The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  ‘The thing is, Kopitcke,’ Bauer said, ‘we know she’s looking for passeurs. We know he can’t speak French. We know she’s got expensive tastes from the clothes and the cosmetics we found. She’s the moneybags. That’s why he’s still here. Would a classy woman like that spend the night in a hayloft? She’s not the Virgin Mary, that’s for sure. No, she’s in a hotel, but we’ve had no reports of any single woman of that description registering since yesterday. Yet she’s here, and wherever she’s staying, I bet she got him inside last night. Then he spent today hiding here while she’s gone out and about trying to get them passages to Spain.’

  Now they had identified Pohl, he and Kopitcke would go after him and the woman, with or without St Jean’s help.

  ‘I’d start with this place, M’sieur le Commissar,’ said Mascaro. Bauer had asked his professional advice about a cosmetics shop, fashionable or not. The American woman had lost all her cosmetics on the freight train, and she had money. He was making a reasonable bet on her vanity. ‘Between us, they also do business with the occupier,’ Mascaro added, as if forgetting who Bauer and his offsider were.

  They were outside the shop of a hundred fragrances on the corner where Eleanor had tended her vanity that very afternoon. Kopitcke in such a place would be the proverbial bull in a china shop, Bauer thought, so ordered him to stay in the car.

  The bell announced his entry. The shop was as still and peaceful as a chapel. He was bonjoured with charm by the elegant proprietress and her young assistant. He bonjoured back just as charmingly. But charm, of course, strikes the sight only, and Bauer knew better than to pretend he was not a cop – the car alone was blindingly obvious – and a German one at that.

  The proprietress gushed at his merveilleux français. ‘A fragrance to take back to your wife?’

  ‘No, alas, not right now,’ said Bauer with genuine regret. He was here on official business. He went out of his way to explain that the case he was working on – the murder of two young men, just out of short pants, in an ambush by a German Jew – was entirely a German matter, with no implications for France or any French.

  ‘But no one of that description ever comes into a shop like this,’ replied the proprietress, puzzled.

  ‘The young man has an accomplice,’ Bauer explained and described an older, possibly American, woman with brown hair, a woman of taste and elegance. At that, he produced the bottle of Schiaparelli he had found inside the woman’s valise and that he’d had the foresight to fetch on their way here. Eventually, he would give it to his wife.

  The francs that Eleanor had so recently handed over to the proprietress were burning a hole in her pocket.

  ‘No, m’sieur, no Americans have come in here for quite some time,’ she replied as she casually moved to shield the bottles of perfume they hadn’t yet returned to the display shelf. ‘At least we can still rely on our German friends,’ she added with an insincere smile.

  She was too late. Bauer had already spotted the bottles, just as he had detected the faintest of warnings the woman’s eyes had sent her assistant. The woman might deal with the occupier, he realised, but it was dealing of the double sort. No matter. His quarry had been here, most likely within the past hour or so. If only he’d had the nous to work this angle out earlier.

  He kept up the façade of charm and gentility until, as he was about to leave, he picked up one of the stray bottles of scent, a Lancôme. Opened already, he noted. He put it to his nose.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ he said, thinking of his wife.

  Standing outside the shop moments later with his wife’s present tucked away in his pocket, he looked around at the pedestrians walking briskly by, their gazes fixed on the footpath. They saw the car by the kerb, he realised, and while Mascaro was in his French uniform, Kopitcke was in the back seat with his square German head. He could sense an invisible ring around him on the sidewalk, as if he were contagious.

  Right across the street he saw the Hôtel Continental, the billet of Lieutenant Wolf. His cases were colliding. He wondered if the French police were still in the lobby defending French sovereignty against the Gestapo.

  At this very moment, Eleanor walked out of the salon de coiffure, her spirit revived by the shine on her freshly washed hair and another application of her new Lancôme scent. She had shared some with the girl who’d washed and dried her hair, insisting despite the young lady’s protest that such a fragrance was too expensive to waste on her. It was as if Eleanor had sprayed her with fairy dust, she was so happy. Her fiancé was about to arrive.

