Chicken in a pastry shell, with slices of truffles under the skin; artichoke hearts with foie gras; mushrooms cooked in goose fat; a stew of crayfish; fruit pastry with cherries, or an apricot Genoese cake with crushed walnuts. Ah mon Dieu, mon Dieu, the very mention of such things made the juices run.
‘Mother would always insist Monsieur Aubre, the chef and owner of the Truffe Noire, should cook some of the mushrooms she’d gathered to her specifications and afterwards would exclaim how perfect they were. The children used to make a little joke of it by saying he could just as well have burnt them to a crisp, maman, she would still have said they were perfect. They were her little treat. We … we always went to stay with her during the summer holiday, but now.…’
Nervously, she drew on the last of the cigarette and for a time said nothing. When he sat down beside her, their shoulders touched. She flinched and moved away a little, then abruptly stood as if she had had enough.
Pressing the cigarette against the stone wall, she extinguished it then took the trouble to carefully brush the ash mark from the stone before thrusting the butt at him. ‘For your little tin, yes?’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘My tin, ah yes. Merci.’ People from all walks of life collected cigarette butts openly and without shame, the old, the wealthy, the priest, the poor. Never had the streets and cafes been more empty of them.
The megot tin was dented and old, a specimen of raspberry throat lozenge that was no longer available and hadn’t been seen in the shops since that other war.
He carefully tucked the butt in among the others. Some had lipstick on them.
They looked at each other and she knew he saw doubt in her. She waited. She let him study her. She forced herself to stand before him.
He saw her blue eyes blink at last in fear. He saw the high cheekbones, the high forehead, clear skin, long lashes, wide lips, the proud chin he himself had hit.
In anger, she unbuttoned her cardigan and pulled it off. ‘It’s getting hot,’ she said tightly.
A pretty woman. ‘Tell me about the meals your mother prepared at your house.’
Ah damn him. ‘Did Andre partake of them, is this what you are asking?’
‘If you wish.’
Then, yes, he ate them without comment just as he has all the thousands I have had to cook for him. He never said a thing unless it was to find fault. Mother never let it bother her. She was here to be with me and the children.’
He was not going to say anything about the mushrooms he must have found. She realized this and turned abruptly away. Her shoulders tightened. A fist was clenched, the sweater purposefully folded.
‘Madame, at about what time would your mother have reached that little valley?’
She flinched. ‘What time? Ah … no later than two o’clock, so as to have everything ready.’
‘The picnic’
‘Yes. The vin paille de Beaulieu always had to be at the temperature of the stream and this took about three-quarters of an hour perhaps, so she would hurry a little to be early if possible. The Chateau Bonnecoste had to breathe. She liked to warm it in the sun, but not too much.’
He must go carefully now, she thought. He would sense this in the way she was standing with her back to him. He would know she was thinking of those last few moments.
When he said nothing further, when he just let her pull away the webs of memory to see herself with maman in years gone by, she bowed her head and tearfully blurted, ‘He was a monster.’
‘Who?’
‘The man who killed her.’
St-Cyr could still hear her screams echoing in that little valley, but even so he cautioned, ‘We are not certain it was a man, madame.’
She clenched her fists and stamped a foot. ‘No woman would have done such a thing! To use a …’
She choked. She buried her face in a hand. ‘I … I didn’t mean to say that. You … you must not listen to me. I’m not myself’
‘A stone tool?’
He was right behind her now and if she moved away, she knew he would force her to stand still.
When she nodded, the Inspector let go of her. He did not take chances, not this one, she told herself. He will force me to tell him everything.
Taking a deep breath, she wiped her eyes and nose with her hands and fingers. ‘We … that is, maman and I, knew the ancients used such tools to butcher their kills. We talked of it while skinning a rabbit or cleaning a chicken for the pot. Mother was very curious about such things. She experimented – people knew of this, much to my discomfort. She … she showed me how it must have been done and made me do it, Inspector. Me. I was only five years old that first time. Five!’
She calmed herself and went on, could not keep the sadness from her voice. ‘The flint knife for carefully splitting the skin as the surgeon’s scalpel does, the scraper for removing the fat and flesh from the hide, the handaxe chopper for … for.…’
St-Cyr leapt. She tried to run from him. She fought to get away and started to scream, to kick, to …
‘Stop!’ he said into her ear. ‘Be brave. Please, I am sorry. Let us start back. Your classes … someone will be asking for you.’
‘I can’t go in there any more. I can’t! It isn’t fair. Mother butchered like that, me with my bruises and my black eye. I’m going away. I’m leaving this little place. Now that I’m free of her, I’m free of him.’
Jouvet and family lived in two rooms and the attic of the school. From where he sat at the kitchen table across from the husband, Kohler could see right through the open doorways to the senior students. Girls and boys were segregated, the girls in view. Those directly in line with him could not help but see him if they raised their eyes.
They didn’t. The oldest was about fourteen. Several silently wept for madame’s sake. Some worked their lips in prayer, others worried their fingernails or simply filled in the time by stolidly waiting. Perhaps twenty students in all and Madame Jouvet teaching both upstairs and downstairs under the critical eye of her husband and run off her feet, what with the household chores, the hunt for food and things, the rationing.
‘So, okay,’ he said, deliberately lowering his voice. ‘Let’s go over it again. You went to Sarlat to see about your leg and to find out if your request for a pension had been finally considered.’
The dark brown eyes faced him as they had faced the Russian winter. Gaunt and empty of all feeling.
‘I have nothing to hide.’
‘Then don’t be so stubborn. Just give me the names of those who saw you there. Monday, right? Remember it was Monday and you took the gazogene autobus to Carsac-Aillac to catch the train to Sarlat at about what? 11:00 a.m.? Yes, that ought to suit. Bang on for a walk up the tracks and into the woods, my friend, with plenty of time to spare on the return journey and no one the wiser.’
The day of the murder. The detective was just trying to rattle him. Kohler could know nothing. ‘Our mayor gave the driver of that bus a letter and some papers to deliver to the mayor of Sarlat. Old Pialat will have seen me sitting right up front because of my leg. Why not ask him? He’ll tell you I was on the bus. He’s full of wind, that mayor of ours, but sometimes what he says is true.’
‘I will, but first I want to hear from yourself the names of those who can prove you were in Sarlat. That mother-in-law of yours may have known her killer.’
‘Known her killer? Oh come now, Inspector. Ernestine did not put up a fight – is this what you are saying?’
It was.
The Russian winter returned, causing Kohler to think of his two sons, a pang of worry, was it really so terrible there?