Stonekiller (31 page)

‘And that is why my Willi needs our help and your continued silence.'

‘Danielle,' he said. ‘Why did he make me do that to her in front of the others?'

‘To teach her a lesson she must never forget. To break my heart — yes, he's done it lots of times. You and she, how could he have been so cruel? Now make love to me again. It may be the last time we have the animals to watch us. I like to see them up there when you're in me. It makes me feel so powerful, Toto. Supreme. An earth goddess of fertility.'

‘And the daughter, the schoolteacher, what of her?'

‘Let us hope her father finds her.'

10

N
IGHT HAD BEEN TURNED INTO DAY IN BEAULIEU-
sur-Dordogne, shadows banished where not wanted. Arc lights brought the sun at noon to windows still leaded in spite of the centuries of wear and the poverty of an
auberge-épicerie
and PTT which could not possibly have replaced them. Giant fans produced a gentle breeze to stir the grape leaves and the potted geraniums of the balcony railing while songbirds chorused from hidden cages on the floor at Marina von Strade's feet and doves roosted on the shabby tower where not so long ago St-Cyr had been trapped on the roof.

Apparently everyone was here — Herr Oelmann looking grim and worried, the cast, the crew, the villagers who stood well back like sheep at a hanging. Would the cinema ever be the same for them or for himself?

He searched the crowd as Hermann and Madame Jouvet did. Film personnel came and went or stood in earnest discussion as sound booms, reflectors and screens were positioned for the take and a silk-screened blue and puff-cloud sky was raised above the roof. It would look so real on film.

Generators softly throbbed in the distance, cables were strung. Two tall wooden towers, looking as if left over from a Roman invasion, held the massive arc lights which could instantly plunge the set into darkness or blind the eyes if one was not careful. The first, second and third cameras would film from the ground, the side and above. Distance shots, pans to this and that, then close-ups to automatically engender empathy in the audience, then shots of the visitor, the actor-prehistorian, the second camera moving in and staying with him as he walked towards the inn and gave a wave, a smile, the sound of his voice.…

‘Louis, I can't find Lemieux.'

‘Maybe the rutting has tired him out. Maybe the season is over for him.'

Oh-oh. ‘Odilon might have something. He's playing co-producer with von Strade.'

Lorries and vans filled the narrow streets behind the Baron. In surrealistic semi-darkness, dressing-rooms, make-up, hairdressers and costumiers competed for space with a mobile canteen. Everything that could foreseeably be needed was there and if not available, then readily made on the spot in the workshops.

‘That one, he is like a voyeur driven out of madness to watch the behaviour of others,' said Juliette bitterly of von Strade. ‘He pulls the strings and they all dance because they have to but I will not dance for him or for anyone else. Not now. Not ever again.'

‘Stay with Hermann, madame. Don't let him out of your sight'

‘A forgery,' she said. ‘All this has been mounted to perpetrate an untruth. Two hundred, three hundred — five hundred must be gathered here but at a signal, the whole place will shut up and no one — absolutely no one — will move until the clapperboard comes down.'

‘The Professor will want his amulet returned, madame. Please let me have it for safe-keeping. I want to hear what he has to say.'

‘And Danielle?' she asked hotly.

Would such a sharpness not lead her into trouble? ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud also, yes, and Toto. Both have much to tell us, as do the Baroness and her husband and your father, madame. Your father.'

‘I … I would not recognize him if he was standing right where you are.'

‘But this is the world of film and anything is possible.'

‘Even a mature thirty-five-year-old Austrian with the mind of a
fille de joie
playing a sixteen-year-old
périgourdine
virgin who airs the bedding as she greets the prehistorian who's about to come into her life,' snorted Kohler. ‘From Essen of all places and bearing rucksack and hammer, no loose change, and holes not only in his pockets but in his socks!'

‘It's magnificent, Hermann, and exactly as I had imagined it would be. Ah some changes, yes, since the days of the silents but mere refinements.'

‘As in war, so in film, my friend. Most of the time people are simply standing around wondering what the hell to do. Then whoosh, eh? Lights, action and camera and it's all over in about thirty seconds or else two hours. The story of our miserable lives. She looks the part, doesn't she?'

