DMXTG, Hermann. The numbers: 4, 13, 24, 20, and back around again to the 7. The kaleidoscope, Hermann. The kaleidoscope and Chamonix.
Lights were brought; voices were hushed. Soon only the quiet gurgle of sulphurous mud could be heard.
In pool after pool beneath the fake temple roof, muddy ogres stood amid the rising steam and gawked like dumb-founded savages in some ancient and primitive grotto.
Angelique Girard floated face down in the mud. Her arms were stretched out to the sides, the legs slightly parted – oh, she’d have struggled valiantly. She’d have thrashed about and gasped for air. But the killer’s hands had been too strong. No doubt he’d straddled her hips and ridden her hard as he’d held her under.
Buemondi could not keep his eyes off the girl’s mud-slicked backside; the weaver was going to be sick. The kid had evacuated her bowels.
Kohler knelt at the edge of the pool. He reached out. He wished that Louis was here. Louis was so much better at this sort of thing. The Frog could detach himself yet crawl right into the victim’s skin.
He strained to grasp a foot, an ankle. Elusively she drifted away. Now Buemondi saw how tangled that frizzed-out mass of amber hair had become. He saw how the killer must have seized her by the hair as well as the neck. ‘Shove her my way,’ said Kohler, and when the professor panicked at the thought, added a firm, ‘Do it, my fine. You drowned her in this. Me, I’m going to make you pump her out.’
‘Monsieur … Monsieur, I did not do it. Her neck, monsieur. The marks of his fingers, the bruises … they will still be there.’
‘Yours,’ said Kohler grimly. ‘You try to leave and I’ll kill you.’
Buemondi grunted as he got down on his hands and knees. He leaned well out …‘Ah! She does not want to come my way, Inspector.’ Mud clung to the hand that had dipped as he’d momentarily lost balance.
He straightened up. He reached out again. ‘Angelique, ma petite…’ he said. ‘Please don’t be so difficult.’
Using her right boot, the weaver savagely shoved him in. He gave a startled cry only to have it abruptly cut off by a mouthful of mud. Gagging, choking and wallowing about, he stood up and tried to clear his eyes. Bellowed, ‘No! No! It was not me!’
The body floated near. Frantically he pushed it away and waded back towards shore, only to find Viviane Darnot all too ready to kick him in the face.
‘You killed her, Carlo!’ she shrilled. ‘You bastard! How could you do such a thing?’
‘Viviane. Viviane! I did no such thing! I left her here when the call came for me to return to the studio. We were going to have dinner. She was going to stay the night with me.’
‘Then fish her out! I dare you to touch her now.’
Kohler left him to it. Reluctantly Buemondi waded back to the corpse. He hesitated. He sought out the two of them, pleading with red-rimmed eyes that were smarting.
When he tried to take hold of the corpse, his hands slipped several times. ‘She is like a fish in oil,’ he gagged, not realizing what he’d said. He vomited, gripped his gut and threw up again – coughed and snorted in a little mud. Wiped his nose. ‘Monsieur,’ he gasped. ‘Is not the hell of this enough to convince you I did not do it?’
‘Strip off. Go on, do it!’ shouted Kohler. ‘Toss your car keys and wallet over here.’
‘Monsieur … Monsieur …’
Fumbling with the buttons of his overcoat, Buemondi finally got it off and left it to lie on the surface of the mud.
His wallet and then the keys to his beautiful Lagonda were placed on the walkway. ‘Naked,’ said Kohler. ‘I want you just like her.’
Wallowing, the professor dragged off his things and when he was done, he looked up at the two of them again. Viviane wanted him to drown; the detective was trying to stop himself from shooting him.
So be it then. He waded back to the corpse to take her in his arms, said, ‘My little one, my little one, this should never have happened to you and that bitch, she knows it only too well.’
Mud clogged the girl’s nose and gaping mouth whose lips were curled tightly back. It slid from the thin shoulders and slim hips with their sharp, prominent bones, coursing slowly from the slack mounds of tiny breasts.
Buemondi began to wipe the mud from her. Weeping, muttering endearments, he brushed a hand tenderly over her brow and tried to close the eyes that had once been so lovely. Cupping a hand, he ploughed the mud off her chest and stomach and forced himself to close her mouth. ‘Monsieur the Detective, I did not do this. My wife and I often shared lovers. It was a game of viciousness between us. Me to see if I could take from her; she to do the same to me. It pleased her to mock my manliness. That one there can tell you much. Make her join me in the mud and let me put my hands on her.’
The weaver turned swiftly away and buried her face. Her shoulders shook.
‘It was Delphane, wasn’t it?’ asked Kohler gently.
He saw her nod and heard her say, ‘It must have been. Oh God, God, what am I going to do now? Josette … Inspector, please! We must find her before it’s too late.’
‘And Josianne-Michele?’ he asked, hating himself for pushing her but he had to.
‘Josianne is in the mountains. She and her sister agreed on this.’
Kohler yanked the woman round to face him.
‘They were both at the cottage,’ she shrilled in tears. ‘Waiting to see Anne-Marie. That’s why she went there on her birthday. ‘That’s why …’ She gripped the back of her neck and began to massage it firmly, could not seem to stop herself.
‘Ludo took Josianne-Michele into the mountains, Inspector. Ludo has always been so good about things. I …’ She dropped the hand. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without him. Josianne and his son are very much in love.’
‘And in the maquis?’
They would smash her face and break her hands. She would never weave again. They would erase the village …‘That I cannot answer, monsieur.’
Kohler shook her hard. He slammed her up against the wall and all but hit her, only stopping himself at the last moment. ‘Louis,’ he shrieked. ‘My partner, mademoiselle. I have to have the truth!’
‘Then, yes.’
She shut her eyes and waited for him to hit her but he did not do so. Instead, he caught a breath and said, ‘You’re lying but I forgive you. That girl doesn’t even exist. She’s been dead for years and you know it.’
‘Then wait and see what happens. Stay here but let me go to her.’
9
When the sickle of a rising moon came from behind drifting cloud, St-Cyr stood still, with his back to the wall. Moonlight made pale the ghostlike outlines of hemp-woven armchairs and an ornate iron day-bed whose strongly shadowed harps and swirls and vividly patterned cushions made it appear as if from a Celtic burial mound or passage grave.
For some time now there’d been no sound in the house, and he had to wonder if they’d both left it. Merde! What was he to do? Speak out? Challenge Jean-Paul? Appeal to the girl – cry out, Josianne-Michele, your only hope is to come to me.
But was it?
The moon began to vanish with agonizing slowness, and as its light crept across the carpet, he held his breath. Unbidden, the pungent smell of walnut husks soaking in a tin pail came to him, then the image of the weaver. The woman was adding handfuls of sumac leaves to another batch of dye on the stove, and he knew that the leaves were full of tannic acid and that this would make the colour fast. More yarn was soaking in solutions of sheep dung, ox blood – the weaver was not afraid to plunge her hands into her own urine, but used a paddle for the alum and potash.
The room with the dye materials had had a sense of alchemy about it. Drying herbs, leaves, flowers, bunches of twigs and roots all in the dark, mortars and pestles. Tansy, camomile, marigold and zinnia; madder and indigo with tin or chrome to produce vibrant shades of gold, red and blue, or iron or copper to darken and enrich them.