by Pirate Irwin
Lafarge grunted and turned on his heel and returned to the drawing room where he opened up an elegant writing desk, searching for any correspondence or a diary perhaps that might at least give them an idea of the victim’s movements.
Having just returned to Paris it was unlikely there would be much in the way of letters but a diary was a better likelihood. He found one of the compartments locked and failing to find the key he forced it open with a letter-opener. Inside there was indeed a diary and an address book.
Lafarge pocketed both – good bedtime reading he was sure – and turned to Levau.
“You drink, Levau?”
Levau looked surprised, but nodded his head vigorously.
“Good, time for a banging of heads together then.”
****
“So nobody heard anything?” asked Lafarge as he sipped at his second cognac.
“Don’t you find that strange, Levau?”
Levau who was also on his second cognac – understandable given the state of the corpse in his first murder case – said he did find it strange and that even if the Count had first been strangled the floor in the bedroom was parquet so the sounds of a struggle must have been evident to the inhabitant or inhabitants in the flat below.
“I agree. Have we spoken to he, she or it?” asked Lafarge drily.
“It is a he and she, sir, a couple called Courneuve. No, they are one of those we still need to talk to. He is an art collector and she is a former model, both of them also just returned from exile,” said Levau.
Lafarge looked sharply at Levau wondering if this remark had been made at his expense and that the drink had loosened his tongue a little bit too much. He let it pass and tried to make light of it.
“Christ, Levau, it is not the return of the Bourbons we are dealing with here. And I for one am certainly not Fouché!” he said referring to Napoleon’s Minister of Police who had seamlessly transferred his allegiance to the Bourbon monarchy once they were restored to the throne after the defeat of the Emperor.
Levau smiled.
“Indeed, sir, you are not. Anyway, what I meant was that there are certain similarities between the victim and the Courneuves, namely the interest in art and they have spent the Occupation outside France,” he said looking suitably pleased.
Lafarge admitted he had the right to feel satisfied with his conclusion.
“Yes, they are definitely of interest. The quicker they are ruled in or out the better, and they could be a useful source of information on the Count. I take it that they both owned their apartments before the war?”
“Yes. The Count was left his by his late father, who died in 1938, while the Courneuves, according to the concierge, moved in in May 1940,” said Levau.
Lafarge was intrigued by this piece of information; why would they have bought an expensive piece of property like that when the Nazis were banging on France’s door? He didn’t believe that there were too many people naïve enough to have been taken in by the invincibility of the French Army and the impregnable defences of the Maginot Line.
“That is strange. Levau, I want you to look in to who they bought the apartment from, for how much and then why they left or rather when they left. It strikes me that they wouldn’t have bought an apartment in such a smart area unless they supported the Nazis,” said Lafarge.
Levau looked sceptical.
“Don’t you think you are jumping to conclusions a bit quickly about the Courneuves, sir? I admit the timing is odd, but then they wouldn’t have been the only French people to have been over confident of repelling the Wehrmacht,” said Levau.
“Tell me about it!” said Lafarge sourly.
Levau sat there silently cradling his near empty glass, prompting Lafarge to order them a third from the cranky-looking waiter, who had been on the point of shutting when they arrived but had desisted from grumbling when Lafarge flashed his ID.
“For what it is worth, I was on the front line when the Wehrmacht swept aside any illusions we might have had of defeating them, and then had the next two years to mull over the humiliation in a prisoner of war camp,” said Lafarge.
Levau swallowed and looked away.
“No need to do that, Levau. I haven’t told you that because I want you to think any differently of me. I imagine it didn’t figure in the briefing you were given when you were told who your partner would be.
“I only told you because being on the front line in reality we were not very optimistic about keeping them at bay, hence why I question the confidence of the Courneuves.
Many people stayed in Paris till the end but I would wager that property dealings did not figure high among the business conducted at that time.”
Levau smiled warmly at Lafarge.
“I appreciate you telling me that, sir. But believe it or not I didn’t receive much of a briefing on you, the Commissaire simply said you weren’t used to partners, that you were overall a man of integrity but that you had perhaps too much of a streak of independence in you and I was to watch my step,” said Levau.
“A few more of those, Levau, and you won’t even be able to put one foot in front of the other!” joked Lafarge pointing at his partner’s empty glass.
Levau blushed, Lafarge couldn’t tell whether it was the effect of the drink or his comment had struck a chord with his younger partner.
“Okay, Levau, that will be it for today. I am going to go home and do some reading,” said Lafarge patting the diary and the address book which lay on the table.
“You can take the night off and in the morning you begin to look into the Courneuves. I think it best we await the outcome of your enquiries before we question them, just in case there is something we can use to extract information from them if they prove less than helpful,” said Lafarge.
****
Lafarge didn’t get through much of his reading that evening as he received a call from Pinault telling him, as he had feared, there had been a disturbance at the apartment block of the Cambedessus and he thought it best the Chief Inspector go round and deal with it.
