How understanding of Bolduc, but neither had worn glasses, though those could, perhaps, have been thrown into that gazo’s firebox with the pocket contents and somehow failed to turn up in the ashes. ‘And this van, mademoiselle, they had a lot of pickups, did they?’ Hermann was now perusing the photos on the wall behind the desk, having just sorted through some other files.
‘Oui, je pense …’ she began, but must this one seize every opportunity to distract her so as to let the other find out everything?
‘You knew, did you, exactly where those pickups were to be made and what was to be collected?’
Ah Sainte Mère! ‘Inspector, I did not say that they had lots of pickups for stuff to sell on the marché noir. Me, I don’t know anything about that business. How could I?’
‘But you did know they were up to something other than for the bank. You must have. You’ve been personal secretary here since 1934.’
‘Pour l’amour du ciel, I’m not his wife!’
Nor mistress, sad though that might well be. ‘But you do keep the wheels well oiled. You must. Now be so good as to write down the address of the bank’s garage and depot, and while you’re at it, the name or names of those in charge.’
‘And their addresses?’
Normally far from easily ruffled, felt St-Cyr, she had simply used that outburst to stop Hermann from looking at those photos too closely. Dropping those lovely eyes under Sûreté scrutiny, she swallowed tightly, deliberately touched the base of her throat, and took a deep breath before swiftly glancing up at Hermann who was again trying the desk drawers, but was she now wondering if he would demand the key or simply find the spare one she had hidden, just like the other one?
‘Now please, Inspectors, I must notify Monsieur Grégoire, who is the operations manager but does not live in this building.’
‘Like yourself?’ asked the Sûreté.
But could that readily be admitted if a little something else was added? ‘Oui, the bank has always provided me with a flat here. Chairman Bolduc, he often works late and I am always on call because it is necessary.’ A cosy little arrangement, was this what he was thinking? Well good, now she could hit him with it! ‘Madame Bolduc is my sister. Me, I am aunt to her two darlings, Didi and Yvonne, ages ten and twelve.’
Hermann looked as if he was about to choke, but there was a more important matter. ‘And your ex-husband, mademoiselle?’
Perhaps he should hear it since it wouldn’t hurt. ‘Sleeps in his coffin, thanks to the plane crash that took him from me in 1932. Me, I will telephone Monsieur Grégoire and instruct him to meet you at the garage, Inspector. He will know what is best. If he needs help, he can always call on one of the others.’
‘Are they all PPF?’ asked Hermann, leaning over the desk to give her glass a refill and touch the fingers that were still holding it.
Her look must be one of cold appraisal, felt Yvonne, for he had the definite appearance and touch of a womanizer. ‘Members of the neofascist Parti Populaire Français? That I most certainly wouldn’t know, Inspector. I’m simply a typist. I never go to that garage. Why should I, when I know nothing of engines and am kept busy here?’
Leaving the Citroën where it was, they got into the van with Louis again at the wheel. ‘Old money, Hermann. For far too long, about 200 families have controlled our banks. While presently they will have German overseers, there will always be someone who watches things for the family. Having married that sister of hers, Bolduc will have got his hands on his wife’s portion of the family’s money, since that is how it is in France, but Yvonne Roget realized immediately that her boss wasn’t the only one on thin ice and that if a sacrifice was to be made, it would be him and no one else. She won’t just be contacting Grégoire, she’ll be disturbing the sleep of that pot-shoot even though the Gestapo’s listeners will hear her. She’ll also, bearing those same listeners in mind but avoiding them at all costs, be on her way to see that sister of hers who obviously must know only too well that her husband has a mistress.’
Louis certainly had an understanding of things. ‘Tolerated, eh, for the good of the family? Though in a hell of a rush, our Yvonne still took time out to brush that lovely auburn hair and do her lips and the rest before dashing off to throw a wrench into us if possible.’
‘After lightly dabbing herself behind the ears with the Empress Eugénie’s favourite, but is Bolduc a Royalist yearning for the days of even Napoléon III and his consort?’
