Snails and cold at that! Kohler reached for the rosé and shunned them. ‘I’ll stick to the bread and lentils,’ he said. Louis was eyeing the damned snails with gluttony; he’d take his time too!
‘More for you, my old one,’ grumbled Kohler, shoving the dish his way.
‘Hermann, please! Must I continually correct you? The snail in its little cage is supreme. Monsieur, the sauce, it is superb. Magnificent! Crushed garlic, egg yolks, olive oil, tarragon and vermouth, I think.’
Borel was impressed. ‘We understand each other, Inspector.’
‘Good! Then perhaps, monsieur, you would tell me exactly when and why you lost the right to draw water from this place?’
Again there was a rapid exchange of glances between the herbalist and the weaver. It was Viviane Darnot who said, ‘It happened some years ago, Inspector. Alain Borel and the girls had gone for a picnic up to the ruins. They’d play their little games – Saracen and Roman, which would they be? Anne-Marie and I, we …’
Borel interceded. ‘My son had not gone with them, messieurs. He had come down here to watch two ladies making love.’
‘The girls had dared him to do it,’ said the weaver. ‘Anne-Marie was furious. You have to have known her to understand her temper. Poor Ludo bore the brunt of it. She hurt him in the worst of ways and nothing I could say or do would stop her.’
‘Without water there is nothing, messieurs. Both the family of the Perettis and my own, farm the small fields in the valley here and the pastures on the hillside. In the old days we shared the water. Now,’ he gave a shrug, ‘I let my fields lie fallow, for in summer there is no hope for them.’
‘And she never rescinded the penalty?’ asked the Sûreté.
The herbalist shook his head. ‘Not for these fourteen years, monsieur. Not since the girls were ten years old and my Alain was twelve. Ah he’s a good boy, and all boys have to get into mischief once in a while or they cannot learn what is right and wrong. The day was very hot. The ladies …’
Suddenly flustered, he reached for his wine then thought better of it.
The weaver said, ‘We were outside under the shade of the olive trees, Inspector. We were very much in love. Anne-Marie had come back to me. Myself, I was … well, grateful, I suppose. Happy – immensely happy and secure once again.’
‘And Alain, your son, monsieur? He and Josianne-Michèle?’
Borel’s gaze was steady. ‘Are like two pieces of broken glass, monsieur, that when placed side by side, fit absolutely.’
‘Is the boy in the maquis?’ asked Kohler, forgetting the lump of cheese on his knife.
‘The maquis? Of course not, Inspector. Alain does most of the collecting. He’ll be home for Christmas. You can ask him then yourself.’
‘Four days …’ said St-Cyr. ‘We may not be given the time, monsieur. The Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane and the Gestapo Munk are impatient. Indeed, I am surprised they are not here.’
‘Then I will tell you that Alain, he has given me his solemn oath not to go into the hills for that purpose.’
Meaning, there might or might not be a maquis. Kohler thought it best to inform them of the pilot’s body they’d found in Bayonne. ‘There’s a code, a five-letter grouping that needs explaining.’
‘A code?’ asked the weaver, blanching.
‘A kaleidoscope, mademoiselle,’ said the Sûreté. ‘A toy of much beauty and interest.’
She swallowed tightly but avoided looking at Borel. ‘And this code, Inspector?’ she asked.
‘Louis, we’d best keep it to ourselves,’ admonished Kohler.
‘Yes, yes, Hermann. At least for now.’ St-Cyr found the kaleidoscope among the other things in his pockets, and taking it out, held it a moment.
Borel shoved his plate aside. He’d eaten little. ‘Permit me,’ he said, but it was the weaver who reached for it from across the table.
St-Cyr held on to it. They looked at each other and he felt the quivering in her fingers.
