Kaleidoscope

by J. Robert Janes

  The church was empty and cold. When he reached the last of the houses, the land still climbed. A rough rampart of maquis scrub and angular blocks of stone rose to the ruins of the citadel, stark and vacant yet sharp in the long slant of the sun.

  Gott im Himmel, what was he to do? The kid had been sick at her stomach, a mild case of food poisoning probably. But had that vomiting served only to cut him off from Louis and drag him up here? He knew he ought to go back; knew he had to go on.

  The streets of the fortress were lined with its broken walls. Everywhere the whitish stones stood out as if the limestone boulders had been burnt to lime and the years had removed whatever blackness the fire had caused. Some walls were higher than others. Rooms lay upon rooms, some like caves, others open to the sky. Portals gaped; rubble lay strewn beneath the snow. Here and there, clumps of maquis and juniper struggled to gain a foothold, green against the vibrant white. Goats had been and gone; donkeys too. In one stable a smoke-blackened ceiling gave evidence of fires past, though no fresh ashes lay beneath and there was still no sign of anyone.

  What might once have been the dining hall was now open to the sky and ringed by broken walls and here a room, there a room or passage. And everywhere that same strong, sage-like smell of the hills but also that of wet moss and mould, a graveyard smell.

  When he came to a portal at the end of a short passageway, he saw snow-capped mountains in the distance – Italy over there; then the nearer hills with their frugal clumps of scattered pines and solitary cypresses, and finally the drop. Ah Jesus, Jesus, it was steep. About sixty or eighty metres, not the thirty he’d thought from below the village. Rust stained the rocks like vomit and though there was no wind, its chill was there.

  The village lay well off to the right and all but out of sight, huddled with its back to the fortress, house piled upon house, rocks lining many of the eaves. Trees and scrub and boulders between it and the cliff, perhaps 300 metres of them. The portal hidden then … all but hidden from the village.

  He dropped a stone but heard nothing – had given up listening for it entirely, only to feel its hollow clatter in every bone.

  There was a sill across the base of the portal, an arch above it. The thing was just wide enough for two persons to sit, or for one to put his legs up should he have no fear of heights.

  Suddenly queasy at the thought, Kohler turned away and began to retrace his steps. There were too many places for an assailant to hide. From any one of several corners a shot could be fired and one would not know whence it had come.

  ‘Louis,’ he muttered. ‘Louis, I don’t like it.’

  When he reached the gap where once there had been a gate, the sea was brilliant in the distance. Cannes spread along the shore, then the hills climbed to the cottage tucked away in its little valley; then the hillside where the murder had happened, the mas of the blind woman, and finally uphill to the village. Olive groves were on the lower slopes; orchards too and fields, but on the road below, the boy Bébert Peretti was holding the Abbé Roussel’s hand. Behind them, in a straggle, were the men of the village. Old … many of them looked too old to be climbing such a hill.

  The priest wore black; the rest, a motley collection of unpatched blue denim, brown corduroy or leather, and berets that summed up at once their total indifference to such things and the absolute frugality with which they approached each work-week. Only on Sundays, or for weddings, funerals and fêtes would they wear their stovepipe suits of black.

  Dédou Fratani was a few paces behind the priest. There was no sign of the herbalist. From a distance of 400 metres they watched him approach and when they turned to evaporate back into their village, he knew Borel would be waiting for him at his shop. Word had somehow travelled up to them from the cottage that Josette-Louise was ill. He’d had no need to go up to the ruins and yet he could not have stopped himself.

  He threw a fitful look back at the citadel. Saracen or Roman, what did it matter? Once trapped among those ruins, once the hunting had started, who would care?

  Louis … Louis, has Delphane chosen his spot so well?

  The cinematographer recorded everything with the camera of his mind. He’d witnessed the first hesitant meeting of two souls, that final rush into each other’s arms. The tears, the half-smiles, the lingering, trembling touch of Josette-Louise Buemondi’s fingertips on the weaver’s cheeks.

