The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

described the search pattern they had followed on the large-scale map. Clothilde leaned over the map and told them Albert’s story, of the flight down the track with the cart, and the row in the hollow by the road, and the booby-trap Manners’s father had set with the grenade.
    “We also found out that Marat was not at Tulle, nor were his Spaniards,” said Lydia. “Wherever he was killed, it wasn’t there. And he had a big row with Malrand on the night of the German attack on the parachute site, about who was to get the guns and where to take them.”
    Manners flipped open Horst’s research file. “Here we are. The night of May twentieth, acting on information received, a company of Freiwilliger —that’s the Russians, they called them volunteers—and a squadron of armored cars broke up a parachute drop at Cumont, killed four Maquis, and captured the weapons. Casualties described as ‘light,’ except for one container that blew up. They brought in another company the next day to set up roadblocks, and two more to search the district. Nothing more found. Arrests, interrogations, three farms burned as reprisals. Hang on, there’s a cross-reference.”
    Horst took the file, and thumbed through to the back, where stapled sheafs of photocopies were neatly labeled with differently colored tabs. “They set up a special unit, called the Höhlegruppe, the cavern team, for attacks on caves. They were equipped with Panzerfausts—that’s like your bazookas—and flamethrowers. They brought the Höhlegruppe in for the search, so they must have thought they were looking for a cave. A Leutnant Voss commanded it, and he reported no action that day.” He looked across the table at Clothilde. “The first thing I did was to check every cave Voss mentions. There’s not one that isn’t listed or marked on your maps.”
    “There’s an easy solution to this, surely,” said Lydia. “We just ask Malrand. He must know what happened to the guns that night. But if he knows, then whatever cave it was won’t have any paintings. Malrand would have said.”
    A long silence fell. “I wonder if he would,” said Manners. “He certainly hasn’t been much help on Clothilde’s project.”
    “Remember what I said to you in Bordeaux, Lydia,” Horst added. “Malrand is a politician. He doesn’t want a scandal about his wartime partner stealing a cave painting. He just wants it back and put on display, with no questions asked. We have our own various reasons for wanting to find the cave whence it comes, but I don’t see that he does. And look at Clothilde—we already know that delving back into this wartime history is like lifting a stone—you never know what grief will come crawling out.”
    “This business about Marat is very curious,” said Manners. “He has a row about guns with Malrand, who hated Communists anyway. Then he disappears.”
    “Not quite disappeared,” said Clothilde. “He was seen again after May twentieth. He was seen almost three weeks later, at Brive, just after D-Day in Normandy, trying to get the Gaullists and the rest of the Resistance groups to join this Communist uprising. Where he did not turn up was at the battle in Tulle, where you would expect him to have been, on the eighth and ninth of June.”
    “Where was Malrand then?” asked Lydia.
    “Trying to slow down a small army. Say a thousand tanks and twenty-five thousand men. The Das Reich division was one of the SS units, which were twice as big and far better equipped than the usual panzer divisions. After D-Day it was moving north from Toulouse to join the fighting in Normandy, and fighting Resistance ambushes all the way,” said Manners.
    “But where exactly? Was he at that meeting in Brive of all the Resistance groups, the one where Marat was seen? And where was your father, Manners? Was he there too?”
    “We know Malrand was at Terrasson,” said Clothilde. “Albert told us that. But he had a Citroën, he could get around fast.”
    Horst checked his sheaf of archives. “June eleventh, Terrasson was cleared by units of the SS Das Reich division fighting their way along the road to Périgord, which they reached the next day. It was a busy time. That was the same day the Germans burned the village of Mouleydier, after Soleil’s group held the bridge across the Dordogne and beat off repeated attacks. There was another battle at an armored train that day, just outside Périgueux. The whole region was erupting.”
    “The poor