The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

man from Normandy called Marcel Devriez who was working in Périgueux and the Milice records listed him as a suspected Communist. Under interrogation, he said he was only driving the cart because the farmer who was supposed to drive it was shot when the Germans opened up, and he was trying to get it away. He was unmarried and had no surviving family in the region. The Gestapo raided his home address in Périgueux, and found it empty. But they did find a lot of anti-Nazi propaganda in both French and Spanish.
    “From the Resistance records in Bordeaux, I traced Devriez. He’s on the Périgueux war memorial for 1944, and was listed in Bordeaux as a member of the FTP, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, who were mainly Communists. He was in a group run by a shadowy man called Marat, who was one of the aides to the famous Colonel Georges of the Limousin, and very definitely a Communist. Marat disappeared in the summer of 1944, according to the few available FTP records, possibly killed in the attempts to attack the SS Das Reich Division.”
    “Surely all those bodies were recovered and identified,” said Manners. “That’s how the names got on the war memorials.”
    “Not Marat’s body, along with eight more of his men, and possibly some more who are simply listed as ‘Spanish comrades.’ Marat was last seen in Brive on the eighth of June, trying to persuade the Gaullists and other Resistance groups to join the general uprising on the day after the British and Americans landed at Normandy. He was turned down flat. The Resistance, which took its orders from London, had been told very firmly to get involved in no such foolhardy adventures. The FTP archives assume that Marat and his men were among those killed in the fighting in Tulle, or in the German reprisals. A lot of buildings were burned down, with bodies inside, and that seems the most likely explanation why they were never found. The Limoges command of the FTP was one of those that sent out in May 1944 the order to launch the national insurrection as soon as the Allies came ashore on D-Day, whenever that would be. Limoges was Marat’s base. The order probably came from him, or he felt bound by it. Anyway, despite all the pleas from London and from the Gaullists, the FTP went ahead with this mad plan to seize control of the district, starting with Tulle and Brive. Tulle alone proved too much for them, and the German garrison held out until some panzer reinforcements came from the Das Reich division. They smashed their way through the FTP guerrillas, and starting hanging the prisoners.
    “That’s it.” Horst sat down again, looking drawn. Clothilde came and sat down beside him, and put her hand on his.
    “That’s brilliant, Horst,” said Lydia, making herself busy with the roses, looking for vases. “You look shattered, you poor man. But really very well done. It just shows what a professional scholar, a true researcher, can do.” Roses in one hand, she thrust the unopened champagne bottle at Manners. “Here, make yourself useful.”
    “This has been very difficult for me. I had not done this kind of research before, and I am sickened by what I found,” Horst said to Clothilde. “I knew, you see, what had happened here in theory. But I didn’t really know until I started going through those war journals and intelligence reports. All in clipped, official language.”
    “I know what you mean, my dear fellow,” said Manners. “I’ve written some of those things myself. Terrible language, trying to be as flat as possible while writing about terrible things. Like writing back letters to the wives and mothers of men who have been killed under your command. Grim stuff.” He went into the kitchen, and with the skill of an old campaigner immediately found the cupboard where Clothilde kept her glasses, and came back and started to pour. “Tell me, Horst, did you come across the name of Malrand in your researches?”
    “Just that formal report that Lydia gave me in Bordeaux. Nothing in the FTP or German military archives. but quite a lot about his brother, Berger. I’ve read his memoirs, of course, about getting captured and then being imprisoned in Toulouse.”
    “What about a chap called Soleil, code name for a Resistance leader in Belvès, real name René Coustellier or another fellow called Lespinasse?”
    “Soleil, yes there is a lot about him in the Geissler reports, when they staged a big raid on Belvès. Soleil got away. And Lespinasse was