The street was nowhere dark enough, the lorries and vans looked as if just waiting for him. He could hear the Sonderkommando rushing through the crowd behind him.
When he got to the dressing room, it was empty. The handcuffs had been shot free. Ah merde.
He ran. He reached the river and went up it until all he heard was the sound of the current. ‘Juliette …?’ he ventured but she did not answer. Where … where the hell had the two of them gone?
They were standing calf-deep in the river, in darkness beneath some overhanging branches. As Juliette pressed the muzzle of the gun into Danielle’s back, figures darted along the bank, while over the lower village, with its cluster of Renaissance houses, the capsule dome of light formed a bubble under the sky.
Muffled, urgent voices were now heard. Lights … would they use their torches? she wondered.
‘He’ll kill you, madame,’ breathed Danielle. ‘Our Franz won’t waste any time on you now.’
‘Don’t you dare try anything! I’m warning. I’ll shoot’
Surrounded by water, they waited until at last she said more calmly, ‘We’ll go upriver to the farm. Maybe then you will find the courage to tell me what happened. You were there when Monsieur Auger was killed, mademoiselle. Shards from one of those little tubes you love so much were found in the sand. Did you break it when you realized there wasn’t enough?’
Ah damn her. ‘I did not kill him. I only heard him die.’
The gun was jabbed into the small of her back, ‘I don’t believe you. Now move! Walk out farther. Feel your way with your feet. Take off your shoes.’
‘And walk naked, is that how I did it, schoolteacher? Naked and with my little bag of stone tools? If so, please tell me who drove him towards me since I did not kill him?’
Danielle was only trying to agitate her so as to escape. ‘You know our father did it. Only he could have walked right up to Monsieur Auger.’
And now you believe it, snorted Danielle inwardly. ‘And what will you do when we three meet? Beg him to tell you the truth, or try to buy your life by letting Herr Oelmann have him?’
They were quite some distance from the shore. The water was getting deep. ‘Mother didn’t deserve to die and neither did Monsieur Auger.’
Were there tears now? wondered Danielle, her hands still held aloft. ‘Beware, schoolteacher. You mingle with the darkness of Cro-Magnon times or was it from the Neanderthal the amulet and the figurines came?’ she taunted. ‘The Abbé Brûlé made a mistake that father you worshipped so much failed to see in his eagerness and inexperience. And that, my dear half-sister, made him believe the Neanderthal capable of feelings for each other which I’m certain they had.’ She tossed her hands for emphasis. ‘Love and sex, eh? Tenderness and nurturing, and even a belief in the hereafter, since they often buried their dead in the fetal position with dustings of red ochre, tools, and food for their journeys.’
A sadness came. It could not be avoided. ‘The amulet and the Adam and Eve are Cro-Magnon, aren’t they?’
‘Of course. Even Courtet could tell you that but he’s a nothing. He’s no match for our father who hated him so much he refused to let him see the contents of that trunk and made our grandparents swear they would never release it.’
‘Then how did you convince them to do so?’ she asked sharply.
‘Me? Hah! by simply getting the Germans to move it. Our grandparents were very upset at the loss but what could they do since it had been sold? The Professor wanted it so badly, and I made certain he got it because, my dear half-sister, that was what our father wanted. Revenge for having lost the bet that forced him to go to war. Revenge for having had his career terminated. So Henri-Georges created, with my help, a cave so beautiful it would rival Lascaux. A swastika was thrown in for good measure — it was his idea — and what do you think happened, eh? A professor from the Sorbonne who should have known better, made a terrible mistake and became an utter fool. A failure the Germans must now punish.’
They were well out in the river and it was dark, so dark. ‘But mother found out what you were doing, and when she went to meet our father, she refused to wait until the film had been made, refused to go along with any of it, so he … he killed her. It’s true then. True!’
And now you stupid, stupid cow, you have yet to realize in your grief that I am no longer your prisoner and will kill you to save myself.
Kohler cursed their luck. He was soaked right through and damned tired yet still there was no sign of Juliette and Danielle, and he knew he had let Louis down.
