‘Verdammt!’ bellowed Kohler, sucking on the bloodied ham of his right thumb. ‘I was trying to be kind, Louis.’
‘You need a mirror, my friend. That scar … the thing that rawhide whip bestowed upon your left cheek, eh? The stitch-marks are still red.’
‘Shit! Her teeth are sharp. I’ll get epilepsy, Louis. Human bites … one can’t be too careful. They’re always the worst!’
The Gestapo’s detective had meant it too. Always the Germans were so afraid of catching some French disease. St-Cyr shook his head to chide his partner, and taking up a wash-cloth from a nearby chair, squeezed water over the thumb.
As the girl watched closely, her breasts pushed at the rough cotton nightgown and her slender throat constricted. She was about twenty-four years of age and thin, had the high cheekbones of the aristocracy, the fierce dark eyes of the Midi and the hair to match. Was really quite beautiful were her state of health and condition not so utterly deplorable.
Kohler wrapped his thumb in the rag. Immediately the girl yanked her eyes from Louis to focus fiercely on it. Again the breasts shoved at the nightgown. Again there was that watchful look of hatred whose intensity both shocked and troubled.
Blood was smeared on her neck and collar-bones, and where the old woman had tried to jam a stick between those white, white teeth, there was more of it on the chin and on the pillow-slip and sheets.
Together, St-Cyr plucking at Hermann’s coat-sleeve, they withdrew. The old woman was again stuffing goose livers into the grinder. ‘Nothing stops for long in these hills, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr ruefully. ‘It can’t, for to do so is to die.’
‘Then ask her if the one in the bed is related to the one with the bolt in her chest.’
‘You’re learning. Ah Mon Dieu, my old one, the lessons I have been so patiently imparting to you are at last beginning to sink in.’
‘Gott im Himmel, you dummkopf, did you think these people were any different from the ones back home in Bavaria? Just give me five with that old girl, Louis, and she’ll have her hand in that grinder or else!’
Hermann did have a way with him when upset, but now was not the time for it.
‘Go and warm yourself by her fire. See if you can’t figure out how it is that in such a place like this, there are not one or two thin sticks on the hearth as there should be, but sufficient logs for the whole winter!’
‘The victim?’ asked Kohler, tossing his head to indicate the general direction of the body. ‘The victim’s been paying them to look after the girl.’
Ah Nom de Dieu, sometimes the Bavarians were so slow-witted! ‘Precisely, my old one. Precisely. You really are learning.’
‘Then ask her where son Georges and the grandson Bebert are.’
‘I already have – silently, eh? They are with the Abbe Roussel and our hearse-driver, deep in conference, no doubt, and forgetting their illegal vin ordinaire. Look, why not go up the hill a little farther, Hermann? Make of it what you will and me, I shall join you presently.’
‘You’d better. I’ve got a stone in my shoe and a nail in my thumb – i.e. my patience is sorely tried!’
Hermann always had to have the last word and, at times like this, it was best to let him have it.
When the door had closed, St-Cyr went back to the girl. Taking up another bit of rag, he wrung it out before placing it on her brow. ‘Now, now, mademoiselle, I am not going to hurt you, eh? From me you have nothing to fear.’
The eyes began to close. The lids fitfully struggled to remain open, once, twice – three times … Ah, Mon Dieu, such force of will, such terror of the defencelessness of sleep.
In exhaustion, the patient slept the sleep of the damned. St-Cyr stood there a moment more. Unbidden, the image of himself as a cinematographer came and he let the cameras roll, wished only that he could pull back the covers. A ballet dancer? he asked. A mannequin – she had every aspect of either, every suggestion. Not a hint of perfume, only the sour odour of the very ill.
A fine gold chain, the equivalent of three or four interwoven hairs, had slipped from beneath the pillow during the fit.
Cautiously he teased it away and when he had the small, heart-shaped locket in hand, he turned to see the old woman holding her breath. Ah now, what was this, eh?
The photograph within the locket was of two curly-headed girls of perhaps ten or twelve in happier times. Twins, ah yes. Identical.
Merde, what had they got themselves into this time? Some heart-rending family feud? Why … why in God’s name had the mother kept the one daughter here like this, and the other … where? Where was the other one?
And why had the mother – if indeed she was the mother – been killed in any way, let alone in such a fashion? And why … Dear God, why did she have to have a pawn ticket from Bayonne in her fist? It could have been from anywhere else, couldn’t it?
As carefully as he could, he slid the locket back but found the girl’s cheek soon came in contact with his hand. She wouldn’t let him leave – he realized this readily enough, knew only by the contented, childlike sigh she gave that deep in sleep, the touch of him had instantly made her happy.
It was the old woman who said, ‘Now come away, monsieur, and I will tell you what I can because I must.’
‘Are you really blind?’ he asked.
‘Is it so hard for you to tell?’
‘Madame, you humble me.’
‘Then understand, monsieur, that I have been blind for over sixty years but that this has never prevented me from seeing what I have to. Your friend will get nothing out of the abbe. Nothing! That one has the lips of wax.’
The dead …? Ah Mon Dieu, not another murder so soon? ‘Will it be safe for Hermann up in the village, madame?’
‘On a night such as this? Perhaps if … if the other one has gone.’
‘What other one?’
‘The one who came to see the body first. The one who came from Bayonne.’
*
Kohler knew it wasn’t safe. His was the only light in the village. Once past the rampart gate, an ugly warren of narrow lanes and shuttered or iron-grilled windows swallowed him. Winding flights of stone steps led up and off to unseen streets – did they name them? Were they even worth naming?
The wind was like Christ after a sinner. It drove its fist into every bone, found every crevice – roared along the narrow lanes, rattling the shutters and tearing away the little bits of flaking mortar the ages had left.
A tile flew off someone’s roof and, falling the two or three storeys, hit the cobbles to fly into pieces. Another followed and then another. A boulder too – one of the slabs that had been used to secure the tiles.
His back to a wall in panic, he heard the boulder rumble and bounce away. A door was flung open. A light shone out and with it came a guttural burst of Provencal he could not translate but understood well enough.
A ladder followed the enraged owner of the lantern. The wind sucked at it and at the light, at the waxed handlebar moustache. ‘Alphonse … Alphonse, hurry! Hurry!’
Kohler darted across the lane and, using the wall as cover from the wind, fought his way up to the ladder, thus terrifying its owner until held in a grip of iron.
‘Kohler. Gestapo Central. Here, allow me to help. Tell the boy to hold my light.’
Another guttural string of verbiage ensued. The light was taken and awkwardly the ladder was leaned against the wall just under the eaves. ‘The rocks,’ gasped the man as another of the tiles pulled away. ‘We must put them back.’
‘You can’t go up there in this!’
‘I have no other choice, monsieur.’
‘Then let me. I’m twice your size.’ Son of a bitch, why had he said it? Kohler began to climb.
‘A moment, a moment,’ shouted the man. ‘The rock, monsieur. You cannot forget the rock. Put it up a good thirty centimetres from the edge of the roof.’