A horse-drawn cutter looked better. Whistling shrilly, Louis threw up a hand, startling the mare into going back on her hind legs. ‘Sûreté and Gestapo,’ he shouted before dropping his voice to all but a whisper. ‘The Hotel d’Allier, monsieur, and make it snappy unless you want this animal of yours to leave for the Russian Front.’
No patience whatsoever and still knows damn all about horses, snorted Kohler to himself. ‘Idiot, don’t speak like that in front of or behind her. She’s sensitive. She’ll …’
‘She was volunteered for service and rejected seven times, monsieur,’ said the driver, bitching silently too, and with a dead fag end glued to his lower lip and a moustache that was coated with frost.
‘Jésus, merde alors,’ shrilled Louis, ‘must we have an argument?’
‘Only if you insist,’ countered Hippolyte Simard as the two from Paris clambered into the sleigh without permission.
‘Then the eighth review will be her one-way ticket to adventure and your loss,’ went on Louis. ‘Now get this crap-heap moving.’
The stitched-up wound above the left eye was cruel, the goose-egg red and probably still swelling. A fight, then, chuckled Simard to himself, so good – yes, it was good to see a cop that had been taught a lesson, though this one had obviously not yet learned it!
‘Paris … Must all those who come from the centre of the world lord it over us, Marguerite? Pay no attention to the acid, mon ange. Let us do as this flic asks and leave others to question his manners.’
Oh-oh, this wasn’t going to end unless someone intervened. ‘Louis, I thought we were to head for the morgue?’
‘Certainly.’
‘The morgue, messieurs? But it’s at the other end of …’
‘Just do as you’ve told the angel who’s doing all the work unless you want to take her place. Repeat anything we’ve said and you’ll be wearing two of what I’ve got on my forehead!’
‘He’s right. I wouldn’t fool with him,’ grinned Kohler. ‘If you think this is cold, you ought to try Russia.’
Silence followed.
‘There, that shut him up,’ sighed Kohler, sitting back. ‘You should always leave such things to me, Louis. No arguments. He simply hears authority in my voice and understands.’
‘Sacré, you’re sounding like the Occupier! If I were you, I’d be careful.’
They turned towards the river and were soon racing through the English Garden that Napoléon III had commissioned in 1861. Snow on the branches of the silver birches and tulip trees, last leaves still clinging … More snow on the Lebanese cedars. A bandstand … a rose arbour … a lone woman carrying a thin burlap sack of sticks, a German officer on a dappled grey, others of the Occupier on skis and looking as if on holiday, still others on patrol – twenty in all and most of them boys no older than seventeen, wearing cut-down uniforms that were still far too big for them.
‘They look ridiculous,’ said Kohler sadly. ‘But why couldn’t my boys have had that chance? Paradise here; hell where they died.’
A large swastika flew above the entrance to one of the villas that had been built in those early days, the Turkish flag was next door, the tricolour still in the near distance atop the Hôtel du Parc.
‘Maybe God thought He needed them in Russia, Hermann, just as He thinks we’re needed here.’
Louis was always calling that God of his to account for being miserable to honest, hard-working detectives. ‘You know Bousquet doesn’t want us to go anywhere but the morgue.’
‘And that, mon enfant, is exactly why we’re going elsewhere!’
‘You want to have a look at where he supposedly found the carte d’identité that should have been with our victim and in her handbag or pocket.’
‘Why the earrings, Hermann? Why try to hide them? Was it simply fear of robbery or was there some other reason for that Florentine intriguer’s saying to me with all sincerity that he “wished he knew who’d given them to her”?’
‘Admit it, you were stopped cold in your tracks. Don’t be bitter. The good doctor just wanted to make certain he was out of bed and at the hotel before we got there.’
‘You leave Henri-Claude Ferbrave to me. I don’t need my big Bavarian brother to take care of such things.’
‘Flies, Louis? Why the hell did Laval throw Bousquet such a silencing glance when asked about that telex?’
