Vichy was a nest of vipers – the whole nation knew of this, rumour building on rumour in an age rampant with them. Ménétrel, along with Premier Laval, was known as an éminence grise, a grey eminence who was responsible for many of the Maréchal’s mistakes and for a lot of other things.
‘But he would not have spoken to you directly about this liaison with Pétain. Everything would have been done through Monsieur de Fleury and if asked, I’m sure the doctor would disclaim all knowledge of you. After all, he’s a family man with a wife and three children.’
There was perfume but far too much time had elapsed since it had been applied. ‘Expensive, though,’ he sighed, leaning back again to gaze at her, the cameras of the mind searching out each detail. The way the killer must have yanked her nightgown open – a broken tie-string – the way the black lace showed through the white but also revealed her skin. The grey smear of the cigar ashes, the left arm stretched out above her head.
It had to be asked. ‘Why, really, did you have to die? Why here of all places? And please, madame, though my partner wants to be convinced that your killer was a man, I still require further information.
‘Hermann, have you found it yet?’ he called out from behind the bar.
‘NO!’
No … No … came the echoes.
‘He will, madame, if it’s here. He’s like that.’
Moving the right hand back to where it had covered the wound, St-Cyr again went over the corpse. She’d been trapped at the last but could have retreated, yet hadn’t taken more than a backward step or two. The killer had come in through the gap in the bar, had grabbed her by the nightgown’s coat and then an arm. There’d be bruises from the fingers, scratches perhaps. Something … They had to have something definite. The cigar ashes? he asked, but these could have been left on purpose to mislead them. Look, damn you, he said to himself. Do as Hermann would.
The floor was bare. Going down on his hands and knees again, he gently lifted the looseness of the nightgown away and ran a hand as far in under her as possible. ‘Nothing … There is nothing.’ He was certain of it.
Only when he got to her head did he find anything. It was buried well beneath her hair.
‘Ah grâce à Dieu, madame,’ he sighed but was surprised and disturbed to see it was the back of a small separable cufflink. Rather common. Not of silver or gold but of tin-plated steel. Punched, pressed, the diameter all but that of the larger diamond, the post shaped like an inverted eggcup so that the eyelet of the cuff would be kept easily open as the cufflink’s head was pressed into place. Mother-of-pearl, probably. Flat and cheap and like so many, many thousands.
It could simply have been lying on the floor and could well mean nothing. The girls and women who had once dispensed the waters here had all worn grey-blue maid’s uniforms whose cufflinks, if not buttons, could well have been the same.
But had Céline Dupuis caught at a woman’s arm and inadvertently freed the cufflink, and, if so, where was the other half?
And wouldn’t that woman have worn an overcoat, which would have got in the way, unless … unless, of course, this had also been left elsewhere as it would have been with … Ah merde, had there been blood on that blouse, had it been dumped with her …
‘The victim’s overcoat, Hermann. We have to find it. Please, there may not be time. It’s urgent.’
‘Then go!’ sang out Kohler. ‘I’ll join you when I’ve finished.’
‘I’ll leave you my lantern.’
‘You do that.’
‘The Hôtel du Parc, third floor. Perhaps a maid’s closet,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Don’t forget Ménétrel’s office is also on that floor.’
Floor … Floor … The echoes died and Louis was gone from him. Gone, thought Kohler. Merde, where would this affair lead them? Into the arms of the Gestapo, the Garde Mobile, the Milice or the Resistance?
Laval had wanted Louis and him to handle the investigation; Bousquet hadn’t and had been upset enough at their arrival to meet them well outside Vichy.
The Buvette Lucas was near a far corner of the Hall and when he held his lantern high, Kohler saw its light reflecting from the tall, arched windows. A simple railing of art nouveau wrought iron had separated the grilled floor and sources from the curistes, the long oval of the buvette being perhaps seven metres by four across. Again there were the hanging cups, jugs and vacuum flasks, but here two eight-sided, carved stone fountains would spill the elixir into shallow basins that encircled them and above each of these basins there were taps.
