Hunting Ground (16 page)

‘So, madame, a word of caution. Don’t harbour this man a moment longer. Give him up, and I will personally see that no further harm comes to you.’

He still hadn’t put the gun away. Big, ugly, scarred, and looking as if accustomed to banging criminal heads, he left that six-shot revolver on the table close to his right hand so that I would be tempted to repeatedly glance at it.

‘He really isn’t here, Inspector.’ But was there something of Tommy’s behind me? I wondered.

Dupuis read my thoughts. ‘Those woollen socks,’ he said.

‘Which?’ I asked, not turning to look towards the stove where they had been hung last night. Instead, I reached for my cup, hoping my nerves wouldn’t betray me.

‘You’d better look,’ he said.

There were no socks or anything else of Tommy’s, but my response was still not good enough. ‘I can have this place searched,’ he said. ‘Your husband has already given the authorization.’

‘And has the district magistrate, Inspector?’ I snapped my fingers for the piece of paper he would have to produce. In those days, one could still demand such a thing. Later, of course, the police didn’t even bother with permission.

It didn’t ruffle him in the slightest. Instead, he cocked that revolver and said, ‘Such a reaction in one who was once so attractive, only suggests that you’re hiding him.’

‘Then search and find out for yourself. He left here three days ago.’

‘Ah, bon,
and this newspaper, madame? Where was he heading, if he really has left? Provence, was it?’

Even then he
knew
of my mother’s having always spent her winters there. ‘Spain, I think.’

‘And not near Barbizon at her farm, eh? He could have walked there easily from here.’

‘He said he had clients in Barcelona who would help him.’

It was then that his associate rapped on one of the French windows. Dupuis got up and went to open it, they to talk of tracks in the snow that had fortunately all but been covered. ‘Those of a man, Inspector, leading here.’

‘And none leaving?’

‘Two sets to her car. The man’s and the woman’s. Hers return from where the car’s now parked.’

‘Then it’s as she says, and he’s gone from here.’

‘Shall we leave you and go to Avon to check out the trains?’

That ‘we’ meant there must be two subordinates, the other still tramping about or already upstairs and waiting.

But Dupuis answered, ‘No. It’s perhaps just as well to leave him on the run. Yes … yes, that would be best. A man in such a position can only look back and wonder if we’re following, and he might well be stopped at the frontier in any case.’

Even now, I have to wonder what Dupuis must have wanted from me, but I knew that he wasn’t going to push things. Maybe they would watch the house from a distance, maybe simply depend on Georges and Tante Marie to inform.

Tommy had got into that car of mine, and I had driven him out to the main road and back, he to walk on his hands into the house and me to then walk in those tracks and obliterate them.

‘Madame, I should arrest you, but as that would leave your children without their mother’s love and care, we’ll leave the matter for now. Just don’t ever cross me again.’

A bargain, was that it? ‘I repeat, Inspector, that he murdered no one. The others did, and I would urge you to have them identified, charged, and arrested. I’m sure that you will find that among them were some, if not all, of those who violated me.’

Long after they had driven away, I remained staring out at the road until at last I felt it safe enough to check if all the locks were on before going slowly up the stairs while still listening for Dupuis.

Tommy was quietly playing cards with my children.

Swallows have lived in the attic. Plastered to the roof timbers, their nests form shallow cups that are drenched with long-dried, spattered grey. Rubbish is everywhere. Not a thing of value has been left. There are cobwebs, great nets of them, and they blow about in the draught that comes in through the broken windows. Again, there are scattered shell casings. Even so, I try to remember because it was here that so much happened.

The crates were stacked or leaning against one another among the relics of my husband’s family, who must have believed their secrets should remain hidden and that one never threw anything out lest those same secrets be exposed.

But Tommy was standing beside me. We were looking at the crates, and I knew we were both wondering if some of Nicki’s treasures were among them. The children were asleep in their rooms, the lantern was on a chest, and light from it was reflected in the bevelled glass of an antique cheval whose spindly stand was broken years ago.

‘Since Dupuis wasn’t interested in these,’ said Tommy, ‘we can only surmise that he’s not in on the whole picture.’

