Kaleidoscope

by J. Robert Janes

  Oh-oh. They were a pair, the two of them. Kohler heaved a detective’s sigh. ‘The professor drives his car; you ride in the back. We’ll know soon enough where she aches.’

  Viviane Darnot said, ‘I’d rather not come. I’d rather stay here.’ She had meant it too.

  ‘Delphane?’ he asked, but she did not answer.

  There were footprints in the snow at the weaver’s house and immediately St-Cyr recognized Hermann’s and the woman’s – it must be her. But the tracks showed they’d been and gone. A fresh grave, no sign of the hearse or of Dédou Fratani.

  He found the tracks of the red Majestic bicycle. Two sets: the one leaving early in the morning for the villa in Le Cannet; the other returning only recently. Ah Nom de Dieu, was Josianne-Michèle now waiting for him in that house?

  Another set of tracks all but matched Hermann’s. This set had come only recently, he thought, but had it also left the house? He gripped his chin in doubt and favoured the scruffy moustache to which the frost now clung.

  Delphane, was he in there with the girl, and where the hell was Hermann? Hermann! he wanted to shout. I need you.

  Snow covered the shoulders of the terracotta urns that stood about the weaver’s back garden in clusters among the abbey ruins. The door to her kitchen was open, the house in darkness. Stars were beginning to appear through the faint dusting of crystalline snow that fell to mock the very thought of Christmas that was only three days away.

  Immediately and unbidden the scent of Mirage came to him and he heard a voice bell-clear and strong in praise and hope, singing ‘Oh Holy Night’. But across the silk screen of his imagination flashed the stark image of a group of shabby men, one boy in particular and their priest. A tiny village square. Walls of stone; the sound of water running somewhere … yes, yes, a tap, a stone basin that had been in use for centuries.

  He was now certain of so many things and yet still uncertain of others. He heard the words: ‘Attention! For crimes against the State …’ He heard the crash of Mauser rifles even as Gabrielle Arcuri continued to sing and German soldiers, on leave in Paris, listened with tears in their eyes because that song and all others like it were universal in appeal.

  Ah Nom de Dieu, Josianne-Michèle, don’t hole up in this house. Let us not go through the same thing again! Hermann … where was Hermann? Jean-Paul Delphane was in the house, but was the girl dead or alive and still hunting him or waiting for the Sûreté to find her?

  An escape network, Hermann, he said. Maquis in the hills – ah! me, I don’t know, my old one. The Buemondi woman was desperate for cash. Cash! When she had bundles and bundles of it in that safe of hers. Perhaps 3,000,000 francs, Hermann. Perhaps 4,000,000.

  DMXTG, Hermann. The numbers: 4, 13, 24, 20, and back around again to the 7. The kaleidoscope, Hermann. The kaleidoscope and Chamonix.

  Lights were brought; voices were hushed. Soon only the quiet gurgle of sulphurous mud could be heard.

  In pool after pool beneath the fake temple roof, muddy ogres stood amid the rising steam and gawked like dumb-founded savages in some ancient and primitive grotto.

  Angélique Girard floated face down in the mud. Her arms were stretched out to the sides, the legs slightly parted – oh, she’d have struggled valiantly. She’d have thrashed about and gasped for air. But the killer’s hands had been too strong. No doubt he’d straddled her hips and ridden her hard as he’d held her under.

  Buemondi could not keep his eyes off the girl’s mud-slicked backside; the weaver was going to be sick. The kid had evacuated her bowels.

  Kohler knelt at the edge of the pool. He reached out. He wished that Louis was here. Louis was so much better at this sort of thing. The Frog could detach himself yet crawl right into the victim’s skin.

  He strained to grasp a foot, an ankle. Elusively she drifted away. Now Buemondi saw how tangled that frizzed-out mass of amber hair had become. He saw how the killer must have seized her by the hair as well as the neck. ‘Shove her my way,’ said Kohler, and when the professor panicked at the thought, added a firm, ‘Do it, my fine. You drowned her in this. Me, I’m going to make you pump her out.’

  ‘Monsieur … Monsieur, I did not do it. Her neck, monsieur. The marks of his fingers, the bruises … they will still be there.’

  ‘Yours,’ said Kohler grimly. ‘You try to leave and I’ll kill you.’

