The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

had made, and disappeared into the bath for nearly an hour. She emerged, drank more coffee, lit a cigarette, and came out to the terrace to put her arms around Lydia and hug her tightly.
    “Thanks for staying. I’m very glad you did.” Smelling marvelous, Clothilde was dressed with her usual dash. She looked as if she had made a miraculous recovery. Lydia wished she could.
    “This is the kind of day when I ought to go to Paris and buy myself a new pair of shoes,” Clothilde said. “You look as though you could use the same therapy.”
    “I’m not sure why I’m still here,” said Lydia. “The whole thing has become very upsetting. For you, for Horst, and I’m feeling wretched. I think I’ll go back to London.”
    “And leave your handsome major to me?” laughed Clothilde. “Don’t be silly. These things that happened in the war happened to other people, not to us. They lived in an impossible time and had to do impossible things. We live in a time of possibilities. There are things we can do, people we can interview now we know so much more. There are geological maps we can look at, places to be searched on the ground. We can find this cave, Lydia, and teach Malrand a lesson.”
    “Where on earth do you get your confidence?”
    “From you. Last night was a disaster for me, and you rolled up your sleeves, took care of me, cleaned the place up, and fed me coffee this morning. You were confronted with a problem and you tackled it. Thank you. And while you had to wait for me, you carry on researching.” She gestured at the open books.
    “Now we have another problem to tackle, finding that cave. I’m not going to let you go back, Lydia. Your friendship is one of the good things to have come from this whole drama that has been launched upon us. We have all been conscripted into this, and we have to see it through.”
    She went into the kitchen, made toast and boiled two eggs, and forced Lydia to eat. They went out to the car, and Clothilde put the hood down, handed Lydia a headscarf and tied another around her own ginger curls, and raced off down the narrow back road to Les Eyzies. They had climbed the long stairs to the old ch‚teau tucked into the rock ledges above the town, the building site of the new museum busy below them, and found Horst and Manners already there, poking amiably around the exhibit of tools made from reindeer bones and antlers.
    “Did you know that I’d have to kill thirty reindeer to make you a necklace like this?” Manners said to Lydia by way of greeting. “Worth every terrified moment. You do look a treat, both of you. Poor old Horst and I had to nurse our hangovers with lots of coffee and croissants. You two look as if you’re fresh from the beauty parlor. Don’t know how you do it, but I’m very glad you do.”
    Horst did indeed look grim, but Manners’s cheerful babble got them across the embarrassments of the previous evening, and a determined Clothilde marched them into her office and started spreading very large-scale maps across her desk. Her office was small and neat, with a spectacular view across the river, but she quickly bustled them into action.
    “That’s the map for Cumont and la Ferrassie, where the parachute drop took place. And that’s the geological survey map of the same district. Major, find some drawing pins and stick them up on that corkboard on the wall. Horst, you know the geology. See what you find, and then you and the major can go and tramp the ground. He’s a soldier. If anyone can identify the kind of place his father would have picked to hide guns, he can. I suggest we meet back here just before the museum closes at five, have a drink, and compare notes.”
    “What are you two going to do?” asked Horst.
    “Well, we can’t go surveying the ground dressed like this. If you find anything worth a closer look, we’ll dress for it tomorrow. Today, Lydia and I have some old Resistance men to interview. Or we may decide we need to shop for a new pair of shoes.”
    “In which case,” smiled Lydia, “We’ll call you from Paris to put off our drinks.”

    The first two men they called on were also on the list that Manners had been given by Morillon back in Bordeaux. The railway man from le Buisson was called …tienne Faugère, and his memory was sometimes precise, sometimes vague. He lived with his married daughter, who made them coffee as they sat in the neat little garden to talk. He remembered Malrand, and a trade union organizer