‘Louis, we have to talk.’
The chèvre crottin before the Sûreté had come dusted with dill and chives as requested; the baguette was broken.
‘Agreed.’
Disconsolately, Kohler dug his fork into the saucisson de Lyon with the hot potato salad. Louis wasn’t eating, a bad sign. The Frog was simply staring at his monk’s repast as if lost in thought and wounded to the quick.
‘Do you remember the Reverend Father of the Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great, Hermann?’
Vouvray, then, and that murder in Fontainebleau Forest. ‘How could I ever forget a thing like that?’
Good! The SS had used a bull whip on Hermann because he had insisted the truth be told. ‘The Abbot said the wine owed its flavour to the aubuis, the clay with much limestone.’
The snort was harsh, the words bitter. ‘It was the boulder of flint you picked up that settled things.’
‘Ah yes, but Gabrielle got the drop on me in that abandoned grist mill down by the river. She and I then shared a simple meal such as this and at the time, I wished her rucksack had held a bottle of their wine. With the goat’s cheese and the bread, it would, I thought, have been superb.’
So much for the travelogue of memories. The Vouvray moelleux was of Sauterne sweetness. For well over a thousand years there had been vineyards along the Loire. The wine was clear and crisp, robust and fruity – ‘piquant’ the Abbot had said, and ‘a good keeper’.
‘The 1934 Clos de l’Oiseau de la Brume, Hermann, the Château Thériault,’ he said, showing him the label. ‘An extraordinary year.’
‘The Countess isn’t mixed up in things, is she?’
Hermann still held a fondness for that one. ‘Let us hope not because if she is, this time for certain René Yvon-Paul will inherit nothing.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s bugging you?’
With great deliberation St-Cyr sampled the cheese, the bread and the wine, nodding from time to time as if well satisfied that his initial thoughts had been correct. ‘But have I been so wrong about Gabrielle, mon ami?’
‘Wrong in what way?’
It was now or never if they were to remain friends and partners. ‘Gabrielle collected the money, Hermann, and took it with her but may also have had the nitroglycerine the Gypsy used at the Ritz in that suitcase, cushioned no doubt by the banknotes.’
‘Ah Christ …’
‘Jacqmain may have had a flask of nitro in his prospecting kit and not have turned it in. He’d have wanted to be rid of it. An extra condition, then, of his letting Wehrle have the diamonds.’
‘And?’
Hermann wasn’t looking well. ‘The matter is even deeper. That crone I spoke to thought the Generalmajor would soon be on his way. A little trip.’
‘To Berlin, idiot, with the contents of his safe. He wouldn’t have known the Gypsy was to empty it on the eighteenth.’
‘Perhaps but then … ah mais alors, alors, what if not to Berlin but to Spain? A major coup for a tiny réseau, a fund of exceedingly valuable information for the Allies.’
‘And what if not the Generalmajor but the Gypsy, eh? What if that’s who Gabrielle meant?’
‘An operation, code-named Zèbre, Hermann.’
‘A Funkspiel, Louis.’
‘The Resistance are desperate for funds. Those three women knew this and asked London for help. They set up those robberies and Herr Max, not London, obliged by sending them the Gypsy. Nana knew all about this safe-cracker and that he was one of the best, so perhaps they asked London to send him – this we may never know – but Suzanne-Cécilia detected a different signature at the end of London’s last reply. She’s convinced of it.’
‘Then it’s true …’ Kohler shoved his plate aside. ‘God help us now. There’ll be no way out of this for Giselle and Oona short of my turning you all over to the Gestapo and Herr Max.’
‘But will you, Hermann? That is the question only you can answer.’
6
At dawn the Château Thériault’s five towers were shrouded in snow. Off to the right, and away from the river, vineyards occupied the lower slopes, climbing gently until they met those of the Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great in territory that had been disputed for centuries until at last the land claim had been settled not two months ago.
‘Louis, go and talk to the Countess, eh? Tell her I’ll be along in a little while.’
