He gave a sigh so genuine she knew it was the truth. He said, ‘An enduring relationship, that’s what we all hunger for.’
‘You’re not married?’ she asked, only to see him shake his head and hear him say, ‘No. No, the Resistance killed the wife and little son. A tragic mistake. A bomb the Gestapo left in place hoping I’d step on it.’
‘But … but your partner, he is of the Gestapo?’
‘We were away on a case. I tried to warn her that there might be trouble. Before we left the city, I went out to where she was living but … Ah, never mind. Hermann, he would have found that bomb easily if we’d been there.’
He looked for more of the acorn coffee, picked at a crumb. Was really, perhaps, a very dear man and therefore exceedingly dangerous. ‘Will you come to the villa with me?’ she asked.
‘The villa,’ he said, his thoughts so obviously far away, she knew his mind was still on Chamonix and that he would not leave the Affair Stavisky alone until he had settled it.
‘The Villa of the Golden Oracle, Inspector. Anne-Marie Buemondi’s villa. It’s why I came here and bought this house with what was left of the wreckage of my father’s estate. The sweepings,’ she said. ‘The dust the bankers forgot to pick up after his ashes were in the ground.’
She would walk away from him now. She would go indoors and up to her room to put on something a little more suitable, and she would have to leave him to his own designs for a moment. By choosing the garden for their coffee, he had obviously wanted to separate her from her weaving. The spot he’d chosen had been sheltered, and he had enjoyed the sun, had used it to put her at ease. Ah yes, he was clever.
St-Cyr knew she was watching from an upstairs window and when he looked up, the parted curtain fell. Ah Mon Dieu, what was it with her? So afraid, one could smell the fear on her. Terrified the Nazis would discover she was English and lock her up, thus ending the work that was so precious to her; terrified of something else.
Picking his way among the storage jars, he re-entered the house, knew then that she would be hurrying and there was something – something she definitely did not want him to find.
The room in which she stores her wool? he asked. Quickly he went along a cluttered corridor – more shards of pottery and bits of Roman glass on a side-table beneath a sumptuous hanging – and when he found a door that was closed, he opened it and sucked in a breath.
To the ceiling and on every available space of wall there were wooden storage cubicles for wool, skeins and skeins of the most gorgeous colours. Draped over a long table to one side, there were tapestries and rugs, a multicoloured heap of wool, and then … then, on plain trestles with straight-backed chairs behind, two ill-defined rows of small hand-looms.
He took out the clot of russet homespun Hermann had found on the hillside above the body. He had perhaps three minutes at the most and began to search earnestly for its source but asked, What have we here? Places for six or eight students, some perhaps older than she; others younger. A pittance for their lessons, barely enough to pay the expenses; and an intrusion into those precious hours that could never be enough.
When he found the skein, the last of a batch, he knew he had the source. And taking out the pocket-knife his father had given him as a boy of six, he cut off a piece and quickly coiled it.
He still had his back to her, when he sensed she was watching from the doorway. He did not turn and she thought then that it was all over for her. That just as the true artist saw with an inner eye, so, too, must the true detective.
St-Cyr brought the skein up to his nose but she was not fooled by this.
‘You’ve found my little secret,’ she said, and he noted the sadness in her voice. ‘To survive as an artist, Inspector, one has always to teach and as so often, most students are totally unsuited and not the slightest bit inclined to strive for greatness.’
‘Yet you could not teach at the School of Fine Arts?’
‘Carlo prevented that, as he tried to prevent everything else.’
‘And Madame Buemondi, she could not provide enough for you to exist without the teaching?’
It was no use. He was bound to find out, and did she care any more? Did she really? ‘I would never have taken charity from her or from anyone, Inspector. Things have been very hard since the Defeat. There are expenses that still must be met. Things do cost a great deal more.’
And you were on that hillside, weren’t you? he wanted so much to ask but held it back, though in all honesty he could find no reason for his reticence.
