‘Medicines?’ shot Kohler. ‘Look, I can let the boys over at the Hotel Montfleury know all about your part in this affair or I can forget I ever saw you.’
‘All right, all right, then yes, yes, she went to Bayonne to obtain the medicines. If that is what you wish to hear, monsieur, then that is what I will say but me, I know nothing of this.’
That was fair enough. ‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘Three days ago. Wednesday, the 16th. She telephoned first as she always did before coming over. She was in great distress and quite unlike her usual self. Would I take this lot of frames – sixteen of them. Mon Dieu, what am I to do with them? I said I could not pay the usual price, as I had already far too many of them but she said I would have to just this one more time as something important had come up and she needed cash. “Cash,” she said. “I must have the cash or all is lost.”’
4
For some time now they had been moving through the silent house, ethereal and remote – ah, it was so eerie, this last vestige of grace. In every room there were priceless antiques; from every window and door, exquisite views of the gardens, and in the distance, always the sea, the hills or a breathless panorama of both.
Yet it was uncanny how the weaver searched for Anne-Marie Buemondi. Viviane Darnot expected to catch a glimpse of her companion in every room, round every door and in every corridor, or to hear her voice in the distance on the telephone perhaps.
They were upstairs now and St-Cyr saw the face of tragedy mirrored in one image after another, she holding back to let him go on ahead. Ah, Mon Dieu, what was this? Another killing? Another body? The husband, the daughter Josette-Louise, or someone else?
The face was broken by some trick of optics into juxtaposed slices. Pale and shaken, the eyes … the eyes …
She was perhaps some three metres behind him yet appeared in the far distance and back again repeatedly until splintered into slices. The soft smell of woven wool, the pungency of Dutch tobacco, a sound, some sound and that same face, those same dark grey-blue eyes and paleness of skin. White … all but chalk-white. Lips that were pensive and red yet quivered. Nostrils that were pinched in fear.
Where had he seen her in Chamonix and why had she lied about it being at the railway station?
Yet he had to be kind. ‘Grief builds its castles of hope, mademoiselle, then tumbles them down. Why not tell me who was the owner of that splendid cloak you wove?’
‘Anne-Marie. It … it was hers.’
‘Then who borrowed it? Who defiled it, mademoiselle?’
‘She did. That one did. And now you know.’
The head nodded curtly towards the nearest door and he knew then, too, that she had led him here as well.
St-Cyr opened the door but stood aside to let her pass only to find her ashen and trembling in her grief. ‘Anne-Marie will hate me for what I’ve just done,’ she said.
‘The daughter?’ he asked, not knowing quite what to make of things. ‘Josette-Louise …? The one who is in Paris?’
The eyes flashed up more darkly. The head was tossed. ‘Angélique Girard, Anne-Marie’s latest …’
Ah no. ‘Her latest lover,’ breathed St-Cyr, still watching the images in the mirrors, still struggling to recall where they’d seen each other in Chamonix. ‘Did you kill Madame Buemondi, mademoiselle?’ he asked quietly. ‘Come, come, to love so deeply is as understandable as it is to feel so deeply betrayed.’
The weaver did not answer. Trapped – caught in the mirrors fragment by fragment – she watched as the castle of all her hopes began suddenly to fall apart.
She buried her face in her hands. The raven hair spilled forward and with a ragged sob, grief took hold of her.
Alone, St-Cyr went into the bedroom. Bars of sunlight threw their pale yellow slats across the open mahogany armoire and he saw at once the hanging silks and satins, the négligés, the slips and half-slips of the careless and untidy, but matched to those in the drawer at the cottage. Ah yes.
The crumpled underpants whose lace fringes were gossamer to the Prussian blue pile of an Aubusson carpet.
The canopied bed was rumpled, the covers flung back. The shutters, when open, gave out on to a small balcony and from there, a view of the rear gardens – vegetables still in their winter plots, orange and lemon trees, and almond trees.
‘Angélique Girard,’ he heard her say, the voice vicious and grating now, the jealousy all too clear. But when he went out into the corridor, the weaver was hurrying downstairs.
