‘I … I don’t know what you’re implying. Me? Having an affair with Jean-Pierre? One of my students? It … it is just not possible for me to love another, Inspector. I once did but … but soon learned my lesson. Oh yes I did! Jean-Pierre had managed to get me a capon. I … I must have taken the keys out of my pocket when I found the money for him.’
She had once had a lover—a fiancé? he wondered. ‘So you set them on the railing here and then … what then, mademoiselle? Did you turn to look back toward your house in fear your brother might have seen you together with that boy? Did your elbow then knock the forgotten keys to the ground where they lay hidden for so long? You were distracted for days prior to their loss—that’s what your three zazous told me. Yes, yes, mademoiselle, you needn’t look so betrayed. What had been troubling you? The thought that your clandestine meetings here had been discovered and misinterpreted by your brother or had he really misinterpreted them?’
Dear Jesus help her to stop quivering. The detective was not going to leave her alone. ‘Henri, he … he understands that Jean-Pierre is … is just a friend, Inspector. A helper—doesn’t one need such helpers these days if one is to survive?’
She was crying again but had not realized it. ‘Then was it worry over your brother’s relationship with Claudine Bertrand, mademoiselle? Please, the time for truth is upon us.’
Her eyes and nose were wiped, her head was bowed. ‘I … I have told you I … I hardly knew her.’
‘Yes, but when she couldn’t get money from your brother, she came straight to you. Therefore, mademoiselle, she knew you well enough!’
Ah no. ‘She … she was a terrible woman, Inspector. Morally bankrupt. I have told Henri many times to have nothing more to do with her, but … but he … he never listens to his little sister.’
‘All right then, did he go with her? Did he visit her at La Belle Époque?’
She would have to face him and pray there were no more tears. ‘My … my brother is not like that, monsieur. Henri … Henri knew everything there was to know about Claudine. What she thought, how she would react to … to things. Her moods, her hopes, her little … Well, you know. And so did Ange-Marie.’
He could not let her off the hook. ‘Where is the husband of Madame Rachline?’
‘The father of her children?’ She would shrug—yes, yes! ‘No one knows. They didn’t get on. One day he was there, the next he … he has left her for another, perhaps, and she has found her bed cold and herself as mistress of that place. Henri …’
‘Has kept the house furnished in the décor of the times.’
Must he be so cruel? ‘Is there harm in that, Inspector? Our grandfather …’
‘Owned the house. Am I correct?’
She bit her lower lip and felt her cheeks colouring rapidly. ‘Yes, damn you! Henri sold shares to several Lyonnais. The préfet, the magistrate—oh bien sûr my brother is a businessman, Inspector. Very successful, very determined to carry on the name of the shop and “other” things. He thought it best to see that Ange-Marie had as little trouble as possible. It was to be business as usual, right from the day our grandfather died and Henri caught the madam of that place cheating!’
So much for Monsieur Henri Masson’s respectability! ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘Have I ever prostituted myself? No! of course not. I … I was once very much in love but … but my fiance was killed in …’ He was not going to leave it now! ‘In Köln, in … in a fire, a terrible fire.’
Ah merde! He must go easy. ‘Tell me about it, mademoiselle. Tell me everything.’
A coldness came to her. He was not a priest, not Father Adrian. ‘There is nothing to tell. We met in Lübeck, went to Heidelberg and finally to Köln. I was a student on an exchange programme the Nazis … the Boches … ah, please forgive me, the Germans had offered. He was a student also, but German. The … the son of a prominent lawyer.’
‘And your brother knew of this romance?’
He would think the worst, though his voice had softened. ‘Yes. Yes, Henri knew of it.’
She had not been able to hide her bitterness. Had she been sleeping with the boy? Had the brother then found out? ‘And now, mademoiselle? This Monsieur Paul? Did he attend the cinema on the night of the fire?’
Ah good! Yes, good! The detective had overextended himself at last! ‘Monsieur Paul thinks film beneath anyone educated enough to read Molière and the others, so I did not worry about him in that regard. Only Henri. Always Henri. My brother and I are very close, Inspector. Like two doves that mate for ever, we worry about each other when one is away.’
