Only time would tell, and time was something they did not have.
5
Beyond the dirt track that led to the village, the road climbed tortuously into the hills. Oak woods crowded closely, sweet chestnut grew near each habitation, and where sufficient land could be cleared and the soil was right, walnut plantations had been set out. But after nearly ten kilometres, they knew they had to turn back, knew also that they had been deliberately led astray.
Subdued and pale in the back seat beside Louis, Madame Jouvet had been giving herself time to think and had let them pass the turn-off.
‘Well? snapped Oelmann.
She was sickened by the little smile he gave. ‘The lane is very difficult to see. Monsieur Auger lives alone and uses a bicycle, so does not often need the fullness of an Autobahn.’
Touche, was that it? wondered St-Cyr, wishing she hadn’t let Oelmann get the better of her. ‘Madame, is it that you are afraid the sous-facteur has also been murdered?’
She dropped her eyes so swiftly it startled him. She turned away to stare at a fine old tree. The car crept along through woods where raspberries grew in summer and the voices of her mother and those of her children on holiday would come to her.
When they found it, the lane pitched downhill and, rather than chance the wash-outs, Oelmann said he would stay with the car.
Kohler didn’t like it one bit. Oelmann was only stalling. The bastard was going to follow at a distance.
They walked in silence. The wash-outs deepened. On the steepest slope, the lane became a scree of pale yellow boulders among the trees, and it was alongside this that a rope had been placed.
‘Auger would have had to carry the bicycle,’ breathed Kohler, shaking his head. Rather than fix the bloody road, the sous-facteur had probably written to the authorities and, having heard nothing, had got his back up and refused to do a thing. A stubborn man.
‘Madame,’ hazarded St-Cyr still looking at the scree, ‘would your husband and his friends in the LVF know of this farm?’
‘Andre …? But… but with his leg, monsieur? Surely you don’t think.…’
‘I am merely asking about his friends, madame. They are to march in the Bastille Day parade. To do so, implies a certain mobility.’
‘Andre would … would not have killed Monsieur Auger, Inspector. He had no reason to.’
She waited for him to ask, But what about killing your mother? She knew this was what he really wanted to say but he let the silence do its work.
Using the rope, they picked their way down the hill and when, at last, they had reached the bottom-lands, they saw the farm beside a bend in the river. The stone cottage with its tiled roof was all but hidden in a grove of walnut trees on the far side of a small pasture where a russet mare paused in grazing to flick her tail and stare at them. The sound of geese came from behind the cottage. There were no cows to milk.
‘He’s not alive,’ she said desperately. ‘No smoke comes from the chimney.’
The place was too quiet. ‘It’s summer. He’d only need the fire just before dawn and maybe in the evening,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Why’d he live alone like this?’
‘Why? Because it is the land of his father and when his older brother was killed in the last war, the farm fell to him.’
‘A bachelor,’ said St-Cyr, carefully searching the landscape for every last detail.
‘My mother was the only woman he ever loved, Inspectors. Though she refused him, she needed him and in her need, there was a kind of contentment for him. He never gave up trying and I was always the daughter he had never had. I loved him as a father.’
‘Ah merde, stay here, then, with Hermann.’
‘Try down by the river if … if he is not in the cottage. He … he liked to go fishing and would have spent all his time doing so if it had been possible.’
‘But only on a Sunday would he have had the time,’ sighed St-Cyr.
The Sunday before her mother was killed. The day she herself had returned to the cave to retrieve the lumps of pyrolusite and the mortar before it was too late.
‘Oelmann has a pistol, Louis. I left our guns in my other bag, the one that stayed on the train.’
‘Idiot! If you don’t have your bags chained to your wrists these days, they are stolen!’
‘I checked it through. It went into the luggage lock-up.’
‘Destined for the Gare d’Austerlitz? Hah! a perfectionniste!’
It was Hermann’s responsibility to look after their guns when not in use.
‘Befehl ist Befehl, Frau Jouvet,’ seethed St-Cyr. ‘Ist wirklich ganz einfach. An order is an order. It’s really quite simple. I leave you with him and trust that God will not ensure yet another blunder!’
‘He speaks deutsch. It helps,’ offered Kohler lamely after Louis had left them. ‘Now why don’t you tell me about the postcards? Oelmann will only find out, then where will you be? He’s SS, madame – he has to be. They teach them how to deal with recalcitrant tongues. Men, women and children, it makes no difference.’
‘This is not the zone occupee, monsieur. Here there are still laws against such things.’
But for how long? he wondered sadly. They’ll strip you naked so as to humiliate you. Then they’ll make you sit before them under the lights or they’ll hang you up from a meat-hook and make what that lousy husband of yours does seem like a picnic. Guys like Oelmann can always get help, madame, even here in the zone libre. All he has to do is make a phone call. If not a Sonderkommando, a special commando, then the Vichy Security Police who work hand in glove with them in spite of your laws. He won’t even lay a finger on you unless he gets a kick out of it, but we’ll find you in some field with the flies buzzing.’
‘Stop it! Please stop it!’
‘Hey, I’m really sorry I had to do that but you have to have the truth. Louis and I can’t be with you all the time. Not if we’re to deal with this thing.’
Sweat stung his eyes and St-Cyr cursed it. The geese were worried. Perhaps forty of them disinterestedly pecked at the stubble about the door but on seeing him the whole flock rushed to a tiny shed at the side of the cottage. There they beat their wings and stretched their necks as they complained loudly.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘A moment, please. Ah nom de Jesus-Christ!’
They fretted. They rushed him again. They pecked at his shoes and ankles. One worked on the turn-up of a trouser leg, another at a sock until he slipped and went down hard to scramble up as they fluttered about and he flicked his hands to clean them and roared, ‘Is Auger in there, eh? Bloated, butchered, festering among the wooden rakes? Ah merde, look what I’ve done to my clothes.’
He was glad Hermann hadn’t seen him fall. He would never have lived it down.
The shed was primitive, the feed-bin half empty. Seizing the wooden bucket, he dug it fiercely into the cracked corn and tried to repel the invasion. ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘Don’t be greedy. There’s enough for all.’
A pump in the yard gave salvation, a towel on the line was used. Wiping his shoes off as best he could, he lifted the latch and went into the cottage. The soot-stained fireplace held cold ashes; the bare, plank table and benches had seen years of use. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The place was clean and simple and elementally perfect once one had got used to the geese. A box bed, with big drawers beneath it, was near a plain armoire. Heavy log beams were above. A small attic was through a trap door to which a ladder of peeled poles rose steeply. Again there was nothing much but again, as in Madame Fillioux’s attic, he had to ask, Has the place been carefully searched?