6

At dawn the Château Thériault’s five towers were shrouded in snow. Off to the right, and away from the river, vineyards occupied the lower slopes, climbing gently until they met those of the Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great in territory that had been disputed for centuries until at last the land claim had been settled not two months ago.

‘Louis, go and talk to the Countess, eh? Tell her I’ll be along in a little while.’

Hermann had slept badly and, contrary to his usual self, had not driven the car but had lamely wanted to ‘look’ at the countryside.

That big Bavarian was sick at heart. Moundlike, the shapes of box, yew and hawthorn stood nearest the arched stone entrance which was set in the base of one of the towers. Ivy climbed the walls. Immediately inside the gates, the courtyard of lawns and formal gardens held mothballed fountains and statues.

The château was huge and Hermann had often said it must be a bugger to heat, but now this conscience-ridden Kripo looked away to the centre of the courtyard to where stone greyhounds leapt at a cornered stag and the nothing murder of Fontainebleau Forest had finally come to an end.

It hadn’t been easy. It had been a very close thing, and when Louis let him out of the car, Kohler simply asked, ‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?’

He went on then towards the stables which were on the far side. He paused to open the great doors to let the light in, then searched his pockets desperately yet again for tobacco.

‘Let him be, Jean-Louis. Give him time.’

‘Countess …’

‘Please wait for us in the kitchens. This frost … will it kill the vines? I had thought to burn fires throughout the night but new restrictions have been placed on such things, so I have spent the hours in walking the rows and fretting. It was silly of me, but when one loves a place so much and there is no other recourse, what else can one do but pray?’

‘Countess, Hermann needs to be alone.’

‘I think he needs to be reminded. Now go. If René Yvon-Paul should come down, tell him he’s not to worry about his mother and me arguing. It happens all the time. Tell him also that the life of a detective is not a life to aspire to, and please ask him to let the dogs come to me. There will be coffee and croissants for the help, so feel free to partake of them even though the croissants are illegal. My cook will give you brandy. It’s rough, but at the moment it’s all that is left.’

‘The caves were emptied?’

His alarm was gratifying. ‘Emptied of every bottle.’

There were no horses in the stables, all had been taken. And when the far doors were also opened, Kohler found himself alone in the pearly light, the breath billowing from him.

Panic came – for just a second it was absolute. He reached out to steady himself. There were splintered bullet holes in the ancient boards. A mare had been wounded and had screamed as she had tried to free herself. Another had been killed. All thirty-two rounds from the drum clip of a Luger had been sprayed about but first there had been the lesson of a rawhide whip.

For pointing the finger of truth, the SS had roped him by the wrists to both sides of the corridor. Blood had welled up along the wound – surprising that, for he’d felt no pain, had still been in shock and staring dumbly down at his parted shirt. From the right shoulder to the left hip had been opened as if by the sudden exercise of a mad tailor’s shears. The pain had hit him but by then the left side of his face had been torn from eye to chin.

A hell of a mess. Gabrielle’s son had cut him free but the SS had come back. In the ensuing fight, the Luger had been emptied and the boy had driven a pitchfork into the back of one of them. Had killed the son of a bitch. Killed him, ah Jésus-Christ!

The other one had been killed by the shots. Kohler remembered telling René Yvon-Paul to beat it, to hide in the abandoned mill and had said he’d take the blame himself. Hell, the kid had only been ten years old.

‘But now it’s different,’ he said. ‘Now it’s far worse.’

‘You’ll think of something. I’ve every confidence.’

The Countess Jeanne-Marie Thériault spoke softly to the five greyhounds that had come to her. She still looked the same in that dark blue woollen overcoat, trousers and riding boots, though he felt a thousand years must have passed since he’d seen her last. ‘Countess, Berlin are very much involved in this matter of your daughter-in-law’s. We were lucky here before, but now …?’

‘You’re not like the others. With you that inherent sense of common decency and humanity has survived.’

She was laying it on the line. Pushing the hood back, she removed the scarf that had been tied over her ears and hair. The dark eyes were very clear and searching. The high forehead was smooth, the pale cheeks reddened by a night in the cold.

At the time of the nothing murder he had had the idea there were carefully arranged rings of defence around the château and that she had a network of informants all too loyal to her. ‘The Resistance …?’ she had said then. ‘Oh, we’ve some of them about here too.’

But did it go much deeper than that? The château could be useful to the Resistance, the hills and caves too. She and Gabrielle had hidden things before, could the two of them not be at it again?

She sent the dogs away and closed the distance. ‘A cigarette, I think,’ she said. ‘Here, let me offer one of Gabrielle’s. They’re Russian, and given to her by a general on leave.’

And on the run, eh – was this what he was thinking? The very mention of a general on leave brought anxiety and fear, ah so many things to those pale blue eyes of his. ‘You’re well?’ she asked.

He knew she was toying with him and said harshly, ‘Countess, why not tell me what that daughter-in-law of yours has been up to?’

Her hair was jet black and had been tied behind but now she shook it out and let it fall loosely about her shoulders, not a touch of grey though she was in her sixties. A timeless and still fantastic-looking woman.

‘What has she been up to, do you think?’

