In his mind’s eye St-Cyr could see the inner village clearly, the gaping shells of houses too ruined to repair, the narrow streets where vacant houses often stood because there was no one to fill them. The public bath, the fountain in the square, and the toilets, ah yes.
The wind stung his eyes when he reached the southern gate. It made him wish the tears were of gladness, but there could be none of this, not yet. Hermann … what could he say except that their partnership, never easy, had welded friend and foe in a common bond, and through this, each of them had become more than conscious of the other.
It was not nice walking through the darkness of these little streets. It made him feel a presence other than his own.
When he came to the church which, like all that had come before, was on a steep slope, he found the door locked and wondered why … why had the old woman feared that man who had come from Bayonne? What had he done to upset her? Had he said something to that girl? Is that why the fit had been of such intensity?
And why had he called Paris to bring them down here if not to seek revenge?
There were perhaps two dozen men crowded into the Café de Bonne Chance and when Kohler entered, the shouting and the gesticulating abruptly ceased. Mein Gott, but the cat had got their tongues. Not a move out of them. The arch of deceit and suspicion growing as the fear of discovery became absolute.
He set the lantern down on a nearby table which was barren of all but a spill of red wine, an empty sardine tin that served as an ashtray, four cheap glass tumblers with dregs, the chairs pushed back.
It was the same everywhere except around the brand-new sawdust burner, the converted oil drum of steel that was but the latest of the Occupation’s inventions. Made in Cannes, of all places. Heat from damp sawdust packed tightly into the drum so as to lessen the speed of combustion and keep the smoke down. Very little draught. Ah yes, the French, they were so good at making do. Sabots on some, scruffy boots on others – not a one of the men under the age of fifty-five and several well over seventy. Dull razors or none at all. Blue denim jackets or coarse, heavy black wool, brown corduroy trousers … shabby … Jesus, was the village that poor?
‘Monsieur, why have you come at this late hour?’ asked the priest, the Abbé Roussel.
‘I’ll come when I want,’ said Kohler quietly.
‘But, monsieur …?’
‘In a minute, Father.’ Motioning to Ludo Borel, he had the herbalist stand in front of the door with his lantern to prevent escape. As he walked about the room, Kohler noted how barren it was. A few tables and chairs, brown linoleum on the counter that served as bar and cash desk or belote table. A handful of pale green bottles, red dregs in all of them. No pastis out – ‘Hey, it’s not a day for alcohol, is it?’ he said loudly. ‘So why the wine, my fines?’
The wine …‘Monsieur …’
‘Well, what is it, Father? No doubt the curfew will be broken, or do they all intend to spend the night cooped up in here? Then the vin ordinaire on a day for water. That’s two violations of the law. Maybe I’ll see something else.’
‘Monsieur, these are but simple villagers. They know nothing of such things. Until the body was found, they were content to think the war, it would pass them by.’
‘So now they’re worried, eh, and have to know what the murder means for their village?’
The priest nodded. The Abbé Roussel did not look like much – thin and gangly in sackcloth, a rake-handle with caved-in chin, hard dark brown eyes that were full of concern among other things. Ah yes.
‘The murder means the Gestapo and the SS will have to come and take over this place. Look, I’m sorry but that’s the way it is,’ said Kohler.
A collective gasp was quickly stifled by an impatient hand from the priest who expected more from the Gestapo’s agent.
Kohler let him have it. ‘Of course, if I could have honest answers to a few simple questions, we might be able to make allowances for … for the remoteness of the village.’
There were whispers, nods, tossed heads. Roussel drew up a chair and indicated that the Gestapo’s Bavarian detective should avail himself of the same. Another sardine tin was hastily fetched but hazardously offered – ah, what was this? Black-market sardines? Nom de Dieu!
A bottle of red wine was opened. Two glasses were filled by the proprietor who must fix machinery or something on the side, since there was grease right up his brawny arms to the elbows and one had to wonder where the hell he’d got it?