Good for Hermann. ‘High-ranking administrators, even those as gifted as our secrétaire général, must be cautioned from time to time. He also shouldn’t have told us he had found the victim’s ID in her room and has now realized the killer or someone else must have deliberately put it there, and so he is worried he might have missed something else.’
They had arrived at the Hôtel d’Allier. The mare was sucking air. ‘Louis, what’s a Florentine intriguer?’
‘The Medici, the Renaissance, deceit, treachery, torture and court killings that time alone has not been able to erase the memory of. Their knives, dirks and especially their ghastly poisons. Stick around. I’m sure you’ll have ample opportunity to find out!’
‘And when I do?’
Must Hermann always have the last word even when they were in a hurry? ‘Just make sure you’re right behind me.’
They were running now, going up the steep and narrow staircases two and three steps at a time. At each landing, hips banged against waist-high wooden wainscoting, shoulders against wallpaper whose turn-of-the-century flowers were faded.
Gleaming, the banister’s railing and darker spindles led the way, their steps hardly muffled by the thin carpet.
‘One more floor,’ managed Kohler. ‘Right up under the eaves where the help used to sleep.’
A garret … In the spring of 1940 Vichy had had a population of 25,000, which had now almost doubled. The Hotel d’Allier, never first or second class during the fin de siècle or at any time since, had been converted into a rooming house for the legions of secretaries and clerks that had been needed – dancers too, and singers.
‘Number 3,’ swore St-Cyr, catching a breath and vowing to smoke only certified tobacco, not the sometimes necessary experiments with dried, uncured beet tops, celery leaves and other things.
The doorknob was of white porcelain, the lock not difficult. Through the lace curtains of a grimy mansard window, daylight filtered to touch the terracotta pots of a tiny kitchen garden – herbs, chives, green onions, lettuces, geraniums too – and among these, as if it belonged there for ever, a plump white rabbit stirred in its little cage but otherwise ignored them.
She hadn’t been able to bring herself to kill it, thought St-Cyr, parting the curtains. So many kept meat on the hoof in their flats and rooms these days. Guinea pigs, the latest Paris food fad, chickens, pigeons – cats that had been captured, kidnapped dogs too, if they could be silenced and were obedient.
The small glass pitcher she had used to water things had shattered with the frost but there was water in the rabbit’s dish and even winter grass that must have been recently scavenged from one of the parks or country roadsides.
Beyond the roofs of houses that would some day surely be demolished, he could see the river and above its far bank the racecourse and stables. Upstream, a little to his left, was a narrow weir and footbridge, the Pont Barrage, and to his right and downstream, the much wider, larger Boutiron Bridge.
Though still well within the town, they were some distance from the Hôtel du Parc. ‘The blackout curtains have been opened, Hermann.’
‘Louis, Bousquet is already taking the lift.’
The sound of it came clearly through the walls. An iron four-poster, one of its brass knobs long gone, was unmade, but the pillows had been smoothed. A clutch of hairpins marked the place where Céline Dupuis had last sat.
There was a photograph of her daughter, another, in uniform, of the husband who’d been killed during the Blitzkrieg, a third of her parents and the house at 60 rue Lhomond.’
The leather-clad alarm clock from the early thirties had stop
ped at 11.22. The alarm, though, had been set for 7 a.m.
‘A rehearsal?’ asked Kohler.
‘She left in a hurry on Tuesday,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘Flannelette pyjamas, heavy woollen socks, a cardigan, knitted gloves and a toque are in a heap on the carpet next to that wicker fauteuil she must have rescued from the hotel’s garden. On that side table below the wall mirror whose gilding has long disappeared there are a tin basin and a large enamelled pitcher of water whose ice she would have had to break had she not been in such a hurry. The facecloth, towel and carefully rationed sliver of soap are neatly piled and were unused.’
‘Louis, the lift. It’s stopped.’
‘Must you keep on about it? There are still two sets of stairs for him to climb. Just let me memorize the room.’
‘You haven’t time. Why not concentrate on the bed? Women who’ve been out working late at night and have to get up early invariably hug the pillows for a stolen moment after the alarm’s been shut off. If I were you, mein brillanter Oberdetektiv, I’d be asking myself who the hell slipped in here to tidy up?’