‘It was mine, Inspector. I gave it to Anne-Marie when we were at the convent school. I was young, I was so very upset – things had been terrible for me there and then, suddenly, the ill-feeling and the punishment ceased. I was allowed to weave what I wanted – what I saw so clearly with my artist’s inner eye. I studied with the best of the best. Oh I knew Anne-Marie must have spoken to her father. I knew he’d paved the way for me with a generous donation the Mother Superior could not have refused, but I hid all that even from myself. When one is young and hurting so much, the mind acts as a shield. This,’ she tugged at the kaleidoscope, ‘had been left to me by my Great Aunt Sally in whom, at the very tender age of six, I had confided everything. It was my most precious possession, Inspector, but I gave it not as some sort of reward for helping me from the hell of that place, but out of love for her. Anne-Marie was my hero – not heroine, please. I’ve always admired her strengths and tried to overlook her weaknesses. She was my Joan of Arc.’
The colour of her eyes was exquisite; the hair, lustrous, black and thick, whereas Madame Buemondi’s eyes had been greeny-brown, her hair a faded ash blonde.
‘Carlo Buemondi’s eyes, Hermann. What colour were they?’
‘Mud!’ snorted Kohler richly.
‘Brown, Inspector. Dark brown,’ said the weaver harshly. ‘He’s of Italian stock, or had you forgotten?’
‘But from the south of Italy?’ asked St-Cyr, flustering her.
‘No. No, from the north. From Torino. At least, that’s what he always boasted.’
St-Cyr released the kaleidoscope. ‘Please,’ he said, indicating the lamp Borel had lighted.
Hesitating, for she was uncertain of what he’d gain by watching her, the weaver held the toy up to her left eye and trained it on the light. Turning … turning always as the patterns were formed and thrown outwards or fell in on themselves.
‘Your right eye, mademoiselle? You do not use it?’
Ah damn, he had remembered Chamonix. ‘I should,’ she said. ‘It’s my weak one and the ophthalmologists always insisted I use it whenever possible. But one gets lazy, isn’t that so? The instinct is to use the stronger eye.’
Hermann’s look said, Louis, what the hell are you up to? ‘It’s nothing, my old one,’ cautioned the Sûreté. ‘Merely patient observation. The twins each have a lazy eye, and so does Mademoiselle Darnot.’
‘This one,’ she said. ‘The right one, Inspector.’
Kohler took in the look she gave, noting with an inward sigh that pride had got the better of her. ‘You kept a diary, mademoiselle,’ he said.
‘My d …? Yes, why yes, I did once.’ Ah no.
‘Where is it, please?’
He knew. ‘Gone. Someone … someone took it from my house. Look, it had been forgotten. I hadn’t opened it in years, but then …’
‘Then Jean-Paul Delphane came into your life and you noticed that it was missing.’
Oh God damn him. ‘Yes.’
Flustered, Ludo Borel excused himself. Viviane Darnot went with him to the door, then stepped quickly out into the night.
‘Hermann, we must go easy, eh? The eggs, they are threatening to break but the time for making the omelette is not yet at hand. Breathe in the smell of these hills. Listen to their silence and remember always the bits of Roman glass and other things Mademoiselle Josette-Louise wishes to take back to Paris with her.’
‘Who was the father, Louis?’
The Frog searched for crumbs among the snail shells. ‘Jean-Paul Delphane, my old one. Chamonix. I have always wondered how it was that he knew the villa so well and at which clinic he could find Viviane Darnot.’
‘Were they in it together – the killing of the financier?’
‘Let us hope not, because if they were, then we are up against formidable enemies.’
‘No matter how much of a Fascist and to the Far Right, or of the Action Française, Louis, Delphane must have been helping the Resistance. The Abwehr became suspicious, so he went over to the Gestapo and is
now trying desperately to cover his tracks by using us.’
‘And anyone else, Hermann. Most particularly Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi and his daughter.’
‘Not daughters?’ breathed Kohler.
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah! it’s in the lap of the hills that our answers lie, but first, the Villa of the Golden Oracle and the School of Fine Arts. Angélique Girard must answer a few simple questions, Hermann, and so must Carlo Buemondi.’
‘Then the boy Bébert Peretti, eh? And the Abbé Roussel.’
‘The abbé?’ asked St-Cyr, hoping that the Gestapo’s Bavarian detective had found the answer for himself and was learning a few things about the French.
‘The abbé, of course,’ said Kohler, unable to find the will to grin. ‘The parish records, Louis. Deaths and births, I think, and in that order.’
