‘The curfew’s begun,’ cursed the woman from somewhere distant in the darkness of the next corridor. ‘Now I’m going to have to stay here until it’s over. Merde, it was crazy of me to have come.’
‘Why did you then? Letters … you had to send me letters. Why should I listen to such as you?’
‘Because I was fool enough to think you were one of us and that you mattered. I felt I had to warn you.’
‘One of whom, please?’ he taunted.
‘You know very well,’ she countered acidly. ‘Angèle-Marie, idiot. The Père Lachaise. The four of you.’
And so long ago.
Leroux took another drink of water and wet his forehead again before moving the lantern up on the steps, to the lip of the spring.
‘Why did you tell us she’d be there after hours, Héloïse? Why did you promise André and the others the reward of their lives if we took care of her for you?’
‘Why? Ah! Why does one do such things when one is told by a dear friend’s father that one has lice and is too dirty to enter his house?’
‘No one bathes regularly, Héloïse. There is always perfume or cologne. You’d do better to tell me the truth.’
‘That brother of hers took me in that shed of his and refused absolutely to marry me.’
‘You tempted Alexandre?’
‘What if I did?’
‘Merde, and you got even by making us go at his sister.’
‘André first, then Jacques and then Thomas, and after them, you.’
‘Salope!’ Slut!
‘Violeur!’ Rapist!
Very much of Charonne, too, her hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of a charcoal woollen overcoat that had been made over years ago, she hesitantly came out of the darkness, but remained standing in the entrance to the exit corridor.
Leroux got to his feet. ‘It was nothing,’ he said of the sounds he thought he had heard. ‘My nerves, that was all.’
‘Your nerves. I’m terrified and you talk of them? Just what the hell are we going to do? You’re in this as much as I am. You’ve got to help me.’
Her face was pinched, the frown deep; the eyes and lips heavily made up. A purple woollen scarf had covered her head but was now loose about her shoulders and neck; the raven hair thick, unpinned and of more than shoulder length, and streaked with grey.
‘Help you?’ he snorted. ‘Why? For old times’ sake?’
Still she hadn’t moved from the entrance to the corridor. Of medium height and thin, she was prepared to run from Leroux if necessary, thought St-Cyr, anxiously gauging the distance between himself and the iron bar.
She shrugged and tried to smile, looked particularly defenceless which, he knew with Sûreté clarity, would not be the case. Not with this one.
‘Alexandre was blackmailing you, too, Jean-Claude. Admit it. That’s why you went to Le Chat qui crie once a month like clockwork. Élène, Nicole, Michèle and others, the latest Charlotte and first when she was sixteen and had just gone to work for that old mare Madame Thibodeau. Girls of such tender ages, I have to wonder if Alexandre didn’t see that they were brought in especially for you.’
The custodian said nothing. Her shadow passed over the bones as she took a hesitant step forward and then another.
‘Admit it, Jean-Claude. He insisted you do so once a month or else.’
‘Why … Why would Alexandre have insisted on such a thing?’
‘To entice the truth from others. He had to know who else had raped that sister of his. Admit it, you and I are both aware of this.’
‘What if I am? He’s dead now and that business is ancient history.’
‘Not to the Sûreté and the Kripo. Not to me, either, unfortunately. Did he ever let you know he knew you were one of them? Well, did he?’
‘Never, and I did not admit it. Always he would go on and on about what I’d done in the war.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Nothing. I just didn’t win any medals. Few of us did, he also.’
‘Yes, of course, but … but please, Jean-Claude, why would Alexandre have said of you many times, “A robber of corpses should work among them”?’
Leroux dragged out a crumpled handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘How should I know why he should have said such a thing?’
‘But … but, mon Dieu, Jean-Claude, how ungrateful can you get? He got you this job. Right after the war when so many could not find work, he made certain you were employed.’
‘ Héloïse, that business of his sister happened a long time ago.’
‘And yet … and yet he can continue to blackmail you even now. It’s curious, n’est-ce pas? “The corpses of officers,” he said to me. “Their gold pocket-watches, wedding rings and fountain pens — especially their cigarette lighters and money.” Apparently you burned the photographs they carried of their loved ones, their last letters from home also.’
‘What else did that salaud tell you? Well, what, damn you?’
She didn’t back away.
‘That you tried to desert and that he and a comrade caught up with you and forced you to return to the lines. That this other man was then found dead of a bayonet attack in the dark of night when no others were harmed or heard a thing, and that ever since then he felt he had had to watch out for himself.’
‘And you … What hold did he have over you, Héloïse? A husband who was a drunkard and often beat the shit out of you?’
She stiffened. She glared back at him.
‘I lost my babies one after another and now … now have no one. When my Raoul went away like that never to return, Alexandre came to tell me he was going to look into the matter. He said that I’d get the …’
‘Wait! Please wait. Maybe I did hear something. I’ll check.’
‘Don’t leave me in the dark. Please don’t! My candle … I put it out and set it on the floor. These old bones … I hate them.’
‘As I have had to, eh?’ he shrilled only to calm himself and say, ‘Ah! forget that. I will only be a few minutes. Stay where you are. Don’t move. You did lock the door behind you, didn’t you?’
‘Lock …? Ah merde, I’m sorry. I … I must have forgotten.’
Smoke rose from the kerosene lantern Leroux had set on the floor at the foot of the stone staircase. ‘Raoul …’ he muttered to himself. ‘Raoul Debré was murdered by her and now Héloïse is afraid the cops will discover this, so asks for my help. Well let her ask, the bitch!’ he said vehemently. ‘Now that Alexandre is dead, only she knows what I did in the war.’
He began to climb the stairs, his shadow seeming to reach up the circular well ahead of him. Exhaling, he said, ‘But I know the hold Alexandre had over her.’
When he reached the top of the staircase, he held the lantern up and let its light shine about the offices of the Quarries Inspection Service which, with the one small room that served as ticket counter and reception desk to the necropolis below, occupied the pavilion.
‘No one,’ he grunted. ‘I should have checked the door right away. She has slid the bolt home as I told her to. HÉLOÏSE,’ he shouted. ‘HÉLOÏSE, IT’S OKAY. YOU CAN RELAX.
‘Relax? How can I when she knows so much about me and when detectives from the Sûreté are breathing down our necks and the Boches have sent one of their own to add gasoline to the fire?’
Going into the reception office, he found a steel letter opener and, examining it for a moment, decided it would do. Hermann would have said, Stop him, Louis, said St-Cyr to himself, but Hermann wasn’t here, and one must wait to hear everything these two had to say to each other.
The custodian’s steps grew distant. At one point he paused, perhaps to listen, but no, it was to take a leak.