With no gasoline to buy and suspicion only in the sight of such motor cars, the things had been left cold on the dockside, now still awaiting requisition.
There was one lone MG sports coupé half hidden among the Christmas decorations some feeble soul had attempted to muster. Brand-new and b … e … a … utiful.
He hit the door and breezed in, asked about the headlamps, the ignition, choke, gear shift, top speed, brakes and availability.
‘Kohler of the Gestapo, my fine. Me, I’ll take it.’
‘Cash?’
‘On account.’
He was back inside five minutes with two jerry cans of gasoline requisitioned from a Wehrmacht lorry. Then he headed out to pick up Louis at the villa. Bayonne … they’d have to go there first to settle the pawnshop business, then on to Paris to find the twin sister of Josianne-Michèle.
That would get the Gestapo Cannes off their backs and give Louis and himself a chance to talk things over. Munk wouldn’t like it and neither would Jean-Paul Delphanebut someone had to read the woman’s dossier before the bastards recovered it. Besides, there was the question of the woman’s list of telephone numbers. By keeping it from them, were they not saving lives?
It was an unpleasant thought. One never knew.
5
Away from the coast, they ran into winter. Freezing rain, wet snow and absolute darkness.
‘Hermann, please! For the love of Jesus, let us take the train!’
The little car skidded, turning twice and twice again before shooting on ahead. ‘Relax, eh? Come on, Louis, stop being so uptight. I got you out of Cannes, didn’t I? We can’t take the trains any more than the coastal roads. Munk will only get his hands on that stuff I stole.’
Kohler trod on the gas and they pelted into the blinding snow. ‘The Army of the South will have cleared the roads of all traffic,’ he sang out. ‘Stop worrying. Here, I’ll stick to the centre. That better, eh?’
The car fishtailed rapidly until the front wheels pitched off to the left and Kohler yelled, ‘Gott im Himmel, you French! The crown’s like a baldheaded whore on her knees! Why can’t you people build decent roads?’
They were on the Route Napoléon northwards out of Grasse, a model of modern engineering. They skidded again, went broadside on sheet ice. St-Cyr threw up his arms, hitting the flimsy canvas roof, then tried to cover his face. ‘Mon Dieu … Mon Dieu …’ They could barely see the front of the car through the frost and fog on the windscreen. They shot past some rocks, the beam of the headlamps careering over angry ledges, went downhill too fast, then suddenly the rear wheels pulled themselves round and they roared uphill into oblivion.
‘Avignon is dead ahead,’ shouted Kohler, throwing the MG into third gear.
‘Digne, Hermann. You were heading for Digne, remember?’
‘Not me, idiot! You saw me take the turn-off. We’re heading for Avignon.’
Through trackless mountains? ‘Stop! Stop then!’ St-Cyr yanked out the Lebel and pointed it at the dash. ‘Stop, please, my old one, before I ruin someone else’s car.’
The Frog really meant it. Kohler eased up on the throttle until the wheels were merely skating. Perhaps five centimetres of wind-drifted snow covered this patch of road, perhaps a little more.
He squinted along the gunsight of the bonnet.
‘Merci,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Me, I have to piss.’
Louis plodded up the road into the night. Kohler watched his friend and partner in the headlamps. He thought of all the things they’d been through, of the war and how it must surely end.
The Frog had splashed his trousers. ‘Hermann, I have had enough. Herr Munk has given us four days in which to solve this case. If we do not do so, he will level that village and shoot all the men and boys. Ah, such a thing might mean nothing to a Bavarian farmboy who is now a member of the illustrious Third Reich’s most feared Gestapo, but me, my old one, I am a patriot.’
One lone woman, leading a donkey loaded with branches, appeared from out of nowhere as Kohler was draining his battery. She took no offence, thought nothing of them perhaps, was just too damned tired and frozen to have cared.
‘Shall we arrest her, Hermann?’ taunted the Sûreté hotly. ‘Come, come, my fine Bavarian detective, she’s breaking the law to warm her toes and bake what little bread there is.’
‘Louis, please don’t do it. Christ knows, I don’t like it any more than you do.’
