Kaleidoscope (17 page)

Delphane must have made more than one visit to the area.

‘Louis … Louis, aren't you going to go to bed?'

He shook his head. ‘I can't, Hermann. I must force myself to think.'

‘Then take two of these. I saved a few from that last job.'

Messerschmitt benzedrine. St-Cyr lifted the tired hand of dismissal. ‘Sleep well, my old one. I will awaken you when it is time.'

Delphane obviously knew the weaver from before. It was her father's villa Stavisky had used in those last few days before his death.

She had moved out at the request of the father, had been there in Chamonix with someone, but would rather not say.

St-Cyr tapped out his pipe and refilled it without even taking his gaze from the fire. He really ought to destroy the woman's notebook so as to save lives. Could they take the chance of keeping it a moment longer?

Tucking it away, he looked at the photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi. A warm day in the early fall perhaps; Paris, the off-white linen suit well-cut and fitted. The handbag over the shoulder, the wide-brimmed felt hat, the woman's version of the fedora, pulled down to the left, almost to the level of that eye.

A troubled young woman, caught in the street perhaps but not avoiding her photographer, ah no. Simply facing the camera. Thin. Once quite beautiful, yes, and dressed up for what? To meet someone or to take the train to see her mother in the south?

For this last, she would have needed an
ausweis
, not easily obtained. The forger in Marseille? he asked. Had she betrayed her mother to Delphane? he wondered. Had Jean-Paul convinced her to co-operate?

She seemed so … ah, what could he say? Tragic? Resigned? Unhappy – yes, yes. Not in love, not on her best feet either, in spite of the clothes. No, ah no. Circumstance had not been kind to this one.

Shutting his eyes, he ran his fingers slowly over the photograph just as Madame Peretti would have done had the girl been before her in that farmhouse on the hillside. He willed himself to step into her shoes and asked, Had she no friends? A pretty girl like this? Young … so young and yet, and yet …

The right eye must be slightly lower than the left as in the sister. Hence the stylish tilt of the hat which had the effect of distracting the viewer from the bad eye.

But surely that same eye would have hampered her ability to fire a crossbow?

What was it Josianne-Michèle had said about her sister? That Josette-Louise had become everything Josianne had ever wished.

The
santon
of Ludo Borel drew him then and he said, as if to Josianne-Michèle, Everything, mademoiselle, but a lover. That boy in the hills, eh? The one thing your sister in Paris did not have.

The clerk who was forced to open up the pawnshop in Bayonne was a shrill-minded little shrew with pencil moustache and teeth like a rabbit in rigor mortis. He hated cops, loathed intrusion, loved order and basked in his supreme sense of power.

Livid, he raked the heavy iron key round in the lock, gripping the door handle in fury only to find himself picked up and slammed against the outer wall.

‘Stay put!' hissed the Sûreté every bit as livid. ‘Don't do so and me, I will personally break every bone in your body with absolute joy!'

For good measure, St-Cyr slammed him up against the wall again, knocking the pancake beret to the road and the gold-rimmed specs askew.

Kohler was impressed. For once their roles were reversed. Pocketing the keys, Louis told him to wait outside. ‘A moment, my old one. That is all I ask. I must experience it as it was, alone.'

The rabbit leapt. ‘The regulations require that I be present! It is the Lord's Day! Monsieur le Directeur, he has said …' He choked. The Bavarian was grinning at him.

When the uninviting black iron door had closed behind Louis, Kohler grinned again and said, ‘He just wants to get the feel of it again. The Chief Inspector St-Cyr was in on the Stavisky Affair and is not entirely certain that business is over.'

Oh-oh. Nine years had not been enough to erase the memory of the scandal. Everyone who had lost still bitched volubly and grumbled about having been taken to the cleaners. ‘I am not from here, monsieur. I know
nothing
of that business. I was assigned this post
after
the crisis and have many times applied for the transfer.'

The Gestapo nodded. ‘Maybe we could help. Would Paris suit?'

