Murder in Lascaux (34 page)

“And you suspect the Cazelle family is still shielding art that was either looted or hidden during the war,” said Toby, more as a statement than a question.

“That's what I'm here to find out. At the beginning of the war, Jewish families with connections—and even some Jewish-owned galleries— sent art down from the North to be hidden away from the Germans. A couple of well-known collections ended up in local castles. Some of those collections are still missing.”

“Like the Bernheim-Jeune collection,” I said.

“That's right. Recently my group came across an affidavit in connection with one of those cases that stated that the Château de Cazelle had been among the hiding places, along with others that were better known. It's not a certainty. There isn't any mention of Cazelle in my father's records, and there's no record of art that had been stored in the château being returned to original owners after the war. But there have been rumors of hidden art and family secrets, and that's what I'm here to investigate. Enrolling in the cooking school made a convenient cover. I've searched pretty much the entire château since we've been here, but so far I've come up empty-handed.”

“David thinks the man who was murdered in Lascaux was trying to investigate the same rumors and that's why he was killed,” said Lily.

“I do. Which is why you're in danger, Nora. Whoever killed Malbert is trying to kill you too, and for the same reason—to keep a secret. I don't understand why he thinks you've uncovered it, but I'm hoping you'll tell me. We need to pool our information to protect ourselves.” David took a breath, held it a few seconds, and slowly exhaled. “So, please, you two, tell me what you've learned.”

“All right,” Toby began, “we've heard those rumors too about wartime art hidden in the château. We met an artist in Meyrals who thinks they're true. And we've been doing some snooping on our own. In fact, we were searching the attic the night you came up there and almost found us. We wondered if you had been following us.”

“What? I had no idea anybody was up there. I heard a noise from downstairs and thought someone was on to me, so I left in a hurry. But I went back the next night and didn't find anything.”

“Neither did we. If there are paintings hidden somewhere, they're not in the attic. But we have another lead. We've been told there's a cave somewhere on the castle grounds that could be a hiding place. In fact, Malbert was trying to gain access to that cave before he was killed.”

David slammed his palm on the table. “I knew it! That's got to be it.”

“Hold on a minute,” I cautioned. “I'm not convinced you're on the right track.”

David was taken aback. “Why do you say that?” He looked at Lily, then at me again.

I explained what I had learned about Jenny Marie Cazelle, including our discovery of the hidden notebook. If there had been paintings hidden in the château for safekeeping during the war, she would have mentioned them, I felt sure. She had risked her own safety and that of her brother to protect a Jewish child, so she certainly would have voiced misgivings about a scheme to appropriate victims' art. Besides, hadn't she collected works by some of her old friends from the academy for resale at provincial auctions? Perhaps that was how rumors about a cache of art gained currency. No, I said, the family may have secrets to protect, but they weren't necessarily about stolen paintings.

David looked crestfallen. Our food arrived, and we received it in silence. When the waitress left, I continued. The others listened as they ate.

“But something unusual did take place here during the war.” I recounted Jenny Marie's references to the Nazi archaeologist who befriended her nephew and who made regular visits to the château to pursue his interests. “What he was studying I don't know, but he sent drawings back to Germany, and it seems they went directly to Himmler. My guess is they were sketches of prehistoric art, but I don't know any more than that.”

David almost tipped over his mug in excitement. “Say that again? An archaeologist who was writing to Himmler?”

I repeated that I didn't know the subject of the sketches and reviewed everything I had gleaned about the mysterious German professor. I added that Jenny Marie had painted a portrait of him that now hung in the corridor near our room.

“That could be Anders Voellmer, one of Himmler's crackpot scholars in the Ahnenerbe.”

“The what?” asked Toby.

“The Ahnenerbe. It was an organization Himmler created to trump up evidence to support the theory of a ‘master race.' They had an institute, an offshoot of the SS, which drafted academics and packed them off to dig up traces of Germanic ancestors, whether real or mythical. Voellmer was a Paleolithic archaeologist in the excavations department. He headed an expedition to the Dordogne before the war to try to prove the Cro-Magnons were the forefathers of the Aryan race, based on some theory he had about spear points and racial superiority. I think he believed the Cro-Magnons evolved from the Neanderthals and that they populated Germany before they settled anywhere else. He also wrote a couple of articles about Cro-Magnon art and symbolism, which have been completely discredited, but Himmler loved the stuff.”

“So, do you think he might have found something here that he thought helped prove his theory?” I asked.

“It's possible,” said David. “Something that happened last night at dinner is just beginning to make sense. I noticed Guillaume glared at you when you mentioned the Cathars. I had no idea why, but now I think I do.”

“Go on,” said Toby.

“If Voellmer was the Nazi who was visiting the château, then there's another part of his story that might be significant. You see, Voellmer bought into the occult in a big way. So did Himmler. While Voellmer was here in the Dordogne, studying the Cro-Magnons, he also became obsessed with the Cathars. He thought they were the preservers of ancient truth and carriers of the spark of human genius through the Middle Ages. He even concocted a theory that the Cathars were keepers of the ancient symbols that had come down from the cave artists and which later fed into the legend of the Holy Grail the Germans gushed over. But according to Voellmer, the Church distorted the legend; it was the Cathars who preserved the ancient knowledge of the Aryan forefathers and who understood the true meaning of the symbols. Well, there you are. It was all hogwash, of course, but Himmler lapped it up. Voellmer died in the war, but he's still a cult figure in some circles.”

