Stonekiller (24 page)

‘Good! Yes, it's good you should ask! Its first owner, the Due de Montignac, was murdered by his youngest daughter. A beautiful child, a princess who loved to listen to their troubador on into the night. She drove a nail through her father's eye — you know the kind I mean. They normally put them through the timbers of their gates. He was drunk and asleep on one of the dining tables and probably didn't feel a thing but to avoid her mother's wrath, the child thought it best to kill herself by leaping from the roof.'

‘A happy household but nothing out of the ordinary.'

A hand was tossed. ‘No, of course not. Now, with the most recent of past owners, ah there is a slightly different story. Jews, a wealthy banker, an old and much respected family. Yes, yes, of course. Passage to Morocco via the Vieux Port de Marseille. What could be cleaner, eh? First the wife disappears while doing a little last-minute shopping with her two daughters, lovely girls, very capable musicians. One played the harp, I think, the other the flute or was it the cello? All three were found in an abandoned warehouse, the girls both naked, bound, gagged and violated, their throats slit, the mother forced to watch but dead and missing all the jewellery she so stupidly thought best to carry with her.'

‘And the father?' he hazarded, not liking this new development.

‘The father, ah yes, you will have wondered why I was cognizant of the filming at Lascaux and touring around with the Baroness and her friends when we arrived in Domme the other day. The father was found dead of knife wounds near a brothel in the Vieux Port, stripped of everything including his underwear and left to kiss the cobblestones as was the couple's only son. Perhaps their baggage was sent on, perhaps it simply disappeared. One thing is certain, my friend, no trace of the money he was paid for that place was ever found and no blame can ever come back to rest on the new owner. I've tried. I've had to think it all through and wonder if I had missed something but Marseille is satisfied and so is the Vichy Sûreté. Enjoy yourself. I only tell you this for your own good. Don't cross von Strade. You're a long way from Paris and I have only so many men at my disposal.'

‘Is the Baroness aware of what he did?'

‘Perhaps. Though she hates von Strade's philandering, she's intensely loyal to him.'

‘And Herr Oelmann?'

‘I'm sure he knows or suspects but will say nothing. The rest probably don't even bother to question the matter since it little concerns them.'

‘And Danielle Arthaud?'

‘That actress? It's hard to say. She's a strange one. Very knowledgeable with the stone tools. An expert.'

‘Is she on cocaine?'

Merde
, what was this? ‘Yes … yes, I believe she must be.'

‘Will you get that restraining order on Jouvet? It's necessary.'

Ah! Jean-Louis would still not take the hint. ‘Don't be a Neanderthal, eh? I'll ask — yes, yes, of course. It's my duty. As soon as I get back to Sarlat I will visit the magistrate between his meals but old Lantôt, he's going to want some proof.'

‘The word of a police officer is not enough?'

‘You know what he's like. He will still remember the last time you applied to him and yes, certainly you were right, but to Lantot it was a slap in the face.'

‘That was five years ago.'

‘Please don't sound so dismayed. Five is not enough and you know it.'

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot! Hey, I'll try to remember it when someone is attempting to slice my jugular in the dark with a wedge of flint!'

‘Just don't get hit on the head. I wouldn't want to have to pick up the pieces.'

Hermann … Where the hell was Hermann? Eating, drinking and playing around with the girls or simply looking out for trouble?

Softly the sounds of swimming came to Kohler in the cellars of the château and he cursed the Baroness for playing games with him because he absolutely had to find Juliette and had left it too long. The woman was down at the end of a narrow passage in pitch darkness — she had taken the fuses from the electrical switch-box on the wall. Back and forth she went, the water dripping from her arms as she did the breaststroke but used the scissors kick so as to make less noise.

When he found her clothes, they were in a tidy mound above her high heels on the rocky platform that surrounded the pool. A natural cavern? he wondered. The spring-fed water was ice cold; she was a real
Nacktkultur
addict then, the naked body taut with goose pimples, the mind alert.

Arching herself, she went over backwards, he thought, to gracefully touch her heels and surface smiling near to him, only to then swim away.

