I am a whore—putain, fille de joie, cunt—she said to herself. It is expected of such women that they should have no feelings. It is part of the profession.
Yet they had just spoken of an engraver’s son. Hermann had leaned closely to Jean-Louis and had asked, ‘Could the boy do some work for me?’ He had given a nod towards herself and Oona, so they were not unaware of her after all.
In return, Jean-Louis had grimly understood and said, ‘Let’s see about it. A good thought.’
False papers. Laissez-passers, the ausweises of the Nazis. A little trip somewhere. Escape from Paris and the only place she had ever known.
Two tears fell, blurring her vision so that the lights became as the last of a sunset and she saw herself on a tropical island walking alone along a beach beneath tall palms, waiting for the night to come and trying to believe she was safe from the coming storm.
Unlike Giselle, Oona van der Lynn watched her ‘protector’— what else could she, an illegal Dutch immigrant from Rotterdam, call Hermann Kohler? Having lost her two children during the blitzkrieg and had her husband murdered while under interrogation by the French Gestapo, she had had no other choice. But war makes instant friends and lovers just as quickly as it separates them. Hermann was a good man, and perhaps he did love her a little, if one could call it love, for he was home so seldom and Giselle … why Giselle did require attention.
The girl was amazingly beautiful but sat woodenly staring up at the stage, unconscious of the looks she was getting from the crowd, remembering how it had been and wondering what the future held. Ah yes.
To be blonde, blue-eyed, tall, slender and forty years of age was not to covet Hermann Kohler or get jealous of Giselle le Roy, though sometimes those sorts of feelings intruded. One was only human and yes, of course one worried for that same future. At any moment the rifle butts could come even at Hermann’s door. Giselle and herself could well be dragged away and ‘deported’.
One must live for the present and accept the situation as it was.
The two detectives had drawn a sketch of the quadrangle of the Palais Royal and its environs and were deep in conversation over it. Hermann was in his element, smoking, tossing glances up at the stage, grinning, drinking beer, thinking that he would like to get a hand between a pair of legs up there, yet all the time his mind was flitting back and forth, recalling little things, projecting on into the future.
Jean-Louis always questioned everything. A thinker, he was not at all interested in the naked girls who kicked their legs above his head. She knew he longed to be alone with his pipe and tobacco, his little furnace, so as to examine the disappearances and murders from as many angles as possible. One so committed, he lived only for each case, especially this one. A cuddly man, Giselle had once said and laughed delightedly at the thought of seducing him, for men over fifty made good lovers sometimes, and the girl had thought it might be ‘very interesting’ to compare the two detectives in such a way.
St-Cyr traced out Joanne’s route from the Bourse station of the Métro westward along the rue Quatre Septembre towards the bank which was on the other side of the street. Then back again and south down the rue de Richelieu past the Bibliothèque Nationale to the Théâtre du Palais Royal in the north-western corner of the quadrangle.
She had picked up the final letter and had, at 1.15 or 1.20 p.m., entered the garden and gone into the shop of Meunier the engraver.
Then finally she had walked out of the garden and around to the rue de Valois to knock at the door of that house.
‘For three days she’s kept a prisoner, Hermann. Three days of … ah, I can’t bring myself to think of it. Then suddenly they leave and the house is emptied.’
‘The photos are then scattered either by one of the kidnappers or by someone else,’ said Kohler grimly.
‘But the photos only tell us so much. The rapes aren’t shown, but were they photographed?’
‘For someone else to view?’ breathed Kohler, watching him closely. ‘Someone who wasn’t present?’
St-Cyr nodded curdy and passed a smoothing hand over the rough sketch map he had drawn. Oona van der Lynn was very still, and when he looked across the table at her, he saw her flinch, saw moisture rush into her lovely eyes.
Giselle le Roy was tense and pensive—ashen, so much so that the paleness of her fresh young cheeks contrasted sharply with her jet-black hair.
‘A sadist, Hermann? A psychopath—one with money enough to hire those who would do his every bidding?’
‘A man and a woman …’ said Kohler, lost in thought.
‘Madame Lemaire’s maid, Nanette, heard the crying not just of Joanne, but of others,’ said St-Cyr.