‘Oh? Is it not the holiday for you, eh? The vacation from the wife and responsibility? That pretty little pigeon you’ve got stashed away in a Paris nest? That lovely Dutch woman …? Oona … Oona Van der Lynn as well? Shocking, Hermann. Shocking!’
Kohler dragged out a tattered bit of yellow copy-paper and thrust it at him. ‘This arrived in Paris just before we left. The Sixth Army outside Stalingrad is surrounded, Louis. My boys are both there.’
Ah, merde! ‘Hermann, I’m sorry, eh? It’s just this case. Me, I …’
‘Ja, ja, I know. War always has two asses to burn.’
‘Jean-Paul wishes to pin the rap of helping the Resistance on us, Hermann. Herr Munk is all too willing to have him do so but in the process, expects us to reveal the truth to him about Jean-Paul.’
Kohler pocketed the telex. ‘Will Delphane be waiting for us in Bayonne? Will that bastard have prepared a welcome for us, Louis?’
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah, Hermann, I really do not know what he is up to. His leaving the Cross of Lorraine for me to find is just not like him – far too clumsy. Is he on the run himself, I ask, and if so, what might that mean?’
Ordinarily, out of deference to Louis, Kohler would not have told him about the girl, Suzanne Rogette, not so soon and never if possible, but he felt he had to. One might just as well have smacked Louis in the mouth with a hammer. The outrage was instant and controlled only by a supreme effort of will. ‘He was afraid someone would see him kicking her to death,’ said Kohler lamely.
‘But why should he have been afraid of such a thing? He is working for the Gestapo. He is one of them, and the kicking can only have increased his value in their eyes. L’Action Française have always hated the rest of us. Jean-Paul must want to find the maquis in those hills, because he is of the enemy and yet … and yet … Ah, forgive me, my old one. I am just not myself. That poor child. Why her, Hermann? Why has God completely deserted us?’
The wind blew the snow into their eyes, the headlamps shone out at them from the loneliness of that polar waste.
‘Chamonix, Louis?’ asked Hermann.
‘Ah, yes, Chamonix. If only I could remember exactly what went on there just before we found the body of the financier. I want to recall mirrors being smashed to pieces, Hermann, the pieces flying outwards as I catch a glimpse of the weaver’s eyes, the look in them and then … then we find Stavisky writhing on that floor in a room that was locked and empty but for himself.’
‘You gained access through a window, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, yes …’
‘You used a ladder?’
‘Yes, of course. Hermann, please do not confuse the issue, eh? It is very delicate. The mind … I …’
‘Hey, hey, don’t get your ass in a knot. You could have slipped and hit your head. The instant black-out.’
‘And the glass?’ snorted St-Cyr derogatively.
‘The mirrors of your imagination, my fine. They toted you off to that clinic you seem to want to remember, and they patched you up!’
‘The asylum, Hermann. That old grandmother grinding goose livers, she asked us if we had come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised.’
So she had. ‘Josianne-Michèle told us she had been sent to Chamonix at the age of sixteen. The girl could have been there at the time.’
‘Yes, yes, and the weaver could well have taken her to see some doctor. Mademoiselle Viviane sent money to the other sister in Paris despite the mother’s asking her not to. Perhaps she tried to help Josianne-Michèle as well.’
‘But to a clinic, Louis
, not an asylum. Epilepsy isn’t madness. It can be controlled in many cases by proper medication.’
‘Which Madame Buemondi must have been obtaining from someone in Bayonne which is so near the Spanish border, Hermann, the medicines are likely to have come that way.’
‘Unless she was moving escapees out of the country, or doing both, my old one, and while we’re out here freezing our balls off, don’t forget that the treatments in Chamonix were unsuccessful and that Carlo Buemondi demanded the return of his daughter and must thus have known with whom the girl was staying.’
‘Viviane Darnot,’ echoed Louis, clucking his tongue as he nodded, and wanting nothing more than his pipe, a good fire and a chance to think.
Kohler gently shook him by the shoulder. ‘Come on then. It’s stupid of us to be arguing out here. Hey, you can drive. I’m going to let you.’
‘For once? Through lousy roads for over 900 kilometres of this?’
‘Then what the hell are we going to do?’
The Sûreté was swift. ‘Find another way, my friend.’
