Only at the last was that handsome frame uncluttered by clothes. In one shot, the naked savage held a handaxe and a flaming torch at the mouth of that cave. In another, disembowelled, a piglet lay ready for the spit. Blood covered the prehistorian’s hands and forearms. Blood was spattered on his chest and face, his thighs and groin.
The smashing of the roasted bones to free their marrow was recorded, the eating of it.
Wearing nothing but a skin pouch of stone tools, Fillioux gazed at her as she must have at him, their own Adam and Eve, but had he really loved her?
There were no photographs of the girl she had once been, none of the picnics beneath the chestnut tree or of the wine, the champagne. Perhaps he kept these photographs from her and took them away with him to the Marne, perhaps he didn’t bother recording her at all. But he had written letters to her and these she had used to establish her claim.
There was no sign of these letters or of the marriage certificate. Though he searched, St-Cyr could not find them but thought again that she would only have left such things in a very special place.
* * *
Alone, Kohler could hear the Baroness and the boy at the foot of the stairs. ‘Toto, darling, please go up to find out what is taking the detectives and everyone else so long. Ask Franz to come down and see me. Ask Professor Courtet or the woman’s daughter. Janine … or was it Juliette – yes, yes, that was it. Someone must know what is going on.’
‘Why must you always order me around?’ blurted Lemieux.
There was a pause. Perhaps she touched the boy’s cheek or traced a fingertip down the open neck of his shirt front, perhaps she gave him a whiff of that perfume the sous-prefet’s asthma had rebelled at.
‘Darling, you know I love to do it with you. Isn’t that enough? Here, then, take me by the hand. Together we will mount the stairs to discover the secrets of this little place.’
‘You know the Professor and then Herr Oelmann told us to stay with the trunk. You know the detectives will only start asking questions if they find us up there.’
‘But, darling, how can we possibly know anything?’
‘We were at the cave on that Thursday before the murder.’
‘But no one saw us. We were quite alone. You excelled yourself. You were very much the savage. It … it was really quite remarkable and exquisite, isn’t that so? Sex in the coolness of a primitive hole in the ground whose walls and roof hauntingly reflected the light from our candles and evoked the trampling herds of the past.’
‘Damn you, Marina, why must you do this to me?’
‘Because it pleases me.’
‘Courtet won’t like it if I leave his precious trunk outside.’
‘Then let the Professor come downstairs to protect it himself.’
The Professor, ah yes, thought Kohler. The French half of the scientific team that was to vet every little aspect of prehistory in the film. An intense, wiry little man, very academic, very serious and with gold-rimmed spectacles, a sharp nose, thin, angular face and lips that seldom smiled. The one who had come from Lascaux with the trunk, not letting it out of his sight for a moment until the temptation to be alone with Madame Jouvet had proved too much for him.
Grey-haired, immaculate in a dark suit, vest and tie, and in his mid-fifties, Courtet had known exactly which room the woman would be in. Perhaps he had read the father’s diary, the record of a first visit to a tiny auberge in an insignificant little riverside village. Perhaps he had simply guessed correctly, but Franz Oelmann had been right on his heels and the good professor should have known a hawk like Oelmann would hunt for every mouse.
Kohler let the couple pass by. He gave them time to find a room of their own, then stepped along the corridor silently to ease the door open a crack.
The voices were muffled if insistent but clearly the daughter was on the defensive. She stood with her back to a tall armoire and Kohler could just catch a glimpse of her in the mirror above the washstand.
Oelmann was standing nearest the bed, the Professor on the carpet in front of the woman.
‘Madame, I wrote to your mother requesting permission to use the story of your parents in the film. All I want is the return of my letters,’ said Courtet.
‘I don’t have your letters, monsieur. Maman must have destroyed them. She seldom kept such things.’
‘Letters of such importance?’ demanded the Professor, irritably tossing a hand. ‘Oh come now, madame, your mother was far too astute. She wrote back to state that the payment of 10,000 francs was more than adequate.’
‘10,000 francs, it is not so much.’
‘Letters?’ said Oelmann. ‘Surely you mean postcards?’
‘Postcards then,’ swore Courtet hotly. ‘Eight of them since only so many words are allowed each time. Letters still cannot be sent across the Demarcation Line even if they deal with something so crucial to science and the war effort.’
‘She has them,’ breathed Oelmann.
‘I don’t. Mother never told me of them. Never!’
‘Look, madame, I need the postcards only to justify the payment that was made.’
‘But, please, Monsieur le Professeur, how was the money sent when one cannot wire funds from the zone occupee or from here to there?’
‘I … I delivered it. I had to go over a few things with her – your father’s journals, the contents of the trunk, the cave.… She and I visited it last year in … in the late fall before … before the opening of the second chamber, before its discovery.’
‘And now you regret having to tell me of this visit, monsieur?’ she taunted angrily. ‘Why is it, please, that only now is anyone paying attention when, for all those years, maman could get no help?’
Courtet shrugged dismissively. ‘It was not up to me. Others made the decisions.’
‘Admit it, you all thought she was crazy. A postmistress from a little place like this? A woman who spoke of the Neanderthal and the Acheulian as though she not only knew them well, monsieur, but had lived their history. Can you fashion one simple stone tool, please?’
‘How dare you? I do not have to answer that.’
‘I dare because that is all I have and when I was a child, maman told me all about your hatred of my father, your constant jealousy and ridicule. He was an expert, damn you. An expert!’ She tossed her hands and head. ‘Ah! if you will allow me, I will gladly reveal to you the art of pressure flaking or the crafting of a Cro-Magnon spear point.’
Ah Gott im Himmel, thought Kohler, go carefully, madame.
It was Oelmann who said, ‘Your mother must have kept a few things. She would not have left you to find that little hiding-place all by yourself.’
Defiantly she stood her ground and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I know of no such place. We were too poor, monsieur, or is that simple fact not evident enough?’
‘Please,’ said Courtet, ‘the postcards. That is all I ask.’
He was not happy, this professor of prehistory. He did not like the inconvenience of her refusal or what she had said to him. ‘Is it that the postcards, they are incriminating, Professor?’ she asked.
His fists were doubled in anger but he did not even realize it, though Hen Oelmann did.
‘How is it, please, that you discovered the trunk?’ she demanded. ‘My father forbade his family to say anything of it.’
He shrugged. He silently cursed her probably, then snapped acidly, ‘Time passes, things change. The parents Fillioux are both in their final years, or did you not know this, eh, madame? Needs unimagined became paramount. The trunk was put up for sale in a shop I frequent. One day it was there – oh bien sur, I had heard whispers of your father’s preliminary investigation before his tragic death in the war – a great loss, madame. Please, I assure you. Who of us hadn’t heard of those whispers? But until that day last year in June, I and my colleagues had never seen the trunk let alone any of its contents.’