‘Here. Here with me, asleep. Hurry, Inspector. Hurry!’
Hermann was next door in Madame Rachline’s work room. He was with the children, over by the big work table, and he was not happy. ‘Louis, Gestapo Lyon will now be after him. I’ve just filed our report with Boemelburg and the Chief’s definitely worried. Apparently Knab and the other bigwigs really are going to attend the concert. Also, the shears, if they were returned to this room, have now been taken again.’
Maudit! ‘But to where, Hermann. Where?’
Though dressed, Louis was still shaky. The house on the park. That’s what the children say but me, ah, I don’t think so. The dress she was working on is gone, Louis. Did she deliver it to the Hotel Bristol? The kids don’t know why she’d have done a thing like that, given what’s happened, but me, I think it’s possible. There’s also a spill of Cs on the floor over there. A box from next door was ripped open and a few handfuls taken.’
‘Cs?’
‘Riding coats,’ blurted the boy, hastily wiping his eyes only to release more tears. ‘Did you think we would not know what has been going on next door for nearly all our lives? A whorehouse, Paulette! A brothel! Our mother!’
Condoms, ah merde! He got down on his knees before the children and took their hands in his. ‘Now listen, your mother was forced into this. I cannot tell you why because we do not have the time, eh? We must know where your Uncle Henri might have gone. She will know of it. That is why the shears have been taken again.’
The shears … the scissors!
The girl screwed up her face in tears and doubt. ‘The … the Marché aux Puces, then. In Villeurbanne, monsieur. Uncle … Uncle Henri, he … he always goes there on Sunday afternoons to hunt for things.’
‘He … he has a warehouse,’ blurted the boy. ‘It is the one with … with the bust of Nero above the door.’
‘Caesar, René. It is the head and shoulders of Caesar Augustus but … but there are many of these and … and all of them, they look much the same.’
St-Cyr’s heart sank at the prospect of what might lie ahead. ‘The flea market, Hermann. It is on the Rhône well to the other side of the Parc de la Tête d’Or.’
They managed to hire a fiacre but it was drawn by a bronchial horse and would not go fast enough. Out on the pont Alphonse Juin, they commandeered a gazogène, a farm lorry laden with produce for black-market restaurants, only to have Hermann leap from behind the wheel to tell the driver of the fiacre to steam his horse and use some friar’s balsam. ‘Here … here, take this bottle my partner had in his pocket. Use a bucket of hot water and a sack over the head, and do it or I’ll come back to give you the full treatment myself.’
‘Me?’ asked the terrified old man. The driver of the lorry was starting to sit up in the road.
‘You, you son of a bitch!’ snarled the Gestapo’s Bavarian protector. That mare of yours has a bad chest. A cold, eh?’ With the ham of his good hand, Hermann shoved the poor bastard’s nose up into the air and slapped him soundly. ‘Gestapo,’ he breathed. ‘Don’t forget it!
‘You French!’ he cursed as he got back behind the wheel. ‘How can you people treat animals like that? It’s no wonder you lose all the wars you drag other people into!’
Ah nom de Dieu, what was one to say? At the height of a crisis, the doctoring of a horse!
The gazogène crawled by the streets, the vélos had plenty of time to get out of the way when the horn was honked. The ice lay in treacherous sheets that sometimes helped and sometimes didn’t. And when they got to the park, Hermann didn’t bother with the roads any more but drove straight overland. Ah merde! Merde! ‘Not across the lake, Hermann! The ice, it will not be—’
‘Hang on, Louis. We’ll go round it.’ Bump … bump … bump …
The Marché aux Puces looked like a medieval fairground. Replete with heraldry and bunting, it was at a bend where the Canal de Jonage met the Rhône. There were gazogènes and vélo-taxis, fiacres, wagons, sleighs and tram-cars, those vehicles of the Germans too, for several in uniform could be seen. Tents and marquees, kiosks and more permanent structures in rows, and people … people everywhere. Crowds of them. All colours of clothing. All sorb of faces. Perhaps four … maybe five or even six hectares and, rising right in the middle of it, the blue-washed, glass-and-iron cupola of the main building. Verdammt! ‘Let’s stick together, Louis,’ said Hermann, exasperated by what lay before them. ‘We’d better this time. Barbie won’t have had time yet to get the troops out in force. Charlebois …’
‘Will be dressed as a woman?’ asked the Sûreté.
