Cold Winter in Bordeaux Read online

  COLD WINTER IN BORDEAUX

  ALLAN MASSIE

  ALSO BY ALLAN MASSIE

  Death in Bordeaux

  Dark Summer in Bordeaux

  Life & Letters: The Spectator Columns

  First published in 2014 by Quartet Books Limited

  A member of the Namara Group

  27 Goodge Street, London W1T 2LD

  Copyright © Allan Massie 2014

  The right of Allan Massie to be identified

  as the author of this work has been asserted

  by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in

  any form or by any means without prior

  written permission from the publisher

  A catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 7043 7354 9

  Typeset by Josh Bryson

  Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII

  XLVIII

  XLIX

  L

  For Alex and Lizzie

  with love

  I

  Sunday afternoon, and one of these October days when, as Lannes’ mother used to say, October had given up on autumn and was opening the door to winter. The wind that had blown all week had died away, the weather had turned chill, and a freezing fog hung over the city.

  He was alone in the apartment, except for Alain’s cat, No Neck, who now leapt on to his lap, pushing his head between Lannes and his book, and digging his claws into his thigh. Marguerite was out, summoned by her mother. The old lady was complaining again of ‘palpitations’. It probably meant nothing. It was her way of commanding attention. If Marguerite immediately responded, it was because her inability to love her mother as she thought she ought to made her feel guilty. Clothilde was also out, somewhere, with Michel. He hadn’t asked where they were going or what they would be doing. The girl, at nineteen, was entitled to her independence, or such independence as could still be enjoyed. As for Michel, Lannes both liked him – the boy had charm and good manners – and distrusted him. His grandfather, the retired professor of literature who looked like a colonel, no doubt felt the same. Lannes respected him but the young people’s relationship caused them both anxiety, the professor for the boy’s sake, Lannes for Clothilde’s.

  He ran his hand along the cat’s back, scratched it behind an ear, causing it to purr. Did it miss Alain? Had it forgotten him? Would it recognise him when he returned? When? If? He knew it was if, but had to believe it was when. It was nine months since his last postcard from Algiers. Did the silence mean he was now in England? ‘It doesn’t do to brood,’ he said to the cat, ‘or worry.’ But it was inevitable that he did. There was after all nothing that really concerned him now but the children, the need for all three of them to survive what he thought of as ‘all this’.

  He picked up Dominique’s last letter from the little table by his chair, and read it again. It was lyrical. An account of his work, of nights spent in the mountains sleeping under the stars, of labour in the forests, of the transformation in the health and morale of the ‘kids from the city’ with whose charge he and his friend Maurice de Grimaud were entrusted. ‘It’s astonishing, and richly rewarding,’ he wrote, ‘to see how they respond.’ One of his colleagues had led his little troop into a village and the children had run away and hidden from them thinking they were Germans – ‘because they were so smart and took such pride in their appearance as they marched along singing’. ‘We really are doing great work for France and for the National Revolution,’ Dominique wrote. ‘Boys who used to hang about smoking in cafés now delight in fresh air, exercise and physical training.’

  Perhaps they did. No doubt they did. Dominique had always been truthful, never one to engage in fantasy. Nevertheless, Lannes remembered that someone had once remarked to Napoleon’s mother how proud she must be to see one son an emperor and others kings and princes, and the old woman had replied, in her broad Corsican accent, ‘so long as it lasts’. Which, of course, it hadn’t. The emperor had ended up a prisoner of the English on St Helena. And the Marshal, the hero of Verdun where Lannes had been wounded, how would it end for the old man?

  He lit a cigarette, causing No Neck, who disliked the smoke, to jump off his lap. He returned to his book, a novel by Walter Scott which he had read once, years before, and enjoyed. But today the adventures of the young men on the Solway, which he understood to be a border between Scotland and England, could not hold his attention. He let it fall again and closed his eyes.

  He wasn’t quite asleep when he heard the door open, and Marguerite returning. There was less constraint between them now than there had been the previous year when he had betrayed her by leaving her in ignorance of Alain’s determination to join de Gaulle and the Free French. Then his suspension at the request of the Occupying Power, and the cause of that suspension, had pleased her. She had been less happy when he was reinstated, but was resigned to it. In any case, as he had said, how would they live without his salary? Yet she still hated his work, and, though there was less constraint, he knew he hadn’t regained her trust, and didn’t deserve to.

  ‘How was she?’ he said.

  ‘As she always is.’

  He knew she wished she liked her mother more, though he thought it evidence of her essential goodness that she liked the old woman at all and took such trouble over her, responding to her demands, enduring her constant complaints without complaining herself. But that was one of the many things they never talked about.

  ‘I hope Clothilde won’t be late,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, but I trust her with Michel. I’m so glad she’s got him.’

