The baths, separated by reclining mermaids, were surrounded on three sides by the bas-reliefs, and it was among these that the mildly effervescent water fell over pleasing thighs and breasts and gorgeous backsides to stream on to the head of a laughing nymph who playfully splashed another but seemed to mock this Kripo.
His Gestapo shoes, broken at the seams, were soaked through, his feet warm. His left sock protruded. There was a hole in its toe.
Verdammt! He was standing on the walkway between the bas-reliefs and the baths. Coursing around and over his shoes, the water gave up the smell of its sulphur, and he heard, as if in the distance, the trickling music of it and finally the gentleness of its fizzing.
Vapour rose up from the baths and for an instant he thought, Please just let me lie in one of the them, but …
Louis … he said silently. Louis, I tried.
The lift had descended to the cellars, its gate opening and closing, but no words had been spoken, or not that he had heard, thought St-Cyr. And as for Hermann, the Garde seemed to have vanished with him.
There were none of them in the foyer when he chanced a look over the third-floor gallery railing; none, apparently, on the staircases, rushing to overtake him; yet surely by now they must know he was no longer in the lift with the sculptress? Surely they’d want her out of the hotel and safely tucked away in her boarding house, if for no other reason than to finish things here in private? Surely Ménétrel would have insisted on that?
A cover-up, a frame-up, too, and if not the wives, as Dr Normand’s file on Julienne Deschambeault had indicated and Charles-Frédéric Hébert had stated, then Blanche and Paul Varollier or Albert. And if not Albert, then Edith Pascal, and if not Edith, then Auguste-Alphonse Olivier, recluse, ex-banker, old. enemy and cuckold. But had Olivier really tried to stop the murder of Céline Dupuis? Had he been right in this? She would have constituted a distinct threat to the FTP had she been taken and questioned by the Gestapo.
Hermann had found no evidence of anyone having tried to intervene. There had been no signs of Céline’s having tried to get away until she had reached the Hall des Sources. Why hadn’t she tried to escape beforehand, why hadn’t she run?
Merde, this investigation, he swore. No time to think things through; Hermann needing him now. Hermann …
Albert was to have delivered a hamper to Chez Crusoe early on Tuesday evening. Some caviar, a little pâté … a bottle of the Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale, one also of the Rémy-Martin Louis XIII, but that hamper hadn’t turned up and neither had Céline Dupuis’s rucksack and handbag, only her ID, which had been left in her room for Bousquet to find.
Hébert’s pocket knife – the Laguiole he had had since a boy – had been in that hamper, or so he’d stated, a reminder to the Maréchal of better days and other conquests: that of Noëlle Olivier.
Albert had left that knife in the sacristy of the chateau’s chapel, thinking Hermann wouldn’t notice the difference. He had then tried to kill the sculptress with Madame Olivier’s knife, having perceived her a threat to his hero, but what threat, please? he asked himself. Herr Gessler and Herr Jännicke had vetted the girl’s valise and, having satisfied themselves, had then asked her to make certain nothing had been taken.
Albert had emptied a phial, causing the case to reek of bitter almonds. The girl had been certain he had known who had killed her friend, but she couldn’t be a threat to Pétain, could she? Certainly she’d been a courier, had received and delivered messages for Olivier and was, yes, like Céline had been, a distinct threat to the FTP should the Gestapo get their hands on her. A threat Olivier had naturally made no mention of, even though Edith Pascal had called him a fool for having divulged he was their leader, a man who had known beforehand everything that would happen.
Had that hamper and Albert been intercepted en route to Chez Crusoe? Had Lucie Trudel been stopped on her way back to the Hotel d’Allier after Albert had helped her to get a bottle of the Chomel for her father?
Had Olivier, knowing full well what must happen to those girls, not intervened but waited instead, and then used the killings, particularly the two most recent, to let Bousquet and the others know their every action was being watched and that they would be called to account?
If so, then the civil war they feared had, as the sculptress had said, already begun. Cruelty would be matched by cruelty, the innocent caught between the two sides. Henri-Claude Ferbrave and the Garde, the Milice and all the others on the one hand; the Resistance on the other.