The tobacco was black and rough. He coughed and inhaled, forcing himself to become accustomed to it. ‘Let me put things this way, then,’ he said sharply. ‘My confrères in the SS and Gestapo Paris-Central – Berlin, damn it – are about to use that réseau your daughter-in-law’s mixed up in to sweep Louis and me into the bag along with the rest of them.’

‘They want, once and for all, for you to prove that you are really one of them.’

‘And if I don’t, Countess? Giselle and Oona and the child will have to go too.’

‘The child? Is Oona …?’

‘Giselle is. Look, Gabrielle brought a suitcase here from Tours on the twelfth, at night.’

‘If she did, I have no knowledge of it.’

He threw his head back as if struck and clenched a fist. ‘Countess, don’t trifle. There were 850,000 francs in that bag.’

‘And?’ she asked, giving him that searching look of hers.

‘And a flask or dropper-bottle of nitroglycerine. It … it belonged to a prospector who has just removed himself from this world.’

Cigarette ash was tapped into a palm. Even when carrying on such a conversation, a part of her mind could still concern itself with the fire hazards of careless smoking.

‘Gabrielle tells me nothing, as you well know from past experience.’

‘Did he kill himself because he knew too much, Countess?’

‘Are you certain she brought such a thing?’

‘As certain as you must be. What’d she do? Park that little car of hers outside the walls?’

‘She came and she went.’

‘She didn’t stay the night?’

‘She couldn’t.’

‘She’d have needed a laissez-passer to be on the roads. Who the hell provided it? The Generalmajor Wehrle?’

Was this Wehrle on the run – she could see him thinking this.

He asked again. She said, ‘That I can’t say. Gabrielle is of independent means and has a mind of her own. René Yvon-Paul and I are left to tend this … this old fortress and to see that somehow it earns sufficient to keep it going.’

‘They’ve taken the last of the horses.’

‘They took the wine and five of my best workers. The Service de Travail Obligatoire. The district Kommandant is proving difficult.’

‘Did you warn Gabrielle to stay away? Is that why she didn’t hang around?’

‘I told her that to oppose the Occupier was both foolish and inopportune.’

At last they were getting somewhere! ‘What did she want you to do? Hide someone? Was that it, eh?’

Why hadn’t he just said, Damn you? ‘A package. That was all she said.’

‘When?’

‘I can’t tell you because I simply don’t know. A week, a month … She was uncertain.’

‘So, did the “package” have two legs?’

‘Come and see the pigs. We’ve been fattening them up for the Kommandant’s table and for the boys in Russia but when they take our Judith, we’ll be left with empty pens. That’s how it is and now I trust you understand why we couldn’t accept any such packages and why I must ask you to help us.’

Far from the kitchens, St-Cyr let his gaze pass slowly down over the lower vineyards. He’d had no idea they could be seen from Gabrielle’s window. She had led him to this room, off in another wing of the château, lost even among those of the servants’ quarters. She and the Countess hadn’t got along – the Countess had felt her only son had married beneath himself. Her own husband had been killed in the Great War, their son in this one. There’d been friction with Gabrielle, and the loss of two loved ones, which should have brought them closer, hadn’t helped.

The single iron bed with its flaking white paint had lent a flea-market desperation to the room and still did. A bureau, a mirror that was none too big and mounted awkwardly for a woman as tall as Gabrielle, an armoire and a chair were about all there was. Country scenes cut from magazines had been pasted into rescued frames. A simple crucifix had been nailed to the wall at the head of the bed.

It was at once the room of a chamber-maid or scullery girl. Gabrielle had deliberately chosen to make her statement that this was how she was perceived by the Countess and therefore this was how it should be.

Since the murder in Fontainebleau Forest, things had improved but still there would be reservations on both sides, old insults and opinions. For those, they needed time.

A soft brown velvet bag with a drawstring of twisted gold thread had held eighteen uncut diamonds, each of five or six carats. Emerald green, yellow, a soft and frosted pink, a blue, some clear white stones … Russian diamonds Gabrielle had brought from Leningrad as a girl of fourteen and had kept no matter what and always in the hope her family would have survived to be reunited with her.

Diamonds then, and diamonds now.

There were some newspapers on the bed and he wondered at them for they were new. The Völkischer Beobachter, the Pariser Zeitung and a copy of Signal, the picture magazine – the January 1943 issue and photos of Gabrielle at the Club Mirage, entertaining the troops. There were shots of her with laughing soldier boys on leave or boarding the train back to the front, others of her with generals. A collage of her with von Ribbentrop and with the General Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the Military Governor of France, occupied a centrefold.

A smiling, cigar-smoking Otto Abetz, the ambassador, had his arm about her waist, she laughing. Dr Karl Epting, the Director of the Deutsche Institut was more staid, as was the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Old Shatter Hand, the Kommandant von Gross Paris.

In page after page she was seen with the high and mighty of the Third Reich. There were bits and pieces of her private life both in Paris and here on the Loire. Shots of the château showed her with her son.

Lying under the newspapers, there was a letter of commendation signed by Hitler himself, 10 January 1943. She had brought the newspapers and the magazine with her on the twelfth to show the Countess but had left them here.