Lafarge protested, but to no avail, and still feeling groggy after the cognacs he drove round to Rue Vaneau and to his dismay found a largish crowd gathered outside the building.
He shoved them aside crudely yelling ‘Police! Police!’, saw no sign of a uniformed presence and made to go up the stairs as he saw that there was a notice hanging from the lift handle that it was out of order. He would have found it amusing any other time but for the fact he had four flights of stairs to climb and he feared what he would find when he got to the apartment.
He arrived out of breath to find there were two gendarmes standing outside what he took to be the front door of the apartment where Berenice lived. It didn’t augur well for what was inside as the door was daubed with a swastika and the word ‘whore’ was splashed over the double doors. He told one of the gendarmes to get the concierge to wash it off or do his best to cover it up.
When the gendarme tried to protest at having to go down the stairs and then up again, Lafarge told him so long as he sent the concierge up he could stay down there and keep the crowd at bay.
The other gendarme told Lafarge that she was alive and they had called a doctor, but she had asked them to stay outside. Lafarge thanked him and entered the apartment.
It was like a building site: paintings lay destroyed on the floor; china was smashed; furniture lay in heaps of broken wood in the hallway, the drawing room and the dining room; offensive graffiti was everywhere to be seen. There was also a smell of burnt wood and he saw that someone had tried to light a fire and thankfully had either failed or been prevented from doing so.
Of Berenice there was no sign, though it didn’t take long for him to find her because of the sobbing coming from a room at the end of the corridor. Holding his breath, he walked briskly down the corridor and entered the room. It was, he guessed, the marital bedroom, where she had also passed her time with the Colonel, but aside from the inevitable damage to everything
breakable in the room, it was her hunched figure cowering in the corner that was of more immediate import.
He turned on a light at the doorway as he didn’t want to trip over anything, and then reeled back in horror at the sight of her: her head was shaven; her hair lay in shreds on the floor not only round her but in a trail from the door to where she now sat. The savage manner in which her hair had been torn from her head had left her skull a bloodied mess; she was also stark naked, and was so terrorised she tried to crawl away from him as he approached her.
“Don’t be alarmed, Berenice, it’s me Gaston Lafarge. I got a call from my superior and he told me you were in trouble so I came over as quickly as I could. Here, I’m going to hand you a blanket and I will look away as you wrap it round you,” he said gently and held out a red blanket he found tossed on the floor.
She raised her head as she reached out for the blanket, and whatever he had seen before paled into insignificance to what he saw now: she had a black swastika engraved, or he hoped had just been painted, on her forehead; she had two black eyes; her nose looked as if it had been broken as it was seriously out of joint; and her mouth was purple.
He was seething with rage both at whoever had done this – whether it had been the mob or a vigilante it was totally unjustified – and at himself for not having listened to Pinault, and conceded it best she was kept inside.
He told her he would be back as soon as possible and strode down the corridor to tell the remaining gendarme to send the doctor right in once he arrived. Noticing the concierge was nowhere to be seen he yelled down the stairs to the other gendarme to get someone else to clean up the mess or he would be spending the rest of the night doing it himself.
“It could be difficult, sir. They are all refusing to come up as they say she got what she deserved as she was nothing but a Nazi whore!” the gendarme yelled back.
Lafarge had had enough.
“Tell those righteous souls that unless I see someone, or plural, people, up here in 10 minutes I will come down and haul them upstairs by force!” he shouted.
The gendarme replied he would see it was done. Lafarge went back inside and slammed the doors shut before for the second time in days he slumped down beside Berenice, who hadn’t moved an inch, and held her in his arms.
He always knew there would be a settling of accounts when the Nazis were booted out but to attack women in such a manner – to degrade them and to make them the examples of collaboration – was the basest of crimes.
For however the mob tried to justify this sort of attack it was indefensible and Lafarge vowed that he would hunt down the person responsible for this crime and he would deal with it in his own manner.
He had murdered three people. He could sit easily with a fourth, for the type of person who did this sort of thing only deserved justice of a certain kind – the Lafarge method.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lafarge wandered wearily into the Quai the following morning, each of the steps on the winding staircase a challenge in itself. He had spent the whole night at Berenice’s, ending up lifting her onto the bed and letting her sleep though she had only done so in fits and starts.
The elderly doctor had dressed her facial wounds as best he could, said that she should go a hospital to have her nose corrected, and then left her some painkillers which he advised Lafarge to administer himself as in her disturbed mental state she could well deliberately take an overdose.
It was as dawn broke that she finally spoke, telling Lafarge with frequent pauses, as she battled with her emotions, what had happened. A uniformed gendarme, an officer, had appeared at her door and said he had been sent to see if she was all right and had had no trouble with her neighbours. She had let him in as he said he wished to make sure there was no one in the apartment and had then forced himself on her and raped her.