  Eleanor, herself in a fairy-dust mood, ignored the cold wind to enjoy the luxury of her hair uncovered, like silk flowing freely over her ears and neck. She returned to the parfumerie on the corner, just to gaze again at the window display. Through the window she saw the proprietress and gave her a discreet wave, only to see a look of horror cross the woman’s face and the strongest indication from her eyes to get the hell out of there. Then, reflected in the window, she saw behind her the car parked at the kerb, police or Gestapo. Unmistakeable. She was briefly frozen to the spot and had to force her feet to move, oh so slowly and casually, stopping fleetingly to glance into the window of another shop, although if you’d asked her what it displayed, she couldn’t have told you.

  Bauer was still staring at the Continental. Was there any need for him to go into the foyer? No Gestapo car was parked ostentatiously outside. They must have given up. Then his nose sensed the fragrance that wafted around him, the same fragrance, he recognised it. His eyes sought the source. That woman? Or that one over there? Neither fitted the description – an older, elegant brunette. Another was gazing casually into a shop window, a real beauty, but she was young, her hair a shining auburn. He looked in the other direction: a brunette under her hat, then another brunette, but they were together. Sisters? Then he saw a young woman, even younger, waiting by the kerb; she waved excitedly to an approaching boy.

  He watched as the sweethearts kissed and the girl begged the boy to smell her neck, both sides, and both wrists. Touched as he was by young love prospering in these hard times, he couldn’t help being disappointed. The black gloom was waiting over both shoulders. Was Georg dead? He shook the thought and the gloom away. This was getting him nowhere.

  Back in the car, he noticed Kopitcke sniffing the air with distaste. The fragrance clung to his nostrils and seemed to fill the car. What a future awaited them, Bauer mused dismally, if the Kopitckes inherited the world.

  ARMISTICE COMMISSION, HÔTEL DE FRANCE, PAU

  Late afternoon to early evening, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  Before they went searching the shady quarter around Rue des Cordeliers, Bauer told Kopitcke and Mascaro to go to the canteen in the commissariat de police to eat, and then return in half an hour.

  Bauer had more important things to do than eat; he went to the communications room. The only cable addressed directly for him was from the Ortskommandant in Nevers, barking about his lack of progress in catching the killer, how it was now the third day since the murders and how long did Bauer think their patience would last and so on and so on. The threat of being dismissed was still there, except Frankfurt had been replaced with the Russian front. The German military was run on threats, direct or implied: do this or else. In Bauer’s case, if only the Ortskommandant carried out his threat. Yes, sir, thank you very much, sir, the Moscow front, if you don’t mind. On the spot, he would find his son.

  He tucked the cable into his pocket. Then he ran his eyes over the available battle reports from Moscow. Any fool could see, reading between the spinning lines, that things were still going badly. There was no point in cabling his pals closer to the front who’d been helping. They had enough to do dealing with the Russian attacks. If there was any news about Georg, they’d let him know when they could.

  ‘One of your boys is in Africa, isn’t he, sir?’ asked the communications clerk and handed him a sheaf of cables. ‘Lots coming in.’

  Bauer read, expecting som
ething uplifting. This was Rommel, after all, the Afrika Korps. The news, however, was bad. The British had been attacking near Gazala since early morning. Tense, his mouth suddenly dry, he read down through what he was strictly not supposed to see. Indians had given a bloody nose to the panzers.

  ‘Indians?’ Bauer said out loud in astonishment. ‘From India?’

  The clerk shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s what it says, sir.’ Bauer went to the preliminary casualty list just as Kopitcke came to find him. He and Mascaro had eaten. They brought with them a copy of the ‘wanted’ poster.

  ‘I’ve brought you a sausage too, sir,’ said Kopitcke.

  Bauer didn’t look up, even when he’d passed the Bs in the officers’ list and there was no Karl-Friedrich Bauer, not until he reached the end. Then he took the sausage from Kopitcke, which was between two sodden pieces of bread.

  ‘Thank you, Kopitcke,’ he said. ‘Very thoughtful of you.’ He hadn’t eaten but wasn’t hungry. The Pervitin pills seemed to blunt his appetite, no bad thing when he was so busy. But since it was in his hand, he ate Kopitcke’s kind offering.

  ‘We’ll go on foot,’ he said as they came outside. Mascaro, with his French uniform, would be their cover and their guide.

