In a whisper, she asked, ‘Did your husband know we were to make a film of their discovery?’
‘Andre’ …? It’s possible. I … I really don’t know. Mother didn’t tell me so he … he would have had to find out in … in some other way. Ah no, mademoiselle, did you …?’
You poor thing, said Danielle to herself. You’re so pretty in that dress of mine but are you even aware of it now? ‘Then if he did find out, would your husband not have seen money in it for himself?’
Had they paid Andre for information? Had Danielle been the go-between? ‘To understand him, Mademoiselle Arthaud, you must realize my husband hates everything around him, not just myself. The school, his humdrum life, the pittance of a salary he was paid and will be paid, the lack of all promotion. The war, it was passing him by. Talk … all he talked about was killing Communists, so the Germans, they let him.’
The glass was drained. Some bureau drawers were desperately searched and then those of the dressing-table. Again the muttering came for Willi von Strade to help her. And then she stood so close they all but touched.
‘Women.… Did your husband do things to the women he and his comrades took prisoner? Did he not boast of how he could use the stone tools he had with him as objects of interest to set himself apart from the others?’
Ah no … ‘Who … Who has suggested such a thing to you? Who?’
When no answer came, the schoolteacher dropped her eyes and blurted, ‘It was Andre. You’ve been getting him to tell you about mother and her visits.’
One could take her by the shoulders now and she would not resist. One could slap her hard and all she would do was dissolve into tears. ‘But if not me,’ said Danielle, moving in closer still, ‘then your father. Is that not so, my little one? He could have met and talked with that husband of yours and you … you would be none the wiser.’
She must smile up at her bravely through her tears, thought Juliette. She must give her the answer such a statement deserved. ‘Andre would have told me my father had returned. He would have laughed in my face, mademoiselle, and would have shouted that my mother had been crazy to have waited all her adult life for a man who had neglected to tell her he was still alive.’
‘And already married? Have you not thought of this, too, schoolteacher?’
‘No!’
‘But if he is alive, and if he did write to her and then kill her or get that husband of yours to do it for him, you can see why he would want to steal the postcards and kill the sous-facteur also. And you must ask, What will you do? Help him or help to convict him?’
The schoolteacher’s hair was soft, and when Danielle ran her fingers through it, the woman did not resist but simply bowed her head and wept. ‘I’ll kill myself. I’ll do it this time because if he’s alive, mother meant to kill him and I … I said nothing to anyone about it. I’m so ashamed.’
‘Good. Then go and kill yourself. Give him what he most needs, the silence of the only one who can speak out against him. Trade your pathetic life for his and let him get on with the research he has had to neglect for so long. It’s what your mother would have wanted, madame, had she not meant to kill him. Now get out of here. I’ve got things to do.’
Sous-prefet Deveaux, his jacket cast aside in deference to a fireman’s duties, refilled the tin cup with brandy and slid it carefully across the table in Madame Fillioux’s kitchen. ‘Another, Jean-Louis. It’s not every night I have to pluck a burglar from the roof of a house in this little village.’
‘A burglar … ah yes, the carpet-bag. I should have known better. So should the cat.’
Merde, what a night! The cat had trapped the tile. The torch beams of Oelmann and Jouvet had homed in on the creature. The neighbours, awakened in any case and secretly watching the proceedings, had seen the cat release the tile to hear it shatter on the cobblestones.
No sooner had Oelmann and Jouvet left in the car, than the citizens of the lower village had come out in force. Nightgowns, nightcaps, brooms, sticks and lanterns, men, women and boys … eager boys with sharp stones. Ah nom de Dieu. Long ladders had been placed at every corner of that wretched roof and others fast carried up to be laid on the tiles as in a fire drill. They had refused to let him climb down. An officer of the law on a murder case.
‘The carpet-bag, they expected me to give it up before they would let me even think of using one of their ladders!’
Deveaux coughed cigarette smoke and wheezed in as the tears came. ‘Ah, don’t sound so wounded. A small miracle, eh? Gendarmes from Sarlat in the nick of time. In Paris, the tenants would have dragged you free and let you chase after that tile just to see if you would sprout wings and play the harp.’
They would have, some of them. Deveaux had sent five of his best men out to Auger’s farm to begin work there. Two others were dusting for fingerprints in the attic, while still others had the unenviable task of opening every last one of the parcels and of disposing of the contents after making suitable notations. The commissariat in Domme had been alerted and a magistrate’s warrant restraining Jouvet would be sought. The husband had to be stopped.
‘Jean-Louis, this thing, eh? It’s getting a little bigger than either of us would wish. Heads will roll if that cave is a forgery and we proclaim it to the world. Vichy have informed me that I am to have the orchestra play softly so as not to awaken the snorers.’
‘Ah yes, Berlin. Herr Goebbels invests 50,000 marks to show the world that the swastika owes its origins not just to the humble Cro-Magnon cave-dwellers of the ancestral Dordogne but to those from some fifty or a hundred thousand years ago. Presumably under all that Neanderthal body hair, pure Aryans existed. But to use that to lay claim to the whole of France? To legitimatize the conquest …? Ah! as a patriot, I find that impossible to swallow.’
Deveaux refilled the cup and gave him the look of a priest at confession. ‘Whether or not the Neanderthals wiped themselves with swastika leaves or prayed to that symbol is no concern of ours. Let history take care of itself and let Herr Goebbels claim whatever idiocy he wishes since he, and the others, have the muscle, eh?’ Effusively he threw out his hands. ‘Those prehistorians, Jean-Louis, they’re like old women. Insidiously jealous of one another, insanely so and envious to the point of greed. Ah! so they want to warp history a little to gain prestige and power for themselves, others will come along to correct their mistakes and show us all what idiots came before them. You know that, I know it too. A year, two years – this war can’t last for ever, can it? Time sorts out all things. God waits only for the bell of truth and so must the rest of us since He’s the ringer.’
‘You’re trying to tell me something, Odilon. Since it isn’t a request to see what I have in this bag, why not enlighten me?’
Ah nom de Dieu, must Jean-Louis be so stubborn? ‘That bag, I could ask you to open it but I’m close enough to retirement to want my pension. Andre Jouvet was in Sarlat on the Monday from noon until the four o’clock bus. Several reliable sources have confirmed this. He can’t be the killer of Madame Fillioux though one of his friends might have done it. We are still working on this.’
‘And what else, Odilon?’
Regrettably it would have to be said. ‘That woman paid three visits to Lascaux.’
Curses were heard from among the parcels, footsteps in the room above. ‘Three visits?’
‘Yes. The first was in the late fall of 1940 when the country was still on its knees and trying to wake up to the Defeat and partition. The cave at Lascaux was closed, of course, but Madame Fillioux, their only visitor in nearly two months, paid to have it opened and spent several hours inside alone. Like others who are passionately interested in such things, she just had to see the paintings. There was a sketchbook with her and some chalks, a pencil too.’