Carousel, p.28
Carousel, page 28
‘Why indeed?’
Up in the loft of the barn beside the walnut mill, Kohler knew there could be no immediate danger to himself, yet he felt it. Gott im Himmel, it made his hands clammy. Was Louis in trouble again? Was that it?
The girl with the geese sat below him on a block of wood amid the littered straw. Wisps of fine flaxen hair trailed over the fresh-faced brow. The bright bandanna was only of so much use. At eighteen years of age a girl had no right to look like that while doing such a domestic chore. The geese crowded. She snatched another, clamped it between her warm thighs, jammed the funnel into its uptilted beak and proceeded to force-feed it. Thrust, thrust with the short wooden plunger, then the fist wrapped around the neck and down, down, the strokes firm and sure, the glance up at him, she knew damned well what he was thinking.
A tidy household. The château, the manor and the walnut mill. The hunt, the living in the rough while that was on, and a little something to warm the toes on frosty nights, ah yes.
In a way he envied Antoine Audit, but why did he feel the way he did? The loft had the usual paraphernalia, if one was in the walnut trade and making pâté as well. Baskets by the dozens, sacks, rakes, ladders, saws, bits of machinery, replacement paddles for the water-wheel, barrels for the walnut juice, the oil and pulp, screens, sieves, et cetera.
The canvas was dusty and when he’d got it off the thing, he stood in awe of it and knew immediately why the place had made him uneasy.
The rich deep tones of mahogany brought out the gnarled grain and beaten silver inlay. It was a cabinet, perhaps a metre and a half high and built in the shape of a truncated pyramid. Falcons with outspread wings hovered at the top of each of the four sides while lesser ones formed the handles of the tiny flat drawers; serpents with crowned heads were poised atop bamboo poles in silver that wrapped the edges of those same sides.
He pulled out one of the drawers. Another and another revealed the same. Each drawer was empty and lined with dark-blue felt.
Lost in thought, he didn’t hear the voices until they rose to shouting. There was a slap – a stinging smack across the face! The girl with the geese had fallen off her block of wood and now held her burning cheek.
Madame Audit stood over her. ‘Fool! Idiot! How could you have let him …’
The woman looked up to see him in the loft and, trembling, lowered her hand. The sound of the geese returned. The girl still lay sprawled among them, clasping her cheek.
Nice … it was really nice. Madame Audit was in her early thirties, wore a leather hacking jacket, whipcord jodhpurs and riding boots. A not unhandsome woman whose thin face served only to emphasize the rage and uncertainty in her hard brown eyes. ‘Monsieur, what right have you to search this place?’
‘None whatsoever,’ he heard himself saying. She hadn’t used the flat of her hand but the riding crop.
Sensing that he’d seen this, the woman turned quickly and strode from the barn.
The girl still lay in the shit and feathers looking up at him. Her fine young breasts pushed at the heavy shirt and sweater, then gradually settled down.
Gestapo, he heard her saying, though no words passed those fresh young lips. You’re from the Gestapo.
When he reached the floor, he stretched out a hand to her. ‘Relax, eh? It’s not you we want.’
‘What’s he done?’ she asked, giving out a fresh well of tears.
‘Nothing that I know of. Simply enjoyed himself making money and playing with the locals.’
The blue eyes blinked as if slapped again. ‘He’s got a mistress in Paris. I … I know he has, though he has denied this to me on the grave of his father.’
‘Hey, come on. Don’t worry so much. It’ll all sort itself out.’
‘Madame Audit knows about the girl. She has followed him to Paris with …’
‘With whom?’
‘The … the Major, the Count Felix von Lindermann. He … he is the one who comes from Bordeaux to … to stay with Madame and Monsieur Audit.’
The naval attaché and overseer of Bordeaux and Périgord, the Abwehr …
‘When’s the baby due?’ he asked, hating himself because it would only make her cry all the more.
‘In July, after … after the strawberries have been taken.’
The mare, a dappled grey, stood with its reins drooping in front of the main entrance to the château. Accustomed to the manor house, the Audit woman had chosen the newly acquired premises as her defence.
