by James Green
He would have to tread very carefully in this matter for he seriously doubted if it was at all as straightforward as he had been led to believe. Yes, he doubted it very much indeed.
He sat back and put the tips of his fingers together and uttered softly to himself.
‘Hmm.’
Chapter Six
Jimmy finally made his call to Rome the following night at eleven. Since his visit to the lawyer he’d been a tourist and he’d enjoyed it. But enough was enough. Paris might be another place, a new place, a different place, but he was still the same, he wasn’t any different just because he was in a different city. He’d had his break, now he had to get on.
He was standing on the small balcony outside his room, recessed into the steeply sloping roof among the red pantiles on the top floor of his hotel. If Professor McBride resented the delay in his calling or the lateness of the hour there was no trace of it in her voice.
‘Yes, Mr Costello? All is going well in Paris I hope?’
‘All is going as you expected it would.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means I’m calling you because the lawyer told me to. Don’t expect me to believe you two haven’t spoken since I visited him.’
‘He called me, yes, and he doesn’t seem to like you.’
‘That’s all right, I don’t like him. But that apart, what’s going on? Why am I here? And don’t screw me around with that missing person crap.’
‘No, Mr Costello, it is not, as you put it, crap. M. Joubert was quite accurate in what he told you. The sisters are leaving, the convent is being closed. They need to find the rightful owner, the heir to Mme Colmar. I was asked to help the sister superior and I sent you.’
‘And?’
‘What do you mean, and?’
‘And the rest? The bit that tells me why I’m here.’
‘The rest. There has to be the rest?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Well then, the rest. Briefly, Mme Colmar was a well-known collaborator with the Germans and lived in that house as the mistress of a Waffen SS officer during the Occupation. Just before Paris was liberated she left and moved to Switzerland. She gave the house to the sisters at a nominal rent to use as a convent. It is generally believed that her motive was nothing to do with any goodness of heart or religious conviction but rather a way of ensuring her property was not confiscated and remained legally in her possession. All of that is in the public domain. What is not in the public domain is in a short dossier which I sent to M. Joubert. The dossier will provide you with information which will, having read it, help you to understand why you are there.’
‘Why couldn’t you just tell me before I came?’
‘Because I wanted you to behave naturally, to be yourself.’
‘You didn’t have to hide things. You could have trusted me.’
‘No I couldn’t. You behaved exactly as I wanted you to behave. I’m sure you were very convincing. The sister you spoke to will tell anyone who asks that you were exactly what you said you were, as indeed will M. Joubert. It sounds like you made exactly the right impression on him. All you have to do now is go back to M. Joubert’s office, pick up the dossier, read it, and get on with the job in hand.’
‘Which will be?’
‘Find an heir to Mme Colmar.’
‘Any particular one?’
‘No, it matters not at all who inherits her estate, so long as we are the ones who find whoever it is. Just do a thorough job, one that will stand up to close, legal inspection. Goodbye.’
And she was gone.
He slipped his phone into his pocket and looked down. Across the road from his hotel were the lights and bustle of the Gare de l’Est. The headlights of the traffic still flowed busily and the cafés and restaurants, of which there were many, poured light out onto the streets. This part of Paris looked nowhere near like going to sleep. He looked across at the dark roofs opposite. Beyond them, under the night sky, he could see the Paris landmarks which were lit up. Away to the left, high on its hill like a large, white, celebration cake, was Sacré Coeur. He hadn’t made a visit to it yet, he’d spent too long in other places. He looked across the dark city and decided that he liked Paris, it hadn’t disappointed, apart from that first lunch, and you can forgive any city one disappointing lunch.
He went back into his room, closed the French windows, and began to get ready for bed. He’d had a good time over the past two days, he’d seen a lot, eaten well, now he was tired. Being a tourist was all very well but it wasn’t something he could do for long. He needed to get working, to be up and doing. Tomorrow he would get the dossier and he had no doubts that, having read it, he would understand why he was here and what it was he was supposed to do. If McBride said that’s how it would be, that was exactly how it would be. Although it probably wouldn’t be all that it would be.
Chapter Seven
The following morning at ten thirty M. Joubert was not in the office. The receptionist said he was away on business but he’d left an envelope to be collected by a Monsieur Costello whom he had said would call. She knew who he was from his previous visit but just as a formality he showed her his passport, which he always had on him, and she handed over the envelope. It was the big, strong padded sort with no label or writing. He took it, left, made his way to a nearby café, and, after ordering a coffee, opened it. Inside there was a plastic folder containing two sheets of paper and copies of three old photographs. One sheet was covered with print and the other had a couple of lines of handwriting. Jimmy pushed the photos and the short note to one side and began reading the page of printed text.
