J. Robert Janes

Kaleidoscope

1

The wind was bitter, the night like ink. Ruefully St-Cyr mopped his stinging eyes. Ah Mon Dieu, he ached like hell – eighteen hours on the train from Paris. Eighteen instead of four! With Hermann bitching for the past twenty and the cause of the delays … well, the Boches and their wretched controls, of course, but then some flywheel in the fledgeling Resistance had placed a pocket-bomb on one of the tracks. A minor derailment outside Lyon. A few more hours …

Hermann gave a savage grunt. ‘Heave, Louis, before I get a hernia!’

They were pushing their taxi uphill. They – two officers of the law! One a Chief Inspector of the Surete Nationale; the other … well, one from the Gestapo with the rank of a Haupsturmfuhrer. Merely an Inspector, but those guys, they had their chiefs elsewhere. Ah yes. In Paris where it was comfortable. And those chiefs did the ordering these days. Never mind that one was absolutely exhausted from a case and had only just escaped from death with a left hand that was stitched across the back and sore as hell! Never mind that Christmas was only seven days away and that one had not had the benefit of a holiday or a day off in years. Never mind that the wife and little son had only recently been tragically killed or that someone new had miraculously come along to soothe an aching heart. Never mind …

A sharp stone caused St-Cyr to cry out in pain as he went down. The gazogene, a converted hearse someone had left outside Chalons-sur-Marne during the invasion of June 1940, began to roll backwards.

‘Louis!’ shouted Kohler, straining.

‘A moment, my old one. A moment.’ Nom de Jesus-Christ but things were getting off to a bad start! Another murder. Provence this time – Friday 18 December 1942, to be exact! Somewhere up in the hills behind Cagnes-sur-Mer, half-way to the other side of the moon!

‘She is just ahead,’ shouted their driver, the voice one of encouragement, the accent harsh. ‘Shot as I have told you, Inspectors, with …’

‘Ja, ja,’ grumbled Kohler, ‘a crossbow.’

‘An antique,’ went on their driver. ‘Right in the heart, messieurs. Right where the virgin sings best on her wedding night. It went through to lodge in the spine, from sixty metres, no more. The hard, solid thunk! She was trying to pull that thing out of her as she fell. The hooks, they are most certainly barbed and have bent her fractured spine.’

An expert, eh? Angrily St-Cyr threw his shoulder against the rear of the hearse and together, he and Hermann managed to roll it up on to a level spot, a hairpin bend in the road perhaps. It was far too dark to tell.

Hermann jammed a boulder behind the left wheel and impatiently ordered him to do the same.

‘Don’t get fussy,’ swore St-Cyr. ‘Me, I hope you do obtain the hernia, my friend, since it will give your latest little pigeon a much needed recuperation and will leave me in peace!’

‘To get on with the detective work?’ snorted Kohler derisively, as if the French were useless at such things. ‘Jesus, Louis, what’s with this wind?’

‘Nothing. It is just the mistral. It comes and goes. It blows steadily for days, then instantly is gone, so,’ he paused, ‘why don’t we stop discussing the weather and get on with the investigation, eh? Me, I would really like to spend Christmas with Gabrielle in a warm bed.’

‘How’s the knee?’

‘A bitch. That stone …’

‘The left knee?’

‘Of course. Always it is the left side that receives the injury. Blood is now presumably ruining my new trousers that have already been ruined by that last investigation!’

‘Then try not to limp too much. It won’t look good to these mountain people.’

These peasants – St-Cyr knew that was what Hermann meant. He was impressed, for not only had the Bavarian correctly assessed their character, he had also couched his words in most acceptable terms so that their driver would take note and pride in what the Gestapo’s detective had said. These mountain people …

‘Louis, what about a fag? I seem to have lost mine.’

‘Or run out! Try lighting one in this wind, eh? Besides, I have only my pipe and a small ration left.’

‘Cheapskate. I’ll remember next time you run out of fuel for that thing in your pocket.’

The Lebel or the pipe? wondered St-Cyr but was too tired to ask. Always there was this problem of the gun, always the need to ask for the permission to shoot or carry, even in situations too dangerous to mention. Ah merde! Why had God seen fit to dump all this on him?

Hermann was a big man, big in the shoulders, a giant with sagging jowls, a storm-trooper’s jaw, brutal nose and sad pouches under faded pale blue eyes that so often saw things but seldom let on.

One with the heart and mind of a small-time hustler who both cushioned the Gestapo’s blows and kept his little Frog out of trouble. Well, sometimes. ‘Forgive me,’ said St-Cyr, allowing a touch of servility to enter his voice since their driver was still within earshot. ‘Here, Inspector. Please accept my tobacco-pouch and pipe. If I were you, I would not try to roll the cigarette in this wind, no matter how desperate the craving.’

Kohler grunted, ‘Piss off!’ and they both followed the lantern which, as their driver had now left the road, began to jig and toss itself above the slabby grey rocks and boulders. Immediately there were stunted clumps of sage and mountain thyme, of juniper too, and goat droppings, and though the wind was far too strong to let their individual aromas perfume the air, it carried the mingled pungency of the hills as St-Cyr remembered it.

Though he had to walk with care, still he let himself dwell momentarily on the little farm he had always wanted, the quiet brook with its life-giving spring that would be so absolutely necessary during the long summer droughts. To retire in peace from all the slime, to till the soil and milk the goats … What soil? his other self demanded, only to hear, Ah, never mind. Mere trifles. Pah! No more crime, no more agonizing over charred little children or girls that have been savagely murdered and then raped.

No more of the Nazis. No more of Hermann? he asked. Hermann was, of course, a former Munich and Berlin detective, a damned good cop when he wanted to be but a bad Nazi, a lousy Gestapo – Kohler had no use for or interest in the Third Reich’s garbage except when it was prudent or necessary to the investigation. No beatings, no torturing – nothing like that. No, they were still free of that sort of thing, thank God. Just ordinary murder, ordinary robbery, extortion and forgery … so many things.

And these days, all solved at gunfire pace because that was the way the Germans wanted them solved. With Hermann it was always blitzkrieg, blitzkrieg, not just because that was his nature, but because it had to be.

She was lying on her side among the rocks, the knees pulled up a little, the left arm bent and tucked under the body, that hand still clutching the wooden shaft of the iron-tipped bolt that had struck her.

A quiet lady, a woman of some substance – well-dressed in a worsted grey-blue suit of pre-war make. Good, stout walking shoes. Pre-war again. Woollen stockings – a cameo at the tightly buttoned throat of a ruffled white blouse whose lace collar the wind constantly attended. The hair not grey, not tinted either but the faded memory of a once beautiful ash blonde. ‘Young at …’ he began.

‘At about your age, Louis. Fifty-two or -three and well preserved. Just where the hell are her coat, hat and gloves? She must have been freezing!’

‘A good question, my old one,’ said St-Cyr, not taking his eyes off the body to glance for answers at their driver. ‘The braided hairdo, Hermann. The crisscrossing into a diadem. That is not common here.’

‘Swiss?’ asked the Bavarian. ‘Or Austrian?’

‘Or French … perhaps Alsatian, eh?’ he taunted, seeing as the Nazis had taken what they had thought was theirs: Alsace-Lorraine. But what was it about the corpse that made him feel uneasy? That crushed bit of thyme where someone’s shoe had been carelessly placed? That small, burned circle on the downwind side of a limestone slab grey-green with moss, the butt of a small cigar carelessly lying amid the stones?

With difficulty, St-Cyr tore his gaze from her and, pushing the lantern aside, looked steadily up at the stars to smell the wind and hear it rub the earth like sandpaper!

Had it all been deliberate again? The choosing of Hermann and himself to solve what should have been a local affair? Were the SS still out to burn them for matters past? Vouvray perhaps, or the carousel, eh? Or both?

Beyond the stars, God mocked and begged his little detective to climb up there to have a look down at himself poised lonely on this windswept hillside with Hermann as his Gestapo watcher and yet another body.

Fate and God had a way of doing things like that and, as if that were not enough, had provided a hearse as accompaniment!

Sobered by the thought, he was all business when he sought their driver, part Italian, part Greek, Roman, Saracen and Visigoth or Vandal. A tough little man with a wide, bony brow and cheeks that had been hammered out of these mountains and were grizzled with at least four days of whiskers, the scruffy brown moustache speckled with grey and half-frozen spittle, soup or snot. Small rimless glasses and a brown-eyed shiftiness no priest would have admired. ‘So, monsieur, the details please. Who found the body, when was it found, who ordered the canvas to cover and then uncover her, and who told you to wait for us at the station?’

Dedou Fratani shrugged as he drew on the cigarette that miraculously clung to his lower lip even when he was facing into the wind.

‘Please do not press me, monsieur,’ said St-Cyr. ‘My partner, here, really is from the Gestapo.’

‘I am,’ said Kohler, removing the man’s fag and flicking it aside. ‘Don’t piss in your trousers. If you have to take the wiener out, fire it downwind. We don’t want to get her wet.’

‘Me, I have already relieved myself, monsieur, while you and … and that “partner” of yours were pushing my gazogene.’

‘Your hearse,’ breathed Kohler.

‘You bastard!’ swore St-Cyr, remopping his eyes and mouth, then spitting on the handkerchief to give himself a good wash.

‘The hill, messieurs,’ began Fratani. ‘It is very steep. I did not wish for you to pause on my account. I …’ He looked away because the one from the Gestapo was grinning and had the cruellest of scars down the middle of his left cheek! ‘I … The bladder, it is weak. The guns … I was at Sedan in 1914 and … and again in 1940. That is how I have come by the hearse, monsieur. It … it was sitting at the side of the road. The driver, the undertaker, he had no more use for it. He …’

Kohler tucked the man’s frayed tie under the tattered sweater and brushed the lapels of the stovepipe jacket. ‘Sure you were there in fourteen and in forty, eh? And me, my fine, I have heard it all before, so give.’

Kohler … Kohler of the Kripo, the smallest and most insignificant of the Gestapo’s many sections, the ones who were supposed to investigate ordinary crimes. Subordinate and attached to Section IV for convenience.

‘I’m waiting,’ breathed Kohler.

‘And so am I,’ said the one called St-Cyr, the one who was much shorter than his friend. Chubby and round of face, but with that broad, bland brow of the determined cop! The thick, wide moustache that was there in defiance of reality and grown perhaps long before the German Fuhrer ever came to power. The hair on the head untidily long for a Parisian and blown about by the wind since he had lost his fedora somewhere and would no doubt insist on finding it.

‘But of course, messieurs. Young Bebert Peretti found her after school late on Wednesday when he came to fetch his father’s goats from this, the lower pasture of the Perettis and the Borels, who do not speak to each other these days or for the past two hundred years, and so must take turns using it when the abbe says it is time.’

A stonemason’s field, thought Kohler, grateful for the insight but curious as to why it had been offered so readily. ‘Didn’t anyone see anything?’

The man shook his head. ‘We were all gathered in the village square to hear our mayor and … the lieutenant speak to us about … about the labour brigades.’

‘The forced labour for the Reich,’ sighed Kohler. ‘The maquis, eh?’ he shot. ‘Come on, don’t shy away from it. You were all gathered by the fountain to receive a lesson about those who had escaped into the hills to avoid their patriotic duty.’

Fratani’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘The maquis, Inspector, as you yourself have said.’

‘And admitted, is that it?’ snarled Kohler.

‘Hermann, please! Monsieur Fratani knows only too well he must not upset the Gestapo, not on such a touchy subject and not when they are so tired. Monsieur, what about this one, eh? The victim?’

‘A hunting accident perhaps. Who knows? L’Abbe Roussel says it is not our affair. That she was not of us, monsieur, and therefore we are not obligated to give her the last rites or to take her remains up to the church to rest with God.’

‘Louis, she’s not Jewish, is she?’ Everyone knew that the Jews, like a lot of others, had bolted south to the Riviera during the invasion and must now be squirming like hell, seeing as the Wehrmacht had only just moved in to occupy the whole of the country but had given in to ll Duce and let the Italians occupy the coast from just east of Cannes to Menton and the frontier.

So caught up had he become in staring at the body, the poor Frog was trying to pack that furnace of his while the wind took the last of his tobacco ration. ‘Louis … Louis, I asked you a question.’

Startled, the brown ox-eyes with their bushy brows flew up in alarm. ‘Hermann, what … what is it?’

‘Perhaps you’d better tell me,’ sighed Kohler, nodding towards the corpse.

‘It is nothing, Hermann. Nothing. I was just wondering why the garde champetre was not here, waiting for us.’

The village cop. Kohler knew that Louis must have other reasons for being so distracted but let it pass. By rights the lieutenant, whoever he was, should have been in on this too. An SS lieutenant? he wondered, giving a silent curse at the thought.

Grunting painfully, St-Cyr knelt beside the body and, motioning impatiently, had the hearse-driver bring the lantern closer.

Blood had run from the corner of her lips and from her nostrils, but had long since congealed and darkened. The eyes were not blue as he had expected from the hair but that rather pleasant shade of greeny-brown which can sometimes overwhelm an unsuspecting man. A once quite handsome woman, not beautiful but very fine of feature, and definitely once of wealth though that might no longer be so.

The nose was aristocratic, the cheeks slightly pinched. The skin was good – clean too – the brow not overly wide but high and incredibly unwrinkled for a woman who must have had worries in plenty. Why else the climb into these hills and across this stony pasture to what? he asked. To some peasant’s farmhouse up there on a barren slope, sheltered only from the wind? Opal and gold ear-rings, the ears pierced, the pendant stones full of fire even in the fitful fluttering of the lantern.

A woman of perhaps seventy kilos – tall, but not too tall. Had she stood with poise even in alarm, she not believing her assailant would dare to fire that thing at her? Had that been it?

The bolt was feathered by leather flights that were hard and cracked with age. The wooden shaft had that dark colour of ash or birch that has first been hardened by fire and then polished before greasing with tallow. The force of the bolt should have knocked her on to her back, yet she had stood her ground in shocked disbelief perhaps and had clutched it. Ah merde, who could have done such a thing, what were they to do? Scream at the injustice of it all or simply get on with a job quite obviously no one else wanted?

‘Well, Louis, what do you make of it?’

‘Trouble, Hermann. Me, I have to ask, Why did your chief demand that we attend to this one? Disregard, please, the need for us to get out of Paris, eh? Let’s simply stick to the absolute truth.’

‘Someone telephoned Boemelburg from Cannes,’ said Kohler lamely. ‘Look, I would have told you sooner or later.’

‘Who? Hermann, please do not do this to me.’

Kohler gave a shrug. ‘A friend of your chief’s.’

‘That little shit?’

‘The same. Major Osias Pharand himself, Louis. Titular head of the Surete Nationale and as file-minded an anti-Semite as Himmler and his boys could ask for.’

‘So, is this one Jewish, eh? Is that what you’re saying? Hey, my friend, me I can’t tell so easily with members of the opposite sex. Perhaps you’d better have a look.’

Touche. Pharand hated the Resistance too – Kohler could see the worry clouding the Frog’s eyes. ‘Relax. We’ll sort it out and wrap it up in style.’

‘That is exactly what I’m afraid of! The small cigar, Hermann. This … this one left deliberately at the scene.’

‘As a reminder?’

‘But of course.’

‘Then take my advice, Louis. Let’s say it was a hunting accident. Let’s find the village idiot and nail him with it.’

This from a former Munich detective, to say nothing of Berlin! ‘So, Hermann, ask our friend who told him to meet us at the station.’

‘He’s gone, Louis. Fratani’s buggered off.’

‘Nom de Jesus-Christ! I leave you to do the necessary while I attend to business and you … you …’

‘Easy, Louis. Easy, eh? Why not tell me what’s upset you?’

‘A feeling. The breath of memory, Hermann. An uneasiness I have not experienced since the first week of January 1934.’

St-Cyr tugged at something in the woman’s right hand and when he had it free, let out a gasp, then lifted brimming eyes to the lantern.

Kohler brought the light closer. ‘The mont-de-piete in Bayonne, Hermann. The municipal pawnshop and the same damned one as in 1934!’

He turned aside, and for a cop with a gut of iron, proceeded to vomit and then to urinate in his trousers, both at the same time or in between.

Kohler sat him up and held the brandy to his lips, and when he’d had another pull at it, St-Cyr waved the flask away. ‘Care to tell me about it?’ asked the Bavarian. ‘Just so that I know exactly what to expect.’

Those troubled eyes ducked furtively away to the body. ‘That is just it, Hermann. With him – if it really is him – we will never be sure of what to expect.’

‘Then you watch my back, I’ll watch yours. Let’s stick together like glue, Louis. That’ll fix him.’

‘The Deuxieme Bureau, Hermann? State security? Even in a nation crippled by the Occupation, security must come before all else, especially murder.’

Louis really was quite ill. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t work for them any more.’

‘Perhaps, but then … then this one will. Once the dye has taken, the skin cannot be changed.’

‘Then come on, let’s see what’s up the hill. This one will keep for a while.’

The house on the hillside had but one room, a single lantern hanging from the ceiling over the table, a loft for sleeping in warmer weather, and the fetid stirrings of the animals below.

As Kohler shut the heavy door behind them, the sound of the wind dropped a little but the shrieking voice carried on – dementedly shrill in terror, the girl tossing on the only bed, roped to it – while the old woman sat with her back to a roaring fire and the wind … the wind outside laid its file over everything.

Blood gushed down the woman’s pudgy hands as she turned the grinder and vigorously stuffed goose livers into it. Heaps of kidneys, a slab of fatty bacon, some larded ribs of pork and the skinned carcasses of four rabbits glistened on the chequered table-cloth before her.

There was a butcher’s knife, a cleaver – blood smeared everywhere – and a bowl of freshly washed intestines, grey-white and flaccid in their coils. Herbs and spices and black olives. Oil too, and salt. A rope of garlic, two of dried peppers and a mound of peeled onions.

‘She’s making sausage, Louis,’ whispered Kohler.

‘And pate. Merde, can I not see this myself? The girl, Hermann. What in God’s name is wrong with her?’

‘Epilepsy.’

‘A fit?’

‘What else would you call it?’

The ropes about the ankles and wrists were feverishly strained at, the shrieking again became a shrill, hair-raising cry for penance perhaps or for the torture to end.

Quivering, the spasm passed, and from where they still stood at the door, they could hear the ragged breathing lapse into a fitful caution.

The woman merely continued to grind things, and the fire that raged, threw her rounded shadow on the wall beside them and on the beams in the ceiling too.

‘Madame …?’ began St-Cyr only to see her suddenly stop and reach for the cleaver.

‘Georges?’ she asked. ‘Is that not you?’

‘Blind … Goddamnit, Louis, she can’t see us.’

‘But I can hear you, mes amis. So, please, what is it you want of me? You are not from around here. This I already know.’

‘A moment of your time, madame. Please do not be afraid …’

‘Afraid? Why should I be afraid?’

She was perhaps seventy. It was always so hard to tell with country people. Round of face and shoulder, chin, cheeks and nose, she had the gaze of the blind all right, the high colour of the wind and sun and the ample bosom of the hills.

Wisps of silky grey hair were matted to the brow with blood or stuck out from beneath the simple kerchief.

‘Madame, the girl …?’ began St-Cyr with genuine concern.

‘That one? Have you really come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised?’

‘No … Ah, no, madame. We have come from Paris about the … the …’

‘The taxes?’

‘Ah no, madame. Not the taxes.’

‘The schooling for my grandson – my only grandson? Look, messieurs, the husband he is dead, isn’t that so? I am the widow, yes? The boy he is needed around the farm. Reading can do him no good if he cannot eat.’

‘Then he was not at school on Wednesday?’ hazarded Kohler.

The cleaver was lowered in defeat perhaps. ‘No … no, he did not go to school then, monsieur. Wednesdays are not days for the schooling. Is it that you did not know of this perhaps?’

Kohler flung Louis a questioning look, only to see the Frog shrug and hear him say, ‘I would have told you sooner or later, eh? Go and have a look at the girl. Leave this one to me.’ Merde! Les Provencaux could be so difficult! Suspicion always, particularly towards outsiders, but she had spoken in French, albeit with the harsh accent, so that was something.

‘The woman, madame. The body?’ he ventured, watching her closely.

She stiffened. ‘What body? There is no body. I am not going to my Maker just yet, monsieur, not when I have such a …’ Ah no, why had she let it slip?

‘Such a duty, madame?’ offered the Surete’s detective.

‘Yes … yes, a duty to that one.’

The girl.

Kohler found the patient’s watchful gaze electric. Every particle of the girl was set to strike out at him if she could. Spittle foamed from between her clenched teeth, the lips were drawn cruelly back, the breath coming in short spasms, hatred everywhere.

He reached out to soothe the dampened brow. She jerked her head back and savagely bit him!

‘Ah … you slut!’ he shrieked. ‘Let go of me! Louis … Louis … The bitch …!’

St-Cyr pried the jaws apart and the girl spat in his face!

‘Verdammt!’ bellowed Kohler, sucking on the bloodied ham of his right thumb. ‘I was trying to be kind, Louis.’

‘You need a mirror, my friend. That scar … the thing that rawhide whip bestowed upon your left cheek, eh? The stitch-marks are still red.’

‘Shit! Her teeth are sharp. I’ll get epilepsy, Louis. Human bites … one can’t be too careful. They’re always the worst!’

The Gestapo’s detective had meant it too. Always the Germans were so afraid of catching some French disease. St-Cyr shook his head to chide his partner, and taking up a wash-cloth from a nearby chair, squeezed water over the thumb.

As the girl watched closely, her breasts pushed at the rough cotton nightgown and her slender throat constricted. She was about twenty-four years of age and thin, had the high cheekbones of the aristocracy, the fierce dark eyes of the Midi and the hair to match. Was really quite beautiful were her state of health and condition not so utterly deplorable.

Kohler wrapped his thumb in the rag. Immediately the girl yanked her eyes from Louis to focus fiercely on it. Again the breasts shoved at the nightgown. Again there was that watchful look of hatred whose intensity both shocked and troubled.

Blood was smeared on her neck and collar-bones, and where the old woman had tried to jam a stick between those white, white teeth, there was more of it on the chin and on the pillow-slip and sheets.

Together, St-Cyr plucking at Hermann’s coat-sleeve, they withdrew. The old woman was again stuffing goose livers into the grinder. ‘Nothing stops for long in these hills, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr ruefully. ‘It can’t, for to do so is to die.’

‘Then ask her if the one in the bed is related to the one with the bolt in her chest.’

‘You’re learning. Ah Mon Dieu, my old one, the lessons I have been so patiently imparting to you are at last beginning to sink in.’

‘Gott im Himmel, you dummkopf, did you think these people were any different from the ones back home in Bavaria? Just give me five with that old girl, Louis, and she’ll have her hand in that grinder or else!’

Hermann did have a way with him when upset, but now was not the time for it.

‘Go and warm yourself by her fire. See if you can’t figure out how it is that in such a place like this, there are not one or two thin sticks on the hearth as there should be, but sufficient logs for the whole winter!’

‘The victim?’ asked Kohler, tossing his head to indicate the general direction of the body. ‘The victim’s been paying them to look after the girl.’

Ah Nom de Dieu, sometimes the Bavarians were so slow-witted! ‘Precisely, my old one. Precisely. You really are learning.’

‘Then ask her where son Georges and the grandson Bebert are.’

‘I already have – silently, eh? They are with the Abbe Roussel and our hearse-driver, deep in conference, no doubt, and forgetting their illegal vin ordinaire. Look, why not go up the hill a little farther, Hermann? Make of it what you will and me, I shall join you presently.’

‘You’d better. I’ve got a stone in my shoe and a nail in my thumb – i.e. my patience is sorely tried!’

Hermann always had to have the last word and, at times like this, it was best to let him have it.

When the door had closed, St-Cyr went back to the girl. Taking up another bit of rag, he wrung it out before placing it on her brow. ‘Now, now, mademoiselle, I am not going to hurt you, eh? From me you have nothing to fear.’

The eyes began to close. The lids fitfully struggled to remain open, once, twice – three times … Ah, Mon Dieu, such force of will, such terror of the defencelessness of sleep.

In exhaustion, the patient slept the sleep of the damned. St-Cyr stood there a moment more. Unbidden, the image of himself as a cinematographer came and he let the cameras roll, wished only that he could pull back the covers. A ballet dancer? he asked. A mannequin – she had every aspect of either, every suggestion. Not a hint of perfume, only the sour odour of the very ill.

A fine gold chain, the equivalent of three or four interwoven hairs, had slipped from beneath the pillow during the fit.

Cautiously he teased it away and when he had the small, heart-shaped locket in hand, he turned to see the old woman holding her breath. Ah now, what was this, eh?

The photograph within the locket was of two curly-headed girls of perhaps ten or twelve in happier times. Twins, ah yes. Identical.

Merde, what had they got themselves into this time? Some heart-rending family feud? Why … why in God’s name had the mother kept the one daughter here like this, and the other … where? Where was the other one?

And why had the mother – if indeed she was the mother – been killed in any way, let alone in such a fashion? And why … Dear God, why did she have to have a pawn ticket from Bayonne in her fist? It could have been from anywhere else, couldn’t it?

As carefully as he could, he slid the locket back but found the girl’s cheek soon came in contact with his hand. She wouldn’t let him leave – he realized this readily enough, knew only by the contented, childlike sigh she gave that deep in sleep, the touch of him had instantly made her happy.

It was the old woman who said, ‘Now come away, monsieur, and I will tell you what I can because I must.’

‘Are you really blind?’ he asked.

‘Is it so hard for you to tell?’

‘Madame, you humble me.’

‘Then understand, monsieur, that I have been blind for over sixty years but that this has never prevented me from seeing what I have to. Your friend will get nothing out of the abbe. Nothing! That one has the lips of wax.’

The dead …? Ah Mon Dieu, not another murder so soon? ‘Will it be safe for Hermann up in the village, madame?’

‘On a night such as this? Perhaps if … if the other one has gone.’

‘What other one?’

‘The one who came to see the body first. The one who came from Bayonne.’

*

Kohler knew it wasn’t safe. His was the only light in the village. Once past the rampart gate, an ugly warren of narrow lanes and shuttered or iron-grilled windows swallowed him. Winding flights of stone steps led up and off to unseen streets – did they name them? Were they even worth naming?

The wind was like Christ after a sinner. It drove its fist into every bone, found every crevice – roared along the narrow lanes, rattling the shutters and tearing away the little bits of flaking mortar the ages had left.

A tile flew off someone’s roof and, falling the two or three storeys, hit the cobbles to fly into pieces. Another followed and then another. A boulder too – one of the slabs that had been used to secure the tiles.

His back to a wall in panic, he heard the boulder rumble and bounce away. A door was flung open. A light shone out and with it came a guttural burst of Provencal he could not translate but understood well enough.

A ladder followed the enraged owner of the lantern. The wind sucked at it and at the light, at the waxed handlebar moustache. ‘Alphonse … Alphonse, hurry! Hurry!’

Kohler darted across the lane and, using the wall as cover from the wind, fought his way up to the ladder, thus terrifying its owner until held in a grip of iron.

‘Kohler. Gestapo Central. Here, allow me to help. Tell the boy to hold my light.’

Another guttural string of verbiage ensued. The light was taken and awkwardly the ladder was leaned against the wall just under the eaves. ‘The rocks,’ gasped the man as another of the tiles pulled away. ‘We must put them back.’

‘You can’t go up there in this!’

‘I have no other choice, monsieur.’

‘Then let me. I’m twice your size.’ Son of a bitch, why had he said it? Kohler began to climb.

‘A moment, a moment,’ shouted the man. ‘The rock, monsieur. You cannot forget the rock. Put it up a good thirty centimetres from the edge of the roof.’

The thing weighed a tonne. The ladder lurched, slipped, then questionably held.

Up at roof level, he had to throw his left shoulder into the wind just to get a grip on the frozen tiles. As he heaved the stone up and slid it along, another of the tiles disappeared. ‘Higher!’ shouted the man. ‘A good sixty centimetres.’

The bastard was right behind him on the ladder!

Another boulder was awkwardly passed up and then another. Again he heard, ‘A moment, please.’

The ladder flexed, then did so again and again as two more boulders were carried up – how had he done it?

At last the tiles seemed fitfully content and Kohler was able to climb down. Blood ran freely from the ham of his thumb and he cursed himself for being such a fool. ‘The abbe, monsieur,’ he managed. ‘I’m looking for him and for Dedou Fratani.’

The lantern revealed an instant of suspicion and swift alarm, then careful reassessment. ‘The Cafe de Bonne Chance, monsieur. Please … please allow me to show you. Here, we will both carry the lanterns, yes? So that each of us will have one.’

‘Your name?’ asked Kohler.

‘Ludo Borel. I am the herbalist, at your service.’

‘Got anything for a human bite?’

‘A bite?’ Ah no, had this one really been bitten? ‘But … but of course, monsieur, although we can do what is necessary at the cafe, I think.’ Nom de Dieu, what had possessed him to say a thing like that? Ten sugar cubes dissolved in a litre of wine was good for washing such wounds, afterwards the sprinkling of crushed sugar and the bandage, but sugar was almost impossible to get these days unless one dealt on the black market and there was sugar at the cafe. Also it was well after curfew and this one had said he was from the Gestapo.

‘Forget it,’ said Kohler. ‘I’m on holiday.’

Head down, St-Cyr hurried on. The road was tortuous and when, at last, he reached the outskirts of the village, the deeper darkness of its newer houses lay against the lesser of the night sky.

He had to pause, had to catch a breath. Too many late nights, the years of too much tobacco and running around – would the war not help with the tobacco fatigue? Ah merde, Hermann, use your head. Don’t be tricked by these people. They have their ways. The one from Bayonne, he will know of this and try to use it against you.

The one from Bayonne … Was it possible? A pawn ticket – some treasured item, a painting perhaps … What, what had that woman pawned and why had she had that ticket in her hand?

Anxiously feeling for it, he dug deeply into his overcoat pocket and when he had the thing, heaved an inward sigh. Had she held it out to her murderer? Had she threatened him with it?

‘St-Cyr …’ – he heard that voice as if it was not far ahead, heard the challenge of it; then again, from later, the Directeur-General of the Deuxieme Bureau’s – ‘You are very wrong, Louis. That one, he could not possibly have done it.’

But someone had, back then on 9 January 1934, and someone had done so now almost nine years later.

Bayonne … must history always repeat itself? he asked and answered, It never does, not in exactly the same way.

Always these mountain villages had their careless spills of newer houses. Expansion in good times, contraction in bad – first the olive groves, then the vines, the cork oaks and the silkworms, the garance, too, from which a red dye was made for soldiers’ uniforms. But then the silkworm disease, ah yes, the winter that froze the olive trees; the artificial dye to replace the natural and, yes, the phylloxera to kill off the vines and the industrialization which swept the population of France into cities and towns. And always the wars, as if the rest were not enough.

In his mind’s eye St-Cyr could see the inner village clearly, the gaping shells of houses too ruined to repair, the narrow streets where vacant houses often stood because there was no one to fill them. The public bath, the fountain in the square, and the toilets, ah yes.

The wind stung his eyes when he reached the southern gate. It made him wish the tears were of gladness, but there could be none of this, not yet. Hermann … what could he say except that their partnership, never easy, had welded friend and foe in a common bond, and through this, each of them had become more than conscious of the other.

It was not nice walking through the darkness of these little streets. It made him feel a presence other than his own.

When he came to the church which, like all that had come before, was on a steep slope, he found the door locked and wondered why … why had the old woman feared that man who had come from Bayonne? What had he done to upset her? Had he said something to that girl? Is that why the fit had been of such intensity?

And why had he called Paris to bring them down here if not to seek revenge?

There were perhaps two dozen men crowded into the Cafe de Bonne Chance and when Kohler entered, the shouting and the gesticulating abruptly ceased. Mein Gott, but the cat had got their tongues. Not a move out of them. The arch of deceit and suspicion growing as the fear of discovery became absolute.

He set the lantern down on a nearby table which was barren of all but a spill of red wine, an empty sardine tin that served as an ashtray, four cheap glass tumblers with dregs, the chairs pushed back.

It was the same everywhere except around the brand-new sawdust burner, the converted oil drum of steel that was but the latest of the Occupation’s inventions. Made in Cannes, of all places. Heat from damp sawdust packed tightly into the drum so as to lessen the speed of combustion and keep the smoke down. Very little draught. Ah yes, the French, they were so good at making do. Sabots on some, scruffy boots on others – not a one of the men under the age of fifty-five and several well over seventy. Dull razors or none at all. Blue denim jackets or coarse, heavy black wool, brown corduroy trousers … shabby … Jesus, was the village that poor?

‘Monsieur, why have you come at this late hour?’ asked the priest, the Abbe Roussel.

‘I’ll come when I want,’ said Kohler quietly.

‘But, monsieur …?’

‘In a minute, Father.’ Motioning to Ludo Borel, he had the herbalist stand in front of the door with his lantern to prevent escape. As he walked about the room, Kohler noted how barren it was. A few tables and chairs, brown linoleum on the counter that served as bar and cash desk or belote table. A handful of pale green bottles, red dregs in all of them. No pastis out – ‘Hey, it’s not a day for alcohol, is it?’ he said loudly. ‘So why the wine, my fines?’

The wine …‘Monsieur …’

‘Well, what is it, Father? No doubt the curfew will be broken, or do they all intend to spend the night cooped up in here? Then the vin ordinaire on a day for water. That’s two violations of the law. Maybe I’ll see something else.’

‘Monsieur, these are but simple villagers. They know nothing of such things. Until the body was found, they were content to think the war, it would pass them by.’

‘So now they’re worried, eh, and have to know what the murder means for their village?’

The priest nodded. The Abbe Roussel did not look like much – thin and gangly in sackcloth, a rake-handle with caved-in chin, hard dark brown eyes that were full of concern among other things. Ah yes.

‘The murder means the Gestapo and the SS will have to come and take over this place. Look, I’m sorry but that’s the way it is,’ said Kohler.

A collective gasp was quickly stifled by an impatient hand from the priest who expected more from the Gestapo’s agent.

Kohler let him have it. ‘Of course, if I could have honest answers to a few simple questions, we might be able to make allowances for … for the remoteness of the village.’

There were whispers, nods, tossed heads. Roussel drew up a chair and indicated that the Gestapo’s Bavarian detective should avail himself of the same. Another sardine tin was hastily fetched but hazardously offered – ah, what was this? Black-market sardines? Nom de Dieu!

A bottle of red wine was opened. Two glasses were filled by the proprietor who must fix machinery or something on the side, since there was grease right up his brawny arms to the elbows and one had to wonder where the hell he’d got it?

‘First, the corpse,’ said Kohler, fishing for his cigarettes only to discover none and have the abbe ruefully extend him one from an all-but-empty packet of Gauloises Bleues, the national curse when they could get them. Come to think of it, how had they got them, eh? ‘Merci. Who was she?’

‘Madame Buemondi. Anne … Anne-Marie.’

‘From where?’

‘Bayonne and … and Cannes.’ There was no use in hiding things from this one, he’d find out everything.

‘And Monsieur Buemondi?’

‘Assistant-Director of the School of Fine Arts in Cannes.’

‘Do they still have such things?’ – the consternation was honest.

‘Yes … yes, Inspector. Monsieur Buemondi …’

Suddenly the priest dried up. Kohler drew on the cigarette and fingered his glass of wine.

‘Monsieur Buemondi, Inspector, he … he has quite the following, if you understand.’

‘Mein Gott – fucking all the ladies, is he?’

Roussel winced; the others watched in absolute silence but was it to see if the bait had been taken, or simply because they could not quite understand the language and were having problems?

Kohler tossed a hand. ‘Cannes must be full of dusty bags just sitting out the war and wanting something to do.’

Again the priest was at a loss for words. ‘Dusty bags …? Madame, she …’

‘Madame Buemondi?’

‘Yes, yes, Inspector. That one, she …’

‘Knew all about the husband’s fooling around?’

‘Yes, certainly. But she was not one to leave her skirts unruffled, monsieur. That one had a temper and the determination to go with it.’

‘She had a lover?’

‘Yes … yes. Perhaps more than one. Me, I would not know since she did not come to me for the confession.’

‘Perhaps she only had urges?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Jealous – was she jealous?’ demanded Kohler sharply, only to hear the priest suck in a breath and hear him say, ‘Perhaps,’ again.

‘And the daughter?’ asked Kohler quietly.

Not a hair moved, not a pair of lungs was filled. The sawdust burner sizzled. A dog-eared cat scurried swiftly across the floor to get out of the way of trouble, reminding the Gestapo’s detective only too well of the last case and the concierge of the Hotel of the Silent Life.

‘Josianne-Michele Buemondi is very ill, monsieur. On puberty, she developed the uncontrollable fits. It is the curse God has placed upon the father and mother and now … now that curse has come to a head.’

‘Buemondi shot his wife, that it?’ snapped the Gestapo’s detective.

The priest hesitated, then crossed himself. ‘Yes … yes, that is how it must have been, monsieur. The accusations from Madame, her threats perhaps, and then the arrow.’

‘Not a hunting accident, then?’

Startled, the Abbe Roussel ripped his gaze away to look questioningly at Dedou Fratani, the hearse-driver, then tore it back and held it steady. ‘At first we did think it an accident. The shot-guns, monsieur, they are no longer allowed. One can only do so much with traps and snares. The wild boar of these hills, they are very dangerous.’

Kohler let a breath escape. ‘I’ll bet they are, Father, but all hunting and trapping is illegal, or didn’t your simple flock know of the decree of 1940? So now, my fine, ask young Bebert Peretti to come out from behind that thing you people call a bar. I want a word with him.’

‘The boy has gone home to his grandmother, monsieur. There is … Ah, why had he said it? ‘There is the trap door in the floor. Bebert will have used it.’

‘As he has before – is that it? Listening in, was he? For whom, Father? Come on, I demand to know.’

‘All boys listen in to their elders, monsieur. Surely you are not so old as to have forgotten that you, yourself, may have done such things?’

‘Then tell me about the daughter. Is she always tied to that bed?’

Who sleeps with her – is that what the Gestapo was implying?

Deeply troubled by the filth of such minds, Roussel said, ‘She walks in the fields and is at peace with God when not demented by her frenzy.’

‘Is it Georges Peretti who’s screwing her, Father? As sure as that God of yours made little green apples, someone’s been up to mischief with that girl.’

Kohler thrust out his wounded thumb. The priest jerked his head away and motioned frantically to Borel who seemed nailed to the door and uncertain of what to do.

At a curt nod from the Gestapo, the wine and the sugar were brought. Everyone still watched the proceedings intently. The teeth had not only punctured the flesh in three places, they had ripped it open.

Inflamed and still bleeding, the thumb was stiffening. Borel was grave. He fussed. He bathed the wound with the sugar and wine solution, then used the bottom of a glass to crush two cubes before sprinkling on the granules and binding things with gauze he apparently always carried. Among other things, was that it? wondered Kohler. The village medicine man. Head ju-ju boy?

Borel had a woman’s touch, a surgeon’s flair, and Kohler was impressed. ‘You ought to volunteer for the Russian Front, monsieur. You could do much fine work there. Me, I have two sons who would appreciate your company.’

The herbalist’s deep brown eyes took on the character of cold slag. ‘I am needed here, monsieur, and have the certificate and papers to verify this in my office, all duly signed and witnessed by the proper authorities in Vichy. Bathe the wound five times a day with the solution and sprinkle on a little sugar each time before applying a clean dressing.’

‘Where will I get the sugar?’

‘This I do not know, monsieur. Not now. Not with Madame Buemondi …’

‘You fool!’ hissed the priest.

The can of worms had been opened. Louis should have been here. Come to think of it, where the hell was he?

Kohler crossed to the door and flung it open. The wind sucked at everything. ‘Louis!’ he shouted. ‘Louis, I’m in here!’

‘He will not hear you, monsieur,’ said Borel. ‘Your friend will not be able to find his way.’

The boy was terrified. By the merest chance, their paths had crossed beside the fountain. St-Cyr could hear his teeth chattering uncontrollably above the spilling of the water and the tears. ‘Now, now, my friend. Hush, eh? I am not the Gestapo’s dragon or one of the Milice. I am a patriot a Chief Inspector of detectives on a case and cold.’

He had a firm grip on the boy, was not about to let him go. Bebert gave a last futile attempt to escape, then burst loudly into yet more tears. Ah Mon Dieu, the young! ‘Hey, it is not such a tragedy. I was following the footsteps, yes … yes, just as you were avoiding them.’

‘He … he asked me to listen in at the cafe. He … he will kill me if I say anything to you, monsieur.’

‘The one from Bayonne? Tall – big in the head and shoulders? Strong, tough, the bulldog jowls and the sagging pouches under the eyes, the …’

Ah no. No! Why had he not remembered?

‘He … he is like the … the one from the Gestapo, monsieur. The Inspector K … Kohler.’

‘But the hair, it is iron-grey and crinkly and very short,’ sighed St-Cyr, ‘and the eyes, they are a very dark brown, almost black like ripe olives.’

The boy must have nodded, for he said in a rush, ‘Your friend, he is at the cafe, monsieur. He is asking so many questions, the truth will most certainly tumble out and then all the men of the village, they … they will be sent to Germany to the forced labour, myself included. Grandmother, she … she cannot survive without my help. She and the madame, they …’

The tongue was bitten – frozen into silence. Ah Mon Dieu, these mountain people!

With a sigh, St-Cyr said, ‘Why not show me where the one from Bayonne is staying?’

The note of sadness was all too clear in the Chief Inspector’s voice, the loss perhaps of wife and child, of so many things like valour, dignity and truth – yes, yes, this one was the seeker of truth above all else. One could tell by the way he breathed. Merde! What was one to do in such a situation?

‘The cottage, it … it is in the little valley below our house and farm, monsieur. That one, he has said he will be waiting for you there.’

‘Then why has he come up to the village on a night like this?’

It was a cry, a plea to God for sanity. ‘He … he did not say, monsieur. That one, he says very little and only what he thinks we need to hear.’

‘How did you find the victim?’

‘Dead from the arrow.’

‘And you saw nothing else?’

Like an eel, the boy twisted away and St-Cyr had to let him go. There was no sense in crying out for him to come back. Indeed, it would be most unwise to make any more noise.

At a sound – a step? – a shape! – he stiffened.

‘Louis … Louis, what the hell are you doing hanging around like some terrified tourist wanting a girl when there’s work to do?’

The shape was the same, the size too – even the way Hermann stood out against the night sky between the roofs. It was uncanny, the similarity.

Trembling, St-Cyr put the Lebel away but realized in that instant he could well have killed Hermann.

He tried to make light of it. ‘Come, come, my old one, there is nothing more we can do here until dawn. We will retreat to the body. We will await the first light to see what it brings.’

‘Piss off with the poetry, Louis. You were about to put a bullet in me and I want to know why.’

‘Then please, my friend, tell me where your lantern is, eh?’

‘Oh, that? I had to drop it in someone’s well.’

2

The wind leaned steadily on the hearse and whistled through the edges of the tightly closed windows and doors. Though it was cold inside, there was room for them both to stretch out.

A two-casket job? wondered Kohler. Did the hearse have some special meaning for them after all? ‘Louis, you’d better let me have the truth, eh? And as soon as you can, you’re going to wash those trousers.’

‘Chantal will be very disappointed in me for ruining the new clothes she and Muriel so thoughtfully provided for their little detective.’

Kohler caught the note of longing. The ‘girls’ were friends of Louis’s in Paris; their lingerie shop, Enchantment, was on the Place Vendome. ‘Well, at least you’re back in your beloved Provence. Maybe now we can find that farm you’re always going on about. Real estate ought to be pretty cheap these days.’

‘Cheap? Ah yes, Hermann. At bargain prices, but first, the man from Bayonne.’

Louis fell into such a silence, Kohler thought the Frog had drifted off, but no, he, too, was staring up at the stars through parted curtains.

‘The mont-de-piete, Hermann, the Credit Municipal. My government’s way of providing social security for the wealthy and all but those who have absolutely nothing and do not matter since they cannot pay taxes.’

Kohler wondered if it was going to be another diatribe. Again there was silence, and then, sadly, ‘It all began with a pawnshop, Hermann, with my aunt, as we prefer to call them. And me, I wish I knew why Madame Buemondi had such a ticket in her hand and why the old grandmother asked first if we had come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised. Why Chamonix, Hermann? Why not somewhere else?’

The Frog was really upset. ‘Maybe she’d always wanted to go skiing?’ snorted Kohler quietly.

‘A murder, Hermann, but not the suicide that was claimed. Ah no, my old one. A murder in a villa outside Chamonix!’

‘Stavisky, the swindler? Late 1933, Louis – no, no, now wait – 9 January 1934. A revolver shot at zero range.’

The whole of the civilized world had heard of it. Alexandre Serge Stavisky – so many had been involved, the government had been shaken to its core and France’s Civil War of 1934 to 1937 had been ushered in with riots, looting and killing. Stavisky’s ‘suicide’ hadn’t been the only death. The repercussions of the scandal had become a tide which had rippled on and on.

