The Caves of Périgord (16 page)

“Among these old Resistance types, it certainly matters. And so it should. My countrymen behaved monstrously around here. I understand their attitude, and have to live with it. But let’s be practical. Have you heard anything more from the London police about the theft?” he asked. “It seems very suspicious, the rock disappearing almost on the very night that it is brought in.”

“It
is
suspicious, even though it was the next night. And all the police have told us so far was to give us the authorization to make the insurance claim. The whole art world and auction community know about the theft, so I doubt that it will surface in the salesrooms. We hope that the reward offer will persuade the thief to make a discreet approach in the usual way.”

“But you have heard nothing as yet?” he asked, leaning forward to leaf through the books she had brought.

“Not when I left London. I have been in Italy, but if there had been an approach, I would have known. I’m surprised—I’d have thought a
thief would have worked out by now that twenty thousand pounds is about the best he’s going to get.”

“Perhaps the French will offer more.” He was riffling through the index of a book about Soleil, put it down and picked up Malrand’s memoirs.

“I doubt it—half of the reward money comes from the museum at Les Eyzies. The French won’t bid against themselves.”

“If the President of the Republic takes a personal interest, you might be surprised at what the French can do, Miss Dean. The Périgord is Malrand’s home region. This was his war. Manners was his comrade, and now it looks as if Manners was looting France’s heritage when he was meant to be fighting Germans. Did Malrand not know what his British friend was doing? Did he not care? Malrand’s war record as a Resistance hero was the key to his political career, and now this comes along to cast a shadow over the presidential past.”

“That seems a bit fanciful, Professor. You may be convinced that this rock is Lascaux work, but I’m not half so certain, and I have seen it. You have only seen the photos.”

“So why, my dear Miss Dean, are you wasting your holiday in the Resistance library?”

“Because I feel responsible,” she burst out. Calm, Lydia, calm. The man was only scoring points, infuriating and perceptive points. And surely that was a mocking smile on his face, the self-satisfied beast! Whatever had Clothilde seen in this fellow? She went on evenly. “What may have been an extraordinary piece of cave art was entrusted to us, and we lost it, and we have a duty to try and put that right. At least, I think we do. But I don’t see that presidential politics comes into it. And I came here because this was where my plane landed. I’m off to the Périgord region to look at lots of caves because I now think I don’t know nearly as much about them as I should.”

He looked at her quizzically and smiled easily, the practiced grin of someone who had often been told that his smile was charming. “Perhaps
you are right, Miss Dean. Your motives do you credit. My motives are scholarly, but I’m sure we can agree that were we to find where this rock of yours came from, it would enhance both our reputations. I think we have much in common. Perhaps we can work together, share the burden. Who knows—perhaps even share the glory, if we are lucky?”

He slid into the chair at the desk before her, opening a laptop computer and pushing the button that whirred the thing into life. “Let me tell you my thoughts,” he went on distractedly, as he waited for the screen to settle. “I thought I would make a timeline of the locations we know that Manners visited, plot them against known sites, interview any former Resistance people he worked with, and see if that leads anywhere. What about you?”

“Nothing so organized, I’m afraid. I imagine he was all over the Vézère and Dordogne valleys, where most of the known caves are to be found. But I had thought of asking his old comrades, although if they knew anything definite about undiscovered caves, I presume they would have been discovered by now.”

She found herself looking at the books by Horst’s elbow. There was one she recognized,
Das Reich,
the account of the Resistance battle to slow down the march of the German SS panzer division from Toulouse north to Normandy. Some photocopies of a dense German text peeped from beneath the book. She made out the initial Kr and the letters B-U-C-H.
Kriegesbuch
—the war diary of a German unit. He had been busy.

“Can I buy you dinner this evening, Miss Dean?” He casually scooped his books and papers into a neat pile.

“I’m sorry, Professor, but no. I have an engagement.” Obviously Horst didn’t know Manners was in the next room. No reason why he should, but equally, no reason to let him know that Lydia’s quest was serious enough to be accompanied by the rock’s current owner.

“Well, perhaps another time. And you must call me Horst,” he smiled. “I’m sure we will meet again on our treasure hunt. You said you
were off to Périgord soon—doubtless we’ll run into each other in Les Eyzies. I’m staying at the Cro-Magnon Hotel. How about you?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said lamely. “Excuse me, Professor, but I really ought to start looking through this stuff—the sooner I’m done, the sooner you can have it.”

“Horst, please. Not Professor,” he said, turning back to his laptop. “But good hunting. To both of us.”

As she sat at the microfiche and inserted the first of the miniaturized films into the reader, Lydia began thinking about how soon she could pretend to go to the ladies’ room, and warn Manners not to come into the library. Secrets and intrigue already, Lydia. How silly, as if the Germans were the enemy again. She turned to the spare prose of Malrand’s military report, so different from the florid style of his memoirs.

“My theory is that we save money on hotels and spend it on food and drink. I never saw the point in paying for an expensive hotel room when all you do is sleep in it,” said Manners. Which is just the sort of thing a chap would say to lull a girl’s suspicions, thought Lydia, as he led her into the dining room of the Centenaire. Two Michelin rosettes; she was looking forward to this.

