‘Ja, ja, the other one! Louis, just how the hell did that girl with the bicycle come by this one’s work card? Was it through a relative, a lover, a friend, or was she paying visits to that house? And did she know of this, eh? Did she?’
There were always questions, seldom ready answers. ‘Patience, mon vieux. Patience, eh? It is the yeast that makes each investigation rise until the loaf, it is complete.’
‘Piss off! I’m scared. That bitch in the street, Louis. I missed her. Me, who is always so good at finding and tailing someone in the dark, missed her and that, my fine Frog friend, says one hell of a lot about our Salamander as does this … this convenient death right after the fire!’
‘When I talked to her, Madame Rachline had only just come in from the street, Hermann …’
‘Yes, yes, but was it the madam who was tailing us?’ he yelped. ‘That perfume, Louis?’
‘The perfume, ah yes. The last of it is on Mademoiselle Bertrand’s bureau.’
So it was. A 250 cc bottle all but dry. ‘Étranger, Louis. The Stranger,’ muttered Kohler uncomfortably, for the name suggested someone as yet unknown. Shit!
‘It’s expensive, Hermann. Not common and probably hasn’t been on the market for a good fifty years.’
‘From la belle époque? Bought at auction, then, Louis?’
‘And unless I am mistaken, shared with the others at the réveillon but worn by someone in that belfry at the Basilica and deliberately left for us to find.’
‘Claudine Bertrand couldn’t have been there, Louis. She’d have been dead by then.’
Hermann fell into such a silence St-Cyr had to ask him what was the matter. ‘The shoes in that belfry, Louis. I … I forgot to take a look at them.’
‘And so did I. Later, eh? Later. Hermann, Madame Rachline is fascinated by fire or very afraid of it. When I struck two matches, she tried to stop herself from looking at the flame and failed.’
‘Ah merde, is that their fetish? As sure as that God of yours made little green apples, Louis, Claudine Bertrand catered to some particular perversion and unless I’ve completely lost my touch, she went with women as well as men.’
‘The girl with the bicycle …’ began St-Cyr, only to let the thought trail off into silence.
‘Those paintings in that storeroom at the Basilica, Louis?’
‘Yes, yes, the paintings, Hermann, and a whorehouse full of things of exceptional quality and expense. Things not easily come by.’
‘Unless one has the ausweis to come and go, and the car also.’
At last they were getting some place. ‘Auction houses, Hermann. Estate sales.’
‘And classy whores whose madam runs from you to find someone in the other part of the house.’
‘Pardon?’ gasped the Sûreté, jerked from his bedside thoughts.
Kohler told him of the enclosed passage above the lane. ‘She wasn’t happy, Louis. Madame Rachline was damned scared and on the run.’
‘And has known this one for at least the last ten years but can tell us virtually nothing about her.’
‘A stranger, Louis. A Salamander and a visiting fire chief.’
‘A pattern, Hermann. Three fires in the Reich in 1938 and now Lyon.’
‘Why now? Why Lyon?’
‘Why not, if for some reason there is a connection with the visit of Herr Weidling?’
Kohler glanced at his wrist-watch and swore. ‘That bastard’s going to get bitchy, Louis. We’re late.’
‘Then perhaps you should go and have a little talk with him, Hermann. Perhaps our visiting fire marshal’s wife would be good enough to offer coffee and rolls?’
Instead of sausages and eggs courtesy of the concierge of this place. ‘You certain you’ll be okay?’
‘Positive. Please cancel my breakfast on the way out. I need to concentrate and do not wish to be disturbed.’
Louis always liked to have his little tête-à-tête with the victim. In spite of knowing they were on the run, Kohler grinned. ‘Enjoy yourself, eh? Look for burns in those tenderest of places and ask her who caused them.’
4
IN THE SILENCE OF MADEMOISELLE CLAUDINE’S bedroom all sounds were magnified. Each time someone came or went in the building, St-Cyr would hold his breath. The door to one of the other flats would open and then close. There would be steps on the stairs, a brief, muffled exchange with the concierge, eyes cast upwards to indicate the Sûreté’s continued presence, then more steps and the outer door would open.
