The key was to the stage door and they let him find this out too. As he felt his way gingerly along a corridor, images kept flashing through his mind of theatres past and murders past, of an actress who had been hanged in the full costume of a lady-in-waiting but had had a bad job done of it, for the pipe above her had broken under her weight and had showered her corpse with effluent; of a promoter who had been shot for a failure, not by a disgruntled backer but by a young actor whose brilliant career had come to an abrupt end and justly so, according to the notices. He saw the furtive, crowded liaisons of urgent lovers both of whom had had jealous mates who would savagely kill them; he heard the gossip, the insidious backbiting, the carping and the cajoling, the commotion that always went on behind stage and beneath it during a performance.
There was no one in the wig room, no one in any of the dressing rooms, but Hermann was very good at this, and Hermann would have checked them all out.
Martine Charlebois and Ange-Marie Rachline would have gone to the brother’s shop on the rue Auguste Comte, which was not all that far from the theatre if one cut diagonally across place Bellecour. Perhaps the shop had been closed when they got there, perhaps not. Frankly, he had no way of knowing. Henri Charlebois could just as easily have been out at his supper with Frau Weidling perhaps, for Leiter Weidling had said only that his wife was dining elsewhere …
When he heard a pair of shears close, he knew he was in a large yet crowded room. The costumes were everywhere, some half finished, others complete; some hanging in bunches from hooks on the walls, others from wires that dangled from the ceiling. Still others on the dummies, both male and female.
He ran a hand lightly over one. Ruffled satin and silk velvet with pompon buttons. A clown, a harlequin?
Again the shears closed tightly, quickly, and in his mind’s eye he saw a cutting table long and cluttered, was taken right back to Ange-Marie Rachline’s house and those two children.
Cocking the Lebel, he pointed it at where the sound had been and waited.
When nothing further happened, he knew that whoever had closed the shears had left the room, or had they?
The scent Etranger rushed at him only to dissipate, and for a time there was silence.
‘Louis … Louis, it’s me. You wouldn’t happen to have a match, would you? I seem to have run out.’
The savagery of the killing suggested a torment that had gone beyond the bounds of sanity. In thrust after thrust the shears had been plunged into the fire chief’s chest, the heart, the lungs, and then the throat, cutting the jugular. Then again in a last desperate embrace that had seen the shears pulled out by his killer and dropped on the stage only to be picked up later and … what wondered St-Cyr? Washed and dried, taken back to Madame Rachline’s work room, hidden among those here, or thrown into the Saone on departure?
They would have to search outside. Surely there would be a thin trail of blood, surely a bloodstained overcoat, sweater or blouse? And why hadn’t Hermann heard a thing?
He had been too far away perhaps, but had the killer known the theatre so well as to be aware of this?
Robichaud had come up on stage to see about the lights, but had his killer known this was what he’d do, that Hermann could not possibly have found the main switch? The fire chief had not been wearing his overcoat and hat-these had been left in the manager’s office, upstairs at the back of the theatre. He’d been digging into every nook and cranny, but had he been killed because of what he’d found or simply as insurance against the future?
Everywhere there were Gestapo agents supposedly trained to search out hidden documents, et cetera, et cetera, now looking for the phosphorus. They were thorough, of course. Certainly they’d look in all the logical places but were they dealing with logic?
When Hermann came up to him, the Bavarian was shaking his head. ‘Are we supposed to think it was the sister, Louis, or did she really do it? The first wound was to the heart-I’m almost certain of it. But would the kid have had the strength or knowledge to hang him up like that, or did she have help?’
‘Are we being played for a pair of fools, Hermann? Is the third fire even to be here?’
Hermann imagined he could see the flames and hear the screams, he could see himself straining to reach yet another fire-starter even as the smoke enveloped him. ‘Patience, mon ami. Patience,’ cautioned St-Cyr. ‘If there is to be another fire, then the sequence is not the same as in 1938. It took fires in Lubeck, Heidelberg and finally Koln to do away with Martine Charlebois’s lover.’
‘But this time round, if indeed Father Adrian ever touched her-’
‘Oh he did. That priest most certainly did and several times.’
‘Then there need only have been one fire, that of the cinema.’
‘Precisely! And that is the sadness with which we must deal, Hermann, for now we have a Salamander who must strike again in order to hide the truth about another person.’
‘Or else it’s Leiter Weidling and that wife of his. Claudine set her up, Louis. As sure as we’re standing here, Frau Weidling was there to have some fun. If you ask me, that husband of hers was using her as bait.’
‘And the Salamander, Hermann?’
‘Knew all about it and made use of them.’
They would meet up here on the terrace in front of the Basilica, said St-Cyr grimly to himself with satisfaction. They would look out over the darkened city as he was doing to see where so much went on behind closed doors yet was seldom admitted beyond a secretive whisper or nod. Guillemette, the prefet, would come first with Madame Rachline. She couldn’t refuse the chief of police and part owner of her house. The bishop would bring Henri Charlebois who would have come to him for succour in his hour of need. Lastly, Klaus Barbie would find and bring Frau Weidling and her husband, if for no other reason than sadistic curiosity.
Within that select group lay all the answers they would need, but had it been wise to summon them at the same time?
Hermann hadn’t liked the idea. It offered too many outs; darkness alone would shield escape.
Yet in darkness was there truth, for without light, the voice tended to betray the deeply hidden thoughts. And the silence of the city was an asset, for it allowed each inflection to be magnified.
Alone and desperately afraid, Martine Charlebois would hide or roam the city until both the cold and the curfew drove her to seek refuge.
Not at her home, ah no, poor thing, nor up here under the bishop’s wing. With her zazous perhaps, but he did not think so-she was fundamentally too kind to want to involve them any more. Not with Ange-Marie Rachline either, or at La Belle Epoque which she hated with a passion.
A room … would she have taken a room in one of the tenements as she had before only to hang herself this time?
He shook his head over such a thing and sadly said to himself, She will not attempt to do so until after the concert.
At the sound of steps, he turned.
‘Louis, if this doesn’t work, we’re going to have to have transport. Let’s take the prefet’s car and say to hell with the consequences.’
‘Why not Klaus Barbie’s?’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Unless I am very much mistaken, Hermann, the Obersturmfuhrer will be only too glad to allow us the use of his car.’
‘Louis, we’re dealing with a Salamander that can change its colour any time it wants.’
‘But usually when warmed, Hermann, by the heat of the sun or a fire.’
‘Thanks! Gott im Himmel, I wish you’d tell me what you’ve got in mind for this little conference of yours! I can’t watch all the exits by myself.’
‘That’s why we need the car, and that’s why the Obersturmfuhrer will let us have it.’
Ah merde, he might have known! ‘Because if we fail, the blame for what happens will be ours.’