‘Madame, we have an informant – no, please do not distress yourself, eh? Hermann, a little more water for madame. The ashtray, my friend. Yes, yes, that one will do nicely. The one with the broken parrot.’
He’d not stop now. ‘Madame, our informant tells us that a Monsieur Charles Audit had the villa at Number twenty-three. Do you remember him?’
Questions – always they would ask her questions. Roland would come to mind. They’d find out. Was there nothing she could do to stop them?
‘How should I know who owned that place, eh? I do not push open doors I should not push open. It’s rented perhaps, or perhaps the owner is in the South for the duration. Many left the city before the Defeat, monsieur. The streets … such emptiness. Ah Mon Dieu, it was like walking through the Devil’s shadow and coming home to cancer.’
‘Then you did not know of this Monsieur Charles Audit?’
‘She’s lying, Louis. Let’s call up the salad basket and have her over to the rue Lauriston for a bit of undressing.’
Her eyes leapt. Her cigarette fell from quivering lips and began to burn a hole in the flowered dress that had seen too many years.
Kohler picked it out of her lap and put it back between her lips. ‘Three coins, madame. Three deaths. I’m holding the fourth.’
‘They were all fake. Take them, damn you!’
‘They’re like your son, eh, madame? Phoney beneath the wash of gold. Where is he?’
Hermann had a way with him when he wanted it. The rue Lauriston … Her eyes began to drain at the thought.
‘I do not know, monsieur. Roland, he has … he has stolen my purse and emptied my savings box too many times for me to care.’
‘When was the last time?’ asked the one from the Surete, brushing a knuckle across his thick brown moustache as if he’d just taken custard.
‘Not since the day of his call-up for the army.’
There, she’d said it, and they would not think that Roland had come back to steal more, not once but four times.
‘Two and a half, maybe three years ago, Hermann. It’s a mother’s love that makes her search for him and think bad thoughts.’
The Bavarian sucked in a breath as he caught the spinning coin. ‘They’ll sort her out, Louis. We haven’t time for wind. We’d better get to work.’
The Gestapo collected the coins from beside the parrot ashtray and she knew then that he’d meant exactly what he’d said.
There was only one thing to do. She could not give up Roland so easily, not even after all he’d done to her.
‘This Monsieur Charles Audit, messieurs. I have lived in the quartier all my life. I have not seen him in years, not since he lost the villa in 1905 to his brother for debts and went away. Colombia, Brazil, Peru, those distant places where there are jungles and … and the monkeys.’ Had she said too much?
‘And his brother, madame?’ asked the Gestapo with tired breath.
‘I have never seen him. They say he lives in the South, in Perigord, in Lyon and Saint-Raphael. But all that happened many years ago. Now no one talks of it.’
‘Does Antoine Audit still own the villa he squeezed out of his brother?’
‘That I would not know, Inspector. Father Delacroix might.’
She would give them a shrug, may God forgive her. But Delacroix might not say the right things. A soldier had been killed. A German corporal who’d been seen with the horse butcher’s wife enough times to make one wonder whose side that shameless slut was on. Had Roland put the bullet into him, eh? Had her baby done a thing like that? To kill one German was to be killed in turn. All members of the immediate family, regardless of whether they’d stolen from their mother or not even seen her in years except for those few times. All would be taken. It was the rule.
Pity was not for situations like this, yet St-Cyr could only find that quality foremost in his heart. ‘Madame, is there anything else you can tell us? Some little thing perhaps forgotten but now needing desperately to come to light?’
‘Louis, you’re being too kind.’
‘Hermann, the warning is taken.’
The rue Lauriston … People went there never to return. Madame Minou swallowed. The coin had stopped flipping. ‘There was a note, a letter for Mademoiselle Baudelaire but …’
‘But what, madame?’ demanded St-Cyr impatiently.
‘But this one took it, monsieur.’
‘Hermann?’
‘Yes.’
Kohler dropped the coin and it rolled about the carpet among the cat hairs. He fished for the note in a pocket and finally trod on the coin. ‘Sorry, Louis. The lack of sleep. The loss of my dinner. That girl … her black hair, the look of her … Giselle, I …’
‘Just let me have it, Hermann. Quickly.’
The envelope hadn’t been sealed. ‘“Christiane, leave the hotel immediately. Don’t go up to the room.” It’s not signed.’
The girl had been late and in a hurry. Madame Minou had not been able to stop her long enough to give her the note.
‘Who left this with you, madame?’
She knew they’d ask! ‘Monsieur Antoine. The one she was to meet.’
‘When? When was it left?’
‘At eight o’clock. No, eight-twenty. I have noted the time in my ledger. You may check if you wish.’
The ledger was open on the tiny desk. All comings and goings were to be noted.
‘Louis, he must have known the hotel was being watched. He played it smart and came by an hour early to check out the ground.’
This was standard Abwehr, Sicherheitsdienst or even Resistance procedure, but there was no point in mentioning it in front of the woman. Still, it was a thought. ‘Then why didn’t he try to stop her at the metro, Hermann, or watch for her from some small cafe, eh? There are a thousand whys with nearly an hour to back them up. “Christiane, leave the hotel immediately. Don’t go up to the room.”‘
‘They must have been on to him, Louis. He must have taken it upon himself to give them the slip in the hope they’d follow him and she’d get away.’
‘One doesn’t write notes like this on the street, Hermann. One uses a desk and a fountain pen.’
Hermann pocketed the coin in order to examine the note and its envelope. ‘Borrowed, eh, Louis? The pen even has a bent nib just like the one that’s squeezed in the centre of a certain concierge’s ledger.’
Together they turned on the woman, who had caught herself by the throat. ‘All right, all right, messieurs! It is my envelope and paper but I swear I did not see who wrote the note, only that it was left on my counter.’
‘And the time?’ breathed the one with the terrible slash. ‘Just for the record, eh?’
‘Eight … eight-twenty. I … I was in the toilet – even a concierge has to go!’ Ah Mon Dieu, what was she to do? ‘It … it is at the far end of the corridor, messieurs, beside the tradesmen’s stairs. It’s Turkish,’ she sweltered. ‘I have not had the opportunity to modernize. I have always had the trouble when they flood.’
She was practically blushing. A hole in the floor over which one had to squat, a chain too far to the left, a rush of water et cetera often covering the cubicle’s floor as the chain was finally yanked.
No escape. Kohler grinned hugely but he’d be kind. ‘The truth always hurts, madame. Now give us the key to that room up there and tell us who else had a key besides the girl.’
‘Hermann, let her think about things, eh?’
‘They both had keys, messieurs, but Monsieur Antoine always came after.’
‘Did you read it?’ asked Kohler, waving the note at Madame Minou.
Her expression hardened. ‘No I did not.’
‘It’s good of you to have said so, madame, because otherwise we’d have had to charge you with being an accomplice.’
‘Hermann, Madame Minou knows all about such things, don’t you, madame?’
She wouldn’t sing like a canary for them, not even after that! ‘Please do not disturb my tenants unduly, messieurs. They are upset enough and threatening to move elsewhere if I cannot guarantee them the peace and quiet I have advertised for so many years.’