Two doves that mate for ever … ‘Have you still got the keys?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘This morning I took them to my superior, Madame Calmette.’
He’d be firm with her though he knew she was distraught. ‘Are you certain of this, mademoiselle? We shall have to ask Madame …’
Everything had slipped from her—everything! In defeat, she would have to answer. ‘As it is the holiday, the keys are in my briefcase at home.’
‘Good! Then together we will pay the Lycée du Parc a little visit. Since the custodian is ill, we should have the school to ourselves.’
‘I know my rights, Inspector. I do not have to do this.’
‘It would be best, but if you wish me to get the magistrate’s approval, I will.’
The couple had been selected for ‘special treatment’ using ‘reinforced interrogation’, all of it ‘legalized’ by the SD’s Berlin decree of 12 July 1942.
Poor Louis had thought Boemelburg would put a temporary stop to it. All Barbie had had to say to the chief was that he had good reasons to suspect Robichaud and Élaine Gauthier had connections with the Resistance. Never mind the Salamander, never mind the threat of another fire.
For now, work on the woman and keep the man no matter how much he shouts or rages—that’s what Boemelburg would have said. Unleash the terror. Ensure that the Occupier would be hated as never before and eventually driven out, ah yes. In his heart of hearts, Kohler knew it to be the absolute truth.
On 28 November a Wehrmacht soldier had been shot and wounded by two young men on bicycles in the place Bellecour. It was Barbie’s task to put a stop to it and the son of a bitch would use any method he could.
Kohler didn’t know what to do. They had stripped Madame Gauthier and had forced her to her knees beside the tub. They had bound her wrists so tightly she could not move them. The dogs were restless and kept going up to her …
Somehow he found his voice. ‘Frau Weidling really was in that cinema on the night of the fire, Herr Obersturmführer. She was absent from her hotel at 4 p.m. and was in Croix Rousse to watch the tenement fire. Why not ask her to tell you about those other fires? Lübeck, eh, Frau Weidling? A Salamander and Claudine Bertrand …’
It was Barbie who unexpectedly said, ‘Perhaps a few answers are in order, Frau Weidling.’
‘I … I don’t know what you mean, Herr Obersturmführer?’
‘I think you do,’ he said, not sparing her.
She stiffened. Then yes—yes, I was at the cinema but not to meet anyone! Johann was busy. I thought to take in a film but soon realized there were no subtitles. Besides, it was a stupid film. I left almost as soon as I got there.’
‘I’ll bet you did,’ breathed Kohler, ‘and in one hell of a hurry.’
Barbie watched her closely. Her fingers shook as she tried to find a cigarette in the package beside his cap. Irritably flicking the lighter several times, she finally got it going.
Exhaling through her nostrils, she tried to steady herself, tried to think. ‘I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t.’
Barbie nodded curtly toward Madame Gauthier but abruptly Frau Weidling set the cigarette aside and reached for her fur coat. ‘I must go now, Herr Obersturmführer. Johann will be wondering where I am.’
‘Do it,’ said Barbie quietly.
She was desperate. ‘I … I can’t. It’s … It’s not
the same. Johann would …’
‘Disown you?’ asked Barbie.
Why was he doing this to her? Why? ‘Yes. Yes, that is so.’
Barbie wasn’t about to leave it. ‘But why would he do such a thing?’
She could no longer look at any of them. ‘Because he … he would feel that I had betrayed him.’
‘That’s interesting. Was Leiter Weidling in the audience at that cinema, Frau Weidling?’ asked Barbie.
When she didn’t answer, he shrieked it at her and she said, ‘Johann is … is an extremely jealous man, Herr Obersturmführer. My driver went to tell him where I was. They … they were waiting with the car in the place Terreaux when … when I came out of the cinema. There was no problem, no fire. We started back to the hotel, but when we reached place Bellecour, Johann heard the alarm and … and we returned to find the cinema in flames.’
‘And where were you last night?’
‘At the hotel in my room until … until the fire. I had gone out earlier but … but came back because … because I wanted to be alone.’