Square holes made a complete cross-hatching over the floor, a grillework that brought only dismay, for if she’d thrown the earring in there, he had little hope of finding it.
Hanging the lantern from the railing, Kohler set to work. Distances were so hard to gauge here, sounds were too flat and muted. Had she really come this way? Had she even hidden behind either of those fountains?
Ivy had at one time spilled from them to trail to the basins. The leaves were brown, the basins dry. No taps dripped. Whitish encrustations of bicarbonate of soda caught the torchlight. Again there were cigar ashes, again that sense of her having knelt or crouched and then slipped away.
Absolutely terrified and yet concerned enough about her earrings to have tried to remove them both.
Through long use and much rinsing some of the glass cups had become frosted. Sip thirty cubic centimetres twice daily, monsieur. Morning and evening before eating. Gargle if you wish, but please use the gargle-atorium or whatever they called it!
‘Come on,’ breathed Kohler impatiently. ‘Lead me to it, madame.’
The earring was in one of the hanging cups – not near any of the gaps in the railing but midway between two of them. She’d not quite had time to remove the other one but must have stood here in the pitch darkness feverishly trying to do so.
Outside the Hall, he found where Vichy’s flics had encircled sets of footprints with marking string. A little snow had blown over them, but one set had probably been made by her boots. And, yes, the others were not nearly so clear but held suggestions of that hinged gap, the curse of all wooden-soled shoes, since it often trapped clay and small stones and the wearer then had constantly to tap them or flex the hinge. The snow, too, would build up in the gap, forming ice.
Those shoes made sounds that weren’t at all like those of leather-soled ones. A harsh clack, clack, which she would have heard very clearly from that floor in there.
A dancer, a singer and piano player – a good conversationalist at private dinner parties. Quite knowledgeable about many things. Birds, de Fleury had said, and then had cut himself off before revealing too much.
A working mother, a young widow. At least two sets of footprints but was the second set that of a man?
Getting down on his hands and knees – gasping in pain as his left knee objected – Kohler blew the soft snow from the prints. Only the forward halves of the wooden soles were clear, but they were larger than the toes of the boots. ‘A man’s,’ he said and looked for the scratches and gouges all such soles would bear.
There was a ridge of snow that indicated a deep gouge in the right sole. The thing was about four centimetres in length and parallel with the long axis of the print, so at some time their owner must have struck that foot against something sharp and it had cut the gouge.
Sabots or leather boots would be worn on the farms and in the hills. These prints were from town shoes and, yes, they led from the Hôtel du Parc at a quick pace.
All the others that had been enclosed by the string were older, he felt – the day-to-day traffic probably and not involved. There’d been only the two of them, then, the killer and his victim.
Forcing himself to return to the body, Kohler shone the torch over the soles of her boots and then ran an explorative thumb over the scratches and cleats. At least the local gendarmes had got those prints right.
She hadn’t begun to stink as corpses soon do – the cold weather had retarded that – bu
t when he looked along the length of her, he saw so many other corpses that he, too, asked, ‘Why you, why here, when the bloody place should have been locked?’
Louis wouldn’t have run off like that had he not realized something significant. ‘Urgent,’ he had said. ‘It’s urgent.’
But had it really been an attempt to assassinate the Maréchal or had the killing been for some other and totally unrelated reason?
Crossing the rue du Parc at a run, St-Cyr made for the main entrance of the hotel, which faced on to that street. He was following in Céline Dupuis’s footsteps, he told himself, but at least up until 11 November of last year neither she nor he or anyone else could ever have gotten so close to the hotel without having first passed through the iron-fisted cordon of the Garde Mobile.
Now they were, apparently, no longer in evidence. Perhaps Pétain and the Germans were still discussing whose responsibility it was. Perhaps the fifteen degrees of frost at this hour had simply kept them indoors. ‘But had a window of opportunity been made available?’ he demanded, not liking the thought as he pushed through and into the lobby, was challenged, shrieked at – vos papiers! – and hit; struck hard across the brow with the flat of a revolver.
