‘The silly woman was always after Adrian, Inspector. She badgered him constantly. The crisis of the heart, the chest, the ear-ache, the back, the rent. He suffered her constant need for attention and quite often … Oh, bien sûr I myself have heard him calming her fears many times over the telephone. Always a kind word, a promise to talk to the owner of that building, to call in at the pharmacy for some little thing, the greengrocer’s, the tea-shop or send someone round to the flat, himself most often. He had the heart and patience of a saint. He understood her and forgave her always.’
‘Then why was he not with her? Why was he in the cinema on his knees, holding that cross before him?’
‘I don’t know, Inspector. La Bête humaine … it’s an excellent film. Perhaps, after he had attended to Mademoiselle Aurelle, he …’
‘She was naked, Bishop. She was tied face down to her bed. A rag had been stuffed in her mouth.’
‘Then why did you not say so at once?’ Angrily Dufour thrust the cross back only to find his hand gripped tightly. Ah damn the Sûreté and their filthy minds! Always against the Church! Always looking for dirt! ‘Had she been violated?’ he asked, hating himself for having said it.
St-Cyr savoured the moment, having obtained the answer he most wanted without having to ask for it. Violation had been entirely possible. ‘Could the call have been made or prompted by someone else, someone known to them both?’
‘The arsonist or arsonists?’
It was a plea to God for help. One could not have that woman violated by a priest, particularly not by a bishop’s secretary, a saint! Ah no, of course not.
‘The cross, Bishop? He should not have worn it to the cinema or to visit this … this nuisance who had not had the wisdom to spend her little capital much earlier in life.’
‘God ought to guard my tongue, Inspector, particularly as in regards to my humble past. The cross was given to Father Beaumont some years ago. It can have no bearing on the fire.’
‘Then why did he wear it? Come, come, Bishop Dufour. There has to be a reason for everything.’
‘Ah, do not be so difficult! You people from Paris … For most things there is often no reason other than impulse.’
‘Then how did he come by it, eh? A wealthy parishioner—a gift like this? Did he save some family from scandal? Did he get the unmarried daughter into a convent so that she could have her child in secret, eh? In each house there is always a closet, Bishop, even in God’s house.’
‘Especially so, is that what you’re implying, eh?’ It was. Ah damn. ‘Monsieur Henri Masson gave that cross to Father Beaumont, Inspector, but he’s been dead for several years. Ten, I believe, or is it twelve? Now, please, I must return to my duties. Father Beaumont would not have harmed Mademoiselle Aurelle. It was just not in his nature to harm anyone, least of all myself and the Mother Church.’
Kohler touched his lips in doubt and fear. Gott im Himmel, with what were they dealing? The bitches were still playing with him. The wash of gasoline was all around him now in the store-room below the belfry. And God damn the Führer and his invincible Reich. The fucking torch in his hand was useless!
He knew the arsonists were close to him—closer than they’d ever been. The place reeked of gasoline. His shoes, leaking at the best of times, had let in the gasoline. The turn-ups of his trousers, would they be wet too?
They were. Ah nom de Dieu, Louis, why can’t you come and find me? Two women … Two, Louis!
Not liking things, he got down on his hands and knees and crept forward. The room, off to one side of the tower, seemed full of paintings in richly carved and probably gilded frames that only brought memories of that last case, of Provence and an antique shop, of a dealer who had complained about the French using such priceless pieces for firewood. Firewood, verdammt!
There were canvases—far too many of them. And he knew then that some of the wealthy, thinking their paintings safer with the bishop, had brought them here rather than let the Occupying Forces steal them.
Cautiously sweeping the floor with wide motions of his hand, Kohler touched excelsior—fine wood shavings, a wren’s nest of them. He found the candle stub in its middle, fixed to the floor—no more than one-and-a-half centimentres of that—found seven wooden matches, their heads arranged in a ring, all close to the candle so as to speed the instant of ignition, not that they would have been needed.
Trembling, he dropped the matches and had to pick them up. He put them and the candle stub and the excelsior into a pocket and stood up slowly. The message was all too clear: See what we can do to you or to anyone at any time.
Two women … had there been two of them? Had he frightened them off?
