Dollmaker (38 page)

‘Pardon?'

Was it so impossible to comprehend? ‘I married a bastard, Inspector. A
bastard.
Everyone thinks it of my wife, no matter what that mother of hers tried to do to cover things up.'

‘Now listen, cut the vitriol and tell me things plainly. Each year she made the same visit on exactly the same date?'

Yes!
The 17th of June.'

Five days ago, on Monday. ‘Was she planning to meet someone this time?'

The veteran's eyes swept anxiously over him. ‘Only her dead lover. A captain like myself but from that other war. He died on the Marne with his face deep in the shit probably but she was still able to obtain the
marriage in extremis aprés décès
to make legal the thing she had carried in her belly. After four years of her trying, the authorities finally listened and gave in — who could blame them with a woman like that? She became Madame Fillioux at last!' He flicked a vindictive glance at his wife who approached.

‘Mother raised me on her own, Inspector. No one helped her — not even the Church. She was a very strong-willed person but I adored her as she adored me. We were very close. My heart is broken.'

Grief was held in check by some fantastic strength of will. The daughter's feet, shod in rough espadrilles, were firmly planted, her hands jammed into the pockets of a knitted soft yellow cardigan. A kerchief covered the light brown hair. Some flour or clay had been used in an attempt to lessen the severity of the welt. The black eye was looking a little better. A redness lay under her chin but it was not too swollen. Hermann was right behind her.

‘That place.… The cave, Inspector, it's very old, very precious. The bones and stone tools go back far into the distant past, far beyond the Cro-Magnons and well into the earliest days of the Neanderthals. My father was a prehistorian, an assistant at the Sorbonne while studying for his final degree. He … he spent all of his waking moments patiently excavating the deposits at the mouth of that cave. His hands would always be cut, the skin worn right through — even the gloves
maman
took to him were never enough. That site was to have been the making of him.'

Louis waited. Kohler knew his partner was giving her time.

‘She … she found the cave for my father, using an old diary from the trunk of artefacts the Abbé Brûlé had left but … but then my father, he went away like so many, never to return.'

A diary and a collection of stone tools probably gathered in the early 1800s. There'd be time to dig into that. ‘Please, I know this must be very difficult for you, madame, but it was a yearly visit?'

She threw her husband a dark look. ‘The visit was her expression of a love that never left her, Inspector. Though there were many offers to take my father's place,
maman
refused all of them. I know. I saw the disappointment in their eyes as they said good-bye to her. She was very pretty and very good with things, very businesslike — she had to be, isn't that correct? Dependable yet … yet tender when needed. A real catch.'

The walking-stick jerked. ‘Juliette, don't be so stupid. Control yourself

‘Control? Why should I control anything now that she's gone? I only did it for her sake, André. On my own I would never have married you, not in a thousand years. Mother wanted things to be better for me. A teacher … a teacher married to another and living here in Domme, a step up in the world. Ah yes. God forgive me. I should have listened to my heart!'

‘You bitch!' The stick threatened.

‘Monsieur,' began St-Cyr.

‘
It's Captain, damn you!
'

‘Please don't touch her. Please. My partner, he is right behind you now and if I give the nod, he will flatten you or worse still, cram that foul-tempered mouth of yours into the ground!'

Louis seldom lost his composure. A born diplomat. Fumbling in a pocket, Kohler suddenly remembered a cigarette tucked away for a rainy day and, straightening it, offered it to her.

With a quiet calm that only threw its acid into the husband's face, she accepted and when she inhaled, she stood there looking at Jouvet as if all the bitterness of an unhappy marriage had suddenly been lifted from her.

You're enjoying his tobacco, aren't you?' seethed the husband.

She tossed her head and shrugged. ‘It's not often I get the chance. Since women are denied a ration, you forced me to steal what little I could or barter for it when your back was turned.'

