Cold Winter in Bordeaux (17 page)

Schnyder was smoking one of the Havana cigars which Lannes still managed to get for him by way of Fernand and his black market, tobacco-smuggling connections. He was as ever beautifully dressed, making Lannes conscious of the shabbiness of his own suit which was seven or eight years old, the turn-ups of his trousers beginning to fray. At least Marguerite still ironed his shirts, he thought, irrelevantly, but the one he was wearing couldn’t compare with the Alsatian’s crisp cream-coloured cotton one. His shoes too were down-at heel; Schnyder’s were highly polished – he was separated from his wife – did he brush them himself?

‘I understand you saw that actress – what’s her name? – Adrienne Jauzion,’ he said. ‘What was that about, Jean?’

The pretence that he wasn’t sure of her name was ridiculous. Did he suppose Lannes didn’t know he had been sniffing round her? But how had he learnt of their meeting? Perhaps he paid her maid to keep him informed of La Jauzion’s doings?

‘She had some information about the Gabrielle Peniel case,’ he said.

‘That surprises me. Was it useful?’

‘Not really. The dead woman used to be her dresser, but what she had to tell me led nowhere.’

There was no need to mention Catherine Haget – Kiki – to Schnyder.

‘Meanwhile,’ he added, ‘Judge Bracal has been questioning the man Peniel. I don’t know if anything has come of that.’

‘It sounds as if the case is going nowhere,’ Schnyder said.

‘It’s certainly not moving fast, but we’ve eliminated certain lines of inquiry.’

‘Good, good.’

It was clear the Alsatian wasn’t interested, but something was worrying him.

‘You’ve a son in Vichy, haven’t you, Jean?’

‘Yes, he’s employed in one of their Youth programmes, seems to enjoy it. Says they are doing good work, and I suppose he’s right. We’re hoping he’ll get leave, be home over Christmas.’

He was tempted to say, ‘Why do you ask?’ – but refrained. Whatever was worrying Schnyder, let him spell it out.

The Alsatian knocked the ash off his cigar, and drew on it.

‘But you’ve another son,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘And he’s?’

‘Not in Bordeaux.’

‘Not in Bordeaux?’

Schnyder frowned.

‘I don’t want to know more,’ he said. ‘I value you, Jean, but you are making things difficult for me. People are asking questions about you. I think you’ll know what I mean. When I say I don’t want to know more, I mean I personally don’t, but – you understand my position? I don’t know where you stand.’

‘As regards what?’

‘I don’t think I need to spell that out. Let’s just say it’s uncomfortable if one of my officers becomes an object of suspicion.’

‘I’m a cop, that’s all, a servant of the Republic, or the French State, whatever you like to call it. A cop investigating a murder, doing my job which, as you know, isn’t an easy one. I can’t think why I should be – what did you call it? – an object of suspicion. Am I entitled to ask who has been asking questions?’

‘You may ask, but you’ll understand that I can’t give you an answer. All I’ll say is this. One son in Vichy and the other … not in Bordeaux. You can’t be surprised if that provokes questions. There’s another thing too. I’d a complaint this morning. It came from one of our Services. You had lunch yesterday, it seems, with one of that Service’s men and he has lodged a complaint, says you are harassing him. Now that’s specific, he’s important seemingly, someone they value. So what do you have to say? What should I reply? You understand my position. It’s awkward.’

The sun had come out. Light streamed through the window. Particles of dust danced in the air. The Alsatian shifted in his seat. Lannes took a somewhat crushed packet of Gauloises from his pocket, extracted a cigarette, tapped it on his thumbnail, and lit it. Félix’s complaint had come quickly. Probably he had spotted Moncerre’s tail; interesting.

‘I bought the chap lunch,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that counts as harassment. Not in my book anyway. I had learnt that there was a connection with Gabrielle Peniel, and a closer one with the man who claims to be her father, the chap Judge Bracal has been examining. So I wanted to speak with him, but nothing useful came of it. This Service you speak of – they’re spooks, aren’t they? Well, we never get anywhere with the spooks, I learnt that a long time ago. I was wasting my time. At least that’s what I thought, chasing up a blind alley … but now that he’s apparently complained, I’m not so sure. Is the complaint formal? If so, I should answer it. In full. Is that what they want? If it is, then I might lodge a countercomplaint. Obstructing a policeman in the investigation of a crime. How would that sound?’