‘It seems so long ago,’ sighed St-Cyr, ‘but was only yesterday. Everyone knew he was a crook – we’d tracked him before as had others – and yet … and yet, Hermann, history was allowed to repeat itself.’

‘Still bitter about it, eh?’

‘That and so much else, but for the moment let the wounds of the past pass as farts in the night.’

‘I didn’t fart.’

‘Then what the hell is that smell in here?’

‘Besides yourself? Embalming fluid, I think,’ said Kohler, knowing it would be reminder enough.

‘Through friends in high places, Stavisky managed to have an associate named as director of the Credit Municipal in Bayonne. It was a master stroke, Hermann. A location far from Paris, one tucked away in a corner few cared much about and with a colony of wealthy Spanish refugees just waiting to be plucked. Stavisky first left a substantial deposit of jewellery as security and thus received a loan of several hundred thousand francs. All seemed well, and the mayor of Bayonne and his municipal council thought they could rest easy. Indeed, the Credit Municipal looked as if bound to flourish.’

‘Then came the swindle,’ sighed Kohler, still staring up at the stars. ‘Each mont-de-piete is allowed to issue bonds based on the total value of the articles that have been pawned with it, but one can easily inflate this. So he floated bonds to the tune of more than half a billion francs, Louis. Securities that were readily sold or accepted as collateral for other loans or as deposits by both businessmen and government alike but were absolutely worthless.’

‘The very pillars of society, my old one. Bankers, lawyers, industrialists, cardinals and politicians but lots of little old ladies too, and with those you do not mess. Not in France. When the scandal broke on 23 December 1933, the circus began. Stavisky had more than forty registered companies all built on thin air but the magistrate’s warrant from Bayonne did not reach us in Paris until the 28th. Immediately a notice went out to all border crossings, to every Criminal Investigation squad in the country and to all members of the IKPK, the International Police Commission.’

‘Of which Boemelburg was a member. It’s a small world, Louis.’

‘Yes, Walter was notified by me, of course, although Pharand tried to stick his nose in it. Every man who could be spared was put on the case. No holiday, no anything. Stavisky had to be brought in immediately and made not only to pay for his crimes, but to sing like a canary. We had reports of sightings from all over the country. Le Havre, Cannes, Saint-Tropez, the Spanish border, et cetera, et cetera. Then on the 30th word came in, a lucky break. A Parisian woman who had been taking the mountain air at Servoz in the Haute-Savoie. Would she rent her chalet to a friend of her neighbour? Ah yes indeed, but on her return to Paris, she lost one of her suitcases.’

Trust Louis to throw in an example of fate’s taking a hand in things! ‘As luck would have it, someone found the luggage who knew of the neighbour’s friend?’ offered Kohler impatiently.

‘Ah no, not quite. As you well know, among our many duties, the Surete are responsible for policing the railways. The woman’s father just happened to be a friend of our Divisional Chief, so of course, it was to him that the father went for help in locating the luggage but not until 5 January was it found.’

‘And then?’

‘By then she had read the news reports of the scandal and had received a letter from the caretaker of her chalet. Apparently the new lodger would reveal himself to no one and lived on nothing but milk and the Paris newspapers.’

‘The cow-juice was for the ulcers, eh?’

‘Stavisky got wind that things were closing in fast and moved to the villa near Chamonix but failed to take on the guise of a skier and that, my friend, is where I first met Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane of the Deuxieme Bureau.’

‘The man from Bayonne.’

‘Once head altar boy of the Notre Dame in Paris, Hermann. But a stone’s throw from the Prefecture of Police and the Palais de Justice.’

‘Old friends? Old school chums?’

‘Connections, Hermann. Like Stavisky, Monsieur Jean-Paul was and still is a man with friends in very high places, but unlike him, he was and is of the Establishment. A man who, no doubt, still believes God is on his side and that he is among God’s chosen few. I tried to convince Pharand that the Inspector, he was the one who had silenced the swindler, but I did not know then of my departmental head’s association with him.’

‘Fellow choirboys?’

‘Among other things, the Action Francaise.’

‘The Royalists of the extreme Right? The Monarchists?’

‘Their terrorist offshoot, the Comite Secret d’Action – the Cagoule, Hermann. The Hooded Ones. Murder, rape, arson and anarchy. They wanted the defeat of the Third Republic and were glad of it!’

‘Shit! Shall we put her on ice, then?’

‘But of course. Exactly as she is. I want to remind her killer of what he has done not just to her, Hermann, but to that daughter who cannot help herself.’

The Cagoule, the Hooded Ones. But how had Delphane gained access to that locked room, how had he vanished into thin air at the moment of the shot?

One bullet from a revolver, blood and brains mingling grey and red, the swindler twitching. ‘A doctor … get a doctor!’ someone had shouted. ‘Hurry! Hurry! There may yet be time to save him.’

The villa had been spacious – sumptuous among brooding spruce, with snowclad mountains towering high above, and darkly stained beams to welcome one in. Richly woven rugs and tapestries – gorgeous things had been everywhere but done by whom – whom, Jean-Louis? demanded the cinematographer of himself but could not answer. Whole blendings of vivid colours. Prussian blues, burnt siennas, golds and crimson reds. Impressionistic, yes; cubist, yes, but earthy too, and wild. The smell of the wool; that of a cigarillo, the tobacco Dutch and very good – yes, yes … The scent, too, of a woman’s perfume, of lily-of-the-valley and lavender … A mirror … a face in a mirror .. and then … then, pine ash smouldering in the hearth beneath charred papers – records, heaps of records. Ah no!

A revolver lying a short distance from the swindler. A Lebel just like his own …

A glass of milk. A last cigarette. The smell of wet leather and saddle soap that had somehow failed to do its job of waterproofing.

‘A suicide, Louis. We will leave it at that,’ Pharand had said.

Now a woman on a hillside, a pawn ticket and memories that simply would not go away.

St-Cyr eased himself out of the hearse. Kohler’s buzzsaw continued, and when the Surete was outside and had his feet firmly on the ground, he paused to take a look at his partner but saw himself superimposed on the other due to his reflection in the window.

Aged beyond his years, as Hermann was becoming, though Hermann was the older by three years and therefore could use age if necessary to settle an argument when all else failed.

The scar would fade in time. St-Cyr hesitantly touched his own left cheek and watched with cinematographic fascination how the gesture appeared as if touching the Bavarian’s cheek. One ragged, inflamed scar against another. The back of his own hand. The dark of night in Paris … Paris. An assassin’s knife. That last case. A carousel …

They had come through so much together. Always the tightwire, always the knife-edge. Would either of them survive the war? Would he have to kill Hermann in self-defence some day, or would Hermann have to kill him?

‘We both know this war cannot last for ever, my old one,’ he said, the frost coming on his breath to momentarily fog the glass and cloud the mirror of it. ‘That little derailment outside Lyon – I saw the look on your face, Hermann. The panic, yes. You knew it was but the beginning of the end.’

He turned quickly away at the thought. Hands jammed deeply into his overcoat pockets, he was soon looking down at the body. Nothing had disturbed it during the last of the night and if one could but awaken her, he felt certain she would look not at him but at the sun.

He heard her say, ‘The sea, it is over there, beyond those hills.’

St-Cyr took out the pawn ticket, number P-9377482, but did not ask himself anything, only gazed at it and at the body.

Then he crouched and began that most patient of studies.

The crevice was mossy in its deepest shade but the moss was bone dry as was everything else in these hills. Kohler thought of snakes and hazarded a few cautious probes with a forked stick.

Satisfied, he lay flat on the bare limestone and reached well into the crevice to retrieve the figure.

It was superb, a carving no more than eight centimetres in height – one of a creche. Dropped perhaps? he asked, or left on purpose, but if so, then why here, why so out of sight?

The exactness was so absolute that he had no question as to the identity. Ludo Borel stared at him from behind the highly polished surface of the holm oak. Oiled and rubbed again and again. ‘The herbalist,’ he said, looking off downhill across the ruin of that sparsely clad hillside to where Louis was still patiently communing with the victim.

Olive trees, grey in the valley, stood among cypresses whose tall, dark green spines appeared almost ornamental.

The wind was still a bitch.

Puzzled as to why the figure should have been dropped or left here, he looked uphill towards the village and saw at once that beyond its broken rampart, beyond the heart of the old town with its jumble of burnt-orange roofs and grey stone walls – perched right up there for all to see, were the brilliant ruins of a citadel. Saracen perhaps? he asked. Jesus, the view from up there must really be something.

Left to the rooks and to the wind, the ruins held the village crowded close as though in fear of the centuries.

A precipice more than thirty metres in depth fell to the uppermost part of the village. He picked out the church, then the spill of narrow lanes that led down to the fountain in the square – some square …

He found the village school by its gathering of children and heard, though he could not possibly have done so, their excited chattering.

Which one of them had lost the carving? The boy, Bebert Peretti? Had he left it here on purpose? Hadn’t the hearse-driver said the Borels and the Perettis weren’t on speaking terms? Two centuries of that?

A feeble attempt, then, to plant the seeds of suspicion in our minds? he wondered. Then why plant it so well only a Munich detective and, too long before that, a farmboy like Bebert himself would ever find it?

Kohler pocketed the thing and, in looking for more, came upon a small clot of wool caught on a bit of thornbush. Russet homespun – he held it up to the sun and let the light shine through it as if it were a woman’s hair.

Or a shepherd’s cloak, but if so, why of such a colour?

The girl? he asked and thought he had the answer since the Abbe Roussel had said, ‘She often walks in the fields and is at peace with God when not demented by her frenzy.’

The girl could have placed the carving here for some quite other reason.

Or someone could have put it here for her to find, he said, seeing in his imagination, as Louis would, the girl both coming secretly downhill to leave the figure or walking back uphill to find it.

Since the Perettis never spoke to the Borels and she was in the care of the former, if care is what it could be called, she might not have wanted them to know about it. Ah yes.

He walked away – did a wide sweep of the area, passing first up higher still, then coming downhill until he was well below the hearse and could see it standing out like God or the Devil, black and ridiculous against the bluest of skies, the orange of the tiles, and the glare from the ruins.

The gazogene that powered the hearse was, of necessity, on its roof. The cylinder for collecting the wood-gas was a cut-down water-tank salvaged from somewhere; the firebox, a small cast-iron stove whose chimney had been welded shut all but for its connection to the tank.

Copper tubing carried the inadequately compressed wood-gas to the engine, yielding perhaps at best sixty per cent of normal power.

If they hadn’t had the small pieces of wood to burn, the petit bois of green oak, they’d have removed the engine and hitched up the donkey or the horse. The roped-on wicker panniers for the wood only made it all the more ridiculous and pathetic. But why the smell? he asked. Bad sausage, eh? Bad something – Louis had known it too, but had said little about it. Indeed, the Frog was deep and quiet in these hills. It was as if he drove himself to commune with the dead, knowing the hills he had thought he might love so much held nothing for him but that same reward.

Kohler longed for a fag. He tried some rosemary, chewed on a bit of savoury, some wild marjoram and when he reached the olive trees, he saw the cottage as he tasted the forbidden fruit – fruit so black and bitter, he sucked on his cheeks but did not dare to spit.

The place was silent even in the ever-present wind. A pond, perhaps five metres in length and three in width at the most, was pale green and bordered by ferns and things that lived and died according to season. As if by some miracle of God, it was here that the water welled up to trickle past a weir and move the lily pads that had all but gone to sleep among the weeds that choked its floor.

Flagstones led round to the cottage. There were two short bits of wall, door-height, on either side of the small courtyard and all but covered with vines. Terracotta amphorae of Greek or Roman vintage stood near the unpainted door whose planks had been stained by the ages. A small casement window that opened outwards at the middle was half hidden by the nearest and shortest bit of wall. The roof was not of tiles but of slate, and the mortar between the stones had been newly pointed within the past ten or twenty years perhaps.

Another small window faced northward but was up high – in the loft perhaps, if there was one.

A stone wash-basin, rectangular and with three flower-pots at one corner, stood out in the small courtyard, a fishpond now perhaps.

There were clumps of greenery everywhere, whole draperies of it. Pines and cypresses nearby, and the olive trees.

It was verdant in a land of dryness. Louis would be ecstatic, but smoke issued from its chimney and the man from Bayonne had said he’d be waiting for them here.

Kohler paused to dip a hand and wash his face – one ought to freshen up before meeting the Establishment. Still, he drew the Walther P38 and, though feeling slightly off at having done so, went all the way and cocked it.

The aroma of sage-flavoured sausage and warm bread came to him, mingling with the pungency of the woodsmoke.

‘A moment, my old one,’ said Louis in a hush. ‘Please, I must see it as she must have done. Ah Mon Dieu, Hermann, it’s exquisite. Mistral could have written here; Balzac too. Fennel and chicory, shepherd’s purse, white nettle and wild celery.’

‘Cherries and olives and lemon trees.’

‘Yes, yes, figs too, and apricots.’ Louis took in a deep breath and held it.

‘And your friend,’ said Kohler only to see Louis give that quick little shake of the head.

‘The girl, I think. Delphane will have left us to discover what he, himself, was unable to find.’

The sausage was good, and with the cheese, the wine and soup, a repast fit for a king. St-Cyr broke off another chunk of bread. ‘Mademoiselle, you honour us in these hard times, eh, Hermann? All the food we want, while you sit like a starved cat watching us devour ten thousand ration tickets’ worth.’

‘Louis …’ began Kohler, stunned by the lack of tact in one who so often used it.

‘The “fork breakfast”, Hermann. One such as those who must labour all morning in the fields are given.’

‘It is … it is what I have thought you …’ The girl turned quickly away to hide her tears.

Kohler made a fist at his partner. ‘Louis, quit being a bastard,’ he said angrily. ‘The kid was only trying to make up for having bitten my thumb.’

‘Ah, forgive me, my old one. I thought she stole the food from Madame Peretti on the hill. But you are so pale and thin, mademoiselle, why will you not join us?’

‘Me, I have already eaten, monsieur! At dawn. The bowl of milk and the piece of bread, since there is no coffee.’

There were chicory and barley to roast – acorns too – but St-Cyr let it pass. Everyone was sick of the ersatz life, even here in these hills.

He cut off a fat chunk of the well-smoked sausage and, nudging her arm, offered the morsel. ‘Go on, take it. Madame can always make more, eh? Isn’t that what you thought when you stole these few things for us?’

Once she had tasted, she waited for more but was agonized by guilt perhaps and torn by fear – was it fear of reprisals? he wondered apprehensively.

Soon she was eating more than they and enjoying it. Ravenously!

With a sigh, she finally sat back. Not a crumb was left, though she searched for more. ‘Now perhaps, mademoiselle, you will tell us what has been going on here, eh? Your mother comes …’

‘My mother!’ she cried out, flinging a hand to cover her face and bursting into tears.

Both of them had to comfort her. St-Cyr found only hatred for himself but said, ‘Please, I know it is a terrible shock for you but we absolutely must know everything you can tell us.’

She shook her head. ‘I saw nothing. Nothing, messieurs! I was ill – all day the temperature, then the warnings I always get, then the spasms – twice, yes, yes, twice they came in the night, and then again.’

‘Who did your mother come to meet? That old woman on the hill? Come, come, Mademoiselle Buemondi, one would have to be an idiot not to notice the sausage mill and the goose livers for the pates.’

‘She … she …’

‘Was working a fiddle,’ sighed Kohler, loving it. ‘She was lugging food to Cannes and Bayonne, was that it?’ he laughed. ‘The black market, eh?’

‘Yes, yes, she was … was dealing in little things. One has to, isn’t that correct, Inspector?’

The rage was instant, the hatred all too clear in those dark, misty eyes. ‘She was doing it to buy the medicines for me, monsieur. Me! Her daughter who is ill.’

Kohler felt like a bastard. Louis said with all humbleness, ‘The phenobarbital, Hermann. A sedative and hypnotic’

‘The Dilantin, monsieur, the anticonvulsant, and the Diamox, the diuretic. Where, please, since you work for the Germans, are we who are so ill supposed to get our medicines if not on the black market?’

St-Cyr met her gaze, noting again how intense it was and how thin the face. ‘Even on the black market you would have no guarantee of what you were getting or of the strength,’ he said. A cold fish – he could see her thinking this. Her right eye appeared as if only slightly lower than the left. This hardened the expression and made it more remote perhaps than she wanted.

A small brown mole on the upper edge of the right cheekbone was just below the eye on the periphery of its hollow circle. The brows were wide and dark and extremely handsome, the nose exquisite – perfect in such a face, the lips … that slight pout of what? – iron discipline? he asked and said, Quite the finest lips. Given a little more meat on her bones, she would be absolutely beautiful, if in a haunting way. Yet now … now she was like a defiant angel, a paragon of virtue searching his dark soul and defying him to uncover her, but why?

‘So, is it your wish to imprison me, Inspector, for someone else’s crime?’ she asked.

Collaborator! she silently screamed. Resigned to such accusations these days, St-Cyr sadly shook his head. ‘No. No, of course not. But your mother’s contact in Cannes or Bayonne? Is it that she had a falling out with him and was killed because of this?’

She felt her brow. ‘If so, monsieur, then why was she killed in these hills? Why not in the streets of Cannes or at the villa my father wanted so much to sell? Mother did not use the villa – it was shut up on the day of the Defeat – but she wanted it kept for me and my sister and so would often check on it, I suppose.’

‘Ah! the sister,’ said St-Cyr, deeply concerned. ‘Someone will have to notify her of what has happened.’

‘Could you?’ she asked, clasping her shoulders now for warmth, so much so that Kohler got up to find her a shawl. A magnificent thing of vibrant colours and designs. Sudden slashes of crimson, great swaths of yellow on a russet background, green … green everywhere, even in the flecks.

Trembling, the girl wrapped the thing about her shoulders but appeared as if to hate the very touch of it. Fear? he wondered.

He tucked the shawl about her neck and gave her a fatherly pat on the back. No bites this time. He let his hand linger just to see if everything was all right.

Louis cleared his throat as if embarrassed by the need to press on with things. ‘The address of your sister, mademoiselle, and her name?’

She would look steadily at him. Yes, yes, that would be best. ‘The address I do not know, Inspector. Me, I never knew it. My sister and I, we were very close – inseparable – until … until the sickness came upon me. Then Josette, she went away to school and me, I stayed here in these hills.’

‘Why? In God’s name, why?’ Both of them had spoken at the same time, the one in German she could not understand, the other in French, but the consternation, it was equal and very sincere. Ah yes.

This pleased her immensely but did not wash away the sadness. ‘Because, messieurs, to be taken with fits was considered to be demented. A shame for any family to bear, so me, I was hidden away, while Josette, she was given everything.’

‘Louis, let me at the father. I’ll kill him.’

‘Me, too, my old one. Josette, mademoiselle? Surely you must have some idea of where we might find her?’

‘An actress, a dancer, a fashion-designer’s mannequin when she cannot get work, and an artist’s model, of course, at such times also. My sister, she has become everything that I ever wanted and that, messieurs, is why she does not come to see me and never writes.’

Good God Almighty! stormed Kohler inwardly. How could such a thing have happened? ‘You must have been taken to doctors, to a clinic perhaps?’

‘In Chamonix, yes. Yes, once I went there when I was sixteen …’ The one called Hermann tossed his friend a look of alarm. ‘But … but the treatment, it was unsatisfactory and my father, he … he insisted that I come home.’

‘To the villa in Cannes?’ asked the Surete.

‘In Le Cannet, yes. Yes, to the Villa of the Golden Oracle. I loved its garden. I was so happy there. Better … yes, yes, much better, but now … now the Germans they have come and I have had to leave. Is it true that they kill those who are sick like me, sick in the head or so poor in health they cannot survive for long?’

They were both silent as she studied them, both with lowered eyes, so yes, yes, it was all too true.

They looked at each other – looked about the cottage quickly as if in guilt. There was nothing … nothing much. It was all so very plain except for the woven things. A stone table, a hearth, a double bed, an unpainted chest of drawers and an armoire to match. Bits of pottery, a few flowerpots and glass things, the mirror … the mirror …

The shawl she was wearing.

‘Surely someone here must know of your sister’s whereabouts?’ asked St-Cyr.

The girl shook her head and gave it a little toss. ‘My mother and sister were estranged – separated. Mother wanted nothing more to do with Josette-Louise.’

Ah Mon Dieu, the family crisis! ‘Is your sister living with one of the Occupying Force?’ asked Hermann who could never remain patient when needed!

Again Josianne-Michele Buemondi shrugged, a little nonchalantly this time. ‘Me, I never knew the reason for their parting, only feared it had something to do with myself.’

‘And your father?’ asked St-Cyr gently.

Again the girl shook her head but did not offer any explanation, just remained quietly pensive.

‘Have you any idea who would want to kill your mother?’ asked the Gestapo, uncomfortably clasping his big hands on the table in front of him.

‘Or where he would get such a weapon?’ asked the one from the Surete.

Tears then, messieurs, to mist my tragic eyes! ‘The villa, for the weapon. My father, he had one he always kept by the fireplace in the grand salon. Italian, something from one of his family’s estates near Torino. Nothing special. A hunting bow, he always called it, but with the beaten silver engraved with wild game birds of all kinds, just to show people that once upon a time, the Buemondis were somebody.’

‘Fifteenth-century?’ asked St-Cyr.

‘Seventeenth, and used for hunting, monsieur, not for war.’

‘Then why the barbed iron tip and the leather flights?’ asked the Surete. ‘Dedou Fratani was positive on this.’

‘Dedou … he is the garde champetre among so many other things, Inspector. That one, he has the imagination but the type of bolt, it does not matter so much, does it? One for hunting could just as easily have killed her.’

‘From sixty metres, Louis. Probably from where I found this.’

Kohler set the carving on the table before him. The gasp the girl gave was real enough. Pale … she had become so very pale. Trembling, she waited but could not seem to take her eyes from the figure.

‘A santon, Hermann. A local custom. There are seventy or so of them, each depicting a traditional occupation in the village. The baker, the woodcutter, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘The herbalist,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Was he treating your epilepsy on the side, mademoiselle, and were you paying him with this?’

Vehemently she shook her head but still could not take her eyes from that thing. ‘For epilepsy there is no cure, and the herbs, they are not sufficient,’ she whispered sadly.

‘Then did you leave it among the rocks?’ he asked.

Again she shook her head. They waited. They gave her time – were genuinely afraid they might well bring on another seizure.

When she got up to leave them, the black beret was tilted to the left. The shepherd’s black, rough cape was linked below her chin and thrown back over the left shoulder.

St-Cyr noted the way she stood before them, defiant, proud but quivering. The rough grey trousers were obviously far too big for her. The black turtleneck pullover was someone else’s too.

He noted the heavy leather belt that could well have held a pistol, a captured Luger or Mauser. Hermann saw it too, but said nothing. Only half stood with sadness, his hands still resting on the table.

‘Messieurs,’ she said. ‘Until we meet again.’

They watched her leave. ‘Jesus!’ exploded Kohler. ‘What the hell was that all about?’

‘A lover, Hermann. In the maquis perhaps, but then … Ah it is far too soon to know.’

St-Cyr stood in the tiny courtyard next to the shorter piece of wall. No place was quite out of the mistral but here the sun was captured so that the soul was warmed.

Weighted under boulders was his laundry. Socks, trousers, underpants, vest and shirt. If anyone should come along – ah, Mon Dieu, they would most certainly wonder what had happened to the Surete.

Wrapped in that magnificent shawl, he stood like Caesar in the shape of a much thinner Balzac. Plump, swarthy perhaps and tough, belligerent when necessary but begrudging of the meagre sponge-bath that had followed the doing of the laundry. Freezing, but refreshed, the mind alert in spite of the lousy night.

Hermann had gone off to find the hearse-driver and arrange for the body and themselves to be transported to the morgue in Cannes. Perhaps an hour was available to himself, perhaps a little more. He must search carefully; he must leave nothing unseen.

Ruefully he looked at the butt of the cigarillo Jean-Paul Delphane had left among the rocks. The juices began to run in his mouth, the pulse to quicken as the temptation of tobacco teased his very being. Should he? Could he?

With guilt, he crumbled the thing into the wind and, going quickly indoors, shut out the morning, shut out the love he had for Provence and the simple pleasure of watching things grow even in winter.

The cottage was very private and intimate in its barrenness. As he moved about, recording detail with the mind’s camera, he caught a broken bit of pottery. ‘Roman,’ he said aloud and asked, ‘Do we ever really come to know each other even during our most intimate of moments?’

There were some Palaeolithic stone chips, a scraper, a flint knife, then a lump of Roman bronze that was flecked with verdigris, and a tiny pale whitish-green bottle – a perfume vial from some Roman lady’s boudoir.

He held the bottle up to the light from the window and marvelled at the iridescent play the work of time created as it destroyed the glass by hydration of the silica, spalling it off a skin at a time, the effect almost opalescent. He brought the bottle to his nose, casting the mind back over the centuries to rhodium (oil of roses), melinum (that of quince blossoms) and metopium (of bitter almonds) yet thinking, too, of Grasse and the essence factories there, the growing of flowers and their distillation. Lavender and mimosa, verbena and narcissi.

Readily he found the fawn-coloured overcoat and pale yellow cashmere scarf hanging on a peg by the door. The coat impressed him, not so much by its quality which was very good, very expensive – of vicuna, and pre-war of course – but as to why she should have worn it while lugging two suitcases into the hills.

The suitcases were sitting under her hat and gloves. The hat, a matching cloche with a bit of pale yellow veil, was totally unsuitable for this time of year. The gloves were leather and pre-war, of summer perhaps or fall. The suitcases were from Louis Vuitton and very, very good. Prewar as well, but looking a little scruffy.

He tried the left pocket, felt the softness of the wool, let the sensuality of its touch race through him. Found a key, a half-used book of Cannes tram-tickets, her papers, ration book – pale pink in colour – bread: 375 grams per day in 25-gram slices, each ticket good for one slice with the meal; cheese: 20 grams if one could get it and it was a day for cheese in the restaurant.

Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi; profession: none; nationality: French; place of birth: Annecy, near the Swiss border and near Chamonix; date of birth: 16 December 1890. Ah Mon Dieu, murdered on her birthday!

Height: 170 centimetres; weight: 68 kilos; hair: blonde, natural; nose: normal, its dimension average; eyes: brown.

A vicuna coat, a woman of some substance but of it now? A birthplace far too close to Chamonix for comfort.

The travel papers and laissez-passer – the much-sought-after ausweis of the Germans – allowed her to travel freely between Cannes and Bayonne on the grounds of medical necessity.

The ausweis was signed by the Generalmajor Harald Riedke of the Kommandantur in Marseille. It was dated 18 November 1942, and he wondered not just why she’d had to go to Marseille to get it but how the hell she’d got it so soon, seeing as the Germans could only have been in the city for a week.

Money? he asked, not liking the drift, or a forgery?

Two addresses were given, and neither would have raised any eyebrows among the Occupying Forces or the Vichy police. The villa in Le Cannet was certainly not given, simply a house in Bayonne on the Quai des Corsaires, and another on one of the back streets in Cannes at the foot of the hills. Again he had to wonder about her.

The other pocket held a thin bundle of thousand-franc notes – ten of them, a few fives, one fifty, a handful of change, lipstick, compact, handkerchief, and a beechwood bobbin.

St-Cyr drew in a breath, his nostrils pinching in thought as he held the bobbin. It was wound with four or five strands of russet wool, the nuances of colour ranging from a rich, dark, earthy shade to that of autumn’s pale whisper among old leaves. There were flecks of sunlight too, that made the wool almost glisten with gold in places.

He brought the bobbin to his nose and drew in the smell of the wool. Hand-carded and spun. This one used only the stuff of the hills and she dyed it herself. But she was not the wearer of the coat.

Quickly he ran his hands up under the lapels and when he found the enamelled pin, stopped his heart and listened to the wind outside before removing it. The Cross of Lorraine, the newly taken symbol of the fledgeling Resistance, of those who secretly were for de Gaulle and the Forces of the Free French in London.

Though he tried, he could not see Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi having been so foolish as to have worn such a thing. And he knew that, for the moment or all time, he could not possibly tell Hermann of it.

When he came to the mirror, which hung on the wall above the bureau, his troubled mind caused him to pause. The frame was wide and of flaking gilt, the glass rectangular and bevelled, the thing of a size just sufficient for one to view the face and hair perhaps, or the bodice by standing on the tiptoes. In places the silver backing had vanished, leaving triangular slashes; in others, it had attained almost coppery hues. The mirror was obviously something bought in one of the country flea markets. Yes, yes, he said impatiently. So she wanted a little something primitive and simple in her life, and she bought this cottage and the adjoining land as a retreat.

Caught among the reflections were the window and then … why, yes, the door and the coat.

And in between, a small throw rug and a rush-backed rocking chair. The rug reminded him of the villa near Chamonix, and he took to staring at the shawl he wore and to fussing with it. Could the weaver have been the same? Ah Mon Dieu, this case. Old wounds that had never closed; new ones rapidly coming on.

When he eased open one of the top drawers of the bureau, he let out a little cry. Facing him on the neatly folded lingerie of silk and lace, pale blues and creams, pinks and whites, were two masks, the faces done with water-colours. Over the white plaster mould, the artist or artists had placed a pale wash of flesh and then had dabbed or touched in the accents. The eyebrows, the lips – the expressions, ah damn it!

The twins, he asked, but as young adults? Thin of face but not so thin as Josianne-Michele, who would have known absolutely that he would have searched and found them.

That girl … what was she hiding? If she had lied about her relationship to her sister then why, if these were they, had she left them here for him to find?

Beautifully done. First the object of the artist’s eye, the touch, the Vaseline and afterwards, the carefully applied layers of gauze and thin plaster. The fingers delicately tracing each feature – straws in the nostrils to allow the patient – patient? why had he said that? – the subject to breathe.

In orange, in yellow, in red, blue, black and shadings of green from deep to pale, the expression of the one was so stark and filled with dark thoughts, the soul found them difficult to probe. Lust, hatred, vengeance, jealousy – ah, so many tortured emotions.

The mask on the right was open and kind – vivacious, intelligent, quick-witted, high-spirited, warm and outgoing. No secrets there, the kind heart exposed for all to see and yet … and yet …

Both of them would have been no more than what? Twenty or twenty-two at the time of the mask-making? Or twenty-four?

On a shelf beside the bed, among a litter of yet more pottery shards and bits of Roman glass, he found the espadrille of a child of ten or twelve, the left foot, and with it, a small, cheap porcelain figure of the Christ at Galilee and a cross that had been fashioned by the village blacksmith out of horseshoe nails.

Determined, he went over to the suitcases and opened them but found only that they were empty.

Kohler stared at the flat box of dead rats that had been built into the floor of the hearse. The copper pipe from the wood-gas tank on the roof passed down and through the box before reaching the engine in front of the driver’s seat.

‘It is a good invention, is it not?’ asked Dedou Fratani, his look so full of doubt and fear that the Gestapo’s detective had to laugh.

‘I like it,’ breathed Kohler. Always the ingenuity of the French tickled his fancy. The rats gave the smell when the back door was opened for the inspections. ‘How do you find the Italians?’ he asked, still looking at those fuzzy little bodies with their maggots.

‘Lazy. Timid and sticking together. You have seen it yourself, monsieur, at the last control, only the other day. Eight Greaseballs armed to the teeth and, on this side of the Zone Coastal, two German corporals with the single carbine.’

‘We shoot better. Besides, it’s less mouths to feed and we tend to ask fewer and far better questions.’ Oh-oh, eh? Is that it, my fine? he asked himself.

Mist had collected in Fratani’s dark eyes behind the rimless specs. The garde champetre, who had not exactly been doing his duty, swallowed tightly. ‘Of course, Inspector, the questions, they are much better. That is why the Germans, they have let us pass so easily.’

‘Not because of my badge?’ snorted Kohler. ‘My Gestapo shield that I thrust into their Wurtemberg mugs though the bastards swore they were Austrians?’

When no answer came, Kohler grinned and let him have it. ‘They were in on the fiddle, right?’

Who could have known the detectives would sleep in the hearse and question the smell? ‘Yes … yes, the German corporals are in on it. Aren’t all your countrymen this way? The good ones, monsieur? The normal ones who are so far from home?’

‘Two rounds of goat cheese, a metre and a half of that sausage and three bottles of your best rose for my partner.’

The shit! ‘Done.’ They shook hands. The Gestapo had been bought but for how long?

‘Now start talking, my fine and keep it coming steadily, eh? First the water rights.’

‘The water …?’ Ah no!

Kohler helped himself to the last of Fratani’s cigarettes and tucked the empty packet back into the bastard’s pocket. ‘We wouldn’t want to litter the hillside with rubbish, would we?’

‘Madame, she …’

‘Madame Buemondi?’

‘Yes … yes.’ Fratani tore his gaze away to search the hill-slope and the mas, the farmhouse then the village and lastly the ruins of the citadel on high.

No one was in sight but that could well mean they were being watched and the Gestapo, he … he knew of this, had seen it all before and was grinning like a wolf!

‘Madame Buemondi owns this land and leases it to both the Perettis and the Borels but only lets the Perettis draw water from her pond when needed.’

‘In return for looking after the daughter?’

‘Yes. That and the cottage she … she uses when she and …’ Again the village cop was forced to swallow tightly. ‘Pardon,’ he said. ‘The catch in the throat. The influenza perhaps.’

Kohler wasn’t impressed.

‘She used to come to visit us,’ confessed Fratani.

‘When she came to barter for a little of what you bastards were flogging on the black markets of Nice and Grasse, eh, and Cannes?’

Among other places – this was all too clear in the Gestapo’s expression.

‘What else are we to do, monsieur, given that our village is so remote and we lack for many things?’

‘How many times a week do you run the hearse to market and how many caskets do you fill?’

‘In summer, two; in winter, one or none. It all depends on each harvest, on the time they change the controls, on so many little things. Too many bodies, too many funerals … Always there are questions.’

Kohler got the picture. It was fair enough and Fratani knew only too well that to even barter an old bicycle inner tube for a chunk of bread these days was illegal and subject not just to a fine and imprisonment, but to transport into forced labour or worse.

‘When did the victim catch on to things?’

‘Right from the start, right from when the shortages first began in Cannes. The grey bread, the sudden absence of asparagus, monsieur, a thing we used to grow in quantity in the valleys. Four, five, six crops sometimes. Ah, nothing like some others but … It was her idea that we do this, monsieur. Madame Buemondi, she was the mastermind of our little business.’

She probably was, thought Kohler, but let it pass. ‘Tell me why she would deny the Borels the right to water but give it to the Perettis?’

Nom de Dieu, this one had the eyes of a priest! ‘Alain Borel, he …’

‘The herbalist’s son?’

‘Yes, yes, damn you! He …’

‘Is in the hills,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Was he the one who left this for the girl, and was it really left for her?’

Fratani stared at the carving. Startled, he asked where the Gestapo had found it and when told, gripped his stubbled cheeks, deep in thought and despair. The others would never forgive him if he told the truth.

‘Ludo Borel’s eldest son gathers the herbs for his father in the mountains, monsieur, and dries them there.’

‘I asked you who left this little carving and for whom? Don’t shrug, my fine, or I’ll make you carry her corpse all by yourself, right to Cannes.’

‘The grandmother, Madame Melanie Peretti, the mother of Georges.’

‘The blind woman?’

Was it so impossible for the Gestapo to comprehend? ‘She sees with the innermost eye, monsieur, and she carves most beautifully.’

‘Don’t dump on me. For her to have done this, the herbalist would have had to let her put her hands all over his face.’

‘But of course.’

‘But I thought you told us the Perettis and the Borels were not on speaking terms?’

‘They’re not. That is why she has left it on the hillside for the herbalist. The Abbe Roussel, he has acted as the transmitter of their words.’

The transmitter? Why not the relay, or the go-between? Why use a wireless term?

Kohler looked away to the ruins of the citadel and from there, let his eye run to the line of the nearest mountains. Da, dit, dit, da … Merde! An enemy transmitter in the mountains. The sap. Had he let it slip on purpose?

‘Is the herbalist’s son, Alain Borel, in love with the girl?’

‘Very much so.’

‘And did the mother not agree?’

‘Did she forbid such a thing, monsieur? Is that what you mean?’

‘You know it is.’

Fratani sighed contentedly. ‘Then you are absolutely correct, Inspector. There could be no wedding, no possibility of a union and of offspring. On this, Madame was positive.’

‘Or else she’d cut off their water?’

‘She had already done that long ago, from the Borels, as I have said.’

‘From the Perettis, you idiot!’ Ah Nom de Dieu, this one understood the hills far better than most.

‘Louis, I have to tell you something.’ Kohler drew him round to the leeward side of the hearse while Fratani waited behind the steering-wheel. ‘The Perettis were supposed to keep the girl away from Ludo Borel’s eldest son. Madame Buemondi threatened one of them in no uncertain terms. Georges, the old woman’s son, shot her.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she would have cut off their water, and in these hills that is life.’

‘Hermann, what is it? What’s really troubling you?’

‘The maquis, Louis. Your friend Delphane is using us against them.’

St-Cyr reached out to him. The gesture was so automatic, the barriers of war were instantly set aside. ‘Quietly, Hermann. Quietly, my old one. You’re forgetting the pawn ticket and letting your innermost fears get the better of you.’

‘Am I? You saw the girl’s clothes. You saw the looks she gave us.’

‘Shall we go up to the village to question the abbe?’

There were tears in Hermann’s eyes. ‘Ask Fratani where we can find Georges Peretti, Louis.’

‘In time, my old one. Let us first go to Cannes and tuck her safely on ice. I have something I must do. The rest will keep.’

Kohler wouldn’t let go. ‘You’ve been my friend, Louis, but if there are maquis in those hills, I’m going to have to let the Army know. Boemelburg has forced my hand.’

‘Or Pharand, my own, Hermann. And Jean-Paul Delphane.’

They were up to their necks in shit and both knew it. One last glance through the open curtains revealed the victim still stiff with rigor. She seemed to be trying to tell them something but could not possibly have done so.

3

Two bodies lay sprawled on the tram-car tracks in Cannes. Perhaps five metres separated them, and when the sub-lieutenant walked up to the nearer of them, he drew his pistol and gave the poor bastard the coup de grace.

Fratani shuddered. Jammed between the two detectives in the cab of the hearse, he saw only blood and brains splashing the stones, not the fashionable shops and hotels of the route d’Antibes. Not the half-frozen crowd of stragglers who were bundled in black or grey with scattered colours and fur coats between who made no move, remained only mute and poised in shock and indecision. Poor and rich alike; alien and resident; one dowager in black with a pair of white poodles who sniffed uneasily at her escort’s heels and cocked their heads as if for more.

A second shot followed, though there’d been no need for it.

The sub-lieutenant then walked slowly back to the woman who raised an arm, outstretched a hand, the fingers spread and bloody. She cried out to that bastard with the gun and he let her cry out to him, let her beg for mercy. One high-heeled shoe had caught in a track and now lay broken behind her just ahead of the tram-car which remained as if hammered against the background of the street and the faces.

Furiously Kohler rolled down his side window and started to stick his head out. ‘Hermann, no! No, my friend.’

‘Louis …? Louis …?’

The shot rang out. The face was smashed. The body crumpled. The hand clawed at the pavement.

Not a person moved. Where once there had always been gaiety, the hubbub of traffic, the lights, the fun, the eccentric and the beautiful, now there was only terror. St-Cyr quickly let his eyes sweep the pavements on either side, alarmed by the sudden thought that others might decide to bolt for it. But no, the couple had been alone in this on the tram-car. A random check of papers. They could not have known their little gamble was bound to fail. An informer? he asked, again searching the faces of the crowd. A collaborator?

It seemed likely, but he could not decide on any one face. With the toe of his jackboot, the sub-lieutenant flipped the woman’s body over. Then he put away his pistol and stripped her of her valuables.

Kohler started to get out of the hearse. Louis hissed at him, ‘Hermann, don’t! It’s finished, eh? What’s done cannot be undone.’

‘The people will hate us, Louis.’

‘They were Jews,’ said Fratani. ‘When the Germans moved in to occupy the south, the Jews and a lot of others fled here to the Italian sector, thinking things would be easier for them. But then the French Fleet scuttled their ships in Toulon and overnight the Italians were kicked out and now control only what is left of the coast from east of here to the frontier and a slice of the lowest hills.’

The sub-lieutenant was now going through the man’s pockets. ID, wallet, watch and chain were taken and still no one else had moved, not even his own men. He found something worthless and tossed it away, then found a handkerchief that the wind stole and one of the poodles snapped at viciously before the dowager could yank the dog back.

Now the wedding ring was being unscrewed to join that of the wife.

Kohler eased the hearse into gear and they crept along the street. At the first intersection, he headed for the Croisette and the sea.

Not a soul was around. All along that vast and glistening arc of sand and posh hotels, only the palms threw their spiked shadows and the pines their parasols.

It was as if the world had stopped.

The three of them got out to stretch their legs. ‘Louis, we’ll have to find Gestapo HQ and …’

‘It is at the Hotel Montfleury on the avenue Beausejour, overlooking the city,’ said Fratani, offering cigarettes from some as yet untapped source. ‘They have requisitioned the hotel for the duration.’

‘Of what?’ asked Kohler, knowing only too well Fratani had meant the Occupation. ‘Louis, let’s let this one cart the body over to the morgue. He can wait for us there and keep her company.’

‘He’ll need the papers,’ said St-Cyr drily. Always it was papers, papers with the Germans. ‘Let us agree to meet at the villa, Hermann, but give me time, first, with the weaver.’

‘What makes you so sure you’ll find her?’

‘A hunch. That’s all.’

Warily Fratani flicked his dark eyes from one to the other of them but said nothing.

The house of the weaver – what could he say about it in the silence of this place? The rear courtyard was the floor of a small, twelfth-century abbey whose grey and broken walls of stone still stood about. Arched doorways led out into the surrounding cemetery; pillars held up bits of makeshift roof upon which the tiles had been rescued, no doubt, from the very ruins of the stables.

Perhaps thirty large amphorae and storage jars of terracotta stood about, a whole collection of them. Most were of a burnt dark brown or greyish brown; some of that dusty, ochrous red so common to the hills. Roman and Greek they were and he wondered at the penchant for collecting them since, apart from a few which held lemon and orange trees – a sort of nursery perhaps – most collected only rainwater and thus would raise mosquitoes in season.

Unless … he said. And peering into one, saw the thin film of iridescence. A drop or two of oil to starve the hatching larvae of much-needed oxygen.

The courtyard held scattered clumps of mimosa and juniper taken from the hills, with thyme and rosemary and sage. Naked grapevines climbed the highest of the walls next to the rickety ladder that had been used in the harvest and simply left for the pruning.

There were potted herbs and winter beans, several squares of soil which had obviously been carted in from the surrounding cemetery in order to raise the crops so necessary to sustain life. Carrots, beets, potatoes – by their frozen, dead tops, St-Cyr named them off and wondered at the chanciness of storing such things in the ground. Brussels sprouts were grown as well, cabbages too, and leeks – good ones. He could smell the soup the leeks would make.

There were apricot and lemon trees, no figs or quince, a puzzle simply by their omission, for whoever cared for this shambles of a garden, did care for its wildness and sought not to tame it too much.

To enter the house, he went in under a makeshift arbour of grey branches wound with wisteria and trumpet vine to a small handful of storage jars in which the roots were anchored.

There was a sturdy rocking chair beside an iron-grilled window whose wall was cracked; a throw rug of earthy red upon which danced an electric design of saffron.

Sabots and espadrilles lay side by side on the rush mat beside a potted palm and two ancient rhododendrons. The door was of that same powder-blue as at the front but open a crack. Ah no, what has happened here? he asked.

Nudging the door open farther, he stepped inside to all but close it behind him. Drew in the heady scents of the hills, the sharp musk of wool that was being dyed.

Bunches of herbs hung above the disused stone fireplace of what had once been the monks’ kitchen. A straw hamper, a wide-brimmed sun-hat, a wicker basket of gardening tools, canvas apron, a pair of rubber boots – he took them all in. ‘Mademoiselle …?’ he tried. ‘Is anyone here?’

He should have rung the front bell, should have yanked on its rusty chain. Could not have used the key he’d brought, not yet, ah no. Not without the warrant and for that he would have needed the magistrate to accompany him.

One must go easily.

Committed, St-Cyr pressed on, finding the present kitchen on the other side of the fireplace, its ashes cold. Here disorder was laid above order. Agitation was in the unwashed dishes, the bits of bread and cheese that had been picked up and put down with hardly a nibble. The glass of wine that had not been touched.

The kitchen was typically Provencal. Low beams, copper pots, an all but empty screened cupboard-box to air the cheeses and the butter. Pate in a stone crock. Vinegar and oil in pale green bottles, mixed with various herbs. Fennel in one; dill in another.

