Then why scatter the photographs of those poor unfortunate girls? Why not simply take them away with everything else?
Again he was forced to admit that the finger of suspicion pointed at the drooler, at the son.
With a decisive thoroughness that pleased him, St-Cyr measured and recorded the size of each of the outlines, stopping only at the smaller of them.
Then he stood in what had been the grand salon, willing himself into Joanne’s shoes.
She had lived in her imagination as a little girl. Oh bien sûr she had always been very interested in the goings-on around her, a most curious and analytical nature, but right in the middle of something, she would be a shop-girl taking orders over the counter of the local pâtisserie, a dancer suddenly or a sword-fighting pirate, a waiter. This last recollection was vivid.
Joanne had tilted her little head to one side while holding a small pad and pencil and, while she could not then read or write, had asked what they would like to order and had written it all down with quick, deft strokes and had made suggestions as to the more expensive items, particularly the wine. She could only have picked this up by watching some big pavement café from the wings The family had had no money to sit in such places and order such things.
‘She ought to have been an actress,’ he said. ‘I had forgotten how well she could drop into any part she chose to play.’
She would have seen the paintings—indeed everything else in this … this lovely house. She would have marvelled at the furniture, have hesitated at first to touch a thing. It was all so far removed from the life she had known.
She would have been submissive, shy, hesitant always—worried, oh my yes. Could she do it? Would they find her unsatisfactory?
He would have to force that little maid next door to tell him what she knew. He must question the neighbours on the other side of the house—no one had been in when he had rung the bells. He would have to question the banker’s daughter about the cat, ah yes.
Suddenly furious with himself for not making faster progress, St-Cyr dug out the smattering of photographs he had gleaned from the heap in the car and realized he ought to have had the complete sequence.
The clothes Joanne had modelled had been very good. Très chic for these times and quite classy but things … ah what could he say about them? The styles …? Skirts, blouses and sweaters, suits that were really very good but did not quite fit perfectly. Trousers, evening gowns, sequined sheaths, peignoirs and lingerie then … why then, nothing.
Though he found it uncomfortable, he forced himself to study her naked body knowing that if ever they should meet again, he would have the utmost difficulty facing her.
She had lovely breasts, full and not too big or too small. Had she been proud of them? Of course, but she would seldom have seen them, for good girls, even ones who wanted to become mannequins, didn’t spend long before the mirror. Christ and the Blessed Virgin, God and old Father Taverner, the parish priest, saw to that. And if not them, her mother and father, the crowding of an overcrowded house, and if not that, her grandmother.
Joanne had been left-handed so, while in photos of the other girls a single bracelet had been worn naturally on the left wrist, with her, she had instinctively chosen the right wrist.
She was lying on that chaise-longue staring up into the camera.
In another photo she lay on it but with her head and shoulders hanging just over the edge and her arms straining to stop herself from sliding on to the floor.
Mon Dieu, she was so beautiful it hurt to look at her knowing what had happened to the others.
The bracelet had been removed. She was totally naked, her legs taut and straining too, her eyes clamped shut in fear, a lower lip bitten, the cheeks tense.
Quickly he found the shot of her backed into that corner, having just been told what was to become of her. Somehow she had snatched up the bracelet and had put it back on the right wrist, yet when he examined similar photos of three of the other girls, they had not worn the bracelet.
Fishing in a pocket, he dragged out a small lens and was grateful that the photos had been enlarged. In raised relief, figures appeared on the bracelet. Though their outlines lacked resolution, he saw a naked young woman kneeling with her head uptilted and a hand grasping something so as to hold it in her mouth.
Was she sucking a cow’s teat?
In another, a falcon-headed figure sat in judgment while a jackal-headed figure weighed something on a tall and quite simple beam balance.
The figures had been copied from the tombs of ancient Egypt. There would be hieroglyphics—snakes, scarabs, birds of various kinds and yes, the scales of truth, the weighing of the heart and the suckling so as the soul could enter the otherworld nourished and reborn …
He swallowed hard as he looked at that thing.