Still St-Cyr heard nothing. Timidly a door opened and a head darted out only to be withdrawn at the sight of him. Again he looked over the railing, this time letting his gaze sweep round the galleries until it came to rest on the fountain below. If the water were turned on, the dust blown away, the chandeliers lit and there were couples about, arm in arm to laughter, music and whispered tête-à-têtes, it would be so like the Vichy he had experienced as a boy. Grand-mère and he hadn’t stayed in anything so opulent. ‘A pension will serve us just as well, Jean-Louis,’ she had said, ‘but we will take our meals in nothing but the finest restaurants, if they have such establishments in this place.’
This Vichy. This tourist trap, she had finally come to call it. Aurore Iréne Molinet, he reminded himself. She’d favoured Balzac, Victor Hugo and Dumas for the sheer pleasure they had brought her as a girl who’d been forbidden to read them.
‘Stay close. I will awaken your eyes,’ she had confided, rejoicing in the sight of so many obviously unmarried couples whose men had been old enough to have known better than to consort with girls, who certainly had known better and were often far less than half their ages.
She had introduced him to tobacco and had known full well he had taken three of her Turkish cigarettes, yet had said nothing of the theft.
She had introduced him to gambling and the Grand Casino, where the Chambre des Députés, under Laval’s conniving and cajoling, had met in July 1940 to vote themselves out of office by a margin of 569 to 8o, thus putting an end to the Third Republic and initiating what some had called the ‘Casino Government’. She had introduced him to crime as well, for she had loved nothing better than a juicy scandal, and had avidly read the news reports of such to him, commenting at length on what had lain between the lines and the sheets. She would have had much to say about the current scandal and the murder of those girls.
And, yes, he said as he started cautiously down a far staircase, she would have agreed with Pétain’s return to the soil, especially as one-third of all of France’s agricultural workers were in POW camps in the Reich. But she would not have agreed with Marcel Déat, that France was and should be ‘Germany’s vegetable garden’. ‘The Boche are savage, Jean-Louis,’ she had said, referring to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. ‘I am going to send you to a farm near Saarbrücken to stay with distant relatives so that you will not only learn their language but how they think.’
Aurore Iréne Molinet … Had she known then that the Boche would be back?
He hadn’t thought of her since their last investigation. Once he had innocently asked her here in Vichy if her side of the family had descended from the poet and chronicler Jean Molinet, who’d been in the service of the dukes of Burgundy in the late 1400s and early 1500s.
She had answered as only she would, ‘I. have no patience with poets,’ and that had been it. A woman – a lady – of great contrasts. One who had introduced him to absinthe and, if truth were told, had no use for the convention that had seen her strapped into a whalebone corset under widow’s black.
But was it at moments like this that the legacy of one’s past became clear, or was her ghost simply trying to tell him he must have missed something?
Louis wasn’t with him. Louis hadn’t backed him up. Verdammt! swore Kohler silently, what the hell had happened to him? Killed? he asked himself and answered, I heard no shots. Shots would have echoed down here in the cellars.
Two of the Garde were stationed at each of the far corners of
the baths. Bergmanns there and no chance of a way out. Sour, still in a lot of pain and just itching to pull the trigger, the one with the broken arm now cradled it and a long-barrelled Luger with drum clip – thirty-two shots. Merde!
Burning sheets of paper – the files he’d taken from Dr Normand’s safe – were being held up, page by page, to be released only at the last by Charles-Frédéric Hébert, their charred remains drifting slowly down until extinguished by the water that coursed around hobnailed boots. And why must that God of Louis’s allow things like this to happen to honest, hard-working detectives?
Henri-Claude Ferbrave, that little gangster from the roof of the Jockey Club and the foyer of the Hotel du Parc, now had a Schmeisser tucked under his right arm. As he lit each page, he handed it to Hébert. Disarmed, Kohler knew he could only wait it out and hope. But when the sculptress and Albert Grenier were hustled in to stand with him on the walkway between the bas-reliefs and the baths, the girl, still clutching her valise and bag, shrilled, ‘The lift, monsieur. The Inspector had climbed out and was standing on it when Albert and I punched the buttons and caused it to go up and down.’
