And now you hate me, she said to herself but asked, ‘What day, please?’
‘The 17th of June.’
Their anniversary.… ‘A shop where, please?’ she asked harshly.
Kohler noted how quickly moisture rushed into her eyes. Mollified, the Professor said, ‘The Marche aux Puces. The Biron stalls.’
Paris, Saint-Ouen and the flea markets.
‘Its contents are priceless, madame. Your mother was absolutely right.’
Was it an offer of conciliation? wondered Kohler.
‘All mother ever wanted was to place my father’s name amongst you and see that he received proper recognition. Why did she have to die?
‘Your mother’s efforts will not have been in vain, madame, I assure you. When the film is complete, it will carry her name and that of your father among its credits. The cave will bear a suitable bronze plaque. A tribute to her dedication and resolve, to the memory of your father also.’
Lips were pressed against Kohler’s left ear. Fingers tickled the short hairs. ‘How touching of him,’ breathed Marina von Strade. ‘Left alone with her, would our professor be so kind, or Herr Oelmann? Our Franz who is so watchful, Inspector, he sees so many things, doesn’t he, Toto darling, but says so little. That’s what makes him so very dangerous.’
Kohler nudged the door open but by then Louis was right behind him.
Juliette Jouvet withdrew into herself. They were all in the shop now and gathered about the trunk which the professor was opening. The one called St-Cyr stood next to the far end, while Herr Kohler stood back a little so as to watch the others and herself.
She had a good view from behind the actress and her lover. She had thought it the very best of positions, for it gave a chance to think and to try to calm herself though Herr Kohler could see her clearly enough. He knew she had been terrified up there in that room. He knew she was hiding something.
They had not forced her to reveal where her mother’s hiding-place was, not yet. For that Herr Oelmann would have to wait and so would the Professor but now each would compete with the other to get her alone and she did not know which to fear the most.
The Professor was pale from being indoors a lot. Indeed, now that she could examine him more clearly, she felt that the stories maman had told her as a child had been absolutely true. Like so many of his colleagues, Professor Courtet had always had others to do the work of excavating for him. The skin of his hands was smooth and soft-looking, the nails fastidiously trimmed. An expert, yes, of course, but one who preferred to keep his distance from the things he studied whereas her father, unlike most other prehistorians, had been just the opposite.
The last strap came undone, the lid was opened. Nearer to her, an arm swung down, a hand was pressed flat. The fabric of the Baroness’s zebra-striped dress rippled as it was smoothed.
At the opening of the trunk, Toto Lemieux had chosen to comfort the Baroness in the only way he knew. By fondling her seat while everyone else was distracted! Everyone but herself, the daughter, who had watched the two of them as they had kissed and played with each other under the waterfall and then had climbed naked to the cave, to enter it and each other.
Wrapped in a brown chamois and tied with stout white cord, the figurines lay in a bundle on the partitioned upper tray of the Abbe Brule’s trunk. His leather-bound journal was there beside that bundle, and next to these things were her father’s journals, all twelve of them. Five from that first season’s work, seven from the second, just as maman had said.
There were handaxes and other specimens of stone tools in the several compartments which varied in size so as to accommodate everything, even the extra nails and twine the good abbe had used to peg out his layers, the measuring tape too – a dressmaker’s tape. Again, it was just as maman had always said.
The cord around the chamois was being untied.
‘Professor, a moment, please,’ said the Surete, his pipe cupped in a hand – ah, she had not seen him even light it! The one called Kohler was no longer where he had been standing. Herr Oelmann was looking at her. What does he see? she asked herself and silently wept.
‘Professor, you were a contemporary of Henri-Georges Fillioux,’ said St-Cyr with a little toss of his pipe-hand. ‘What was he like?’
Ah damn the Surete! thought Courtet acidly, his glasses winking in the light. ‘Jealous. Insidiously private and secretive. Very possessive of his research. Young to the point of being arrogant beyond his years. We were both assistants under Mouton at the Sorbonne. Henri-Georges went to war and I stayed on. It was a toss-up. Old Mouton said that even though our families might think to shield us from the cannon, he would see that the nation at least got a half-measure of our powder. A fifty-centime piece was tossed.’
‘And he won,’ breathed Herr Kohler who was now standing directly behind her – why … why had he moved himself so close? wondered Juliette.
‘Yes, he won, if you wish to put it that way.’
‘I do,’ – she heard Herr Kohler saying this even as the Professor’s dark brown eyes fell from looking at him to momentarily settle on herself with a coldness that hurt so much she could not meet his gaze.
She let her eyes settle on Lemieux’s hand to watch the lover brazenly caress the Baroness.
A hush fell on the gathering as, side by side and perhaps no taller than the length of her hand, the soft yellow stone figurines lay revealed on their little rumpled bed of brown suede as if in the exhaustion of having just made love fifty thousand years ago. The arms were cut off almost at the shoulders so that they, with the bodies and the very simply crafted heads, formed the two crosses the Abbe Brule had been so excited about.
The legs were long and straight – rigid from their loving. The hips of the woman were somewhat broader than those of the man. Only at his waist had the ancient sculptor carved a girdle from which to hang a pouch of stone tools.
‘Adam and Eve,’ said Courtet.
‘Cro-Magnon,’ said Louis. ‘Upper Palaeolithic and no older than about 20,000 years, as are similar things from other sites.’
‘It is as I have thought myself, Inspector,’ acknowledged Courtet reluctantly. ‘But the abbe’s notes position the figurines much lower in the gisement. Henri-Georges was most thorough in pin-pointing the exact stratum. Those, he said, were found with the chunky, flint tools of Neanderthal and are Mousterian in age, so far, far older. Perhaps fifty thousand years.’
‘But those are not all that was found,’ said the Baroness softly. ‘Show them the amulet. Here, let me.’ She moved away from her friend.
‘Ah no, madame. No. Not even if my life is to be forfeited,’ seethed Courtet.
‘But I’m going to wear it in the film?’
‘No, you’re not!’ hissed Courtet quivering. ‘We are having a replica made. Did you think for one minute I would let you handle them again?’
You fool, swore Kohler. You don’t know what you’re saying to that woman.
‘Baroness, it’s all right. It’s all being taken care of,’ soothed Franz Oelmann. ‘The Reich’s prehistorian, Herr Eisner, has okayed everything, Professor. The replicas are to be used after the Baroness has first opened the trunk to reveal the figurines. She will put on the amulet then as that one’s mother did.’
The amulet …?’ began Juliette only to stop herself and ask inwardly, Maman … Maman, what is this he is saying about your wearing it?
A knotted thong had been thoughtfully provided and yes, the tongue-shaped bauble of deerhorn had probably been polished thousands of years ago, and yes, it had been engraved with the primitive incisions of some ancient scribe but was it any more than twenty thousand years old? wondered St-Cyr, and concluded, no.