The woman known as Mme Colmar was born Alicia Müller in the German Alsace in 1912. She was the second child of a wealthy industrialist. The family were ruined during WW1. Her father committed suicide shortly before being arrested for selling substandard materials to the German army which cost the lives of a considerable number of troops. After the war ended Alicia, with her mother and an older brother, left Germany and went to America. Nothing is known of Alicia’s life there until a Boston police report of 1928 that stated her brother had died in a knife-fight in a brothel. Alicia was named as one of the girls working in the brothel and the brother was identified as part-owner. The next report of Alicia appears in a confidential file from the Boston Mayor’s Office dated 1931. Local politicians, senior police officers, and important local businessmen were named as regular clients of a local madam who ran a high-class establishment. The file indicated that blackmail of clients was strongly suspected and that evidence of considerable sums from clients had been paid into accounts which were indirectly controlled by the madam. There was a reference to an appendix containing statements from some of those clients who were suspected of being victims of this blackmail. That appendix seems to have been removed at some point from the report. The file was stamped as inactive with a note that no official action was recommended. This note was initialled by the then chief of police and countersigned by the deputy mayor on behalf of the mayor. Alicia was the madam. Nothing more is known of her until she registered the birth of a daughter, Thèrése , born at a private hospital in 1934. No father’s name appeared on the birth certificate.
Alicia next surfaced in Paris in 1937 where she bought a large house in a fashionable neighbourhood. By that time she had become Mme Colmar. From the records of various transactions and from other reliable sources it seems that she presented herself as an American widow with one daughter, wealthy and a devout Catholic. Before Paris fell to the Germans in 1940 Mme Colmar sent her daughter to the US. Shortly after her daughter left a young Waffen SS officer attached to the German Paris Headquarters staff moved into her house and Mme Colmar openly assumed the role of his mistress. From Paris she made frequent trips to Switzerland. A short time before the D-Day landings in June 1944 the officer was transferred to the Eastern Front. Soon after the allies had landed in Normandy Mme Colmar closed her house and left for Switzerland. Through lawyers in Switzerland she re
nted her Paris house to an order of nuns who took up residence at the end of the war. Mme Colmar lived on in Switzerland until she died in 2000 aged 88. In her will she left everything to her daughter, Thèrése , and made the nuns in Paris her executors on condition they instituted a thorough search for the daughter. They were given permission to stay at the house until her daughter was found and could decide for herself what would happen to the property.
No trace of the daughter could be found. An examination of what records are available show that she was sent to the US by her mother in 1940 at the age of six and was placed in a convent boarding school. All fees and other expenses were paid by a lawyer’s office in Manhattan. She appears to have had no visitors and spent her holidays at the school among the nuns. School records show her as a talented pupil who could speak four languages fluently by the age of twelve and loved music, especially the singing of Gregorian chants. She ran away from her convent school at 16 with a black musician in 1950. How she met him no one knew. They disappeared. If she is still alive there is still no trace of where she is or if she had any children.
As far as can be ascertained Mme Colmar, née Müller, had no other known relatives. If no heir can be found within a reasonable time her considerable wealth will be disposed of through a Swiss court.
Jimmy put the sheet of paper down and picked up a photo. It was a woman in her mid-twenties. She was beautiful but her looks were diminished somewhat by the severity of her black dress and the way she looked out of the picture, unsmiling, with eyes that told you nothing. It was a posed portrait probably in a photographer’s studio. He turned over the photo. Handwritten on the back was:
Mme Colmar 1937 location unknown .
The other photo was of a young German SS officer in dress uniform. Jimmy looked at the back. Also handwritten was , Obersturmführer Erich Streubel 1939. Promoted Hauptsturmführer 1940 and posted to Paris HQ. Promoted Sturmbannführer 1942. Promoted Obersturmbannführer 1944 and posted to the eastern front. Died in 2006 as the result of a hit and run incident in Munich while in his wheelchair outside his care home.
Jimmy turned the photo over, looked at the young soldier, and did a quick calculation. If he’d been around twenty when he was in Paris then in 2006 he’d have to have been in his eighties. How the hell does somebody survive the whole of a war, including a spell on the Eastern Front, and then get killed over sixty years later in his wheelchair outside his care home? He went back to the writing. The ranks meant nothing but one date did – 1940. Promoted, posted to Paris HQ, and shacked up with Mme Colmar all in one year. Good going even for wartime.
Jimmy picked up the last photo, a sad-looking, pretty young girl in her early teens in a school blazer and tartan skirt, standing beside a smiling nun in full old-fashioned rig-out. On the back was written,
Thèrése Colmar and an unknown sister 1947.
That was all. He put it down beside the other two photos and picked up the short note which was handwritten in the same hand as the writing on the backs of the photos.
Gathering this information has almost certainly alerted other parties to our involvement in this matter. The value of the inheritance is substantial and we must presume others know about it and are interested, especially in the light of the death of Erich Streubel. We must act accordingly.
Jimmy pushed everything together, put it all into the plastic folder and back into the envelope.
He liked the way she said ‘our involvement’ and ‘we must act accordingly’.
He spoke almost silently to himself.
‘Sod the “we”. I’m the only one out in the open on this. Anyone interested will be watching Paris not Rome which means they’ll be watching me.’
But she was right about one thing, he would definitely have to act accordingly.
He took a sip of his coffee. It was cold so he left it. He had only bought it to be able to sit at the table and go through the dossier.
He let his mind go through what he knew so far.
