Santoni acknowledged this with a slight, sidewards toss of his head. ‘The 750 cc engine drives …’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Surete. ‘It drives the bike’s rear wheel and that of the side-car.’
‘There’s a spare tyre …’
‘Yes, yes, and an extra pair of gauntlets and goggles. Better still, unless I am very mistaken, my partner has never driven one of these. Keep the thirty thousand and say nothing. Perhaps I can sell it to a certain hearse-driver.’
‘A hearse-driver …? Ah no, monsieur. But how did you …?’
‘Let’s just say Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi had a list of telephone numbers. Yours was among them.’
‘The eggs … and … and the cheese, and the wine. The rose.’
‘Never mind the groceries, my friend. You were one of her middlemen and marked with an asterisk. Don’t breathe a word of it and I’ll do you all a favour and burn the list.’
St-Cyr mounted the bike. Immediately there was that tremendous sense of power, that sudden surge of adrenalin. Kicking it to life, he pulled the goggles down and heaved the sack into the side-car.
The open road beckoned. Moonlight was everywhere. Within forty-five minutes he was walking up to the village, having parked the bike where Hermann would not fail to see it.
Right where the woman had died, right out there on that hillside beneath the moon.
A beautiful bike. A beautiful thing but had God not mocked His little detective by providing such a benediction?
Only the ruins of the citadel, ghosting whitely on high, gave answer and suddenly all the exhilaration, the momentary reliving of his youth, then the Great War and the roads of Flanders, vanished, and he saw it all for what it was: a disaster, a tragedy so in keeping with the history of Provence. All God had done was to speed him on his miserable way.
Three half-tracks with 88 millimetre guns brought up the rear of the convoy. Six medium-sized Opel lorries were crammed with troops of the Waffen-SS fresh from the Reich and on their way to wet their trousers in North Africa. MG42s, Schmeissers, Bergmanns, stick grenades and mortars. Kohler had to laugh at that God of Louis’s. ‘These bastards will chew the hell out of that village, mademoiselle. You see, they have to prove themselves in battle.’
There were four armoured cars ahead of the lorries and then; right in front, eighteen motorcycles with side-cars on which had been mounted machine-guns. ‘It isn’t going to be nice,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry you’ll have to witness it.’
She did not know what to make of him. Crying over the loss of his partner and friend; now being sarcastic over the might of his own countrymen.
The snow fell lightly, and it was so beautiful even in the stabbing lights, but then there was the frozen breath of the enemy who ran this way and that alongside the convoy shouting orders and checking things. And the harsh angularity of their helmets matched the bleak brutality of their weapons.
‘Look, if it means anything, Mademoiselle Viviane, I don’t think you were involved with the Resistance and neither was Madame Buemondi. She worked her butter and eggs business and fought off her husband’s attempts to sell the villa. You did your weaving and when someone came along who wanted to leave a few francs with you in exchange for a cheque on a London bank, you obliged.’
Was it all so simple? Could anyone even begin to understand the hell she’d been through?
Shackled tightly to him by wrist and ankle, and guarded by three Alsatians, they could only watch the convoy assemble and dared not move.
‘That business nearly drove me crazy. You see, Herr Kohler, I was terrified the fraud would be uncovered. Every day I asked myself how could I possibly pay those poor, deluded people back? How could I, whose father had suffered so much from fraud, now perpetrate a similar thing on others? There wasn’t any more than a hundred pounds in that account. My father died penniless, remember?’
One of the dogs rose up on its hind legs to get her scent. She cringed. Kohler hissed, ‘Don’t move!’ and the dog took its time. Ah merde! She’d urinated.
He waited, giving her time to calm herself. ‘Madame Buemondi kept the money for later, didn’t she? It was her idea and you went along with it because, being English and determined to stay, you would never know quite what the future might hold. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, she handled the business side of things and, even knowing what she was like, you let her.’
She shut her eyes. She could not look at the dogs! ‘Please don’t condemn me. We needed so many things and I cannot answer for the love and loyalty I have always held for her.’
Kohler wanted to leave it but, Gott im Himmel, sentiment had no place in a detective’s life and they’d need everything at hand if the two of them were to get out of this alive. Besides, talking about it might just keep her from moving. ‘Madame Buemondi had a friend alter the figures in your pass book. Right? Voila, the one hundred pounds became what? Hell, no one could possibly have checked with the bank!’
‘Five hundred and seventeen thousand, four hundred and twenty-two pounds, six shillings and eight pence. There was only one page that had anything on it. I hadn’t used the account in years and had simply kept the money there in case I should ever have to return to England. Can’t … can’t you do something to make these dogs leave me alone?’
He waited, and finally she continued. ‘That page was removed and the booklet carefully restitched. Several new entries led up to the invasion of 1940, then others traced my route south. But you see, I was an artist, an eccentric and a recluse – isn’t that so? Money didn’t mean anything to me, Inspector. My father was fabulously wealthy – oh, it all fitted and I let it all go on because, you see, I could never leave France!’
The dogs were worrying over her urine. They couldn’t seem to leave her alone. Kohler filled his chest and let the breath out slowly. It was almost time for Munk to begin his Christmas campaign in the hills, and who in Berlin was to know if one villager or another really were maquis? Hell, they’d all been up to their stupid, stupid necks in the black market!
The dogs moved away and sat there watching them.
‘Delphane found out about things,’ he said. ‘By then he was desperate for an out and seized on the two of you. He asked for the money and you tried to get it from her but she saw things differently. She didn’t want to become involved with him at all. She’d have lost everything.’
One should not cry. One must be brave. ‘He went after Josette-Louise and found her in Paris. He … he said that he would use her against me if .. if I did not get him the money. That he needed it to … to finance things.’
‘What things?’
As if he didn’t know! ‘The escape of himself and four others. They … they had come this way and had used the cottage, Inspector. You see, Jean-Paul knew all about that place. He knows everything there is to know about Anne-Marie and myself. He …’
‘He fathered your children who were then adopted by your lover and Carlo Buemondi.’
‘Is it so bad? I had nothing. An artist earns so little. Oh for sure, in the early days I could use my father’s villa near Chamonix now and then if I pleaded with him and said it was an emergency, but he never gave me an allowance. You see, Inspector, my father despised me for what I had become. And when he lost everything to Stavisky, he blamed me and I was left with only my dearest friend and her love for me. For me!’
Ah Nom de Dieu, it had been a crime of passion! Borel had had nothing to do with the killing. Merde! ‘What did Jean-Paul tell you after all those years, mademoiselle? That her father had hired him to silence the financier?’