Kaleidoscope

by J. Robert Janes

  She felt her brow. ‘If so, monsieur, then why was she killed in these hills? Why not in the streets of Cannes or at the villa my father wanted so much to sell? Mother did not use the villa – it was shut up on the day of the Defeat – but she wanted it kept for me and my sister and so would often check on it, I suppose.’

  ‘Ah! the sister,’ said St-Cyr, deeply concerned. ‘Someone will have to notify her of what has happened.’

  ‘Could you?’ she asked, clasping her shoulders now for warmth, so much so that Kohler got up to find her a shawl. A magnificent thing of vibrant colours and designs. Sudden slashes of crimson, great swaths of yellow on a russet background, green … green everywhere, even in the flecks.

  Trembling, the girl wrapped the thing about her shoulders but appeared as if to hate the very touch of it. Fear? he wondered.

  He tucked the shawl about her neck and gave her a fatherly pat on the back. No bites this time. He let his hand linger just to see if everything was all right.

  Louis cleared his throat as if embarrassed by the need to press on with things. ‘The address of your sister, mademoiselle, and her name?’

  She would look steadily at him. Yes, yes, that would be best. ‘The address I do not know, Inspector. Me, I never knew it. My sister and I, we were very close – inseparable – until … until the sickness came upon me. Then Josette, she went away to school and me, I stayed here in these hills.’

  ‘Why? In God’s name, why?’ Both of them had spoken at the same time, the one in German she could not understand, the other in French, but the consternation, it was equal and very sincere. Ah yes.

  This pleased her immensely but did not wash away the sadness. ‘Because, messieurs, to be taken with fits was considered to be demented. A shame for any family to bear, so me, I was hidden away, while Josette, she was given everything.’

  ‘Louis, let me at the father. I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Me, too, my old one. Josette, mademoiselle? Surely you must have some idea of where we might find her?’

  ‘An actress, a dancer, a fashion-designer’s mannequin when she cannot get work, and an artist’s model, of course, at such times also. My sister, she has become everything that I ever wanted and that, messieurs, is why she does not come to see me and never writes.’

  Good God Almighty! stormed Kohler inwardly. How could such a thing have happened? ‘You must have been taken to doctors, to a clinic perhaps?’

  ‘In Chamonix, yes. Yes, once I went there when I was sixteen …’ The one called Hermann tossed his friend a look of alarm. ‘But … but the treatment, it was unsatisfactory and my father, he … he insisted that I come home.’

  ‘To the villa in Cannes?’ asked the Sûreté.

  ‘In Le Cannet, yes. Yes, to the Villa of the Golden Oracle. I loved its garden. I was so happy there. Better … yes, yes, much better, but now … now the Germans they have come and I have had to leave. Is it true that they kill those who are sick like me, sick in the head or so poor in health they cannot survive for long?’

  They were both silent as she studied them, both with lowered eyes, so yes, yes, it was all too true.

  They looked at each other – looked about the cottage quickly as if in guilt. There was nothing … nothing much. It was all so very plain except for the woven things. A stone table, a hearth, a double bed, an unpainted chest of drawers and an armoire to match. Bits of pottery, a few flowerpots and glass things, the mirror … the mirror …

  The shawl she was wearing.

  ‘Surely someone here must know of your sister’s whereabouts?’ asked St-Cyr.

  The girl shook her head and gave it a little toss. ‘My mother and sister were estranged – separated. Mother wanted nothing more to do with Josette-Louise.’

  Ah Mon Dieu, the family crisis! ‘Is your sister living with one of the Occupying Force?’ asked Hermann who could never remain patient when needed!

  Again Josianne-Michèle Buemondi shrugged, a little nonchalantly this time. ‘Me, I never knew the reason for their parting, only feared it had something to do with myself.’

  ‘And your father?’ asked St-Cyr gently.

  Again the girl shook her head but did not offer any explanation, just remained quietly pensive.

  ‘Have you any idea who would want to kill your mother?’ asked the Gestapo, uncomfortably clasping his big hands on the table in front of him.

  ‘Or where he would get such a weapon?’ asked the one from the Sûreté.

