Crouching, Kohler wiped off a label. The 1912. He found another and then another.
When he found the 1889, there was only one bottle left but places where two had lain were free of dust.
The chateau’s silhouette stood above the trees against the night sky, its turrets and walls darker than the steeply pitched roofs and chimneys. Though far from the bombing routes, the black-out ordinance was being strictly obeyed as it was throughout the whole of France. Not a chink of light showed but because of this the place appeared all the more menacing.
Sous-prefet Deveaux reluctantly brought the Peugeot to a stop on a gentle rise before switching off the ignition. ‘Jean-Louis, listen to me. Go easy, eh? Herr Himmler and Herr Goebbels? Who wants to have breakfast with them if your chin is resting on a silver platter and a waiter has his thumb at the back of your head?’
‘Odilon, my partner’s in there and so is Madame Jouvet.’
‘Yes, yes, that’s just what I’m saying. That bag of yours – ah! you know I can’t keep it in the car for you. It’s my neck if I do. Postcards Herr Oelmann wants? Sketches of cave paintings that woman may have subsequently forged? Do you still refuse to understand what you’re dealing with?’
Damn the weakness of the civil servant! ‘Is there still something you should tell me?’
Ah Paris, why the hell did he have to be so difficult? ‘That place, there are rooms and rooms, staircases few will know of, bolt holes and secret panels behind which are hidden passages because that’s the way the people that built it had to live.’
‘Fillioux won’t know of them. How could he?’
A call to the prefecture in Sarlat had established no one of that name had registered among the cast and crew. ‘It’s not just him that worries me. These old places. Lovely, of course. Quite splendid if you can heat them and do the repairs but steeped in history and deceit’
‘Just tell me, Odilon. Prepare me.’
‘Good! Yes, it’s good you should ask! Its first owner, the Due de Montignac, was murdered by his youngest daughter. A beautiful child, a princess who loved to listen to their troubador on into the night. She drove a nail through her father’s eye – you know the kind I mean. They normally put them through the timbers of their gates. He was drunk and asleep on one of the dining tables and probably didn’t feel a thing but to avoid her mother’s wrath, the child thought it best to kill herself by leaping from the roof.’
‘A happy household but nothing out of the ordinary.’
A hand was tossed. ‘No, of course not. Now, with the most recent of past owners, ah there is a slightly different story. Jews, a wealthy banker, an old and much respected family. Yes, yes, of course. Passage to Morocco via the Vieux Port de Marseille. What could be cleaner, eh? First the wife disappears while doing a little last-minute shopping with her two daughters, lovely girls, very capable musicians. One played the harp, I think, the other the flute or was it the cello? All three were found in an abandoned warehouse, the girls both naked, bound, gagged and violated, their throats slit, the mother forced to watch but dead and missing all the jewellery she so stupidly thought best to carry with her.’
‘And the father?’ he hazarded, not liking this new development.
‘The father, ah yes, you will have wondered why I was cognizant of the filming at Lascaux and touring around with the Baroness and her friends when we arrived in Domme the other day. The father was found dead of knife wounds near a brothel in the Vieux Port, stripped of everything including his underwear and left to kiss the cobblestones as was the couple’s only son. Perhaps their baggage was sent on, perhaps it simply disappeared. One thing is certain, my friend, no trace of the money he was paid for that place was ever found and no blame can ever come back to rest on the new owner. I’ve tried. I’ve had to think it all through and wonder if I had missed something but Marseille is satisfied and so is the Vichy Surete. Enjoy yourself. I only tell you this for your own good. Don’t cross von Strade. You’re a long way from Paris and I have only so many men at my disposal.’
‘Is the Baroness aware of what he did?’
‘Perhaps. Though she hates von Strade’s philandering, she’s intensely loyal to him.’
‘And Herr Oelmann?’
‘I’m sure he knows or suspects but will say nothing. The rest probably don’t even bother to question the matter since it little concerns them.’
‘And Danielle Arthaud?’
‘That actress? It’s hard to say. She’s a strange one. Very knowledgeable with the stone tools. An expert.’
‘Is she on cocaine?’
Merde, what was this? ‘Yes … yes, I believe she must be.’
‘Will you get that restraining order on Jouvet? It’s necessary.’
Ah! Jean-Louis would still not take the hint. ‘Don’t be a Neanderthal, eh? I’ll ask – yes, yes, of course. It’s my duty. As soon as I get back to Sarlat I will visit the magistrate between his meals but old Lantot, he’s going to want some proof.’
‘The word of a police officer is not enough?’
‘You know what he’s like. He will still remember the last time you applied to him and yes, certainly you were right, but to Lantot it was a slap in the face.’
‘That was five years ago.’
‘Please don’t sound so dismayed. Five is not enough and you know it.’
‘Thanks. Thanks a lot! Hey, I’ll try to remember it when someone is attempting to slice my jugular in the dark with a wedge of flint!’
‘Just don’t get hit on the head. I wouldn’t want to have to pick up the pieces.’
Hermann … Where the hell was Hermann? Eating, drinking and playing around with the girls or simply looking out for trouble?
Softly the sounds of swimming came to Kohler in the cellars of the chateau and he cursed the Baroness for playing games with him because he absolutely had to find Juliette and had left it too long. The woman was down at the end of a narrow passage in pitch darkness – she had taken the fuses from the electrical switch-box on the wall. Back and forth she went, the water dripping from her arms as she did the breaststroke but used the scissors kick so as to make less noise.
When he found her clothes, they were in a tidy mound above her high heels on the rocky platform that surrounded the pool. A natural cavern? he wondered. The spring-fed water was ice cold; she was a real Nacktkultur addict then, the naked body taut with goose pimples, the mind alert.
Arching herself, she went over backwards, he thought, to gracefully touch her heels and surface smiling near to him, only to then swim away.
Though she said absolutely nothing, he crouched and waited, heard her roll over to do the backstroke, heard her dive right to the bottom probably. Naked … naked like some beautiful siren calling out to him through her bubbles, beckoning … beckoning.…
When no further sound came, he hazarded anxiously, ‘Baroness?’
Hurriedly he found two matches and in their lonely light saw the stalactites hanging from the roof above, the grey of limestone walls that curved, the pool. ‘Baroness?’ he asked again and cursed as the matches burnt his fingers and plunged him back into darkness. ‘Baroness, two brutal murders have been committed. I’d just as soon there wasn’t another.’
Myself? she seemed to say though she was gone from him.
The fuses were in the toes of her shoes. Under overhead lights that shone among the stalactites, he could see the bottom clearly now, the water emerald green and with round, white pebbles on the floor of an ancient channel perhaps three metres down. No sign of her anywhere. Where … where the hell is she? he wondered, seeing her in his mind’s eye caught on something, her mouth open, her body floating face up, no movement now.…
When he saw a rocky ledge just above the bottom at the far end of the pool, he followed the channel below it back to the pebbles and understood. She was challenging him to join her. She wanted him to swim under that ledge to find the channel and then the cavern she must now be in.