‘Then do it,’ said Barbie. ‘You have nothing to be afraid of.’
‘I … I can’t. I mustn’t!’
‘Do it!’ he shrieked. She leapt. The fur coat fell. The cigarette was snatched up and … and …
When the scream came from Madame Gauthier, it filled the room and set the dogs to barking viciously. ‘Tell them,’ wept Kohler. ‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, Robichaud, don’t be so stubborn! Do it for her sake.’
‘There is nothing to tell and I have nothing to say.’
They were alone in the Lycée du Parc, just the two of them, the detective and herself. Was it the last time she would ever walk these endless corridors and hear her own steps amid the maze of classrooms? wondered Martine Charlebois. Up some stairs, down others, the skirting boards of darkly stained, vertical tongue-and-groove scuffed and dented by the shoes and boots of boys who so often thought they were prisoners. Elsewhere, in another part entirely, the coveys of jabbering girls rushing along to a destiny they knew not. The smell of them so different from that of the boys. No lipstick, no varnish on her nails, the girls assessing her with the harsh cruelty of their tender years; the boys also but in such a different way and, if a skirt was accidentally raised above the knee when sitting, or a button of a blouse had come undone, or sweat dampened the underarms, they would laugh silently and rut with her in their minds or talk openly about it to the others in whispers. Ah yes, but she did not dislike them doing this or the way they stared at her breasts. Indeed, these incidents brought their little pleasures for at least then she knew she was still attractive.
They came to an intersection and she turned left, saying meekly, ‘It is this way now, Inspector. Only a little more.’
St-Cyr flicked the beam of his torch over the sickly yellow plaster above the panelling. To think that lycées had grown so much. It was like a huge warren of traboules. It made him feel old and lost—passed by. Baffled at the change in an educational system none had thought would ever change.
The decided smell of formaldehyde in which the zoology professors kept their specimens signalled that they had all but reached their goal. Then the faint mingling of burnt sulphur, the sharpness of acid and above it all, the high note and faint trace of mustard gas that lingered from some experiment to warn all future generations of its horror.
Unaware that he was doing so, St-Cyr suddenly crossed himself at the memory of past battlefields and kissed his fingertips—realized at last that she was waiting for him. And when he shone the torch up, it revealed the stark black letters on a door—CHEMISTRY FOUR—and the lines in her face, the worry and the strain.
‘Please shine the light on the lock, Inspector. I cannot see which key to use.’
A hardness had entered the voice of one so timid.
There were rows of black-topped workbenches with tall stools upended on each. Cold Bunsen burners with retort stands, sinks, taps, beakers and racks of test-tubes, blackboards on three sides and no windows.
‘It is vented by fans in the roof,’ she said as if reading his thoughts. ‘The storeroom is over there past the professor’s desk. In the corner there is another door which is kept locked when he is not present.’
‘The keys, mademoiselle.’ He snapped his fingers to unsettle her. ‘Please wait here in the dark. I will take a look myself.’
So that she could not know if it were true? Was he so cruel? He would know exactly how much she would agonize over the delay. He would use her fear as a weapon to send its barbed shaft into her. He would rape her as no man had ever raped but it would not be of sex or of the body, ah no, not with him. Humiliated by not knowing, she would break down and confess everything as she had to Father Adrian, and this one, why he would realize this and would soon know it all. She could not allow him to do that to her. She mustn’t!
The tops of the desks were smooth but pitted where acids had touched them. The drawers below did not move easily and when, at last, one became unstuck, glassware rattled and she straightened up silently, seeing only in her mind’s eye the shadows cast as his torch beam passed furtively over the rows of bottles behind the windows of the cabinet doors.
Phosphorus, Inspector? she asked silently. It is grey-white and non-metallic though it looks like a metal. Very light, very soft and unctuous and in cubes that are about one-and-a-half centimetres square which cut like butter. Kept under water in brown glass jars, it looks like some strange sort of condiment, a pickled Turkish Delight perhaps because when you open the top, there is a whitish crust on each cube as on a Camembert, but when burned there is a garlic odour which is very strong, and a pungently choking white smoke—a great deal of this smoke—and a very, very hot flame into which the phosphorus suddenly bursts on exposure to air.
