‘No one will notice,’ muttered Leroux softly to himself. ‘The Boches are always doing it and thinking it funny. Mine will simply add to the stench for when I fetch the Kommandant to witness what those bastards of his have been doing. Fungus … There is fungus growing on the bones. It’s serious. So many visitors not only warm the caves but increase the humidity and bring it on. The ossuary will have to be closed or else the bones will go quickly to dust. In either case I’ll lose my job.’
‘Jean-Claude, is that you talking?’
Sounds carried.
‘Oui. To myself. Don’t worry. We’re alone.’
‘Bon. We’ll make a night of it, the two of us. You won’t leave me again, will you? Not until after the curfew.’
Relief had filled her voice. Sitting on the steps of the spring, she dipped a hand into the water, looked so like that woman from the Biblical past, Leroux told her so.
‘Then let me give you a real drink, mon vieux.’
The bottle had been in the pocket of her overcoat. ‘It’s an eau de vie de poire from one of the little orchards Alexandre’s bees serviced. In a rare moment of concern for what he had just done to me, he left it on my kitchen table. Or perhaps he simply forgot it. But,’ she shrugged. ‘I never touched it until now.’
‘Is it poisoned? Well, is it?’ he demanded.
‘Would I be drinking it? A pact — you and me both dead in this place — is that what you think I want it to look like?’
He took the bottle from her. ‘Merci,’ he said. ‘Salut!’
Momentarily her hand touched his as he returned the bottle. ‘To the past, Jean-Claude. To the present, of course — one must drink to it, n’est-ce pas? And to the future. You poisoned him, didn’t you? You couldn’t stand being blackmailed any more than I could. So, what, please, did he confide to you about me and that husband of mine? Was it what the neighbours all thought in any case?’
Leroux set the lantern on the steps at her feet and took the bottle from her, but remained standing.
‘First, you tell me what you wanted to warn me of.’
So it was to be like this, was it? thought Héloïse. ‘The one from the Sûreté will be watching that house of Madame Thibodeau’s for you, Jean-Claude. If I were you I would give Charlotte up and find another somewhere else. Of course, there will not be the cemetery room, but I’m sure you know it well enough to imagine it.’
The slut! thought Leroux. Always that tongue of hers couldn’t resist having the razor’s edge. ‘I didn’t poison him, Héloïse. I wanted to-yes, yes, of course and many times considered how best to do it. Down here there are iron grilles that close off countless passages and galleries. Some have locks and I have access to their keys. Any of those would have done and no one … Believe me, no one would have been the wiser. The draught … I had even calculated that the constant draught we have would carry the stench of his rotting corpse well away from the ossuary.’
The look she gave him hardened. ‘Are you threatening me, mon pauvre, because if you are, please try to think of whom I might have told where I was going tonight.’
He didn’t laugh at her or even smile.
‘No one, Héloïse. You would not have told a soul.’
‘Then you’re forgetting the second of the letters I sent you. Today’s … well, yesterday’s, I guess. It’s now Sunday.’
‘I burned them both in my room and enjoyed the momentary warmth they gave.’
Was he going to kill her? wondered the woman, or so it seemed, thought St-Cyr, still waiting and watching, still holding back when perhaps he ought to step in and put an end to their little discussion.
‘Blackmail,’ said Leroux and seemed to relish taunting her. ‘I was not the only one to suffer, was I?’
‘I didn’t poison him.’
‘You could so easily have done so. Please don’t deny it.’
She tossed a hand. ‘All right, all right, I used to help him with his bees, but that doesn’t make me a murderess.’
‘Which you already were.’
Ah Sainte Mère, these two, thought St-Cyr. She took a long pull at the bottle and then offered it.
‘Drink with me, then. Two killers, you and I, eh? Yourself during the war; myself some fifteen years after his sister was raped.’
‘On the night of 14 July 1927. Bastille Day.’
‘He told you?’ she asked, and looking up at him, pleaded for compassion with haggard eyes whose tears began to streak their mascara and shadow.
‘First you got that husband of yours drunk, Héloïse — a state Raoul welcomed and was used to. Then … and this is the fortunate part for you, as a part-time bargee’s assistant, he was alone and on duty during the celebrations.’
Emptily she looked down at the lantern. ‘And headless corpses, even if weighted down with coal and dredged from the Canal Saint-Martin, are hard to identify. The body was never found — at least I never heard or read about its being found and I searched the newspapers. Believe me, but I did,’ she said, suddenly looking up at him and not bothering to wipe her eyes. ‘Every day for months and months, Jean-Claude. Years, damn you. Years!’
‘Not found,’ breathed Leroux and, taking the bottle from her, let a little of its contents piddle on to the top of her head.
‘You cut that out!’ she shrieked and flung herself aside.
OUT … OUT … the caves echoed.
‘A small baptism, just in case,’ he said. ‘Oh by the way, ma chère, Alexandre made certain I knew exactly how he got you to tell him what you’d done and that you had buried Raoul’s head on that little farm of your Uncle Marcel’s. Near Soissons, isn’t it, where old bones are always cropping up in the orchards and fields? An abandoned well the Boches had all but filled in during their final retreat in 1918. What could have been better? A few shovels of fresh earth and a few more stones.’
When she said nothing, the custodian drank deeply from the bottle, then told her to finish it. ‘Go on. You’re going to need it.’
‘Why? Because you will kill me?’
‘Now listen, Héloïse. Take it easy. We’re in this together.’
‘I couldn’t move — did Alexandre tell you that, too? I couldn’t scream. Always there’d be those damned bees of his, always one of his hives on that roof of mine and no record of it in his little book or with that daughter of his. “The perfect excuse to visit you,” he’d say and then … then would let them crawl all over me. I was terrified. He’d laugh at me and I can still hear him, and … and only after I’d passed water in my bed, would he condescend to patiently scrape them off and return them to their hive. He was a monster, Jean-Claude. Of course I wanted him dead! Dead, do you understand?’
‘You were naked.’
‘Completely! That … that’s the sort of hold he had over me. Honey … he always used honey. The bees then gathered it from my skin.’
‘And you poisoned him, didn’t you? Confess. There is only me to listen.’
She was in despair and wrung her hands.
‘I wish I had. God forgive me, but I do, Jean-Claude. He wanted that sister of his to come home — you knew of this?’
‘What if I did?’
Leroux was going to kill her now, thought St-Cyr. Now …
‘Alexandre confided this to you. Well, he did, didn’t he?’ she asked of the sister.
‘Several times. He was worried the Germans would snuff out her life.’
The woman looked away towards the entrance corridor. St-Cyr stepped back and held his breath. ‘Some life, poor thing,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’ve begged God to forgive me. Father Michel has heard my confession many times, so please don’t think he and that God of his are unaware of what happened in Père Lachaise and who was responsible.’
‘Idiot! Did you confess also to murdering Raoul?’