She was really bitter but not without good reason. ‘How is it you can entertain the Captain? We know you’ve been seeing him.’
Ah no. Had Victor told them or had Johann? ‘The Captain …’ She must try to flash a sad smile but do so to the fire since the Inspector Kohler was concentrating so hard on her. ‘He comes here, yes, and we let him do so under duress. He’s of the Occupier, isn’t that so, Inspector? Oh mon Dieu, how could I ever forget what you … you people did to us, to me, to Adèle and, yes, to poor Yvon who is still so broken-hearted he cannot get her out of his mind and we have yet to make love?’
There, that ought to shut him up. She would shrug it off. She would say, ‘A meal, a talk, a few hours about books, music, films we might have seen … What harm is there in that? So what if we speak German and it makes Herr Kaestner feel like he is at home? So what if it’s a lie for me? I do so only because he asks. The Captain brings us food, Inspector. Food the child needs.’
‘And the dolls?’
‘You’ve seen them?’
Why was she alarmed? ‘Yes. The one of your stepdaughter — the head. Louis has seen others in the shop.’
‘Dolls,’ she said hollowly and felt so helpless. How could she begin to tell anyone what it had really been like for her?
I mustn’t, she said to herself, but Angélique will tell them. Angélique will make certain they know everything.
In the darkened study there were baby spiders in a clear glass fruit sealer and when the torch was pointed at them, they threw their tiny shadows on the map.
Forced to watch the game of silhouettes terribles, the detective took in short, sharp breaths of impatience and interest, ah yes.
‘There,’ she said, a sigh. ‘I told you so. There are megaliths at the clay pits. The Ancients sometimes, but not always, cremated their dead in pits at the base of these standing stones, then buried the bones with pots and tools and occasionally bits of jewellery. My father was digging right near the clay pits on the day of the murder. She knew he would be working there.’
The bicycle tracks … the shed, the little bits of clay she had spoken of. Had the Captain been aware he wasn’t alone? Had the watchman seen the father too?
‘Does your father always let you and your stepmother know where he will be working?’ he asked.
She could hear the hesitation in his voice. Were detectives always so cautious? ‘This time he did. You see, the Captain sent us a message from Paris that he would be returning on New Year’s Day and would drop in after he had been to the pits.’
‘When was this message delivered?’
‘On the 30th of December but you should ask first who delivered it, I think.’
She was making him feel completely out of his depth. ‘Very well, who was it?’
‘The Obersteuermann, Herr Baumann. Both my father and that … that woman he has married were present. Both read the note and thanked Herr Baumann. He had a cup of the acorn coffee and two of my biscuits, the flat ones with the sprinklings of crushed walnuts and watered honey on top.’
‘They’d be very tasty.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, they were. And now, if you like, I will switch on the overhead lights.’
He touched her arm. ‘A moment, please, Mademoiselle Charbonneau. I wish to experience the study as you have first introduced me to it.’
The room, with heavy dark beams across its ceiling, occupied perhaps more than half the ground floor of the oldest part of the house. As in the living-room, there was a massive stone fireplace with granite mantelpiece, but no fire. On either side of this, and stretching into darkness, there were superbly carved Breton armoires and cabinets, tables and shelves — everywhere he looked there was both the ordered and disordered pilings of antiquity.
‘It was once the billiards room,’ she said, swinging the torch round. ‘That is the table over there under all those things from the passage graves. The entrances are where the good finds are sometimes made. The Ancients blocked up the entrances to seal their dead in and stop them from coming out at night, I think, and in the blockages there are many things of value and broken things as well. A kind of garbage heap. A midden perhaps. Yes, it must have been like that,’ she nodded severely. ‘After working hard all day they would eat their supper and then throw the oyster shells and pig bones in too.’
There were shards of terracotta with simple decorations of dots in parallel lines or slanting dash strokes, zigzags occasionally and even on one reassembled piece, a swastika among its intricate designs.
Knives, spear-points and arrowheads of flint, copper and bronze lay with ceremonial axeheads of polished stone, all scattered in little collections among the shards — perhaps two thousand years of prehistory on the forgotten green baize of a late nineteenth-century billiard table.
‘There are a few gold coins and some of silver,’ she hazarded softly. ‘Coins are very rare but those I like best all have the horse and chariot racing madly on the back, with the driver of course. The Armoricans fought naked, Chief Inspector, and were taken as slaves that way to Rome, or had the dagger plunged by themselves straight down into their hearts from the base of the throat. Then their heads were cut off.’
They did not always fight naked — this much he did know, but no matter. ‘The Veneti,’ he managed. ‘The Celts and the last great battle in Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. A … a naval battle, I believe. Off the coast of the Morbihan in …’
‘In 56 BC, in the Bay of Quiberon. Caesar is said to have watched from Port-Navalo but that’s impossible. It simply does not agree with the geography of the times. The sea was not so close and only came in to flood the Gulf of Morbihan well after the event. At least, that is what the experts say. Perhaps careful readings of Caesar’s Gallic War might bear this out, or the Greek historian and geographer Strabo’s Geography. They are both in languages I cannot yet read, you understand, but my father has copies, as he has of most other things.’
‘In any case, the battle was fought,’ he murmured uncomfortably.
‘Yes. The Veneti, the most powerful and brave of all the Armoricans, lost to the Romans and …’
He gave a sigh. ‘And were then led into slavery.’
‘With their women, their young girls, their virgins.’
Ah merde, why must she bait him like this? ‘Please turn on the lights. I’ve experienced enough of your darkness.’
Bits of charred human bones in little heaps, all with carefully labelled cards giving the location and details of excavation, lay about among the artefacts. In all it was the work of a pack rat of antiquities. Prehistory, perhaps some two or even three thousand years of it up to 56 BC and a little more recently, yes, had been gathered in one room.
Skulls were among the treasures. Bronze cloak pins and belt buckles lay with linked cloak belts of exquisite design and glass bracelets of deep blue or soft pink, most of which had been broken long ago by age, by frost, or simply by ancient custom or carelessness.
Charbonneau had not been selective. ‘Your father has been busy.’
She heaved a weary, much troubled sigh. ‘Yes, but there are many sites he has yet to explore.’
‘And that is his map of them.’
Herr Kohler was persistent. ‘The Préfet …?’ she said. ‘Victor is just a friend, Inspector. Oh for sure he’s a little lonely now that his children are all grown up and his wife has turned to religion. What man of his age would not seek the cup of coffee or herbal tea with someone younger, especially if that someone herself was a little lonely and, yes, a little lost and perhaps even in need of help or just plain friendship? The people around here keep to themselves. Yvon’s behaviour has … has, well, scared them off, I suppose.’