The horse had been ridden hard, but why the hurry? Why leave a fine animal to catch its death?
Getting angrily out of the car, Kohler started across the lawns. The château’s blue-slate turrets and yellowish buff stone walls half enclosed the courtyard.
The horse was dragging in the air. Sweat streaked its neck and flanks.
Without another glance at leaded windows he knew must be watching, Kohler took up the reins and led the poor thing in search of the stables. Built in medieval times as a river fortress high on limestone bluffs, the château was self-contained. The stables would be off to the left. When he found them, he helped the stable-boy to rub the horse down.
The latest Madame Audit was waiting for him in the library, had been pacing irritably back and forth before the windows, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
‘Why have you come here?’ she shrilled, not turning to look at him, but pausing to cup her left elbow more firmly in her right hand and suck on the cigarette as if she just couldn’t get enough nicotine into her.
Kohler didn’t answer; it was always best this way. He gave the crone who had announced him a nod and indicated the madame and he were to be left alone.
The doors closed. An antique table held drinks. Vermouth, whisky, cognac, vodka and all of the many Audit specialities. The strawberry liqueur then? A toast to a certain goose girl’s lost maidenhood?
Glassed-in bookcases held leatherbound tomes. The floor was a mosaic of verd-antique. Nice … yes, it was very nice, and Jewish of course.
He handed her a cut-glass tumbler of strawberry liqueur. ‘The view of the river’s great from here.’
‘WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?’
Up close, she was modestly pretty. ‘Just a few questions.’
‘That … that woman you brought with you says Christabelle was murdered?’
‘Raped and murdered, or vice versa.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
The nostrils were pinched. The hand that held the strawberry liqueur trembled.
‘Antoine would not have done it, monsieur. He … he is not the type to have done such a thing.’
‘I didn’t say he was, but if I have to, madame, I’ll see that the boys at Headquarters take you apart piece by piece.’
‘Bâtard!’ The dark-brown eyes flicked away to settle on the windows and the river that lay far below them in its gorge.
Kohler took a sip of the liqueur. ‘Permit me, madame, to advance a theory that’s fast taking shape. Is it not correct that you went to Paris on a number of occasions with the Major, Count Felix von Lindermann, and that …’
‘That little bitch, I’ll cut out her tongue!’
He grabbed her by the arm but kept his voice calm and hard. ‘You stayed at the Villa Audit on the rue Polonceau primarily with the intention of checking up on your husband.’
She yanked her arm free of him. The cigarette was finished, the butt crushed out. ‘Yes, that is correct, but neither Antoine nor Felix suspected it.’
‘And what did you find?’
Her snort was very quick and very real and it lifted the narrow chin, giving a touch of regality. ‘That he was meeting a young girl in a nearby hotel. Look, I’ve had two sons by him. I …’ She indicated the château, the manor house, the walnut mill …
‘Did you or did you not meet with that girl?’ he asked.
She would have to answer readily to allay suspicion. ‘I did on … on two occasions. I caught her in the courtyard of the villa one evening after dark. It … it was in summer, in August. Felix – the Major – hadn’t come back, a meeting, I suppose. I was sitting under the sycamore where it was a little cooler. She said she’d just stepped into the courtyard to avoid someone whom she’d thought had been following her. I took her at her word but then discovered she’d been meeting my husband in that hotel.’
‘And then? The next meeting?’
Some of the strawberry liqueur dribbled from a corner of the slender lips.
‘I … I caught her stealing things from the villa.’
Kohler scoffed. ‘Yet you didn’t inform the police?’
Damn him! ‘No … no, I did not do so. She didn’t threaten me, Inspector. Oh, she could so easily have said she would tell Antoine about Felix and me, but … but the girl was really very shy, and …’
‘And what?’
She would let a faint smile brush her lips. She would leave the liqueur on her chin, since it seemed to trouble him that she’d forgotten it. ‘And odd, Inspector, if you know what I mean. It pleased her to know that I was being unfaithful to my husband and I got the feeling, too, that on more than one occasion, the girl had listened to the Major and I making love in that villa.’