‘The same person who fed and watered the rabbit?’
‘And opened the blackout curtains?’
‘Or the one who …’
‘Nom de Jésus-Christ, do you two not listen?’ demanded Bousquet, fedora in hand as he stormed breathlessly into the room. ‘I told you to go to the morgue I …’
‘You felt it prudent to beat us here, Secrétaire,’ said Louis, not backing off. ‘You had, I think, to take another look in case whoever left her identity card but not her handbag had also left something you had missed.’
‘Nothing … There was nothing else.’
‘No ration tickets? No residence permit?’ They were all but shouting.
‘All right, all right! Those must have been in that overcoat you found, Kohler, and were taken from it, or were in her bag which has yet to be found, and yes, whoever killed her came back here afterwards to leave the card!’
‘And these?’ asked Louis, removing the first of the freshened pillows to expose a neat little pink-ribboned bundle of letters in their scented envelopes.
‘Those weren’t there when we found her carte d’identité on Wednesday morning,’ managed Bousquet, sickened by what must have happened. ‘We searched. Mon Dieu, but we did. Ménétrel insisted on accompanying me and at the time I realized those must have been what he was after, but they simply weren’t there then.’
Not then. ‘So this unknown visitor must have come back?’ asked Louis.
‘Yes!’
‘And recently, too,’ said Kohler, indicating the curtains. ‘Had we not been here, Secrétaire, I wonder what might have happened to you? A big place like this and you here all on your own.’
‘And waterers of rabbits are killers, are they?’
He had a point. ‘Were no fingerprints taken after that visit?’ demanded St-Cyr.
‘Ah! don’t be so difficult. It was a crisis.’
‘And how, please, did you and the doctor find her carte d’identité?’
‘Why should it matter?’
‘Just answer, please,’ said Louis, keeping up the pressure.
‘On the bedside table, leaning up against that photograph of her husband.’
‘As a warning?’
‘As a reminder, perhaps, of our lost heroism. All right, it was deliberately left there for me, or so I felt at the time.’
‘Why you, Secrétaire?’
‘I … I don’t really know.’
‘And Dr Ménétrel?’
‘Felt the same, I’m certain.’
‘A visit that was done after the killing and that anticipated your coming here,’ said Louis. ‘And then another, which anticipated our own and yours again. It’s odd, is it not?’
‘Look, people come and go in this place at all hours up to and even beyond the curfew. Anyone could have slipped in and out if asked to – the killer too, of course. Old Rigaud, the concierge, was having a hell of a time keeping track of the residents and finally went on strike. They were driving him crazy simply for the fun of it, so we had to let him stay on.’
‘Please wait downstairs or in your car, Secrétaire. Hermann and I won’t be long.’
‘Will there be fingerprints on those?’ He indicated the letters.
‘Other than the Maréchal’s, Madame Dupuis’s and those of any number of postal clerks, since the letters were mailed? Not likely, but they’ll have to be dusted.’
‘Then don’t tell the doctor what you’ve found. Let him continue to worry about them. Learn that it’s always best to keep him in the dark and distracted.’
‘Merde, Louis, he’s really edgy,’ sighed Kohler when Bousquet had left them. ‘Does he think he’s the target?’
‘He must, but does the killer or the one who took her to the Hall have a room here, Hermann, or do both of them? And is this what our secrétaire is now wondering since you so kindly pointed it out to him?’
‘Someone so close to each of them, he, she or they can come and go at will and all are targets.’
‘Pétain and his right hand; Laval and his. And why, please, did Monsieur Bousquet not drag along the local flics, eh? Look for little things, Hermann. Things that will tell us not only who our victim really was but why the Secrétaire Général de Police should have such a lapse of duty.’
‘Things that may have been missed by our visitor or left on purpose, Dummkopf. Things we might never know the reason for their being here but others will.’