  It wasn’t only because the boy sometimes brought her flowers when he came to collect Clothilde. He even flirted with her, and Lannes had seen his wife blush – with happiness? – when Michel paid her a compliment.

  ‘I made Mother an omelette with three of the eggs I found in the market yesterday. She insisted she had no appetite, but she ate it all.’

  II

  The fog was still thick and it was clammy and cold as he set off to the office. He wore his thorn-proof tweed coat and leant on his stick, because his hip ached as it always did in this weather. The ache was almost an old friend, souvenir of his war. ‘Ils ne passeront pas,’ they had said at Verdun, symbol of France defiant. For years he had told himself: you survived Verdun, you can survive anything. He wondered if the Marshal thought of Verdun when he woke in the mornings in Vichy. It was strange. He deplored Vichy in many ways, though aware there had been no good choices to be made in the summer of 1940; yet he had never lost his respect for the Marshal, respect and even regard.

&n
bsp; Clothilde had returned home in good time, before the curfew, glowing with happiness.

  ‘We met a friend of Michel’s, called Sigi. He sent you his regards.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  ‘He said to say you have his respect.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You don’t like him, Papa? I hear it in your voice.’

  ‘Let’s just say I doubt if he’s a good influence on Michel.’

  He had left it there. Perhaps he should have taken the opportunity to speak more strongly, to tell her he was a dangerous man, not to be trusted, a murderer and a Fascist. But he had said nothing. He had said nothing because to say anything would have required him to say everything, and …

  He banged his stick against a lamp-post in irritation and self-reproach.

  There was a pile of paperwork waiting for him. There always was, and it was rarely important, a reminder nevertheless that despite everything the business of functionaries went on. The less autonomy Vichy had, the more assiduously it deluged the police with paper in order to maintain the pretence of government. Little of it mattered, not much anyway, but it all required his attention, even if the attention he gave it was never more than perfunctory.

  There was a knock on the door. Young René Martin entered. As ever Lannes was touched by something frank and unspoilt in the boy’s expression. Somehow or other he retained his faith in the virtue and necessity of their work. Moncerre, whom they called the bull-terrier, said the boy was naive, and loved to tease him, but Moncerre was wrong. It was just that René Martin hadn’t yet succumbed to the prevailing cynicism.

  ‘I called you at home,’ he said, ‘but Madame Lannes said you were already on your way. There’s been a death, a woman in an apartment in the Cours de l’Intendance. Her maid discovered the body when she came to work this morning. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Is Moncerre in?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Call him and tell him to meet us there.’

  Was it reprehensible to feel his spirits lift? Undoubtedly. Nevertheless that’s how it was. With luck, this would be ordinary police work, nothing to do with the war, or with members of the Resistance groups whose activity over the last year had occupied so much police time.

  * * *

  They stopped off at the Bar Jack, rue de Voltaire, for a coffee and Armagnac.

  ‘The dead woman is called Gabrielle Peniel,’ René Martin said, ‘but that’s all I know.’

  He was impatient to get on, be at the scene of the crime. Lannes delayed, smoked three cigarettes, and ordered another Armagnac. The boy didn’t understand that this was his way of preparing himself, that it was, as it were, a gear-change.

  A delay of twenty minutes would make no difference, except to his mood. He almost said, ‘She won’t run away, you know.’ If the maid had found the body on her arrival this morning, it was probable that her employer has been killed at any time over the weekend.

  The concierge was waiting for them at the door of her lodge.

  ‘I’d never have thought it,’ she said. ‘Poor Marie, that’s the maid, was in a real state. Nothing would do for her but that I went up to see for myself. Well, there’s no doubt to my mind. It’s a murder, superintendent, and a nasty one. Nobody ties a silk stocking round their own neck. Of course you don’t need me to tell you that. I settled Marie with a glass of the rum which I keep on account of my rheumatism. She was speechless, poor girl, well, not exactly, because in actual fact she couldn’t stop talking. But when I say speechless, I mean that she was making no sense at all. She still isn’t really. Anyway I’ve settled her in my lodge and I’ll keep her there till she’s recovered herself sufficiently for you to speak with her. Now do you want me to accompany you to Madame Peniel’s apartment?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Lannes said. ‘I’ll have a word with you later. Meanwhile I would be grateful if you would continue to look after Marie, and keep an eye open for the doctor and the other members of my team who will be arriving soon.’

  ‘Very well, if that’s how you wish it, superintendent. Here are the keys. Naturally I locked up the apartment, which is on the first floor right. I know how to behave in these circumstances, even though it goes without saying that we’ve never had this sort of thing here before, not in my time. You’ll understand that this is a very respectable building; my tenants are all good people. As for Madame Peniel, it’s hard to take it in, such a distinguished lady she was. A bit reserved, but always polite and well-spoken.’

  It was an apartment with high ceilings. Someone, presumably the maid, had opened the shutters and pulled back the curtains to let the grey morning light in.