Kohler told him of Renée Marteau’s body and that the former mannequin had been kept for at least forty-three days. ‘Between 3 July 1941 and 15 August. The throat was slit, Louis, the hair hacked off, the breasts …’
‘Say it, please.’
Ah merde …‘Removed.’
‘Months—years, Hermann. How long has it been going on in that house? Fourteen girls all with the same colour of hair and eyes, the same height, weight, size of bust …’
‘Louis, take it easy. Try not to get so close. A man probably took the photos but a woman may have greeted each girl at the door.’
‘One whose purpose was to lead them on,’ blurted Giselle le Roy, all broken up about it. ‘How could any woman do such a thing?’
‘She was essential,’ said Oona, instinctively reaching out to comfort Giselle. ‘If she hadn’t been at that door to welcome them in, some of those girls would have turned away and saved themselves.’
‘Joanne was very nervous. She knew she was being followed …’ muttered St-Cyr.
‘But did she see the robbery?’ asked Oona earnesdy. ‘Could she have identified one of the men or perhaps the woman who watched the street for them?’
‘Ah, I wish I knew,’ said Jean-Louis.
‘And was that not the woman who followed her?’ asked Giselle.
The girl shrugged when St-Cyr looked at her—she could appear so innocent at times, so fragile.
‘If so, then it couldn’t have been the one who answered the door,’ she said more decisively.
‘Then there were two entirely unconnected women,’ concluded Oona positively. ‘One who watched the street for the bank robbers, and one who opened the door when Joanne rang the bell or knocked.’
Two women It was a thought.
‘They couldn’t have been the same because Joanne would have recognized her, Louis,’ said Kohler. ‘The one she knew was following her must have been the one who watched the street.’
‘Did both women follow her, but only that one was seen by Joanne?’ asked St-Cyr grimly.
‘Verdammt, Louis. The one who opened the door would have made damned certain Joanne had come alone!’
‘And to do so, she would have had to follow Joanne right from the Bourse Métro to the Théâtre du Palais Royal,’ said St-Cyr, ‘then leave her so as to get to the house on time.’
‘But wouldn’t she have seen the other woman, then,’ asked Oona, ‘and thought the girl hadn’t come alone?’
‘Perhaps but … ah mais alors, alors …’ muttered St-Cyr. It was all speculation.
‘Girls with specifics,’ said Giselle, giving Kohler the tremulous look of a young woman who was still not certain her lover really cared enough about her to obtain false travel papers for them.
‘Specific physical features,’ said Jean-Louis, gravely brushing both hands over the table, ‘that match the girl who was once engaged to the son of the house’s owner.’ He fingered a richly gilded announcement. ‘Le Château des belles fleurs bleues near Provins. A Mademoiselle Angèlique Desthieux, a mannequin.’
‘Ah no,’ gasped Giselle, clutching the base of her throat and feeling quite sick.
‘A mannequin …?’ managed Oona.
‘Engaged to Captain Gaetan Edouard Vergès, 13 April 1916.’
‘And then?’ asked Kohler, hearing the
guns of that other war as if only yesterday, feeling the mud, the shit, the shells …
‘A drooler, Hermann.’
Giselle quivered and couldn’t look up but seemed only to shrink into herself. ‘The face …’ she managed. ‘The constant drooling as he paws your naked body and then fucks you. No lips, sometimes half a nose, no jaws … Nothing but noises, mes amis. Noises!’
‘Verdammt!’ Kohler grabbed her hand. ‘Did you …? Hey, petite, have you ever had to …? Well, you know.’
‘Me?’ She arched her lovely eyebrows at him, pleased that he should care so much but distressed also, for it was not any business of his! ‘No, Herr Haupsturmführer, one such as that has never slobbered over these breasts you hunger so much to suckle, nor has such a one ever fucked me. But …’ Ah! poor Hermann, he was so mortified and embarrassed … He must really love her a little. ‘But I have heard others talk of it, not at our house. Ah no, Madame Chabot would not allow it. But at other houses.’
‘Les baveux,’ said Oona, watching the two men closely and asking herself what she really felt about Hermann Kohler. Jealousy after all? Envy that Giselle, who had such a splendid young body and was so very beautiful, gave him such pleasure while she …
‘Madame Lemaire’s maid hasn’t told me everything,’ grumbled St-Cyr. ‘Is it that Nanette saw the drooler on or from the balcony of those houses, or is it that her mistress has so filled the poor girl’s head with stories of the war, the very sound of crying next door is enough to give her nightmares?’
