Kaleidoscope (33 page)

‘Then it will happen in the citadel of dreams among the shards of pottery and bits of Roman glass, Inspector. It will happen where the wars of the imagination were often fought and nearly always won. It will happen where my heart was broken.'

The dogs …? wondered Kohler. Would the SS unleash them?
Mascots
, for Christ's sake!
Loved
until ordered otherwise. And well fed by the look.

The broken walls and narrow passageways of the ruins came to him and he saw them bleached by moonlight, then plunged into darkness. Cold, so cold and all alone.

Snow and moonlight played the devil's taunt with the narrow streets and passageways of the darkened village. No one was about. There was no sound but that of his own boots. And through it all came that sense of knowing all doors and voices would be shut to him.

St-Cyr reached the tiny square. Water still spilled from the tap. Snow filtered down, and where the sharp shaft of the sky above appeared, the crystals glistened as they fell and swirled and struggled so as to bury the ground.

‘
Messieurs
,' he shouted in panic now. ‘
I must have answers!
'

Only silence and the cold of their canyons came to him. All would be listening – tensely, so tensely, the finger to the lips, the black-out curtains tightly drawn. All lights extinguished in every room and house but a single candle.

Old lips with wrinkles sharply joining to meet them among the hairs of unwanted moustaches. Black shawls, black everything. So be it. He tossed the hand of indifference, said quietly, ‘
Mon Dieu
, you people are stubborn. United in spirit, you range against that common enmity of your centuries not understanding I come as a friend.'

St-Cyr gave them what they wanted. Trudging onward and uphill always, he passed the Café de Bonne Chance, their little gathering place – oh how they valued it but were not blind to its humble simplicity. It had served them well. He passed the church and knew its door, though never locked, would now be shut to him.

He went on up the hill and just before he came to that final, steep ascent, turned to look back over the land. He drew in a deep breath and gave a long sigh of, ‘Ah, it's magnificent!'

Light shimmered on the sea that was always bluer than any other. It bathed the olive groves and vineyards, the orchards too, and came on up over stony pastures to solitary pine or clump of cypresses. Roman and Saracen, Vandal or Visigoth, Nazi or German. Munk would level the village – he knew this now, felt it and said, ‘God, do not mock me like this. The Gestapo Munk stands only to gain no matter the outcome of our little investigation.'

As was His custom, God did not answer but gave only the paleness of the moon and the gently falling snow.

Abruptly St-Cyr turned and climbed to the heights, passing through that broken portal and into ruins the centuries had left. An owl flew off, heavy-winged and dark beneath the moon and silence.

‘Josianne-Michèle,' he sang out, his voice so loud it seemed odd and frightening to hear it echo back and forth. It was as if time had left only his voice to bounce about long after death.

He lowered it. ‘Josianne-Michèle …? Ah! it is me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, the detective. Please, I am unarmed. The man from Bayonne, mademoiselle. The one from the Deuxième Bureau, isn't that so? He has my revolver. My revolver, Josianne-Michèle, and me, I have foolishly let him take it from me again.'

Again … again … again … Did Saracen or Roman yell among fresh ruins a last farewell, and would it have echoed so many times and so hauntingly?

‘Ah yes, mademoiselle. The crux of the matter, eh? A simple revolver then; a simple murder now. Then, too, that of a dancer in Les Naturistes in Paris – a single shot in an otherwise empty room. Protection through silence for her killer.'

As some tourist, forgotten by tour guide and autobus and left to his own designs in a foreign land, the detective strolled about the ruins, muttering things to himself. And she could not decide about him and eased her aching arms. He might know who had killed that dancer; he might not even understand why it had happened. He might now know about Chamonix – ah! it was very possible. He had discovered the masks. Oh for sure, he had looked at them. What had he thought? she wondered.

He was now in the arena surrounded by the broken columns that stood as soldiers would to stop the lions from escaping so that the naked virgin of childhood, she could try to save herself. One could hear the shouts and cries all around him; one could see among the crowd those who stood to shout their praises and encouragement, and those who threw the thumb down to mock her.

‘But Chamonix,' he said. ‘Chamonix, Josianne-Michèle Delphane? That and the death of the financier are the kernel of this whole affair.'