‘Sonderbehandlung,’ Herr Max had warned. He must have known the article had already been published and the magazine distributed not just in France but in every occupied country and wherever the troops were fighting.

She was revered by thousands. Front-line soldiers heard her singing via broadcasts that were picked up live from the club. There had been several requests for her to visit the troops but so far she had been able to put these off.

The Resistance … a réseau … She had said she’d join up, and he had agreed and had included himself but why had she let the Occupier do this to her unless desperate and thinking it would protect the réseau? Every hot-headed résistant in the country would be after her.

When René Yvon-Paul came to find him, the boy, who looked a lot like his mother but had the dark brown eyes and hair of his father, gravely said, ‘You must tell maman we cannot possibly accept any packages at this time. Things are far too difficult for us. She must listen to grand-mère in the matter and not argue with those who love her.’

‘What sort of packages?’

The boy burst into tears. ‘Was it a suitcase?’ asked St-Cyr gently.

‘No! It … it was someone she wanted us to hide for a few days, just until things could be finalized.’

‘Who? René, you must tell me if I’m to help her.’

‘A gitan, a nomade. She said he had some work to do for them in Paris and then they … they would send him to us for “delivery” to others.’

‘And were these others to help him on from here?’

‘Yes!’

Longing for a cigarette, they drove in silence. St-Cyr shut his eyes. He wished he could peacefully gaze at the countryside, but the roads … ‘There’s a convoy up ahead, Hermann!’

‘Where? There’s no convoy.’

‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, idiot, trust me!’

Trust … wasn’t that what this whole affair was all about? wondered Kohler uncomfortably. Trust between friends and partners, trust between a man and his Vaterland, and trust between the members of a réseau and two detectives who should have known better than to have meddled with them in the first place but had been ordered to!

The brakes were hit. The Citroën slewed sideways. At about 90 kilometres an hour, it sped broadside towards the rear lorry. They did a complete circle. Another and another … ‘Hermann!’

The car pulled out of its spin and they found themselves at the side of the road.

‘So, Louis, why not tell me what you found out, eh? Why keep me in suspense?’

‘The Resistance in Vouvray were to pass the Gypsy on to others once he had finished his work in Paris. De Vries will know of this, Hermann. Gabrielle will have told him of it.’

‘Then it’s even worse than we thought. The son of a bitch will turn them all in if he has to.’

‘And if not him, then Tshaya.’

At Beaugency they stopped for the prix fixe of watery soup, sour wine, stuffed cabbage leaves but stuffed with what – more of the infamous ‘mystery’ meat? – and prunes aux vinaigre. There wasn’t a single one of the Occupier in the restaurant except for Hermann and there were stares from all others.

At OrléBuilt on the right bans they headed north towards Paris, the meal not sitting well. Neither of them had any tobacco. Even their mégoi tins, where all cigarette butts, found or otherwise were kept, held only ashes.

At a control, the car was flagged down and they had to go through the motions. Cartes d’identité were handed over, their laissez-passers and sauf-conduits. Cold stares from the burly Feldwebel in charge were received by the Sûreté. Always there was this little panic, this fluttering of the heart only more so now.

But it didn’t happen. Louis wasn’t asked to get out, and soon they were on their way again, Kohler heaving a sigh of relief. ‘Berlin must be tearing their hair,’ he said.

‘Himmler’s, I think, and Herr Max’s.’

‘Boemelburg’s too.’ Kohler floored the car as they passed a farm wagon that was driven by an old woman whose black shawl was suddenly caught by the wind. ‘Nana must have hoped and prayed De Vries had escaped to England in 1940, Louis. The Norwegians let a lot of prisoners go just before the Defeat. She would have been ready to believe he’d been parachuted into France, but even so, would have been surprised to learn he had arrived on her doorstep to do the very thing they wanted.’

Had they asked specifically for him? they both wondered, but thought it doubtful if for no other reason than security. Instead, they must have asked simply for help and then found an expert had been sent.

Wind-drift was carrying the snow across a ploughed field. Sunlight, rare for this time of year, was breaking through the clouds to be caught among the crystals …

‘If De Vries is now having to get his nitro from dynamite, Louis, then how much of it did those three women find for him? Berlin and Herr Max wouldn’t have given him any, no matter what they fed them by wireless, so don’t start thinking they did.’

‘But does Herr Max know for certain it’s them, Hermann, or does he only suspect it is?’

The airwaves, the distance factor, the difficulties of pinning a transceiver down. Was there still a particle of hope or was all lost?

Built on the right bank of the Nonette and surrounded by a plain that was bordered by forests now shrouded in snow, Senlis was about fifty kilometres to the north-north-east beyond Paris. It was a quiet provincial town whose soft grey limestone walls and substantial houses had lasting charm. But it was from this southernmost apex that the triangle known as the Devastated Region began.

To the north, at Péronne in 1917, the British had found on the blackened shell of the mairie a signboard left by the Kaiser’s retreating army. Nicht ärgern, nur wundern. Do not be enraged, only wonder.

The devastation had been deliberate and terrible. Thousands and thousands of fruit trees had been hacked off at exactly waist height and felled so that their crowns all pointed with mathematical preciseness along the path of the retreating army.