‘I gave her that cloak, monsieur. I worked my fingers to the bone for her and she … she … she gave it to another. Another!’
The cry of it echoed throughout the silent house and he heard it as the broken heart of the betrayed.
Ah, Nom de Dieu, what was he to do now? Arrest her? Take her into custody – what custody? Gestapo Cannes, eh? They’d strip this place of everything but the paint or they’d requisition it, if not for themselves then for the Wehrmacht.
The coloured silks and satins were as light as a feather – azure blue, deep green, amber and gold – and he had the thought that Muriel and Chantal might have sold them to the woman, yet their shop in Paris was so far from here.
When he found the photograph, its glass and frame broken, he found Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi standing behind the girl and he had to wonder who had taken the photograph.
The girl was young and very beautiful, even though pouting fiercely. There were dark circles around her lovely eyes. The hair was thick and light-coloured, teased forward and out into masses of curls and waves.
The soft oval of her face was about twenty-two years of age.
Both women had expressions caught as in defiance. Angélique Girard clasped Madame Anne-Marie’s hand which rested possessively on the girl’s right shoulder. They were both very serious. A moment of defiant commitment, then, to each other and recorded on film by someone else. He was certain of it. Though one or the other could have set the timer delay on the shutter, the expressions revealed far too much for them to have been held for more than a moment. The daughter in Paris? he wondered. Was this one a friend of Josette-Louise? Ah, there were so many questions to answer, so little time. A real murder – was it really so? He felt this, was all but certain of it. Would have sworn to it in front of any priest or Gestapo chief.
The girl wore a black, tightly collared top of crushed velvet and a strand of large costume pearls. An ornate pin, high on the left shoulder, held a floppy but stylish satin bow. Pink probably.
Anne-Marie Buemondi wore a beautifully woven and very fashionable, loose-fitting sweater of black design on a crimson background perhaps. Small ropes of gold hung from her ears, the hair was not braided into the severe diadem they’d seen in the hills but was worn loosely, combed back behind the ears and parted to the left. A pin – some costume designer’s bit of fancy, a golden mask with vacant eyes and gaping mouth – was worn in exactly the same position as the girl’s pin.
There were two of the same masks chained to Anne-Marie’s right wrist by four twisted ropes of gold, the bracelet heavy and obviously a gift from the girl. A lover’s present. Yet who had taken the photograph?
From the balcony he saw the target, off to the far left next to the wall, and knew that someone had been recently practising their archery.
Pocketing the photograph, St-Cyr hurried downstairs and when he approached the target, he saw that whoever had fired the crossbow, had known exactly how to do so.
There were at least seventeen bolt holes in the centre, a pattern spread of not more than fifteen centimetres at the most.
Pacing off the metres, he repeatedly found the imprints of a woman’s low-heeled shoes, and at sixty metres and behind them, those of a heavy-set man. Had the man come upon her in the garden; had she then shown him what she could really do? Was it all too obvious? he wondered. Had the weaver led him to everything only to set him up for something else?
She was standing before the fireplace in the grand s
alon and right away she showed him where the crossbow had been.
‘It was gone,’ she said, still looking at the place beside the fire-irons. ‘On Wednesday I searched everywhere for it. I knew – don’t you see, Inspector, I knew what had happened. I felt it in my heart. A knife – like a knife. I was right here when she fell. I heard my name as she cried it out to me.’
Unwittingly Viviane Darnot gave the image of herself repeated several times again in gold and glass, richly defined in splendour. Superbly gilded Louis XVI armchairs were all about her. A Tilliard screen was just to her left. An exquisite Louis Philippe-style piano and golden harp. A magnificent secretaire. A tapestry, an allegory of Rome, portrayed the trial of a young woman who stood among grim-faced senators who would judge and condemn, while behind her, the Colosseum was thronged with upraised lances.
‘Carlo killed her,’ she said, quite simply. ‘He was the one to benefit the most. All this,’ she said, gesturing dismissively. ‘He wanted so much to sell it but needed Anne-Marie’s permission. He had a buyer all lined up, Inspector. Himmler’s buyer.’
