Stonekiller (11 page)

Why she had gone to that cave not just on the Sunday before the murder but also on the Thursday, ah yes, that Thursday, messieurs.

‘My husband,' she began. Again there was that shrug. ‘I cannot live with him any more. It's impossible.'

‘But to take your life is to leave your children in his hands?' said the one called St-Cyr. He was so earnest. There was compassion in the look he gave.

‘That is why I have not used the rope. An intense inner struggle, yes, which love and duty overcame.'

‘And now?' asked the one called Kohler. ‘Are we to keep an eye on you always lest you seize the next opportunity?'

They were really very worried about her and not without good reason. Dead, she could tell them nothing.

Instinctively her smile was faint and self-effacing. She lowered her eyes and let the smoke curl up from her cigarette as she whispered, ‘Forgive me. It … it was a moment of weakness. I … I shall try not to succumb.'

Ah
merde
, thought St-Cyr, is she threatening us with the possibility? ‘Madame,' he began. Her answered, ‘Yes?' was much too quick and startled. ‘Madame, a flask was found near the stream. I have it here.'

She waited but he did not hurry. At last she had it in her hands and it was cold and worn and dented but engraved sharply with letters.…

They were both watching her intently. ‘
HGF
,' she whispered. ‘Henri-Georges Fillioux … but … but, please, messieurs, what has my father's flask to do with
maman's
murder?' She set it aside as if afraid to touch it.

Ah
nom de Dieu, de Dieu
, wondered St-Cyr, has she suddenly realized that she herself may well be in danger?

‘There was some champagne, madame,' said Kohler gruffly so as to let her know he had had about enough of her evasiveness. ‘A Moët-et-Chandon. The 1889.'

She blanched. ‘The … the 1889? But … but mother never took champagne to the picnic. Always the
vin paille de Beaulieu
because once my father had said he liked it very much and she never forgot for a moment every word he ever said; the Château Bonnecoste also but.…'

‘But,
what
, madame?' he insisted, reaching for the flask to remind her of it.

She straightened her back and shoulders. ‘But champagne, that … that was only once and my father brought it. A day in the early summer of 1913. In June. The … the 17th.'

The same date as that of the murder. ‘Two bottles?' hazarded Kohler.

The faintness of her smile was again instinctively self-effacing. Blood beaded on her battered lips and she tried to hide this but gave it up. ‘They loved each other and I am the result, and yes, my father probably got my mother a little drunk and very receptive to his advances if you wish to look at things that way — I don't. It … it was a moment of weakness
maman
refused ever to regret; myself also. Is it so terrible a thing?'

The flask was making her nervous.

‘No, no, of course not,' muttered St-Cyr uncomfortably. ‘Such things, they happen all the time between those who truly love each other.'

You hypocrite! A girl of seventeen, Inspector, and a man of twenty-six? she said silently, giving them a moment to think of it themselves.

Satisfied, she said, ‘But if the truth were known, Inspectors, they shared each other's bodies more than once that summer and well into the fall, well past the time of her knowing. At least, this is what I have since come to believe but not,' she held up a hand, ‘because of the words of my husband who has constantly reminded me of it.'

‘The cave,' breathed Kohler. ‘The waterfall and that little glade.'

Places André knew only too well — she could see them thinking this. My husband, she said silendy. He … he did it, didn't he, but why the flask? she asked herself. The flask …?

‘Tell us about that Thursday,' said St-Cyr. ‘Begin by revealing why you tried to hide this visit from me.'

‘You received an urgent telephone call from your mother that morning, madame,' said Kohler. ‘You left the school that afternoon — the half-holiday. You were in a hurry and didn't want to be seen leaving town.'

André must have told them. André … ‘I … All right, I did go to the cave on that Thursday. Mother was very agitated. She spoke of a mortar and some lumps of the black pigment. She wanted me to get them before it … it was too late. They … they were too precious to leave to chance.'

‘Too late for what, please?' asked Kohler.

‘This … this she did not say.'

‘But how did she know of them,' asked St-Cyr, ‘if she only went to the cave once a year?'

