crackling Clayton sounded almost ebullient. He’d found Cade’s key ring, and one of the keys on it did fit the study door. Trave felt a tremor of excitement. It was as if he had uncovered the footprint of an invisible man. His instinct had been right. The key with Stephen’s fingerprints on it had been a copy. The question was, Who had made it? Trave was about to tell Clayton what to do next but Clayton preempted him. He had already started making the rounds of Oxford locksmiths.
Buoyed, Trave packed his bag and drove over to the records office. But he didn’t get the death certificates that he’d applied for the previous day until the afternoon. There were four of them, each neatly typed and signed and edged with a black border. Henri Rocard, aged forty-eight; his wife, Mathilde, aged fifty-two; and an old servant called Albert Blanc were each described as having been shot by the enemy in Marjean Church on August 28, 1944. The fourth victim, Marguerite Blanc, clearly the wife of Albert, had been burnt by the Germans in the chateau on the same day.
There was also a copy of a letter with the certificates in which the chief registrar in Rouen informed the lawyers for Stephen Cade in London that all the existing records had been checked, and they disclosed no evidence that either the Rocards or the Blancs had any close living relatives at the time of their deaths.
Existing records. Trave asked the man behind the desk why that word had been used. Why not just records? He was a different official from the day before. More helpful but just as self-important. He explained, in slow French for Trave’s benefit, that the records for 1938, 1939, and early 1940 had been destroyed when the Germans invaded northern France, but those before that had survived because they had been kept in a secure archive immune from enemy bombing. A disaster of this kind would not happen again, added the clerk in a self-satisfied tone, because procedures had improved since the war. It was almost as if he was expecting the Germans to start bombing Rouen again anyday now.
Trave drove out of the town, gripped with a sense of mounting frustration. He’d half known, of course, that the records office wouldn’t help him. Swift’s man had been there already after all. But his policeman’s instincts had told him to be thorough, and now he regretted his decision. He should have gone straight to Moirtier and Marjean, but as it was, he had wasted nearly two days and was no further forward, while all the time the clocks in Wands- worth Prison ticked remorselessly on.
Moirtier-sur-Bagne called itself a town, but really it was little bigger than a large village, built on either side of a tiny tributary of the Seine. There was one hotel with a cafe on the ground floor, which faced the mayor’s office and police station across the village square, where a group of men in berets were playing bowls under the plane trees in the late afternoon. Trave bought a glass of wine and sat down near the game, watching the black balls being tossed through the air to land in the sandy dirt. The players hardly ever spoke and showed no apparent interest in Trave, even when he tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation with them. Eventually, despairing of an opening, he asked them outright if they knew anything about the killings at Marjean Chateau fifteen years before. But this just made things worse. They shook their heads and turned their backs on him, muttering to one another in a fast French that he could not understand, until he gave up and went inside.
It was the same with everyone he approached in Moirtier both that day and the next. The reactions ranged from incomprehension to outright hostility, and he fared little better in Marjean itself, which turned out to be an even smaller place than Moirtier, a few houses built around the crest of a low hill surrounded by vineyards, with a view across a long dark lake to a ruined house and church encircled by encroaching woods.
The police station in Moirtier was closed on the day of Trave’s arrival, but the following morning, a Friday, he found a young gendarme sitting behind an iron desk, laboriously typing out something official on an ancient typewriter.
“You make me feel like I’m at home again,” said Trave with a smile.
“Seventeen Hill Road, Oxford, England,” said the young man, without looking up.
“How do you know that?” asked Trave, astonished.
“Your registration card at the hotel,” said the young man, waving it in the air like a conjuror. “They pass it on to us, and we make a record in triplicate. One stays here, one goes to Rouen, and one to Paris. Don’t ask me why. It’s the law and I do what I’m told. Fortunately, I don’t have to do it too often. Not too many foreigners put up at the Claire Fontaine these days, particularly in the winter.”
The young man’s friendliness was a welcome change after the reticence Trave had encountered from the other villagers. “I’m here for a reason,” he said.
“So I hear. Asking questions and getting no answers. This is a small town, Mr. Trave. People don’t like outsiders.”
“But you don’t feel that way?”
“You’re a policeman and so am I. We have something in common.”
“Not enough, I’m afraid,” said Trave with a smile. “You’re too young to be able to help me.”
“With what?”
“The real story of what happened at Marjean Chateau fifteen years ago. You’d still have been in school in 1944.”
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t help,” the gendarme said. “It’s no great secret. It’s the same as I told the lawyer’s man who came out here from London a few months back: the owners were killed by the Germans. Some people here say they were collaborators, but even if it’s true, they didn’t deserve to die that way. Herded into the church and shot like animals. The Nazis burnt the house too. It’s a ruin now.”
“I know all that. But I’m here because I need to find out whether there were any survivors, anyone who saw what happened. It’s important. Some-body’s life depends on the answer.”
“That’s what the other man said. But, as I told him, I’ve never heard of there being any survivors. Still, as you say, I was only a boy back then. You could ask my inspector, I suppose. He’d know one way or the other. He’s been here since before the war.”
“Did the man from England talk to him?”
“No. He was away then. It was during the summer. Everyone deserves a holiday some time, don’t they, Inspector?” said the gendarme, smiling.
“Where is he now?” asked Trave, smiling in agreement.
“Gone to Lille to see his sister. She’s not well and he visits her most weekends, but this time he’s taken the Friday off as well. He’ll be back on Monday. You can talk to him then.”
“Can’t we call him? Doesn’t his sister have a telephone?”
“No. She lives outside the city. No telephone, I’m afraid.”
“What about a telegram?”
“I don’t have the address. Come back on Monday morning, Inspector. You can talk to him then.”
“Monday’s too late.”
“I’m sorry.” The gendarme opened his hands in a gesture of deprecation, and then turned away to resume his typing.
Trave realised that he had gone as far as he could. Perhaps the inspector’s sister did have a telephone, but the gendarme was not going to tell him the number. He was probably under strict orders not to reveal such information. Trave would have to wait until Monday. There was no point in going back to England before then anyway. Clayton didn’t need his help to visit a few locksmiths’ shops. And Stephen’s execution was not until Wednesday morning. There would still be time to get back to England and go with Swift to see the powers that be, as Creswell called them, if he found out something useful on Monday. At present he didn’t have anything. He didn’t need a lawyer to tell him that. Stephen could have copied the key, and the name in the atlas was just a curious coincidence.
The next day Trave drove to Marjean, parked his car at the foot of the hill, and walked out to the ruined chateau along the side of the lake. It was a longer distance than it had looked when he set out, and the path was muddy in places, forcing him to take detours through the adjacent scrub. There was a glassy darkness to the water, an absence of movement on its surface that Trave found oddly disquieting. Several times before he reached the end of the path, he thought of turning back, and only his natural obstinacy kept him going.
Eventually he found himself standing on the far side, looking up at the grey stone church and bell tower built on the top of a small hill, sloping up from where he stood at the water’s edge. Beyond the church the ground ran down again to the ruins of what had once been the chateau. It was sadly dilapidated. The glass in all the windows was broken and most of the roof had fallen in. It was a desolate place, but incongruously, unexpectedly, a white truck was parked in front of the main door, which hung precariously off its hinges, swinging backward and forward