The same had happened to the poplars and buttonwoods which had once beautified the lanes and roads. From Senlis to Saint Quentin in the north and to Albert in the west, had been affected but in reality the ruination of that war had been much greater. About fourteen hundred villages and towns had all but been obliterated.

And in Senlis? It had been occupied from 2 September 1914 until the eleventh, during the initial push to the Marne. Here the invader had trodden relatively lightly, one might suppose, looting, burning and destroying all but four of the houses along the fabled rue du la République. Its mayor and six others had been executed, but fortunately much of the town had been spared.

During the retreat, all wells and springs had been polluted with the carcasses of dead animals and latrine excrement, the farm buildings either burned or blown up and the roads dynamited.

‘It’s a wonder you speak to me at all,’ muttered Kohler, still behind the wheel.

‘Ah! it wasn’t of your doing.’ Hermann had been taken prisoner in 1916.

‘Right after the Armistice we were marched north and through Jussy, Louis. Not a Kaiser’s shell or one of yours had hit it but not a wall, a bush, flower or blade of grass had been left. Hell, it was only a little place. Why’d they do a thing like that?’

Hermann must have seen the remains of the orchards, the farmboy in him overwhelmed. ‘In war all things are possible. Come on, let’s find the house of Monsieur Jacqmain’s mother. Let’s not dwell on ancient history.’

‘It was only twenty-five years ago and now we’re right back in the shit again.’

The grey-stone house, with mullioned windows and white trim, was just off the rue de la Treille in the oldest part of town. Built largely in the eighteenth century, it was part seventeenth-century priory, part thirteenth-century chapel, and the two long storeys of it exuded tranquillity, substance and stability. But it was from the back that the treasure of the house was best seen even in winter. Here ivy-covered, high and ancient walls enclosed a large garden with sturdy walnut trees and several venerable apple trees. The remains of the chapel were at the rear of the house where moss-covered stone steps led steeply up from beneath the apple bows, a good six metres to the top of the Gallo-Roman wall that had once surrounded the town.

‘Silvanectum, Hermann. Home of the Silvanectes. There were once twenty-eight towers along this wall, but now only sixteen are left.’

Trying to momentarily forget their problems, Louis added, ‘If ever I could move out of that house of my mother’s, this is what I would aspire to.’

Kohler had heard it all before. The little retirement with government pension, the farm in Provence where vegetables might be harvested if sufficient water could possibly be secured; the orchard in Normandy not ravaged by cutworms, blight, frost, starlings, war or thieves, namely tax collectors. ‘It doesn’t look as if there’s anyone around.’

They descended the steps. Louis slipped and nearly went down. Kohler cursed the impulse that had led them to explore the place from such an entrance. At the back door, repeated banging brought no answer. All the curtains were drawn. ‘Merde, what now?’ muttered Louis.

‘We open it up. We have to. Look, for all we know Boemelburg and Herr Max could have had everyone arrested and be only waiting for us to return to Paris.’

‘Idiot, they’d have stopped us on the road. You’re forgetting the controls.’

Kohler tried to force the lock. ‘Messieurs …’

The voice had about it a breathless urgency. At the far corner of the garden, a top step was hesitantly negotiated by a wooden-clogged, tall, thin woman in black with a shopping hamper. A hand was thrown up. They held their breaths. ‘Madame Jacqmain is in her grave these fifteen days,’ she cried out. ‘The Mademoiselle has gone to Paris. You … why would such as you demand such as this effort from one such as myself?’

They recrossed the garden at a run and when these two from Paris who had come in the shiny black car that had been left outside the mairie and Kommandantur stood below her on the steps, Madame Augustine Moreel faced them from above, thus blocking their way and putting even the giant at a disadvantage. ‘Messieurs, must I notify the préfet himself? You were tampering with the locks.’

A Belgian, a Walloon … ‘Madame, could we not discuss things on more stable ground?’

Suspicion raked him. ‘Please state your business.’

Her purse was black and gripped as a weapon. ‘Sûreté and Kripo. He’s the Sûreté, I’m the …’

Her grey-blue eyes flashed impatience. ‘What’s the son done this time? Violated another poor young thing? Flayed her to satiate his base desires and then wept on his knees before that portrait of his dear mother, a saint?’

They waited. They swallowed this outburst, these two detectives who clung to the icy ascent beneath her.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

Louis was about to say, A few small questions. Kohler shushed him by gripping him by the elbow and nearly sending the two of them to the bottom. ‘You mentioned a mademoiselle, madame?’

‘Perhaps I did.’

‘There were two ladies who came from Paris. Did they have a suitcase with them?’ tried Louis.

‘When, exactly, did they come?’ she asked.

‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ managed Kohler.

‘A suitcase,’ she said, the breath held back. ‘Travellers always have such things.’

Merde! they were getting nowhere. ‘Madame, please step aside and accompany us into the house.’

‘I’ll do no such thing. Madame trusted me implicitly and carried her confidence in that trust to her grave.’

A treasure, then, if the key to part this one’s lips could ever be found. ‘The two who came here, did they take Monsieur Jacqmain’s daughter to Paris with them?’ It was a complete shot in the dark.