Clearly they were dealing with a case of madness.
Shadows flew about or were pinned to the walls. Robichaud, the fire chief, looked up into the belfry timbers and sharply drew in a breath. The beam of his torch faltered, then came back to settle on the jerry cans. Dull brown and pale green with their camouflage, each was still slowly dripping a trickle of gasoline. Stolen … they must have been stolen.
‘Regulation issue,’ he grunted. ‘The fuel depot at Delfosse or one of the others over in Croix Rousse, the Fort Saint-Jean or the Saint Vincent along the quai.’
All fuel was under German control. The two jerry cans had been lashed to timbers that ran above the bells. Each would have weighed a good twenty kilograms. Who could have done such a thing? ‘Ah mon Dieu, Bishop, this … this …’ He swung his light down to indicate the trail of gasoline that crossed the belfry floor and ran to the empty can Herr Kohler had found at the top of the steps. ‘This is the trailer from the storeroom downstairs. Light the lower one, Bishop, and the flames, they race along this trail and right up to those.’
Stains from the dripping cans high above them had spread down other timbers to the floor. ‘It’s a miracle the Salamander didn’t set it off,’ said Guillemette, the Préfet of Lyon.
‘My pumpers …’ began Robichaud. ‘The lines up here on Fourvière Hill—oh for sure, Bishop, my men can fight a normal fire but this … this? Ah no, no. It’s impossible. Impossible! The mains would collapse, isn’t that correct, Guillemette? Well, isn’t it? For years I’ve been trying to tell you all that new and far larger water mains are needed. More pressure. A new station up here, two new crews. Men! Where am I to get them, eh? Where? They’re all off in Germany either in the prison camps or the forced labour brigades.’
‘Easy, Julien, go easy, eh?’ snorted the préfet. ‘We all know how much you care but you are not the only one to consider when the budgets come round.’
The light swung, pinning shadows to the walls as Robichaud turned on him swiftly. ‘Then what about you stopping this one, eh? You have yet to visit the temporary morgue we have set up in the Lycée Ampère. Ah, you’ve not thought it necessary to inform the children who have lost their parents, is that it? How are we to find them, eh? Lists … that bastard Weidling demands lists? Let him pull the limbs apart himself. Let him examine the teeth and hope for dental records.’
Bishop Dufour stepped forward. ‘Julien, go down to my study. Have some of the port, then take a glass of the Calvados my sister sent me. Please, I must insist. You’re exhausted. There is no need to be ashamed. Your tears are quite understandable.’
‘Are they, Bishop? Are they?’ The beam of his light fell to the floor at their feet.
‘Now, now, Julien, control yourself. Please, I beg it of you. Say no more. We have enough trouble as it is.’
Patting him on a shoulder, the bishop led him to the top of the belfry stairs. ‘Auguste and Philomena will wash this down and be most careful.’
‘That old caretaker and his wife? Don’t be silly. My men will handle it.’
‘Then do as I say. You need to sleep. Look at you, you’re still dressed for a fire. Have you forgotten time? Please, I promise I’ll awaken you in a couple of hours. At least do that for me.’
Robichaud started down the stairs then swung his light back over the
m before settling it on the préfet.
Blinded by it, Guillemette said nothing, only waited.
‘Hermann, go with him,’ said St-Cyr quietly. ‘See that he does as he’s told. You’ll find me on the terrace in front of the church. I’ll be looking out over the city trying to figure out what has happened here and where our Salamander could be hiding.’
‘If it was those two women from the cinema, Louis, they know all about how to start a fire.’
‘It’s the mark of a professional!’ hissed Robichaud. ‘Surely our préfet must have the names of all such people. Ask him to provide them. Give that list to Herr Weidling when you join him for breakfast!’
St-Cyr drew the bishop aside. ‘A small problem,’ he said, glad that the edge of light from his torch just touched the bishop’s eyes. ‘Three fires in 1938, Bishop, in the Reich, and now this. Was it to have been number two, I wonder, or was Father Adrian the target and our Salamander did not realize he had been killed?’
‘I … I don’t know what you mean, Inspector? N … no one would have wanted to kill Adrian. No one.’