On leaving he had in order to cover up his crime left the door open and worked the locals up into a frenzy that a Nazi whore was in their midst and they should do something about it. A dozen or so had burst into her flat and, well, he had seen for himself what they had done. They had not raped her, saying they would not touch something the Boche had already dirtied, but they had done the rest, shaving her head and stamping the swastika on her head.
Lafarge had pressed her as hard as he could on the appearance of the gendarme – what rank, his name and any other details she could remember – but she was incapable of recalling any. Lafarge told her that could wait but it would be helpful if at some point she was able to furnish him with some clues.
On the way to the Quai he had dropped her at the hospital La Pitié Salpêtrière close to Notre Dame, and left one of the fatigued gendarmes – who out of sensitiivity to Berenice he had dressed in some plain clothes he had found in a wardrobe in the apartment – to keep her company. He had left them there and driven the short distance to the Quai telling the gendarme to take her home afterwards.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and seeing no sign of Levau he opened up the diary and the address book of the Count, which he had preferred to keep with him even when Pinault had called him to go to Berenice’s.
He focused first on the dates since de Boinville had returned to Paris, and saw that little was noted down, and what he took to be people’s names were solely in initials.
This was going to be hard going, thought Lafarge. The night of the murder, he had had drinks and dinner, or was due to at any rate, with JC and JM, with the added flourish of ‘what a joy it will be to be in their company again’, and that was it.
There were references to a meeting with a GP for the day after, which was underlined three times, and of the Courneuves there could be several references as there was drinks with HC and tea with MC, on two of the seven days he had been in Paris. He would have to wait for Levau to turn up so as to firm that one up.
Lafarge was on the point of leafing through the address book to see if he could hurry up the process of working out whom these people were when Pinault walked in.
“So I hear it wasn’t pretty,” said Pinault while in the process of pouring himself a coffee, which was as thick as treacle and pretty much undrinkable.
“No, sir, that is the least one can say. It was bloody awful. Seeing the after-effects of mob justice is distressing, and I can only imagine what else is taking place round France in the name of the liberators.
“Is this what it is all about, so people can wreak revenge on others, and sometimes the perpetrators are as guilty as the ones they are raping and murdering,” said Lafarge bitterly.
“The worst thing about this one was that it was an officer who raped her and then encouraged the locals to run riot. How can one restore order and faith in a police force if we have men going round doing that,” he added.
He admitted to himself that what he was saying was hypocrisy of the highest order, though he justified it by the trio of his victims being two collaborators and an officer of the occupying army.
Pinault laughed mirthlessly.
“Yes, the admirable resistants of the last minute, or indeed some even after the fact. As for the gendarme officer, we don’t know whether he really was one; he could have just come by the uniform. Who knows he could have killed the poor sod who he is now impersonating.
“Sadly, Lafarge, we are powerless to prevent all these unattractive incidents happening. This is a bloodletting and settling of accounts that was inevitable, and hopefully will abate after a few days.
“However, there are barely enough of us to deal with the ordinary day-to-day crime.
“Talking of which, what are your initial thoughts about your case? I don’t see Levau anywhere so please tell me you haven’t lost a partner within 24 hours!” he said.
Lafarge, who was having difficulty drinking the coffee and yearned to go to the local café on the corner and have a passable espresso and the added zip of a cognac, smiled darkly.
“No, sir, he is I hope making enquiries into a couple who lived below the victim. They could be of some
interest as dates of their return and the victim coincide, they both shared an interest in art, and the couple was not around to be questioned.
“They could simply have gone out but they did not return all day, and I would be very surprised if they didn’t hear anything the night of the murder, were they at home at the time.
“Meanwhile I am sifting through his diary and the address book to try and put names to initials. I can’t promise immediate results I’m afraid,” said Lafarge.
Pinault came and took a chair which was positioned on the other side of Lafarge’s desk.
“Well I can help you with some of the background of the victim.”
“Please be my guest. Noticing that bulge in your pocket I was conjecturing whether you might be able to spice up the conversation!’ said Lafarge.
His superior grinned and withdrew a silver hip flask, unscrewed the top and poured them both a draught.
“Yes, I brought some of your favourite tipple cognac along, Lafarge. Though I would urge you not to go back to the amount you were consuming in the bad old days. Maigret may be able to drink to his heart’s content but he is a fictional character – you, good or bad, are real.”
“Point taken, commissaire,” said Lafarge raising the chipped cup to his lips and drinking it all in one.
“Now let’s get down to business. Count de Boinville was a trusted confidant of the General; he was regarded as one of the potential candidates to be Foreign Minister once France has been totally liberated and we are a nation again. For the moment, though, he was acting as a go-between with the General and the Allies.
“Not an easy task, but he was very well respected and I believe liked by the British Foreign Minister Eden, and the Americans judged him to be someone they could deal with. Well it was anyone but de Gaulle for them in terms of meeting one-to-one.”
Pinault paused and Lafarge used the opportunity to hijack the hip flask and pour them another dose of the excellent cognac.
“I can sense a ‘but’ coming and not one which one finds in ashtrays, sir,” he said.