‘Sylvianne was beside herself with grief, monsieur. The child has lived all her tender life with the grandmother she adored. They were the greatest of companions. No matter was too difficult for either to accomplish for the other. Reading, sketching, piano lessons … Night after night exquisite concerts, the singing … Though she’s only twelve years old, the daughter has the sound of angels in her voice and fingers, but also the great goodness of God in her heart, thanks be to Him who has made us all in spite of accidents of birth.’

‘You must be freezing,’ said Kohler. ‘Here, let’s go round and into the house by its proper entrance. It was stupid of us to have come this way. Undignified of police officers.’

Suspicion registered but she held her tongue. An eighteenth-century iron railing ran atop the wall. There were the usual ‘tourists’ about, members, also, of the Wehrmacht’s local detachment, but the lack of schoolboys throwing snowballs at schoolgirls reminded one that the light of day was, alas, fast fading. Soon the kids would be let out of school.

‘Messieurs, why have you come?’

It was Louis who said, ‘He has killed himself.’

She drew in a breath. ‘Then you will want to know where his daughter is. Two deaths in such a short time … It will be hard for Sylvianne to bear. In spite of everything, that goodness of heart included the father she had never seen except in photographs faded by the rays of the tropical sun.’

‘Who was the mother?’

Why were they so anxious? ‘One whose skin was that of a mulatto. A gypsy. A “virgin” he took repeatedly in a brothel in Bruges and once beat so terribly with his whip, it brought the police, thereby disgracing his mother in the eyes of her family and friends, while leaving her with the constant reminder of the child that was given to her at birth by the madam of that house.’

Tshaya’s child … ‘A saint, you said,’ offered St-Cyr kindly.

‘Now, please, let us go in before the neighbours think I’ve been arrested and that the house will fall into the hands of the son they know nothing of but whispers.’

The house was pleasant, the kitchen spacious beneath a wealth of ancient beams from which, by some avoidance of the ordinance for copper, scrap and otherwise, the pots still hung. There was a large and blackened, grey, cut-stone fireplace in which a small fire soon burned. Clearly Jacqmain’s daughter had been in charge of collecting twigs and branches, but it was when he went to get some of the fist-sized balls of drying papier-mâché she had made, that St-Cyr found the half used-up novel.

‘Nana,’ he said. ‘Why did I not think of it?’

Zola’s novel of the courtesan, ‘actress’ and ‘singer’ of no talent but one, had captured readers ever since its publication in 1880. A tall and stunningly curvaceous creature with reddish-blonde hair. Nana had suddenly appeared on stage at the Variétés in the operetta, La Vénus blonde. At the age of eighteen she had had no qualms. Her breasts had been firm, the nipples erect beneath the flimsy, diaphanous veil she had worn with nothing else. In triumph, she had lain in the grotto of the silver mine on Mount Etna, its walls serving as polished mirrors to her nakedness. Through their opera glasses, the bankers, financiers, stock brokers and demi-mondaines of fashionable Paris had even seen the tawny hair of her armpits and her radiant, if wickedly lecherous smile.

She had known all about men and had known exactly what they had wanted of her. But her young life, after unbelievable riches had been heaped upon her, had ended in smallpox and he could still recall the scent of carbolic that had permeated the death-bed room at the Hôtel Grand on her return from Russia. Only her hair had retained its radiance but Zola had given a last glimpse of it in candlelight. Touched by a chance gust, some strands had fallen forward to be glued to the sores.

Within six months of the novel’s end, Bismark’s Prussians had marched into Paris. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 had ended and the German state had begun.

‘Nana Thélème,’ he said when Hermann came to find out what was delaying him. ‘It’s the stage name our Nana chose and the daughter here must have known of it. Hence her reading the novel, in secret no doubt.’

‘I made her burn that book,’ said Madame Moreel. ‘The child adored Mademoiselle Thélème who, before the Defeat, would come to visit us as often as she could and delighted in this house and in the child. It was through her that Sylvianne took up the piano, the singing and dancing.’

‘Is Sylvianne the reason Monsieur Jacqmain sold his diamonds and sent that suitcase?’ asked Kohler only to hear Louis interjecting. ‘A moment, mon vieux.

‘Madame, this friend of the child’s father, did she sometimes bring along another? A Dutchman? Tall, thin, about …’

‘Why is it, please, that you ask, Inspector?’

The coldness of suspicion had leapt into her eyes. ‘Only to give us background. It’s always best to explore all avenues.’

All branches of the tree – was this what he was implying? she wondered anxiously. ‘They adored Sylvianne. The child was very fond of Mademoiselle Thélème’s friend, but he did not come here often, nor did she explain his long absences beyond that she did not know where he was. What passed between our Nana and her “Jani”, Inspector? Love – ah! even an old widow such as myself could see it. But why did he not marry her?’

‘The suitcase,’ said Kohler brusquely.

‘The money was to ensure that Sylvianne and her grandmother should want for nothing, but I couldn’t have that father of hers suddenly coming into her life. It was Madame Jacqmain’s most fervent wish that her son never see his daughter or take any part in her life. When she died, after a long illness, I had to see that these wishes were carried out and let them take the child and the suitcase to Paris, but now that he is dead, Sylvianne can return. His suicide is as if God had answered all our prayers.’