‘A woman?’
‘Yes. It is what I think must have happened at the cinema on the night of the fire.’
‘And at those other fires in the Reich?’
Only the barest nod was given as the crowd was surveyed. ‘Claudine Bertrand would be bringing a special friend for Frau Weidling to play with.’
‘A Salamander,’ grunted Hermann, checking the Walther P38 that was still miraculously with him in spite of the dunking in the river. ‘Louis, hand me your Lebel.’
‘Is it that your weapon is all gummed up, Hermann, and you have need of mine before the shooting starts?’
‘No, but I’m going to have to strip it down and oil it later on.’
‘Good! My Lebel is in the river. Me, I am sorry for the loss but still have my bracelets.’
‘Then let’s get going. I’ll cover you.’
‘Hours, Hermann. It has been hours since we came so close to the Salamander and last saw Madame Rachline.’
Was it a warning of some kind? ‘And in about another hour this place is going to be swarming with Gestapo and it’ll be dark.’
‘He’ll have friends.’
‘Associates.’
‘Those who might offer help in exchange for a little something.’
‘Enemies too.’
And then from Hermann also, as they got out of the lorry, ‘Frau Weidling, Louis?’
It was one of those times when the soul had to be searched. The Sûretés little Frog cast a doubtful glance up to that God of his for assistance, only to see that the sky was grey and threatening snow.
‘Yes. Ah yes, Hermann, the Salamander could well have called Frau Weidling to him since she did not die in the cinema fire as planned.’
‘Locked in the toilets?’
‘Yes!’
Above the constant murmur of the crowd came the shouts of the various vendors. Above these, the sounds of an accordion, a child who played a tambourine and another, the violin. Then in the distance somewhere there was a steam calliope.
It was a madhouse. No one would understand the urgency because they were all here to enjoy themselves and it was the holiday.
There were wicker baskets of used cutlery, stacks of old china—cups, saucers, tureens and platters in some of the booths, old glass, old pots, butter churns no one could possibly want these days, bits of tinware … ah, so many things. The images flashed by as Louis shouldered through the crowd and finally shouted, ‘Sûreté, Sûreté!’ and blew his whistle—stopped suddenly right in the middle of the Alley of the Old Maid’s Most Precious Possessions and gave it another blast.
The shrill sound of the police whistle was met with a stunned silence that gradually extended outwards from them as each person halted to look apprehensively his way.
‘Good! Now step aside,’ he shouted.
Ah, Gott im Himmel, another Bismarck! ‘Louis, why not ask where the Alley of the Caesars is?’
‘Because I already know where it is. On the other side of that.’
The main building.
The warehouses were down along the canal. They were not big. Indeed, they varied in size according to the needs of their owners, yet before each of them was a scavenged marble statue, a bust, a headless figure, all Roman, all of Caesars perhaps, it was hard to tell.
‘They remind me of Provence, Louis, of walking through the ruins of that hill fort,’ grumbled Kohler uncomfortably.
‘There were no statues that I recall. The Saracens must have taken care of them.’
Louis would toss in a bit of history! ‘There wasn’t anyone else around but our archer and here there isn’t anyone either!’
Ah yes, it was quite quiet. All the activity was behind them.
Henri Masson had accepted stone busts that could seldom find a buyer. They were of the kings and queens of France and their children, of generals and politicians, great thinkers and great artists, musicians and writers. And he had gathered them on tiers of benches in a separate chamber that was lined with stone beyond the stacks of old furniture, paintings, packing cases and other things. It was cold and there was a smell that was most distinct. Ah no …
Hanging from a string, attached to the lamp high in the arch of the vault, were the collapsed remains of at least three scorched condoms.
