Stonekiller (22 page)

‘A chance that can't be stopped because some stupid woman decided to fart around with us,' said someone.

‘The film-Jews,' said the German director. ‘They've all been kicked out or have fled the country.
Kaput. Fini!
as the French are so fond of saying, Herr Kohler. It's been like a breath of fresh air. New and far better talent has now been allowed to come forward.'

‘How tiresome of you,' said von Strade. ‘I thought I asked Herr Kohler to fill us in. He's only too aware that the Reich lost virtually all of its film industry and France a good deal of its finest talent. No matter their race or whatever, let us not forget that we have a vacuum to fill and fill it we must.'

He was really worried, thought Kohler, not liking it one bit. ‘As to the authenticity of things.…'

‘Please don't use such big words. Did that dead woman do a job on us or not?'

‘It's too early to say. Louis might have something.'

Must Kohler be so evasive? ‘Sturmbannführer Boemelburg, your superior officer and Head of Section IV, the Gestapo in France, tells me you are difficult. A realist, yes, but not entirely unmalleable when it comes to women, money and such other necessities. Your partner, though, is a hard-line patriot who refuses to take anything for his personal comfort and seeks only the truth, as you do yourself, regardless of the consequences, and consequences there will be.'

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Distantly the start-up dialogue of the night's screening could be heard but everyone ignored it.

‘Boemelburg?' bleated Kohler.

‘Yes. I spoke to him not three hours ago. I felt I had to do so.'

‘Ah
Gott im Himmel
, then the SS of the avenue Foch will already know of it.' Would it bring Oelmann the troops he needed?

‘That possibility did occur to me,' said von Strade drily. ‘As in life, so in business, Kohler, one has to take chances. Herr Boemelburg has said you are to stick to crime and to leave prehistory to itself and our experts.'

‘Is fraud not a crime?'

‘Don't be impertinent. You know it will only get back to your boss.'

Courtet and Eisner exchanged worried glances. Christian Dussart, the French film director, asked, ‘When can we start work at the house in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne?'

‘As soon as my partner and sous-préfet Deveaux are finished with it.'

Von Strade drained his glass. ‘Deveaux is on his way right now, having given up his beauty sleep. He'll have the necessary men with him. We start work at 1800 hours tomorrow.'

‘1800 hours but.…'

‘No buts, Herr Kohler. Sturmbannführer Boemelburg is looking forward to previewing
Moment of Discovery
with you and St-Cyr even if your leg-irons and handcuffs get in the way. That little order, my friend, comes straight from Herr Himmler.'

‘Ah
merde
, Berlin …?'

‘Unless Herr Himmler is in Bohemia still executing reprisals for Herr Heydrich's untimely demise. A village has been razed and all one hundred and ninety-one of its adult males given the rope or the bullet. That is in addition to the one hundred and thirty-one who were executed right on the spot of the murder. All the women and children of the village have been sent to concentration camps — let's not deny they exist. The children to one, their mothers to another.'

‘I'll talk to Louis.'

‘You do that. You take a leaf from our book. Find your stonekiller if you must, but keep the story line so simple even an ignoramus can grasp what you have to say. Titillate the masses with a few tasteful glimpses of our Danielle's beautiful posterior and you will have millions in your pockets and millions, my friend, are what is at stake. Marina, see that he gets everything he needs and enjoys himself. Your Toto is, I gather, busy elsewhere.'

‘He's watching the rerun of
The Wizard of Oz
because I told him to.'

‘Good. That should keep his mind busy. It's the rest of him you'll have to watch.'

‘His cock, Willi?'

‘My dear, when you get angry it only makes you more beautiful. Oh by the way, Danielle was not at the rushes. Remind her that attendance is mandatory and cast in stone in her contract.'

‘Why not remind her yourself, darling?'

‘Because tonight I'm busy. You can tell her that too. Tell her she's being punished and that from now on she had best behave herself.'

‘She'll only come begging.'

‘Then let her. That is exactly what I want.'

Danielle Arthaud had drunk most of the latest bottle of Monbazillac but still Herr Kohler had not come to find them. Still Juliette waited and prayed for him to release her from this … this torment.