Joanne had worn the bracelet in hopes someone would see it. Though he couldn’t prove this, he felt the photographer and his assistant had, perhaps, been too distracted to notice.
If so, that could only mean they had been afraid of discovery and in a hurry.
Cramming everything into his briefcase, he raced for the door, caught himself only at the last moment to leave a brief note for Hermann.
Then he headed for the rue Quatre Septembre with a vengeance, Dédé’s words echoing in his head. ‘But … but Joanne, she has had plenty of time? She might have …’
Window-shopped so as to see the type of clothes she would have to model. Of course!
Hermann … Hermann, have I found the answer?
4
‘EXCUSE ME, MONSIEUR, BUT IT WILL HAVE TO BE another time. I’m going out’
The banker’s wife was in her early sixties, still quite handsome, and wearing a dove-grey suit that was perfect for her. Good-naturedly Kohler grinned and tossed the hand that held his fedora. ‘Ah, of course, Madame de Brisson, I quite understand but another time is just not possible. It’s an emergency.’
The blue eyes behind their gold-rimmed spectacles hesitated. ‘Emergency? But … but what is this? What emergency?’
‘Gestapo, Paris-Central. Kohler, Haupsturmführer and Detective Inspector. Please step aside.’
‘Most certainly not!’ she quivered.
The rounded shoulders were bunched for battle. So, okay, he would let her have it. ‘Your daughter, madame. We have reason to believe she’s engaged in a criminal conspiracy.’
‘Our daughter …? Marie-Claire …? But … but that is impossible, monsieur. What could the girl have done?’
Moisture was rapidly gathering in her eyes. ‘Why not tell me, eh? Suddenly you feel sick, madame. What’s she been up to?’
‘Nothing!’
The reddened lips trembled, the rouged and powdered cheeks tightened. ‘Then step aside and we’ll have a look. Her flat first, then down the stairs to yours. Anyone leaves and my partner out there on the street has orders to shoot on sight. No questions. Just bang, right in the face!’ Louis was nowhere near but …
The pearls were clutched. ‘Marie … Marie-Claire couldn’t have had anything to do with that robbery, monsieur. It’s monstrous of you to even suggest such a thing. Absurd! Adopted at birth, a treasure to her dear mother and father …’
Adopted … ‘Go on. Please do, Madame de Brisson, or shall I first go through the house and then that flat up there?’
‘You … you’ve no reason to suspect her. She … she’s innocent’
‘Then you’ve nothing to fear.’
‘Have you a magistrate’s order?’
It was a last line of defence and he had to give her credit for trying. ‘Don’t be silly. Be thankful I haven’t brought along the troops to knock hell out of this place.’
The salon de Brisson was rather nice though he saw it only in passing. Fluted columns with scrolled volutes and acanthus leaves held up a ceiling whose ornate mouldings made him think of Rome. A grand piano, Louis XV armchairs in silver with dove-grey fabric were tastefully scattered. The alabaster head of a woman sat o
n the mantelpiece beside a large bouquet of silk flowers, both reflected in a superb mirror. Then he was in a hallway with doors opening off it, a library, a study, a billiard room, kitchen, pantry, stairs up the back to the attic, to what formerly had been the maid’s quarters, the cook’s or nanny’s.
He skipped the second floor and went on up to the third floor and a change of scenery. Avant-garde, more of the demi-monde and the Left Bank.
Instead of oil paintings on the walls, there were mounted black-and-white photographs. Lots of them. Scenes of Paris, of the gardens, the Champs-Élysées, pigeons, old people, flowers, children …
He drew in a breath, then went through the attic pied-à-terre, swiftly opening doors, checking the two bedrooms, the small sitting-room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, et cetera, even to opening tall armoires that were crammed with clothes. Good stuff too. Evening dresses, sheaths, blouses, skirts and suits, and then, ah Gott im Himmel, a small dark-room. Shit!
The banker’s daughter was an amateur photographer who developed and printed her own photographs.
