Kaleidoscope (15 page)

‘But it was someone.'

‘Yes, yes, of course.'

‘Your daughter?'

‘Josette-Louise?' asked Buemondi.

The one in Paris. ‘No, no, the other one,' said Kohler. ‘Josianne-Michèle perhaps.'

Startled and afraid, the girls looked at each other. One of them suddenly stood up. Mud coursed down over her splendid breasts. Her hands helped it.

‘Monsieur, neither of my daughters would ever have killed their mother. In spite of Anne-Marie's love affairs with other women, the children were always very loyal to her. Even my little one, my Josianne, she would … she would …'

‘Carlo,
come
. Come and join us.
Please
don't upset yourself.'

‘Josianne-Michèle was mine, monsieur. Josette-Louise was Anne-Marie's. Always there was this favouritism but even so, neither would have done what you think. It is just not possible.'

‘Where were you on the day your wife was killed?'

‘Here, in Cannes, in my studio. These four will vouch for it. My Four Graces, monsieur. The body casts.'

‘I'm sure they'd vouch for anything,' said Kohler drily. ‘What about Angélique Girard?'

Buemondi blinked to clear his reddened eyes. ‘That one also, monsieur. Believe me, I had no reason to kill my wife.'

‘The villa?' asked Kohler, seeing the tadpoles glance quickly at one another and hold their breaths.

‘Not even for the villa, monsieur, though Anne-Marie refused absolutely to let me sell it and I begged her many times for the divorce she would not grant.'

The girls began to play with each other, to roll about and grapple but it was all to no avail. Kohler wasn't buying any of it. ‘I smell a rat, my friend,' he said. ‘Me, I think you did it.'

‘Then think again. Jean-Paul Delphane would not be bothered were it a simple matter of marital discord.'

‘Settled with a crossbow?' asked Kohler, pulling down a lower eyelid to peer at the hippo. ‘Hey listen, my fine
professori
, loading a crossbow takes a good bit of muscle; firing it into sharp sunlight to hit a mark from sixty metres, one damned lot of practice.'

Buemondi didn't waver. He would give the fine detective from Bavaria a moment.
Ah sì, sì
. Then he would tell him. ‘The weaver, monsieur. Viviane Darnot, my wife's ex-lover and former companion of many years. She was in the hills on that day, yes? She travels there quite often in search of herbs and earths with which to dye the wool. Ludo Borel, the village herbalist, often helps her. Viviane discovered that Angélique and my wife were using the cottage she and Anne-Marie had used themselves as a lovers' nest. It is as simple as that. The villa also. And she could shoot with that bow of mine, monsieur. Shoot only too well. She and my wife used to practise killing me. The big photograph on the target, the sketches – yes, yes, myself have I seen such a thing many times.'

‘Then why is the man from Bayonne involved?'

‘Why indeed, if not to discover something else?'

‘Did they know each other from the past?'

‘Delphane and Viviane, or Viviane and my wife?'

‘All three of them, I think.'

Buemondi grimaced, then flicked mud from his hand. ‘Look, let's not mess. You and I both know what those people in the Deuxième Bureau are like. Trouble under every carpet and behind every door. Me, I don't want to become involved.'

‘Just say it,' said Kohler quietly.

The hippo clucked his tongue ruefully then jerked his head up as he nodded. ‘Yes … yes, I think the three of them must have known each other from before but I have nothing with which to back this up.'

‘You lying bastard. You were married to the woman nine years ago. You know damned well what I'm referring to. The murder of Stavisky in Chamonix.'

‘The financier? Then scrape the mud away and find out what is beneath.'

Kohler got up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don't drown,' he said. ‘I'd hate to have to watch them pounding that crap out of you.'

The
masseuse
was waiting for him when he came out of the showers. He tried to ease her fears about her mother, the
coiffeuse
on the rue du Canada, and the sister but found it difficult to hide the truth.

Paulette Rogette was tough, sturdy and with the hands and arms of a potter, above all a realist. ‘My sister Suzanne is dead, is that it?' she asked. ‘Mother telephoned here twice, Inspector, then again and again and again but they will not tell her anything, so now I ask it of you. Did the Gestapo of the Hotel Montfleury pry anything out of my sister before they killed her?'

