Stonekiller (5 page)

‘Have they? Then did they tell you, please, that it was we of the LVF who were always given the task of guarding the rear and facing the partisans? One could not take a crap or a piss for fear of having his balls shot off or the organ removed with a knife and fed to him as his throat was slit!'

‘I thought it was freezing? I thought it was too cold to … well, wave the wand,' shrugged Kohler.

‘
It was!
'

For a man with a bad leg, Jouvet could ignore pain when he wanted. Deft with his stick, and by throwing his right side forward, he adopted a twisting gait that soon took them through the graveyard to ruined walls and beyond. Domme had lots of open spaces, the houses often being situated around irregularly shaped quadrangles, and everywhere behind them there were gardens that had been turned over to sustenance. Pigs, goats, beans, potatoes, artichokes.… Mentally the farmboy in Kohler ticked them off with appreciation, giving credit where due.

Jouvet knew the town well, knew every wall and bolt hole. Each house, most of one storey with attic dormers, was of that same soft honey-coloured limestone but often with steeply pitched roofs that were shingled with
lauzes —
slabs of flat grey limestone. Where the roofs were far less steep, they were covered with the thick flat reddish tiles so common in the Périgord and the South.

Not on Berlin Time like the Occupied Zone, where 8 a.m. meant 6 a.m., nevertheless the town had long since been up and about. The house, both school and home, was but a stone's throw from the rampart walk but separated from it by a single row of houses. Here on this side of the street, there was only the school and the gardens; the other three sides of the quadrangle held distant rows of houses. Again there were tethered goats, geese, ducks, rabbits in cages, chickens, people working, men, women, boys and girls.…

A small schoolyard was to the left of the building. Jouvet went through the boys' door like a rocket to shriek the kids into silence. No one dared look up from his or her desk. All hands were folded in front — perhaps thirty pairs. A portrait of Pétain hung on the wall dead centre and just below a clock with Roman numerals. There was a stove which, in winter, would always have a pot of water with sweet-smelling herbs simmering in it. A small blackboard, a stack of slates brought back into use due to the shortages, some tired exercise books with a few empty pages … little else met the eye until Kohler noticed the cut-outs rescued from ancient magazines. Fish swam across the imaginary sea of one wall. Pages of sheet music with pictures of symphony orchestras competed to broaden young minds but there were also things from their own world, though everything extra was probably dead against the regulations of the Ministry of Education. A taste of honey in a world of rote memory and annual examinations.

The silence was penetrating, the wait an agony.

‘
Bon.
That is how it should be,' said Jouvet. ‘There has been a murder, yes, and the Inspector here has come all the way from Paris seeking answers. Your continued silence is mandatory even if it has to last for the next ten days.'

Christ!

These students were the little ones from the ages of four to seven or eight, but it was exactly the same in the upstairs room. Not a whisper.

‘They aren't just afraid of you,' breathed Kohler. ‘They're terrified.'

‘As they should be.'

The view from the promenade des Falaises was lovely, a Lilliputian landscape with distant rows of tall, spindly poplars along the roadsides and boundaries but St-Cyr had no time for it. ‘Madame, I must ask you some difficult questions. Please, if at any time you feel it is too much, simply say so.'

A nod would suffice, for he was trying to be kind. The Inspector fiddled with his pipe, deciding to ration himself, but when she asked for another cigarette, he readily gave it up as if he had plenty.

‘Your husband, madame …' he began and she thought, Yes, he would start with André and she would have to tell him something, though suddenly
maman
was no longer here to advise her, to direct, to say, You must give him only a little.

‘André was not always like this,' she hazarded softly.

She did not avoid his gaze. He must be gentle. ‘But things have never been good?'

Her shrug said, Why should you care? Life's like that sometimes.

‘My husband always felt he had married beneath him, Inspector.'

‘But was your mother aware of this?'

Why must he ask it?
Why?
What had he found at the cave or in that valley? ‘
Maman
believed each married couple should stay together, no matter what.'

‘That is not what I asked.'

Her look was one of instant betrayal. ‘Have you found something?' she asked sharply and turned away to seek the distant scarps and wooded hills where the murder had occurred. Ash was irritably flicked from her cigarette. ‘Mother didn't know of it. There, does that satisfy you?'

She clenched a fist. He waited. He never took his eyes from her. She could feel him memorizing every last feature, the tears and how they could not stop, the chin — was it not a little proud? The bruise … the throat as she swallowed. ‘We … we exchanged letters every week, Inspector. Sometimes twice and even three times. Sometimes mother would telephone the post office here and … and Monsieur Coudinec, the
facteur
, would send his son to fetch me.'

He hated himself for pressing her. ‘And these letters, madame, these telephone calls, was your husband aware of them?'

Behind the tears, her smile, though crooked, was soft and forgiving. ‘There are no secrets, are there, in a little place like this? André often knew of the calls and intercepted her letters and read them. He knew
maman
hated him for what he was doing to me but also he knew she despised him for having proved her judgement so wrong in the choice of a husband for me.'

‘And the letters you wrote to your mother?'

‘He did not read them. That was not possible but … but mother kept them just as she kept everything I ever did. The notice of my first communion, the little cards of greeting I made for her at Christmas and for her birthday and that of my father — my dear father, Inspector. The letters
maman
made me write to him at least once a week!'

Ah
merde
, the poor child.…

‘It was her way of not only keeping me in touch with the father I would never meet, but of making sure I could read and write at a very early age. She was like that, Inspector. She always had to have two or three good reasons for doing something. Now, please, let us walk a little more. People will see us here. There will be enough talk as it is. I've left the children again without their teacher.'

From the promenade des Falaises, the walk passed below the public gardens which, in spite of the war and the hardships, held masses of flowers. ‘It's our mayor,' said the woman, welcoming the digression. ‘Monsieur Pialat insists pride of place is important particularly in hard times. The mill is just along here a little. Please, it is not far now.'

About seven hundred metres separated them from the graveyard at the other end of the esplanade. The windmill drew them to its soft yellow stone walls and he could see that it must have been a refuge for her when the troubles at home had become too much. Not used in years, its ancient walls had been left to the quiet dignity of decay.

She sat before him on the worn steps with her knees together and her arms wrapped tightly about them. She was, in that slender moment, like a woman who has suddenly been relieved of a tremendous burden but is still afraid to admit it to herself.

‘Madame, did your mother plan to visit you afterwards?'

Instantly the knees were released. ‘Not to stay with us. We … we haven't room and André … well, we've already discussed him.
Maman
would take a room … Ah no, I must cancel it, mustn't I? A room at the Hotel Esplanade. She … she always liked to stay in a good place when she came to see us. She always said the sacrifice, it … it was worth it for my sake, and for the children's.'

The pretence of being well-off had been important to her mother — she could see the détective thinking this. There would always have been those who criticized such foolishness — she could see him thinking this too. André most especially. André.… But there would be those who, on seeing her mother so well dressed and spending her money like that, would think well of the daughter she had raised. Ah yes, the détective, he thought this too.

‘We shared our meals. The children loved her visits. Dinner at her hotel, supper at the Auberge de la Truffe Noire, afterwards a drink in the Café de Bon Pere under moonlight with the sounds of the cicadas in the trees. Before this war, a
poulet en croute aux truffes, fonds d'artichauts au foie gras, champignons à la sarladaise, ragout d'ecrivisses, clafoutis aux cerises
or perhaps if it was a really special occasion, a
génoise ô l'abricot avec les noix pilées.
'

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 Aubré, 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 cafés been more empty of them.

The
mégot
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 André 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 Château 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.…'