Blanche had gripped the edge of the table with both hands but, unlike Monsieur Hebert and Sandrine Richard or even Albert, hadn’t noticed she’d done this.
St-Cyr had noticed, Ines told herself. He quickly wrote something in return and shoved it back across boards scratched and gouged through centuries — gouges, Mademoiselle Blanche, like the one in your brother Paul’s wooden-soled shoe? she asked silently.
Blanche waited, knowing only too well the gouges in the table had been a reminder to the detectives, though none had been needed, but did she say, Paul! to herself, or, Paul, my darling, beware?
But what did St-Cyr write? wondered Ines. Hermann, Blanche purchased a Choix Supreme on Saturday, 30 January at 4.45 p.m. the very day Lucie was killed and three days before Celine — was that what he had jotted down? Or was it: Paul Varollier must have taken Celine to his sister who waited in the Hall des Sources?
The answer, if such it was, came with the Chief Inspector’s next question. A shiver ran through her — Ines tried not to let Albert feel how nervous she was, but he couldn’t have missed it.
‘Mademoiselle, were those letters from anyone else?’
From Capitaine Auguste-Alphonse Olivier, Inspector? From the compagnon d’armes and dearest friend of my father, Lieutenant Pierre-Thomas Charpentier, who was put before the firing squad on orders from General Petain, orders that Auguste-Alphonse had then to carry out?
Blanche’s cheeks had stiffened; the look in those dark blue eyes had hardened. Charles-Frederic Hebert, the organizer of the little games of love, lust, rape and predator power, was watching her closely and no longer averting his gaze.
Albert’s fingers touched the haft of that butcher’s knife … Did St-Cyr ask himself of her, wondered Ines, Are you the threat Albert Grenier thinks you are? Always sniffing around, drifting in and out of our company, turning up at the most opportune times — coming here early this morning even though you must have had to leave your boarding house just after curfew to walk — yes, walk — through the bitter cold to meet Albert, whom you knew would be in his ‘little nest’, putting the coffee on?
Your valise, mademoiselle. Did you leave it there again? You must have.
Father, help me, she said silently, and then … then, ‘The letters were from no one else, Inspector. Celine and I were like twins. Each of us shared equally the life of the other. Annette Dupuis is my goddaughter; I was bridesmaid at Celine’s wedding, and it was I who found her when she had slashed her wrists.’
Mon Dieu, the control, Hermann, thought St-Cyr. Those sea-green eyes aren’t full of tears as they should be, but reveal a coldness that brings back the very words she spoke when rescued at the stables and told to cry: ‘I can’t. I haven’t cried in years.’ But of course she had cried at the sight of her friend.
Some strands of the fine, reddish hair were hastily brushed from her brow; the freckled, turned-up nose was touched with a knuckle.
‘I am what I say I am, Inspectors. When Celine convinced herself to take the job here in Vichy, we vowed we’d meet; either I would visit her, or she me. Monsieur Gilbert, my directeur at the Musee Grevin, was well aware of this and when the opportunity arose, he allowed me to come only for me to then find my dearest friend had indeed been murdered.’
‘Hence her interest in the corpse, Louis,’ said Herr Kohler gently.
‘Merde alors, idiot, must you always go soft when the pretty ones put the squeeze on! Mademoiselle, that little dissertation in no way justifies the answer you gave my partner: that death has always been of interest to the artist in you.’
There are enemies and there are enemies, she warned herself, and was Herr Kohler not taking just that line of approach so that his partner and friend could then be hated, himself liked, so as to prise further answers? ‘I couldn’t tell you the truth, could I?’ she heard herself ask. ‘I didn’t even know who either of you really were or what you were doing in Vichy.’
‘You most certainly did!’ said the Chief Inspector and, reaching for that cold and empty pipe of his, took it up, only to put it down as if furious with her! ‘What brand, please, of cigars did that director of yours give you to bring to the Marechal as a gift? Choix Supremes?’
‘Yes. Yes, I believe that is what they were but I had to hand them over to Dr Menetrel, so am not positive.’
‘Albert … Albert, mon vieux,’ interjected Hebert, ‘please go to the storehouse in the big barn and get the Chief Inspector a tin of our Dutch pipe tobacco. The one that smells so good, n’est-ce pas?’ A black iron key was taken from a ring and slid across the table to his grand-nephew. ‘Bring the Inspector Kohler one of the tins of fifty Wills Gold Flake cigarettes. These last are courtesy of the RAF, Inspectors, and were included, I believe, in some of the parachutages they have now taken to illegally dropping to the terrorists.’
The Resistance, as if that battle, in itself, justified everything else, thought Ines, relieved that Albert hadn’t said to his grand-uncle, I can’t hear you!
Madame Richard, though wanting badly to leave the chateau and get free of the detectives and of Hebert, had listened avidly to everything, but had remained apart as much as possible. Forgotten, her cigarette, the third, Ines told herself, gave to the room its little pillar of smoke … Smoke that reminded one of the burning barns and farmhouses during the Blitzkrieg and the exodus from Paris when Annette and she had become separated from Celine and her parents. Their automobile was found in flames, as were countless others. The road had been a carnage of shattered prams, wagons and bodies … bodies everywhere, the wounded crying out for help, having been machine-gunned and bombed by Messerschmitts and Stukas bent on clearing the roads for advancing armour.
Albert had taken the butcher’s knife — why? she asked. Had he been afraid she might have put it somewhere — on the floor under her feet, perhaps?
Or had he felt Herr Kohler or St-Cyr would remove it?
‘Mademoiselle,’ said Herr Kohler, having received the curtest of nods from his partner and friend — and how was it, please, that these two could be friends even if St-Cyr was, as Monsieur Olivier had confided, a patriot and Kohler the arch-doubter of Germanic invincibility and Nazi dogma? Like brothers? she had asked Olivier. Not quite, he’d replied, but be careful. The two are birds of a feather. A feather!
‘Mademoiselle,’ Herr Kohler continued, ‘your father and this one’s.’ He indicated Blanche. ‘Was Olivier forced to give the order after the Battle of Chemin des Dames and the mutinies of May-June 1917? Did Petain order him to do it?’
She must give the faintest possible answer as if stricken, thought Ines, and then … then must divert their attention to Blanche. ‘I … I can’t believe it possible, Inspectors, but have no way of knowing. Mademoiselle Blanche, I … I thought your name was Varollier?’
‘It is!’ came the harsh retort from one who knew only too well that she and her brother had been using Edith Pascal to get them repeatedly into that house of their father’s when he was absent from it. Olivier had been adamant about this, though he hadn’t yet confronted Mademoiselle Pascal. I’ll wait, he had said, until I know more.
‘Then perhaps you can enlighten the inspectors?’ said Ines.
You bitch! — everything in Mademoiselle Varollier-Olivier’s expression registered the thought.