Death in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

  ‘You see why I’m worried,’ he said.

  ‘He’s fond of you. That’s evident, and he’s an attractive lad.’

  ‘Undoubtedly. But not very intelligent and easily led. And I don’t like the direction he is being persuaded to follow. They’ll feed him with all sorts of nonsense, pernicious nonsense, in this legion of his, and I’m very much afraid he’ll lap it up.’

  Lannes had no consolation to offer. The old man was so clearly right. They were all afraid for the young: the professor for Michel, Miriam for Léon, and he himself for Alain and Clothilde. Whichever side they took, they were in danger, if not immediately than in time, and the higher their spirit, the greater the danger.

  ‘This “New Order”,’ the professor said ‘it’s meaningless, mere rhetoric, and, as a man of letters, I have learned to distrust rhetoric. High-flown abstract language, it’s the curse of France, an affliction. This man who calls himself Grimaud – who may for all I know, be entitled to do so – despite what you say, is it, I wonder, possible for you to intervene?’

  ‘I wish I could say I could.’

  It was already almost dark and a wind was rising as Lannes made his way back to the Place de la République. People leaving work hurried home with heads lowered as if to a refuge. Which was indeed, he thought again, what home had become; the one place where you could be as you were before war and occupation. A lorry full of German troops hurtled past. He smacked his blackthorn against a lamp-post. Damn them all! What nonsense, what vile wicked nonsense, would that gullible enthusiastic boy be led into? He wished he could speak to Sigi as forcibly as he had spoken to Jean-Christophe and as the old professor had all but implored him to do. But it was impossible. He would be met with insolence, talk of the ‘Herren-Moral’.

  Moreover, a policeman seeking to deter a boy from joining an organization sponsored by ‘Les Amis du Maréchal’ – shocking. There would be a black mark against his name – yet another black mark.

  Madame Cortin was already waiting when he returned to the office. She was dressed in black, widow’s weeds, that matched his mood. He gave himself a glass of Armagnac before calling her in.

  XVII

  As he had feared it was futile. However hard he tried, varying his approach, he got nowhere. She sat, filling the chair, obdurate, sullen, refusing to admit to what he was sure she knew: that her husband’s meeting had been with his foster-brother. Yet she must have realized that Sigi was responsible for his murder, even if he had not actually killed him himself.

  ‘He would have told me in time who he had gone to meet, I’d have seen to that,’ she said, over and over again, ‘but since he never returned, I know nothing.’

  The refrain infuriated him, all the more so when she repeated her certainty that Jules had been murdered by ‘one of these criminal types, foreigners many of them, who are to be found in the vicinity of the Gare St-Jean’.

  And he couldn’t budge her.

  Afterwards Moncerre said, we’re not only getting nowhere, chief, we’re never going to get anywhere. All we are doing is banging our heads against a brick wall.’

  ‘In that case,’ Lannes said, ‘we must try to find the door in the wall that will let us through.’

  Walking home through deserted streets, his hip aching, Lannes turned the question over and over in his mind, searching for that door and the key that would open it. Why had Gaston and Cortazar been tortured? Because they wouldn’t reveal something that Sigi had to know. And what was that? Information he believed Pilar had entrusted to them. If so, it must be in the form of a document that would compromise Edmond. Had the search of their apartments been successful? Surely not; the shot fired at him outside the Splendide – and the murder of Cortin – suggested alarm, apprehension. So, assuming Gaston had had it – which was more probable than supposing it was in Cortazar’s possession, since there was no evidence that he had actually known Pilar, then where had Gaston successfully hidden it?

  His reflections were interrupted by two uniformed policemen, demanding to know why he was breaching the curfew and requiring him to produce his papers. Apologies followed. ‘Only doing our duty, superintendent. Instructions are that anyone on the streets is to be regarded as a suspicious character. If it wasn’t us, it would be the Boches.’

  Marguerite and Clothilde had gone to bed. Alain was still up, reading, his legs slung over the arm of the chair, the black cat – Sylvestre, No Neck – lying contentedly pressed against his chest. Lannes went through to the kitchen, made a pot of coffee and brought two cups and a glass of marc for himself back into the salon.