Hermann had slept badly and, contrary to his usual self, had not driven the car but had lamely wanted to ‘look’ at the countryside.
That big Bavarian was sick at heart. Moundlike, the shapes of box, yew and hawthorn stood nearest the arched stone entrance which was set in the base of one of the towers. Ivy climbed the walls. Immediately inside the gates, the courtyard of lawns and formal gardens held mothballed fountains and statues.
The château was huge and Hermann had often said it must be a bugger to heat, but now this conscience-ridden Kripo looked away to the centre of the courtyard to where stone greyhounds leapt at a cornered stag and the nothing murder of Fontainebleau Forest had finally come to an end.
It hadn’t been easy. It had been a very close thing, and when Louis let him out of the car, Kohler simply asked, ‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?’
He went on then towards the stables which were on the far side. He paused to open the great doors to let the light in, then searched his pockets desperately yet again for tobacco.
‘Let him be, Jean-Louis. Give him time.’
‘Countess …’
‘Please wait for us in the kitchens. This frost … will it kill the vines? I had thought to burn fires throughout the night but new restrictions have been placed on such things, so I have spent the hours in walking the rows and fretting. It was silly of me, but when one loves a place so much and there is no other recourse, what else can one do but pray?’
‘Countess, Hermann needs to be alone.’
‘I think he needs to be reminded. Now go. If René Yvon-Paul should come down, tell him he’s not to worry about his mother and me arguing. It happens all the time. Tell him also that the life of a detective is not a life to aspire to, and please ask him to let the dogs come to me. There will be coffee and croissants for the help, so feel free to partake of them even though the croissants are illegal. My cook will give you brandy. It’s rough, but at the moment it’s all that is left.’
‘The caves were emptied?’
His alarm was gratifying. ‘Emptied of every bottle.’
There were no horses in the stables, all had been taken. And when the far doors were also opened, Kohler found himself alone in the pearly light, the breath billowing from him.
Panic came – for just a second it was absolute. He reached out to steady himself. There were splintered bullet holes in the ancient boards. A mare had been wounded and had screamed as she had tried to free herself. Another had been killed. All thirty-two rounds from the drum clip of a Luger had been sprayed about but first there had been the lesson of a rawhide whip.
For pointing the finger of truth, the SS had roped him by the wrists to both sides of the corridor. Blood had welled up along the wound – surprising that, for he’d felt no pain, had still been in shock and staring dumbly down at his parted shirt. From the right shoulder to the left hip had been opened as if by the sudden exercise of a mad tailor’s shears. The pain had hit him but by then the left side of his face had been torn from eye to chin.
A hell of a mess. Gabrielle’s son had cut him free but the SS had come back. In the ensuing fight, the Luger had been emptied and the boy had driven a pitchfork into the back of one of them. Had killed the son of a bitch. Killed him, ah Jésus-Christ!
The other one had been killed by the shots. Kohler remembered telling René Yvon-Paul to beat it, to hide in the abandoned mill and had said he’d take the blame himself. Hell, the kid had only been ten years old.
‘But now it’s different,’ he said. ‘Now it’s far worse.’
‘You’ll think of somethin
g. I’ve every confidence.’
The Countess Jeanne-Marie Thériault spoke softly to the five greyhounds that had come to her. She still looked the same in that dark blue woollen overcoat, trousers and riding boots, though he felt a thousand years must have passed since he’d seen her last. ‘Countess, Berlin are very much involved in this matter of your daughter-in-law’s. We were lucky here before, but now …?’
‘You’re not like the others. With you that inherent sense of common decency and humanity has survived.’
She was laying it on the line. Pushing the hood back, she removed the scarf that had been tied over her ears and hair. The dark eyes were very clear and searching. The high forehead was smooth, the pale cheeks reddened by a night in the cold.
At the time of the nothing murder he had had the idea there were carefully arranged rings of defence around the château and that she had a network of informants all too loyal to her. ‘The Resistance …?’ she had said then. ‘Oh, we’ve some of them about here too.’