Viviane Darnot was a good seven years younger than her companion had been, but there was no youthfulness in the dark grey-blue eyes that met his own.
‘We’d best go,’ she said, ‘or we will miss the autobus.’
‘There are two bicycles, are there not?’
Lady’s, but would they not be safer than the bus? – she knew that was what he was thinking and was grateful for this sign of concern. ‘Let us compromise, then. The back streets until the climb becomes too much. We’ve a good three kilometres to cover.’
‘Could Carlo Buemondi have killed his wife?’
Startled – betrayed that he should ask such a question when least expected – she glanced away to the student looms and then looked bravely at him. ‘Someone did, Inspector, and may God bring down His Holy Wrath upon whoever it was!’
When he followed her to the cellars to fetch the bicycles, she felt he did not stare at her as men usually do. There was no fear within her of the sexual thing, none of the distaste she usually felt in such situations, and she found herself respecting this quality in him even when in the closeness and the near-darkness of the cellars.
He was a man who understood and who did not question that two women or two men could live quite naturally together as a couple. He did not prejudge and she wanted to thank him for this but could not bring herself to do so.
St-Cyr took the dark green Majestic from her and carried it up the stairs as she followed him with the red one. But all the time he did so, he saw her eyes as they’d been in that chance moment – had it been chance? – in Chamonix as now. Flashing revelations of their owner. Dark raven hair and pure white skin, the pale oval of the face touched by the blush of apprehension.
It took about an hour to reach their destination. From the shelter of the wooded hills above Le Cannet, the Villa of the Golden Oracle overlooked the Esterel, the city and the sea. Three handsome plane trees gave the buff-coloured, eighteenth-century manor-house great dignity. Ivy climbed the walls; cypresses stood out among the clipped box and yew. There were herbaceous borders behind which there would be flowers everywhere in season. Mimosa, oleander and roses. Arbours too, and trellises, a quiet pool, the ancient sculptured head of the oracle from whose mouth the water would pour.
‘Perhaps four or five hectares in all,’ sighed St-Cyr.
‘Six, and surrounded by this same wall of buff-yellow stone. It was worth a fortune but not today, not with the money the Nazis have printed for us.’
The french windows of the ground floor opened on to a flagstone terrace, and from there the steps led down to the gardens which spilled away to the gates.
‘It’s magnificent,’ he said, ‘and such a contrast to all we’ve experienced in getting here.’
The shabby lines for food that so often no longer existed when one got there, the dirt, the crowded autobus whose gazogène could barely get them up the hills. The smell of unwashed bodies drenched in cheap peifume – Dear God, why did they have to wear it? The dogged looks, that damnable uncaring, the downtrodden nature of everyone. The hawking and spitting, the tubercular coughing now that winter had come.
‘They are beaten, mademoiselle, and they are desperately afraid because they no longer have any control over their lives.’
‘They hated me, did you know that? When the Defeat came, I very quickly discovered my French friends would have nothing more to do with me. It wasn’t the accepted thing to be on friendly terms with anyone who was Engli
sh. I was dirt and they let me know it. I was to blame for what had happened at Dunkirk. My hangings were burned. My commissions ceased absolutely.’
‘So you hid yourself away until they came to realize that Britain was fighting to free them.’
‘And now I do not know which of those friends are truly so, Inspector, and which are not.’
St-Cyr tossed his head in acknowledgement of the national disgrace. ‘Come. Come, we’d best not stand too long at the gates. Let us leave the bicycles against the wall.’
‘Let us take them up to the villa and put them in the solarium out of sight.’
It was only when they got there that they found the cloak of russet homespun and he knew then that she had led him to it and he had to stand in awe of her.
The Salon Marchal des plus Beaux Antiquités was on the rue d’États-Unis not far from the rue d’Antibes. It was right in the most exclusive shopping district, right where few French these days could afford to buy and therefore the clientele was nil or numb and selectively German otherwise.