Fearing she had said too much, the woman gathered an apronful of the papier-mâché balls and, clutching the last of the novel, went back to the fire.

‘Was the daughter even Jacqmain’s?’ grunted Kohler, pulling down a lower eyelid at the vagaries of whorehouses and the paternity of such offspring.

‘Tshaya must have been banished from the kumpania and from the Rom for ever, Hermann. She’d have left the child with them otherwise. But if De Vries was the father, that could well be why he came here and why Nana took such an interest in the child.’

‘What about the nitro? Could he have come to tap a little of it from time to time in the thirties?’

‘Perhaps – its certainly worth considering.’

‘And the Thélème part of her stage name?’ asked Kohler, his mind still on the explosives.

‘It’s from Rabelais’s magnificent satire of 1534. He believed that humanity held within itself a basic instinct to do what was right, if all his conditions of being free and well-bred, properly educated and of good company were met. There was a war in which all the priests but one sought refuge in prayer while their lonely brother took on all comers in the abbey close and drove the enemy from it. To celebrate the victory, an abbey was built whose only rule was “Do what thou wilt”. L’Abbaye de Thélème.’

‘Another maison de tolérance!’ snorted Kohler.

‘Not so. A place where all good things might be enjoyed, yes! but goodness being defined and governed by that fundamental instinct in us all. You should read more, Hermann. You really must introduce yourself to our literature.’

‘Okay, I get the message. Hey, I would never have let you down. You know that, Louis. We’re in this together.’

They had no tobacco. They could only share a handshake.

‘Madame,’ said Louis gently when they had returned to the kitchen, ‘was Sylvianne’s mother Lucie-Marie Doucette?’

The woman was instantly suspicious. ‘If so, she did not call herself that. Her name, and the only one she went by, was Tshaya. Myself, I saw her only once and what I saw, I did not trust, but Madame was determined to make amends by adopting the child, and I am for ever grateful that she did.’

Louis nodded sagaciously. Onions were being peeled for the soup that would be her supper. ‘And was Mademoiselle Thélème aware of the mother’s name?’

Was she familiar with Tshaya – is this what they were after, these two? ‘Madame confided it to her just as Mademoiselle Thélème brought news of Madame’s son she then imparted in confidence.’

‘And when, please, did these visits begin?’ said St-Cyr.

‘Inspector, you ask too many questions. I’m an old woman.’

‘Then I’ll ask it again.’

She shrugged in reproof. ‘The Mademoiselle Thélème first came to us almost as soon as we had moved in. The child was about a year old.’

‘In 1931, then.’

‘Yes, but her “Jani” did not come with her until the summer of 1934.’

‘And did she use the name of Thélème at that time?’ persisted Louis.

The slicing stopped. Tears began to form. ‘Inspector, have I been wrong to entrust Sylvianne to her?’

‘No. No, of course not. Please, you mustn’t worry. The girl will soon return.’

‘Then why did you ask that about Nana? What else would she have called herself?’

It would do no good to avoid the issue, but Nana had obviously come gradually to understand who the child’s real father was. ‘We only thought it might be a stage name, as is the Mademoiselle Arcuri’s, whose real name is Natal’ya Kulakov-Myshkin.’

‘A Russian!’

‘But widowed. Her married name is Thériault.’

Louis was just digging a hole for himself. ‘When did they arrive to take the girl?’ asked Kohler.

Her look was cold, but she knew she’d have to answer. ‘A week ago yesterday. They came, they said, only to deliver the suitcase but when she learned of Madame’s death, Mademoiselle Thélème agreed to take Sylvianne with her even though they would have to seek residence and travel papers for her. The Mademoiselle Arcuri was convinced she could take care of the matter and that there would be no problem. “The Kommandant von Gross Paris is an old friend,” she said. “He’ll understand the need and that there is nothing untoward in our request.”’

Old Shatter Hand wasn’t going to like it when he learned the truth, thought Kohler but said pleasantly enough, ‘They went to a quarry.’

‘Yes. Monsieur Jacqmain had told Mademoiselle Thélème of the pierre fine from which the Château de Versailles was constructed. This limestone came from quarries nearby.’

Building at Versailles had begun in 1624, recalled St-Cyr. Louis XIII had wanted a small hunting pavilion, but it was the Sun King, Louis XIV, who, from 1661 to 1681, had built on an impressively grand scale and in 1682 had made Versailles the official residence and seat of government.

‘Monsieur Jacqmain did come to Senlis occasionally, Inspectors, but never to this house. It was his intention to reopen one of the old quarries but not for cut stone, you understand. For road metal. He invested substantially but was thwarted. No one wanted the noise of the blasting. Several were afraid the vibrations would disturb their livestock, even the honeybees in the orchards. There is also a small and very old chapel near the quarry. A beautiful little church the workers used to be blessed in each day before work began. The resident father was most concerned about the ancient stained glass which is said to be some of the finest in …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said St-Cyr, ‘but when, please, did Monsieur Jacqmain invest in the project?’

