J. Janes - Beekeeper

‘We are entering Draveil,’ said St-Cyr companionably to her. ‘Once beyond it, you will find one of the finest stretches of the river. A gentle peace before the storm of the city, a reprieve for those wanting to get away for the weekend. On the Left Bank there are the smokestacks, cranes and loading docks of increasingly crowded industrial complexes; on the Right Bank, as if by pure magic, the villas with their expansive lawns and tennis courts, the sailing clubs and quaint little hotels of the bourgeoisie.’

‘My father loved our country house, Inspector,’ said Juliette from behind them, ‘but it was far from being a villa!’

‘There are riding trails throughout the forest and along the river bank, Frau Hillebrand,’ he went on, ignoring Madame de Bonnevies as if he was a tour guide for some low-priced agency, thought Kohler. ‘Peaceful walks, picnics and diligent hunts for morels, but always the river which here flows quietly. No barges these days, of course, but do you know, Hermann, I have yet to investigate a murder along this stretch of the river. Such contentment has to mean something.’

‘He’s overtired. Ignore him. If you don’t, he’ll soon be going on about the little farm he wants to retire to!’

‘Messieurs, please ! It is not a joking matter. The turn-off to the house is but a few kilometres now. Once past a little wood on your right, Inspector, you take the first turn towards the river, but … but we will have to walk in, I think.’

And Étienne? wondered Juliette. Should she cry out a warning? Would he then attempt to escape or use the gun to defend himself?

The road was even lonelier than the one they’d come along and it was covered with about fifteen centimetres of snow. As light from the headlamps passed quickly over the house and then returned to settle on it, the two detectives searched the ground ahead for footprints and tyre marks but could see none.

‘Wait here,’ breathed St-Cyr softly. ‘Make a sound and you will answer for it. Hermann, let me go in alone, but follow at a distance.’

‘Then take my gun.’

The head was shaken; the Lebel Louis carried was preferred. Danielle de Bonnevies had stated that she had stayed overnight here on Thursday and Friday, arriving well after dark and leaving well before dawn.

Finding her footprints under the fresh snow would take time, the tyre marks of her bike also.

But had she really stayed here on Thursday night? wondered Kohler. Had the kid not lied about that, too?

It was not good walking in here alone, thought St-Cyr. Though a dark shape on a moonless night, he would still show up against the snow-covered ground. Fruit trees, old, many-branched and left to nature, marked the remains of a small orchard and offered cover. Four beehives had been set out in a tidy, well-spaced row among the trees and as his gaze passed quickly over them, he realized Danielle and her father had kept one of their out-apiaries here. A logical place, a perfect location, but there were no recent tracks under the snow when he crouched to brush it away, and perhaps it was true what she had said, that she tried not to use the house often, so as to keep attention from it. ‘I arrived well after dark, Inspector, and left well before dawn.’

From the hives, it was but a short walk to the house whose dark silhouette gave a sloping-roofed shed, a ground-floor wing, with attic dormer, and then, at a right angle, the main two-storeyed part of a stone building that probably dated from about 1850. Peering through a window revealed only a lack of black-out curtains. Trying the doors as stealthily as he could yielded only a decided need for their keys. But there were recent tracks, though not since this snowfall or the one before it. The prints were those of the girl’s hiking boots.

‘Thursday and Friday nights, then,’ he whispered to himself. ‘ Merde , I wish Hermann was with me. Hermann is far better at this and can see things I don’t.’

The door to the shed wasn’t locked. Danielle had pushed her bike in here on those two nights but there was no bike. There were garden tools as old as the centuries, fishnets, two pairs of oars, and he couldn’t help but admire Juliette de Goncourt’s father for both having kept the house as a family retreat and making sure Étienne de Bonnevies had the use of it and perhaps even its ownership.

Soisy-sur-Seine had been lovely. Marianne had adored the little holiday they had managed when Philippe had been six months old. They had left him nearby with a farm woman and had danced to an accordion on the grand porch of one of the fabled guinguettes , the rustic riverside restaurants and dancehalls. They had gone out on the river in a skiff, he with his shirtsleeves rolled up and wearing an old straw hat, Marianne in a brand-new flowered print dress that had been so light and gay, he could remember it still. The fritures , the deep-fried little fish from the river, had been superb. They had shared a chocolate mousse and she had spilled some on the dress and been so worried about it he had bought her another the very next day.

‘But such holidays were always too rare and brief, and now she’s gone and so is Philippe,’ he reminded himself and, passing the torch beam over the remainder of the shed, felt his heart sink.

On the other side of a wheelbarrow, hidden as if set out of sight in haste, there was a tattered khaki rucksack. Atop this, tightly rolled and tied with linked bits of old boot laces, was a darkly stained French Army trench coat that still bore a frayed and faded Red Cross armband. A metre-long, stiff, leather-covered map tube from the Great War lay on the stone floor and beside it there was an artist’s paintbox. Étienne de Bonnevies had indeed come home.

Kohler leaned on his crutches and listened hard to the night. Louis had been gone too long. There wasn’t a sound, save that of the wind in frozen reeds now dry and old along the bank. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let him go in there alone,’ he softly swore. ‘ Verdammt ! What the hell am I going to do if something’s happened to him and I haven’t his help?’

Try to get Oona to Spain, no matter what? Try to outrun the SS with this foot? And what about Giselle, eh? Giselle …

Sickened by what would surely happen to both of them if he tried and failed to get them to freedom behind Oberg’s back, he started out again. Louis had often paused, and that was good. He had done the wise thing and had approached the house obliquely.

When he came to the shed, Kohler leaned the crutches against the wall and hobbled inside. Only then did he switch on his torch and curse Gestapo stores for the lousy batteries they supplied. Striking two matches which flew apart in a rush of sparks, he again cursed, this time the State-run monopoly Vichy now managed but no better than the Government of the Third Republic. The French had been putting up with the same lousy matches ever since the damned things had been invented!

Finally one of them lighted and his frost-numbed fingers added two more. As though it were yesterday and he still deep in that other war, he saw the map tube and rucksack. He remembered the battery of field guns he had commanded, the fierceness of the shelling, the constant stench of cordite, wet, mouldy earth and death, of opened French bunkers and upheaved trenches, the scatterings of last letters from home. ‘Ah Scheisse ,’ he said. ‘Louis …’

Hobbling as quickly as he could, he raced to find the main door of the house and bang on it. ‘Open up!’ he yelled. ‘Police!’

‘Louis …’ he bleated. ‘Louis, I heard no shot. Has the kid killed herself?’

Only silence answered, and as he nudged the door, it swung open.

It was freezing in the car, the endless waiting an agony, and when Honoré de Saussine got out, Juliette did so too.