by Allan Massie
Clothilde came in, barefoot and in a dressing-gown, and kissed the top of his head. She took a glass of milk from the press and settled herself at the table cupping her chin in her hands.
‘You saw us, Papa, didn’t you?’
He thought how much he loved her, how much he was afraid for her, and didn’t pretend not to understand.
‘He’s very nice,’ she said, ‘he’s sweet actually. Dominique likes him too. You disapprove, don’t you?’
‘Nothing good can come of it, nothing but unhappiness I’m afraid.’
‘You’d like him, I’m sure, and, though he’s a German, he’s shy and polite. Besides, this war – well there’s no war, is there? Nobody’s fighting, not here in France, or anywhere much as far as I can see. Manu is in the army just as Dominique was, not through his own choice. He doesn’t even like Hitler much. When I ask him about him, he just makes a face. Rather a funny face. Maman wants to ask him to dinner, or lunch on Sunday. When you meet Manu I’m sure you’ll like him, really sure.’
‘Clothilde darling,’ he said, ‘things won’t stay the way they are and then what?’
Then what indeed, he thought, as the barber stropped his razor, He wondered if Schnyder would ask him about his meeting with the spook. But of course he wouldn’t. The Alsatian was cagey, no cards on the table for him. Lannes remembered that he had been born a subject of the Kaiser’s Reich. He might not like the Nazis and the Occupation. Lannes was pretty sure he didn’t. He might not care for Vichy and have no enthusiasm for either collaboration or the new European Order of which they spoke. Again Lannes was confident this was so. But Schnyder was going to avoid engagement either way. The fence might be uncomfortable, but that was where he had prudently settled his buttocks. Lannes didn’t blame him. Was his own position any different, any braver or more honourable? He got a photograph of the Spaniard, Sombra, from his desk, called Moncerre in and told him to take it to the Pension Bernadotte and to the bar below, and see if he could be identified as the man who had called on Professor Labiche.
‘Sure,’ Moncerre said, ‘but he’s not the killer. The garotte’s his method, remember. The blunt instrument’s a bit too crude for chummy.’
‘You’re probably right, but it would be nice to make the connection.’
There was another pile of paperwork to be dealt with, passed on by Schnyder with a note which almost contained an apology. If Moncerre did get the answer he hoped for, he would himself call on old Marthe, the housekeeper in the rue d’Aviau, and see if Sigi was indeed back in Bordeaux. He was sure that anything Sombra did was authorised by him – and that led the trail back to Edmond in Vichy. He wondered if he should have said something about this case to the spook.
The young man who emerged from Labiche’s office fitted the description Mangeot had given, vague though that had been. René Martin hesitated for a moment, unsure whether it would be wise to accost him in the street. However, the clerk turned in the opposite direction, stopping at a kiosk to buy a newspaper, doubtless to read over his lunch. Martin followed him at a distance till he saw him turn into a brasserie in the Cours du Chapeau Rouge. He quickened his pace and was relieved to see that his quarry had taken a seat at a table for two against the wall in the back of the room. Without an apology he settled himself opposite the clerk who was evidently a regular customer, for the waiter greeted him with a handshake.
‘The usual?’ the waiter said. The clerk nodded, and Martin said, ‘Bring me the same.’
Martin showed him his identification and said, ‘We can talk here, which will be more convenient for you, or you can accompany me to the station.’
‘I can’t think that we have anything to talk about.’
The words were bold, but there was uncertainty in the tone of voice and he did not look Martin in the face.
‘Doktor Braun and the Pension Bernadotte,’ René Martin said.
‘What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Jacques Bernard. I see no reason not to tell you that, since I have done nothing which can interest the police, but I have to say that these names you mention mean nothing to me.’
‘Oh, if that’s so, we had better continue this conversation at the station, with my boss, when we’ve eaten our lunch. He will certainly want to see you. He is interested in your boss after all, Monsieur Labiche. You won’t deny you’re his clerk. On the other hand, if you’re sensible, we can deal with this matter over our meal and I hope that can be the end of it as far as you’re concerned. It’s up to you. Ah here’s our soup.’
