Murder in Lascaux (38 page)

I thought hard about Daglan's summary. The pieces fit.

“But why did she try to poison the rest of us?” Patrick demanded.

“The mushrooms? Well, Monsieur, by then things were out of her control. After Rouffignac, as far as Marianne was concerned, both her friend's problem and her brother's had been solved. That is, until the three of you (he pointed at David, Toby, and me) discovered the shrine, and then she felt compelled to go one step further.”

“But all of us? Did she think she could get away with it?” asked Patrick.

“Not all of you. Her friend Madame Belnord was in her room. Yes, it was reckless, but an accident in the cooking class would draw the least suspicion, she reasoned, and so she tried to feed you those mushrooms this morning. Afterward she could try to claim she had made an unfortunate mistake. The rest you know.”

That Marianne could be so cold-blooded was appalling.

“Any other questions?” asked Daglan.

“There's still something that puzzles me about the first murder,” said Toby. “That dead bird Marianne left next to the corpse, why?”

“Ah, the dead dove. I think she calculated that the bird would throw us off her trail and cast suspicion elsewhere. For a while, that's exactly what happened. We assumed the murderer was someone who had knowledge of the Lascaux symbolism, a prehistorian most likely. We wasted our time going over Malbert's old cases, looking for a colleague or a researcher who might bear him a grudge. That's how Marc Gounot became a suspect.”

“And now you're sure he wasn't involved?” I asked.

“Yes, and he has been released. We have a confession. As far as I am concerned, the case is closed.”

Was it? I thought of all the people whose lives had been altered by what Marianne had done. The case would never be closed for them. Roz would grieve for the sister-in-law whom she had just begun to understand and for her dearest friend, whom she had not understood at all. Guillaume's shrine would be the focus of a media circus, and his sister would spend the rest of her life in prison. Gounot would lose his position as the guardian at Lascaux. And who knows who would grieve for Malbert?

I felt very tired. The others seemed subdued as well, as we said goodbye to Inspector Daglan and his assistant. We lingered on in the salon, talking through the logistics of our departure. David offered to help Roz make phone calls back to the United States. We realized she would need to stay on for at least a few more days, to arrange for transport of Dotty's body to Baltimore. Patrick, who of all of us had been least touched by the whole affair, proved a good friend in this regard. Insisting he had no immediate need to return home, he offered to stay with Roz and help her through the arrangements. He would book hotel rooms for them in Sarlat. We were thinking of doing the same thing ourselves.

We were just settling the details when we heard a knock at the front door. We tensed, expecting the awkward return of Guillaume. But when the door swung open, it was Marc Gounot who walked in. “I was waiting for that policeman to leave. I've seen quite enough of him. I've come to say how sorry I am about Dotty,” he said apologetically. “Roz, I especially want to offer you my sympathy.” He walked across the room and took Roz's hand. Lily stood and left them talking quietly for a few minutes, Roz occasionally patting her cheeks to dry tears.

After a while he rose to go, but Toby was waiting for him near the door. “Would you mind if we talked to you before you leave?” Marc nodded and followed us out the front door. Across the driveway, under a linden tree, there were a few metal tables set out for the guests, and he and I sat down at one while Toby dragged over a third chair. By now Marc knew Marianne had been arrested, but he hadn't heard the details of her confession, and he was eager to know what Inspector Daglan had told us. When we finished our summary of events, he scratched his head in disbelief. Then it was our turn to ask him questions. First, about Rouffignac.

Yes, he knew in advance about our group's visit to Rouffignac, because Dotty had mentioned it to him at Domme. He told Dotty he was scheduled to work at Rouffignac that day and that it would be fun to keep it a surprise for the rest of us in case he ended up as the driver of our train. As it turned out, he enjoyed seeing our reaction when he waved to us.

Fernando? Yes, they did business from time to time. Fernando would bring his finds to the mineral shop for sale: rocks, artifacts if he was lucky, once in a while an arrowhead or spear point. He had good eyes for the ground and was something of a magpie. He also did odd jobs for the owner of the Château of Castelnaud. That day we saw them together, Fernando was finishing some masonry work at Castelnaud and had dropped in to try to sell Marc an old flintstone.

