Gypsy (23 page)

‘Did he kill himself because he knew too much, Countess?'

‘Are you certain she brought such a thing?'

‘As certain as you must be. What'd she do? Park that little car of hers outside the walls?'

‘She came and she went.'

‘She didn't stay the night?'

‘She couldn't.'

‘She'd have needed a
laissez-passer
to be on the roads. Who the hell provided it? The Generalmajor Wehrle?'

Was this Wehrle on the run – she could see him thinking this.

He asked again. She said, ‘That I can't say. Gabrielle is of independent means and has a mind of her own. René Yvon-Paul and I are left to tend this … this old fortress and to see that somehow it earns sufficient to keep it going.'

‘They've taken the last of the horses.'

‘They took the wine and five of my best workers. The
Service de Travail Obligatoire
. The district Kommandant is proving difficult.'

‘Did you warn Gabrielle to stay away? Is that why she didn't hang around?'

‘I told her that to oppose the Occupier was both foolish and inopportune.'

At last they were getting somewhere! ‘What did she want you to do? Hide someone? Was that it, eh?'

Why hadn't he just said, Damn you? ‘A package. That was all she said.'

‘
When
?'

‘I can't tell you because I simply don't know. A week, a month … She was uncertain.'

‘So, did the “package” have two legs?'

‘Come and see the pigs. We've been fattening them up for the Kommandant's table and for the boys in Russia but when they take our Judith, we'll be left with empty pens. That's how it is and now I trust you understand why we couldn't accept any such packages and why I must ask you to help us.'

Far from the kitchens, St-Cyr let his gaze pass slowly down over the lower vineyards. He'd had no idea they could be seen from Gabrielle's window. She had led him to this room, off in another wing of the château, lost even among those of the servants' quarters. She and the Countess hadn't got along – the Countess had felt her only son had married beneath himself. Her own husband had been killed in the Great War, their son in this one. There'd been friction with Gabrielle, and the loss of two loved ones, which should have brought them closer, hadn't helped.

The single iron bed with its flaking white paint had lent a flea-market desperation to the room and still did. A bureau, a mirror that was none too big and mounted awkwardly for a woman as tall as Gabrielle, an armoire and a chair were about all there was. Country scenes cut from magazines had been pasted into rescued frames. A simple crucifix had been nailed to the wall at the head of the bed.

It was at once the room of a chamber-maid or scullery girl. Gabrielle had deliberately chosen to make her statement that this was how she was perceived by the Countess and therefore this was how it should be.

Since the murder in Fontainebleau Forest, things had improved but still there would be reservations on both sides, old insults and opinions. For those, they needed time.

A soft brown velvet bag with a drawstring of twisted gold thread had held eighteen uncut diamonds, each of five or six carats. Emerald green, yellow, a soft and frosted pink, a blue, some clear white stones … Russian diamonds Gabrielle had brought from Leningrad as a girl of fourteen and had kept no matter what and always in the hope her family would have survived to be reunited with her.

Diamonds then, and diamonds now.

There were some newspapers on the bed and he wondered at them for they were new. The
Völkischer Beobachter
, the
Pariser Zeitung
and a copy of
Signal
, the picture magazine – the January 1943 issue and photos of Gabrielle at the Club Mirage, entertaining the troops. There were shots of her with laughing soldier boys on leave or boarding the train back to the front, others of her with generals. A collage of her with von Ribbentrop and with the General Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the Military Governor of France, occupied a centrefold.

A smiling, cigar-smoking Otto Abetz, the ambassador, had his arm about her waist, she laughing. Dr Karl Epting, the Director of the
Deutsche Institut
was more staid, as was the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Old Shatter Hand, the Kommandant von Gross Paris.

In page after page she was seen with the high and mighty of the Third Reich. There were bits and pieces of her private life both in Paris and here on the Loire. Shots of the château showed her with her son.

Lying under the newspapers, there was a letter of commendation signed by Hitler himself, 10 January 1943. She had brought the newspapers and the magazine with her on the twelfth to show the Countess but had left them here.

