Kohler opened the other tin only to find an almost identical selection, but here there were also two carefully flattened cigar bands: another Choix Supreme perhaps, and a Romeo y Julieta, both bright red and with gold coins on either side of the brand name.
‘Our nurse must have known Albert, Louis.’
‘She had a private practice. Was he one of her patients?’
‘Was she accustomed to caring for the girls at Camille Lefebvre’s school?’
‘Where Celine Dupuis may have taught ballet part-time?’
‘A bird lover, Louis. One who wore diamonds she tried her damnedest to hide.’
‘But hadn’t worn the dress, the shoes or this because she couldn’t have had them.’
The beads of a very wealthy flapper.
‘Which, by rights, should have been stolen from her room,’ breathed Kohler. ‘The Hotel d’Allier, mon vieux. I think we’d better hear what our shorthand typist has to say if alive and still at home.’
The Hotel d’Allier rose up from behind its iron fence, grey and slate-roofed against an even greyer sky. Shutters open, others closed.
In the foyer, a simple bell and desk stood before dark, wooden pigeon-holes with their infrequent messages. Keys absent or left on the run, others long forgotten. Maybe sixty or seventy rooms …
The head-and-shoulders portrait of Petain in uniform, looking sternly down from the papered wall, was crooked.
‘St-Cyr, Surete. Mademoiselle Lucie Trudel, and hurry.’
‘Hurry?’ yelped the ancient concierge, having ducked behind the desk. ‘The police are always in a hurry, no more now than before. Nor have they changed their coats or their politics, only the weight of their truncheons.’ Cloves of garlic spilled from his left hand. ‘My lunch,’ he hissed. ‘There’s no bread.’
‘Kohler, mon fin. Gestapo, Paris-Central.’
‘Concierge Rigaud, it’s a matter of some importance,’ tried Louis.
‘My soup, is that not important? This place. The constant comings and goings and no one signing in or out, eh? What’s it this time? Drugs? Syphilis? Or did she have something worse? Is that why she had to go home? Well, is it?’ he shrilled.
Sacre nom de nom, a tough one! ‘Did she really go home?’ bleated St-Cyr.
‘Three messages now and not collected. Aren’t they evidence enough?’
Rigaud, for all his years and apparent frailty, was fiercely protective of his territory but the snap of Hermann’s fingers broke the air. Swiftly handed over, the slender slips of paper were quickly scanned and pocketed.
‘She was rounded up, wasn’t she?’ rasped the concierge, biting back on his gums, then clucking his tongue for good measure. ‘Grabbed off the street and hustled to the commissariat. Forced to strip for the doctor to have a look and a swab, eh? They’re disgusting, the girls these days. Dropping their underwear whenever they get itchy. No morals. No sense of decency. These old ears of mine don’t want to listen but cry when they hear the goings on!’
Venereal diseases had become so rampant in Paris that the Occupier had insisted the flics routinely round up for medical checks whatever females were available, not just the filles de joie.
‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Louis. ‘The key, monsieur. Room 4-17.’ He pointed to the empty pigeon-hole.
‘She left very early on Saturday and has not returned,’ said Rigaud spitefully.
‘Stay here. If we need you, we’ll get you. Louis, it’s this way. I’m not taking that lift or any other.’
Caught once by the hanging thread of a broken cable, Hermann had a thing about lifts. Old or from the late thirties, repaired and constantly serviced or otherwise, it simply didn’t matter.
‘The exercise will do you good,’ he said, only to gasp in pain on the stairs and grab his left knee. ‘Ach!’ he shrieked. ‘Scheisse!’
He sat down hard. Pain blurred his eyes and twisted the whip scar on his cheek. ‘Go ahead,’ he managed. ‘I’ll join you in a minute. It’s nothing.’
‘Nothing? Remind me to fix that poultice for you tonight.’
‘Who sleeps? Not us. Now beat it. Fourth floor at the back, since Celine’s room in the attic was number 3 and at the front. Oh, here. You’d better take these.’
The messages.
