‘Is that wise?’ asked the Surete. ‘The Gestapo, monsieur. They will be watching for just such a thing.’
‘Wise or not, it must be done.’
‘What is it this time?’
‘Three freshly killed goats, honey, olives, the oil, sausage, soap, dried apricots, warm sweaters and wool. The plants also for the mademoiselle to dye the wool.’
None of it was essential, none of it worth risking all their lives. Besides, Fratani was admitting it to a cop. Ah merde! ‘She can take the plants and the wool with her when we’re finished. For now you go nowhere, monsieur.’
‘But … but …’
‘No buts. As garde champetre, I charge you with the duty of watching over those two women. Use the village telegraph – ah! don’t deny it exists. My partner and I know these villages well enough. Use it so as to move them both to safety at a moment’s notice. The Gestapo Munk may come and if not him, the one from Bayonne.’
‘Then will you drive the hearse to the garage that is on the rue Georges Clemenceau just before it passes over the railway tracks?’
In le Souquet, the old part of Cannes, another hilltop warren. Merde, why must he persist if not to hide that very thing they wished to hide more than anything else?’ If we do so, Monsieur Fratani, and the Gestapo Munk discovers us aiding your butter and eggs venture, my partner and I are finished.’ St-Cyr tossed the hand of the impatient and stamped a decisive foot. ‘Don’t persist. Don’t be an idiot!’
‘No casket, no deliveries … yet if they should find me out, Inspector, it might satisfy the Gestapo Munk and me, I would be the sacrifice, isn’t that so? The one who has saved the village.’
‘With your name cast in bronze near the gates, eh? Who can guess which way the vulture will turn. Don’t tempt it with your carrion.’
‘Then you must talk to the Abbe Roussel. That one will swear to look after those two until I return.’
‘And if you don’t?’ snapped the Surete.
‘Then you yourselves must take care of them, Inspector. Please, it is necessary. Clients gained are clients lost if deliveries are not made, especially as it is so near to Christmas and the things, they have already been paid for.’
‘And pilots who are dead; men who must escape, eh? Answer me, monsieur. Be truthful.’
‘Monsieur, I know nothing of such things, nor does anyone else in the village. The Germans, they look where there is no need. They think what they should not think and the one from Bayonne, he urges them on, but why this should be, we do not know.’
They’d get nothing out of the villagers. The people would be as silent as their hills and the ruins of their citadel.
Hermann came out to them, checking his pistol and banging the clip home with the heel of a hand. ‘Merde, Louis! Here I thought this place would be warm and fertile. Lush under the palms. Women bathing in the buff with dates and figs to pluck!’
Vapour steamed from his urine as he unleashed a flood. He shook himself, said, ‘Be thankful we’re not on the Russian Front, eh? It’d be ice before it hit the ground and this,’ he shook it a last time, ‘would break off and shatter. That a coffin?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Open it.’
Ah no! ‘Open it?’ swallowed Fratani. ‘But there is no need, monsieur.’
‘Gott im Himmel, imbecile! When a Gestapo gives an order, you obey! Use a can-opener if you have to, but do it!’
He was in rare form, having slept on the floor without even the aid of a blanket.
Fratani threw a desperate look towards the village. Alone on the heights, the Abbe Roussel, his black cassock pilloried against the snow, stood watching them.
The hearse-driver crossed himself and tried to find a way out of things. It took too long for him to undo the screws, and when he had them in hand, he had to ask for help. ‘We must draw it out a little, messieurs. Please be careful. It … it is heavy and nothing must be disturbed.’
Viviane Darnot and Josette-Louise stood a little downhill of them. The girl clutched the weaver’s cloak about herself.
Two women, a mother and her daughter, said St-Cyr to himself, but where, please, mesdemoiselles, is the other sister? In the mountains as we’ve been told, or in the casket?
Hermann grunted as he and Fratani went to work. The Abbe was striding rapidly downhill. The boy Bebert Peretti and his grandmother had come out of the mas.
The skeleton still had scraps of desiccated flesh clinging to it and bits of badly stained clothing.
‘A child, Louis. Male or female. Probably about ten or twelve years of age. She’s been in the ground several years. Maybe ten at least.’
‘Let us take it out. Let us see what is below it.’
‘Messieurs, please. The false bottom has been glued in place. If we break it open, another will have to be made. You can see for yourselves at the garage that I have only been telling you the truth.’
‘And to which cemetery are the remains to be consigned? Come, come, monsieur. An answer is demanded.’
Fratani blinked to clear his eyes. ‘The one that is beside and behind Mademoiselle Viviane’s house.’
‘Louis …?’
‘It’s all right, Hermann. Unless I am mistaken, the kaleidoscope has just taken another turning.’
Both of the women had gone back to the cottage.
Beyond the Villa of the Golden Oracle, the hills above Le Cannet climbed into open pine woods now dusted and caked with snow. St-Cyr breathed in deeply. He wished he could walk beneath those boughs and feel that childhood sense of wonder such a forest brings to all who harbour innocence. He longed to be free of crime, to banish the sordid and the tragedy from his life; to blot them from memory. He wanted to put his feet up, to get to know Gabrielle and her son, to enjoy Christmas and the New Year as they ought to be.
But there was no time. God mocked his little detective; the Nazis watched, and somewhere in that villa or in its grounds lay answers they had to have, answers that others would wish to keep from them. Ah yes, unfortunately.
Angelique Girard, Carlo Buemondi and Jean-Paul Delphane. The letters DMXTG, what did they really signify? A code, as they’d thought, or something quite different?
Two flat tyres en route to Cannes had caused unpleasant delays. The first had been a simple puncture, that of a nail a kilometre from the village and not where it should be – who had carpenter’s nails to spare these days? The second had been a slow leak that had suddenly chosen to burst and rip at a boulder they’d bounced over. The repairing of the first had taken an hour; the second had been impossible until Hermann, with Bavarian stubbornness, had braided roadside straw into ropes and they’d stuffed the tyre with these and managed to limp into the city.
He’d left Hermann to watch over the opening of the casket at the garage. One could not be in two places at the same time no matter the need or desire.
And now? he asked. Has it all been to separate us again so that Hermann cannot watch my back nor I his?
Uneasy at the thought, he began to climb alongside the eastern wall, ducking under branches when necessary. There were no footprints in the snow. It was as pure as if only just fallen. The land fell away behind him and towards a neighbouring estate, perhaps some 800 metres to the east, among cypresses, olive trees, oaks and sycamores of its own. But to the north, there were the woods and soon the smell of pines. He took a moment to touch a pine-cone and brought a branch to his nose.
Then he went into the woods anyway, and when he found the tracks, followed them down to the small, rough-hewn door that was in the centre of the north wall. She’d either not had a bicycle, or had chosen to carry it.