He was in silhouette sharply defined and he wanted her to walk out there to him. That, she could not do. ‘My name is not Delphane!' she shrilled, trembling with sudden anger. ‘How can you say such a thing?'

She was up in the seats of this little forum she thought a theatre or perhaps even a colosseum. St-Cyr thanked that boyhood intuition that was still with him after all these years. Think as a child, and a child you will find.

Again he tossed an indifferent hand. ‘All right, mademoiselle, then is it Buemondi who fathered you and your sister? Come, come, I need to know the answer and must hear it from yourself.'

She rested her arms on her knees and saw him along the sight of the crossbow and above the shaft of the arrow. She could kill him easily.

‘Carlo made the mask of me and the body casts, Monsieur the Detective from Paris. Carlo has allowed me to see myself as I really am. Wanton, monsieur. Lustful and with no shame for the urges of my body. Ah yes, Inspector, I have slept with my father many times and enjoyed it immensely!'

Ah Nom de Dieu!
‘And your sister?' he shouted but knew the girl had vanished.

Picking his way through the blocks of stone, St-Cyr came out on to a broad avenue and looked uncertainly along it towards the walls that surrounded the citadel. Instinctively his shoulders flinched and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

She was behind him and he knew that if he turned, she'd fire that thing at him. ‘And your sister?' he asked again, lowering his voice to a calmness he did not feel.

The girl's voice grated. ‘My sister loathes the very sight of me, Inspector. She's always hated me because Alain Borel is
mine
! Alain could not divide one heart among two lovers. Oh for sure, Josette-Louise, she envies me. She even let Carlo make the mask of her and lay naked under his hands while the body casts, they were made. She exposed herself to him many times and tried to let him have the use of her body, but it was no good. I was not present. Me, I refused absolutely to be a witness to it. And the face you see in her mask, Inspector, is the lie of her outgoing self, for she has failed miserably at everything she ever tried to do except be the virgin she is.'

‘A dancer,' he said – it was not a question.

‘Yes!' she answered. ‘Actress, designer's mannequin and artist's model – even at prostituting herself, she could not succeed.'

‘Then why didn't you go to Paris?' he asked, fearing the iron-tipped bolt of that thing in her hands; feeling he had asked too much.

There was no answer.

Just before dawn the boy, Bébert Peretti, came up to the ruins with bread and a bowl of
caf
é
blanc
made with real coffee and milk.

‘It is to be a treat for her, monsieur,' he said gravely. ‘It is because
grand-mère
wishes to tell her the agony will soon be over. The soldiers, they have the guns and they ring both the village and the fortress.'

St-Cyr threw up his eyes to the heavens above. He could not help but cry out from the soul, God, why have you not allowed us to prevent it?

Only silence gave answer. Eventually he filled his lungs, catching the breath of sage, thyme and mimosa.

‘Bébert, today is to be your day and me, I know exactly how much you and your grandmother love the Mademoiselle Josianne-Michèle. She is the sweetheart of your dreams, and by your silence, you are trying not only to protect the village but her also. This I understand and admire because I've been a boy myself. But now you must go down through the village that is your home. Walk right through it, eh? Speaking to no one. Tell the Gestapo Munk that the leader of the maquis is in the citadel among the ruins and agrees to negotiate only with the Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane. Please, you may give the Inspector this. That one, he will understand.'

St-Cyr placed the kaleidoscope in the boy's hand and closed his fingers over it with a gentle clasp and the terse shake of comrades. ‘Now go, and may God go with you.'

‘And the other one, monsieur? The Inspector from the Gestapo?'

‘Ah, yes, Hermann. Hermann, he must not try to join us. Tell him that we part as friends, knowing each respects the other for what we are. Men first, and detectives second.'

‘But he must not come.'

‘Hey, listen, my friend. That one is stubborn beyond belief, but this time absolutely, he must bend to my wishes. I do not wish to see him crucified.'

The boy raised the hand of farewell and the detective from the Sûreté watched as he threaded his way through the ruins and went down to the village.

Then he left the
café blanc
and the bread on a slab of stone and beside them both, placed a single piece of Roman glass and the scent bottle the two girls had found so long ago.

