It was not pleasant to think of such things. Louis should be with him but Louis was nowhere near.
When he saw the car ahead, Kohler tried to rein in the mare but she would have none of it. Madame Jouvet, freed at last, stood to one side of the road clutching the front of her dress closed and still terrified, poor thing. An overturned cart blocked the road. Chickens were everywhere and the front left wheel of the car was dead flat, its fender crumpled. Oelmann was in a rage and trying to get the owner of the cart to change the tire.
‘Run,’ cried Kohler. ‘Run, madame. I’ll try to stop her.’
The wind was in his hair. As its hooves threw up clods, the mare left the road to scatter the chickens. A shot was fired. This only produced a further burst of speed.
The damned thing headed straight for the river and a drink. Oelmann had caught up with Madame Jouvet. There was only one thing to do and quickly. ‘Come on, my beauty. Build a fire in your lungs again.’
The mare’s chest was heaving. She tossed her head, flicked her tail and refused to co-operate. Wading out a little farther in the shallows, she again began to drink.
Oelmann fired at them twice and that was enough. Thundering through the shallows, the mare broke back up onto the road and then in among the cluster of Renaissance houses. Her hooves clattered on the ancient cobbles. Marina von Strade stepped out from the shade of the cafe. Courtet reached for his hat.
The mare raced past them down the lane between the houses to finally pull up sharply at the post office. ‘Ah nom de Dieu,’ swore Kohler. ‘You knew exactly where we were headed!’
Standing on her back, he pulled himself up onto the balcony and once within the inn, went along the hall to the room at the head of the stairs.
‘Louis … Louis, we’ve done it!’ he cried breathlessly as the drawer popped open.
There wasn’t a damned thing in it, not even a speck of dust.
Hands folded in her lap, her dress pinned in places, Juliette Jouvet sat on the edge of the bed with eyes downcast in despair. There was the loss of everything – the postcards, yes, yes! The silver necklace and diamond pin, the few louis d’or, the savings of a lifetime, the 10,000 francs also.
There was the presence of Herr Oelmann too, and she could still feel the nearness of him, the knife at her breast.
Herr Kohler reached out to her from the chair he had drawn up. ‘Is this the only place your mother would have hidden things?’ he asked.
His voice was very gentle and she knew he regretted terribly what had happened to her. The emptiness that was usually in his eyes was gone but her heart was hard. ‘This is the only place,’ she said stonily. ‘Search the rest of the house if you wish. It will do no good.’
Kohler nodded. He understood only too well that she would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to forgive him, that he, too, as one of the Occupiers from the North, was as much to blame for what had happened to her as was Oelmann.
‘Madame,’ he said, and again there was a sincerity and concern that only made her want to scream at him to leave her alone. He asked about maman’s telephone call on that Thursday morning, and she had to repeat what she had told Hen Oelmann. ‘ “Them”, that is all mother said. She would “take care of them”! She … she could not tell me who she meant, could she? Monsieur Coudinec, the facteur in Domme, he always listens in. Andre could well have found out that … that mother intended to poison him. This … this is what I have thought.’
There, now they knew for sure she herself had wanted Andre dead and that she felt he had killed maman.
‘The mushrooms,’ said Oelmann. ‘But “them” means someone else.’
‘The one Madame Fillioux went to meet,’ sighed Kohler evasively. ‘Someone from Paris perhaps.’
‘The father?’ asked Oelmann sharply.
Ah merde … ‘Perhaps. Look, I really don’t know, do I?’
‘Mother … Mother must have been trying to keep me out of things,’ said Juliette. ‘After she said she would take care of them, she begged me to go to the cave to remove the mortar and the lumps of pyrolusite. She did not tell me specifically what it was she wanted taken from the cave, only that I was to remove the things from our little cache. “I put them there some time ago,” she said.’
‘When?’ demanded Oelmann only to see her shrug and hear her say, ‘Hurt me if you like. It will gain you nothing.’
‘Either before or after she visited the cave with Professor Courtet,’ offered Kohler. ‘Look, there’s no sense in questioning madame further. She doesn’t know anything else.’
Could he leave it? wondered Oelmann. Kohler wouldn’t tell him everything unless he felt the fear of repercussions.
The Bavarian said, ‘Don’t be asking the SS of the avenue Foch to put the squeeze on me, my friend. All they’ll do is start asking questions of their own and thinking those paintings in that little cave of yours are a fraud and the film a bust. Egg on the Fuhrer’s face and in Technicolor – is that what you want? Don’t be a dummkopf.’
‘There is always the Sonderkommando-SS we have in the Perigord,’ said Oelmann quietly. ‘I have only to call them.’
‘For help? Ah Gott im Himmel, Herr Obersturmfuhrer or whatever your rank is, you know only too well each undercover special commando in the zone libre reports daily to the avenue Foch.’
Up close, the threatening muzzle of the Radom pistol felt just like any other. ‘It’s simple,’ shrugged Kohler. ‘Their little grapevines are everywhere and each of them runs right back to Berlin as well and the ears of the Fuhrer. Let Louis and me handle this. We’ll fill you in. No problem.’
‘Even after what I did to that one and my shooting at you?’
Oelmann couldn’t be such a fool as to believe they’d cooperate, but there was no harm in pretending. ‘Hey, it’s all in a day’s work. Louis and I don’t ever want trouble with the SS.’
Kohler was just gassing about. The SS of the avenue Foch and Gestapo Paris Central had little good to say about him but could he and his partner be used?
Oelmann cocked the pistol and gave the Bavarian’s temple a nudge. ‘Perhaps what you say is true, perhaps not. We shall have to see.’
The bastard curtly nodded at Madame Jouvet, causing her to shudder. He would now rejoin the world of film and be as smooth and charming as ever, if a trifle silent.
The door closed. They waited and when, finally, they heard Herr Oelmann’s car start up, the detective heaved such a grateful sigh, she had to look questioningly at him.
The smile he gave was warm and conspiratorial. ‘For now he’s satisfied, madame. If it helps, I think he’ll leave you alone and seek his answers elsewhere.’
‘Are they all like that, the SS?’
She’d go to pieces if he didn’t offer hope but she had to hear the truth. ‘Most of them. The only good ones are the dead ones.’
Tears began again. Her lower lip quivered. ‘But … but are you not also of the Gestapo and the SS, monsieur?’
‘Only under duress and only as a detective, and not SS. Louis and me, we hate the very thought of what they do and are just itching to get back at bastards like that.’
Once more she could see that what had happened to her was a great sadness to him but so, too, was his connection to those agents of terror. When his hand was extended, she found she had to accept it. He had a way with him and that was good. He did not accuse or blame her for having kept to herself that maman had intended to poison Andre, even though she had also meant to kill someone else, someone whose name might well have been on one of those postcards. Her father’s. ‘All right,’ she said and found the will to smile. ‘Let us help each other.’
The cavalry were down in the river in shirt sleeves, bare feet and rolled-up trouser legs, laughing and tossing water from a wooden bucket over a horse that loved it. A tattered crowd of children had gathered and now squatted on their haunches or stood along the bank amused and passing judgment as the giant with the Fritz haircut shouted sweet endearments to a plough-horse.