‘Louis, we should have pumped her dry.’
‘Not with Cueillard listening in. So, my friend, we have a name to attach to the mackerel’s big toe.’
‘You didn’t really mean that about gangsters killing gangsters, did you, Louis? Madame Giroux’s insisting you’re full of cotton wool. She says Schraum must have done it and if not him, then Monsieur Antoine Audit.’
‘She’s really got it in for the brother, hasn’t she?’
Louis was at the wheel and enjoying it. The streets of Montmartre were easing past. Traffic had more than enough chance to get out of the way. The Citroen was purring.
‘So, how does a mackerel like Morande come to be running a carousel?’
‘Precisely, Hermann. It’s not exactly the racket one would expect of him.’
‘At least he found himself a place to live rent free.’
‘But when, Hermann? When?’
‘Just after the Defeat. Within a week of it, he was here. I asked her.’
The Defeat? Were Hermann’s sympathies making him careless? ‘The Conquest, Hermann. Must I correct you, for your own sake?’
‘I still say Morande had no business wasting time with a carousel. Seven long years in stir, Louis. The Sante and then Fresnes. Nineteen thirty-three to ’forty for armed robbery and assault. Ran two girls on the side, but that was a secondary matter. Got out in June, in time to meet the New Order. That old dame’s a Bible.’
‘Maybe the carousel suited him?’
‘At five sous a ride? Come on, Louis, you know better. Even with the depressed market, he’d not have had the cash to buy it. The Prefet’s boys recovered the loot before they put him away.’
‘Then maybe someone told him to stay off the streets?’
‘Ostracized, was that it? He spent fourteen weeks in solitary for hitting a prison guard with a shovel in an attempt to escape.’
‘That should have earned him more than five dots. Perhaps his attempted escape was the act of a desperate man. Perhaps our friend Morande had to get out before someone killed him.’
‘If so, then that person waited for two and a half years.’
‘Revenge is sweet, Hermann. Like the carbuncle, it is best squeezed when full of pus.’
To that there was no answer. The car had stopped in front of the entrance to a courtyard. A small bronze plaque, now covered in heavy black paint to protect it from thieves, gave Number 23, the rue Polonceau.
‘A villa just like the grandmother said,’ sighed the Surete.
‘It’s too close to the Hotel of the Silent Life, Louis. Too close to the Church of Saint Bernard.’
‘My thoughts exactly. Madame Minou would have known the girl by her real name.’
‘The girl wouldn’t have chanced a liaison in such a familiar neighbourhood.’
‘Then why Number twenty-three, Hermann?’
‘Madame Giroux would not have made a mistake, Louis. She sucked on her eyes every time she mentioned Charles Audit.’
Number 23 was one of those delightful little surprises so typical of the city. A quiet, walled courtyard, a bit of peace from a troubled world. Chestnut trees, lilacs, rose-bushes, wisteria and trumpet vine, all without their leaves. A scattering of brick-red paving-tiles among the limestone flags. A small fountain, a faun with cloven feet, the pipes of Pan. A bird-bath.
The shutters were open. Two low steps led to the entrance path that ran through clipped box and Yew towards a terracotta urn.
The curtains were drawn. There were scrolled, Louis XIV ironwork grilles on the lower part of the tall windows. Not a sign of anyone.
‘Very nice, and very private, Hermann. Very bourgeois too. The businessman in retreat.’
There was a bell – tidy links of wrought iron and a ring to grasp. Kohler yanked it down. Louis told him to turn his bad cheek away. ‘We don’t want to frighten the mistress of the house unduly, eh?’
‘The stitches don’t come out for another three days. They’re beginning to itch.’
He gave the chain another yank. Somewhere beyond the door, the faint sound of ringing came to them.
‘There’s no one home, Louis. The place is empty.’
‘Try your fist. They might be hard of hearing.’
‘Want me to break it down?’
‘No. No, we’ll leave it for now, but it isn’t right. Something’s wrong.’
The Hotel of the Silent Life was just up the street and across from the bakery; the Church of Saint Bernard was down the street and around the corner. ‘It’s all too convenient, Hermann. Did the girl know of the district and come back to use it, hence the dyed hair, or did Madame Minou’s “Monsieur Antoine” know of it and wish to use it for purposes of his own?’
‘Don’t forget our Christiane or Christabelle took the trouble to dye her locks below the waist.’
‘A virgin, Hermann. It is a puzzle, unless, of course, the room was only made to look as if it was for that purpose.’
‘Then why the jewellery, why the canary? Things from M Antoine for her to sell, or from her to him if, my fine Frog friend, if selling at the fleas wasn’t working out to her satisfaction?’
‘Then Antoine was the buyer, she the seller and the gold coins, eh? What of them?’
‘This thing goes round and round.’ He’d open the hotel’s courtyard door for Louis, he’d show mutual respect and let the baker who was hanging on to his window glass see that the Gestapo could back off when it suited them.
Madame Minou was in her cage and nervous. The coffee wasn’t ersatz but black and strong. A sacrifice. Pre-war and hoarded, and therefore against the law, leading not just to confiscation but to incarceration.
‘Me, I have passed the miserable night, messieurs. I’m an old woman. God should be kinder. Word of the murder has now got round to all of the tenants. The hotel is abuzz.’
St-Cyr crowded in after Hermann. The woman was forced by the lack of space and nerves into the sagging armchair that had always given comfort in troubled times.
Arfande, the cat, disappeared under the narrow cot she used as a bed.
Hermann offered a cigarette but it was refused, then taken at his insistence. ‘For later, yes, merci.’
She avoided looking at them and gazed perhaps into a finer, more distant past.
‘Madame Minou, did you know the girl who was killed -’
‘Murdered! Violated! In my hotel! As tenants die, messieurs, others will not come to replace them.’
So much for the future, bleak though it was. ‘Madame, did you know her by any other name than Christiane Baudelaire?’
The grey eyes swam. ‘Why should I have?’
St-Cyr hushed her with a gesture of his hand. ‘Was the girl new to your neighbourhood, or a resident from before the Defeat?’
The Gestapo had taken out one of the coins. Now a toss, now a fall. He had that look about him, that one had. ‘New, of course. I would have known otherwise. Since 1912 I have been concierge of this place.’
Thirty years … To live like this. Hermann was still flipping the coin. Good! ‘Then what about Monsieur Antoine?’
‘No. With that one I would have known from fifty years even though he is like so many men of his age and station in life. The big shot, isn’t that so, Inspector? The young girl naked and on her knees between his own.’
Kohler nodded. The coin went up a little higher. ‘There’s more than one way of using a young girl, eh, madame?’ he taunted, flustering her.
‘You men are all the same! Filthy minds when your buttons are undone and a girl, a wife is -’
Louis lit her cigarette. She drew in, but coughed. A glass of water was needed.
Again the questions started up. The one from the Surete would not be distracted. Ah merde! what was she to do? The Gestapo had seen it too. They were a pair of shit-miners!