‘
Sonderbehandlung
,' Herr Max had warned. He must have known the article had already been published and the magazine distributed not just in France but in every occupied country and wherever the troops were fighting.

She was revered by thousands. Front-line soldiers heard her singing via broadcasts that were picked up live from the club. There had been several requests for her to visit the troops but so far she had been able to put these off.

The Resistance … a
réseau
… She had said she'd join up, and he had agreed and had included himself but why had she let the Occupier do this to her unless desperate and thinking it would protect the
réseau
? Every hot-headed
résistant
in the country would be after her.

When René Yvon-Paul came to find him, the boy, who looked a lot like his mother but had the dark brown eyes and hair of his father, gravely said, ‘You must tell
maman
we cannot possibly accept any packages at this time. Things are far too difficult for us. She must listen to
grand-mère
in the matter and not argue with those who love her.'

‘What sort of packages?'

The boy burst into tears. ‘Was it a suitcase?' asked St-Cyr gently.

‘
No
! It … it was someone she wanted us to hide for a few days, just until things could be finalized.'

‘
Who
? René, you must tell me if I'm to help her.'

‘A
gitan
, a
nomade
. She said he had some work to do for them in Paris and then they … they would send him to us for “delivery” to others.'

‘And were these others to help him on from here?'

‘Yes!'

Longing for a cigarette, they drove in silence. St-Cyr shut his eyes. He wished he could peacefully gaze at the countryside, but the roads … ‘
There's a convoy up ahead, Hermann
!'

‘Where? There's no convoy.'

‘
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, idiot, trust me
!'

Trust … wasn't that what this whole affair was all about? wondered Kohler uncomfortably. Trust between friends and partners, trust between a man and his
Vaterland
, and trust between the members of a
réseau
and two detectives who should have known better than to have meddled with them in the first place but had been ordered to!

The brakes were hit. The Citroën slewed sideways. At about 90 kilometres an hour, it sped broadside towards the rear lorry. They did a complete circle. Another and another … ‘
Hermann
!'

The car pulled out of its spin and they found themselves at the side of the road.

‘So, Louis, why not tell me what you found out, eh? Why keep me in suspense?'

‘The Resistance in Vouvray were to pass the Gypsy on to others once he had finished his work in Paris. De Vries will know of this, Hermann. Gabrielle will have told him of it.'

‘Then it's even worse than we thought. The son of a bitch will turn them all in if he has to.'

‘And if not him, then Tshaya.'

At Beaugency they stopped for the
prix fixe
of watery soup, sour wine, stuffed cabbage leaves but stuffed with what – more of the infamous ‘mystery' meat? – and
prunes aux vinaigre
. There wasn't a single one of the Occupier in the restaurant except for Hermann and there were stares from all others.

At OrléBuilt on the right bans they headed north towards Paris, the meal not sitting well. Neither of them had any tobacco. Even their
mégoi
tins, where all cigarette butts, found or otherwise were kept, held only ashes.

At a control, the car was flagged down and they had to go through the motions.
Cartes d'identité
were handed over, their
laissez-passers
and
sauf-conduits
. Cold stares from the burly Feldwebel in charge were received by the Sûreté. Always there was this little panic, this fluttering of the heart only more so now.

But it didn't happen. Louis wasn't asked to get out, and soon they were on their way again, Kohler heaving a sigh of relief. ‘Berlin must be tearing their hair,' he said.

‘Himmler's, I think, and Herr Max's.'

‘Boemelburg's too.' Kohler floored the car as they passed a farm wagon that was driven by an old woman whose black shawl was suddenly caught by the wind. ‘Nana must have hoped and prayed De Vries had escaped to England in 1940, Louis. The Norwegians let a lot of prisoners go just before the Defeat. She would have been ready to believe he'd been parachuted into France, but even so, would have been surprised to learn he had arrived on her doorstep to do the very thing they wanted.'