Wading in to the bank, he grabbed a branch to steady himself while he drained his shoes and stuffed his stocking feet back into them. He was upriver a good piece and perhaps not far from Auger’s farm. Would they have made for the cottage? Was it worth a try? Hours … it had been hours since Louis had been taken. Ah merde, what was he to do? The stars were fading. The damp, sweet smell of hay came to him and then, as he moved inland, that of the mare.
He stopped. He was in the middle of the pasture now. No sign of the mare, no sound of the geese. Someone must have taken them away.…
The cottage was nestled among walnut trees whose dark silhouette all but hid it.
When he reached the door, he knew he was not alone. When he softly hazarded, ‘Madame,’ she fired.
* * *
One by one they had returned to the café. Now there were four of the Sonderkommando with Herr Oelmann. The handcuffs, St-Cyr’s own, were too tight, his arms were aching. The chair, it was too hard, and he had had nothing to wet his throat in hours. Not a sip of the vin paille, not a taste of his beloved pastis.
When Juliette was flung into the café to lie bleeding from the forehead on the floor at his feet, despair swept through him. The cut was ragged, about six centimetres long and above the left eye. A handaxe? he said to himself. A handaxe.
‘Hermann … what has happened to Hermann, madame?’
She gave no answer. She was dragged up and thrown into a chair. She was slapped hard and spat blood when they demanded to know what had happened. ‘I tell you nothing, messieurs. Nothing!’
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! ‘A moment, messieurs. A moment,’ he urged. ‘Bathe her face and dress that wound. Can’t you see she’s terrified of you?’
She was soaked right through. There was mud on her bare feet. A toenail had broken in half. The toe was bleeding.… ‘Messieurs, I beg you,’ he said. ‘Please, I need to know where my partner is.’
‘He’s dead. Dead!’ she cried and sucked in a breath. ‘Danielle … she got away from me. Hermann, he came to Monsieur Auger’s cottage. He did not know she was in there, that for hours she had been hunting me. Me! I had lost the gun, Jean-Louis. She had it! He.…’
Hermann … Hermann, he said to himself, what have I done by getting off that train when Deveaux asked us and you wanted only to continue on to Paris to see your new girlfriend?
The dawn had not yet come, the night was very dark. Cold ashes met fingertips that felt so stealthily they hardly moved.
Verdammt, where was she? wondered Kohler. The cottage was small — just this one room. A table, two benches, stoneware crocks, a bed with big drawers beneath it, a plain armoire, both doors closed and walnuts scattered all over the floor in a desperate but futile search for cocaine.
When he felt the ladder, he felt the smoothness of peeled poplar and the steepness of it. An attic, had she gone up there? Was she now on the roof or only leading him to think this?
Danielle Arthaud, he said and realized in that instant where she was.
The Webley would be with her but had she managed to pick up the handaxe that had fallen to her feet in her dressing-room? he wondered. Had Juliette not seen this happen? Was the schoolteacher now lying dead out there or drifting slowly downstream to catch on a gravel bar and swing lazily back and forth in the current?
He heard Danielle sigh. He knew she was desperate. She hadn’t hit him with that one shot of hers. He’d been through that sort of thing countl
ess times and had known better than to stand in the doorway.
When his fingers touched the soaking wet cloth of her skirt, they found the hem and then the zipper at the back and he had to wonder why the two were so close together.
He heard the hammer fall. Even as he grabbed her wrist and tried to force the gun aside, the sound was there. The metal of the handcuff bit into him. A blinding flash of white-hot light was followed by a deafening bang but then he saw her swing the handaxe. She cried out. She screamed and kicked and bit and fought to kill him … kill him.…
Kohler clutched the gun and the hand that gripped the stone. ‘Bâtard!’ she shrilled and tried to bite him. He was forcing her back.… ‘My arms … my arms,’ she cried.
As she hit the floor, the gun went off and she pulled him with her, wrapped her legs around him. Together they rolled about, banging into things.
He gave a ragged gasp. Her chest heaved. He was so big, so heavy and strong and he had pinned her to the floor. Ah no.
The gun came free only with difficulty and he slid it as far away as he could. The handaxe was next and that, too, he removed.
She would bite her lower lip to stop herself from shaking, would bite right through it if necessary.
