Stonekiller (14 page)

Defiantly she stood her ground and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I know of no such place. We were too poor, monsieur, or is that simple fact not evident enough?'

‘Please,' said Courtet, ‘the postcards. That is all I ask.'

He was not happy, this professor of prehistory. He did not like the inconvenience of her refusal or what she had said to him. ‘Is it that the postcards, they are incriminating, Professor?' she asked.

His fists were doubled in anger but he did not even realize it, though Hen Oelmann did.

‘How is it, please, that you discovered the trunk?' she demanded. ‘My father forbade his family to say anything of it.'

He shrugged. He silently cursed her probably, then snapped acidly, ‘Time passes, things change. The parents Fillioux are both in their final years, or did you not know this, eh, madame? Needs unimagined became paramount. The trunk was put up for sale in a shop I frequent. One day it was there — oh
bien sûr
, I had heard whispers of your father's preliminary investigation before his tragic death in the war — a great loss, madame. Please, I assure you. Who of us hadn't heard of those whispers? But until that day last year in June, I and my colleagues had never seen the trunk let alone any of its contents.'

And now you hate me, she said to herself but asked, ‘What day, please?'

‘The 17th of June.'

Their anniversary.… ‘A shop where, please?' she asked harshly.

Kohler noted how quickly moisture rushed into her eyes. Mollified, the Professor said, ‘The Marché aux Puces. The Biron stalls.'

Paris, Saint-Ouen and the flea markets.

‘Its contents are priceless, madame. Your mother was absolutely right.'

Was it an offer of conciliation? wondered Kohler.

‘All mother ever wanted was to place my father's name amongst you and see that he received proper recognition. Why did she have to die?

‘Your mother's efforts will not have been in vain, madame, I assure you. When the film is complete, it will carry her name and that of your father among its credits. The cave will bear a suitable bronze plaque. A tribute to her dedication and resolve, to the memory of your father also.'

Lips were pressed against Kohler's left ear. Fingers tickled the short hairs. ‘How touching of him,' breathed Marina von Strade. ‘Left alone with her, would our professor be so kind, or Herr Oelmann? Our Franz who is so watchful, Inspector, he sees so many things, doesn't he, Toto darling, but says so little. That's what makes him so very dangerous.'

Kohler nudged the door open but by then Louis was right behind him.

Juliette Jouvet withdrew into herself. They were all in the shop now and gathered about the trunk which the professor was opening. The one called St-Cyr stood next to the far end, while Herr Kohler stood back a little so as to watch the others and herself.

She had a good view from behind the actress and her lover. She had thought it the very best of positions, for it gave a chance to think and to try to calm herself though Herr Kohler could see her clearly enough. He knew she had been terrified up there in that room. He knew she was hiding something.

They had not forced her to reveal where her mother's hiding-place was, not yet. For that Herr Oelmann would have to wait and so would the Professor but now each would compete with the other to get her alone and she did not know which to fear the most.

The Professor was pale from being indoors a lot. Indeed, now that she could examine him more clearly, she felt that the stories
maman
had told her as a child had been absolutely true. Like so many of his colleagues, Professor Courtet had always had others to do the work of excavating for him. The skin of his hands was smooth and soft-looking, the nails fastidiously trimmed. An expert, yes, of course, but one who preferred to keep his distance from the things he studied whereas her father, unlike most other prehistorians, had been just the opposite.

The last strap came undone, the lid was opened. Nearer to her, an arm swung down, a hand was pressed flat. The fabric of the Baroness's zebra-striped dress rippled as it was smoothed.

At the opening of the trunk, Toto Lemieux had chosen to comfort the Baroness in the only way he knew. By fondling her seat while everyone else was distracted! Everyone but herself, the daughter, who had watched the two of them as they had kissed and played with each other under the waterfall and then had climbed naked to the cave, to enter it and each other.

Wrapped in a brown chamois and tied with stout white cord, the figurines lay in a bundle on the partitioned upper tray of the Abbé Brûlé's trunk. His leather-bound journal was there beside that bundle, and next to these things were her father's journals, all twelve of them. Five from that first season's work, seven from the second, just as
maman
had said.

