The front of the house was a wreck. If something wasn’t done soon, the place would be completely finished.
Boards were strewn about. There were bits of splintered wood. To have even touched one would have brought prison – that’s what the Verboten meant. But he knew that things could so easily have been taken in any case were it not for the unspoken code of the street. They had condemned him to doubt and until the matter of his loyalties and the destruction of his house et cetera, et cetera were resolved, they would not touch a thing.
Whoever had wired the gate shut must have done it at night.
He lit a fire in the kitchen stove. Soon hot water was available. The shave then, ah yes, and the brushing of the teeth …
It was Marianne’s spare toothbrush and it took him several moments to overcome the guilt and remorse a detective’s life had caused, but nothing could be wasted these days. Besides, he had left his only toothbrush at the cottage in Provence. It had gone completely out of his head. Such an important thing. Ah merde!
When Gabrielle Arcuri found him on her way home from work, he was sitting at the table smoking a pipe of Luftwaffe tobacco and musing over bits and pieces. There was no sign of the girl Josette-Louise and she knew then that Louis really had kept her safely hidden. It pleased her immensely to find her mind so in tune with his.
The santon of the herbalist was there, a beechwood bobbin wound with russet wool in many shades, a clot of the same. The silver kaleidoscope was beautifully engraved. There was a gold locket and chain containing photographs of two curly-headed girls. ‘And three tiny scabs of lichen, Gabrielle,’ he said, nudging them into better view.
‘Where are the lantern slides of the father’s artwork, Louis, and the box in which that thing was kept?’
The kaleidoscope … Hermann must have told her everything. ‘Both in a locker at the Gare de l’Est awaiting retrieval on the return journey.’
‘Will you be free by Christmas?’
‘Ask the Nazis. I think they have simply forgotten it this year. Perhaps it was not in Hitler’s budget.’
‘You’re not pleased to see me.’
‘Of course I’m not. It’s far too dangerous.’
‘Hermann said it was now okay for me to come here. I’m to tell you he’s gone to see Boemelburg. He’ll demand a letter guaranteeing safe passage for you both and the girl, Josette-Louise.’
‘Good. At least it will get us back to Provence. Once there, we will have to look after ourselves again.’
‘God, I’m so tired of singing “Lilli Marlene”, Louis.’
When he didn’t say a thing, she dumped her handbag on a chair and pulled off the sable coat. Was dressed quite simply in a plain skirt, blouse and sweater.
‘I don’t like it when you’re angry with me,’ she said.
He removed his pipe. ‘I’m not. I’m angry at a world which no longer allows a detective the patient contemplation of the case before him.’
She sat awhile, letting him look at his little bits and pieces. She picked up the Cross of Lorraine and, as in a game of chess, slid the identity disc into its place.
‘The body in that house,’ he said. ‘Who found it?’
She moved the enamelled Cross back into view beside the disc. ‘The Abwehr, Louis.’
Though he nodded, it was as if he’d already known. He laid the photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi above the open locket. He said, ‘I stood over that girl late last night as she slept. Chantal and Muriel, they were very good about my bringing a fugitive to them. She’s so like her sister, Gabi, and yet … and yet there is the world of difference.’
‘The Stavisky Affair?’ she said softly. One could not prod the mind too hard at times like this.
‘Ah yes, Stavisky, Gabrielle. The financier took the weaver’s father for a fortune.’
‘But Anne-Marie Buemondi’s father made one and got out before the crisis.’
‘Did M. Cordeau advise the weaver’s father of what investments to make?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. It was so good to be thinking with him.
St-Cyr drew on the pipe. ‘Two women in love, Gabrielle. Lifelong friends, the one straying often perhaps, but always coming back to the other to be forgiven.’
‘Until … until, ah suddenly, Louis, someone comes along to tell the weaver the truth about Anne-Marie’s father getting out before the crisis fell, but not giving others a warning.’
‘The toy is pawned, a heart is broken. It is the final straw. They’ve fired the crossbow often enough, the two of them. In jest, of course, but now in business.’
‘The mother leaves Cannes to visit the village on her birthday and to see Josianne-Michele.’
‘Yes, yes, but something happens on that hillside, Gabrielle. The mother is challenged. The pawn ticket is extended – offered perhaps as evidence that it will be retrieved in good faith, or was it used as a threat?’
‘But what kind of a threat?’ she asked, ‘unless to expose this one?’ She slid the identity disc directly in front of him but he only shook his head.
St-Cyr picked up the kaleidoscope and pointed it at the light. ‘Bits of colour but such colours, Gabrielle. They rain in on each other; they pass outwards making patterns I cannot read.’
He handed her the instrument. He said, ‘Stavisky, Gabrielle. Something happened at that villa near Chamonix the day the financier supposedly shot himself, or it happened at a clinic and Jean-Paul Delphane, he is using it against me.’
He told her of the dancer at Les Naturistes. He said, ‘I tried to force myself to open that laundry basket in which I myself had only just hidden, but I could not do it. I was terrified he would kill me.’
‘And what is worse,’ she said, lowering the instrument to reach out and touch his hand, ‘is that he knew it.’
‘Yes. It’s like a puzzle in which time will suddenly collapse and have no meaning for me. Things will happen in the past and in the present and very fast. The kaleidoscope will turn and everything will suddenly fall into place but will it be too late?’
Gabrielle held the toy up to the light again and slowly turned its outer box. Patterns continuously folded in upon each other or opened out. Translucent and transparent, the colours of the gemstones glowed but … but was there not something else? ‘Louis … Louis, would you do something for me?’
He set the pipe aside. ‘Yes, of course. Anything. You have only to ask.’
‘Then open it.’
‘What?’
She made unscrewing motions with her fingers, was lost to the excitement of discovery and could hardly contain herself until it was done.
When he took a pair of tweezers from his pocket, she asked for a magnifying glass and he went to get one.
Then they sorted through the tiny heap of platelets whose facets flashed.
‘A D, Louis,’ she said.
‘An M and … and an X.’ Ah damn.
When laid out in a row, single chips of emerald, topaz, ruby, tourmaline and diamond gave the engraved letters of D, M, X, T. G.
‘A five-letter grouping,’ he said, aghast at what they’d found. ‘A wireless code, Gabrielle. The maquis of those mountains. Josianne-Michele’s lover, the eldest son of Ludo Borel … The one thing her sister didn’t have.’
It was all so clear he felt sick about it. ‘Jean-Paul, he … he has known exactly what we’d find and now I must tell Hermann of it.’
‘Can’t you keep it to yourself?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what Jean-Paul will expect me to do.’
‘Then why, please, did he not want you to find the sister of Josianne-Michele?’
‘Perhaps Josette-Louise knew of this?’ He indicated the letters.
‘But that cannot be. Not if she was estranged from her mother as you have said.’
‘But not from the weaver, Gabrielle. Viviane Darnot sent the girl money against the wishes of the mother. She kept in touch.’
‘But how could she have done such a thing without help? The Demarcation Line between the north and the south, it still exists. It is not so easy to get such letters across even now. The censors, Louis. The Gestapo. Postcards are still the only possible mail.’