Slumped against the wall, he found himself sitting on a cold stone floor. Blood had welled up above his left eye and was trickling down to blind it. Blinking, he gingerly explored the parted skin and rapidly swelling goose egg, tried to clear his head. The victim’s overcoat … must find her coat, he warned himself. The killer may have left her blouse with it.
‘Henri-Claude Ferbrave,’ he said, tasting blood – his own blood! – and looking up at his assailant. ‘Age thirty-two. Former altar boy of the Saint-Sulpice, and between June 1936 and the call-up of ’39, a key member of the Parti Populaire Français’s “riot guard”. Accused of killing an obstreperous socialist with a wooden club during a noisy intercalation at the March 1937 gathering of the PPF when one hundred and thirty thousand of the faithful were crowded into the Vélodrome d’Hiver to hear your leader, but released for lack of reliable witnesses. Being one of Doriot’s former toughs won’t help you, mon fin, nor will being one of the Maréchal’s bodyguards. You are under arrest for assaulting a police officer. Please put that gun down before I take it from you.’
‘Why not relax, since we have to work together?’
‘Never! Ahh … my forehead, you salaud!’
‘Some ice and a few stitches will help.’
‘And there’s a doctor in the house, isn’t there?’
‘It’s only five-thirty. Ménétrel doesn’t usually show up for breakfast until after seven.’
‘And I’m to bleed to death for having reached only for those papers you demanded?’ Hermann … where the hell was Hermann? They had to find her overcoat, they had to …
‘Messieurs, I … I have some sticking plasters in my case. Perhaps …’
Again the detective blinked to clear his eye. She must try to smile softly and hope he wouldn’t notice she’d been crying, thought Inès. She must forget everything else and put him at ease. ‘My name is Mademoiselle Charpentier, Inspector. From Paris to … to see the Maréchal.’
‘She’s from the Musée Grévin,’ snorted Ferbrave, not bothering to look behind himself and across the lobby to where the girl sat in her overcoat, scarf and cloche on the edge of a chair. ‘A sculptress whose train arrived last night.’
‘I spent the intervening hours in the station,’ confessed Inés, ‘until … until the curfew had ended.’
At 5 a.m. ‘Your sticking plasters, please, Mademoiselle Charpentier. It’s most kind of you to have offered them.’
Had the Inspector deliberately repeated her name to let her know he wouldn’t forget it? she wondered. Four others of the Garde hung about, all with machine pistols – Bergmanns and Schmeissers. All in their disgusting black uniforms with brown shirts, black ties, black berets and black leather, three-quarter-length coats. Arrogant smart-asses all of them and cruel. Cruel!
The girl was gentle but unsettled, thought St-Cyr. Several tissues sopped up the excess blood. Some water was called for, a little brandy. More tissues were needed to quickly dry the cut, then there came the sting of the iodine she had taken from her case. ‘It’s necessary,’ she said, the accent clearly from the quartier Sorbonne and the Pantheon but with suppressed overtones of the rue Mouffetard also.
On her knees beside him, and still wearing the fawn-coloured, camel’s hair overcoat with the big lapels and deer-horn buttons of the thirties, she taped the parted skin as best she could, then lingered a moment to examine her workmanship. ‘It will do for now,’ she said with beautifully modulated tones, and gave a curt little nod more to herself than to anyone else. A girl with soft reddish hair and lovely but still smarting sea-green eyes under finely curving brows, the freckled nose turned up a little, the lips slightly parted, the chin and lower jaw delicately boned but determined.
‘Guerlain,’ he heard himself muttering. ‘Absolute rose, bergamot and jasmine, mademoiselle. Oil of cloves and cinnamon, but with sandalwood, of course, and ambergris. You or your lover have exquisite taste. Though the scent is not a recent one, the memory of it haunts.’
Ah Sainte Mère, her perfume! ‘Merci,’ she managed.
‘My case of tools, Inspector,’ he heard her quickly saying as she indicated a worn leather valise with a tray of many compartments. Spatulas, hooks, knives and other wooden-handled tools – the same essentially as a taxidermist would use – were there. Scissors, balls of knotted twine, rolls of surgical gauze … a small, tightly stoppered phial of some kind of oil, another of the perfume – could he manage to get a closer look at it? he wondered. Some drawing pins …
‘All the rubbish of my humble trade, Inspector.’