It was enough. It would have to be enough.

10

They were gathered on the road just below the ramparts of their village, about 200 souls in all. And the Abbé Roussel, gaunt, an old rook in flight, hastened down the narrow passageways to be with them.

Most were on their knees; some stood like cattle, dumb before the hammer that would kill them. Three were dead. Their bodies lay in the streets above on trampled snow where the bullets had caught them or one of the dogs. A woman had lost her baby; blood and brains were on hands that shook so hard, she could barely clasp them in prayer.

It was the morning of 23 December 1942. The dogs were being put back on the leash for a final pass through the village. Anyone found hiding would be shot on sight.

Kohler, freed of the handcuffs that had held him all night, clasped and then favoured first one bony wrist and then the other. Ludo Borel and the weaver stood with him, the woman constantly searching the heights and desperate.

Carlo Buemondi, lost and ludicrous in his black uniform, had finally realised what it all must mean for him.

Apart also, and alone, Jean-Paul Delphane drew on a cigarette in the frosty air, hiding whatever thoughts he might have.

The sun was sharp and it made oranger still the flame-coloured roofs of the village.

‘Buemondi is about to die in the battle for that hilltop,' said Kohler quietly. ‘Oh for sure he'll die the hero's death and valour will be nailed to his tombstone, but he'll die all the same.'

‘The Gestapo Munk will take over the Villa of the Golden Oracle and either sell or live in it,' said the weaver emptily.

‘All that Anne-Marie wanted so much to keep for herself will be lost.'

‘And Buemondi's heirs won't get a sou,' breathed Kohler, watching her intently. ‘Heirs that might have had a rightful claim will not be able to raise their voices in objection because they, too, will be silenced, as will this hillside.'

‘
Viviane, tell him!
' seethed the herbalist, his fists doubled in frustration.

‘
I can't, Ludo! Don't you see, I can't
?'

Still she hadn't turned to face them. ‘There's only one of your daughters up on that hilltop, Mademoiselle Viviane,' said Kohler firmly. ‘With Madame Buemondi dead, that daughter stood to have a life of financial freedom because, though bastard and lecher he is, Carlo Buemondi would have kept her.'

‘Josette was suicidal,' said Borel, uneasy at the turn of things. ‘Mademoiselle Viviane took her many times to Paris, to Zurich and to Chamonix for treatment.'

‘Who paid for it?'

Ah merde
, must this Gestapo betray such a harsh inquisitiveness? ‘Me, I never knew, monsieur, and she never said.'

‘Listen, my friend, don't be an idiot and hold out on me now. Delphane paid up, eh? The village …
Gott im Himmel
, think of the village.'

Did this one hope to save it by knowing the truth? Would it even matter?

Borel tossed a curt nod. ‘That one then. The one from Bayonne. Sometimes he came to see Viviane at the cottage. The twins, they knew him as their uncle.'

‘Delphane took letters and money to Josette in Paris, Mademoiselle Viviane,' said Kohler. ‘He broke the rules and got her the
laissez-passers
necessary for her to come south from time to time. But she didn't come here to see Madame Buemondi. She came to see you because by then she had been told or had realized the truth of who her real father and mother were.'

The weaver bit her lower lip and clenched her fists to stop herself from crying. ‘Anne-Marie had disowned her years ago. Carlo … Carlo made use of her whenever … whenever she went to see him. He was
raping
her, Inspector. My daughter. A girl who was …'

‘Mentally ill,' said Kohler sadly. ‘You were both on this hillside, Mademoiselle Viviane, when Madame Buemondi came out to see you on her birthday. You shouted the accusations at her – hell, she'd locked up the money you so desperately needed to get Jean-Paul off your back.'

The weaver clenched her fists all the harder. Blood trickled from the split she had reopened in her lip. Ludo Borel took a step towards her. Kohler grabbed him by the arm.

The woman choked back a sob and said, ‘Anne-Marie, she … she held out her hand as she had always done to me, Inspector. She … she said that the kaleidoscope was in the
mont-de-piété
in Bayonne, and that she would redeem it for me just as soon as she could gather enough money. That … that Jean-Paul, he was having the villa watched too closely, and she … she could not go there because he … he would kill h …'