‘I got here very early this morning. Me, I passed right by the cottage and saw you all asleep, my sister and Viviane on the bed together. I went first to Viviane’s house to borrow a bicycle, then came here to find Angelique still asleep. I thought I’d see what she’d do, because by then I knew she had been into mother’s jewel case, though she had not taken anything. Perhaps she was still struggling with her conscience. This I do not know, only that mother must have shown the things to her lots of times.’
St-Cyr signalled to her to keep talking. Cautiously he approached the closer of the two armoires, tall, beautifully carved pieces … Chamonix? he asked. Is it to be just like Chamonix, Jean-Paul? Just like that dressing-room at Les Naturistes, eh?
‘My father came to the house at around eleven this morning and they … they made love. She was so eager for him, monsieur. It … it is hard for me to have to say it, especially as she was also my mother’s latest lover.’
‘And the Inspector Delphane?’ he asked.
She swallowed. ‘After my father had given Angelique her archery lesson, I found the bow in the grand salon and realized that someone else had come into the house but had not let them know of his presence. The crossbow was not exactly where my father would have left it, Inspector, so I knew that someone must have moved it.’
There was no one in the armoire. Just dresses and more of them. He nodded for the girl to continue. ‘They had a little something to eat, Inspector, then Angelique went upstairs and my father, he has followed her into this room. Together they went through mother’s jewel case. Angelique wanted the diamonds; my father chided her and said she would have to wait, that soon she could have whatever she wanted.’
The second armoire also held no one. St-Cyr gave an exasperated sigh. Beneath a richly gilded mirror there was an escritoire whose hinged lid was open, revealing the many compartments. Had either of those two, or both of them, gone through the woman’s desk? Had they been searching for something, only to have their search interrupted by some sound?
‘There is a wall safe, Inspector, behind that painting of the pomegranates by Courbet.’
Apples and Anjou pears as well as opened and uncut pomegranates and raspberry leaves. The painting was magnificent, the depth of colours so real he wished for time to examine it, but knew there was none.
‘Its frame was tilted to one side, Inspector. I straightened it.’
‘Does your father know the combination?’ he asked desperately. Delphane was still somewhere very close. He felt it, was terrified of it and yet … yet could find no other place for that one to hide.
‘Only mother knew the combination, Inspector. Not Viviane or Josette-Louise or myself, not my father either. She kept all such things to herself and carefully hidden.’
‘Then the Germans will have to blow it,’ he said more loudly than necessary. ‘We will leave while it is still light, mademoiselle. Perhaps it would be best for you to close up your mother’s jewel case and hide it under the bed.’
That didn’t work either. There was no one else in the room yet he swore there must be. It was uncanny this feeling. It was more than a sixth sense. It was an uncomfortable realization of one’s vulnerability and a bond that went right back to Chamonix, yes, but had recently been present in that dressing-room at Les Naturistes. A knowing that his presence was very near.
Then suddenly the feeling was gone and he knew Jean-Paul had left the house.
Josianne-Michele sat on the edge of her mother’s bed, silently watching as he examined the wall safe. He would turn the dial to the right, listening for the tumblers to fall into place; then, exasperated by his inability to hear them, he would turn the dial to the left and back again.
‘Mother kept something in the safe for Viviane,’ she said, letting him catch the note of sadness in her voice. ‘Viv wanted the combination desperately, Inspector. She was frantic for it and begged mother several times, all to no avail.’
‘Then Madame Buemondi came out to see you on her birthday?’ he asked.
‘Yes, only … only someone killed her.’
He found the girl unable to take her eyes from the crossbow. He saw her reach out to it in uncertainty only to withdraw her hand at the last moment. ‘How many spare bolts are there?’ he asked.
‘Six,’ she said, not looking across the room at him. ‘Six and the one that is in the attic door.’
He went back to the safe. Now he worked in earnest and she could not understand what she’d said to make him do so. But then he gave a sigh of triumph. ‘Voila,’ he said. ‘There, it’s open.’
Pleased with himself, St-Cyr turned towards her only to find the girl and the crossbow had vanished. ‘Hermann,’ he gasped anxiously. ‘Hermann, what have I done?’
Carlo Buemondi’s studio made one feel uncomfortable. Body casts and masks in plaster and papier-mache crowded the walls, were piled into the corners or hung suspended by wires from the ceiling. Stark-white, bone-white, often chillingly coloured and patterned in the face, they stared at one or slowly turned as stray draughts caressed them. And everywhere there were his lithographs in orange, in black or brown or red and yellow and green – penises, full erections, hairy lips that were parted, knees up or down; eyes that darted, tongues that licked, teeth, ears, breasts of all sizes and shapes, buttocks and anuses too. All in pieces, all broken as if by a demented child, then often broken again. The drawings first – merde! had he drawn them that way? – and then, when overprinted, the casts themselves.
One recent creation without a head lay smashed to smithereens on a bed of loose sand among cluttered work tables and the tubs of water, bags of plaster and piles of handmade paper. It was obvious Buemondi would pause from time to time, puffing on a cigarette or wiping plaster from himself, to rearrange the pieces. Art evolved that way. Every day the arrangement would cast some new light that could only be satisfied if a piece or two were moved.
No lover of the avant-garde, Kohler grumbled, ‘He’s sick. What’s he do? Get his students to throb their erections while he tries to draw them or lathers some sweet young thing with goo?’
He picked up an open jar of petroleum jelly and wondered how Buemondi had come by the stuff in such hard times. No one could possibly want to buy any of his creations, could they?
The weaver summed things up. ‘Carlo thinks he’s clever, Inspector, and he has the ego of a goat. There is this thing about his “work”. Thinking it controversial, he tries to draw out the snail of suppressed sexuality and nail the flesh of it up for all of us to see, but the man’s a charlatan. Neither master of drawing in a medium where skill is demanded, nor anywhere near one of sculpting – how could he be? He hasn’t a ghost of an idea of what art is all about. He’s simply a phony.’
On another bed of sand two female casts lay smashed to pieces, and Kohler thought he knew whence some of the weaver’s feelings came.
‘Has he always rebelled at the thought of his wife having female lovers?’ he asked.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she demanded hotly.
She had a point but didn’t stop there. Soon she was rooting through things in a far corner, raising clouds of dust into the greying light.
‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Look at this one.’
It was the shell of a girl of ten or twelve. Completely blank. Just bone-white and with no head. ‘Now that one,’ she said. ‘No, no, Inspector, the one that’s hanging upside-down from that wire.’
Ah Jesus, Jesus. Kohler wet his throat. Overprinted on the plaster shell were the masks of so many faces. Some leered, others lusted; some grinned or simply stared blankly from among the full and half-erections or patches of flaccid limpness.
‘That … that is Josianne-Michele,’ she said, turning suddenly away. ‘When she was at the age of twelve, he raped her here in this … this barn he calls a “studio”. But children do not tell us of such things, Inspector. Besides, she was his favourite and she did not want to bring trouble to him, poor thing. My poor Josianne. Ah God, God forgive me for not seeing it soon enough.’