They had left Bordeaux and the kindly old curator at six-thirty, Horst having long before been shown to the door as just another member of the public to whom closing hours applied. Claiming to have drunk no more wine, Manners had taken the wheel and the Jaguar had raced past mile after mile of vines: Lydia had seen the signs for St-Emilion and Lalinde de Pomerol and her mouth was watering already. At one crossroads, delving into the glove compartment to find a map, she found a small leather pouch, which she recognized as a traveling chess set. Well, well, she thought to herself, he
does
have hidden depths. After consulting the map, they had driven to a tiny hamlet, not much more
than a bend in the road, a small river, and a pretty miniature château. Their Hotel du Château was just across the park, and she had a view of the turrets from her room. It might not be expensive, but it was well chosen. Manners allowed her precisely ten minutes to wash and change and they raced the three miles into Les Eyzies, parked, and walked into the restaurant with a few minutes to spare before 9
P.M.
He was wearing a rather jolly pink tie with his blue suit. Given no time to iron her clothes, Lydia was playing safe in black cashmere and her expensive gray flannels. The restaurant was full, and moderately noisy, the clientele too discreet or self-absorbed to break off their conversation to study the latest arrivals. Shown to a large table by the wall, they ordered two glasses of Kir Royale and began to study their menus in silence.

“The menu for me. The foie gras, the
sandre
, and the duck,” he said as the somber gentleman approached with the wine list under his arm and his badge of office, the small silver tastevin, gleaming on his chest. Lydia ordered the foie gras and the fish, chose lamb instead of duck, and in serviceable French Manners asked the sommelier which wine he would recommend. Did Monsieur know the wines of the region, unpretentious but charming? Only the Jaubertie and Pécharmant, said Manners. A thoughtful nod, a courteous inquiry whether Monsieur had considered a Pomerol, and business was concluded with a glass of Monbazillac for the foie gras, some Badoit water with the fish, and a Château Nénin. It had been competently done, thought Lydia, looking appraisingly at her companion. An extremely grand restaurant, and he had surmounted the hurdle of ordering the wine without showing off, and with a courteous consideration for the sommelier’s expertise. She approved.

“Well, our adventure is shaping up according to all the proper conventions,” said Manners, as the two glasses of champagne arrived, touched with rose by the cassis. Another waiter brought some
amuse gueuls,
a morsel of salmon, some black pudding, and a small sphere
of foie gras topped with a black flake of truffle. “We have a Holy Grail to look for, a château to stay in, an extremely fair maiden, and an enemy.”

“I think the most you can say of Horst is that he is a possible rival.” She smiled at him, enjoying the thought of herself as a fair maiden. She had related the encounter with Horst as they raced through the flat-lands of Gascony.

“Point taken. No dragon. Still, he’s German, which is the next best thing.” He grinned. Lydia had a feeling that nobody had ever told Manners he had a good smile, or if they had, he hadn’t paid attention. Looking at the healthy way he was polishing off the tiny snacks, he’d probably been too busy eating.

“Old Morillon, the chap in the library, has given me three leads,” he went on, after a swig of his Kir. “Three old men. One is from the Berger network who lives near a tiny village called Audrix. There’s an old railway man from the Communist FTP in le Buisson who worked with them. I have their addresses. And then there’s Soleil himself, still alive, but his memory is not what it was. But at least we have his memoirs, which do not mention my father. Apparently he used to be some kind of Communist, but broke with the party after the war. I have his phone number, but he was always very cautious about who he sees, so Morillon is going to call him on our behalf, and see if the old chap still has enough of his marbles to be worth seeing. That’s about it. Morillon himself was never north of Cahors, and only knew my father during the Toulouse operation. But he did say one thing about the Berger network that I found interesting. They sometimes hid the guns and ammo from the parachute drops in the remote caves along the Vézère valley. Caves were good because they protected the stuff from the damp, and he said my father was always on the lookout for a good cave.”

“That seems obvious, but it’s a useful connection,” she mused, tearing her attention away from the elusive taste of the truffle. “He could well have found a cave with paintings—except how has the cave
remained unknown ever since? There must have been some local Resistance people in on the secret, if only to carry the weapons.”

“I asked Morillon if the caves weren’t too dangerous. They make terrible traps if the Germans were on their heels. And then probably some of the German troops would have been stomping around the better-known caves for their own interest. A lot of them apparently went to look at Lascaux itself, which was only discovered in 1940.”

“That reminds me. Among the microfiche I went through was something called the order of battle for Army Group G, under General Von Blaskowitz, in charge of defending southern France. It assigned him three armored divisions, one motorized and thirteen infantry divisions. How many troops would that be, Manners.”

“We normally reckon about ten thousand to a division, but armored divisions tend be larger and an SS panzer division would have twice that number. Then there are the troops attached to corps and army HQ. At least two hundred fifty thousand troops, but that was to hold down the whole of southern France, which contained something close to twenty million people. Not all of the troops were Germans, as Morillon said this afternoon. And a lot of the German infantry units were composed of old men or convalescents from the military hospitals. They had entire battalions of ulcer sufferers—it made it easier to organize their diet. Even the SS panzer division was being filled up with Volksdeutsch, the ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Alsace-Lorraine. Some of them didn’t even speak much German. And the troops were spread out, guarding the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, controlling the big cities like Lyon and Marseilles, the industrial centers like Clermont-Ferrand, patrolling the railways. Bear in mind that Périgord was not terribly important to the Germans, except for the rail and transport links. Not much industry, no great population centers, just a handful of important factories. They had the Vichy police and paramilitaries to do most of the patrols—and the dirty work.”

Their foie gras arrived, just long enough in the pan to toast the outside and warm the flesh within, with a steaming portion of onion confiture on one side of the plate, and a tender bed of baby leeks on the other. She took some liver. It had the taste of luxury. She sipped her Monbazillac. Sweet gold.

“I think just one restaurant meal a day from now on, Manners,” Lydia said. “I don’t mind putting on weight in a good cause, but this is too princely.”