A tapestry of truths, half-truths and lies. A fantasy, a nightmare. A kaleidoscope.
He made no sound as he left the room and went along the hall and up the stairs to her studio. Stood drawing in that dusty smell of frayed wool every loom gives off.
The moon came out but there was no sign of anyone. Ah Nom de Dieu, where were they? Had Jean-Paul killed the girl? Had he silenced her for ever?
The weaver’s upright loom let moonlight through the vertical strings of its warp and he saw at once the half-completed piece, but saw it in all but total darkness.
Someone was sitting on the weaver’s bench behind the loom. Yes, yes … He raised the revolver.
But then the moon went in and the room returned to darkness, and when he was on his hands and knees and moving to one side, he felt a ball of wool roll across his fingers.
He stopped to pick it up – crushed it in a fist and questioningly brought it to his lips, felt the fine, fine hairs of doubt, the softness of it. Remembered Chamonix, a red so red it lived.
Winding the strand around a finger, he drew it taut and tugged gently on it.
In answer, the girl gave three quick tugs and he knew then that she was in the room, but where?
Knew it could just as easily be Jean-Paul. That same intensely uneasy feeling was with him as at Chamonix. An understanding, a knowing there was not just another person near but Jean-Paul Delphane.
He felt a pistol being pressed against his temple.
‘Louis, put the gun down on the floor.’ Ah no! He felt a terrible blow to the back of his head, the left side, always the left – glimpsed the weaver’s eyes in the mirror; saw her lips part in shock as she caught a breath and ducked away behind a cloak, a cape, a wall-hanging; things hung on hangers beneath a set of stairs … stairs … Yes, yes, she’d seen Jean-Paul hit him and had been afraid.
The thread went slack, the crossbow fired. The bolt crashed into the wall behind them! Delphane fired twice, shattering things, shattering all sense of being. The girl shrieked and ran. He tried to stop her but she ducked away and made for the stairs.
The house fell to silence and after a while, the moon came out again.
‘You did not kill me,’ said St-Cyr to that empty room. ‘Just as before, you still need me now to prove your innocence.’ He heard a revolver shot – loud, so loud, a crash! – and began to run not up the stairs as in that villa near Chamonix, but down them … down them shouting inwardly, Your revolver, idiot! Jean-Paul, he has taken your revolver and used it to kill the financier!
Stavisky … a body twitching on a floor within a room that had been locked. Locked! A pool of blood, grey brains spreading slowly. A revolver lying nearby.
My revolver, he said, suddenly exhausted by the experience. One Lebel Model 1873 looks exactly like another.
It was only when he reached the kitchen that he heard Josianne-Michele frantically trying to wiggle the bolt free of the wall upstairs.
Jean-Paul had gone outside. To not have a gun at such a time! Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ! What was he going to do?
Hermann … Hermann, where the hell are you when needed most?
Snow filtered softly through the floodlights that shone on the entrance to the mud baths. Viviane Darnot saw it against the darkness and the solid ring of grim-faced men that faced them. Their uniforms were grey-green or black or blue, and among them, the black leather trench coats glistened; their guns were everywhere incised on memory’s haunting screen.
They would throw her into the street. They would beat her nearly senseless and break her hands. Then they would rape her and she would scream.
‘Don’t!’ hissed Kohler. ‘Panic is what they want.’
He gripped her firmly by the elbow and she had to let him do that to her, said silently, Mother of God, please help me. I’m going to die.
They had sealed off the rue Buttura with army lorries that had disgorged their rush of soldiers with submachine-guns and rifles.
There were the French police and the German police from various organizations.
There were the Gestapo.
‘Inspector, put the pistol down and let me go to them.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Please! Maybe if I tell them how it was, they will believe me.’
‘Don’t be silly. What they want to hear is that you and that ex-lover of yours were helping the Resistance. For some reason, the Gestapo Munk is now convinced there are maquis in the hills and mountains.’
‘Then Jean-Paul has told him of the wall safe.’
Kohler caught the sadness and defeat in her voice. ‘What safe?’ he hissed. ‘Gott im Himmel, answer me before it’s too late for both of us.’
She would continue to face the lights. She would not tell him where it was and he would see the tears as they began to trickle down her cheeks. ‘Josette,’ she said. ‘Darling, please forgive me.’
Kohler was frantic. ‘Listen, by not telling me, we give that one what he wants. He’ll get it in the end. His kind invariably do.’
‘I know nothing.’
He snorted harshly. ‘You idiots! Madame Buemondi was the banker; your account in Britain, the wellspring of hope. What’d Delphane do, mademoiselle? Get you to find him the cash he needed to get those poor bugger-damned airmen of his out of France?’
Dear Jesus help her. ‘I cannot say. I must not answer.’
Stubborn to the last, she faced the lights and would not look at him. ‘Then let them tear it out of you!’ he shouted, releasing her arm and pushing her down the steps. ‘Go. Go, you slut, and remember the blood of my partner is on your hands!’
She stumbled and cried out to him, and at last she faced him and Kohler let her have it. ‘God damn you, mademoiselle. Delphane will have killed that daughter of yours just as he murdered that one in the mud!’
‘My daughter …?’
‘You know it’s true and you know there’s only one of them.’
‘But … but that is not true, monsieur. Me, I have no daughters. I never married. Anne-Marie did.’
‘Then why did you agree to use your bank account in England?’
‘Because Anne-Marie wanted me to. Because she needed the cash.’
There was no sound. They awakened to the crowd which had not pressed closer but remained intent.
‘Jean-Paul,’ she gasped. ‘Jean-Paul …’
Delphane had joined Munk and now faced them both as judge and executioner.
They were in the graveyard, and though there was sufficient light beyond the dark shadows of the tombstones, the girl with the crossbow still had the advantage. But were there not two girls – both Josianne-Michele and her sister? Two female voices had called out to each other. ‘Josianne, he’s over here …’ ‘Josette, watch out behind you!’
Jean-Paul Delphane’s tall silhouette had been between the two voices but had vanished. A brief scuffle, a sharp cry and the sound of one of them dragging in a breath as she darted away had been followed by a hush into which the falling snow had finally made intrusion as its crystals had melted on the face.
‘Josianne …? Josianne, are you all right?’
‘Ssh! He’s still here.’
And then later, a sigh among limestone crosses and marble statues of the Virgin with hands clasped in prayer. ‘He’s gone now, Josianne. Now only the detective remains.’ Slight differences of inflection and tone set the voices apart. Josette’s was a little stronger, a little deeper; Josianne’s more excitable and more intense also.
‘Josette, I love you. For me it is such an immense relief to have you come home to see me. I’m so happy now.’
And from the sister, ‘Josianne, have you still got the crossbow and its quiver of arrows?’