Even in death was there a use for Jouvet. Exhausted, desperately in need of sleep, St-Cyr heaved the body into the front seat of Herr Oelmann’s touring car so that the head slumped on to the steering wheel.
‘There, I give you Henri-Georges Fillioux, my friends,’ he said to the night and the chateau’s darkened silhouette. ‘Let us see what this brings.’
Pulling off the stained coveralls and bulky sweater he had borrowed, he tossed them into the wheelbarrow and tidied himself. Then, trundling the barrow back to the stables, he cleaned the stall, checked the Luger and collected the carpet-bag and its contents.
The sweater and coveralls went into a corner out of sight, the handaxe was washed. When he reached the great hall, he walked hesitantly among the tables with their piles of dirty dishes, the knives and forks, the half-eaten rubbish, empty wine bottles and bowls of salad et cetera, et cetera, a Lupercalian feast perhaps, but with the fertility rites now long passed into exhaustion and sleep.
Like a visiting abbot of old arriving late for the feast, he stood beneath a chandelier in the grand salon, seeing himself in the mirrors, shabby, pale and forlorn, a traveller down murder’s lane. He would have to get himself cleaned up, a shave at least, a haircut. A new fedora … could one be found?
‘Inspector …’
‘Baroness … Ah, forgive me. I seem to be lost.’ She was sitting all alone beside a film projector.
‘I thought you were in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne looking for things?’ Her voice trembled just a little. Was she dismayed to find him here with this bag in hand?
‘Yes, yes, of course I was there but I couldn’t sleep. Some villagers. You know how they are at times. Hermann, Baroness? Have you seen my partner?’
‘Not in several hours. I wanted him to swim with me but … but he was too modest, I think.’
‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘Can’t you?’
‘Pastis or brandy … I need a little something,’ he said and she could tell by his tone of voice he was unsetded.
‘Too bad, then. All I have is this.’
She indicated a bottle and when he joined her, he saw that she had been crying but was not drunk.
‘Danielle,’ she said, ignoring the carpet-bag which he dumped at his feet. ‘Our princess has a passion for this wine, Inspector, so much so, my Willi allows her the key to his wine cellar and she comes and goes as she pleases and drinks all she needs but often carelessly leaves the cellars open to others. They have no shame.’
He found himself a chair. ‘Then I take it Danielle was recently here watching that film?’
‘The rushes, yes. She was being punished for not having attended the evening’s mandatory viewing but has now taken herself back upstairs.’ To beg, she said to herself, to be fucked and used in other ways if necessary until she gets what she so earnestly desires, a little more cocaine.
The wine was warm and he judged she had been holding the bottle in her lap for some time.
‘It’s too sweet for me,’ she said, and he caught again the faint quaver in her voice, ‘but Danielle is a slave to it.’
And to other things? he thought and let her see this. ‘The rushes, Baroness. I’m a great lover of the cinema, starved of course these days for so many of the great films are denied us. Please, take no offence. I didn’t mean to say that’
‘You did. Willi would agree. He has a fantastic collection. Everything from the Lumiere brothers’ first attempts to The Jazz Singer and The Wizard of Oz.’
‘Charlie Chan in Shanghai? Modern Times? Captain Blood?’
From cops and robbers in China Town to Chaplin and the wheels of industry to pirates, all released in 1936. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said and could not help but smile faintly. ‘Are there others you like?’
‘Camet de Bal – it’s not as good as pepe le Moko but Duvivier still stands out as a great director, another Jean Renoir perhaps. That’s hard to match but … but, ah I go on. Please, your rushes. I would like very much to see them.’
‘Then see them you shall.’
In frame after frame he saw the paintings at Lascaux then, like all the others, was fascinated by the sight of Danielle and her Cro-Magnon ‘husband’ on that primitive scaffold.
‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?’ said Marina von Strade tighdy. ‘Watch how she disembowels a doe.’
Ah merde … blood … blood on her thighs and arms, her breasts, neck and face.
‘Danielle, Inspector. Danielle is the one you want.’
When Kohler and Madame Jouvet found it quite by chance, the room was in darkness but then Danielle came along the corridor in a hurry, swearing softly in French, crying, wiping away the tears perhaps and saying more loudly, ‘Bastard … that bastard … Oh mon cul, mon pauvre cul.…’
She tripped, she cried out, ‘Ah no!’ and went down on her hands and knees to grope about the carpet and beg God to give it to her until at last she had it.
A light on the dressing-table went on. Behind the heavy drapes, Kohler clasped a hand over Juliette Jouvet’s lips to smother her gasp, then eased his hand away.
Naked but for a leather thong about her slender waist and her skin bag of stone tools, Danielle Arthaud stood a moment to calm herself. A lower drawer was opened and a silver disc, perhaps ten centimetres in diameter, was taken out.
The disc was polished and held up to the mirror. Trembling, she searched for the flint blade with which she had so carefully divided the truffes sous la cendre and when she had it, licked it and used a crumpled blouse to dry it.
From a cigarette case, she took a straw of cobalt-blue glass and for a moment, delicately fingered this as if in the waiting there was heightened excitement.
Two halves of a walnut shell, the thing she had dropped, were carefully prised open and again Danielle sat there looking as if temptation’s call was only enhanced by waiting. ‘I can still stop myself,’ she said and sighed. ‘I’m still not a slave to it.’
Cocaine was dipped out of the walnut shell with the point of the flint blade and carefully tapped onto the centre of the disc. Spreading the snow-white powder, she smoothed it into a square that was divided into ten lines. She waited again for so long it seemed she really might be able to stop herself.
Two lines were taken, drawn through the tube and into each nostril, the head thrown back each time, the eyes shut, lips parted in a gasp, then a grin and a slow smile that grew until the lips parted in another sudden gasp.
Blood pounding, she sat there and, fingering the glass tube, held it to the light and watched herself in the mirror.
Grinning, she took some more and then a little more. ‘It’s enough!’ she said. Enough for what? wondered Kohler. Enough to kill?
Everything was packed away. Worth far more than gold these days, the rest of the cocaine was carefully returned and the halves of the walnut shell closed to safely hold their little treasure.
Von Strade … said Kohler to himself. The giver of all gifts.
‘Toto … I’ll fix him,’ breathed Danielle. ‘He enjoyed doing that to me while the others watched and Willi … Willi sat in that goddamned chair of his and made me beg. Me to whom he owes so much!’
Ah merde.…
The road was dark, the wind was in her hair and it felt so good to be leaving that place Juliette wanted to shout for joy but found only despair. Herr Kohler was ahead of her; St-Cyr behind. Caught between the two of them, they would ride through the rest of the night until, at last, they could walk the bicycles up through the woods and into that little valley to leave them by the stream and climb to the cave.
It all made sense. Everything. The trunk coming to light after all these years, the film, the visit of Courtet, the payment of 10,000 francs and Andre’s … Andre’s working for Danielle Arthaud and telling her things and then … then for Herr Oelmann … Herr Oelmann.…