‘Ah yes, she does.'

Side by side, and dangling from their leather thongs, the two amulets, the real and the replica, were identical to the untrained eye. And certainly the deerhorn of the one was a trifle darker, a touch more of that deep bluish cast old bone often acquired, a few more of the hairline cracks, but really the match was quite remarkable. Line for line, the short, sharp, seemingly randomly arranged incisions of the flint engraving burin were so similar one could even see where it had first been pressed into the bone and then forced away or drawn towards the artist.

‘I worked largely from photographs and detailed drawings,' said the propsman-cum-carpenter he had found all alone in the cluttered workshop where the smells of sawdust, paint and resin were pungent.

‘I commend you,
mein Herr
,' enthused St-Cyr in
deutsch.
‘Even Professor Courtet will be hard pressed to tell the difference.'

The man grinned and accepted a cigarette of thanks. ‘Take two,' urged the Sûreté. ‘The Baron forgot and left the package at the château. He won't mind.'

They lit up. Though young, the man had seen enough of life to shrewdly give him the once-over.

‘The Baron doesn't forget anything, Inspector. Is the cave really a forgery?'

‘A forgery?' came the startled reply.

‘Rumours … there are rumours circulating that we're all to be let go and blacklisted if we say anything.'

Ah
merde …
‘Until we find the stonekiller, the authenticity of the paintings must remain in question, though who are my partner and I to care so long as we apprehend the killer? Ours is not the task of patiently defining prehistory but of uncovering the identity of the murderer.'

‘But that was why the woman was killed, wasn't it? She thought the paintings were fake and he couldn't have her saying that. She'd have only made trouble for him.'

‘Perhaps, but then, perhaps not. Two persons may have been involved in the killing of the assistant postmaster but only one in that of the woman.'

‘And of Jouvet, the husband of the daughter?' hazarded the man.

‘One most definitely. A small struggle perhaps and then the throat viciously opened with the stone. A handaxe, I believe.'

‘We could have faked those paintings easily. Danielle showed us how they were done. She's really very good at it.'

‘Yes, she is, isn't she?'

‘While she was at the university she used to work in props. That's how she got into acting.'

‘And the stone tools, how is it she learned so well how to use them?'

So it was Danielle who was under suspicion. ‘She was a student at the Sorbonne. Courtet was one of her professors. She was working towards her final degree in prehistory but had to give it up. Too broke, I guess. It's odd, though. Really it is. Courtet doesn't know as much about the tools as she does. If you ask me, I don't think he has ever made one. Experimented with them of course, but that's not quite the same thing, is it?'

‘No … No, it isn't, is it?' Was Courtet held in suspicion by the crew and cast or did they simply not like him? Too arrogant, too demanding and covetous of his precious trunk. ‘My thanks. You've been most helpful. Please …' St-Cyr indicated the amulets. ‘I would like to deliver these to the Professor. I know how anxious he must be to get them.'

‘Then I'd better come with you.'

‘Ah, no. No, that would be most unwise. Stay here. Have that other cigarette and consider yourself lucky.'

‘I've not done anything.'

‘Of course you haven't. It's just that we are dealing with a particularly desperate killer and it would be safest if you were not seen in my company.'

‘Is it her father?'

‘Whose?'

‘Danielle's.'

‘What do you think?'

‘I'm asking.'

‘Perhaps but then, ah then, either he has come back from the dead as everyone has been led to believe, or he hasn't. Now, please, I have much to do. Will they continue all night with the filming?'

‘We work straight through until we're finished, then go to the cave until the film is in the can.'

St-Cyr was at the door when the man stopped him. ‘Here, you'd better take these too. The figurines the Professor wanted. The Adam and Eve.'

‘Ah! yes, the couple. Cro-Magnon, I believe.'

‘Neanderthal … the professors say they are at least from fifty to seventy thousand years old.'

‘But these have only just been made so they could not possibly be of that age. Imagine it though. Lovemaking at the very dawn of prehistory. Kissing and doing all manner of things in a cave whose paintings look down on the couple as a child is conceived. Wild, yes, and like the animals above but also tender and caring when required or demanded, it's a miracle the swastika was ever thought of.'