  HEDAS, PAU

  Early evening, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  Having drawn a series of blanks along the main streets in the area, they descended a rough pathway that curved down into the ravine, around the back wall of the chateau. The arctic wind was blowing hard from all directions, swirling leaves and paper every which way and keeping most people indoors, windows and doors firmly shut. To Bauer, the place looked more picturesque than he’d been led to believe by Inspector St Jean’s sneering reference to a smoky rabbit warren of Spanish anarchists and communists. You could see stars across a clear, moonless night sky. Lanes normally clogged with muck, and walls and roofs covered in grime and slime, had been rain-swept clean. Even the Lord might see that it was good, but not Mascaro. The Spaniards were still there in their makeshift hovels and, worse, an infestation of refugees from all over Europe. Every inhabitant was either a smuggler or looking for someone to smuggle them across the frontier.

  The sound of voices came and went with the gusts of wind. Lights were on in most windows, either from candles or paraffin lamps. These days, any dwelling with a secure roof, and sometimes not, was a boarding house, although few were registered as such. Boarding houses had concierges, although that wasn’t the word Mascaro used: sometimes women operating on their own who collected the rent from their tenants, sometimes toughs who’d pushed in to run a protection racket, especially in the hovels packed with refugees from Central Europe, the Jews.

  Threats and a little bit of bribery were the only way with any of them, according to Mascaro. Few here had proper resident permits; they could be kicked out over the border into Franco’s welcoming arms just like that, and they knew it. Usually they tried to keep out of the way of the cops, but now, on foot, and in the dark, Mascaro caught them at home. It was dinner time, after all.

  ‘This man, a Boche, doesn’t speak French,’ Mascaro barked his explanation at the residents of the first house after barging in. He handed over the ‘wanted’ poster. ‘Arrived only yesterday,’ he added and showed a few extra francs, to be handed over only on receipt of a useful answer.

  ‘We only got yids here,’ said the Spanish tough. ‘You know that. You got their names.’

  ‘There’s a reward,’ said Mascaro, stabbing at the figure on the poster.

  ‘What about a middle-aged woman, classy, possibly American?’ Bauer asked. ‘Arrived yesterday.’

  The tough cackled. ‘Classy? She must be hard up.’ He shook his head and laughed again. This place, the walls long stripped of paint and now stained and cracked, was a human dump.

  In the next, a woman stood defiantly at the door, Spanish and tougher than an elephant. ‘But yes’ was her response, followed by ‘possibly, maybe’. The more specific Bauer and Mascaro became, the less ‘possibly’, she became, the less ‘maybe’. They realised all she cared about was the cash and she’d say anything to get it.

  And so it went, door to frustrating door. Mascaro even pushed his way into some of the houses, room to room, kicking the doors open, startling the hell out of the occupants.

  ‘You can tell the Jews, can’t you?’ Mascaro said. ‘Frightened like rabbits.’

  Kopitcke chafed under orders from Bauer to keep his mouth shut. What a haul they were passing up here.

  ‘We’re not after Jews,’ Bauer had to remind him, ‘we’re after the murderers of two German soldiers.’ Sometimes he wanted to send Kopitcke right back to the Brownshirts, whence he’d come. Didn’t he realise a lot of these Jews had been kicked out of Germany? What did Kopitcke want? To send them right back?

  Then they came to the Hôtel Cosmopolitan, the second in the area claiming that status. The first, clinging to the passage that curved down from the street, had been almost respectable, the sort of place in which Bauer expected his ‘madame américaine’, as he was now calling her, to hide. He had perused the register and gone with Mascaro room to room. Kopitcke, in tow, was their bloodhound, whose nose would detect the presence of the cat. Kopitcke’s nose remained dry.

  Bauer followed Mascaro in.

  ‘Ah, it’s you,’ said Madame Dumas, matter-of-fact, when she saw Mascaro. He might have returned from a short errand. ‘I haven’t seen you around for a while.’ Mascaro was acquainted with her – not as well as the local constables were, but he knew who she was. He’d told Bauer she’d been here since well before the arrival of the Spanish, a local fixture, one of the few remaining concierges who was French. ‘Too grand for me now, are you?’ she added.