But did it go much deeper than that? The château could be useful to the Resistance, the hills and caves too. She and Gabrielle had hidden things before, could the two of them not be at it again?
She sent the dogs away and closed the distance. ‘A cigarette, I think,’ she said. ‘Here, let me offer one of Gabrielle’s. They’re Russian, and given to her by a general on leave.’
And on the run, eh – was this what he was thinking? The very mention of a general on leave brought anxiety and fear, ah so many things to those pale blue eyes of his. ‘You’re well?’ she asked.
He knew she was toying with him and said harshly, ‘Countess, why not tell me what that daughter-in-law of yours has been up to?’
Her hair was jet black and had been tied behind but now she shook it out and let it fall loosely about her shoulders, not a touch of grey though she was in her sixties. A timeless and still fantastic-looking woman.
‘What has she been up to, do you think?’
The tobacco was black and rough. He coughed and inhaled, forcing himself to become accustomed to it. ‘Let me put things this way, then,’ he said sharply. ‘My confrères in the SS and Gestapo Paris-Central – Berlin, damn it – are about to use that réseau your daughter-in-law’s mixed up in to sweep Louis and me into the bag along with the rest of them.’
‘They want, once and for all, for you to prove that you are really one of them.’
‘And if I don’t, Countess? Giselle and Oona and the child will have to go too.’
‘The child? Is Oona …?’
‘Giselle is. Look, Gabrielle brought a suitcase here from Tours on the twelfth, at night.’
‘If she did, I have no knowledge of it.’
He threw his head back as if struck and clenched a fist. ‘Countess, don’t trifle. There were 850,000 francs in that bag.’
‘And?’ she asked, giving him that searching look of hers.
‘And a flask or dropper-bottle of nitroglycerine. It … it belonged to a prospector who has just removed himself from this world.’
Cigarette ash was tapped into a palm. Even when carrying on such a conversation, a part of her mind could still concern itself with the fire hazards of careless smoking.
‘Gabrielle tells me nothing, as you well know from past experience.’
‘Did he kill himself because he knew too much, Countess?’
‘Are you certain she brought such a thing?’
‘As certain as you must be. What’d she do? Park that little car of hers outside the walls?’
‘She came and she went.’
‘She didn’t stay the night?’
‘She couldn’t.’
‘She’d have needed a laissez-passer to be on the roads. Who the hell provided it? The Generalmajor Wehrle?’
Was this Wehrle on the run – she could see him thinking this.
He asked again. She said, ‘That I can’t say. Gabrielle is of independent means and has a mind of her own. René Yvon-Paul and I are left to tend this … this old fortress and to see that somehow it earns sufficient to keep it going.’
‘They’ve taken the last of the horses.’
‘They took the wine and five of my best workers. The Service de Travail Obligatoire. The district Kommandant is proving difficult.’
‘Did you warn Gabrielle to stay away? Is that why she didn’t hang around?’
‘I told her that to oppose the Occupier was both foolish and inopportune.’
At last they were getting somewhere! ‘What did she want you to do? Hide someone? Was that it, eh?’
Why hadn’t he just said, Damn you? ‘A package. That was all she said.’
‘When?’
‘I can’t tell you because I simply don’t know. A week, a month … She was uncertain.’
‘So, did the “package” have two legs?’
‘Come and see the pigs. We’ve been fattening them up for the Kommandant’s table and for the boys in Russia but when they take our Judith, we’ll be left with empty pens. That’s how it is and now I trust you understand why we couldn’t accept any such packages and why I must ask you to help us.’
Far from the kitchens, St-Cyr let his gaze pass slowly down over the lower vineyards. He’d had no idea they could be seen from Gabrielle’s window. She had led him to this room, off in another wing of the château, lost even among those of the servants’ quarters. She and the Countess hadn’t got along – the Countess had felt her only son had married beneath himself. Her own husband had been killed in the Great War, their son in this one. There’d been friction with Gabrielle, and the loss of two loved ones, which should have brought them closer, hadn’t helped.