Joanne Labelle was nowhere in the flat. Hesitating, for he had felt so certain he would find the girl here before it was too late, Kohler went down the front stairs to Marie-Claire de Brisson’s private entrance on the rue de Montpensier, then back upstairs and down the service stairs into her parents’ home.
‘Nothing, monsieur. There is nothing, is there?’ said Madame de Brisson, still looking ashen and so close to tears he had to ask himself, what was she hiding?
He wanted to shriek at her to spit it out while there was still time. Instead, he sighed and pulled off his overcoat. ‘Let’s go upstairs to your daughter’s flat, madame, and you can tell me all about her work as a photographer. Oh by the way, where is she?’
‘At work, of course. Where else would she be?’
‘Work?’
Was it so surprising? ‘Yes, the shop of a friend, Chez Denise. It’s on the rue Quatre Septembre directly across the street from my husband’s bank.’
For hours, it seemed, St-Cyr stared at a bracelet in the window of the shop called Chez Denise. Was it the twin of the one Joanne had worn in that photograph or exactly the same one?
As Dédé had suggested, he had followed in Joanne’s footsteps and had window-shopped westward from the Bourse Métro station. But he mustn’t let the bracelet’s presence disturb him so much he gave away what he now knew and jeopardized her life. He must go into this shop and ask a few simple questions about the robbery—the jewellery only in passing if at all. Yet for the moment he could but stand here seeing that thing among a cascade of others, on deep blue satin near white antique lace and a soft woollen evening dress that was such an intense reminder of pre-war days.
The bracelet was of delicately wrought gold and blue enamel in the style of ancient Egypt, with mummiform coffins, scarabs and winged gods. Tutankhamen’s tomb had been discovered in early November 1922, spawning a roaring trade in such things. There had been a good ten years of them but since the mid-thirties such pieces had seldom been seen.
There were necklaces of lapis lazuli, turquoise and gold in which the sun god appeared in the form of a scarab that was worshipped by two naked servant girls holding funerary urns of embalmed organs. The heart, the lungs, the brain. There were rings and brooches, pendants and ear-rings, some of which he was certain had been worn in other photographs. A pharaoh’s fortune but why display it like this if it was involved? It made no sense.
The stuff had to be old stock that had been brought to light by the Occupation. Few, if any, today could be making such things. The gold alone precluded this.
The shop, and others nearby, were on the very northeastern fringe of the fashion district that encompassed the rue de la Paix, the place Vendôme and extended southward to the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Yet could it have occupied a prominent place right in the heart of the trade? Had the owner seized on the Occupation to lift it from the fringe?
The clothes were really quite exceptional, given the extreme shortages. There was, as in most such places, that flagrant acceptance of the black market and the two-tiered economy. Those who could buy and, sadly, those who didn’t even have enough for food and ate sparingly since the rationing system was so lousy and niggardly.
A classic Chanel-type bolero was to be worn over an exquisitely uncomplicated little dress of black silk crêpe de Chine. A Schiaparelli-like purple satin dress with plum-green Ottoman friar’s cape was complemented by scarves, berets, hats and gloves, all of which were displayed with flare and feminine eloquence by a person who had a real eye for such things and left no detail to chance.
But the styles and the fabrics—indeed the whole of the window—were of the 1930s. It was as if, not only would the shop work within the system and flaunt this in the faces of all, it would show people what things had once been like before the war.
Determined to find out what he could without jeopardizing Joanne, St-Cyr let himself into the place and stood there looking around. The shop was not overly large but very elegant. There were several customers—not all were German officers and their mistresses. There were the wives of bankers and investment brokers, of industrialists and others who profited from the Occupation. Their men, too, some of them and … ah yes, a smattering of lesser types and their girlfriends.
‘Monsieur, can I be of service? A little something for your wife perhaps?’
Must she look at him as if she saw flic written all over him? ‘The owner, please, mademoiselle, or the manageress.’
‘Ah! then you will want Mademoiselle de Brisson.’
‘Mademoiselle de …’
Was he ill at the thought, or merely alarmed? she wondered apprehensively. ‘De Brisson, monsieur. Excuse me a moment, please.’
