J. Janes - Carousel

‘Hermann, please! Madame Van der Lynn is our guest and in need of softly spoken words.’

Kohler hacked off a chunk of the chicken mush. ‘No business?’ he demanded antagonistically.

‘None,’ admonished the Surete. ‘Not until we have finished our repast and found our way back to the manor house for the night.’

He’d say it darkly. ‘The coins were only the tip of the iceberg, Louis.’

‘Hermann, I know that.’

‘Anyone could see it,’ offered Madame Van der Lynn. ‘A Big One. A really big one, isn’t that what your friend Pierre Bonny called it?’

‘He’s not my friend. He never was.’

‘Nor mine, Inspector. He helped to murder my husband.’

‘Oona, eat your supper. Louis is just being bitchy. He’s worried, eh, Louis?’

The Auberge of the Wandering Goose was full of Germans, some in uniform, some not. Fellow travellers and carpet-baggers just passing through the quaint, medieval town of Sarlat. French businessmen, the local priest et cetera. Quite obviously the district Kommandant was a regular also; so, too, its garrison’s commander and three striking women – wives of absent soldiers? wondered St-Cyr, thinking momentarily of the horse butcher’s wife and the young priest, Father David.

‘There are so many aspects to this case, Hermann.’

Had it been said in lieu of an apology? Oona Van der Lynn helped herself to some of Hermann Kohler’s chicken. He added a few more vegetables to her plate. ‘Let’s not go back to Paris,’ she said. ‘Let’s go south and stay there.’ A hope.

‘Provence,’ grumbled St-Cyr. ‘A small farm …’

Kohler sucked on a tooth. ‘Saint-Raphael, Louis, and a certain villa.’

‘Ah yes, Michele-Louise Prevost, the runaway wife with her perfumer lover, Gerald Kahn.’

‘The father of Christabelle Audit – is that not correct?’ asked Madame Van der Lynn.

The sky-blue eyes and blonde hair suited the plain silk dress that had been borrowed from a closet in the manor house. Madame Audit would not mind. Indeed, she’d probably not even notice if the dress simply vanished. ‘The father, yes, or so we’ve been told,’ acknowledged St-Cyr politely.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Kohler.

‘That one tells others what one wishes them to hear, Hermann. A “fast” woman, eh? Wild, an artist, a sculptress, a forger, but … ah,’ he chose a chunk of carrot, ‘not a forger of coins because, my old one, those were acquired after her death, yet the cabinet was acquired beforehand.’

‘She didn’t make it, did she?’

‘My apologies, my fine Bavarian friend. Please, I have completely spoiled your dinner.’

Kohler shoved his plate aside. ‘You know I can’t eat because of Giselle, Louis. Give.’

‘With pleasure, but first let us sample the cheeses and the pears with cherry brandy, or would you prefer to have them with the chocolate sauce?’

‘There are some paintings of hers in a closet, and some pieces of sculpture in the cellar,’ confided Madame Van der Lynn. ‘I do not think Monsieur Audit could bring himself to throw them away, nor could he dispose of the cabinet.’

‘You’re not to be trusted to mind your own business,’ breathed Kohler, ‘but thanks for the help.’

‘Madame, if you will permit me the intrusion at this late hour, a few small questions.’

He’d come alone, this one from the Surete. ‘Will you join me in a digestif ?’

‘But of course. Gladly. Some of the blackberry cordial, I think, or perhaps a little of the choke-cherry? So many, such variety, such beautiful colours … One wishes one could try them all.’

‘My husband uses everything, Inspector, or hadn’t you noticed?’

The girl with the geese. ‘A delightful man. A man of the soil, madame. The salt of the earth.’

Touche. He was more likeable, this one, therefore infinitely more dangerous. ‘What sort of questions?’

‘Oh nothing much. The robbery …’ St-Cyr accepted the liqueur she had poured without spilling a drop. ‘I believe you were at home here, in the manor house.’

Some three kilometres by road from the chateau and the night so dark. He hadn’t driven but had walked in from the turn-off. ‘Yes … yes, I was here with my sons, the cook and housekeeper. None of us knew what would happen to France. We all lived in fear. Antoine … Antoine was called to Paris. A contract with the Ministry of Defence. The silk, I think.’

As with Hermann, Madame Audit had agreed to see him in the library. It wasn’t the main sitting-room where there’d be certain to be a fire, nor the kitchen, but something cold and in between. Ah yes.

‘This is lovely.’ He indicated the room. ‘A Gauron ormolu clock, a Venetian chandelier, perhaps an early Briati. I’m particularly taken with the plasterwork. Italian, is it? Early eighteenth century?’

‘Inspector, what exactly is it that you wish to ask? I can’t tell you much. We were all asleep. In the morning, at about eight o’clock, Madame Auger, our housekeeper at the time, came to tell me my husband’s study had been broken into.’

‘A window?’ he asked. Had the housekeeper then been dismissed?

She took a tremulous sip of the cognac she preferred at times like this. Had she realized her mistake? he wondered.

‘It’s so cold in here,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go into the sitting-room?’

‘But of course. Did the chateau come completely furnished?’ he asked.

‘Antoine bought it the way he buys everything. Cheaply.’

Touche to her. ‘The window, madame?’ They were now in the main hall. Beauvais tapestries hung from the walls, gorgeous things. Another Venetian chandelier, a sumptuous drapery of dear crystal and coloured flowers, hung high overhead.

‘A pane of glass in one of the French windows. You’ll see it when you go back to the manor house, Inspector. The one right beside the lock. The police said the thief had used a sock to muffle the breakage, but of course they found nothing.’

The main sitting-room was pleasantly furnished in the style of Louis XV. One had only to take it in at a glance to realize its value, even at twenty new francs to the mark.

‘The silk embroidery on the chairs is exquisite, madame. My compliments to your good taste.’

‘Don’t be insulting, Inspector.’

She took a quick sip of the cognac and chose not to sit in any of the chairs but rather to stand and stare at the fire.

He caught her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror that rose to the ceiling above them. ‘The coins really were stolen, Inspector. All the drawers of that … that cabinet he … All the drawers were open and empty.’

‘May I sit down?’

‘Of course.’ She tossed off the cognac. ‘Is the choke-cherry not to your taste?’ she asked, and he wondered then what she was hiding and why she was so afraid he’d discover it.

‘Were any of the coins traceable?’

‘At that time? The Defeat … Antoine tried of course. He … he supplied the proper authorities with a list. The Surete were notified. Surely you would have seen the list or heard of the robbery, Inspector? Once again he has …’

‘What, madame?’

‘Supplied them with another list of the contents.’

‘When? When did he do so?’

‘A few months ago. In September, I think, or was it October? Since there is nothing left, it does not matter.’

The strain was evident, and he wondered at it. ‘The cordial is excellent, madame. Please … No, I insist. Stay by the fire. You’ve been most helpful.’

Was he not going to ask how Antoine had first come by the coins? Was he not going to ask why they’d been in the house instead of a bank vault, or why the cabinet had been hauled away to be hidden from view like all the other things of hers that had been kept? Michele-Louise Prevost!