The soft oval of her face was about twenty-two years of age.
Both women had expressions caught as in defiance. Angelique Girard clasped Madame Anne-Marie’s hand which rested possessively on the girl’s right shoulder. They were both very serious. A moment of defiant commitment, then, to each other and recorded on film by someone else. He was certain of it. Though one or the other could have set the timer delay on the shutter, the expressions revealed far too much for them to have been held for more than a moment. The daughter in Paris? he wondered. Was this one a friend of Josette-Louise? Ah, there were so many questions to answer, so little time. A real murder – was it really so? He felt this, was all but certain of it. Would have sworn to it in front of any priest or Gestapo chief.
The girl wore a black, tightly collared top of crushed velvet and a strand of large costume pearls. An ornate pin, high on the left shoulder, held a floppy but stylish satin bow. Pink probably.
Anne-Marie Buemondi wore a beautifully woven and very fashionable, loose-fitting sweater of black design on a crimson background perhaps. Small ropes of gold hung from her ears, the hair was not braided into the severe diadem they’d seen in the hills but was worn loosely, combed back behind the ears and parted to the left. A pin – some costume designer’s bit of fancy, a golden mask with vacant eyes and gaping mouth – was worn in exactly the same position as the girl’s pin.
There were two of the same masks chained to Anne-Marie’s right wrist by four twisted ropes of gold, the bracelet heavy and obviously a gift from the girl. A lover’s present. Yet who had taken the photograph?
From the balcony he saw the target, off to the far left next to the wall, and knew that someone had been recently practising their archery.
Pocketing the photograph, St-Cyr hurried downstairs and when he approached the target, he saw that whoever had fired the crossbow, had known exactly how to do so.
There were at least seventeen bolt holes in the centre, a pattern spread of not more than fifteen centimetres at the most.
Pacing off the metres, he repeatedly found the imprints of a woman’s low-heeled shoes, and at sixty metres and behind them, those of a heavy-set man. Had the man come upon her in the garden; had she then shown him what she could really do? Was it all too obvious? he wondered. Had the weaver led him to everything only to set him up for something else?
She was standing before the fireplace in the grand salon and right away she showed him where the crossbow had been.
‘It was gone,’ she said, still looking at the place beside the fire-irons. ‘On Wednesday I searched everywhere for it. I knew – don’t you see, Inspector, I knew what had happened. I felt it in my heart. A knife – like a knife. I was right here when she fell. I heard my name as she cried it out to me.’
Unwittingly Viviane Darnot gave the image of herself repeated several times again in gold and glass, richly defined in splendour. Superbly gilded Louis XVI armchairs were all about her. A Tilliard screen was just to her left. An exquisite Louis Philippe-style piano and golden harp. A magnificent secretaire. A tapestry, an allegory of Rome, portrayed the trial of a young woman who stood among grim-faced senators who would judge and condemn, while behind her, the Colosseum was thronged with upraised lances.
‘Carlo killed her,’ she said, quite simply. ‘He was the one to benefit the most. All this,’ she said, gesturing dismissively. ‘He wanted so much to sell it but needed Anne-Marie’s permission. He had a buyer all lined up, Inspector. Himmler’s buyer.’
‘But Angelique Girard pulled the trigger, is that it?’ he asked and heard her whisper, ‘Yes.’
‘And Himmler’s buyer?’ he asked.
Her sarcasm was all too clear. ‘That one’s Jewish and knows the Riviera well, Inspector, since he used to deal in fine paintings and other works of art. He’s going to be made an Honorary German and so must work all the harder to ensure that Herr Himmler obtains nothing but the best.’
Ah, Nom de Jesus-Christ, more trouble! Hermann … where the hell was Hermann?
Her little smile was brief. ‘Carlo had agreed to sell the villa, Inspector, but Anne-Marie had refused absolutely. As a result, Herr Himmler’s buyer was furious.’
St-Cyr longed for his pipe and a good supply of tobacco. He longed for Hermann and a chance to talk things over in quiet. ‘This “buyer” mademoiselle, his name and where might he be found?’
Now there was defiance, the weaver proud. ‘Heimholtz Kleitsmann; alias Heinz Kleist, the Hotel Albion. He has a suite of rooms but seldom stays long in one place. He’s far too busy.’
‘French?’
‘Of course. Why not a little real estate, Inspector? You French are into everything else, isn’t that so? Robbery, arson, murder …’
‘Yes, yes, even detective work. These times, they are not good for us, mademoiselle, but soon they will pass. Of this, I am certain.’
‘And your partner?’ she asked. ‘This Gestapo detective?’
The shrug was that of a man upon whom God had willed a certain fate. ‘Hermann? Hermann is something special, Mademoiselle Viviane. A damned good detective at a time when the world seems to want anything but one.’
Kohler darted into a block of flats and paused to catch a breath. The boys in blue were out in force. The ones in black were with them and so were those in the field grey-green of the Wehrmacht. It was only a matter of time until Munk and Delphane caught up with them.
Verdammt! What was he to do? Call the villa and warn Louis? Go to ground and hope they didn’t pick the Frog up and hold him for ransom? Or walk out there now and let the bastards have the dossiers and the little notebook? The photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi in Paris?
Jesus! Four black cars shot down the rue du Canada and he heard the screech of their brakes and knew he was for it.
Then heard the hungry throb of their engines as they pelted along the Croisette to jump on someone else.
He had about an hour, maybe less. One by one, the pedestrians began to move. A velo-taxi started up as he stepped out on to the street; another jangled its bell and he waited until it had passed before threading his way across to the other side. Everyone was looking at him now, only to duck their eyes away when he met them. A good head and shoulders taller than most, he’d never be able to hide in a crowd down here.
The shop was gushy, the small ante-room holding an antique desk, a woven basket of cut flowers, vases of the same, three ornate chairs, handfuls of celebrity photographs on the walls and a coffee-table with the latest fashion magazines and a copy of Der Stuermer that was six weeks old.
‘Kohler, from Madame Buemondi, to see the boss,’ he said to the doubting dumpling who fussed with worried locks as she attempted to get up and found her girdle too tight. ‘Just tell the boss it’s private, eh? A little matter about the face creams and the hormonal jellies. Too much acid in that last batch.’
Dumpling tugged at her suit jacket and nodded doubtfully. ‘Madame, she is in the back, but is very busy, monsieur. There is the ball at the Majestic tonight. You should have come this morning. You should have telephoned first.’
‘I couldn’t. Something came up. Just say there’s trouble and we’d better talk.’
The coiffeuse had her hands full, and that was for sure. Among the dozen or so Louis XV chairs with their pink coverlets under soft yellow lights and before a battery of mirrors and dressing-tables, were the bored, the pampered and the haughty mondaines of Cannes, the wives of black marketeers, bankers and industrialists, the socialites and high-class whores who lived on the wealth of others and had up to now been comfortably sitting out the war.
A poodle piddled and Madame Ernestine Rogette hardly paused in the rinse job she was performing, the woman simply flicking a towel at the floor and putting a foot on it.