The wires that held the skeleton and filled out the shape in unsupported parts had been implanted properly. There’d have been no flesh left to putrefy after mounting. The bird smelled clean but of lavender, and he wondered then if it hadn’t been kept in some other bureau drawer for years.
Taxidermists were not having an easy time of it these days. Mementos of household pets were not in fashion but consigned instead to the stew pot and the fur made into gloves and hats or used to rub oneself to keep warm.
There’d been an elastic band around the bird, a reminder perhaps, something with which to hold a little note that was now absent?
The possibilities were there. Always questions and more questions.
The choker of pearls was very fine, from the Belle Epoque, that period before the last war. There were six strands of perfectly matched pearls, five millimetres in diameter, all of them curved outwards from a hinged plaque of silver on which were opposing poppies that had lost their petals. The fruit of the opium poppy? he wondered, alarmed, only to remember the avant-garde of that period had often played with it to their detriment and disgrace. The stems of the poppies were sinuously curved and folded in upon each other, though juxtaposed so that the seed heads faced away from each other at the top of the plaque.
Why had the girl had it in her room if not to wear when her clothes were absent, if not to remind some successful middle-class roue of his daughter or his grandmother perhaps? It took all types and a young woman’s body usually brought out the worst in most men.
The single strand of pearls was of an even finer quality but much older. Perfectly matched and sized, the stones began with one superb pearl of five millimetres in diameter and then diminished to those of less than two. It made one think of the South Seas, of native girls and cannibals, of drums and rum and firelight and sweat in the night, of mosquitoes, of so many things.
The emerald earrings were indeed from South or Central America, Peru or Colombia perhaps. Very, very old, taken from some tomb perhaps.
Had all the pieces of jewellery belonged to the same person? Had they been from some legacy to the girl who had called herself Christiane Baudelaire, or had Madame Minou’s Monsieur Antoine brought them to her?
Pierre Bonny’s card-index file on the girl had held the notation, ‘A Big One’. – lots and lots of loot to be gained. Ah yes.
The crumpled photograph showed the girl anxious and yet entirely unaware that she was being followed. She’d been in a hurry and had turned away from a cluttered table in the flea market, perhaps to see if the next bus had come in, and if she could possibly catch it.
St-Cyr glanced at his watch. Ah Mon Dieu, it was almost four and he had one further thing to do before the morgue.
With the Benzedrine still floating around inside him, he felt as though he could go on for another forty-eight hours.
The canary lay atop the counter beneath which a lynx from Canada held a Hungarian partridge in its jaws while clinging to the branch of a birch tree.
The taxidermist, M Edouard Verdun, was thin and lofty and not inclined to inspect the work of others, no matter how good. It had been a long time since this one had paid him a visit. A dog that time, a pink ticket for a beagle bitch that had been left for mounting in the spring of 1937, the 15th of April to be exact. Number 603. A wealthy widow in her eighties from Chartres, a customer for years.
The woman had been murdered in her bath and the Surete had never paid up. He still had the dog in the window.
‘Look, I know all about it, eh?’ grimaced St-Cyr. ‘I put it in my report, an absolute recommendation that the estate be made to pay you, but’, he shrugged, ‘such things take time.’
Verdun drew himself up. ‘Patience is not bought with words, Inspector.’
‘It’s Chief Inspector.’
‘No matter. As I was saying …’
‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’
‘Do you want my help or not?’ snapped Verdun, defying answer until an apologetic nod was received. ‘These days no one hunts or fishes. There are no safaris, Inspector. Only German generals bring me their pets.’
St-Cyr ducked his head subserviently. Why was it that taxidermists – this one in particular – always engendered a whining servility?
The shop was full of lions and tigers, the heads of zebras and Thomson’s gazelles, their skins, their pelts and more of them, all left to be picked up later. After the war, after the Occupation, or not at all. Out on the rue des Lions a few bicycles passed by and then the staff car of a German general, but it continued on and he heard the sigh of disappointment the taxidermist gave.
‘Look, I will personally see that you get paid for that other job.’
The slender fingers hesitated as they delicately felt the bird. ‘Five thousand francs, with interest.’
Ah Mon Dieu, the pinch was excruciating! ‘Tell me who did this one.’
‘First, the consultation fee is one hundred francs, Inspector. Out of necessity our prices have risen.’
In the name of Jesus, why must God do this to him? St-Cyr smoothed the bill but continued to hold on to it. Verdun moved the canary out of the detective’s reach. ‘Usually I can tell whose work it is – if he’s been in Paris and is long established. Usually, too, there is some sign. A tiny initial on one of the claws perhaps. Birds like this aren’t easy, Inspector. If one takes pride in one’s work, one likes to leave a little something.’
St-Cyr was impressed. ‘Like the hallmarks on old silver?’
‘Ah yes, exactly. The set of the eyes is another way; also, did he use stock eyes and hand-paint them, or take the trouble to have them custom-made?’
There was no stopping him now.
‘Then, too, is the body padded out with well-chopped tow? Cotton wool is no good, Inspector, and this one didn’t use anything but the best.’
He put the bird down. ‘Without opening it up, I can’t say more. There’s no mark. The work’s excellent – so good I have to feel the twinges of envy. Was he not in business here in Paris?’
Meaning he hadn’t been. ‘Why would there have been a heavy elastic band around it?’
Verdun shrugged. ‘To remind the owner of something or to hold its ticket, but we would not do such a thing, nor do I think this one would either. No, someone else must have put the elastic there, someone who didn’t know, or didn’t appreciate fully, the quality of the workmanship, the hours, the labour of love, the …’
‘Good! Enough! So, for now that’s sufficient.’ St-Cyr swept the bird away and started for the door.
‘You can leave it here. A thought might come. I might be able to sell it for you. I have a general who is very partial to canaries.’
The pavement was narrow. There were two women coming towards him. ‘What general?’ he asked, darting back.
‘He’s actually not a general. He wears the blue uniform.’
‘Luftwaffe? Their airforce? Come, come, I’m in a hurry.’
Verdun knew he’d missed another 100 francs. ‘It has the anchor. Their navy.’
‘The Kriegsmarine?’
‘Stationed in Paris. The Hotel Lutetia, I think. A moment, please, Inspector. Yes … yes, here it is.’
He held up a white card. ‘The Vice Admiral Guenther Heinrich von Lion.’
Von Lion in the street of lions! Ah Mon Dieu … The Hotel Lutetia was the headquarters of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service – arch enemies of the SS and their Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, the secret service of the SS over on the avenue Foch!
The pissoir was rank. A plugged drain gave fjord to the yellow slime that had collected. A few cigarette butts, smoked down to their last toothpick, floated about giving tendrils of nicotine. Some bastard had jerked off against the flaking iron of the trough.
The Abwehr … the Abwehr … the Sicherheitsdienst … A canary.