“So that's how Inspector Daglan came up with the idea Fernando and I were involved in a conspiracy, is it? It was because you told him you had seen us talking together.”

I admitted that we had.

“Well, perhaps I shouldn't blame you. I know that Fernando has a police record and that he's not the most agreeable sort, but I seem to get on with him pretty well.”

I was glad Marc wasn't resentful that I had shared my suspicions with the inspector. And I was glad that Fernando had played no role in the murders. In fact, I felt somewhat guilty about him. My grandfather had been a Portuguese laborer too. How might his life had been different had he not come to America? I regretted my hostility toward Fernando. I might have been more generous.

There was one other matter I wanted to clear up before we parted. I needed to ask Marc how much he knew about his father's relationship with the German archaeologist who had visited Cazelle during the war. I told him what I had learned about his father and Anders Voellmer from reading Jenny Marie's notebook.

“Anders Voellmer? Of course, I know about him. How could I not know? It was the work my father did with Voellmer that got him into trouble. It's true they worked together, on one research project, mind you, but my father wasn't a Nazi. In fact, he was completely naive about politics. His only interest was his research, and Voellmer was interested in the same subject. It's unfortunate Voellmer also was a member of the Nazi Party.”

Marc's claim that his father had been an innocent when it came to politics struck me as evasive. According to Daglan, Henri Gounot had purged his Jewish colleagues from their positions to placate the Vichy authorities. For that he was personally responsible. I felt I couldn't remain silent on this point and confronted Marc about it.

“My father wasn't perfect. He made mistakes as many Frenchmen did during that period, and maybe he did some things I would rather not know about. But he was determined not to let the war interrupt his research, and that's where the authorities had influence over him. Anders Voellmer especially, too much influence, I admit.”

There was a lot more to be said on this score, but I held back. Right now I wanted to coax additional information from Marc, not drive him away. “What was their research about? Do you know?”

“Ancient symbolism, the symbolism of prehistoric cave art, to be specific.”

“Such as the tableau of the bird beside the falling man in Lascaux?”

“Precisely. My father spent a lot of time trying to analyze those images.”

“And did he reach any conclusions?” Toby asked.

“Only that the drawings were made to illustrate a story, a myth, if you want to use that term—a myth that was as important to the Cro-Magnons as the stories in the Bible are to us. The difficulty of knowing what the meaning was is that we have no other references to the story except for the drawings. My father had a theory, though. It's too bad he never lived to complete his work. Did I tell you I have kept all his notes and papers? Well, I have them, and one day I will complete his work and restore his reputation.”

It would take more than a clever theory to do that. But I pressed on. “Are you willing to share his ideas with us?”

“There's no reason not to, now. His point was that images of birds appear very rarely in prehistoric art. But when they do appear, they are always painted in an abstract style, in the simplest of outlines without much detail, whereas all the other animals are drawn as realistically as possible. Why? He thought the answer must be that the bird was treated as a special creature, different from all the others, more sacred perhaps.”

“But isn't that true as well for the human figures in cave art?” I remembered that the falling man in Lascaux was presented as a stick figure without any suggestion of volume or dimensions.

“That's so,” replied Marc. “And that's what my father noticed, too. So in the mind of the cave artists there must have been a special connection between birds and human beings, but what was it? As an anthropologist, my father knew a lot about comparative religions. In one of his papers, he argued that in almost every culture around the world, birds are associated with gods or spirits. It's a natural association. Birds fly in the air, they inhabit the sky, and that's where the spirits live. So the bird becomes a symbol of the soul.

“That was one of his insights. Another was his recognition that for the Cro-Magnons, a human being wasn't just another animal but a special being with a soul. And that's why humans and birds are linked in cave art and why they are depicted differently from other animals. At least, that was his theory. But if I can ever prove him right, the world will have to recognize that my father was the first to show that the Cro-Magnons believed in the soul and that their art wasn't merely about hunting. It was essentially religious.”

