The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [98]
“I’d love to, Clothilde. I’m full of questions,” he said, and turned to Lydia. “O.K. with you?” She nodded. She didn’t feel like being alone with Manners just yet. Perhaps that flood of lust for him had just been the effect of the cave. She liked him a great deal, but she had never been comfortable with holiday flirtations.
“I wonder when he will announce the new reward?” she asked.
“Very soon, I imagine. No point in delaying. But I suppose he’ll have to talk to the police and culture ministers, probably the finance people.”
“Ah no, my dear Major. Malrand does not work like that. In France, the presidency has its own funds, to be used at the President’s discretion. He will not tell the culture ministry, since the minister would try to steal the credit. He will find some moment when he needs a useful distraction and make the announcement. It should bring results very fast, I imagine.”
“Well, that looks like the end of our adventure, Lydia.”
“Why on earth so? The painting may be recovered, which would be a good thing. But that still leaves the mystery of where it’s from, let alone how your father got hold of it. And it looks as if Clothilde’s cavehunting project is not getting the presidential seal of approval, so we might as well continue our inquiries among the old Resistance types.”
“I have some names for you, and some information,” said Clothilde. “Not very exciting, but one friend of my father—my real father, that is—said he knew of two caves where guns were stored. The big one at Rouffignac, which goes back for miles, and Bara-Bahau. Rouffignac is a possibility. It has been fully explored, but by speleologists, not by modern experts. It’s a small painting, and it’s possible that some great scar on the wall was not noticed.”
“But the lines continue beyond the edge of the rock, and in the background is that clear white calcite,” Lydia objected. “The lines would have been noticed.”
“I know, it’s just a faint possibility. Bara-Bahau is out. It’s too well known, and not much calcite there. I feel sure that Horst was on the right track when he talked of a cave that lay waiting to be discovered, like Lascaux in 1940, and somehow the painting came out and then the cave was sealed again.”
“So your idea of the echo-sounding project would probably be a sure-fire way of finding it again,” said Manners thoughtfully. “Odd that Malrand seemed to be set against it.”
“I think he was set against the idea of being bullied into a commitment, rather than the idea itself,” said Lydia.
“It’s curious,” said Clothilde. “The project seemed guaranteed of success when I first proposed it, long before we heard of your new rock. The Air Force was quite happy, saying it could fit into its training schedule. The Ministry of Culture was in favor, and we had a university and a research institute eager to help. But then it got squashed somewhere in the hierarchy, and I was given different explanations why. The culture officials said they thought it was the finance ministry. The research people said they thought it was political, the Prime Minister’s office muttering that too many funds were being steered to Malrand’s Péri gord. And one of Malrand’s people told me it was because they thought that in a year or so we could get half the project financed by Brussels, from the European fund.”
“There couldn’t be any—well—sinister reason for someone trying to block it, could there?” mused Manners, almost to himself. “Somebody who may have a good reason to make sure the undiscovered cave remained unfound.”
“What do you mean?” said Clothilde, glancing meaningfully from Manners to the impervious security man who was driving them. Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head warningly.
“Oh, nothing. Just a fancy,” he said lightly. “Your scientific search is a good idea, and good ideas have a way of getting carried out. The European fund will probably come through from