‘Possible or not, she has just given us information we should have had long ago!’
‘I didn’t kill her. I can have had nothing to do with any of the killings.’
‘But for some as yet unknown reason, mademoiselle, Albert Grenier has come to consider you a threat.’
‘Yes, but he’s confused. The knife dropped in there after her killing, the vomit only yesterday — you yourselves and your questions … questions are always very difficult for one such as he is. The portrait mask … Perhaps I shouldn’t have shown it to him. Maybe he has confused it with death. I … I don’t know. Really, I don’t.’
The kid was desperate. ‘Louis, for her to have come forward like this took courage. Go and talk to the ladies. Leave this one to me.’
‘With pleasure!’
The tightly bound, Moorish turban, a lame of irregular patches of ochreous silk on a crimson background with thin, interlaced black lines, had flashes of silver everywhere. Beneath it, the wrinkled, well-powdered brow was further creased by a ruthlessly plucked and defiantly raised eyebrow, the expression accusative, the nose prominent, the lips wide, grimly pursed and turned down in distaste, the wrinkled upper lip, jaw and jowls fierce, the broad shoulders squared.
Formidable, thought St-Cyr, as he introduced himself, but then … then one of Houbigant’s scents delicately emanated from her. A woman of great taste …
‘Well?’ demanded Madame la Marechale. ‘Why have you released the one and not arrested the other?’ At sixty-six years of age, Eugenie Hardon-Petain could still defy time, but this one, he felt, would fight it to the end. Large teardrops of pearl, ruby and brass, one on either side and curving inwardly, flanked the many strands as if the necklace was a breastplate of office and she the female counterpart of the Wehrmacht’s Kettehhunde.
‘Albert Grenier is constantly confused, madame, and for some reason feels the sculptress is a threat to your husband. But since she is to remain with my partner and me at all times, and his father is looking after him, the boy is no longer a threat.’
‘And the other?’ she demanded fiercely.
It would be best to appear simple-minded. ‘Who?’
‘Nom de Dieu, are we to expect this from a chief inspector with an enviable reputation? Enviable, I say, if one is not guilty! Hebert, of course. That fornicateur deliberately introduced those girls to Bousquet and the other. He made certain they were tempted!’
‘The girls or the boys, madame?’
Menetrel had been in a rage when he had learned of this one and his partner coming to Vichy; Bousquet hadn’t liked it either, but the Jamaick had insisted on it. St-Cyr and Kohler and no others! ‘You know very well whom I mean, and if you so much as breathe a word of what was to have gone on in that room of my husband’s, I will personally see that you are not just stripped of your rank, but are court-martialled and shot. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Abundantly, Madame la Marechale. A few …’
‘Questions? Inspector, for your information, neither of these two ladies were anywhere near those girls when each of them was killed. I should think you would have discovered this by now!’
‘Then let me just jot that down. Ah yes, here it is. Friday 7 January at about 2.45 a.m.’
‘Camille Lefebvre …’ hazarded Sandrine Richard, as the three of them swiftly exchanged glances. Bousquet’s woman of course.
Visibly withdrawn and obviously finding it hard to come forward, Elisabeth de Fleury said quietly, ‘One of my sons was ill, Inspector, and had a very high temperature. The flu — we all worry so much about it, for when it arrives it spreads like wildfire throughout the hotel and everyone can hear its first coughs and sneezes. I …’ She looked to Madame Petain for guidance.
The rock curtly nodded.
‘I hurried along the hall to Dr Menetrel’s suite in my nightdress and awakened him. He gave me a few of the aspirins he keeps in a special store and advised the damp cloths and a cold sponging, but … but it wasn’t until nearly noon the next day that … that my little Louis let the crisis pass and slept soundly. He’s only ten years old and looks so like his papa, I … Naturally I had moved the other two children out of the room and had let them sleep in my bed, daughter and son together, you understand, but only during such an emergency.’
Merde alors, and not like Blanche and Paul Varollier, eh? ‘And your husband, Madame de Fleury?’
Downcast, her sky-blue eyes rapidly moistened until two single tears were squeezed. ‘Had not come home,’ she whispered, her fists desperately clenching.
‘Didn’t he have to go into the office that morning? A Friday, madame? It wasn’t a day off, was it?’
How harsh his voice was, but her look must be frank, Madame Petain had warned. You must face the Chief Inspector and answer truthfully as if your life was nothing more than an open book, ma chere. A little book, of course, and one not read even by your husband! ‘It would be best, Inspector, if you were to ask him where he was that night.’
‘He was with that woman of his, Inspector,’ charged Madame Petain. ‘Celine Dupuis, a widow, yes! First at Chez Crusoe and then … then, mon pauvre detective, in a hotel room those men had rented for just such a purpose.’
And damn Bousquet and the others for not having told them of it! ‘The Hotel d’Allier?’ he bleated.
‘Pah! And advertise their identities like that? Isn’t an element of secrecy necessary with such as they? An overcrowded hotel like the Allier would not have been suitable. People coming and going at all times. Friends knocking at the door or, as is usual, I understand, in that place, simply barging in.’
And never mind Lucie Trudel lying naked in hopes Deschambeault would come to her the morning she was smothered!
‘The Hotel Ruhl, Inspector,’ said Sandrine Richard. A fresh packet of cigarettes lay in front of her but none had been taken since Madame Petain did not use tobacco. ‘Room 3-17. An old bed with a sagging mattress that reeks of stale urine, a plain washbasin, second-hand water pitcher, mirror whose backing is clouded, thin towels … Always there are the hand towels and the notices, now in Deutsch, too, warning of unsafe sex!’
‘Near the lift? Was the room near it?’ he heard himself asking. They were all watching him closely. Elisabeth de Fleury moved her cup and saucer from in front of her, the teaspoon telegraphing a nervousness that alarmed the others.
‘Next to the service staircase,’ she said, not averting her gaze though she must have wanted to. A rather pleasant-looking, very pale and fair-haired woman in her early forties. ‘Inspector, I … I know this only because I had to see where my husband and Madame Dupuis had been meeting.’
‘And you’re certain he spent the night of 6–7 January with the dancer?’
Ballet instructress, piano player, cabaret singer and whore. Honore would have his alibi, and she herself? she asked, and answered, I will have mine. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m absolutely certain.’
Ah damn the woman! ‘Then please explain how you know this.’ He held up a hand. ‘Neither of you ladies are to answer for her.’ Hermann … why the hell hadn’t Hermann come to listen in and help? The sculptress, he reminded himself. Ines Charpentier is with him. The table was directly behind and he couldn’t, daren’t turn to throw a pleading glance that way. Merde!
‘I …’ began Madame de Fleury only to hesitate.
‘Madame, one of your sons was gravely ill. You were at his bedside. You couldn’t have left him until what? Well after noon that Friday? You were exhausted, hadn’t slept, were sick with worry …’
‘All right! All right! I asked my daughter, Monique, to stay home from school while I went to that hotel to … to touch the pillows!’