He was in rare form. Again he yanked on the bell and again! ‘Patience, mon vieux. Patience. This is not one of Napoleon III’s villas — those are downstream a little and nearer to the Parc des Sources and the Hotel du Parc. This is simply a private residence, an hotel particulier, a mansion but …’
‘But another of your travelogues? Piss off. It’s cold, I’m hungry and we still have to register at our hotel before curfew or those bastards will lock us up! They will, Louis. That Scharfuhrer wasn’t kidding. Those boys would like nothing better than to get their hands on two Schweinebullen. We should call back here tomorrow morning. Don’t you be so impatient!’
Hermann had had difficulty in locating Ines Charpentier’s boarding house, across the river on the outskirts of the suburb of Bellerive-sur-Allier. He had had to cross and then recross one of the bridges and had been hassled twice more!
‘Messieurs … What is it you wish?’
Ah merde, a woman, a dark silhouette, stood just behind the bars of the gate, shrouded in the cloud-shadow of one of the pillars.
‘Auguste-Alphonse Olivier. Surete and Kripo.’
‘Detectives … Whatever for? He can’t know anything of use to you. He never goes out during the day, never walks up into town. You’ll only upset him. His supper …’
‘Ach! Open up, Fraulein. Sich beeilen! Depechez-vous!’ shrieked the Kripo.
Hermann would use Deutsch and then French! ‘Verfluchte Franzosen,’ he went on. Cursed French. ‘Always causing trouble.’
One shouldn’t let that pass! ‘I thought it was les Allemands who caused the trouble,’ snapped St-Cyr.
‘Calme-toi, Louis. Calme-toi.’
The key, though probably fashioned in the late 1860s, had difficulty finding the lock after that little exchange but once there, it turned smoothly and, surprise of surprises, the gate swung open without a sound.
‘I can answer whatever you wish to ask,’ she said determinedly. ‘There is absolutely no reason for you to question him. Is it the house that you think to requisition? Well, is it?’
The path to the street had been cleared and freshly swept. Only her footprints dented the snow ahead. In the foyer, and once beyond the blackout curtain that shrouded all such doors these days, the light from a single sconce of mid-nineteenth-century brass and frosted glass was grey and dim. A plain walking stick leaned forlornly against a small, bare table. Another of those urns was to Hermann’s left, on a short pillar of grey marble, the fer forge balustrade and stone staircase rising majestically to a landing beneath a magnificent Beauvais tapestry before turning to lead to room upon cold room.
‘All right, messieurs,’ she said tartly, ‘you will now answer me.’
Arms tightly folded across her chest, she blocked further progress. Severe was the word one would most use to describe her, felt St-Cyr. Dark and very widely set eyes lay under fiercely plucked brows. The long straight black hair was tied behind but pulled down in front to hide the left side of her forehead, making her look like what? One of Man Ray’s photos, the stern maitresse of a girls’ boarding school?
The nose was prominent, the lips thin, the face with its slanting knife-edged creases on either side of that nose, sharply angular. The ears were pierced and held wedding-ring loops of gold; the neck was no longer youthful, the head perched as if that of a tortoise protruding from the loose and cable-knitted cowling of a grey-blue, woollen, long-sleeved dress.
‘Well?’ she asked harshly. ‘If not the house, then what?’
‘Your name, mademoiselle?’ asked Louis, having raised a cautionary hand to silence his partner who was still taking her in, still trying to get a feel for this place. Ah yes!
‘Pascal, Edith, secretary and, since some time now, cook, housekeeper and maid of all work.’
She was in her early fifties. The cheeks were indented, the complexion sallow, or was it the lack of lighting? wondered Kohler. Black eye shadow had been used only at the extreme far corners of her eyes to emphasize their shade and severity. The eyebrows were much, much thicker nearest the bridge of the nose so that their arch tapered swiftly to pencil thinness and the gap between them was reinforced by their blackness.
In 1918 there had been so few eligible men left in France, Germany and Britain after the Great War that spinsters like this had been minted in. their hundreds of thousands.
‘Employed here since November 1925?’ asked Louis pleasantly enough.
‘If you must know, yes,’ she said, having read his partner’s mind and not liked what she’d read.
‘A few pieces of jewellery,’ he continued, unruffled as usual.
‘There is no jewellery here. Why should there be?’
‘Perhaps if you would simply take us to your employer, he might allow you to stay while we question him?’
‘Stay? of course I’ll stay! Haven’t I been at his side all these years since she …’
‘Drowned herself?’ asked Louis, keeping up the heat.
‘How dare you say that in this house?’
‘Edith … Edith, who is it?’ called out a distant voice.
‘Detectives, Auguste.’
‘Then have them come into the kitchen. Could we offer them a little of our soup and some of the National?’
‘No soup and no bread, Auguste. There’s barely enough as it is.’
‘A little of the wine?’
‘It’s a pas d’alcools day and the wine has been watered twice in any case.’
‘Then at least some of the tisane, Edith. It’s very cold out there. Mon Dieu, two pullovers on under my coat and still I froze! Inspectors, what brings you to us?’
He had finished his soup and bread. Though his cheeks were still coloured by the frost and he’d doubtless been outside recently, newspapers were spread before him. L’Humanite, Paris-Soir, Je Suis Partout, the Volkischer Beobachter, Das Reich also, and still others … How had they come by them?
The couple had been arguing — that was abundantly clear, thought Kohler. Reclusive Olivier might be but those walks of his had served him well. The ex-banker’s grip was strong, the hand roughly calloused. Once sure of himself no doubt, this haut bourgeois — never one of the nouveaux riches, for the house was of old money — had been reduced to avoiding the gaze of others but that’s where it all stopped. On his lapel lay not only the red ribbon of the Legion d’honneur but that of the Croix de guerre and the yellow and green of the Medaille militaire. Though sixty- eight or seventy years of age, he was still quite handsome, if now rough and ready. The blue suit jacket had obviously been something he might have once worn to that bank of his, but now it had frayed cuffs and mismatched buttons. The pullover beneath it was one he must favour, the plaid workshirt beneath that, frayed right round at a collar that had already been turned.
There were bags and dark circles under the deep brown eyes and these made the still-averted gaze even more sorrowful. There was also the perpetual evening shadow of Paul Varollier, though stronger and definitely not sickly.
‘Inspectors, we tend to live in the kitchen,’ he acknowledged with a gesture. ‘As a boy I spent much time here, so that is all to the good. Sit, please. Smoke if you wish. We’ve a fire as you can see, but the wood is from one of my own trees. A windstorm took it.’
Was the emphasized singsong accent of the Auvergnat deliberate? wondered St-Cyr.
Olivier slid a saucer their way, refusing Hermann’s offer of the last of his partner’s cigarettes.