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    â€˜Inspector …’ began Brother Matthieu only to hear the Kripo shriek, ‘Silence! Let him do the talking. So, empty your pockets, Xavier. Let’s see what you’re carrying.’
    â€˜Inspector …’
    â€˜ Sei still, Priester ! Look, don’t force me to get rough. I simply want the truth. Neither of you appears to be shedding a tear over the dearly departed.’
    â€˜Our tears are already dry,’ muttered Brother Matthieu sadly. ‘She was God’s gift, an example to us all.’
    Tears fell and there were plenty of them as the broken lips quivered in silent prayer and the fingers trembled, but at memory’s touch of what? wondered Kohler uneasily.
    As if on cue, the boy suddenly turned out his pockets. A mégot tin held a connoisseur’s pick of cigarette and cigar butts that had obviously been gleaned from the courts of the high and mighty. There were a dozen dried apricots, some almonds and cloves of garlic to stave off hunger.
    A flat, brown, hip-pocket-sized bottle from prewar days was half-filled with home-distilled brandy, the fierce grappa of the hills.
    â€˜For the toothache, Herr Detektiv,’ offered the boy, with no feeling in his gaze or voice.
    Two 9mm Parabellum rounds were confiscated. ‘We’ll get to these. Now tell me where you got the goat’s cheese?’
    â€˜From home, from les Baux.’
    A village some twenty-three kilometres to the south.
    â€˜Inspector, he ran away,’ confessed Brother Matthieu lamely. ‘When he heard of what had happened here, Xavier left us and has only just returned by way of our kitchens and at the bishop’s command.’
    â€˜Afraid, was he? The boy, that is.’
    â€˜Upset, yes. All of us were and are.’
    Kohler gave the brother a curt nod. Towering over them, he said, ‘Is that why he hasn’t quite emptied his pockets, Father?’
    The monk silently cursed this Bavarian from the Kripo as a small brass bell, une clochette , fell to the hearth to ring and roll into the ashes.
    â€˜The boy sleeps with the dogs for warmth, Inspector. They are a modest duty he undertakes.’
    â€˜For whom?’
    May God forgive me, said Brother Matthieu to himself. ‘His Holiness, the Bishop.’
    Each dog, when out hunting, would wear a bell whose sound was different from those of all the others. And when the dogs drove game towards their master, he would know exactly where each of them was.
    The tin of sardines had come from the firm of D’Amelio et fils in Marseille and it would have cost a fortune on the black market, thought St-Cyr. At least 1200 francs, the equivalent of a kilo of butter or five kilos of potatoes, if one could find them, and half a month’s wages for a department store clerk or minor government official. Its presence was so incongruous he drew in an impatient breath. Always there were questions, and always under the Germans virtually no time was allowed to sort such things out.
    The label carried an artist’s romantic view of the Vieux Port with the slumbering industry of beached and anchored trawlers whose burnt ochre sails held their inverted triangles to the intense blue of the sky. Twin sardines, swimming away from each other, were superimposed on the label in a softer, greyer blue but he thought no more of them.
    Not two weeks ago, from 13 to 15 January, the Germans had destroyed the warren of slum housing that had occupied the whole of the first arrondissement of Marseille. Hitler had been in a rage. On the third of the month German security forces had attacked a brothel hoping to arrest résistants in hiding, and several of the Occupier had been killed.
    Avignon could not help but have shuddered at the news, and this one must certainly have been aware of it.
    There were several rings on each of her fingers – one of plain gold had round projections, others were of polished cabochons: a superb jasper of deep red was