There were handaxes and other specimens of stone tools in the several compartments which varied in size so as to accommodate everything, even the extra nails and twine the good abbe had used to peg out his layers, the measuring tape too — a dressmaker's tape. Again, it was just as
maman
had always said.

The cord around the chamois was being untied.

‘Professor, a moment, please,' said the Sûreté, his pipe cupped in a hand — ah, she had not seen him even light it! The one called Kohler was no longer where he had been standing. Herr Oelmann was looking at her. What does he see? she asked herself and silently wept.

‘Professor, you were a contemporary of Henri-Georges Fillioux,' said St-Cyr with a little toss of his pipe-hand. ‘What was he like?'

Ah damn the Sûreté! thought Courtet acidly, his glasses winking in the light. ‘Jealous. Insidiously private and secretive. Very possessive of his research. Young to the point of being arrogant beyond his years. We were both assistants under Mouton at the Sorbonne. Henri-Georges went to war and I stayed on. It was a toss-up. Old Mouton said that even though our families might think to shield us from the cannon, he would see that the nation at least got a half-measure of our powder. A fifty-centime piece was tossed.'

‘And he won,' breathed Herr Kohler who was now standing directly behind her — why … why had he moved himself so close? wondered Juliette.

‘Yes, he won, if you wish to put it that way.'

‘I do,' — she heard Herr Kohler saying this even as the Professor's dark brown eyes fell from looking at him to momentarily settle on herself with a coldness that hurt so much she could not meet his gaze.

She let her eyes settle on Lemieux's hand to watch the lover brazenly caress the Baroness.

A hush fell on the gathering as, side by side and perhaps no taller than the length of her hand, the soft yellow stone figurines lay revealed on their little rumpled bed of brown suede as if in the exhaustion of having just made love fifty thousand years ago. The arms were cut off almost at the shoulders so that they, with the bodies and the very simply crafted heads, formed the two crosses the Abbé Brûlé had been so excited about.

The legs were long and straight — rigid from their loving. The hips of the woman were somewhat broader than those of the man. Only at his waist had the ancient sculptor carved a girdle from which to hang a pouch of stone tools.

‘Adam and Eve,' said Courtet.

‘Cro-Magnon,' said Louis. ‘Upper Palaeolithic and no older than about 20,000 years, as are similar things from other sites.'

‘It is as I have thought myself, Inspector,' acknowledged Courtet reluctantly. ‘But the abbe's notes position the figurines much lower in the
gisement.
Henri-Georges was most thorough in pin-pointing the exact stratum. Those, he said, were found with the chunky, flint tools of Neanderthal and are Mousterian in age, so far, far older. Perhaps fifty thousand years.'

‘But those are not all that was found,' said the Baroness softly. ‘Show them the amulet. Here, let me.' She moved away from her friend.

‘Ah no, madame. No. Not even if my life is to be forfeited,' seethed Courtet.

‘But I'm going to wear it in the film?'

‘
No, you're not!
' hissed Courtet quivering. ‘We are having a replica made. Did you think for one minute I would let you handle them again?'

You fool, swore Kohler. You don't know what you're saying to that woman.

‘Baroness, it's all right. It's all being taken care of,' soothed Franz Oelmann. ‘The Reich's prehistorian, Herr Eisner, has okayed everything, Professor. The replicas are to be used
after
the Baroness has first opened the trunk to reveal the figurines. She will put on the amulet then as that one's mother did.'

The amulet …?' began Juliette only to stop herself and ask inwardly,
Maman
…
Maman
, what is this he is saying about your wearing it?

A knotted thong had been thoughtfully provided and yes, the tongue-shaped bauble of deerhorn had probably been polished thousands of years ago, and yes, it had been engraved with the primitive incisions of some ancient scribe but was it any more than twenty thousand years old? wondered St-Cyr, and concluded, no.

The cluster of sharp, short incisions gave no pattern. Some were parallel to the length of the piece, some at right angles to it. Some had a short barb at one end, either slanting to the left or right. Clearly they had been cut by working the point of a flint burin back and forth. The shavings would have been blown out from time to time but did the markings mean anything? Were they the first sign of written language?