Hermann’s nose was still quite sore. St-Cyr thought of that night in Paris and of the dancer who had died for no other reason than that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He thought of the war and how easily loyalties could change, and vowed that no matter the circumstance or consequences, Delphane must pay for what he’d done.
‘That kid in Cannes, Louis. The one that died in the cellars of the Hotel Montfleury.’
A nod would suffice, grim though it was.
‘Suzanne Rogette, Louis. Age seventeen.’
8
Dawn came, and there was little comfort in it. St-Cyr made his way up to the hearse, only to find a coffin had been loaded during the night. Immediately images were etched in grey upon the celluloid: Fratani and others in the village graveyard, digging up a corpse and transferring its remains to the coffin; the abbé begging God’s forgiveness and praying for salvation; then the carrying of the new coffin down to the hearse beneath a winter’s moon.
‘We heard no sound?’ he managed. How could they do this to them?
Mouse-eyed with guilt and clutching a black beret that had seen better days, Dédou Fratani was apologetic. ‘The cottage,’ he muttered, giving the shrug of a simple man, ‘it is shielded from up here even though the cold of night makes such sounds hug the ground and pass like vapour from the feet. I must move some things, Inspector.’ He gritted his teeth in deference and ducked his head towards the hearse.
‘Is that wise?’ asked the Sûreté. ‘The Gestapo, monsieur. They will be watching for just such a thing.’
‘Wise or not, it must be done.’
‘What is it this time?’
‘Three freshly killed goats, honey, olives, the oil, sausage, soap, dried apricots, warm sweaters and wool. The plants also for the mademoiselle to dye the wool.’
None of it was essential, none of it worth risking all their lives. Besides, Fratani was admitting it to a cop. Ah merde! ‘She can take the plants and the wool with her when we’re finished. For now you go nowhere, monsieur.’
‘But … but …’
‘No buts. As garde champêtre, I charge you with the duty of watching over those two women. Use the village telegraph – ah! don’t deny it exists. My partner and I know these villages well enough. Use it so as to move them both to safety at a moment’s notice. The Gestapo Munk may come and if not him, the one from Bayonne.’
‘Then will you drive the hearse to the garage that is on the rue Georges Clemenceau just before it passes over the railway tracks?’
In le Souquet, the old part of Cannes, another hilltop warren. Merde, why must he persist if not to hide that very thing they wished to hide more than anything else?’ If we do so, Monsieur Fratani, and the Gestapo Munk discovers us aiding your butter and eggs venture, my partner and I are finished.’ St-Cyr tossed the hand of the impatient and stamped a decisive foot. ‘Don’t persist. Don’t be an idiot!’
‘No casket, no deliveries … yet if they should find me out, Inspector, it might satisfy the Gestapo Munk and me, I would be the sacrifice, isn’t that so? The one who has saved the village.’
‘With your name cast in bronze near the gates, eh? Who can guess which way the vulture will turn. Don’t tempt it with your carrion.’
‘Then you must talk to the Abbé Roussel. That one will swear to look after those two until I return.’
‘And if you don’t?’ snapped the Sûreté.
‘Then you yourselves must take care of them, Inspector. Please, it is necessary. Clients gained are clients lost if deliveries are not made, especially as it is so near to Christmas and the things, they have already been paid for.’
‘And pilots who are dead; men who must escape, eh? Answer me, monsieur. Be truthful.’
‘Monsieur, I know nothing of such things, nor does anyone else in the village. The Germans, they look where there is no need. They think what they should not think and the one from Bayonne, he urges them on, but why this should be, we do not know.’
They’d get nothing out of the villagers. The people would be as silent as their hills and the ruins of their citadel.
Hermann came out to them, checking his pistol and banging the clip home with the heel of a hand. ‘Merde, Louis! Here I thought this place would be warm and fertile. Lush under the palms. Women bathing in the buff with dates and figs to pluck!’
Vapour steamed from his urine as he unleashed a flood. He shook himself, said, ‘Be thankful we’re not on the Russian Front, eh? It’d be ice before it hit the ground and this,’ he shook it a last time, ‘would break off and shatter. That a coffin?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Open it.’
