‘She’s alive?’
‘Yes. And free.’
‘At exactly what time did he see her?’
‘In the last of the daylight and just before you left me to find the name of Violette Belanger’s maquereau from those … those salauds in that Café of the Turning Hour where you should never have left me alone, Hermann. Never! If you valued me at all.’
Hesitantly he reached out to touch the softness of her cheek and press the backs of two fingers gently against her lips. ‘I’ve been through hell,’ he confessed. ‘I feel as though I could sleep for a thousand years.’
‘But there are no beds in this place, are there, my Hermann? Only les liaisons enchantées for those who do not wish to go with whores, even the very high-class ones.’
6
In the pre-dawn bitter cold and dampness of the Bois de Boulogne, the warmest place was next to the manure piles just outside the riding stables.
‘Did you sleep at all?’ grumbled Kohler, unable to light a cigarette. ‘Christ, why does it always have to be us, Louis? Couldn’t that God of yours smile on us just once?’
‘He’s too busy. He expects us to simply get on with the job.’
‘Giselle is convinced Debauville is still a priest, but me, I have to tell you that little pigeon of mine is not the same. When we got home to the flat, she prayed on her knees for a good hour-Oona told me all about it. Tears and entreaties to the Blessed Virgin to save her from a life of “consorting with the enemy and having unclean and lurid thoughts,” begging Our Father to forgive her for “engaging in wanton sexual activities of a depraved nature with a member of the Gestapo, a detective. A man old enough to be her grandfather”!’
Hermann was in rare form and coughed.
‘I fell asleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Her droning on and on beside the bed was hell. She’s even taken to wearing the little gold cross she had as a child in the convent school. She says, “I am going to improve myself, Herr Kohler, starting with you.” She’s off later this morning to consult her clairvoyant. Her “future must be divined”.’
‘Madame Rébé?’ hazarded the Sûreté, trying to light another match.
‘That’s the one. The rue de l’Eperon right next to the shop that sells crystal balls, bats, curses, rune stones and Tarot cards.’
‘Madame Vernet’s clairvoyant. President of the Society of Metaphysical Sciences.’
Kohler cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure?’
‘As positive as I can be at the moment, considering the lies and half-lies we have had to listen to.’
When an orderly came looking for them, they followed him to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Having booted the custodian out, Old Shatter Hand was sitting in his shirtsleeves at the table before a roaring fire of, yes, chair legs and other furniture. The place was like a furnace and it was clear he had been here for some time. Clear, too, that the airwaves of Paris and the gossip lines had been vibrating into his ear. He wanted the truth and had been disturbed enough to have arrived early.
‘Avail yourselves of the coffee and cognac, gentlemen. There are croissants in that newspaper. Eat while you talk.’
Ah, nom de Dieu, Talbotte must have told him something, thought St-Cyr, and that bit of news had upset him. The papers, too, no doubt.
Unyieldingly, those stern blue eyes settled on them. ‘Everything. I’ll have it from you, St-Cyr, and then from Kohler as needed. There are only the three of us, so please speak freely. Nothing you say will pass beyond these four walls.’
Berlin must have been after him, thought Kohler. Old Shatter Hand was close to retirement. Gestapo Mueller could easily have threatened to move the date up. An outraged citizenry, the threat of a revolt, et cetera, et cetera. A sadist to provide the spark. Ah, merde!
Louis cleared his throat. ‘The Vernet child, if the report is true, General, is alive and was sighted in the rue Chabanais just before dusk yesterday. She dropped this glove.’
‘Why wasn’t she wearing it?’
‘She was probably picking something up off the street and was frightened.’
‘Of whom?’
It was coming now and had best be gotten over with. ‘A defrocked priest, a pimp who uses the name Father Eugène Debauve.’
‘Debauve … I met him at the house of that wretched woman in the rue Chabanais. Is he not the Bishop’s emissary to the lorettes?’
‘No, General. He is the pimp of Violette Belanger, whose sister is a nun and teacher in the convent school the girls attended.’
‘He runs an escort service,’ interjected Kohler quickly.
‘He what?’ stormed von Schaumburg.
They told him. Kohler dragged out his notebook. ‘Records were not too forthcoming, General, but I did manage to pry the following out of them: Father Eugène, born 3 June 1883, the eldest son of the Debauvilles of Troyes. The family have extensive holdings and remain very wealthy. The son was drummed out of the Church and disowned by his mother twenty years ago for terrifying schoolgirls in the convent school where he was the Reverend Father. No sexual interference was proven, but apparently one of the girls hanged herself in the shower baths, using her sheet. Others then mentioned Debauville’s questions to them during confession. Red faces all round, I gather, and tears. Since then he’s managed to keep himself free of arrest.’
‘But not of the girls, we gather.’
‘The French!’ seethed von Schaumburg, hitting the table with a fist and sloshing coffee all over the place. ‘Bring the criminal in for questioning.’
‘The escort service he runs caters to officers from your forces,’ offered Louis blandly.
Oh-oh. ‘It appears to be all above board,’ shot Kohler, ‘but I’d like to take another look.’
‘Discretion, Kohler. Discretion. Why is it I am always in difficulty with you two?’
Gestapo Mueller had talked to him. Kohler was convinced of it and, digging deeply in a pocket, dragged out the badges the kid had collected. ‘There’s another matter, General. A death’s-head. Two of the gold wound badges. The Polish Campaign medal …’
‘Yes, yes, the SS-Attack Leader Gerhardt Hasse, a hero to Herr Himmler. An artist, a painter of children. Gestapo Paris’s Watchers are aware Herr Hasse has sketched those two girls on a number of occasions. Pay him a visit. Ask what you will of him. He’s not a well man.’
Discretion again, thought St-Cyr ruefully as he took the badges and the medal from Hermann, but why, please, did that child include the trappings of the SS-Attack Leader unless to say, These, too, they are important?
It was von Schaumburg who brought up the matter of the abortion and Liline Chambert’s affair, having been informed of them by Talbotte, no doubt.
‘Vernet,’ he said levelly, ‘is returning from Rouen this morning at my request. He’ll answer everything truthfully. He assures me the affair was brief, that the girl, being away from home and missing her father, put temptation in front of him and that he is much saddened by its result. Indeed, I do believe he wept when I informed him of the girl’s death.’
In love with her, then, was he? snorted Kohler, inwardly ridiculing foolish older men with young girls until he remembered Giselle and had to swallow on a lump of croissant.
It was Louis who said, ‘General, neither of the Vernets has been truthful. Though each espouses a kind regard for their orphaned niece, the child had planned with her little friend to run away and now is afraid to return to the house.’
‘Afraid?’
‘Yes, General. Plans for running away began in the first week of November, well before the Sandman murders. Liline Chambert had been ill-morning sickness. It’s my belief that it was this sickness which finally drove the child to make preparations to run away.’