‘I doubt if that’s what they want.’

‘Perhaps I should speak of this to Bracal,’ Lannes said. ‘He’s the investigating judge, after all, who, as I say, has been examining the chap’s acquaintance, the man Peniel. Do you think I should do that?’

‘I don’t think that would be necessary, Jean. I’ll do what I can to smooth things over. But please don’t embarrass me in this way again. We don’t interfere with the Service. You must accept that as an order.’

Not even, Lannes didn’t say, when they interfere with us?

All the same, Lannes knew that he would indeed find an opportunity to raise the matter with Bracal. You had to find a way of protecting your back, and it was obvious the Alsatian wasn’t going to do that for him. Meanwhile he had other things on his mind, visits to make.

* * *

The old professor laid aside his book when the maid ushered Lannes into his study, first placing a ribbon in it to mark his place.

‘I don’t know why I bother to do this,’ he said. ‘I’ve read it so often that I sometimes think I could find my way about it blindfold. Indeed I read it only for – what shall I say? – consolation isn’t the right word. But it’s a book for all time and more peculiarly for ours, though it was written more than a hundred years ago.’

‘What is it?’

‘
La Charteuse de Parme
, to my mind the greatest French novel. You’ve read it of course, superintendent?’

‘A long time ago,’ Lannes said

‘You should read it again. If only because of its sense of politics as a recurrently calculated readjustment of roles. For instance, even as the Prince persecutes the Republicans, he considers how he might be wise to seek to establish a relationship with them, and so effect a new balance of power. Isn’t this a true picture of what is happening here in France now? A readjustment, or redistribution, of roles, with actors alert to the new part they will soon be playing. How else to account for the assassination of the Admiral? Very Stendhalian. But you haven’t come to hear me chatter about literature. Why are you honouring me with a visit?’

‘It’s difficult to explain,’ Lannes said.

‘That wretched woman who was murdered? I can’t think you suppose that either Anne-Marie or I can contribute anything to your investigation beyond what you have already learnt from her. So it’s Michel?’

‘Yes, it’s Michel.’

The old man’s lips moved. He pulled at his moustache, then, speaking as if his words came from far away, he said: ‘One always fails when speaking about those one loves. He’s a boy made to be happy and he’s condemned to be young in our ruined France. Does that make sense?’

‘I know what you mean. The same thought has occurred to me about all our young people, not only my own children.’

‘I think, superintendent, you are too sensitive for your profession. Do you drink sherry? It’s a taste I acquired when I did some research in England, at Cambridge, many years ago.’

He picked up a little hand-bell and rang it. The maid appeared and he asked her to bring the sherry decanter and two glasses from the dining room.

‘There were always sherry parties there,’ he said. ‘It’s a cerebral wine.’

Neither spoke till the maid had supplied them with a glass of the wine which was the colour of pale straw and had an astringent taste.

‘Do you want to speak to Michel?’

‘I think I may have to, but to you first, in the hope that … ’ He paused. ‘I like the boy. My daughter is in love with him, there’s no doubt about that, and she is sure he loves her. It’s first love for her, and perhaps for him too. I’ve nothing to complain of. With regard to that. First love, it’s beautiful, but those who experience it are vulnerable. Peculiarly vulnerable it seems to me. I don’t want Clothilde to be hurt.’

‘And you think Michel will hurt her?’

‘What he wants – intends – to do is hurting her.’

‘I won’t pretend I don’t know what you mean. It distresses me too.’

‘Can you prevent it? That’s what I’ve come to ask.’

The professor laid his hand on the book which he had placed on the little table by his side.

‘Michel’s like Fabrice, Stendhal’s hero,’ he said. ‘An ardent boy, an idealist, passionate, in search of adventure, not, I fear, very clever or possessed of good judgement. But … he doesn’t listen to me. He’s fond of me, even grateful to me, but he doesn’t listen. I could tell him he’s heading for disaster, careering towards the abyss, and he would dismiss my warning as coming from someone who has lived too long to know anything. The certainties of the young are frightening for one of my age. In the novel Fabrice alarms those who love him – it’s also part of his attraction.’

As it was of Alain’s, Lannes thought, feeling a new sharp stab of anxiety.

‘Germany will lose the war,’ Lannes said. ‘I’m sure that’s inevitable now, but there will be horrors before it does, and horrors here in France too. Can’t you convince him of that?’

‘Could you?’

