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you’re slipping.’
    â€˜And the other three?’
    â€˜They don’t all look like SS or Gestapo with false papers but then … ah then, Hermann, it is often so hard to tell with those, is it not, and they would need false papers to venture into the Free Zone under cover.’
    â€˜Piss off! They’re just friends along for the ride.’
    â€˜Then let us see what they want.’

3
    S UNLIGHT STRUCK THE PLACE DE LA HALLE AND glared from the tiled roof of the town’s seventeenth-century covered market. It made the air above the car’s bonnet vibrate and brought the smell of vaporizing gasoline.
    The only shade was under the timbered balcony of the market or within its expanse, the only sound, that of a flight of homing pigeons. Perhaps one hundred and sixty people were gathered. Shopkeepers, café owners, waiters and chefs stood in aprons at the doors of their premises. Mayor Pialat, florid and in a hurry in a black homburg, heavy black woollen suit, black tie, vest, gold watch chain and stomach, paused half-way between the Governor’s House, with its shuttered first-storey windows and its second- and third-storey side turret, to stare up at his precious pigeons and wet his lips in apprehension.
    Mopping his brow and grey bush of a moustache, he continued on across the stony square where tufts of weeds and wedges of stunted grass had suffered the ravages of drought and tethered goats.
    He disappeared into the shady recesses of the market. Not a word was said. Though the crowd listened intently, all they could hear were those damned pigeons.
    No swastika flew from the grey-roofed turret of that lovely sixteenth-century house. No German sentries stood on either side of its french doors, no patrols tainted the air with the smell of sweat and saddlesoap or the sound of their rifles as they fired at a post and white-targeted ‘terrorist’ or hostage and saw him suddenly slump.
    No swastika pennant flew from the front left wing of the car yet it could just as well have done so, such was the mood of the crowd. The South was haven to far too many the Germans wanted. Homing pigeons such as those might carry secret messages and were forbidden in the North.
    Like tourists from the other side of the moon, the five visitors waited impatiently for the mayor to unlock the old iron gates to the stone staircase that led down into the warren of caves and tunnels beneath the town. Used as a hiding place during the Hundred Years’ War and then in the Wars of Religion, the caves would be pleasantly cool.
    But why the interest? wondered St-Cyr. Why the impatience? And why the hell was sous-préfet Deveaux playing tour guide and host when he knew very well there was a murder to attend to?
    The visitors were swallowed up, the woman going first in that hip-clinging white silk dress of hers and a big, floppily-brimmed and beribboned chapeau , the mayor bringing up the rear and bleating, ‘The lamps, madame et messieurs. You must each take one so as not to get lost.’
    â€˜Toto, darling,’ came the earnest female voice up from the darkness, rich and deep and musical, the accent exquisite and one hundred per cent of the salons along the rue Royale. ‘Toto, light one for me. There’s a good boy. Willi … Willi, how can we possibly get a crew in here?’ The switch to deutsch maintained the richness. ‘Franz, it’s fascinating — were the English slaughtered or did they hide in these caves?’
    â€˜Baroness, I believe the Huguenots captured the town in 1588.’
    â€˜Did they slaughter the French Catholics or did they, too, escape into these caves? It’s marvellous what holes in the ground can tell us about history. Willi … Willi, make a note of that. Oo, darling, there’s such a lovely breeze. It’s blowing right up my dress. It’s like the bathe I had under that little waterfall. It’s delightful.’
    A short, stocky