  Buemondi grunted as he got down on his hands and knees. He leaned well out …‘Ah! She does not want to come my way, Inspector.’ Mud clung to the hand that had dipped as he’d momentarily lost balance.

  He straightened up. He reached out again. ‘Angélique, ma petite…’ he said. ‘Please don’t be so difficult.’

  Using her right boot, the weaver savagely shoved him in. He gave a startled cry only to have it abruptly cut off by a mouthful of mud. Gagging, choking and wallowing about, he stood up and tried to clear his eyes. Bellowed, ‘No! No! It was not me!’

  The body floated near. Frantically he pushed it away and waded back towards shore, only to find Viviane Darnot all too ready to kick him in the face.

  ‘You killed her, Carlo!’ she shrilled. ‘You bastard! How could you do such a thing?’

  ‘Viviane. Viviane! I did no such thing! I left her here when the call came for me to return to the studio. We were going to have dinner. She was going to stay the night with me.’

  ‘Then fish her out! I dare you to touch her now.’

  Kohler left him to it. Reluctantly Buemondi waded back to the corpse. He hesitated. He sought out the two of them, pleading with red-rimmed eyes that were smarting.

  When he tried to take hold of the corpse, his hands slipped several times. ‘She is like a fish in oil,’ he gagged, not realizing what he’d said. He vomited, gripped his gut and threw up again – coughed and snorted in a little mud. Wiped his nose. ‘Monsieur,’ he gasped. ‘Is not the hell of this enough to convince you I did not do it?’

  ‘Strip off. Go on, do it!’ shouted Kohler. ‘Toss your car keys and wallet over here.’

  ‘Monsieur … Monsieur …’

  Fumbling with the buttons of his overcoat, Buemondi finally got it off and left it to lie on the surface of the mud.

  His wallet and then the keys to his beautiful Lagonda were placed on the walkway. ‘Naked,’ said Kohler. ‘I want you just like her.’

  Wallowing, the professor dragged off his things and when he was done, he looked up at the two of them again. Viviane wanted him to drown; the detective was trying to stop himself from shooting him.

  So be it then. He waded back to the corpse to take her in his arms, said, ‘My little one, my little one, this should never have happened to you and that bitch, she knows it only too well.’

  Mud clogged the girl’s nose and gaping mouth whose lips were curled tightly back. It slid from the thin shoulders and slim hips with their sharp, prominent bones, coursing slowly from the slack mounds of tiny breasts.

  Buemondi began to wipe the mud from her. Weeping, muttering endearments, he brushed a hand tenderly over her brow and tried to close the eyes that had once been so lovely. Cupping a hand, he ploughed the mud off her chest and stomach and forced himself to close her mouth. ‘Monsieur the Detective, I did not do this. My wife and I often shared lovers. It was a game of viciousness between us. Me to see if I could take from her; she to do the same to me. It pleased her to mock my manliness. That one there can tell you much. Make her join me in the mud and let me put my hands on her.’

  The weaver turned swiftly away and buried her face. Her shoulders shook.

  ‘It was Delphane, wasn’t it?’ asked Kohler gently.

  He saw her nod and heard her say, ‘It must have been. Oh God, God, what am I going to do now? Josette … Inspector, please! We must find her before it’s too late.’

  ‘And Josianne-Michèle?’ he asked, hating himself for pushing her but he had to.

  ‘Josianne is in the mountains. She and her sister agreed on this.’

  Kohler yanked the woman round to face him
.

  ‘They were both at the cottage,’ she shrilled in tears. ‘Waiting to see Anne-Marie. That’s why she went there on her birthday. ‘That’s why …’ She gripped the back of her neck and began to massage it firmly, could not seem to stop herself.

  ‘Ludo took Josianne-Michèle into the mountains, Inspector. Ludo has always been so good about things. I …’ She dropped the hand. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without him. Josianne and his son are very much in love.’

  ‘And in the maquis?’

  They would smash her face and break her hands. She would never weave again. They would erase the village …‘That I cannot answer, monsieur.’

  Kohler shook her hard. He slammed her up against the wall and all but hit her, only stopping himself at the last moment. ‘Louis,’ he shrieked. ‘My partner, mademoiselle. I have to have the truth!’

  ‘Then, yes.’