  ‘Part of our school is going to be requisitioned by the Boches,’ Alain said. ‘Maybe the whole building. Nobody knows for sure, or whether we are going to be transferred elsewhere, or simply told there’s nowhere for us to study. Even the profs don’t know, they’re as confused as we are.’

  He laid aside his book – one of Simenon’s novels. Lannes glanced at it. If only it was as easy for me as it is for Maigret, he thought.

  ‘They’re bound to find somewhere for you,’ he said. ‘The education authorities will see to that.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’ Alain said, not for the first time.

  ‘Let’s not go into that again.’

  He handed Alain one of the cups.

  ‘You look tired, papa, and worried.’

  ‘We’re all worried. Your mother’s afraid you may do something rash. It’s because you’re intelligent, she says. I see her point. The intelligent – intellectuals – are easily carried away by ideas, and then do something that’s dangerous – and in the circumstances, stupid – as a result. You won’t, will you?’

  Alain made no immediate reply. He looked very serious. Then he smiled.

  ‘But I’m pleased to learn that you think I’m intelligent. I met that German officer again today, the one who’s been billeted on the Romiers upstairs. He’s called Siegfried, which, he says, embarrasses him because “I’m not at all Wagnerian, I don’t even like opera. I prefer jazz, despite the Fuehrer’s disapproval.” He’s a nice guy. I wouldn’t want to shoot him even if I had a gun. So you don’t need to worry. By the way who’s the boy who’s working in my honorary uncle’s bookshop? I went there the other day and we talked about books and things. He’s nice too. He said he knew you.’

  ‘He was a friend of Henri’s brother. The one who was murdered. That’s how I came across him, why Henri gave him a job, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that.’

  ‘He’s a Jew.’

  ‘He told me that too. Indeed he made a point of doing so. I said, “so what? It doesn’t matter to me.” ’

  Lannes put his cup down, picked up the glass of marc, and knocked it back.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t. But it matters to other people, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I know it does. It’s disgusting. To people like Uncle Albert.’

  ‘And to others who are more important.’

  ‘Are you warning me off him, Papa?’

  ‘Not exactly, no. I’d be ashamed to do that just as I’d be ashamed if you shared your Uncle Albert’s prejudices. But be careful. That’s all I’m saying. Be careful, Alain.’

  What I really wanted to say, he thought, as he lay unable to sleep, was ‘Don’t get too close to Léon, not because he’s queer or thinks he is and I’m afraid he would corrupt you, because I don’t believe that at all, but simply for your own safety because very soon it’s going to be compromising, therefore dangerous, to have Jewish friends’. But I couldn’t and not only because Alain would have despised me if I had said that. I would have despised myself. And yet it makes sense. What times we live in when good sense is despicable. I might have added, remembering that letter sent to Rougerie, and Sigi’s hint of blackmail over Miriam, that I myself am already compromised in that direction. But we’re all compromised, one way or another. There’s the professor, with that long-legged, awkward, eager boy, an enthusiast whom he’s anxious and powerless to save from
his ignorant idealism. And from Sigi too. I wish Alain would find a girl to fall in love with and distract him. We’re enmeshed in lies, he thought, then, towards three in the morning, drifted into a sleep disturbed by a dream in which Dominique came home, embraced him, and then stood arm-in-arm with the boy Michel singing a song in praise of the Marshal. Michel detached himself from Dominique and brought his face close to Lannes; his breath was sweet and sickly. Like death, Lannes found himself muttering, like death.

  XVIII

  There was a chill in the air and murmuring of disaffection. A shot was fired at an off-duty German soldier taking his ease on a bench in the public garden. It was dusk, the light was poor, and the gunman, reported to be ‘a youth’ missed his target. The bullet was embedded in the wood and the youth escaped into the shadows. Lannes was happy not to be involved in the search which was carried out by the Gendarmerie in association with the German military police. Even Moncerre was indignant. ‘It’s pointless,’ he said. ‘Things are bad enough without some idiot making them worse by setting out to be a hero and trying to pick off an ordinary private who is doing no harm to anyone. If it served any purpose, then of course I’d approve, but as things are it’s sheer foolishness. Crazy.’