Kohler took the towel and wrapped it around himself. ‘She can't have given them much or they'd have shut this place down and taken you away.'

‘
Why can't you look at me when you say this
?' she shrilled.

Kohler did so, and when she struck him, hissing, ‘
Bâtard
!' he let her try to get it out of her system.

‘They'll pay for it,' he said.

‘That will not bring her back!'

The woman was in tears. He could not comfort her; she would not have allowed him to touch her.

Without another word he walked away Chez Paulette's was on the rue Buttura not far from the Sporting Club and the Notre Dame de Bon Voyage. There were the bicycles of the oppressed, the
vélos
jockeying for position. Girls wanting to sell themselves in front of shops that contained either little or things that were far too costly for most. Girls and older men because there were so few of the young ones left. Everyone pumping their legs to beat the Jesus for a sou while the Army of the South took its leisure in the growing night and the boys in blue with their leaded capes and sticks strolled about looking for him.

When he found the showroom, it was completely by chance. Kohler stood a moment admiring the De Sotos, the Chrysler Imperials and Packards, the Rolls Royces and Bentleys of the departed.

With no gasoline to buy and suspicion only in the sight of such motor cars, the things had been left cold on the dockside, now still awaiting requisition.

There was one lone MG sports coupé half hidden among the Christmas decorations some feeble soul had attempted to muster. Brand-new and b … e … a … utiful.

He hit the door and breezed in, asked about the headlamps, the ignition, choke, gear shift, top speed, brakes and availability.

‘Kohler of the Gestapo, my fine. Me, I'll take it.'

‘Cash?'

‘On account.'

He was back inside five minutes with two jerry cans of gasoline requisitioned from a Wehrmacht lorry. Then he headed out to pick up Louis at the villa. Bayonne … they'd have to go there first to settle the pawnshop business, then on to Paris to find the twin sister of Josianne-Michèle.

That would get the Gestapo Cannes off their backs and give Louis and himself a chance to talk things over. Munk wouldn't like it and neither would Jean-Paul Delphanebut someone had to read the woman's dossier before the bastards recovered it. Besides, there was the question of the woman's list of telephone numbers. By keeping it from them, were they not saving lives?

It was an unpleasant thought. One never knew.

5

Away from the coast, they ran into winter. Freezing rain, wet snow and absolute darkness.

‘
Hermann
, please! For the love of Jesus, let us take the train!'

The little car skidded, turning twice and twice again before shooting on ahead. ‘Relax, eh? Come on, Louis, stop being so uptight. I got you out of Cannes, didn't I? We can't take the trains any more than the coastal roads. Munk will only get his hands on that stuff I stole.'

Kohler trod on the gas and they pelted into the blinding snow. ‘The Army of the South will have cleared the roads of all traffic,' he sang out. ‘Stop worrying. Here, I'll stick to the centre. That better, eh?'

The car fishtailed rapidly until the front wheels pitched off to the left and Kohler yelled, ‘
Gott im Himmel
, you French! The crown's like a baldheaded whore on her knees! Why can't you people build decent roads?'

They were on the Route Napoléon northwards out of Grasse, a model of modern engineering. They skidded again, went broadside on sheet ice. St-Cyr threw up his arms, hitting the flimsy canvas roof, then tried to cover his face. ‘
Mon Dieu … Mon Dieu
…' They could barely see the front of the car through the frost and fog on the windscreen. They shot past some rocks, the beam of the headlamps careering over angry ledges, went downhill too fast, then suddenly the rear wheels pulled themselves round and they roared uphill into oblivion.

‘Avignon is dead ahead,' shouted Kohler, throwing the MG into third gear.

‘
Digne
, Hermann. You were heading for Digne, remember?'

‘Not me, idiot! You saw me take the turn-off. We're heading for Avignon.'

Through trackless mountains? ‘Stop! Stop then!' St-Cyr yanked out the Lebel and pointed it at the dash. ‘
Stop
, please, my old one, before I ruin someone else's car.'

The Frog really meant it. Kohler eased up on the throttle until the wheels were merely skating. Perhaps five centimetres of wind-drifted snow covered this patch of road, perhaps a little more.

He squinted along the gunsight of the bonnet.

‘
Merci
,' said St-Cyr. ‘Me, I have to piss.'