The Action gangs and the robbery, Schiller and the Nazi connection. ‘Hence Jules and the Vuittons will soon arrive to see if you’ve broken into any of them, all of which means that you will have to leave.’

There was a warmth and sincerity to his eyes that I desperately needed, but he said, ‘I have to, for your sake.’

‘Why not open a few of them?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re safe enough for now. That way, we can come back. I’ll talk to the firm and to Nicki, and we’ll see what can be done. There must be something. Those people can’t go unpunished for what they did to you.’

The attic was huge and cluttered with old and still very fine things. The light was soft as we threaded our way among wicker chairs, a baby carriage, a bureau, a washtub, a pile of carpets. There were boxes of china, lamps, and lanterns … The images come at me: a hat stand, a dressmaker’s dummy, spinning wheel, even a sheathed sword, but did an ancestor of my husband’s really go to war under Napoléon? Was he killed in Russia?

It was dark, for the lantern was now far behind us, giving a horizon that was irregular but glowed as if the sun were going down, and as Tommy reached for me, I was terrified and pulled away, but the kiss was so tender, he so hesitant and conscious of what had happened to me, I let it continue. Hands were soon placed on my hips, and though I flinched, I let them stay until the spasm passed and I felt myself pressing against him.

Dragging him back a little, I sat down on something. It was an end table. There was just room for me to wrap my legs about him, and I couldn’t think of anything else. I had to have him in me, had to forget the laughter and the shouting.

In a rush, my legs tightened, for he had lifted me up and was softly saying my name over and over as I felt his tears mingle with my own. Perhaps Georges was out there watching us—spying—and I hoped he was because then he’d see me doing this among the relics of my husband’s family.

Throwing back my head, I pushed myself against my lover, had to get closer and closer, had to have him in me deeper and deeper, and as I felt him coming inside me, I wanted to cry out but was silent.

The throbbing ended, the kisses lingered, and finally I murmured, ‘Now please take me to bed downstairs.’

Two nights later, the children and I saw him enter the forest. He wouldn’t be taking the train from the station at Avon, which was just on the other side of Fontainebleau. This much we knew for sure, and in the morning of that third day, I took the children to Paris. There were things I had to do, questions I had to ask.

Wind tugs at a torn photograph among the litter of others that have been dumped from drawers that are no longer present. It’s one of the first of my children—Jules obviously having taken the photo, happier days back then—Jean-Guy at his birth, love in my eyes as I lift a nipple to his anxious little lips and feel the tug of them. Did I once possess such a gentleness?

Another of Marie at the age of two is in the bath, splashing. Always, she loved to do that!
Ah, mon Dieu
, you should have seen her.

Another shows the dog we once had before Jules got tired of it and Georges hit the poor creature with the axe. Yes, the axe!

There are others of my father and mother, from the days before the 1914–1918 war. The candlelight makes the photographs a deeper shade of amber, but the wind comes back and a sudden gust sweeps through the house stirring the dust and the ghosts, banging things and creaking others as it drags the candle flame out and I let go of the photos to remember Paris in that winter of 1940, my sister near to death. André de Verville had come at my summons. He was a very good doctor, but even he was doubtful and furious with good cause, for the concierge hovered about the door to Nini’s room, and at his, ‘For God’s sake, Lily, do something!’ I gave her five thousand francs in exchange for her silence and promise to keep my sister’s room. Abortion was illegal, you understand.

‘We’ll take her to the hospital now,’ I told the woman. ‘Nothing will be said of where she lived.’ It’s a reassurance she questioned, as she should, but André, he went downstairs to bring his car closer while I sat in the chair he had vacated and I reached for Nini’s hand.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘To do such a thing, Nini?’

Her eyes were closed. She was so pale. ‘Marcel told me what that husband of yours had let them do to you on the orders of the Vuittons. Me, I couldn’t keep the child a moment longer.’

‘So you went out and got some butcher?’

The nod she gave was very slight. There were tears and these flow freely. ‘I didn’t want it to live, Lily. I wanted us both to die.’

‘Did you love him?’

There was a brief smile, a shake of the head. ‘I only went with Jules to show you what that bastard was really like.’

She’d have done it too. ‘
Imbécile,
you could simply have told me!’