‘The shrapnel, Louis. Clouds of it. The screams, the sounds of those who could no longer scream because their faces had been torn to shreds.’
St-Cyr turned to Giselle. ‘The shells exploded above our positions.’
‘And ours!’ swore Kohler, grabbing his own chin to show what had happened to his face. ‘Brilliant star-bursts and then …’
‘The dark grey snaking tongues of metal,’ sighed Louis.
‘Of pieces,’ said Oona, sadly fingering her cardigan, ‘some no bigger than the buttons of my blouse.’
Hermann had withdrawn his hand from Giselle. He had noticed her reaction and had felt a little something for her.
Again Jean-Louis spoke. ‘Angèlique Desthieux refused to marry Gaetan Vergès. She was shown his face by the doctors and couldn’t bring herself to carry through, but is it that he harbours such a hatred after all these years, he still seeks out only those with her eyes and hair?’
‘Yes!’ hissed Giselle with a harlot’s vindictiveness. ‘Those who wished to become like her.’
Kohler calmly ignored the outburst. ‘Vergès couldn’t have taken the photos, Louis. None of those girls would willingly have posed for him.’
It had to be said. ‘But did he employ the photographer and the woman? Did he wait upstairs in the attic and come down only at the last? Is that not where Madame Lemaire’s maid saw him and is this not what she’s too afraid to tell me?’
They were each silent at the thought. All around their little group the racket soared with laughter, much applause and foot-stamping both on the stage and beneath the tables.
St-Cyr drew in a breath. Still deep in thought, he said, ‘A cat wanders, a banker’s bank is robbed and right across the garden from his house, a young girl is brutally assaulted. Then … then three days after the robbery and the kidnapping, the house is emptied by four men from the firm of the Dallaire and Sons—why that firm, Hermann? And how, please, could that maid of Madame Lemaire’s have seen the name on those lorries when, at 6.07 in the evening, the street would already have been pitch dark and it’s against the law to show a light?’
‘Did she go outside to look?’ asked Giselle.
‘Perhaps but then … Ah, I must ask her,’ said St-Cyr ruefully. ‘I must ask her so many questions.’
Hermann found a few dregs in his stein and drained them before shoving it aside. ‘Chloroform, Louis. Why not ether?’
A square pad of cotton wool was dragged out and held with trembling fingers as Jean-Louis delved deeply into memory and more sadness came, thought Oona. The sadness of that other war, of things that could never be forgotten.
‘Ether,’ he said. ‘Is our Gaetan Vergès an ether-drinker?’
‘Ether, while used as an anaesthetic, can also be taken internally as a narcotic,’ said Hermann, looking steadily at his partner and friend, so much so, one knew absolutely he understood exacdy how Jean-Louis felt.
‘Ether to kill the pain of disfigurement,’ said Giselle earnesdy, ‘or to kill the loss of his lover. And why, please, the kidnapping now? Is it that only under the Occupation he feels secure enough that such horrible things can be done, or have they been going on before the war as well?’
The two men swiftly exchanged glances. Both knew they had best start for Provins immediately, yet should they not look closer first? wondered Oona. ‘That balcony,’ she said, and then, ‘Both chloroform and ether, they … they must be very difficult to obtain these days and would require special papers. Even then, I do not think such an addiction possible any more.’
Medicines of all kinds were exceedingly difficult to come by. Even aspirins were virtually impossible to buy and only one or two were doled out at a time, if available. ‘Boemelburg first, Hermann. We’ll have to have his clearance for this,’ said St-Cyr. ‘We can then take it from there.’
‘Yes, yes,’ grunted Kohler, ‘but the Chief isn’t going to like it, Louis. Ah Christ! why can’t things be easy for once?’
Unnoticed, the floor show had changed two or three times. Now the man with the rabbits in his hat was accusing his buxom assistant of hiding them upon her person and demanding that she search her top and briefs to hoots of laughter as they reappeared.