Still he had not come out of the storeroom. Still he had not called out to her with, Ah, it is not here, mademoiselle. Two rings of dust. Two jars taken. It was not much used apparently. It was kept well to the back of the cupboard on the top shelf. Yes, yes, Mademoiselle Charlebois, the phosphorus, it has been taken.
Trembling, she felt renewed tears. She did not know what to do, knew only that he had to be stopped. Stopped! Stopped!
The gas was on. A little miracle Father Adrian would have praised. It hissed too loudly but when the valve was opened wide, the sound lessened substantially.
One after another she opened all of the bench-top valves, then closed the outer door. Hunting—moving quickly now—she searched frantically for one of the igniters. They were at every bench. They were very simple things of wire, with a flint striker that was pushed across a platelet of sharply ribbed steel. One squeezed the igniter, bending the wire handle in on itself and springing the striker.
He did not come until she had it in her hand. He did not understand what was happening. ‘Mademoiselle …?’ he said, surprised—yes, yes! ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, what are you doing?’
The smell of gas was everywhere in the classroom. Feverishly she gripped the igniter and struggled frantically to kill them both. St-Cyr ran. He moved among the workbenches hearing the rush of gas as it poured from each nozzle. Again she tried to blow them up. Again!
Dizzy, sick at his stomach, he tried to shout at her to stop. The beam of the light danced away. He pulled it back—shone it at her. Willed it to blind her.
With a ragged sob, she flung the igniter at him and raced for the door. Was pulling at the collar of her coat. Air … She had to have air …
Must close the valves, he shouted at himself as he ran from bench to bench. No time, no time. No time!
He reached the last of them. Vomiting—dragging in a breath—St-Cyr pitched out into the corridor, flinging the light from himself, tearing at his collar just as she had done.
The light was out. Where … where had he thrown it? Ah merde! ‘Mademoiselle,’ he managed weakly. He had no voice. Air … he must still need air. ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, you are under arrest for trying to kill a police offic
er.’
There wasn’t a sound. He knew she was standing in some doorway, lost in the darkness, her heart racing.
When she vomited, he knew she was just as ill as himself, but when he reached the place where she had been hiding, she was no longer there. ‘Mademoiselle, why did you set that tenement on fire? Eighteen dead, mademoiselle. Eighteen on Christmas Night!’
He would never find her where she was going. He must never find her, she said to herself.
‘Did Jean-Pierre steal the phosphorus for you?’ he shouted. There was so much rage in his voice, she trembled. He would beat her. He would drag her down and hit her …
The detective stopped. Still dizzy and throwing up, he tried to steady himself.
‘Mademoiselle, did he tell you how to kill Claudine? It was perfect, wasn’t it? Just a little balsam around the lip of the bowl to give the proper smell and not a trace afterwards of what you had done.’
Again St-Cyr listened for her, hearing only silence. Maudit! ‘But you were nervous,’ he called out. ‘As you opened the bottle of oxalic acid some of the granules spilled. You swept them up—of course you did. You even took them away or washed them down the drain but you forgot to tap the broom against the floor.’
She had sought refuge in a very large room, an auditorium, he thought. Immediately there were changes: a deeper darkness, a greater coldness, sounds echoing upwards. The smell of beeswax, chalk dust and sweat. A gymnasium.
Kohler tossed off the cognac and held the glass out to Barbie for more. ‘Now that she’s left us, Herr Obersturmféhrer, I can tell you Frau Weidling lied. She was nowhere near that hotel of hers last night when the tenement caught fire. Her husband told us she was dining with you.’
‘And the night of the cinema fire?’
‘There wasn’t enough time between when she went in and when the fire started. She could have got there earlier and been waiting long enough, but I don’t think so. That driver of hers had to find Leiter Weidling, who then had to extricate himself from whatever he was doing. Then they had to drive back to place Terreaux and then back to place Bellecour before turning around to find out where the pumper trucks were heading.’
Salamander Page 22