  She shut her eyes and waited for him to hit her but he did not do so. Instead, he caught a breath and said, ‘You’re lying but I forgive you. That girl doesn’t even exist. She’s been dead for years and you know it.’

  ‘Then wait and see what happens. Stay here but let me go to her.’

  9

  When the sickle of a rising moon came from behind drifting cloud, St-Cyr stood still, with his back to the wall. Moonlight made pale the ghostlike outlines of hemp-woven armchairs and an ornate iron day-bed whose strongly shadowed harps and swirls and vividly patterned cushions made it appear as if from a Celtic burial mound or passage grave.

  For some time now there’d been no sound in the house, and he had to wonder if they’d both left it. Merde! What was he to do? Speak out? Challenge Jean-Paul? Appeal to the girl – cry out, Josianne-Michèle, your only hope is to come to me.

  But was it?

  The moon began to vanish with agonizing slowness, and as its light crept across the carpet, he held his breath. Unbidden, the pungent smell of walnut husks soaking in a tin pail came to him, then the image of the weaver. The woman was adding handfuls of sumac leaves to another batch of dye on the stove, and he knew that the leaves were full of tannic acid and that this would make the colour fast. More yarn was soaking in solutions of sheep dung, ox blood – the weaver was not afraid to plunge her hands into her own urine, but used a paddle for the alum and potash.

  The room with the dye materials had had a sense of alchemy about it. Drying herbs, leaves, flowers, bunches of twigs and roots all in the dark, mortars and pestles. Tansy, camomile, marigold and zinnia; madder and indigo with tin or chrome to produce vibrant shades of gold, red and blue, or iron or copper to darken and enrich them.

  A tapestry of truths, half-truths and lies. A fantasy, a nightmare. A kaleidoscope.

  He made no sound as he left the room and went along the hall and up the stairs to her studio. Stood drawing in that dusty smell of frayed wool every loom gives off.

  The moon came out but there was no sign of anyone. Ah Nom de Dieu, where were they? Had Jean-Paul killed the girl? Had he silenced her for ever?

  The weaver’s upright loom let moonlight through the vertical strings of its warp and he saw at once the half-completed piece, but saw it in all but total darkness.

  Someone was sitting on the weaver’s bench behind the loom. Yes, yes … He raised the revolver.

  But then the moon went in and the room returned to darkness, and when he was on his hands and knees and moving to one side, he felt a ball of wool roll across his fingers.

  He stopped to pick it up – crushed it in a fist and questioningly brought it to his lips, felt the fine, fine hairs of doubt, the softness of it. Remembered Chamonix, a red so red it lived.

  Winding the strand around a finger, he drew it taut and tugged gently on it.

  In answer, the girl gave three quick tugs and he knew then that she was in the room, but where?

  Knew it could just as easily be Jean-Paul. That same intensely uneasy feeling was with him as at Chamonix. An understanding, a knowing there was not just another person near but Jean-Paul Delphane.

  He felt a pistol being pressed against his temple.

  ‘Louis, put the gun down on the floor.’ Ah no! He felt a terrible blow to the back of his head, the left side, always the left – glimpsed the weaver’s eyes in the mirror; saw her lips part in shock as she caught a breath and ducked away behind a cloak, a cape, a wall-hanging; things hung on hangers beneath a set of stairs … stairs … Yes, yes, she’d seen Jean-Paul hit him and had been afraid.

  The thread went slack, the crossbow fired. The bolt crashed into the wall behind them! Delphane fired twice, shattering things, shattering all sense of being. The girl shrieked and ran. He tried to stop her but she ducked away and made for the stairs.

  The house fell to silence and after a while, the moon came out again.

  ‘You did not kill me,’ said St-Cyr to that empty room. ‘Just as before, you still need me now to prove your innocence.’ He heard a revolver shot – loud, so loud, a crash! – and began to run not up the stairs as in that villa near Chamonix, but down them … down them shouting inwardly, Your revolver, idiot! Jean-Paul, he has taken your revolver and used it to kill the financier!

  Stavisky … a body twitching on a floor within a room that had been locked. Locked! A pool of blood, grey brains spreading slowly. A revolver lying nearby.

  My revolver, he said, suddenly exhausted by the experience. One Lebel Model 1873 looks exactly like another.