He smiled at the young man who was a bit younger than himself, a mere child, René Martin thought, and who hadn’t even started to shave, probably because he was fair-haired and his skin was very pale. He had long fingers and when he lifted his spoon to his mouth was so nervous that he spilled some of the soup. René Martin picked up the carafe the waiter had placed on the table and poured them each a glass of wine.
‘Doktor Braun,’ he said again, ‘Pension Bernadotte. You collected his things, didn’t you?’
‘That’s not an offence.’
‘Of course it isn’t, that is, if you didn’t know that Doktor Braun had been murdered.’
The clerk’s hand trembled. He stretched it out to pick up his glass, then drew it back.
‘Murdered?’ he said, and wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘I know nothing of that.’
‘So you say, so you say, but your master now . . . ’
‘Said nothing of that to me. I swear it. Doktor Braun was a client who had left instructions for his things to be collected and his bill to be paid. I did as I was told. I know nothing of any murder, you must believe me.’
Moncerre would have seized happily on the clerk’s evident nervousness. René Martin felt ashamed. He thought, what a horrible trade mine is.
‘Drink your wine,’ he said. ‘Doktor Braun was no client, but your master’s brother. He left no instructions for him, but someone bashed his head in. Your master knew that, even if you didn’t. What can you tell me about this man?’
He passed the photograph of Sombra across the table. Bernard looked at it, and pushed it back.
‘Your face tells me you recognise him,’ Martin said.
Bernard kept his head lowered, unwilling to look Martin in the face, and crumbled a piece of bread.
‘You called me a clerk,’ he said, ‘which makes me sound more important than I am. I’ve no responsibility, I’m just the office-boy used to fetch and carry messages, that’s all. And I’ve only been in the job a few months, since I left school because my father’s a prisoner-of-war in Germany and it’s necessary for me to earn a wage. So I had to leave school. If my boss, Monsieur Labiche, finds out I’ve been speaking to you, I’ll get the sack, That’s sure as eggs is eggs. He’s a holy terror.’
René Martin put his finger on the photograph.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to make trouble for you. We know quite a bit about the advocate Labiche and we don’t like him.
We’re not going to be sharing confidences with him, I can assure you of that. So, this chap now . . . ’ The boy still hesitated.
René Martin smiled and said, ‘Look, I understand how you feel, but if I have to ask you to accompany me to the station, then you can be sure that your boss will learn of it. On the other hand at present it’s just between you and me, and need go no further.’
‘I suppose I have to trust you. I don’t know his name, but he came to the office once, that was a couple of weeks before I was asked to fetch Doktor Braun’s things, and that’s all I know. I never spoke to him or heard him speak.’
‘Good,’ Martin said, ‘that’s all I need to know. Now, enjoy your lunch . . . ’ ‘All the same,’ he said to Lannes, when he reported the conversation, ‘there’s something that doesn’t ring true. Because if he took this job as an office-boy because his mother needs him to earn a wage, which certainly won’t come to much, I don’t understand how he can eat lunch regularly in that brasserie which equall
y certainly isn’t particularly cheap.’
‘No doubt you’re right, but it’s no concern of ours. Moncerre says the barman has identified our friend Sombra as the man who had a drink with Aristide. So the connection’s established. I think we are almost ready to have a word with our precious advocate. We’ll call him in tomorrow. There’s someone else I want to speak to first.’
Lannes’ hip ached as he limped, leaning heavily on his stick, towards the rue d’Aviau. He was oppressed by a sense of futility. Moncerre was surely right in refusing to believe that Sombra had killed Aristide Labiche; murderers stuck to their favoured and practised method. But his involvement in the case not only brought back sour memories of Gaston’s murder and his own failure; it meant that he was morally bound to pursue a case which he couldn’t now believe he would be permitted to bring to court. If Sombra had had dealings with Aristide and with his repulsive brother, then so had Sigi, and so, at one remove, had Edmond de Grimaud; and therefore he himself was compromised. None of it made sense. If Edmond was involved, even at one remove, with the advocate Labiche, why had he stepped in to protect Lannes against him?
