The wire was bound to the short wooden shaft by tightly wound string that had first been soaked in salt-water to make it shrink on drying. Then grease of some sort – tallow perhaps – had been applied. It had the look of long usage, was something kept as a memento perhaps, but of what?
Lying there on his back, with the sagging springs just above him, he tried to think. Rejean Turcel … One of the hard ones. Three killings – had they been in sequence and had they all been done by him? The Re and the Tu would fit the real name. The rest would be make-believe, but why rape the girl? An act of vengeance, violation to pay someone back? Antoine Audit, or Charles, his brother?
Thirty fake gold coins and the promise of far more. Find the forger, find the new owner of the carousel, the previous one too, find out what went on. Never mind the killings. Killing was an everyday affair these days.
Oona Van der Lynn’s skirt hit the floor, then the slip cascaded about her ankles, lastly her underpants. She’d nice ankles, nice calves. A very stubborn woman.
‘Look, I told you not to do that. Put your things back on, and that’s an order, eh? You’re far too nice and I’m not like those bastards think I am.’
‘They will kill me if I do not let you have the use of my body.’
‘Then I’ll tell them it was great, madame, and so will you.’
Getting down on her hands and knees, and then on her elbows, she peered uncertainly in at him. It was cold and she gave a little shiver as he stared back at her.
‘Can you think of anything else about Turcel?’ he asked. She had such clear blue eyes. They were so large.
Doubt clouded the eyes and he wondered then if she would still try to force herself upon him. But no, she was honestly searching her memory just as a Dutch maiden would. Perplexed and earnest and wanting to help.
‘Once he laughed about the crows. He said that now that the city was starving, there was so little food they would have to go back to their old ways of raiding the farms, only they didn’t know how to any more. Generations of sponging had spoiled them. He’d seen three dead ones that day. All had been too ravaged by hunger to have survived. Not even good enough to stuff.’
‘To stuff?’
‘To stuff, yes. To mount, I think.’
The draper’s shop on the Pas-Leon was empty but Father Eugene Delacroix had a key.
‘There is nothing in here, Inspector. Nothing, as I’ve said! The Nazis came and took it all away. Looted – that one looted the place! Monsieur Paul junior and his family did not come back from the South after the Defeat, so by the decree of August 1940 all such businesses and their contents became the property of the Third Reich, and I have failed to protect what I had said I would.’
‘I’m not working for the Germans, Father. I’m as French and as patriotic as yourself.’
‘I didn’t say you weren’t.’
‘Then please don’t become so irritated by a few simple questions. After all, there have been two murders in the rue Polonceau, and one of them very near to your church. My partner and I …’
‘Your “partner” – ah that one’s as Gestapo as all the rest! And you … your few questions, eh? They’d flood the place and cause the ark to founder.’
The grizzled chin was belligerent. The shabby black beret looked as if pigeons had not just roosted but had left their prayers for a fertile earth.
‘Father, your secret is safe with us. Herr Kohler and I understand the needs of the flesh, eh? We’re both detectives of longstanding. You need have no fears.’
‘As God is my witness, I wish that were so, but I am afraid for that young couple and their child. Father David has sinned many times with her – ah, Madame Ouellette seduced him, of this I’m certain. Marie … I’ve known her since she was a child. Always after the boys, that one, always up to mischief and at confession, the most lurid of thoughts, shameful in a grown woman, wicked in a girl! But’, he gave a shrug, ‘it became a game with them, and then I became a party to that game.’
‘Relax, eh? Have a cigarette and take your mind back to this other murder but first tell me who cleaned out the shop and when?’
The Surete had been kind but would he now leave things well enough alone? ‘The Corporal Schraum, the one who took his pleasure with Madame Ouellette whenever he wanted. It was he who cleaned it out last summer. In passing through the district on his way to her, Schraum saw a shop forgotten and decided it was too good to leave. Marie swears she tried to stop him. Father David … It was all I could do to restrain him.’
The priest paused, but pausing would do no good. ‘I argued with the Corporal but they loaded everything on to their trucks, even the furniture. He gave Marie two bolts of cloth with which to make new dresses – just flung them off the back of one of the trucks. He had so much of it. All his, all those things. The accumulations of two generations, father and son. They’re bastards. Bastards!’
The cigarette did little to calm the old priest’s nerves. Indeed, tobacco seemed only to make him more agitated and angry. The acid of the years came forward.
‘The sisters Gagnon,’ he spat. ‘They are lying. Lying, Inspector! The Captain Dupuis is innocent of such a hideous crime. I’ve warned them repeatedly. I’ve told them both they must stop picking on a man with one leg, a veteran! But at the ages of eighty-seven and eighty-three, God could tell them and they’d still turn the deaf ear!’
Delacroix took a quick drag. ‘Merde! must I go down on my knees to those two old bitches, eh? Dupuis is nothing!’ He tossed the hand of insignificance and spat tobacco from his lower lip. ‘Oh, for sure he looks at the girls – which of you doesn’t, eh? and the younger, the prettier – you can’t tell me you haven’t ravaged a few in that mind of yours, eh? But the Captain is incapable of killing anyone.’
St-Cyr took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. ‘He was a soldier, was he not?’
‘Verdun. Yes … yes, he could have killed. Does that make you feel better?’
The pipe was forgotten. ‘Why not say the Captain was incapable for other reasons?’
He’d show the Surete! He’d not let up now, not when things were going so well! ‘Dupuis often frequented the houses – Mme Lauzon’s, Mme Belle’s …’
‘Yes, yes, but was it always the youngest he chose?’
The Surete’s eyes sought him out. The pipe, tobacco pouch and matches had yet to be put to use. ‘He … he had strange tastes, Inspector. They had to be suitable, you understand, but those two old women are wrong. They’re simply being vindictive. It wasn’t Dupuis. It was Charles Audit if it was anyone from around here.’
The pipe was packed but the effort took time. At last the match was struck. ‘M Charles Audit?’
Delacroix drew deeply on his cigarette to let the impasse grow. The further they got from discussing Father David the better, but should he air the parish linen, should he not listen to God?
‘I’ve no proof, except that I saw Monsieur Charles early on that evening coming out of the courtyard of the Villa Audit. I’d gone to have my supper but, of course, the cafes were all closed, the streets so empty it was not difficult to notice a man in great haste who was afraid he might be caught.’
‘Are you certain it was Charles Audit?’
‘Positive. I’ve known the brothers for years. He was some distance ahead of me, carrying two suitcases which he left behind those barrels in the courtyard out there.’
Two suitcases … St-Cyr hesitated. Why had the priest not called out to Charles Audit? Why hadn’t he offered to help carry the suitcases? ‘And you didn’t tell the police?’
Delacroix again tossed a hand. ‘I had no reason to. At the time I didn’t suspect him of the girl’s murder. Besides, the police had better things to do and so did I. Two suitcases are not much, even though Monsieur Charles did not own the Villa Audit and should not have been taking things from it.’