Louis should have been with him. ‘Does Count von Lindermann have other women?’
‘Probably. Oh I see what you’re after, Inspector. Yes, yes, Felix could quite possible have used the villa to entertain others. He’s really very good as a lover, but I have no illusions. Antoine robbed me of those.’
Gott im Himmel, where was Louis? ‘Would the girl have been afraid of your husband?’
The chestnut eyes were lowered in a touch of shyness or doubt.
‘Why should she have been?’
‘Because she’d been raised by him, madame, until the age of six. Because she was Charles Audit and Michèle-Louis Prévost’s granddaughter. Surely you must have realized this when you caught her stealing things?’
She wouldn’t turn away. She’d face him! ‘We didn’t discuss it. At the time I thought she’d got into the villa through one of the windows.’
He’d let her have it quietly. ‘But you met her more than twice then, madame, and you did ask her, and she told you who she really was.’
‘Yes … yes, she did.’
‘And realizing that the bits of jewellery should have been hers, you let her have them and did not inform the police because, madame, you needed her silence.’
The gorge was deep, the walls across the river were stained with rust. ‘Yes … yes, that is true. Antoine … Sometimes a woman never really knows the man she marries, Inspector. Antoine has always had a thing about his older brother. He took Charles’s wife and drove him into debt so that he could have her.’
‘Then he made certain the poor bastard went to Devil’s Island.’
The villa, the room, that bed, Michèle-Louise’s perfume, the sketches of her lying in the nude … ‘She was wild, but … but Antoine still thinks of her.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Again you see I have no illusions. The girl was the absolute reincarnation of the grandmother. Christabelle looked exactly like Michèle-Louise must have looked.’
And had dyed her hair to do it. ‘What did you think went on in that hotel room?’
‘Sex, what else? He bought her things. He took her things from here, never much, but I know they went to bed. Why else would he have gone to her so many times and she to him?’
It made her nervous to have to stand under scrutiny. It made her wipe the liqueur from her chin at last.
‘Would it surprise you, madame, if I were to tell you the girl was a virgin?’
‘A what?’
Anger, rage – jealousy, for she’d been cheated of the one thing she’d wanted so much to believe – so many things flashed before him in that moment.
The woman conquered them by vehemently shaking her head. ‘He loved the girl – did you think I wasn’t aware of this, eh? The trips to Paris, monsieur. They were more than just for business and to play with a new mistress. Ah, yes, he’s had several. Antoine is like a boar in rut. It’s the vraie truffe he hunts so avidly. An aphrodisiac, Inspector, as well as a major source of income.’
She tossed a hand. Another cigarette was found and lit, her head tilted well back as she drew in and blew smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Just how certain are you that girl was a virgin?’
‘Let’s be brutal about it, eh? Is that it?’
‘Yes, that’s it!’
‘Reasonably.’
‘Pardon? Reasonably? Surely the coroner’s report would have spelled it out for you, Inspector? Did you not look for God’s sake? Ah, you did, eh?’
‘Yes, we did. At least, someone did.’
The cigarette was crushed into the ashtray with a brittleness that surprised. ‘Then she held out the offer of it to my husband, monsieur, and he’s an even bigger fool than I have given him credit for!’
At dusk the yellowish hue of the limestone deepened and the walnut mill with its turning water-wheel exuded that quiet sense of timelessness for which Périgord was justly famous.
St-Cyr drew on his pipe. There was a small wooden bridge across a turning of the flume and he’d chosen this as his point of observation. The boy had led the pigs away. There’d been other hunters working designated parts of the region, but they’d long since left. Even the truffles had gone off in the truck to Sarlat to be made into pâtés, sorted, shipped to Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. One day’s haul had more than equalled a Sûreté detective’s annual stipend. So much for making money by solving crime!
Something had happened at the mill. The girl who tended the geese had come out only to be told sharply to disappear. Now, again, she timidly approached Audit. They talked in earnest, the girl broke into tears. An angry word was said. They looked his way.
