J. Janes - Kaleidoscope

‘So the weaver let you into the villa and gave you a key to that room.’

It could do no harm to tell him. ‘Ah yes, of course. Viviane got me into the villa just ahead of Louis and the others, but forgot to give me the key to the room the financier had locked himself into.’

‘The room she kept her daughter locked in when not at the clinic,’ sighed Kohler. ‘The girl saw her mother leave the clinic again and followed her back to the villa. Josette knows you murdered Stavisky.’

‘With Louis’s gun, yes,’ said Delphane. There was no other sound but that of his voice. Now everything was so still and Kohler’s shadow no longer moved.

‘How’d you convince the weaver to let you into that villa, eh? Her father had lost a fortune. By rights, she should have wanted him alive.’

A dry chuckle was followed by a derisive snort. ‘Viviane believed me when I told her Stavisky was going to get off scot-free.’

Slowly Kohler turned to face him and lowered his hands. ‘No, my fine, you threatened to tell the world that Josette-Louise had killed her sister.’

Delphane’s dark, bushy eyebrows arched. ‘And now, my friend? What now, eh?’

The bastard was going to shoot him. ‘Munk, my friend. Munk is down there waiting for you to bring him the leader of the “maquis”.’

The one from Bayonne shrugged. ‘Oh for sure, for me it does not matter, monsieur. Viviane will be shot, so, too, the herbalist and the hearse-driver, the abbe and the boy. All others. The black market, eh? Escapers did pass through here. But these hill people, they are nothing in the struggle ahead, and we will win it. Someday the trash you Germans have brought to France will be gone for ever.’

Louis … where the hell was Louis? ‘Bravo! One dead girl of seventeen in the cellars of the Hotel Montfleury. Hey, my fine, did you enjoy stuffing that hose up inside her, eh? One dead dancer and the drowning in mud of Angelique Girard. The laugh is that Munk let you kill that kid in the cellars, and wanted only to see how far you’d go to protect yourself!’

It was all so still. Surely he would have heard Louis and Josette? Had she killed him? ‘And now a tunnel, a passageway, Herr Kohler, that leads to freedom but,’ Delphane lifted the gun slightly, ‘but only for myself.’

‘Idiot! What passageway? If there’d been one, the Romans or the Saracens or whatever would have used it.’

‘A fissure that leads to a cavern. Josette has told me of it.’

‘Then what about her, eh?’ shouted Kohler in panic, a last defiant act. Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ , why hadn’t Louis poked his head up out of the ruins?

‘Josette-Louise will take care of herself by jumping to her death exactly from the place her sister fell. For me, I will use the money Louis took from the villa to make my way to Spain and then to Britain. I will vanish, my friend, into the hills, leaving only fear among the minds of the Waffen-SS and your Gestapo. Then I will return with the Forces of the Free French to wipe you people off the face of the earth!’

He really believed it too. Kohler wanted to ask him why he’d changed sides, but couldn’t take his eyes from the muzzle of the gun. He thought of home, of the boys in their winter’s hell, of Gerda’s warm embrace, her stern no-nonsense nature, and of Giselle, his little pigeon in Paris. Giselle would be waiting for him. Naked on her back, or on her hands and knees with that gorgeous rump of hers bare for all the world to see but only himself. And Oona? he asked. Gott im Himmel , the muzzle was black! It was like a hole or a well down which he was about to fall … Oona would have the flat ready for the holiday. Nothing expensive – Gott im Himmel , there wasn’t much available unless he could get back to Paris and the black market. Oona who washed his socks but refused to do Giselle’s laundry. Oona who had such fantastic blue eyes and long legs, and who would argue with herself like lessons in catechism, then roll over on to her back for a bit of gentle loving. Two women … Never had he had it so good and now this … this poisson of the bottom muds, this carpe from the aristocracy was going to put a bullet in him!

‘Don’t, Jean-Paul. It is myself you need dead, not Hermann. Hermann must be with you and alive so that you can both drag my body down the hill to Herr Munk. Otherwise, there is no leader of the maquis.’

‘Louis …? L … o … u … i … s !’ Kohler threw himself at Delphane. Pieces of glass began to fly everywhere. Giselle … Giselle … He saw her reflected in the mirrors, her bottom round and firm, her breasts uptilted for waiting hands that strained to hold them, the nipples taut and flushed with heat. Her supple back and slender waist, her hips, her seat … everywhere there were mirrors in the Room of Looking-Glasses at Madame Chabot’s little place, and everywhere he saw the many views of Giselle le Roy, age twenty-two but no virgin … wet, so wet between the legs, she was climbing on to him and he was lifting her up … up … her lips hot and feverish against his own … his own …

The mirrors flew apart in one final burst of shattering as he hit the ground. All over the ruins, the sound of the shot resounded. It was like cannon. It raked up history and brought the battle cries of old. Hauntingly it echoed among the hills and threw itself back and forth between the village and the fortress.

Then for a long time there was no sound.

The girl was softly crying. Sunlight poured down an ancient stairwell into a large room whose broken walls were stained with rust. She was sitting, slumped against the far wall in fullest sunlight, with the crossbow in her lap and he had not come by the stairs but through a doorway. St-Cyr noted the quiver of iron-tipped bolts in the open rucksack, the handles for turning the windlass that would draw the bowstring taut. He brushed the tears from his own eyes. He did not know where Jean-Paul was, knew only that Hermann … Hermann had been hit and now lay face down in the snow, blood seemingly everywhere.

The room was dark in shadow except for the pool of sunlight, and under the stairs it was darker still. She said so clearly, ‘Mother, I think I’m going to kill myself.’ Time suddenly meant nothing. It vanished, and in that instant he was carried right back to Chamonix. He smelled the wool of the weaver’s hangings and her cloaks, her shawls, her vibrant rugs, drew in the scent of her perfume – found it was now so strongly in his nostrils, he had to turn, had to look for her face, her eyes in the mirror. But she was not there, and with a start he realized Josette-Louise’s voice alone had transported him.

Yet the fear remained. That tenseness that did not creep up the back to stiffen the spine or prickle the hairs, but was at once everywhere.

He felt the muzzle of the gun – his own revolver – pressed against his temple and could not help but think things had repeated themselves.

And he realized then that it had been that sense of hopelessness in the girl’s voice that had most distracted him. That and the look in the weaver’s eyes. The look of a mother who must save her child, even if it meant banishing all other things and stooping to murder.

‘Well, Louis, it comes to pass that we find ourselves in a similar situation, and once again Josette, she has not failed me. You’re too sensitive to be a detective, my old one. You need to harden the heart.’

Jean-Paul was to his right – gripping him by the elbow but keeping a little distance.

‘You should not have killed Hermann, Jean-Paul. Given the right sort of conditions, my partner would have let you go free. Hermann, he … he was the realist, yes? A cop to his last breath but a saint from the barn of his boyhood. He dragged the truth out of you in that little theatre, and you gave it to him.’