‘Therese teaches ballet; Martine, having taken her degree in horticulture, tries to brighten the Government’s solitude with her flowers. We’ve a labrador retriever, also a cook, housekeeper, chauffeur, groundskeeper and two, or is it three, maids of all work. My wife keeps firing and then rehiring them.’
‘But were your son and daughters or any of the staff aware of your running around?’
‘My fucking Lucie? Why should they have cared, especially as it kept me happy and content?’
‘It must have cost you plenty.’
‘I’ve private money. I’ve always had it.’
‘And the riding crop, monsieur? Why did her killer or killers place it in her hand?’
Ah damn this infernal Surete! ‘I’ve no idea. How could I have?’
‘It’s curious, that’s all.’
‘Then if you’re through with me, I’m already late for a meeting with Dr Carl Schaefer, the coordinator of the Bank of France and director of the Office for the Surveillance of French Banks.’
‘Das Bankenaufsichtsamt,’ said St-Cyr in Deutsch just to increase their uneasiness if possible.
‘The reparations,’ countered Deschambeault in French without a whisper of disquietude. ‘Try as we consistently have, our friends refuse to reduce them.’
Five hundred million francs, nearly seventy per cent of the value of the whole economy, went to the Reich every day of every year. Two and a half million pounds sterling at the official rate, or eleven and half a million US dollars.
‘Secretaire, transport was promised and is urgently needed.’
‘A Peugeot two-door sedan has been left for you and Kohler outside the Hotel du Parc. The keys, together with petrol and food tickets, are with the concierge. It’s the best I could do under … under the circumstances.’
‘Merci. Then please notify the sous-prefet that we again require the services of his iron man. Felix Laloux is to do the autopsy on this one also, and I’m grateful you arranged his release from prison. There were only four of you in your little group? If there are others, now is the time to say so.’
‘Four only,’ said Bousquet guardedly.
‘An bon. Then for now that is all, but please remind the others to take precautions. No one leaves town. Not today, tomorrow or any other day until this matter is settled.’
‘And the killer or killers?’ demanded Deschambeault.
‘Have ears that have been wrapped around each and every one of you. Let us hope my partner can pin things down a little more firmly.’
Already St-Cyr had gone back to his probing, easing a drawer open, leafing through a novel with the blunt end of that pencil. Totally absorbed as if he’d forgotten them.
‘He won’t,’ swore Bousquet as they left the building and headed for the car where Georges sat behind the wheel. He had kept the engine running in spite of the ordinance to do no such thing. ‘He’ll remember every word you said, Gaetan, every nuance. The cigar, the riding crop, the laissez-passers Fernand so generously parts with from that allocation of his when you grease his palm, as do I and others. How could you have gone to Paris without telling me she’d been murdered?’
‘You worry too much, Rene. He’s only a cop.’
‘His partner’s a Gestapo.’
‘Who has yet to visit Herr Gessler to pay his respects.’
‘Then let us hope he doesn’t.’
‘Gessler says Herr Kohler’s loyalties are being constantly questioned and that Gestapo Paris-Central would just as soon be rid of him and St-Cyr.’
‘Idiot, both are considered far too honest and seek only the truth. But it’s you I’m also worried about, Gaetan. You would take Lucie to Paris. You know how I’ve warned you about Doriot and Deat and the others of the far right. Any excuse to let us have it is excuse enough for them.’
‘The Intervention-Referat, the Bickler Unit?’
‘Hired assassins who know how to hide behind the Resistance and have or have not the sanction of their Gestapo friends. Georges, drop the sous-directeur off at La maison des saumons plus beaux for a taste of that fish he and Lucie used to love, and where I know he’s to meet with Schaefer, then run me round to the commissariat. We’ve found another one.’
As the car drove off, Kohler let the blackout curtains at the end of the sixth-floor corridor fall back into place. No sound came up from the lift, or from anywhere else. It was eerie how quiet the hotel could be; it simply wasn’t good.
Room 6-11 was as close as peas in a pod to being above that of Lucie Trudel and below that of Celine Dupuis. And why the hell did the Resistance have to put Louis’s name in print and do so in advance of their visit?
That, too, was eerie and not good.
Kneeling — ignoring the sore-tooth pain in his knee — he tried to peer through the keyhole only to find the key had been inserted into the other side of the lock. ‘Okay, mein Liebling,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘two can play this game.’
Using a half-round feeler from the ring of lock-picking tools in his jacket pocket, he silently gave the key a gentle push and felt it move, hoped there’d be a carpet and heard the bloody thing crash on the parquet floor. Through the keyhole he saw a plump white rabbit suddenly lift its head and prick up its ears, then return greedily to its feeding.
Slices of dried apple had been tossed on to the worn Aubusson carpet to keep the creature quiet. Beyond it, there was a plain wooden coffee table, a carpenter’s bench in years gone by perhaps, with books, ashtrays, a japanned chest, a bronze model of the place Vendome’s column, an Empire-style desk lamp with jade-green shade and, at either end of the table, two china mugs: blue as well, to match that of the carpet.
Steam issued from the mugs but there were no knees or hands in sight.
Beyond the table, beyond a narrow space with piled tin trunks, cluttered shelves with square openings rose all but to the ceiling. More books, some porcelain — Chinese perhaps — a few figurines, a soft purple tulip-glass with white silk narcissi and, at the very top, four experiments in beginner’s taxidermy: a dove, a rook, a starling and a seagull.
‘Un moment,’ confessed a faint but carefully modulated female voice, the accent perfect. Not a trace of the rolling, singsong accent of an Auvergnate, more of Paris and the Sorbonne. Of wealth and place and the long, long tumble from it. Of hesitation too, and fear? he wondered.
Fabric moved to block his view as the key was collected. She didn’t tremble when fitting it back into the lock, was outwardly calm. ‘Monsieur?’ she said, the look in her dark blue eyes empty.
‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central.’
Her throat was lovely and slender, what he could see of it, the collar of the black and crimson brocade dress all but touching the delicately smooth fantastic line of her lower jaw and chin. About thirty, he told himself, the hair a dark, rich auburn and long but pinned up and worn in the style of the fin de siecle, her brow partly hidden by it, the face thin and sharply featured, aristocratic, yes, the whole of her being from that other time and nervous. Yes, nervous.
‘Well, Herr Kohler, to what do we owe this pleasure?’ she asked.
It would sound foolish, but he’d have to say it. ‘A moment of your time, Madame …’
‘Mademoiselle Blanche. Everyone calls me that, but I suppose you will need another label. Varollier. Grand-papa was an architect. The mairie, the hotel de ville — how do you say it in Deutsch, Inspector?’
The town hall. ‘Das Rathaus, but my French is good enough. Please continue using it and don’t worry.’
‘Forgive me. It’s just that … that so few of our visitors speak our language. Japanese, of course, at their embassy, Spanish, too, at theirs, and Italian at theirs, but seldom what is so often required, which makes me of some small service when needed. The mairie of the eighteenth arrondissement has magnificent stained-glass windows which cover its courtyards. The Eglise de Notre-Dame-de-Clignancourt, opposite it, was finished at about the same time, in 1896 and four years later, I think.’