‘You’re not alone,’ he said. ‘Believe me, we will find out who did this and then we’ll bring them to justice even if one is not a drooler but a member of the Luftwaffe’s Press Service, another not a drooler either but a reporter on Paris-Soir, and the third a woman and owner of a certain shop or even the daughter of a well-known banker or that one’s wife!’
Right in the small of her back, shading gave the pressure point of her assailant’s knee as the cord had been savagely twisted.
Needing the lantern now, he had to take it with him. As he stood over her with it, he saw her chained to the attic ceiling of that room overlooking the balcony round the garden of the Palais Royal, asked, ‘Did they put a blue light on the floor, Joanne, and let it shine up over your blindfolded eyes?’
Did Andre-Philippe de Brisson see you like that? Did he put his hands on you and is this not the final link to the robbery?
Kohler hesitated. At dusk, the three-room cottage of stone and timber looked quaint and peaceful amid the snow and open woodland at a bend in the Seine. No smoke issued from its chimney and this worried him but what else was there about the place?
A rowboat had been drawn up and overturned on the simple dock of weathered poles and planks. Reeds, now brown and old, rose thickly through the shore ice. There was no loosestrife to bugger everything up and choke off the food supply the waterfowl needed. ‘Cleaned out,’ he breathed. ‘A hunter?’ he asked of the son, of Gaetan Verges. There was something about the place that gave him the shivers.
Tepees of dead branches had been gathered by wagon and left to await use years ago-how many years? he asked, recalling the lane between the sycamores and the final approach to the main house.
There was a good stack of cut firewood-oak and beech- under a shed with a plank roof, but the wood looked untouched for at least a couple of years. A man’s bicycle, gently rusting, was leaning against the wall nearest the front door. Heavy timbers framed the doorway and extended out so as to form a covered entrance. Two wrought-iron squirrels shared an iron walnut above a mud-caked bootscraper next to a sisal mat. The mud was not quite dry-hell, nothing really dried out in this climate so close to the river, unless indoors by the fire.
Easing the door latch down and finding it unlocked, he let the door swing slowly open. The place was all but dark, the smell … ah Gott im Himmel!
Again there were beamed, low ceilings. A massive stone hearth, directly opposite the door, held charred logs and a good bed of ashes. There was an iron pot on an arm that could be swung in over the fire, a spit that, when its rope was unwound by the counterweight, rotated.
There were chairs, tables, a roll-top Napoleonic desk, brass candlesticks, fishing rods, an old shotgun that should have been turned in to the authorities. Smooth bore, both barrels, and unloaded.
Carefully he put it back. In contrast to the main house, the cottage was immaculate but whereas the former had been lived in continuously, this had been left until …
A shoe, a sock-the turn-up of a trouser leg-caught the last of the light. Nervously Kohler drew the Walther P38, then realized how stupid the gesture was and slid it back into its shoulder holster.
The man was lying face down on the carpet behind the table that separated the fireside from the rest of the room. A service revolver, one of the old Lebel Model 1873s, was clutched in the right hand.
Grey and splattered across the carpet, greasy and frozen-streaked with congealed blood-his brains had been blown out, the bullet having not only entered the right temple but having been cut before firing with the Cross of Hope for divine forgiveness.
A pocket-knife, lying on the carpet nearby, showed shavings of lead and it was as he looked at these, that the light finally slipped away without his realizing it.
‘Verdammt!’ Fumbling with his pocket matches, Kohler lit first one and then another and another of the candles.
Still shaking, he lit a cigarette and for a time stood there trying to get a grip on himself. ‘It’s finally got to me,’ he breathed and was glad Louis wasn’t with him. ‘I’ve had it. Death, death, death! That’s all I ever seem to get!’
A fleeting memory of his sons came to him. A wagon, a trip into Wasserburg to market, one of those rare times when papa, who made the money that had kept the farm alive, had come home from Munich. Papa on a visit. The big detective. ‘Shit!’
There was a photograph among several others on the desk. Kohler picked it up and turned it over to read the inscription. Luc and I at the Ecole Militaire, 10 March 1914. The saps. They should have gone AWOL and beat it to Algeria and the desert or headed south to the Congo.
Another photo showed Angelique Desthieux and Gaetan Verges, the happy couple. It was signed From Luc who relinquishes all claim with regrets and kind regards, Paris 3 July 1916, Jardin du Palais Royal.
There was little left to resemble the once handsome young man in that photograph. The face which remained was without the lower jaw, most of the upper jaw was horribly twisted to the left and up, the skin flayed by a mass of deep scars among which grew small forests of bristles. One eye was completely gone and most of the nose.
The plastic surgeons had done their best-a new science then and finding its way with lots of fodder for experiment. Plates of silver and those of nickel had been fixed under the skin to give some semblance of form to shattered cheekbones and a forehead that still didn’t look right even with a toupee above.
There were no muscles in what must pass for lips-nothing but a slack hole for the spoon or rubber tube that would feed him and slake his thirst for the rest of his life. Constant drooling and no voice. A slate board and chalk or bit of paper and pencil for ‘talking’.
‘The poor bastard,’ breathed Kohler. ‘By rights he should have died on the battlefield.’
But had he messed with that girl, with Joanne Labelle? Had he put his hands on her and tried to kiss her? Had he …
Trembling at the thought, he lit another cigarette and then a lantern, which he placed near an unshuttered window should Louis come looking for him. He knew they had the night and morning to spend in this godforsaken place-that’s all there was to it. Too many things to look for and carefully-yes, God damn it, yes, most carefully.
The coroner would have to be called in, the local flics and a photographer. It was all a routine he had come to detest, only now he really knew it and felt it. ‘It’s finished for me,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can take any more.’
Boemelburg would simply stare at him and snort or say, Welcome to the Russian Front, Kohler. What was your former rank?
There were dozens of glass containers in a small storeroom that must once have served as a wine cellar and root-store. But all the bottles were empty and covered with a film of dust, though all bore the label of ether.
Clearly Gaetan Verges had been an ether-drinker but his supply had been carefully budgeted by the father in the main house and doled out only a little at a time. The son had lived here, had fished, shot ducks, gathered firewood, read, written his journals, worked in the family potager probably, and each evening had had his cubic centimetres of ether. Maybe twenty or thirty, maybe forty or fifty-just enough to make him feel good for a little while and then to get him to sleep. One hundred, two hundred … would it have taken half a bottle or the whole damned thing?
But all that had ceased with the death of the father and the Defeat of France. The source must have dried up, though when the father had passed away, they still didn’t know.
Up in the loft, there was a small bedroom-it was all so tidy. There was a portrait photograph of Angelique Desthieux-she had been a real beauty, a fine-looking young woman. Decent, calm, gentle, not arrogant … Eminently lovable and adored. Worshipped.