Cold Winter in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

  * * *

  Clothilde and Michel were playing piquet. The boy rose at once to shake his hand. He was always polite but there was some reservation in his manner when he addressed Lannes. Probably Sigi had told him to be wary. Or perhaps he had spoken of Lannes with contempt. Now Michel pushed back his hair and said, ‘I hope you don’t object, sir. Madame Lannes has invited me to stay for supper and spend the night here.’

  ‘Why should I object? As Clothilde’s friend you are always welcome.’

  Had he put that badly? Implying that in other circumstances he would have been quick to show him the door?

  ‘I take it you’ve told your grandfather,’ he said. ‘He worries about you young people, as we all do, and must, in these times.’

  Marguerite didn’t look up from the sauce she was making when he came into the kitchen.

  ‘Are you happy about this?’ he said.

  ‘It’s good for Clothilde to have company of her own age, and he’s a charming boy. I like having him here in any case. With the boys away and their room empty. It feels like a reproach whenever … ’

  Her voice tailed off. They had got into the way of not completing sentences when they spoke to each other. The unspoken words were an accusation: he should have prevented Alain from running into danger. He remembered the look on her face, both stricken and angry, when he had said he was proud of Alain’s decision to set off to join de Gaulle, and that she should be proud too. They had scarcely spoken since about where he might be, what he might be doing. She protected herself with silence. Well, that was her way. His too, he had to admit. They both feared that he might be dead and that they would never learn how, where or when. That was part of the horror with which they lived. He gave himself a glass of marc and said, ‘I’ve a case that troubles me.’

  She didn’t lift her gaze from the pan.

  ‘What would you do,’ he said, ‘if Clothilde told you that one of her teachers had made advances to her?’

  ‘But they’re nuns,’ she said.

  ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering how you would react, as a mother.’

  ‘As any mother would,’ she said. ‘But you’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  He wondered if Anne-Marie had spoken to Michel about Madame Peniel. Wouldn’t Clothilde have confided in Alain if one of her teachers had behaved in that way? And wouldn’t she have said things to her twin brother that she would have been too embarrassed to say to her parents?

  Conversation was sparse during the meal – macaroni with tomato sauce, and with Marguerite apologising for its inadequacy. What was there to talk about? So many subjects were barred. Clothilde was nervous, tried to keep the ball rolling, without success. Marguerite had nothing to say, having on previous occasions asked Michel about his family. Lannes was sure that the young people were eager to be left alone, and looked at him hopefully when Marguerite retired to bed immediately after the meal of which she had eaten very little. But instead of following her he asked Clothilde if she would make coffee. Did she look anxious, as if afraid that he was going to speak sharply or firmly to the boy? And was there a flicker of apprehension in his face too? And indeed he might have said something like ‘Clothilde’s very fond of you – you will take care not to hurt her, won’t you.’ The words were there in his mind, all the more so, because once again the thought came to him that Michel in his blond beauty really did look like an Aryan poster boy.

  Instead he said, ‘I don’t suppose you ever met your sister’s piano teacher?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Of course not, why would you have, but you’ll have heard of her murder and you probably know I’m investigating it. I’ve spoken to your grandfather and to Anne-Marie. I wonder if she said anything more to you than to either of us. It would be natural if she had.’

  He lit a cigarette and pushed the packet towards the boy who took one and held his face towards Lannes for a light.

  ‘From what Anne-Marie said, she’s no loss.’

  ‘That may be true. Nevertheless, murder is murder.’

  ‘There are people being killed everywhere. Why bother about a woman like that, of no importance?’

  ‘It’s what I do,’ Lannes said, ‘what I’m required to do.’

  He drew on his cigarette.

  ‘Did you know she was a Jewess?’

  He despised himself for putting the question, despised himself not only because of the implications of asking such a question at any time, in any circumstances, but, more particularly, because it was an appeal to the ugly prejudices which might not be natural to the boy, but which he had almost certainly imbibed from Sigi and his political associates.

  Michel leant back in his chair, his chin tilted and the hand holding the cigarette raised high.

  ‘She was filthy,’ he said. ‘No, I didn’t know she was Jewish, Anne-Marie never said, not that I was interested before, not interested at all, not till she told me what the woman had been up to and what she said, which was disgusting. So I’m not surprised, not surprised at all. So you see why I think she is no loss.’

  Clothilde came back with the coffee. She handed them each a cup. For a moment her fingers rested on Michel’s.

  ‘You both look very serious,’ she said. ‘You haven’t been quarrelling, have you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Lannes said. ‘We’ve been talking about murder, that’s why we look serious.’

  ‘Oh,’ Clothilde said. She smiled at Michel. ‘You’re privileged, very lucky. He never speaks of his work to me. I suppose it’s about Anne-Marie’s piano teacher. She sounds like a right cow. Are you going to find who killed her, Papa?’

  Lannes said, ‘I rather think Michel thinks I shouldn’t bother.’

  ‘Oh, but you must. People shouldn’t be murdered, not even a woman like that.’

  ‘Yes, I rather agree with you.’

  He drank his coffee, stubbed out his cigarette.