‘They were in a cache of ours from the years before, as I have already told you. Mother had her reasons. I … I did not question her. One seldom did.'

But you are afraid, madame, thought St-Cyr. Either you have done something you fear we will soon discover, or you are aware that your mother intended to poison your husband perhaps, and someone else, the one she thought she would meet. Your father. ‘And on the Sunday, madame, the day before her death? When you were hanging out the laundry, you said you had removed the things then.'

He would not leave it now. ‘For the lessons in cave painting, yes. That … that part was a lie for which I apologize, but I did remove them then. It … it was not possible on the Thursday afternoon as she had insisted.'

They let her finish the cognac. They let her fiddle with the last of a forgotten cigarette. They would see that her face was flushed beneath the bruises but would not understand the reason for her embarrassment. ‘I … I could not get to the cave on that Thursday afternoon. Others were there and they …' she shrugged and tossed her hands, ‘they interfered. Please, I don't know who they were. I saw only a couple exploring the cave. Strangers. A boy of twenty and a woman — wealthy … well-off in any case and from Paris, I thought.'

‘And?' asked the one called Kohler. Were his eyes always so empty of feeling?

‘I … She … They … they made love in the cave. Love and … and I … I listened.
There …
there, now you know the reason why I could not recover the things nor tell you of it.'

‘What did you hear?' asked Kohler severely.

‘
What do you think
?' she countered hotly.

‘So you went back on the Sunday to get them?' said St-Cyr, seemingly oblivious to the fuss.

‘
Yes!
'

‘But … but, madame, you have already told me you thought there was someone else there then?'

‘He … he watched me but … but I could not see him.'

‘Could it have been your husband?' asked Kohler.

‘André …? This … this I do not know, Inspector.'

Or your father? wondered St-Cyr but did not ask it. 'You went into the cave but only to the
gisement.
You changed into your work clothes knowing there was someone else around?'

‘I kept my hammer ready.'

‘You bathed afterwards under the waterfall?'

‘Yes, but … but by then I was certain he had left the valley.'

‘A man and not a woman?'

‘Yes, but … but I cannot be sure, of course. It was only a feeling I had. I often got those feelings even as a child. It's that kind of place.'

And you have now countered all our questions by saying the feeling was common to you. She could see them thinking this. They were silent, these two from Paris. Perhaps they thought she was lying — she really couldn't tell. Perhaps in their imaginations they saw her naked under the waterfall knowing someone was watching her and that this might also account for her embarrassment since she had done it willingly.

‘Your father's family, madame,' said the one from the Sûreté, reaching for the flask. ‘Please tell us what you know of them.'

‘A house in Monfort-I'Amaury,' she said stonily.

‘About forty-five kilometres to the west of Paris,' acknowledged the one called St-Cyr. There was no hint in his voice of the wealth involved.

‘A villa in Paris, in Neuilly on the boulevard Richard Wallace overlooking the Bois de Boulogne. Mother always had the address, since she and my father had sent the trunk there in the late fall of 1912.'

A trunk that would then reappear in an antique shop in Paris thirty years later to spawn a film. A trunk that had since come back to the Dordogne and would soon be opened in the very house where the abbé had left it so long ago.

‘Madame, could your father have come back?' asked St-Cyr.

‘To kill my mother? Why … why, please, would he do such a thing if … if he was alive? He's dead. He died on the Marne.'

‘Then why, please, was his flask discovered lying in the bushes near the stream?'

‘I … I don't know. How could I?' She blanched.

‘And the cave paintings, madame?' asked Kohler.

‘The lumps of pyrolusite. Pigments.…'

‘Please, I.…'

‘A film?' demanded Kohler. ‘Cave art like no other?'

‘You are afraid, madame. Is it that you have done something you now regret or is it that you fear for your life at the hands of another?'

What the hell had she been up to? wondered Kohler. Ah damn, why would she not answer?

‘Messieurs, she has had enough. She needs to rest,' urged Pialat who had come silently into the room. ‘Please, until tomorrow, yes? It is not much to ask. Rooms have been provided at the hotel where her mother used to stay. She'll go there with the children. You will each be on one side or the other of her.'