‘First, the corpse,’ said Kohler, fishing for his cigarettes only to discover none and have the abbé ruefully extend him one from an all-but-empty packet of Gauloises Bleues, the national curse when they could get them. Come to think of it, how had they got them, eh? ‘Merci. Who was she?’
‘Madame Buemondi. Anne … Anne-Marie.’
‘From where?’
‘Bayonne and … and Cannes.’ There was no use in hiding things from this one, he’d find out everything.
‘And Monsieur Buemondi?’
‘Assistant-Director of the School of Fine Arts in Cannes.’
‘Do they still have such things?’ – the consternation was honest.
‘Yes … yes, Inspector. Monsieur Buemondi …’
Suddenly the priest dried up. Kohler drew on the cigarette and fingered his glass of wine.
‘Monsieur Buemondi, Inspector, he … he has quite the following, if you understand.’
‘Mein Gott – fucking all the ladies, is he?’
Roussel winced; the others watched in absolute silence but was it to see if the bait had been taken, or simply because they could not quite understand the language and were having problems?
Kohler tossed a hand. ‘Cannes must be full of dusty bags just sitting out the war and wanting something to do.’
Again the priest was at a loss for words. ‘Dusty bags …? Madame, she …’
‘Madame Buemondi?’
‘Yes, yes, Inspector. That one, she …’
‘Knew all about the husband’s fooling around?’
‘Yes, certainly. But she was not one to leave her skirts unruffled, monsieur. That one had a temper and the determination to go with it.’
‘She had a lover?’
‘Yes … yes. Perhaps more than one. Me, I would not know since she did not come to me for the confession.’
‘Perhaps she only had urges?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Jealous – was she jealous?’ demanded Kohler sharply, only to hear the priest suck in a breath and hear him say, ‘Perhaps,’ again.
‘And the daughter?’ asked Kohler quietly.
Not a hair moved, not a pair of lungs was filled. The sawdust burner sizzled. A dog-eared cat scurried swiftly across the floor to get out of the way of trouble, reminding the Gestapo’s detective only too well of the last case and the concierge of the Hotel of the Silent Life.
‘Josianne-Michèle Buemondi is very ill, monsieur. On puberty, she developed the uncontrollable fits. It is the curse God has placed upon the father and mother and now … now that curse has come to a head.’
‘Buemondi shot his wife, that it?’ snapped the Gestapo’s detective.
The priest hesitated, then crossed himself. ‘Yes … yes, that is how it must have been, monsieur. The accusations from Madame, her threats perhaps, and then the arrow.’
‘Not a hunting accident, then?’
Startled, the Abbé Roussel ripped his gaze away to look questioningly at Dédou Fratani, the hearse-driver, then tore it back and held it steady. ‘At first we did think it an accident. The shot-guns, monsieur, they are no longer allowed. One can only do so much with traps and snares. The wild boar of these hills, they are very dangerous.’
Kohler let a breath escape. ‘I’ll bet they are, Father, but all hunting and trapping is illegal, or didn’t your simple flock know of the decree of 1940? So now, my fine, ask young Bébert Peretti to come out from behind that thing you people call a bar. I want a word with him.’
‘The
boy has gone home to his grandmother, monsieur. There is … Ah, why had he said it? ‘There is the trap door in the floor. Bébert will have used it.’
‘As he has before – is that it? Listening in, was he? For whom, Father? Come on, I demand to know.’
‘All boys listen in to their elders, monsieur. Surely you are not so old as to have forgotten that you, yourself, may have done such things?’
‘Then tell me about the daughter. Is she always tied to that bed?’
Who sleeps with her – is that what the Gestapo was implying?
Deeply troubled by the filth of such minds, Roussel said, ‘She walks in the fields and is at peace with God when not demented by her frenzy.’
‘Is it Georges Peretti who’s screwing her, Father? As sure as that God of yours made little green apples, someone’s been up to mischief with that girl.’
Kohler thrust out his wounded thumb. The priest jerked his head away and motioned frantically to Borel who seemed nailed to the door and uncertain of what to do.
At a curt nod from the Gestapo, the wine and the sugar were brought. Everyone still watched the proceedings intently. The teeth had not only punctured the flesh in three places, they had ripped it open.
