternoon, about this time. Gaston adored Wagner too. It’s comforting as if we were still sharing something. Does that sound silly?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Wagner,’ Henri said, replacing the first record with the Prelude to the first act of the Meistersinger, ‘Sublime. It pains me to think that that little guttersnipe in Berlin pretends to love his music, when quite evidently he’s incapable of love. Listen to this, Jean: it speaks of joy, love, reverence for life, not hatred, resentment and war.’
He sank back into his chair. The little dog Toto came and licked his hand, asking to be petted. For the moment, peace and contentment filled the room.
Then the music stopped. Only the sound of the needle going round and round.
‘It’s got to be finished. That’s what people are saying, aren’t they, about this war? Do you think we’re up to it? I’m shy of asking because you are a veteran of the last war, and I’m not. People used to call us shirkers, Gaston and me. Worse than that too: cowards. It was painful. But what do you think?’
‘I don’t know what to think. I really don’t, Henri.’
‘In my opinion we’re not the people we were in 1914. There’s been too much suffering. I couldn’t say this to anyone but you, Jean.’
Lannes thought: he may be right, but Dominique is every bit the man I was then, even though I still think of him as a boy, and for Marguerite he is still her baby. He’s better than me in many ways, but those around him, I don’t know. And the politicians and the High Command, well, that’s another thing altogether. I’ve little faith in them.
He said: ‘It’s out of our hands, old man. We can only hope. Meanwhile I want you to know that, no matter my instructions, I’m not going to forget Gaston. Whatever they say, his case is still on my desk. Nobody should die like that unavenged.’
Henri got to his feet, moving like an old man now, and poured them both another glass of wine.
‘You said that before, Jean, and I trust you to do whatever you can. But don’t imperil yourself. Stay a little. I get drunk most evenings now and it’s agreeable to have your company. But that’s selfish of me. Marguerite will be expecting you.’
Nevertheless, as if to hold Lannes there, he put another record on the gramophone. More Wagner: the Pilgrims’ Chorus from ‘Tannhauser’.
Lannes said, ‘Do you happen to know the Comte de Grimaud?’
‘Grimaud? Has he come your way? I don’t like that.’
Henri occupied himself in filling his pipe, pressing the tobacco down with his thumb, then putting a match to it and emitting short rapid puffs to get it going. Then, frowning, said:
‘He used to be a customer. In those days he had a passion for anything connected with mediaeval witchcraft, which he had theories about – how it was a survival of pre-Christian religion, as I recall. The cult of Diana, I think. But I haven’t seen him in a long time. That doesn’t distress me. I never cared for him. It’s an old family, but not a good one. There was some story about the death of his first wife and he’s had three at least, possibly four. I don’t know how they live, he was always a poor payer, another reason I was happy when he stopped frequenting the shop. But how has he come to your notice? The elder son? Jean-Christophe? There was a scandal concerning him, some years ago. Under-age girls, was it? One of them was admitted to hospital, I seem to remember. Nasty anyway. But he’s not up to much. His brother Edmond is more formidable. Gaston used to know him in the days when he wrote poetry. Edmond lives in Paris, edits a review, owns it perhaps. Clever but not to my taste, to the right of L’Action Francaise, inasmuchas that’s possible. More modern anyway, Fascist rather than Royalist. Anathema to an old Radical like me.’
‘Anti-Semitic then?’
‘Unquestionably, but in a lofty intellectual fashion. Oh, I see, you’re thinking of Miriam.’
‘You know her too.’
‘For years. Since she was a little girl. I get my tobacco from her
father. What’s all this about? I suppose you can’t tell me. But be careful, Jean. That family is not good to know. But then I suppose that few of those you have dealings with are. I admire you, Jean. You know that, I hope, and I’m grateful for the way in which you are treating my poor Gaston’s case.’
Lannes, embarrassed, said, ‘There’s a grandson too, I believe.’
‘Edmond’s boy. I know nothing of him. But there is bad blood in that family, much bad blood.’