  ‘There’ll be more of it,’ Lannes said. ‘We have to accept that it’s inevitable that there are young hotheads who resent the Occupation sufficiently to act in this way. They’re patriots, after all, in their fashion.’

  ‘Patriots be damned. Play-actors, that’s all, comedians, and a bloody nuisance.’

  ‘Well, so long as we can keep out of it.’

  But the incident alarmed him, chiming with the fear that came to him in the night as he lay unable to sleep.

  In the afternoon – again, the cold, clear weather that pleased him – he made his way to the rue des Remparts. He was surprised to find Schussmann there in conversation with Léon.

  ‘Ah,’ the German said, ‘so we have an interest in literature in common, superintendent, assuming that, as I hope, you are not here on official business. See, this clever young man has unearthed for me a first edition of Les Nourritures Terrestres which previously I know only in translation. It made a great impression on me when I read it first in my last year in the Gymnasium. “A paean to paganism”, my master called it, and drew my attention to the echoes of Nietzsche. I am delighted to have it now in French, and, see, it is numbered 406 of an edition of only 500 copies. Remarkable that so small an edition should have had so great an influence. Or perhaps not so remarkable: great oaks grow from little acorns. I am very grateful for the discovery.’

  He laid his hand lightly on Léon’s shoulder as he said this, then, remarking that pleasure must give way to duty, took his leave, very formally, of Lannes.

  The door closed behind him.

  ‘Interesting,’ Lannes said, and saw that Léon looked ill-at-ease.

  ‘Henri’s upstairs. Drinking, I’m afraid. Are you going up?’

  ‘In a moment.’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ the boy said.

  ‘I’m not suggesting it is. I take it he’s been here several times.’

  ‘Quite a few. He says he’s a collector. He’s nice actually, but I’ve no desire to get involved. On the other hand I can’t tell him to bugger off, can I? Or should I just tell him I’m a Jew? Is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t think anything. I came to see that you are all right.’

  ‘Well, you’ve seen. Are you going to tell my aunt?’

  ‘Tell her what?’ Lannes said. ‘There’s nothing to tell her, is there? Some young fool took a pot-shot at a German soldier in the public garden yesterday. Fortunately he missed and even more fortunately he got away. But they have a description.’

  ‘You don’t think that was me?’

  ‘As I just said, I don’t think anything. I hope it wasn’t. The description could fit you. On the other hand it could fit dozens of young men in Bordeaux.’

  ‘Well, there you are. But, if you want to know, it wasn’t. I don’t have a gun for one thing, and, for another, I told you I’m being a good boy.’

  He smiled, for the first time, mischievously.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Stay that way. Don’t let Schussmann get too close.’

  ‘How do I stop him?’

  Henri wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t quite sober either, unsteady as he rose from his chair to embrace Lannes. His cheek was bristly, he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days at least, and, when he turned away to fetch a bottle and a glass for Lannes, his trousers sagged behind even more than they had done a few weeks ago.

  ‘There’s no more Johnnie,’ he said, pouring Lannes a brandy and squirting soda into it. ‘There’ll be no more Johnnie till we’re liberated, if we live long enough to see that day. I’m glad to see you, Jean, even though I’m scarcely fit to be seen myself. I can’t sleep and I can’t eat. If you hadn’t provided me with Léon, I really think I’d have to shut up shop. Any word from Dominique?’

  ‘A card, simply to say he’s alive and well. No word of him coming home.’

  ‘Poor boy, to have his youth stolen from him. I’m sorry, Jean.’

  ‘Léon’s proving satisfactory then?’

  ‘He’s a nice child. I don’t know what I’d do without him.’

