‘Try the other side,’ said Oelmann, his voice a whisper. ‘He has to be here.’
‘Maybe he’s above us. Maybe he’s up on the crown of the roof.’
The shutters on the opposite side of the roof opened. There, too, lights played, and from the crown, its tiles loose, St-Cyr desperately watched the circus of those beams. They would find him. They would try to take the carpet-bag so as to have all the answers while he and Hermann … Hermann.…
The telephone jangled. Its sound was soft and distant, yet the cicadas stopped their mating chorus while the torches went out.
Again and again the sound came. Incessantly demanding, painfully stubborn as only a certain Bavarian could be until at last the switchboard operator in Argentat, ignoring the caller’s pleas, disconnected the line.
Oelmann and jouvet were arguing about the possibility of one of them climbing out on to the roof for a final look. Jouvet was insistent that his leg and hand would be useless to him. As always, they spoke German.
‘When I get that bitch of a wife of mine alone, I will break her, Herr Obersturmfuhrer. I’ll teach her to hide things from us. She prayed I would be killed in Russia. She had confessed this to me when I broke her wrist before I went away to training camp. I beat her so hard, blood ran from her nose but she doesn’t learn. She’ll never learn.’
Oelmann leaned well out of the dormer and, straining, pulled himself up until the beam of his torch touched the distant crown of the roof and began to move along it.
‘You will kill her. The film is far too critical. She might say things we can’t have.’
Fraud … was it really a case of fraud?
They recrossed the attic to repeat the process. St-Cyr tried to stay out of sight. Spread-eagled now, he clung to the crown by his fingertips just waiting for the tiles to come loose. The torch beam passed over his fingers. It went on to its limits. Old tiles, thick tiles, tiles whose boards underneath smelled of mould and age.
‘When the filming is done here, you will set fire to the house and make certain it burns to the ground. There may still be things St-Cyr has missed. We can’t have him finding them.’
A fifteenth-century house, a small, if impoverished treasure in itself. Ah merde …
‘But … but if I do that, I inherit nothing.’
‘That is not my concern. Your time will come. There will be other uses for you and your friends.’
Down on the cobbled street behind and far below St-Cyr, a cat paused in the moonlight to lick its paws while the Surete’ awkwardly clung to the crown of the roof.
A shooting star fell from the skies just as Hermann had said it would.
‘Her mother was going to poison me, Herr Obersturmruhrer. The facteur in Domme listened in to the telephone call. He distinctly heard her saying to Juliette, “I will take care of them”.’
‘So you took care of her. You did it, didn’t you?’
A tile began its long journey, interrupting the answer. Taking its time, it scraped against others, was caught on an ancient ripple and began to slowly turn. Moonlight showed it up so clearly. It was right there not a metre from St-Cyr but now … now the cat, that damned cat, was playing with it. Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, Hermann where the hell are you when most needed?
* * *
Kohler let his gaze sift over the room where a dozen of the film’s executives were gathered for the mandatory post-rush conference. Gold was everywhere: in Meissen clocks, Sevres porcelain, in the chandeliers and the delicate rococo panelling. It was in a desk by Andre-Charles Boulle, in commodes by Baumhauer and Delorme and sconces by Jacques Caffieri. It was also in the frames of wall-mirrors that, though huge, exquisitely complemented everything including the Old Masters the chateau’s former owners had collected.
‘This is Willi’s room,’ confided Marina von Strade. ‘He keeps it for himself.’ She touched his arm to prevent his saying anything. ‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘It’s time.’
The wireless crackled. Filling one of the Louis XIV armchairs, von Strade swirled cognac in silent contemplation, his gaze lost to its own crystal ball. Hans-Dieter Eisner, the Number One prehistorian from Hamburg, tapped cigarette ash into the jardiniere at his elbow. Professor Courtet sniffed in distaste at such crudity.
Eisner was young, Courtet middle-aged. Where the first wore dark, horn-rimmed, very manly eyeglasses, the second wore gold-rimmed spectacles that gave him the look now not of a professor but of an apothecary in distress at having inadvertently poisoned a customer.
‘This is the BBC London calling. Here is the evening news,’ and never mind tuning in to Berlin for the truth. ‘It is with deep regret that we must report Tobruk has fallen to the desert army of General Erwin Rommel. Heavy casualties have been sustained, as well as the loss of all remaining stocks of arms, ammunition and fuel. Considerable numbers of prisoners of war have been taken by the enemy.’
‘The blitzkrieg for Egypt’s on,’ said someone – Herr Richter, thought Kohler. The German half of the directing team.
Von Strade was short with him. ‘I don’t pay you to give proclamations about the war’s progress, my dear Otto. If you want to work for the Propaganda Staffel please consult our friend Oelmann. If that one has any free time left these days, he might give you an interview.’
‘Turning now to Russia, we report that all but one of the fortifications defending Sevastopol has been overrun. The summer offensive has begun.’
‘They’ll be in Moscow by Christmas,’ said Rene Bresson, the lead French cameraman. There was an uncomfortable sense of awe in his voice, as if, having backed the right horse, he still could not quite believe it was a winner and was afraid.
In the Philippines all effective resistance to the armies of Imperial Japan had ceased. Now virtually every island in the Western Pacific was under the flag of the Rising Sun, as well as Burma, Thailand, Manchuria and other mainland territories. Clearly, Australia and New Zealand were next.
Lesser statistics about fighter aircraft and bombers shot down over London were followed by the sinkings of enemy submarines along the North Atlantic convoy routes. Having heard enough, von Strade switched off the wireless but remained lost to his cognac. The RAF had destroyed much of Koln with incendiaries on the night of 30-31 May and the glow from the firestorms had been seen from more than two hundred and fifty kilometres, a fine old city in ruins. The SS-OberstgruppenFuhrer and Gauleiter of Bohemia-Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich had been assassinated by Czech partisans. The Imperial Japanese Navy had just been dealt a death blow at Midway in the greatest naval battle of the Pacific war.
‘The Americans are determined,’ said von Strade, not looking around at the others. ‘That man they have in the Pacific isn’t going to go away nor will Mr Winston Churchill. We have, my dear Kohler, no other choice but to complete Moment of Discovery on schedule and to personally deliver it in its commemorative can to the Fuhrer. Tell us what you’ve found out about our cave. If it’s a forgery, we in this room had better know.’
‘Baron, it’s no forgery. I’d stake my.…’
‘Hans, spare me your precious prehistoric vanity. Don’t any of you leave. Well?’ he asked. ‘Two murders, Herr Kohler. Both with stones, or so I hear. The rumours fly, my friend, and I must stop them, yes? So, please, give us the benefit of your opinion. The French film industry is in the throes of a massive boom and we at Continentale would like to continue helping them.’
Ah yes, of course.
‘Never before have our people had such opportunities,’ interjected Christian Dussart, the French director. ‘The war stopped the American and British films from flooding us out of business. Now we are at last getting a chance.’
‘A chance that can’t be stopped because some stupid woman decided to fart around with us,’ said someone.