J. Janes - Kaleidoscope

‘Louis …?’ he whispered. ‘Louis …? Louis …?’ came the echoes.

‘ Ah Nom de Dieu , Hermann. He has the revolver again pressed to my head!’

‘Don’t move, Kohler!’ shouted Delphane. ‘Josette, stop this at once. Josianne is dead.’

‘But I did not push her, did I?’

Ah no, breathed Kohler inwardly. Son of a bitch, the kid had cracked the ice of time. The weaver held her breath and he could feel her heart pounding against him.

‘Of course you pushed her,’ snorted Delphane and this echoed too.

‘Then why did you come up to the ruins, Uncle Jean? Josianne had had the bad convulsions. Terrible ones, don’t you remember? Anne-Marie said my sister, she would never get better. You … you came with her.’

Kohler tapped the weaver’s arm twice. Stay put – she knew that’s what he meant. Then he was gone from her and Josette was saying, ‘Anne-Marie walked on ahead of you, Uncle Jean – father , should I call you father? You knew what she was going to do and you let her !’

St-Cyr heard the weaver’s cry. It began deep within her and was ripped right from her. ‘ No, Josette! No! ’

‘Mother, it’s true ! She pushed Josianne-Michele from the Window of the Gods and then she hit me and hit me and hit me until …’

Kohler wrapped a hand about the Lebel and bent it away from Louis, turning it towards Delphane until pressed against that one’s temple. ‘Go on, my fine. Pull the trigger. Don’t make me do it for you.’

‘Hermann …’

‘ Louis, shut up !’

The bang was very loud. Flecks of blood and brains flew about and Kohler felt them hit his face and hands. The one from Bayonne collapsed. The gun fell and clattered on the stones.

‘There are two SS back there somewhere, Louis. It’s a pity this one couldn’t have told them what he knew.’

St-Cyr let a breath escape. ‘ Merci , my old one. Merci . His contacts in the Resistance are safe.’

‘Don’t let it go to your head, Louis. I’m still on the other side, remember? This one’s yours. Now you owe me one.’

‘Of course.’

The war – the ‘Occupation’ – could only get worse and both of them knew it. The next time there could well be maquis in the hills, or Resistants hiding out in a place like this. Ah yes. Hermann the prisoner and his partner the what? asked St-Cyr. The moment of final decision.

‘Delphane killed the Buemondi woman, Louis. Don’t argue about it. Sure the boy will say it wasn’t so, but you know how these villagers are. One murder deserves another. Besides, it was a matter of the water rights and anyway, it must have been the dead girl who fired the arrow.’

‘Ah yes, Hermann. Without water there can be no life. “Drink and live for ever”, it’s on the beaker.’

‘Beaker …? What’s this about a beaker? Louis, the weaver and her daughter will have to come to Paris with us. Boemelburg won’t have it any other way. I’m going to insist on it.’

Good for Hermann. Having the last word again, as nearly always. Grumpy too, but, then, he had his reasons. But what of a detective’s duty? Must the girl be brought to justice for a crime she did commit? Everything in him said that it was not his job to ask such questions, but only to bring the assailant in. Yet the law of the hills tugged at him fiercely. The villagers would need to see their own brand of justice done.

‘With luck, the kid won’t lose the villa, Louis. Maybe she’ll have to lease it to Munk and he’ll have to be satisfied.’

For the Duration? Ah, one would wish to say such a thing but not to Hermann, and especially not at a time like this.

‘The parish records will have been burned, Louis. Madame Buemondi and that husband of hers adopted the girls, and under the law, Josette-Louise is legal heir no matter what anyone says. So, come on, my old one, I need a drink.’

Still there could be no answer from the French side. Matters were often best left that way but … Ah, what the hell. ‘Me, also, Hermann. Two I think, and then a meal.’

‘You’re buying. You’ve got all the cash and Munk’s not getting one franc of it!’

‘Then you’d better ask him for the motorcycle. It’s stolen.’

‘That thing? Hey, I requisitioned it on sight, but we’re going to need a better set of wheels and I know just the place. A Bentley or a Rolls, and I’m driving.’

Boemelburg, who was looking out of the windows of his office, was quite taken with the Rolls which was parked in the courtyard behind Gestapo HQ Paris, on the rue des Saussaies. ‘For Christmas, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ said Kohler quietly from his chair before the Chief’s desk. ‘Louis and I thought you might like to have it.’

The Old Man snorted, ‘ Ja, ja , Hermann, and what is it I am to give you in return? Ausweises for those two women to return south, eh? Come, come, don’t be a dummkopf . You know I can’t do that.’

‘Neither of them is a threat to the Reich. The one only wants to weave …’

‘Weave?’ thundered Boemelburg. ‘If I understand correctly, the woman wove quite a tale and involved the whole village as accomplices.’

‘But only to protect her daughter. Delphane was using them, Sturmbannfuhrer.’

The Chief tossed his shaven head. ‘And Bleicher, the famous Colonel Henri of the Abwehr? What have you offered that one for Christmas ?’

‘Nothing, Sturmbannfuhrer. The Buemondi woman’s list of telephone numbers was accidentally destroyed along with their dossiers and our own in Gestapo Leader Munk’s stove.’

Well up in his sixties and bigger than Kohler, France’s top cop and Head of SIPO-SD Section IV, the Gestapo in France, knew enough not to ask how this could possibly have happened. ‘And the village?’ he hazarded.

‘Left to bury their dead, my Sturmbannfuhrer.’

‘Don’t “my” me, Kohler. Gott im Himmel , what am I to do with the two of you?’

They waited, keeping silent. Not turning from the windows, the Chief said at last, ‘The girl, is she really pregnant by the herbalist’s son or was it this … this professor, this sham artist who defiled her?’

‘Not pregnant, Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg. A mistake or a fantasy.’

‘Good! Why did Delphane use the antique arrow to kill the woman? Why not a newer one?’

‘Because it was more fitting but also, Sturmbannfuhrer, because the newer ones were not kept in the grand salon and available to him.’

‘Don’t weave too hard, Hermann. Your fingertips might suffer. Surely the Inspector would have used a gun to kill her?’

Kohler steeled himself for it but the Chief had yet to turn from the windows. Still admiring his new toy. ‘Delphane wanted to pin the murder on the weaver, Sturmbannfuhrer. Guns were not allowed.’

‘Guns,’ grunted Boemelburg. ‘Guns like the one that killed the financier, eh, Louis, and then did in the perpetrator of that little falsehood.’

‘My gun,’ muttered the Frog, knowing he shouldn’t speak out of turn. ‘No one in authority would believe it was my revolver that had killed Stavisky, Walter, because they did not want to believe it and the whole thing was to be hushed up. Serial numbers and all.’

‘Yet in every police photograph, Louis, it was your gun we saw.’

St-Cyr nodded. ‘Madame Buemondi’s father got Jean-Paul to deal with the financier.’

‘Was he paid for the job, do you think?’ asked the Chief.

‘Perhaps, but then … ah then, money need not always change hands.’

‘One of the connected, eh, Louis? The Establishment. Friends in high places who could help him out in the future when a favour was needed. What made him turn against us? Come, come, from you I demand an answer.’