The innkeeper where they’d stayed last night could easily have given the chateau a ring. The dogs had probably treed poor Louis. The morning wasn’t turning out as it should.
The Countess Jeanne-Marie (pronounced Jianne) Theriault was more than just a power to be reckoned with. She had them by the cold hard plums and she’d let him know it. Why else the cooler of her little salon? Why else the chance to go through her writing desk if he should choose – which he would, she’d assume.
Why else unless she’d known the desk had contained nothing incriminating?
Glancing towards the door she had left open, he had the thought then that perhaps she had been watching him all along. These old places … peepholes where you least expected them. Arsenic in your soup, belladonna in the cakes. No love between brothers, sisters and heirs … Lots and lots of places to hide a fugitive.
He left the desk alone and walked on. The coffee and brandy were taking one hell of a time.
She chose her entrance with a timing that was impressive. He’d only just seen the general’s staff car drive in under the stone arch, when there she was, standing in the doorway with a tray – huge and glittering – coffee-pot, cups and saucers, a bottle of Armagnac and crystal glasses …
‘You must forgive my keeping you waiting, Captain Kohler. Business …’ Again a shrug but now an apologetic smile, quite pretty too … ‘When one lives alone, there is never enough time.’
Kohler took the tray from her and set it on the verd-antique coffee table whose top rested on four golden cherubs. How nice …
She’d given the hair more brushing but still wore it loose, had composed herself if ever one such as this needed to. The needlework turned out to be the ornate and beautifully worked front panel of her dress. The amber beads made sharp little noises as she indicated he was to sit. ‘So, these murders, Captain. Tell me about them, please. Leave nothing out.’
The stall then, until the general arrived. The use of his rank instead of Inspector. A put-down, or to set the stage for a later confrontation with the higher rank of the general?
He had the idea there were carefully arranged rings of defence around the Chateau Theriault and that she had a network of informants only too loyal to her.
But he liked the way she poured their coffee. Absolute control – hesitation, glances, dropped dusky eyelids, slight touches of slender fingers. Was the woman flirting with him? Gott in Himmel…
‘Please, I must insist, Captain Kohler. All the details.’
As she sat back in her armchair, she crossed her long legs and he liked that too. Still gunpowder in the old barrel, eh? A woman who had liked to have her lovers and probably still did.
He set his coffee aside and laid out all the photographs for her. ‘That willow the boy’s lying under must be down by the river, Countess. Whoever took the photographs knew him only too well. When we examined the body, he was fully clothed as you can see, but dressed as if from one of the seminaries. A boy of some means, I think, Countess. The clothes were good.’
‘He had entered the priesthood – there’s a Benedictine monastery not far from here. Brother … Brother Jerome had enrolled as a novice but if you ask me, Captain, he had no inclination whatsoever towards the priesthood.’
‘Just a dodge then, from the military call-up?’
Was that genuine sadness in those dark and dusky eyes?
The nod was almost imperceptible. ‘My son had no patience with him and refused to speak to him when he heard of it.’
Quite obviously the general had been told by someone to cool his heels.
‘Was his wife’s maid in love with the boy?’
‘Yvette Noel was his sister, Captain Kohler. The family are not wealthy – they’ve been employees of the Domaine Theriault for some ninety-seven years, this coming spring. Riel Noel is my Chef de Culture, the keeper of our vines. His brother, Morgan, is our wine master and oenologist, so you can see, I hope, that the matter is of a delicate nature and that I had, of course, to search my heart before answering your questions.’
Gott in Himmel, she was fantastic! Louis should have been witness to this. ‘I quite understand, Countess,’ he said humbly.
Reaching for his coffee, he took a sip – glanced over the rogue’s gallery of naked shots of the boy, the young David with his pecker asleep in the sunshine of the Loire or of Fontainebleau Woods.
‘Jerome Noel …?’ he asked, just to get it right.
‘Alain Jerome Noel. The Alain was taken from my husband’s name as a gesture of sympathy and honour.’
‘How old was the boy?’
The sad eyes lifted, the fingers traced the line of her right thigh to which the material clung. ‘Twenty-four. He looks much younger and that was a part of the trouble, I think. He was young for his age. And silly.’
‘Like the maid?’ he asked.
He had remembered. ‘Yes … yes, like his sister, Yvette.’
Kohler affected the seriousness of a high-court judge. ‘With all due respect, Countess, that’s not the impression my partner got of your daughter-in-law’s maid.’
‘Your partner …?’
Gott in Himmel, she was good! Genuine surprise … questions in the look she still gave him. ‘We always work in pairs – on criminal investigations. It’s safer that way. My partner and I deal with common theft, bank robberies, arson and murder mostly.’
Again she said, ‘Your partner …?’
‘Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete Nationale.’
Lost in thought, she said, ‘The owner of the car.’
‘I’ve only borrowed it for the duration. Actually, it isn’t St-Cyr’s. He had the use of it and a driver before the Armistice but manpower being scarce, we’ve had to dispense with the driver.’
‘And where is this partner of yours now?’
Kohler found himself secretly relishing the moment. Had they really got the better of the woman? ‘He’s in Paris, on another case, Countess. The manpower thing.’
He gave a futile shrug; she, a pleasant little smile. ‘Have you any suspects, Captain?’
Was she being coy? He found the use of his rank a pain in the ass. ‘Two as a matter of fact, but I’d rather not say who they are at the moment.’
‘Two but … ah, I see. Yvette’s killer might possibly also have killed her brother. Is that what you mean?’
No mention of the Resistance. ‘Something like that, yes. You see, Countess, it can’t have been the sister, can it?’
Her coffee was cold and there was no place to dump it. ‘Then who?’ she asked but couldn’t find the will to look at him – she knew she must! He had no proof! Just supposition. A shot in the dark. The police were all the same!
‘Who indeed, Countess?’ Nothing yet about the diamonds, nothing about monogrammed cigarette cases from Russia and bottles of perfume in beaded silk purses or condoms in their little silk sleeves.
‘He was a silly boy, a foolish boy. So foolish. Gabrielle …’
‘Gabrielle what, Countess?’
‘Nothing. It … it doesn’t matter now in any case. Nothing matters. It’s finished – finished for the two of them, Inspector, and me, I have somehow to pick up the pieces for the family.’
‘Is your daughter-in-law really in danger from the Resistance or was Yvette’s murder merely made to look that way?’
‘I… I don’t know. I wish to God I did!’
Kohler poured the brandy and handed her a glass. Their fingers touched, again that same icy calm and yet those dark eyes … had they touches of violet in them?
‘You must excuse me, Inspector. I’ve kept the General Hans Ackermann waiting far too long. I can spare you no more time this morning but if you wish, I will be only too glad to see you again.’
In hell. ‘That’s decent of you, Countess. Please give the general my regards. We’re old friends.’
St-Cyr poled the punt through the last of the reeds then let it glide out into the backwater pond. The greystone mill and silent water wheel reeked of Balzac’s novel, The Lily of the Valley. The tall, steeply pitched cedar roof had dormer windows in the loft, skylights and lots of moss.