Madrigal

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As the sound of high and ancient iron wheels constantly hammered at him, Jean-Louis St-Cyr tried to find a moment’s refuge to dwell on the murder investigation. But the coach’s wooden benches were bolt upright, the buttocks numb, and there was hardly room to squirm. The Germans had taken over sixty per cent of France’s rolling stock, thus pressing relics like this into service, even for the first-class carriages. And all around him, through the smoke-hazed, dim blue, fart-and-sweat-tainted air, the battered, dented steel helmets touched one another, and all around him there was the muffled sound of men not knowing what to expect.

Russia had taught these boys a lesson. The Battle for Stalingrad had been lost.

Hermann Kohler played Skat in the narrow corridor. Crowded around a Hindenburg Light, a stove that had been dredged from the trenches of that other war in 1914-18, he and two others held the cards. And the phalanx of silent men who were ranked on the nearby benches or stood or crouched, either stared at the guttering flame that brought no warmth but dreams of home, or at the cards, knowing only too well that after four hours of non-stop play, the Vorhand among them was a master.

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