III
April 1–2, 1940
When Lannes was young, a senior policeman once told him: ‘The trouble with you is that you get too involved with the people in a case, and let yourself be distracted from the facts. Facts, facts, my boy, that’s all a policeman should busy himself with. Facts leave a trail. Follow it and you’ll get there in the end.’
Good advice doubtless; advice he hadn’t taken.
This Grimaud case, which wasn’t a case, nagged at him, just like, on another scale, this war which wasn’t a war, not yet anyway. He found himself waking in a state of anxiety before it was light, thinking of Dominique, picturing him waiting, waiting, waiting, for the German attack that would surely come. Lannes didn’t believe those who said it would all be arranged, or the others who declared that the French Army was the strongest in Europe, that Hitler was a gigantic bluff and the German tanks were made of plasterboard. It didn’t make sense. He knew how the Germans could fight. They were a great people, however perverted their leaders. So he would slip out of bed, pad through to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee and sit smoking till the light began to grow. Then he would look across the court and see other apartments coming to life as their occupants prepared to go to work behaving as if everything was normal.
He thought often of Gaston. How strong must have been that compulsion – to accept humiliation in the search for a few moments of pleasure which must surely afterwards inspire self-disgust.
Would they bomb Bordeaux? He remembered the newspaper photographs of Guernica. Or was Bordeaux still out of reach of their planes?
He couldn’t read anything but newspapers. Even Dumas, his solace in so many black hours, failed him – how distant now seemed the gallantry of his beloved musketeers. No poison gas or hideous bombardments in their wars!
One morning Clotilde, rising for once before her mother, found him there, gazing out of the window, turning his empty coffee cup round and round, an ashtray already full of stubs beside his saucer.
‘What’s wrong, Papa?’
‘Nothing,’ he lied. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he added, reverting to truth. ‘I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.’
‘Me neither. Is it Dominique? It is, isn’t it? I know you’re afraid for him. We all are, Maman especially, though when I speak of him, she bites my head off and changes the subject. She’d be better to speak of it, wouldn’t she?’
‘Perhaps. It’s not her way however.’
‘It’s not your way either, Papa. You’re a pair of clams,’ she said, and bent to kiss the back of his neck. ‘But we’re not children, Alain and I, you must understand that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re no longer children. You’re not allowed to be children now. All over Europe childhood is being forbidden.’
She sat down opposite him, and stretched across the table to take hold of his hand.
‘You don’t think we’re going to lose the war, do you?’
Her lips were trembling and her eyes damp as if she was about to cry. She was right. No longer a child, but denied what she was entitled to enjoy – her youth. He couldn’t tell her he had no faith in their generals and less than none in the politicians who had stumbled into this war.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and felt ashamed.
Later that day – it was a Sunday – he went to watch Alain play rugby for the Bègles junior XV. The air was crisp, the sky a pale blue, there was no wind from the river, and it was possible to believe again in the promise of Spring. Alain, light but athletic, played with a zest and courage that filled Lannes with pride. The boy tackled bigger opponents as if his life depended on it, using his speed to cut them down. In the last minutes of the game, he swerved outside his marker in the centre to score a try under the posts, and came off the field flushed with happiness and triumph. ‘Like a musketeer,’ Lannes thought, ‘Like d’Artagnan himself.’ It was an old joke between them, one they had shared when Alain first played as a boy of eleven or twelve. But now it would only embarrass him. Lannes contented himself with clapping him on the back and saying, ‘Good, well done’.
He had often thought rugby was the image of war without the guilt. But there was no getting away from the guilt of the real thing. Damn these politicians. Double-damn Hitler.
IV
April 12, 1940
There are slack times in the police force as in any other business. Crimes go on being committed of course, but only such as are easily dealt with by junior officers, or may at least be entrusted to them. It was in these periods, when his days were devoted to catching up with paperwork, that Lannes often questioned the value of his job. Pointless, naturally. At his age, forty-three, rising forty-four, what else could he do? When he shaved in the morning and observed the lines that now ran more deeply from the corners of his nose to his mouth, and saw that the mouth itself was now turned down at the left, he thought: anyone might say, it’s the face of a cynic. But I don’t think I’m that; not yet.
