‘Yes. She … she had just come out of the Hotel du Parc.’
‘From work?’
‘Isn’t that what I said?’
‘The offices of the Bank of France aren’t there, mon fin. Try the Carlton.’
‘She had delivered some papers,’ said Paul calmly, now very much the dealer of vingt-et-un who knows the deck in his hand is thin of fives and tens and therefore vastly in his favour.
‘Your shoes. Let me see them.’
Paul was wearing carpet slippers. ‘My shoes …?’ he managed. ‘They’re …’
‘They’re under his side of the bed, Inspector. I’ll get them for you if you wish.’
‘I don’t.’
The headboard was against the corridor wall, the sister having that side closest to the door and window, the brother the one next to the far wall; the things one had to do these days to make do.
‘One pair of boots without hobnails or cleats, one pair of leather shoes with soles of the same, pre-war and needing attention, and a pair with wooden soles,’ said Herr Kohler.
Running those fingers of his over the wooden soles, he looked at Paul and then at her, didn’t say a thing about their having to share a bed but … but for just a moment his fingers hesitated on the right sole and then … then began to trace something out. A gouge, a deep scratch? wondered Blanche, sickened by the thought. ‘Inspector …’ She heard her voice. It was too sharp. ‘Inspector, you’ve not told us why you want to know when we last saw Lucie, or what has happened to her to make you ask. She met us on the avenue Thermal, if you must know.’
The main thoroughfare.
‘She had just come from the Eglise Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc on place Chanoine Gouttet, had been praying to the Virgin for help and guidance, and had gone to confession. I … I knew she was pregnant. Paul hadn’t been told but … but must have sensed the reason for her distress of late and … and has now tried to protect her reputation. She was a good friend, and she readily said we could borrow her gramophone and the record while she was away at home to see her father. She …’ Merde, it was going to sound badly but Paul had to be rescued. ‘She gave me her key and said to leave it in her box at the front desk, that she’d collect it later that evening.’
‘Then she wasn’t on her way here?’
‘She … she said she had to meet someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Celine, I think, but … but she must have known Celine had already gone to work at the Theatre de Casino.’
The girl was desperate. ‘As one of its dancers?’ he asked. Had the sister read the note Celine had left for Lucie on Saturday and said this simply to protect her brother? he wondered.
‘The piano also,’ she said. ‘An … an operetta. La Bayadere. All I know about it is that it’s the one that Dr Menetrel thought would most please the Marechal. It was only to run for a few nights, a week at most, and is still on, I think, or … or has it finished its run, Paul?’
The brother didn’t answer. Ignoring her, he tried to find a cigarette but finally gave it up. ‘You’re not going to take those, are you?’ he demanded spitefully.
‘These?’ Herr Kohler indicated the shoes. ‘No. They’re all yours for now.’ And coming round to her side of the bed, took to examining the wooden soles of her shoes, then those of the others and of her boots. In summer it would be so hot in that bed, so cold in winter — was this what he was thinking, that they must hold each other, comfort each other, see and touch each other when naked? Satisfy each other?
‘I think you both know that early on Saturday morning she was murdered in that room of hers,’ he said. ‘I think the whole damned hotel knows by now, but what I want are answers.’
‘Murdered?’ bleated Paul, throwing her a glance of alarm, not being able to stop himself, poor darling.
‘Here,’ said the Detektiv, and then … then, on noticing above the baseboard the hole in the plaster that she had plugged, ‘You don’t have a problem with rats in this hotel, do you? You ought to, from what I’ve seen of it.’
‘Rats?’ said Blanche. ‘Why … why, yes, we do, but … but Albert comes and … and takes care of them.’
‘Albert.’
‘That is so,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He’s very good at it and studies each problem thoroughly before setting his snares …’
In a rush, Kohler left them. Louis wasn’t in any of the corridors or on any of the staircases, nor was he still in Lucie Trudel’s room, which was locked.
He was with the concierge deep in the cellars, was jammed head and shoulders between two ceiling joists and the floor above, and bent double over the top of a stone wall, his feet no longer touching the backless chair he had used to get up there.
‘I heard you talking in that room, Hermann,’ he managed. ‘I knew then that you were all right. Earth,’ he grunted, his voice still muffled. ‘Very fine earth has been mixed with the powdered white sugar that’s been dusted over the tripwire and noose. I’m certain it’s sugar and not potassium cyanide.’
‘Rats,’ confided Rigaud, cradling the Surete’s overcoat and fedora, the Lebel also and suit jacket. ‘He’s curious about how ours are caught.’
‘And butchered,’ came the tunneller’s voice. ‘Butchered and sorted as to their sex, then saved.’
The metal doors to the service lift from the furnace room opened on to the pavement outside the Hotel du Parc. Still smoking, the ashes and clinkers overflowed their metal drums, carrying the acrid stench of sulphur. A waiting gazogene lorry intermittently banged and roared as its engine fought to suck into its cylinders enough of the wood-gas to keep itself running. The tank and gas-producer’s tubing were up there on the roof of the cab, the firebox in front, and God help anyone if the lorry should happen to run into them, thought Kohler.
‘Inspectors,’ said the elder Grenier cautiously, ‘my son always sorts them. So many males, so many females. It does no harm, and helps him to keep track of how much he should charge each client.’
Louis crowded him, putting his back to one of the assistant groundsmen. ‘And the livers?’ he asked, hands jammed deeply into those overcoat pockets of his, collar up, breath billowing and fedora yanked down. Frost on the thick and bushy brown moustache too. ‘They were, I believe, absent from the little corpses we found.’
‘The livers,’ murmured Grenier, only to hear the Surete breathe, ‘Mystery meat?’
‘Albert sells them, yes, to … to others.’
‘Restaurants?’
‘Sometimes. The meat is … is as good as chicken, Inspector. When boiled for ten minutes and marinated in a little wine with herbs and a little salt, one can’t tell …’
‘Yes, yes. These days especially. The British have even issued such instructions to their aircrews in case of their being shot down. The cellars, I think. You and I. Hermann, please ask the concierge for the keys to our vehicle.’
Following the elder Grenier, Louis stepped off the pavement to take the service lift slowly down into the cellar. As it descended, those same hands were still crammed deeply into the pockets of that shabby overcoat, the shoulders still squared. ‘He may look grim but he’s happy,’ confided Kohler to an assistant groundsman. ‘We’re making progress. Where are the rats kept after they’re taken?’
‘In the shed behind the Grenier house. Now that it’s winter, Albert can dress them when he has the time, though he usually sees to this right away.’
‘Ten francs apiece — that’s what they’re asking for crows in Paris.’
‘The rats are evidently much tastier. Albert does quite well with them but only charges five for those he traps; ten if the client wishes to keep them, as some do. The rest he sells for twenty. There are always buyers.’
Down in the furnace room, the elder Grenier pulled off his asbestos gauntlet gloves and said, ‘Some coffee, Chief Inspector? A little something to warm us up?’
‘A cognac? Ah, merci, that would be perfect, as would the coffee, but alas we haven’t time. Your son, monsieur?’