Colmar was put on the game by her brother from a very early age and it must have taken plenty of guts to get off her back and set up in business for herself. And she was shrewd, she had brains. She didn’t set up just any old cat-house, it was high-class with the right kind of customers, ones who would make sure she and they were left alone. But they were also the ones who would be most vulnerable to blackmail.
Yes, thought Jimmy, a strong, smart lady. A lady who knew how to take care of herself. A lady who was trouble even from beyond the grave.
Chapter Eight
The waiter passed and Jimmy ordered a beer. It was still a bit early but he wanted to sit and think and he didn’t want another coffee.
Colmar had used her business to burrow into the underbelly of Boston’s establishment and that had probably given her a fair share of powerful friends. But her sideline in blackmail must also have given her plenty of equally powerful enemies. Running a brothel and blackmailing your best clients was a very dangerous game so maybe, if the enemies started getting too close, that was why she jumped over to Europe. Or maybe she decided she’d milked enough from her racket and wanted some sort of life for herself and her kid while she was still young enough to enjoy it. If that was how it was then she wouldn’t stay in America. In America she could never be sure of being safe. But even living in Europe she would have made sure she’d got some solid insurance tucked away somewhere in case anyone decided to come looking for her.
The beer arrived. Jimmy poured some into his glass and took a drink.
But Colmar didn’t stay retired, did she? She may have meant to become a comfortable, pious bourgeois lady and mother, but the war got in the way. And she obviously still hadn’t got her old habits out of her system. She was up to something during the occupation of Paris and it wasn’t just rumpy-pumpy with a dashing Young Hitler from the SS. And whatever she was up to in the war had surfaced again and was important enough to get McBride involved, which means somehow it involves the Church.
Jimmy pulled out the printed notes and checked them. She’d died in 2000 so that would be when her goods, whatever they were, came up for grabs. Whatever she had amongst them it seemed no one was in any hurry to get hold of it during her lifetime. However she’d done it, the old girl had made sure that as long as she was alive she and her property were left alone. But if someone was interested why not make a move as soon as she died? Why not put in some sort of claim? It wasn’t as if the daughter was sitting on the lawyer’s step waiting to collect her inheritance.
He let his mind circle the question. Maybe they wanted to see if the legitimate heir, the daughter, would surface. No, they’d have been watching and as soon as the nuns gave up they’d have made a move to stake their claim, and nobody had made any move. The thing just lapsed. Then, six years after Ma Colmar hands in her chips, somebody pops Young Hitler while he’s outside his care home sitting in his wheelchair. That had to be a planned killing. Who the hell gets killed in an accident like that? In a wheelchair parked outside a care home. How weird is that for a way to die, for God’s sake?
Jimmy lined up the questions.
Why wait so long? If there was something important in the estate why not manufacture a claim when the daughter didn’t surface? And why kill Young Hitler? He had no claim on the estate, did he? Or did he? Maybe he had some sort of claim but didn’t know it.
As Jimmy’s mind circled the questions came, plenty of questions. As for answers … there were none. Yet.
Jimmy took a drink and poured the rest of the beer from the bottle into his glass. There was no doubt that Young Hitler, he checked the name, Erich Streubel, had been murdered, ‘… as the result of a hit and run incident.’ Some bloody incident.
Jimmy put the papers and photos back together and closed the folder. OK, he’d read the dossier. What was he supposed to do? McBride said he’d know.
He called the waiter and ordered another beer. This needed thinking about. One thing was certain, it wasn’t going to be easy or straightforw
ard and at least one person had already been killed. The more he looked into this thing the less happy he felt. Not life threatening?
If it looks evil, smells evil, and makes evil noises, then it has to be evil, and he didn’t want to be the one in the way when whatever it was it broke loose.
The beer arrived and as he poured it and took a drink he suddenly realised that McBride had been right as always. He now knew exactly what he had to do. It would indeed life-threatening to somebody but, if he was careful and made the right moves from day one, he should be able to make damn sure it wasn’t his life that got put in the frame and was threatened. That he would leave to somebody else.
Chapter Nine
He knew it as soon as he got back to his hotel room. They were out there all right and they were watching. It had been well done, very professional, but there was no way you could turn over a room, even a hotel room, and not leave signs for anybody who was used to looking, which meant they didn’t mind him knowing he’d had visitors. Maybe they even wanted him to know to see what he would do about it.
OK, what was he going to do?
First things first, ditch the dossier.
Jimmy went down to the reception.
‘I’d like something delivered by courier. Can you arrange that?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Can you make it now, immediately?’
‘I will try, sir.’
The man pulled out what looked like a directory, thumbed through it, found what he wanted, and made a call.
‘What is it you wish delivered?’
Jimmy put the big envelope on the desk and the man went back to the call, finished, and put the phone down
‘The rider will be here shortly.’
Jimmy wrote the lawyer’s name and address on the envelope clearly in block capitals and then borrowed a roll of tape and taped it up securely.
‘What’s the name of the courier company?’ The man told him a name. Jimmy picked up the envelope. ‘Thanks. I’ll wait over there.’