Inflamed and still bleeding, the thumb was stiffening. Borel was grave. He fussed. He bathed the wound with the sugar and wine solution, then used the bottom of a glass to crush two cubes before sprinkling on the granules and binding things with gauze he apparently always carried. Among other things, was that it? wondered Kohler. The village medicine man. Head ju-ju boy?
Borel had a woman’s touch, a surgeon’s flair, and Kohler was impressed. ‘You ought to volunteer for the Russian Front, monsieur. You could do much fine work there. Me, I have two sons who would appreciate your company.’
The herbalist’s deep brown eyes took on the character of cold slag. ‘I am needed here, monsieur, and have the certificate and papers to verify this in my office, all duly signed and witnessed by the proper authorities in Vichy. Bathe the wound five times a day with the solution and sprinkle on a little sugar each time before applying a clean dressing.’
‘Where will I get the sugar?’
‘This I do not know, monsieur. Not now. Not with Madame Buemondi …’
‘You fool!’ hissed the priest.
The can of worms had been opened. Louis should have been here. Come to think of it, where the hell was he?
Kohler crossed to the door and flung it open. The wind sucked at everything. ‘Louis!’ he shouted. ‘Louis, I’m in here!’
‘He will not hear you, monsieur,’ said Borel. ‘Your friend will not be able to find his way.’
The boy was terrified. By the merest chance, their paths had crossed beside the fountain. St-Cyr could hear his teeth chattering uncontrollably above the spilling of the water and the tears. ‘Now, now, my friend. Hush, eh? I am not the Gestapo’s dragon or one of the Milice. I am a patriot a Chief Inspector of detectives on a case and cold.’
He had a firm grip on the boy, was not about to let him go. Bébert gave a last futile attempt to escape, then burst loudly into yet more tears. Ah Mon Dieu, the young! ‘Hey, it is not such a tragedy. I was following the footsteps, yes … yes, just as you were avoiding them.’
‘He … he asked me to listen in at the café. He … he will kill me if I say anything to you, monsieur.’
‘The one from Bayonne? Tall – big in the head and shoulders? Strong, tough, the bulldog jowls and the sagging pouches under the eyes, the …’
Ah no. No! Why had he not remembered?
‘He … he is like the … the one from the Gestapo, monsieur. The Inspector K … Kohler.’
‘But the hair, it is iron-grey and crinkly and very short,’ sighed St-Cyr, ‘and the eyes, they are a very dark brown, almost black like ripe olives.’
The boy must have nodded, for he said in a rush, ‘Your friend, he is at the café, monsieur. He is asking so many questions, the truth will most certainly tumble out and then all the men of the village, they … they will be sent to Germany to the forced labour, myself included. Grandmother, she … she cannot survive without my help. She and the madame, they …’
The tongue was bitten – frozen into silence. Ah Mon Dieu, these mountain people!
With a sigh, St-Cyr said, ‘Why not show me where the one from Bayonne is staying?’
The note of sadness was all too clear in the Chief Inspector’s voice, the loss perhaps of wife and child, of so many things like valour, dignity and truth – yes, yes, this one was the seeker of truth above all else. One could tell by the way he breathed. Merde! What was one to do in such a situation?
‘The cottage, it … it is in the little valley below our house and farm, monsieur. That one, he has said he will be waiting for you there.’
‘Then why has he come up to the village on a night like this?’
It was a cry, a plea to God for sanity. ‘He … he did not say, monsieur. That one, he says very little and only what he thinks we need to hear.’
‘How did you find the victim?’
‘Dead from the arrow.’
‘And you saw nothing else?’
Like an eel, the boy twisted away and St-Cyr had to let him go. There was no sense in crying out for him to come back. Indeed, it would be most unwise to make any more noise.
At a sound – a step? – a shape! – he stiffened.
‘Louis … Louis, what the hell are you doing hanging around like some terrified tourist wanting a girl when there’s work to do?’
The shape was the same, the size too – even the way Hermann stood out against the night sky between the roofs. It was uncanny, the similarity.
