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boss.’
    Left to itself, fennel could grow in great profusion and here it was so tall and thick, the dill was threatened as was the recovery of that cartridge casing. Down on his hands and knees, forcing his way into the thicket, he said, ‘There are limits to my patience, Hermann. Maybe you should be here instead of myself!’
    Leaves, old stalks, the refuse of the forgotten years didn’t make the task easy. Taking a break, he went to harvest a little dill. Letting that wonderful astringency and aroma come, he again went down on the hands and knees, was now soaked through and with no easy way of getting dry.
    The ground wasn’t just spongy. The knees sank in, the hands too. Sunlight, if God had granted it, would have made the job easier. In all it took an hour and by then he had, of course, repeatedly heard Hermann calling for him and at the last, a more vehement, ‘ Verdammt , Louis, where the hell are you?’
    Disregarding the summons, sheltering the 10x lens the years had given him, he scanned the two casings side by side. ‘ Ah bon , there’s little doubt. Similar scratches imply that it was the same gun, the killings done by a decisive individual who, for some reason, didn’t hesitate to silence both of you.’
    The pungent aromas of juniper and rosemary were here, the taste of those and of sage, thyme and oregano in scatterings, and had the day been different, he would have spent happy hours harvesting. ‘There’s even a stonemason’s mark,’ he said, tracing it out on a large rectangular block. Though several hundred years old, it was still as fresh as the day it had been cut. ‘A circle with inwardly­ pointing arrowheads on the single horizontal line that cuts it exactly­ in half and is parallel to the bedding planes of the limestone. As to its meaning, mon ami , it’s somewhat like a murder investigation. One should consider that the job must be compassed round and studied carefully from every angle. This one was a master builder. No names are ever in any of the history books, hardly a mention even, and yet … and yet they have left us so much.’
    Hermann was now madly waving both arms, only to finally point toward the muddy lane they had taken to get the Citroën in as far as possible.
    Top down, for the rain must have miraculously stopped, a Wehrmacht-camouflaged tourer flew drenched swastika penants. The one at the wheel had stood up to better see them and signal that they both should come near. No need, then, for anyone else to muddy their boots or shoes.
    â€˜ Merde , visitors no one wants, and with no time for us to first talk things over.’
    Apart from the silver skull and crossbones on the cap, and the braiding, the one in the back with the open topcoat looked like Rommel in the desert war that had finally been lost on 12 May of this year after so many successes, while the one in the dark-grey fedora with down-pulled brim and topcoat collar up who was sucking on a cigarette in the front seat beside the driver and polishing his steel-framed specs, looked the epitome of an aging Gestapo gumshoe.
    â€˜God always smiles when least expected, Hermann.’
    â€˜Why a Standartenführer, Louis?’
    That, too, was a very good question: a colonel in the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, the Secret Service of the SS and Nazi Party. ‘Ours is but to ask, but let’s keep things to ourselves. You to do the talking, me to play the conquered subordinate with Gestapo detective overseer.’
    â€˜Don’t rub it in. Let me just tell you that things are definitely not right with what’s happened here and that bastard under the grey sombrero who’s still sucking on his breakfast teeth is someone we simply don’t want meddling in our business.’
    â€˜ Ah mon Dieu, mon vieux , it gets deeper and deeper, doesn’t it?’
    â€˜You really do want the last word so I’ll let you have it while that garde