When Kohler got behind the wheel all Louis said was ‘Four names, mon vieux. One of whom was killed at Sedan during the invasion of 1940. Another who no longer lives in the quartier but visits a certain lupanar late on Sunday evenings and takes Charlotte whose age is eighteen in that very room.’
‘What room?’ blurted Kohler, baffled by the thought trend but intrigued.
‘Please don’t interrupt me. Two others, Hermann, who are married and with families but are locked up in POW camps in the Reich just as, supposedly, is Madame de Bonnevies’ precious son.’
‘Oflag 17A.’
‘It’s just a thought.’
‘Louis, Rudi says Schlacht’s fucking Madame de Bonnevies.’
‘Did he really say that?’
‘Not really, but enough.’
‘In return for which?’
‘Schlacht must have put the fifty thousand francs down at Maxim’s for her to get her son back. Why else was that little badge of his in her drawer? Why else the expensive lingerie and the menu?’
‘The son, then, and that’s what the daughter tried to hide from me, but really, Hermann, Herr Schlacht could have any …’
‘He has.’
‘Who?’
‘His secretary.’
‘Then you will have to prove to me that he really is consorting with madame.’
‘Why me? Why not you?’
‘Are you ordering me to keep a watch on her when I have already too much to do?’
‘Louis, this is serious. Boemelburg has warned us to lay off.’
‘Even though the Kommandant von Gross-Paris is insisting we do no such thing?’
They’d be shouting at each other in a moment. ‘Oberg won’t stand for our interfering again. Let it lie, Louis. Say it was an accident.’
‘An accident.’
‘Misadventure. Rudi says there are flying bombs and that they’re to be pointed at England from launching ramps that are already being built in the north. He wouldn’t have told me that had he thought it wouldn’t convince me to be a good Nazi for once.’
‘And has it convinced you? Is the one-thousand-year Reich really here to stay, Hermann?’
‘I don’t know. Verdammt! I wish I did.’
‘Then in the interim, mon ami de guerre, let me visit the sister while you …’
Hermann knew he’d have to say it. ‘Visit Frau Schlacht.’
‘Who may have paid our beekeeper a little visit on the night of his death — is this what worries you, Hermann?’
‘Not really, but now that you’ve brought the possibility to my attention, I’ll be sure to ask her.’
‘Bon! For all we know at present, she could just as easily have given him that bottle as anyone else!’
‘Idiot, it’s the wife she’d have wanted to get rid of, not de Bonnevies, particularly if Schlacht is running around with madame!’
‘And that, mon enfant, is precisely what I meant.’
Ah merde, the Amaretto, thought Kohler. Had it not been meant for the beekeeper at all, but for madame?
Out of the darkness and the falling snow, the silhouette of the Salpêtrière grew, and the line of its many roofs stretched from the rue Jenner almost to the Gare d’Austerlitz, along the south side of the boulevard d’Hôpital.
Pausing to search for a visible light — some sign of life within — St-Cyr found only one tiny pinprick of blue above the main entrance. Every window and door would be secured behind heavy black-out curtains. Oh bien sûr, the staff would open those curtains during the day — they were really very conscientious, so much so, the hospital ranked among the finest. But still there would be that mesh of stiff steel wire, still the bolts, the necessary locks, guards, warders, nurses, doctors, cooks, et cetera.
‘Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies,’ he softly said and wondered what he’d find. She’d be forty-six years old now.
The patients would be at their evening meal. Soup … would it be soup? And how many of them did they really have — six thousand … eight thousand? Was the cost what troubled the Occupier as much as an unwillingness to recognize that mental illness was not something society should wipe out with injections of potassium cyanide or air?
There was wing after wing to the hospital — those for the criminally insane, others for the suffering of amnesia, depression, hypochondria and senile dementia. On visiting days, the triangular foyer would be crowded with relatives and loved ones — two thousand, perhaps three thousand of these, with vendors, too. Ersatz chewing gum — yes, yes, banana-flavoured, cherry also, and apple; flower sellers as well; paper collages and cut-outs, picture books done in cloth or otherwise. From the administrative centre, avenues opened up and these were named after the permanent shops they led to. And which one would he follow? Which would she walk every day of her life? The rue de tabac, where now no tobacco would be available? The rue de la pâtisserie where painted plaster and papier-mâché mock-ups would give the lie of plenty as they did all over the city? Éclairs, petits fours and babas au rhum? Would they allow such lies or simply have empty shelves?
The street of the market was one of the most popular, since the hospital was to be as much like a small town as possible.
Of the two bronzes at the entrance, only one remained: that of Dr Philippe Pinel who, in the 1790s, was one of the great pioneers in the humane treatment of the mentally ill. The other, that of the world-famous neurologist Dr Jean Martin Charcot, had been removed by the Occupier last year. Cast out for having influenced Freud, among others of his students. A man who had pioneered the use of hypnotism in the treatment of hysteria, Charcot had lived from 1825 until 1893; Freud had, of course, been Jewish.
Shaking his head in despair at the long memories of the Occupier and what had happened to France, he went in to the administrative desk, pulled out his badge and ID and said, as always in such places, a stern, grim, ‘St-Cyr. Sûreté. It’s urgent, so please don’t argue. Just get me whoever is in charge of the wing in which Mademoiselle Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies resides. Her dossier also.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘As are most things these days until a little persuasion is applied.’
Namely the Gestapo. ‘Wait here. I’ll ring for him.’
‘Bon.’
The smell of eau de Javel was pungent. Water dripped constantly from leaking faucets. The white, enamelled cast-iron washtubs were chipped, the light so dim it was as if a fog had seeped into the corridor.
All that remained of Louis XIII’s gunpowder factory were this wet, grey marble floor and these two limestone walls with their black iron bolts and the heavy ceiling timbers. Later, sconces of wrought iron had been added to give torch- and candlelight, but that had been in 1656 when the Salpêtrière, then so named, had been an asylum for vagrants.
‘Inspector, please be careful. She is … How should I put it? Almost normal. Deceptively so,’ said the doctor.
The woman wore grey — an undershift — and the dress she frantically scrubbed was grey, too, as were the galvanized iron ripples on the washboard she used. Her hair was blonde, but pale and cut short so that it stood well out from her and above the shoulders. Thick and teased by constant, rhythmic brushing.
Apparently she paid no attention to them, to the dripping of adjacent faucets, the damp cold, dim light, fog and constant smell of Javel. And her voice — she was talking to herself — was not shrill but earnest. ‘You will be poisoned, Angèle. I drank water, idiot. You know the poison wasn’t in it! Ah, you think I’m crazy? I know where you are. You were in the chapel. I’m in the garden. There were clowns. You were on the trapeze; Angèle. Madame la sous-maîtresse Durand was riding an elephant. You were …’