Far from helping things, the wine had only made the actress more irritable. She constantly muttered, ‘
Willi, how can you do this to me? I need it, damn you.
' Now up, now down, now pacing about or glancing at her wrist-watch, she would hurriedly wipe her nose with the back of a hand. The deep brown eyes were no longer lovely and wide but the pupils hard and constricted. The lips were no longer generous but tight and uncertain.

‘You refuse to tell me anything,' accused the woman petulantly. ‘I give you things; you give me nothing. The
coup de grâce
, eh, schoolteacher? Why, please, did your father come back?'

‘He didn't!'

‘He did!'

‘He's dead. He died on the Marne.'

‘Your mother … those postcards.… Are you certain he did not write to her?
Certain
, do you hear?'

‘Stop it! Just stop it! I know nothing. A flask … his initials.
His
flask. It … it was found near the stream. Mother's … mother's blood had been washed off.'

Danielle sucked in a breath. ‘So, evidence was carelessly left and yet you still doubt his return from the dead? Was there anything else?'

Kohler … where the hell was he? ‘Two bottles of champagne, the 1889.'

And you hate to tell me anything, thought Danielle, because you are so afraid of what I might do to you with my stone tools. Ah yes, my battered little housewife, if I touched you now, you would jump. ‘Listed as missing in action does not have to mean being blown to pieces or cut to ribbons by machine-gun fire.'

She was not smiling. She really meant it. ‘If … if he has come back, I wouldn't know what he looked like. He could walk right past me and I … I would never know.'

‘Then you do believe he
has
come back. Admit it!'

Ah damn the woman! ‘Perhaps. I … I really do not know.'

And now you are trembling, schoolteacher. You are thinking — yes, I can see it in your eyes as you sit there at my dressing-table — that your father and I might have done the killings. ‘There are photographs, paintings — the portrait the parents Fillioux commissioned of their son in uniform. I could get them for you. He was very handsome. Your mother must have loved him dearly. I would have yielded, too, to such a one but in that cave, I think. Yes, in that cave.'

With the tip of a forefinger, Danielle extracted a droplet of wine from her glass and, reaching out, made the sign of the cross on Juliette's brow. Abruptly it was wiped away.

‘Tell me something, schoolteacher. Did that mother of yours ever visit the cave at Lascaux?'

The blue eyes leapt. ‘So as to copy the paintings? No! Mother … Mother would have told me of such a visit. She wanted very much to see them, yes, of course, but the war, the Occupation in the North, the uncertainties.… It was not so easy to escape one's responsibilities at such times, or at any other for that matter.' She gave a shrug.

And now you are lying, thought Danielle, and your eyes, they duck away from me rather than face the matter squarely. ‘But if she had gone there, what would she have done?'

Ah damn her anyway! ‘Lighted a candle and stood in awe of the paintings. Wished with all her heart that my father had been with her.'

The mother had been to Lascaux but had the daughter not known of all of the visits? It was possible, thought Danielle, shrewdly looking her over, wanting to shake the life out of her.

In a whisper, she asked, ‘Did your husband know we were to make a film of their discovery?'

‘André' …? It's possible. I … I really don't know. Mother didn't tell me so he … he would have had to find out in … in some other way. Ah no, mademoiselle, did you …?'

You poor thing, said Danielle to herself. You're so pretty in that dress of mine but are you even aware of it now? ‘Then if he did find out, would your husband not have seen money in it for himself?'

Had they paid André for information? Had Danielle been the go-between? ‘To understand him, Mademoiselle Arthaud, you must realize my husband hates everything around him, not just myself. The school, his humdrum life, the pittance of a salary he was paid and will be paid, the lack of all promotion. The war, it was passing him by. Talk … all he talked about was killing Communists, so the Germans, they let him.'

The glass was drained. Some bureau drawers were desperately searched and then those of the dressing-table. Again the muttering came for Willi von Strade to help her. And then she stood so close they all but touched.

‘Women.… Did your husband do things to the women he and his comrades took prisoner? Did he not boast of how he could use the stone tools he had with him as objects of interest to set himself apart from the others?'

