The Germans had been at the gates of the city, Paris all but deserted but what had happened to now make him suspect Charles Audit? ‘Tell me about this other girl.’
Father Eugene looked away. Was there sadness at the memory of her, or relief that they’d passed beyond Father David and the murder of Corporal Schraum?
‘Her name was Mila Zavitz. She was a Polish refugee, a very pleasant and presentable girl from Cracow. M Paul junior took her into his shop over the objections of his wife, to which, I must confess, I agreed. The girl was quite attractive, not what you’d think at all. The wife had reasons enough to worry.’
‘When would that have been?’
Such eagerness for the sordid. ‘In the late spring of 1938. Mila was only seventeen. She and her family lived over in Belleville, in a cellar off the rue Armand Carel, near the parc des Buttes-Chaumont. The father was a shoemaker. Mila spoke delightful French. She was a very well-educated girl. The parents could speak so little of our language, but she …’
Father Eugene drew on his cigarette and held the smoke in for the longest time. ‘She played the piano – classical things. I let her … I could not have kept her from the instrument in our parish hall even though she was a Jew.’
And one whose murder on the eve of the Defeat would have counted for little?
Saddened by the thought, St-Cyr drew on his pipe. He’d leave Charles Audit for the moment, would keep his voice very calm, for the death of this other girl was hurting the conscience of the old priest in more ways than one. Delacroix had been forced to face up to his anti-Semitism. ‘Did Mademoiselle Jeanne come to tell you of the body she had discovered?’
Delacroix blinked at this but did not turn from gazing sadly out at the street. ‘Yes. I asked Father David to look after her and I went to see if it was true. Mademoiselle Jeanne has always been afraid of men, Inspector. Ever since I have known her it’s been the same. When one is a priest, one bears the agonizing of other souls, even their darkest secrets and, yes, desires.’
‘And the girl? How did you find her?’
‘Dead, as Mademoiselle Jeanne will have told you. Ravaged, strangled.’
Was Father Eugene not lying a little? ‘How certain are you that she was in fact “ravaged”?’
Ah damn! The Surete’s detective saw more than he let on. ‘Her clothes … the attitude of the body …’
‘Yes, yes, but was there anything else?’ He’d push the priest now. ‘Semen? The ejaculation?’
St-Cyr waited. A cloud of pipesmoke would be useful perhaps. Delacroix was struggling with his own soul for he knew only too well what the ‘ejaculation’ looked like. All priests do.
‘It … it was on her pubic hairs, on her stomach. Some … some of it had collected in her belly button.’
Then the killer had withdrawn himself at some sudden noise – footsteps perhaps, in fright perhaps, or had it simply been because of guilt, because of a realization of what he’d done?
Mila Zavitz, age twenty, a Polish refugee, a Jew.
‘What makes you now want to accuse Charles Audit of this girl’s murder, Father, and that other killing, that of Christabelle Audit, his granddaughter? Please, I know you are linking the two deaths to him. Just give me your reasons.’
Delacroix crossed himself and muttered a prayer of absolution. ‘Monsieur Charles spent fifteen years on Devil’s Island for the attempted murder of his brother, Inspector, nearly six more years in the jungles of Brazil and Colombia. He was a man who had been betrayed by a brother seven years younger than himself.’
‘M Antoine Audit.’
‘When Charles returned to Paris in 1926 he was a changed man, no longer the bourgeois shopkeeeper. Though I saw him rarely, there was much hatred in him. Oh for sure, he lived for his carousel and his granddaughter, but he hated also and myself, may God forgive me if I am wrong, believe he waited only for the moment to repay his brother.’
‘Revenge is at the heart of darkness; vengeance is its sweet success.’
‘He came back for his suitcases only to find Mila in the courtyard. Since he’d stolen the things from the villa, he had to kill her.’
‘Why?’ The priest was edgy.
‘Because she knew him, Inspector. Mila often went to the parc des Buttes-Chaumont on her afternoon off and on Sundays. She would have seen him at the carousel. She spoke of him and of his granddaughter. I remember her once saying, “Those two, they are so close. It’s as if the one loves the other and she reminds him of her grandmother.”’
‘Michele-Louise Prevost.’
‘Yes, yes, that one.’
‘Could M Antoine have withdrawn the charge of attempted murder he brought against his brother?’
‘He could have. A misfired pistol – myself I have prayed for this at the time. But he chose not to. Instead, at the age of thirty, M Charles went to the tropics, to hell itself, and Madame Charles left the house and went to Perigord with M Antoine.’
‘She was expecting a child.’
‘Yes … yes, a girl – Christabelle’s mother. That one died in childbirth at the age of fifteen.’
‘Did Michele-Louise raise Christabelle?’
Father Eugene shook his head. ‘Not after the age of six. That’s when Charles came home and bought the carousel. From then on he raised Christabelle himself with the aid of a housekeeper. They didn’t come here to this quartier, not to my knowledge, and I hear most things that happen sooner or later. Michele-Louise could not have been much of a mother. She was not a good woman, Inspector. She was too loose, too busy with her “art-work” and her friends.’
‘And you’re certain the Captain Dupuis could not have killed Christabelle any more than he could have killed Mila Zavitz?’
‘Lonely men are always suspect, Inspector, but fear is a terrible thing. The few droplets of blood Mademoiselle Jeanne saw on the Captain’s shirt could just as easily have come from these, the cuts and nicks of shaving. There weren’t many of them – I examined the shirt myself at the local prefecture. The sisters have had it in for the Captain ever since he got the better of them in one of the shops. A last two bottles of sherry, I believe, or was it Madeira?’ He gave a shrug. ‘Of just such little insults are mountains made and the avalanche of nightmares begun again.’
‘Was there no blood on the girl?’
‘A little. In … in the area of her … her sexual parts and on the legs, the thighs.’
‘So M Charles could have killed her to protect himself for having robbed the house that had once been his own?’
‘Yes. The law had been broken.’
How close to the truth was the priest treading? ‘Did you see the contents of those two suitcases, Father? Did you open them?’ he asked harshly.
‘No, I did not open them. They were locked, but I can tell you that they were heavy.’
‘And when you saw Mila’s body, they were no longer there?’
‘That is correct. He’d pushed the trash barrels back. He was quite strong. The years on Devil’s Island had changed him, as I’ve said.’
St-Cyr nodded. There was so much more they needed to know, but one could ask only so much at any one time. ‘Why is it that you feel M Charles Audit could also have killed the granddaughter he loved so much?’
The priest tossed his head and shrugged. ‘It doesn’t make any sense but me, I feel he did.’
‘Could it have been Madame Minou’s son, Roland?’
Delacroix fingered the crucifix he carried in a pocket. He’d come to the end of the cigarette, must remember to save the butt. Always these days there was something to remember, and the wine … he’d have to have just a little of it. ‘Roland Minou … Yes, yes, I suppose if you could find him, that one might well have done it too, but he’d have had to have a good reason.’
‘Cheating?’
Father Eugene’s gaze narrowed. ‘Yes. Yes, cheating. If he’d thought he’d paid good money for something that wasn’t what he’d been told it was. He’s a mean-minded little gangster, a young man without a conscience. That silly woman dotes on him but he’s played her for a sucker once too often. Still, you might have something there, Inspector. Yes, you certainly might!’