  Tears then, messieurs, to mist my tragic eyes! ‘The villa, for the weapon. My father, he had one he always kept by the fireplace in the grand salon. Italian, something from one of his family’s estates near Torino. Nothing special. A hunting bow, he always called it, but with the beaten silver engraved with wild game birds of all kinds, just to show people that once upon a time, the Buemondis were somebody.’

  ‘Fifteenth-century?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Seventeenth, and used for hunting, monsieur, not for war.’

  ‘Then why the barbed iron tip and the leather flights?’ asked the Sûreté. ‘Dédou Fratani was positive on this.’

  ‘Dédou … he is the garde champêtre among so many other things, Inspector. That one, he has the imagination but the type of bolt, it does not matter so much, does it? One for hunting could just as easily have killed her.’

  ‘From sixty metres, Louis. Probably from where I found this.’

  Kohler set the carving on the table before him. The gasp the girl gave was real enough. Pale … she had become so very pale. Trembling, she waited but could not seem to take her eyes from the figure.

  ‘A santon, Hermann. A local custom. There are seventy or so of them, each depicting a traditional occupation in the village. The baker, the woodcutter, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘The herbalist,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Was he treating your epilepsy on the side, mademoiselle, and were you paying him with this?’

  Vehemently she shook her head but still could not take her eyes from that thing. ‘For epilepsy there is no cure, and the herbs, they are not sufficient,’ she whispered sadly.

  ‘Then did you leave it among the rocks?’ he asked.

  Again she shook her head. They waited. They gave her time – were genuinely afraid they might well bring on another seizure.

  When she got up to leave them, the black beret was tilted to the left. The shepherd’s black, rough cape was linked below her chin and thrown back over the left shoulder.

  St-Cyr noted the way she stood before them, defiant, proud but quivering. The rough grey trousers were obviously far too big for her. The black turtleneck pullover was someone else’s too.

  He noted the heavy leather belt that could well have held a pistol, a captured Luger or Mauser. Hermann saw it too, but said nothing. Only half stood with sadness, his hands still resting on the table.

  ‘Messieurs,’ she said. ‘Until we meet again.’

  They watched her leave. ‘Jesus!’ exploded Kohler. ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  ‘A lover, Hermann. In the maquis perhaps, but then … Ah it is far too soon to know.’

  St-Cyr stood in the tiny courtyard next to the shorter piece of wall. No place was quite out of the mistral but here the sun was captured so that the soul was warmed.

  Weighted under boulders was his laundry. Socks, trousers, underpants, vest and shirt. If anyone should come along – ah, Mon Dieu, they would most certainly wonder what had happened to the Sûreté.

  Wrapped in that magnificent shawl, he stood like Caesar in the shape of a much thinner Balzac. Plump, swarthy perhaps and tough, belligerent when necessary but begrudging of the meagre sponge-bath that had followed the doing of the laundry. Freezing, but refreshed, the mind alert in spite of the lousy night.

  Hermann had gone off to find the hearse-driver and arrange for the body and themselves to be transported to the morgue in Cannes. Perhaps an hour was available to himself, perhaps a little more. He must search carefully; he must leave nothing unseen.

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bsp; Ruefully he looked at the butt of the cigarillo Jean-Paul Delphane had left among the rocks. The juices began to run in his mouth, the pulse to quicken as the temptation of tobacco teased his very being. Should he? Could he?

  With guilt, he crumbled the thing into the wind and, going quickly indoors, shut out the morning, shut out the love he had for Provence and the simple pleasure of watching things grow even in winter.

  The cottage was very private and intimate in its barrenness. As he moved about, recording detail with the mind’s camera, he caught a broken bit of pottery. ‘Roman,’ he said aloud and asked, ‘Do we ever really come to know each other even during our most intimate of moments?’

  There were some Palaeolithic stone chips, a scraper, a flint knife, then a lump of Roman bronze that was flecked with verdigris, and a tiny pale whitish-green bottle – a perfume vial from some Roman lady’s boudoir.

