Suddenly flustered, he reached for his wine then thought better of it.
The weaver said, ‘We were outside under the shade of the olive trees, Inspector. We were very much in love. Anne-Marie had come back to me. Myself, I was … well, grateful, I suppose. Happy – immensely happy and secure once again.’
‘And Alain, your son, monsieur? He and Josianne-Michele?’
Borel’s gaze was steady. ‘Are like two pieces of broken glass, monsieur, that when placed side by side, fit absolutely.’
‘Is the boy in the maquis?’ asked Kohler, forgetting the lump of cheese on his knife.
‘The maquis? Of course not, Inspector. Alain does most of the collecting. He’ll be home for Christmas. You can ask him then yourself.’
‘Four days …’ said St-Cyr. ‘We may not be given the time, monsieur. The Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane and the Gestapo Munk are impatient. Indeed, I am surprised they are not here.’
‘Then I will tell you that Alain, he has given me his solemn oath not to go into the hills for that purpose.’
Meaning, there might or might not be a maquis. Kohler thought it best to inform them of the pilot’s body they’d found in Bayonne. ‘There’s a code, a five-letter grouping that needs explaining.’
‘A code?’ asked the weaver, blanching.
‘A kaleidoscope, mademoiselle,’ said the Surete. ‘A toy of much beauty and interest.’
She swallowed tightly but avoided looking at Borel. ‘And this code, Inspector?’ she asked.
‘Louis, we’d best keep it to ourselves,’ admonished Kohler.
‘Yes, yes, Hermann. At least for now.’ St-Cyr found the kaleidoscope among the other things in his pockets, and taking it out, held it a moment.
Borel shoved his plate aside. He’d eaten little. ‘Permit me,’ he said, but it was the weaver who reached for it from across the table.
St-Cyr held on to it. They looked at each other and he felt the quivering in her fingers.
‘It was mine, Inspector. I gave it to Anne-Marie when we were at the convent school. I was young, I was so very upset – things had been terrible for me there and then, suddenly, the ill-feeling and the punishment ceased. I was allowed to weave what I wanted – what I saw so clearly with my artist’s inner eye. I studied with the best of the best. Oh I knew Anne-Marie must have spoken to her father. I knew he’d paved the way for me with a generous donation the Mother Superior could not have refused, but I hid all that even from myself. When one is young and hurting so much, the mind acts as a shield. This,’ she tugged at the kaleidoscope, ‘had been left to me by my Great Aunt Sally in whom, at the very tender age of six, I had confided everything. It was my most precious possession, Inspector, but I gave it not as some sort of reward for helping me from the hell of that place, but out of love for her. Anne-Marie was my hero – not heroine, please. I’ve always admired her strengths and tried to overlook her weaknesses. She was my Joan of Arc.’
The colour of her eyes was exquisite; the hair, lustrous, black and thick, whereas Madame Buemondi’s eyes had been greeny-brown, her hair a faded ash blonde.
‘Carlo Buemondi’s eyes, Hermann. What colour were they?’
‘Mud!’ snorted Kohler richly.
‘Brown, Inspector. Dark brown,’ said the weaver harshly. ‘He’s of Italian stock, or had you forgotten?’
‘But from the south of Italy?’ asked St-Cyr, flustering her.
‘No. No, from the north. From Torino. At least, that’s what he always boasted.’
St-Cyr released the kaleidoscope. ‘Please,’ he said, indicating the lamp Borel had lighted.
Hesitating, for she was uncertain of what he’d gain by watching her, the weaver held the toy up to her left eye and trained it on the light. Turning … turning always as the patterns were formed and thrown outwards or fell in on themselves.
‘Your right eye, mademoiselle? You do not use it?’
Ah damn, he had remembered Chamonix. ‘I should,’ she said. ‘It’s my weak one and the ophthalmologists always insisted I use it whenever possible. But one gets lazy, isn’t that so? The instinct is to use the stronger eye.’
Hermann’s look said, Louis, what the hell are you up to? ‘It’s nothing, my old one,’ cautioned the Surete. ‘Merely patient observation. The twins each have a lazy eye, and so does Mademoiselle Darnot.’
‘This one,’ she said. ‘The right one, Inspector.’
Kohler took in the look she gave, noting with an inward sigh that pride had got the better of her. ‘You kept a diary, mademoiselle,’ he said.
‘My d …? Yes, why yes, I did once.’ Ah no.
‘Where is it, please?’
He knew. ‘Gone. Someone … someone took it from my house. Look, it had been forgotten. I hadn’t opened it in years, but then …’
‘Then Jean-Paul Delphane came into your life and you noticed that it was missing.’
Oh God damn him. ‘Yes.’
Flustered, Ludo Borel excused himself. Viviane Darnot went with him to the door, then stepped quickly out into the night.
‘Hermann, we must go easy, eh? The eggs, they are threatening to break but the time for making the omelette is not yet at hand. Breathe in the smell of these hills. Listen to their silence and remember always the bits of Roman glass and other things Mademoiselle Josette-Louise wishes to take back to Paris with her.’
‘Who was the father, Louis?’
The Frog searched for crumbs among the snail shells. ‘Jean-Paul Delphane, my old one. Chamonix. I have always wondered how it was that he knew the villa so well and at which clinic he could find Viviane Darnot.’
‘Were they in it together – the killing of the financier?’
‘Let us hope not, because if they were, then we are up against formidable enemies.’
‘No matter how much of a Fascist and to the Far Right, or of the Action Francaise, Louis, Delphane must have been helping the Resistance. The Abwehr became suspicious, so he went over to the Gestapo and is now trying desperately to cover his tracks by using us.’
‘And anyone else, Hermann. Most particularly Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi and his daughter.’
‘Not daughters?’ breathed Kohler.
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah! it’s in the lap of the hills that our answers lie, but first, the Villa of the Golden Oracle and the School of Fine Arts. Angelique Girard must answer a few simple questions, Hermann, and so must Carlo Buemondi.’
‘Then the boy Bebert Peretti, eh? And the Abbe Roussel.’
‘The abbe?’ asked St-Cyr, hoping that the Gestapo’s Bavarian detective had found the answer for himself and was learning a few things about the French.
‘The abbe, of course,’ said Kohler, unable to find the will to grin. ‘The parish records, Louis. Deaths and births, I think, and in that order.’
Hermann’s nose was still quite sore. St-Cyr thought of that night in Paris and of the dancer who had died for no other reason than that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He thought of the war and how easily loyalties could change, and vowed that no matter the circumstance or consequences, Delphane must pay for what he’d done.
‘That kid in Cannes, Louis. The one that died in the cellars of the Hotel Montfleury.’
A nod would suffice, grim though it was.
‘Suzanne Rogette, Louis. Age seventeen.’
8
Dawn came, and there was little comfort in it. St-Cyr made his way up to the hearse, only to find a coffin had been loaded during the night. Immediately images were etched in grey upon the celluloid: Fratani and others in the village graveyard, digging up a corpse and transferring its remains to the coffin; the abbe begging God’s forgiveness and praying for salvation; then the carrying of the new coffin down to the hearse beneath a winter’s moon.
‘We heard no sound?’ he managed. How could they do this to them?
Mouse-eyed with guilt and clutching a black beret that had seen better days, Dedou Fratani was apologetic. ‘The cottage,’ he muttered, giving the shrug of a simple man, ‘it is shielded from up here even though the cold of night makes such sounds hug the ground and pass like vapour from the feet. I must move some things, Inspector.’ He gritted his teeth in deference and ducked his head towards the hearse.