Sometimes people came in off the street to buy whatever the concierge had to offer, but these visits lasted so briefly, the caller hardly bothered to close the outer door. There were never any complaints. One took what one was offered and did not complain for to do so was to get nothing else. One didn’t haggle and, as often as not, cigarettes were the floating currency. France had become a nation of beggars on the scrounge ruled by tobacco, collaborators and, still, that oligarchy of the wealthy and the well-to-do who had always taken care of themselves.
Claudine Bertrand had been a victim of that oligarchy, of this he was now certain. In photo after photo he had seen her as a child in the gardens and rooms of a lovely house in the suburb of Les Brotteaux or on the beach at Concarneau along the Breton Coast, several times with the friend who was now Ange-Marie Céleste Rachline. Again and again the two of them as schoolgirls, then as students at the university here and then … the financial collapse of the Great Depression, this flat and La Belle Époque.
‘Claudine, she is … Ah, how should I say it, Inspector? In this world of such varied taste, Claudine is different. Very special.’
He remembered the instant he had struck those matches and the look that had come into Madame Rachline’s eyes. Had Claudine been just as fascinated or afraid of fire? Had those two children played with matches and found it a game neither could resist?
There were no photos beyond that point of lost fortune. The year would have been 1932, Claudine then twenty-two, Ange-Marie twenty-four.
He put the album back in the lower drawer of the bureau and covered it with sweaters as it had been. Then he stood up and began to study the perfume bottle. It wasn’t one of Houbigant’s or any of the other great perfumers. Lost to that world, he read the label and muttered, ‘Joulbert. Perfumer to the Imperial Court of Russia.’
Right at the top of the label were the dates: 1785 on the far left, and 1900 on the right. At the bottom, the address was given as 17 rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, Paris. Joulbert had been classy, ah yes. Quite obviously the stuff had been very expensive even at the turn of the century.
In the illustration a bare-breasted, winsome girl of perhaps eighteen was seated with a peacock’s rainbow of irises and tulips behind her. Masses of them. All the rest of her, except for the ankles and bare feet, was clothed in some sort of see-through webbed fabric, her look pensive as if assessing the object of her dreams and not in the least concerned about the spiders that might have woven her garment.
Unscrewing the cap, he brought it up to first one and then the other nostril. Yes, the scent was one of the ‘Persian’ types so popular at the turn of the century. Again he felt the musk too strong. Heavy and body-clinging and not at all suitable for the girl on its label. Perhaps some forgotten carton had come to light or perhaps the bottle had simply been from an estate sale. Perhaps the house had been given it by one of the clients and Madame Rachline had shared it out.
Then why, he asked, has Mademoiselle Claudine the dregs, unless it was she who had been given it and she was the sharer? Ah yes. Yes, of course.
There was nothing in the room to indicate it was Christmas. Going over to the bed, St-Cyr drew up a chair and began to study the woman earnestly, willing himself right into her skin. Alive, what were you hoping for? he asked. A return to those former days? Something better for your mother and yourself or release, Mademoiselle Bertrand, from filial duty?
It couldn’t have been pleasant coming home to a place like this from La Belle Époque. Did you hid
e everything from that mother of yours? he asked. Were you afraid she’d find out? Or were you sick and tired of having to look after her and wanting only to get on with your life?
Had she had a child she wished to protect? he wondered. Is that why she brought so little of her income home? A child in a convent boarding school, a child who would know nothing of her mother’s profession.
She had gone to the cinema in her red dress and high heels, of this he was now certain. She had not stayed out long, had come back and dressed for bed, then put the kettle on and had …
Swiftly he went into the kitchen and, lighting a match, checked the stove’s draught. ‘Excellent,’ he breathed softly. ‘The flue is not blocked. There can have been no poisonous fumes, no carbon monoxide to silently kill without the victim ever knowing.’
Returning to the chair, he leaned forward to ask those questions he had to ask. ‘Did fire excite you sexually, mademoiselle? Did the men or women you went with like to tie you to the bed and then strike matches or burn candles over and around your naked body? Did you cry out for mercy until they had consummated their lust in an orgy of fire?