Kohler felt her relax. Every muscle seemed to let go all at once. Then she said, ‘Couchez avec moi,’ and he heard her catch a breath. ‘You can if you want. I’m naked below the waist. Naked, monsieur. Just give me a little. Please, I beg it of you.’
When he refused, she spat at him and hissed, ‘Had I had it, nothing would have stopped me. Nothing!’
Continentale’s doctor finished putting the last of the sutures in Juliette’s brow then ran a thumb over the wound. Using the Sûreté as interpreter, he said, ‘A scar is inevitable, madame, but you’ve no concussion. Your eyes are clear, the pupils good. Give it five or six days and come back to see me, yes? I would like to take the sutures out then and check you over once again just to be sure.’
The doctor had insisted on Juliette’s hands being freed. He had as much as cursed the Sonderkommando for their rough handling. A silent but conscientious objector, he had found refuge under von Strade’s wing yet appeared untainted by it. ‘I’ve warned you, Baron,’ he said. ‘Release them. Those handcuffs are cutting into the détective’s wrists.’
‘Ah, Ernst, my good man, it’s just not possible yet but a deal has been struck with Herr Oelmann and his associates and I have it on record that their freedom has been guaranteed. You’ve no need to worry.’
Von Strade gave the doctor’s arm a fatherly pat. ‘When Danielle arrives, take care of her for me. A little something just to sooth her nerves and give her back that confidence we like so much to see. You know how she is. She’s like a Stradi-varius with a string that might break right in the middle of a magnificent concert. We wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?’
Or else the Russian Front, thought St-Cyr grimly. Ah merde, what was the deal?
The doctor threw Juliette a frantic look and in that one gesture, St-Cyr saw only too clearly it was the end for them.
Courtet had reluctantly come into the café to morosely nurse a mug of café noir and smoke a cigarette down to its very last. There was still no sign of Toto Lemieux. No one seemed to know where he was. The Baroness was still shooting the trunk scenes in the attic but Courtet was not needed since Herr Eisner could handle everything.
All others, unless directly concerned with the murders or the Sonderkommando, had been excluded.
A deal … Exactly what had they in mind? Odilon fidgeted uncomfortably. Caught in the middle, he worried about his pension, fussed over duty and knew he ought to say something.
A forgery. Could they not have been more discreet? This, too, was written all over the sous-préfet because now he, too, was involved and yet he was not sure if his fate had been included in the deal.
‘Cocaine.’ said von Strade, lost in thought to the grandjean he had taken from a pocket. ‘The favourite stimulant of the avant-garde, the artist, actor and writer. In small doses it produces intense well-being and great self-confidence, a sense of invincibility, of never getting caught. Inhibitions decrease. Sexual drive is often enhanced as a result, and in a young and vibrant woman like Danielle, her need often leads her to do anything to get more.’
He put the grandjean down on the table between them and looked to Juliette as if to say, Don’t ever try it, madame. ‘Had I known the addiction would lead to such vicious murders, Inspector, I would most certainly have been far more temperate in my judgement. Please be reasonable. We’re both men of the world. Let us finish Moment of Discovery, then make whatever arrests you deem necessary.’
So Danielle was the killer, was that it, eh? Was it that simple? ‘And the forgery, Baron?’ he asked.
‘Forget about it. Don’t be troublesome.’
‘But isn’t forgery a crime?’
‘Jean-Louis.…’
‘Odilon, please let me handle this.’
‘Then don’t be so foolish, Inspector,’ snapped von Strade angrily. ‘Do you think I don’t know what’s been going on?’
‘Good! It is just as I have thought, Baron. Danielle’s addiction forced her to tell you everything. That makes you an accessory to murder and I welcome the opportunity to see that you are charged!’
‘You fool, do you think you can say that to me?’
‘I say it even if my wrists are shackled, Baron! You knew and so did the Baroness!’
A purist, Deveaux had said of St-Cyr, a stickler for the truth. ‘Then take the platform you so desire, Inspector. Let me see how well you do. Audition, please. Don’t stint yourself.’
‘A cigarette … My pipe.…’
‘Nothing. Such things are impossible.’