‘Good. I just wanted to hear you say it, but it is odd, is it not, that the Salamander should know the workings of the Basilica so well? None of the other towers were touched. Only the one with the paintings.’
‘An insider …? But … but …’ Desperation haunted the bishop’s eyes until, at last, he said, ‘It’s not possible. No. No. Absolutely not.’
Again the detective said, ‘Good,’ but this time he grunted it as he abruptly turned away in dismissal and went down the stairs before another word could be said. Ah merde, the paintings …
The city was in silence but now the skies had cleared. Up from the rivers came an icy ground fog to hug the streets and blocks of flats in silver-grey and hide the infrequent pale blue lamps.
St-Cyr stood alone. Christmas … it was Christmas Day! Ah maudit, what were Hermann and he to do? Lyon—old Lyon—was a rat’s nest of narrow streets and passageways, the traboules that darted from a side entrance down a long and arched tunnel, up a spiralling flight of stairs, through buildings three and four hundred years old to yet other streets and lanes and other passage-ways. Dark and filthy, most of those passages, with doors here and there and iron-grilled windows and cries in the night. No lights. Not now, and not much evident in the past either.
Though old and venerable, its citizens more Swiss-like in their attitudes than French perhaps, Lyon was also very much an industrial city. Its railways linked it to every corner of the country. One could come and go so easily if one knew how—oh for sure there were the controls, the sudden spot checks, the Gestapo or the French Gestapo, the German and the French police too, and the harsh demands to see one’s papers. Papers, please. Your carte d’identité, your laissez-passer—the ausweis, the pass! all travellers had to have to go anywhere—anywhere—outside their place of domicile. The work permit too, and ration tickets—books of these each week, the colours constantly being changed so as to confuse Allied agents and foil counterfeiters. The letters of explanation, too, that one had to carry at all times. Those that freed one from ‘voluntary’ labour service in the Reich; those that gave the medical history if needed. A valid military discharge for being wounded at the front in 1940. Papers and more papers.
If one hesitated, the suitcase or handbag or both would be ripped from one’s hands and dumped out on to the street no matter what the weather, the crowd, the traffic, time or place, or even if one was in a hurry and would miss their bus or tram-car or the Métro.
But forged sets of papers were now becoming much, much better and far more commonplace. Those two women … the Salamander … could have provided themselves with false papers. They could come and go, and could already have left the city, having left their warning here, if such is what it was.
Close … far too close for comfort.
‘Well, Jean-Louis, we have the pleasure of your company again,’ said Préfet Guillemette ‘yet in spite of the urgency you do not call at my office? You do not exchange greetings or ask for assistance? A car, the ration tickets, some little thing? Ah no, not you. Well then listen, my friend. Listen, eh? Things have changed here. Be careful.’
The tramp of hobnailed boots came up to them from a Wehrmacht patrol somewhere on the side of the hill. ‘Préfet, let us bury the hatchet and not be so territorial. This case demands our every co-operation no matter on which side of the fence we sit.’
St-Cyr would never change. Never! ‘Fences? You talk of fences? Is it so wrong of me to invite the Obersturmführer Barbie to dine with me, eh? Especially, my friend, as he is in charge of countersubversion and I must work with him and show good faith in public.’
‘Don’t try to make excuses, Gérard. I know all about your kind. Fence sitters, ah no. You and the others have always been in bed with them.’
‘Bâtard! And Kohler, eh? What of him? Isn’t he Gestapo? Won’t the Resistance still be aware of your association with him? Pah! I’ll do as I please and tip them off if necessary.’
‘Don’t threaten me, Préfer. Please don’t.’
‘Then don’t be a fool. Try to understand how it is. No mouse can fart for fear the lion will step on him.’
‘But you’re no mouse; you’re one of the lions? What did Herr Barbie want, Préfer? Your thoughts on the cinema fire, on this Salamander and Gestapo Mueller’s interest, or more Jews for you to herd on to railway trucks to Nowhere? Was the round-up of last August twenty-sixth insufficient? One thousand, I heard. Was it one thousand you contributed to the forty-odd that have so far been taken? You sent them to Vénisseaux, to buildings that had long been abandoned, and then they were deported.’