“So you think the bird in Lascaux symbolizes the soul of the dying man?” asked Toby.

“I do,” replied Marc.

“It's an interesting theory,” I said, “but how does Anders Voellmer fit into the picture?”

“The Cathar Dove,” Marc answered flatly. “Another bird image meant to represent the soul, but this time the Holy Spirit in the Middle Ages. Voellmer convinced himself Périgord was somehow endowed with mystical properties that inspired both the Cro-Magnons and the Cathars to create similar images in their art and religion. But that wasn't enough for Voellmer. On top of that, he came to believe the dove was associated with the Holy Grail. For him, the Grail was a code word for a sacred work of art, never named, that was entrusted to the Cathars until such time as humanity could rediscover its ancient wisdom and realize its potential. Possessing the sacred work of art would confer almost supernatural powers on those who could claim it.”

“Namely, the Nazis?” Toby asked with irony in his voice.

“Of course. That's why Himmler was interested. And just what was this mystical object according to Voellmer, and where did he think it was hidden?”

“I think I can guess the answer,” responded Toby. “It was hidden in the cave of Cazelle.”

“Yes. Lascaux and Cazelle, two caves that shared a common destiny. In Lascaux, Voellmer saw a bird next to a falling man, predicting, he thought, the end of the Cro-Magnons, who were supposed to be the first Aryans. In Cazelle he saw a bird perched atop a pedestal ready to soar, foretelling the glory of the renewed Aryan race! Well, that's what Voellmer made of it, anyway; that's not what my father thought. When Voellmer saw the statue of the dove, the fool actually thought he had found the Holy Grail. And he dragged my father down with him, discrediting a theory that otherwise might have made sense.”

“A lot of things are beginning to make sense,” said Toby. “So you do know about the statue underneath the Cazelle chapel. That's what Voellmer was sketching, isn't it? He was sending pictures of it back to Himmler.”

“I've never seen the dove in person, but yes. I know about the statue from my father's notes and from what my uncle has told me. Only members of Guillaume's cult are allowed inside the cave, and joining up would have been too high a price for me to pay. Besides, as I've told you, I don't buy the parallels between the cave artists and the Cathars. All that was Voellmer's idea. What I want to do is pursue my father's study of Cro-Magnon bird imagery. I think I can do that without bothering about the Holy Grail.”

I had been mulling things over while listening to Marc's description of his father's theory and the crackpot views of Anders Voellmer. “Marc, how much do you think Marianne knew about the interest taken by the Nazis in the Cathar statue?”

“She must have been aware of it.”

“What about Guillaume?”

“Of course, what she knew, he knew.”

I now had the last piece of the puzzle, and it meant Daglan was wrong. “The inspector told us Marianne left the bird by the corpse to throw the police off her trail, to send them looking into Malbert's old cases rather than investigating the family. But the real reason was that she was leaving a message for Guillaume! Who else would understand the connection between the Lascaux bird and the Cathar Dove? She was telling him someone who knew the Cathar secrets had taken care of Malbert and stopped him from violating the shrine.”

“And the garrote was another part of the message,” added Toby. “Didn't you tell me it was a method of execution used against the Cathars?”

“That's right.”

Toby frowned. “So that means Guillaume knew all along that someone from his cult or his family had killed Malbert.”

“They all knew,” I said, “including the old baron.”

W
e said our goodbyes and returned to our room to pack. I took Jenny Marie's notebook out of my drawer and, after a moment's silent debate, brought it to the dining room to give to Madame Martin. Finding she wasn't there, I wrote a note saying that since the notebook had last been in her mother's hands, it seemed right to entrust it to her. I guessed she would give it to Guillaume, but in my mind's eye I pictured her returning it to the offering box in the chapel where her mother had placed it when Jenny Marie died. I left the note and the notebook in the center of the table where Marianne had served us our first meal together.