  For some time they sat drinking, in silence., Lannes hesitating to put the question that had brought him there. His old friend’s condition distressed him. Police work shouldn’t be mixed with personal relations. Not for the first time he thought that it might have been better if he had insisted that he wasn’t the person to investigate Gaston’s murder. If he had done so, it would have been filed away long since. Cortazar might even still be alive, for it was likely that it was his questioning of the Catalan that had drawn Sigi’s attention to him. Cortin too, for there would have been no need to borrow his car and take a shot at him from it. Well, it was too late for these thoughts.

  He said: ‘I haven’t given up on Gaston. But there’s something I have to ask you. Did he ever entrust a paper to you, for safe keeping, anything like that.’

  ‘No, of course not. I’d have given it you if he had. There was only that letter which came so long after he was dead. Nothing else. I don’t have much to remember him by, except memories themselves. And now the boy Léon. What sort of paper?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He couldn’t say: something Pilar wrote and handed to him, something that explains her death and was the cause of his, something that still compromises the man responsible. He couldn’t. If Henri didn’t have the paper it would be futile to go on, painful too.

  Instead he said: ‘There was a German officer in the shop when I came in, one I’ve had dealings with, a decent enough type. He was buying a copy of Gide’s ‘Nourritures Terrestres’. Léon says he’s become quite a regular customer. I told him to be careful. You understand?’

  Downstairs again, he said to Léon, ‘When you dust the books, would you open each one and see if any paper falls out. I’m looking for something Gaston hid. There must be books here that are never likely to be bought, and he might have thought that such a one would serve as a hiding-place. It’s a very long shot and perhaps crazy, but . . . ’

  ‘But? It’ll give me something to do. There are books of sermons and theological tracts that nobody in their right minds ever going to buy. But it doesn’t seem likely, does it? After all it’s not impossible that somebody might take a fancy to whichever book he’d slipped it into and, then, where would he have been? Still I accept it’s the sort of crazy notion he might have had, like something out of Balzac.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have expected it would have to stay there for long. He was here the afternoon of the day he was killed and he had made an appointment with the man I am sure was his murderer. He would have expected to retrieve the paper the next day, in all probability. Just a temporary hiding-place, he’d have thought.’

  ‘You’re sure there is such a paper.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure, though
not of course that it is here. By the way, why haven’t you mentioned meeting Alain?’

  Léon lowered his eyes.

  ‘I thought you might not approve.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? He liked you. All I ask is that the pair of you don’t do anything “heroic”. That would be stupid.’

  As he left the bookshop he found himself face-to-face with the advocate Labiche.

  ‘Visiting your little Jewish friend, superintendent?’

  Lannes took hold of the velvet collar of the lawyer’s coat. His left hand formed itself into a fist which he brought up against Labiche’s face. He restrained the impulse to hit him – hit him hard – but kept his fist there, and said, ‘I was under the impression that lawyers signed their letters, monsieur Labiche.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You don’t? That’s amusing.’

  He released his grip and said, ‘And another thing. I’ve given your client, the Comte de Grimaud, a warning. If he so much as touches that little girl, I’ll have him in a cell, and it will be a pleasure to put him there.’

  ‘Again I have no idea what you are referring to, but it sounds like slander. You’re on edge, superintendent. It’s you who should watch your step.’

  Back at the office, young René said, ‘There’s a message for you, chief, from Madame Robartet. You remember, the old lady across the landing from Gaston’s apartment. She would like you to call on her, no reason given. Perhaps she’s ill, I don’t know.’

  XIX

  Léon hadn’t been wholly frank with Lannes. Schussmann had been calling at the shop frequently, almost every day, often scarcely pretending that he was looking for a particular book or even that had come to browse. He talked mostly about literature – mentioning for instance that early work of Gide’s which Léon had happened on quite by chance, for it had been on the wrong shelf, perhaps replaced there by some customer. Actually this wasn’t remarkable. Léon had already concluded that his predecessor Bloch, perhaps Henri himself too, had been careless or haphazard in their arrangement of the books. Of course, he reflected, some customers probably liked antiquarian bookshops where the stock was not arrayed in regularly regimented ranks. Anyway he had come on ‘Les Nourritures Terrestres’ a couple of days after Schussmann had spoken of it, and had been happy to present him with it this afternoon.