Friday, 29 January
Cherie, je t’aime, toujours je t’aime. You know I want only what is best for you. Paris, cherie. Paris tomorrow. Though we won’t be able to travel together, I promise I’ll be with you when we get there.
It was signed: Ton petit grigou. Your little penny-pincher.
Saturday, 30 January
Lucie, please come back soon. We have to talk. It’s urgent.
Celine
Tuesday, 2 February
Cherie, I needed you. Every day without your warm embrace was a day of constant despair. Paris no longer held its magic and now I find that you went home in spite of our having discussed things and agreed.
This final note was unsigned but was obviously from her penny-pincher. Merde, were they to have yet another killing, wondered St-Cyr, or had it already happened?
As before, the stairs and corridors were narrow and poorly lit. Noises carried. Though most of the rooms would be unoccupied at this time of day, cooking was in progress somewhere, a gramophone was playing — Lucienne Boyer singing ‘Sans Toi’, Without You …
The room was not at the back of the hotel as Hermann had thought, but at the front, though here the blackout curtains were still drawn, the bed mounded with covers. Slacks, a woollen pullover, a blouse, brassiere and underpants lay in a heap beside it. One sock, her shoes, her overcoat, ah Jesus … Jesus … The pale blue glass bottle of water was on the bedside table. Woven wicker where the hands would hold it. The Buvette de Chomel … the Chomel …
Switching on the overhead light, he hesitated, asked silently, Was she smothered — is that how it was done?
The smell … always there was that clinging, throat-clawing sweetness Hermann now found so terrifying.
Flinging back the covers, St-Cyr sucked in a ragged breath and held it, forced himself to look closely as, grey and bloated, cut open, festering and crawling with maggots, five dead rats lay belly up, their entrails trailing.
‘Trapped … They were first trapped,’ he heard himself muttering and wondered where her corpse must be. Her corpse …
‘On Saturday,’ he said, his voice stiff with control, ‘30 January. Almost six days now, but was Bousquet supposed to find these?’ he asked when Hermann hobbled into the room to swear under his breath.
‘Where’s the girl, Louis?’
‘Don’t open that armoire. Let me.’
Dresses had been flung aside, others had fallen from their hangers. A brown velvet hacking jacket, a paisley silk cravat and brown whipcord riding breeches covered her. A slip, a half-slip, then a pair of lace-trimmed underpants, silk and expensive, were hooked over the end of the riding crop in her hand.
The cheeks were ashen to a contused greyish purple; her eyes were closed, sprays of petechiae dusting the lids, the bridge of her nose and forehead. Effluent and bloodstained oedematous fluid and froth had erupted and then oozed from her nostrils and mouth. There were blotches. The stench was terrible.
‘Smothered,’ he said softly. ‘Held down under a pillow on the bed, Hermann, then carried here while unconscious to be crammed into a corner and finished off, the other sock no doubt jammed into her mouth. She’s lost the child. About three months, I think. Laloux will be more precise. Aborted foetuses are a speciality with him, among other things.’
She had also voided herself.
‘These rats are all males,’ managed Kohler. ‘Why only those, unless they’re the next to get it?’
‘De Fleury, Bousquet, Richard, this one’s “lover”, and Petain, eh?’ snapped St-Cyr.
‘Mademoiselle Trudel was to have left for Clermont-Ferrand, Louis. There’s a third-class ticket on the floor with her clothes.’
‘Yet she changed her mind.’
‘Was agitated. Didn’t pick up Friday’s message. Went out very early Saturday morning to meet Albert and get that bottle. Forgot her hat and mittens. Must have been freezing, yet walked all the way there and back in the dark.’
‘Then took off her clothes and climbed into bed.’
‘To freeze and wait for her lover?’ hazarded Kohler.
‘Who was to have checked in with her before the couple made their separate ways to catch the train to Paris, or to give her a lift to it, eh?’
‘She’s scribbled two items on a bedside note. A seven with a plus and minus sign and then a half-hour for the train to Clermont Ferrand, and an eight with the same for the early train to Paris, kidding herself that they still run so closely on time.’
‘A grigou.’
‘One of les gars, mon enfant.’ One of the boys.