  Viviane Darnot kept returning to comfort the girl. The shawl Josianne-Michèle had loathed to touch, her sister Josette drew tightly around herself, stroking it fondly as though in wonder.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ she said, ‘so talented.’ And then again apologetically as if they’d only just met, ‘Forgive me, please. I could not stop them from bringing me, Viviane.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Forget it, chérie. Just try to rest. She’s so pale, Inspector. Can’t you see how worried she is? That ham you ate … Ludo … Where the hell is he? Why hasn’t the German brought him to see her?’

  ‘The Bavarian, mademoiselle. Hermann, he will get here in his own good time. Nothing stops him once he’s made up his mind.’

  She arched her eyebrows. ‘Is that some sort of warning?’

  He would give a shrug. ‘It is merely a statement of fact. Please take it any way you like.’

  God damn him!

  The weaver brushed a hand over the girl’s hair then kissed her on the cheek. St-Cyr noted the gorgeous dress the woman wore, a shade of blue not dark or light, or greyish, yet all three and of a depth of colour that matched her eyes and radiated a warmth that glowed.

  More camomile tea was poured into the patient’s cup, the heavy silver bracelets sliding down the weaver’s wrists, the girl drawn to them and to the rings, memories of her childhood rushing in to bring their fresh, silent well of tears.

  Their foreheads came together, the weaver gently clasping the girl by the back of the head and shaking her a little. ‘Don’t, chérie. The Inspectors will find the killer, then you and I will bury her up by the village she loved so much, isn’t that right?’

  ‘And Josianne-Michèle?’ begged the girl.

  ‘It’s best you don’t meet. Really, ma petite, it was wise of your sister to take herself away. The fits … She can’t be upset. You know how she is.’

  ‘Worse?’

  ‘Unfortunately yes.’

  The girl was distraught. ‘I should have written; I should have come to see her, Viviane. She knows how ashamed I am to have failed her. The lies, Viviane. The lies of my success.’

  ‘Inspector, would you mind?’

  St-Cyr nodded and got up from his chair to busy himself by adding more wood to the fire. Some cypress, yes, to give the hot, fast aromatic flame; a little of the green oak to slow things down, and some of the olive for lasting strength.

  He warmed his hands, then stood and, not looking at the two of them, went over to the bureau.

  They saw him pause before the mirror – knew he could not watch them from there but wondered why he was looking so steadily into it when all he could see were reflections of the door and window, the rug, the chair and little else.

  Opening one of the bureau drawers, he would have sworn their voices hesitated, but grief has its pauses so perhaps it was only that.

  As before, the two masks stared up at him from their nest of lingerie. Silks, satins and laces in pale creams, shimmering sky-blues, emerald-greens, soft rose and white.

  The mask on the right had been that of Josette-Louise. Quick-witted, high-spirited, vivacious and intelligent, warm and outgoing – successful. No secrets and yet … and yet so many of them.

  The masks had been reversed. That of Josianne-Michèle was now on the right, that of her sister on the left.

  ‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, did you touch these?’ he asked – any one of several people could have done so since their first visit. Indeed, Josianne-Michèle could easily have moved them after Hermann and he had left for Bayonne and Paris.

  The two women glanced at each other – some sig
nal perhaps. Caution, yes. ‘Mademoiselle …?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Inspector, I touched them after Herr Kohler went to find Ludo for me.’

  Surprised at her familiarity towards the herbalist, he wondered if it was because of arrogance, some childhood legacy. Surely she should have referred to him as Monsieur Borel?

  ‘You shifted their positions,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I placed them as they should be. Mine to the left, Inspector. Josianne’s to the right.’

  ‘But how is it, please, that you have had the mask made when you haven’t been back here in all these years?’

  ‘I went to Cannes two years ago to see my father, Inspector. It was at his request. He said he’d already made one of Josianne and wanted to do me.’

  Two years ago … December 1940 and a world that had changed for ever. ‘Did you see your sister then, mademoiselle?’

  ‘No. No, we did not see each other. She was ill and it would only have upset her.’

  ‘Carlo obtained a laissez-passer for her, Inspector. Josette stayed with me, though her father wanted her to stay with him.’

  ‘And the mother?’ he asked. ‘What did Anne-Marie Buemondi do?’