‘Louis …’
As yet they could not see much else. Only those stone faces that sat as in final judgement, silent and all staring down at the person on the floor between them.
A bare foot, a cast-off shoe … some scattered female clothing and, in a heap, the sky-blue dress with all its underthings.
Ange-Marie Rachline was huddled in an armchair, off to one side of them. Hermann threw an anxious glance her way. The woman wasn’t moving. She was just staring at them as those busts were staring at someone else.
He stepped away. ‘Ah merde, Louis, look.’
Leiter Weidling’s wife was naked and lying face up—spread-eagled beneath the condoms with her wrists and ankles securely tied to the stone legs of the benches. And the water that had dripped out of the condoms above had fallen on her skin to remind her of the phosphorus, and when this had burned its way through the thin rubber, it, too, had fallen on her.
She’d been gagged and must have arched her back as she stiffened. The burns were horrible. The flesh had been eaten away until the blood had finally put out the flames or the phosphorus had been consumed. There was little left but a cavity between her breasts, nothing but entrails where her navel had been …
‘Cover her, Hermann. There are some rugs. Let me have a moment with Madame Rachline.’
‘That one didn’t get here soon enough, Louis. The shears are still in her hands. He must have done it late last night or early this morning.’
She’d have killed Charlebois if she could have. The childhood friend from the seaside at Concarneau was bitter.
‘Look, Inspector, I really didn’t think he had had anything to do with the fires. That was all past. Martine … ah, that one detested me. I thought she was crazy saying the things she did. Dragging it all up. I … Would I honestly have helped him in the slightest, knowing I had two children to care for?’
‘You knew Frau Weidling had been with Claudine at La Belle Époque not once but several times since coming to Lyon.’
‘Yes, I knew.’
‘You knew that Henri Charlebois secretly watched them. Come, come, madame, you could not have been unaware of this.’
Vomit rose in her throat, and she turned away suddenly as she swallowed hard. Burning, it made her eyes smart. ‘I swear I didn’t, Inspector. Henri … he has always had his own set of keys. I … I never thought of his doing this. Surely one of the others would have seen him?’
‘A Salamander, madame? A man who could stand over you while you slept?’
Dear Jesus forgive her. Henri in the house, Henri with the children …
‘Madame, what has happened to your husband, please?’
‘Émile? What … what the hell has he to do with this?’
St-Cyr gave her a moment. He would draw up an armchair, a thing with the stuffing sticking out of it. ‘The past always preconditions the present, madame. Your husband left you destitute. Henri Charlebois remembered his childhood friend.’
‘Henri was never my lover, Inspector. He could not possibly be the father of my children.’
He tossed the hand of dismissal. ‘Ah no, of course not, but he knew who the father was, madame, and on the death of his grandfather, he imparted this little bit of knowledge to your husband.’
Ah damn him! ‘Henri … Henri Masson …’
‘Did not just take advantage of Claudine, but yourself also.’
She did not look away but into the past so deeply he could hear the sound of the waves on the beach of memory. ‘Claudine was the youngest, Henri the oldest. She was anxious to be friends, so submitted to things she might not otherwise have done. We … we discovered that fire sexually aroused her and that Henri liked to watch her. He would … would bring the flame up to her skin again and again as he … he brought her to orgasm. It became a compulsion with him—she was only nine when it started, twelve when it ended and it … it was a sickness in which I shared in the desperation of my own loneliness, but … but I could not stand to be burned. For me, the nearness of the flame only made me scream.’
‘But when brought close to another, madame, did it sexually excite you also?’
Vehemently she shook her head—could not help but look toward the alcove of the stone busts. ‘It fascinated me to watch them both! That’s why I let him do it to her!’
‘When … when, exactly, was it that Henri Masson, Senior, discovered his grandson playing with matches?’