The sitting-room was large, the floor of the same brick-red tiles, the chairs of woven hemp and modern – pale gold with soft beige cushions. Light … light everywhere streaming in to touch the tapestries. ‘Ah, Mon Dieu,’ he whispered. ‘I am in the presence of a master.’ The weaving was superb. Everywhere he looked there was this presence, this uniqueness, that feeling only the true artist can engender solely by exposing his or her work to view. ‘Mademoiselle …?’ he asked again. Still there was no answer. This troubled him; this made him think he’d come upon another murder and he asked, So soon? and was afraid.

Then he heard the tiny, brittle sound of beechwood shuttles as they knocked against each other, and he followed it. Saw on the landing one of the tapestries from the villa near Chamonix. Was rocketed right back in time the nine years to the murder of Stavisky.

Felt the villa, smelled the warm aroma of a small cigar, and looked up still, could not have moved. Was transformed.

The tapestry flashed spears of colour laid upon one another as a bird’s wing-feathers are when preened. Mirrors of whites, blues, browns, greys, reds, greens and yellows blending into a pattern that was absolutely magnificent, the texture almost that of banded cornelian yet touched with fine lines and waves of purplish blue and of so many other colours and shades. Washes of the same as well.

He heard the pistol shot. He caught a breath, fought through the web of time and panic – forced himself to break away and run up the last of the stairs and along the hall.

There had been no gunshot.

She was sitting behind the upright loom with the sun over a shoulder, and he saw her first through the vertical threads of the warp and the design she had drawn upon it. Eyes downcast, the left hand momentarily up and pressed gently flat against the warp; the right hand out of sight behind the tapestry, holding one of the bobbins. The lashes long and dark black, the hair black and loose and spilling outwards to the shoulders, the face half obscured by the dye of the design, the head bent as if in prayer. The concentration absolute.

‘Mademoiselle …?’ he began.

‘Ah!’ she gasped and in that instant his mind flew back to Chamonix and he saw the dark grey-blue of those eyes as they had looked at him then but where? Where had he seen them? Not in the villa? Not on those stairs?

Dark and so very afraid as now.

‘What the hell do you want?’ she demanded, the accent all too clear. ‘Can’t you see that I’m working?’

It was no use. He was the same. He hadn’t changed one bit. Oh he was shabbier, a little older, yes, but some men never change. They’re born into middle age and he was exactly as she remembered and like a face out of the darkness. Why had he come?

‘Mademoiselle …?’

He didn’t remember – could that be possible? she asked herself. ‘Mademoiselle Viviane Darnot. Now how the hell did you get in here and what the hell do you want?’

He would keep the voice steady. ‘Mademoiselle Darnot, I am Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete Nationale.’

She would not move, would stare at him from behind the warp. He must not realize who she was.

‘Your friend, mademoiselle …’

‘Is dead. Yes, I know about that but can tell you nothing. Now please, Inspector, I must catch the light on the threads, yes? Otherwise it will not guide my fingers.’

And I cannot work for more than a few hours a day, as a result – was that it? wondered St-Cyr, and knew it was so. ‘Who murdered her?’ he asked.

The eyes flew up, the left hand gripped the threads, then quickly released them. ‘Murdered …? It was an accident and nothing … nothing I can do will ever bring her back to me.’

‘A hunting accident?’ he persisted.

Why did he look at her the way he did, if not to tug at memory’s door? ‘An accident. Ludo came to see me right away. He … he knew it … it would all be so hard for me to bear.’

How nakedly she had laid herself open to him. St-Cyr drew in a long breath. ‘The herbalist … Yes, yes, my partner has met him.’

She asked about his partner and he told her, ‘Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo, mademoiselle.’

And you hate yourself for having said that to me – is that it? she wondered. You think it cheap of yourself to have made a threat like that to a woman like me. ‘All right, I am English, Inspector. Good God, I never once expected that my accent would become a threat to me. My French, it is pretty good.’

‘How long have you lived among us?’

Still there was that hunter’s look about him and her heart, it could not keep from sinking. ‘Since our school-days, Inspector. Anne-Marie and I grew up together in … in the convent. The Sisters of Charity – some charity. Hah! Me, I shall miss her for the rest of my life.’

‘What about her husband?’

‘Carlo? That pig? He spent all her money and he abused her terribly. He calls himself an artist but he shits far better.’

Ah now, what was this? ‘And the twins?’ he asked.

‘The twins,’ she said, and he knew at once by her tone of voice that her heart had always included the daughters of her dearest friend.

She dropped her eyes to the tapestry which he could see only from the front. She touched a bobbin, noted the play of colours that would give those delicate nuances she wanted so much. ‘The twins were always a constant worry, Inspector, and me, I shared that burden with my lover.’

There, she had said it in foolishness perhaps, or in defiance and pride.

‘Josianne-Michele was at the farm,’ he acknowledged with that nod.

‘The one who has the epileptic fits?’ she asked, somewhat taken aback.

Again he nodded. ‘It is the other one I am interested in, Mademoiselle Darnot. Josianne believes her sister is still in Paris but me, I am not so certain it is as easy as that.’

‘A dancer, an actress and … and a mannequin … yes, yes, Josette-Louise is in Paris. Her mother and she were not on speaking terms, Inspector.’

‘They were estranged.’

‘Yes … yes, all right! I was forbidden to write to the girl but, since Anne-Marie is no longer here to be angry with me, I can tell you that I did. I also sent her money when I could. Not much, for we did not have much, you understand. But a little something every now and then to keep her off the streets.’

Again there was that curt little nod but was he satisfied? It was so hard to tell. ‘I can let you have the last address, Inspector. It is a few weeks old and she may well have moved since then. The mails … these days they are not so good, isn’t that right?’ She gave a shrug when he didn’t respond and said, ‘In any case the girl can tell you nothing since she never came home to see us.’

‘Not the father?’ he asked.

She didn’t blink – he was certain of this. Cold, was she that cold towards the father? Did the hatred cut so deep?

‘Not even her father, Inspector. Not since she went away to school as both her mother and I had done before her.’

‘At the age of twelve?’

‘Yes, after Josianne-Michele contracted the encephalitis and began to have the fits, we sent Josette-Louise away. It was only fair that we do so.’

Fair to deny the one sister the love and help of the other? St-Cyr took a chance – a gamble. ‘Mademoiselle, I am not of the Germans, though I must work under them. If there is anything you should confide in me, do so now before you encounter my partner.’

‘My papers are in order, Inspector.’

‘But you are English. You, yourself, have admitted this. By rights you should be in the internment camp at l’lsle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse.’

She did not move. Her gaze never wavered. ‘If you wish to check, you will find that I am Irish, Inspector, and since the Irish, they are not at war with the Reich, my papers really are in very good order.’

‘Yet you must tread carefully, mademoiselle. Me, I am not so stupid as to miss such an obvious thing. Your accent is like broken glass to those whose ears are in tune.’

‘All right. I have a friend who arranged for me to get a proper set of papers but I really have lived in France nearly all my life.’

‘This friend, is he the one who made sure Madame Buemondi would have a proper laissez-passer for the travel to Bayonne and return?’

‘Yes … yes, he’s the same one.’

‘Good. Now tell me why she had that pawn ticket in her hand.’

‘What pawn ticket? Me, I know of no …’

‘Mademoiselle, please! Time, it is of the essence! Jean-Paul Delphane is also on the case.’

Jean-Paul Delphane … Ah no. This one, he had remembered Chamonix.

Tall French windows overlooked the city and the sea beyond the spacious grounds of the Hotel Montfleury. Kohler sought the yacht basin only to see that most of the boats had been beached due to the Occupation. He felt time ticking by and knew he’d have to say something.

The Gestapo Gerhardt Munk, a hard, quick, bitter little man of thirty-six, irritably fingered the pencil that lay lost among the papers on the ornate desk behind which no one sat.

‘Well?’ asked Delphane. ‘We’re waiting, Herr Kohler. We can’t wait long.’

‘It’s Hauptsturmfuhrer Kohler, or Inspector to you.’

‘The notebook!’ hissed Munk. ‘These … these …’ He snatched it up and thrust it under the Bavarian’s nose. ‘Telephone numbers!’ he shrilled. ‘Communists! Agents provocateurs!’

‘Come off it, don’t make me laugh.’

‘This is no laughing matter!’ seethed Delphane. ‘We have the necessary proof. The woman was carrying that notebook when found.’

Kohler returned the leaden gaze, was shocked again at the near-image of himself. Only in the hair and the eyes was there difference. A shrug would irritate – he did so and noted the stiffening of the ramrod back, the swift determination to return the slight with good measure. ‘Removing evidence from the scene of a murder is against the law, monsieur. Both here in France and at home in the Reich.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ snorted Munk, watching them both.

‘Then why call Louis and me in, eh, seeing as you’ve got it all figured out?’

‘All right, all right.’ Delphane tossed a pacifying hand. ‘So, my friend, it is more than a list of telephone numbers.’

‘But you don’t know how much more and you’d like us to find out,’ sighed Kohler, reaching for the cigarette box only to have Munk place a hand firmly on top of his own.

‘Not so fast, Herr Kohler. There is a small matter the Inspector, here, wishes to settle.’

Delphane did not like being put on the spot by anyone, let alone a divisional head of the Gestapo. Hesitating, he took up a folder, then found the hornrimmed glasses his sixty years had made necessary.

When he glanced at Munk only to receive the curt nod of suicide or else, his eyes were like ripe olives in oil. Ah yes.

The Deuxieme Bureau’s agent began to read, the voice gruff with the humiliation he himself had only just received. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Central, Paris. Has recently moved out of free room and board among his associates at the Hotel Boccador to take up lodgings at Number 44 rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts in the Latin Quarter with the young prostitute Giselle le Roy.’

‘The flat’s right across the street from the lycee. I was hoping she’d take the hint and go back to school.’

‘At twenty-two years of age?’ scoffed Munk. ‘Come, come, Herr Kohler, the address is not far from that of the bordel of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton.’

Once a whore, always one, was that it? ‘I was afraid the kid would get homesick. She’s half Greek, half Midi French and doesn’t know the city all that well.’

Delphane ignored the lie. ‘But … but she has Madame Oona Van der Lynn to take care of her? Forty years of age. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed and …’

Munk let Delphane say it. ‘And a Dutch alien, Herr Kohler. An illegal immigrant.’

The bastards.

‘Are you fucking them both?’ asked Munk, breathing in so tightly his nostrils pinched. ‘If so, we can supply you with condoms. We found eighteen cases stashed among the wine bottles in the cellars of the American consulate.’

The man from the Deuxieme Bureau waited; Munk sucked in a little breath and allowed the merest vestige of a grin.

‘So, okay,’ sighed Kohler, ‘you’ve made your point. Now what seems to be the trouble besides that notebook?’

Again at a curt nod, Delphane was delegated to speak. ‘No, my friend, I have not made my point. The Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg has offered the Deuxieme Bureau the full co-operation of the Gestapo in this matter and I want it. I insist!’

‘It’s too early to tell you anything. If you want another look at the body, she’ll be over at the morgue just as soon as our driver can get her there.’

‘That driver of yours must be watched,’ said Munk fastidiously.

‘And where is Louis?’ asked Delphane. ‘Why is he not here with you?’

Kohler shrugged. He wasn’t used to being told he’d have to work under a Frenchman. It hurt. It was humiliating and that was exactly what Munk had had in mind.

Delphane was terse. ‘Don’t get your ass in a knot, my friend. If you wish me to do so, I will tell Gestapo Paris to keep the child from returning to her profession.’

‘She’s not a child.’

‘Then we will leave her to her own desires and get on with things.’

A buzzer was pushed. An orderly brought in a roll of maps and they moved over to a table that had been cleared.

‘The maquis,’ swore Delphane. ‘Bayonne to Marseille to Cannes, the mountains and the Italian frontier.’

‘Where they no doubt have joined up with the Italian partisans who’ve been fighting Il Duce’s Fascists since the late twenties? Come off it,’ snorted Kohler. ‘That woman had nothing to do with the Resistance.’

‘Nothing? But … but what is this?’ demanded Delphane. ‘Has Louis not told you of the Cross of Lorraine the woman was wearing under the lapel of her overcoat?’

‘Ah merde! You bastards …’

‘Bastards we may be, Herr Kohler, but you will find the truth for us or else.’

Again Munk had let the Deuxieme Bureau say it.

Kohler stood nervously outside the hotel finishing the cigarette he had taken from the orderly. One thing was certain. Gestapo Cannes would offer no help in solving the murder. Stores would not free up a set of wheels. Food tickets were out of the question. Even ammunition for Louis’s Lebel and his own Walther P38 was ‘unobtainable’.

Yet the place was like a wasps’ nest that had been stirred. Telephones, telexes – grey mice everywhere and full of themselves. Blonde, blue-eyed bitches from home.

And in the cellars – cellars that already were choked with loot – the beatings, the screams, the sight of Delphane and Munk hurrying down stone steps and along to a cell. A terrified shriek, a girl’s. The kid’s sister? he demanded, not liking the thought.

Memory came and gave him every detail. The corridor stacked on either side with oil paintings and tall mirrors in richly gilded antique frames. Himself in every one of the mirrors. His face that of a man on the run and ravaged by doubt and anxiety.

The girl had shrieked, ‘My mother!’ so clearly his heart had stopped. Then had come the blows, the vomit, the sound of water and of her choking and gasping for air, and of, ‘Bring her round. Immediately! We must know the reason for it.’

He had slid the iron window open a crack and had seen the body on the floor awash in vomit and excrement with Delphane standing over her. A shoe had lifted. The kick, when it had hit the ribs, had been savage.

Then the kid had rolled over with a sigh and in that instant Delphane had looked towards the door, the image of him seared on the mind for all time. Intense, yes; stung, yes, but in secret fear himself and terrified he’d be discovered doing such a thing.

They had hauled the girl up and had sat her in a chair. They had hit her several times to bring her round, then Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane had taken hold of her by the front and had ripped the shirt and shift away.

He had touched her battered, shivering cheek and had run the tip of his fingers down the curve of her broken jaw.

Kohler threw the butt down and ground it out. He was glad Louis hadn’t been there, glad his partner hadn’t seen what Delphane had done next.

Fratani was waiting by the hearse, staring emptily not towards the sea but towards the hills of home. Rheum in his dark eyes and so much tremor in the voice, he could not speak at first.

‘You’re not coming with us?’ he asked, when finally he’d taken the necessary papers.

A shake of the head would do but a touch of kindness would not be remiss. ‘She’ll sleep okay now but see that they put her on ice.’

‘The leader of the Gestapo, he … he took the longest time with her. Me, I had to draw the curtains wide for him so that the sun, it would pour over her.’

‘And Delphane, the man from Bayonne?’

‘He … he has told me that all our lives, they are in jeopardy if we do not obey.’

Like a knife, the mistral blew just as incessantly and as coldly as before. Sweeping down among the shuttered villas of the wealthy, it had long since bent the token olive trees towards the south. Yet the sky was so absolutely clear of cloud, one could see for at least a good forty kilometres and, were one up on the very heights above the city, the snow-capped Alpes-Maritimes and the Italian frontier.

‘Why not tell me what happened the day the woman was killed?’ asked Kohler, wishing he had cigarettes to offer and hating himself for having stolen the last of them from Fratani some time ago.

The hearse-driver drew himself up as a garde champetre and village elder should. ‘Because to do so is to have all the men of our village shot, Inspector.’

‘Then wait for me down the hill a bit, eh? I won’t be a minute.’

The little blue notebook was still on Munk’s desk. Frantic that he’d be discovered, Kohler tore his eyes away from that damning temptation to find the dossier Boemelburg had so kindly sent down from Paris, and to find Louis’s right underneath it. Ah merde, what was he to do?

He lifted them, and only then did he pause, for beneath the two was the dossier of Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi.

It took about three seconds for him to decide. Popping buttons on his shirt front, he stuffed the dossiers away, lifted the notebook and only paused when he saw the photograph. Paris in the fall. The Marly Horses behind, the girl in an off-white linen dress with modestly plunging open collar, wrist-watch, leather shoulder bag and wide-brimmed felt hat tilted to the left and pulled down so that the edge of the brim and the eye were all but in line.

She’d a coat folded over the hands that were clasped in front of her. The belt was wide and of linen too, so matching the dress. No jewellery at the neck, button earrings – enamelled perhaps – the hair dark and thick like the sister’s, the eyes the same, the face the same, even to the tiny mole that was on the upper cheek-bone just below the right eye. Josette-Louise Buemondi. That kid in the cellar? he cried out inwardly, knowing he’d have to look, that he couldn’t leave it. Not now; not after seeing the photo.

The cell door was wide open, the clothes were in rags, the body completely naked and crumpled on the floor among the swill. Blood seeped from her nose and battered lips.

He turned her gently over, asked, Murder, isn’t this murder? Twenty – eighteen? Was she even eighteen?

The hair was a dark reddish-brown, the eyes were green and where the bastards had shoved the rubber hose up inside her, the lower abdomen was distended.

He closed the eyes and touched her cheek, said, ‘I’m sorry, kid. This kind of thing should never have happened,’ and knew in that moment that it was the beginning of the end. The American landings in North Africa had been the turning-point – he knew that now. Now the savagery would come out as never before. Now the hatred and the fear.

When he reached the avenue Beausejour, he threw up into someone’s shrubbery.

Fratani picked him up and they drove down into the city in silence.

‘Mademoiselle Darnot, if I understand you correctly, Stavisky took your father for several hundred thousand francs,’ said St-Cyr.

‘Two millions, five hundred thousand,’ she said.

‘And yet he allowed the financier to use the villa near Chamonix as a final hiding-place.’

‘Is it so hard to believe? The investments were in railways, automotive engineering works and real estate – all apparently quite legitimate concerns. Right up until the last moment my father believed emphatically that the financier would pull it all off and come out on top as he had before. Many others did, why not him? It’s what I’ve had to ask myself.’

‘And when the scandal broke, you were at the villa.’

‘Yes.’

‘With whom?’

‘That I’d rather not say. Father telephoned from England to ask that I let the villa to a friend, and I did so. That is why you noticed me at the station.’

‘Was it there that I saw you?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course it was, Inspector.’

St-Cyr nodded as if it were so, but there was more to it, though he could not push her too much. Not with grief holding its shroud over her and the Germans waiting to discover her papers were not quite so in order as she had claimed. Still, it would be best to try.

‘And Madame Buemondi? When, exactly, did the two of you get back together?’

‘We have always been together, Inspector. Oh, for sure there were the years of a bad marriage for her, the birth of the twins, all that sort of thing but,’ she gave the shrug of the committed, ‘we always found each other in the end. Either she to me, or myself to her.’

‘And Carlo Buemondi?’ he asked.

‘Carlo hated me – he still does. To him, I am the cause of his wife’s “strange” infatuation and a “gross” insult to his manliness. More than once he’s thrown me out of their house – her houses, I should say. They’re both Anne-Marie’s. Carlo doesn’t own anything. He never has, but he’s the reason she bought the cottage and gave the village money now and then. We had lovely times there; times of great bliss and utter freedom. The four of us, Inspector. The girls, Anne-Marie and myself.’

He gave a sigh so genuine she knew it was the truth. He said, ‘An enduring relationship, that’s what we all hunger for.’

‘You’re not married?’ she asked, only to see him shake his head and hear him say, ‘No. No, the Resistance killed the wife and little son. A tragic mistake. A bomb the Gestapo left in place hoping I’d step on it.’

‘But … but your partner, he is of the Gestapo?’

‘We were away on a case. I tried to warn her that there might be trouble. Before we left the city, I went out to where she was living but … Ah, never mind. Hermann, he would have found that bomb easily if we’d been there.’

He looked for more of the acorn coffee, picked at a crumb. Was really, perhaps, a very dear man and therefore exceedingly dangerous. ‘Will you come to the villa with me?’ she asked.

‘The villa,’ he said, his thoughts so obviously far away, she knew his mind was still on Chamonix and that he would not leave the Affair Stavisky alone until he had settled it.

‘The Villa of the Golden Oracle, Inspector. Anne-Marie Buemondi’s villa. It’s why I came here and bought this house with what was left of the wreckage of my father’s estate. The sweepings,’ she said. ‘The dust the bankers forgot to pick up after his ashes were in the ground.’

She would walk away from him now. She would go indoors and up to her room to put on something a little more suitable, and she would have to leave him to his own designs for a moment. By choosing the garden for their coffee, he had obviously wanted to separate her from her weaving. The spot he’d chosen had been sheltered, and he had enjoyed the sun, had used it to put her at ease. Ah yes, he was clever.

St-Cyr knew she was watching from an upstairs window and when he looked up, the parted curtain fell. Ah Mon Dieu, what was it with her? So afraid, one could smell the fear on her. Terrified the Nazis would discover she was English and lock her up, thus ending the work that was so precious to her; terrified of something else.

Picking his way among the storage jars, he re-entered the house, knew then that she would be hurrying and there was something – something she definitely did not want him to find.

The room in which she stores her wool? he asked. Quickly he went along a cluttered corridor – more shards of pottery and bits of Roman glass on a side-table beneath a sumptuous hanging – and when he found a door that was closed, he opened it and sucked in a breath.

To the ceiling and on every available space of wall there were wooden storage cubicles for wool, skeins and skeins of the most gorgeous colours. Draped over a long table to one side, there were tapestries and rugs, a multicoloured heap of wool, and then … then, on plain trestles with straight-backed chairs behind, two ill-defined rows of small hand-looms.

He took out the clot of russet homespun Hermann had found on the hillside above the body. He had perhaps three minutes at the most and began to search earnestly for its source but asked, What have we here? Places for six or eight students, some perhaps older than she; others younger. A pittance for their lessons, barely enough to pay the expenses; and an intrusion into those precious hours that could never be enough.

When he found the skein, the last of a batch, he knew he had the source. And taking out the pocket-knife his father had given him as a boy of six, he cut off a piece and quickly coiled it.

He still had his back to her, when he sensed she was watching from the doorway. He did not turn and she thought then that it was all over for her. That just as the true artist saw with an inner eye, so, too, must the true detective.

St-Cyr brought the skein up to his nose but she was not fooled by this.

‘You’ve found my little secret,’ she said, and he noted the sadness in her voice. ‘To survive as an artist, Inspector, one has always to teach and as so often, most students are totally unsuited and not the slightest bit inclined to strive for greatness.’

‘Yet you could not teach at the School of Fine Arts?’

‘Carlo prevented that, as he tried to prevent everything else.’

‘And Madame Buemondi, she could not provide enough for you to exist without the teaching?’

It was no use. He was bound to find out, and did she care any more? Did she really? ‘I would never have taken charity from her or from anyone, Inspector. Things have been very hard since the Defeat. There are expenses that still must be met. Things do cost a great deal more.’

And you were on that hillside, weren’t you? he wanted so much to ask but held it back, though in all honesty he could find no reason for his reticence.

Viviane Darnot was a good seven years younger than her companion had been, but there was no youthfulness in the dark grey-blue eyes that met his own.

‘We’d best go,’ she said, ‘or we will miss the autobus.’

‘There are two bicycles, are there not?’

Lady’s, but would they not be safer than the bus? – she knew that was what he was thinking and was grateful for this sign of concern. ‘Let us compromise, then. The back streets until the climb becomes too much. We’ve a good three kilometres to cover.’

‘Could Carlo Buemondi have killed his wife?’

Startled – betrayed that he should ask such a question when least expected – she glanced away to the student looms and then looked bravely at him. ‘Someone did, Inspector, and may God bring down His Holy Wrath upon whoever it was!’

When he followed her to the cellars to fetch the bicycles, she felt he did not stare at her as men usually do. There was no fear within her of the sexual thing, none of the distaste she usually felt in such situations, and she found herself respecting this quality in him even when in the closeness and the near-darkness of the cellars.

He was a man who understood and who did not question that two women or two men could live quite naturally together as a couple. He did not prejudge and she wanted to thank him for this but could not bring herself to do so.

St-Cyr took the dark green Majestic from her and carried it up the stairs as she followed him with the red one. But all the time he did so, he saw her eyes as they’d been in that chance moment – had it been chance? – in Chamonix as now. Flashing revelations of their owner. Dark raven hair and pure white skin, the pale oval of the face touched by the blush of apprehension.

It took about an hour to reach their destination. From the shelter of the wooded hills above Le Cannet, the Villa of the Golden Oracle overlooked the Esterel, the city and the sea. Three handsome plane trees gave the buff-coloured, eighteenth-century manor-house great dignity. Ivy climbed the walls; cypresses stood out among the clipped box and yew. There were herbaceous borders behind which there would be flowers everywhere in season. Mimosa, oleander and roses. Arbours too, and trellises, a quiet pool, the ancient sculptured head of the oracle from whose mouth the water would pour.

‘Perhaps four or five hectares in all,’ sighed St-Cyr.

‘Six, and surrounded by this same wall of buff-yellow stone. It was worth a fortune but not today, not with the money the Nazis have printed for us.’

The french windows of the ground floor opened on to a flagstone terrace, and from there the steps led down to the gardens which spilled away to the gates.

‘It’s magnificent,’ he said, ‘and such a contrast to all we’ve experienced in getting here.’

The shabby lines for food that so often no longer existed when one got there, the dirt, the crowded autobus whose gazogene could barely get them up the hills. The smell of unwashed bodies drenched in cheap peifume – Dear God, why did they have to wear it? The dogged looks, that damnable uncaring, the downtrodden nature of everyone. The hawking and spitting, the tubercular coughing now that winter had come.

‘They are beaten, mademoiselle, and they are desperately afraid because they no longer have any control over their lives.’

‘They hated me, did you know that? When the Defeat came, I very quickly discovered my French friends would have nothing more to do with me. It wasn’t the accepted thing to be on friendly terms with anyone who was English. I was dirt and they let me know it. I was to blame for what had happened at Dunkirk. My hangings were burned. My commissions ceased absolutely.’

‘So you hid yourself away until they came to realize that Britain was fighting to free them.’

‘And now I do not know which of those friends are truly so, Inspector, and which are not.’

St-Cyr tossed his head in acknowledgement of the national disgrace. ‘Come. Come, we’d best not stand too long at the gates. Let us leave the bicycles against the wall.’

‘Let us take them up to the villa and put them in the solarium out of sight.’

It was only when they got there that they found the cloak of russet homespun and he knew then that she had led him to it and he had to stand in awe of her.

The Salon Marchal des plus Beaux Antiquites was on the rue d’Etats-Unis not far from the rue d’Antibes. It was right in the most exclusive shopping district, right where few French these days could afford to buy and therefore the clientele was nil or numb and selectively German otherwise.

Kohler gave the glitter of carved mahogany and old paintings a glance. He noted a silver jewel-case with a spillage of pretty baubles – pearls like that poor kid had worn in the last investigation, diamonds as in the one before …

Straight-arming the door, he sent it crashing open. Startled, the dealer, a vain little bastard in grey serge with pop-eyes behind gold-rimmed specs, looked up. Caught in that moment, crouched beyond a marble nymph among stacks of gilded frames whose canvases had been cut away and rolled up for delivery elsewhere long ago.

‘Fernand Marchal?’ he shouted.

The shop fell to silence and the dust began to settle. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Central, my hot little friend. Start talking.’

Ah merde! The glasses were pulled away, Marchal dragging at a silk handkerchief while one old boy in a black lamb’s-wool overcoat and Homburg stole a hand across a counter to the pocket-watch he had been trying to flog to the dealer’s assistant.

An off-duty Wehrmacht lieutenant and his latest pigeon ceased perusing a magnificent ormolu cabinet neither of them could ever have afforded in normal times.

‘Get out,’ said Kohler. ‘All of you except this one. You,’ he said to the assistant, ‘put the lock on, then wait for me in the back. If you don’t, I’ll sell your balls to the chef over at the Carlton.’

‘M … monsieur,’ began the dealer.

‘It’s Inspector,’ breathed Kohler. ‘We’ve things to discuss.’

Marchal eased the last of the gilded frames back into place and, wincing painfully, for the knees, they were no longer youthful, stood unsteadily.

Kohler reached up to lay a hand on the nymph’s gorgeous ass and then to lean that hand dangerously against the statue … Ah no – 470,000 new francs, 90,000 old ones if lucky. Florentine and worth a fortune. Priceless!

‘A little blue notebook, my friend,’ said the Gestapo, waving that thing at him. ‘Telephone numbers and telephone numbers. Yours is among them.’

He patted the nymph’s bum and stepped round her so that now there wasn’t a metre between himself and the dealer. ‘Sweating, eh?’ he said. ‘Does the name Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi mean anything?’

The little bastard winced again, the eyes darting about to take in all the lovely things the shop had been able to acquire in the past two and a half years at very reasonable prices. ‘I gave her things – little things,’ confessed Marchal, ‘but only from time to time.’

‘Innocent, eh? And the Carlton?’ demanded the Gestapo whose French, it was quite good because that was the way one got things done.

‘The Carlton’s head chef, he would … would take the jars of preserved tomatoes from Madame in exchange for the Russian snuffbox which she would then deal off to me in exchange for my accepting another six of these for cash at twenty-five francs apiece!’

The frames. Kohler glanced up the length of that gorgeous nude and wondered if it was true that all such sculptors had found it necessary to use a model. ‘Sing on, my friend. I’m listening, eh? The cook over at the Carlton got the snuffbox from one of the waiters who stole it or received it from one of the guests in exchange for a little something extra at dinner, right?’

He felt an ankle, gripped a calf and let his fingers trickle over the toes.

‘Madame … she … Ah look, Monsieur the Inspector, I was only a part of it. I did nothing wrong. Nothing, I assure you. The snuffbox was in payment for the sweetbreads Madame had secured that very morning.’

‘Nothing wrong?’ demanded Kohler. ‘You were bartering, my friend, and that is against the law.’

‘Then let us sit down, monsieur. Please choose … choose any chair you wish. Take that one. Charlemagne is said to have sat in it. There is the bed he used when not on the march.’

Kohler swung away to take a look, only to swing right back. ‘Hey, listen, my fine. My cow died, eh? I don’t need your bull.’

‘It is not bull. It is the truth. Everything in my shop is certified.’

‘Then start by telling me the truth.’

Marchal stared ruefully at the stack of picture frames. How could he explain such a thing to this Nazi boor who could know nothing – nothing about art and things of great value? ‘Madame, she … she has telephoned me.’

‘When? When did it first begin?’

‘About two years ago. About six months after the Armistice when … when things began to come into short supply. Her father had bought from me in the old days, you understand, and we knew each other a little but not much.’

‘Yes, yes, get on with it. I’m in a hurry and have eighteen more numbers to follow up.’

‘Then I can save you much time.’

Kohler grinned. ‘You do, and I’ll see that they leave you alone. Okay?’

Marchal did not like the look, the scar on the face, or the wounded thumb whose bandage had come undone …

The Gestapo squeezed the thumb and let the pus erupt. ‘A girl bit me,’ he said. ‘I don’t like girls that bite but this one was ill.’

The hint was ignored, the panic was there in any case.

‘Madame had a network of numbers – people from all over and all walks of life. From one she would obtain a quantity of shoelaces, from another the buttons or the gilded picture frames, from another the pair of theatre tickets or the visit to her coiffeuse or the massage and the hot mud treatment which is very good for the rheumatism.’

‘Keep talking. Got any tobacco?’

The dealer shook his head, then thought better of it and picked his way through the clutter to a display case.

When he came back, he had a humidor full of cigars. ‘Havanas,’ he said. ‘For you, Inspector.’

Kohler pulled out a wad of bills that would have choked a horse and peeled off a five-franc note. ‘Just give me one for now. My partner’s French and I’m feeling righteous. Now talk.’

One could not avoid the look in those pale blue eyes. It was as if of death yet wounded to the quick by events perhaps far beyond control.

‘The picture frames are being burned as firewood, monsieur. I could not see them being so foolishly destroyed. The centuries, they are recorded in the styles of the carving, in the gilding. Master after master …’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Rouge and lipstick from one source, can-openers from another. Soap – always she would tell me she could get this fantastic soap from a friend in the hills. The grey paste we have today burns the skin and the sensitive parts, monsieur. My wife, she suffers terribly from the haemorrhoids and the boils, the erysipelas for which even the lancing is of little good. It’s the lousy food one gets these days, what there is of it. The grey bread with the sweepings, the rat droppings and the sawdust. The swedes and the lack of potatoes. Madame Buemondi could find almost anything. Nutmeg, I remember, and cinnamon. Me, I gave her a Sevres tureen in exchange and this, she bartered for brocade curtains from one of the hotels.’

‘And the brocade?’

‘For the wine, I think. Who knows? The Bar Modiste kept cigarettes for her – you’ll find their number in that little book of hers.’

‘And you’ll not tell anyone I’ve got it, will you?’

‘Of course not. Women are not allowed the tobacco ration, monsieur. But Madame Gilberte of the Bar Modiste bleaches the hair, yes? And bleach is unobtainable but for Madame Buemondi’s service.’

‘What did the two of you do? Have tea in here every afternoon?’

‘She was very free with her information, monsieur.’

‘Only because you made her tell you.’

Marchal tugged at a sleeve. This one would find out everything. ‘She often used our telephone, monsieur, as I am sure she did everyone else’s when needed. Me, I … ah, I have overheard the snatches from time to time. From the nuns of the Blessed Virgin she obtained the braided silks stiff with gold and silver thread, and much bed linen that could be dyed any colour one wished if one was a fashion designer and had nothing else with which to work. For these things, Madame gave the nuns toothpaste, the soap, the sandpaper sticks for the fingernails, the wine, the vegetables, the sausage and the granulated sugar.’

The Gestapo made no comment but only drew on the cigar. Marchal told him that Madame must have at least fifty names on her list of contacts. ‘Each morning she would begin her day by telephoning someone. Always the bright, cheery voice, always the optimist until … Monsieur, has anything happened to her?’

‘No … No, it’s all just routine. We have to follow everything up. It’s part of the job.’

‘Then why have you got her notebook?’

‘Bayonne … Why not tell me what she did there?’

‘Bayonne …? But … but why would she travel so far when she had all the business she could possibly handle here?’

‘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. ‘Angelique 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 negliges, 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.

‘Angelique 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. Angelique 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 salon 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 Angelique 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 Jesus-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 velo-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 will 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 protegee. Mademoiselle Angelique Girard.’

‘Not the weaver?’

‘No … No, not the weaver. Others, too, in … in exchange for the things Madame Buemondi had to dispose of.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The hot mud treatments, but those are done over at the other place, on the rue Buttura. Chez Paulette, the House of the Eternal Life.’

‘Sulphurous mud?’ he asked.

‘Yes. But of course. Modelled after the hot waters and mud baths in the grottos of Vesuvius. My elder daughter is in charge. My husband, he … he has died in the last war, monsieur. At Verdun. Now, please, you will tell me what has happened to Suzanne. When one is accustomed to reading the truth in the eyes, monsieur, it is very hard for others to conceal it from me.’

Kohler touched her arm as he was leaving but could not find the courage to face her any longer. Out on the street, he drew in several deep breaths and swore he’d kill Munk and Delphane.

When he found a telephone to ring the villa and warn Louis, he knew Gestapo Cannes would be listening in for just such a thing, and gave it up.

Louis would just have to look after himself.

They came in two cars and they arrived very fast. One moment they were at the front gates of the villa; the next, the weaver was saying, ‘For the love of Christ, don’t let them find me here! There’s a door at the far end of the garden. I’ll go out that way.’

‘What about the bicycles?’ shot St-Cyr.

‘Ah merde!’ She bit her lower lip. ‘Look, could you handle the two of them? Please, Inspector. I beg it of you. Carlo mustn’t find me here and neither must Jean-Paul Delphane.’

In mirror after mirror he saw the look of tragedy in her eyes and was transported right back in time to Chamonix and that other villa. An entrance room of some sort. Yes, yes … she looking up at him from a chair – what had there been in her eyes besides that look of anguish? A quivering uncertainty? The dare of one who has gambled hard and is uncertain if she will be found out?

An entrance room? he asked, puzzled. White … the walls, the ceiling, an inner door opening. Shoes … a pair of shoes … a nurse in a light blue uniform with a white apron. Yes, yes, he urged himself. Think, St-Cyr. Think!

Remember. ‘Jean-Paul, it’s been a long time,’ he said, still feeling Chamonix intensely, still smelling the fear – everywhere the fear.

‘Fuck off. You, you and you,’ said Delphane. ‘Search the house and grounds.’

‘Please do,’ enthused the Surete. ‘I came alone and entered using this.’ He held up the key. The three Gestapo hesitated and when their leader came in with someone else, they decided not to take orders from the Deuxieme Bureau but to await further instruction.

The key, of course, was to the weaver’s house, but they could not have known this.

He pocketed it and took out his pipe, only to remember the lack of tobacco.

‘Jean-Louis St-Cyr?’

‘Yes. Yes, that is me.’

‘You are under arrest for high treason.’

‘Don’t be silly. I am merely doing my job.’

The Gestapo Munk leapt. ‘Silly?’ he shrieked, swinging his gloves. ‘French pig, I’ll teach you who is silly!’

St-Cyr feinted to the left, grabbed the Gestapo’s wrist and carried the arm straight up and back, pivoting the man so that Munk was now between himself and the troops. ‘Don’t ask for help,’ he said. ‘Tell them I will break it, Herr Munk, and gladly die in the process.’

The Gestapo winced. Perhaps five seconds passed. ‘Please, I am warning you,’ said the Surete quietly. ‘All is not as it seems here, and I greatly fear you and the German Reich are being led astray.’

The hard little dark eyes seethed with hatred. ‘How dare you?’ hissed Munk, spitting.

St-Cyr released his grip, but slowly. ‘I dare because I must. Is it that you wish to be made to look a fool?’

‘We have the proof – proof positive! – that the Buemondi woman was an enemy of the Reich!’

‘Please … Please, Herr Munk, do not rewind the engine, eh? If it is as you say, then a day or two will not matter. Something is not right.’

Munk glanced doubtfully at Delphane and fumed silently for about two seconds. ‘Into the grand salon. Quickly! You, you and you take him. One false move and he’s dead!’

Their jackboots rang on the hardwood floor and were only dampened by the carpets. Flung into a Louis XVI armchair, St-Cyr bunched his shoulders and waited for the blows. Munk sat down facing him. The other three stood guard but the idiots had yet to take his gun. Jean-Paul Delphane chose to tower over everyone and remained standing.

St-Cyr held up a hand to caution them all, then slowly drew the Lebel from its shoulder holster and laid it on the carpet at his feet. ‘So, a matter of the maquis in the hills.’

‘Terrorists!’ leapt Munk. ‘Enemies of the state!’

‘Yes, yes. The Cross of Lorraine.’ He took it out but kept it in an open hand. ‘A foolish symbol that will grow, Herr Munk, as the war in North Africa and in Russia grows worse – no, please do not interrupt me. A woman dies on a barren hillside and one of the best men in the Deuxieme Bureau fails to find such a thing as this beneath the lapel of her overcoat? Come, come, Jean-Paul, I know you are far too good to miss a little thing like this. Why did you not take it in evidence? Why did you plant it there if not to pin the accusation of Resistant upon myself and of sympathizer on my partner Hermann Kohler?’

‘Who has stolen damaging evidence from the office of Herr Munk.’

Ah Mon Dieu, Jean-Paul, how could he remain so calm? ‘I know nothing of this. If Hermann has taken anything, it will only be material that is of the utmost importance to the investigation.’

‘Dossiers,’ hissed Munk. ‘A photograph and notebook.’

‘Telephone numbers, Louis. Contacts. The woman was running an escape line from here to Bayonne and the Spanish frontier.’

‘Pilots, escapees, insurgents, Communists, Jews and Resistants,’ said Munk, ‘so you see, Inspector, we have the proof.’

‘Then why bring Hermann and myself into the affair? If it is not murder, Herr Munk, and it is an affair for Counterintelligence and Counterinsurgency, why ask two tired detectives for help when they already have far more work than is humanly possible to handle?’

Munk snapped his fingers. ‘A little cognac. Quickly, you,’ he said to one of the others. ‘Find some and bring my cigarettes.’

Munk handed his gloves to another. ‘Your German is really quite good, St-Cyr. How is it that you come to speak it so well?’

Did they think he was some sort of spy? Had Jean-Paul put this into their heads as well?

‘Come, come,’ insisted Munk. ‘A wife who runs off with a Wehrmacht lieutenant? A mistress who speaks German fluently to the generals she entertains?’

‘Pardon, monsieur, permit me, please, to enlighten you and perhaps correct Gestapo Paris’s misinformation. Gabrielle Arcuri is not my mistress. Indeed, that one is only an acquaintance I met on a former case. The generals do the entertaining. They are the ones that buy her a late breakfast after she finishes work or perhaps a glass of champagne at the club and a little dinner. As to my speaking your language, my work with the IKPK and with the Sturmbannfuhrer Walter Boemelburg before the war made it imperative. But then,’ he shrugged, ‘Walter speaks excellent French so I guess, in this at least, he and I are even.’

Munk’s smile was sardonic. St-Cyr had learned to speak German as a boy. He’d been found unruly and had been sent several times for the holidays to distant relatives on a farm near Saarbrucken to experience a little Germanic discipline since the French variety had failed. ‘If the Surete thinks to use friends in high places, Inspector, he had best think again.’

‘Walter is after our heads? Is that what you mean?’ exclaimed St-Cyr.

Delphane stepped forward. ‘You’re both on trial, Louis. Given half a chance, you’ll go over to the other side, and everyone in Paris knows it.’

‘Then here are my bracelets, Herr Munk, and you can let this one wrap it all up. Is it to be the salt mines of Silesia for me, Jean-Paul, and the Gestapo Kiev, where the partisans are so thick, for Hermann, eh? Or simply the bolt of an antique crossbow that could not possibly have been fired unless, my friend, both its bow had been restrung and its windlass rewound with new cord.’

Ah now, what was this? Delphane uncertain of himself and having to sit down? Heavily no less?

‘I told you what he was like, Herr Munk. I said you’d get nothing from him.’

The cognac came but there was only one glass and one cigarette, and after the Gestapo Munk had tossed off his drink, he handed the empty glass to Jean-Paul.

The humiliation was there, the fear as that one drank from it. Ah yes. All too evidently the Gestapo Munk wanted the Surete’s little detective to witness that Jean Paul Delphane was not on easy ground but on quicksand himself!

‘Tell me more about the woman,’ said Munk, and for the first time, the hard knife of reality sunk in. Herr Munk was far from being a fool. Instead, he was a very cunning man beneath the belligerent veneer of overt savagery.

‘Madame Buemondi died on her birthday,’ began St-Cyr. ‘Though it is a little early to advise you completely, Herr Munk, we see the woman separated from her loved ones and going into the hills to celebrate the occasion with one of them.’

‘She was dealing in contraband,’ snorted Delphane. ‘The black market, you idiot!’

‘Yes, yes, but why wear her best clothes?’

‘Expensive?’ asked Munk casually.

‘Quite good,’ said St-Cyr.

The Gestapo uncrossed his knees and paused to let one of the others light his cigarette. ‘Then I am surprised, Inspector St-Cyr, that you are not aware we Germans and you French tend to think less ill of those who are well dressed. The Buemondi woman always dressed in such a fashion when on her travels. It helped to keep suspicion from her.’

Delphane did not smile, but in that moment, the light of triumph touched his eyes. ‘Don’t try to cover things up, Jean-Louis. Three weeks ago five British airmen escaped from the Italians at a camp near Cuneo. Sightings put them on the march for the Riviera – oh for sure, it is only natural the British, they should think to come here. They ruled the Cote d’Azur for generations, pushing themselves around and lording it over everyone in their playground. But, is it not more than coincidence that Madame Buemondi should make her little trip just as these escapees are arriving in the very hills to which she has come?’

‘Where they soon discovered the south was no longer the “Free Zone” they had been taught to expect six months ago,’ added Munk, watching the two of them closely.

‘The woman brought two suitcases with her, Louis,’ said Delphane, noting the Gestapo’s scrutiny. ‘Have you not asked yourself what they contained? Come, come, my friend, clothes suitable for the escapers to wear when taking the trains from here to Bayonne. Madame had houses in both places. It’s obvious what she was up to.’

‘Then why, please, was this villa not under surveillance?’ It was a cry to God for mercy, a plea for some sort of help.

‘Oh but it was, Jean-Louis,’ said Delphane. ‘How else could we have known to find you here?’

And? Ah Mon Dieu, the weaver – did they know Viviane Darnot had been with him? Had they taken her into custody?

Delphane asked for a refill and drank again from the Gestapo’s glass. Never once did he take his eyes from St-Cyr.

Munk enjoyed the evident hatred that existed between the two men. St-Cyr could know nothing yet. Kohler would be found. Paris would be satisfied and Berlin more than pleased.

He stood up. ‘So, gentlemen, a matter of resistance. I give you three days before we move into that village to eliminate it.’

‘Four days,’ said St-Cyr unwaveringly.

