‘Could she swim?’
‘Why not?’
They sat in the car, letting the engine warm while knowing they were being watched through more than one of the Villa Marenzio’s windows.
‘Spaggiari made a point of telling me his boss could buy farmland for a song, Louis. Hell, everyone knows the farmers can’t get their produce to market and the Occupier steals it anyway, so the price of land has plummeted. And sure, what few tractors they had before the war have long since been taken and the Russian Campaign has left so few horses, pulling a plough is now damned hard on the wife’s shoulders, but did our Basso Continuo tell me that about Simondi to take the heat off himself and the others?
‘The accabussade …’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘For Thérèse Godard the threat of being locked into one was real enough.’
‘And drowned?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Spaggiari indicated Adrienne de Langlade could swim.’
‘Whereas Christiane Bissert stated positively that the girl couldn’t.’
Kohler waited. After nearly two and a half years of working together, he knew Louis hadn’t finished.
‘A sickle is missing from among the stage props. Xavier tried to lie about it and in the process convinced me he had done the tidying up.’
Again Kohler waited.
‘The boy hides a thick twist of Adrienne de Langlade’s hair, Hermann. Dried twigs, waterweeds, sand grains and fragments of snail shells were caught in it, so the hair was taken after she had drowned. I took only sufficient for Peretti to match with the curl on our postcard, but visually there is absolutely no doubt in my mind.’
‘Did the boy kill her?’
‘Or find her body under the water?’
‘What now, then, Chief?’
‘The Préfecture and a file others may hope remains dosed.’
Police photographers, lacking in sensitivity, welcomed the thought of lesser beings vomiting on seeing their photos; detectives especially.
Hermann was using a waste-paper basket as a receptacle. Once, twice … ah mon Dieu, couldn’t someone give him a brandy?
Buried up to the waist in the bottom muds, the girl had obviously been in the water a good two or three weeks before the floods of last November n to 18 had dislodged her corpse. Swept along, tumbled, dragged, her skin pierced by sticks, rusty bits of metal, broken glass, pebbles and sand, she’d been jammed among the debris — caught against an abutment of the Pont Saint-Bénézet.
Her seat was up, her legs spread at odd angles among the timbers, the rest of her half hidden. A frayed bit of rope was still tied around her right ankle but the boulder that had anchored her to the bottom was now missing.
‘Hermann … Hermann, wait in the car. Go on, please.’
There was no answer, not even the lifting of a feeble hand. ‘He absolutely has to be allowed a damned good rest,’ swore St-Cyr to the clerk. ‘Go with him. Be gentle or I’ll deal with you. I’m worried about him.’
‘You can’t take any of that file away.’
‘I won’t. The memory will be sufficient, eh? Now beat it. And don’t let de Passe know we’re here.’
No one had expected them to look for this file. No one.
She’d been a pretty girl with a figure she’d have been proud of, but after such a time under water, her hair had slipped completely away. Like gloves, the skin of her hands had been peeled off to cling at the last by the nails.
Fish, worms, eels, parasites, all manner of underwater creatures had been at the torso and head whereas the rest of her, buried beneath the mud, had been somewhat protected. The face, unrecognizable to any, would have been livid to flaccid grey and blotched by bluish green. Even in black-and-white photos there were sufficient differences of shading to indicate this. Tatters of flesh had all but been parted from the bones. The lips and nose were gone, the ears, the eyes, the eyelids also.
He bowed his head and said grimly, ‘Where? Where were you drowned and when, exactly, you poor thing?’
There was no mention of any of this in the file. Others would have drowned in the flooding. Animals … Overtaxed, the rescue crews would have had her taken to a temporary morgue.
‘Unidentified Caucasian female,’ had been crossed out later and her name entered above it.
There was no mention of who had identified her. Peretti had not examined the corpse. No coroner had. ‘And yes,’ said St-Cyr coldly to himself and the photos, ‘Xavier must have found you along the bank a good two or three weeks before the flooding. Your hair was still intact. You’d been in the water but a short time. Did he then tie the boulder to your feet and remain silent, or was it already there and yet he’d known exactly where to find you?’
Back in the car, himself behind the wheel and Hermann looking like death, he went through the order book Mireille de Sinéty had kept privately.
‘“Sunday, 25 October, 1942”, Hermann. She has used a glyph to represent the name — an alchemist’s symbol, an m against and with whose tail there is an l, but I’m sure it must mean the girl. “Adrienne has missed her final fitting. I can’t understand this because she knows how terribly important it is and that only I can help her hide what has happened to her.
‘“Tuesday, 27 October”. There’s another glyph that looks like two Grecian columns with a flat roof and floor. Yes, it must be one of the singers. This person “says Adrienne went home to Paris to tell her parents the good news about joining the group.” Merde, there’s yet another glyph! This one has asked — ah! it’s Madame Simondi — “Adrienne to go to Hediard’s with a request she has written out.
‘“Friday, 30 October. Adrienne has still not returned and we are to leave tomorrow. Nice, Cannes and then Fréjus. Will she catch up with us, I ask but am afraid for her. Something isn’t right. There has been no word from her. César …” Grâce à Dieu, she gave us a name! “César is very angry and swears she is finished and that he will have nothing more to do with her for leaving him in the lurch like this.
‘“I am to take her costumes along just in case he can bring himself to forgive her.”’
‘Louis, for Christ’s sake don’t tell anyone we may have another murder on our hands. Not yet. Giselle and Oona need me. You know they won’t be able to make it through this lousy war without me.’
‘The Kommandant, Hermann. We have no other choice but to go to him.’
‘But he’s not here! He’s out in the hills. He’s probably hunting down our petite lingère’s boyfriend.’
The Kommandant was one of Simondi’s and the bishop’s hunting partners, but was he also a business associate? wondered St-Cyr. He had been evasive when interviewed and had refused to let them question his wife …‘Mireille de Sinéty must have known about the death of this one, Hermann, and was about to confront her judges with the truth. She went to her audition hoping Dédou Favre would be there to back her up.’
‘Favre wasn’t waiting on the ramparts.’
‘But Xavier lies, as do all the others.’
‘Then was Dédou there, Louis, and did our altar boy of the cracked voice and the thieving hands tell her differently?’
‘She took a tin of sardines with her just in case he should come …’
‘Had prepared herself for every eventuality.’
‘Was found by a dog, Hermann …’
‘A dog named Nino, with a penchant for wandering and collecting last year’s birds’ nests.’
‘There was a clochette …’
‘The clochette of one of the bishop’s hounds, Louis …’
‘A bell that rings …’
‘When a grive has been shot, a young girl drowned, or a throat opened with a sickle.’
They sat a moment in silence. Then Kohler said, ‘I didn’t know you could part sing.’