Toby edged his chair closer to the table and leaned forward over his plate. “So whatever it is the family wants to protect may have something to do with the Cathars? Is that what you're saying?”

“I'm not sure, but I'd like to find out what's in that cave you mentioned.”

“We think we know where the entrance is located,” I said.

“Where?” David asked, with surprise in his voice.

I told him about the ceremony I had observed in the family chapel and how the men inside had disappeared, leading us to suspect a secret exit that must lead underground. Toby filled in the details of our search for the passageway, which, though unsuccessful, had yielded Jenny Marie's notebook.

“Let's try again,” urged David. “That's where we'll find the answer.”

“No!” Lily protested. “It's too dangerous! Two people are dead already. Don't you know when to stop?” I couldn't tell whether that last remark was meant for David or for Toby and me. In any case, David took it as a rebuke and began defending the righteousness of his project. Lily shook her head, looked away, and murmured, “There's a time to let go. You just can't see it.”

She was right. David was not to be deterred. In the end, Toby agreed to go with him. And I wasn't about to stay behind.

T
HERE WERE A FEW LIGHTS ON
upstairs in the château when we returned, but the downstairs was dark except for the entrance way and the central salon. Once we were upstairs, David escorted Lily to their room and then quietly knocked on our door. He was carrying a heavy-duty flashlight. Toby and I led him down the corridor to where the portrait of Anders Voellmer was hanging.

“So that's him, is it?” David whispered. “Looks nasty, and he
was
nasty.” In the glare of David's flashlight, the portrait seemed even more sinister than it had before under the more subdued light of the
minuterie.
We tiptoed back into our room.

“Did he actually believe those myths about the Cathars, or do you think he was just sucking up to Himmler?” Toby asked.

“Who knows?” David said with a shrug. “You could ask that about all those academics who ended up working for the Third Reich. And which was worse, believing that crap or just pretending to in order to advance your career?”

“Good point,” I acknowledged. “You said he was killed in the war. Do you know how it happened?”

“Voellmer was recalled to Berlin in the early part of '45 to finish his book on the precursors of the Aryans, but he never completed it. He was probably killed in the bombing of Berlin. We know he was in Berlin then, from Himmler's correspondence. I'm not aware of any sketches Voellmer sent from the Dordogne surviving in Himmler's papers, but when I get back to New York, I'll try to use my contacts to institute a search.”

Right now it was more important to investigate the Cazelle cave. We agreed to remain in our rooms until midnight, turn out the lights, wait another half-hour, and then rendezvous at the old stables. At the appointed time, Toby and I crept silently down the stairs, out the front door, and across the whispering gravel to the meeting place, guided only by the dim moonlight. David was waiting for us.

“We'd better not use our flashlights in the yard,” cautioned Toby, “but once we're on the cliff path, we'll go round a bend where the light won't be visible from the house.”

I took the lead as we set out, since I'd done this walk several times. I kept David on my left to make sure he didn't veer too far toward the cliff's edge. Once we were around the bend, I took the big flashlight from him and used it to light the dangerous edge of the path. In the dark, the topiary figures loomed frighteningly, sometimes blocking, sometimes revealing what would otherwise have been a fairy-tale view of the opposite cliffs, which were lit up dramatically for the summer tourists. It was a starry night, but the view overhead blinked on and off as we walked under oak trees and then out in the open again. I was so nervous that I nearly forgot to breathe. I kept worrying about being followed.

When we reached the chapel, I kept the lead. I wasn't going to let a little fear keep me from completing my quest with dignity. The door was closed, but it opened with normal pressure on the latch. That would seem to say the family had no fear of prying eyes. Well, we were going to pry now. David already knew we had examined the walls and floor. We had agreed that the place to look was behind the small altar, the one space we had not explored.

I lifted the altar cloth and aimed the flashlight at the altar's base. The surface looked like marble, but a knock on its face said wood. I asked Toby and David to examine the right and left sides of the altar, to see if there might be a crawl space behind. There wasn't. But I thought I'd try the simplest solution.

“Guys, take the Virgin and the candles off the altar, would you?” When they did, I put David's flashlight down and gave a big push upward on the overhang of the altar. It budged.

“Now help me lift the altar up and then away from the wall.” With a “one-two-three” heft, we had her up in the air and then back a few inches into the room. Another few tries, and there was a space big enough to walk into, and behind it was a hole in the wall as high as the altar. I went back to pick up the big flashlight, came round to where Toby and David were standing, and shone the beam into the opening. I saw a narrow corridor with walls of unpolished stone.

“I'm going in,” I said. “What about you?”

They were coming too. We agreed Toby would follow me, and David would follow him. David would use Toby's little flashlight. We would keep close together.

The way in was difficult. We had to crouch to get through the opening, and once we were in the corridor we had to walk with bent knees. Sometimes the walls were so close together that it was hard to move. But we managed to travel this way for what seemed a long while, descending gradually, and then rounding a corner, only to find ourselves at a wall with a very low opening. To get through that opening, we had to drop to our hands and knees. David was so big that he had to get on his stomach and crawl through like an overgrown child.

What I saw on the other side made our toils worthwhile. As David's shoulders came through, I beamed the flashlight toward the ceiling, which glowed a moonlike white, as the light caught hundreds of stalactites hanging high above us. I rose to my feet, my mouth agape with wonder.