Grumpy still and no imagination! ‘Nor was the railway spur that’s at the foot of this hill from which Herr Abetz’s chateau commands such an imposing view.’
After leaving Chez Crusoe, they’d spent the rest of the night in yet another of the lousy flea-bitten hotels honest detectives had had to become accustomed to. Searing pain in that left knee and no time to boil chestnuts and mash a poultice as promised. ‘Caesar wouldn’t have campaigned in the dead of winter!’
A sigh had best be given. Hermann had tossed and turned all night. Sleep had been impossible! ‘You’re missing the point. Every schoolchild in this country your Fuhrer thinks is his has to memorize the heroics of that twenty-year-old warrior, less now, of course, due to the Marechal’s policy of collaboration. But still, when he or she hears that Vercingetorix was defeated later that same year at Alesia, they learn that, like all noble Celts, he praised his vanquisher and led the Arverni in the victory parade, only to be courted by the Romans and then put to death. I tell you this simply to emphasize first that treachery is common to the Auvergne, though not limited to its natives.’
‘And the chateau?’
Hermann found a cigarette and, breaking it in half, lit both halves to pass one over.
‘Merci. Is like Vipiacus, the former estate of the Roman, Vipius, now corrupted into Vichy and owned by one of your countrymen.’
‘When in Rome, do as the Romans, eh; when in Occupied France, as the Occupier?’
‘Buy up everything you can.’
‘Then let those who once owned it, look after it.’
‘You’re learning. I’m certain of it.’
‘And second?’
Ah bon, Hermann had risen to the bait. ‘That those same natives, having kept their beloved Auvergne independent of Paris for over a thousand years until Louis XIV made the mistake of finally taking it, are still tough but toughest on themselves. Just look at this chateau of your ambassador. Its towers and square keep, which have been often repaired, are all that remain of the lava-stone feudal fortress. The villagers have repeatedly raided its ruins for building materials, not only out of necessity but because of a deep-seated hatred of its owners and former owners, all of whom had not only robbed but brutalized them. Of course the Revolution also took its toll, although even then it was the peasants who suffered. But then … then along came new money and a gentler time to give us the gracefully sloping roofs that are covered with lauzes, the walled gardens, fishponds and statuary of a maison de maitre, the baronial mansion of a grand seigneur.’
‘Who, like as not, is still from outside and still keeping the peasants in thrall. Mein Gott, haven’t you heard that “effort brings its own reward”?’ snorted Hermann, quoting the Marechal.
‘“Salvation is above all in our hands,” mon vieux. “The first duty of all Frenchmen,” and I count you one of us, “is to have confidence”.’
‘You sort out the former owner and bird lover. Leave the staff to me.’
‘Les bonnes a tout faire?’
The maids of all work. ‘Only those who have eyes and ears and are pretty enough to have been chased at parties! Coffee and cakes in the kitchen when you’re ready, Chief?’
Hermann had been lifted out of his slump and was now looking forward to opening this little can of worms, so it would be best to let him have the last word since he always liked to have it, except … except that, having now passed through the last set of gates, they had a visitor.
A black, four-door Citroen traction avant, just like their own in Paris, was drawn up in front of the main entrance, empty.
‘The bonnet is still warm,’ said Louis, noting its melting snow.
‘Hot, if you ask me. There are even skid marks.’
Sandrine Richard was waiting for them. Not in the grand salon with its Regence furniture and floor-to-ceiling murals of the hunt. Eighteenth-century, those, thought Kohler. Flemish by. the look. Gorgeous paintings of long-necked swans and geese hanging upside down to mature, pheasants too. Stags, boars and lunging hounds, the wounded at bay under crystal chandeliers whose light would be reflected from the gilded frames and bevelled mirrors.
Even the parquet underfoot would gleam, their quickening steps echoing as they passed a seventeenth-century harpsichord and followed the maid with the short blonde pigtails and blue, blue eyes. One of the Blitzmadchen. Eighteen, if that, and with an urgent, self-deprecating walk, her arms kept stiffly to the sides of the prim black uniform with its dentelle of white Auvergne lace. Black lisle stockings, too, and glossy black leather shoes with low and slightly worn heels.
Madame Richard, wife of the Minister of Supplies and Rationing, wasn’t in the billiards room either, its life-sized Hellenic nudes of Carrara marble gracing the decor of dripping, tassled green and maroon velvet, lozenges of crystal dangling from the low-slung lights above the table, the smell of cigars lingering in the musty air. Nor was she on the staircase that rose beneath baronial shields and crossed pikes to landing after landing, opening on to a long corridor that led to an even older part of the chateau.
She was in a high-ceilinged bedroom whose canopied bed was of dark rosewood and whose walls were covered with faded, patchy Renaissance frescoes but had the remarkable added touch of perched, exquisitely mounted birds. Hawks in full flight or having just come in to roost; eagles too, an owl … Another and another, one so small it was no bigger than a fist. All looking at the intruders, all caught as if alive. A snipe, a rail, a cock pheasant, a partridge. Eighty … a hundred … two hundred of these birds, the chicken-coop smell of their feathers mingling with that of cold wood-ashes.
‘Messieurs …’
‘Hermann, interview our guide and what staff remain. Leave this one and Monsieur Hebert to me!’
Turn-of-the-century, long-necked glass lamps with rose-coloured globes and wells of kerosene would shed the softest of lights on the assembled aviary, thought St-Cyr. An ormolu clock, its Olympian gracefully raising her garland from above the blackened fireplace, gave the exact time, even to its minute hand moving one step further into the current hour beneath a sumptuously reclining, all but life-sized nude whose back was slightly arched, throwing her pubes into full view.
Leaded windows let in the cold, grey light of day.
Madame Richard wore no hat or scarf — even the charcoal-grey woollen overcoat hadn’t been buttoned, so eager had she been to jump into that Citroen of her husband’s.
No gloves either, and watchfully tense, he noted. A woman in her late forties with straight jet-black hair that had been pulled to the right and back but had remained unpinned in haste, her eyes the hard and unyielding chestnut brown of the betrayed wife, socialite and mother, one of the Parisian beau monde, no doubt, with money, lots of money. Hers and his, ah yes. No wrinkles furrowed that most diligently tended of brows. Only at the base of the neck, above the everyday woollen dress, were there the cruel signs of ageing. A woman of more than medium height but not tall, the figure trim not because of the rationing, but because she ate only enough and never too much.
‘Inspector,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘We have to talk.’
‘A few small quest-’
‘Don’t you dare patronize me! That …’ She pointed accusingly to an oaken door, centuries old, which had seen the hammering blows of countless invaders. ‘Is where I found them and.’