  ‘I’m for bed. Don’t sit up too late.’

  Marguerite was already asleep. That was how it was nowadays. She slept earlier and longer than she used to. It was a sort of denial. He was happy to think that he could trust Clothilde to go to her own bed and send Michel to Alain’s. He wondered who had told her Madame Peniel was ‘a woman like that’, Anne-Marie or Michel himself? How little he really knew of the young, even the daughter he doted on. What would they be talking about now? It worried him that Clothilde could scarcely take her eyes off the boy.

  VII

  ‘I think you’ve been looking for me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Madame Peniel.’

  He was unwilling to come to Lannes’ office, would explain why when they met. Meanwhile …

  ‘All right then,’ Lannes said, and suggested they meet that afternoon in the Café des Arts, Cours de la Marne.

  It was all but empty at that hour, and Lannes recognised his telephone caller from the description the concierge had given of the man she called Madame Peniel’s uncle. He was sitting in the far corner of the room with an empty glass before him. His lank grey hair was still wet from the rain, his bony face was dark; he wore a soiled raincoat and fingerless gloves. He didn’t look up as Lannes approached. Lannes stood there a moment, eyeing him.

  ‘We’ve met before,’ he said. ‘Some years ago, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Then you will understand why I chose to ask you to come here. I have no happy memories of police headquarters. Or of your cells. Not that the case ever came to court. As it shouldn’t have, since I was innocent.’

  ‘You were?’

  He sat down. The waiter approached. He asked for an Armagnac.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘A small Vichy water, please.’

  What had it been? Blackmail? Procuring? Abortion? Something sordid anyway. He himself had been only a junior inspector then, like René now. It surprised him that he remembered the man, who now for the first time raised his head, and he realised why he was memor
able: one of his eyes was brown and the other blue. Yet he had recognised him as an old customer before he had seen this. Strange.

  ‘So you were a friend of Madame Peniel,’ he said. ‘The concierge suggested you were her uncle.’

  ‘No, not that. She was my daughter actually, or so I was told, for I don’t mind confessing that I was never married to her mother, so she may not have been, but I came to regard her as such. Are you surprised that I called you?’

  ‘It’s what happens when people have something to tell me … ’

  The man flexed his fingers, which he couldn’t quite straighten.

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I hesitated, you know. Why shouldn’t I leave you to find me – which you might not have done, since I’m not in any way remarkable. But then Gabrielle was the only woman I’ve ever cared for. I don’t usually like women – you may remember that – but I was fond of her, in my way, and somebody has murdered her. So I would like her killer to be found. Would have liked, rather. Only he can’t be, mustn’t be. That’s what I’ve got to tell you. That’s what I’ve been instructed to tell you.’

  He sipped his Vichy water without visibly lowering the level in the glass, and licked his thin lips.

  ‘She was doing good work, you see, important work, for us.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Instructed? Who has instructed you? And who is your “us”?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. I’ve been deputed to give you a warning. Lay off.’

  ‘You’re either an idiot or think I’m one,’ Lannes said. ‘You’ve no happy memories of our cells? Well, you’re going to find yourself in one again very soon. Let me make things clear. I have evidence that Madame Peniel – what did you call her? Gabrielle, wasn’t it? – was engaged in procuring underage girls for men who like that sort of thing, and now that I’ve met you and recognised you I’m inclined to think I’ve reason to believe you were her accomplice. Enough reason to book you. So that’s just what I’m going to do unless you explain yourself.’

  He lit a cigarette and looked the old man in the face. It was quite without expression. Then he licked his lips again.

  ‘You’re being foolish, superintendent,’ he said. ‘Do you think I would have called you if I didn’t have protection? All I will say is this: I’m a patriot, whatever you think you know of me in the years before the war. My poor Gabrielle was a patriot too. Yes, I don’t deny that she was engaged in the activities you speak of. But who do you think were her clients? Meanwhile I’ve a letter for you.’

  He pulled it out of his inside breast pocket, and got stiffly to his feet. He lifted his glass of Vichy water, and spat into it.

  ‘I’ve another reason to dislike you, superintendent, but I’ll say nothing of that. Some day I’ll want something from you and you’ll give it me, I assure you. Meanwhile, as I say, I’m protected. I’m not going to see the inside of your cell again. You may be certain of that, believe me. Now read your letter and do as you’re told.’

  Lannes watched him moving with small steps out of the café. He moved only from the knees, as if his thighs were tied together.

  It was a cheap envelope, greyish paper, such as some cafés supply to their clients. He was reluctant to open it. To have that wretch proclaiming himself a patriot and speaking of the protection he enjoyed – it was disgusting – disgusting and, he had to admit, disquieting. He ran his fingers over the envelope. There was something stiff there, as it might be a photograph. And which sort of patriotism had the old man boasted of? Edmond de Grimaud was a patriot – so was Sigi – to their minds, anyway. And the Resistance group who had set off an explosion which derailed a train near Bergerac, killing two elderly women, because they had made a mistake and their device was intended for a goods train, not a passenger one – they were patriots too, of course they were. Patriotism was a licence to lie, a licence to kill, a licence for murder.

