J. Janes - Stonekiller

‘Last Sunday, the day before she was killed.’

‘Yes.’

Compassion all but overwhelmed him and for a moment he could do nothing more than set the rucksack down. He wished she would turn to look at him but knew she wouldn’t, that he would have to force her to do so.

‘And that is when you gathered the lumps of pyrolusite,’ he said more harshly than intended. She dropped her hands, tugged the skirt from her belt and tried to free it from clinging to her thighs.

‘The stones for the cave painting, Inspector – you know this is what they were for. Why is it, then, that you demand it of me?’

She was facing him now and saw him draw in a breath in shock. She tried to smile self-consciously and this split her battered lips and made her wince. Blood trickled down her chin and she wiped it away with the back of a hand. ‘The sooty black dust of another era, Inspector. The children … my students. I was preparing for a little lesson in our history. I thought if I had some of the black, a little of the ochre, some grease – dear God there is now so little of it here and it is hoarded as never before and always priced too high.’ She stopped herself, touched her hair, felt suddenly at such a loss to appear so poorly, and tucked strands of her hair up under the tight diadem of braids.

‘Some oil, yes, or melted fat – foie gras , isn’t it possible that the ancients might also have loved the fat of goose livers?’ she asked. ‘Some clay to mix with the colours if needed. I could let the children see for themselves why Lascaux, it …’ Ah no, why had she said it? she wondered.

‘Lascaux?’ he reminded her.

Her hands fell to her sides in defeat. Yes, the cave paintings everyone still talks of. The Sistine Chapel of the Perigord.’

And a cave painter , madame, was that it? he wondered but did not ask. She had been badly beaten by her husband. Blood had seeped through to stain the left shoulder of the housedress but she was, as yet, unaware of this. Perhaps five metres separated them. The rabbits slept, the chickens took little interest. The smells of both mingled with that of the vegetables and earth she had watered with the leavings of the laundry.

‘How did you find the cave on that Sunday?’ he asked.

‘Disturbed. I knew someone had been there very recently to look it over – matches … I have found some burnt ones. Ah, I thought,’ she shrugged and winced and clutched her left shoulder only to drop her bloodied fingers and stare at them in dismay. ‘I … I sensed it, Inspector. Right away I felt the presence of another – yes, yes, that was how it was. It made me uncomfortable. I hesitated to go into the cave but mother was coming and I had to be warned ahead of time of any trouble. I went in only to the gisement , not into the darkest parts behind. I kept my hammer ready.’

‘Madame, your shoulder …?’

‘It is nothing. It will stop.’

Damn you, don’t interfere in something that doesn’t concern you! was written all over her. So, okay, he would have to leave the shoulder for a moment. ‘But … but you collected the pyrolusite lumps?’

She had him now; he could not know the truth. ‘Yes. Mother and I had a cache of them. From time to time when others came to the cave, they uncovered pieces from the gisement but thinking them of no value, left them. These lumps we hid, the little mortar also.’

‘And you met no one?’

‘No one.’

Ah merde , why must she be so wary? ‘Did you know of the filming?’

She blanched. ‘The filming …? Please, what is this?’

She was lying and he knew it but there was nothing she could do about it, she said to herself. Nothing yet.

‘The story of your mother and father, madame. The trunk of artefacts you spoke of, the diary, her finding the cave and leading your father to it, their visits in the spring and summer of 1912 and again in 1913. The beginning of the ritual, madame, that would eventually lead your mother to her death.’

He gave her a moment. She knew she had betrayed herself by lying.

‘Now come, please,’ he said. ‘It’s unforgivable of me to press so hard. There must be a doctor. That shoulder had best be attended to.’

‘Then come into the kitchen. Fix it if you must and let me change. I will not walk with you or anyone through this town, not now, not until my lips have healed at least a little.’

Once bared, the shoulder revealed the skin had been broken in several places. The slash from the walking-stick had left a welt perhaps as long as the width of his hand. He bathed it and changed the dressing she had applied herself. His touch was very tender and all the time he worked, he muttered things to her and to himself. ‘Our attitudes must change. No man has the right to do this to any woman. Sutures … you had best have them.’

She shook her head. ‘It will heal. I can’t have talk.’ He dabbed at the skin to dry it but did he notice how fine her skin was? Did he think it a shoulder worth caressing, and not of her mother’s but of her father’s family, of wealth and good breeding? Did he wish the dress would drop so that he might see her as she had been under the waterfall on that Sunday? That Sunday.…

He would have found the towel in her rucksack, would have discovered the change into work clothes but had yet to say anything of them. ‘Where is your partner?’ she asked tightly.

‘With the others. Returning the car we borrowed. Asking questions of them.’

‘The others?’

He was noticing the older welts on her back. He would be dropping his eyes slowly down the gap in her dress.

‘Yes. An actress, a film producer and a young man of twenty perhaps. He is an assistant on the archaeological dig in the film. Two others also. One from the Propaganda Abteilung at 52 Champs-Elysees, Paris. The other is the sous-prefet of the Perigord Noir.’

She didn’t say a thing. She only looked at the wall in front of her.

‘My partner, madame, he’s very good. He’s from the Gestapo but is not like any of those types. We’re simply Common Crime, the two of us. The Kripo for him, the Surete Nationale for me and no Gestapo brutality so do not worry yourself. If you find my fingers gentle, his would also be.’

We aren’t here to hurt you, we are here to help. This was what he implied, but how could anyone help her now?

‘There,’ he said at last and let her pull up the shoulder of her dress. ‘I will wait outside while you change.’

‘No … no, it’s all right. I will go upstairs to the attic’

There was no sign of her two children and he knew she must have sent them off to that old mill perhaps, or to gather clover and dandelions for the rabbits. There was no sign of Jouvet.

The school was quiet and far hotter than before. He wondered how Hermann was doing. He knew he had to ask her about the champagne and the flask that had been found – the initials HGF engraved in dull grey, dented silver. A flask that had seen some use – how many had he seen himself among the officers of that other war?

HGF, the letters overlapping. ‘Henri-Georges Fillioux,’ he muttered to himself, seeing any one of the so many plain brown, waxed cardboard boxes that had come back with the last effects, the boots perhaps, the belt and webbing, the tunic and cap, the bloodstains – how heartless of the army. The last letters too.

Knowing that he had best not confront her with her father’s flask, not just yet, he waited but she did not come down from the attic and he heard himself saying to himself, Hermann … Hermann, I think I need you.

Kohler wasn’t sure but thought the Auberge de la truffe noire was in what had once been a small monastery. Languidly the Baroness strolled arm in arm with her Toto. And in her white dress she was like a fluid wraith passing through sunlight and shade, tall and graceful along the little paths that fell away from the inn to where the monks had prayed or gone about their humble chores in what had once been a potager. Herbs, vegetables and fruit trees.