Though she said absolutely nothing, he crouched and waited, heard her roll over to do the backstroke, heard her dive right to the bottom probably. Naked … naked like some beautiful siren calling out to him through her bubbles, beckoning … beckoning.…

When no further sound came, he hazarded anxiously, ‘Baroness?'

Hurriedly he found two matches and in their lonely light saw the stalactites hanging from the roof above, the grey of limestone walls that curved, the pool. ‘Baroness?' he asked again and cursed as the matches burnt his fingers and plunged him back into darkness. ‘Baroness, two brutal murders have been committed. I'd just as soon there wasn't another.'

Myself? she seemed to say though she was gone from him.

The fuses were in the toes of her shoes. Under overhead lights that shone among the stalactites, he could see the bottom clearly now, the water emerald green and with round, white pebbles on the floor of an ancient channel perhaps three metres down. No sign of her anywhere. Where … where the hell is she? he wondered, seeing her in his mind's eye caught on something, her mouth open, her body floating face up, no movement now.…

When he saw a rocky ledge just above the bottom at the far end of the pool, he followed the channel below it back to the pebbles and understood. She was challenging him to join her. She wanted him to swim under that ledge to find the channel and then the cavern she must now be in.

You fool, he said. To swim alone in such a place, in darkness, is not wise. Had she things to tell him that demanded such privacy or was she simply trying to seduce him?

‘Both,' he said but did not grin. ‘Be careful, Baroness. Where one can swim, so can two but the next time the visitor might not be myself.'

The door was of massive oak with iron drift pins and a lock that must be three centuries old. Kohler knocked but there was no answer. He pounded, and the sound of his fist splintered the air. A girl giggled, another too, but the door and walls were far too thick for sounds like that to escape.

When he glanced over a shoulder, he saw two naked teenagers clutching flimsy shawls of silk that webbed their nubile breasts but left the rest exposed. ‘Monsieur, are you joining the party?' asked one, whose dark red hair brushed loosely over pale white, freckled shoulders.

‘The party?' he bleated.

‘Yes,' whispered the other one, a brunette, her breath warm on his lips as she lightly explored them.

‘Ah no, I've work to do. Juliette Jouvet, the schoolteacher. …'

Both tossed their heads to indicate the staircase at the far end of the corridor. Both flicked their shawls away to coil their arms about the giant's neck and whisper, ‘
Couchez avec moi, mon grand détective.
' Fuck me.

‘A
partouse
,' whispered the redhead. An orgy. ‘There are six of us girls tonight. Toto Lemieux and a few others are coming. In there,' she said. Tou have only to knock once, yes? It is the signal.'

‘I'll try to remember.'

They left him then and he stood out in the corridor like the Tin bloody Woodsman gaping through the now open doorway into a haze of tobacco smoke and naked female flesh, wondering if Juliette was still alive.

‘Don't keep us waiting,' breathed the brunette, beginning to close the door. ‘One knock, that is all it takes to experience everything.'

‘All urges,' confided the other one, ‘until they are satisfied even for those who do not wish to participate and come only to watch.'

Ah
nom de Dieu, de Dieu
, von Strade? he wondered. Von Strade.

When he found Juliette, she was on her knees frantically going through the trunk Courtet had guarded so jealously. The espadrilles were her own. The grey flannel trousers rolled above the ankles, and pin-stripe shirt, indicated she had helped herself to the Professor's wardrobe. Cast aside was the borrowed dress she would never wear again.

From time to time she irritably brushed a tear away and when, with a frightened gasp, she turned to look up at him, her blue eyes registered fear, not relief. ‘What's happened?' he asked.

She swallowed hard. ‘My father's come back! He's alive. Everything fits. The death caps, the champagne, that … that flask of his. Her.…'

‘Not suspecting he would harm her.'

‘The blow, the … the slashings, the.…'

Kohler went down on his knees to wrap his arms about her. ‘Hey, easy, eh? Easy.' She buried her face against his shoulder and wept, ‘That bitch Danielle has indicated to me my father is alive. He'll kill me, Inspector. I'm next. Don't you see, she's right? He must! I'm the only one who can prove those paintings are a forgery.'

