The theatre was packed. The music soared and with it came the glitter, the sumptuousness of black ties and dinner jackets, silk and satin evening dresses, bare shoulders, plunging necklines, swept-up hair, droplet ear-rings, bracelets and necklaces. Everywhere he looked, Kohler saw that the audience, finding the furnaces on, had shed their overcoats and wraps. And oh mein Gott but there must be half the fucking Army of the South in attendance, scattered about among the elite of Lyon. The bishop in his box, the mayor, the préfet, the Obersturmbann-führer Werner Knab and Klaus Barbie with two gorgeous women in another, General Niehoff and his party in yet another.
Over one hundred musicians were onstage, arranged in tiers with kettledrums and bass viols to the back. Trombones and trumpets next, with French horns to one side and violas. Then to the left, the violins in front, woodwinds dead centre, and the first and second cellos to the right … the right …
Maudit! There was an empty chair among all the sawing, a naked cello leaning against a stand and not lying on the floor waiting to be picked up by its owner. A music stand on which the sheets had been spread … spread … ‘Louis …?’ he said, searching desperately along the far aisle for a sight of him as the waltz swirled upwards to fill the hall.
Kohler heard Madame Rachline sharply suck in a breath and say, ‘Martine’s cello …’
‘What about the cello?’
‘Henri …’ she began, but could not bring herself to continue.
Again he hunted for Louis. Again he found there was no sign of him. Ah merde, where had he gone?
Kohler shook her hard and at last she blurted. ‘Henri … he … he must have got past the guards by carrying that in.’
A cello. ‘Dressed as a woman?’ demanded Kohler.
Her nod was quick, and she fought to tell him about the stage door. ‘So, the game has begun, Inspector, and now you and your partner must find him among all these people.’
The swirling, soaring richness of Strauss was suddenly all about them. Loud and full and magnificent. Violins gave questions; cellos answered, then trumpets signalled change and flutes and oboes came in to join the violins and violas.
Plucking … there were strings being plucked in a counter-melody. The cellos … yes, yes, he said, anxiously looking down over the crowd below, now here, now there … Barbie using his field glasses to find them … Knab asking what the trouble was … Ah Gott im Himmel, Louis, where the hell are you?
Exasperated, St-Cyr breathed in. There’d been a minor altercation with Gestapo Lyon at the door to the balcony. The bastard had insisted on seeing his ID, and unfortunately the Sûreté had broken a Gestapo nose on the belle époque ashtray stand. One could not please everyone these days. Such things were hopeless.
From the balcony railing he scanned the faces row by row. Charlebois could be anywhere. Dark black hair—a wig perhaps, if as a woman, but short hair if as a man. Long lashes, short lashes, lipstick, rouge and eye shadow or none.
No, it was impossible. They’d never find him this way. Besides, people were beginning to take notice. Ah merde.
He turned and he, too, saw the cello alone among the others as the music fell only to lift again and he, too, was tempted to listen, to fill his mind and soul with it, for the Vienna Blood was perhaps the most stirring of Strauss’s waltzes.
A cello … an empty chair, a tribute to a sister who had died in vain, but did that instrument have some other purpose? Did it?
Hermann nudged his arm with a pair of borrowed opera glasses. ‘You take the left down there, Louis. I’ll take the right. He’s not up here.’
‘Or is he, eh, my friend? Come, come, how can you be so sure?’
The sound of violins filled the theatre. ‘She’d have recognized him even if he’s dressed as a woman.’
‘Who would have?’
‘Madame Rachline, idiot! She’s right here with … Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, Louis, she’s vanished!’
‘So we look for her and we find him, Hermann. Is that the way it is to be?’
‘And we ask, will he also use gasoline?’
The elevator shaft went up to a drum hoist on the roof and down to a well in the cellar. Hermann hated lifts. Old ones, new ones, it did not matter. They seldom worked properly. Life too often hung by a thread when least expected. There was pork grease on the cable, not petroleum grease, a bad sign. Strands of wire had become frayed and some had parted.
The grease was pale whitish grey and glistened in the beam of the torch as they gingerly stood on top of the cage and the fucking thing rocked in its housing.