Who had been banished to England in 1871, but the partnership had been up against those wanting the strong hand of royalty before, though there was something else Louis had better hear. ‘Three of those vans use the Porte de Versailles as a designated entrance and we both know what it’s close to because it’s also Oberfeldwebel Werner Dillmann’s beat.’
And the entrance used by the Tabac National. ‘Ah bon, but why bother to talk to the cat when you can talk to the tiger?’
An old saying from home, and also from Louis’s childhood summers at an uncle’s farm near Saarbrücken, but there was still more to come. ‘Yvonne left that boss of hers a note, Louis. Apparently the PPF are due another donation.’
‘Aren’t Rudy de Mérode and the other gangs enough?’
‘Easy, mon vieux. Easy.’ But many of the big banks were funding the PPF, and always such donations were in cash to avoid a paper trail. Vehemently anti-Democratic, anti-Communist, anti-the Allies, de Gaulle, the Masons and the Jews, PPFs were especially anti-Résistance now and had their spies everywhere.
‘And like a lot of the others, Hermann, they will have realized Herr Himmler’s determination to destroy the Abwehr and absorb it into the Sicherheitsdienst, and will have switched sides.’
Leaving the Abwehr, which had originally done so much for all such types, right out in the cold. So bad had things become, Abwehr-West had forbidden its German and French staff to have any dealings with the SD and SS, but it was all too clearly a battle the Abwehr were fast losing. ‘And that has to include Bolduc’s two overseers, Louis. Hauptmann Reinecke and Leutnant Heiss must be Abwehr-West and will have been with that bank since July of 1940.’
‘With lots of time to get to know and work with Bolduc. This investigation just gets deeper and deeper, doesn’t it?’
Unfortunately, there was something else Louis had better hear. ‘When he assigned us to this investigation, Boemelburg thought to tell me that the SD had just recruited a Selbstschutz from among the PPF. I know I should have told you, but …’
‘News like that would be too upsetting, a self-defence hit squad to do what the SD themselves don’t want to be associated with like taking care of outspoken detectives?’
‘If I have to, I’ll use the Purdey.’
The rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine ran from place de la Bastille to place de la Nation. On either side, in the 11th and 12th arrondissements behind what must once have been elegant residences with wrought-iron balconies, shops and all the rest, were warrens of narrow passages and courtyards. Generations of cabinet and furniture makers still had their shops here and, in the past, had incorporated marquetry, gilding and bronze work and become known for it throughout Europe. ‘Yet it’s also an enclave of political troublemakers, Hermann. Repeatedly they have taken to the streets with their likes and dislikes.’
There were also produce shops, and the long lines of the Occupation had already been forming since the lifting of the curfew at 0500 hours. Some had even brought a stool or fold-up chair. Kids with runny noses and untied shoelaces seemed everywhere, baby carriages too, and even grandmothers wearing carpet slippers, all with the inevitable shopping bag, flowers pinned to their hats and the hopes of getting something more than the likelihood of a few radishes and carrots with tops for the rabbits if lucky.
The bank’s garage was just to the east of the intersection with the rue de Charonne. Four- and five-storey tenements, all grey with prewar soot, h
ad balconies whose livestock awaited the sunlight. Merely a slot in the wall, the entrance was labeled GARAGE in grey-blue tin metal with flanking notices for CITROËN, HOTCHKISS, PEUGEOT and RENAULT repairs too, but who had cars other than the chosen few?
Iron bars guarded the lower windows, and above and beyond those were curtains, some open, others perpetually drawn. The depot and repair bays were at the very back of the courtyard, the beams above them sagging. Ateliers of two and three storeys were to the left and right, while in the tenements above, the grey and flaking walls from which laundry hung definitely needed repairing.
‘There’s an iron gate that closes all this off at night, Hermann.’
‘And a hive of industry with hardly a sound. Is it that we’ve been expected?’
Bicycles, well chained, were nearby. Rank on the damp air was the stench of the outdoor toilet, while from the cast-iron tap of another century, a constant stream dribbled as two Alsatians lapped at it, completely ignoring Hermann’s, ‘Ach, meine Schatzen, you’re lovely.’ They barely tolerated his touch, but he was never one to give up easily and soon had these ‘treasures’ all over him.
