‘I’ll get your clothes.’
‘Does the sight of my nakedness offend you so much?’
‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘Then I will get my clothes myself and leave you to pick up the handaxe I did not use to kill you though I could have, couldn’t I?’
Ah merde, there was not a thing wrong with either of her ankles. Not a thing!
‘Toto … Toto, darling, you must say nothing. Oh for sure you know things, yes? but just keep everyone believing you are simply my stud, my grand godemiche whose stiffness lasts for as long as any woman could ever want. With a little help, of course.’
‘Damn you, Marina. What makes you say things like that?’
‘Your cock and the white angel that feeds it. Now listen to me. Willi is in trouble – trouble like he has never had before so we must help him.’
‘Three murders … Fillioux, was it really him, eh, Marina?’
‘I did not hear that, Toto. I really didn’t.’
‘Fillioux could be out there somewhere.’
‘Yes, that’s it exactly! Danielle and her father, they are working together. She was so anxious to visit the cave to see the paintings on the Friday before that woman’s death, she led us to them. She behaved exactly as she would have had she been here many times before.’
‘They’re fakes. They’re all fakes.’
‘And that is why my Willi needs our help and your continued silence.’
‘Danielle,’ he said. ‘Why did he make me do that to her in front of the others?’
‘To teach her a lesson she must never forget. To break my heart – yes, he’s done it lots of times. You and she, how could he have been so cruel? Now make love to me again. It may be the last time we have the animals to watch us. I like to see them up there when you’re in me. It makes me feel so powerful, Toto. Supreme. An earth goddess of fertility.’
‘And the daughter, the schoolteacher, what of her?’
‘Let us hope her father finds her.’
10
Night had been turned into day in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, shadows banished where not wanted. Arc lights brought the sun at noon to windows still leaded in spite of the centuries of wear and the poverty of an auberge-epicerie and PTT which could not possibly have replaced them. Giant fans produced a gentle breeze to stir the grape leaves and the potted geraniums of the balcony railing while songbirds chorused from hidden cages on the floor at Marina von Strade’s feet and doves roosted on the shabby tower where not so long ago St-Cyr had been trapped on the roof.
Apparently everyone was here – Herr Oelmann looking grim and worried, the cast, the crew, the villagers who stood well back like sheep at a hanging. Would the cinema ever be the same for them or for himself?
He searched the crowd as Hermann and Madame Jouvet did. Film personnel came and went or stood in earnest discussion as sound booms, reflectors and screens were positioned for the take and a silk-screened blue and puff-cloud sky was raised above the roof. It would look so real on film.
Generators softly throbbed in the distance, cables were strung. Two tall wooden towers, looking as if left over from a Roman invasion, held the massive arc lights which could instantly plunge the set into darkness or blind the eyes if one was not careful. The first, second and third cameras would film from the ground, the side and above. Distance shots, pans to this and that, then close-ups to automatically engender empathy in the audience, then shots of the visitor, the actor-prehistorian, the second camera moving in and staying with him as he walked towards the inn and gave a wave, a smile, the sound of his voice.…
‘Louis, I can’t find Lemieux.’
‘Maybe the rutting has tired him out. Maybe the season is over for him.’
Oh-oh. ‘Odilon might have something. He’s playing co-producer with von Strade.’
Lorries and vans filled the narrow streets behind the Baron. In surrealistic semi-darkness, dressing-rooms, make-up, hairdressers and costumiers competed for space with a mobile canteen. Everything that could foreseeably be needed was there and if not available, then readily made on the spot in the workshops.
‘That one, he is like a voyeur driven out of madness to watch the behaviour of others,’ said Juliette bitterly of von Strade. ‘He pulls the strings and they all dance because they have to but I will not dance for him or for anyone else. Not now. Not ever again.’
‘Stay with Hermann, madame. Don’t let him out of your sight’
‘A forgery,’ she said. ‘All this has been mounted to perpetrate an untruth. Two hundred, three hundred – five hundred must be gathered here but at a signal, the whole place will shut up and no one – absolutely no one – will move until the clapperboard comes down.’
‘The Professor will want his amulet returned, madame. Please let me have it for safe-keeping. I want to hear what he has to say.’
‘And Danielle?’ she asked hotly.
Would such a sharpness not lead her into trouble? ‘Mademoiselle Arthaud also, yes, and Toto. Both have much to tell us, as do the Baroness and her husband and your father, madame. Your father.’
‘I … I would not recognize him if he was standing right where you are.’
‘But this is the world of film and anything is possible.’
‘Even a mature thirty-five-year-old Austrian with the mind of a fille de joie playing a sixteen-year-old perigourdine virgin who airs the bedding as she greets the prehistorian who’s about to come into her life,’ snorted Kohler. ‘From Essen of all places and bearing rucksack and hammer, no loose change, and holes not only in his pockets but in his socks!’
‘It’s magnificent, Hermann, and exactly as I had imagined it would be. Ah some changes, yes, since the days of the silents but mere refinements.’
‘As in war, so in film, my friend. Most of the time people are simply standing around wondering what the hell to do. Then whoosh, eh? Lights, action and camera and it’s all over in about thirty seconds or else two hours. The story of our miserable lives. She looks the part, doesn’t she?’
‘Ah yes, she does.’
Side by side, and dangling from their leather thongs, the two amulets, the real and the replica, were identical to the untrained eye. And certainly the deerhorn of the one was a trifle darker, a touch more of that deep bluish cast old bone often acquired, a few more of the hairline cracks, but really the match was quite remarkable. Line for line, the short, sharp, seemingly randomly arranged incisions of the flint engraving burin were so similar one could even see where it had first been pressed into the bone and then forced away or drawn towards the artist.
‘I worked largely from photographs and detailed drawings,’ said the propsman-cum-carpenter he had found all alone in the cluttered workshop where the smells of sawdust, paint and resin were pungent.
‘I commend you, mein Herr,’ enthused St-Cyr in deutsch. ‘Even Professor Courtet will be hard pressed to tell the difference.’
The man grinned and accepted a cigarette of thanks. ‘Take two,’ urged the Surete. ‘The Baron forgot and left the package at the chateau. He won’t mind.’
They lit up. Though young, the man had seen enough of life to shrewdly give him the once-over.
‘The Baron doesn’t forget anything, Inspector. Is the cave really a forgery?’
‘A forgery?’ came the startled reply.
‘Rumours … there are rumours circulating that we’re all to be let go and blacklisted if we say anything.’