‘You’re so beautiful,’ she said, ‘so talented.’ And then again apologetically as if they’d only just met, ‘Forgive me, please. I could not stop them from bringing me, Viviane.’
‘It’s nothing. Forget it, cherie. Just try to rest. She’s so pale, Inspector. Can’t you see how worried she is? That ham you ate … Ludo … Where the hell is he? Why hasn’t the German brought him to see her?’
‘The Bavarian, mademoiselle. Hermann, he will get here in his own good time. Nothing stops him once he’s made up his mind.’
She arched her eyebrows. ‘Is that some sort of warning?’
He would give a shrug. ‘It is merely a statement of fact. Please take it any way you like.’
God damn him!
The weaver brushed a hand over the girl’s hair then kissed her on the cheek. St-Cyr noted the gorgeous dress the woman wore, a shade of blue not dark or light, or greyish, yet all three and of a depth of colour that matched her eyes and radiated a warmth that glowed.
More camomile tea was poured into the patient’s cup, the heavy silver bracelets sliding down the weaver’s wrists, the girl drawn to them and to the rings, memories of her childhood rushing in to bring their fresh, silent well of tears.
Their foreheads came together, the weaver gently clasping the girl by the back of the head and shaking her a little. ‘Don’t, cherie. The Inspectors will find the killer, then you and I will bury her up by the village she loved so much, isn’t that right?’
‘And Josianne-Michele?’ begged the girl.
‘It’s best you don’t meet. Really, ma petite, it was wise of your sister to take herself away. The fits … She can’t be upset. You know how she is.’
‘Worse?’
‘Unfortunately yes.’
The girl was distraught. ‘I should have written; I should have come to see her, Viviane. She knows how ashamed I am to have failed her. The lies, Viviane. The lies of my success.’
‘Inspector, would you mind?’
St-Cyr nodded and got up from his chair to busy himself by adding more wood to the fire. Some cypress, yes, to give the hot, fast aromatic flame; a little of the green oak to slow things down, and some of the olive for lasting strength.
He warmed his hands, then stood and, not looking at the two of them, went over to the bureau.
They saw him pause before the mirror – knew he could not watch them from there but wondered why he was looking so steadily into it when all he could see were reflections of the door and window, the rug, the chair and little else.
Opening one of the bureau drawers, he would have sworn their voices hesitated, but grief has its pauses so perhaps it was only that.
As before, the two masks stared up at him from their nest of lingerie. Silks, satins and laces in pale creams, shimmering sky-blues, emerald-greens, soft rose and white.
The mask on the right had been that of Josette-Louise. Quick-witted, high-spirited, vivacious and intelligent, warm and outgoing – successful. No secrets and yet … and yet so many of them.
The masks had been reversed. That of Josianne-Michele was now on the right, that of her sister on the left.
‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, did you touch these?’ he asked – any one of several people could have done so since their first visit. Indeed, Josianne-Michele could easily have moved them after Hermann and he had left for Bayonne and Paris.
The two women glanced at each other – some signal perhaps. Caution, yes. ‘Mademoiselle …?’
‘Yes, yes, Inspector, I touched them after Herr Kohler went to find Ludo for me.’
Surprised at her familiarity towards the herbalist, he wondered if it was because of arrogance, some childhood legacy. Surely she should have referred to him as Monsieur Borel?
‘You shifted their positions,’ he said.
‘Yes, I placed them as they should be. Mine to the left, Inspector. Josianne’s to the right.’
‘But how is it, please, that you have had the mask made when you haven’t been back here in all these years?’
‘I went to Cannes two years ago to see my father, Inspector. It was at his request. He said he’d already made one of Josianne and wanted to do me.’
Two years ago … December 1940 and a world that had changed for ever. ‘Did you see your sister then, mademoiselle?’
‘No. No, we did not see each other. She was ill and it would only have upset her.’
‘Carlo obtained a laissez-passer for her, Inspector. Josette stayed with me, though her father wanted her to stay with him.’
‘And the mother?’ he asked. ‘What did Anne-Marie Buemondi do?’
There must be no hesitation. ‘Flew into a rage and went to stay at the villa in Le Cannet. Refused to have anything to do with us. That’s when … when she left me and … and began again to hunt for another.’
For Angelique Girard. The weaver would be standing beside the girl’s chair. One hand would rest on Josette’s shoulder. He could not see the two of them in the mirror yet longed to have the image of them.
‘Mademoiselle Josette-Louise, permit me, please, to ask another question.’
They would glance at each other. The weaver’s eyes would register alarm and fear just as they had in Chamonix.
‘Yes, yes, Inspector,’ said the girl. ‘Your question?’
‘Ask it, then,’ said the weaver apprehensively.
But he thought not and began to pack his pipe, thereby distressing them both.
When he had the furnace going to his satisfaction, he blessed the Luftwaffe for their handsome donation of tobacco and praised Hermann’s tenacity in obtaining it.
‘The espadrille of your sister, mademoiselle, and the bits of Roman glass. Where have you put them? They were there, on that shelf beside the bed.’
Neither of them moved. For perhaps ten milliseconds the cinematographer’s camera caught them. Alarm in the weaver’s eyes; panic in the girl’s. They both recovered quickly and he wanted to demand which of them had fired that crossbow but had to give them both the benefit of doubt. He tossed the hand of indifference. ‘There was also a cheap porcelain figurine of the Christ at Galilee and a cross that had been fashioned out of horseshoe nails. Mesdemoiselles, I have only to ask the village blacksmith whom he made that cross for. Come, come, enough of this. Too many lives are at stake.’
It was the girl who went to get the things from the small suitcase Chantal and Muriel had given her in Paris. A donation, as were the clothes she wore.
‘They are all I want to take back with me, Inspector. They were mine, my little treasures.’
Then why did you leave them here? he wanted to challenge her. Was it because your sister coveted them, or did as a child? Ah Nom de Dieu, he wished he could find it in his heart to break her to pieces before it was too late, but that heart would not let him and he only nodded grimly and sucked on his pipe. ‘Your locket,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, mademoiselle. In your haste to leave your room in Paris, you forgot to take it with you.’
Scratched and dented, tarnished and dull, it was dangled above her open hand and he watched her as her fingers hesitantly closed over it, heard her voice, a whispered, ‘Merci, monsieur. I have thought I would never see it again.’
The cameras sought the depths of the look she gave. Ah Mon Dieu, she had such lovely dark brown eyes, and were he but able to roll back the years, the smile, the happiness, the love of living that once had been in them. Ah yes, the mask as it should have been.
Hermann arrived with the herbalist. Rapidly the cinematographer reloaded his camera and drew on his pipe. By its very lack of size, the cottage closed them in and he had the thought then, that so much of this whole business rested here. The question of water rights would come up. Borel knew it in his heart of hearts. It was only a matter of time.