Again, there was that brief smile, gone too soon. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me.’

‘So he’s left you, just like this, that pig. I’ll kill him!’

Nini didn’t respond. Anxiously, I pressed my fingers to her wrist. The pulse, it was too faint.

She had a sepsis in her womb.

At a noise, the present comes back, and I know I must get that Luger before it’s too late, but am afraid to go down into the cellar, afraid of what it will tell me about myself, and can’t yet leave the memories of that visit to Paris.

The Fourteenth Arrondissement was the home of Breton immigrants, of impoverished writers, poets, and artists. Most of the prostitutes there were
Bretonnes
, chunky, blonde- or brown-haired farm girls who’d come in hopes of finding work of a different sort. Montparnasse was full of them. Cow-eyed, docile until beaten by their pimps, they eyed me as I walked along the streets, searching always until at last, I found the address.

Number 7 rue de l’Ouest—how I remember it still. There was a very long courtyard with a ramshackle, two-storey house at the far end, behind which there was a solid stone wall that rose out of question.

The house had arched French windows, all but one of whose shutters were closed. There were two round windows to the left of these, and at the base of that wall, there was a heap of broken boards. Iron grilles guarded the cellar windows while a broken down-spout hung precariously from the eaves, and children played in the ever-damp and freezing cold as an old woman rinsed pots at the courtyard tap, behind which thin frozen dishcloths hung, and there were cats, cats and a dog that was afraid.

There was a carpenter’s shop for the picture framing, so that was handy unless the credit had all run out. Practically all of the other windows were tall and narrow, some with curtains, their shutters open. Others were with their shutters closed, those, too, of the concierge’s
loge
. Marcel’s window faced straight down the length of the courtyard, and I gave it a last glance before pulling the rusty chain that would, I hoped, ring a bell.

Of course, nothing happened, and when I stood back to look up again at that window behind which some shreds of gauze hung, I noticed that half the louvres were missing from the shutters. Frost was on the glass. Icicles lined the sill.

‘Marcel, it’s me.
Oo-oo
. Hey, up there, Marcel!’ My breath steamed. The children stopped their games as I yelled again.

Finally, a small boy with a runny nose and hair down over his eyes, handed me a small stone. ‘Not too hard, madame. He’s painting the lady again, and you mustn’t break the window.’

The stone hit the glass. Several seconds passed until there’s a bellow, ‘
Nom de Jésus-Christ
, can’t a man work in peace?’

It was the first time I’d ever heard Marcel talk like a real artist. Even in my troubled state of mind, I was humbled.

‘Lily … ?’

‘Marcel, I need to talk to you.’

He had a paintbrush in hand, and I heard him saying,
‘Merde!’
just under his breath but not under it enough. ‘A moment then.’

The woman was the mother of the boy who handed me the stone. Shyly, she smiled at me and reached for her clothes. She was chunky, big-breasted, had hips and a seat that flared, was all woman. We waited while she got dressed. Marcel asked me if I’d any money. ‘Just a little, Lily, for the boy.’

I wanted to say, I’m sorry I spoiled your fun, for I know he and the woman would have gone to bed later, but I gave him a hundred francs of Tommy’s money. ‘For the boy. Ask her to buy him a hat and a scarf.’

The woman disappeared, and for a few moments silence reigned as we sat among the clutter of paints, brushes, and canvases, the two of us staring into our glasses at the cheap
vin rouge
he had offered.

‘Nini’s in the hospital now. I’ll ring them later.’

He tossed off the wine and wiped his lips on the back of a hand. ‘For what it’s worth, I tried to get Jules to help her and when he wouldn’t, I tried to get her to go to a doctor.’

‘I know. I wanted to thank you. Marcel … ?’

‘Oui.’

‘How deeply is Jules involved with those people?’

‘Don’t question things, Lily.’

‘I have to! They tried to kill my …’

‘Lover? The American …’ Marcel nodded and set his glass aside. Again, I heard him say, ‘I shouldn’t tell you, but I will. The robbery was to gain them money with which to buy guns and explosives since they are no lovers of the Third Republic. Half the loot came here to Paris in a van, the other half …’ He gave a shrug. ‘Those paintings and things could be anywhere.’