He drew on the pipe and waited. Antoine Audit had lived up to his every expectation. The man was wily, exceedingly shrewd and, at times, ruthless. Ah yes, my old one, he said. Witness the killing of that rabbit and how the glint of triumph and greed came into your eyes on seeing its struggles and hearing its last high-pitched screams.
The wire had been tight around a hind leg – not new wire, ah no, nothing like that, but very finely braided, very flexible steel. Quite unlike – and he must remember this – quite unlike the wire that had garrotted Christabelle Audit.
The boy had found a suitable stick, then he, too, had watched with rapt attention the rapid strangulation, the deftness, the flinging of the little corpse to the ground on release of the wire. The patient resetting of the snare. The lack of comment as if the whole thing had been as nothing.
At a shout, he crossed the bridge, but took his time so as to cause impatience.
Audit and the girl led him to the barn and up into the loft. The girl handed her employer the lantern and Audit hung it from one of the beams. ‘That friend of yours,’ he began.
‘My partner, yes.’
‘He had no right to search this place or to question my wife.’
St-Cyr lifted a tired hand of apology. The girl stepped aside, the lantern-light burnishing the swollen welt on her cheek. Ah now, Hermann, what has happened here?
‘It’s magnificent,’ he said of the coin cabinet. ‘French Empire, monsieur, but why have you put it away like this? A priceless antique …?’
Why indeed. ‘Out of sight is out of mind, Inspector. Ah, you know the Germans. Questions, always questions.’ Audit gave a shrug. ‘Sometimes our friends are hard of hearing. Jeanine, you may leave us now.’
‘But – ’ began the girl.
‘I said go, Jeanine. I will be staying at the château tonight. The Inspector – I must walk back with him. I’ve things to do, eh? Don’t provoke me at a time like this.’
A last glimpse of her climbing down the ladder revealed the desperate uncertainty of a young girl in trouble. St-Cyr glanced questioningly at Audit, who gave a shrug of You know how it is, eh? but said nothing further on the matter.
The silverwork was exquisite. The cabinet, while it had all the elements of the First Empire Period, had very strong ones of Art Nouveau.
‘The action of the drawers is superb,’ he said, running his fingers lightly over them. ‘When exactly did you first begin the collection?’
Audit silently cursed the Sûreté for its meddling parasites, but there’d been no sense in hiding the cabinet from him, since the other one had found it and they’d be certain to talk.
‘In 1930, Inspector. As the Depression came on, good pieces began to appear. Coins that had been kept for years. I bought wisely, always choosing perfection and rarity above all else. Ah, it’s like anything else, is it not? Once the collecting bug is acquired, one strives to do the best one can.’
‘Four hundred and eighty-seven coins, all of them gold and Roman. That’s pretty good for being “best”.’
‘I planned to donate them to the Louvre on my death – purely for tax purposes, you understand.’
Ah but of course, the Louvre … ‘Who built the cabinet?’
‘I’ve no idea. There is a mark, but that’s of Percier, the designer.’
First Empire then, under Napoleon. The Louvre, the Tuileries … so much of the interior designing of those days had been Percier’s. ‘Might I see it, please?’
‘It’s on the bottom. We would have to tip the cabinet over, Inspector. Is that really necessary?’
The cabinet was heavy and the mark, a signet brand, was hidden well underneath the thing. ‘Percier,’ grunted St-Cyr. ‘Yes … yes, it is as you’ve said, monsieur. Perfect in every way. Mahogany like this is simply not seen any more. When they did things in those days, they did them right.’
Audit was not impressed.
The poularde cuite à la vapeur d’un pot-au-feu was so excellent it momentarily overcame the pangs of worry. A steamed chicken beneath whose tender skin had been inserted thin slices of the vraie truffe!
St-Cyr waved an appreciative fork. It would be best to keep Madame Van der Lynn’s mind on other things in any case. ‘The pot-au-feu is first cooked for three hours, madame. Then the prepared chicken is hermetically sealed in its earthenware vessel to steam in the vapours of the boiled beef and vegetables. Served with a cream sauce such as this, it is more than a poor man can bear.’
