J. Janes - Madrigal

Kohler tugged the collar of his greatcoat up and crammed bare hands into its pockets. He was dying for a fag but the wind put paid to any such notion.

‘Inspector …’

The word, though shouted, was ripped away and pelted southward.

‘In a moment, Préfet. I have to get the lie of the land.’

Bâtard ! cursed de Passe silently. ‘You find things at the base of the Latrines Tower. You do not immediately inform me in the proper manner. Instead, you demand my presence here in this wind? What is it you want? I haven’t all day.’

‘Nor have I.’

The gun-metal grey of a thickly layered ice-fog was being swept down the Rhone Valley and from distant hollows among the hills. Faint touches of pastel pink were beginning to intrude but offered no promise. The bitterly hard air took the breath away.

Would it have been like this in Russia? wondered Kohler. Would the boys have watched the fog lift or hug the ground to remain as they waited for the battle to begin again?

Everyone said the mistral had its origins in Russia. ‘My sons were within a year of her in age,’ he shouted.

‘Could we not go inside?’

Ah damn you, eh? ‘This wind makes people edgy, doesn’t it?’

‘What is it you want of me?’

‘A word, that’s all.’

The coal-black eyebrows arched under the grey snap-brim fedora. The cleanly shaven chin and wind-burned cheeks stiffened as the grey eyes swiftly narrowed. ‘Get to it, Inspector.’

‘Answers. That kid lived right down there in a slum next to the ramparts and by that four-legged bridge that looks as if it still might like to cross the river but can’t quite make up its mind.’

‘You’ve found her papers.’

De Passe was of medium height and build and immaculately dressed in a grey overcoat whose thin and perfect collar wasn’t turned up to ward off the wind. The blue silk of a Royalist’s tie showed from between the arms of a grey cashmere scarf. Arrogant and of the bourgeoisie , he was not quite of the bourgeoisie aisée , the really well off, but would have aspirations, especially these days when anything was possible for the chosen few.

A civil servant, an administrator, he would consider himself far above such a lowly station as a cop.

‘Start by telling me why that girl was here and then, Préfet, what the hell she might have known that someone didn’t want her saying.’

This was Kohler of the Kripo, a conscientious doubter of Germanic invincibility who was disloyal to his peers, reviled and often hated by many at Gestapo Paris-Central, yet kept on by Sturmbannführer Boemelburg because he and that infernal partner of his gave some semblance of law and order to the ordinary citizen. They were Boemelburg’s flying squad, dealing with the difficult, thus opiating public outcry. They still couldn’t seem to learn that policemen were never dismissed for doing too little.

‘She had a lover. A boy who fled to the hills to join the Banditen. ’ The ‘terrorists’, the Résistance , the maquis . ‘This matter was known to the bishop who, Herr Kohler, prevailed upon me to let him try to convince the girl to give up such a foolishness and agree to help us take the boy into custody before he did anything untoward.’

Anything that might damage the status quo, namely that of those in power. But good of him to have agreed to let the bishop have a try, though there must have been a little something offered in exchange for such a consideration.

‘And you think she was here to meet that boy?’

‘It’s possible. She would dress as if to cover herself for the lie of an audition, should the authorities stop her in the streets.’

‘But she wore her overcoat and beret, Préfet, a scarf and boots, too, and carried a handbag?’

Further discoveries had been made in the Latrines Pit, thought de Passe, and Kohler had seen fit to tease his ears with the information so that he would now fret over what else had been found. ‘I’m only suggesting a possibility. You and Jean-Louis are in charge of the investigation.’

‘Why’d they choose to meet here?’

‘Her place of residence was being watched. Quite obviously she must have realized this and found a way to arrange a meeting no one would suspect or question.’

But someone had. ‘Patriotic, was she?’

‘Misguided, Inspector, as so many of our young seem to be.’

‘Then there was some urgency to what she had to impart?’

‘Inspector, could we not go inside? There’s a window in this tower from which the view is almost as good.’

‘But then I couldn’t see the hills behind us. Those ones. That big one to the northeast. Right out there, Préfet. Yes, there.’

Mont Ventoux and the plateau de Vauduse, home to some of the maquis .

‘What else did you find in the Latrines Pit?’

‘Anxious, are you?’

‘Why should I be?’

‘Because maybe I found something you didn’t expect. Maybe whoever tidied up and dumped those things of hers should first have taken a damned good look through her handbag.’

‘What, damn you? Tell me. I have a right to know.’

‘Nothing, then. Absolutely nothing.’

‘ Maudit salaud! Cochon , how dare you defy me?’

Livid, de Passe turned abruptly away and headed for the exit rather than embarrass himself further. Left to the rooks which would haunt the battlements after a siege, Kohler thought again of his two sons. He thought of Giselle and Oona in Paris, the two loves of his life. And he thought of Louis who had lost his wife and little son to a Resistance bomb not so long ago, a mistake if ever there was one — that bomb had been meant for Louis who was not and could never be a collaborator — and he thought of Avignon and of men like de Passe.

‘Ah merde ,’ he croaked, ‘have I gone too far this time?’ The lady’s wrist-watch he had found in her handbag was from Carder’s and, though it was tastefully modest and had but a plain brown leather strap, the watch would have cost from 30,000 to 50,000 francs in 1938, the year it must have been purchased.

Ovid Peretti gently stroked the girl’s breasts using a swab of cotton wool. He did her hips and arms, the inner thighs. He wasn’t going to miss a thing and that was good. Because I have, thought St-Cyr, cursing himself. There had been three rings on the fine gold chain that had hung about her neck — he was positive of this and had reread his notes — and now, unfortunately, there were only two of them.

Search as he had, no sign of the third ring had been uncovered. ‘The sisters,’ he said. ‘One of them made off with a trinket.’

The cotton swab was added to others in a labelled glass vial. ‘ Le bijou par excellence , eh?’ snorted Peretti. ‘Are you still certain the youngest of the sisters was vomiting only because of this place, or are you now wondering if God’s servant, in all of her innocence, also did it to distract you?’

‘That was no act. The younger sister was suffering deeply from grief as well as a queasy stomach, but the older one must have used these against me. The ring had a ruby cabochon of at least four carats.’

‘Pigeon’s blood and free from flaws?’

‘Why did they take it?’

Had Jean-Louis now realized that, at the very least, the younger sister must also have known what they had been told to retrieve?

‘Was it the bishop’s?’ hazarded St-Cyr.

‘And on loan? You’re asking the wrong person, mon ami. ’

‘Then what about this?’

At least six hundred years old, the pendant box that was attached to her girdle next to the sewing kit was ovoid in shape, and not more than six centimetres long by about three in width, and one-and-a-half in thickness. Foiled crystals, in silver gilt, threw back a golden light when the box was opened to reveal a thorn.