Toto and the Baroness, was that it then? wondered the propsman. They'd been screwing in that cave and everyone knew it too. Screwing when she should have been working. No sign of Toto, though. No sign of him at all.

‘A swastika. Yes, it's a miracle. Who would ever have thought it possible?'

‘Only a student or a professor,' said St-Cyr with the toss of farewell. ‘Someone with an eye for it and a damned good reason.'

Von Strade and sous-préfet Deveaux sat in canvas deck chairs with a bottle of the
vin paille
between them. And the street, with its half-shadows and its overcast light from the arc lamps, was a clutter of cables and dressing rooms that bore the names of Marina von Strade, her prehistorian, and that of Danielle Arthaud and others.

‘Baron, where is Toto Lemieux?'

‘Herr Kohler, how good of you to join us. Madame,' said von Strade, offering her his glass and letting her quickly shake her head. ‘Madame, you keep good company in such difficult times but I would not place too high a value on it.'

Amen, was that it, eh? wondered Kohler.

‘Inspector,' said Deveaux uncomfortably, ‘it would be wise to listen. Hen Oelmann, he … he has a little something in mind for you and Jean-Louis and you, also, madame. Please, I … I cannot make the warning any plainer since I could not possibly know of the existence of a
Sonderkommando
in our midst. One with explosives in its possession and perhaps highly trained assassins.'

‘I want the postcards,' said von Strade, taking out a cigar. ‘Everything that partner of yours found. I'm willing to pay — yes, of course. It's what I do best, but we can't have rumours and we can't have trouble. Find the stonekiller if you must and bring him to justice, but let us finish
Moment of Discovery
in peace. Let us say 100,000 marks between the two of you with another 50,000 for you, madame. None of you are experts in prehistory and none of you could ever gain the upper hand by trying to prove those paintings a forgery. If you cry foul, we will only cry all the louder and our voice, well, what can one say but that it is so infinitely greater.'

‘The postcards,' said Deveaux. Would Kohler not be reasonable?

‘That's not possible, Baron.'

Was Kohler really so foolish? ‘Oh, and why is that, please?'

‘Louis hid them in a cache and until we have the stonekiller, that's where they will remain.'

‘A cache …?' asked von Strade, startled and looking to Deveaux who had the good sense to shrug.

‘It … it is a place only my mother and father knew of, monsieur.'

‘And yourself, if I understood that husband of yours correctly, madame. To hide the postcards there, with your father presumably having returned, cannot have been wise of St-Cyr but it really doesn't matter, does it?'

‘The paintings are a forgery and you know it!' she said. ‘This … this whole business is a sham.'

‘And you?' asked von Strade. ‘What will your children say when you fail to return to them? That you did the right thing by exposing this … this forgery, as you say, or by listening to reason and removing for ever all chance of want from their lives? Make no mistake, 50,000 marks is 1,000,000 francs. You need never work another day. They can go to the best schools and on to the university. They can study music, painting, medicine, whatever they wish. You could even take up residence in Paris. That, too, can be included with all the necessary papers thrown in for good measure.'

‘I … I cannot accept. I … I must do as mother would have wanted.'

‘Then that's settled and I leave you both to the stonekiller and to Herr Oelmann.'

‘Baron.…'

‘No, Herr Kohler. The lady has spoken. The Reichsführer-SS Himmler, the Reichsminister Dr Goebbels and the Führer will doubtless hear whispers of your insubordination but, as in film so in life, truth is in the eye of the beholder. The people will believe what they want to because it makes them proud and happy and we will tell them that they have a heritage so great and grand it extends well back into Neanderthal times. And who is to say differently when you are gone? Think about it. Don't make nuisances of yourselves like that woman did.'

Danielle Arthaud was distraught. She got up, sat down, fiddled with a copy of the replica of
Vogue
magazine the Germans produced in Paris, then grabbed the cinema pages from
Aujourd'hui, Paris-Soir
and several of the other Paris dailies and threw them down opened at bad or not so bad reviews of her last film.