Cold Winter in Bordeaux

Sunday afternoon, and one of these October days when, as Lannes’ mother used to say, October had given up on autumn and was opening the door to winter. The wind that had blown all week had died away, the weather had turned chill, and a freezing fog hung over the city.

He was alone in the apartment, except for Alain’s cat, No Neck, who now leapt on to his lap, pushing his head between Lannes and his book, and digging his claws into his thigh. Marguerite was out, summoned by her mother. The old lady was complaining again of ‘palpitations’. It probably meant nothing. It was her way of commanding attention. If Marguerite immediately responded, it was because her inability to love her mother as she thought she ought to made her feel guilty. Clothilde was also out, somewhere, with Michel. He hadn’t asked where they were going or what they would be doing. The girl, at nineteen, was entitled to her independence, or such independence as could still be enjoyed. As for Michel, Lannes both liked him – the boy had charm and good manners – and distrusted him. His grandfather, the retired professor of literature who looked like a colonel, no doubt felt the same. Lannes respected him but the young people’s relationship caused them both anxiety, the professor for the boy’s sake, Lannes for Clothilde’s.

He ran his hand along the cat’s back, scratched it behind an ear, causing it to purr. Did it miss Alain? Had it forgotten him? Would it recognise him when he returned? When? If? He knew it was if, but had to believe it was when. It was nine months since his last postcard from Algiers. Did the silence mean he was now in England? ‘It doesn’t do to brood,’ he said to the cat, ‘or worry.’ But it was inevitable that he did. There was after all nothing that really concerned him now but the children, the need for all three of them to survive what he thought of as ‘all this’.

He picked up Dominique’s last letter from the little table by his chair, and read it again. It was lyrical. An account of his work, of nights spent in the mountains sleeping under the stars, of labour in the forests, of the transformation in the health and morale of the ‘kids from the city’ with whose charge he and his friend Maurice de Grimaud were entrusted. ‘It’s astonishing, and richly rewarding,’ he wrote, ‘to see how they respond.’ One of his colleagues had led his little troop into a village and the children had run away and hidden from them thinking they were Germans – ‘because they were so smart and took such pride in their appearance as they marched along singing’. ‘We really are doing great work for France and for the National Revolution,’ Dominique wrote. ‘Boys who used to hang about smoking in cafés now delight in fresh air, exercise and physical training.’

Perhaps they did. No doubt they did. Dominique had always been truthful, never one to engage in fantasy. Nevertheless, Lannes remembered that someone had once remarked to Napoleon’s mother how proud she must be to see one son an emperor and others kings and princes, and the old woman had replied, in her broad Corsican accent, ‘so long as it lasts’. Which, of course, it hadn’t. The emperor had ended up a prisoner of the English on St Helena. And the Marshal, the hero of Verdun where Lannes had been wounded, how would it end for the old man?

He lit a cigarette, causing No Neck, who disliked the smoke, to jump off his lap. He returned to his book, a novel by Walter Scott which he had read once, years before, and enjoyed. But today the adventures of the young men on the Solway, which he understood to be a border between Scotland and England, could not hold his attention. He let it fall again and closed his eyes.

He wasn’t quite asleep when he heard the door open, and Marguerite returning. There was less constraint between them now than there had been the previous year when he had betrayed her by leaving her in ignorance of Alain’s determination to join de Gaulle and the Free French. Then his suspension at the request of the Occupying Power, and the cause of that suspension, had pleased her. She had been less happy when he was reinstated, but was resigned to it. In any case, as he had said, how would they live without his salary? Yet she still hated his work, and, though there was less constraint, he knew he hadn’t regained her trust, and didn’t deserve to.

‘How was she?’ he said.

‘As she always is.’

He knew she wished she liked her mother more, though he thought it evidence of her essential goodness that she liked the old woman at all and took such trouble over her, responding to her demands, enduring her constant complaints without complaining herself. But that was one of the many things they never talked about.

‘I hope Clothilde won’t be late,’ he said.

‘Oh, but I trust her with Michel. I’m so glad she’s got him.’

It wasn’t only because the boy sometimes brought her flowers when he came to collect Clothilde. He even flirted with her, and Lannes had seen his wife blush – with happiness? – when Michel paid her a compliment.