Louis plodded up the road into the night. Kohler watched his friend and partner in the headlamps. He thought of all the things they'd been through, of the war and how it must surely end.

The Frog had splashed his trousers. ‘Hermann, I have had enough. Herr Munk has given us four days in which to solve this case. If we do not do so, he will level that village and shoot all the men and boys. Ah, such a thing might mean nothing to a Bavarian farmboy who is now a member of the illustrious Third Reich's most feared Gestapo, but me, my old one, I am a patriot.'

One lone woman, leading a donkey loaded with branches, appeared from out of nowhere as Kohler was draining his battery. She took no offence, thought nothing of them perhaps, was just too damned tired and frozen to have cared.

‘Shall we arrest her, Hermann?' taunted the Sûreté hotly. ‘Come, come, my fine Bavarian detective, she's breaking the law to warm her toes and bake what little bread there is.'

‘Louis, please don't do it. Christ knows, I don't like it any more than you do.'

‘Oh? Is it not the holiday for you, eh? The vacation from the wife and responsibility? That pretty little pigeon you've got stashed away in a Paris nest? That lovely Dutch woman …? Oona … Oona Van der Lynn as well? Shocking, Hermann. Shocking!'

Kohler dragged out a tattered bit of yellow copy-paper and thrust it at him. ‘This arrived in Paris just before we left. The Sixth Army outside Stalingrad is surrounded, Louis. My boys are both there.'

Ah, merde
! ‘Hermann, I'm sorry, eh? It's just this case. Me, I …'

‘
Ja, ja
, I know. War always has two asses to burn.'

‘Jean-Paul wishes to pin the rap of helping the Resistance on us, Hermann. Herr Munk is all too willing to have him do so but in the process, expects us to reveal the truth to him about Jean-Paul.'

Kohler pocketed the telex. ‘Will Delphane be waiting for us in Bayonne? Will that bastard have prepared a welcome for us, Louis?'

‘Perhaps, but then … Ah, Hermann, I really do not know what he is up to. His leaving the Cross of Lorraine for me to find is just not like him – far too clumsy. Is he on the run himself, I ask, and if so, what might that mean?'

Ordinarily, out of deference to Louis, Kohler would not have told him about the girl, Suzanne Rogette, not so soon and never if possible, but he felt he had to. One might just as well have smacked Louis in the mouth with a hammer. The outrage was instant and controlled only by a supreme effort of will. ‘He was afraid someone would see him kicking her to death,' said Kohler lamely.

‘But why should he have been afraid of such a thing? He is working
for
the Gestapo. He is one of them, and the kicking can only have increased his value in their eyes. L'Action Française have always hated the rest of us. Jean-Paul must
want
to find the maquis in those hills, because he
is
of the enemy and yet … and yet … Ah, forgive me, my old one. I am just not myself. That poor child. Why her, Hermann? Why has God completely deserted us?'

The wind blew the snow into their eyes, the headlamps shone out at them from the loneliness of that polar waste.

‘Chamonix, Louis?' asked Hermann.

‘Ah, yes, Chamonix. If only I could remember exactly what went on there just before we found the body of the financier. I want to recall mirrors being smashed to pieces, Hermann, the pieces flying outwards as I catch a glimpse of the weaver's eyes, the look in them and then … then we find Stavisky writhing on that floor in a room that was locked and empty but for himself.'

‘You gained access through a window, didn't you?'

‘Yes, yes …'

‘You used a ladder?'

‘Yes, of course. Hermann, please do not confuse the issue, eh? It is very delicate. The mind … I …'

‘Hey, hey, don't get your ass in a knot. You could have slipped and hit your head. The instant black-out.'

‘And the glass?' snorted St-Cyr derogatively.

‘The mirrors of your imagination, my fine. They toted you off to that clinic you seem to want to remember, and they patched you up!'

‘The asylum, Hermann. That old grandmother grinding goose livers, she asked us if we had come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised.'

So she had. ‘Josianne-Michèle told us she had been sent to Chamonix at the age of sixteen. The girl could have been there at the time.'

‘Yes, yes, and the weaver could well have taken her to see some doctor. Mademoiselle Viviane sent money to the other sister in Paris despite the mother's asking her not to. Perhaps she tried to help Josianne-Michèle as well.'