  He held the bottle up to the light from the window and marvelled at the iridescent play the work of time created as it destroyed the glass by hydration of the silica, spalling it off a skin at a time, the effect almost opalescent. He brought the bottle to his nose, casting the mind back over the centuries to rhodium (oil of roses), melinum (that of quince blossoms) and metopium (of bitter almonds) yet thinking, too, of Grasse and the essence factories there, the growing of flowers and their distillation. Lavender and mimosa, verbena and narcissi.

  Readily he found the fawn-coloured overcoat and pale yellow cashmere scarf hanging on a peg by the door. The coat impressed him, not so much by its quality which was very good, very expensive – of vicuna, and pre-war of course – but as to why she should have worn it while lugging two suitcases into the hills.

  The suitcases were sitting under her hat and gloves. The hat, a matching cloche with a bit of pale yellow veil, was totally unsuitable for this time of year. The gloves were leather and pre-war, of summer perhaps or fall. The suitcases were from Louis Vuitton and very, very good. Prewar as well, but looking a little scruffy.

  He tried the left pocket, felt the softness of the wool, let the sensuality of its touch race through him. Found a key, a half-used book of Cannes tram-tickets, her papers, ration book – pale pink in colour – bread: 375 grams per day in 25-gram slices, each ticket good for one slice with the meal; cheese: 20 grams if one could get it and it was a day for cheese in the restaurant.

  Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi; profession: none; nationality: French; place of birth: Annecy, near the Swiss border and near Chamonix; date of birth: 16 December 1890. Ah Mon Dieu, murdered on her birthday!

  Height: 170 centimetres; weight: 68 kilos; hair: blonde, natural; nose: normal, its dimension average; eyes: brown.

  A vicuna coat, a woman of some substance but of it now? A birthplace far too close to Chamonix for comfort.

  The travel papers and laissez-passer – the much-sought-after ausweis of the Germans – allowed her to travel freely between Cannes and Bayonne on the grounds of medical necessity.

  The ausweis was signed by the Generalmajor Harald Riedke of the Kommandantur in Marseille. It was dated 18 November 1942, and he wondered not just why she’d had to go to Marseille to get it but how the hell she’d got it so soon, seeing as the Germans could only have been in the city for a week.

  Money? he asked, not liking the drift, or a forgery?

  Two addresses were given, and neither would have raised any eyebrows among the Occupying Forces or the Vichy police. The villa in Le Cannet was certainly not given, simply a house in Bayonne on the Quai des Corsaires, and another on one of the back streets in Cannes at the foot of the hills. Again he had to wonder about her.

  The other pocket held a thin bundle of thousand-franc notes – ten of them, a few fives, one fifty, a handful of change, lipstick, compact, handkerchief, and a beechwood bobbin.

  St-Cyr drew in a breath, his nostrils pinching in thought as he held the bobbin. It was wound with four or five strands of russet wool, the nuances of colour ranging from a rich, dark, earthy shade to that of autumn’s pale whisper among old leaves. There were flecks of sunlight too, that made the wool almost glisten with gold in places.

  He brought the bobbin to his nose and drew in the smell of the wool. Hand-carded and spun. This one used only the stuff of the hills and she dyed it herself. But she was not the wearer of the coat.

  Quickly he ran his hands up under the lapels and when he found the enamelled pin, stopped his heart and listened to the wind outside before removing it. The Cross of Lorraine, the newly taken symbol of the fledgeling Resistance, of those who secretly were for de Gaulle and the Forces of the Free French in London.

  Though he tried, he could not see Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi having been so foolish as to have worn such a thing. And he knew that, for the moment or all time, he could not possibly tell Hermann of it.

  When he came to the mirror, which hung on the wall above the bureau, his troubled mind caused him to pause. The frame was wide and of flaking gilt, the glass rectangular and bevelled, the thing of a size just sufficient for one to view the face and hair perhaps, or the bodice by standing on the tiptoes. In places the silver backing had vanished, leaving triangular slashes; in others, it had attained almost coppery hues. The mirror was obviously something bought in one of the country flea markets. Yes, yes, he said impatiently. So she wanted a little something primitive and simple in her life, and she bought this cottage and the adjoining land as a retreat.

  Caught among the reflections were the window and then … why, yes, the door and the coat.

