This one would want to hear it as it was, thought Caroff, and had already concluded that Chairman Schrijen was reinvesting zero in the Works while earning the maximum. ‘Eugene’s wife was spreading her legs behind his back, Inspector. When a wife bares that little orifice to others, she insults her man.’
‘Or so the anonymous letter he was shown implied.’
‘Letters like that are cruel, aren’t they, but often contain elements of the truth. Did it tell you that Paulette Thomas had scraped up enough cash to buy a brand-new bicycle?’
It hadn’t. ‘Just how the hell did she get the cash then, Inspector, if not by offering herself to others? A nice one, too. A brunette. Thick, wide and curly, a real bush.’
Sex-starved were they all, or had it been said simply to reinforce Eugene Thomas’s feelings of betrayal? In Paris, as this one must know, a new bike was all but impossible to obtain unless one had very highly placed friends and even then it would cost 8,000 francs, the prewar price of a brand-new two-door Renault or Peugeot sedan yet working-class wages had been frozen at those levels while everything else had had only one way to go.
The detective’s mind was racing along the line of thought given, so that was good, felt Caroff, but a little reinforcement would be useful. ‘Eugene’s Paulette had about 7,000 francs a year on which to live, Inspector. Understandably he worried constantly about how she could possibly manage. When the parcels, a considerable expense, didn’t come, he forgave her by saying she needed things for their little boy. When that letter arrived, he wept.’
Cigar smoke was savoured as it should be, a far-off look coming into those eyes.
‘Papa used to buy these in England, Inspector, before returning home to Roscoff on the Breton Coast. Maman and us kids-there were eight of us then-grew the onions and shallots he carried round on strings draped over that old bicycle of his. Five months he’d be gone across the Channel. Swansea, Cardiff and Newport, Plymouth sometimes, though he preferred the Welsh simply because they could sing better and were closer to his ancestors. Women … I know he must have had several, but maman, she was very religious and never once mentioned it. But when I was old enough, she took me to the door and sent me to the naval yard at Brest, to her brother Martin, after whom she had named me. “Avoid loose women,” she said. “Get a trade. Don’t sell onions others are forced to grow. Become a machinist.”’
In the Age of the Machine, and so much for nostalgia. POWs the world over would indulge in such reminiscences particularly if they thought they had a captive audience.
‘We asked Eugene about his Paulette, Inspector. How was she in bed? Was she always wet or only at certain times? He didn’t like to talk about her that way, was too protective of her, but the wire soon destroys all that. She had a way with her, he confided. A look, a gesture, sometimes even the simple touch of her hand and he’d know what she wanted and soon be hearing her cry out for more. L’orgasme. Le grand frisson, n’est-ce pas?’
The great shudder, but it was time to put an end to this. ‘Look, my friend, I was once one of you and know all about what it’s like, so let’s cut the crap and you tell me what I need to know.’
Herr Kohler wouldn’t be easy to convince but one had best try so as to reinforce what the others would confide. ‘Eugene was really depressed. The poor bastard just didn’t want to live anymore. Awake all night thinking terrible things were happening at home? Two men at a time, three … We tried to convince him his Paulette would never do such things, but …’
‘Now listen, you. He had only one anonymous letter. There weren’t any more of them.’
This could be checked if challenged but would the inspector then begin to wonder if someone here had gotten a friend or relative at home to write such a letter? Would it not be best to give him a little something else to think about? ‘The guards in this place suggested all sorts of liaisons shy;, knowing they would upset him further. The Jardin du Luxembourg when their little son was watching the puppet show or sailing one of the toy boats … Sacre nom de nom, but we had to keep an eye on him, though in a place like this, with all of us being worked to death, how could we possibly have stopped him?’
The fabric designer and test weaver having been deliberately forgotten since that one had a pass which allowed him to visit the laboratory at any time.
Fishing into a wet khaki pocket, Caroff pulled out a black armband of artificial silk. ‘I only took it off because of that puddle I had to jump into. All of us are wearing them in honour of Eugene. We swore we would even though Herr Dorsche would bitch.’
‘We?’ asked Kohler.
‘The other members of our combine to which Eugene was a member in good standing. Eat, sleep, fart and live together, all cooped up in one room in that place when not here at work? We shared everything we scrounged or got from our parcels, even though Paulette forgot to send him one last month and the month before that, the Christmas one.’
A member in good standing could only mean that some were not or had not been in the past, shunning being common in such cases, but it would be best to sadly say, ‘A broken man, then.’
‘Precisement!’
Pleased with this detective’s conclusion, was he, this popgun fixer? ‘Ping-Pong balls,’ muttered Kohler. ‘I seem to remember seeing your name plastered beside that on the roster.’
In the carnival’s field office but what else had he found? ‘I’m good at mending things. Those were for the shooting gallery. We’ve also made a bottle-fish for the ladies. At least, we will have if they are allowed to continue with their plans. Are they to be allowed, Inspector?’
And anxious, was he? ‘It’s too early to say. A bottle-fish?’
‘Wine, eau-de-vie, cognac and champagne, if your comrades haven’t drunk everything. It’s easy. You tie slipknots that won’t slip when the line is pulled after the little noose has dropped over the neck of a bottle. It’s an old carnival trick I learned as a boy earning money for maman’s apron pocket.’
This one would digress for as long as possible if allowed. ‘Now tell me about the night he killed himself.’
Were knots no longer of interest, the suicide definite? ‘Dorsche and his Griefer woke us up.’
His ‘catchers’, the ‘grabbers’, the plant’s Werkschutz, its work police.
‘They searched that hotel of ours from top to bottom for Eugene.’
‘But he was found at just after midnight when the alarm first went out?’
Was Herr Kohler so green or had he forgotten that Kriegsgefangenen past of his? ‘Dorsche had a good look anyway. After all, life is not exactly stimulating here, even for a Lagerfeldwebel who enjoys his job. We sleep like stones, Inspector. I was tumbled out of my bunk as were the others.’
Dorsche had wanted to see if they’d known of the suicide but they had obviously managed not to give him anything. ‘Okay, okay, now tell me what Thomas was like?’
‘Quiet. Studious. Very professional. He didn’t cause trouble, if that’s what you’re after. He was one of us, a friend to all. He had no enemies, Inspector. This I must state emphatically.’
Just like the onions and the shallots, was that it? ‘And with the members of the Winterhilfswerk Committee?’
‘Bien sur, they were skirts and they smelled like heaven, but Eugene knew his place.’
‘Didn’t the others? Yourself, for instance?’
‘Inspector, we’re not that stupid. Eugene always kept himself as clean as possible. That’s what made the Fraulein Schrijen first notice him, and when she decided to fix up some of the carnival booths early last September, she went straight to him. Eugene then brought the rest of us in on it.’