These days one had to beg even though such an offer could only be suspect. ‘The Basques, monsieur. They do not like the outsiders. My wife and son, we do not speak their devil's tongue, so it is very difficult and sometimes it gets on the nerves, the isolation of a foreign posting.'

So much for the far corners of the empire. Fog had rolled in from the Atlantic up the Adour to smother its confluence with the Nive and shroud the ancient bridges of the old town. Their landing had been a bitch. The drive in from the aerodrome outside Biarritz something else again.

Kohler dragged out the Luftwaffe's fags and offered one. ‘Tell me about the Inspector from the Deuxième Bureau, eh? We know he's been to see you. Why'd he leave that little item in there for us to find?'

Rabbit-teeth jerked round to stare at the door above which had been chiselled the words:
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
. ‘He … he has said we must report the names of any who come to collect the kaleidoscope, monsieur.'

‘The “kaleidoscope”?'

‘Yes, yes. A child's toy but very beautiful. In silver with much eloquent scrollwork and such colours when held to the sun. We gave Madame Buemondi 35,000 francs. It is a lot, but an item of such curiosity and craftsmanship deserved at least that much. I had to consult with the Director several times, you understand. Madame needed the cash, she said, and since she comes from a very old family, we gave it. But … but why are you here, monsieur? Has something happened to her?'

Again Kohler found himself saying abstractedly, ‘No … No, nothing. It's just a small matter of her father's estate.'

‘The taxes …? Ah, no! Yes, yes, of course. The taxes. The father was very wealthy. That one had many investments in the companies of the scoundrel Stavisky but managed to extricate himself well before the scandal erupted.'

‘Made a bundle, did he?'

‘Yes, yes, the bundle.'

‘Then why did Madame have to pawn her little toy?'

‘This … this I do not know, monsieur. The wealthy often come to us. Along with the poor and the destitute, they, too, require the funds from time to time. The stocks and bonds, the fine paintings one has overbought at auction … Monsieur, could we not …'

‘Go in?' Kohler shook his head. ‘The Chief Inspector has to be left alone to soak up whatever vibrations this place of yours can give that memory of his. Find us a café and I'll let you buy me a coffee and a marc'

‘It is not a day for alcohol and there is no coffee.'

The shops were barren or making hollow pretence. A plaster ham in a place where the hams had been famous. Chocolate looking suspiciously like painted mud. No bayonets in a shop of no knives – too dangerous probably in a town that had been named after the bayonet.

Rope-soled espadrilles for Christmas? wondered Kohler, thinking of the espadrille Louis had found in that cottage. Moth-eaten berets, oyster shells where no oysters were to be had because it was against the law to fish and the town was in the Forbidden Zone, that deep swath of terrain along the coast the Wehrmacht had sealed off from the rest of the country. Controls, controls …

‘Louis won't touch a thing. Relax, eh? And we'll see what we can do about Paris while you try to remember everything you can about Jean-Paul Delphane.'

‘He looked at the box. He looked through the tube and said to leave it.'

‘Did he mention the Stavisky Affair?'

‘No, but … but Monsieur le Directeur, he has said that one must have murdered the financier or been very close to the one who did. A man from the Deuxième Bureau, Inspector? A man from the police?'

Dead, Stavisky could tell no tales; alive, he could have identified all those who had benefited from the swindles.

‘How much of a bundle did Madame Buemondi's father make?'

‘Monsieur Cordeau doubled his substantial fortune, Inspector. Perhaps several hundred millions of francs, who knows? There are still those who say he was smart to have pulled out when he did; others, that he knew only too well what was going on and got out before the scandal broke. Still others say it was he who paid to have the bullet placed in Monsieur Stavisky's brain.'

Nice … that was really nice. Louis should have heard it. ‘Did Madame Buemondi ever pawn anything else?'

The man shook his head. ‘She was very quiet, you understand. Like the terrified little mouse. She sat among the others on one of our benches and when I called out her number, she jumped but did not argue. Just snatched the money and stuffed it into her purse. I had to call her back to make her take the ticket she had left on the counter.'

‘A kaleidoscope.'

‘Yes, as I have said.'

‘Was there anyone with her?'

