He’d let them all have a moment. He’d let the truth take its course. ‘There was an elastic band, Monsieur Charles, around the canary you had mounted for your granddaughter. I have asked myself why she would have put it there. Was it to remind her of something? Your love, your friendship – how much she owed you for all you’d done for her? She was used to stroking that little bird, perhaps remembering how things used to be here at the carousel …’
‘She twisted it like a harlot!’ seethed Charles Audit, tugging at the handcuffs. ‘He made her – ’
‘Your brother could not stand to gaze at her nakedness any more, knowing she was conspiring against him, Monsieur Charles. When did Antoine tell you exactly what had been going on in that room?’
‘On that Thursday. I … I received a note from him at the flat. It said he’d be meeting Christabelle again that night at nine, but of course I already knew this. He … he told me Christabelle would be only too willing to go down on her knees between his filthy legs because she had done it often enough before.’
‘Ah yes. The elastic band is used by prostitutes to increase ecstasy during the male orgasm, yet she was a virgin until after the moment of her death.’
‘I did not rape her. I would never have done that.’
‘Of course not, but you did kill her, Monsieur Charles. You could not bear to have your brother take Christabelle away from you, or bear to have her act like Michele-Louise.’
‘Yes … yes, I did it. She did not wish to undress in front of me, but didn’t resist when I ordered her to. The wire, Rejean. I … I had to use the wire. She coughed. She struggled … My little one could not believe that I would …’
St-Cyr tossed a hand. ‘So, it’s finished. Please allow Clement Cueillard, who has the skill and patience for such a task, to open those animals in which the coins et cetera are hidden.’
‘Do you want a demonstration first, Inspector?’
A last run of the thing, even though it was now so badly damaged. ‘Those animals which rise a little more heavily or have a slight hesitation, those are the ones you want.’
‘So, Jean-Louis, there are only the two of us and we meet, as we did that last time, at the end of a case.’
The iridescent sky-blue sheath with its vertical rows of tiny seed pearls fitted her body like a glove.
‘Look, you’re a very understanding man, Jean-Louis, but I greatly fear you are absolutely hopeless at love. Why won’t you come and stay at my place? Separate rooms, separate beds. The Nazis can’t touch you now. You gave them the coins and the emeralds – emeralds like I’ve never seen before – and river diamonds, ancient gold. A split between the Wehrmacht and the SS, the Bureau Otto and the rue Lauriston, a show of mutual cooperation for the Fuhrer.’
‘It was wise of you to have suggested it.’
‘Wise, too, I think, to have told you how best to hide things by leaving them right out in the open.’
‘But disguised.’ Ah Mon Dieu, she was so beautiful. ‘Why me, why not …? You could have anyone, Gabrielle.’
‘Hey, listen. Do you think I want a Nazi lover? Me, who has lost a husband to them? No.’ She tossed her head and reached for her cigarette case. ‘I want a man who understands that a woman must decide things for herself. I have decided on you.’
In the Name of Jesus, decisions, must there always be decisions? ‘Christmas, then, and a few days with your son.’
‘Merci. We … we will be expecting you.’
‘Good!’ He got up to leave. She stood blocking his way. ‘Hermann’s living with two women, Jean-Louis. One to wash his socks and the other to …’
‘It won’t work. It can’t. Not for a detective.’
‘It’s too dangerous for me, is that it?’
‘You know it is. At any moment my German masters can turn on me. Hermann … he’s not had an easy time of it.’
‘Will you have to choose between him and France some day?’
‘He’ll have to choose between me and the Third Reich. I could never shoot him, not after what the two of us have been through.’
‘What about the hostages?’ she asked.
‘Rerouted to the South, to Perigord. It was the best we could do under the circumstances. Hermann fixed it using two of Antoine Audit’s trucks. I got the baker Georges and his girlfriend to go along with them.’
‘So, it’s only the two of us and it won’t work.’
‘You’re much taller than me.’
‘Another excuse?’
‘There are eight hundred German servicemen out there and any one of them would give an arm or a leg for what you have just offered but me …’
‘Yes, yes, I know, Jean-Louis. War is dangerous and so is being a detective when no one really wants one, but we need you to help us in the Resistance cell I’ve formed, so there is an end to it, and I have laid my life in your hands.’
‘You’re a very determined woman.’
‘One doesn’t get anywhere without determination.’
Her arms went about him, her lips … the feel of her. Ah Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu … the coal-black stallion, the shower of emeralds and gold coins …
Paris … Paris under the Occupation. A carousel …
‘Louis … Louis, I hate to break things up, but the Chief wants to see us right away.’
‘Another murder?’ Ah no …
‘Provence. Some little place in the hills. He thinks it still might be a good idea if we got out of town for a while.’