  He slipped his thumb under the flap of the envelope. Two snapshots and a sheet of the same cheap grey paper. The first photograph was of himself, sitting at a café table with Léon and smiling at the boy; the second showed Léon with Schussmann, the German liaison officer. The typewritten message was brief: I need to see you. You need to see me. So stay where you are. Or these photographs go to the Boches.

  Lannes knew he was trapped. The cards had fallen badly. The photographs were compromising. It was true that Kordlinger, who had taken over as liaison officer after Schussmann shot himself, had managed to arrange his transfer only a couple of months after Lannes had been supplied with information that gave him a hold over the German, but there was no reason to suppose, or hope, that his successor would no longer be interested in Schussmann’s case. It was the spook who called himself Félix who had used Léon as bait to catch the sentimental fool, and Lannes had no doubt that it was Félix whom he was now instructed to wait for.

  Who do you think her clients were, the old man had asked, with a note of contempt or perhaps mockery in his voice. The implication was clear. Clear and disturbing. Not the Boches – that was too much to expect – but men of position, what they had become accustomed to recognise as untouchables. Again he thought of the advocate Labiche with his perverted taste for young flesh and his membership of the body set up to ‘deal with’ the Jewish Question. Even in his mind he put the words deal with in inverted commas.

  The waiter approached. Lannes asked for another Armagnac. The waiter collected the glasses, held up the one into which the old man had spat, and said, ‘A dirty type, superintendent. I don’t envy you a job that brings you in contact with such vermin.’

  ‘You have to serve them yourself,’ Lannes said.

  ‘True enough, and I do it with disdain. But I’m not required to do more than put a glass in front of them and take their money. I don’t know how much you know of him – of course I don’t – but I would advise you not to believe a word he says, not even if he swears by the Virgin. That one would sell his grandmother for a sou. Perhaps I don’t need to tell you that.’

  ‘No, Marcel, you don’t, but thank you for your advice.’

  Lannes waited, smoked and waited. A white cat with a black face crossed the floor, rubbed itself against his legs. Three men in blue overalls, work clothes, came in, their hair wet from the rain which the briefly open door revealed as a thin persistent drizzle. One of them called, loudly, for three large reds. He rolled a cigarette, leant with his back to the bar, stared at Lannes and turned away again. He was a big fellow with a swollen nose and a bruise on his left cheek. They began to talk about football.

  The telephone rang. Marcel answered it. Lannes watched him; he nodded, hung up the receiver, came over and said, ‘It was a message for you. No, he didn’t want to speak to you, just said he would be with you in an hour’s time.’

  Lannes slipped the envelope with the photographs into his pocket.

  ‘I don’t know who he is,’ he said, ‘but I can’t wait any longer. When he arrives, tell him I had another appointment. Tell him to call me at headquarters. Meanwhile I’ll drop in tomorrow morning and you can give me a description of him.’

  The rain was falling harder now. Lannes turned up the collar of his coat. The gutters ran yellow. He thought: he won’t do anything with the photographs because he wants something from me. So it’s cat and mouse, but which of us can play the cat better and make the other the mouse?

  VIII

  Michel stood, poised, on the balls of his feet. The instructor blew his whistle. Michel hesitated a moment, came lightly forward, leapt, landed both hands on the wooden horse, somersaulted high, and landed secure, both feet together, chin raised, hands clenched by his side.

  ‘All right, not bad.’

  The instructor almost smiled. He was a small man in his sixties, bald, wiry, one-eyed, a veteran of the Foreign Legion. He had lost the other eye in the war against the Rif, almost twenty years ago. He still spoke with a Russian accent, all the stronger when he inveighed against the Bolsheviks. In the Legion he ha
d been known as Ivan, but he had told the boys to address him as Count Pierre. Michel knew himself to be his favourite. Once the Count had told him he had had a hand in the murder of Rasputin – ‘That filthy lascivious monk, a German spy. But it was that bastard Lenin I should have shot,’ he said.

  ‘Did you ever have the chance?’

  ‘Alas, no. And now I believe that it was God’s will I was denied the opportunity, which I would surely have taken.’

  ‘But why?’ Michael said. ‘Why should God have willed that?’

  He didn’t believe in God. Sigi had told him Christianity was a slaves’ religion, but there was no reason to pass this judgement on to the old Russian.

  The Count had made two glasses of tea from the samovar he kept in the little room where he changed from his shabby suit into the white cotton high-necked jersey and drill trousers he wore in the gym. He added sugar and a slice of lemon and handed a glass to Michel.

  ‘You’re a good boy,’ he said, ‘but you can’t be expected to understand these things. You have no knowledge of the Russian soul. When they murdered our poor Tsar – not that he was much of a man, I don’t pretend that he was – the Almighty decided that Holy Russia should endure a time of suffering, so that she might expiate her sins, and he gave the land to the Bolsheviks and the Jews, first to the intellectual Lenin and then to the Georgian cobbler who calls himself Stalin, that the people should know the meaning of Hell and repent. And now he has sent Adolf Hitler to cleanse the land, after which Russia will be reborn. This is how it works. This is how History unfolds.’