He stopped at a bar for an Armagnac. And Clothilde and her German officer – what had she called him? Manu? Short for Manuel, he supposed. If he was a proper father, he would force her to break that friendship for her own good. But he was weak, he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her, even to save her from future pain. As always he would take the path of least resistance, in the hope that things would turn out all right. Which they wouldn’t.
Old Marthe greeted him as sourly as ever, but led him into the gloomy cavern of her kitchen.
‘I suppose it’s me, not the Count you want to speak with, seeing as you’ve come to the back door. Not that you would get any sense out of him, he’s back at the brandy, sip, sip, sip, morning and night and making no sense.’
‘Do you still have Germans in the house?’
‘That we have, though I’ve naught to do with them. I’ve made that clear. Not like Madame, she’s all over them, silly woman.’
‘And Sigi?’ Lannes said.
‘God knows where, or rather the Devil. I take no notice of him since he killed his own father, which you failed to prove.’
‘And the Spaniard?’
‘That long streak of nothing! He’s in and out, why I don’t know. Madame is thick as thieves with him.’
Lannes showed her the photograph of Aristide Labiche.
‘What about him?’
Marthe took it over to the window and shut one eye to examine it. She nodded her head twice, laid the photograph on the table went to the cupboard and brought out a bottle of marc, less than a quarter full, and two little glasses. She passed one to Lannes and settled herself in her chair holding her glass in both hands ‘He used to come here,’ she said. ‘The old count liked him, or came as near to liking him as the old devil liked anyone. They would talk for hours, don’t ask me about what, because I don’t know or care.’
She had been the Count’s mistress for years, through his several marriages, and even in his feeble old age he would have his hand up her skirts. Her voice softened as she spoke of him, then resumed its habitual harsh brusque tone as she said,
‘Since you’re here with this picture I suppose something’s happened to him. He’s dead too, is he? Well, I know nothing about that. He was a gentleman, however, I can tell you that.’
‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘not only dead, but murdered. You may have heard of a body being found in the public garden. That was his. It’s the Spaniard I’m interested in. He was seen with the dead man.’
‘I know nothing about that,’ she said again. ‘But there’s wickedness in this house, always has been, always will be. That’s why that poor sot sitting in his father’s chair drinks himself into a stupor, day after day, to drown the wickedness.’
Lannes had no reply to that. The old woman got up, took a lump of dough from a bowl and put it on a board, sprinkled flour on it and began to roll it out. She sniffed, twice. Then she wiped her hand on her apron and drank her marc.
Lannes said, ‘The Count knows the dead man’s brother. He’s his client, perhaps his friend. They’re two of a kind.’
‘That’s nothing to me,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s anything to me, since the old devil died. I never thought I’d say this to anyone. Now go away.’
XVIII
Léon was the first of the musketeers to arrive at the swimming-pool. He felt nervous, on edge. Lieutenant Schussmann had called at the shop for the first time in ten days, and had again pressed him to accept his invitation to have dinner. ‘It would please me so much, Léon,’ he had said. ‘I seek refreshment. So much of my work here is boring. Of course, I understand that you may resent our presence here. When I was your age I would have hated to see a French Army of Occupation in Würrtemberg. But such things are accidents of politics and history. They are no reason why you and I should not be friends. It would give me such great pleasure.’
And for the first time Léon hadn’t said ‘no’. He hadn’t accepted the invitation either, but he hadn’t dared to refuse. It wasn’t possible of course that the man who called himself Félix could know that Schussmann had renewed his request. But he might know he had visited the shop – he might have someone tailing Schussmann – anything was possible. At the thought of Félix Léon felt as if he was at a door that would open on a house of desolation . . . And what would Alain and the other musketeers think if they learned that he was being solicited by a German officer? They would condemn him as a spy. Certainly they would never trust him again.