  And in between, a small throw rug and a rush-backed rocking chair. The rug reminded him of the villa near Chamonix, and he took to staring at the shawl he wore and to fussing with it. Could the weaver have been the same? Ah Mon Dieu, this case. Old wounds that had never closed; new ones rapidly coming on.

  When he eased open one of the top drawers of the bureau, he let out a little cry. Facing him on the neatly folded lingerie of silk and lace, pale blues and creams, pinks and whites, were two masks, the faces done with water-colours. Over the white plaster mould, the artist or artists had placed a pale wash of flesh and then had dabbed or touched in the accents. The eyebrows, the lips – the expressions, ah damn it!

  The twins, he asked, but as young adults? Thin of face but not so thin as Josianne-Michèle, who would have known absolutely that he would have searched and found them.

  That girl … what was she hiding? If she had lied about her relationship to her sister then why, if these were they, had she left them here for him to find?

  Beautifully done. First the object of the artist’s eye, the touch, the Vaseline and afterwards, the carefully applied layers of gauze and thin plaster. The fingers delicately tracing each feature – straws in the nostrils to allow the patient – patient? why had he said that? – the subject to breathe.

  In orange, in yellow, in red, blue, black and shadings of green from deep to pale, the expression of the one was so stark and filled with dark thoughts, the soul found them difficult to probe. Lust, hatred, vengeance, jealousy – ah, so many tortured emotions.

  The mask on the right was open and kind – vivacious, intelligent, quick-witted, high-spirited, warm and outgoing. No secrets there, the kind heart exposed for all to see and yet … and yet …

  Both of them would have been no more than what? Twenty or twenty-two at the time of the mask-making? Or twenty-four?

  On a shelf beside the bed, among a litter of yet more pottery shards and bits of Roman glass, he found the espadrille of a child of ten or twelve, the left foot, and with it, a small, cheap porcelain figure of the Christ at Galilee and a cross that had been fashioned by the village blacksmith out of horseshoe nails.

  Determined, he went over to the suitcases and opened them but found only that they were empty.

  Kohler stared at the flat box of dead rats that had been built into the floor of the hearse. The copper pipe from the wood-gas tank on the roof passed down and through the box before reaching the engine in front of the driver’s seat.
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br />   ‘It is a good invention, is it not?’ asked Dédou Fratani, his look so full of doubt and fear that the Gestapo’s detective had to laugh.

  ‘I like it,’ breathed Kohler. Always the ingenuity of the French tickled his fancy. The rats gave the smell when the back door was opened for the inspections. ‘How do you find the Italians?’ he asked, still looking at those fuzzy little bodies with their maggots.

  ‘Lazy. Timid and sticking together. You have seen it yourself, monsieur, at the last control, only the other day. Eight Greaseballs armed to the teeth and, on this side of the Zone Coastal, two German corporals with the single carbine.’

  ‘We shoot better. Besides, it’s less mouths to feed and we tend to ask fewer and far better questions.’ Oh-oh, eh? Is that it, my fine? he asked himself.

  Mist had collected in Fratani’s dark eyes behind the rimless specs. The garde champêtre, who had not exactly been doing his duty, swallowed tightly. ‘Of course, Inspector, the questions, they are much better. That is why the Germans, they have let us pass so easily.’

  ‘Not because of my badge?’ snorted Kohler. ‘My Gestapo shield that I thrust into their Würtemberg mugs though the bastards swore they were Austrians?’

  When no answer came, Kohler grinned and let him have it. ‘They were in on the fiddle, right?’

  Who could have known the detectives would sleep in the hearse and question the smell? ‘Yes … yes, the German corporals are in on it. Aren’t all your countrymen this way? The good ones, monsieur? The normal ones who are so far from home?’

  ‘Two rounds of goat cheese, a metre and a half of that sausage and three bottles of your best rosé for my partner.’

  The shit! ‘Done.’ They shook hands. The Gestapo had been bought but for how long?

  ‘Now start talking, my fine and keep it coming steadily, eh? First the water rights.’

  ‘The water …?’ Ah no!

  Kohler helped himself to the last of Fratani’s cigarettes and tucked the empty packet back into the bastard’s pocket. ‘We wouldn’t want to litter the hillside with rubbish, would we?’