Munk’s look was cold. ‘Then take them, Inspector, but remember, please, that every day you delay is one more the escapers can use. They must still be somewhere in the hills, since the woman’s death will have prevented them from leaving. If they are not found, I will personally hold you responsible.’

‘And Jean-Paul?’ he asked.

‘That one also.’

The Gestapo left in two cars, and Jean-Paul let them go without a word of objection, though it was a substantial hike back to the city. He knew he was being dismissed for the moment – humiliated yet again – and only stood on the terrace staring emptily after them.

When he returned to the grand salon, he found St-Cyr amid the gold and glitter. Louis did not turn, but chose to face him in one of the mirrors.

‘So, my friend, what exactly is going on here, eh?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘By rights, your Gestapo chief should have had the living daylights beaten out of me for nearly breaking his arm.’

There were several reflections thrown back and forth. Delphane had the uncomfortable thought that Louis was trying to trap him in the mirrors. He brushed an irritated hand over his crinkly iron-grey hair, said to himself, Look at me then, Louis. Try your best to strip away the layers of paint the years have given.

‘You are on dangerous ground, Louis. Me, I owe you nothing, but I give you that much since it is near to Christmas.’

St-Cyr clucked the tongue of impatience. ‘Who fired the shot that killed Stavisky?’ he asked. ‘Come, come, my old one. You and Pierre Bonny – France’s top cop – were there in Chamonix. Bonny was always one step ahead of the law he represented, and you, my friend, one step ahead of him.’

‘That business is finished, Louis. Finished! Bonny works in Paris for Henri Lafont, as you well know.’

‘For the French Gestapo! Stealing, killing, raping and torturing! Why? Why do you persist? You of all people, Jean-Paul? The good family, the upper crust … You, whom I trusted. Me! You played me for a fool and now are attempting to do so again.’

‘Cognac? Come, come, Louis, get down off that high horse of yours and let’s talk a little business.’

‘No deals. Ah no, my friend.’ He waved a reproving finger. ‘With you I am finished!’

‘Then I’ll let Munk have the weaver, Louis. The surveillance on this place was mine, not the Gestapo Munk’s. Viviane Darnot will have been seen leaving by that back door she thinks is so secret – a door, my friend, that has been used often enough by Madame Buemondi’s escapists.’

The image of him standing there was so like that of Hermann. Splintered just as Viviane Darnot’s image had been, the woman staring at him now through the gossamer of memory. Delphane overlapping her image as the mind played its tricks upon God’s little detective.

Viviane Darnot had been in Chamonix with someone. When asked whom, she had replied, ‘I’d rather not say.’

‘Leave the weaver out of it, Jean-Paul, and I will not mention again to Herr Munk the fact that you have been lying.’

‘They’ll have found Kohler by now, Louis. They’ll be working him over.’

‘Hermann? Is Hermann such a threat to you or is it simply the things he has taken?’

‘You said you would make no deals, Louis, but this time, my friend, I greatly fear you must set aside those precious principles of yours. Already Kohler will have dug himself too deep a hole and as for the weaver, she is as good as dead unless you co-operate.’

Kohler let himself into the dusty lecture hall at the School of Fine Arts, only to find that the lecture had been cancelled. The steep little amphitheatre of miserable seats cupped a paltry stage and lectern. One lonely glass of water stood sentinel, waiting for the ice to form.

Carlo Buemondi – ‘Il Professori’ to the woman on the desk – had not been in his studio or office either.

Not liking the husband’s absence, he let his eyes drift over the place and only then noticed the girl.

She was sitting, very still, on the other side of the lanternslide projector, and at first he did not think she had noticed him. But then she flinched and though she did not turn, he knew she was aware of him.

About twenty-two, he thought. The hair was amber in the last of the sunlight. All frizzed out into a thick mop of waves and curls, the face pale.

He noted the choker of dark brown velvet, the beige camel’s-hair overcoat and silvery-grey silk scarf that had been dyed so many other colours.

‘So where’s he gone?’ he asked at last, his voice unintentionally loud in that empty theatre.

Her neck stiffened. She still did not turn. ‘The … the mud baths, I think. Look, Monsieur Whoever-you-are, me, I do not always keep track of him.’

‘But only sometimes?’ he asked, still standing up in the gods, off to the left of her.

‘Just what the hell do you want?’ she asked, her voice shrill.

‘Nothing, really. I came from Paris about the lessons. He told me to meet him here.’

She would not believe one word of it! Never! ‘You are Gestapo, monsieur. You are here about the murder.’

‘Then who the hell are you?’ he asked more quietly, still not completely stepping down to her

‘Angelique Girard. Student.’

The name meant nothing to him. ‘Assistant?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Sometimes. When … when he does not choose one of the others. It … it is his way of letting us earn a little money.’

Still she had not turned to look at him and he had the thought that it was not simply fear that made her do this.

He took a seat five rows behind her and she heard him sitting down, heard the clash of the hard wooden seat as it was unfolded into place. ‘What’s on the slides?’ he asked.

‘His work. The body casts, the masks, the self, the inner self and the truth.’

‘Let’s have a look. There’s no need to draw the curtains.’

She turned and, in that moment, revealed both sudden anger and defiance in large brown oval eyes and tightened cheeks that quivered. ‘Oh but there is, my fine inspector! The black-out, isn’t that so, monsieur? You will not trip me up on that one, ah no, my fine detective, so, please, allow me.’

He put a foot on the back of one of the seats and watched as she went over to pull the heavy cord. Of medium height, her figure was all but hidden by the coat, and he had the thought then, that the coat was someone else’s and a lot like that of the dead woman. ‘Don’t try to run away Angelique Girard.’

‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘Me, I have no reason to do such a thing. My soul is clear as is my conscience.’

He heard her coming back through the darkness but she did not sit down again. Instead, she climbed the stairs and squeezed along the row until she came against his upraised knee. ‘So now, monsieur, you will tell me, please, why you are here.’

Kohler listened to the sharp intake of breath; he felt her trembling fingers as they touched his cheek and then his lips.

She waited. He caught the smell of her perfume – it was light and heady, it was so many things but only Louis could have identified it. ‘Look, I just want to see the slides,’ he said. He felt the hem of her overcoat, a buttonhole, felt the trembling urgency in her fingertips.

‘Carlo didn’t kill her, monsieur, and neither did I.’

‘But now he’s gone off with someone else?’

‘It’s nothing new. He always does that. Like me, they will come back, monsieur. You see, he has made us bare our souls. We are his adoring slaves.’

She left him then, and he heard her pick her way down to the projector. ‘Ready?’ she asked, and when he did not respond, flung on the lamp and filled the screen, deftly focusing the image only at the last.

The mask was chalk-white, unglazed and chillingly stark, the eyes gaping voids of darkness, the expression haunting.

‘It is neither of woman nor of man, monsieur, since the inner self is neither and only demands to be free.’

Kohler pulled down a lower eyelid in doubt and pinched his nose, neither gesture she could possibly have seen. ‘Next,’ he said drily.

Carlo Buemondi rilled the screen, the head so like that of Il Duce it caught the breath. There were even folds in the bald scalp, no sign of a hair, the ears large, the cheekbones wide and of peasant hill-stock, the nose robust and the lips fleshy.

‘Il Dottore,’ she said, a whisper. The Doctor …

The smock was probably pale blue and certainly covered with plaster dust. In slide after slide the professor made paper, then soaked it in water, in wine, in olive oil and paint and, after vaselining a student model from head to toe, made a papier-mache cast of a hand, a face, a body.

‘That is me,’ she said, another whisper.

The girl was naked and lying stretched flat out on a table awaiting the Vaseline. Breathing straws stuck out of her nostrils. The eyes were hidden beneath black petals of cloth that had already been sealed in place. ‘Here he is going to use the plaster, yes? Since it is much more brittle and gives the better cast when smashed.’

She had a pleasant figure, if a bit skinny. Tiny breasts and almost childlike hips and waist.

The cast was shown. Both the inside and the outside were then covered with lithographic prints of body parts: faces, hands, hair – body-hair – knees, breasts, a breast, a woman’s sex, the labia et cetera, et cetera, and penises – penises everywhere. Erect and otherwise.

‘He uses several colours,’ she said with that same sense of submissive awe. ‘At least seven or eight in the printing.’

‘Then he smashes it all up.’

‘Yes. And glues it back together or leaves it in pieces.’

‘But never in the same form, the natural form?’

‘No, never in the finished piece, since the soul, it is quite formless, isn’t that so? And the body but a vessel for it.’

No artist or connoisseur of the finer things, Kohler was baffled. The drawing, such as it was, appeared inadequate. Oh for sure a woman’s sex was hairy and one could part the lips if curious or peel back a foreskin to examine the head of a penis.

But surely the drawing should at least have approached that of Michelangelo Buonarroti? And as for the quality of the lithographs, he doubted it as well.

‘Not my kind of thing,’ he said uncomfortably.

The collage was a collection of broken casts all wired together and hanging by a frayed noose. Erection after erection stared boldly at him. Through the blinding light, hidden ears and eyes appeared – a finger, a thumb, a woman’s heel, a set of toes – he’d swear to it and got up suddenly to walk past her and up on to the stage.

She saw his shadow leap across the screen and caught her heart. ‘Delphane,’ she said, a whisper. ‘Ah, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, it is impossible. The likeness, it is … it is like a curse.’

Kohler traced out the oval of a woman’s eye complete with false lashes. He found a rather nice-looking nose, a lower lip, a hairy scrotum. Son of a bitch, was the bastard a pervert? Cock seemed to be it. Everywhere he looked there was some guy’s genitals. Buemondi’s? he wondered. Mirrors … had he used mirrors? ‘Art?’ he asked. ‘Is this really art?’

The lantern light made his features sharp. Angelique Girard noted the long scar on the left cheek, the sad bags under dissipated eyes, the touches of bruises from some terrible fight that had still to completely fade. The untidy growth of whiskers that made this Gestapo seem older than he was. More ravaged by time. Ah, it was so very sad to see one’s features decay so quickly.

‘You are challenged, monsieur. Is it not so, and is that therefore not what true art must always do?’

‘Perhaps, but then …’ he began, realizing he was using one of Louis’s expressions and was totally out of his depth and wishing the Frog was with him.

‘You are afraid of your own masculinity, monsieur. Though you pride yourself on it, I think you tremble inwardly at thoughts you are afraid to face.’

Quickly she showed him another slide rather than acknowledge his ‘Horseshit!’, said, ‘This is Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi, Monsieur the Inspector from Paris.’

There was no semblance of order. The white shards of the body cast had been put back together at random as by a demented hand. They didn’t even look like a human form of any kind but rather, that of a patch of broken plaster. Most of the pieces were curved either up or down, and all had been overprinted with the husband’s lithographs.

Again the bastard’s cock was there. In her broken ear, in her broken nose or eye. Not always whole, sometimes incomplete and sometimes all but absent. Erection and otherwise.

‘And this is me,’ said the girl without a trace of shyness.

Only a painted mask covered her face. All the rest was bare. She lay flat on the table again, and around her perhaps fifteen students crowded, all ages, all shapes, all naked but for their masks, all gazing down at her childlike body. Both male and female.

‘It threatens you, does it not?’ she asked, standing up beside the projector. ‘It asks you to admit your innermost desires, monsieur, to confess the truth and let your soul be free.’

‘Rape? Is that it, eh?’

‘Yes,’ she said demurely, ‘that and much worse.’

Kohler came down off the stage like a rocket. In one swift flow of motion, he switched off the lantern, collected the slides, grabbed her by the elbow and said, ‘Get moving. I want to talk to the son of a bitch! That was no more you than me. That was one of his daughters.’

She yanked herself away. ‘Which one?’ she asked, lost in the darkness but near enough. ‘Which one, my friend?’ Her voice was shrill and near to tears.

‘Look, I … I don’t know. Josianne-Michele, I think. The … the one who has the fits from time to time. The one who bit me.’

It was only then that he realized she had used the darkness to make her escape. From the upper floor, she paused to look back down through the pitch darkness at him. ‘Find out which one, Monsieur the Inspector from Paris, and you will find the killer of my lover.’

‘Where is he?’ he cried out.

‘Carlo?’ she shot back. ‘In the mud baths. Wallowing with the others. Fucking them any time he wants.’

There was only one place to hide from Munk’s Gestapo and Kohler took it. The air was full of sulphurous steam, the grotto poorly lighted and subdivided into pools with low walls of pseudo-volcanic rock between. Frescoes and wall paintings of Pompeiian brothels, he supposed, lined the place. Doric columns held up the ersatz temple roof with its fake and hidden lighting, the sun over ancient Rome.

There were perhaps forty or fifty taking the cure, both male and female. The old, the sick, the lame, the wealthy, the nubile, even children as young as ten or twelve.

No one seemed to mind the lack of privacy. It was as if the mud took care of everything and all were united in the common bond of opening the pores, loosening the joints and talking about it, among other things. Besides, in winter it was probably the warmest place in town.

He joined four others. The mud was scalding. The red ochre he’d been dusted with after coming out of the shower-bath did nothing to protect the skin from the heat. Everywhere he looked, whether male or female, partly clothed or not, there was this alarming clash of red and grey.

As he sank below the surface, a moment of panic came with thoughts of smothering, but then some not-so-young thing with stringy mouse-brown hair and chunky hips helped him to his feet and he stood knee-deep in the goo while she proceeded to do his back and shoulders. ‘Now it is your turn,’ she said. ‘Ah, don’t be afraid, my fine monsieur, I am not about to eat you!’

Mud drained from his lips, he tasting it as he grinned. ‘Your back, I think,’ he said and she smiled mockingly perhaps – with all that mud on her face it was hard to tell.

One of the others did his back while he did the woman’s. The Gestapo came then and perhaps they were as startled as himself, for the place looked like nothing on earth short of the wilds of New Guinea.

They searched for him as the chatting fell off but did not think to check the lock-ups for his clothes and things, or ask if he was there.

When they were gone, Kohler moved from pool to pool until he found Buemondi in a far corner. The head was just above the mud between the knees of four naked young girls. Bald but lathered, big with robust ears and folds of skin across the brow, wide eyes that blinked, the same nose as in the lantern slides, a bull-like throat. Yeah, it was him all right.

The hippopotamus rose up among the nymphs, the barrel gut and hanging fruit drained mud in sheets. The girls descended on him and each began to smear more mud over the hairy back and belly.

Then they all submerged themselves until only their heads protruded. Red ochre round the eyes, lips and nostrils, grey nearly everywhere else, though the girls had tried to keep their hair out of it.

‘Carlo Buemondi?’ he said, stepping off the walk and into the pool.

‘Yes, that is me. What can I do for you?’

‘Nothing at the moment. I just wanted to tell you that for a man who’s supposed to be in mourning, you’re taking things pretty well.’

Buemondi held up handfuls of mud, squeezing it through clenched fists. ‘Ash, is it ashes you want?’ he said. ‘Volcanic ash from Vesuvius.’

‘Carlo, shall we go?’ asked one of the nymphs.

‘No, no, darling. It’s all right. It’s nothing. Monsieur, my wife and I have not seen each other in ages. Though I regret the news of her death, I can offer little sympathy.’

‘But much rejoicing,’ said one of the other girls, coyly tracing a finger over the professor’s cheek.

‘Laura, I will teach you a lesson some day. Perhaps it is best if the monsieur and I were to talk alone while the four of you play.’

Kohler sat down on the edge of the pool. Buemondi handed him one of the girls’ towels, saying, ‘The face, monsieur. The countenance. That way we will recognise each other in the street.’

The bastard even talked like an Italian! Fruit was brought – figs, oranges and persimmons; bowls of water to wash the hands, the girls co-operating as if trained to the job.

Buemondi chose an orange but did not peel it, simply biting into the thing and sucking at the juice. ‘She was an odd one, monsieur. Splendid in bed when needed but … what can I say? Not really enjoying it. All lies,’ he said, dribbling juice and mud. ‘Lies and schemes.’ He chose fig.

‘She loved other women,’ said one of the girls shyly. ‘Angelique Girard, I think.’

Their mentor impatiently shooed her away and the girl immersed herself in wallowing with the others, her posterior bobbing up like a cork.

‘Look, I really do not know what happened, monsieur. Anne-Marie went into the hills, yes, and someone shot her with my crossbow but it was not me. Me, I could never do such a thing as that. Not to a woman I loved.’

‘But it was someone.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Your daughter?’

‘Josette-Louise?’ asked Buemondi.

The one in Paris. ‘No, no, the other one,’ said Kohler. ‘Josianne-Michele perhaps.’

Startled and afraid, the girls looked at each other. One of them suddenly stood up. Mud coursed down over her splendid breasts. Her hands helped it.

‘Monsieur, neither of my daughters would ever have killed their mother. In spite of Anne-Marie’s love affairs with other women, the children were always very loyal to her. Even my little one, my Josianne, she would … she would …’

‘Carlo, come. Come and join us. Please don’t upset yourself.’

‘Josianne-Michele was mine, monsieur. Josette-Louise was Anne-Marie’s. Always there was this favouritism but even so, neither would have done what you think. It is just not possible.’

‘Where were you on the day your wife was killed?’

‘Here, in Cannes, in my studio. These four will vouch for it. My Four Graces, monsieur. The body casts.’

‘I’m sure they’d vouch for anything,’ said Kohler drily. ‘What about Angelique Girard?’

Buemondi blinked to clear his reddened eyes. ‘That one also, monsieur. Believe me, I had no reason to kill my wife.’

‘The villa?’ asked Kohler, seeing the tadpoles glance quickly at one another and hold their breaths.

‘Not even for the villa, monsieur, though Anne-Marie refused absolutely to let me sell it and I begged her many times for the divorce she would not grant.’

The girls began to play with each other, to roll about and grapple but it was all to no avail. Kohler wasn’t buying any of it. ‘I smell a rat, my friend,’ he said. ‘Me, I think you did it.’

‘Then think again. Jean-Paul Delphane would not be bothered were it a simple matter of marital discord.’

‘Settled with a crossbow?’ asked Kohler, pulling down a lower eyelid to peer at the hippo. ‘Hey listen, my fine professori, loading a crossbow takes a good bit of muscle; firing it into sharp sunlight to hit a mark from sixty metres, one damned lot of practice.’

Buemondi didn’t waver. He would give the fine detective from Bavaria a moment. Ah si, si. Then he would tell him. ‘The weaver, monsieur. Viviane Darnot, my wife’s ex-lover and former companion of many years. She was in the hills on that day, yes? She travels there quite often in search of herbs and earths with which to dye the wool. Ludo Borel, the village herbalist, often helps her. Viviane discovered that Angelique and my wife were using the cottage she and Anne-Marie had used themselves as a lovers’ nest. It is as simple as that. The villa also. And she could shoot with that bow of mine, monsieur. Shoot only too well. She and my wife used to practise killing me. The big photograph on the target, the sketches – yes, yes, myself have I seen such a thing many times.’

‘Then why is the man from Bayonne involved?’

‘Why indeed, if not to discover something else?’

‘Did they know each other from the past?’

‘Delphane and Viviane, or Viviane and my wife?’

‘All three of them, I think.’

Buemondi grimaced, then flicked mud from his hand. ‘Look, let’s not mess. You and I both know what those people in the Deuxieme Bureau are like. Trouble under every carpet and behind every door. Me, I don’t want to become involved.’

‘Just say it,’ said Kohler quietly.

The hippo clucked his tongue ruefully then jerked his head up as he nodded. ‘Yes … yes, I think the three of them must have known each other from before but I have nothing with which to back this up.’

‘You lying bastard. You were married to the woman nine years ago. You know damned well what I’m referring to. The murder of Stavisky in Chamonix.’

‘The financier? Then scrape the mud away and find out what is beneath.’

Kohler got up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t drown,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to have to watch them pounding that crap out of you.’

The masseuse was waiting for him when he came out of the showers. He tried to ease her fears about her mother, the coiffeuse on the rue du Canada, and the sister but found it difficult to hide the truth.

Paulette Rogette was tough, sturdy and with the hands and arms of a potter, above all a realist. ‘My sister Suzanne is dead, is that it?’ she asked. ‘Mother telephoned here twice, Inspector, then again and again and again but they will not tell her anything, so now I ask it of you. Did the Gestapo of the Hotel Montfleury pry anything out of my sister before they killed her?’

Kohler took the towel and wrapped it around himself. ‘She can’t have given them much or they’d have shut this place down and taken you away.’

‘Why can’t you look at me when you say this?’ she shrilled.

Kohler did so, and when she struck him, hissing, ‘Batard!’ he let her try to get it out of her system.

‘They’ll pay for it,’ he said.

‘That will not bring her back!’

The woman was in tears. He could not comfort her; she would not have allowed him to touch her.

Without another word he walked away Chez Paulette’s was on the rue Buttura not far from the Sporting Club and the Notre Dame de Bon Voyage. There were the bicycles of the oppressed, the velos jockeying for position. Girls wanting to sell themselves in front of shops that contained either little or things that were far too costly for most. Girls and older men because there were so few of the young ones left. Everyone pumping their legs to beat the Jesus for a sou while the Army of the South took its leisure in the growing night and the boys in blue with their leaded capes and sticks strolled about looking for him.

When he found the showroom, it was completely by chance. Kohler stood a moment admiring the De Sotos, the Chrysler Imperials and Packards, the Rolls Royces and Bentleys of the departed.

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 coupe 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-Michele.

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 Napoleon 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 Surete 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 Francaise 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-Michele 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-Michele 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 Surete 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 braisee a 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 Perigord 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 Provencal 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 Chateau-d’Yquem of the Luftwaffe and the Dom Perignon. 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 Abbe 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 (nee Cordeau), self-proclaimed lesbian. Sexually promiscuous. Has had many lesbian affairs, most notably that with the weaver Viviane Damot and, most recently, the student Angelique Girard, bisexual with whom she has been secretly meeting for some time.

‘Known to be dealing on the black market in Cannes and Marseille. Makes frequent trips to Bayonne where she also has property.

‘Suspected of supplying arms, ammunition and false papers to the maquis of the Alpes-Maritimes.

‘Suspected of operating an escape line for enemy prisoners of war and of using this conduit to funnel infiltrators into France and Italy.

‘Estranged wife of the Fascist, Carlo Buemondi, professor of art and founding member of the National Socialist Party of Cannes and the Society for the Greater Glory of Italy. Mother of twin girls: Josette-Louise, last address: 22 rue Terrage, Paris; and Josianne Michele, diagnosed as suffering from epilepsy, the result of the mother’s sexual deviations.’

St-Cyr shuddered at Delphane’s brutal lack of understanding but saw the notations as the Gestapo Munk would have seen them.

On the surface, then, nothing but death for virtually all those associated with Anne-Marie. Deportation to a concentration camp for Viviane Darnot. Gas or the lethal injection for Josianne-Michele – the State, the Glorious Third Reich could not tolerate any signs of weakness, especially ‘madness’ brought on by a mother’s ‘sexual deviations’.

Yet what was the truth? A pawn ticket. A woman so desperate for cash on the day she was killed, she had said to the antique dealer, ‘Cash. I must have the cash or all is lost.’

A woman who possessed a villa full of valuable pieces. Surely she could have sold something? She had had the contacts. She had bartered with a sharp determination and efficiency.

A woman, then, with two faces, two masks.

An espadrille, a small, cheap porcelain figure of the Christ at Galilee, a cross that had been fashioned by the village blacksmith.

The espadrille had been that of a child of ten or twelve, and all three items had been together on the shelf beside the bed in that cottage. More shards of Roman glass and bits of pottery. Why must shards of glass keep coming up?

Two daughters, the one estranged from her mother though she was Anne-Marie’s favourite; the other, the one who was ill, the favourite of the father. ‘My little one, my Josianne …’ Carlo Buemondi had said to Hermann only to have one of his current girlfriends call him away to comfort in the mud.

Himmler’s buyer was furious. Anne-Marie Buemondi would not let her husband sell the villa.

Viviane Darnot was terrified the Germans would discover she was British and carrying false papers.

St-Cyr drew out the santon, placing the little carving next to the candle. Though the talk was everywhere now, the men relaxing, the sound of them was as if hushed.

The beechwood bobbin had been in the mother’s coat pocket, wound with the russet wool of the cape she had given to Angelique Girard.

The clot of wool had been on that hillside near the santon, near where, in all probability, the shot had been fired.

According to Carlo Buemondi, the weaver and his wife had practised their archery using images of himself as targets.

St-Cyr set the pawn ticket between the bobbin and the clot of wool, and in that moment saw again on the cinematographer’s screen, the weaver’s eyes as she had looked at him in Chamonix nine years ago. Shards of mirrored glass then; shards of Roman glass now.

The force of the bolt would have fractured Madame Buemondi’s spine.

The boy, Bebert Peretti, had seen something on that hillside but had been forbidden by Delphane from telling them anything, as had everyone else in that village.

Delphane must have made more than one visit to the area.

‘Louis … Louis, aren’t you going to go to bed?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t, Hermann. I must force myself to think.’

‘Then take two of these. I saved a few from that last job.’

Messerschmitt benzedrine. St-Cyr lifted the tired hand of dismissal. ‘Sleep well, my old one. I will awaken you when it is time.’

Delphane obviously knew the weaver from before. It was her father’s villa Stavisky had used in those last few days before his death.

She had moved out at the request of the father, had been there in Chamonix with someone, but would rather not say.

St-Cyr tapped out his pipe and refilled it without even taking his gaze from the fire. He really ought to destroy the woman’s notebook so as to save lives. Could they take the chance of keeping it a moment longer?

Tucking it away, he looked at the photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi. A warm day in the early fall perhaps; Paris, the off-white linen suit well-cut and fitted. The handbag over the shoulder, the wide-brimmed felt hat, the woman’s version of the fedora, pulled down to the left, almost to the level of that eye.

A troubled young woman, caught in the street perhaps but not avoiding her photographer, ah no. Simply facing the camera. Thin. Once quite beautiful, yes, and dressed up for what? To meet someone or to take the train to see her mother in the south?

For this last, she would have needed an ausweis, not easily obtained. The forger in Marseille? he asked. Had she betrayed her mother to Delphane? he wondered. Had Jean-Paul convinced her to co-operate?

She seemed so … ah, what could he say? Tragic? Resigned? Unhappy – yes, yes. Not in love, not on her best feet either, in spite of the clothes. No, ah no. Circumstance had not been kind to this one.

Shutting his eyes, he ran his fingers slowly over the photograph just as Madame Peretti would have done had the girl been before her in that farmhouse on the hillside. He willed himself to step into her shoes and asked, Had she no friends? A pretty girl like this? Young … so young and yet, and yet …

The right eye must be slightly lower than the left as in the sister. Hence the stylish tilt of the hat which had the effect of distracting the viewer from the bad eye.

But surely that same eye would have hampered her ability to fire a crossbow?

What was it Josianne-Michele had said about her sister? That Josette-Louise had become everything Josianne had ever wished.

The santon of Ludo Borel drew him then and he said, as if to Josianne-Michele, Everything, mademoiselle, but a lover. That boy in the hills, eh? The one thing your sister in Paris did not have.

The clerk who was forced to open up the pawnshop in Bayonne was a shrill-minded little shrew with pencil moustache and teeth like a rabbit in rigor mortis. He hated cops, loathed intrusion, loved order and basked in his supreme sense of power.

Livid, he raked the heavy iron key round in the lock, gripping the door handle in fury only to find himself picked up and slammed against the outer wall.

‘Stay put!’ hissed the Surete every bit as livid. ‘Don’t do so and me, I will personally break every bone in your body with absolute joy!’

For good measure, St-Cyr slammed him up against the wall again, knocking the pancake beret to the road and the gold-rimmed specs askew.

Kohler was impressed. For once their roles were reversed. Pocketing the keys, Louis told him to wait outside. ‘A moment, my old one. That is all I ask. I must experience it as it was, alone.’

The rabbit leapt. ‘The regulations require that I be present! It is the Lord’s Day! Monsieur le Directeur, he has said …’ He choked. The Bavarian was grinning at him.

When the uninviting black iron door had closed behind Louis, Kohler grinned again and said, ‘He just wants to get the feel of it again. The Chief Inspector St-Cyr was in on the Stavisky Affair and is not entirely certain that business is over.’

Oh-oh. Nine years had not been enough to erase the memory of the scandal. Everyone who had lost still bitched volubly and grumbled about having been taken to the cleaners. ‘I am not from here, monsieur. I know nothing of that business. I was assigned this post after the crisis and have many times applied for the transfer.’

The Gestapo nodded. ‘Maybe we could help. Would Paris suit?’

These days one had to beg even though such an offer could only be suspect. ‘The Basques, monsieur. They do not like the outsiders. My wife and son, we do not speak their devil’s tongue, so it is very difficult and sometimes it gets on the nerves, the isolation of a foreign posting.’

So much for the far corners of the empire. Fog had rolled in from the Atlantic up the Adour to smother its confluence with the Nive and shroud the ancient bridges of the old town. Their landing had been a bitch. The drive in from the aerodrome outside Biarritz something else again.

Kohler dragged out the Luftwaffe’s fags and offered one. ‘Tell me about the Inspector from the Deuxieme Bureau, eh? We know he’s been to see you. Why’d he leave that little item in there for us to find?’

Rabbit-teeth jerked round to stare at the door above which had been chiselled the words: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. ‘He … he has said we must report the names of any who come to collect the kaleidoscope, monsieur.’

‘The “kaleidoscope”?’

‘Yes, yes. A child’s toy but very beautiful. In silver with much eloquent scrollwork and such colours when held to the sun. We gave Madame Buemondi 35,000 francs. It is a lot, but an item of such curiosity and craftsmanship deserved at least that much. I had to consult with the Director several times, you understand. Madame needed the cash, she said, and since she comes from a very old family, we gave it. But … but why are you here, monsieur? Has something happened to her?’

Again Kohler found himself saying abstractedly, ‘No … No, nothing. It’s just a small matter of her father’s estate.’

‘The taxes …? Ah, no! Yes, yes, of course. The taxes. The father was very wealthy. That one had many investments in the companies of the scoundrel Stavisky but managed to extricate himself well before the scandal erupted.’

‘Made a bundle, did he?’

‘Yes, yes, the bundle.’

‘Then why did Madame have to pawn her little toy?’

‘This … this I do not know, monsieur. The wealthy often come to us. Along with the poor and the destitute, they, too, require the funds from time to time. The stocks and bonds, the fine paintings one has overbought at auction … Monsieur, could we not …’

‘Go in?’ Kohler shook his head. ‘The Chief Inspector has to be left alone to soak up whatever vibrations this place of yours can give that memory of his. Find us a cafe and I’ll let you buy me a coffee and a marc’

‘It is not a day for alcohol and there is no coffee.’

The shops were barren or making hollow pretence. A plaster ham in a place where the hams had been famous. Chocolate looking suspiciously like painted mud. No bayonets in a shop of no knives – too dangerous probably in a town that had been named after the bayonet.

Rope-soled espadrilles for Christmas? wondered Kohler, thinking of the espadrille Louis had found in that cottage. Moth-eaten berets, oyster shells where no oysters were to be had because it was against the law to fish and the town was in the Forbidden Zone, that deep swath of terrain along the coast the Wehrmacht had sealed off from the rest of the country. Controls, controls …

‘Louis won’t touch a thing. Relax, eh? And we’ll see what we can do about Paris while you try to remember everything you can about Jean-Paul Delphane.’

‘He looked at the box. He looked through the tube and said to leave it.’

‘Did he mention the Stavisky Affair?’

‘No, but … but Monsieur le Directeur, he has said that one must have murdered the financier or been very close to the one who did. A man from the Deuxieme Bureau, Inspector? A man from the police?’

Dead, Stavisky could tell no tales; alive, he could have identified all those who had benefited from the swindles.

‘How much of a bundle did Madame Buemondi’s father make?’

‘Monsieur Cordeau doubled his substantial fortune, Inspector. Perhaps several hundred millions of francs, who knows? There are still those who say he was smart to have pulled out when he did; others, that he knew only too well what was going on and got out before the scandal broke. Still others say it was he who paid to have the bullet placed in Monsieur Stavisky’s brain.’

Nice … that was really nice. Louis should have heard it. ‘Did Madame Buemondi ever pawn anything else?’

The man shook his head. ‘She was very quiet, you understand. Like the terrified little mouse. She sat among the others on one of our benches and when I called out her number, she jumped but did not argue. Just snatched the money and stuffed it into her purse. I had to call her back to make her take the ticket she had left on the counter.’

‘A kaleidoscope.’

‘Yes, as I have said.’

‘Was there anyone with her?’

‘Not in the pawnshop, but when I went to call her back, I saw her meet a young girl.’

‘One of her daughters?’

The man gave him a curious look. ‘No, not a daughter, monsieur. A Basques-Francaise.’

‘The daughter of a shepherd? Of a man who knows the mountains?’

‘A mountain guide, yes.’

Verdammt! Now what were they to do? Delphane had been right. The cash had been to pay off the guide for taking the escapers into Spain. Kohler knew it, felt it in his bones, said to hell with the medicines she might have been buying. It was as good as over for that village and for the weaver and the daughters. Louis, too, and himself.

When they reached the pawnshop, they found the door locked from the inside. A note had been written on the back of one of the tags and tied to the handle. Hermann, please do not disturb me.

The room was large and all but bare. Dark wooden panels lined the walls not unlike those of a courtroom. Austerity and piety seemed everywhere. A long counter ran across the back, separating the rest of the room from the storehouse of pawned wealth in rows of shelves asleep behind padlocked wire caging.

St-Cyr stood alone among the shabby wooden benches where the poor and the not-so-poor or the wealthy sat alike with sinking hearts as each had his or her number called out. ‘Numero -, will you take thirty francs for your wedding ring? Numero -, will you take forty-five on the camera and ten on the shoes?’

Often the sum given was far less than the rumoured one-quarter of the object’s value – only fools dared to arrive in the morning. Always bitchy, never kind, the clerks behaved slightly better after a good lunch, and the wealthy often did a little preliminary research so as to bribe the waiter or the chef for just such a reason.

Photographers and artists were among the first to come as hard times approached; farmers often among the last. He remembered a ballet dancer who had had to pawn her shoes in order to pay her rent but then could not dance that very evening and was distraught. Fifty francs he’d given her and she had held him as one would a long-lost father.

He remembered an old man who, on parting with his pet finch, had wept openly and promised vehemently to return at the first opportunity but had immediately gone into a cafe and drunk the pittance away.

Everyone in the room knew the amount received by everyone else. Some could not bear the humiliation and broke down completely, only further disgracing themselves. Others were cavalier. Most tried to argue but the value offered was always firm and attested to by the arrogance of the clerks who hated with a vengeance any and all who approached that counter.

Yet from just such as this had Stavisky been able to launch his swindles.

St-Cyr drew in the musty odour of things long forgotten. He willed the memories to come. Chamonix … he urged. Chamonix. It was so far from here.

Viviane Darnot had known Jean-Paul Delphane was in Cannes looking into the murder of her former lover and companion. Her father had been taken to the cleaners by Stavisky but why, then, must she lie about things, unless still protecting someone?

Josianne-Michele? he asked. But why protect her now, knowing that the girl’s mother was dead?

He saw the mother’s eyes in death, the braided diadem with the fringe all but covering the forehead. The dark, wooden shaft of that arrow – why had the killer not used a newer bolt? If the two women had practised their archery as much as Carlo Buemondi maintained, then surely they must have had newer ones?

The weaver came to him then. He saw her in the half-light of some stairwell, the cellars perhaps? Hiding … Yes, yes … Had she come back to the villa near Chamonix to find out what was happening?

Again he reminded himself that her father had lost a fortune. Two and a half million francs – old francs then. Worth at least twelve and a half million now.

Two girls in a convent school, the older one taking the younger under her wing and into her bed.

The sound of a pistol shot – fragments of mirror flying outwards. Dark grey-blue eyes in every one of them. Slices of her face, turning … turning …

Quickly he went over to the counter and ducked through the gap. From row to row he searched among the battered valises, the pitiful lampshades and stacks of dishes. ‘Numero P-9377482,’ he said aloud, ‘will you take 35,000 francs?’ Ah Mon Dieu, so much?

The black leather box was really quite small – perhaps no more than twenty-five centimetres by fifteen in width and the same in height.

Unlocking the wire, he moved the rusty screen aside, then stood there looking down at that thing she had pawned. Though the dust must settle constantly, there was no trace of it on the leather, and he could not help but wonder why Jean-Paul had left it here for them to find.

‘A trap,’ he said. ‘It’s a trap.’

There was a tiny key and he could hear the argument that must have raged between Madame Buemondi and the clerk as to its leaving. Only at the last would she have given in and relinquished it.

Jewels? he wondered. Some sort of scientific instrument? ‘Ah, Nom de Dieu,’ he breathed. ‘A pocket telescope!’

In black velvet, the silver shone. Even in the poor light, the bright-cut engraving sparkled. Lions and tigers, elephants, giraffes and palm trees, the sickle of the moon above an oasis, the stars all out, the three wise men in their robes, their camels hobbled for the night. The crest of some wealthy family, the hallmark of its maker.

Carrying the box into the Assistant Director’s tiny office, he switched on the lamp, then stood looking down at that thing again.

The workmanship was absolutely exquisite, the faceting of the bevelled engraving almost jewel-like. He imagined the dead woman sitting at one of those benches among such shabbiness with the others all around her waiting for her number to be called, so desperate for cash she had had to pawn this. Thirty-five thousand francs but worth at least between 140,000 and 250,000, if one could find a buyer, but why had it been so valuable?

Delicately picking it up, he pointed it at the lamp, sucked in a breath, let out a little cry of delight and began at once to rotate the outermost end of the tube. Beautifully coloured and faceted platelets were thrown outwards. Reflected again and again by the simple system of mirrors, there were patterns such as he had never seen before. Ruby-reds and emerald-greens, topaz-blues and yellows, tourmaline in shades of red, green, blue, yellow and pink … diamonds … were there coloured diamonds as well?

There was a range of nearly every colour from a deepest red that absorbed to the finest of pale pinks; the yellows from that of ripened flax to that of a golden wine, the blues, the greens varying the same, and clear, transparent pieces that drew the colours of the others yet stood out themselves when turned.

A kaleidoscope like no other. A fabric designer’s piece of magic. A child’s toy but such a toy.

He knew its owner had once been Viviane Darnot, for the weaver could never have resisted such a thing and would have been absolutely entranced by its patterns. He thought of Chamonix, of the wall hangings he had seen in that villa, her eyes reflected so many times in shards of mirrored glass.

The octagonal patterns were everchanging as the outer end of the tube was turned, yet when the turning stopped, it was as if the particles fell in on themselves and the pattern remained stationary.

The hallmark gave the name of the engraver: John S. Hunt of Hunt and Roskell, London, 1849. Viviane Darnot could well have received it from the father she seldom saw; in turn, she would have given it to the girl she loved.

And that same girl, now a woman, had pawned the gift and done so when? he asked, examining the tag and recalling that her body had been found on the 16th, the Wednesday last.

She had pawned the kaleidoscope on the previous Saturday, 12 December, at two forty-five in the afternoon.

Had Jean-Paul informed the weaver of what her former lover and companion had done with her gift? Was that why Madame Buemondi had extended the ticket on that hillside and made not threats, ah no, but entreaties perhaps for forgiveness? I needed the money, cherie. I was desperate, she might have said. Josianne must have her medicine. The pilots must get across the Pyrenees and into safety so that they can fight again.

But wait, he cautioned. Viviane Darnot is English. Then were they not both in on it, both helping the escapers until Angelique Girard came between the two women? Ah yes. The cloak had been given to another. The kaleidoscope had been pawned – a last straw, then. The weaver could tolerate no more. Wearing the cloak, she went into the hills and when Anne-Marie arrived, challenged her former lover and then shot her.

Perhaps, but then … then … ah, it was such a case. They must get to Paris as quickly as possible and then return to those hills. That’s where the answers lay. The boy, Bebert Peretti, must be made to tell them what he witnessed on that hillside. The villagers, most particularly the herbalist and the hearse-driver, must be made to reveal what they knew. Somehow he had to keep Hermann from finding out about the maquis, if indeed there had ever been any of them.

And Jean-Paul Delphane? he asked, still holding the kaleidoscope. Jean-Paul must be made to answer for his crimes.

They were hurrying along the Quai des Corsaires through the fog, past half-timbered houses that had been built in the late 1500s perhaps. An old town, a once-bustling port the British had controlled from 1152 until 1451, Bayonne had fallen into decline for 200 years only to be revived by eighteenth-century privateers who had used it as a free port. Hence, the long tradition of taking the wealth of others? asked St-Cyr, snorting at the thought only to forget all about it.

‘Hermann, we must remember to ask the hearse-driver or the Abbe Roussel why Madame Buemondi denied the Borels their right to water, and when she did so.’

Kohler flapped his wings in despair. ‘Dummkopf! It was the Perettis she threatened! The Borels’ oldest son was after the epileptic’s ass and Madame did not want him having it!’

‘Yes, yes, my friend, your crudeness is admirable, but the Borels? Why, if Ludo Borel and the weaver worked together on the plant dyes, did Madame Buemondi take away their right to water and when did she do so?’

Louis could be such an idiot! Kohler stopped suddenly and turned to face him. ‘That woman was helping escapists, my fine. Whether she pissed away Borel’s water or not, simply doesn’t matter. She met a girl here, the daughter of a mountain guide, Louis, and she had the 35,000 francs to hand over.’

‘Ah no, a guide …? Why did you not tell me, Hermann?’

‘You were too busy trying to get that toy out of the rabbit’s hands. Besides, I didn’t want to tell you.’

They hurried on in silence, each angry with his own thoughts, until they came to the house. Between the timbers of the upper storey there was white stucco. The shutters were open. They rang the bell and wondered why, if there was no housekeeper, the lower shutters had not been closed.

‘Try the door,’ said Hermann, and when Louis did, it opened easily enough. ‘Louis, I don’t like this.’

‘Me neither,’ said the Frog, still carrying his toy.

The ceilings were low, the lintels over the doorways even lower still, the house unpretentious – quite obviously that of a merchant with shipping interests as well as others. Merely a house away from home.

The bedroom looked out over the River Nive but by then they had noticed the stench.

‘Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ!’ coughed Kohler, flinging himself away to throw up his guts and rush out of the room only to bang his head and shriek at the place.

St-Cyr threw open the windows but with the fog there was little daylight.

He struck a match and went over to the bed. The body was that of a young man of twenty or so. The bloated face was greenish-grey and horribly distorted, a mask of agony. Decay of the internal organs had caused a froth to ooze from the lips and nostrils. He’d been hit in the right thigh by shrapnel – a Stuka perhaps or merely the flak from some battery. The wound had festered but had perhaps not been too much to bear at first. Then the gangrene had set in, the fevers, the delirium – he could see where a rag had been used to stuff his mouth and stop his cries. The thigh was a deep greenish-black and bloated terribly, the sheeting and mattress soaked with effluent. The boy had been dead for at least two or three weeks, but why had she left him here to die like this all alone?

Why had Delphane left them to find the body if not to pin the rap of sympathizers on them?

‘Hermann, we are being forced into admitting we saw this one. If we do not report him, Herr Munk will think we are on the other side and wanting only to hide things. Yet if we do report the body, he will then move in on the village.’

For a former artilleryman and one who ought to have been accustomed to seeing death in all its many forms, Hermann looked positively ill.

‘Delphane wins either way, Louis. If we say we found the body, the village is lost and he’s proven right. If we withhold the information even for a day, he’s still proven right about us.’

‘And we have so little time at our disposal.’

‘Could we find the guide and his daughter?’

The warmth of fear was in Louis’s eyes. ‘How? If they are running an escape line, Hermann, they will most certainly not come to us.’

‘Ja, ja, I’m Gestapo. I know all about it. Our goose is being properly cooked this time.’

‘Hermann, the door was open, yes? Eyes will be watching to see what we do. If we leave quietly, some might think other than those of Jean-Paul and the ones he employs, if any.’

‘But will they take the chance of contacting us? Why should they?’

Why, indeed. It was hopeless and they both knew it. Madame Buemondi had been conducting escapers through to Spain. Whether her murder had anything to do with this or not was of no consequence, and yet … and yet, a murder had been committed.

‘Come on,’ said Kohler. ‘Let’s find our pilot and go home.’

‘Paris in winter is the shits,’ muttered the Frog. ‘Me, I should like to spend the last days of my life in that woman’s cottage.’

Listening to the bees of summer in his dreams and calculating the honey each would make as he read Baudelaire. Living on goat cheese, herbs and sausage. And water, Kohler reminded himself. Ja, ja, water. Without that there can be no life.

6

An icy mizzle made greyer still the gathering dusk over Paris. All along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin near the Gare de l’Est the only cars were those of the Germans, and few of them, ah yes, but not few enough.

St-Cyr stood at the kerb waiting to cross over. Ever since arriving at Le Bourget aerodrome, he and Hermann had known they were being followed. They’d split up. There was nothing new in this, the work always shared. But Hermann, he was better at deception. Instinctively the Bavarian could tail or lose a tail better than anyone.

