‘Petain … The Marechal met Maman in the Hall the day she took her life. He’d … he’d posted a last letter earlier from Paris but she had begged to see him again and he agreed. It … it was there that he told her in no uncertain terms to take whatever cure she wished but that, as far as he and his lawyers were concerned, their affair was over. Tout fini. Absolument!’
‘Does Hebert know of this?’ asked Herr Kohler.
‘As he knows everything,’ cried Blanche. ‘He … he hates my father and still blames him for the loss of fortune and the loss of this place which, if you question him closely, I’m sure you will find he desperately wants returned. Why else the parties and the constant attempts to ingratiate himself with the doctor? Why else his involvement with the vans and the money it brings?’
‘And Albert and that knife?’ asked Kohler.
Blanche sucked in a breath. ‘Albert listens to what his grand-uncle tells him and does exactly as he’s told!’
‘Albert knows who killed Celine, Inspector. I’m certain of it,’ said Ines. ‘You see, when we were at the Jockey Club, I overheard Monsieur Deschambeault tell his son that Henri-Claude Ferbrave had better find out everything he could from Albert before taking care of him. “We can’t have the rat-catcher coughing up our blood to those two from Paris.”’
‘Yet when stopped in that corridor after we’d pulled Albert and Henri-Claude from the roof, you told my partner you had overheard nothing.’
‘Yes. Yes, I did, and for this I apologize. I … I wanted to think about it first.’
‘And Henri-Claude?’ asked Herr Kohler harshly. ‘What else did those attentive ears of yours pick up?’
She must face him and not waver, thought Ines. She must try to recover lost ground. ‘That the use of the bank’s vans had to stop. That Monsieur Deschambeault would not submit to blackmail from Henri-Claude or anyone else and that if Henri-Claude didn’t listen, he’d go straight to Herr Gessler to tell him things the Garde Mobile would rather not have the Gestapo hear!’
Like who really killed those four girls and had probably been paid to do so! ‘What else?’ demanded Kohler.
‘That … that Menetrel is on good terms with Dr Normand who treats Madame Deschambeault at his clinic, and that he is kept informed of everything she says.’
‘You’re a fund of information, aren’t you?’
‘I want to help. Is that not what you wish me to do?’
‘Albert watches those portable toilets in the Parc, Inspector,’ interjected Blanche to save herself perhaps, thought Ines. ‘He’ll have figured out who took that knife into one of them and then threw up and dropped it.’
‘But didn’t leave the cigar,’ said Ines quickly, too quickly. ‘A Choix Supreme, was it not? A brand the Marechal favours.’
‘As Petain did in the Hall des Sources when he gave Maman the final brush-off!’ spat Blanche, only to apparently regret having reacted so vehemently. ‘That … that I really don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘Edith Pascal told my brother and me this, of how the Marechal had then left his cigar on one of the counters and how deserted the Hall had been at that time of year, the season all but ended. She … she was always telling us things about Maman when Paul and I went to the house. How the Marechal and Charles-Frederic were to blame for everything and had conspired to allow Petain to seduce Maman. How they had joked about how easy it would be, that Mother … She had wanted to be set free and had had many lovers.’
‘Edith would kill for Auguste-Alphonse, Inspector,’ hazarded Hebert, as he warmed his hands at one of the kitchen stoves. ‘That one has never looked at another man.’
They’d come in from the feeding to find Hermann and the others not back, and Sandrine Richard still sitting alone, nervously smoking the last of her cigarettes, the packet tightly crushed in a fist.
‘Kill?’ said St-Cyr. ‘Isn’t that a little harsh?’ One had to keep the custodian talking now that he’d recovered a little from the news that the dress, the sapphires and the billets doux had been left in Celine Dupuis’s room for Hermann and his partner to find.
‘Not at all. Many times, when I was chairman and manager of the bank, I would see her at her desk secretly fingering a photograph of him in uniform. A cut-out from a larger photo of the directors. She knew all about Noelle’s infidelities and was incensed not just that a wife should betray a valiant husband but that she did so openly. Always the caution, though, when Noelle visited the bank to make a withdrawal that I personally attended to. Always the little birthday gifts for Blanche and Paul who were in awe of her but laughed at her behind her back, a thing that, when she found out about it, enraged her. A woman, Inspector, who, if what Blanche has told me is correct, has kept the dead woman’s bedroom as some sort of shrine and exactly as Noelle left it. Why, please, would she do such a thing unless deranged?’
Hebert had to be grasping at straws to take the heat off himself! ‘A motive, monsieur. Even if the assailant is mad, one is demanded.’
‘Protection. Ah! I’m only suggesting this, but what if Edith felt those girls had discovered something Auguste-Alphonse couldn’t have them repeating?’
‘Such as?’
How swift the Inspector was to be cautious and suspicious. ‘That those solitary walks of his are not so solitary as many have come to believe. That he has ways of finding things out and knows ahead of time what others are planning?’
L’Humanite and its list and a certain detective’s name, was that it, eh? The leader of the FTP? Did Hebert really know of Olivier’s position in it or did he simply suspect it?
In either case, things were not good — bien sur this Surete was a supporter of the Resistance — but must one submit to such blackmail?
Sandrine Richard took a last drag at her cigarette and, with sharp jabs, stubbed it out in the overflowing saucer she’d used as an ashtray. ‘Perhaps, Inspector, you should ask him how well he and Edith Pascal got on at that bank when Monsieur Olivier was defending his country at Verdun and other places. Edith noticed irregularities in the transfer of funds and took him to task.’
‘Small transfers! It was nothing, I assure you, Inspector. That virginal puritan mistakenly thought she’d caught me out only to find everything had been returned with interest!’
‘He’s lying. Ask him what she did.’
‘All right, all right, I’ll tell him, shall I?’ shouted Hebert. ‘She notified Auguste-Alphonse — yes, yes, Madame Richard. That woman went right through the chain of command to Petain himself! Petain, madame!’
‘Olivier returned, Inspector, ostensibly on leave, and for the last year of war, Edith, a mere secretary from the wrong side of the tracks, had the right to challenge every transfer this one made and to sanction it only if correct and honest.’
‘Jesus, merde alors, you bitches certainly talk!’ snorted Hebert, tossing his smock and fedora into a chair. ‘Did that lantern-jawed witch, Madame la Marechale, tell you all of this?’
‘And more, monsieur. Much more. How you, yourself, during his absence had seduced Noelle Olivier, your friend and business partner’s wife. How you had wanted her to leave him for yourself. Many times you had had her out to this place, to parties just as wild and licentious as the ones you now hold for your friends and business partners. How, when she refused to leave her husband for you, you then continually introduced her to other men who made their attempts and sometimes succeeded!’
‘Trou de cul, the dried-up wife has really been stung, hasn’t she?’
‘Asshole, am I? Then what about this, Inspector? His first wife left him in despair; the second … ah! should I tell you of her? All but a virgin and only twenty-one, she fell down the cellar stairs here and bled to death behind … yes, yes, Inspector, behind a door that should not have been found closed and locked after her fall but was, it is whispered, slammed on her!’