‘Good,' said St-Cyr testily. ‘That's perfect.'

‘Louis, we can't watch her all the time.'

‘Of course not, but at least the word will get out that we are doing so.'

‘Did the champagne come from one of the family's cellars?'

‘Perhaps, but then was Henri-Georges Fillioux only listed as missing in action and presumed dead? Did he return to Paris but never tell our victim of it?'

‘The poisonous mushrooms,' breathed Kohler. ‘Madame Fillioux found out he had lied to her. She was about to pay him back for all those years of loneliness and privation.'

‘But why, please, did it take her four years of constant harassment to obtain the
marriage in extremis après décès?
'

‘Maybe the family didn't want her demanding her rightful share? Maybe there were others he hadn't told her about? A son, a daughter, a wife who, accepting his death, had then remarried and didn't want a fuss.'

There were always so many questions and always there was so little time. ‘Monfort-l'Amaury is extremely pleasant, Hermann, because money makes it so. The house in Paris must be worth a tidy fortune even if it has been requisitioned for the Duration.'

‘Von Strade said there were cave paintings far better than at Lascaux. An international shrine.'

‘Yet the daughter is sent to retrieve a mortar and some lumps of pigment? Was the telephone call the first she knew of those things?'

‘Was our victim a cave-painter, Louis? A forger?'

‘Ah
merde
, I wish I knew. The Baroness visits the cave with her Toto on the Thursday afternoon. The daughter, who has always held that little valley in respectful awe, hears a woman cry out in ecstasy.'

‘And cannot help but think of her mother and father.'

‘Was Madame Fillioux aware of the plans to make a film of the discovery?'

‘Did she object and the film people not want her interfering?'

‘An amulet, Hermann. Incisions — scratches on a bit of deer-horn. A thong-hole, the first such one in history.'

‘Two primitive figurines in stone. An Adam and an Eve.'

‘Goebbels invests 50,000 marks.'

‘The film is a matter of great urgency. There's a very tight schedule.'

‘
Moment of Discovery
is crucial to the war effort.'

‘Why would the daughter bathe in the buff without first having thoroughly checked that valley?'

‘You're improving. Working with me is good for you.'

‘Did she see him leave, Louis? Is this what she's afraid to tell us?'

‘Or is it simply what her mother really intended to do with the mushrooms?'

‘Poison the daughter's husband and poison her own.'

‘Only to be killed herself.'

It was a land of castles where beauty leapt to meet the eye in towering cliffs whose ancient ramparts hugged a treed and placid river, warm yet cool in the early morning light. Franz Oelmann knew the road well and was an excellent driver. Hermann, seemingly content to play the man on holiday, lounged affably on the seat beside him making idle chatter or pointing out some feature far more worthy of the Rhine!

In the back seat of the big touring car, Madame Jouvet had shrunk into a far corner to stare blankly at the front seat. Knees primly together, hands in the lap of a pale blue dress, her fingers were tightly knitted. Now a sudden, nervous twisting of her wedding ring, now the gripping of a clenched fist.

St-Cyr sat opposite her across the barren no man's land of leather that gave her no comfort. She knew she was trapped. He knew that if she got through the day, she might well try to kill herself.

What has she done? he demanded harshly of himself. Helped that mother of hers to paint the inner recesses of that cave? Helped to pull the wool over everyone's eyes?

The repercussions of such a fraud would cause heads to roll. His own, his partner's, others too. Ah
merde.

She dreaded what they would discover in the house of her mother. She hated every kilometre of this magnificent route, the ancient traverse of traders and pilgrims, monks and their abbots, Cro-Magnon, too, and Neanderthal. As the crow flies, it was not far. Perhaps some fifty-five kilometres to the east-north-east. By road, perhaps eighty or ninety. And Franz Oelmann, who knows all the short cuts, has been looking at you, hasn't he, madame? he asked himself, seeing her turn swiftly away to stare bleakly at a stone farmhouse and seek its every detail as if she, too, was aware of his thoughts.