The car was down the street no more than five lampposts. Beetle-black and ugly, a Citroen just like the one he’d once had. Son of a bitch! Could they not leave them alone long enough to draw breath or pass water?

Delphane … Did he have such resources at his command? And if so, then why … why the need to tail them?

Perhaps it was someone else? Gestapo Paris, on repeated requests from Herr Munk in Cannes? Perhaps old friends who had been associates of Jean-Paul’s during the Stavisky business? Pierre Bonny and the boys from the rue Lauriston, eh, my friend? The French Gestapo!

Would they not leave things well enough alone and let an honest detective get on with the business at hand?

Mercilessly the velos-taxis with their heavy loads were pedalled or pushed through the eight centimetres of fast-freezing slush. One old horse that had escaped the Russian Front had ice so thick around its hooves, the poor creature could barely lift them. Hermann would have bullied the driver of that antiquated open carriage. The whip would have been threatened and the Hauptmann in the back told off in no uncertain terms. Ah yes. Hermann had a way with him when aroused by such passions.

The couple kissed. The Hauptmann laughed. The girl stepped daintily down, bravely refusing to acknowledge that those same eight centimetres of slush were now rushing through the open toes of high-heeled shoes best worn in summer.

Her pockets bulged with treasures – secreted pate stashed into a napkin, some of the bread, a bar of precious soap or tin of anchovies. He could not find it in his heart to censure her as some would do. The coat was cheap, the dress too thin but, ah Mon Dieu, there were no young Frenchmen to take the Hauptmann’s place and likely as not her husband or lover was either in a POW camp in Germany or dead.

The girl had a bad cough and when she passed him on the way to the entrance of the metro, he turned quickly aside and held his breath for good measure. Automatically the mind, it leapt to thoughts of the influenza, the croup, the crisis of the running nose. The maladie terrible to which the Surete Nationale’s petty little dictator and chief paid not the slightest concern unless personally threatened!

St-Cyr almost wished he hadn’t turned away. He could have passed it on to Pharand. That arch little file-minded Fascist had been a boyhood friend of Jean-Paul Delphane. Another ex-choirboy. Ah yes. Singing up in the gods but singing such a tune.

The horse started up, the slush splashed grey upon the grey. The whip Hermann would have seized flicked harshly but by some miracle of miracles, all four clods of ice suddenly broke from the hooves and the old horse stepped out lively.

Another car had arrived, a Daimler, but held itself back from the first. He couldn’t lead them to Josette-Louise Buemondi. Was she even at her old address?

He couldn’t have them following him everywhere.

Dodging the bicycles and contraptious velos, St-Cyr bolted across the street. Slipping and sliding, he darted in among the drab, bundled mass of uncaring humanity. A car started up. A car door opened. Someone blew a whistle. Someone shouted. He ran, pushing his way deeper and deeper into the crowd. He must lose them. He must not lead them to that girl but why … why should they want her? Or did they?

Nearly out of breath, he raced into the rue du Terrage. The crowd thinned. Number 22 … 22 … He tossed a look over a shoulder, stepped between two hurrying clusters of pedestrians and eased the courtyard door shut behind him. Put the lock on and waited. Waited … Ah the chest, the lack of vitamins and minerals these days. The itching. Had he caught that young girl’s influenza? Had he?

The courtyard was very rural – peaceful even in its times of peril. Terracotta flowerpots had held tomatoes, herbs, lettuces and cucumbers in season. Grapevines climbed the walls where the sun would be trapped. The roofs leapt up and up on all sides, bars or closed shutters on the lowest windows, but at the far end, a door exposed two oblong panes of glass.

He started out, threw yet another look behind. Cast-iron drainpipes carried sewage down the outer walls of these older houses, but were hopelessly vulnerable in weather such as this. The one nearest the door to Number 22 had been bashed with a hammer in a fit of rage and now leaked a half-frozen pus of effluent. A bad sign if one was looking for a concierge with heart.

The man, like Shylock in a shoebox, was huddled over his dinner, guiltily rubbing half a grey loaf of that other national curse with a handful of garlic that had been poorly crushed.

The garlic, of course, gave one that sense of the full stomach when the bread had been eaten. Some swore it lasted nearly all day.

‘Well, what is it?’ demanded the concierge fiercely. ‘You’ll get nothing here! Don’t tell me my rights, monsieur. I am not Father Beaumont for nothing!’

A defrocked priest. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ, could nothing go right? ‘A moment of your valuable time, eh?’ snarled the Surete, immediately regretting the slip of manners.

‘A moment?’ shrilled the man, tossing the hand with the garlic. ‘Then start the meter running, my fine flic with the slush on your shoes, and while you’re at it, tell me who is going to clean the place up?’

The beard jerked, the grey eyes were livid. There’d been a notice on the door, ah yes. Please remove the galoshes.

Six sweaters and three pairs of trousers hid the concierge. The belt had not been sufficient and a frayed bit of rope held the last of the trousers up.

Beaumont wore no boots, shoes or carpet slippers. Instead, his feet were wrapped in woven straw that had been stuffed with the same.

‘It’s warmer than anything else,’ he said testily. ‘Our ancestors crossed the glaciers with such as these.’

Was he some kind of historian?

Above the tiny cast-iron stove he had pinned his coal card – 25 kilos a month if one could get it. Enough perhaps to heat this one small room for about two hours a day.

‘This girl,’ said St-Cyr, showing him the photograph Hermann had rescued from the Gestapo Munk. ‘The last address we have is …’ He threw a look down the stairwell at some noise or other.

‘What’s she done now?’ hissed the man, forgetting the wad of garlic which shot across the threadbare carpet to land in the slush.

‘Pardon?’ offered the Surete, not bothering to pick the thing up. ‘You said “now”, monsieur. Please take the trouble to explain yourself.’

The head jerked fiercely. ‘She tried to get away without paying the rent. Twice it’s happened but me,’ he tapped his head, ‘I have seen too many bare asses in this place for that, monsieur. No one secretly smuggles a few clothes outside, then tries to shoot the moon in my place while leaving all the rest of their crummy baggage behind!’

‘Ah, yes, the moon. And what did you do, eh?’

Merde! Must he use the eyes of the bishop? ‘Me I faced her with the problem, monsieur.’

‘And?’

‘I …’

‘You said you were going to tell the police.’

The man nodded. Head bowed, he said, ‘That one wept when I undressed her. The moon, I said. Me, I will show you what shooting the moon is like.’

‘The room,’ breathed the Surete with barely controlled fury. ‘Take me to it at once.’

The man was shrill. ‘Oh you needn’t look so pious, my fine Inspector. I did not fornicate with that cheater of cheats. Me, I would never do such a thing. The vows … they are still sacred.’

It took all types to make the city what it was. ‘Where’s she gone then?’ asked St-Cyr so quietly the budgie in its disgusting cage had to cock an ear.

Birdshit lay a centimetre deep across the little tin floor. The wires were bent, the bird in moult perhaps.

‘She’s gone to stay with a friend, I think,’ muttered the concierge. ‘A German perhaps. Even rats will spread their legs these days and hers was quite hairy.’

St-Cyr experienced an almost overwhelming desire to free the bird and throw the bastard to the wolves. When he swung the counter top up and stood aside, Beaumont wolfed the bread before snatching up the garlic and stuffing it into a pocket.

‘You can’t leave a thing lying around these days,’ he cursed. ‘Even here the rule of law no longer exists.’

The room was in the attic six floors above the vacant courtyard. Frost covered all but a central patch of window across which hung a dirty webbing of tattered lace.

Both cars, still with engines running, were waiting in the street – he could just catch a glimpse of each. Not on speaking terms, then. One watching the other and both of them on to him but not inclined to step out into the cold.

So be it, eh, my friends? There was virtually nothing in the bureau drawers. Two rolled-up pairs of heavy woollen socks, dark blue, a pair of grey tweed trousers unlined … A man’s? he wondered, dragging them out to hold them against his own. Perhaps … but he thought not. Not like the sister.

A skirt and blouse for summer.

‘That one, she has pawned practically everything, monsieur,’ muttered the concierge. ‘The blanket is mine, as are the sheet and pillow slip. Rented, of course.’

‘Of course. Did she cry, my friend?’

‘When undressed? Yes, yes … it is the sinner’s duty to weep, is it not?’

‘At other times?’

‘Yes, yes, often there was much weeping behind the closed door.’

‘Did she ever receive any letters?’

‘Three since she came to this place in the early summer. She always used to ask if anything more had arrived. Always she was so eager for money, always so distraught when nothing more came.’

‘Money?’ asked the Surete, raising the eyebrows and carefully moving the curtain aside again to have another look.

‘Money, yes. From the south but posted here in Paris. When no more letters had arrived for some time, she said, “My friend, she has let me down and this I cannot understand. Something must have happened to her.” Then she pawned her things, Inspector, bit by bit and then …’

‘You caught her trying to leave without paying the rent. Yes, yes, continue.’

‘She gave up hope. I have seen that look in others, Inspector. I know what it is to relinquish all trust in God.’

A pathetic mirror and brush were on the bureau beside the tiny tin wash-basin and toothbrush … Ah, Nom de Dieu, why had she left the toothbrush if she’d gone to stay with a friend? The things were almost impossible to obtain these days. Rubbish when one managed it. Carpet bristles, cheap glue, and as a consequence, the mouth full of bristles at the first tasting of non-existent tooth-powder!

Satisfied that the boys in the street would wait, and that they probably had already known the girl had flown the coop, he went back to picking through her meagre belongings.

When he found the locket in the toe of a shoe that had lost its low heel, his fingers trembled. Immediately he was taken right back to the mas on that hillside in Provence. He heard the sister’s terrible shrieks and moans while the old woman steadfastly ground her goose livers.

The locket, though similar to that of Josianne-Michele, was badly dented and deeply incised with scratches. Cherished still, perhaps, but not clutched as one would the anchor of lost love when exhaustion overcame all else.

Not worn any longer. Ah no, of course not. Josette-Louise had come to Paris to succeed at all the things her sister had dreamed of.

The same two curly-headed girls of ten or twelve looked at him from their rings of gold. The cinematographer’s eye saw the village, the ruins of its citadel higher still. He smelled the sage and thyme of those hills, heard the goats and felt the mistral on his cheeks.

Why, if those two girls had ceased to speak or see each other, had Josette-Louise bothered to keep her locket?

There were teeth-marks sunk into the gold. He ran a thumb over them. He asked, what has happened here?

There was no other jewellery, no perfume or traces of the rouge and carefully budgeted lipstick she would most certainly have worn when attempting to find work.

A dancer … a designer’s mannequin … one who posed for artists and sculptors when she could find no other work.

He brought the slender scrap of soap up to a nostril but age and wear had banished whatever scent there might once have been.

‘Has anyone else been here asking questions? Come, come, monsieur, it will do you credit to answer truthfully.’

‘Credit? You talk of credit?’

‘I’m waiting.’

‘One who is much taller and bigger than yourself. Also from the police, eh? A man of no patience.’

‘When … when was he last here?’

The Surete was worried. Could a bribe be asked? Ah no, not this time. ‘Late yesterday and … and again this morning. That one searches, monsieur, but not as a man after a woman. Is it that she is hiding from him?’

Delphane had not gone to Bayonne as expected but had used it to delay Hermann and himself from reaching Josette-Louise.

‘That one, he has paid her the little visit some weeks ago, monsieur. The dress, the hat, the handbag and the shoes of that photograph in your hand, those things she had yet to pawn and wore them later on another occasion when … when she went out to meet him. The silk stockings as well and the … the white underpants. White … she … she only wore white ones.’

The weaver had known Jean-Paul – probably also from before, at least from Chamonix. Josette-Louise must also have known him or of him. Ah yes. He tossed a hand to indicate the concierge should continue.

‘Me, I have wondered why the work it should have completely dried up for her after his visit, monsieur. But day by day it did and since then there has been nothing.’

‘Was she afraid to go out?’ snapped the Surete testily.

‘Perhaps.’

The photograph had been taken in the Place de la Concorde. Early October perhaps. A very troubled young woman who had looked towards the camera with … with such pleading in her eyes. Ah yes, yes, but had she not also been startled by the photographer only to realize she could not object? He tossed his head and nodded grimly.

The father had wanted to sell the villa in Cannes; the mother had refused but more than this, had been unwilling to part with anything in that villa in spite of her apparently desperate need for cash.

When opened again, the locket revealed nothing but the happiness of twin sisters in far better times. When closed, it seemed to want to say so much.

Sliding the thing into a pocket, he said, ‘Touch nothing. This room is to be treated as if sealed until further notice from myself.’

It was only as he went to close the bureau drawers that he saw a scattering of dust. It had been beneath one of the pairs of socks. Greyish to greenish-white. Each particle larger than that of freshly ground pepper. The edges slightly curled.

Quickly he unravelled the socks and carefully shook them over the drawer.

Three tiny scabs of lichen fell out and he heaved a sigh that was far from contented.

Collecting them into a simple fold of paper, he said, ‘Now show me the way up on to the roofs and suggest the most possible avenue of exit. The slush will have to be conquered and that is all there is to it.’

The woman was very nice and Kohler thought her very good. Unlike the two schmucks who had tailed him in their car, this one had used her pins and her head. She had let him dodge the two of them, had had it all figured out well ahead of time and had known exactly what he’d do.

Only then had she let him become aware of her. The Odeon had been running newsreels. Tanks, tanks, and more of them but not in the snow and hard-frozen mud of a Russian winter. In high summer. Stukas plummeting through naked skies to bomb the Jesus out of baffled peasants and scatter Cossack cavalry.

She had slipped from row to row and had sat right down beside him. Half-way through the destruction of some miserable Ukrainian village, he had felt her knee against his own.

She had asked for a light, the accent of Normandy, had said softly, ‘It’s a bunch of shit. Let’s go to my place.’

Then had got up but had hesitated in front of him, her backside firmly blocking his view and those knees of hers between his own. He’d got up. He’d had to! Some fanatic four rows behind had shouted at them to sit down and somehow she had turned around. Had stood there frozen in the fringes of the projector beam. Nice eyes, nice lips, a generous smile. Nose to nose and body to body. ‘I meant it,’ she had said. ‘I think I could show you a few things, monsieur, and perhaps you could teach me something.’

Ah Nom de Dieu, what was he to have done, eh? He had buttoned up that coat of hers and had said, ‘Beat it. I haven’t got the time.’

Admonishingly a forefinger had been pressed against his lips, the catcalls coming. The crowd jeering at some victory Goebbels was trying to put over on the French, that bastard behind yelling his head off, too, and threatening violence. Flames on the screen, a fuel dump that time. Nomadic Arab goats scattering like hell across Saharan sands and then …‘The male orgasm it takes only seventeen seconds. We could do it right here and no one would be the wiser than yourself. But,’ she had tossed those lovely eyes of hers, had shrugged and touched his cheek ‘at my place it could be prolonged.’

She’d had a car all ready and waiting. The flat was on the fashionable rue Pergolese not far from the Arc de Triomphe. A piano took up one corner with a tall crystal vase of roses and litter of sheet music. Handel, Bach, Schubert and Brahms …

On the corner walls behind the piano were two gorgeous murals, done perhaps in the mid- to late 1700s. Eve caught in the clutches of a giant oak around whose twisted trunk coiled a boa constrictor after the juicy apple in her frightened hand. Succulent breasts uplifted, the torso thrown back and cringing, one arm clutching a branch for dear life as those same branches formed the crude fingers of a brutal and lustful curiosity that had Eve firmly within its grasp. Oh to be a boa.

The other mural was of a sleeping Psyche lifted on a robe of gold among pitch-dark thunderclouds by cupids with smiles and grins and teenaged boys in the buff and up to mischief.

Both paintings drew the eye and he could not decide which he liked better.

‘Perhaps this is what you want?’ she said, startling him. ‘But, alas, my poor detective from the Gestapo, I am already spoken for.’

Kohler grinned. The tight-fitting woollen dress was the colour of Moroccan lemons. The stupendous eyes were of a soft amber that matched the hair and the single topaz that hung from fine gold links in the centre of her cleavage.

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Mademoiselle Suzanne Labrie,’ he said. ‘Former proprietress of the Pelican Bar in Caen and now …’

Swiftly she pressed that finger against his lips then kissed him, withdrew a touch. ‘Now the lover of Hugo Ernst Bleicher, better known as the Abwehr’s Colonel Henri.’

The hero of German Military Intelligence in France. ‘The man who nailed Brutus and put that one and a hundred of his Interallie escape network behind barbed wire.’

Ever so slightly she nodded that pretty head of hers, still held his hand, did not indicate her part in that affair. ‘Henri, he wishes to talk to you – yes? – but finds the Abwehr’s Hotel Lutetia on the boul’ Raspail somewhat conspicuous. If you get my meaning.’

Kohler laid a hand on her shoulder. It was a nice shoulder and she did not seem to mind. ‘Henri will be here soon,’ she whispered. ‘In the meantime …’ She gave that little shrug.

‘Seventeen seconds?’ grinned Kohler, nibbling a topaz-studded ear lobe.

‘Coffee, I think, and a glass of marc or would you prefer, perhaps, the pastis of your friend?’

‘I hate the stuff.’

‘Then I can assure you of a very fine cognac but first …’ She touched his lips again and listened for the lift. ‘First, I would like another sample for the record book of my memory.’

Kohler slid the Gestapo’s dossier on Anne-Marie Buemondi across the antique desk as though through a minefield.

At forty-three years of age, Hugo Bleicher was a specialist in counterintelligence attached to the Abwehr’s Group III F. Fluent in French, he was equally and far more notably proficient in Spanish, ah yes. He had the freedom to travel where and when he liked and to employ whomever he wanted in his never-ending search for enemies of the State and for his own advancement. Bayonne? wondered Kohler apprehensively. Had Bleicher been there too?

‘So, Kohler, why show me this?’

The backs of the hands were hairy, the thin brown locks were rapidly receding. The heavy brown hornrimmed glasses did nothing to hide the bleak emptiness of dark brown eyes.

Kohler knew he’d best say something. ‘By rights, Colonel, as a member of the Deuxieme Bureau, Jean-Paul Delphane ought to be working for the Abwehr, but we find him under the Gestapo Munk. Maybe you’d like to tell me why that horse has changed its rider?’

‘Then why not ask your superior officer, the Sturmbann-fuhrer Walter Boemelburg?’ Bleicher indicated the telephone and took the trouble to move it cautiously through the minefield towards his opponent.

‘Walter’s getting forgetful, Colonel. Rumour has it that he’s soon to be replaced.’

An accomplished pianist, Bleicher had been the former chief clerk in the Jewish export firm of Bodenheimer, Schuster and Company where he’d dipped the whole lot of them, friends and all, into the net without batting an eye. He had a wife and son in Poppenbuttel, near Hamburg.

‘What can you do for us?’ asked the Abwehr’s man. ‘Come, come, Kohler, when my little Suzanne found you, you were in Montparnasse on your way to see me so let us not beat about the bush.’

The crunch had come. ‘Give you a link in a possible escape network.’

The thin and shadowed cheeks and chin were favoured in thought. ‘A certain telephone list?’ asked Bleicher, deciding to quietly reveal a little of what the local gossip had yielded.

Louis wasn’t going to like it but … ah, Gott im Hitnmel, something had had to be done. If Suzanne hadn’t intervened, Kohler would have gone to Bleicher anyway. Besides, the bastard had known it and had prepared himself in advance. He’d seen the airman’s body, then. He had known all about it. Shit!

‘All right, I’ll give you the list once my partner and I are satisfied about Delphane and his part in the murder of that one.’

‘This partner of yours, could he be used to our purposes?’

Ah damn! Bleicher must be only too well aware of the maquis link. He was smelling blood so hard, had he been a dog after a bitch in heat, his nose would have been running. ‘Louis and I are buddies, Colonel. You know what it’s like. You work so closely with a guy, you step right into his shoes. If you don’t, then the bullet or the knife that’s coming could well be your last.’

When Bleicher didn’t respond, Kohler said lamely, ‘The Frog trusts me, Colonel, but yeah, we can use him, only he mustn’t know I’m feeding you things.’

Kohler was known to be untrustworthy and defiant of authority. He had disgraced the SS in front of his superiors, defying all of them in his search for the truth.

‘What’s in it for yourself?’ hazarded Bleicher, closing the dossier and noting the stamp of the Gestapo Cannes.

Kohler knew exactly what had just run through Bleicher’s mind. ‘I’ve two sons at Stalingrad and a wife back home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg.’

‘Let’s dispense with the wife and sons.’

‘I want to clear my name, Colonel. I’m a good German. I can’t help the indiscretions of others. Like yourself, I …’

‘Dislike the traditional officer class?’

Bleicher was an NCO and had never risen above the rank of sergeant. ‘No, Colonel. Like yourself I was in the last war and taken prisoner.’

‘But did not try to escape?’

Ah merde, the bastard was tricky! Four times Bleicher had busted out of a camp near Abbeville only to be taken back because he’d enjoyed the intellectual exercise of beating his captors again! ‘Look, we need help. Delphane smells just about as badly as the corpse he let us find in that woman’s house in Bayonne.’

‘What corpse?’ asked Bleicher quietly. One could not reveal too great an interest.

Kohler dreaded what he was about to say, but knowledge of the corpse could not have been kept back for much longer. Someone in authority had had to be informed, otherwise the charge of hiding evidence and sympathizing with the enemy would have stuck.

In his heart of hearts, Louis would have agreed. Kohler could hear him saying, ‘One must take the lumps with the rest of the custard, Hermann, if the dessert of life is to be digested.’

He told Bleicher what the bastard must already know. ‘A British airman, Colonel. Dead for at least two or three weeks.’

Bleicher exhaled exasperation slowly. It would be best that way. ‘And you come to see me with such as this when you know the Buemondi woman was involved?’

‘We don’t know that, Colonel. Not really. Instead, we and others – yourselves and Gestapo Cannes perhaps – are being deliberately led into believing it.’

‘An escape line, Kohler. Is there anything else perhaps?’

Let’s have the whole of the dirty laundry, eh? ‘A whisper of the maquis in the Alpes-Maritimes but it’s not definite either.’

‘Suspicions have always been good enough in the past for the Gestapo?’

‘But not for the Abwehr, Colonel. For some reason the Wehrmacht still prides itself on doing things correctly. That’s why I’m asking you.’

This was heresy on Kohler’s part. So be it then. ‘Jean-Paul Delphane no longer works for us. Yes, yes, that one is of a good family, he’s a “good” Frenchman and of the Action Francaise but …’ Bleicher shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is that he felt he could better serve the Reich by working for the Gestapo Cannes.’

Or that of Bayonne? wondered Kohler. To ask more was to ask for the impossible. A man like Bleicher never laid all his cards on the table. But sure as that God of Louis’s made little green apples, the Abwehr had seen Delphane going into or out of that house in Bayonne and at some point – earlier perhaps – had put the skids under him. ‘You make me feel like I’ve just been taken to the cleaners, Colonel.’

One should not yield to flattery yet it was gratifying to know one’s reputation had spread even to the dingy corridors of the rue des Saussaies and what had formerly been the Headquarters of the Surete Nationale but was now that of the Gestapo in France.

Bleicher motioned to the lovely Suzanne who’d drifted into the study at some point in the discussion but had remained unobtrusively in the background. ‘Please show the Inspector out, my dear. We’ve taken up enough of his valuable time.’

She kissed her lover on the head and passed a lingering hand down over the back of his neck while smiling the Gestapo’s way. They made a lovely couple. The Abwehr and his collaborator. Ah yes. Kohler was glad Louis hadn’t been with him.

At the door she handed him one of the Abwehr’s small brown pay envelopes and when he thought it was money, held his fingers and his eyes. ‘Show it to that friend of yours, that Frenchman you so admire. Tell him that Colonel Henri wishes to express to you both this small token of interest.’

The thing had been licked shut and stapled for good measure.

‘Open it in private, yes? There are eyes everywhere.’

‘Is Louis being followed?’

She moved closely to brush her lips over his. Put his hand on her seat and pressed her middle against him as she leaned away. ‘Not by me. You were sufficient. Me, I have enjoyed our little affair and might wish for more, were you not so very worried about that partner of yours. Bring Hugo what he wants and me, I will see that you are justly rewarded.’

‘I’ll bet,’ said Kohler, giving her bum a pat. ‘Auf Weidersehen, Fraulein. Sweet dreams.’ Louis … where the hell was Louis?

She caught him by the arm. ‘Your friend is in Pigalle, Herr Kohler. If you look hard enough, you might just find him there.’

‘Then give me a lift, damn you. Delphane may be out to kill him.’

‘To stop him, I think, from finding Josette-Louise Buemondi, isn’t that so? Pigalle, Herr Kohler, the meeting place of the mannequins and others, too, of course. The Lorettes, the prostitutes.’

The city was dark.

St-Cyr threw his back against a wall and swore. There must be several of them after him. In spite of his going over the roof-tops of the rue du Terrage, they had picked up his trail as he’d come out of the metro. Now what was he to do? They had torches. They were the ones who shone them over the faces of the crowd. French Gestapo! Traitors … searching always for him. Running, shoving people aside … three … four torches. The leather trench coats and fedoras … others following them. Yes, yes … Ah Nom de Dieu! Were there still two groups, the one following the other and both of them after him?

He ran. He made it to the entrance of Les Naturistes and bowled the doorman out of the way. ‘Police!’ he cried. ‘A raid, eh? Out! Out! Vanish while you can, my friends.’

The girls screamed. The Wehrmacht’s soldiers, stunned into inactivity, hesitated then surged towards the exit. ‘Gestapo!’ he cried. ‘A raid! All leave is to be cancelled if you are found on the premises!’

He fought against the mob. Naked girls were being passed overhead from hand to hand. Screaming, shrieking … yelling at the top of their lungs. ‘Fire!’ shouted one of them as she was flung up into the tobacco smoke, her plump breasts jostling, then being squished by soldiers’ hands who honestly believed they were helping.

He reached the stage and ducked behind the curtains. He made it to a dressing-room that was all but empty.

‘So, my fine, what’s up, eh?’

The woman was in her mid- to late thirties. Tall and with the stretchmarks of several difficult children.

‘Madame, the revolver … Please, I … I am from the Surete. I’m on a murder investigation.’

She was totally naked and dragged off her blonde wig as she tossed her head. ‘The Surete? Hah! That’s a new one. Just what’s your game?’

‘That gun is illegal, madame. There are those looking for me who will arrest you.’

‘But you’re from the Surete?’ she said, scratching a thigh. ‘Why should they chase one such as yourself? Why should they not reward me for stopping you?’

A dangerous woman when unarmed; a menace as now.

‘The revolver,’ he reminded her, catching a breath and trying to hear beyond the deafening commotion in the club. ‘The badge,’ he said. ‘I have the identification but please … I cannot explain. I must get away. A young girl’s life is in grave danger.’

The painted eyes grew dark. The generous bosom swelled. ‘Which of my girls? Come, come, my little weasel, which one of them has been up to mischief?’

A shrug would be best but he didn’t have the energy, was suddenly exhausted. ‘None of them. A mannequin. The twin sister of a girl in Provence who is suspected of killing her mother.’

The revolver lifted slightly to nudge the air. ‘And someone wants to kill her?’

‘Yes. I am so very afraid that is exactly what will happen.’

She screwed up her face in doubt. ‘Why did the other one kill the mother? It’s not a very nice thing to have done.’

Ah Nom de Dieu, must he spend all night discussing the case with her? ‘I’m not even sure she did. There’s a weaver who might have done it.’ He caught a breath. ‘And also the father … Yes, yes, that one. My partner feels the father, he has been at one of the daughters. The one with the epilepsy, but me, I am not so sure of this.’

She waved the revolver, motioning him to a chair, but at some sound above the tumult, said, ‘The laundry basket and quickly!’

The wicker sighed and screamed as she sat on it and he lay among the cast-off garments, the little shreds of clothing the girls wore perhaps in some jungle tableau. Smelling of face powder and cheap perfume, other things too, of course. Ah merde!

‘Where’s he gone?’ shouted someone harshly.

‘Who?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette and crossing her legs.

‘The one from the Surete, you slut!’

‘I am not a slut, monsieur. There has been no one through here. If there had been, I would not be taking my break.’

The gaps in the wicker provided but glimpses of Delphane. St-Cyr knew it was him.

‘You’re too calm, madame. Is it that you are so cold, the threat of a raid does not disturb you?’

‘He went out the back.’

The slap was brutal and it almost knocked her to the floor. ‘Batard!’ she shrilled. ‘Enjoy chasing him. I hope he shoves that revolver of his up your ass!’

Others followed Delphane, and then still others. Hesitantly St-Cyr climbed out of the basket. Her lips were bleeding. The mascara ran. ‘You shit,’ she said more quietly but quivering with fear. ‘That one will kill me if he finds out I’ve helped you. He’s desperate, monsieur. Never have I seen a man with such hatred in his eyes.’

St-Cyr thought to give her his handkerchief but realized his presence would be established by it and withdrew the offer. ‘If he comes after you, tell him he will have to answer to me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete Nationale.’

‘Go! Just go, damn you, and leave me to myself.’

When the revolver went off, he knew exactly what she’d done. He stopped. The image of Chamonix struck him. He saw the weaver’s eyes trapped in mirror after mirror. He said, ‘Ah, Jesus, Jesus, madame, why did you have to do it?’

Then he ran. He saw her lying on the floor of that dressing-room among the scattered jars of face cream and the tins of talcum powder. Her legs were twitching. Water was passing rapidly. Blood ran from her mouth … Ah, Jesus … Jesus …

He crouched. He said, ‘What is it here, madame? Why were you so afraid they’d come back for you?’

There was no answer but one. She’d been involved in the Resistance. She’d been afraid that under torture she would have revealed things.

Tormented by the thought he’d brought this upon her, St-Cyr desperately searched the room, running his eyes quickly over everything. Tried … tried to find another reason.

He picked up the revolver that lay near her hand and only then realized it had not been fired.

The laundry basket, he said. The basket …

Snakes … was it to be a day for snakes? Kohler flicked his eyes over the boisterous crowd, then returned his gaze momentarily to the stage of the Sphinx. Two boa constrictors writhed about a naked virgin who was chained to the wall of some pharaoh’s tomb amid jars of embalming fluid and a sarcophagus that looked all too suspiciously like an altar. A high priestess, wearing top-heavy headgear and nothing else but see-through gauze, was threatening the poor girl with a butcher’s knife that had seen better days, while an assistant tormented the poor kid by lashing her toes with a papyrus wand – was it papyrus? Did they use such stuff for such things?

He thought not. Baskets … yeah, yeah, they made baskets out of it. Remember Moses, eh? And paper. Yes, yes, paper.

Louis? he asked. Louis, where the hell are you?

The air was full of tobacco smoke and boozy catcalls. One young crew-cut of a tank boy with unbuttoned tunic and open shirt collar stood teetering on a table-top, fumbling with his flies and belt. ‘Hey, me,’ he shouted at the stage in throaty German. ‘Let me at her. Let the Afrika Corps show the young maiden what to expect from the Sultan!’

They hooted, they jeered and seethed from side to side as a totally disinterested band played someone’s idea of songs from the Nile. The huge curtain, upon which had been painted a turquoise sphinx, came slowly down to the sound of gongs and nasal flutes.

He could not stay for the second act. At the Nouvelle Eve the girls prepared for bed while a Teutonic Caesar sang Roman arias under an aluminium moon and naked ladies-in-waiting stood like statues going round and round on pedestals that squeaked.

Again there was no sign of Louis. A rush of feet and shoulders. Others looking so hard for the Frog they failed to notice his friend and partner. Ah yes.

Pigalle in winter and in the black-out. Torches flickering over the faces of the crowd. Girls selling themselves. Boys out to buy. Painted lips and flashing eyes caught in the beam of someone’s torch. The lips red … red … the teeth white, the girl laughing now.

Kohler hit the man solidly on the back of the head and the torch spilled away. The girl vanished.

Josette-Louise Buemondi had been a mannequin, among her other professions. Custom brought such girls to the Place Pigalle when in search of work. It was here that the artists and sculptors came for a look when in need of the real thing in the flesh, ah yes. The girls would stroll outside in better weather during the days, or sit outside any of the cafes or round the fountain. Laughing and talking, preening themselves and hoping for a job that might last more than two hours. Now, of course, they’d be inside or at home in bed.

Yet Louis had come here and the Abwehr’s tail had let Bleicher know of it.

Kohler moved away from the man he’d hit, leaving that one in the gutter. French of course – all of them would be French. Even the Abwehr used them.

He lost himself in the crowd, asked where the hell would Louis look for the Buemondi girl?

From a vent above the windows of a bakery, the smell of baking bread and rising yeast rushed down over famished sparrows who gathered in rapture at the vapours. ‘It is so good,’ said one. ‘Heaven,’ said another. ‘Me, I would gladly sell myself for twenty francs, monsieur.’

He felt his arm being tugged. The girl whispered shyly, ‘Anything, monsieur. I will do anything.’

‘How do they make the smell?’ he asked.

‘With the essence,’ she said. ‘One of the cooks, he puts a few drops on the stove and voila, we smell the baking bread even though there is none to be had except for the usual stuff and then only if you get here very early in the morning. Fifty francs, monsieur, and I will …’ She pulled his head down and pressed her lips to his ear. ‘Honest,’ she said. ‘For you I would really do such a thing.’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘Right now I’m kind of busy.’

The smell of sweat, garlic, onions and tobacco … pipe tobacco intruded, the man much shorter than himself. the shoulders squared … Louis … was it Louis?

Delphane! Doubling a fist and lifting a foot, St-Cyr kneed the bastard in the groin, slammed him squarely on the nose and stamped on a foot! Ignored the babbled, ‘Louis …! Gott im Himmel, idiot, that was me!’ Disappeared muttering, ‘I should have killed him! Merde, why did I not do so? He shot that dancer. He killed her, a mother of six children!’

On the pavement outside the Canada where one used to get onion soup equal to that of the tiny stand-ups in les Halles before this lousy war, two charcoal braziers glowed softly. There were a few chairs, a few of the little round tables. He could not see much, but the Canada had always been a place for the little people of Pigalle. Waitresses, dancers, doormen, Lorettes and mannequins all came here to warm the toes and the soul, but always in a hurry and never for long enough.

He did not approach the cafe too closely but stood in the darkness letting the noisy, jostling crowd brush past him, catching but glimpses through the black-out of the glowing coals and of forbidden cigarettes cupped surreptitiously in hands that should have known better. The sudden burst of a lighter took hold, a cheap one, the flame torching up only to be hastily extinguished, for all such lights were illegal and the offence punishable by an indefinite stay in prison.

When he noticed the girl sitting in deepest darkness behind one of the braziers, it was only because she had momentarily given in to the urge to warm her fingertips and had leaned forward.

Then she dissolved back into the darkness and St-Cyr saw her in his mind’s eye. On the run, hungry and afraid – destitute but with a friend in the Canada who would turn a blind eye to her spending the night out here.

Garlic came to him and he awoke to the fact that there were two of them, one on either side and yet … Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ, was it really Josette-Louise in that darkness?

‘Pardon, messieurs,’ he said, gruffly pushing his way between them. ‘The pissoir, eh? Could you be so good as to direct me?’

Their heads cracked solidly. One gasped, the other swore, but by then he had raced between the braziers, knocking them over. A woman shrieked, a man howled. He darted into the darkness only to find the bird had flown. Ah no! No!

A fight had broken out. Whistles were being blown. He raced along the rue Pigalle, knocking people aside.

When a velo hit him, he slipped on the ice, fell flat on his back and skidded off into the darkness.

Dragging himself up, St-Cyr caught the breath of the condemned. That left knee … Ah damn! Hermann … where the hell was Hermann when needed most? Drinking, whoring, gambling with the money of others?

Firefly lights in the darkness, the pinpricks of velo lamps constantly passed him by. ‘Have you got a woman, monsieur?’ said someone. ‘Would you like to come with me? It’s just around the corner.’

He brushed her away and when he found the girl, cowering in a doorway, she was weeping softly. Two Wehrmacht soldiers stood over her. Young boys, timid boys. Paris and a first taste of forbidden love.

He pushed his way between them. ‘Surete, gentlemen. Gestapo, eh? This one is wanted in connection with a murder.’

They vanished. He crouched. Reaching tenderly out, he touched her cheek. ‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, is it really you?’

He felt her nod. ‘Then listen, please. I have come as a friend and know of a place where you can safely stay.’

Necessity drove them to hurry along the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the girls teasing, catcalling after them. ‘What will she do for you that I can’t, my fine monsieur?’ ‘Take both of us, eh?’ cried another out of the darkness. ‘Such hurry!’ cried yet another. ‘Bang, bang, my horny elephant. Don’t break her in half!’ ‘Take her here in the slush, eh?’ The slush … ah yes. It was freezing.

The rue Henri-Monnier was no better but by then they were running on more ice. The girl went down and he dragged her up. ‘My stockings!’ she shrilled. ‘My very last pair!’

‘Forget your stockings! We are being followed by killers!’

She felt him clap something cold and hard around her right wrist. She heard him grunt, ‘There, ah there now, my little one, the bracelets will unite us as never before!’

Handcuffs, ah merde! He ran, she tried to keep up with him. They broke into the Place Pigalle and crossed the boul’ de Clichy, dodging the bicycles and velos. Now it was the rue Houdon, she thought. ‘Please …‘she managed. ‘My chest, monsieur. I cannot keep up.’

‘You must!’ Ruthless … he would have to be ruthless with her. Delphane … was it Delphane behind them? That woman at Les Naturistes, he cried out to his conscience. Delphane murdered her but you will receive the blame, ah yes.

They hit the rue Foyatier. One lonely blue-washed lamp glowed softly up on the hillside between the thousands of stone steps. High above it, the Butte of Montmartre and the Sacre-Coeur were in total darkness.

‘Try!’ he said, dragging her after him. ‘We must escape or all is lost!’

They climbed, they slipped and climbed again. Step after step, the steepness of the staircase robbed the breath and strained the thigh and calf muscles until they screamed in agony and he stood with her crushed against him in darkness, their breath mingling as that of lovers.

‘Hush,’ he whispered, an impatient gasp.

‘He is still down there, monsieur,’ she shrilled breathlessly. ‘He has fallen twice and now again but is dragging himself after us.’

A cheek and ear were hot against his smothered lips. ‘Only one man?’ he managed, catching a doubtful breath.

She nodded, allowing herself a moment in his arms. ‘The bracelets,’ she gasped, hoping he would unlock them, but he only shook his head.

‘Come on, now. Let us try to outwit him while he’s tired.’

In the days before the war there had been wrought-iron handrails and ornamental chains to help the weary up the stairs but these had all been taken to the Reich to be melted down into submarines and tanks.

They ran without help, on ice, climbed up and up, and when they reached the Basilica, slid to ground against its stones.

First one and then another silhouette appeared, hunting in the darkness. A lover gasped, a couple kissed.

Josette-Louise Buemondi stood so still, he could but sense some further trouble.

By the barest jerking of the bracelets, she telegraphed the danger. A silhouette stood out against the darkness of the city, shade upon shade. St-Cyr felt her quiver. The suddenness of fresh tears told him it was Delphane. The height, the shoulders, the bare head – the size of it, the very way the man stood still for so long … Hermann, could it possibly be Hermann?

They waited but saw no more of him.

Kohler removed the bloodied handkerchief from his throbbing nose but still stared at the ceiling of the tiny dressing-room. He’d come half-way across the city, right back to Montparnasse, hoping to find Louis and the girl with Gabi at the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre. But they hadn’t been here.

Now the chanteuse was on deck singing her heart out like a nightingale while he soaked his beleaguered feet in warm and soapy water.

Gingerly he explored his nose as he listened to her. Had Louis broken it this time? A logical mistake of course. But why did he have to stamp on the toes as well as knee him in the groin?

He shut his eyes and marched or waited beside the guns of both sides in this lousy war as she sang ‘Lilli Marlene’. He saw his two boys in better days, picked apples with them – hey, they’d had such a good time then. One of those rare weekends he’d been home. They’d gone fishing – yes, yes. Gerda had packed them a fantastic hamper. Beer, schnapps, cold ham, hard-boiled eggs, pickled beets.

A tear fell and then another and he said, ‘Jesus, Louis, what the hell are we going to do? It’s a set-up, my old one. Delphane is trying to frame us.’

He took out the Abwehr’s pay envelope and ripped it open, dropping the handkerchief into the foot-bath, still dropping blood too.

Bleicher had given him the dead airman’s identity disc. Flight Lieutenant Charles Edward Thomas. A serial number followed. Lost in thought, Kohler ran a worried thumb over the thing, asked, Why had Bleicher given it to them and, knowing of the airman’s body, why had he not jumped on Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi himself?

Jean-Paul Delphane had been after her. Yes, yes, but he was working for Gestapo Cannes.

Bleicher’s been watching Delphane. Bleicher suspects him of something. Gestapo Cannes are playing a wait and see.

The man from Bayonne, ah yes, a man who could threaten a whole village and think nothing of it.

He felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder and realized that the song was over and he’d failed to hear the thunderous applause of the boys out front. ‘You’re exhausted, Hermann. Why not try to sleep? Louis won’t come here, not if he feels it might endanger me.’

She was absolutely gorgeous. Tall and willowy. ‘Then I’ve put my foot right in it, haven’t I?’

‘Only because he is your friend – no, no, don’t deny it. Louis and you … Hey, you’re something special, isn’t that so?’

Another tear fell and she knew then that Hermann Kohler was really worried and that the cognac must have got to him a little. ‘Is it a matter of the Resistance?’ she asked, cutting right to the heart of things.

‘Why the Resistance?’ he asked, taking hold of her by the hand. She had such long and slender fingers, looked absolutely smashing in that sky-blue silk sheath with its vertical rows of tiny seed pearls.

‘Because Jean-Paul Delphane of the Deuxieme Bureau came to see me here last night. I am to telephone their office immediately either of you contact me.’

‘And?’ he asked, for more than worry had come into those violet eyes of hers.

She shrugged the fantastic shoulders. ‘The Abwehr … as of late this afternoon they, too, have demanded that I do the same for them.’

The identity disc was still in his palm and there was no need for her to ask about it. The implications of such things were all too clear. ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

Her hair was the colour of a very fine brandy. It was swept up and pinned to expose a slender neck that was soft … so very soft. ‘Go back to the village in Provence. Sort it all out where it happened. Pick up the rest of the pieces.’

He was really upset, a lion in the winter of his life, knowing the jackals were out there waiting to devour him.

‘The thing I can’t understand, Gabi, is why Delphane doesn’t want us to get to the twin sister Josette-Louise. That one lives here in Paris. She was estranged from her mother and hasn’t seen her sister in Provence in years.’

She asked him to tell her what he could and listened as Hermann Kohler found the need within himself to tell her everything. He told her of the cottage, of the village and its herbalist, of the ruins of a Roman or Saracen stronghold high on the hilltop above it all. He said, ‘Those ruins, Gabi, I’ve got a feeling they can only mean trouble for us.’

‘The Affair Stavisky?’ she half asked, losing herself in thought, her mind leaping ahead. ‘A kaleidoscope whose platelets have been cut from gemstones.’

‘Thirty-five thousand francs to redeem it.’

‘A need for cash, then, but a will so firm she would sell nothing from her father’s villa.’

‘Stubborn … she must have been one hell of a stubborn woman.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

He tried to grin and, realizing that he still held her hand, finally released it. ‘Louis is a fool, Gabi. I’d have told Pharand and Boemelburg I’d had enough. I’d have taken you away and married you.’

‘Compliments are always nice to receive.’ She bent to kiss him on the cheek, a brush so soft and warm he could not fail to notice her perfume even though his nose was such a wreck.

But when he said nothing, she thought Louis had not told him about the makers of Mirage, that Louis still must keep his little secrets from his friend and partner.

‘Louis does his thing, Gabi, and I let him,’ said Kohler, having figured it all out.

She kissed him on the cheek again and brushed a hand fondly over his hair. ‘You saved my son, Hermann Kohler, but even so, I cannot reveal where Louis is.’

‘But he’s safe?’

‘Yes, yes, for now, I think, though it is only intuition which tells me where he must have gone.’

The shop called Enchantment on the Place Vendome. The underwear store. And the perfume of Mirage … ja, ja … the juice for the loins.

‘Wait while I do this set, then I will drive you around until we find him,’ she said, resigned to having lost the battle, for she’d seen he’d understood only too well.

Kohler did what she so desperately wanted. He shook his head and put his feet up, said, ‘Leave the door open, Gabi, and sing this old soldier to sleep. I’ve had it.’

Dawn forced a gun-metal hue between the bars of pitiful harshness in the sky over St-Cyr’s beloved Belleville. Wearily he slogged round the corner and into the rue Laurence-Savart. Already the boys were heading off to school. Playfully they pushed at each other, snatched the toque of one, tried to trip another or merely trudged along with schoolbags strapped to the back as welcome protection against the snowballs, ah yes.