  ‘No, Madame Dumas,’ Mascaro replied. ‘Just don’t get around these parts anymore.’

  ‘Hah,’ sniffed Dumas. ‘The place is full of riff-raff these days.’

  Mascaro slapped the ‘wanted’ poster on her counter.

  ‘Who is it this time?’ she asked and pushed her glasses up her nose so she could see the photograph clearly.

  ‘A murderer,’ Mascaro responded. ‘If you’d seen him, it’d be in the last twenty-four hours.’ She tut-tutted and said she didn’t take in murderers and she’d know one if she saw one, yes indeed. She peered more closely at the photograph on the poster.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But he’s a Boche, isn’t he? That’s a Boche uniform. I wouldn’t have a Boche here, you know that.’

  ‘What about a middle-aged woman?’ Bauer asked. ‘A bourgeois. Would have checked in late yesterday. Brunette, could be American; she wears classy fragrances, smokes Chesterfields. A woman with your taste would certainly recognise her.’

  Madame Dumas’s sweet disposition suddenly went. ‘How would I know classy fragrances or Chesterfields?’ she complained, ignoring Bauer and addressing herself to Mascaro. ‘Our conquerors take everything. Butter’s not to be had, they take all our olives, they take all the good cuts of meat. Has your wife served you up any beef in the last year? Perfumes,’ she grumbled. ‘They probably spray it on their balls, they’re so ignorant.’

  Mascaro didn’t know what to say. Or if Bauer would take offence. What the hell was she doing?

  ‘Talk about a New Europe?’ she persisted. ‘Pétain, he’s senile.’

  ‘Steady on,’ Mascaro intervened at last. ‘You can’t say that sort of thing.’

  ‘I just did,’ said Dumas defiantly. ‘What are you going to do about it? Arrest me? I gave a husband and three boys to France in the last war. Husband and the eldest are in the ground. The remaining two couldn’t care less about their old mother – that war did something to them.’

  ‘Yes, madame,’ said Bauer diplomatically. He understood her feelings. But since she had sons, she might think of the mothers of the two boys who had been murdered.

  Dumas was having none of that. ‘Boches killing Boches? They should do more of it.’ She went to the doorway that led into her rooms. ‘You should
be looking after us, real French people, not helping the Boches,’ she said and slammed the door, and suddenly the light in the vestibule went out.

  Kopitcke was enraged. ‘Arrest her,’ he demanded of Mascaro.

  ‘Pipe down,’ said Bauer. ‘It’s all right, Mascaro.’ The poor fellow had turned a terrible colour.

  Bauer took the register nevertheless. It was still on the counter. He turned on his torch and perused it. There was no entry for yesterday or today. He pushed it back with a sigh. There wasn’t much else he could achieve. That damn American woman was around; she’d bought herself enough protection. But she couldn’t stay hidden. Nor could Lance Corporal Pohl.

  *

  They returned to the Armistice Commission. Bauer looked in on Lieutenant Wolf, who was still sleeping. He went to the communications room for further news from the Moscow front and from North Africa, and sent his boy outside Gazala one of his short ‘from the old man’ cables of encouragement. He still hadn’t told his wife Georg was missing in Russia.

  HÔTEL COSMOPOLITAN, PAU

  After 10pm, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  Eleanor had eaten in a café further away, where her now-fashionable and clean hair, not to forget her perfume, were less obvious. She hadn’t been able to slip past Madame Dumas unnoticed on return. Oddly, she thought, Dumas said nothing about her hair, or her fragrance. Just a cheery good evening, hoping she would sleep well. She went up to her room to await Henk. She had no idea when he would arrive but hoped it would be after the concierge was asleep. If the wretch ever slept.

  Reading was like breathing to Eleanor, something she did as second nature, but tonight she may as well have tried climbing Mount Everest. First she tried the Psalms. Then, failing to concentrate, she turned to the Books of Kings and their stories about Ahab and Jezebel, and though she read the words, they may as well have been in Swahili. She even tried Finnegans Wake but that still worked as a soporific when the last thing she wanted to do was sleep. She got up and, bending herself double, crawled out to the window. The light above the front door was off. She could see nothing.