Once again, a man with a big family. ‘And are her suitcases heavier when you leave or when you arrive?’
She would duck her eyes and say it modestly, thought Mariette. ‘Heavier when we arrive. Always it is this way.’
‘And how many banks does she visit for that husband of hers?’
Madame would kill her if she knew about her telling him, but he was of the Gestapo and had shown her his badge. ‘Three. One in Zurich, another in Bern, and the last in Lausanne. It … it is best that way, is it not?’
This kid wasn’t dumb and had figured it all out, had damned well known it was illegal for any citizen of the Reich to send or hold money in a foreign bank, yet they all did it, those who could.
In the master bedroom a flowery dust of icing sugar fell from the Turkish delight the detective sampled. Herr Kohler noticed this dust as he noticed everything, and even as he nodded and said, ‘Pas mal, pas mal — not bad — she knew he was thinking she was counting the bonbons because Madame would most certainly do so later.
‘I’ll leave her a little note,’ he said, eating another.
‘Please don’t. You … you mustn’t. Just let her blame me as she often does when she loses count. I … I will eventually be forgiven.’
‘What does she pay you?’
‘Fifty a week.’
Two hundred francs a month! And yet … and yet such maids, even those who had taken the trouble to learn a little deutsch — and this one knew far more than that — were dirt cheap and easy to come by. The French bourgeoisie had seen to that. And one did get fed, clothed and have a room, even though it was usually nothing but a filthy garret and as cold as Siberia in winter. But this one must have been treated far better and, under Frau Schlacht’s firm hand, no doubt, had learned to bathe and groom herself every day or else.
‘Saturday afternoons, after the flea market, I am allowed to visit my family and to … to take them a few little things that are no longer needed here.’
A stale loaf of bread, a half-litre of wine — the dregs of a dead soldier? wondered Kohler. A suspect egg, a few withered carrots, even the icing sugar that would soon be left in the bottom of this box.
The detective set the bonbons on the bedside table among the clutter of figurines. He touched the Art Deco alarm clock Madame had found last Saturday. He sat down on the edge of her bed and ran a hand over the antique lace of its spread, but did not say pas mal this time, for he was now concentrating on the photograph of Madame’s son whose frame was draped in black.
‘A sergeant and so young,’ said Mariette, surprised by the steadiness of her voice, for the room had grown quiet and the clock, it must have stopped. Ah no!
‘A midshipman on a U-boat, a Fähnrich zur See in Unterseebooten,’ muttered the detective, and there was to this giant with the terrible scar the sadness of a father who had, perhaps, lost a son himself. The postcard he picked up had the photograph of men firing the bow cannon of a submarine, and beneath this, the words of a song. ‘Kameraden auf See,’ he snorted sadly. ‘That’s an eighty-eight millimetre gun, probably the most versatile thing to have come out of this lousy war so far. Is this the medal she kisses before bed? It’s the boy’s Kriegsabzeichen. Every man aboard a U-boat gets one after two sorties. Two is good and damned lucky. Three are possible. Four is … Well, you must know all about that.’
He ran a forefinger over the eagle and swastika above the badge’s U-boat, then indicated the oval wreath of oak leaves around it. ‘When did his boat go down?’ he asked.
‘In December. The fifteenth. A Tuesday.’
And still fresh in Frau Schlacht’s mind.
‘Madame lost her brother in the Great War. She …’
‘Hates you French.’
‘But myself not so much, I think.’
This kid had really learned her lessons.
There were photos on the wall next to a landscape of Renoir’s: black, cheaply-framed snapshots of the three Schlacht daughters. The youngest was a fresh-faced Luftwaffe Signals Auxiliary; the middle one, a Red Cross nurse, but taken in the summer of 1941 during the blitzkrieg in the east and not among the shattered, snow-covered ruins of Stalingrad. The eldest, a big, round-faced replica of Herr Schlacht, wore the grin, the uptilted goggles and dungarees of a scrap-metal cutter with torch in the yards along the Luisenstädter Kanal.
The detective eased the bedside table drawer open and ran his pale blue eyes over the contents. He touched the neckerchief Madame’s son had worn on parade as a Hitlerjugend and noted that it was tightly crumpled and damp.
‘She still cries,’ said Mariette softly. ‘A mother must, is that not so, monsieur?’
The boy’s pocketknife — black-handled and with an oval portrait of the German Führer and stainless steel eagle and swastika — was there, too, and as the detective fingered it, she heard herself saying, ‘Klaus forgot to take it with him when he last visited Paris in November. Madame … Madame feels his leaving it behind was an ill omen for which she blames herself for not having sent it on to him by special courier. But you see, she did not know where to send it.’
‘Lorient, probably. It’s on the Breton Coast. My partner and I were there not so long ago. A dollmaker. The Kapitän zur See Kaestner.’
‘But … but could it have been the same boat and now you’ve come here, too?’ she blurted, revealing at once that she, herself, might quite possibly be superstitious.
The detective looked up at her and shrugged, but there was not the emptiness that had just been in his gaze. Now there was a warmth, the loss of loved ones, the feeling, yes, that all were a part of this war and that he had had enough of it.
Unlike Madame, he spoke French and well, and this was a curious thing, but had it made her tongue loose? wondered Mariette and hazarded, for it was not her place to demand, ‘Have you seen enough, monsieur?’
‘I’ll leave in a minute. Don’t worry. Just don’t tell her I was here, eh? and remember your concierge, Madame Jouvand, is also on board and won’t say a thing.’
He examined the Louis Vuitton trousse de toilette Madame had bought — an extravagance she had lamented but had not denied herself. He examined her jewellery, such as it was.
‘Marcasite,’ he said, fingering a bracelet. ‘Onyx and carnelian — most of these are from what was once Isaac Kahn’s factory in Pforzheim. Mein Gott, does she not realize he was Jewish? I may have to report it. You remember I said so, eh?’ And grâce à Dieu for that little bit of ammunition!
There were plastic bracelets and bangles, chrome neckchains — the gaudy, cheap and plain, when Madame could have had the very best.
There were sturdy black leather shoes fit for walking all day, lisle stockings, no silk ones, not her, thought Kohler — silk was for parachutes. There were stiff, prewar woollen skirts and jackets, a small pin on the lapel of one. ‘The Honour Cross of the German Mother,’ he said. ‘A bronze …’
A Tyrolean hat à la Fräulein Braun caught his eye and he asked, ‘Like Eva, does your mistress spend her time waiting for the light of her life to come home?’
‘He’s never here. Well, not never. Only sometimes.’
‘In and out, eh?’
‘She hopes he will stay and invariably begs him to, but he’s … he’s very busy.’
‘So, okay, tell me where you went last Thursday?’
The detective had not said why he had come to the flat. ‘She … she went out at about two in the afternoon. That … that is all I know.’
A cautious answer. ‘Did she take anything with her?’
‘I … I do not think so, monsieur. Just her handbag. The big one.’
‘You can do better than that.’
The emptiness had come back into his eyes. He patted the bedspread and indicated she had better sit down beside him. ‘It helps,’ he said tonelessly. Would he now beat her, force her to answer — torture her? wondered Mariette and felt tears rushing into her eyes.