‘During the rainy season in Africa he would return to France. It was in 1936 but if you ask me, Inspector, I believe, as did Madame, that his sole object was to find an excuse to be close to his daughter. We … we could not let that happen and … and lent our voices to those of the others. Since then, we have not seen him.’

De Vries could not have known then, in 1934, of the explosives and could only have learned of them much later. ‘And those two Parisiennes wanted to see an ancient quarry just so that they could tell others they’d been there?’ asked Kohler.

Was the Bavarian a disbeliever of everything? ‘Nana said Monsieur Jacqmain had given her something that had to be returned to the magazine. He was most insistent.’

‘The nitroglycerine in the suitcase,’ interjected St-Cyr.

‘Yes. A flask that was kept in its special box. He had taken it away just before the war stopped him from going back to his savages. You see, I have the keys to the gates and to the magazines. The quarry is just to the east of Aumont-en-Halatte, in the escarpment, but the roads … this weather … the darkness. They went in daylight. Surely you’re not …’

‘No problem,’ said Kohler. ‘All we need are the keys. We’ll see that they’re returned with Sylvianne.’

When they reached the car and were letting its engine warm, Kohler said, ‘The kid’s the Gypsy’s, Louis, and Nana soon figured it out.’

‘But was Tshaya aware of Nana’s continued interest in the child or of Jacqmain’s interest in Nana?’

‘She must have been. When faced with deportation in 1941, she fled to Tours to be close to the one man she knew would help her because she had what he wanted, the scars, and his mother had what was hers. Is she the reason Nana bought the flypapers?’

‘Strychnine is most unpleasant, Hermann. The body convulses. The face grows livid, the eyes bulge until death intervenes, then …’

‘Ja, ja, mein lieber Detektiv, just answer the question, eh?’

Kohler got out to rip the black-out tape from the headlamps. ‘It’s an emergency,’ he said. ‘Gabrielle and Nana and Suzanne-Cécilia each must know it’s only a matter of time until they’re picked up, if they haven’t already been.’

Louis sighed heavily. ‘Then perhaps that is why Nana wanted the strychnine and it is only a matter of time until they take it.’

*

The forest was close, the road winding. Ahead of them the garde champêtre of Aumont-en-Halatte pushed his sturdy bicycle, cursing the snow, the lateness of the hour and themselves most especially.

Beyond a wooden bridge across a frozen stream, tall and rusting gates bore a last vestige of the Sun King’s coat of arms and the faded notice Défense d’entrer.

‘I will wait here, Inspectors,’ grumbled the village cop. ‘That way, if there is trouble, some warning may be given.’

A wise man, was that it? wondered Kohler, squinting down through the driving snow at this father of seven children, all of whom had been under the age of five. ‘You do that, Henri, but make sure the tombstones are of granite, eh? and not of limestone. It lasts a hell of a lot longer.’

The bushy eyebrows knitted themselves, the grizzled moon-cheeks tightened. Paris would have to be told how things were. Paris must be forced to listen! ‘Inspector, no one has been here for years. The magazines are isolated – ah! certainement, Monsieur Jacqmain has obeyed all the regulations to the letter. Distance from the working face. Protection in case of accident. Two timbered walls with sand packed between in case some idiot with a rifle should have target practice. A double roof aussi, and sufficient ventilation. But …’ He paused. He gave these two time to reconsider their little adventure. ‘But the dynamite should have been taken away long ago. It smells. The heat in summer has not been good for it, the dampness in springtime also.’

‘Anything else?’ asked the giant, grinning down at him from under a beaver hat with full earflaps that were tied beneath the chin.

‘Oui. Many times I have notified the authorities in your army to send a disposal crew but without success.’

‘We only want to have a look.’

The chubby lips were pursed in exasperation. ‘That is what I am afraid of.’

A wise man again.

‘Inspectors, there are two magazines and they are well off to your left some 600 metres once you enter the property. They are behind a remnant of the original escarpment, a boss of rock that was not mined out. First comes the powder magazine and then, some fifty paces further, that of the blasting caps.’

Companionably Kohler clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Give us a fag, eh? For the war effort. Hey, make it two.’

‘Hermann, if he has any, they will have to be hand rolled. It will take all night in this wind!’

Woefully the dark brown eyes caught the light from the headlamps. ‘I have none,’ lamented the village flic. ‘Now even the tobacco ration has been cut in half, nor can I take one stick of wood from the forest to warm the toes.’

Hard times.

‘Inspectors, please watch your step. With the snow, the crevasses in the floor will be hidden. Those, that is, which do not have the cedars sprouting from them.’

The big one switched off the headlamps and the engine and pocketed the keys only to take them out to lock all doors. ‘Our guns,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who’s responsible for them. They’re under the driver’s seat, so keep an eye on the car.’

‘Thieves in this weather?’ came the startled retort but by then the two were negotiating the gates, and soon, even the light of their torches had been swallowed up.

Isolated the quarry was, and huge. Though they would see little, would they not perhaps feel the size of it? he wondered. The utter emptiness? Versailles was a palace but there had been other and more recent demands. As a result, a lot of stone had been removed, the face of the escarpment having been eaten away until it was now indented nearly one kilometre.