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! St-Cyr would never listen. ‘Shot or deported, it’s all the same with them. Like Robichaud, Louis, your tears are admirable but out of place.’
‘Then please do not light that cigarette, there is gasoline on my sleeve.’
Suddenly furious with him, Guillemette angrily stuffed the lighter and cigarette away. Much taller and bigger, a flic all his adult life and proud of it, he leaned on the railing, blocking St-Cyr’s faint view of the Croix Rousse. ‘Herr Barbie could not help but notice that little exchange you chose to have at the restaurant with Monsieur Artel and his associates, Louis, but that one, he did not ask me about it, you understand. The Obersturmführer acted as though completely unaware of the furore.’
‘He didn’t want to spoil his dinner.’
‘Cochon! Did you not think when Herr Kohler borrowed his fiacre?’
His carriage. ‘Don’t call me a pig, Gérard. Please, let us try to work together, eh? The city demands it.’
‘My city, Louis. Mine!’
Ah nom de Dieu, was there no common ground? At sixty-two years of age, Guillemette had been Préfet of Lyon for the past twelve years. A hard-fought post. One had had to oil the way there but he was shrewd and clever, a force to be reckoned. An enemy that was definitely not needed. ‘Robichaud has had a hard time of it.’
Guillemette faced him bluntly. ‘Then start by asking the right questions. How is it he escaped to send in the alarm? Surely he should have stayed to direct people out of that building?’
When no answer came, the préfet clenched a ham-hard fist and raised it defiantly. ‘He panicked, Louis. He ran to save himself. That is why the tears, my friend. That is why he is so upset.’
Guillemette blew out his cheeks in exasperation. ‘Robichaud’s every action is being called into question, Louis. There are several who are saying he should be dismissed.’
‘Herr Weidling?’
‘Yes. Most certainly.’
It would be best to get it over with. ‘Where was Robichaud sitting, who was he with in that cinema …?’
The préfet snorted lustily. It was always refreshing to get the better of Paris! ‘One of my crows tells me he was in the back row, off the left aisle with his mistress, Madame Élaine Gauthier.’
The crows … the informers. Without them the polic
e could not survive for long or advance up the ladder of command. Clearly Guillemette had been having the fire marshal followed. ‘I should like to meet this crow. Did he stay for the flames?’
‘You listen, Louis. Listen hard! Now I apply the gristle before the muscle. Robichaud does not remember with whom he was sitting or where, exactly. He claims the shock was too much and this has caused a loss of memory. Let us hope that it is temporary, eh? It would be a great calamity to us if we had to confine our fire marshal to the mental hospital at Bron!’
‘And this Madame Gauthier?’
Good! ‘Sizzled to bacon, my friend. Bacon! Pah! He was with his little bit of cunt and has abandoned her because he does not—I repeat not—want his wife to know about the affair!’
Ah nom de Dieu, Lyon and its politics! The couple would have met inside the cinema. ‘Are you certain she was killed in the fire?’
‘Positive! I make it my business to find out such things. There is another matter. Letters are starting to pour in. Anonymous, it’s true. Always we get them now. One says that Madame Robichaud must have set the fire to get even—hey, it’s been done before, eh? A lover lost. How many women go crazy after such a thing? But me, I’m not holding that one up like the gospel, though it’s an interesting idea, is it not?’
One would have to keep the voice calm. ‘Were there any other letters of interest?’
‘Two. One points the finger directly at Monsieur Artel—that is only to be expected. A girl, I think. One who perhaps was interfered with and wishes to get even.’
‘And the other?’ It was coming now. Everything had been building up to this moment. merde!
‘Don’t pretend to be so disinterested, Louis. This one claims Father Beaumont was breaking his vows with Mademoiselle Aurelle in that flat above the cinema and that God became angry with him. As a measure of my good will, you may keep the letters for study but must return them when this is over, so that we will have a record of them in case they are needed.’
First the threats and now the warning, but the damaging evidence too! Clearly Guillemette expected him to inform the bishop of the allegations. This could only mean that they were true. ‘And what about Herr Weidling?’ asked St-Cyr cautiously. Talking with the préfet was like walking on broken glass in bare feet!
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