Which of them saw it first, they’d never know. Gasoline was trickling down the cable in a little river of its own. Already it had formed a puddle in a corner of the roof, and from there, had seeped down the outside of the cage until droplets were released to hit the floor far below them.
Hermann looked questioningly up into the darkness of the shaft above. ‘You know I don’t like heights, Louis.’
‘Time, Hermann. Is there time? Let us use the stairs and not the ladder.’
‘Leiter Weidling will have checked the drive house. It must be between here and there.’
A different droplet fell and then, after an indeterminate pause, another. ‘Louis …’ Again the torch beam probed the darkness but Occupation batteries were subject to failure. ‘Water, Louis,’ he muttered. ‘It’s dripping on my head.’
‘Water?’
‘Yes.’
The cold and impersonal iron ladder beckoned. It went up one side of the timbered shaft but neither of them had thought to tell anyone the lift must not be used while they were up there.
When the hoist drum began to turn, it filled the shaft with its sound and through this came the muted strains of Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, Opus 90, the second movement, ah yes. The whirring soon filled the shaft and then the clunking of the stops as the cage descended to leave them stranded.
Mendelssohn … If one tried, one could almost see the cellos as they carried the countermelody. Lovely … it was lovely. Did Charlebois know his music so well?
Half-way to the hoist there was a cable guide and stop, and it was here that the Salamander had tied a jerry can of gasoline. They could just pick it out in the feeble beam of light.
Again there was dripping water, and again Hermann felt it, this time on an outstretched hand. With almost haunting, terrifying progression, the music reached them. They thought of heating and ventilating ducts, they thought of all the places Charlebois might hide and never be found.
‘A condom,’ grunted Louis. ‘It’s hanging from a bit of wire, Hermann. It bulges with water like a woman’s breast with the milk of my dreams.’
‘Milk? Dreams? Can you get it? Don’t drop it.’
‘The cube of phosphorus will be in the centre at the bottom, Hermann, just above the pin-hole of the nipple.’
‘Nipple?’
‘You’re taller,’ said Louis, straining. ‘Your arms, Hermann, they are longer than mine. Please, I am sorry for the inconvenience but if I were to climb down and you were to climb up …’
The torch fell away, and they listened for it until it was heard.
‘Hang on, Louis! Ah Gott im Himmel, idiot! Give me some room.’
‘My foot! You are standing on my foot!’
Hermann paused as the echoes chased their words. ‘Maybe you’d better find us a bucket of water, Louis. Just in case.’
‘Shall I stand on the cage and hope to catch the condom in the dark, eh? Get up there, my friend. That’s what they pay you for. Please don’t piss on me.’
Hermann unbent the wire in the darkness—he was really very good at such things, having once been a demolitions expert.
Gingerly the bag was passed from hand to hand. ‘Easy, Louis. Easy. You’re right. It’s like a pregnant woman’s tit just before the kid comes.’
‘Is he trying to tell us something, Hermann? Is this nothing but a decoy?’
‘No phosphorus, is that what you mean?’
; ‘We will have to see, once we get it under water.’
Grey-white and looking just as Martine Charlebois had said it would, the phosphorus appeared harmless as the flaccid rubber of the cut-open condom, stirred by some hidden current, drifted silently away only to cling to the side of the galvanized bucket like a manta ray in a distant ocean.
‘Now are you satisfied there is a threat, Herr Weidling? And you, Herr Obersturmführer Barbie? Will you not now empty the theatre in an orderly fashion before chaos descends on us?’ asked the Frog. Verdammt, but he looked worried sick. Proud though he was, at any moment Louis would go down on his knees to them. A patriot.
It was Barbie who said, ‘It is not necessary. He will be found and stopped.’
There was a cube of phosphorus safe under water in one of the toilets, a reminder. There was another in a condom, hanging from the nozzle of the only showerbath to service the dressing rooms.
The French horns were very regal, very stirring as they reached high into the heavens of the first Brandenburg Concerto, in F, the third movement. They sounded as if greeting a royal coach that came at full gallop. They were very distracting.