‘Or were you the one to do the tying up? Did you brush their skin with flames as they tried to cry out through the gag you had stuffed in their mouths? Did you singe the hairs on the stomach, the groin, the face, eh, until, in ecstasy, they finally came?’
He gave her a moment, then asked, ‘Did you go only with women, Mademoiselle Bertrand? Did you enjoy making them so afraid, that fear then heightened awareness until they shuddered with release at the touch of your tongue? Was that the only way they could ever attain sexual climax? The striving, mademoiselle, the straining for it until suddenly, the fire, the flames were too much for them and finally they yielded?’
Her expression of total innocence made him furious at his own inability to fathom this thing. Was there to be another, even more horrific fire?
‘Who did you go to that cinema with, mademoiselle? Your childhood friend Madame Rachline? Come, come, I know you were there. You were sitting in that projection booth talking to the projectionist. When the cry of fire came, you lost a shoe, you dropped these …’
He tossed the bent and twisted cigarette case on her bed. The compact and lipstick tube followed, then the steel shank of that other shoe. He found the remains of the fountain pen and tossed it into the pile. He found the jewelled cross. ‘Father Adrian Beaumont, mademoiselle,’ he said so very quietly. ‘Did you know of him? A Monsieur Henri Masson gave this cross to him.’
According to the bishop, Masson had died ten or twelve years ago. She’d have been twenty-two or twenty at the time. Had he been a former client of La Belle Époque? Had he been alive when Claudine first went to work for her childhood friend?
He took out the anonymous letters the préfet had given him.
My dear messieurs
As a concerned and loyal citizen I must tell you that Father Adrian Beaumont, secretary to Bishop Dufour, has been breaking his vows. Day after day I have seen Father Adrian enter Mademoiselle Madeleine Aurelle’s building, sometimes right after her.
Always there is the long pause, the visit of two and sometimes three hours—once four hours. Always that one would return to the street like a thief, while Mlle Aurelle, the shameless harlot that she was, would gaze down upon the object of her lust, the vanishing figure of her confessor, from the bedroom window.
Once her night-dress, it was open and once she waved to him and he, caught by guilt, stood transfixed in the street unable to move.
I heard him whisper, ‘Cover yourself, Mlle Madeleine. For God’s sake, cover yourself,’ and when he looked at me, aghast that I might have overheard, there was nothing but terror in his eyes.
There was no signature. Depressed that such letters had become all too common a means of getting back at others, St-Cyr ran his eyes over it again. The penmanship was excellent, the handwriting neat and small and precisely budgeted, the straightness of the lines perfect, the paper good but not overly expensive by pre-war standards—one always had to measure such things by those bygone days. Paper like this would no longer be readily available.
A woman? he asked. One didn’t give much credence to such letters. Indeed, there was always distaste, yet one was forced to read them from time to time.
It must have come in early, just after the fire. Either it had been delivered to the Préfecture or Guillemette had got it from the Gestapo over at the Hotel Terminus.
He put the letter down on her bed and placed the cross with its chain on top of it.
Bishop Dufour had not given answers readily. There had been hesitation over Father Adrian but that would only have been natural. ‘Ah merde,’ he said of the letter, ‘it’s wrong of me to be trapped into paying any attention to this.’
The other two letters were equally condemning. Monsieur Artel had always ‘talked of burning his cinema down to collect the insurance’. He had ‘never treated his employees well’. He had ‘cheated them of their wages and had done other things’. He had ‘always kept the fire doors padlocked in spite of the regulations’.
The fire marshal’s wife had ‘known of her husband’s love affair with Madame Élaine Gauthier’. She had been jealous and had ‘sworn she would get the two of them’.
Madame Robichaud ‘suffered from acute depression’, was ‘suicidal’ and ‘possessive’.
She had ‘consulted the préfet on the matter and had asked for that one’s help’.
She had been ‘out’ on the night of the fire. Her eldest daughter, who had been staying with her mother ‘to calm her down’, could give no ‘adequate answer as to where her mother had gone that evening’.
