‘Countess, Hermann needs to be alone.’
‘I think he needs to be reminded. Now go. If Rene 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 Jesus-Christ!
The other one had been killed by the shots. Kohler remembered telling Rene 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 Theriault 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 chateau 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 chateau 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 confreres in the SS and Gestapo Paris-Central – Berlin, damn it – are about to use that reseau 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. Rene 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 chateau, 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.