Stonekiller by J. Robert Janes

even have seen you in Sarlat or on that train or at the station. Let it be for your certificat d’études primaires , my sick friend. Now I’m going to dismiss the school. Please maintain silence here while the kids rejoice in the fact I’ve got your number.’
    Kohler got up. He started for the doorway. He knew he ought to ask if the rucksack on the floor was the husband’s. It had the look of the Russian Front. There were things in it. A stone hammer, a pick, a flint knife …?
    Without another word, he went into the classroom and without a sound the students left.
    â€˜Monsieur.…’
    â€˜It’s Inspector to you.’
    Caught in the doorway, Jouvet looked like death. He wiped his brow with that crippled hand. ‘Please, I did not kill her. Ernestine, she … she always made a circuit of that little valley so as to see if it was free of others. If not, she would wait. Sometimes she would not even unpack the picnic hamper and lay things out or put the wine in the stream to cool and uncork the red to breathe.’
    The man swallowed. Feeling lost at what he was saying, and calling himself an utter fool, Jouvet knew he had trapped himself into continuing. ‘Sometimes there were others in the cave, rooting around for things. Usually they left when she told them it was forbidden, though it wasn’t of course. Sometimes they drove her from it and she would come to us in tears saying they were ruining the site, taking everything her husband had wanted so much to record and preserve. Any one of them could have killed her. I … I have thought I should tell you. It could have been a rapist, a.… Well, you know what I mean.’
    Kohler turned away to find the daughter facing him.
    â€˜Mother would always be most distressed, Inspector. Before the war she would telephone the Museum of Culture and the Sorbonne, demanding that they listen to her. She would write letters to them, so many letters. They … they thought she was crazy. A shopkeeper, a postmistress from a little place like ours talking about things only they could know about but refusing always to give them the exact location until they agreed to excavate the deposits properly and give credit to my father. Her requests all fell on deaf ears. Money was always too difficult to find, the time too short, the staff too small and overworked, ours but one cave among so many.’
    A tow-haired, skinny girl with freckles and reddened blue eyes, peeked uncertainly out at him from under the left arm of her mother. A hank of black hair hung down over the boy’s forehead. He had the dark brown eyes of Jouvet, a steady, searching look that asked, Is he really guilty?
    Louis quietly slid in to one side of them to lean against the rear wall and remain as unobtrusive as possible.
    â€˜My father was going to write a series of scientific papers about the site, Inspector.’
    â€˜To startle his colleagues with his discovery. His , Juliette? Tell them that, please,’ demanded the husband.
    She must remain calm. ‘André, let us be at peace for the moment. Mother is dead and we must help them find her killer. That site, as I have told you, is very special, Inspectors. An almost continuous record exists there from earliest Neanderthal times. A book was to follow and was to contain all his detailed notes and sketches. The discovery was to have been the making of his reputation as a prehistorian, that cave, his life’s work.’
    â€˜And your mother found it for him?’ asked Louis gently.
    She would not turn to look at him. She would keep her eyes on Herr Kohler and André. ‘Mother found the location in the diary of the Abbé Brûlé. The ink had run with the dampness. Some of the words, in the dialect of the Périgord, were unfamiliar to my father. Monsieur l’abbe came across the cave in 1856 and found some astounding pieces. Stone figurines, incised bits of bone, an amulet.…