Lined up in a row, the handwriting and the paper were as different as the other objects on the bed. The cheap and shoddy compact and cigarette case, the richness of the jewelled cross.
But, again, he found himself asking, Had a woman written each of them?
Three distinctly different women, one well-educated perhaps, another—that of the insurance letter—a disgruntled employee.
And that of the Madame Robichaud letter? he asked. The fire chief’s concierge perhaps? The family would live in a reasonably good area, quite central probably and very middle class.
The writing was not so brutal or so refined but was something in between.
Clearly it was implied that the writer of the Madame Robichaud letter was a confidant of the woman, or knew some indiscreet person who was close to her. He was surprised the writer hadn’t made derogatory remarks about the fire marshal, and he wondered then, in spite of telling himself he shouldn’t, if it had not come from Robichaud’s mistress, from Madame Élaine Gauthier.
The ‘a’s, though different, were the classic classroom ‘a’s of a schoolteacher. The ‘l’s were similar, the crossing of the ‘t’s. Ah nom de Dieu, they had all come from the same hand. He was certain of it. Certain! But had that girl with the bicycle sent them? Had she dropped this one’s work card on purpose?
Like Hermann, he found himself staring across the street in the direction of La Belle Époque. He could not see its chimneys, though he knew there would be smoke issuing from them even when there was little or none from most of the others.
Holidays were always the worst of times for such arsonists. A crowded café, a railway station, another church perhaps—yes, another cinema … any of the many blocks of flats. They were so old, they were just asking for a fire. The streets were often so narrow.
Lübeck, Heidelberg and Köln were all very old cities. Had those two women paid them each a visit or had they absolutely nothing to do with any of the fires?
And what of Madame Rachline and her continued evasiveness? The woman had lied about being at midnight Mass and walking home. But had she come here to see Claudine only to stand, perhaps, in the street below, gazing up at this very window in doubt and fear?
Yes, he said to himself. Yes, that is what she must have done. Then she does not yet know Claudine is dead, but only suspects
there is something very wrong and is herself in danger.
In the kitchen he found an open bottle of friar’s balsam. It was simply the usual alcoholic solution of benzoin, the balsamic resin from tropical trees of the genus Styrax, especially those from Java and Sumatra.
A spoonful or two into the hot water to clear the sinuses and chest by breathing the steam. A sweetly aromatic, quite resinous odour that strangely lasted long after inhalation. A clinging odour.
The Gare de Perrache was frozen in the pearly-grey light. At twenty degrees of frost, the swastika that flew above the central railway station hung as if in fright and wanting to disappear.
People came and went, all bundled up and grim about it. Just across the Cours de Verdun, at Number 12, two SS guards stood sentinel outside Gestapo HQ, the Hotel Terminus, a flag above them.
Four black cars—two Daimlers, a Citroën and an Opel—sat with their engines running, a bad sign. Swastika pennants were mounted on the right front fenders of the leading Daimlers and Kohler had to ask himself, Visiting royalty for Christmas? and said, Another bad sign.
The Bristol, all five storeys of staid respectability, was at Number 28. Leiter Weidling was pacing back and forth in front of a row of straight-backed chairs on which sat six … or was it seven ashen people. The harangue was loud and fast, the fist with its napkin clutched, the interpreter frantically trying to catch up.
Having breakfasted on rolls, plum jam and black coffee, Weidling had chosen to interview the prime witnesses collectively. He was all push and bad manners and not likely to get a hell of a lot out of any of them, a puzzle since he was experienced and must have had to do this sort of thing lots of times.
Fabien Artel sat with his knees together and fedora in hand. The usherette who’d seen the two women leave the cinema in a hurry, was pale and badly shaken. A kid of seventeen without her lipstick or anything much—she’d simply been dragged from some attic room in Croix Rousse, and had had her overcoat thrown at her. No boots! No time to even put them on.
Her bare toes were shy and they tried to cling to each other as the visiting fire marshal’s words flayed the hide off her. ‘Colour? Give me the colour of their eyes, you imbecile! The hair, dummkopf! Their clothing!’
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