‘But Angélique Girard pulled the trigger, is that it?’ he asked and heard her whisper, ‘Yes.’
‘And Himmler’s buyer?’ he asked.
Her sarcasm was all too clear. ‘That one’s Jewish and knows the Riviera well, Inspector, since he used to deal in fine paintings and other works of art. He’s going to be made an Honorary German and so must work all the harder to ensure that Herr Himmler obtains nothing but the best.’
Ah, Nom de Jésus-Christ, more trouble! Hermann … where the hell was Hermann?
Her little smile was brief. ‘Carlo had agreed to sell the villa, Inspector, but Anne-Marie had refused absolutely. As a result, Herr Himmler’s buyer was furious.’
St-Cyr longed for his pipe and a good supply of tobacco. He longed for Hermann and a chance to talk things over in quiet. ‘This “buyer” mademoiselle, his name and where might he be found?’
Now there was defiance, the weaver proud. ‘Heimholtz Kleitsmann; alias Heinz Kleist, the Hotel Albion. He has a suite of rooms but seldom stays long in one place. He’s far too busy.’
‘French?’
‘Of course. Why not a little real estate, Inspector? You French are into everything else, isn’t that so? Robbery, arson, murder …’
‘Yes, yes, even detective work. These times, they are not good for us, mademoiselle, but soon they will pass. Of this, I am certain.’
‘And your partner?’ she asked. ‘This Gestapo detective?’
The shrug was that of a man upon whom God had willed a certain fate. ‘Hermann? Hermann is something special, Mademoiselle Viviane. A damned good detective at a time when the world seems to want anything but one.’
Kohler darted into a block of flats and paused to catch a breath. The boys in blue were out in force. The ones in black were with them and so were those in the field grey-green of the Wehrmacht. It was only a matter of time until Munk and Delphane caught up with them.
Verdammt! What was he to do? Call the villa and warn Louis? Go to ground and hope they didn’t pick the Frog up and hold him for ransom? Or walk out there now and let the bastards have the dossiers and the little notebook? The photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi in Paris?
Jesus! Four black cars shot down the rue du Canada and he heard the screech of their brakes and knew he was for it.
Then heard the hungry throb of their engines as they pelted along the Croisette to jump on someone else.
He had about an hour, maybe less. One by one, the pedestrians began to move. A vélo-taxi started up as he stepped out on to the street; another jangled its bell and he waited until it had passed before threading his way across to the other side. Everyone was looking at him now, only to duck their eyes away when he met them. A good head and shoulders taller than most, he’d never be able to hide in a crowd down here.
The shop was gushy, the small ante-room holding an antique desk, a woven basket of cut flowers, vases of the same, three ornate chairs, handfuls of celebrity photographs on the walls and a coffee-table with the latest fashion magazines and a copy of Der Stuermer that was six weeks old.
‘Kohler, from Madame Buemondi, to see the boss,’ he said to the doubting dumpling who fussed with worried locks as she attempted to get up and found her girdle too tight. ‘Just tell the boss it’s private, eh? A little matter about the face creams and the hormonal jellies. Too much acid in that last batch.’
Dumpling tugged at her suit jacket and nodded doubtfully. ‘Madame, she is in the back, but is very busy, monsieur. There is the ball at the Majestic tonight. You should have come this morning. You should have telephoned first.’
‘I couldn’t. Something came up. Just say there’s trouble and we’d better talk.’
The coiffeuse had her hands full, and that was for sure. Among the dozen or so Louis XV chairs with their pink coverlets under soft yellow lights and before a battery of mirrors and dressing-tables, were the bored, the pampered and the haughty mondaines of Cannes, the wives of black marketeers, bankers and industrialists, the socialites and high-class whores who lived on the wealth of others and had up to now been comfortably sitting out the war.
A poodle piddled and Madame Ernestine Rogette hardly paused in the rinse job she was performing, the woman simply flicking a towel at the floor and putting a foot on it.
There were creams on half the faces, black hair, blue hair, blonde hair being teased by hot irons or combed and clipped, dyed and sprinkled with some sort of ersatz silvery powder. Ground aluminium probably.
