‘Did you know her father?’
Irritably Audit flicked cigarette ash to one side. ‘Kahn … a German who lived in Paris, a perfumer. He and Michele-Louise … All right, you have me, Inspector. Eventually Michele and that bastard ran away together and were killed in a road accident, leaving Christabelle in my care.’
‘The girl’s mother was very young. Fifteen, I believe.’
‘Kahn couldn’t have cared less, Inspector. Michele-Louise was a wild woman. Crazy! Fantastic, but …’ His eyes strayed to the shotgun.
‘But not to be trusted even when her own child was concerned?’
Audit’s gaze was unwavering. ‘Totally unreliable. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have given that fifteen-year-old to Kahn as a present, and then to have climbed in with them. She could never accept the staid life my brother had imposed on her, Inspector. Ah, what can one say about such things? Charles … Charles tried to give Michele-Louise the freedom she required. She furnished their villa to her own taste, painted, sculpted -’
‘Made forgeries of the coins you once had?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The coins, Monsieur Audit. What really happened to them?’
The cheeks were blown out in exasperation, the hands were tossed. ‘They were stolen from my house here. Of course I reported the theft. The local Prefecture were as thorough as they could possibly be. Lyon was called in and Bordeaux, but, ah! they turned up nothing. No leads. Just nothing. Why do you ask? What have the coins to do with … with …’
‘Christabelle’s death? Thirty of them were scattered about her body.’
‘But you have asked about forgeries? My coins were very real.’
‘And stolen when, precisely?’
Audit picked up the shotgun. ‘A month before the Defeat. I was in Paris at the time. Things were chaotic. When I returned to the house, my present wife informed me of the theft.’
St-Cyr hefted a few of the coins as one would a handful of loose change, before extending his fist to Audit and opening it.
‘Rubbish. It takes but one glance, Inspector. They’re too round, too perfect. Half of those were struck from iron dies when bronze ones were still in use.’
‘But are the copies exact?’
Audit shifted the shotgun awkwardly into the crook of his other arm then fanned the coins out in his palm. ‘I have not got my reading-glasses with me but yes … yes, I’d say they were. Augustus established mints here in Gaul and in Spain, as well as in Rome. During Gallienus’s reign mint marks were shown. The ARL on this one’, he tapped the coin, ‘means Arelate, or Aries. The LVGD is for Lugdunum – Lyon. Yes … yes, they’re good copies, Inspector, but ones that would fool no one but the stupid and the gullible.’
So much for the necessity of reading-glasses. ‘Could Michele-Louise have made them?’
‘Michele …? Why? Whatever for? How could she have? That one was dead before I ever had the coins, monsieur.’
‘Then could it have been Christabelle who made the dies from which these coins were struck?’
Audit saw the detective’s gaze drop warily to the shotgun only to return. ‘Why would she have done such a thing, Inspector?’
‘Why indeed?’
Up in the loft of the barn beside the walnut mill, Kohler knew there could be no immediate danger to himself, yet he felt it. Gott im Himmel, it made his hands clammy. Was Louis in trouble again? Was that it?
The girl with the geese sat below him on a block of wood amid the littered straw. Wisps of fine flaxen hair trailed over the fresh-faced brow. The bright bandanna was only of so much use. At eighteen years of age a girl had no right to look like that while doing such a domestic chore. The geese crowded. She snatched another, clamped it between her warm thighs, jammed the funnel into its uptilted beak and proceeded to force-feed it. Thrust, thrust with the short wooden plunger, then the fist wrapped around the neck and down, down, the strokes firm and sure, the glance up at him, she knew damned well what he was thinking.
A tidy household. The chateau, the manor and the walnut mill. The hunt, the living in the rough while that was on, and a little something to warm the toes on frosty nights, ah yes.
In a way he envied Antoine Audit, but why did he feel the way he did? The loft had the usual paraphernalia, if one was in the walnut trade and making pate as well. Baskets by the dozens, sacks, rakes, ladders, saws, bits of machinery, replacement paddles for the water-wheel, barrels for the walnut juice, the oil and pulp, screens, sieves, et cetera.
The canvas was dusty and when he’d got it off the thing, he stood in awe of it and knew immediately why the place had made him uneasy.
The rich deep tones of mahogany brought out the gnarled grain and beaten silver inlay. It was a cabinet, perhaps a metre and a half high and built in the shape of a truncated pyramid. Falcons with outspread wings hovered at the top of each of the four sides while lesser ones formed the handles of the tiny flat drawers; serpents with crowned heads were poised atop bamboo poles in silver that wrapped the edges of those same sides.
He pulled out one of the drawers. Another and another revealed the same. Each drawer was empty and lined with dark-blue felt.
Lost in thought, he didn’t hear the voices until they rose to shouting. There was a slap – a stinging smack across the face! The girl with the geese had fallen off her block of wood and now held her burning cheek.
Madame Audit stood over her. ‘Fool! Idiot! How could you have let him …’
The woman looked up to see him in the loft and, trembling, lowered her hand. The sound of the geese returned. The girl still lay sprawled among them, clasping her cheek.
Nice … it was really nice. Madame Audit was in her early thirties, wore a leather hacking jacket, whipcord jodhpurs and riding boots. A not unhandsome woman whose thin face served only to emphasize the rage and uncertainty in her hard brown eyes. ‘Monsieur, what right have you to search this place?’
‘None whatsoever,’ he heard himself saying. She hadn’t used the flat of her hand but the riding crop.
Sensing that he’d seen this, the woman turned quickly and strode from the barn.
The girl still lay in the shit and feathers looking up at him. Her fine young breasts pushed at the heavy shirt and sweater, then gradually settled down.
Gestapo, he heard her saying, though no words passed those fresh young lips. You’re from the Gestapo.
When he reached the floor, he stretched out a hand to her. ‘Relax, eh? It’s not you we want.’
‘What’s he done?’ she asked, giving out a fresh well of tears.
‘Nothing that I know of. Simply enjoyed himself making money and playing with the locals.’
The blue eyes blinked as if slapped again. ‘He’s got a mistress in Paris. I … I know he has, though he has denied this to me on the grave of his father.’
‘Hey, come on. Don’t worry so much. It’ll all sort itself out.’
‘Madame Audit knows about the girl. She has followed him to Paris with …’
‘With whom?’
‘The … the Major, the Count Felix von Lindermann. He … he is the one who comes from Bordeaux to … to stay with Madame and Monsieur Audit.’
The naval attache and overseer of Bordeaux and Perigord, the Abwehr …
‘When’s the baby due?’ he asked, hating himself because it would only make her cry all the more.
‘In July, after … after the strawberries have been taken.’
The mare, a dappled grey, stood with its reins drooping in front of the main entrance to the chateau. Accustomed to the manor house, the Audit woman had chosen the newly acquired premises as her defence.
The horse had been ridden hard, but why the hurry? Why leave a fine animal to catch its death?