  The salon was furnished in the style of the Belle Époque and there were three cases of stuffed birds. There was a smell of stale cigar smoke and an empty bottle of champagne stood with two glasses on an occasional table beside a grand piano, a Bechstein. The body was in the bedroom. It lay on the floor. The woman was wearing only knickers, which had been pulled down to her knees. As the concierge had told them, she had been strangled with one of her silk stockings – a suspender belt lay on the floor beside her. A bottle of scent – Chanel No. 5 – was there too, with its top off, as if it had fallen from the dressing-table. Some of it had spilt and the air was heavy with the perfume. The woman’s face was swollen and it was impossible to say if it registered any expression.

  Moncerre, entering, said good morning to them, took in the scene quickly, and smiled.

  ‘Looks pretty straightforward, don’t it? Nice pre-war crime of passion. All we have to do is identify the bastard.’

  ‘Certainly what we are supposed to think,’ Lannes said.

  ‘Can’t see how it could be different. They split a bottle of fizz. She goes through to the bedroom for a spot of how’s your father, sits at her dressing-table to tart up. He comes up behind her, puts his hands lovingly on her shoulders, whips the stocking round her neck and goodbye lady-love. She tips over backwards. Bet you a hundred francs that Dr Paulhan finds a bump on the back of her head, and that the technical boys find no sign of forced entry but fingerprints everywhere.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what it looks like,’ Lannes said.

  ‘So, cheer up. This is a murder we’ll be allowed to solve. Makes a change. A nice change, in my opinion.’

  He looked at Lannes and smiled.

  ‘All right then, chief, what don’t you like about it?’

  Lannes lit a cigarette.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like it at all. Let’s wait to see what the technical boys find. Have you noticed,’ he said, ‘there are three photographs on the dressing table and another by her bed, all of the same woman? I think it’s herself, though you can’t tell with her face the way it is, but I’m sure nevertheless. No other photographs. What sort of woman surrounds herself with her own photographs?’

  ‘A vain one, obviously,’ Moncerre said.

  ‘A vain one, and I would guess, a cold one.’

  ‘I noticed two others in the salon,’ René Martin said.

  ‘So what do you have for me, Jean?’ Dr Paulhan as usual spoke without removing the Boyard cigarette from the corner of his mouth. He laid down his medical bag to shake hands first with Lannes, then with Moncerre and finally with young René Martin. He knelt beside the body.

  ‘Looks straightforward,’ he said. ‘I can tell you she wasn’t killed this morning. Probably yesterday, but you’ll have guessed that for yourselves. Cause of death obvious. Do you know anything about her?’

  ‘Nothing yet. The concierge says she was a distinguished lady.’

  ‘Nothing distinguished about the way she died,’ Moncerre said.

  ‘Well, when the technical boys have finished, send her over to me. I’ll cut her up, but I doubt if I’ll be able to tell you more than your own eyes can.’

  ‘You can tell us if she’d just had sex,’ Moncerre said.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll be able to tell you that, which will help you only if you find
the man.’

  ‘If it was a man,’ Lannes said.

  ‘Any reason to think it wasn’t?’

  ‘Just keeping an open mind.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not one of our Kraut friends,’ Moncerre said.

  ‘No reason to think it might be. Right, I’ll have a word with the maid. Moncerre, you see if you can get anything more from the concierge, and René, start looking through her desk, will you? Set aside anything that’s of interest.’

  * * *

  Marie was a thin pale girl with lank hair and rabbit teeth. She was still shivering, and when she spoke her words came sometimes hesitatingly, sometimes tumbling over each other. She had worked for Madame Peniel for nine months and been glad of the job, because her father was a prisoner-of-war in Germany, her elder brother too, and her mother was in and out of hospital, she didn’t know why. No, she knew nothing about Madame Peniel’s private life.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t, would I?’ she said. ‘To tell you the truth, monsieur, I was scared of her, I don’t know why, because she never raised a hand to me, or her voice indeed, but I was.’

  As for this morning, well, she had never seen anything like it. Naturally she hadn’t. Her family might be poor, but they were decent law-abiding people. That was how she had been brought up. Seeing Madame like that, her always so well-dressed, had given her quite a turn.

  ‘But I knew something wasn’t right soon as I drew the curtains in the salon. It wasn’t how she would leave it, and I’ve never known her drink champagne. And the cigar smoke, well, I’ve never smelled tobacco there either. I’m surprised she allowed it. And to pull down her knickers like that, well, that’s disgusting, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘I agree with you there. Did she have many visitors, do you know?’

  ‘Only her pupils, she taught piano, see. Only to girls, though, and only in the afternoons.’

  * * *

  ‘I didn’t even bother to ask the usual question,’ Lannes said. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill her? The poor child knew nothing; that was obvious.’