Leiter Weidling was grey with fatigue and sweating. Anxiety tore at him for he knew he must now face their questions. The three of them were alone for the moment in the manager’s office on the second floor.
‘My wife did not know the identity of the Salamander. I swear it,’ he said gruffly even though they hadn’t asked. ‘Oh yes, my Kaethe went to meet someone special in Lübeck and those other places, and here in the cinema also, but,’ he raised the stump of a reproving finger, ‘she did not know him and expected another woman, a friend of the one she had been … well, you know.’
‘Fucking,’ said Hermann, to clarify things.
‘Claudine Bertrand set her up,’ said Louis quietly. ‘In each fire a scapegoat was needed, someone upon whom suspicion would fall until, finally, Martine Charlebois’s fiancé was killed. Then the fires stopped.’
‘Weidling removed his cap and ran a hand wearily over his thinning hair, touching the bald spot she had ridiculed. Two “women”, and my future wife, gentlemen. Ja, ja, Herr Kohler, I knew perfectly well what she had been up to. I needed her. How else could I find the Salamander? But she was not the cause of the fires and took no part in them, of this I was certain. She was the bait I used and watched and finally trapped into a confession and … and marriage.’
‘You knew Claudine had come from Lyon,’ said Louis. ‘Did you trace Martine Charlebois here as well?’
The French. Always they were a nuisance. ‘I had no time. I was kept far too busy. My superiors chose not to let me continue the investigation and go after the Salamander for fear of antagonizing France at such a critical time.’
‘The war came, then the Occupation and finally a chance to visit Lyon and reopen the case,’ breathed Hermann. ‘Gestapo Mueller gave the okay and you brought your wife along, thinking to use her to flush the bastard out, but he got wind of it and now you’re going to have to bury her.’
Weidling reached for his cap to put it on. ‘And the man she sought but understood to be a woman like herself, Herr Kohler, until the two of them finally met. We must concentrate on the stage. I am almost certain that is where the Salamander will have planned his little surprise. The audience, yes? In full view of everyone.’
‘A surprise?’ blurted Hermann, dragging a piece of paper from a pocket. ‘Haydn, Louis. Right after the intermission.’
‘He can’t time things that closely, Hermann, not unless he intends to be there.’
Weidling took a pistol from his jacket pocket. ‘My wife’s,’ he said. ‘Sadly I neglected to tell her I had taken it from her purse. When the call came to go to the warehouse at the flea market, she must have forgotten to look for it. A Beretta I intend to use.’
‘Then let us hope you do,’ swore Hermann. ‘This place will go up like a torch.’
The lobby was crowded. People were streaming out through the doors. Drinks on the house as a gesture of good will. Champagne and darting looks. Stares and bolder stares.
They went back to work but found nothing further. Absolutely nothing!
Haydn’s ‘Surprise’ Symphony contained the simple melody of the child that should be in everyone. Again the cellos were being worked hard. Always one was waiting for something new to happen. Always there was this overwhelming sense of expectation and the excitement of it. A childlike innocence if one would but listen, yet very, very deliberate a seduction and very, very sophisticated.
From the upper balcony, Louis could not help but wonder at Charlebois’s choice of pieces. Had he chosen those passages which raised the spirits beyond all else to subvert the alertness of those who sought him, or had he done so out of a genuine love of beauty?
A strange man, one governed by an obsession. One who became so desperate after the cinema fire, he would, in hopes of pointing the finger at someone else, plant in the Basilica’s belfry the frivolous shoes of the sister he loved.
Using the opera glasses, St-Cyr searched the faces of the audience. Four rows in from the unused orchestra pit in front of the stage there had been two empty seats side by side and next to the aisle. Seats that Leiter Weidling and his young wife would have used.
Ange-Marie Rachline had taken the farthest one from the aisle. Pensive, and with hands clasped in her lap, she waited for Charlebois to join her. From where she sat, she could not possibly see the sister’s cello yet he was certain she looked that way.
The melody was repeated. It was so like something that would accompany a nursery rhyme or a child’s game of hopscotch perhaps. Again St-Cyr found himself listening to it; again he waited expectantly for it to change. A surprise …
She had taken off her overcoat so that Charlebois might see her better. He knew she would have stood to search the faces of the crowd, hoping to be found. Had she still the scissors in her purse? Would she still try to kill her childhood friend or had she, like Father Adrian, resigned herself to a death by fire?