When one of them saw him, they all stopped. Stood rooted like frozen elves muffled in their heavy coats, long scarves, toques and mittens. And the old grey canyon of the street, filled with its iron-blue fog of frost, held them against the paving stones.

St-Cyr tried to give a cheery wave though still haunted by the unfortunate death of the dancer at Les Naturistes.

In a rush, the breath blowing, Dede Lebelle said, ‘It’s him. He’s back already.’

The detective looked like a guilty mole, hunched before the shattered gate of its little house. ‘He’s lost the briefcase,’ whispered Herve Desrochers whose father operated a velo-taxi in the Place de l’Opera and had already left for work one hour ago.

‘First the car,’ whispered Guy Vachon. ‘That great big beautiful black Citroen. Then they have taken away the revolver only to give it back after the shooting has begun.’

‘Then the demotion with loss of pay,’ swore Antoine Courbet who lived directly across the street from the detective and therefore knew much more about him than anyone else. ‘Then the wife drops her underpants and planks herself out beneath a German general.’

‘He was a lieutenant, idiot!’ swore someone. ‘They did it standing up. All Germans do it that way! It’s part of their training.’

Courbet tossed the indifferent hand of his father. ‘Oh for sure, my apple-cart, what does it matter whether the woman is up or down, eh? Or the man a general or a private? The shaft of one Boche is the same as that of another, and that one down there, he has turned the blind eye and the cowardly cheek of the cuckold!’

‘Then she came back to him,’ said Dede, shaking his head, ‘and boom! That was the end of her.’

‘And the little son,’ said someone else. ‘The Resistance. Did they make a mistake or did they not?’

‘He’s got a mistress,’ seethed Antoine whose mother had once looked after the detective’s house but had lost her job in the bang. ‘He couldn’t wait to get rid of the wife. He let the Resistance do the job for him.’

‘The Nazis shot his car to pieces on that last job,’ offered Guy Vachon hesitantly. ‘At the garage where my father now works for the Boches, they got the job of fixing it. Fixing a car like that these days? Pah! It’s unfortunate.’

‘Me, I never want to become a detective,’ sighed Herve. ‘Breakfast could be your last meal.’

‘Shall we wave?’ suggested Dede, half in hopes the others would agree. He looked so sad, the detective.

‘My father would kill me,’ swore Antoine. ‘Until the windows of our house are replaced, that one is to be ostracized.’

‘He can’t ask the Germans to do it for him,’ said someone. ‘We’d hate him more than we already do if he did.’

Herve shook his head in wonder at the way the world turned. ‘He looks like Christ in winter without the benefit of His breakfast of wafers and wine.’

The boys did not wave. St-Cyr stood there by the gate, the hand of friendship raised again and doubtfully yet again.

Yanking open the shattered gate someone had wired in place, he ignored the Verboten signs of the Germans and the scribbled Traitor of someone else.

The front of the house was a wreck. If something wasn’t done soon, the place would be completely finished.

Boards were strewn about. There were bits of splintered wood. To have even touched one would have brought prison – that’s what the Verboten meant. But he knew that things could so easily have been taken in any case were it not for the unspoken code of the street. They had condemned him to doubt and until the matter of his loyalties and the destruction of his house et cetera, et cetera were resolved, they would not touch a thing.

Whoever had wired the gate shut must have done it at night.

He lit a fire in the kitchen stove. Soon hot water was available. The shave then, ah yes, and the brushing of the teeth …

It was Marianne’s spare toothbrush and it took him several moments to overcome the guilt and remorse a detective’s life had caused, but nothing could be wasted these days. Besides, he had left his only toothbrush at the cottage in Provence. It had gone completely out of his head. Such an important thing. Ah merde!

When Gabrielle Arcuri found him on her way home from work, he was sitting at the table smoking a pipe of Luftwaffe tobacco and musing over bits and pieces. There was no sign of the girl Josette-Louise and she knew then that Louis really had kept her safely hidden. It pleased her immensely to find her mind so in tune with his.

The santon of the herbalist was there, a beechwood bobbin wound with russet wool in many shades, a clot of the same. The silver kaleidoscope was beautifully engraved. There was a gold locket and chain containing photographs of two curly-headed girls. ‘And three tiny scabs of lichen, Gabrielle,’ he said, nudging them into better view.

‘Where are the lantern slides of the father’s artwork, Louis, and the box in which that thing was kept?’

The kaleidoscope … Hermann must have told her everything. ‘Both in a locker at the Gare de l’Est awaiting retrieval on the return journey.’

‘Will you be free by Christmas?’

‘Ask the Nazis. I think they have simply forgotten it this year. Perhaps it was not in Hitler’s budget.’

‘You’re not pleased to see me.’

‘Of course I’m not. It’s far too dangerous.’

‘Hermann said it was now okay for me to come here. I’m to tell you he’s gone to see Boemelburg. He’ll demand a letter guaranteeing safe passage for you both and the girl, Josette-Louise.’

‘Good. At least it will get us back to Provence. Once there, we will have to look after ourselves again.’

‘God, I’m so tired of singing “Lilli Marlene”, Louis.’

When he didn’t say a thing, she dumped her handbag on a chair and pulled off the sable coat. Was dressed quite simply in a plain skirt, blouse and sweater.

‘I don’t like it when you’re angry with me,’ she said.

He removed his pipe. ‘I’m not. I’m angry at a world which no longer allows a detective the patient contemplation of the case before him.’

She sat awhile, letting him look at his little bits and pieces. She picked up the Cross of Lorraine and, as in a game of chess, slid the identity disc into its place.

‘The body in that house,’ he said. ‘Who found it?’

She moved the enamelled Cross back into view beside the disc. ‘The Abwehr, Louis.’

Though he nodded, it was as if he’d already known. He laid the photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi above the open locket. He said, ‘I stood over that girl late last night as she slept. Chantal and Muriel, they were very good about my bringing a fugitive to them. She’s so like her sister, Gabi, and yet … and yet there is the world of difference.’

‘The Stavisky Affair?’ she said softly. One could not prod the mind too hard at times like this.

‘Ah yes, Stavisky, Gabrielle. The financier took the weaver’s father for a fortune.’

‘But Anne-Marie Buemondi’s father made one and got out before the crisis.’

‘Did M. Cordeau advise the weaver’s father of what investments to make?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. It was so good to be thinking with him.

St-Cyr drew on the pipe. ‘Two women in love, Gabrielle. Lifelong friends, the one straying often perhaps, but always coming back to the other to be forgiven.’

‘Until … until, ah suddenly, Louis, someone comes along to tell the weaver the truth about Anne-Marie’s father getting out before the crisis fell, but not giving others a warning.’

‘The toy is pawned, a heart is broken. It is the final straw. They’ve fired the crossbow often enough, the two of them. In jest, of course, but now in business.’

‘The mother leaves Cannes to visit the village on her birthday and to see Josianne-Michele.’

‘Yes, yes, but something happens on that hillside, Gabrielle. The mother is challenged. The pawn ticket is extended – offered perhaps as evidence that it will be retrieved in good faith, or was it used as a threat?’

‘But what kind of a threat?’ she asked, ‘unless to expose this one?’ She slid the identity disc directly in front of him but he only shook his head.

St-Cyr picked up the kaleidoscope and pointed it at the light. ‘Bits of colour but such colours, Gabrielle. They rain in on each other; they pass outwards making patterns I cannot read.’

He handed her the instrument. He said, ‘Stavisky, Gabrielle. Something happened at that villa near Chamonix the day the financier supposedly shot himself, or it happened at a clinic and Jean-Paul Delphane, he is using it against me.’

He told her of the dancer at Les Naturistes. He said, ‘I tried to force myself to open that laundry basket in which I myself had only just hidden, but I could not do it. I was terrified he would kill me.’

‘And what is worse,’ she said, lowering the instrument to reach out and touch his hand, ‘is that he knew it.’

‘Yes. It’s like a puzzle in which time will suddenly collapse and have no meaning for me. Things will happen in the past and in the present and very fast. The kaleidoscope will turn and everything will suddenly fall into place but will it be too late?’

Gabrielle held the toy up to the light again and slowly turned its outer box. Patterns continuously folded in upon each other or opened out. Translucent and transparent, the colours of the gemstones glowed but … but was there not something else? ‘Louis … Louis, would you do something for me?’

He set the pipe aside. ‘Yes, of course. Anything. You have only to ask.’

‘Then open it.’

‘What?’

She made unscrewing motions with her fingers, was lost to the excitement of discovery and could hardly contain herself until it was done.

When he took a pair of tweezers from his pocket, she asked for a magnifying glass and he went to get one.

Then they sorted through the tiny heap of platelets whose facets flashed.

‘A D, Louis,’ she said.

‘An M and … and an X.’ Ah damn.

When laid out in a row, single chips of emerald, topaz, ruby, tourmaline and diamond gave the engraved letters of D, M, X, T. G.

‘A five-letter grouping,’ he said, aghast at what they’d found. ‘A wireless code, Gabrielle. The maquis of those mountains. Josianne-Michele’s lover, the eldest son of Ludo Borel … The one thing her sister didn’t have.’

It was all so clear he felt sick about it. ‘Jean-Paul, he … he has known exactly what we’d find and now I must tell Hermann of it.’

‘Can’t you keep it to yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what Jean-Paul will expect me to do.’

‘Then why, please, did he not want you to find the sister of Josianne-Michele?’

‘Perhaps Josette-Louise knew of this?’ He indicated the letters.

‘But that cannot be. Not if she was estranged from her mother as you have said.’

‘But not from the weaver, Gabrielle. Viviane Darnot sent the girl money against the wishes of the mother. She kept in touch.’

‘But how could she have done such a thing without help? The Demarcation Line between the north and the south, it still exists. It is not so easy to get such letters across even now. The censors, Louis. The Gestapo. Postcards are still the only possible mail.’

‘Delphane?’ he asked but rushed on. Suddenly he was lost to her. He got up to search the cupboard for something and when he had it, opened the tin and shook a little out into his hand, drew in the smell of sage.

‘The espadrille, Gabi. The shards of Roman glass that must have come from Hermann’s ruins. Ah Nom de Dieu, why have I not seen it before?’

More he would not say but rapidly gathered everything up stuffing it into pockets wherever he could find them.

‘Christmas,’ he said. ‘Tell Rene Yvon-Paul we will hunt for the osprey and when we find it, we will know that is where to fish.’

Son of a bitch, he had the answer! Not the murderer or murderess yet, ah no, it was too early for that. But the answer all the same.

The kaleidoscope had made its first complete turning. A pattern had unfolded.

7

Far below the intense blue of the sky, fresh snow blanketed the ground. It sharpened the contrast of orange-tiled roofs in their jumble against the bleached grey-white of the ruined fortress perched on the summit.

St-Cyr stood alone on that hillside. Frost was in the air. Smoke trailed thinly from the village. Goats foraged amid snow-dusted clumps of mimosa and juniper. Grey-green, the scattered ilex and olive gave to the landscape some semblance of the once luxurious forest that had stood here in ancient times. Solitary pines cast long shadows as if that same forest had now all but been forgotten.

Dedou Fratani had brought them in the hearse. Now the girl, Josette-Louise and Hermann waited in the cottage below.

He tried to put himself into the shoes of that girl’s mother. A birthday – she’d been exactly fifty-two years old. Some sixty metres from her, the assailant had held the crossbow. They’d exchanged a few words. The woman had extended the pawn ticket. Viviane, I’ve always loved you. Viviane, forgive me, please. Viviane, you don’t understand. I was helping the Resistance.

Or had it been: Mother, why couldn’t you have helped me? Mother, you knew I was down and out. Mother, I tried to sell my body in the streets of Paris but could not find the courage.

Viviane sent you money, Josette. Viviane saved you from that, though she disobeyed me.

No, no, he cautioned. It’s not Josette-Louise up there on that snow-covered rock where Hermann found the santon. It’s Josianne-Michele.

He heard the wheels of the morning’s express to Lyon as if they were still beneath them. He saw the girl, Josette-Louise, asleep before him on the opposite seat. He felt himself slipping inside her head to explore the caverns and tunnelled passageways of her mind.

My father never loved me, he said. Josianne-Michele has always been his favourite. Mother has rejected me and now … now after all the years of my absence, I must come home to face her burial and my sister with my failure.

Josette-Louise Buemondi had not drifted off to sleep easily. Instead, she had fought it long and hard. Exhaustion had ringed the dark eyes. Alone with Hermann and himself, she had stared out of the compartment windows and said so little.

She had dreaded coming home but had also feared their scrutiny and had fought sleep until only it had offered welcome respite.

Josette-Louise Buemondi. The same pale lustre to the skin, that same slender neck and gauntness, that same little brown mole high on the right cheek-bone, the same slight laziness in the right eye.

Hermann had put his coat over her and had lifted her feet up on to the seat. She had sighed – had been so deeply unconscious of them, her fleeting smile had given but a glimpse of happier times.

‘Louis … Louis, the girl’s vomiting.’

‘Wha …? Ah, Hermann. What is it?’

‘The kid’s sick. It must have been that lousy ham we had in Lyon. Ersatz like all the rest of it.’

‘Or fear. Is it not dread, Hermann, at meeting the sister of her childhood?’

Kohler broke off a bit of thyme and began to chew it. He, too, looked uphill to the ruins beyond the village. ‘Two sisters, two partings of the ways, the one to hell and the other to heaven, Louis. Fear knows no equal to the loneliness of a small village when all the doors are closed and eyes watch everything you do. I’d best get the herbalist. He’ll be able to give her something to settle that stomach.’

‘Ah yes, the herbalist. Is it that Josette-Louise believes that one will help her and therefore has brought the vomiting upon herself?’

‘You’re too suspicious. Give the kid a break eh? She’s had a rough time of it, Louis.’

Was Hermann getting soft in his old age? ‘Suspicion is midwife to detection. It is the umbilical cord of answers.’

‘And Delphane? What about our friend?’

‘He is absent as are the villagers from this hillside. Fear is at once their enemy, Hermann, and their only friend.’

Muttering, ‘You’re too deep for me,’ Kohler raised a tired hand in half-salute and pushed on up the hill. He knew that Louis would watch him until the ramparts had cut him off from view. He knew all about the threat of the maquis in those hills, of what it could only mean for both of them.

An end to their partnership; a return to hatred because only then can wars be won and enemies conquered.

He reached the spot where the crossbow had been fired and paused before turning to look back at his partner and friend.

Then he raised his arms and bent them as if aiming that same bow at Louis.

Shabby and diffident, an old trilby tilted back to expose the broad, bland brow, Monsieur Ox-Eyes and Bushy Moustache looked up at him.

Frost hung in the air they breathed. Louis extended his right hand and shook it a little as though holding the pawn ticket out and pleading with him to understand that justice must always be done no matter the consequences or opposition.

‘She didn’t do it, Louis. That kid from Paris hasn’t got it in her.’

The air burst with a puff of vapour as the words chased up to him, but Kohler knew them anyway, had already said them to himself and aloud, ‘Perhaps, but then … then …’ Mais alors … alors …

Lonely on that snow-covered hillside, Hermann was etched in relief, sharpened by the sunlight that, as with the pines, cast a long shadow from him. The air, though crisp, was pungent with the mingled perfume of sage and thyme. New leaves protruded from beneath the clumps of snow. ‘A pattern set is a pattern fixed in memory,’ said St-Cyr, but to himself.

When he turned to walk down to the cottage, the weaver stopped and she, too, stood out on that hillside for God to mock. She wore the russet cloak with hood thrown back. She looked up at him and then beyond to Hermann’s fast-dwindling figure.

He said, ‘Mademoiselle Darnot, where is the other sister, please? Our cable specifically asked that you both be here.’ In mirror after mirror he saw those same dark grey-blue eyes ache with anguish and fear. Flashing at him through the semi-darkness of some stairwell; gazing up at him through the sterile brightness of some clinic.

‘Did you have to bring her?’ demanded the weaver harshly. ‘Are you now satisfied?’

‘Mademoiselle, I asked you a question. Please, it is your duty to answer truthfully even though such answers may be used against you.’

‘Josianne-Michele has gone into the mountains, Inspector. I could not stop her.’

‘And Jean-Paul Delphane, Mademoiselle Viviane? Where, please, is he?’

She shook her head and did not come closer. Perhaps five metres still separated them. ‘I … I don’t know, Inspector.’

Again he saw that look in her eyes. Ah, it was of such tragedy, such anguish, she lay broken at his feet.

‘You know, don’t you,’ she said at last.

That boyhood intuition had served him well. ‘Yes … yes, I know,’ he said.

Hands in the pockets of her cloak, the weaver tightly shrugged. ‘Josianne-Michele needed help, Inspector – qualified doctors and psychiatrists. Against Anne-Marie’s wishes I took the girl to Chamonix, yes, and we were there when … when the financier killed himself in my father’s villa.’

‘Josianne-Michele?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. The girls were sixteen at the time. Anne-Marie was at her wits’ end. Carlo would do nothing. I thought … That is, I … I interfered, if you want the truth. I came down here and together, Josianne and I went to Chamonix to see an old friend of my father’s.’

‘You told no one? Not her mother or her father?’

‘Neither of them knew.’

‘But Carlo Buemondi has told my partner that he demanded the girl be brought back here?’

‘Yes, yes, Carlo said the treatments weren’t working and he wanted his little pigeon back. The man’s a bastard, Inspector. You saw how she bit your friend. Carlo raped her repeatedly.’

‘His own daughter? His little Josianne …?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t let it happen any longer but … but Anne-Marie made me bring her back.’

‘Knowing what he was doing to the girl? Please, mademoiselle, the time for family secrets is past.’

He’d find out anyway; he had that look about him. ‘Josianne-Michele had tried to kill herself, Inspector. Not once or twice, but several times. It’s true the treatments weren’t working.’

‘Is it also true that your lover and friend, Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi, asked you to take her daughter to Chamonix?’

‘Yes, yes, it’s true.’ Ah merde! He’d discover the truth and all would be lost. ‘We’d been there for nearly four months and … and nothing seemed to be working. Josianne-Michele herself begged me to bring her home even though she knew exactly what awaited her.’

‘Was she in love with the herbalist’s eldest son even then?’

There was a nod, the woman brushing a booted foot over the snow to clear a small patch. ‘If love can have its roots in loneliness then, yes. Everyone up there in that village, Inspector, was only too well aware of what Carlo had been doing to the girl. You see, they had the aftereffects to contend with, isn’t that correct? Madame Peretti, that blind woman who sees everything, has the memory of that child’s screams on her conscience.’

‘And now?’ he asked, longing for his pipe and quiet contemplation.

‘Now she waits like all the rest of them to see what you and your friend will do.’

‘And the Nazis.’

‘Yes, yes, and them.’

‘What happened at the villa near Chamonix, mademoiselle?’

He was so intent, she’d have to tell him something. ‘My father telephoned from London to say that the villa was urgently needed by a friend and that I should leave the key with our gardener and caretaker. Josianne-Michele was at the clinic – about three kilometres away, in the town. I packed our things and did exactly as my father asked. It was me you saw sitting in that waiting-room when the nurse came to ask you what was the matter.’

‘I’d fallen. I’d hit myself. There was blood on the back of my head.’

She held her breath. Puzzled, then baffled by something, he asked, ‘But why that clinic, mademoiselle? Why did I go there and not to a pharmacy or the hospital?’

When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘I was looking for you, wasn’t I?’

Her lungs filled, her chest rose. She turned away and he saw her shoulders slump in defeat as she looked downhill towards the cottage, hidden in its little valley.

‘Not me, Inspector. Jean-Paul Delphane. You were after that one and you had followed him to the clinic because he had come to find me.’

‘After the death of the financier?’

It was no use. Things could not be hidden from him for long. ‘Yes … yes, after Stavisky’s death.’

‘But you were in that villa before it, mademoiselle? Me, I remember seeing you in a stairwell. Your eyes … you were hiding among some things. You were holding your breath.’

‘Just as I am now?’

‘Yes … yes, exactly!’

‘Then my back must have been turned to you, Inspector, and you could not possibly have seen my eyes.’

‘There was a mirror on the wall in front of me, mademoiselle, and you were behind me. The staircase rose above you. There were some hangings – it is, and was, all in semi-darkness, a sliver of light, a triangle of it, the frame of the mind rapidly opening as the cinematographer’s aperture does in shade, only to close down as I moved away from you and more light entered the stairwell.’

Ah damn, he had seen her. She must walk away from him, walk right back into the present and go down to Josette-Louise. She must cradle that poor child in her arms as she had so often before, and weep over the death of Anne-Marie.

My lover, she said, but only to herself. My heart and my life.

*

Kohler didn’t like it. The village was too still. Beyond the rampart gate, that ugly warren of narrow, twisting streets boxed him in. Shuttered windows looked down with suspicion and alarm. Snow clung tenaciously to mossy crevices and ledges. Ivy climbed yellowish-grey walls but there was little of it. A tendril strained to reach a shutter three floors up in brilliant sunlight. The pale ochrous paint of the shutters was peeling.

He knew he was being watched; knew then with absolute certainty the village was united in its silence and afraid.

Winding steps led steeply to another street just visible. No one had bothered to sweep the snow from their doorsteps. There were few footprints, but one set led from house to house and at each door, a new set of prints appeared to follow those of the others. Dedou Fratani, hearse-driver, village cop and general handyman when not flogging stuff on the black market, had been busy but had said nothing of it when he’d picked them up at the station in Cannes.

Since dawn the men of the village had been waiting for Louis and himself. They’d be at the cafe or up at the church. The Abbe Roussel would urge caution and counsel silence.

The bastards must be only too well aware of the maquis in the hills. The Gestapo Munk would hold them responsible and if not that one, then Jean-Paul Delphane.

Kohler began to hunt for the herbalist’s shop only to find himself drawn deeper and deeper into the web of interconnecting streets. They’d view him as at one with Munk; as far as they were concerned, one Gestapo was as bad as another.

Water ran from a tap at a plain stone fountain in a tiny square of no name. Ice rimmed its basin. Footprints led up to it, then went away. The sound of the water was everywhere in the stillness of the square. Directly above him, the sky was still so very blue, though the afternoon was getting on.

Snow clung to eaves where orange-red tiles jutted out.

The water was ice cold. He wet his throat and looked around at closed shutters. An iron-grilled, ground-floor window sought him out. Beyond its bars and glass and lace curtains, an old woman in black and wearing a shawl crossed herself when he noticed her.

You are of the Gestapo, monsieur, he heard her saying to herself. You are as the bell that tolls before death comes.

Several archways of stone provided walkways from house to house above the street. Steps led down into cellars, while the street itself went uphill under the arches. Jesus it was narrow – dished so as to carry the run-off, and cobbled. Globular terracotta urns held grape and trumpet vines that twisted up the railing of a rickety set of nearby stairs.

There were gas lanterns the black-out didn’t allow – no time to even give them a wash of blue paint. The Occupation of the south had been too rapid. Now the villagers simply didn’t bother to light their lamps. Ah yes.

Figs and cacti grew in other urns, olive trees from some, herbs in still others and winter lettuces the cold snap had finished.

When he found the shop, it was beneath an archway, half hidden at a corner where the steps led down and up, and the street was no wider than any of the others.

The door was not locked. At once that pungent, dusty smell of ground, powdered herbs and spices met his nostrils. There were liquorice and ginseng roots, dried sponges, glass-stoppered apothecary jars, all with Latin labels. Hieracium pilosella L COMPOSITAE (Mouse-ear Hawk-weed), Hyoscyamus niger L SOLONACEAE (Henbane, a sedative and antispasmodic but also quite poisonous), Iris germanica var. florentina Dykes IRIDACEAE (Orris, the Florentineiris, causes vomiting and may be violently purgative if taken from fresh root-stock). The violet smell was powerful.

There were sacks and bins of dried herbs and flower petals for pot-pourri, a small desk-cum-work table with brass weigh-scale, one chair and beams in the ceiling that must have been three or four hundred years old.

A pictorial chart gave the names of perhaps sixty local herbs and other useful plants. Another gave human organs with their various complaints and treatments. For colds, teas of hyssop and white horehound; bayberry and ginger; or liquorice, elder, meadow sweet, violet and garlic.

There was no sign of Ludo Borel but on the dispensing table there was one bottle of pale grey-green dust. Papaver somniferum L PAPAVERACEAE, the opium poppy, the ground leaves and white flowers probably. Not as narcotic as the milky sap but used in teas and poultices all the same.

Again he had to ask that question that had been bothering him ever since they’d come on the case. Was Borel treating Josianne-Michele? Now he had to ask, Had she really gone into the mountains?

Behind the shop was one long room devoted to storage and the drying of the herbs. Bunch after bunch of fennel, sage, thyme and rosemary, among others, hung from the rafters. There were burlap sacks and wicker panniers of rosehips, others of pungent juniper berries, a much-worn chopping block and small machete – a wicked thing in the right fist. Honed sharp and centuries old.

Even an idiot could see that the Borels had been in business for generations.

There was a grinding mill with nests of screens to sieve out particles of the appropriate size and return the rest to the mill. There was a distillation unit – oil of eucalyptus, essence of lavender. Roasted barley and acorns were ready to be ground into ersatz coffee; metre-long bunches of soapwort for making soap.

Kohler wished his partner was with him. It was eerie, it was uncomfortable. All warehouses had this feel when no one was around.

Tiny pre-war bottles were stored in pre-war boxes and there were hundreds of them. Borel had bought with an eye to the future.

Going quickly back through to the shop, he paused to scan the shelves of tiny bottles, read: oil of anise; oil of savin; oil of the white opium poppy …

Borel didn’t fool around. He had something for everything. Lungwort, henbane and mandrake.

There were even plant dyes and lots of them. Madder and cosmos, walnut and indigo. Goldenrod too.

Out on the street there was still no sign of anyone. As he climbed to the church, he found the village closing in on him. It seemed to say, You are an outsider; you are not wanted here. Beware!

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 Bebert Peretti was holding the Abbe 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 fetes would they wear their stovepipe suits of black.

Dedou 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-Michele 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, cherie. 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, cherie. 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-Michele?’ 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-Michele 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-Michele could easily have moved them after Hermann and he had left for Bayonne and Paris.

The two women glanced at each other – some signal 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 Angelique 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-Michele.

‘Permit me, please,’ said the Surete, 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 Melanie 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 quietly, ‘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 rose, a jar of peppers and one of rabbit pate. ‘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 pate was left on the doorstep by Bebert 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 Surete.

‘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.’

Touche. 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 aioli 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.’

Snails and cold at that! Kohler reached for the rose 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 Surete.

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-Michele?’

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 Surete. ‘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 Surete. ‘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 Francaise, 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. Angelique Girard must answer a few simple questions, Hermann, and so must Carlo Buemondi.’

‘Then the boy Bebert Peretti, eh? And the Abbe Roussel.’

‘The abbe?’ 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 abbe, 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 abbe 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, Dedou 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 Surete. ‘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 champetre, 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 Abbe Roussel. That one will swear to look after those two until I return.’

‘And if you don’t?’ snapped the Surete.

‘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 Abbe 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 Abbe was striding rapidly downhill. The boy Bebert 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 son, 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.

Angelique 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.

There were three iron-tipped, wooden bolts in the centre of the target that was over by the far wall. St-Cyr looked anxiously around, said, ‘Mademoiselle, what is this?’

The house and grounds were still. ‘Ah Nom de Dieu, Hermann, what am I to do?’

From two to four centimetres separated each bolt in the cluster and all had hit the centre of the target.

They were not antique but relatively new and with feathered flights, and he had the thought then that whoever had fired them, had had plenty of extras made.

He took out the Lebel, and turning so as to face the house, gripped the revolver in his right hand.

Then he started for the place, determined to get things over with as quickly as possible.

The red Majestic he’d ridden from the weaver’s house on the first visit was leaning against a post in the solarium. Snow clung to its tyres and spokes. She’d made no attempt to clean it off – perhaps she’d wanted him to find the bicycle as it was.

Her boots rested neatly side by side on the doorstep and she’d even left the inner door to the house open for him. ‘Mademoiselle …’ he began, only to think better of saying anything. She was not in the grand salon, not in the kitchens or in any of the other ground-floor rooms.

The main staircase was wide, and it went up to two landings, so he could not see the second floor and would have to take things one step at a time. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ! Why hadn’t he prepared himself better? That nail in the front left tyre; that slow leak. Of course she’d caught the morning’s autobus to Cannes. The ride down from the village could have been accomplished without them being aware of it. A chance, of course, but when one is desperate, chance is all one has.

She was not in the first of the bedrooms he came to. Not in the second either. He reached the room Angelique Girard had used and found its door slightly open. Hermann, he said. Hermann …

He gave it a nudge, threw his back to the wall, glancing both into the room and suddenly behind himself, along the hall.

Silks and satins. A sky-blue slip. White lace underpants on the floor. An oval dressing mirror facing him. The bed unmade, the covers thrown carelessly back as before.

No sign of anyone. He hesitated, then breathed in quietly and gave a muted sigh of exasperation.

There was a condom on the floor, grey-white and looking as if a snake had just shed its skin.

St-Cyr stepped over it, barely missing the wire and clasp of a gold ear-ring. When he reached the French windows, he looked briefly through the lace curtains and down into the gardens.

As before, he found the target against the far wall, and saw again the bolts that had been fired into it.

Carlo Buemondi? he asked. Or Jean-Paul Delphane? The front entrance? Had either of them been waiting for her? Was it even Josette-Louise Buemondi? Was it Viviane Darnot? Where was Angelique Girard? Why hadn’t he looked at where the archer had stood this time? Ah damn, he should have.

Sixty metres and deadly accurate. The ‘mother’ extending the hand and threatening perhaps with the pawn ticket.

A kaleidoscope. The letters DMXTG.

They were burying the remains of the child in a corner grave not far from the ruins of the old abbey among which the weaver’s house stood alone. Kohler could see the three of them. Dedou Fratani and one of the men from the garage where they’d off-loaded the butter and eggs; two others – obviously grave-diggers – and, ah yes, the weaver. Viviane Darnot had broken her word and the express wishes of both the Surete and the Gestapo, this one anyway. She’d taken one hell of a risk and had followed them back to Cannes and he, in turn, had come after them, though none of them were aware of it.

Turning from the window, he ran a finger over the harpstrings of the warp on the weaver’s upright loom. He touched a beechwood bobbin, noted that she used them as shuttles. There were nests and singles of them clinging to the warp above the finished cloth. Threads and threads; colours and colours; tonal variations that were superb. Once in a thousand years an artist like this would come along, but the point was, the New Order wouldn’t give a damn. Munk would smash her fingers and break her arms if he felt the slightest need. They’d strip her, kick her and kill her – things often went too far. ‘Don’t let them,’ he said, giving his thoughts aloud. ‘I’d hate to have it on my conscience.’

Childhood memories of chasing balls of wool across a carpeted floor came to him, but he had no time for them. An ornate iron bed with canopied mosquito screen, armoire, chaise and dressing-table made the bedroom somewhat Spartan, and he saw at a glance that she’d not had much money. Not since her father had lost his wealth in the Stavisky Affair.

Moving swiftly, Kohler went through the room, ignoring the scent bottles until he found a Roman one, pale green, opalescent and milky just like the one Louis had taken from the cottage.

It was empty, but immediately he thought of the ruins of the fortress above the village. Shards of Roman glass and bits of pottery picked up on numerous little expeditions – collected by twin girls of age ten or twelve, adults too.

Photos showed the weaver with them at the ruins. There were shots of several collections, shots of the views from up there, others of the picnics they’d had.

Then, the girls bathing in that little pond at the cottage and laughing, splashing each other and their mother, their bodies skinny. Chummy shots of the weaver with her arms draped across their shoulders – they had loved her; both of them had. It was easy to see they’d both adored her.

One of a hike in the mountains – Chamonix, he wondered? Anne-Marie Buemondi must have taken the photo, for a woman’s heavy sweater and alpine boots lay next to them.

When he came to a photograph of Jean-Paul Delphane, taken perhaps fifteen years ago, Kohler let a breath escape as he pried it from the corner tabs. Uncle Jean-Paul had been written on the back. June 12, 1927. The twins would have been nine years old. ‘For “uncle” write “father”,’ he said, pocketing the thing.

Still other snapshots were of Ludo Borel and the two girls – herb collecting in the hills and happy faces; others of the weaver and Borel with Madame Buemondi; then some, also, of the herbalist’s eldest son with the twins but there was nothing in the album beyond the age of twelve. Perhaps the photos were elsewhere; perhaps the camera had broken.

It didn’t take a genius to see mischief in the girls’ eyes, but which of them had been the more daring? Both looked like imps and lots of fun, so perhaps it did not matter who had dared the other to get Alain Borel to spy on those two women as they made love. Ah yes.

There were photos of the weaver and Anne-Marie that had obviously been snapped by inexperienced hands, i.e. those same two girls. In one photograph, the weaver playfully leaned her head against her lover’s chest. In another, unknown to them at the time, one of the girls had caught them kissing; in another they were holding hands.

Again he had the thought that everything had stopped at the age of twelve.

Rifling through an Empire-style desk that had obviously been bought at a flea market, he found her cheque stubs – books and books of them. Cheques drawn on the main branch of Barclay’s Bank in London. Lombard Street.

?700 to a Monsieur Isaac Kelmann, dated 13 September 1942. This from a woman who had no money or had not been able to get it out of Britain in time?

?500 to a Mademoiselle Judith Lund, 8 August 1942.

He chose another bundle, dropped the first and quickly pocketed it. ?1500 to a Meyer Biederfeld, 24 November 1941.

Not all of the cheques had been made out to Jews. The weaver had been working a currency fiddle. Occupation francs in exchange for pounds sterling to be paid out of her account after the war or if and when the person managed to escape. The wealthy, fleeing to the south, had realized their money would be worthless if taken out of the country, and so had dealt it off in hopes of better times. At anywhere between 600 and 1000 francs to the pound sterling it was not much of a deal, but better that than nothing, yet quite obviously she’d never spent a sou of it on herself. She’d been a damned fool to have kept the stubs. By just such little things were people caught.

There’d been cheque stubs, too, in the Stavisky Affair but fortunately for those in positions of power and trust, some enterprising cop in the Surete had got to them and they had vanished. Pierre Bonny, now of the French Gestapo and the rue Lauriston. You’d think she’d have learned her lesson and burned them!

‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Her voice grated. Kohler realized he hadn’t heard her come into the house or up the stairs, that he’d been too caught up in things, a bad sign. ‘Maybe you’d better tell me, mademoiselle.’ He indicated the stubs. Flustered, she pulled off her hat and gloves and tossed them on to a chair.

‘Those are none of your business. They’ve got nothing to do with … with things.’

She began to unhook the cloak – couldn’t have kept her fingers still; glanced down at the carpet to avoid his scrutiny. Said, ‘Ah merde, look what you’ve made me do.’

Mud and snow had been tracked in on her boots. She dragged them off and found a towel on which to set them.

Undoing the last of the hooks, she removed the cloak but stood there with it in one hand, unable suddenly to think.

He indicated the stubs and said a little sadly, ‘The only reason you haven’t been picked up is that Delphane still hasn’t blown the whistle on you. I can only surmise that he wanted Louis and me to find these, so you’d better tell me about them, mademoiselle, and while you’re at it, give me the identity of that child you just buried.’

Agitated, she glanced uncertainly at the cloak, still not knowing quite what to do with it. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked. ‘Look, I haven’t used them in years but …’ She gave a shrug. ‘Ah, forget it. Most of you men these days are far too miserly. I shouldn’t have asked.’

She went over to the bed and laid the cloak on it, said, ‘It’s so cold in this place.’ She’d get no sympathy from him; she’d have to tell him something. ‘The remains are those of Ludo’s eldest daughter, Therese. She died of influenza in the winter of 1930, at the age of twelve. It … it was the same year Josianne-Michele contracted epilepsy.’

Kohler wanted to say, How very convenient, but let it pass. He found his cigarettes and lighting two of them, passed one to her.

‘Merci,’ she whispered. Taking a drag, she filled her lungs and held the smoke in, a pause. ‘Look, everyone in the village has to give up the remains of a loved one. It’s that simple, don’t you understand? They draw lots, for God’s sake! The abbe makes sure no one cheats. It was Ludo’s turn, that’s all. None of it’s fair, is it?’

‘None of the war? No. No, of course not. But why leave the comparative safety of the cottage to follow us to Cannes when told not to?’

There was nothing in his eyes but emptiness. ‘It is my responsibility to see that the remains are properly and unobtrusively reinterred, and that the positions of all the graves are recorded so that after … Well, after you people …’ Ah merde, why had she said it? ‘After this war is over, monsieur, the remains may be returned to the village where they belong. If I am not here to pay off the grave-diggers and see that the custodian turns a blind eye and signs the papers and the register, no one else can. Me, they accept because they have known me a long time.’

That was fair enough. ‘And Josette-Louise?’ he asked.

‘Will stay at the cottage. Ludo will make sure of that.’

‘Borel, yes. It must be hell not having water rights, especially at a time like this.’

The weaver stubbed out her half-finished cigarette but, as was the custom these days, saved what was left for another time. ‘Ludo didn’t kill Anne-Marie, Inspector. He was only too well aware of how much she meant to me. He is also my very dear friend and most valued associate.’

‘But you’d lost her to another?’

‘To Angelique, yes. Oh, you needn’t think you’re on to something, monsieur. Ludo knew very well what Anne-Marie was like. This one, that one … but through it all, there was myself and me, I remained steadfast. Ludo respects that in a person. He always has and unlike others in that village, he does not judge me beyond the sincerity of my commitment to my lover and my work.’

She turned from him, but was undecided which way to go. Kohler saw her toss a hand and give a shrug. ‘Besides, Inspector, he and the rest of the village needed her and now … now must somehow pick up the strings.’

‘The threads,’ he said. ‘From you, threads would sound better.’

So, he didn’t believe her, was that it then? She bowed her head, a spill of raven hair across shoulders that would still be too proud for him, ah yes, but would they make his voice gentle?

‘Mademoiselle Viviane, if my partner hadn’t found Josette-Louise in Paris, Jean-Paul Delphane would have silenced her. Why not tell me about the money?’

Still she would not turn to face him. ‘Because I can’t tell you, Inspector. Not now. Maybe never.’

‘Was he the father of those two girls?’

‘How dare you?’

‘I dare because I must. I’ve seen too many witnesses who should have spoken out when asked.’

‘Then why would he wish to kill his daughter, eh? Pah! If you’re so intelligent, answer me that!’

There were tears in her lovely eyes and she could barely keep herself together.

‘He’s desperate, mademoiselle. Jean-Paul Delphane is on the run and I think you know exactly why.’

‘Then I have nothing more to say to you!’ She started for the hall. Kohler grabbed her by the arm.

‘You can’t stay here,’ he said.

‘Am I under arrest? Is that it, eh? Come, come, Inspector, make the decision!’

‘Yes, yes, then, you’re under arrest. You are charged with the murder of Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi, mademoiselle, and with illegally dealing in a foreign currency, namely that of the enemy.’

‘Please, you don’t understand. No one really will. It wasn’t me.’

He let go of her and she went to gather her things. On the way past the room she used as a private studio, she paused to take a last look at her weaving. ‘I want so much to finish it,’ she said – he’d never understand how an artist could ache to finish something; would never know why else it was important to her. ‘This, it was something special.’

‘Was it for Josette-Louise?’

Hurriedly she wiped her eyes. ‘Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact it was.’

‘Not for Josianne-Michele?’

The weaver hesitated – it could not be helped. ‘No, not for her, Inspector. Josianne-Michele loathes the touch of my weaving, but me, I have lived long enough to know I cannot please everyone.’

‘Was she jealous of the time it took you away from them?’

‘Yes, of course. Children … they can be … Well,’ she shrugged, ‘unreasonable sometimes.’ Ah damn. Children … why had she said that?

‘Come on then. My partner will be busy at the villa. We’d best find Buemondi and have a few words with him.’

The villa …? Ah no. ‘Carlo?’ she asked.

‘Yes, yes, Buemondi.’

‘He killed her. I know he did. He can shoot that thing of his better than any of us.’

There were perhaps thirty rooms in the Villa of the Golden Oracle and in nearly every one, there were gorgeous things but still not a glimpse of its elusive occupant. Oh for sure, there had been the sudden rush of stockinged feet up a narrow staircase to the attic; open French windows behind drapes that had reached to the floor in a library that was magnificent. The chilliness of the air as he had stepped outside a moment; in the bathroom upstairs, the faint after-scent of a delicate perfume he had had no time to identify. Boots that had been so carefully removed and left on the doorstep. The coldness of a kitchen stove. Mirrors … mirrors; paintings … paintings; pearls, black opals and diamonds spilling from a jewel case whose rifling had been interrupted, ah yes. Nom de Dieu! Had he come upon a robbery?

St-Cyr suppressed the urge to cry out, I’m here, damn you! Come and get me. He did not want to have to shoot her, was still uncertain if she meant to fire that thing at him. Thought again of the condom on the floor in that bedroom, said, Sex, eh? Sex before the killing?

He reached the first staircase to the attic again, this time deciding to go up it and not wait for her to venture down the other staircase. One step was placed ahead of the last. There was a railing. He ignored it and cocked the Lebel, said silently, Mademoiselle, please don’t do this to me.

Just when he realized she had trapped him was not certain. He did not hear her on the floor below. The bolt, when it came, gave a sudden rush of air, splintering the door at the top of the stairs!

He fired once. The girl dropped the crossbow and began cautiously to raise her hands. ‘Monsieur, I …’ She lost her voice and tried frantically to get it back. ‘Monsieur, I … I have not thought it was you. Please, you must understand I hunted another. My father … I thought he had returned to kill me.’

It was Josianne-Michele. As before, the trousers were too big; her belt, that of a man; the heavy shirt and sweater also.

Gingerly St-Cyr went down to her. She was very pale and badly shaken. ‘Please, I would not have wished to kill you,’ she said softly. ‘At the very last moment, I jerked the crossbow away. Ah, it was enough to have saved you! Forgive me.’

She went down on her knees like a stone before him – trembling, shaking so hard, he panicked at the thought of her succumbing to another epileptic fit. But that didn’t come on and at last he was able to say, ‘Please pick up the crossbow for me, mademoiselle. I could so easily have killed you. The second of two mistakes rectified only at the last moment also.’

They were both well aware of what they might have done. ‘Why did you kill your mother?’ he asked.

She sought no defence in tears, was far too agitated and still in shock. ‘I didn’t! Me, I have found the crossbow in the grand salon beside the fireplace where it has always been kept until recently.’

Ah Nom de Dieu, was she lying? ‘When did you get here?’

Was he to be her judge? ‘Two days ago. Two days of trying to keep myself awake knowing he might come for me.’

‘Then who was it made love in Angelique Girard’s bedroom? Come, come, mademoiselle, I saw the evidence. Recent, so recent they can only have left the house as I entered the grounds by the back gate.’

The tears began – perhaps it was the sudden realization of what she’d almost done; perhaps the bitterness of what she’d found.

‘Angelique and my father, Carlo Buemondi. He was rutting at her like a boar in heat, monsieur, while that one cried out her thirst for more.’

‘Then he hadn’t come to kill you, had he?’

Why must he look at her the way he did? ‘No. No, he hadn’t come to kill me.’

St-Cyr fingered the polished ironwood of the crossbow’s stock. The thing was heavy but quite portable. She could have carried it in a rucksack. The arms of the windlass that pulled the powerful bowstring back had been detached. These could also be in that same rucksack. He’d seen it in the kitchen on the floor beside the stove. Ah yes. Merde!

‘Was your father the one to put the crossbow back where it belonged?’ he asked, and when she didn’t answer, he said, ‘Mademoiselle, you were hunting a man you believed would kill you, isn’t that correct?’ He dropped his voice to a gentleness she could only find unsettling. ‘You were very good at it, Mademoiselle Buemondi. In all my days as a detective, and there have been many of them, only once have I found myself pitted against someone like yourself.’

It was not praise; it was a warning. ‘My father put it back,’ she said, proudly facing him, ‘or Angelique. Me, I really do not know which of them did, Inspector. They are in it together. They both wanted mother to sell this place but she had refused absolutely to even discuss it.’

St-Cyr gave her a moment. She wiped her nose with the back of a hand – he knew he ought to get her something to drink, ought to let her sit down, but he could not do so. Not yet. No, someone … someone … Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ! Had he missed it completely? Had there been someone else in the house? The girl hunting for himself, the other one waiting … always waiting for the inevitable to happen. One dead Surete!

Nervously he glanced along the corridor past her, then back over a shoulder. No one. Nothing. Antiques everywhere, porcelains, Old Masters … exquisite paintings. The bric-a-brac of the wealthy. ‘Then if it was not them, mademoiselle, that you thought had come to kill you, who was it?’