Far from flat, the floor was often stepped. There were ledges. There were still places where, in summer one could see the lines of holes, each hole two metres from all others in the line and perhaps thirty centimetres deep. These holes had been drilled by hand using hardened iron chisels and wooden mallets. The lines followed the grain of the rock so that it could be ‘feathered’ out by pounding hardwood pegs into the holes. The rock was then split along the lines of pegs and along the bedding surface below, a time-honoured method but one which had left the debris of some carelessness for those who would venture in at night, and in winter, to stumble over.

When the beams of their torches found the powder magazine, it stared out of the blizzard at them from under a sloping roof whose tar paper was buffeted by the wind.

The door was solid, the padlock big and tight. And the bare, unpainted boards were weathered beneath the alarmingly bullet-riddled signboard of Explosifs. Danger, Défense d’entrer.

‘That sand in the walls must be full of lead, Louis.’

‘Gabrielle and Nana came here, Hermann. How could they have done such a thing?’

They had come on the thirteenth, in preparation for the Gypsy’s arrival. ‘They even thought to oil the lock. Look, it’s still sticky.’

The powerful stench of bitter almonds came to them. Hermann gagged and tossed his head. Hesitating, he stared at the lock in alarm, then at the key in his hand. He tried to cram his torch under an arm and get it to shine fully on the damned thing. ‘Here, Louis. You hold it.’

The key went in. He bit his lower lip. He said, ‘Is it really oil, or has that son of a bitch beaten us here and left us another surprise?’

Leaving the key in the lock, Hermann began to search for footprints other than their own, but it was no use. ‘They couldn’t have had an oil can with them, could they?’ he bleated in despair, only to add, ‘Beat it, eh? Go on. Take cover.’

St-Cyr reached out and, saying, ‘We’re in this together,’ turned the key and removed the lock.

The door opened easily enough but not before Hermann had gone over and around it carefully. Light shone feebly in on wooden cases, each of which carried embossed words of Dynamite, 25 kilos. Fifty per cent, 110 sticks.

Each stick would be twenty centimetres in length by two and a half in diameter, and there were plenty enough of them lying in recently opened cases for one to see that the years and the heat and the humidity had been most unkind.

There were slats of wood under the tiers of cases, and straw beneath these and around them, and this straw had received the seepage.

‘Louis …’

‘Hermann …’

Both were speechless. It was eerie, it was terrible. Gabrielle and Nana Thélème and perhaps the Gypsy too, but later … later, had used a screwdriver to open the cases. They had actually taken handfuls of sticks, had braved the fumes, the dizziness and had been oblivious to the danger.

‘Hermann …’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Flasks of nitroglycerine, but the case is empty.’

Oh-oh. ‘How many?’

‘A dozen. Each of one hundred cubic centimetres.’

They stared at the flat case whose square compartments were cushioned with rubber and had each held its little wooden box. They tried to comprehend how those two women could possibly have transported such things to Paris without accident. They worried about Janwillem De Vries.

‘The house on the rue Poliveau,’ blurted Hermann. ‘He needed nitro then.’

‘But is it that he now has more than enough or is it that they held back on him and gave him only the first flask and not the others?’

Had he been here since, or had only Gabrielle and Nana paid a visit?

Braving the fumes, weeping, gagging constantly, they searched as best they could. Perhaps the freezing temperatures helped to hold off an explosion, perhaps God simply looked down on them and took pity.

The magazine was not large by such standards, and when he found a woman’s handkerchief, St-Cyr knew that one of them must have dropped it by accident.

Coughing, choking, they went outside for air. Both were bent double. The fumes burned.

Weeping, they huddled over the handkerchief. ‘How many cases are gone in addition to the nitroglycerine?’ managed St-Cyr.

‘Two, I think, and … and some coils of safety fuse.’

The magazine for the detonators was much smaller and was free of fumes. Here there was shelving but broken-open cardboard packets revealed blasting caps so corroded, their copper tubes, each of pencil-size in diameter and no more than three and a half centimetres in length, were encrusted with verdigris. The ones that were used with safety fuse were often stuck together. The ones that were used for electrical blasting had two thin wires protruding from the base of each cap, and often these wires were corroded at their ends.

It was clear that Gabrielle and Nana Thélème had searched for the best of them, clear also that they had taken sufficient.

But had the Gypsy been here since to help himself?

At 5 a.m. those who started for work in Paris did not lift their heads. The iron-hard frost of the Occupation’s most hungry winter was crushing. They coughed, they wheezed painfully. Steps squeaked. The smoke from the firefly glows of occasional cigarettes did not rise, and everyone, it seemed, had the flu.

Remi Rivard let the last of the Wehrmacht’s soldier boys out of the Club Mirage and began to bolt the doors.

‘A moment, Remi,’ hazarded a frozen voice in pitch darkness. ‘Are things clear?’

Of the Gestapo? ‘Perhaps.’

The Corsicans, the club’s owners, were ever-wary. ‘Where is Gabrielle? Her car …’

‘It was stolen. She has had to file a procès-verbal and is not here. Some idiots in the Resistance took it.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You don’t listen, do you? The Gypsy, you idiot. The Resistance! Now ask that frozen gumshoe brain of yours what was in her car.’

‘Explosives.’

‘You said it. I didn’t.’