Jean-Guy was still standing. Shattered, broken — terrified and now utterly useless. ‘Everyone who is anyone.’
‘But you’re so distant from it that you and Richard and the other lovers of those four girls are in the clear?’
‘I was and, yes, I still am, as are they.’
Was that a hint, eh? wondered Kohler. Ferbrave and a little accident, the FTP getting the blame and everyone lamenting the loss of two detectives from Paris who were only doing their duty but couldn’t have understood the difficulties of the terrain and the urgency of their being ever-vigilant? ‘This Flykiller or killers of Monsieur Laval’s, Sous-directeur. Who could have such an inside track?’
‘I only wish I knew, but it can’t have anything to do with the vans. Merde alors, why should it?’
‘The perfume, the cognac and champagne from 1925. Who requested those?’
‘I really wouldn’t know, nor would my son or that one.’
Ferbrave.
‘Inspector, you are only too aware of the scandal that will erupt if word of this gets out,’ said the sous-directeur. ‘Surely you must realize we could soon be on the verge of a civil war and that the Reich, for obvious reasons, doesn’t want this to happen and wishes the Marechal to remain in office and in Vichy. Ambassador Abetz is a personal friend and part-owner of the stables my son manages. If you were to speak to him, the Ambassador would’ satisfy you that what was done with the vans was necessary. Pour l’amour de Dieu, we had to keep up appearances. Thirty-two embassies, the papal nuncio among them. Constant delegations from the Reich, visiting dignitaries from all over the new Europe, submissions from our citizenry in the zone libre and even from the zone occupee. One couldn’t have undertaken such receptions in an aura of defeat, could one? The nation had to maintain an image, and in a small and humble way what I and my associates did, helped.’
A saint. ‘And the rats in that girl’s bed, the knife that was recovered?’
‘Albert Grenier may well know who took them and killed her but he’s a difficult boy. I would not have harmed him in the slightest. Henri-Claude arrived unexpectedly and … Well, you know the rest, and fortunately no one was seriously hurt.’
‘That hand,’ said Kohler of Ferbrave. ‘Merde, it doesn’t look good. I’d best get our sculptress to have a look at it. Hang on a minute.’
Ferbrave hadn’t screamed when she’d done as Herr Kohler had asked and had poured the iodine on to that torn strip of flesh. He had simply looked at and through her, thought Ines, and she had realized he had been convinced she knew more than she was letting on. Bien sur, Herr Kohler had warned him that if anything further should happen to her or to Albert he would be held responsible, but Henri-Claude would find a way. Albert hadn’t revealed a thing. Adamantly he had refused to tell the detectives who he’d seen dropping that knife into the outhouse. And now? she asked herself, hunching her shoulders under her overcoat for warmth and cramming her hands deeply into its pockets. Now my ten minutes of utter darkness have again passed undiscovered by the detectives and moonlight bathes the snow-covered garden that runs behind the Grenier house on the boulevard de l’ Hopital. Moonlight that is so beautiful as it glistens off the rows of cloches beneath which vegetables will soon be started, the garden extending straight out to the railway embankment above the marshalling yards and the station beyond. And at its very back, next to the family’s outdoor toilet, is the shed Albert uses.
Herr Kohler had gone to look at the railway lines and the ease of access. He would conclude there was no problem at all in getting to and from that shed unseen so long as one could avoid the patrols with their dogs. St-Cyr was inside it with the father; Albert indoors, in tears, his mother beside herself with trying to calm him.
While I … I stand out here where I’ve been told to wait by St-Cyr until he returns, she said, and the moon, so pure and silent, sails high above me, the innocent perhaps, or the condemned. And should I move from my little root, he will see my tracks in the snow.
But had the rats that had been found really come from here? Did Albert really know who had taken them?
She wished she could listen to what was being said but knew she daren’t move …
‘Inspector,’ said the elder Grenier, ‘my Albert was very upset when he returned from the Hotel d’Allier last Friday evening. He said he had done well, and that with what he’d trapped in the cellars of the Hotel du Parc, he’d managed six males and four females — he was positive of this — but that someone had stolen five of the males.’
‘Stolen while he was still at the Hotel d’Allier?’
‘One of the tenants lets him play with her rabbit. Always when he’s on a job there, he takes time out for this. She … she’d been to confession and was still very distressed.’
‘That was Lucie Trudel. Celine Dupuis owned the rabbit.’
‘Yes, but one of the others … a Mademoiselle Blanche — I’m sorry I don’t know her last name — had returned to console Mademoiselle Trudel when Albert knocked on her door. Blanche had a key to the other one’s flat.’
‘And the sack Albert kept his rats in?’
‘Was left in the cellars, as always. Dead of course. Albert finishes them off with a chair leg he keeps for just such a purpose. Even if they’ve hanged themselves in his snares, he gives them a good rap just to be certain.’
A rough-hewn bench served as butcher’s block, its wooden-handled butcher’s knife thin and old, but razor-sharp, the blade a good fifteen centimetres long but worn down at the haft to a width of about a centimetre and a half.
A tin pail caught the skins, the heads and entrails.
One mustn’t alarm the elder Grenier too much. ‘Monsieur, it would be best if you, or one of the others on your staff, could accompany him on his early-morning rounds and at other times. Do so as unobtrusively as possible. Make up some excuse that’s logical, a little schedule with the others perhaps. Just for a few days, until this thing is settled.’
But would it be settled? Would Albert tell them what they needed to know? ‘Four murders, four lovely girls, Inspector. They were each very kind to him. Never a cross word or the disdain and impatience he gets from so many. Though very shy, he’d come to greet them whenever they passed through the park or he’d see them elsewhere in town. If they could, each would always pause to exchange a few words. If he could, Albert would have a little something saved up for at least one of them, a few flowers, an apple … We can’t spare much, but always let him do this.’
‘And Mademoiselle Charpentier?’
‘Has taken their place, I think, until just recently.’
The furnace at the Hotel du Parc had been banked for the night. At a word from St-Cyr, the firebox door was slammed, the lone man on duty begrudgingly excusing himself to leave the ‘nest’ to the three of them.
Herr Kohler set her valise on the workbench, then stood aside to let her open it. St-Cyr was to her left, the other one reaching up to hold the ceiling light a little closer.
Ines undid the catches. She would hesitate now, she told herself. The inquisition in the car on the return from the Grenier house had been hard: Mademoiselle, remind me of what street in Paris you and your uncle and aunt lived on while you were growing up? The rue Tournefort, numero 47, she’d said and thought, It’s not far from place Lucien-Herr and the house of Celine’s parents, is it? Neither of them had made mention of this last, nor had they asked if she’d had one childhood friend, one very special person to whom she could confide everything. Well, nearly everything, and receive the same in trust.
The perfume … the Shalimar. Why had she chosen such a scent? It must have cost a fortune. It was my aunt’s, she had said and they had left it at that, causing her to wonder if they’d believed her.