  There must be no hesitation. ‘Flew into a rage and went to stay at the villa in Le Cannet. Refused to have anything to do with us. That’s when … when she left me and … and began again to hunt for another.’

  For Angélique Girard. The weaver would be standing beside the girl’s chair. One hand would rest on Josette’s shoulder. He could not see the two of them in the mirror yet longed to have the image of them.

  ‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, permit me, please, to ask another question.’

  They would glance at each other. The weaver’s eyes would register alarm and fear just as they had in Chamonix.

  ‘Yes, yes, Inspector,’ said the girl. ‘Your question?’

  ‘Ask it, then,’ said the weaver apprehensively.

  But he thought not and began to pack his pipe, thereby distressing them both.

  When he had the furnace going to his satisfaction, he blessed the Luftwaffe for their handsome donation of tobacco and praised Hermann’s tenacity in obtaining it.

  ‘The espadrille of your sister, mademoiselle, and the bits of Roman glass. Where have you put them? They were there, on that shelf beside the bed.’

  Neither of them moved. For perhaps ten milliseconds the cinematographer’s camera caught them. Alarm in the weaver’s eyes; panic in the girl’s. They both recovered quickly and he wanted to demand which of them had fired that crossbow but had to give them both the benefit of doubt. He tossed the hand of indifference. ‘There was also a cheap porcelain figurine of the Christ at Galilee and a cross that had been fashioned out of horseshoe nails. Mesdemoiselles, I have only to ask the village blacksmith whom he made that cross for. Come, come, enough of this. Too many lives are at stake.’

  It was the girl who went to get the things from the small suitcase Chantal and Muriel had given her in Paris. A donation, as were the clothes she wore.

  ‘They are all I want to take back with me, Inspector. They were mine, my little treasures.’

  Then why did you leave them here? he wanted to challenge her. Was it because your sister coveted them, or did as a child? Ah Nom de Dieu, he wished he could find it in his heart to break her to pieces before it was too late, but that heart would not let him and he only nodded grimly and sucked on his pipe. ‘Your locket,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, mademoiselle. In your haste to leave your room in Paris, you forgot to take it with you.’

  Scratched and dented, tarnished and dull, it was dangled above her open hand and he watched her as her fingers hesitantly closed over it, heard her voice, a whispered, ‘Merci, monsieur. I have thought I would never see it again.’

  The cameras sought the depths of the look she gave. Ah Mon Dieu, she had such lovely dark brown eyes, and were he but able to roll back the years, the smile, the happiness, the love of living that once had been in them. Ah yes, the mask as it should have been.

  Hermann arrived with the herbalist. Rapidly the cinematographer reloaded his camera and drew on his pipe. By its very lack of size, the cottage closed them in and he had the thought then, that so much of this whole business rested here. The question of water rights would come up. Borel knew it in his heart of hearts. It was only a matter of time.

  And so would questions about his son and the maquis, and of his son’s relationship with Josianne-Michèle.

  ‘Permit me, please,’ said the Sûreté, quickly leaving his camera aside to take from Borel the small sachet the herbalist had prepared.

  ‘The purple loosestrife,’ answered Borel, ‘for the mild case of food poisoning your partner has said.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ answered St-Cyr, impatient at the interruption. ‘A moment, please.’ He brought the sachet to one nostril, cursed the habit of tobacco which spoiled one’s sense of smell; said, ‘Peppermint, spearmint, camomile and …’

  He looked up. Borel answered, ‘European centaury and a little …’

  The detective waited for him to say it. ‘Wormwood, Inspector. It’s perfectly acceptable in such small quantities and hardly dangerous.’

  The girl glanced questioningly from Borel to Viviane. ‘Absinthe, Hermann. It is from wormwood that the curse of French drinkers came. Is that not correct, monsieur?’

  It was. ‘And if taken regularly, Hermann, it causes poisoning of the central nervous system.’

  Oh-oh. ‘Convulsions?’ asked Kohler, alarmed by the drift.

  ‘Convulsions, ah yes,’ said St-Cyr nodding grimly. ‘But one has to take a lot of it, or simply taste the oil.’

