The girl would have looked well in that crimson dress, with a black slip to match her hair, a black lace-trimmed brassiere and black underpants, ah yes, except, of course, that the hair was not naturally black at all but very light, as evidenced by the hairs on her forearms.
A blonde. These days blondes were at a premium. Blondes with blue or violet eyes – grey even.
So she’d taken great pains to hide the fact. An almost complete dye job.
‘Louis, take a look at this.’
A stuffed canary.
‘It was nestled in its own little box on a bed of crushed velvet. There was an elastic band around the wings and breast – this one.’ Kohler expanded the elastic. ‘Heavy and thick, but the wings don’t seem to need holding in.’
Gingerly St-Cyr took the canary from him. The bird’s skin had been tightly sewn, fitting the little body to perfection. ‘Not a feather out of place, Hermann. Did the girl often take it out to caress it, I wonder?’
‘Perhaps she was lonely? Is that what you mean?’
‘The work of an artiste,’ he said, not pausing to comment on the Gestapo’s offering. ‘A real taxidermist, Hermann. No ordinary stuffer of neighbourhood cats and dogs in good times when there is money for such remembrances. Ah no, not this one. The set of the beak and the eyes are too real. He has captured the bird in death as in life.’
‘Then why the elastic band?’
‘Why the coins, Hermann? Why any of this? Why the abandonment by Talbotte, eh, unless the higher-ups want to burn us?’
The girl’s identity card, residence papers and ration tickets had been stuffed into a stocking, along with seven 100-franc bills and a clatter of sous.
‘Christiane Baudelaire, a student, Louis. The Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Twenty-two years, two months and seven days.’
The photo was passable. It was the corpse all right.
St-Cyr ran an exasperated hand through the thickness of his dark-brown hair. ‘Baudelaire was a poet who lived in poverty, Hermann. The girl has chosen well.’
‘It’s not her name? But the photo, Louis? It’s -’
Though he knew he shouldn’t, St-Cyr let him have it with acid. ‘A student? This room? Everything about it says she lived elsewhere, Hermann. There is no laundry, no food, no crumbs! Too few clothes. Ah Mon Dieu, if an art student, then where, please, are the sketches, where the much-guarded portfolio, eh? Where the chalks, the paints, the canvases that are so difficult to come by these days? The rags with the turpentine, Hermann? The smock?’
‘Okay, okay, I get the point. Don’t let grief and guilt over Marianne and Philippe get your ass in a knot. Just remember I’m your friend.’
‘Of course. Forgive me. But, Hermann, there is not even a piece of gum-arabic eraser? Not even the smell of paint? No, my friend, this was but a room for one purpose.’
‘Then where’s the real ID?’
‘Outside, in the courtyard, under a stone. In behind something, Hermann. She would not have walked the streets without it. Not this one.’
Gestapo streets. Jackbooted streets. The patrols, the curfew.
‘Perhaps she left the ID with a friend,’ offered Kohler lamely.
‘Perhaps, but then …’
St-Cyr thought better of saying it. The friend, if there was one, could well be dead or in hiding.
‘Louis, this thing is fast becoming too big for us.’
‘Exactly, my old one. Exactly! That is why we need Talbotte’s help.’
‘I’d sooner have the Devil’s.’
‘They are one and the same, or hadn’t you noticed?’
In alarm, the concierge threw her jaundiced grey eyes up at them. ‘Messieurs …’ she began, thinking to huff and fart about.
‘Sit down!’ roared Kohler, turning swiftly to slam the slot of her cage closed even as Louis shut the door.
Now the hall and the entrance to the hotel were hidden and she was trapped in her cage as never before.
‘So …’ began Kohler, towering over her in the cramped enclosure with its shabby divan and dusty, faded purple cushions.
Lisette Minou gripped the armrests of her chair. The big one was formidable. A fresh wound …
The mouse elbowed his way between her and the giant. His voice would not be like a balm but the salve of a cop!
‘Oil your way, monsieur,’ she shrilled with admirable tartness. ‘It will do you no good. I know nothing. Nothing, do you hear? Absolutely nothing.’
‘A tough one, eh?’ breathed the Frog. The place was a rat’s nest! They’d get lice if they weren’t careful. ‘Mademoiselle Baudelaire has been murdered, madame. Ah yes, please do not distress yourself too much. Save that for later, eh?’
‘A murder in my hotel?’ gasped the woman, visibly shaken.
St-Cyr nodded. Hermann glowered.
‘Did you see the man who went up that staircase to kill her?’ asked St-Cyr.
The furtive gaze slid away to the mange of a torn-eared cat whose one encrusted eye wept as it limped towards her.
They would discover the truth, these ones. She just knew they would. ‘My aching bones, monsieur …’
‘Fuck your bag of bones! I’m tired. I’ve not had any sleep for days. I’ve not even been home yet!’
‘Hermann, please! Madame Minou has had a long and difficult life. There is also the shock of what we have just told her.’
The eyes rose up in doubt and deceit from the doughy pan of her face. The rounded shoulders hunched, folding the knitted grey cardigan with its holes.
‘I did not see anything, Monsieur the Inspector. Arfande, my cat – I was at the moment feeding him a little titbit. These days … Ah what can one say, eh? Things are so hard to get. I had acquired a tin of -’
‘The black market?’ leapt Kohler expectantly.
Her calm was shattered. ‘Hermann, please! For the love of Jesus, just let me deal with this one.’
‘She’s all yours, chum.’
The rolls of flesh about her throat rippled. ‘A tin?’ reminded St-Cyr.
The woman swallowed. A murder … She had known it would come to no good, an arrangement like that. ‘A tin of sardines, Inspector. My back was turned to the wicket – for just a moment, you understand.’
St-Cyr feigned surprise. ‘You heard someone come in, yet you did not turn to look?’
‘My bones. My back. This world. This work. The war. The Naz … is.’
‘All right, all right. What time?’
The cardigan rose. The tired bosom, with its twin soccer balls, was held.
‘About nine?’ offered St-Cyr.
Eight as in the old days, but now that Paris ran on Berlin time, nine of course. The Surete was plucking at straws and that was good. So, they would barge into her office, would they?
‘About nine. Yes, yes, but I heard nothing more, Inspector, and no one came back down so, you see I was not sure anyone had actually come into the hotel.’
They’d never get done with her.
Hermann lit a cigarette – one of the woman’s. He tapped Louis on the shoulder. The swollen eye opened a little. The lower lid of the other one was pulled well down. ‘The wireless,’ he breathed.
St-Cyr sought it out, noting with alarm the position of the tuning dial even as the woman noted this herself and the cat bolted off her lap and went to hide under the divan. Oh-oh.
It wasn’t illegal to own a wireless set, ah no. It was simply illegal to listen to forbidden broadcasts.
Smoke billowed from the dragon’s lips. The voice, when it came, was decisive. ‘The slut’s been listening to the BBC Free French broadcast from London, Inspector. That’s an offence under article seventeen. The nine o’clock time is okay but she had her ear screwed to the set. She’d have been so wrapped up in the Russian Front, God Himself could have farted and she’d not have heard Him.’
Or seen him. ‘Hermann, must I ask again that you go easy, eh? Madame Minou is in a very difficult position. The killer – the rapist, madame, a specialist with the garroting wire, a sadist! – might well come back.’ He paused. ‘And yet, Hermann, if she does not open the purse of her lips, she will not have the protection of those she and her kind so despise.’