‘And the Maréchal is to sit for you?’ She was still close to him, still on her knees …
‘The Musée is always late when granting its commissions, but fortunately has decided Monsieur le Maréchal should have a head-and-shoulders done for posterity’s sake. I am nervous, of course, but understandably so, even though experienced. Ten years, and with the medals to prove it.’
Pétain, like Charlemagne, would take his place in the waxworks of history at 10 boulevard Montmartre. ‘The Musée already has a life-sized statue of him, mademoiselle.’
‘Yes. The Victor of Verdun and on the white horse he once rode in a parade, but that … that was done long ago.’
‘Not so long. Not even twenty-five years ago. I was among those who marched in that Bastille Day parade of 1919, the Treaty of Versailles having just been signed in June.’
A veteran, then, but one who was determined to let her know of it. The young these days … Did he think them cowards? wondered Inés. ‘You are correct, of course, Inspector. The bust is simply to show how the demands of state have superimposed themselves upon those left by that other terrible war. One in which the father I never knew was taken from me, and at Verdun as well.’
An ice pack arrived and she gently placed it against his forehead, guiding his hand to hold it. Closing the case, she retreated to her chair. A girl of twenty-eight or so, not too tall but above medium height and of good posture. Very correct. Calm, too, now that the introductions were over.
‘You must rest a little, Inspector. There may be concussion. Please don’t try to move. Just try to relax.’ And let your dark brown, wounded eyes, now cleared, take in the swift-eyed little gangster who hit you. Please note the scar beneath the thinness of that black goatee he thinks so handsome. It’s to the right of that chin which is so pronounced, and was caused, I assume, by the razor’s edge of a broken lump of sugar* and a fight over some pimp’s girl, but at the tender age of sixteen perhaps. Note, too, the insolent way he looks at you, the carefully trimmed moustache that extends to the turned-down corners of thin lips but is not so thick and bushy as your own. Note the forehead that is surprisingly free of wrinkles for one so bold. Note the nose, its sharpness, the clarity and paleness of the skin – he’s
no outdoors man, this Henri-Claude Ferbrave of the Garde Mobile, otherwise those beautifully chiselled and shaven upper cheeks would be ruddy, n’est-ce pas? The jet-black, carefully combed and parted hair glistens with a pomade that holds the scent of ersatz spices – cinnamon, I think, but it’s doubtful. The deeply sunken dark brown eyes have late-night shadows that are caused, no doubt, by repeated visits to his favourite maison de tolérance. Note, too, the suspicion with which he now, under my scrutiny, gazes at me, Inspector. But please remember that I arrived late last night and can therefore have had absolutely nothing to do with this tragedy.
*
The forerunner of Interpol.
*
World War One slang for a German soldier.
*
Before the war, sugar was often obtained in blocks or cones, and when broken as in a bar or club, was very sharp and a favourite weapon.
2
Having caught a glimpse. of what was going on behind the blackout curtains of the foyer, Kohler found the Hotel du Parc’s side door that was off the rue Petit, between that hotel and the Majestic, and went quickly up its staircase. It was still early, not yet 5.45 a.m. Louis was keeping the troops busy. Louis was sitting on the floor of the foyer and bleeding, but there’d be time enough to settle that little matter. The Government of France stirred. From somewhere there was the sound of a cough, from elsewhere that of teeth being brushed. Mein Gott, were the walls that thin?
The Quai d’Orsay had taken the first and part of the second storey – Foreign Affairs – but Premier Laval also had his offices on the second. The Élysée Palace – Pétain and his retinue – were on the third. The main lift sounded. He paused, his heart hammering – those stairs; that Benzedrine he was taking; he’d have to watch himself.
The lift had stopped. The cage was being opened. Again sounds carried, again he heard them clearly but still couldn’t see the lift. Was that the Maréchal snoring? Pétain was known to be an early riser. Whispers were heard, the lift-cage closed, as it descended to the ground floor …
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