Not on Berlin Time like the Occupied Zone, where 8 a.m. meant 6 a.m., nevertheless the town had long since been up and about. The house, both school and home, was but a stone’s throw from the rampart walk but separated from it by a single row of houses. Here on this side of the street, there was only the school and the gardens; the other three sides of the quadrangle held distant rows of houses. Again there were tethered goats, geese, ducks, rabbits in cages, chickens, people working, men, women, boys and girls.…
A small schoolyard was to the left of the building. Jouvet went through the boys’ door like a rocket to shriek the kids into silence. No one dared look up from his or her desk. All hands were folded in front – perhaps thirty pairs. A portrait of Petain hung on the wall dead centre and just below a clock with Roman numerals. There was a stove which, in winter, would always have a pot of water with sweet-smelling herbs simmering in it. A small blackboard, a stack of slates brought back into use due to the shortages, some tired exercise books with a few empty pages … little else met the eye until Kohler noticed the cut-outs rescued from ancient magazines. Fish swam across the imaginary sea of one wall. Pages of sheet music with pictures of symphony orchestras competed to broaden young minds but there were also things from their own world, though everything extra was probably dead against the regulations of the Ministry of Education. A taste of honey in a world of rote memory and annual examinations.
The silence was penetrating, the wait an agony.
‘Bon. That is how it should be,’ said Jouvet. ‘There has been a murder, yes, and the Inspector here has come all the way from Paris seeking answers. Your continued silence is mandatory even if it has to last for the next ten days.’
Christ!
These students were the little ones from the ages of four to seven or eight, but it was exactly the same in the upstairs room. Not a whisper.
‘They aren’t just afraid of you,’ breathed Kohler. ‘They’re terrified.’
‘As they should be.’
The view from the promenade des Falaises was lovely, a Lilliputian landscape with distant rows of tall, spindly poplars along the roadsides and boundaries but St-Cyr had no time for it. ‘Madame, I must ask you some difficult questions. Please, if at any time you feel it is too much, simply say so.’
A nod would suffice, for he was trying to be kind. The Inspector fiddled with his pipe, deciding to ration himself, but when she asked for another cigarette, he readily gave it up as if he had plenty.
‘Your husband, madame …’ he began and she thought, Yes, he would start with Andre and she would have to tell him something, though suddenly maman was no longer here to advise her, to direct, to say, You must give him only a little.
‘Andre was not always like this,’ she hazarded softly.
She did not avoid his gaze. He must be gentle. ‘But things have never been good?’
Her shrug said, Why should you care? Life’s like that sometimes.
‘My husband always felt he had married beneath him, Inspector.’
‘But was your mother aware of this?’
Why must he ask it? Why? What had he found at the cave or in that valley? ‘Maman believed each married couple should stay together, no matter what.’
‘That is not what I asked.’
Her look was one of instant betrayal. ‘Have you found something?’ she asked sharply and turned away to seek the distant scarps and wooded hills where the murder had occurred. Ash was irritably flicked from her cigarette. ‘Mother didn’t know of it. There, does that satisfy you?’
She clenched a fist. He waited. He never took his eyes from her. She could feel him memorizing every last feature, the tears and how they could not stop, the chin – was it not a little proud? The bruise … the throat as she swallowed. ‘We … we exchanged letters every week, Inspector. Sometimes twice and even three times. Sometimes mother would telephone the post office here and … and Monsieur Coudinec, the facteur, would send his son to fetch me.’
He hated himself for pressing her. ‘And these letters, madame, these telephone calls, was your husband aware of them?’
Behind the tears, her smile, though crooked, was soft and forgiving. ‘There are no secrets, are there, in a little place like this? Andre often knew of the calls and intercepted her letters and read them. He knew maman hated him for what he was doing to me but also he knew she despised him for having proved her judgement so wrong in the choice of a husband for me.’
‘And the letters you wrote to your mother?’
‘He did not read them. That was not possible but … but mother kept them just as she kept everything I ever did. The notice of my first communion, the little cards of greeting I made for her at Christmas and for her birthday and that of my father – my dear father, Inspector. The letters maman made me write to him at least once a week!’
Ah merde, the poor child.…
‘It was her way of not only keeping me in touch with the father I would never meet, but of making sure I could read and write at a very early age. She was like that, Inspector. She always had to have two or three good reasons for doing something. Now, please, let us walk a little more. People will see us here. There will be enough talk as it is. I’ve left the children again without their teacher.’
From the promenade des Falaises, the walk passed below the public gardens which, in spite of the war and the hardships, held masses of flowers. ‘It’s our mayor,’ said the woman, welcoming the digression. ‘Monsieur Pialat insists pride of place is important particularly in hard times. The mill is just along here a little. Please, it is not far now.’
About seven hundred metres separated them from the graveyard at the other end of the esplanade. The windmill drew them to its soft yellow stone walls and he could see that it must have been a refuge for her when the troubles at home had become too much. Not used in years, its ancient walls had been left to the quiet dignity of decay.
She sat before him on the worn steps with her knees together and her arms wrapped tightly about them. She was, in that slender moment, like a woman who has suddenly been relieved of a tremendous burden but is still afraid to admit it to herself.
‘Madame, did your mother plan to visit you afterwards?’
Instantly the knees were released. ‘Not to stay with us. We … we haven’t room and Andre … well, we’ve already discussed him. Maman would take a room … Ah no, I must cancel it, mustn’t I? A room at the Hotel Esplanade. She … she always liked to stay in a good place when she came to see us. She always said the sacrifice, it … it was worth it for my sake, and for the children’s.’
The pretence of being well-off had been important to her mother – she could see the detective thinking this. There would always have been those who criticized such foolishness – she could see him thinking this too. Andre most especially. Andre.… But there would be those who, on seeing her mother so well dressed and spending her money like that, would think well of the daughter she had raised. Ah yes, the detective, he thought this too.
‘We shared our meals. The children loved her visits. Dinner at her hotel, supper at the Auberge de la Truffe Noire, afterwards a drink in the Cafe de Bon Pere under moonlight with the sounds of the cicadas in the trees. Before this war, a poulet en croute aux truffes, fonds d’artichauts au foie gras, champignons a la sarladaise, ragout d’ecrivisses, clafoutis aux cerises or perhaps if it was a really special occasion, a genoise o l’abricot avec les noix pilees.’