She must return his gaze measure for measure. ‘The Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane. The one from Bayonne.’

In room by room the house flew across the screen of the cinematographer’s brain. He saw the bathroom with its copper tub that was flanged and had such a patina of age about it, saw the jewel case open in Madame Buemondi’s room, its spill of baubles interrupted – yes, yes. Angelique Girard had been about to plunder the place for herself.

He saw Carlo Buemondi as Hermann had described him, a walrus in mud rutting at the naked girl because he had found her stealing – yes, stealing!

‘Where is she?’ he gasped, still lost to the screen of his mind. ‘Where are they now, mademoiselle?’

Her shrug was instinctive and irritating. Immediately she was apologetic. ‘I watched them leave the house together, monsieur. It … it was then that I discovered the crossbow had been returned.’

Oh, is that so? he wanted to shout, but the camera of memory revealed the library’s drapes, the open French windows behind them and … and yes, footprints in the snow – not this girl’s. Not this girl’s.

Gripping her by the arm, St-Cyr propelled her swiftly along the hall and into Anne-Marie Buemondi’s bedroom. Delphane? he demanded of himself, his gaze racing over twin armoires to touch briefly on the canopied bed, the bureau with its mirror, a round table in front of the windows, chairs … a settee …‘Here … is he still here?’ he asked. And setting the crossbow down lightly on the coverlet, took out his revolver again.

They waited. There was little time. Already the day was coming to a close. He did not want to be in the house after dark.

‘Josianne-Michele, you did not come here two days ago. Your tracks in the snow are far too fresh. Your boots are still wet.’

The crossbow, it was so dark; the oil of ages had been absorbed into its wood. Beaten silverwork was all along the stock and her father, he had been proud of it. She thought of her sister, of how she herself had always been his favourite, saw herself naked on the table in his studio, felt the Vaseline on his hands as he had covered her body with it and then had made a plaster cast of her. The masks also. The vessel of her virginity.

‘Mademoiselle, please! You must tell me. That man, the Inspector Delphane, wants to kill me and unless we are both very mistaken, yourself also.’

It was no use. She’d have to tell him, but was the one from Bayonne still in the house? Had she been so intent on this one, and he on her, they had both missed his presence?

‘I got here very early this morning. Me, I passed right by the cottage and saw you all asleep, my sister and Viviane on the bed together. I went first to Viviane’s house to borrow a bicycle, then came here to find Angelique still asleep. I thought I’d see what she’d do, because by then I knew she had been into mother’s jewel case, though she had not taken anything. Perhaps she was still struggling with her conscience. This I do not know, only that mother must have shown the things to her lots of times.’

St-Cyr signalled to her to keep talking. Cautiously he approached the closer of the two armoires, tall, beautifully carved pieces … Chamonix? he asked. Is it to be just like Chamonix, Jean-Paul? Just like that dressing-room at Les Naturistes, eh?

‘My father came to the house at around eleven this morning and they … they made love. She was so eager for him, monsieur. It … it is hard for me to have to say it, especially as she was also my mother’s latest lover.’

‘And the Inspector Delphane?’ he asked.

She swallowed. ‘After my father had given Angelique her archery lesson, I found the bow in the grand salon and realized that someone else had come into the house but had not let them know of his presence. The crossbow was not exactly where my father would have left it, Inspector, so I knew that someone must have moved it.’

There was no one in the armoire. Just dresses and more of them. He nodded for the girl to continue. ‘They had a little something to eat, Inspector, then Angelique went upstairs and my father, he has followed her into this room. Together they went through mother’s jewel case. Angelique wanted the diamonds; my father chided her and said she would have to wait, that soon she could have whatever she wanted.’

The second armoire also held no one. St-Cyr gave an exasperated sigh. Beneath a richly gilded mirror there was an escritoire whose hinged lid was open, revealing the many compartments. Had either of those two, or both of them, gone through the woman’s desk? Had they been searching for something, only to have their search interrupted by some sound?

‘There is a wall safe, Inspector, behind that painting of the pomegranates by Courbet.’

Apples and Anjou pears as well as opened and uncut pomegranates and raspberry leaves. The painting was magnificent, the depth of colours so real he wished for time to examine it, but knew there was none.

‘Its frame was tilted to one side, Inspector. I straightened it.’

‘Does your father know the combination?’ he asked desperately. Delphane was still somewhere very close. He felt it, was terrified of it and yet … yet could find no other place for that one to hide.

‘Only mother knew the combination, Inspector. Not Viviane or Josette-Louise or myself, not my father either. She kept all such things to herself and carefully hidden.’

‘Then the Germans will have to blow it,’ he said more loudly than necessary. ‘We will leave while it is still light, mademoiselle. Perhaps it would be best for you to close up your mother’s jewel case and hide it under the bed.’

That didn’t work either. There was no one else in the room yet he swore there must be. It was uncanny this feeling. It was more than a sixth sense. It was an uncomfortable realization of one’s vulnerability and a bond that went right back to Chamonix, yes, but had recently been present in that dressing-room at Les Naturistes. A knowing that his presence was very near.

Then suddenly the feeling was gone and he knew Jean-Paul had left the house.

Josianne-Michele sat on the edge of her mother’s bed, silently watching as he examined the wall safe. He would turn the dial to the right, listening for the tumblers to fall into place; then, exasperated by his inability to hear them, he would turn the dial to the left and back again.

‘Mother kept something in the safe for Viviane,’ she said, letting him catch the note of sadness in her voice. ‘Viv wanted the combination desperately, Inspector. She was frantic for it and begged mother several times, all to no avail.’

‘Then Madame Buemondi came out to see you on her birthday?’ he asked.

‘Yes, only … only someone killed her.’

He found the girl unable to take her eyes from the crossbow. He saw her reach out to it in uncertainty only to withdraw her hand at the last moment. ‘How many spare bolts are there?’ he asked.

‘Six,’ she said, not looking across the room at him. ‘Six and the one that is in the attic door.’

He went back to the safe. Now he worked in earnest and she could not understand what she’d said to make him do so. But then he gave a sigh of triumph. ‘Voila,’ he said. ‘There, it’s open.’

Pleased with himself, St-Cyr turned towards her only to find the girl and the crossbow had vanished. ‘Hermann,’ he gasped anxiously. ‘Hermann, what have I done?’

Carlo Buemondi’s studio made one feel uncomfortable. Body casts and masks in plaster and papier-mache crowded the walls, were piled into the corners or hung suspended by wires from the ceiling. Stark-white, bone-white, often chillingly coloured and patterned in the face, they stared at one or slowly turned as stray draughts caressed them. And everywhere there were his lithographs in orange, in black or brown or red and yellow and green – penises, full erections, hairy lips that were parted, knees up or down; eyes that darted, tongues that licked, teeth, ears, breasts of all sizes and shapes, buttocks and anuses too. All in pieces, all broken as if by a demented child, then often broken again. The drawings first – merde! had he drawn them that way? – and then, when overprinted, the casts themselves.

One recent creation without a head lay smashed to smithereens on a bed of loose sand among cluttered work tables and the tubs of water, bags of plaster and piles of handmade paper. It was obvious Buemondi would pause from time to time, puffing on a cigarette or wiping plaster from himself, to rearrange the pieces. Art evolved that way. Every day the arrangement would cast some new light that could only be satisfied if a piece or two were moved.

No lover of the avant-garde, Kohler grumbled, ‘He’s sick. What’s he do? Get his students to throb their erections while he tries to draw them or lathers some sweet young thing with goo?’

He picked up an open jar of petroleum jelly and wondered how Buemondi had come by the stuff in such hard times. No one could possibly want to buy any of his creations, could they?

The weaver summed things up. ‘Carlo thinks he’s clever, Inspector, and he has the ego of a goat. There is this thing about his “work”. Thinking it controversial, he tries to draw out the snail of suppressed sexuality and nail the flesh of it up for all of us to see, but the man’s a charlatan. Neither master of drawing in a medium where skill is demanded, nor anywhere near one of sculpting – how could he be? He hasn’t a ghost of an idea of what art is all about. He’s simply a phony.’

On another bed of sand two female casts lay smashed to pieces, and Kohler thought he knew whence some of the weaver’s feelings came.

‘Has he always rebelled at the thought of his wife having female lovers?’ he asked.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ she demanded hotly.

She had a point but didn’t stop there. Soon she was rooting through things in a far corner, raising clouds of dust into the greying light.

‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Look at this one.’

It was the shell of a girl of ten or twelve. Completely blank. Just bone-white and with no head. ‘Now that one,’ she said. ‘No, no, Inspector, the one that’s hanging upside-down from that wire.’

Ah Jesus, Jesus. Kohler wet his throat. Overprinted on the plaster shell were the masks of so many faces. Some leered, others lusted; some grinned or simply stared blankly from among the full and half-erections or patches of flaccid limpness.

‘That … that is Josianne-Michele,’ she said, turning suddenly away. ‘When she was at the age of twelve, he raped her here in this … this barn he calls a “studio”. But children do not tell us of such things, Inspector. Besides, she was his favourite and she did not want to bring trouble to him, poor thing. My poor Josianne. Ah God, God forgive me for not seeing it soon enough.’

Her head was bowed, the face covered by a hand. Kohler went to hold her by the shoulders but she shrugged him off. ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Please don’t. I’d only scream. I cannot bear the touch of a man, Inspector. I’m sorry, but that … that is the way it is for me.’

The detective was disconcerted, the weaver tense. Buemondi gave them a moment before launching himself into the studio. ‘Inspector,’ he boomed in a strongly Italian accent. ‘Mademoiselle Viviane, I’m enchanted. But … but why did you not telephone ahead?’ He threw out his arms gregariously. ‘Some wine. The lights – ah! you will need to see things properly. Take your time. Yes, yes, Inspector. Stroll at liberty. Study, my friend. Absorb. Question. The only secrets here are in the self. Lie naked upon the table and let the self come out. Be the body cast and the mask. Recognize the truth within and welcome it.’

‘Carlo, shut up! The Inspector’s no fool. He wants to ask you some questions.’

‘The murder. Yes, yes, of course. An unfortunate affair. A great loss.’

‘There. Don’t you see what I mean, Inspector? Now he moans about her death!’

‘Whereas before he couldn’t have cared less,’ said Kohler, welcoming the exchange. ‘You’ve been sexually abusing one of your daughters, monsieur, and I’ve the thumb to show for it. What other sort of hold have you got over her?’

Startled – alarmed – Buemondi threw the weaver a questioning glance. ‘Josianne-Michele lied about it, Inspector. Me, I swear I never harmed the girl. She was my …’

‘Your sweetheart! Your little Josianne …’ began Viviane Darnot.

She was close to tears.

‘Viviane, get a hold of yourself, eh? Don’t lie to the Inspector. Don’t try to pin the murder on me!’

They were shouting now.

‘You bastard! You think I did it – is that what you’ve been saying? Oh, I understand you, Carlo. I must have seen Anne-Marie with that girl, that gorgeous creature in her arms, eh? Kissing and fondling Angelique Girard, one of your little pets! Well listen, my fine egomaniac. I understood your wife. Though she was always difficult, I loved her and forgave her. And,’ she dropped her voice, ‘I understand you also, Carlo. Ah yes, but I do, you old rooster. Lecher! Whore-master! If I could, it’s you I’d kill for what you did to that child.’

‘Then use my crossbow. Shoot me also!’ Buemondi leapt away to a drawing cabinet. Yanking on a drawer, he pulled a sheet of paper out and shouted triumphantly, ‘Here, Inspector. Here it is and I have saved it for just such a moment!’

The life-sized charcoal drawing revealed at once both the professor’s character and the skill of the artist who had done it, the weaver no doubt. Ah yes. Buemondi stood as if caught crossing a lawn about to deflower his daughter. The barrel gut was there, the fleshy hips, hairy shoulders and big lips, the bull neck and arms. Licentiousness was in every particle. He didn’t just lust after the girl he was after, he ravaged her with his eyes and Gott im Himmel, he looked exactly like II Duce. That same sense of omnipotence, that same comic posturing, yet behind it all, a real bastard.

In hole after hole those two women had shot the hell out of him with that crossbow he so cherished. Several of the bolts had hit the groin area and that prick he so loved to scribble. Two had passed right through the heart, another had hit him right between the eyes.

Buemondi took a deep breath. ‘Now, Inspector, ask this one who was the archer. Ask her to deny that she went often into the hills to see the herbalist Ludo Borel and to hunt with that one for the plants with which to dye the wool for her weaving. Ask why she took my daughter Josette-Louise, not Josianne-Michele, to a clinic near Chamonix when your financier was killed. Ask what happened in the past to make the present so unpleasant.’

Ah damn! ‘Carlo, please! Enough is enough.’

The bitch! ‘Is it? Come, come, Viviane. Take off your things. Lie naked on my table. Let me make the cast of you and the mask, eh? Let the world see the truth you have hidden for so long.’

‘What truth?’ asked Kohler darkly.

The weaver’s troubled eyes sought him out. ‘It doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with Anne-Marie’s murder. Ask Jean-Paul, Inspector. Ask that one. Maybe he will give you all the answers you want.’

‘And Angelique Girard?’ asked Kohler of Buemondi. ‘Where is she?’

The professor shrugged effusively. ‘How should I know? Me, I do not keep track of my students, Inspector. Not beyond the hours of study.’

‘And those of bathing in the mud? Listen, my fine, you’ve still got traces of ochre round your eyes. That receptionist I asked to find you knew exactly where you were. In the mud again.’

‘Then you will find Angelique there, Inspector. Her back, it was bothering her. A lower vertebra, I think.’

‘Her ass?’ snorted the weaver. ‘Admit that you’ve been fucking her, Carlo, and that the poor creature is simply worn out and sore right up to her lovely lips.’

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 Dedou 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-Michele 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-Michele, 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 Surete 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.

Angelique 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. ‘Angelique, 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-Michele?’ 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-Michele 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-Michele, 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-Michele 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 Jesus-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.’

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-Michele 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.’

And from the sister, ‘Josianne, have you still got the crossbow and its quiver of arrows?’

‘Uncle Jean-Paul, he has not been able to take it from me this time, Josette. Me, I have made certain of this.’

‘Good. He had a photograph taken of me in Paris, Josianne. This I could not understand but now fear he has given it to the Gestapo.’

‘Yes, yes, he will have done such a thing. Didn’t Viviane tell you what he had asked of her?’

Chamonix … had it been in the villa near there?

‘Viv has not written to me for some time. Not since she became so very afraid of what was happening. Are there really maquis in the hills, Josianne? Please, the Inspector St-Cyr, he will want to know of this. It is very important to him.’

‘Alain says the hills, they are empty, that it is now too cold in the mountains.’

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘Josette, I’ve longed to tell you about it. Josette, I’ve lain in his arms beneath the stars and he has filled my soul and my body with rapture.’

There was a pause and then, ‘Me, I wish I had such a lover. Someone to banish the terrible loneliness of the big city, but now I am afraid I will never experience such a thing. Paris, it was not good for me, Josianne. I failed miserably at everything I tried so hard to do.’

‘You should have come home. Mother should have let you.’

‘Yes, yes, she should have let me.’

Chamonix … the weaver …? puzzled St-Cyr, desperately trying to clutch at the windblown chaff of a fragmented memory.

‘Were you very jealous of me?’ asked Josianne-Michele coyly.

‘At your having such a lover? Ah no, my sister. Envious, perhaps, and happy for you who have suffered so much.’

Ah damn, were the sisters at each other’s throats?

‘Josette, our father forced himself upon me time and again. Please, it is so very difficult for me to tell you this, but the Inspector, he should hear it from myself.’

‘And Alain … what does Alain say about it?’ asked Josette suspiciously.

Pride entered. ‘Alain, he says that it does not make any difference to him, but me, I was so ashamed and so afraid, it took forever for me to let him touch me.’

Now bitterness and jealousy intruded. ‘You were always Alain’s favourite, Josianne. Me, I could never get him to do the things I asked of him. He must be very kind to you, petite. He must still be the very gentle and sensitive person I knew.’

The epileptic betrayed anger. ‘Ludo wants us to get married; Madame Anne-Marie would not allow it. She refused absolutely to give us her blessing.’

There had been tears in that last little bit. Ah Nom de Dieu …

‘Are you with child – is it Alain’s?’ hazarded the sister.

‘Yes.’

St-Cyr found the place where the two of them had stood among a cluster of statuary beside the ruins of a broken wall. Crouching, he ran his hands lightly over the frozen clods of earth that lay beneath their dusting of snow.

Josianne-Michele Buemondi had been in Chamonix with Viviane Darnot. Jean-Paul Delphane had gone to the clinic to find the weaver after the shot had been fired.

But the weaver had been in the villa just before the financier had been killed. St-Cyr knew he had seen her in that mirror. He had looked up suddenly to the floor above them, had been momentarily distracted …

‘Viviane …? Viviane, are you there? Mother, why won’t you answer me? Mother, please! I think I’m going to kill myself.’

The girl had been suicidal, and Viviane Darnot had intervened and taken her to Chamonix for treatment. But the voice he had heard just before being hit on the back of the head had not been that of Josianne-Michele. It had been Josette-Louise who had called out, ‘Mother, please! I think I’m going to kill myself.’

The screech of tyres and throb of engines pelted them out of the heart of the city and up the boulevard Carnot towards Le Cannet and the villa. Jammed into a back seat and held at gunpoint, Kohler managed to touch the weaver’s hand. He felt her fingers close about his own and wanted to tell her he’d do everything he could to save her.

Forbidden to talk, she watched through tear-filled eyes as they raced past darkened streets, and he held her fingers a little tighter and tried to tell her again.

She could not stop herself from trembling. In image after image, Kohler knew she would see herself being thrown to the floor. Dazed and bleeding, she would try to get up, try to speak out but Jean-Paul Delphane, that bastard would have her by the hair. He would drag her up and rip the dress from her. Shivering uncontrollably, she would clutch her bare shoulders. The brassiere would be torn from her and then the underpants. Reeling from a blow, she would stumble and fall and try to get away. Blood would burst from her battered lips, a breast would be savagely kicked. No breath, no breath … In agony, her mouth would keep opening and closing until she had passed out. ‘Answers! he shrieked. ‘We must have answers, Viviane! It is necessary for you to give them.’

Kohler shook his head to clear it. The bastard hadn’t shrieked. He’d said it quietly, was arrogant and cock-sure of himself because that was the only way he could bluff it out.

Viviane Darnot saw that Jean-Paul had turned to look at her. The streets flashed past. The headlamps flung their beams across a row of empty shops. They caught puzzled onlookers frozen in their tracks, gaping and too stunned by panic to move.

‘I will not give them the answers you want, Jean-Paul. Josette means everything to me.’

The one from Bayonne leaned over the back of the seat to trace a finger under her chin. In revulsion, she jerked her head away and swore, ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me again.’

‘Just give them the answers they must hear.’

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘Then I will let them have Josette, Viviane. Josette was in on it too. There is proof enough.’

‘Your daughter? Your own flesh and blood? Have you become so heartless, you would sacrifice her to save yourself?’

Lunging over the seat, he struck her twice and then again. She shrieked and tried to get away. Kohler struggled to help her.

Lights were flung over the Villa of the Golden Oracle as they raced up to it and slammed on the brakes. ‘Out!’ shrieked Delphane. ‘Get out and see what becomes of you.’

‘Je … Je …’ She tried to say his name.

Leaning forward, Kohler breathed, ‘You’ve forgotten something, my fine. St-Cyr has it in for you and so have I.’

Delphane tossed an indifferent hand. ‘Pah! What are you both to me? Nothing but vermin that need to be stamped on!’

‘But rats in trouble always go around in circles inside the bottom of the barrel, my friend, and two of them will eat a third if left alone long enough. The Abwehr had your number, right? So you went over to Gestapo Cannes, but Munk’s no fool. He wants us to sort you out.’

‘Then me, I will drop the tom-cat into the barrel and let them see what happens!’

‘You do that, but remember the barrel gets filled with water, and cats can’t swim as well as rats.’

They were hustled into the villa and up the stairs at a run. Viviane Darnot saw the doors to the bedrooms flashing past, some open, others not … A porcelain vase was accidentally knocked over, then some glassware …

Spinning, stumbling, falling drunkenly, she was thrown into Anne-Marie’s bedroom and left to claw herself upright. Retreated hesitantly from them in horror of what they were going to do to her. Held the back of a hand to her broken lips.

‘Now talk,’ said Munk quietly. ‘You were helping your lover to get escaped prisoners of war out of France, mademoiselle. You are a British citizen and have a bank account in England on which you wrote numerous cheques. In return, money was handed over to you and you gave this to Madame Buemondi to finance your activities. Behind that painting is a wall safe. You are to open it.’

There was nothing in his eyes, no thought of compassion, and she knew then that he would let Jean-Paul beat her to death, knew the others would all stand around and watch.

Vomit rose in her throat and she gagged on it. Even Herr Kohler would be powerless to help her.

‘Don’t say a thing, mademoiselle,’ said Kohler grimly. ‘Let me tell him.’

It was Munk who said, ‘Very well. Proceed.’ In dismay, Kohler realized the bastard had used the weaver to trap him into talking.

‘Hadn’t you best remove the painting?’ he asked.

‘It’s Gestapo Leader Munk, Herr Kohler. You will address me properly.’

Kohler nodded. ‘The painting,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what’s in the safe.’

A ramrod in a black uniform yanked the painting away and threw it aside, ‘It’s open,’ he said in German. ‘Empty, Gestapo Leader. The safe is empty.’

Savagely Munk swung his black leather gloves. Stung by the blow, the weaver reeled into Kohler. Blinded by her tears, she fought for some sort of sense and shrilled, ‘Empty? Empty? This I cannot believe!’

As she looked into the safe, Kohler held her. Every nerve and muscle in her body quivered. Quickly she turned aside. ‘A chair,’ he seethed. ‘Gott im Himmel, let the woman sit down!’

Delphane swung a chair across the carpet. Someone brought a lamp and they made her look up into it but this she could not do without help, so one of them simply seized her by the hair and yanked her head back.

‘Now talk, Herr Kohler,’ said Munk. ‘Already your sympathies are in question. The Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg has left the matter entirely in my hands so do not look to Paris Central for help.’

Kohler could barely control the outrage he felt. He wanted so much to say, Hey, listen, my fine, I’m a detective and we’re dealing with a murder, but he knew that was of little consequence in the scheme of things. ‘Perhaps, Gestapo Leader, it is the Inspector from the Deuxieme Bureau who should talk. Unless I’ve missed something, that safe should have been crammed with bundles of francs, and that was exactly what Mademoiselle Darnot expected. So if she expected to find it loaded, and this one told you it was, then ask him where the cash is.’

Delphane glanced questioningly at the safe and then at the weaver. ‘The money, Viviane …?’ he said.

‘It’s gone, Jean-Paul, but Anne-Marie could not have taken it.’

Kohler filled things in. ‘The Buemondi woman was desperate for cash. On the Saturday before she was killed, Madame Buemondi pawned a kaleidoscope in Bayonne. In exchange, she received 35,000 francs.’

‘Which she then passed on to a Basque guide who knows the routes across the Pyrenees into Spain,’ offered Delphane. ‘She had a little problem on her hands, isn’t that so, Viviane? A dead pilot was in her house, is that not correct, eh?’

‘Easy, my friend. Easy,’ cautioned Kohler. ‘The body had been there for a good two or three weeks, maybe more. Abwehr Central knew of it. Colonel Henri gave me the pilot’s identity disc. They’d been watching the Inspector here and had their doubts about him.’

‘What doubts?’ challenged Delphane. ‘Come, come, my fine Inspector from Gestapo Central, Paris, spill the beans.’

‘It’s the lentils I want to spill,’ said Kohler but didn’t elaborate. ‘Doubts about what you’d been up to in Bayonne, Inspector. Visits to Madame Buemondi’s house there.’

‘Oh for sure, that means nothing. Nothing! I’ve been a friend of hers for years. I knew her father well. One of the old school. A great man at boules.’

How nice. ‘Visits to this villa, Inspector? Conveniently it has a back entrance.’

‘Most of them do,’ said Delphane blandly. ‘It is so that the help can come and go.’

It was Munk who reminded them of the pilot’s body and the need for cash.

Kohler let him have it. ‘First, she had to dispose of the body in Bayonne and no doubt that is why she gave the 35,000 francs she had received for the kaleidoscope to the daughter of the mountain guide. Then five days later she found she had to redeem her pledge, and thus needed yet another 35,000 francs.’

‘The … the kaleidoscope has the combination to the safe hidden in it,’ confessed Viviane Darnot. ‘Anne-Marie said she had an engraver in Marseille cut letters on some of the chips. The letters can be transcribed into the numbers of the combination. It … it was her way of ensuring that if anything should happen to her, I … I could eventually get at the money. At least, that is what she said before … before she died.’

‘And the money?’ asked Gestapo Munk. ‘The bundles of francs?’

She would not open her eyes to the lamp though they would make her do so. She would kiss the back of her hand and wipe her lips one last time.

‘Louis knows the answers,’ said Kohler. ‘Louis has the cash.’ Wolfishly he grinned at Delphane. ‘My partner opened that safe, my old one. Now what are you going to do about it? Mess with him again?’

‘I already have,’ snorted Delphane.

Kohler looked down at the old Lebel six-shooter that had been a devil’s gun in the right hands. Cases and cases flashed across the screen of memory. Vouvray, the carousel …‘Louis?’ he gasped. ‘Not Louis.’ He leaped at Delphane. He was clubbed and kicked and forced to his knees.

‘The village, I think,’ said Munk. ‘Bring them both.’

*

‘A pastis, please. Make it a double, then get me another.’

‘Shove off. There is no alcohol today.’

‘Then make it one or you will feel the weight of my boots, monsieur. The Surete, eh? And impatient.’

St-Cyr dragged out his badge and ID. ‘Look, I’m on a case and on the run. A patriot’s life is in danger. A village will be razed to the ground if my partner and I do not stop it.’

‘Then why sit here asking for drinks that cannot be served under the laws and ordinances you obey?’

A wise one. ‘I obey them because I have to. That doesn’t mean I agree. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ, don’t be so difficult! I’ve had nothing substantial to eat for far too long and must fortify my constitution for the terrible task that lies ahead.’

He had meant it too. ‘Can you pay?’

‘Pardon? Ah, the cash. Yes, yes, certainly.’ St-Cyr dug deeply into the sack at his feet, and dragged out a bundle. ‘Thirty thousand, I think, if you will hire me the taxi with a motor that runs on gasoline.’

Ah no. ‘But … but the Boches …’

‘Hey, listen, idiot. Did you think I would come to a place like this for a pastis? I need transport and I need it immediately.’

Raoul Santoni threw a razor-look over the few customers who already knew enough to keep to themselves. ‘The warehouse,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s just across the tracks. Meet me there in five minutes.’

‘Don’t be silly. You would only telephone the Hotel Montfleury. Neither of us need those jokers breathing down our necks.’

A mouse-eared little Corsican, the proprietor wiped the zinc and reached beneath it for a green bottle. ‘The bike’s not mine. Some idiot left it there two weeks ago and hasn’t come back. It’s trouble. Maybe you can help me out.’

Oh-oh. ‘A bike?’ hazarded the Surete, watching as his glass was half filled.

‘Water?’

‘Ah, no. No. Straight. Merci. A bike …?’

This one had the squawk of a chicken in heat! ‘Can’t you handle one?’

The pastis was good. Pre-war stuff and 90 proof. ‘Of course. The Surete can handle anything. Me, I only wondered whose bike it was.’

The glass was refilled. ‘And me, I thought such things, they would not matter, monsieur, since you are in a hurry?’

Ah Nom de Dieu, the Corsicans were a breed apart! ‘Proceed. The warehouse, eh? You first and then myself so as to cover you with my revolver.’

‘What revolver? I see no revolver?’

St-Cyr gathered up the sack and the bundle. ‘Ah, don’t worry about it, monsieur. The revolver is always kept hidden until needed. Rest assured I would not lug around a few million francs and seek the life of danger without it.’

The warehouse was a garage suitable in size for one car and little else. The BMW R75 with side-car and under filthy canvas was in mint condition. ‘Fresh camouflage paint,’ muttered St-Cyr, aghast at what he’d stumbled on to. ‘Straight from the factory in Germany and one hell of a problem for you, monsieur, if caught with it. Ah yes.’

Santoni acknowledged this with a slight, sidewards toss of his head. ‘The 750 cc engine drives …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Surete. ‘It drives the bike’s rear wheel and that of the side-car.’

‘There’s a spare tyre …’

‘Yes, yes, and an extra pair of gauntlets and goggles. Better still, unless I am very mistaken, my partner has never driven one of these. Keep the thirty thousand and say nothing. Perhaps I can sell it to a certain hearse-driver.’

‘A hearse-driver …? Ah no, monsieur. But how did you …?’

‘Let’s just say Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi had a list of telephone numbers. Yours was among them.’

‘The eggs … and … and the cheese, and the wine. The rose.’

‘Never mind the groceries, my friend. You were one of her middlemen and marked with an asterisk. Don’t breathe a word of it and I’ll do you all a favour and burn the list.’

St-Cyr mounted the bike. Immediately there was that tremendous sense of power, that sudden surge of adrenalin. Kicking it to life, he pulled the goggles down and heaved the sack into the side-car.

The open road beckoned. Moonlight was everywhere. Within forty-five minutes he was walking up to the village, having parked the bike where Hermann would not fail to see it.

Right where the woman had died, right out there on that hillside beneath the moon.

A beautiful bike. A beautiful thing but had God not mocked His little detective by providing such a benediction?

Only the ruins of the citadel, ghosting whitely on high, gave answer and suddenly all the exhilaration, the momentary reliving of his youth, then the Great War and the roads of Flanders, vanished, and he saw it all for what it was: a disaster, a tragedy so in keeping with the history of Provence. All God had done was to speed him on his miserable way.

Three half-tracks with 88 millimetre guns brought up the rear of the convoy. Six medium-sized Opel lorries were crammed with troops of the Waffen-SS fresh from the Reich and on their way to wet their trousers in North Africa. MG42s, Schmeissers, Bergmanns, stick grenades and mortars. Kohler had to laugh at that God of Louis’s. ‘These bastards will chew the hell out of that village, mademoiselle. You see, they have to prove themselves in battle.’

There were four armoured cars ahead of the lorries and then; right in front, eighteen motorcycles with side-cars on which had been mounted machine-guns. ‘It isn’t going to be nice,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry you’ll have to witness it.’

She did not know what to make of him. Crying over the loss of his partner and friend; now being sarcastic over the might of his own countrymen.

The snow fell lightly, and it was so beautiful even in the stabbing lights, but then there was the frozen breath of the enemy who ran this way and that alongside the convoy shouting orders and checking things. And the harsh angularity of their helmets matched the bleak brutality of their weapons.

‘Look, if it means anything, Mademoiselle Viviane, I don’t think you were involved with the Resistance and neither was Madame Buemondi. She worked her butter and eggs business and fought off her husband’s attempts to sell the villa. You did your weaving and when someone came along who wanted to leave a few francs with you in exchange for a cheque on a London bank, you obliged.’

Was it all so simple? Could anyone even begin to understand the hell she’d been through?

Shackled tightly to him by wrist and ankle, and guarded by three Alsatians, they could only watch the convoy assemble and dared not move.

‘That business nearly drove me crazy. You see, Herr Kohler, I was terrified the fraud would be uncovered. Every day I asked myself how could I possibly pay those poor, deluded people back? How could I, whose father had suffered so much from fraud, now perpetrate a similar thing on others? There wasn’t any more than a hundred pounds in that account. My father died penniless, remember?’

One of the dogs rose up on its hind legs to get her scent. She cringed. Kohler hissed, ‘Don’t move!’ and the dog took its time. Ah merde! She’d urinated.

He waited, giving her time to calm herself. ‘Madame Buemondi kept the money for later, didn’t she? It was her idea and you went along with it because, being English and determined to stay, you would never know quite what the future might hold. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, she handled the business side of things and, even knowing what she was like, you let her.’

She shut her eyes. She could not look at the dogs! ‘Please don’t condemn me. We needed so many things and I cannot answer for the love and loyalty I have always held for her.’

Kohler wanted to leave it but, Gott im Himmel, sentiment had no place in a detective’s life and they’d need everything at hand if the two of them were to get out of this alive. Besides, talking about it might just keep her from moving. ‘Madame Buemondi had a friend alter the figures in your pass book. Right? Voila, the one hundred pounds became what? Hell, no one could possibly have checked with the bank!’

‘Five hundred and seventeen thousand, four hundred and twenty-two pounds, six shillings and eight pence. There was only one page that had anything on it. I hadn’t used the account in years and had simply kept the money there in case I should ever have to return to England. Can’t … can’t you do something to make these dogs leave me alone?’

He waited, and finally she continued. ‘That page was removed and the booklet carefully restitched. Several new entries led up to the invasion of 1940, then others traced my route south. But you see, I was an artist, an eccentric and a recluse – isn’t that so? Money didn’t mean anything to me, Inspector. My father was fabulously wealthy – oh, it all fitted and I let it all go on because, you see, I could never leave France!’

The dogs were worrying over her urine. They couldn’t seem to leave her alone. Kohler filled his chest and let the breath out slowly. It was almost time for Munk to begin his Christmas campaign in the hills, and who in Berlin was to know if one villager or another really were maquis? Hell, they’d all been up to their stupid, stupid necks in the black market!

The dogs moved away and sat there watching them.

‘Delphane found out about things,’ he said. ‘By then he was desperate for an out and seized on the two of you. He asked for the money and you tried to get it from her but she saw things differently. She didn’t want to become involved with him at all. She’d have lost everything.’

One should not cry. One must be brave. ‘He went after Josette-Louise and found her in Paris. He … he said that he would use her against me if .. if I did not get him the money. That he needed it to … to finance things.’

‘What things?’

As if he didn’t know! ‘The escape of himself and four others. They … they had come this way and had used the cottage, Inspector. You see, Jean-Paul knew all about that place. He knows everything there is to know about Anne-Marie and myself. He …’

‘He fathered your children who were then adopted by your lover and Carlo Buemondi.’

‘Is it so bad? I had nothing. An artist earns so little. Oh for sure, in the early days I could use my father’s villa near Chamonix now and then if I pleaded with him and said it was an emergency, but he never gave me an allowance. You see, Inspector, my father despised me for what I had become. And when he lost everything to Stavisky, he blamed me and I was left with only my dearest friend and her love for me. For me!’

Ah Nom de Dieu, it had been a crime of passion! Borel had had nothing to do with the killing. Merde! ‘What did Jean-Paul tell you after all those years, mademoiselle? That her father had hired him to silence the financier?’

Her father who had made so much money on the schemes. ‘Yes. It … it is what I feel your partner had already come to know.’

‘And now poor Louis is dead and that bastard is going to have his way.’

‘His kind always do, Inspector. It is a right they assume at birth even though it is a wet nurse who suckles them.’

The dogs were now worrying his ankles. One of them was …‘Then why’d he turn over a new leaf? Why’d a Fascist and leading member of the Cagoule change the colour of his ways?’

‘Ask him. Perhaps he’ll tell you if he does not kill us first. Certainly he will not allow me to betray him, Inspector, and you … why you are powerless to prevent it.’

‘But he cannot kill us. He’d only expose himself. He must have others do that, mademoiselle. He must make certain of it! Everything must appear as if he is innocent and loyal to the Reich. Ah Jesus, Jesus, you bastards leave my trousers alone!’ Kohler moved a foot and received a nip and then a heavy chorus of throaty barking.

When the dogs had quietened, she wanted so much to say, Jean-Paul has already thought of this. That even as they stood prisoner, he spoke urgently to the Gestapo Munk and the SS major and his lieutenants. She wanted to say, I’m sorry for you but could not bring herself to do so.

‘Then it will happen in the citadel of dreams among the shards of pottery and bits of Roman glass, Inspector. It will happen where the wars of the imagination were often fought and nearly always won. It will happen where my heart was broken.’

The dogs …? wondered Kohler. Would the SS unleash them? Mascots, for Christ’s sake! Loved until ordered otherwise. And well fed by the look.

The broken walls and narrow passageways of the ruins came to him and he saw them bleached by moonlight, then plunged into darkness. Cold, so cold and all alone.

Snow and moonlight played the devil’s taunt with the narrow streets and passageways of the darkened village. No one was about. There was no sound but that of his own boots. And through it all came that sense of knowing all doors and voices would be shut to him.

St-Cyr reached the tiny square. Water still spilled from the tap. Snow filtered down, and where the sharp shaft of the sky above appeared, the crystals glistened as they fell and swirled and struggled so as to bury the ground.

‘Messieurs,’ he shouted in panic now. ‘I must have answers!’

Only silence and the cold of their canyons came to him. All would be listening – tensely, so tensely, the finger to the lips, the black-out curtains tightly drawn. All lights extinguished in every room and house but a single candle.

Old lips with wrinkles sharply joining to meet them among the hairs of unwanted moustaches. Black shawls, black everything. So be it. He tossed the hand of indifference, said quietly, ‘Mon Dieu, you people are stubborn. United in spirit, you range against that common enmity of your centuries not understanding I come as a friend.’

St-Cyr gave them what they wanted. Trudging onward and uphill always, he passed the Cafe de Bonne Chance, their little gathering place – oh how they valued it but were not blind to its humble simplicity. It had served them well. He passed the church and knew its door, though never locked, would now be shut to him.

He went on up the hill and just before he came to that final, steep ascent, turned to look back over the land. He drew in a deep breath and gave a long sigh of, ‘Ah, it’s magnificent!’

Light shimmered on the sea that was always bluer than any other. It bathed the olive groves and vineyards, the orchards too, and came on up over stony pastures to solitary pine or clump of cypresses. Roman and Saracen, Vandal or Visigoth, Nazi or German. Munk would level the village – he knew this now, felt it and said, ‘God, do not mock me like this. The Gestapo Munk stands only to gain no matter the outcome of our little investigation.’

As was His custom, God did not answer but gave only the paleness of the moon and the gently falling snow.

Abruptly St-Cyr turned and climbed to the heights, passing through that broken portal and into ruins the centuries had left. An owl flew off, heavy-winged and dark beneath the moon and silence.

‘Josianne-Michele,’ he sang out, his voice so loud it seemed odd and frightening to hear it echo back and forth. It was as if time had left only his voice to bounce about long after death.

He lowered it. ‘Josianne-Michele …? Ah! it is me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, the detective. Please, I am unarmed. The man from Bayonne, mademoiselle. The one from the Deuxieme Bureau, isn’t that so? He has my revolver. My revolver, Josianne-Michele, and me, I have foolishly let him take it from me again.’

Again … again … again … Did Saracen or Roman yell among fresh ruins a last farewell, and would it have echoed so many times and so hauntingly?

‘Ah yes, mademoiselle. The crux of the matter, eh? A simple revolver then; a simple murder now. Then, too, that of a dancer in Les Naturistes in Paris – a single shot in an otherwise empty room. Protection through silence for her killer.’

As some tourist, forgotten by tour guide and autobus and left to his own designs in a foreign land, the detective strolled about the ruins, muttering things to himself. And she could not decide about him and eased her aching arms. He might know who had killed that dancer; he might not even understand why it had happened. He might now know about Chamonix – ah! it was very possible. He had discovered the masks. Oh for sure, he had looked at them. What had he thought? she wondered.

He was now in the arena surrounded by the broken columns that stood as soldiers would to stop the lions from escaping so that the naked virgin of childhood, she could try to save herself. One could hear the shouts and cries all around him; one could see among the crowd those who stood to shout their praises and encouragement, and those who threw the thumb down to mock her.

‘But Chamonix,’ he said. ‘Chamonix, Josianne-Michele Delphane? That and the death of the financier are the kernel of this whole affair.’

He was in silhouette sharply defined and he wanted her to walk out there to him. That, she could not do. ‘My name is not Delphane!’ she shrilled, trembling with sudden anger. ‘How can you say such a thing?’

She was up in the seats of this little forum she thought a theatre or perhaps even a colosseum. St-Cyr thanked that boyhood intuition that was still with him after all these years. Think as a child, and a child you will find.

Again he tossed an indifferent hand. ‘All right, mademoiselle, then is it Buemondi who fathered you and your sister? Come, come, I need to know the answer and must hear it from yourself.’

She rested her arms on her knees and saw him along the sight of the crossbow and above the shaft of the arrow. She could kill him easily.

‘Carlo made the mask of me and the body casts, Monsieur the Detective from Paris. Carlo has allowed me to see myself as I really am. Wanton, monsieur. Lustful and with no shame for the urges of my body. Ah yes, Inspector, I have slept with my father many times and enjoyed it immensely!’

Ah Nom de Dieu! ‘And your sister?’ he shouted but knew the girl had vanished.

Picking his way through the blocks of stone, St-Cyr came out on to a broad avenue and looked uncertainly along it towards the walls that surrounded the citadel. Instinctively his shoulders flinched and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

She was behind him and he knew that if he turned, she’d fire that thing at him. ‘And your sister?’ he asked again, lowering his voice to a calmness he did not feel.

The girl’s voice grated. ‘My sister loathes the very sight of me, Inspector. She’s always hated me because Alain Borel is mine! Alain could not divide one heart among two lovers. Oh for sure, Josette-Louise, she envies me. She even let Carlo make the mask of her and lay naked under his hands while the body casts, they were made. She exposed herself to him many times and tried to let him have the use of her body, but it was no good. I was not present. Me, I refused absolutely to be a witness to it. And the face you see in her mask, Inspector, is the lie of her outgoing self, for she has failed miserably at everything she ever tried to do except be the virgin she is.’

‘A dancer,’ he said – it was not a question.

‘Yes!’ she answered. ‘Actress, designer’s mannequin and artist’s model – even at prostituting herself, she could not succeed.’

‘Then why didn’t you go to Paris?’ he asked, fearing the iron-tipped bolt of that thing in her hands; feeling he had asked too much.

There was no answer.

Just before dawn the boy, Bebert Peretti, came up to the ruins with bread and a bowl of cafe blanc made with real coffee and milk.

‘It is to be a treat for her, monsieur,’ he said gravely. ‘It is because grand-mere wishes to tell her the agony will soon be over. The soldiers, they have the guns and they ring both the village and the fortress.’

St-Cyr threw up his eyes to the heavens above. He could not help but cry out from the soul, God, why have you not allowed us to prevent it?

Only silence gave answer. Eventually he filled his lungs, catching the breath of sage, thyme and mimosa.

‘Bebert, today is to be your day and me, I know exactly how much you and your grandmother love the Mademoiselle Josianne-Michele. She is the sweetheart of your dreams, and by your silence, you are trying not only to protect the village but her also. This I understand and admire because I’ve been a boy myself. But now you must go down through the village that is your home. Walk right through it, eh? Speaking to no one. Tell the Gestapo Munk that the leader of the maquis is in the citadel among the ruins and agrees to negotiate only with the Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane. Please, you may give the Inspector this. That one, he will understand.’

St-Cyr placed the kaleidoscope in the boy’s hand and closed his fingers over it with a gentle clasp and the terse shake of comrades. ‘Now go, and may God go with you.’

‘And the other one, monsieur? The Inspector from the Gestapo?’

‘Ah, yes, Hermann. Hermann, he must not try to join us. Tell him that we part as friends, knowing each respects the other for what we are. Men first, and detectives second.’

‘But he must not come.’

‘Hey, listen, my friend. That one is stubborn beyond belief, but this time absolutely, he must bend to my wishes. I do not wish to see him crucified.’

The boy raised the hand of farewell and the detective from the Surete watched as he threaded his way through the ruins and went down to the village.

Then he left the cafe blanc and the bread on a slab of stone and beside them both, placed a single piece of Roman glass and the scent bottle the two girls had found so long ago.

It was enough. It would have to be enough.

10

They were gathered on the road just below the ramparts of their village, about 200 souls in all. And the Abbe Roussel, gaunt, an old rook in flight, hastened down the narrow passageways to be with them.

Most were on their knees; some stood like cattle, dumb before the hammer that would kill them. Three were dead. Their bodies lay in the streets above on trampled snow where the bullets had caught them or one of the dogs. A woman had lost her baby; blood and brains were on hands that shook so hard, she could barely clasp them in prayer.

It was the morning of 23 December 1942. The dogs were being put back on the leash for a final pass through the village. Anyone found hiding would be shot on sight.

Kohler, freed of the handcuffs that had held him all night, clasped and then favoured first one bony wrist and then the other. Ludo Borel and the weaver stood with him, the woman constantly searching the heights and desperate.

Carlo Buemondi, lost and ludicrous in his black uniform, had finally realised what it all must mean for him.

Apart also, and alone, Jean-Paul Delphane drew on a cigarette in the frosty air, hiding whatever thoughts he might have.

The sun was sharp and it made oranger still the flame-coloured roofs of the village.

‘Buemondi is about to die in the battle for that hilltop,’ said Kohler quietly. ‘Oh for sure he’ll die the hero’s death and valour will be nailed to his tombstone, but he’ll die all the same.’