So be it then. All anger must be suppressed, the impassive faces and weapons of the Sonderkommando ignored. ‘At the end, Madame Fillioux had to be stopped, Baron. Certainly she let the Professor think she would go along with things but she had her own reasons, her own plans. A forgery, a betrayal and denial of all she had struggled so hard to protect.’
‘She would kill my father and then my husband,’ said Juliette sadly. ‘She would expose the forgery for what it was. A monstrosity.’
St-Cyr let sympathy register as he looked at her. ‘But he did not come back, madame. Though we will never be certain of its location, he probably lies in an unmarked grave along the Marne like so many others.’
‘Not alive …?’ she blurted. ‘Dead, Inspector? But … but.…’
‘Please, it is a shock, yes, and were I able to comfort you, I would. As in film, madame, so, too, in murder, illusion is so often necessary. Your mother had to believe emphatically that your father had returned, otherwise she would not have kept silent for a whole year the knowledge that the paintings were a forgery. Remember, please, that she was unsettled after last year’s visit. Things were happening then. The cave, it was not right’
‘The postcards had been arriving from my grandparents and then later from Danielle and … and then from the Professor and … and at last from my father.’
He turned to von Strade. ‘Juliette did not help her father as the postcards from him claimed but … ah, but his words must have struck fear into your mother, madame, and doubly she resisted telling you anything.’
‘It was clever … so clever. Had I known, I would have done something to help her,’ said Juliette. ‘She must have thought I was involved even when she asked me to visit the cave and get the things for her. Even then she wanted to keep me out of it.’
Courtet was staring sourly at the dregs of his café noir. ‘It was necessary also,’ went on the Sûreté, ‘that everyone else believe Fillioux had returned, and so successful was the illusion, even my partner and I believed it for a time. But … ah but he never showed up. Two killings, so vastly different, the one as if in a demented frenzy, the other simply a crushing of the skull. The Baroness had no fear of him, Baron, though it was she who discovered the body of Jouvet i
n Herr Oelmann’s car. She led my partner to your wine cellar — two bottles of the Moët-et-Chandon were missing. We had found them in the stream. After I had viewed the rushes, she told me Danielle was the one I wanted. A postcard was mailed from the Marais in Paris by Fillioux. Mademoiselle Arthaud was daring to the point of foolishness. She even had one mailed from there while at Lascaux with her “friend”, knowing full well that Madame Fillioux would see the entry in the visitors’ book.’
‘So, no Fillioux, Inspector, and two murders,’ said von Strade, signalling for a glass and bottle of wine. ‘If Fillioux could not have done it, who could our stonekiller possibly be?’
‘Baron, never mock the Sûreté. It is not wise.’
How close the room was, how still. ‘The Professor, Inspector?’ asked von Strade.
Courtet leapt. ‘I had nothing to do with the forgery. Nothing, do you hear? I only found the paintings.’
Dregs of café noir shot across the flagstone floor as the mug shattered.
‘Of course, Professor. That is exactly it,’ said St-Cyr. ‘You did what you were supposed to do. Mademoiselle Arthaud was the cave artist and she had you right where she wanted you.’
Desperately Courtet looked to the Baron for help. ‘This is crazy. I did not kill that woman.’
‘My dear Eugene, no one has said you did,’ offered von Strade blandly.
Courtet clenched his fists in anger. ‘Apart from a postcard or two, and one visit, I had no further contact with that woman. I had what I wanted from her and needed nothing else she could possibly provide.’
‘YOU KILLED HER!’ shouted Danielle, causing them to turn as she and Hermann, with wrists bound tightly behind their backs, were brutally shoved into the café by Herr Oelmann and some others.
‘A grâce à Dieu,’ began St-Cyr. ‘Mon vieux.…’
Herman wasn’t happy. He was furious. ‘She tried to kill me, Louis! A handaxe, damn it! She’s confessed to having been at the scenes of both crimes.’
‘I DIDN’T KILL EITHER OF THEM, DAMN YOU!’ she shrieked and tried to kick him. ‘I WAS THERE, YES! BUT … but I … I could not stop things from happening. I really couldn’t. Please, you must believe me. Willi … Willi, can’t you see I need a little? Just a little?’
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