St-Cyr sucked in his breath impatiently. These two would kill each other if they could. ‘Madame, let us walk a little. Hermann, please accompany this one back to his command post behind his wife's school. Pry what you can from him and remind him that the Sûreté and the Gestapo require full and accurate answers.'

Namely, when and where was he on the day of the murder. Kohler knew this was what Louis meant and grinned. But when he had the man alone, he, too, tried to make peace. ‘My two sons are in Russia. They've told me how it really is.'

‘Have they? Then did they tell you, please, that it was we of the LVF who were always given the task of guarding the rear and facing the partisans? One could not take a crap or a piss for fear of having his balls shot off or the organ removed with a knife and fed to him as his throat was slit!'

‘I thought it was freezing? I thought it was too cold to … well, wave the wand,' shrugged Kohler.

‘
It was!
'

For a man with a bad leg, Jouvet could ignore pain when he wanted. Deft with his stick, and by throwing his right side forward, he adopted a twisting gait that soon took them through the graveyard to ruined walls and beyond. Domme had lots of open spaces, the houses often being situated around irregularly shaped quadrangles, and everywhere behind them there were gardens that had been turned over to sustenance. Pigs, goats, beans, potatoes, artichokes.… Mentally the farmboy in Kohler ticked them off with appreciation, giving credit where due.

Jouvet knew the town well, knew every wall and bolt hole. Each house, most of one storey with attic dormers, was of that same soft honey-coloured limestone but often with steeply pitched roofs that were shingled with
lauzes —
slabs of flat grey limestone. Where the roofs were far less steep, they were covered with the thick flat reddish tiles so common in the Périgord and the South.

Not on Berlin Time like the Occupied Zone, where 8 a.m. meant 6 a.m., nevertheless the town had long since been up and about. The house, both school and home, was but a stone's throw from the rampart walk but separated from it by a single row of houses. Here on this side of the street, there was only the school and the gardens; the other three sides of the quadrangle held distant rows of houses. Again there were tethered goats, geese, ducks, rabbits in cages, chickens, people working, men, women, boys and girls.…

A small schoolyard was to the left of the building. Jouvet went through the boys' door like a rocket to shriek the kids into silence. No one dared look up from his or her desk. All hands were folded in front — perhaps thirty pairs. A portrait of Pétain hung on the wall dead centre and just below a clock with Roman numerals. There was a stove which, in winter, would always have a pot of water with sweet-smelling herbs simmering in it. A small blackboard, a stack of slates brought back into use due to the shortages, some tired exercise books with a few empty pages … little else met the eye until Kohler noticed the cut-outs rescued from ancient magazines. Fish swam across the imaginary sea of one wall. Pages of sheet music with pictures of symphony orchestras competed to broaden young minds but there were also things from their own world, though everything extra was probably dead against the regulations of the Ministry of Education. A taste of honey in a world of rote memory and annual examinations.

The silence was penetrating, the wait an agony.

‘
Bon.
That is how it should be,' said Jouvet. ‘There has been a murder, yes, and the Inspector here has come all the way from Paris seeking answers. Your continued silence is mandatory even if it has to last for the next ten days.'

Christ!

These students were the little ones from the ages of four to seven or eight, but it was exactly the same in the upstairs room. Not a whisper.

‘They aren't just afraid of you,' breathed Kohler. ‘They're terrified.'

‘As they should be.'

The view from the promenade des Falaises was lovely, a Lilliputian landscape with distant rows of tall, spindly poplars along the roadsides and boundaries but St-Cyr had no time for it. ‘Madame, I must ask you some difficult questions. Please, if at any time you feel it is too much, simply say so.'

A nod would suffice, for he was trying to be kind. The Inspector fiddled with his pipe, deciding to ration himself, but when she asked for another cigarette, he readily gave it up as if he had plenty.

‘Your husband, madame …' he began and she thought, Yes, he would start with André and she would have to tell him something, though suddenly
maman
was no longer here to advise her, to direct, to say, You must give him only a little.

‘André was not always like this,' she hazarded softly.

