The smoke would have been thick and pungent with the stench of burning flesh. It would have crept along the roofs of the tunnels or hung there for days. Soot was everywhere above him, now that he looked for it. All too soon, though, the fears and superstitions of the crew got the better of them and they searched in silence, conferred seldom and then but softly, ghosts of another time and with candles instead of flaming torches or stone lamps.
A little farther in, another long passage went east into that same pitch-dark and uncertain void. But had both of these lateral passages once broken out at their far ends so that the rays of the rising and setting sun would have been seen directly but only at one precise time of year? The tumulus must be huge.
At a distant shout from one of the men, they discovered that the other entrance door was locked, but for how long had that been?
‘We’ll wait here,’ said Baumann softly. ‘We’ll know soon enough if there’s anyone else.’ Anyone but the spirits of the dead, thought Kohler, the spirits of men, women and children who had once lived and worked and played and fashioned tools of flint and then of copper and had dragged their dead in here.
Schultz took the string bag from him and, grinning, set each of the skulls in wall niches where once the stone lamps would have been placed. They would have a trial and they’d find out what he knew but then what? wondered Kohler uneasily. On Thursday, in another forty-eight hours, they would put to sea taking their Dollmaker with them and no one the wiser as to the whereabouts of this half of the partnership, particularly if they locked the owner of that hotel and his family in with him.
St-Cyr was not happy. Ah no, most certainly. With the first grey touches of dawn, the rain had ceased. Now dense fog had come in to blanket everything and give to the alarm of foraging gulls and ravens a special sharpness.
Something was attracting them. Kerjean had heard it too, and so had Hélène Charbonneau but more than this, far more, was the Préfet’s having not stopped where he should have, and the woman’s alertness to the unannounced change of plan.
The Dolmen of Crucuno was a good one and a half kilometres behind them and that is where Kerjean had said he was taking them to look for her husband.
Tense and wary, she sat in the far corner of the back seat, directly behind the Préfet but visible to him in the rear-view mirror, for he had turned it so as to see her. Though it must hurt her to do so, she was clutching the door handle as if ready to bolt and run at the slightest sign.
She was afraid of Kerjean and must have overheard them talking about her.
Kerjean knew it too.
‘Hélène, why not stay in the car,’ he said, looking at her in the rear-view. ‘It may be the child the birds have found. It may be your husband. Until Jean-Louis and I have had a look, it could be anything.’
She didn’t answer. With the back of her other hand, she rubbed the side window clear then stared emptily out at the moor.
Desolate and all but hidden beneath the fog, its scattered clumps of heather, gorse and stunted hawthorn gave shades of grey and brown to the ever-present silvery tufts of wind-twisted grass and boulders with mosses and lichens on them.
‘Hélène …’
‘I heard you, Victor. Why, please, have we stopped here? This place soon becomes marshy. There’s a bog and then a fen of several hectares with an open space of water in the middle.’
Must she be so difficult? ‘You know I have often found your husband there, Hélène. You know he swore he could hear parts of his symphony and that the Veneti and those from long before them used to throw offerings into its centre and to sometimes make sacrifices.’
‘Sacrifices? Sacrifices for what?’ she said harshly. ‘My husband? Don’t you mean Yvon? Don’t you mean the man you cared enough about to watch over him for me?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘What have you done with him?’
‘Hélène, you are overwrought.’
‘Am I? You were there at the clay pits on the day of the murder, Victor. You came to the house to warn me of trouble but you did not offer to go with me. You said you mustn’t, that I would have to handle le Trocquer myself. Me, Victor. Me!’
‘Jean-Louis, don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’
‘I know it only too well, Inspector. A package of American cigarettes? A crumpled handkerchief in the straw? My handkerchief. Mine!’
‘Madame …’ began St-Cyr.
Bitterly she looked at him. ‘Angélique is aware of this place and will have told the Captain of it. My husband often took her with him both to hear the “symphony” and to gather sphagnum moss and the leaves of what the old fishermen call Labrador tea. Berries too, and other things. She is very close to her father and understands him better even than myself but she is also with the Captain and may be under his spell.’
‘Hélène …’
‘If you have killed my husband, Victor, I will tell the Germans everything. I know about your Resistance. Everything, do you understand?’
The gulls cried and the sound of them grew as she pushed open the door and bolted from the car.
‘Ah merde,’ breathed St-Cyr. ‘Victor, I must ask that you …’
‘Jean-Louis, I did not kill le Trocquer nor did I kill her husband. I swear it. She’s crazy. She’s all mixed up. Oh for sure, it’s understandable but …’
‘But, what, Victor?’
‘But if the gulls and the ravens have got to his corpse we had best find her before she finds him.’
‘Then stay close. Don’t let us become separated. You first, then myself.’
‘And the child, Jean-Louis? What if it is the child they are crying over?’
In less than twenty metres, the car and the road were lost to them. Kerjean asked again about the child but St-Cyr did not answer. Instead, he let only the sound of the gulls and the ravens come to them. Victor could well be guilty. Certainly he had been playing a very dangerous game. And what of Paulette le Trocquer and her mother? he asked himself. What of those empty jerry cans? Had he gone to Quiberon to settle the girl and her mother once and for all? Had he then returned to the house and taken the woman and this detective on to the clay pits so as to give himself an alibi?
Kerjean moved again, and he followed the Préfet for some distance. There were cairns half sunk into the peaty soil. Sometimes only a single, small menhir, perhaps not placed by the ancients but in far more recent times, marked the route.
Frequently they both stopped and listened hard but beneath the crying of the gulls and ravens, there was not even the patient dripping of water.
So muffled were the sounds at ground level, the birds had full dominion but then, suddenly, her voice came loudly and from all directions hollowly echoing. ‘Yvon … Yvon … darling, please forgive me. I was so afraid the Captain would have us all arrested.’ Arrested … arrested … ‘I could not tell him to leave me alone.’ Alone … alone … ‘Darling are you out there?’
Ah damn, where the hell was Kerjean? Why had he not kept his eyes on him?
‘Yvon, is Angélique with you?’ You … you … ‘Did you meet up with the Captain?’ The Captain … the Captain … ‘He took her from the house, Yvon.’ The house … the house …
St-Cyr went forward but was soon up to his calves in springy, water-soaked sphagnum moss which grew in low mounds and humps with leatherleaf, Labrador tea and cranberry and sometimes stunted black spruce. And to the damp salt smell of a cold sea, came that of rotting vegetation, of peat, black water and methane, and the sense of someone near but never seen.
Nom de Dieu, de Dieu, he said to himself, why could Hermann not have been with him?