The lift … Ah Christ, had Louis fallen? Was he caught in the cables, torn, mangled, bleeding?
‘Not there,’ said one of the two who had brought the girl and Albert. ‘We looked, Henri-Claude. He must have reached the third floor.’
Afraid of Ferbrave, Albert clung to the sculptress, which only made her cringe all the more. His woollen hat was pulled down, the scarf loose, the jacket of the bleus de travail open.
The burlap sack he held, he now released, letting it fall into the water at his feet.
‘Ah bon, it’s done,’ sighed Hébert as the last of the pages was torched, ‘Now there is no proof.’
‘And Ménétrel will be happy, eh?’ yelled Kohler.
The bushy eyebrows arched as the faded blue eyes sought him out. ‘I did not kill them, Inspector. August-Alphonse Olivier did.’
‘Th—That’s right,’ said Albert. ‘Monsieur Olivier took the knife you promised you’d give me. He … He dropped it in the shit. I saw him.’
Saw him … Saw him …
Water coursed over naked stone thighs, releasing bubbles and catching the light as it ran to swirl around their boots.
‘I took Mademoiselle Dupuis to the Hall just like I was told to,’ said Albert, dragging off the hat his mother had knitted. ‘I closed the doors on her and held them tight so she couldn’t get out. She screamed.’
‘Albert … Albert, she was your friend,’ wept Inès.
‘Not friend. Enemy! Pay … I was paid!’
Glances of alarm flew between Ferbrave and the grand-uncle. ‘Albert …’ began Hébert only to find that the string which had held the sack tightly closed had loosened. Kohler moved, yanked – dumped the bag.
Dead rats and bundles of share certificates, some of which had broken loose of their rubber bands, spilled out. Sodden, the certificates headed for the baths. Lithographed borders bore coloured scenes of Vichy and its spas, of well-dressed curates strolling under parasols, the pictures of health.
‘La Banque du Pays Bourbonnais-Limagne et Crédit Industriel, Commercial de Vichy,’ sighed Kohler, having plucked one of the certificates out of. the water. ‘Bearer bonds to the tune of ten thousand francs each. Total capitalization: ten millions, dated Paris, June 1907 and worthless. Albert, tell us again how you got these.’
No one moved. The boy, the man, his tricoloured scarf trailing in the water, ducked his head towards his grand-uncle. ‘I help him,’ he gushed. ‘I’m the best rat catcher Vichy ever had. He lets me use his chapel. I built a shrine there.’
A nest, too. ‘And did you give him the rats he put in Lucie Trudel’s bed?’
Albert blinked hard, grimaced and frowned deeply. ‘Rats?’ he blurted. ‘Bed? Uncle Charles didn’t steal my rats, did he?’
‘You fool!’ swore Hébert. ‘Henri-Claude, shoot them. You must!’
‘Messieurs … Messieurs, a moment,’ sang out a voice.
Louis … was it really Louis?
‘A few small questions. Nothing difficult.’ St-Cyr held up the Lebel. ‘I will leave it here on this lovely old stone bench. Excuse me,’ he said to the two at that end of the bas-reliefs, and, elbowing his way past one of them, walked on. ‘Charles-Frédéric Hébert,’ he said, and Kohler knew that Sûreté voice, ‘the pocket knife, please, that you are now forced to carry.’
The water found the Chief Inspector’s shoes and rapidly soaked into them, Inès noted. He and Hébert were of about the same height, St-Cyr’s shabby overcoat open, the battered fedora tilted back a little; Albert’s grand-uncle still in Auvergnat black trousers, black cable-knit cardigan and boots. The hands rough, the fingers strong.
‘That old pocket knife …?’ he blurted. ‘Henri-Claude, what is this? You allow him to question me when I know enough to put you in prison for life?’
‘It’s in your pocket, Uncle,’ said Albert, wanting to be helpful.
‘An Opinel, mademoiselle,’ said Louis, opening the thing. ‘You butchered those rats, monsieur, but first you smothered that girl and finished her off in her armoire.’
Frantic now, Hébert threw the others a look of alarm only to be met with the mask of indifference. His black felt fedora was swept off. ‘Salaud! Imbécile!’ he cried. Albert cringed as the hat repeatedly swatted him. ‘Auguste, you idiot. Auguste did it!’
