The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [166]
“That’s the great secret. I didn’t want the cave open because it’s still a grave. And when those bodies come out, the scandal would have ended my career.”
“Your father and I survived, along with Lespinasse’s father,” he went on, breathing out a long plume of smoke. “That’s why he’s here. Quite a family reunion. Anyway, first I think I ought to give you this. Your father wrote it, and entrusted it to me. I wrote a similar account, and gave it to him. My version was sent back to me after his death by his lawyer, in a sealed envelope bearing the instructions that it should be sent to me in the event of his death. Here is his. He wrote it in this very room.”
He went to the desk, opened a drawer and handed Manners a slim brown envelope with a blob of red sealing wax on the flap. Manners ripped it open, and began reading aloud:
To whom it may concern:
This statement describes events which I witnessed at the cave at la Ferrassie, outside Le Bugue, on the night of June 9-10, 1944, as a captain in the British Army attached to the Special Operations Executive and working with the French Resistance. Along with Colonel Malrand of the Free French forces, and Captain James McPhee of the United States Army, we had gone to the cave to recover a cache of arms which we had stored there after German forces interrupted a parachute drop at Cumont nearby. I found the cave by chance, after German mortar fire knocked down a tree and opened the entrance. The guns were being appropriated by a leader of the FTP Resistance organization known as Marat, a devout Communist who had fought in Spain. Marat was accompanied by a Russian agent and two Spanish Communists. Determined to appropriate the guns, they attacked us, and in the subsequent shooting, Lieutenant McPhee was killed along with a French Resistance fighter attached to Colonel Malrand’s unit known to me only as Florien. Marat and his team were all killed. We left the bodies in the cave, sealed it with explosives, and took the weapons to Terrasson, where they were used in the attempt to deny the road to the SS Das Reich division. The cave was found to contain a number of remarkable wall paintings, probably many thousands of years old. In view of the highly charged political situation at that time in the war, Colonel Malrand and I took the view that it would be irresponsible to the Allied war effort to publicize the murder of an American officer by Communist militants, including a Russian agent, in their attempt to steal weapons. We took this decision on our own responsibility, and now make this written statement to affirm our joint wish that the existence of the cave and its remarkable paintings, along with the tragic events of that night, should be made publicly known after our deaths.
Signed, John Philip Manners
Witnessed, François Malrand Hervé Lespinasse
Manners then unfolded the second sheet of paper from his father’s letter, a rough sketch map of the cave’s location, showing Cumont, la Ferrassie, and the track between them.
“I believe we must have come very close to it,” he said, handing the map to Lydia with a smile.
“Tell me about the paintings,” said Clothilde.
“I imagine you’ll see them soon enough,” said Malrand. “But you will be gratified to learn that your theory is right. La Marche cave is not the only place where prehistoric man left images of human faces. It contains portraits, one of a man, the other of a woman. They are extraordinary. I have never been able to forget them. There is also a landscape, with animals depicted among trees and rocks and a sky, which I found very beautiful.”
“I suppose I can understand why the two of you decided to keep the cave and the shootings a secret during the war when the Russians were still our allies,” said Lydia. “But why afterward, during the cold war?”
“Politics, I’m afraid. I had embarked on a political career, and with French Communists getting twenty percent of the vote, I would not have had much future as a Gaullist who had shot