Ah no! ‘Open it?’ swallowed Fratani. ‘But there is no need, monsieur.’
‘Gott im Himmel, imbecile! When a Gestapo gives an order, you obey! Use a can-opener if you have to, but do it!’
He was in rare form, having slept on the floor without even the aid of a blanket.
Fratani threw a desperate look towards the village. Alone on the heights, the Abbé Roussel, his black cassock pilloried against the snow, stood watching them.
The hearse-driver crossed himself and tried to find a way out of things. It took too long for him to undo the screws, and when he had them in hand, he had to ask for help. ‘We must draw it out a little, messieurs. Please be careful. It … it is heavy and nothing must be disturbed.’
Viviane Darnot and Josette-Louise stood a little downhill of them. The girl clutched the weaver’s cloak about herself.
Two women, a mother and her daughter, said St-Cyr to himself, but where, please, mesdemoiselles, is the other sister? In the mountains as we’ve been told, or in the casket?
Hermann grunted as he and Fratani went to work. The Abbé was striding rapidly downhill. The boy Bébert Peretti and his grandmother had come out of the mas.
The skeleton still had scraps of desiccated flesh clinging to it and bits of badly stained clothing.
‘A child, Louis. Male or female. Probably about ten or twelve years of age. She’s been in the ground several years. Maybe ten at least.’
‘Let us take it out. Let us see what is below it.’
‘Messieurs, please. The false bottom has been glued in place. If we break it open, another will have to be made. You can see for yourselves at the garage that I have only been telling you the truth.’
‘And to which cemetery are the remains to be consigned? Come, come, monsieur. An answer is demanded.’
Fratani blinked to clear his eyes. ‘The one that is beside and behind Mademoiselle Viviane’s house.’
‘Louis …?’
‘It’s all right, Hermann. Unless I am mistaken, the kaleidoscope has just taken another turning.’
Both of the women had gone back to the cottage.
Beyond the Villa of the Golden Oracle, the hills above Le Cannet climbed into open pine woods now dusted and caked with snow. St-Cyr breathed in deeply. He wished he could walk beneath those boughs and feel that childhood sense of wonder such a forest brings to all who harbour innocence. He longed to be free of crime, to banish the sordid and the tragedy from his life; to blot them from memory. He wanted to put his feet up, to get to know Gabrielle and her so
n, to enjoy Christmas and the New Year as they ought to be.
But there was no time. God mocked his little detective; the Nazis watched, and somewhere in that villa or in its grounds lay answers they had to have, answers that others would wish to keep from them. Ah yes, unfortunately.
Angélique Girard, Carlo Buemondi and Jean-Paul Delphane. The letters DMXTG, what did they really signify? A code, as they’d thought, or something quite different?
Two flat tyres en route to Cannes had caused unpleasant delays. The first had been a simple puncture, that of a nail a kilometre from the village and not where it should be – who had carpenter’s nails to spare these days? The second had been a slow leak that had suddenly chosen to burst and rip at a boulder they’d bounced over. The repairing of the first had taken an hour; the second had been impossible until Hermann, with Bavarian stubbornness, had braided roadside straw into ropes and they’d stuffed the tyre with these and managed to limp into the city.
He’d left Hermann to watch over the opening of the casket at the garage. One could not be in two places at the same time no matter the need or desire.
And now? he asked. Has it all been to separate us again so that Hermann cannot watch my back nor I his?
Uneasy at the thought, he began to climb alongside the eastern wall, ducking under branches when necessary. There were no footprints in the snow. It was as pure as if only just fallen. The land fell away behind him and towards a neighbouring estate, perhaps some 800 metres to the east, among cypresses, olive trees, oaks and sycamores of its own. But to the north, there were the woods and soon the smell of pines. He took a moment to touch a pine-cone and brought a branch to his nose.
Then he went into the woods anyway, and when he found the tracks, followed them down to the small, rough-hewn door that was in the centre of the north wall. She’d either not had a bicycle, or had chosen to carry it.
Once inside the grounds, the footprints made their way through the kitchen gardens, pausing every now and then to view the winter beans, the snow-caked Brussels sprouts on their sturdy stalks, the cabbages and onions.
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