‘Guard dogs they may be, Louis, but a little scavenged smoked sausage does miracles.’
Beyond the bay for greasing and minor repairs, and the one for flat tires, the sliding door opened into the service centre, a warehouse that seemed, by contrast, huge. Four of the bank’s eight vans were in a row, leaving three still out and probably soon on their way back to Paris, the mechanics and their assistants in bleues de travail and busy, though casting glances at them. But there were also a Vauxhall sedan, a Citroën coupé, a Ford Model C Ten and a forest-green, four-door Cadillac Series 60 limo that was absolutely beautiful. A 1938 or ’39.
Daylight now entered the barred windows high above, while a gleaming black Renault Vivastella four-door, the 1939 and capable of 177 kph (110 mph), had beat them to it.
‘The hood’s still warm,’ said Louis.
‘Inspectors … Inspectors,’ came a deeply resonant voice from on high, behind an iron walkway’s railing at the back. The suit and tie were those of a banker, the gut and shoulders something else again. ‘Mon Dieu, but you’ve had a time of it, I gather. Hector Bolduc à votre service. Come up, come up. Back of this walkway is my office away from the bank. A little coffee and cognac to take the chill off? Two trusted bank employees murdered, was it, at l’Abbaye de Vauclair of all places? Their wives and children have been notified, have they? Funeral expenses will have to be found—the bank of course—and a little set aside to keep them all going.’
A hand was quickly extended, theirs taken by the grip of a wrestler. ‘Here, I’ll close the door to let the boys get on with their work. Grégoire will soon be here. You’ve left the van locked, have you? The keys then, for later.’
He, too, snapped his fingers just like Yvonne Roget. ‘A few questions first, Chairman Bolduc,’ began Louis. ‘Nothing difficult you understand, since your return from the Côte Sud des Landes has been so remarkable, my partner and I are a little taken aback.’
And if that wasn’t kindly, what was? wondered Kohler, for if damage control was intended, the set of this one’s lips and arch of the fiercely bushy grey-black brows and the look in those deep-brown eyes said enough. Greying at the sides, thin and curly and almost bald on top, the hair would see a barber every other day at least, but the grizzled cheeks, chin and throat simply reinforced the appearance not just of toughness, but of a slum landlord about to toss out a family of ten.
The big hands gestured at the thought of his still being in Paris. ‘Yvonne was only trying to give me time to get here. I’m not off until Thursday at 0500 hours. Hauptmann Reinecke and Leutnant Heiss, who are assigned to my bank, are to deliver the Dornier DO-24T flying boat we at the bank have donated to the Luftwaffe’s Coastal Command. It’s come straight off the line at the Potez-CAMS works at Sartrouville.* Very safe and reliable, it’s the perfect reconnaissance aircraft. The Dutch are also producing them. Now please, a little refreshment since Yvonne has told me you hardly touched a thing she had ordered in for you.’
‘A moment,’ said Hermann. ‘Are Reinecke and Heiss also attached to Abwehr-West?’
The Army’s counterintelligence service and the usual for such. ‘Would it matter?’
‘It might.’
‘Then that I wouldn’t know, would I, otherwise it wouldn’t be top secret.’
Seizing the coffeepot, he filled the mugs, then smoothly set three glasses in a row and gave them the Rémy Martin Vieille Réserve. ‘It’s a favourite,’ he said. ‘Fifteen years in the cask. Look at how deep the colour is, savour its aroma first. Warm it in the hand and only then brush the lips while breathing in the scent. It’s magnificent.’
One could but try, thought St-Cyr. ‘Monsieur, the back of that van of yours was loaded not just with cash, but items gathered along its route for sale on the marché noir. Brie, wine, champagne, bacon, ham, flour, eggs, truffles …’
Confessions would be out of the question, felt Kohler, since the swiftness of a dark and challenging look had erupted into, ‘What’s this you’re saying? That trusted employees of my bank would dare to do such a thing when half the city is starving and the other half entirely hungry? No milk for the newborns whose mothers have gone dry?’