‘The Gestapo Munk will take over the Villa of the Golden Oracle and either sell or live in it,’ said the weaver emptily.

‘All that Anne-Marie wanted so much to keep for herself will be lost.’

‘And Buemondi’s heirs won’t get a sou,’ breathed Kohler, watching her intently. ‘Heirs that might have had a rightful claim will not be able to raise their voices in objection because they, too, will be silenced, as will this hillside.’

‘Viviane, tell him!’ seethed the herbalist, his fists doubled in frustration.

‘I can’t, Ludo! Don’t you see, I can’t?’

Still she hadn’t turned to face them. ‘There’s only one of your daughters up on that hilltop, Mademoiselle Viviane,’ said Kohler firmly. ‘With Madame Buemondi dead, that daughter stood to have a life of financial freedom because, though bastard and lecher he is, Carlo Buemondi would have kept her.’

‘Josette was suicidal,’ said Borel, uneasy at the turn of things. ‘Mademoiselle Viviane took her many times to Paris, to Zurich and to Chamonix for treatment.’

‘Who paid for it?’

Ah merde, must this Gestapo betray such a harsh inquisitiveness? ‘Me, I never knew, monsieur, and she never said.’

‘Listen, my friend, don’t be an idiot and hold out on me now. Delphane paid up, eh? The village … Gott im Himmel, think of the village.’

Did this one hope to save it by knowing the truth? Would it even matter?

Borel tossed a curt nod. ‘That one then. The one from Bayonne. Sometimes he came to see Viviane at the cottage. The twins, they knew him as their uncle.’

‘Delphane took letters and money to Josette in Paris, Mademoiselle Viviane,’ said Kohler. ‘He broke the rules and got her the laissez-passers necessary for her to come south from time to time. But she didn’t come here to see Madame Buemondi. She came to see you because by then she had been told or had realized the truth of who her real father and mother were.’

The weaver bit her lower lip and clenched her fists to stop herself from crying. ‘Anne-Marie had disowned her years ago. Carlo … Carlo made use of her whenever … whenever she went to see him. He was raping her, Inspector. My daughter. A girl who was …’

‘Mentally ill,’ said Kohler sadly. ‘You were both on this hillside, Mademoiselle Viviane, when Madame Buemondi came out to see you on her birthday. You shouted the accusations at her – hell, she’d locked up the money you so desperately needed to get Jean-Paul off your back.’

The weaver clenched her fists all the harder. Blood trickled from the split she had reopened in her lip. Ludo Borel took a step towards her. Kohler grabbed him by the arm.

The woman choked back a sob and said, ‘Anne-Marie, she … she held out her hand as she had always done to me, Inspector. She … she said that the kaleidoscope was in the mont-de-piete in Bayonne, and that she would redeem it for me just as soon as she could gather enough money. That … that Jean-Paul, he was having the villa watched too closely, and she … she could not go there because he … he would kill h …’

‘Monsieur, please!’ pleaded Borel. ‘Madame Buemondi had hurt the Mademoiselle Viviane so many times in the past. When I met them on the hillside, I …’ He saw the Abbe Roussel make the sign of the cross but had no time for him. ‘I took the crossbow from the girl, Inspector, and put an end to what should have ended long ago.’

‘Ludo, how could you? Ah Jesus, Jesus …’ The woman fell to her knees and pounded the rocks with her fists. Kohler leapt to drag her up. She fought to destroy herself, to end the one thing her lover had made possible above all else.

Her knuckles were bleeding badly. ‘Idiot!’ shouted Kohler angrily. ‘Why did you have to do that?’

She spat in his face and shrieked at him, ‘Because I killed her! Because I was the one who knew about the escapers! It was me who took them to the villa in Le Cannet. Me, Inspector. I moved them from the cottage.’

Such an outburst did not go unnoticed. Buemondi wet his breeches; Delphane levelled his pistol at her but still had not pulled the trigger …

Kohler did the only thing possible. He flung the woman at the bastard’s feet and shouted, ‘Go on and kill her then! Be a coward to save your miserable ass.’

It was Munk who took the Mauser from Delphane and gave him back Louis’s revolver. ‘Now go up on the hill and sort it all out. Take Kohler with you. We will wait one hour and then the executions will begin at ten-minute intervals.’

Kohler thought of his two sons encircled with the whole of the Sixth Army by the Russians at Stalingrad. Savagery could only be met with savagery. What mercy could the boys possibly expect?

He thought of Gerda and the farm he’d hardly seen since the spring of 1939, of picking wild flowers by a reedy pond and bathing naked with the boys while she laughed yet worried they’d get pneumonia.

He thought of Louis up there among the ruins and of the dogs they’d be certain to unleash. ‘Give me something,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me to go in there barehanded.’

Have some compassion where none could be expected? Borel warned himself not to intervene, that by the very act of doing so, he would place himself among the first to be executed.

Even so, when the Gestapo Munk turned aside to speak to the SS major and his lieutenants, he nudged the Bavarian’s arm. ‘Take this,’ he whispered urgently. ‘It is of the opium poppy and the hot red peppers. I made it up for Mademoiselle Viviane’s escapers but she would not allow me the opportunity to give it to them. She was afraid, monsieur, that if it was found in their possession, I would suffer for something I had had nothing to do with.’

The glass-stoppered bottle was cold and Kohler warmed it with a hand as he slid it away in a pocket. ‘Thanks,’ he said as the truth of what the herbalist had just said hit him. ‘Have courage.’

‘Please, monsieur. If you value life, value silence. My eldest son, he is among them.’

‘The maquis?’

‘Monsieur, that word must never pass my lips. My son is a good boy. When he found the escapers lost and wandering about our hills with one of their number badly wounded, he did what had to be done.’

‘He brought them to the cottage under cover of darkness,’ sighed Kohler grimly. ‘Then he left them there for Jean-Paul Delphane, the one they’d said would take them on through to Spain and freedom.’

‘Marcus. His code name was Marcus. No one could have known the German security forces had begun to question the Inspector’s moves, monsieur. Nor could anyone have known for sure that he would then turn on them to save himself.’

‘Try to get them to keep the dogs here and I’ll see what I can do. Look after the weaver. She’s going to need all your efforts for the little time that’s left.’

St-Cyr bit off a breath. It was uncanny how well the girl knew the ruins. She did not hide so much as lead him into positions from which, unseen, she could observe him. And the sunlight from the east was always behind her, dazzling and painful, red-orange and full of fire.

A clump of snow fell suddenly from a rock. He wet his lips in doubt and fear. For some time now he’d felt there was a pattern to the places she led him. Time seemed suspended though time they did not have. Down a darkened ramp, blocked by rubble at its ends, in shadow still, there was an open doorway to one side, and it was colder there than when in the sun. ‘Mademoiselle …’ he began again, knowing she would answer only when it suited her, knowing, too, that Jean-Paul, he would understand this and try to use it.

Suffused with soft light from a portal high in its eastern wall, the stable was littered with goat droppings and he knew at once, the girl and Bebert Peretti had often met here to share their humble lives.

Fresh straw had been put down in one corner. There was a simple wooden bench for the milking, the blackened remains of a fire, a tin can for boiling water and a shared cup.

At first he didn’t notice the lifted stones in the floor right at the corner, nor the small heap of rubble that was to one side of them.

Throwing an anxious glance over a shoulder, St-Cyr crouched, then got down on his hands and knees as he saw the trowel she had used. Ah Nom de Dieu, among the shards of Roman glass there was a small, pale green beaker. A magnificent thing with Greek letters and designs around the rim. She had brushed it off.

‘“Drink and live for ever,”’ he said, swallowing tightly as he saw those two girls in happier times, heard their excited cries, their shouts and earnest whispers as they dug for treasures like this. ‘Fourth or fifth century AD,’ he said sadly. ‘A town, a fortress destroyed – when, when?’ he asked. ‘Now a village is to have its turn and these ruins, they are to receive another pounding. Mademoiselle Josianne-Michele,’ he called out. ‘You alone can save the village, and me, I think you are wise enough to have perceived this.’

‘“Drink and live for ever,”’ she said, but from where he could not discover. ‘I didn’t kill her. It was an accident.’

She was already moving away from him. ‘Your voice …’ he said, startled. ‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, listen to me!’

‘She said I was diseased, Inspector! That I had this terrible, terrible affliction and that I wasn’t ever going to get better!’

‘Mademoiselle … Jean-Paul Delphane, he is …’

No one would believe her! ‘It was an accident, Inspector! How can you think anything else?’

Merde, where was she? Up above him or to one side? ‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, what are you doing here? Only a moment ago I was talking to your sister.’

‘She’s a liar! Epilepsy is not contagious. It was an accident, Inspector. An accident!’

‘Which Monsieur Borel saw only too clearly,’ he said, sadly muttering it to himself as the past overwhelmed the present, suspending it in that ether called time. Two girls of twelve, the one with epilepsy and subject to terrible fits she could not control or understand; the other trying to cope with the sister she had once known. These ruins; those happy times before.

Abruptly he left the stable, carrying the beaker clenched in a fist. When he came to the portal at the end of a long and confining passage, she was not there to face him with the sun behind her. Puzzled, he looked down at the wide stone sill upon which Josianne-Michele must have sat, and saw the shard of glass and the perfume vial he had left elsewhere for her at dawn. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he hazarded, not turning from the mountains and the sun in the east lest she fire that thing at him. ‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, you and your sister had fought over something. Did she threaten to give you the incurable disease you said she had? Did she then make you so angry that, in a fit of rage, you pushed her?’

‘I … I grabbed her, Inspector. I did not mean her to fall. I was only going to tease her but … but she screamed and Ludo … Ludo saw it all from below. Mother … mother made him bury her and say nothing of it. She took away his water rights but told him he could have them back once she was satisfied he’d obeyed.’

St-Cyr raised his arms. She could not avoid seeing the beaker. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ, where was Jean-Paul? ‘You were sent to school; Josianne-Michele supposedly for treatment, and so it all began, the lie of your double existence.’

St-Cyr waited. The light was so unbelievably clear over the mountains, incredible beauty and … and this. ‘Only Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi was not your natural mother. That one resented the increasing burden of what was happening to you, Josette-Louise. Two sisters, an actress, a dancer and a mannequin in Paris; yes, yes, you tried, succeeding immensely well only as the sister you had loved and accidentally killed.’

He had believed her about the accident, but would it matter? ‘It was the Madame’s birthday and Viviane my real mother, was very upset with her.’

‘Anne-Marie knew the weaver was going to kill her,’ said St-Cyr. ‘That is why she had a bobbin wrapped with russet wool in her pocket. She wanted the truth known if what she feared came to pass.’

The beaker would break as he fell. It was so very beautiful and Josianne, she had kept it hidden from her all these years and only now had let her find it. ‘Anne-Marie did not want to help my real father, Inspector, my uncle, the Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane. She wanted the money for herself.’

‘And by then you had come to hate her.’

His back was straight. He had braced his booted feet so as to better receive the arrow’s shock. The beaker would fly to pieces. Those things, they were so delicate. Like paper sometimes, thin, so thin and flashing bluey-green and gold or yellow when the sunlight touched them. ‘Yes, yes, I hated her, Inspector. She was greedy and selfish and domineering, and she had betrayed my mother for the last time.’

Dear Jesus help him. ‘Both of you were on that hillside to meet her, Mademoiselle Josette-Louise. The weaver and yourself. Bebert saw it all happen, and now the village is being held hostage.’

‘The village, yes, and … and Carlo, the maker of masks and body casts.’

‘And your mother, the weaver whom I think you love more than anyone.’

When he turned, the girl stood cautiously up, but he could not tell which of them held the crossbow. Josianne-Michele or Josette-Louise? The one would not kill him, and the other would have to.

Kohler tried to ease his aching arms. The bastard was right behind him with that gun of Louis’s. They were making their way down a central avenue among the ruins. Columns stood on either side. There were stone basins that had once held olive oil perhaps. More than a fortress or citadel, the place must have had its market. But he had no time for idle speculation. They came out into a small amphitheatre and saw at once an empty bowl with dregs of cafe blanc now frozen, and the footprints of Louis and the girl …

The wind whispered among the ruins. Overhead the sky was very blue. Delphane cocked the Lebel. ‘What’d you do to the weaver, eh?’ shouted Kohler, angrily tossing the words over a shoulder. ‘Rape her? Is that how she got the twins? Did she scream and throw her head about? Did you have to hold her down or tie her wrists and ankles to the bedposts?’

The sun threw the long shadow of the Bavarian across the snow. ‘Viviane and Anne-Marie had decided they wanted a child neither could give the other. Anne-Marie chose me.’

‘An old friend of the family, eh?’ snorted Kohler. ‘Wasn’t her father the one who made a bundle before the Stavisky Affair erupted?’

A bundle … a bundle … The Bavarian’s words were echoing. Good! A small smile would not hurt when he turned, and then the bullet in the chest – yes, yes, that would be best. Kohler ‘killed’ by the partner and friend he had come to put a stop to, Jean-Louis St-Cyr the traitor. ‘She screamed so hard we had to jam a stick between her teeth. Indeed, for myself, I thought the whole thing a piece of foolishness.’

‘But you enjoyed it,’ sighed Kohler, easing his arms a little. ‘Your kind always would.’

‘Yes, yes, keep me talking, my fine detective from Wasserburg! That is precisely what I want.’

Ah merde, the bastard wanted Louis to come out here! ‘What’d Madame Buemondi do? Sit on her lover’s head while you went at the weaver, eh? Did you have to do it several times until the fix was in? Did she enjoy watching you torture that poor woman? Did she try to kiss her as it was happening?’

‘Antagonize me, my friend. Come, come, a little more of the acid, please. Yes, I went at her several times and yes, Anne-Marie probably watched and listened! Viviane cannot stand the touch of a man but to please her lover, she would endure even that.’

‘Even murder the financier?’ hazarded Kohler, dropping his voice.

Delphane raised the Lebel. He would aim it at the centre of the Bavarian’s back instead, and would let Louis see the coup de grace. ‘The financier Stavisky. First, my friend from the other side, you must understand that Anne-Marie’s father had written in his will that all his wealth was not to go to her, but to her children.’

‘And she had none,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Ah Nom de Dieu, so much for her wanting kids by Viviane! She married the first jackass that came along, and Buemondi couldn’t believe his luck but was never able to consummate the marriage and had to lie about it.’

Kohler had shifted his weight to the left foot – he would throw himself to the right but by then it would be too late. ‘Anne-Marie’s father and others could not allow the financier to talk. Too much was at stake.’

‘So the weaver let you into the villa and gave you a key to that room.’

It could do no harm to tell him. ‘Ah yes, of course. Viviane got me into the villa just ahead of Louis and the others, but forgot to give me the key to the room the financier had locked himself into.’

‘The room she kept her daughter locked in when not at the clinic,’ sighed Kohler. ‘The girl saw her mother leave the clinic again and followed her back to the villa. Josette knows you murdered Stavisky.’

‘With Louis’s gun, yes,’ said Delphane. There was no other sound but that of his voice. Now everything was so still and Kohler’s shadow no longer moved.

‘How’d you convince the weaver to let you into that villa, eh? Her father had lost a fortune. By rights, she should have wanted him alive.’

A dry chuckle was followed by a derisive snort. ‘Viviane believed me when I told her Stavisky was going to get off scot-free.’

Slowly Kohler turned to face him and lowered his hands. ‘No, my fine, you threatened to tell the world that Josette-Louise had killed her sister.’

Delphane’s dark, bushy eyebrows arched. ‘And now, my friend? What now, eh?’

The bastard was going to shoot him. ‘Munk, my friend. Munk is down there waiting for you to bring him the leader of the “maquis”.’

The one from Bayonne shrugged. ‘Oh for sure, for me it does not matter, monsieur. Viviane will be shot, so, too, the herbalist and the hearse-driver, the abbe and the boy. All others. The black market, eh? Escapers did pass through here. But these hill people, they are nothing in the struggle ahead, and we will win it. Someday the trash you Germans have brought to France will be gone for ever.’

Louis … where the hell was Louis? ‘Bravo! One dead girl of seventeen in the cellars of the Hotel Montfleury. Hey, my fine, did you enjoy stuffing that hose up inside her, eh? One dead dancer and the drowning in mud of Angelique Girard. The laugh is that Munk let you kill that kid in the cellars, and wanted only to see how far you’d go to protect yourself!’

It was all so still. Surely he would have heard Louis and Josette? Had she killed him? ‘And now a tunnel, a passageway, Herr Kohler, that leads to freedom but,’ Delphane lifted the gun slightly, ‘but only for myself.’

‘Idiot! What passageway? If there’d been one, the Romans or the Saracens or whatever would have used it.’

‘A fissure that leads to a cavern. Josette has told me of it.’

‘Then what about her, eh?’ shouted Kohler in panic, a last defiant act. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ, why hadn’t Louis poked his head up out of the ruins?

‘Josette-Louise will take care of herself by jumping to her death exactly from the place her sister fell. For me, I will use the money Louis took from the villa to make my way to Spain and then to Britain. I will vanish, my friend, into the hills, leaving only fear among the minds of the Waffen-SS and your Gestapo. Then I will return with the Forces of the Free French to wipe you people off the face of the earth!’

He really believed it too. Kohler wanted to ask him why he’d changed sides, but couldn’t take his eyes from the muzzle of the gun. He thought of home, of the boys in their winter’s hell, of Gerda’s warm embrace, her stern no-nonsense nature, and of Giselle, his little pigeon in Paris. Giselle would be waiting for him. Naked on her back, or on her hands and knees with that gorgeous rump of hers bare for all the world to see but only himself. And Oona? he asked. Gott im Himmel, the muzzle was black! It was like a hole or a well down which he was about to fall … Oona would have the flat ready for the holiday. Nothing expensive – Gott im Himmel, there wasn’t much available unless he could get back to Paris and the black market. Oona who washed his socks but refused to do Giselle’s laundry. Oona who had such fantastic blue eyes and long legs, and who would argue with herself like lessons in catechism, then roll over on to her back for a bit of gentle loving. Two women … Never had he had it so good and now this … this poisson of the bottom muds, this carpe from the aristocracy was going to put a bullet in him!

‘Don’t, Jean-Paul. It is myself you need dead, not Hermann. Hermann must be with you and alive so that you can both drag my body down the hill to Herr Munk. Otherwise, there is no leader of the maquis.’

‘Louis …? L … o … u … i … s!’ Kohler threw himself at Delphane. Pieces of glass began to fly everywhere. Giselle … Giselle … He saw her reflected in the mirrors, her bottom round and firm, her breasts uptilted for waiting hands that strained to hold them, the nipples taut and flushed with heat. Her supple back and slender waist, her hips, her seat … everywhere there were mirrors in the Room of Looking-Glasses at Madame Chabot’s little place, and everywhere he saw the many views of Giselle le Roy, age twenty-two but no virgin … wet, so wet between the legs, she was climbing on to him and he was lifting her up … up … her lips hot and feverish against his own … his own …

The mirrors flew apart in one final burst of shattering as he hit the ground. All over the ruins, the sound of the shot resounded. It was like cannon. It raked up history and brought the battle cries of old. Hauntingly it echoed among the hills and threw itself back and forth between the village and the fortress.

Then for a long time there was no sound.

The girl was softly crying. Sunlight poured down an ancient stairwell into a large room whose broken walls were stained with rust. She was sitting, slumped against the far wall in fullest sunlight, with the crossbow in her lap and he had not come by the stairs but through a doorway. St-Cyr noted the quiver of iron-tipped bolts in the open rucksack, the handles for turning the windlass that would draw the bowstring taut. He brushed the tears from his own eyes. He did not know where Jean-Paul was, knew only that Hermann … Hermann had been hit and now lay face down in the snow, blood seemingly everywhere.

The room was dark in shadow except for the pool of sunlight, and under the stairs it was darker still. She said so clearly, ‘Mother, I think I’m going to kill myself.’ Time suddenly meant nothing. It vanished, and in that instant he was carried right back to Chamonix. He smelled the wool of the weaver’s hangings and her cloaks, her shawls, her vibrant rugs, drew in the scent of her perfume – found it was now so strongly in his nostrils, he had to turn, had to look for her face, her eyes in the mirror. But she was not there, and with a start he realized Josette-Louise’s voice alone had transported him.

Yet the fear remained. That tenseness that did not creep up the back to stiffen the spine or prickle the hairs, but was at once everywhere.

He felt the muzzle of the gun – his own revolver – pressed against his temple and could not help but think things had repeated themselves.

And he realized then that it had been that sense of hopelessness in the girl’s voice that had most distracted him. That and the look in the weaver’s eyes. The look of a mother who must save her child, even if it meant banishing all other things and stooping to murder.

‘Well, Louis, it comes to pass that we find ourselves in a similar situation, and once again Josette, she has not failed me. You’re too sensitive to be a detective, my old one. You need to harden the heart.’

Jean-Paul was to his right – gripping him by the elbow but keeping a little distance.

‘You should not have killed Hermann, Jean-Paul. Given the right sort of conditions, my partner would have let you go free. Hermann, he … he was the realist, yes? A cop to his last breath but a saint from the barn of his boyhood. He dragged the truth out of you in that little theatre, and you gave it to him.’

‘Walk gently, my fine. Do not move more than the necessary muscle.’

The girl waited. Judas to him though she was, St-Cyr said, ‘Josette … Josette, I am sorry my partner and I could not find a way to help you.’

‘The one from Bayonne, he … he has promised to see that my mother goes free, monsieur. Me, I could not do otherwise.’

‘The steps, Louis. You first, then myself, then Josette. We will go up on the ramparts so that Herr Munk and the others can see us. That will stop the executions and allow us a moment.’

The steps were worn, the stone bleached a yellowish-white but darker where the snow had reached and had begun to melt.

‘What made you change sides, Jean-Paul? You were always among the Far Right, loyal to the descendants of the throne and among the Cagoule. You welcomed the Nazis but now have chosen to switch sides. Please, at least allow me the generosity of knowing. By herself, Viviane Darnot would have kept out of it – ah yes, don’t deny you forced this girl’s mother into taking a terrible, terrible risk. A gamble, eh? The hiding of escapers first in her house and then in the villa of her former lover.’

Louis was only trying to excite Josette-Louise and turn the girl against him.

‘Well?’ shouted the Surete as they came up on to a broken rampart some ten metres above the main level of the ruins. Now there was sunshine everywhere and only the expansive blue of the sky above.

Two black eagles soared as they circled on an eddy and it was as if only the wind made a sound as it slipped over their wings so high above them.

‘It would take too long to tell you, Louis, so let us forget it, eh?’

They walked gingerly in single file along the rampart, picking their way past the gaps and over scattered blocks from once higher walls. When they came out into full view of those gathered below the village, they went up and up until they stood more than sixty metres above the base of the cliff.

Munk was now watching them through the binoculars of the SS major. Already two of the villagers had been executed. Hands tied behind their backs, the herbalist had stood against the wall and had fallen there; Dedou Fratani must have panicked at the last and run toward the guns.

The weaver, her hands also tied behind her back, stood where he had fallen and she, too, looked up towards them as did all the others.

‘The Boches will leave someday, Louis, but for now will only be satisfied with death. Yours, hers, Kohler’s …’

‘But not yours, eh? Is that how it is to be, Jean-Paul? Josette to pitch herself over the edge where her sister fell, while you, her father, go free?’

‘There is a passage, monsieur,’ said the girl hesitantly. ‘I am to show my father how to leave this place without their ever knowing it.’

‘But he has told my partner you are to take care of yourself?’

‘Yes. It … it is what I should have done in Chamonix.’

One of the SS, straining at the leashes, brought the dogs up to the Gestapo Munk and the major. The dogs! Ah Nom de Dieu, they were going to unleash them …

‘Herr Munk is finished with you, Jean-Paul. Dedou Fratani or Ludo Borel, or the weaver perhaps, has told him the truth of the maquis.’

For the first time in his life perhaps, Delphane did not know what to do. He shouted at Josette, ‘How far to the passage?’

She said, quite simply, ‘It is safer here, my father. Only then can you offer yourself and let mother go free.’

‘Idiot! They will kill her anyway. She’s English! You … you are a murderess, Josette. Do you not know what that means? The guillotine … yes, yes, screw up that face of yours. Cry, Josette! Don’t threaten me with that bow.’ He dropped his voice. ‘You cannot kill me. You who have killed your sister, have not the heart to do so again. But,’ he paused, ‘they will use the Nazi refinement of the guillotine, cherie. The axe!’

‘Batard!’ shrieked St-Cyr, slipping as he lunged at Delphane. A shot rang out, then another and another. Hit in the lower leg, Delphane spun away. Pushing the girl aside, he stumbled and fell – began to drag himself to cover.

‘Louis …! L … o … u … i … s! Get down, you idiot!’

It was Hermann. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ! Blood … there was blood on his forehead and all over his face and hands …

St-Cyr raced along the wall, yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘The dogs, Hermann! The dogs!’ He grabbed Delphane by the ankle. The Lebel swung round. A shot rang out from below. Ricocheting off a boulder, it flew up. Another followed. The girl shrieked and ran past them, lashing out at the gun in her father’s hand … still too tight a grip … too tight … Ah made, the scuffle then on the ramparts. ‘My bracelets, you bastard! Feel the clench of steel on your wrists!’

They rolled about. The revolver came at him, a savage blow …‘Ahh!… Mother of God …’ Reeling, St-Cyr tumbled away, clawing desperately at the stones … too far … too far … He saw the drop below and felt himself falling … falling …

‘Louis … Louis! It’s me.’

Kohler dragged him up and, racing with him, got him to cover. ‘Telescopic sights, idiot!’ he swore, trying to catch his breath. ‘Gott im Himmel, Delphane’s beat it with the girl. Now we’re going to have to ferret him out!’

‘My chest … Ah Jesus, Hermann … the breath. I must stop the smoking.’ He coughed, wheezed terribly and dragged in air as Kohler pounded him on the back. ‘The dogs, my old one. The dogs!’

‘Verdammt! I knew it! You okay, eh?’

St-Cyr raised a tired hand. ‘Yes, yes. I think I will live a little longer.’

‘Then maybe we’d better get away from the dogs.’

‘A passage,’ gasped St-Cyr, so fraught with worry he was waving a useless hand. ‘Josette, she has said …’

‘Hey, my old one, there is no passage. That kid is only going to lead him into a trap.’

St-Cyr blinked, gaping as he took in a breath and tried to still his aching chest. ‘Pardon?’ he bleated. ‘No passage …?’

‘Not unless I’ve missed my guess. Come on. Let’s … Ah no!’

The dogs had found the ruins. They made no sound as they raced along the ancient byways, going here, there, revealed only by their flying fur.

The girl was motioning anxiously. ‘Up here,’ she cried. ‘Quickly! Quickly, messieurs. There are few places they cannot reach.’

They ran. They made it across the little amphitheatre and in among the columns. Blood marked their trail.

Even as they scrambled up to her, Josette-Louise sighted along the crossbow. The lead dog was huge. It would throw itself at the wall. It would tear at their trouser legs …

Kohler couldn’t manage it. Loss of blood perhaps, or pain in the head from the bullet-graze Delphane had given him. ‘Louis,’ he managed. ‘Gott im Himmel, Frog, pull me up!’

The girl fired. The Alsatian caught the bolt squarely in the chest and was carried back by it. ‘Verdammt …’ muttered Kohler as the thing hit the ground below them. ‘Verdammt, Louis, I’m done for.’

The kid was working the windlass like a trooper. Round and round the handles went, her foot jammed solidly into the stirrup. Then the arrow in the slot. She gave a satisfied gasp and said, ‘Now this way,’ even as the other two dogs threw themselves at the wall in a rage.

Kohler hesitated. Louis and the girl pelted along the wall, slipping, stumbling once while he held the dogs here. ‘Louis …’ he managed. ‘Louis … what was it the herbalist gave me?’

The greyish-red powder was very fine. Kohler clenched a fistful. He got down on his knees and deliberately let the dogs leap at him.

Louis was yelling for him to join them. ‘Their SS handlers, Hermann. They will be coming!’

The dust stung the dogs’ eyes. It burned their nostrils and reached far down into their throats. It only drove them to a madness that alarmed. Flinging the last of the bottle at them, Kohler ran but by then Louis and the girl had vanished. Ah merde! Where had they gone?

There was a cistern deep in the rocks below the ruins. As he peered doubtfully past the girl, St-Cyr saw that the steep and narrow staircase disappeared uncomfortably into inky darkness below. ‘Ah Nom de Dieu,’ he whispered, giving a troubled sigh. ‘We must wait for Hermann, mademoiselle. This I cannot undertake myself.’

‘But we must, monsieur. The dogs, isn’t that correct? There is a narrow bridge to cross. Once there, I will come back for your friend.’

‘Leave an arrow for him. Place it up high, in sunlight if possible. That will have to do.’ Merde, this place! Ruin piled upon ruin; passageways and passageways.

As she stepped past him, they brushed against each other precariously. His back was to the wall; she had nothing but the abyss to guide her steps.

He watched as she found a slender patch of sunlight high on the wall and placed the arrow there; he hoped Hermann would not be too busy with the dogs to notice it.

‘The dogs …?’ he asked, and wondered what had happened to them.

‘Hurry,’ she said, her voice a hush, and stepping quickly past him, went down the steps. ‘Come,’ she urged. ‘Don’t hesitate. It’s quite safe but stay close to me.’

‘Josette-Louise … your voice, mademoiselle? You have used the voice of your sister.’

‘Have I?’ she asked, flashing a smile. ‘She is with me, Inspector. Can’t you feel her presence? It was she who discovered this place and who found the beaker you have in your pocket.’

‘Ah yes. “Drink and live for ever”.’

‘Let us drink then, when we reach the water. Let us drink to her.’

Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ, Hermann, he shouted to himself. With what are we dealing? Two people; two voices. The one from the world beyond. Both calling to each other …

Down in the darkness there was nothing but the sound of trickling water as it spilled over the cistern’s lip. And he had to wonder how it was that the village had never discovered this ready source, just as he had to wonder where Jean-Paul was hiding. ‘Mademoiselle …?’ he began hesitantly, only to find that she had left him.

Immediately a cold sweat broke out all over him. ‘Chamonix again!’ he cursed. Jean-Paul, he was so near, so near …

Feeling with a toe, he hazarded a step – felt all around him with a hand. A bridge, she’d said. A narrow walkway.

Listen as he did, the sound of the water was not near or far, or from the left or right, but coming from everywhere. It echoed too. And the musty damp of the ages was there as well. Ah yes. And the stale pipesmoke and tobacco of the present. That, too, of small cigars. Dutch cigarillos.

Getting down on his hands and knees, St-Cyr found the narrow slab of stone that formed the bridge, and crossed over what must be a chasm filled with water. Now the ground was flagged and he could feel the edges of each stone. He went on for perhaps twenty metres, perhaps a little more. A narrow fissure forced him to stand and squeeze sideways and only then did he realize a wall or several layers of rock must have slid sideways to all but close the passage. An earthquake perhaps. In Aegean times, or Roman.

Here time really had no meaning.

The fissure ended. St-Cyr sucked in a breath. Josette-Louise was standing on some rocks in the centre of a circular pool whose rim was only slightly raised. Sunlight fell on her from a hole high in the roof above, but all around her there was darkness.

Jean-Paul would be waiting for him. Then why … why did he feel he was so near?

Kohler dragged in a ragged breath and brought the stone down with all the force he could muster. The dog’s skull cracked. Blood shot from its eyes. ‘There …’ he gasped, too tired to fling the boulder from him in disgust. ‘I like dogs, damn it! Good dogs. I always had one when a boy.’

Kneeling still, he let his hands fall between his legs as he bowed his head in utter exhaustion. First one and then the other of the dogs had come at him. Unsteady … yes, yes, perhaps, but how was he to have known for sure?

Dragging himself up, he leaned against the wall and tried to still the aching in his head. Jesus, it was as if all the fireworks in China were going off inside him.

Blood still seeped from the damage Delphane had inflicted. Must he bear the scars of every investigation Louis and he got into? He wanted to rage aloud at the injustice of it all. He wanted to curse Himmler and the Fuhrer but knew it would serve no purpose. ‘Louis …’ he muttered. ‘Must get to Louis before that bastard does him in.’

‘Monsieur …?’

It was the weaver but she had not come alone. Two burly SS with Schmeissers stood on either side of her, and neither of them looked happy about the dogs.

Kohler raised a tired hand to signal that he’d seen them, and when she walked on ahead, he thought that maybe they might shoot her. The walls confined. There was a cleared space where blocks of stone had perhaps been quarried by one of the villagers to finish off a house or build one. She crossed this and then, suddenly, came up three simple steps and was standing before him.

He asked what had happened and she said, ‘I know the ruins, though not as well as my daughter. Jean-Paul might just be able to escape. Herr Munk has offered to let Josette go free if I will see that her father is stopped.’

‘Have they killed the boy?’

She shook her head and saw him nod – understood at once that this one had not wanted Bebert or any of them to have been taken. ‘Carlo’s dead. He tried to snatch a gun from one of the SS. Herr Munk could not have let him live.’

Kohler nodded grimly. ‘Questions … there’d have always been questions about the villa and who really owned it.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s so, isn’t it?’

‘Come on. We’d better find them. Those two can follow if they want.’

He took her by the wrist and she let him do so, was glad of the gesture, but when they saw the arrow, she had to follow him down the steps. They were so steep. Darker, darker, and darker …

‘Ssh!’ he said. ‘Listen!’

The girls were calling to each other. ‘Josianne, why didn’t you tell me you’d found this place?’

‘Josette, I wanted to but then I could not control myself. I went all to pieces. A terrible fit. The worst one ever.’

‘That’s why you took your things up to the ruins and sat at the Window of the Gods. I just knew there had to be a reason for your sitting there like that so quietly.’

And from elsewhere, echoing also, ‘I would never have given you epilepsy, Josette. I would have shared Alain with you, just as we shared everything.’

‘Yes, yes, my sister, this I know. He loved us both. Hey, I found the beaker, Josianne! The Inspector has it in his pocket.’

‘It’s beautiful, Josette. It was to be a present for you but I could not dig it up again … again … She … she …’

Kohler felt for the weaver’s arm and gently tugged on it, signalling to follow him. The voices came from everywhere. Now, too, the sound of trickling water.

‘I’ve never been here,’ she whispered anxiously.

They crossed the chasm and came to the fissure. ‘Sideways,’ he said. ‘You after me. Don’t stay behind … behind … behind …’ Ah merde, merde, even whispers echoed! A loose rock fell. The sound of it was canyon-loud, and after it, there was the sound of someone running and then only that of the water.

‘Louis …?’ he whispered. ‘Louis …? Louis …?’ came the echoes.

‘Ah Nom de Dieu, Hermann. He has the revolver again pressed to my head!’

‘Don’t move, Kohler!’ shouted Delphane. ‘Josette, stop this at once. Josianne is dead.’

‘But I did not push her, did I?’

Ah no, breathed Kohler inwardly. Son of a bitch, the kid had cracked the ice of time. The weaver held her breath and he could feel her heart pounding against him.

‘Of course you pushed her,’ snorted Delphane and this echoed too.

‘Then why did you come up to the ruins, Uncle Jean? Josianne had had the bad convulsions. Terrible ones, don’t you remember? Anne-Marie said my sister, she would never get better. You … you came with her.’

Kohler tapped the weaver’s arm twice. Stay put – she knew that’s what he meant. Then he was gone from her and Josette was saying, ‘Anne-Marie walked on ahead of you, Uncle Jean – father, should I call you father? You knew what she was going to do and you let her!’

St-Cyr heard the weaver’s cry. It began deep within her and was ripped right from her. ‘No, Josette! No!’

‘Mother, it’s true! She pushed Josianne-Michele from the Window of the Gods and then she hit me and hit me and hit me until …’

Kohler wrapped a hand about the Lebel and bent it away from Louis, turning it towards Delphane until pressed against that one’s temple. ‘Go on, my fine. Pull the trigger. Don’t make me do it for you.’

‘Hermann …’

‘Louis, shut up!’

The bang was very loud. Flecks of blood and brains flew about and Kohler felt them hit his face and hands. The one from Bayonne collapsed. The gun fell and clattered on the stones.

‘There are two SS back there somewhere, Louis. It’s a pity this one couldn’t have told them what he knew.’

St-Cyr let a breath escape. ‘Merci, my old one. Merci. His contacts in the Resistance are safe.’

‘Don’t let it go to your head, Louis. I’m still on the other side, remember? This one’s yours. Now you owe me one.’

‘Of course.’

The war – the ‘Occupation’ – could only get worse and both of them knew it. The next time there could well be maquis in the hills, or Resistants hiding out in a place like this. Ah yes. Hermann the prisoner and his partner the what? asked St-Cyr. The moment of final decision.

‘Delphane killed the Buemondi woman, Louis. Don’t argue about it. Sure the boy will say it wasn’t so, but you know how these villagers are. One murder deserves another. Besides, it was a matter of the water rights and anyway, it must have been the dead girl who fired the arrow.’

‘Ah yes, Hermann. Without water there can be no life. “Drink and live for ever”, it’s on the beaker.’

‘Beaker …? What’s this about a beaker? Louis, the weaver and her daughter will have to come to Paris with us. Boemelburg won’t have it any other way. I’m going to insist on it.’

Good for Hermann. Having the last word again, as nearly always. Grumpy too, but, then, he had his reasons. But what of a detective’s duty? Must the girl be brought to justice for a crime she did commit? Everything in him said that it was not his job to ask such questions, but only to bring the assailant in. Yet the law of the hills tugged at him fiercely. The villagers would need to see their own brand of justice done.

‘With luck, the kid won’t lose the villa, Louis. Maybe she’ll have to lease it to Munk and he’ll have to be satisfied.’

For the Duration? Ah, one would wish to say such a thing but not to Hermann, and especially not at a time like this.

‘The parish records will have been burned, Louis. Madame Buemondi and that husband of hers adopted the girls, and under the law, Josette-Louise is legal heir no matter what anyone says. So, come on, my old one, I need a drink.’

Still there could be no answer from the French side. Matters were often best left that way but … Ah, what the hell. ‘Me, also, Hermann. Two I think, and then a meal.’

‘You’re buying. You’ve got all the cash and Munk’s not getting one franc of it!’

‘Then you’d better ask him for the motorcycle. It’s stolen.’

‘That thing? Hey, I requisitioned it on sight, but we’re going to need a better set of wheels and I know just the place. A Bentley or a Rolls, and I’m driving.’

Boemelburg, who was looking out of the windows of his office, was quite taken with the Rolls which was parked in the courtyard behind Gestapo HQ Paris, on the rue des Saussaies. ‘For Christmas, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ said Kohler quietly from his chair before the Chief’s desk. ‘Louis and I thought you might like to have it.’

The Old Man snorted, ‘Ja, ja, Hermann, and what is it I am to give you in return? Ausweises for those two women to return south, eh? Come, come, don’t be a dummkopf. You know I can’t do that.’

‘Neither of them is a threat to the Reich. The one only wants to weave …’

‘Weave?’ thundered Boemelburg. ‘If I understand correctly, the woman wove quite a tale and involved the whole village as accomplices.’

‘But only to protect her daughter. Delphane was using them, Sturmbannfuhrer.’

The Chief tossed his shaven head. ‘And Bleicher, the famous Colonel Henri of the Abwehr? What have you offered that one for Christmas?’

‘Nothing, Sturmbannfuhrer. The Buemondi woman’s list of telephone numbers was accidentally destroyed along with their dossiers and our own in Gestapo Leader Munk’s stove.’

Well up in his sixties and bigger than Kohler, France’s top cop and Head of SIPO-SD Section IV, the Gestapo in France, knew enough not to ask how this could possibly have happened. ‘And the village?’ he hazarded.

‘Left to bury their dead, my Sturmbannfuhrer.’

‘Don’t “my” me, Kohler. Gott im Himmel, what am I to do with the two of you?’

They waited, keeping silent. Not turning from the windows, the Chief said at last, ‘The girl, is she really pregnant by the herbalist’s son or was it this … this professor, this sham artist who defiled her?’

‘Not pregnant, Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg. A mistake or a fantasy.’

‘Good! Why did Delphane use the antique arrow to kill the woman? Why not a newer one?’

‘Because it was more fitting but also, Sturmbannfuhrer, because the newer ones were not kept in the grand salon and available to him.’

‘Don’t weave too hard, Hermann. Your fingertips might suffer. Surely the Inspector would have used a gun to kill her?’

Kohler steeled himself for it but the Chief had yet to turn from the windows. Still admiring his new toy. ‘Delphane wanted to pin the murder on the weaver, Sturmbannfuhrer. Guns were not allowed.’

‘Guns,’ grunted Boemelburg. ‘Guns like the one that killed the financier, eh, Louis, and then did in the perpetrator of that little falsehood.’

‘My gun,’ muttered the Frog, knowing he shouldn’t speak out of turn. ‘No one in authority would believe it was my revolver that had killed Stavisky, Walter, because they did not want to believe it and the whole thing was to be hushed up. Serial numbers and all.’

‘Yet in every police photograph, Louis, it was your gun we saw.’

St-Cyr nodded. ‘Madame Buemondi’s father got Jean-Paul to deal with the financier.’

‘Was he paid for the job, do you think?’ asked the Chief.

‘Perhaps, but then … ah then, money need not always change hands.’

‘One of the connected, eh, Louis? The Establishment. Friends in high places who could help him out in the future when a favour was needed. What made him turn against us? Come, come, from you I demand an answer.’

It was clear that Walter was worried but equally clear that he knew more than he was letting on. St-Cyr took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. A Gestapo, Walter was, and a Nazi too; but beneath it all and behind it, a cop and a damned good detective. One could not say otherwise when one had known and worked with him before the war.

Lighting up the furnace, he took several puffs, then waved out the match. ‘Perhaps, Walter, for completeness you might tell us why Abwehr Central and the famous Colonel Henri started to watch the Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane but did not jump him?’

‘Louis …?’ began Hermann, startled by the all-too-obvious challenge.

It was a tired Boemelburg who said, ‘Because I always suspected what Jean-Paul had done in Chamonix, Louis, and wanted us to take a closer look at him.’

‘So you tipped off the Abwehr, for whom he was then working, and they went after him.’ Paris these days … it never ceased to amaze!

‘And Bleicher suspected the truth but wanted the Gestapo to take care of things – Delphane was too well connected for their shining morals.’

‘But … but why did he go over to the other side?’ blurted Kohler. ‘The Resistance?’

Boemelburg turned back to the windows and the rain. Was it pissing like this in Berlin, he wondered, or snowing? The car was superb and he’d enjoy being driven around in it from time to time but for how long?

‘Even the Far Right are beginning to have second thoughts about us, Louis, but who can answer for a man like Jean-Paul? Perhaps he felt the end was near and thought that by switching sides he’d save himself.’

‘The war in Russia,’ muttered Hermann, ‘and the one in North Africa.’

‘Who knows?’ said Boemelburg. ‘The Right have always done what they felt was right for themselves.’

‘Walter, why not admit that you lost heavily in the Stavisky Affair and have been feeling badly ever since? Me, I am certain you must have …’

‘Some shares. A little venture – ah, it was nothing, Louis. Nothing. Merely the heating-and-ventilating firm I used to work for here in the old days. One can’t always be a cop. Someday one has to retire. Stavisky refloated the firm and I thought … Well, Paris, I’d had such good times here. I …’

St-Cyr tugged at Kohler’s sleeve. ‘Enjoy the Rolls, Walter, and the holiday, eh? Hermann and me, we must take a few days off to rest up.’

‘Then read that telex on my desk and enjoy your own holiday.’

Ah no … The thing was from Mueller, Gestapo HQ Berlin. It was all about someone code-named Salamander.

‘Find him, Louis, before he kills too many more. Hermann, you go with him. Lyon first, I think. Arson, Louis. A cinema-house and all the popcorn the two of you can eat!’

‘And the weaver and her daughter?’ bleated the Surete’s little Frog.

‘Besancon and the internment camp there for British citizens, Louis. It’s the best I can offer.’

‘But what about Christmas? What about …?’ Kohler saw the telex beneath the other one. He could not bring himself to pull it out. Apprehension rushed in on him. The boys? he asked. Gerda … his little Gerda?

‘She’s asking you for a divorce, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr, wishing he could cushion the blow to the ego. ‘Apparently your wife has found someone else.’

‘A Frenchman, Hermann,’ snorted the Chief. ‘A labourer on her father’s farm.’

‘Then I’m applying for compassionate leave, Sturmbannfuhrer. Please, you can’t cut me off like this. I’ll …’

Have nothing to go home to. All three of them knew this was what Hermann had been about to say.

‘Lyon,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘We’ll pass through Vouvray, Walter. A short digression to restore the soul.’

‘Then see that you don’t take too long about it. This one’s slippery. Get to the cinema-house before the ashes are cold. Find the hand that did it.’

Content

J. Robert Janes
Kaleidoscope

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