The single iron bed with its flaking white paint had lent a flea-market desperation to the room and still did. A bureau, a mirror that was none too big and mounted awkwardly for a woman as tall as Gabrielle, an armoire and a chair were about all there was. Country scenes cut from magazines had been pasted into rescued frames. A simple crucifix had been nailed to the wall at the head of the bed.
It was at once the room of a chamber-maid or scullery girl. Gabrielle had deliberately chosen to make her statement that this was how she was perceived by the Countess and therefore this was how it should be.
Since the murder in Fontainebleau Forest, things had improved but still there would be reservations on both sides, old insults and opinions. For those, they needed time.
A soft brown velvet bag with a drawstring of twisted gold thread had held eighteen uncut diamonds, each of five or six carats. Emerald green, yellow, a soft and frosted pink, a blue, some clear white stones … Russian diamonds Gabrielle had brought from Leningrad as a girl of fourteen and had kept no matter what and always in the hope her family would have survived to be reunited with her.
Diamonds then, and diamonds now.
There were some newspapers on the bed and he wondered at them for they were new. The Völkischer Beobachter, the Pariser Zeitung and a copy of Signal, the picture magazine – the January 1943 issue and photos of Gabrielle at the Club Mirage, entertaining the troops. There were shots of her with laughing soldier boys on leave or boarding the train back to the front, others of her with generals. A collage of her with von Ribbentrop and with the General Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the Military Governor of France, occupied a centrefold.
A smiling, cigar-smoking Otto Abetz, the ambassador, had his arm about her waist, she laughing. Dr Karl Epting, the Director of the Deutsche Institut was more staid, as was the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Old Shatter Hand, the Kommandant von Gross Paris.
In page after page she was seen with the high and mighty of the Third Reich. There were bits and pieces of her private life both in Paris and here on the Loire. Shots of the château showed her with her son.
Lying under the newspapers, there was a letter of commendation signed by Hitler himself, 10 January 1943. She had brought the newspapers and the magazine with her on the twelfth to show the Countess but had left them here.
‘Sonderbehan
dlung,’ Herr Max had warned. He must have known the article had already been published and the magazine distributed not just in France but in every occupied country and wherever the troops were fighting.
She was revered by thousands. Front-line soldiers heard her singing via broadcasts that were picked up live from the club. There had been several requests for her to visit the troops but so far she had been able to put these off.
The Resistance … a réseau … She had said she’d join up, and he had agreed and had included himself but why had she let the Occupier do this to her unless desperate and thinking it would protect the réseau? Every hot-headed résistant in the country would be after her.
When René Yvon-Paul came to find him, the boy, who looked a lot like his mother but had the dark brown eyes and hair of his father, gravely said, ‘You must tell maman we cannot possibly accept any packages at this time. Things are far too difficult for us. She must listen to grand-mère in the matter and not argue with those who love her.’
‘What sort of packages?’
The boy burst into tears. ‘Was it a suitcase?’ asked St-Cyr gently.
‘No! It … it was someone she wanted us to hide for a few days, just until things could be finalized.’
‘Who? René, you must tell me if I’m to help her.’
‘A gitan, a nomade. She said he had some work to do for them in Paris and then they … they would send him to us for “delivery” to others.’
‘And were these others to help him on from here?’
‘Yes!’
Longing for a cigarette, they drove in silence. St-Cyr shut his eyes. He wished he could peacefully gaze at the countryside, but the roads … ‘There’s a convoy up ahead, Hermann!’
‘Where? There’s no convoy.’
‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, idiot, trust me!’
Trust … wasn’t that what this whole affair was all about? wondered Kohler uncomfortably. Trust between friends and partners, trust between a man and his Vaterland, and trust between the members of a réseau and two detectives who should have known better than to have meddled with them in the first place but had been ordered to!
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