Only when Courtet had taken a small, marked disc of tracing paper from his wallet and had slid this over the scratches, did they see the swastika among them.

‘At least fifty thousand years old,' he said. ‘Henri-Georges was always an advocate of greater age than anyone else, but I have to conclude that he was correct.'

‘Fifty thousand years,' said someone.

‘Perhaps far more,' whispered Juliette.
Maman
, she cried inwardly.
Maman
, what is this?

‘A swastika,' breathed Kohler.

‘Yes,' said Courtet. ‘I do not doubt it for a moment and neither does my colleague from the Reich, the Herr Dr Professor Eisner.'

‘The greatest discovery of all time,' said the Baroness. ‘Now you see why the filming of
Moment of Discovery
is so important and why the Reichsminister Dr Goebbels is urging us to keep to the schedule.'

St-Cyr drew on his pipe in quiet contemplation. The amulet was certainly very old, the figurines also. And true, one could sometimes make unexpected patterns out of primitive scratches but
nom de Dieu
, was this not going too far?

Hermann seemed to think so too, but still gazed on the objects with the rapt attention of a small boy at a carnival.

The Sûreté had best clear the throat and the air. ‘Professor, upstairs in the room my partner overheard you saying something about another chamber?'

‘Ah, the
grotte
, yes. After I had visited the cave with Madame Fillioux, I went back to study it alone. I had the journals of your father madame, and that of the abbe. I felt certain though that they both had missed something. Henri-Georges … your father, madame, he was always too intense, too patient with his little investigations. Every grain of sand had to be examined and accounted for. The
gisement
was there at the mouth of the cave and, yes, this suggested a place of lengthy habitation, not a
grotte
for the worship of creatures of the hunt. But the cave, it has two entrances, yes? A much smaller one to the east, one not much used since it is barely large enough to slither through. A ventilation conduit for the smoke of their fires perhaps. This entrance suggested to me that there might possibly be further openings and I persisted.'

Good for you, was that it, eh? snorted Kohler inwardly.

Courtet went on. ‘I found a fissure and rocks that, on close examination, revealed lime had been redeposited to cement the gaps. Clays washed in from the plateau above had contributed to the hiding of the opening of this new chamber. Believe me, the paintings are magnificent, Inspectors. For an hour or more I walked along the ancient channel beneath them, looking up always and aided only by the beam of my torch. Then I could no longer help myself. Ah, I could not. I knelt, as those early hunters must have done, in abject prayer. My moment of discovery.'

‘Dr. Goebbels should see them then,' said Kohler firmly. ‘I'll let Sturmbannführer Boemelburg know of it. He and Gestapo Mueller are old friends. They'll impress upon the Reichminister the importance of his coming here to consecrate the site.'

‘After he's seen the film,' said Oelmann tightly. ‘Do we have clearance to shoot the initial scenes here at the house?'

‘Clearance …? Ah no. No, I'm afraid not,' said the Sûreté. ‘Not until the victim's living quarters have been dusted for fingerprints.'

‘But there was no body, no murder here?' objected Courtet. ‘Surely there is now no need for further delays?'

‘Well?' demanded Oelmann.

‘Yes, please tell us,' insisted the Baroness.

The hand with its pipe was given that little toss Kohler had come to know so well. ‘A day, two days … perhaps a week. Until I am certain no one has searched through Madame Fillioux's personal belongings, that attic is sealed.'

‘But that's impossible,' swore Oelmann, darting an accusing glance at the professor. ‘Filming is to begin up there.'

‘But the trunk, it had lain in the cellars, had it not?' said Louis.

‘They lived up there,' countered Oelmann harshly. ‘We want to record the poverty. It's important to show how she lived. She did not realize the true meaning of what she had stumbled upon.'

Ah, the wonder of celluloid, thought Kohler. An ignorant sixteen-year-old peasant girl portrayed by a thirty-five-year-old Austrian baroness with a bottom that liked to be polished.