‘No, Louis. Now, look, you can’t expect me to do a thing like that. I’m in enough trouble as it is. I caught a glimpse of my dossier. Yours isn’t any better.’
‘Success belongs to those who dare, Hermann. To fly is to approach the gods.’
‘You sound like Goering.’
‘It is the only way if we are to get from here to there to Paris and back in such a short time. Besides, it will give you the chance to spend a night with Giselle and Oona, wrapped in their collective embrace.’
‘Then let’s hope the weather eases and Rommel doesn’t need the plane.’
‘Shall we eat first?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Where?’ demanded Kohler suspiciously.
‘Fayence. The olive mill of a friend.’
‘Louis …? Ah, Louis, mon enfant! Mon cher!’ The cook threw her arms about the Frog and took him to her ample bosom, all 150 kilos of her in a red polka-dot housedress and green woollen cardigan with tentlike apron. Pearl earrings too. ‘But … but out of nowhere you appear? In this snowstorm? In this dreadful war?’ Her dark eyes narrowed swiftly. Sweat was brushed from her brow with a forearm. ‘It is the murder of that poor woman. Even here we have heard of it. The spear, Jean-Louis. Hooked with the barbs of vengeance and pulled for good measure!’
Bernadette Yvaldi gestured at the futility of life. ‘But come … come in, my friends. Two seats. I have only two seats left but you shall have them on a night like this and the Generalmajor Johann Vermelhren, he will not say no or I will poison him personally. And anyway, you have one of them in your company.’ She dipped her dark-haired head Kohler’s way but refused to acknowledge him otherwise.
The place was packed with Luftwaffe. ‘Louis …? Louis, how the hell did you know they’d be here?’
‘Pleased, eh? The secrets, Hermann, they are best kept to oneself.’
‘You didn’t know,’ hissed Kohler.
‘No, my old one, I did not know of anything but a small aerodrome, but God, he has smiled on us, eh? The slender ray of light, Hermann. The warmth of a fire knowing high octane fuel will be ours if only you can sing the right tune.’
The woman ushered them to a table next to the fire. The Moulin of the Broken Wing was a converted eighteenth-century olive mill complete with press. There were about twenty tables with chequered cloths, plain linen and candles.
‘I look after them,’ she said tartly, ignoring the grins of her boys in uniform. ‘The Moulin, it has become their mess.’
‘Good,’ breathed Kohler. ‘No one eats better than the Luftwaffe.’
‘Oh?’ she taunted, a tough old pork-pie of sixty maybe. ‘If you wish the haute cuisine, monsieur, you had better leave.’
St-Cyr chided her. ‘Don’t ruffle the feathers, Bernadette. This one is okay, eh? Good simple food, Hermann, that is what she always serves.’
‘Simple, monsieur, because with those dishes nothing can be hidden. No rubbish in the langouste Belle Aurore or the poularde de Bresse braisée à l’estragon because we stick to the truth by being uncomplicated. There is only one menu and that is what you will eat in my establishment.’
‘Which of them is the Generalmajor?’
‘You are sitting in his chair; Jean-Louis in the chair of his mistress but … since they are not here,’ she shrugged, ‘I can give their places to someone else.’
‘That God of yours just frowned, Louis. Let’s hope they don’t show up.’
The soup was a thick marriage of mutton stock, vegetables, garlic and God knows what else. Good, though, and served with bread brushed with olive oil because the Luftwaffe must have asked for bread and maybe they were short of butter or she simply made them eat it that way. The omelette had truffles, reminding Kohler of Périgord and the truffle hunter of that last case.
Stuffed woodcock were crammed with the birds’ chopped intestines minus the gizzard, foie gras and more truffles. Garlic again, but mild enough – not strong like the garlic of the north – and dashes of Armagnac.
The daube was more than just a cheap cut of Provençal beef soaked in wine with herbs and braised in olive oil before making the casserole stew. It was superb. Chunks of beef, but sausage too, and duck – he’d swear it was duck. Salt pork, lamb, ground black pepper and white beans. Bay leaves, onions and things. Peppers, tomatoes and black olives, of course. Bean stock, too, and wine.