The children would have to be told. They’d hear things—the girls at La Belle Époque would be bound to say something. ‘After … after several fires had been mysteriously lit. A pavilion, a boatshed, a trawler, a barn, a house in the country in which five people perished. Monsieur Henri, Senior, found us among the dunes. They were not big dunes. They were just little hills and we ought to have known better. Claudine was lying on the ground and I was letting her hold me by the hands while Henri … Henri caressed her naked body with the flame.’
‘And then, madame?’ he asked so quietly she blinked.
‘He beat us savagely. Claudine most of all but myself also, over his knee with my … my underpants around my ankles and my dress pushed up over my head. After this, we stopped going to Concarneau for the summers. Later … later she became his mistress but Monsieur Henri, Senior, was never satisfied, Inspector, and took me as well.’
So much for the quiet undercurrents beneath the veneer of Lyonnaise respectability. ‘Was Martine Charlebois the one to tell him about the three of you?’
Again his voice … ah, it was so gentle. ‘Yes. She was only six at the time and did not understand what was going on. Much later, and just before the old man died, he made Father Adrian swear to watch over Henri. No one could have foreseen that Father Adrian would take advantage of Martine and others, Inspector, but Henri found out about it and now … now so many have died, I must blame myself for not having stopped him.’
‘She knew her brother had caused the fires that eventually killed her fiancé.’
‘Yes. Claudine went to Lübeck first, but I did not even think Henri had also done so. He’s away so much of the time.’
‘Did you kill Robichaud with those?’
The shears. ‘Robichaud … ah no. No, of course not. Nor did Martine. Henri saw his little sister with them when we went to the shop. He … he must have …’
‘And now, madame? What will he do?’
She shrugged. She tried not to meet his eyes and failed. ‘He will kill himself and perhaps others. He’s lost her—don’t you see? For him, Martine was everything I could no longer be, and the irony of it is, Inspector, that Henri Charlebois is my half-brother.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Look, I wouldn’t have known as a child, would I? Oh for sure I saw the similarities—you’ve only to look at my son and me. But my mother, whom I adored, never gave me so much as a hint.’
‘And your father?’ he asked.
Must he push until he had all the answers? ‘Was never happy with me and always suspected me of something I could not possibly have known anything about.’
‘Louis …’ The Bavarian had come to join them. The two detectives looked at each
other. Grimly the one called Kohler nodded. So, the job was done and the body covered. ‘We’d best get going, Louis. We haven’t much time.’
They would have to be told. ‘You’ll never stop him, Inspectors. Henri knows the theatre too well. He’ll play games with you and you’ll never know which game he intends to use until it is too late.’
‘And if he finds you there, madame?’ asked Chief Inspector St-Cyr. Quite obviously he hated himself for having asked, yet had known he must.
She would give him the shy half-smile of the child she had once been before the fires had ever started. ‘Then Henri will kill me, Inspector, and the ménage à trois of Concarneau will be complete. Claudine, myself also, and Henri, your Salamander.’
They were running now, and the sound of the orchestra was coming to them through the closed doors of the upper balcony. A Strauss waltz … yes, yes, thought Madame Rachline. The German fire chief had met them in the foyer below. No sign of Henri. No way he could possibly have got through security. Everything safe … safe … His wife … The German did not yet know about her and still wondered where she was.
St-Cyr had said nothing, only hurried on. Kohler had said, ‘Idiot, you’re crazy! Charlebois must be inside!’ and had run after them.
All along the corridor there was carpeting. Red globes of fire-retardant hung on the walls near gas lights that were so subdued, the laughter and the good times of the past came as if in the present on the soaring strains of the waltz and it was mad … mad … crazy, yes! Henri would be hiding some place. Henri would also hear the waltz, a favourite. Was it that the detectives did not know he had chosen the pieces? Would it make any difference?
‘In here,’ hissed the one called Kohler. ‘You first, madame. Louis, you take the far aisle. Search the faces. He’ll have timed the release of all those bloody bits of phosphorus!’
‘What about the elevator shafts?’
‘The shafts?’
‘Yes. Wind tunnels, Hermann. The belfry, remember?’
Verdammt! ‘Later. Let’s look for him first.’
Salamander Page 29
