‘Look, I won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘My partner and I don’t do that sort of thing. I just have to know.’
‘She … she went out, that’s all. She did not say where to, nor when I had got myself ready, did she want me to accompany her. Always she does, but … but not that time.’
‘And when she came back?’
A hesitation had entered the detective’s voice. ‘She said, “There, it’s done.”‘
‘What was done?’
Hurriedly the girl dried her eyes. ‘I … I really don’t know. Something she had to do. Something important, I think.’
In defeat, the girl’s shoulders drooped, and she folded her hands in her lap.
‘Now tell me about the beekeeper. Give me all you can about his visits. My partner will be sure to ask and gets bitchy if I forget something. You’ve no idea, Mariette. A Sûreté. A Chief Inspector, no less, but impossible!. Merde, you should hear him sometimes!’
‘And where is this “partner” of yours at the moment?’ she asked with wisdom well beyond her tender years.
‘The Salpêtrière.’
‘Ah!’ She tossed her head and nodded. ‘The sister. A tragedy Madame is only too aware of, since Monsieur de Bonnevies always speaks of Angèle-Marie at length when questioned by her.’
Startled, Kohler hazarded, ‘And she never fails to ask him?’
‘Never. Not for some time now.’
‘Is it because of something Madame de Bonnevies did? Well, is it?’
Merde, why had he had to ask, how had he known?
Hastily the girl crossed herself.
‘May God forgive me, yes. Yes, it is because she suspects her husband is having une affaire de coeur with the woman. It’s crazy. I tell her this. I plead with her but … but Madame is of her own mind, monsieur. Of her own mind!’
The detective let a sigh escape. ‘And Herr Schlacht does mess about with the ladies, doesn’t he?’
‘A lot, but not with me. I swear it. She … she put a stop to that before it ever got started. I screamed and she … she heard me.’
There was more to this, there just had to be.
‘She badgered Monsieur de Bonnevies until finally he agreed that, yes, his wife was probably seeing Herr Schlacht,’ said the girl.
‘And not just for an isolated lunch at Maxim’s?’
‘Other places. He … he did not know where.’
‘A candle factory?’
The girl bit a knuckle and tried to stop herself from crying. ‘The Hôtel Titania, on the boulevard Ornano.’
A maison de passe, a seedy hotel where prostitutes, licensed or otherwise, took their ‘lovers’.
‘I know this because I … I have followed Madame de Bonnevies there for Madame.’
The life had gone right out of the kid but he’d have to ask it. ‘Did you see Schlacht go into that hotel?’
‘He … he came in his car.’
She’d have to be told. ‘Then watch yourself. If you feel you have to bolt and run, go at once to 12 rue Suger, in Saint-Germain-des-Près, and ask for Oona or Giselle. They’ll know what to do and will probably hide you in the house of Madame Chabot, around the corner. Failing that, go to the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre in Montparnasse, but use the courtyard entrance and be careful, since the Gestapo’s Watchers may still be taking an interest in the place. Ask for Gabrielle, and tell those Corsican brothers behind the bar that Hermann says it’s urgent and they’re to keep you out of sight or else.’
Shiny brass cowbells hung from dark ceiling timbers and made little sounds when vibrated by the din as Kohler squeezed himself into the Brasserie Buerehiesel. Loud laughter, boisterous, good-natured banter and argument competed with orders for meals, for beer and wine. Crockery clacked, copper pots were banged — there were no signs on the rows of bottles behind the bar saying Nur Attrapen, only for decoration. No coloured water. Not in this establishment.
Schiefala, smoked pork shoulder, served with hot potato salad; Baeckaeoffe, a long-simmered stew of lamb, pork and veal with onions and potatoes; and choucroute, sauerkraut with several types of ham and sausage — the fabulous golden-crusted tarte à l’oignon also — were constantly on the move. One hustling waiter had seven heaped dinners perched in a row on an arm and three in his right hand. How the hell did he do it?
‘Monsieur, your coat, please, and weapon. You do have a weapon?’
The coat-check girl was cute but firm. There were off-duty Felgendarmen on the door and hired especially to bring ease, so everything was okay in that department, but what the girl really meant was the SS ceremonial daggers so many of them would wear. They simply got in the way when sitting cheek to cheek in such long rows. ‘No weapon. Not tonight.’
‘Then please find yourself a seat if you can.’
‘Danke.’
Neighbourhood pub and feedbag, the waiters, cook’s helpers and cook-owner had all been Alsatian fifth columnists prior to the blitzkrieg of 1940 and were now in their element. Meteor Pils, straight from Hochfelden, was on tap; Ackerland too — both the light and the brown. ‘Mortimer … have you Mortimer?’ he shouted at the balding barkeep who had little time and simply said in deutsch, ‘Ah, ein Kenner,’ a connoisseur, and filled a large, clear-glass stein with the dark, strong mother of beers.
‘I needed this,’ said Kohler, squeezing sideways to better look the place over.
A slab of Münster cheese, ripe and seasoned with caraway, passed by — well, actually, there were six slabs of it. There were signs for Schutzenberger beer on the walls, signs for sabots made by a François Schneider, portrait pipes carved by an Adolf Lefèbvre, signs for the red Vorlauf from Marlenheim that surpassed most French burgundies.
There were life-sized tin sculptures of storks wading in ponds or nesting on the roofs of half-timbered bits of home. There was even a gaudy poster of the Baron von Münchhausen in his hot-air balloon; others, too, of ruined castles — Hohenburg, Löwenstein and, yes, Fleckenstein which even Louis XIV couldn’t quite destroy in 1680.
There were alpine scenes and alphorns, one of which some idiot had taken to blowing until silenced.
There were the business suits of the collaborators, of the butter-eggs-and-cheese boys with their petites amies and those of the Occupier. All down the long tunnel of two sets of tables, and under lamps whose light fought with the haze of tobacco smoke and the heady aroma, there were the uniforms, most with tunic buttons undone.
And there, sitting jammed into a far corner beneath the guild sign of a wrought-iron hunting hawk, and staring out over glass and bottle of eau de vie, was Frau Schlacht. The new permanent wave was perfect for the short, thick blonde hair which was parted on the left, the expression empty though, the lips tightly pursed as if deep in thought.
A cigarette, untouched for some time, wasted its life in a saucer before her. In a place of conviviality she sought solitude.
A chalkboard gave the menu. Five hundred francs for the prix fixe of choucroute, a thousand for the roast quail stuffed with goat’s cheese and served with a creamy sauce of preserved white grapes. Other items were in between, and for a bottle of the Pinot Blanc: four hundred francs; for that of the Reisling, six hundred francs; the spicy Gewürztraminer requiring three hundred more.
When what looked to be a seat became free a few places from her, he squeezed himself down the long tunnel between the tables and gave a nod the woman completely ignored.