The hat was snatched away, a wrist grabbed, the arm bent behind Hébert’s back. Water coursed and fizzed, and where it poured into the baths, it swirled the share certificates round and round.
‘The foyer, I think, Hermann. Unless I’m mistaken, there will be visitors who are most anxious to hear what we have to say, since I’ve managed to telephone them.’
Laval hadn’t just brought Ménétrel, he had insisted on Bousquet and the others being present. Honoré de Fleury, uncomfortable at being summoned and wondering what the future held, was there, as were Deschambeault and Richard. A full house, snorted Kohler silently, but grace à Dieu, Madame la Maréchale and the wives hadn’t been invited.
Bousquet, handsome and well dressed as always, remained a little detached from the others. Deschambeault stood near the desk; Richard and de Fleury sat on the lip of the fountain. The Garde, still armed, stood to one side with the prisoner.
Alone, Laval sat in an armchair the concierge had dragged out for him, the Premier still in his overcoat, gloves and fedora. Those black patent leather shoes of his with their grey-cloth and buttoned uppers were all too evident, as was the white necktie and, certainly, the soggy butt of the Gitane that clung to his lower lip.
The dark eyes took in everything swiftly, even to noting that among the hotel’s residents, a few had timidly approached the gallery railings and were now in attendance.
‘Messieurs …’ began Louis, drawing on his pipe and then exhaling to gesture with it as he always did at such times, ‘these killings, the deaths of these “flies” as you called them, Premier, occurred at a particular point in time. There was, of course, the party at the Chateau des Oiseaux Splendides on 24 October last, but then, suddenly, everything was lost with total Occupation on 11 November, the killings starting on 9 December with that of Mademoiselle Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux.’
He would take a moment now, thought Inès. He would let them all think about it.
‘With the drowning, since quite obviously the victim was a little drunk, there could be little question among the investigating police. Death by misadventure. Later, however, my partner and I discovered what they’d failed to note: that Sandrine Richard had threatened to do just that to Mademoiselle Mailloux, and the evidence is that she and the other wives not only knew exactly where her husband’s lover would be but when.’
‘Get on with it!’ muttered Hébert.
Laval had brought along a bottle of his own wine and a glass, but had yet to light another cigarette or take a sip.
‘Ah bon, Monsieur Hébert,’ said Louis, u
nruffled. ‘With the second killing, that of Camille Lefébvre, there could be no such question: she was killed with a wire, similar to that which your grand-nephew uses for his snares. Monsieur le Secrétaire Général thought himself the target and so was born the myth of a Resistance threat, one that you, Doctor, wanted sown and encouraged.’
‘You’ll never prove it,’ snapped Ménétrel.
‘I will if pressed,’ countered Louis. ‘Monsieur Bousquet fired two or three shots at the intruder or intruders, and then beat a hasty retreat to Paris, notifying no one of the killing.’
‘I really did think the terrorists were after me,’ grunted Bousquet. ‘Bernard, why couldn’t you have taken us into your confidence?’
‘Because, Secrétaire, confidence is not the way of an éminence grise when plotting revenge.’
‘How dare you! Pierre, how can you sit there and let him …’
‘Bernard, be quiet,’ said Laval, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply.
‘A Résistance or terrorist plot to bump off the boys,’ said Louis. ‘Little for my partner and me to go on in the police reports and primary autopsies. Information withheld also by each of you, damning information, but …’
He’d let them think about that, too, thought Inès. She had chosen to sit on the edge of the fountain as far to one side as possible, but unfortunately Albert had again cosied up to her, and the Chief Inspector, though he was aware of this, had let it be.
‘But,’ he said, gesturing with the hand that held that pipe of his, ‘certainly the killer knew where Monsieur le Secrétaire Général and his mistress would spend the night. A cabin downriver, perfect isolation, and perfect for eliminating yet another of the flies.’
‘Informants. Why not call them that?’ demanded Ménétrel.
Ignored … he’d be ignored, thought Kohler, squeezing the water out of his socks and draining each shoe. Examining the burns their last case had given him between the toes of his right foot. The Milice had done that with molten metal.
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