A forgery … ah
merde
, so it was true.

Clumsily he searched his pockets for a handkerchief and, finding none, got up to look in one of the Professor's dresser drawers and found instead a loaded .455-calibre Mark VI Webley, ex-British Army revolver. ‘Dunkirk,' he said as if struck.

Through her tears she saw the gun and was sickened because it could only mean the Professor was afraid of her father too. ‘My father despised Courtet who hated him in return. Each was very jealous of the other and many times his student colleague tried to get at the contents of this trunk until now … now, finally, he has it.'

Her agitated fingers hurriedly wiped the tears from her cheeks. A shirt-sleeve was yanked out in which to blow the nose and dry the eyes, then rolled above the elbow. ‘Excuse me,' she said and tried to smile. ‘I'm a wreck and freely admit it.'

Herr Kohler gave her a few seconds. The emptiness that had so often been in his eyes was not there. He turned to rummage in the top drawer of the dresser and when he had it, emptied a packet of cartridges into a pocket. ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud,' he said, and she knew by his look that there was more trouble. ‘Danielle was in contact with your mother. A parcel in April to Paris. The sous-facteur Auger's name was on the return address.'

Ah no,
maman
, she cried inwardly, what is this he is saying? ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud is not very nice, Inspector. Brilliant perhaps but cruel and demanding and utterly selfish. André should have her. They deserve each other. He would be so mentally outclassed, she would kill him with a little something from her bag of stone tools, and if not that, her bitchiness would make him hit her once too often.'

Herr Kohler asked about the stone tools and she told him they were supposedly from the film, and that André had probably been secretly meeting Danielle or Henri-Georges. ‘But I have to ask myself, were the tools not also used on my mother?'

‘There'll be postcards from Mademoiselle Arthaud …,' he said, his voice trailing off in thought.

‘She has asked for them. When I told her they had been stolen, she was very upset — unreasonably so.'

Still lost in thought, he said, ‘We saw no evidence of there being two assailants at the murder of your mother.'

‘But at that of the sous-facteur Auger, monsieur? Were there not two perhaps? This is what your eyes, they are telling me.'

‘Come on, we'd best leave here while we can.'

She reached out to him. ‘A moment, please. First you must see the journals of my father. It is what I have been after. There is not one mention of the paintings, nor is there a complete description of the cave.
That
is also missing.'

In page after page and sketch after sketch, Henry-Georges Fillioux had demonstrated not only where the tools had been found among the layers of the
gisement
, but how each had been made and used.

‘There … there is also not one mention of my mother,' she said, holding back the tears, ‘It is as if the father I worshipped as a child had done it all — found the cave, seen the light and expounded on the brilliance of
his
theories when many of his ideas were hers.
Hers!
He … he has even listed among his accounts the cost of the two bottles of champagne and has marked them down to
necessity.
A mere forty-five francs? But … but I must ask myself, are these journals not where Mademoiselle Arthaud learned so well how to use the tools?'

‘The Baroness says Courtet may have taught her.'

‘The Professor, ah yes. But Danielle has visited my father's parents at their house in Paris. She knows all about what has happened to them since the Defeat. Is she not the one who encouraged them to sell the trunk after first learning everything from it, or is it that she did not learn from these journals at all but directly from my father?'

‘And not from Courtet?'

‘No, not from that one. But if you like, I will ask him to fashion for us a stone tool even of the simplest kind. My thought is he cannot do it but we shall see.'

8

M
OONLIGHT LIT THE WELL-TREED GROUNDS OF
the château as St-Cyr heard beyond the symphony of insects, the muted whispers of an urgent love. ‘Come in me, darling. In me now,
please.
'

Ah nom de Dieu …

‘I can't find my rubber.'

‘Then shoot the stork in flight before it lands. Jump from the train while it is still in motion. Don't stop now. Please don't. Just keep going, Erik. I
don't
want to lose it.'