The tiny dressing-room backstage was beyond a crowded gaundet of all-but-naked chorus girls who, while waiting to go on stage, grinned lewdly at St-Cyr, wet painted lips, gave knowing looks or brushed teasing fingers down his arm or across a cheek, asking, ‘Hey, my fine Inspector, what’s she got that I haven’t?’ and pressing firm, plump breasts, with pasty-covered nipples against him. Old, young, not-so-young, all sizes, all shapes …‘Ah merde,’ he sighed. ‘Please, it’s no ordinary visit. A young girl is missing.’
‘Missing?’ teased one with flashing dark hazel eyes and huge lashes. ‘What is missing is that you are the only one with clothes!’
There were pink dots on her throat and breasts … Measles? he wondered apprehensively. Sequins! ‘Please, another time.’
‘All of us?’ asked one. They were laughing now and whispering to each other.
‘Oh, let him go,’ said another.
‘She’s waiting, Inspector!’ hissed another lewdly. ‘But for what, mes enfants? The shag? The release of his little burden?’
‘And hers!’ laughed another. ‘But it will never happen, ah no. Not with them. He’s always too busy; she also, and too beautiful, too sophisticated, too …’
Self-consciously he hurried past them, brushing talcum powder from his jacket and wiping lipstick, face cream and rouge from his cheeks.
‘Gabrielle …’ He burst into the cubbyhole she called her own. The door closed behind him and he drew in the scent of her perfume.
‘Jean-Louis …’
There were only two chairs and she was sitting in one of them with her feet up on the other. She reached out to him and he took her hand in his and, suddenly at a loss for words, stumbled over an apology for not having spent Christmas with her and her son at her Château on the Loire as planned. ‘Lyon and a case of arson,’ he said. ‘A tragedy,’ only to leave it off and shrug, ‘With you there is no need to apologize. How is René Yvonne-Paul?’
‘Fine and still wanting to spend time with you but understanding that, like his mother, he must share you with your work just as he must share me with mine.’
‘My work … ah yes. May I?’ he asked, indicating the other chair.
Must there always be this stiffness between them at first? she wondered, but when he sat oppos
ite her, their knees touched and he took both her hands in his.
She squeezed his hands hard and tossing her head in warning, said urgently, ‘Kiss me. I want to be loved, mon cher. Loved!’
Merde alors! what was this? Releasing her hands, he cautiously stood and looked slowly around the cramped room, searching always …
There were two tiny microphones—one behind the dressing-table mirror, on the left up high, the other hidden above the ceiling light.
‘A cigarette,’ he said, easing himself into the chair to sit looking at her, worried, ah so very worried.
She moved a piece of paper across her dressing-table and watched as he wrote, What has caused the Gestapo to be interested in you?
She shrugged and smiled sadly, then shook her head to indicate she didn’t know.
Have your contacts in the Resistance any word on the robbery at the Crédit Lyonnais? he wrote and saw her shake her head, and when they held each other tightly and he drew in the scent of Mirage, of vetiverol and bergamot, angelica and lavender, she whispered, ‘So far there’s been nothing, but the few I work with don’t think it was a Resistance job.’
None of the microphones could be touched. Another was located with difficulty in the wall behind the fire extinguisher in a corner. She was Russian. She used an assumed name, had escaped during the Revolution and had later married a Frenchman who had been killed in this war.
One could not question her activities or tell her the danger was too great and that, if it came to the worst, it would be hard for Hermann to turn a blind eye and for himself to help without perhaps first killing his partner.
She understood the risks, he understood her need to be involved. As they sat facing each other, he quietly told her about Joanne—the Gestapo would know of the girl by now. ‘She’s like a daughter I’ve watched over,’ he said. ‘I must find her before it’s too late.’
Instinctively a hand touched his cheek and she let her fingers trace down to his moustache to press themselves against his lips. He wasn’t like the wealthy businessmen or politicians, the generals and other high-ranking officers who took her to dinner, bought champagne, sent flowers and asked her to parties and endless official receptions. He was shabby, somewhat diffident, rough-and-ready, a cop—they had met on another case … Ah, how should she say it? He knew himself absolutely and didn’t try to be anyone else. Yes, he was not like so many other men. She felt good with him, good all over. Secure, at ease, at home, so many things. What more did one need?
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