Ah no … ‘Who … Who has suggested such a thing to you? Who?'

When no answer came, the schoolteacher dropped her eyes and blurted, ‘It was André. You've been getting him to tell you about mother and her visits.'

One could take her by the shoulders now and she would not resist. One could slap her hard and all she would do was dissolve into tears. ‘But if not me,' said Danielle, moving in closer still, ‘then your father. Is that not so, my little one? He could have met and talked with that husband of yours and you … you would be none the wiser.'

She must smile up at her bravely through her tears, thought Juliette. She must give her the answer such a statement deserved. ‘André would have told me my father had returned. He would have laughed in my face, mademoiselle, and would have shouted that my mother had been crazy to have waited all her adult life for a man who had neglected to tell her he was still alive.'

‘
And
already married? Have you not thought of this, too, schoolteacher?'

‘No!'

‘But if he is alive, and if he did write to her and then kill her or get that husband of yours to do it for him, you can see why he would want to steal the postcards and kill the sous-facteur also. And you must ask, What will you do? Help him or help to convict him?'

The schoolteacher's hair was soft, and when Danielle ran her fingers through it, the woman did not resist but simply bowed her head and wept. ‘I'll kill myself. I'll do it this time because if he's alive, mother meant to kill him and I … I said nothing to anyone about it. I'm so ashamed.'

‘Good. Then go and kill yourself. Give him what he most needs, the silence of the only one who can speak out against him. Trade your pathetic life for his and let him get on with the research he has had to neglect for so long. It's what your mother would have wanted, madame, had she not meant to kill him. Now get out of here. I've got things to do.'

Sous-préfet Deveaux, his jacket cast aside in deference to a fireman's duties, refilled the tin cup with brandy and slid it carefully across the table in Madame Fillioux's kitchen. ‘Another, Jean-Louis. It's not every night I have to pluck a burglar from the roof of a house in this little village.'

‘A burglar … ah yes, the carpet-bag. I should have known better. So should the cat.'

Merde
, what a night! The cat had trapped the tile. The torch beams of Oelmann and Jouvet had homed in on the creature. The neighbours, awakened in any case and secretly watching the proceedings, had seen the cat release the tile to hear it shatter on the cobblestones.

No sooner had Oelmann and Jouvet left in the car, than the citizens of the lower village had come out in force. Nightgowns, nightcaps, brooms, sticks and lanterns, men, women and boys … eager boys with sharp stones. Ah
nom de Dieu.
Long ladders had been placed at every corner of that wretched roof and others fast carried up to be laid on the tiles as in a fire drill. They had refused to let him climb down. An officer of the law on a murder case.

‘The carpet-bag, they expected me to give it up before they would let me even
think
of using one of their ladders!'

Deveaux coughed cigarette smoke and wheezed in as the tears came. ‘Ah, don't sound so wounded. A small miracle, eh? Gendarmes from Sarlat in the nick of time. In Paris, the tenants would have dragged you free and let you chase after that tile just to see if you would sprout wings and play the harp.'

They would have, some of them. Deveaux had sent five of his best men out to Auger's farm to begin work there. Two others were dusting for fingerprints in the attic, while still others had the unenviable task of opening every last one of the parcels and of disposing of the contents after making suitable notations. The commissariat in Domme had been alerted and a magistrate's warrant restraining Jouvet would be sought. The husband had to be stopped.

‘Jean-Louis, this thing, eh? It's getting a little bigger than either of us would wish. Heads will roll if that cave is a forgery and we proclaim it to the world. Vichy have informed me that I am to have the orchestra play softly so as not to awaken the snorers.'

‘Ah yes, Berlin. Herr Goebbels invests 50,000 marks to show the world that the swastika owes its origins not just to the humble Cro-Magnon cave-dwellers of the ancestral Dordogne but to those from some fifty or a hundred thousand years ago. Presumably under all that Neanderthal body hair, pure Aryans existed. But to use that to lay claim to the whole of France? To legitimatize the conquest …? Ah! as a patriot, I find that impossible to swallow.'