The boy took his place atop the seagull, excitement glistening in his deep-brown eyes. ‘Grand-mere, did you pay?’ he asked.
‘She doesn’t have to. All rides are free today,’ announced the Gestapo, reaching for his cigarettes only to desist under the old dame’s glare. ‘I forgot,’ he said lamely. ‘Monkeys aren’t supposed to smoke.’
‘To chew,’ she said darkly. ‘It makes the creature’s stools runny.’
The carousel began to turn, the boy to hang on and rise up, his feet jammed securely in the stirrups.
The monkey let go of the brass pole, waiting to be jerked out of the saddle perhaps.
‘Madame, a few small questions, eh?’
The dark button eyes swept callously over him. ‘The Surete were always sour, m’sieur. So, I am to be denied the pleasure of seeing that my grandson does not forget to hang on?’
Kohler knew he’d have to do it. ‘Okay, okay, Louis. I’ll watch the kid.’
The woman gave the orders. ‘Get behind him on the seagull.’
‘Not on your life. I’ll sit the goose next to him.’
‘Don’t spill your coffee then. Monsieur Audit would never have allowed food or drink of any kind on his magic machine.’
‘It’s all in the line of duty, Hermann. Don’t fall asleep. So, madame,’ he indicated the doorway but she shook her head.
‘In the centre. At my age it’s nice to be warm. Monsieur Audit always kept a drop of cognac in there and he was not impartial to me if approached in the correct manner.’
Ah, was that so? The thing began to gather momentum but the old girl was steady on her pins. The music of ‘Daisy, Daisy’ started up as they threaded their way towards the centre.
Cueillard made room for them beside the boiler and its firebox. The place was self-contained, complete with bedroll et cetera, et cetera. St-Cyr sat on one of the sacks of coal, the woman on a butter box.
There was a five-star cognac. The flic had even found three thimble glasses.
‘This Monsieur Audit, madame. Tell me about him.’ Cueillard had already begun to make notes, the date, the time, that sort of thing. All scaffolds must be properly constructed.
‘Monsieur Charles Audit was not always the owner of this thing, monsieur. That one once had money but he lost it all and went away. When he came back, after the years of absence, he bought this carousel in 1926 for his little granddaughter. He had it shipped all the way across the seas from Rio de Janeiro, though it had gone there first from New York City in America. The granddaughter became the light of his life, that one. Oh for sure he made money, but not all that much. Enough to keep the house perhaps, though me, I think the brother helped him out.’
‘The brother?’
‘Ah yes, Monsieur Antoine. Explosives, glass, wine and truffles, the silk too.’
‘Monsieur Antoine.’
‘Is it that you have met him, Inspector?’
The Surete had forgotten his cognac. The one from the Prefecture held his pencil poised.
‘In a way, yes. Yes, I have met him a little,’ murmured the detective. ‘What was the granddaughter’s name, madame?’
‘You’ve not even asked madame her own,’ sniffed Cueillard, fingering the left knee of his trousers.
‘Madame Lucienne Giroux of the rue Piat, Number sixty-three upstairs at the front, never the back. Everyone knows me.’
St-Cyr nodded to Cueillard. ‘I’d like a copy.’
‘I’ve already got the carbon in place.’
Again there was that nod but still the look of one wanting to be left alone with his thoughts.
‘The granddaughter, madame. Please, her name, eh?’
‘Why, Audit, of course. Christabelle. She used to take the tickets here before the war.’
Yet again there was that nod, this time as if the detective had known it all along.
‘Her address, madame? And that of this Monsieur Charles Audit?’
‘Number twenty-three the rue Polonceau, a villa, or so he once said.’
It was all fitting together. The selling of the trinkets to buy food or medicines, the suspicions of gold coins, the panic, the forgeries that were not very clever but done perhaps on the advice of the brother, Madame Minou’s ‘Monsieur Antoine’.
How many times had he seen it before, the successful brother, the businessman, and the down-on-his-luck brother, the family’s disgrace? A carousel for a living, a love of little children and a granddaughter that was the soul of his life.
The body too? he asked, hating himself for doing so.
‘The mackerel, madame? How did he come to take this thing over?’
The woman gave a shrug; the music changed again, a march this time. ‘He took over. His type always do. Monsieur Charles or his brother must have sold it to him for a song even as the Germans were shouting at the gates of the city.’
‘Could they have retained a piece of the action?’
‘Never! That is,’ she gave a shrug, ‘not Monsieur Charles. Not him. Maybe the brother, maybe Monsieur Antoine. That one was shrewd. No heart. Me, I think he laughed at Monsieur Charles for running this thing at a loss and for taking such passionate care of it.’
‘The mackerel must have been running it for someone else. Even at depressed prices, that one would never have had enough cash.’ St-Cyr dragged out the crumpled photograph. ‘Just for the record, Madame Giroux, is this the girl you knew as Christabelle Audit?’
At first the woman vehemently shook her head, but then she said, ‘What has she done to her hair? It is dark, is it not?’
He acknowledged that it was.
‘That one, the German soldier with the child in his arms, he came to see the mackerel many times. They always came in here and left the machine running.’
Again things seemed to be fitting together, almost too well and too rapidly.
‘He used to come here in the early days, the mackerel. I remember him as a boy when Christabelle was perhaps ten or twelve years old. He was arrested for stealing chairs from one of the cafes and selling them to another, only to steal them back for a price.’
‘Henri Chamberlin, alias Lafont, got his start that way, madame. It’s an old game. Nothing surprises me.’
‘How long have you been a detective?’
‘Too long.’
‘The mackerel’s name, madame?’ asked Cueillard, as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Police work bothered him. Details, always petty details.
‘Victor Morande. That’s what the other one called him. Either, “Hey, Victor, you fish in olive oil”, or, “Morande, it’s time to take a walk and find our little pigeon”. Monsieur the Detective, has anything happened to …’
Madame Giroux couldn’t bring herself to say it.
‘She was murdered two nights ago.’
‘And violated?’
‘This one could not possibly have done it, madame, but it’s interesting you should think it possible that he would violate her.’
‘Idiot! I meant the brother not the mackerel! The brother was always after her skirt!’
‘Monsieur Antoine Audit?’ asked the startled detective.
‘Who else? The big car, the birthday cake and barley sugars, then the clothes and the jewellery. Ah, that one had his eye on her. Monsieur Charles knew it too, and so did she. Fifteen and a new pair of red leather shoes. High heels. The lipstick. Sixteen and the black underwear if you ask me, Inspector. The pigeon beneath the loins of a relative! Every girl must pay her price, isn’t that so?’
Especially if you were beholden to your grandfather’s brother.
‘You have exhausted me, madame. For now that is enough. Cueillard, you may stop the machine and start servicing the main gearbox.’
Talbotte’s chief scribe set his clipboard aside and went to man the controls.
As Madame Giroux watched, the detective from the Surete tore off both copies of the notes and several pages as well, before tucking the original away and throwing all the rest into the firebox, including the carbon paper.
‘Shh! Don’t breathe a word of it, madame. The Prefet has a direct line to God, so there is no problem since the smoke will reach Him and it contains the notes. Please don’t concern yourself. When one gangster kills another it is always best not to let too many know who might have been helpful to the investigation.’