Mud drained from his lips, he tasting it as he grinned. ‘Your back, I think,’ he said and she smiled mockingly perhaps – with all that mud on her face it was hard to tell.
One of the others did his back while he did the woman’s. The Gestapo came then and perhaps they were as startled as himself, for the place looked like nothing on earth short of the wilds of New Guinea.
They searched for him as the chatting fell off but did not think to check the lock-ups for his clothes and things, or ask if he was there.
When they were gone, Kohler moved from pool to pool until he found Buemondi in a far corner. The head was just above the mud between the knees of four naked young girls. Bald but lathered, big with robust ears and folds of skin across the brow, wide eyes that blinked, the same nose as in the lantern slides, a bull-like throat. Yeah, it was him all right.
The hippopotamus rose up among the nymphs, the barrel gut and hanging fruit drained mud in sheets. The girls descended on him and each began to smear more mud over the hairy back and belly.
Then they all submerged themselves until only their heads protruded. Red ochre round the eyes, lips and nostrils, grey nearly everywhere else, though the girls had tried to keep their hair out of it.
‘Carlo Buemondi?’ he said, stepping off the walk and into the pool.
‘Yes, that is me. What can I do for you?’
‘Nothing at the moment. I just wanted to tell you that for a man who’s supposed to be in mourning, you’re taking things pretty well.’
Buemondi held up handfuls of mud, squeezing it through clenched fists. ‘Ash, is it ashes you want?’ he said. ‘Volcanic ash from Vesuvius.’
‘Carlo, shall we go?’ asked one of the nymphs.
‘No, no, darling. It’s all right. It’s nothing. Monsieur, my wife and I have not seen each other in ages. Though I regret the news of her death, I can offer little sympathy.’
‘But much rejoicing,’ said one of the other girls, coyly tracing a finger over the professor’s cheek.
‘Laura, I will teach you a lesson some day. Perhaps it is best if the monsieur and I were to talk alone while the four of you play.’
Kohler sat down on the edge of the pool. Buemondi handed him one of the girls’ towels, saying, ‘The face, monsieur. The countenance. That way we will recognise each other in the street.’
The bastard even talked like an Italian! Fruit was brought – figs, oranges and persimmons; bowls of water to wash the hands, the girls co-operating as if trained to the job.
Buemondi chose an orange but did not peel it, simply biting into the thing and sucking at the juice. ‘She was an odd one, monsieur. Splendid in bed when needed but … what can I say? Not really enjoying it. All lies,’ he said, dribbling juice and mud. ‘Lies and schemes.’ He chose fig.
‘She loved other women,’ said one of the girls shyly. ‘Angelique Girard, I think.’
Their mentor impatiently shooed her away and the girl immersed herself in wallowing with the others, her posterior bobbing up like a cork.
‘Look, I really do not know what happened, monsieur. Anne-Marie went into the hills, yes, and someone shot her with my crossbow but it was not me. Me, I could never do such a thing as that. Not to a woman I loved.’
‘But it was someone.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘Josette-Louise?’ asked Buemondi.
The one in Paris. ‘No, no, the other one,’ said Kohler. ‘Josianne-Michele perhaps.’
Startled and afraid, the girls looked at each other. One of them suddenly stood up. Mud coursed down over her splendid breasts. Her hands helped it.
‘Monsieur, neither of my daughters would ever have killed their mother. In spite of Anne-Marie’s love affairs with other women, the children were always very loyal to her. Even my little one, my Josianne, she would … she would …’
‘Carlo, come. Come and join us. Please don’t upset yourself.’
‘Josianne-Michele was mine, monsieur. Josette-Louise was Anne-Marie’s. Always there was this favouritism but even so, neither would have done what you think. It is just not possible.’
‘Where were you on the day your wife was killed?’
‘Here, in Cannes, in my studio. These four will vouch for it. My Four Graces, monsieur. The body casts.’
‘I’m sure they’d vouch for anything,’ said Kohler drily. ‘What about Angelique Girard?’
Buemondi blinked to clear his reddened eyes. ‘That one also, monsieur. Believe me, I had no reason to kill my wife.’
‘The villa?’ asked Kohler, seeing the tadpoles glance quickly at one another and hold their breaths.
‘Not even for the villa, monsieur, though Anne-Marie refused absolutely to let me sell it and I begged her many times for the divorce she would not grant.’
The girls began to play with each other, to roll about and grapple but it was all to no avail. Kohler wasn’t buying any of it. ‘I smell a rat, my friend,’ he said. ‘Me, I think you did it.’
‘Then think again. Jean-Paul Delphane would not be bothered were it a simple matter of marital discord.’
‘Settled with a crossbow?’ asked Kohler, pulling down a lower eyelid to peer at the hippo. ‘Hey listen, my fine professori, loading a crossbow takes a good bit of muscle; firing it into sharp sunlight to hit a mark from sixty metres, one damned lot of practice.’
Buemondi didn’t waver. He would give the fine detective from Bavaria a moment. Ah si, si. Then he would tell him. ‘The weaver, monsieur. Viviane Darnot, my wife’s ex-lover and former companion of many years. She was in the hills on that day, yes? She travels there quite often in search of herbs and earths with which to dye the wool. Ludo Borel, the village herbalist, often helps her. Viviane discovered that Angelique and my wife were using the cottage she and Anne-Marie had used themselves as a lovers’ nest. It is as simple as that. The villa also. And she could shoot with that bow of mine, monsieur. Shoot only too well. She and my wife used to practise killing me. The big photograph on the target, the sketches – yes, yes, myself have I seen such a thing many times.’
‘Then why is the man from Bayonne involved?’
‘Why indeed, if not to discover something else?’
‘Did they know each other from the past?’
‘Delphane and Viviane, or Viviane and my wife?’
‘All three of them, I think.’
Buemondi grimaced, then flicked mud from his hand. ‘Look, let’s not mess. You and I both know what those people in the Deuxieme Bureau are like. Trouble under every carpet and behind every door. Me, I don’t want to become involved.’
‘Just say it,’ said Kohler quietly.
The hippo clucked his tongue ruefully then jerked his head up as he nodded. ‘Yes … yes, I think the three of them must have known each other from before but I have nothing with which to back this up.’
‘You lying bastard. You were married to the woman nine years ago. You know damned well what I’m referring to. The murder of Stavisky in Chamonix.’
‘The financier? Then scrape the mud away and find out what is beneath.’
Kohler got up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t drown,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to have to watch them pounding that crap out of you.’
The masseuse was waiting for him when he came out of the showers. He tried to ease her fears about her mother, the coiffeuse on the rue du Canada, and the sister but found it difficult to hide the truth.
Paulette Rogette was tough, sturdy and with the hands and arms of a potter, above all a realist. ‘My sister Suzanne is dead, is that it?’ she asked. ‘Mother telephoned here twice, Inspector, then again and again and again but they will not tell her anything, so now I ask it of you. Did the Gestapo of the Hotel Montfleury pry anything out of my sister before they killed her?’