She did not avoid his gaze. He must be gentle. ‘But things have never been good?'

Her shrug said, Why should you care? Life's like that sometimes.

‘My husband always felt he had married beneath him, Inspector.'

‘But was your mother aware of this?'

Why must he ask it?
Why?
What had he found at the cave or in that valley? ‘
Maman
believed each married couple should stay together, no matter what.'

‘That is not what I asked.'

Her look was one of instant betrayal. ‘Have you found something?' she asked sharply and turned away to seek the distant scarps and wooded hills where the murder had occurred. Ash was irritably flicked from her cigarette. ‘Mother didn't know of it. There, does that satisfy you?'

She clenched a fist. He waited. He never took his eyes from her. She could feel him memorizing every last feature, the tears and how they could not stop, the chin — was it not a little proud? The bruise … the throat as she swallowed. ‘We … we exchanged letters every week, Inspector. Sometimes twice and even three times. Sometimes mother would telephone the post office here and … and Monsieur Coudinec, the
facteur
, would send his son to fetch me.'

He hated himself for pressing her. ‘And these letters, madame, these telephone calls, was your husband aware of them?'

Behind the tears, her smile, though crooked, was soft and forgiving. ‘There are no secrets, are there, in a little place like this? André often knew of the calls and intercepted her letters and read them. He knew
maman
hated him for what he was doing to me but also he knew she despised him for having proved her judgement so wrong in the choice of a husband for me.'

‘And the letters you wrote to your mother?'

‘He did not read them. That was not possible but … but mother kept them just as she kept everything I ever did. The notice of my first communion, the little cards of greeting I made for her at Christmas and for her birthday and that of my father — my dear father, Inspector. The letters
maman
made me write to him at least once a week!'

Ah
merde
, the poor child.…

‘It was her way of not only keeping me in touch with the father I would never meet, but of making sure I could read and write at a very early age. She was like that, Inspector. She always had to have two or three good reasons for doing something. Now, please, let us walk a little more. People will see us here. There will be enough talk as it is. I've left the children again without their teacher.'

From the promenade des Falaises, the walk passed below the public gardens which, in spite of the war and the hardships, held masses of flowers. ‘It's our mayor,' said the woman, welcoming the digression. ‘Monsieur Pialat insists pride of place is important particularly in hard times. The mill is just along here a little. Please, it is not far now.'

About seven hundred metres separated them from the graveyard at the other end of the esplanade. The windmill drew them to its soft yellow stone walls and he could see that it must have been a refuge for her when the troubles at home had become too much. Not used in years, its ancient walls had been left to the quiet dignity of decay.

She sat before him on the worn steps with her knees together and her arms wrapped tightly about them. She was, in that slender moment, like a woman who has suddenly been relieved of a tremendous burden but is still afraid to admit it to herself.

‘Madame, did your mother plan to visit you afterwards?'

Instantly the knees were released. ‘Not to stay with us. We … we haven't room and André … well, we've already discussed him.
Maman
would take a room … Ah no, I must cancel it, mustn't I? A room at the Hotel Esplanade. She … she always liked to stay in a good place when she came to see us. She always said the sacrifice, it … it was worth it for my sake, and for the children's.'

The pretence of being well-off had been important to her mother — she could see the détective thinking this. There would always have been those who criticized such foolishness — she could see him thinking this too. André most especially. André.… But there would be those who, on seeing her mother so well dressed and spending her money like that, would think well of the daughter she had raised. Ah yes, the détective, he thought this too.

‘We shared our meals. The children loved her visits. Dinner at her hotel, supper at the Auberge de la Truffe Noire, afterwards a drink in the Café de Bon Pere under moonlight with the sounds of the cicadas in the trees. Before this war, a
poulet en croute aux truffes, fonds d'artichauts au foie gras, champignons à la sarladaise, ragout d'ecrivisses, clafoutis aux cerises
or perhaps if it was a really special occasion, a
génoise ô l'abricot avec les noix pilées.
'