  It was only when he reached the kitchen that he heard Josianne-Michèle frantically trying to wiggle the bolt free of the wall upstairs.

  Jean-Paul had gone outside. To not have a gun at such a time! Ah Nom de Jésus-Christ! What was he going to do?

  Hermann … Hermann, where the hell are you when needed most?

  Snow filtered softly through the floodlights that shone on the entrance to the mud baths. Viviane Darnot saw it against the darkness and the solid ring of grim-faced men that faced them. Their uniforms were grey-green or black or blue, and among them, the black leather trench coats glistened; their guns were everywhere incised on memory’s haunting screen.

  They would throw her into the street. They would beat her nearly senseless and break her hands. Then they would rape her and she would scream.

  ‘Don’t!’ hissed Kohler. ‘Panic is what they want.’

  He gripped her firmly by the elbow and she had to let him do that to her, said silently, Mother of God, please help me. I’m going to die.

  They had sealed off the rue Buttura with army lorries that had disgorged their rush of soldiers with submachine-guns and rifles.

  There were the French police and the German police from various organizations.

  There were the Gestapo.

  ‘Inspector, put the pistol down and let me go to them.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘Please! Maybe if I tell them how it was, they will believe me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. What they want to hear is that you and that ex-lover of yours were helping the Resistance. For some reason, the Gestapo Munk is now convinced there are maquis in the hills and mountains.’

  ‘Then Jean-Paul has told him of the wall safe.’

  Kohler caught the sadness and defeat in her voice. ‘What safe?’ he hissed. ‘Gott im Himmel, answer me before it’s too late for both of us.’

  She would continue to face the lights. She would not tell him where it was and he would see the tears as they began to trickle down her cheeks. ‘Josette,’ she said. ‘Darling, please forgive me.’

  Kohler was frantic. ‘Listen, by not telling me, we give that one what he wants. He’ll get it in the end. His kind invariably do.’

  ‘I know nothing.’

  He snorted harshly. ‘You idiots! Madame Buemondi was the banker; your account in Britain, the wellspring of hope. What’d Delphane do, mademoiselle? Get you to find him the cash he needed to get those poor bugger-damned airmen of his out of France?’

  Dear Jesus help her. ‘I cannot say. I must not answer.’r />
  Stubborn to the last, she faced the lights and would not look at him. ‘Then let them tear it out of you!’ he shouted, releasing her arm and pushing her down the steps. ‘Go. Go, you slut, and remember the blood of my partner is on your hands!’

  She stumbled and cried out to him, and at last she faced him and Kohler let her have it. ‘God damn you, mademoiselle. Delphane will have killed that daughter of yours just as he murdered that one in the mud!’

  ‘My daughter …?’

  ‘You know it’s true and you know there’s only one of them.’

  ‘But … but that is not true, monsieur. Me, I have no daughters. I never married. Anne-Marie did.’

  ‘Then why did you agree to use your bank account in England?’

  ‘Because Anne-Marie wanted me to. Because she needed the cash.’

  There was no sound. They awakened to the crowd which had not pressed closer but remained intent.

  ‘Jean-Paul,’ she gasped. ‘Jean-Paul …’

  Delphane had joined Munk and now faced them both as judge and executioner.

  They were in the graveyard, and though there was sufficient light beyond the dark shadows of the tombstones, the girl with the crossbow still had the advantage. But were there not two girls – both Josianne-Michèle and her sister? Two female voices had called out to each other. ‘Josianne, he’s over here …’ ‘Josette, watch out behind you!’

  Jean-Paul Delphane’s tall silhouette had been between the two voices but had vanished. A brief scuffle, a sharp cry and the sound of one of them dragging in a breath as she darted away had been followed by a hush into which the falling snow had finally made intrusion as its crystals had melted on the face.

  ‘Josianne …? Josianne, are you all right?’

  ‘Ssh! He’s still here.’

  And then later, a sigh among limestone crosses and marble statues of the Virgin with hands clasped in prayer. ‘He’s gone now, Josianne. Now only the detective remains.’ Slight differences of inflection and tone set the voices apart. Josette’s was a little stronger, a little deeper; Josianne’s more excitable and more intense also.

  ‘Josette, I love you. For me it is such an immense relief to have you come home to see me. I’m so happy now.’