He began to strip and thought how Gaston had liked to unbutton his shirt and run his hands over his body, murmuring lines of verse, sometimes Rimbaud, but more often English poets. Would Schussmann do that too? He had just put on his bathing-trunks when Aramis came into the changing-room.
‘Are we the first?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. The others may be already by the pool. I’ll wait for you.’
Aramis chattered as he changed, then said, as if shyly, his eyes averted from Léon, ‘I thought what you wrote was brilliant.’
‘It was mostly Alain’s work.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t all his, that you had a hand in it. Anyway, you mean, d’Artagnan’s.’
They both found themselves giggling. Aramis put his arm round Léon’s shoulder.
‘I’m sure we’re going to be great friends,’ he said. ‘But I wish I could remember where it was I saw you before.’
‘In the bank perhaps,’ Léon said. ‘I used to be a counter-clerk.’
‘Not possible. I’ve never been in a bank in my life.’
Again they both laughed and with Aramis’ arm still round his shoulder went through to the pool.
Aramis said, ‘Well, we are the first. Do you want to swim? It looks more natural if we do.’
Léon blushed, ‘I can’t actually. I’ve never learned.’
‘I’ll teach you. It’s not difficult. Really, it’ll be a pleasure. Some day you may have to swim for your life and think how embarrassing it will be if you can’t. Come on.’
They entered the pool at the shallow end where the water came just up to their waist. It was colder than Léon expected. Aramis put his arm on Léon’s middle and told him to kick his legs up. Then he cupped his other hand under Léon’s chin and said, ‘Now arms and legs like a frog.’ To his surprise Léon found himself buoyant. He made a few strokes and with Aramis supporting him, felt the tension leaving him and was almost swimming. Then he looked up and saw Alain standing on the poolside. Alain dived in, swam a couple of lengths and stopped beside them.
‘All right?’
They clambered out. Porthos was standing watching them. He was still fully dressed.
‘I hate swimming,’ he said, ‘except in the sea. Before the war we always went to Biarritz for the holidays every summer. I suppose that’s off this year too.’
He talked for some time about Biarritz and what a bore
it was that they had been confined to the city last year, and how it looked like being no better this one.
‘So that’s how it is,’ Aramis said. ‘We’re accustomed to going to the Côte d’Azur, to Nice where my grandparents live. Now we can’t even cross the demarcation line to the Unoccupied Zone. What about you, Athos?’
Alain intervened, sparing Léon the embarrassment of admitting that he had never gone away on holiday because his father was dead and his mother couldn’t afford it.
‘This is not what we’re here to talk about,’ he said, and led them to the little gallery above the pool. They spread towels and lay down.
‘So . . . ’ Alain said, ‘how did we do?’
All the posters had been distributed.
Aramis said, ‘I’ve got a confession though. I was pinning one to a tree in the public garden and thought I was alone till an old lady who had been asleep on a bench came up and stood by my shoulder. I don’t mind admitting I was scared stiff in case she called a policeman – not that there was one about but I wasn’t thinking straight – until she clapped me on the back and said, “Bravo, young man, but you really must be more careful. Vive la France all the same!”’
Alain told them about Léon’s plan to scatter copies of the Cross of Lorraine around the city.
‘I like that,’ Aramis said, ‘that’s brilliant.’
Porthos said, ‘My father says de Gaulle’s a madman, crazy, vain and conceited. He was in a prison camp with him in the last war, and says he wouldn’t trust him an inch.’
‘Well, my father thinks the Marshal the saviour of France,’ Aramis said. ‘We just have to accept that we can’t trust our fathers’ generation. After all, it’s they who have got us into this mess.’
‘De Gaulle may be a madman,’ Alain said, ‘but perhaps a madman is what France needs just now.’
‘Absolutely,’ Aramis said, ‘Joan of Arc was probably crazy and think what she achieved.’