Trembling, St-Cyr put the Lebel away but realized in that instant he could well have killed Hermann.
He tried to make light of it. ‘Come, come, my old one, there is nothing more we can do here until dawn. We will retreat to the body. We will await the first light to see what it brings.’
‘Piss off with the poetry, Louis. You were about to put a bullet in me and I want to know why.’
‘Then please, my friend, tell me where your lantern is, eh?’
‘Oh, that? I had to drop it in someone’s well.’
2
The wind leaned steadily on the hearse and whistled through the edges of the tightly closed windows and doors. Though it was cold inside, there was room for them both to stretch out.
A two-casket job? wondered Kohler. Did the hearse have some special meaning for them after all? ‘Louis, you’d better let me have the truth, eh? And as soon as you can, you’re going to wash those trousers.’
‘Chantal will be very disappointed in me for ruining the new clothes she and Muriel so thoughtfully provided for their little detective.’
Kohler caught the note of longing. The ‘girls’ were friends of Louis’s in Paris; their lingerie shop, Enchantment, was on the Place Vendôme. ‘Well, at least you’re back in your beloved Provence. Maybe now we can find that farm you’re always going on about. Real estate ought to be pretty cheap these days.’
‘Cheap? Ah yes, Hermann. At bargain prices, but first, the man from Bayonne.’
Louis fell into such a silence, Kohler thought the Frog had drifted off, but no, he, too, was staring up at the stars through parted curtains.
‘The mont-de-piété, Hermann, the Crédit Municipal. My government’s way of providing social security for the wealthy and all but those who have absolutely nothing and do not matter since they cannot pay taxes.’
Kohler wondered if it was going to be another diatribe. Again there was silence, and then, sadly, ‘It all began with a pawnshop, Hermann, with my aunt, as we prefer to call them. And me, I wish I knew why Madame Buemondi had such a ticket in her hand and why the old grandmother asked first if we had come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised. Why Chamonix, Hermann? Why not somewhere else?’
The Frog was really upset. ‘Maybe she’d always wanted to go skiing?’ snorted Kohler quietly.
‘
A murder, Hermann, but not the suicide that was claimed. Ah no, my old one. A murder in a villa outside Chamonix!’
‘Stavisky, the swindler? Late 1933, Louis – no, no, now wait – 9 January 1934. A revolver shot at zero range.’
The whole of the civilized world had heard of it. Alexandre Serge Stavisky – so many had been involved, the government had been shaken to its core and France’s Civil War of 1934 to 1937 had been ushered in with riots, looting and killing. Stavisky’s ‘suicide’ hadn’t been the only death. The repercussions of the scandal had become a tide which had rippled on and on.
‘It seems so long ago,’ sighed St-Cyr, ‘but was only yesterday. Everyone knew he was a crook – we’d tracked him before as had others – and yet … and yet, Hermann, history was allowed to repeat itself.’
‘Still bitter about it, eh?’
‘That and so much else, but for the moment let the wounds of the past pass as farts in the night.’
‘I didn’t fart.’
‘Then what the hell is that smell in here?’
‘Besides yourself? Embalming fluid, I think,’ said Kohler, knowing it would be reminder enough.
‘Through friends in high places, Stavisky managed to have an associate named as director of the Crédit Municipal in Bayonne. It was a master stroke, Hermann. A location far from Paris, one tucked away in a corner few cared much about and with a colony of wealthy Spanish refugees just waiting to be plucked. Stavisky first left a substantial deposit of jewellery as security and thus received a loan of several hundred thousand francs. All seemed well, and the mayor of Bayonne and his municipal council thought they could rest easy. Indeed, the Crédit Municipal looked as if bound to flourish.’
‘Then came the swindle,’ sighed Kohler, still staring up at the stars. ‘Each mont-de-piété is allowed to issue bonds based on the total value of the articles that have been pawned with it, but one can easily inflate this. So he floated bonds to the tune of more than half a billion francs, Louis. Securities that were readily sold or accepted as collateral for other loans or as deposits by both businessmen and government alike but were absolutely worthless.’
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