Kohler gave the glitter of carved mahogany and old paintings a glance. He noted a silver jewel-case with a spillage of pretty baubles – pearls like that poor kid had worn in the last investigation, diamonds as in the one before …
Straight-arming the door, he sent it crashing open. Startled, the dealer, a vain little bastard in grey serge with pop-eyes behind gold-rimmed specs, looked up. Caught in that moment, crouched beyond a marble nymph among stacks of gilded frames whose canvases had been cut away and rolled up for delivery elsewhere long ago.
‘Fernand Marchal?’ he shouted.
The shop fell to silence and the dust began to settle. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Central, my hot little friend. Start talking.’
Ah merde! The glasses were pulled away, Marchal dragging at a silk handkerchief while one old boy in a black lamb’s-wool overcoat and Homburg stole a hand across a counter to the pocket-watch he had been trying to flog to the dealer’s assistant.
An off-duty Wehrmacht lieutenant and his latest pigeon ceased perusing a magnificent ormolu cabinet neither of them could ever have afforded in normal times.
‘Get out,’ said Kohler. ‘All of you except this one. You,’ he said to the assistant, ‘put the lock on, then wait for me in the back. If you don’t, I’ll sell your balls to the chef over at the Carlton.’
‘M … monsieur,’ began the dealer.
‘It’s Inspector,’ breathed Kohler. ‘We’ve things to discuss.’
Marchal eased the last of the gilded frames back into place and, wincing painfully, for the knees, they were no longer youthful, stood unsteadily.
Kohler reached up to lay a hand on the nymph’s gorgeous ass and then to lean that hand dangerously against the statue … Ah no – 470,000 new francs, 90,000 old ones if lucky. Florentine and worth a fortune. Priceless!
‘A little blue notebook, my friend,’ said the Gestapo, waving that thing at him. ‘Telephone numbers and telephone numbers. Yours is among them.’
He patted the nymph’s bum and stepped round her so that now there wasn’t a metre between himself and the dealer. ‘Sweating, eh?’ he said. ‘Does the name Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi mean anything?’
The little bastard winced again, the eyes darting about to take in all the lovely things the shop had been able to acquire in the past two and a half years at very reasonable prices. ‘I gave her things – little things,’ confessed Marchal, ‘but only from time to time.’
‘Innocent, eh? And the Carlton?’ demanded the Gestapo whose French, it was quite good because that was the way one got things done.
‘The Carlton’s head chef, he would … would take the jars of preserved tomatoes from Madame in exchange for the Russian snuffbox which she would then deal off to me in exchange for my accepting another six of these for cash at twenty-five francs apiece!’
The frames. Kohler glanced up the length of that gorgeous nude and wondered if it was true that all such sculptors had found it necessary to use a model. ‘Sing on, my friend. I’m listening, eh? The cook over at the Carlton got the snuffbox from one of the waiters who stole it or received it from one of the guests in exchange for a little something extra at dinner, right?’
He felt an ankle, gripped a calf and let his fingers trickle over the toes.
‘Madame … she … Ah look, Monsieur the Inspector, I was only a part of it. I did nothing wrong. Nothing, I assure you. The snuffbox was in payment for the sweetbreads Madame had secured that very morning.’
‘Nothing wrong?’ demanded Kohler. ‘You were bartering, my friend, and that is against the law.’
‘Then let us sit down, monsieur. Please choose … choose any chair you wish. Take that one. Charlemagne is said to have sat in it. There is the bed he used when not on the march.’
Kohler swung away to take a look, only to swing right back. ‘Hey, listen, my fine. My cow died, eh? I don’t need your bull.’
‘It is not bull. It is the truth. Everything in my shop is certified.’
‘Then start by telling me the truth.’
Marchal stared ruefully at the stack of picture frames. How could he explain such a thing to this Nazi boor who could know nothing – nothing about art and things of great value? ‘Madame, she … she has telephoned me.’
‘When? When did it first begin?’