Kohler was impressed but Louis … for a Frenchman, Louis ate with almost total lack of interest after the first few exclamations of joy for Madame’s benefit. He sipped the local wine, refusing the 1911 Château-d’Yquem of the Luftwaffe and the Dom Pérignon. He read and read again the dossier of Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi and often looked up to stare emptily into the fire.
Then he took to looking at the photograph of the other daughter, Josette-Louise.
Their coffee came – he refused the desserts, asking only that their portions be saved for later along with any leftovers. ‘We are travelling by air, Bernadette. A long flight through dangerous weather conditions and possible hostile aircraft. It will help if we have something to eat. It will take Hermann’s mind off the extreme altitude and the chance of Allied bullets.’
Then he went right back to the dossier, muttering only, ‘Hermann, see what you can do, eh? I am desperate for tobacco.’
What Hermann didn’t realize was that the dossier was not just that of Madame Buemondi, but contained also that of the weaver. There were glimpses of a common past: Chamonix and the convent school; Viviane Darnot at the age of seven cut off from her father in England, the mother dead of influenza; Anne-Marie Cordeau fourteen years old; snatches of Viviane’s diary rescued from the grate of some recent fire and spanning several years.
‘We see each other every day and I know she is my friend but I have yet to say hello and introduce myself. Dear Jesus, why can You not let me learn to speak French as the others do?’
And then: ‘She brushed against my hand in the corridor. The light at dawn was suffused with grey. There were bursts of sunlight struggling through as we went outside. Matins again. More prayers, and still more of them always. Oh God how I hate it here. She is my one ray of hope.’
‘I have been weaving and the punishment is this: For one mistake all is torn out. For two mistakes the tips of the fingers, which are already so painful, are struck five times with the Mother Superior’s stick. For three mistakes one lives in silence on the knees before God without warmth or food.’
‘Anne-Marie is so kind to me. Where everyone criticizes, she praises. I know she hates the tapestries as much as I do, but each little step forward wins a word, a kind look, a tender smile.’
‘My father came to visit. He has said I cannot go home. When I wept, he got angry. Anne-Marie says that it is not because of anyone else, only that he is afraid to have me home. When I asked her why this should be, the look she gave I could not understand. It upsets me still.’
There were not many more excerpts. Delphane
had obviously compiled both dossiers and had probably selected only those fragments that would give the effect he desired, and had destroyed the rest. Ah yes.
‘Last night I fell asleep in Anne-Marie’s cot with her arms around me. The cold, dry air of these mountains in winter makes the skin of my fingers crack. There was blood on the tapestry, my blood, and now my fingertips, they will never heal.’
‘I worked all day at the weaving. It’s like a ray of sunshine, a breath of the sweetest air. No more beatings, no more harsh criticisms from the sisters or the Mother Superior. Now I am free to weave as I want.’
‘I am studying hard, and have visited the Abbé Martin in his workrooms at the monastery. He has much to offer and has agreed to show me all he can. Dear Jesus, why have I been so lucky? There is nothing but encouragement now. Anne-Marie, she has said, “You are uniquely gifted. In you has God placed his trust for the future.”’
‘My tapestry hangs in the Mother Superior’s office and is seen by all who come to visit her.’
Kohler placed a full pouch of pipe tobacco beside the forgotten glass of wine, and patted Louis gently on the shoulder. ‘The Generalmajor and two of his fly-boys were at Stalingrad until only a few weeks ago, Louis. My sons are our ticket. The flight’s on for 0600 hours, weather permitting.’
There was barely a nod, no consciousness of stuffing the furnace and lighting up, only that same far-off look. Moisture collecting in the ox-eyes.
‘My father came to visit but there was no thought or mention of my going home. He avoids looking directly at me and this I still cannot understand. Anne-Marie has said it was very wise of me to stay, that the years, they will harden me to life’s little realities and that I must always live for my weaving. She is so good to me. Every day I see her, I thank God we have slept together and shared our love for each other.’
‘Anne-Marie Buemondi (neé Cordeau), self-proclaimed lesbian. Sexually promiscuous. Has had many lesbian affairs, most notably that with the weaver Viviane Damot and, most recently, the student Angélique Girard, bisexual with whom she has been secretly meeting for some time.
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