‘I don’t know. Probably not. Would you like me to try?’

‘Our poor France,’ the professor said. ‘She’s devouring her children.’

XXVI

Léon was cold, but Paris was wonderful; even the pinched impoverished Paris under a low steel-grey sky was wonderful. The trees were bare. He adjusted his scarf and huddled into his thin overcoat. He was waiting, as he had been instructed, on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens by the statue of the boy called
Le Marchand des Masques
. The boy who was naked except for shorts carved in such a way that they seemed to be moulded close-fitting to his buttocks was holding up a mask, as if inviting Léon to wear it. I don’t need it, he thought. I’m nobody here; I don’t exist as I was. I should be afraid, well I am afraid often, but I’ve never been more alive. The boy’s so sure of himself and his beauty, no one would refuse him; he’s like Alain, that last morning in the dawn when we embraced and he got into the car and I watched it lose itself in the mist. Paris is full of Germans, there’s danger everywhere, and I’ve never been happier. It’s absurd.

He picked up his newspaper. It was the collaborationist
Je suis partout
which he had been told to carry. It was disgusting, everything in it was disgusting, except for the literary articles, and even some of them were repulsive too, but it didn’t matter; I’m alive, he thought, in Paris, and happy.

The girl approached. She wore an ankle-length black coat and a ridiculous perky fur hat.

‘I like your choice of newspaper,’ she said.

‘It’s the voice of our times,’ he replied.

The obligatory exchange amused him. It was unnecessary. After all, they’d done this before. But you stuck by the rules. They’d hammered that into him. Into her too of course. And there was another response he had been given to use if he scented danger.

She leant forward and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Gosh, your face is cold. Are you all right?’

‘But of course.’

‘Put your arm round me,’ she said. ‘There’s a policeman over there. Remember we’re lovers. I think he’s watching us. He followed me into the gardens. Now kiss me. On the lips.’

He held her close, nuzzled her ear. She screwed round and whispered, ‘You’re shy with girls, aren’t you? I can always tell.’

‘He’s moving away,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. I expect he just fancied you and is disappointed now.’

She disengaged herself.

‘It’s not just shyness, is it? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Has he really gone? I don’t want to turn round.’

‘He’s gone.’

‘Right then.’

She took an envelope from her bag.

‘This is urgent,’ she said. ‘They want it off today. It’s coded of course, so it doesn’t make sense, but it’s important.’

‘Isn’t it strange,’ he said, ‘that we do this and we don’t know what it is we are doing and we don’t know each other, and never will, but yet are colleagues?’

‘That’s how it is. It’s best that’s how it is.’

* * *

Jérôme certainly wasn’t lonely – quite the reverse; much in demand, his social life busy, enjoyable too, in this bomb-battered London where everything was provisional. They’d found him a room in Charlotte Street, and every night there were pubs to go to and often a party after closing time. Being French was an advantage because everyone knew the Free French were kept supplied with Algerian wine, and so he always had a bottle to take along, which he did the more willingly since he drank hardly anything himself. The RAF boy Max, who seemed to be Edwin Pringle’s lover, was friendly, had even, it seemed, taken a fancy to him, and they laughed about Pringle together. Max had been a dancer before the war – ‘Chorus-line, darling,’ he said – and took him to theatrical parties. He had an American accent but British passport, which, he said, is ‘why I’m a soldier of the King, or rather one of his boys in blue’. He was stationed somewhere out of London but this scarcely seemed to inhibit his social activities. They had gone to bed a couple of times because, as Max said, ‘Why not? I’m training to be air crew in bombers, and so who knows what Fate – that big word in inverted commas – has in store for me?’ On the other hand there were no emotional complications because Max had always gone for older men though ‘Edwin’s a joke, the old sweetie, I admit that, and before him I was crazy about a guy in the Foreign Office who decided it was all wrong and he would deny himself sex, not for religious reasons you understand, but because he’s a Communist or at least what they call a fellow traveller. It’s all right being that now, of course, since Stalin has become everybody’s Uncle Joe. Poor lamb – my friend, that is, not Stalin – this self-denial, abstinence, makes him even more miserable, but that’s life.’ This led Jérôme to tell him about the Fascist boy in Bordeaux, and they sighed and giggled together. Accordingly when Edwin Pringle invited him to his Christmas house party, Jérôme checked first that Max would be there, which meant there was no danger for him, and accepted.