Had they asked specifically for him? they both wondered, but thought it doubtful if for no other reason than security. Instead, they must have asked simply for help and then found an expert had been sent.

Wind-drift was carrying the snow across a ploughed field. Sunlight, rare for this time of year, was breaking through the clouds to be caught among the crystals …

‘If De Vries is now having to get his nitro from dynamite, Louis, then how much of it did those three women find for him? Berlin and Herr Max wouldn't have given him any, no matter what they fed them by wireless, so don't start thinking they did.'

‘But does Herr Max know for certain it's them, Hermann, or does he only suspect it is?'

The airwaves, the distance factor, the difficulties of pinning a transceiver down. Was there still a particle of hope or was all lost?

Built on the right bank of the Nonette and surrounded by a plain that was bordered by forests now shrouded in snow, Senlis was about fifty kilometres to the north-north-east beyond Paris. It was a quiet provincial town whose soft grey limestone walls and substantial houses had lasting charm. But it was from this southernmost apex that the triangle known as the Devastated Region began.

To the north, at Péronne in 1917, the British had found on the blackened shell of the
mairie
a signboard left by the Kaiser's retreating army.
Nicht ärgern, nur wundern
. Do not be enraged, only wonder.

The devastation had been deliberate and terrible. Thousands and thousands of fruit trees had been hacked off at exactly waist height and felled so that their crowns all pointed with mathematical preciseness along the path of the retreating army.

The same had happened to the poplars and buttonwoods which had once beautified the lanes and roads. From Senlis to Saint Quentin in the north and to Albert in the west, had been affected but in reality the ruination of that war had been much greater. About fourteen hundred villages and towns had all but been obliterated.

And in Senlis? It had been occupied from 2 September 1914 until the eleventh, during the initial push to the Marne. Here the invader had trodden relatively lightly, one might suppose, looting, burning and destroying all but four of the houses along the fabled rue du la République. Its mayor and six others had been executed, but fortunately much of the town had been spared.

During the retreat, all wells and springs had been polluted with the carcasses of dead animals and latrine excrement, the farm buildings either burned or blown up and the roads dynamited.

‘It's a wonder you speak to me at all,' muttered Kohler, still behind the wheel.

‘Ah! it wasn't of your doing.' Hermann had been taken prisoner in 1916.

‘Right after the Armistice we were marched north and through Jussy, Louis. Not a Kaiser's shell or one of yours had hit it but not a wall, a bush, flower or blade of grass had been left. Hell, it was only a little place. Why'd they do a thing like that?'

Hermann must have seen the remains of the orchards, the farmboy in him overwhelmed. ‘In war all things are possible. Come on, let's find the house of Monsieur Jacqmain's mother. Let's not dwell on ancient history.'

‘It was only twenty-five years ago and now we're right back in the shit again.'

The grey-stone house, with mullioned windows and white trim, was just off the rue de la Treille in the oldest part of town. Built largely in the eighteenth century, it was part seventeenth-century priory, part thirteenth-century chapel, and the two long storeys of it exuded tranquillity, substance and stability. But it was from the back that the treasure of the house was best seen even in winter. Here ivy-covered, high and ancient walls enclosed a large garden with sturdy walnut trees and several venerable apple trees. The remains of the chapel were at the rear of the house where moss-covered stone steps led steeply up from beneath the apple bows, a good six metres to the top of the Gallo-Roman wall that had once surrounded the town.

‘Silvanectum, Hermann. Home of the Silvanectes. There were once twenty-eight towers along this wall, but now only sixteen are left.'

Trying to momentarily forget their problems, Louis added, ‘If ever I could move out of that house of my mother's, this is what I would aspire to.'

Kohler had heard it all before. The little retirement with government pension, the farm in Provence where vegetables might be harvested if sufficient water could possibly be secured; the orchard in Normandy not ravaged by cutworms, blight, frost, starlings, war or thieves, namely tax collectors. ‘It doesn't look as if there's anyone around.'