‘I made Mother an omelette with three of the eggs I found in the market yesterday. She insisted she had no appetite, but she ate it all.’

The fog was still thick and it was clammy and cold as he set off to the office. He wore his thorn-proof tweed coat and leant on his stick, because his hip ached as it always did in this weather. The ache was almost an old friend, souvenir of his war. ‘Ils ne passeront pas,’ they had said at Verdun, symbol of France defiant. For years he had told himself: you survived Verdun, you can survive anything. He wondered if the Marshal thought of Verdun when he woke in the mornings in Vichy. It was strange. He deplored Vichy in many ways, though aware there had been no good choices to be made in the summer of 1940; yet he had never lost his respect for the Marshal, respect and even regard.

Clothilde had returned home in good time, before the curfew, glowing with happiness.

‘We met a friend of Michel’s, called Sigi. He sent you his regards.’

‘Did he now?’

‘He said to say you have his respect.’

‘Indeed.’

‘You don’t like him, Papa? I hear it in your voice.’

‘Let’s just say I doubt if he’s a good influence on Michel.’

He had left it there. Perhaps he should have taken the opportunity to speak more strongly, to tell her he was a dangerous man, not to be trusted, a murderer and a Fascist. But he had said nothing. He had said nothing because to say anything would have required him to say everything, and …

He banged his stick against a lamp-post in irritation and self-reproach.

There was a pile of paperwork waiting for him. There always was, and it was rarely important, a reminder nevertheless that despite everything the business of functionaries went on. The less autonomy Vichy had, the more assiduously it deluged the police with paper in order to maintain the pretence of government. Little of it mattered, not much anyway, but it all required his attention, even if the attention he gave it was never more than perfunctory.

There was a knock on the door. Young René Martin entered. As ever Lannes was touched by something frank and unspoilt in the boy’s expression. Somehow or other he retained his faith in the virtue and necessity of their work. Moncerre, whom they called the bull-terrier, said the boy was naive, and loved to tease him, but Moncerre was wrong. It was just that René Martin hadn’t yet succumbed to the prevailing cynicism.

‘I called you at home,’ he said, ‘but Madame Lannes said you were already on your way. There’s been a death, a woman in an apartment in the Cours de l’Intendance. Her maid discovered the body when she came to work this morning. That’s all I know.’

‘Is Moncerre in?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Call him and tell him to meet us there.’

Was it reprehensible to feel his spirits lift? Undoubtedly. Nevertheless that’s how it was. With luck, this would be ordinary police work, nothing to do with the war, or with members of the Resistance groups whose activity over the last year had occupied so much police time.

* * *

They stopped off at the Bar Jack, rue de Voltaire, for a coffee and Armagnac.

‘The dead woman is called Gabrielle Peniel,’ René Martin said, ‘but that’s all I know.’

He was impatient to get on, be at the scene of the crime. Lannes delayed, smoked three cigarettes, and ordered another Armagnac. The boy didn’t understand that this was his way of preparing himself, that it was, as it were, a gear-change.

A delay of twenty minutes would make no difference, except to his mood. He almost said, ‘She won’t run away, you know.’ If the maid had found the body on her arrival this morning, it was probable that her employer has been killed at any time over the weekend.

The concierge was waiting for them at the door of her lodge.

‘I’d never have thought it,’ she said. ‘Poor Marie, that’s the maid, was in a real state. Nothing would do for her but that I went up to see for myself. Well, there’s no doubt to my mind. It’s a murder, superintendent, and a nasty one. Nobody ties a silk stocking round their own neck. Of course you don’t need me to tell you that. I settled Marie with a glass of the rum which I keep on account of my rheumatism. She was speechless, poor girl, well, not exactly, because in actual fact she couldn’t stop talking. But when I say speechless, I mean that she was making no sense at all. She still isn’t really. Anyway I’ve settled her in my lodge and I’ll keep her there till she’s recovered herself sufficiently for you to speak with her. Now do you want me to accompany you to Madame Peniel’s apartment?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Lannes said. ‘I’ll have a word with you later. Meanwhile I would be grateful if you would continue to look after Marie, and keep an eye open for the doctor and the other members of my team who will be arriving soon.’

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