This slack period was all the more irksome because two days previously the war had come to life, the Germans marching through Denmark and invading Norway. Was it because he felt his deskwork to be a sort of self-reproach that he could not bring himself to drop the Grimaud case that wasn’t a case? Or simply that he required the illusion of action to distract his thoughts from Dominique? No matter the reason; he made arrangements to interview the count’s wife, Miriam.
Not wishing to summon her to his office or to meet her in a public place, for that, Bordeaux being what it was, would give rise to talk and speculation, he suggested she come to Henri’s bookshop. It wasn’t the first time he had made use of it when the occasion called for delicacy. Henri was happy to let him have the sitting-room above the shop.
She was laughing when he came in, a deep full-throated laugh, boisterous enough to set the dust flying. She was a big woman, running to fat, a woman from a saucy postcard. Her thick hair was dyed blonde and her tweed skirt hung squint. There was a ladder in her stocking and her crimson lipstick was smeared. It was impossible for Lannes to see her as the adolescent who had perversely desired to be the plaything of a lecherous old man.
‘Henri tells me I can trust you,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know as I have anything to trust you with.’
Upstairs, she said: ‘So what’s this about? I haven’t a clue, you know, which is why I accepted your invitation. But is it usual for top policemen to make assignations of this sort? Not that I mind.’
She settled herself in a high-backed Louis Quinze chair, hitched up her skirt, crossed her legs – fat, but still well-shaped – and lit an American cigarette with a tiny mother-of-pearl lighter.
‘So. Explain please. I hope you’ve a good story for me.’
‘Are you on good terms with your husband?’
She laughed again.
‘That’s blunt. I could say, “What’s it to do with you”, but I don’t mind telling you. The answer’s “no”. But then nobody is on good terms with him, except old Marthe, who’s been his housekeeper for more than half a century, and he wouldn’t have it otherwise. Does that satisfy you?’
Lannes said: ‘This isn’t a police matter, and so our conversation, which isn’t an interrogation, is entirely unofficial, off the record, as they say. Your husband called me to see him because he had received a number of anonymous letters.’
‘About me?’
‘About you. Nasty letters, vile language.’
‘That’s usual, isn’t it, the language, I mean.’
‘Usual, yes, almost invariable, rea
lly.’
‘I’m not so sure I like this,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should have some coffee. Henri said to make ourselves at home. Or a drink.’
‘Coffee for me. Like many policemen I’m an addict.’
She went through to the little kitchen in the room behind. She moved lightly for such a big woman; she would probably waltz beautifully, he thought. He heard the hiss of the gas stove as she prepared the coffee. It was the Neapolitan kind of pot that you turn upside down to let the coffee filter through when the water has boiled.
‘None for you?’ he said, when she placed pot and cup on the little table at his side.
‘I think I’ll have a whisky-and-soda. This sounds as if it’s going to be unpleasant. I suppose they’re anti-Semitic, Jewish whore, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes,’ Lannes said. ‘I could show them to you, but really you don’t want to read them. Madame Thibault de Polmont came to see me.’
‘The old cow.’
‘I was surprised because your husband told me he had shown the letters to nobody. But she knew about them.’
‘She would. She’s always snooping. It’s impossible to keep a secret from her.’
‘I can believe that.’ Lannes sipped the coffee which was strong and good, and lit a cigarette. ‘She gave it as her opinion that your husband had written the letters himself. To make mischief, she said. What do you think?’
This time she didn’t answer at once. She drank some whisky, her lips leaving a red smudge on the rim of the glass. Toto who had been asleep on a Persian rug, woke, stretched himself and came to sniff at her ankles.
‘I think she’s a troublemaking old bitch herself. But I have to say it’s not impossible. He’s capable of anything, the old bastard.’
‘I had wondered if she might be the author herself, since she not only knew about them but was anxious that I hand them over to her.’