‘About two years ago. About six months after the Armistice when … when things began to come into short supply. Her father had bought from me in the old days, you understand, and we knew each other a little but not much.’
‘Yes, yes, get on with it. I’m in a hurry and have eighteen more numbers to follow up.’
‘Then I can save you much time.’
Kohler grinned. ‘You do, and I’ll see that they leave you alone. Okay?’
Marchal did not like the look, the scar on the face, or the wounded thumb whose bandage had come undone …
The Gestapo squeezed the thumb and let the pus erupt. ‘A girl bit me,’ he said. ‘I don’t like girls that bite but this one was ill.’
The hint was ignored, the panic was there in any case.
‘Madame had a network of numbers – people from all over and all walks of life. From one she would obtain a quantity of shoelaces, from another the buttons or the gilded picture frames, from another the pair of theatre tickets or the visit to her coiffeuse or the massage and the hot mud treatment which is very good for the rheumatism.’
‘Keep talking. Got any tobacco?’
The dealer shook his head, then thought better of it and picked his way through the clutter to a display case.
When he came back, he had a humidor full of cigars. ‘Havanas,’ he said. ‘For you, Inspector.’
Kohler pulled out a wad of bills that would have choked a horse and peeled off a five-franc note. ‘Just give me one for now. My partner’s French and I’m feeling righteous. Now talk.’
One could not avoid the look in those pale blue eyes. It was as if of death yet wounded to the quick by events perhaps far beyond control.
‘The picture frames are being burned as firewood, monsieur. I could not see them being so foolishly destroyed. The centuries, they are recorded in the styles of the carving, in the gilding. Master after master …’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Rouge and lipstick from one source, can-openers from another. Soap – always she would tell me she could get this fantastic soap from a friend in the hills. The grey paste we have today burns the skin and the sensitive parts, monsieur. My wife, she suffers terribly from the haemorrhoids and the boils, the erysipelas for which even the lancing is of little good. It’s the lousy food one gets these days, what there is of it. The grey bread with the sweepings, the rat droppings and the sawdust. The swedes and the lack of potatoes. Madame Buemondi could find almost anything. Nutmeg, I remember, and cinnamon. Me, I gave her a Sèvres tureen in exchange and this, she bartered for brocade curtains from one of the hotels.’
‘And the brocade?’
‘For t
he wine, I think. Who knows? The Bar Modiste kept cigarettes for her – you’ll find their number in that little book of hers.’
‘And you’ll not tell anyone I’ve got it, will you?’
‘Of course not. Women are not allowed the tobacco ration, monsieur. But Madame Gilberte of the Bar Modiste bleaches the hair, yes? And bleach is unobtainable but for Madame Buemondi’s service.’
‘What did the two of you do? Have tea in here every afternoon?’
‘She was very free with her information, monsieur.’
‘Only because you made her tell you.’
Marchal tugged at a sleeve. This one would find out everything. ‘She often used our telephone, monsieur, as I am sure she did everyone else’s when needed. Me, I … ah, I have overheard the snatches from time to time. From the nuns of the Blessed Virgin she obtained the braided silks stiff with gold and silver thread, and much bed linen that could be dyed any colour one wished if one was a fashion designer and had nothing else with which to work. For these things, Madame gave the nuns toothpaste, the soap, the sandpaper sticks for the fingernails, the wine, the vegetables, the sausage and the granulated sugar.’
The Gestapo made no comment but only drew on the cigar. Marchal told him that Madame must have at least fifty names on her list of contacts. ‘Each morning she would begin her day by telephoning someone. Always the bright, cheery voice, always the optimist until … Monsieur, has anything happened to her?’
‘No … No, it’s all just routine. We have to follow everything up. It’s part of the job.’
‘Then why have you got her notebook?’
‘Bayonne … Why not tell me what she did there?’
‘Bayonne …? But … but why would she travel so far when she had all the business she could possibly handle here?’
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