Following the line of her gaze, he paused at the prompter’s box which was inset into the floor of the stage right at the front and low enough so as to be unobtrusive. He let the glasses search its mat black hood as he remembered the dream, the nightmare and asked, Had anyone thought to look immediately beneath the stage? Surely someone must have.
The cello … Hermann was standing at the far side of the stage out of sight of the audience. He did not look happy.
The cello … Ah mon Dieu, what was there about it? A beautiful glow to the wood, warm, so warm. The sound holes, yes. Yes, of course. A string … Ah no.
Around the strings near the bridge there was a thin piece of gut and this stretched until it disappeared into the farthest sound hole.
‘Hermann …’ he began. ‘Hermann …’
Kohler saw Louis turn on his heel so swiftly he knew there was not a moment to lose. He started out across the stage. He knew he’d never stop the Salamander, not now. Never now. Ah merde! A music stand … He grabbed the thing as it fell, and flashed a grin as he straightened it. Then he was leaning into the conductor’s ear. ‘Keep playing this piece over and over. Don’t stop unless you want the fucking place to burn!’
Threading nimbly among the first cellos and along past the seconds—ah Gott im Himmel it was a squeeze—he reached for the instrument only to see the gut around its strings and hear the music all around him, the rising, joyously mischievous sound of cellos playing Zaddle-zaw, taw, daw, dah. Zaddle-zaw, tah …
Verdammt! The son of a bitch had run another line from the foot of the cello under the platform on which some of the second cellos sat.
Now what was he to do? Aghast, Kohler looked up. Everyone would be watching him. Everyone! Ange-Marie Rachline was coming toward the stage … the stage …
Somehow he got down on his hands and knees between the instruments, the chairs, the legs of the musicians and the music stands. Somehow he got out the wooden-handled trooper’s knife the
Kaiser had issued to all ranks above those of dead men. The blade was wickedly sharp because it always had to be, and when he had gingerly cut the tripline, he delicately passed it under the lacquered toe of a black shoe and tied it to the high heel. Said into a pretty ear, ‘Please don’t move your foot. Not a millimetre. Just think of it as a bomb.’
Giving her a fatherly pat on the shoulder, he straightened up to tower over them, a shabby giant without his fedora, and the music went on and on all around him, the music …
Ange-Marie Rachline was now standing just beyond and to one side of the prompter’s box. Ignoring her as best he could, the conductor took the orchestra through its paces, the sound of the cellos diving spiritedly into Zaddle-zaw, taw, daw, dah … until it filled the air.
For an instant their eyes met and Kohler shook his head. ‘He’s below us,’ he said, mouthing the words for her and pointing downward.
The music pounded in her ears as she headed straight for the east wing, and when Kohler caught up with her to take her firmly by the arm, he said, ‘Don’t try to stop him madame. Please don’t. Let us get to him first.’
‘He will not listen to you! He will destroy the things he loves the most. You must let me talk to him. Please! I beg it of you. In his own way, Henri might still consider me a friend. Maybe … maybe he will listen to me.’
Over and over again the melody came to them as they joined the others. Beneath the stage there were timbered posts, a forest of them with cross-pieces for bracing. There were steamer trunks, old suitcases, stage props, cobwebs. The beam of Leiter Weidling’s torch pierced the darkness.
They were all on their hands and knees and scrambling madly through this place until … ‘Henri …’ she managed.
‘Louis, don’t let her go to him.’
‘Don’t any of you move,’ shrilled Charlebois. ‘I’ll do it! I will!’
Weidling swore as his light found the Salamander and he saw the uniform of a Wehrmacht corporal. A corporal …
‘Don’t shine it into his eyes,’ hissed St-Cyr. Ah merde! Each hand tightly clutched a fist-sized brown glass jar of phosphorus in water. Charlebois was sitting right beneath the cellos, with his back against a post. The line of gut was still wrapped around his right hand and it ran from there up to a tiny hole in the floor.
Salamander Page 30