A Saint Louis crystal perfume bottle was still in its presentation box, tucked away at the back of her dressing table drawer. Right inside the lid, and probably never read by Pétain, there was a note: Maréchal, please accept this small token for your dear wife in recognition of our esteem and devotion to you both. It was signed M. Jean-Paul Brisset and Mme Marie-Louise of 32a bis rue Dupanloup, Orléans. Though their numbers had dwindled, Pétain still regularly received such gifts from supporters all over the country. A bit of lacework from Normandy, a Sèvres soup tureen or vase, silver tea and coffee services, paintings too, signed and sent by their artists, books by their authors. All such things ended up in storage rooms at the stately home, the maison de maître, he had rented as a weekend retreat in the tiny village of Charmeil just six kilometres by road to the north-west of Vichy.
Céline Dupuis had obviously read the note and had carefully returned it to its place before shoving the box well out of sight.
Hermann was thumping a book he’d taken from the pile she’d been reading when time allowed …
‘La Cuisinière Bourgeoise et Économique, Louis. Well thumbed, somewhat tattered and probably published in 1890.’
The charming housewife on the cover wore a long, striped white and red dress, with white apron and frilly cap, but was holding a bloodied butcher’s knife that was far more than needed to decapitate the chicken she’d just finished plucking for the steaming pot on the stove behind her.
‘But why learn to cook, Louis, unless you plan to leave here or at least to leave the profession you’re in?’
The wicker hamper at the woman’s feet had spilled a rush of vegetables on to the floor. Pots hung in the background; pots that now would have been commandeered for scrap metals!
‘Do you really need the reminder, eh? You know damned well people go to the films to watch the feasting, and that they read cookbooks that are centuries old just to taste the food they can only dream about.’
She hadn’t heated the leftovers of some ‘coffee’ in a pot on the simple electric ring that served for all cooking. There were three carrots in the little larder, a thin slice of questionable cheese, a bit of bread – the grey ‘National’ everyone hated – two onions, a few cloves of garlic and some cubes of Viandox, a beef tea that was all but absent from the shops. Little else.
Her underwear, beyond a couple of pairs of pre-war silk, was nothing special, thought Kohler. Manufactured lace on the brassieres, a pair of black, meshed stockings she’d rolled
up and had set aside to try to mend, a few slips and half-slips …
‘Blouses, Hermann. Part of a costume, perhaps. The uniform of a troupe. Look for ones with cheap, mother-of-pearl cufflinks that may have been left in. Her killer might have been a colleague.’
Kohler went quickly through the contents of the armoire. Evening dresses, halter-necked and off-the-shoulder ones, a couple of suits with trousers, a few skirts …
The flat box of pre-war cardboard, a gift, was lined with tissue paper, the halter-necked dress of a soft, silvery silk over which were panels of see-through, vertically pleated strands, each about three millimetres apart and five centimetres long, separated by horizontal panels of scalloped, sequined lace. A long strand of blue sapphires lay atop the dress. A fortune.
‘The earrings, Louis. Were they to have been worn with this?’
‘The shoes … There are leather high heels to match.’
‘She’d have looked fabulous in them.’
‘No attempt has been made to steal the sapphires.’
‘Then were these left for us to find along with the love letters?’
‘The perfume, Hermann. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s the same as our sculptress wore. It’s Shalimar, one of Guerlain’s, and was a smash hit in 1925. Sandalwood, bergamot and jasmine, absolute rose and iris, but vanilla also and that is what set it off to create the sensation it did at the International Exhibition in the Grand Palais. Our victim was wearing it when killed. This cheap little phial was on her dressing table.’
‘And a hugely expensive dress from the twenties,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Did de Fleury give it to her, and if so, why the hell didn’t he tell her to wear it?’
‘You’re forgetting the sapphires.’
‘And that she must have put the earrings on after de Fleury had let her out at the hotel.’
‘But were the necklace, the dress and the earrings all from the same person?’
‘Blue eyes and fabulous blue stones, Louis. Nice and dark.’
The strand was dangled. ‘Surely no résistant worth his salt would have left these when funds are so desperately needed by them?’
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