That the banker’s daughter should work directly across the street from her father’s bank was troubling enough, but to add the presence of the jewellery in the window … Nom de Jésus-Christ! what was he to think?
With difficulty, much apology to a client in the Kriegsmarine, and a troubled glance his way past trousers of grey tweed with the generous legs of the thirties, Mademoiselle de Brisson sought him out. The knitted, forest-green woollen dress, with its ribbed collar and long sleeves, accentuated the green eyes and made the pixie-like cut of dark red hair far more attractive than they might otherwise have been. She was perhaps twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age, a little taller than himself, of good figure but not beautiful. The rather plain and sharply chiselled face was made bright by the use of cosmetics—indeed, everything about her had been used to good advantage. But still there was a brow that was too high, a nose too broad and long for smallish ears. The lips that forced a smile did so awkwardly under scrutiny and he had to ask himself, Does she think it cruel of me to look so closely at her? and answered, Yes, it upsets her a great deal.
Her voice was harsh. ‘Monsieur, to what do I owe this intrusion? I … I’m very busy as you can see. If you would like to wait, I could perhaps …’
A backless, white piqué evening dress with green and white taffeta halter attracted him momentarily. The intricate embroidery of a brightly coloured blouse caught his fancy. He told her who he was and said, ‘Your shop is impressive, Mademoiselle de Brisson. I had no idea it was still possible to achieve such elegance.’
‘Then you should understand that to forget is to survive.’
Not only was there the acid of a swift rejoinder but a nervousness that made him edgy. To forget is to survive … Survive what, exacdy, he wondered? ‘A few questions, Mademoiselle de Brisson. On Thursday last your father’s bank …’
Impatient with him, her voice remained harsh. ‘Look, I know nothing of that business! I’ve already told the police all I know. Mademoiselle St. Onge, the owner, and I were in the office at the back discussing things when one of my girls came to tell us what had happened.’
‘Yes, of course. Perhaps you would be good enough to conduct me to the office, mademoiselle?’
‘So that
everyone in the shop will think I’ve done something wrong? Is this what you wish? Ah mon Dieu, mon Dieu, the nerve! I saw nothing!’ She stamped a foot. ‘Nothing! Denise …’
‘Mademoiselle St. Onge?’
Ah damn him for picking that up! ‘Yes, the owner.’
‘Is a friend?’
‘Yes. Yes, a friend, but it’s stricdy business between us when she comes to the shop. There are always things to be discussed.’
A nod would suffice. He would ask how Mademoiselle St. Onge had taken the news of the robbery.
Why must he watch her so closely? she wondered. Why must he be so suspicious of her? ‘Mademoiselle St. Onge was extremely distressed, Inspector, both for the sake of the driver and for the car since it was not hers.’
Uncertainty registered in her eyes. She waited for him to ask whose car it had been and when he didn’t do so, was troubled and had to ask herself, Why has he come if not for that reason?
St-Cyr set his shabby fedora on the nearest display case and, taking out pipe and tobacco pouch, appeared as though prepared to stay until closing and afterwards if necessary.
‘The fabrics, Inspector. The perfumes. It is requested that there be no use of tobacco in the shop.’ She gave him a tight little shrug and forced herself to apologetically grin. ‘Of course we cannot ask our German friends to comply but with ourselves … Ah, I am sorry. Each day I hunger for my cigarettes and tell myself I must wait.’
The urge to ask what she was afraid of was almost overwhelming, but he would have to wait until Hermann was with him. He couldn’t jeopardize Joanne’s life.
His shrug said, Okay, it’s all right about the tobacco. I quite understand. A nearby café will suit just as well. Shall we?
Ah, it said so many things.
‘Tell me, Mademoiselle de Brisson, how is your father taking the loss?’
Starded, she blurted, ‘My father …? Ah, I … I suppose not well. Eighteen million …’
‘You haven’t asked him?’
Was such a lack of familial discourse so questionable? ‘My father and I don’t discuss things, Inspector. Though I live above the house of my parents, I see little of them. I live my own life.’
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