‘Apparently so,’ went on Louis, ‘but those employees of yours certainly got taken on the truffles. They’re not of the winter variety. They’re from last summer and, in a foolish attempt to increase their price, have been dyed with the juice from walnut husks.’
‘And what, please, am I to say? That I’ll cut the balls off the sellers, eh, since I knew absolutely nothing of this matter?’
Indicating that he should sit facing them both from across the table, this Sûreté even had the audacity to drag out a little notebook and a pair of ivory bones!
Kohler had already started in on the cognac and judging it perfect, had given him an appreciative nod and was now lathering one of the buttered, hot croissants with the jam, so one had best calm the voice. ‘It’s blue damson, Inspector, albeit from Poland, but from before those people started the hostilities that have taught them such a lesson. Word has it that the Crusaders brought the plum back to France from Syria, the Romans having grafted it.’
And a little like the walnut husks, but ancient history when needed, was it? wondered St-Cyr. ‘Again, monsieur, I must remind you of the contents of that van of yours.’
Kohler had crammed his chair into the corner and was leaning it back against the wall, relaxing. ‘Remind if you wish, but eat, please, since the croissants are fresh and sharing a meal always brings people together.’
He couldn’t have known of garde champêtre Rocheleau’s similar offering, felt St-Cyr, but there it was, his own comment to Hermann at that time as well.
‘Me, I have the coffeepot on here at all times,’ went on Bolduc gregariously while buttering himself a croissant and adding the jam. ‘This is made with honey. Whenever time allows, and there’s little of it these days, I love to work on my car. I also own the building, of course.’
‘And those other cars—are you a collector?’ asked Kohler.
A laugh, a grin, a smile would suit for they would probably have already figured it out. ‘All are being cleaned up for resale in the Reich by Hauptmann Reinecke and Leutnant Heiss who have that duty also. We here are simply doing the necessary, as we have now ever since the hostilities between our two nations ceased. Gasoline is in such short supply in France, few can afford to keep them, so the cars, they are unbelievable bargains, but what can one Frenchman do, eh? Object or simply repair them to at least take in that amount of cash?’
Bought at next to nothing, thought Kohler, they’d be sold for at least 8,000 marks or 160,000 francs for a tidy profit, especially if those bank overseers pocketed half the sale and said nothing about others they were selling on the side, since they’d
be the ones to do all the necessary paperwork even if Abwehr. No doubt about it, Bolduc was in deeply, for he’d have a cut of that as well. ‘Business has been good, has it?’
Refilling Hermann’s glass, Bolduc then hunkered down with forearms on the table. ‘Listen, you two, I can buy just about anything and everything I want. I knew absolutely nothing of what those two employees of mine were up to, so please don’t try to attack my reputation and bring disgrace down on my bank.’
The cognac was excellent, felt St-Cyr, the jam and croissants perfect, the coffee that little added touch. Taking the worn pair of dice that had been with him since joining the Sûreté, he would begin the necessary by tossing a seven or an eleven. ‘Monsieur, is it that you know so little of what goes on with your bank, you would ignore the news Oberführer Wolfgang Thomsen and Unterstrumführer Ludwig Mohnke brought to Paris on Thursday after discovering the bodies? Two much valued employees, both with bad eyesight but no glasses, which is a puzzle, is it not? Cash—how much was there on the manifest, Detektiv Inspektor Kohler? Remind me.’
‘I didn’t count what was left of it, Chief, but 65.25 million francs in 42 bags, for starters.’
These days everything was a gamble. ‘First, I wasn’t informed of the robbery and the killings by anyone, especially the two you’ve just mentioned. Secondly, as to that amount of cash, it was the end of the month and our friends like to pay in cash when they buy the champagne and other things we French are only too willing to sell, so is there a problem?’
Snake eyes had turned up far too early. Gathering the dice, Louis gave them another toss. ‘When information is demanded, monsieur, it’s necessary for you to answer completely and truthfully, especially since this is first and foremost a murder enquiry. Bad eyesight, was it?’
Yvonne must have told them. ‘Both Deniard and Paquette were called up but rejected, and since the bank needed them, is there still a problem?’
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