  Son of a bitch! One could have dropped a bomb and none of them would have raised a hair. Kohler wanted to yell, Salut, Louis! but contented himself by reaching for the kettle and then the teapot. ‘Shall we warm it first?’ he asked. Hell, the thing was already warm!

  Borel simply watched him and when the pot had been emptied of its camomile tea and warmed again, he handed him the sachet. ‘A half of the water,’ he said, indicating the kettle. ‘I only want her to have a few sips, a cupful at the most. Don’t drown it, Inspector.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  They thought they knew everything, these two from Paris and yet they knew nothing. Absolutely nothing!

  It was the cinematographer’s first close look at Ludo Borel. Again he was impressed – indeed humbled – by the skill with which Madame Mélanie Peretti, the blind woman, had carved the santon she had hidden on that hillside. Borel’s Stocky figure spelled business and expertise in all he touched, and these same attributes were there in the carving. Oh for sure, there were the outward things, the broad shoulders, the squat stature, thick neck, large, strongly boned head. Tough … this man was tough, but understanding and skill were in his every bone.

  The large dark brown eyes missed nothing as they searched the girl for clues to the cause of vomiting. Even as he watched him, St-Cyr knew Borel’s mind was rapidly formulating the tonic he would prescribe for general health – sifting out each herb, discarding some on second thought, adding others.

  Only in the waxed, handlebar moustache was there vanity. The rough clothes, the worn blue plaid shirt and coarse beige sweater were clean, without patches or holes … Yes, yes, this man was a leader in the village but had come by that position not just through the legacy of his family’s business. He was the herbalist and never would question his place in the scheme of things or the need to uphold it.

  Honour … there were so many professions that, alas, sadly lacked this basic ingredient. Lawyers, doctors … policemen and detectives, ah yes. These days honour was on hard times. Pride in one’s work also.

  Borel had not just his own sense of being to protect but that of past generations of Borels going back at least a few hundred years.

  When the tea was taken, he made the girl lie down. ‘Now you must rest, little one. Tomorrow will come and it will be another day.’

  It was Hermann who said qui
etly, ‘How much opium did you put in that tea?’

  Borel’s gaze lifted to them from the bedside. ‘Enough.’

  ‘But you didn’t know she’d need it, monsieur? You had already had that bottle out on your desk when I came up to tell you she was ill?’

  ‘I knew she would be upset, Inspector. The loss of her mother, the estrangement from her sister also … ah! so many things, isn’t that correct? I prepared myself.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did,’ mumbled Kohler grumpily.

  ‘Hermann, please! The herbalist knows the family well. The past conditions our responses to the present. He was only doing what he thought was best.’

  I.e., leave it alone! Gott im Himmel, why should they? ‘Strike while the iron is hot, Louis. This one had better spill the lentils soon.’

  ‘The lentils … Ah yes,’ said Borel, motioning to the table.

  Viviane Darnot had set out a meagre supper of olives, goat cheese, bread and rosé, a jar of peppers and one of rabbit pâté. ‘It isn’t much,’ she apologized, giving them the half-smile of a shy innocence. ‘Anne-Marie’s dealings in butter and eggs did not extend to myself, Inspectors. The pâté was left on the doorstep by Bébert Peretti.’

  ‘But we did not hear him knock?’ exclaimed St-Cyr.

  Again there was that smile. ‘Because he didn’t, Inspector. For myself, I knew, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘I don’t, mademoiselle,’ cautioned the Sûreté.

  ‘I understand these people, Inspector. Madame Peretti wishes to offer you a little something, perhaps to humour Herr Kohler and gain favour, but knows she must not offer too much. Even so, these days it is a sacrifice.’

  Touché. She and the herbalist swiftly exchanged glances. The two of them began to talk of the dyes she would use for her next project and at once the impression given was that they had known each other professionally for years.

  Of the lentils there was no sign until Borel took a jar from his pocket. ‘In olive oil,’ he said, ‘with black beans, sweet fennel and much garlic. I am continually experimenting, Inspectors. It’s in the blood. Also, the snails in a sauce of my own. Not quite the aïoli for which we are justly famous. Indeed, something quite different but perhaps some day,’ he gave a shrug, ‘who knows, it might become just as popular.’