The Gestapo winced. Perhaps five seconds passed. ‘Please, I am warning you,’ said the Surete quietly. ‘All is not as it seems here, and I greatly fear you and the German Reich are being led astray.’
The hard little dark eyes seethed with hatred. ‘How dare you?’ hissed Munk, spitting.
St-Cyr released his grip, but slowly. ‘I dare because I must. Is it that you wish to be made to look a fool?’
‘We have the proof – proof positive! – that the Buemondi woman was an enemy of the Reich!’
‘Please … Please, Herr Munk, do not rewind the engine, eh? If it is as you say, then a day or two will not matter. Something is not right.’
Munk glanced doubtfully at Delphane and fumed silently for about two seconds. ‘Into the grand salon. Quickly! You, you and you take him. One false move and he’s dead!’
Their jackboots rang on the hardwood floor and were only dampened by the carpets. Flung into a Louis XVI armchair, St-Cyr bunched his shoulders and waited for the blows. Munk sat down facing him. The other three stood guard but the idiots had yet to take his gun. Jean-Paul Delphane chose to tower over everyone and remained standing.
St-Cyr held up a hand to caution them all, then slowly drew the Lebel from its shoulder holster and laid it on the carpet at his feet. ‘So, a matter of the maquis in the hills.’
‘Terrorists!’ leapt Munk. ‘Enemies of the state!’
‘Yes, yes. The Cross of Lorraine.’ He took it out but kept it in an open hand. ‘A foolish symbol that will grow, Herr Munk, as the war in North Africa and in Russia grows worse – no, please do not interrupt me. A woman dies on a barren hillside and one of the best men in the Deuxieme Bureau fails to find such a thing as this beneath the lapel of her overcoat? Come, come, Jean-Paul, I know you are far too good to miss a little thing like this. Why did you not take it in evidence? Why did you plant it there if not to pin the accusation of Resistant upon myself and of sympathizer on my partner Hermann Kohler?’
‘Who has stolen damaging evidence from the office of Herr Munk.’
Ah Mon Dieu, Jean-Paul, how could he remain so calm? ‘I know nothing of this. If Hermann has taken anything, it will only be material that is of the utmost importance to the investigation.’
‘Dossiers,’ hissed Munk. ‘A photograph and notebook.’
‘Telephone numbers, Louis. Contacts. The woman was running an escape line from here to Bayonne and the Spanish frontier.’
‘Pilots, escapees, insurgents, Communists, Jews and Resistants,’ said Munk, ‘so you see, Inspector, we have the proof.’
‘Then why bring Hermann and myself into the affair? If it is not murder, Herr Munk, and it is an affair for Counterintelligence and Counterinsurgency, why ask two tired detectives for help when they already have far more work than is humanly possible to handle?’
Munk snapped his fingers. ‘A little cognac. Quickly, you,’ he said to one of the others. ‘Find some and bring my cigarettes.’
Munk handed his gloves to another. ‘Your German is really quite good, St-Cyr. How is it that you come to speak it so well?’
Did they think he was some sort of spy? Had Jean-Paul put this into their heads as well?
‘Come, come,’ insisted Munk. ‘A wife who runs off with a Wehrmacht lieutenant? A mistress who speaks German fluently to the generals she entertains?’
‘Pardon, monsieur, permit me, please, to enlighten you and perhaps correct Gestapo Paris’s misinformation. Gabrielle Arcuri is not my mistress. Indeed, that one is only an acquaintance I met on a former case. The generals do the entertaining. They are the ones that buy her a late breakfast after she finishes work or perhaps a glass of champagne at the club and a little dinner. As to my speaking your language, my work with the IKPK and with the Sturmbannfuhrer Walter Boemelburg before the war made it imperative. But then,’ he shrugged, ‘Walter speaks excellent French so I guess, in this at least, he and I are even.’
Munk’s smile was sardonic. St-Cyr had learned to speak German as a boy. He’d been found unruly and had been sent several times for the holidays to distant relatives on a farm near Saarbrucken to experience a little Germanic discipline since the French variety had failed. ‘If the Surete thinks to use friends in high places, Inspector, he had best think again.’
‘Walter is after our heads? Is that what you mean?’ exclaimed St-Cyr.
Delphane stepped forward. ‘You’re both on trial, Louis. Given half a chance, you’ll go over to the other side, and everyone in Paris knows it.’
‘Then here are my bracelets, Herr Munk, and you can let this one wrap it all up. Is it to be the salt mines of Silesia for me, Jean-Paul, and the Gestapo Kiev, where the partisans are so thick, for Hermann, eh? Or simply the bolt of an antique crossbow that could not possibly have been fired unless, my friend, both its bow had been restrung and its windlass rewound with new cord.’
Ah now, what was this? Delphane uncertain of himself and having to sit down? Heavily no less?
‘I told you what he was like, Herr Munk. I said you’d get nothing from him.’
The cognac came but there was only one glass and one cigarette, and after the Gestapo Munk had tossed off his drink, he handed the empty glass to Jean-Paul.
The humiliation was there, the fear as that one drank from it. Ah yes. All too evidently the Gestapo Munk wanted the Surete’s little detective to witness that Jean Paul Delphane was not on easy ground but on quicksand himself!
‘Tell me more about the woman,’ said Munk, and for the first time, the hard knife of reality sunk in. Herr Munk was far from being a fool. Instead, he was a very cunning man beneath the belligerent veneer of overt savagery.
‘Madame Buemondi died on her birthday,’ began St-Cyr. ‘Though it is a little early to advise you completely, Herr Munk, we see the woman separated from her loved ones and going into the hills to celebrate the occasion with one of them.’
‘She was dealing in contraband,’ snorted Delphane. ‘The black market, you idiot!’
‘Yes, yes, but why wear her best clothes?’
‘Expensive?’ asked Munk casually.
‘Quite good,’ said St-Cyr.
The Gestapo uncrossed his knees and paused to let one of the others light his cigarette. ‘Then I am surprised, Inspector St-Cyr, that you are not aware we Germans and you French tend to think less ill of those who are well dressed. The Buemondi woman always dressed in such a fashion when on her travels. It helped to keep suspicion from her.’
Delphane did not smile, but in that moment, the light of triumph touched his eyes. ‘Don’t try to cover things up, Jean-Louis. Three weeks ago five British airmen escaped from the Italians at a camp near Cuneo. Sightings put them on the march for the Riviera – oh for sure, it is only natural the British, they should think to come here. They ruled the Cote d’Azur for generations, pushing themselves around and lording it over everyone in their playground. But, is it not more than coincidence that Madame Buemondi should make her little trip just as these escapees are arriving in the very hills to which she has come?’
‘Where they soon discovered the south was no longer the “Free Zone” they had been taught to expect six months ago,’ added Munk, watching the two of them closely.
‘The woman brought two suitcases with her, Louis,’ said Delphane, noting the Gestapo’s scrutiny. ‘Have you not asked yourself what they contained? Come, come, my friend, clothes suitable for the escapers to wear when taking the trains from here to Bayonne. Madame had houses in both places. It’s obvious what she was up to.’
‘Then why, please, was this villa not under surveillance?’ It was a cry to God for mercy, a plea for some sort of help.
‘Oh but it was, Jean-Louis,’ said Delphane. ‘How else could we have known to find you here?’