‘Not in the pawnshop, but when I went to call her back, I saw her meet a young girl.'

‘One of her daughters?'

The man gave him a curious look. ‘No, not a daughter, monsieur. A Basques-Française.'

‘The daughter of a shepherd? Of a man who knows the mountains?'

‘A mountain guide, yes.'

Verdammt!
Now what were they to do? Delphane had been right. The cash had been to pay off the guide for taking the escapers into Spain. Kohler knew it, felt it in his bones, said to hell with the medicines she might have been buying. It was as good as over for that village and for the weaver and the daughters. Louis, too, and himself.

When they reached the pawnshop, they found the door locked from the inside. A note had been written on the back of one of the tags and tied to the handle.
Hermann, please do not disturb me
.

The room was large and all but bare. Dark wooden panels lined the walls not unlike those of a courtroom. Austerity and piety seemed everywhere. A long counter ran across the back, separating the rest of the room from the storehouse of pawned wealth in rows of shelves asleep behind padlocked wire caging.

St-Cyr stood alone among the shabby wooden benches where the poor and the not-so-poor or the wealthy sat alike with sinking hearts as each had his or her number called out. ‘Numéro –, will you take thirty francs for your wedding ring? Numéro –, will you take forty-five on the camera and ten on the shoes?'

Often the sum given was far less than the rumoured one-quarter of the object's value – only fools dared to arrive in the morning. Always bitchy, never kind, the clerks behaved slightly better after a good lunch, and the wealthy often did a little preliminary research so as to bribe the waiter or the chef for just such a reason.

Photographers and artists were among the first to come as hard times approached; farmers often among the last. He remembered a ballet dancer who had had to pawn her shoes in order to pay her rent but then could not dance that very evening and was distraught. Fifty francs he'd given her and she had held him as one would a long-lost father.

He remembered an old man who, on parting with his pet finch, had wept openly and promised vehemently to return at the first opportunity but had immediately gone into a café and drunk the pittance away.

Everyone in the room knew the amount received by everyone else. Some could not bear the humiliation and broke down completely, only further disgracing themselves. Others were cavalier. Most tried to argue but the value offered was always firm and attested to by the arrogance of the clerks who hated with a vengeance any and all who approached that counter.

Yet from just such as this had Stavisky been able to launch his swindles.

St-Cyr drew in the musty odour of things long forgotten. He willed the memories to come. Chamonix … he urged. Chamonix. It was so far from here.

Viviane Darnot had known Jean-Paul Delphane was in Cannes looking into the murder of her former lover and companion. Her father had been taken to the cleaners by Stavisky but why, then, must she lie about things, unless still protecting someone?

Josianne-Michèle? he asked. But why protect her now, knowing that the girl's mother was dead?

He saw the mother's eyes in death, the braided diadem with the fringe all but covering the forehead. The dark, wooden shaft of that arrow – why had the killer not used a newer bolt? If the two women had practised their archery as much as Carlo Buemondi maintained, then surely they must have had newer ones?

The weaver came to him then. He saw her in the half-light of some stairwell, the cellars perhaps? Hiding … Yes, yes … Had she come back to the villa near Chamonix to find out what was happening?

Again he reminded himself that her father had lost a fortune. Two and a half million francs – old francs then. Worth at least twelve and a half million now.

Two girls in a convent school, the older one taking the younger under her wing and into her bed.

The sound of a pistol shot – fragments of mirror flying outwards. Dark grey-blue eyes in every one of them. Slices of her face, turning … turning …

Quickly he went over to the counter and ducked through the gap. From row to row he searched among the battered valises, the pitiful lampshades and stacks of dishes. ‘Numéro P-9377482,' he said aloud, ‘will you take 35,000 francs?'
Ah Mon Dieu
, so much?

The black leather box was really quite small – perhaps no more than twenty-five centimetres by fifteen in width and the same in height.

Unlocking the wire, he moved the rusty screen aside, then stood there looking down at that thing she had pawned. Though the dust must settle constantly, there was no trace of it on the leather, and he could not help but wonder why Jean-Paul had left it here for them to find.