The place smelled like a brothel after a bath or a raid. The talk, which had been a sharp crossfire of insidiously cruel gossip from chair to chair, had ceased entirely.
Now there were only the sounds of increasingly hesitant scissors and the tap that was still running.
Kohler picked up a bottle of scented lotion then put it back. The dog began to sniff nervously at his heels and then to do its other business on the floor.
Madame tossed a no-nonsense nod at the nearest assistant. Still nothing was said. The assistant exposed nice knees as she crouched, giving him a good view up her stockinged legs. Silk, no less! Demurely she picked up the hard little turds and primly left.
They heard the front door open and then close.
‘Madame …’ he began.
‘Monsieur?’ she asked.
At first Kohler thought the red hair and sea-green eyes a coincidence but when the assistant returned, Madame Rogette could not stop herself from asking if there’d been any sign of her daughter. ‘I sent that girl on an errand first thing this morning and she’s not back yet,’ she confided to the rinse job and all others.
The assistant thought to help. ‘It’s not the first time, madame. Suzanne will be all right. It’s only that old …’
‘These days …’ began Madame, thinking to ease the tension. ‘Ah, what can one do with the young, mesdames et mesdemoiselles? That girl, she is seeing someone. Me, I have had my suspicions for some time but a mother, pah! One cannot interfere too much or else they vanish.’
Into the cellars of the Gestapo. Kohler knew it had to be the kid Munk and Delphane had worked over. ‘Madame …’ he tried again.
‘Has anything happened to my daughter, monsieur?’
He met the look in her eyes. Without being told, she’d known right away he was a cop. ‘No. No, not that I’m aware of,’ he said. ‘I’m from Paris Central.’
Still no one moved. Even the scissors had stopped. ‘A case of missing persons. Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi has asked us to find her daughter, Josette-Louise. The girl’s in Paris.’
‘Then I ask again, monsieur, why are you here?’
‘Madame Buemondi thought you might have a suggestion or two – nothing specific, you understand. Just an idea perhaps.’
It was meant to let her off the hook in front of the customers and it would have to do. ‘Babette, please attend to Madame the Countess. Madame, excuse me for a moment, please. I w
ill not be long. We’ve finished with this, Babette. Now please, the combing out and then the electricity of the drier but lightly, yes? Very lightly.’
The dark eyes of the countess flashed the fire of curiosity. ‘Have you done anything?’ she asked, detaining Madame by gripping a wrist.
‘No. No, of course not,’ said Green-Eyes. ‘Monsieur and I will simply be a moment.’
They didn’t go into the front office but passed behind a curtained doorway into a narrow corridor whose flanking shelves were crammed to the ceiling with bottles and tins of soap and powder, et cetera, et cetera.
From there, they entered a small but comfortable sitting-room. She closed the door and leaned her back against it.
‘Madame Buemondi is dead, Inspector. Me, I suppose you are aware of this only too well, as are all those in my shop. But Suzanne, she knows nothing, you understand? A few errands, a little of the herbal shampoo for the countess from time to time; a bar of the lavender soap for that one’s husband or Monsieur Jacques, the head croupier over at the Palm. Nothing. The child knows nothing.’
Kohler wished she’d sit down. Crucified on that door of hers, she looked like Christ in her agony of doubt.
‘Did Ludo Borel supply the soaps and other things?’ he asked.
The shrug was genuine. ‘A man from the hills, that is all I know. Monsieur, Madame Buemondi would not have given that one’s name to anyone, not these days when soap is impossible to acquire without … without the proper connections.’
‘What did you give her in return?’
‘What do you think, eh? Is it so hard to see?’
‘I just want to hear it from yourself.’
‘The manicures, the coiffures – the hair stylings, yes? For herself and her friend.’
‘Which friend?’
‘Her companion. Her favourite. Her little protégée. Mademoiselle Angélique Girard.’
‘Not the weaver?’
‘No … No, not the weaver. Others, too, in … in exchange for the things Madame Buemondi had to dispose of.’
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