‘Urges …’ muttered Vivienne, only to silence herself.
‘Forty percent of them have children,’ managed the daughter timidly. ‘Sometimes six, sometimes as many as ten. Madame Guillaumet …’
‘In the department de la Seine alone, Kohler, the number of clandestines on the streets has tripled to nearly six thousand. Oh for sure there are the card-carrying putains as well, about four thousand. The figures vary from day to day.’
‘But not the demand, Judge?’ There were at least ten thousand streetwalkers in Paris alone, to say nothing of the girls in the legalized brothels.
‘Kohler, this interview is over.’
‘Not yet. And Madame Guillaumet, mademoiselle? You were about to enlighten me.’
Papa was going to be very angry, Maman not happy with her response, but Herr Kohler and his French partner had found the woman and must have seen what had happened to her. ‘I’m not really certain about her, Inspector. Though there has been some evidence, I would like more before judging her so harshly, but with Madame Barrault … Henriette-that is, Madame Morel-is certain her stepsister and her husband are having an affair.’
There, the disgraceful filth was finely out, sighed Vivienne inwardly, but had Herr Kohler been convinced of it?
‘Many times Madame Morel has spoken to me of her concerns, Inspector,’ went on the daughter, having gained a little self-confidence. ‘I really had no other choice but to look into the matter and did so.’
‘Ah, bon, and how was that looking-into done?’
‘Denise had the woman followed,’ grunted Rouget.
And wouldn’t you know it. ‘That can’t be in the mandate of the Famille du Prisonniers’s social workers, Judge. Who paid for the detective prive? I assume one was engaged?’
‘Madame Morel,’ managed the daughter. ‘Cost, it … it was no object.’
And wouldn’t you know that too. ‘And the recipients of this largesse?’
‘Kohler, this has gone far enough. My daughter has done nothing wrong. She has only acted in the best interests of a wife who is being subjected constantly to the infidelities of a husband who should know better.’
‘Be that as it may, Judge, just let your daughter answer.’
‘Or you will attempt to take her in for questioning?’
‘You said it, I didn’t.’
He would have to be told, decided Vivienne, but it had best come from herself. ‘The Agence Vidocq de Recherches Privees, Inspector. A Monsieur Flavien Garnier, but only after repeated offences and at the insistence of Henriette Morel.’
Vidocq, a convicted criminal among other things, had been the first to head up the forerunner of the Paris Surete, itself preceding the Police Judiciaire, the criminal investigative branch. An arch blabbermouth, he had then founded the first agency of private detectives and had published his memoirs and made a fortune. In 1840 he had moved his agency to the Second Arrondissement and near the Bourse and the Bank of France, and not far from the Opera, and into posh headquarters in, yes, the Galerie Vivienne, and if that wasn’t a coincidence, what was?
‘And the address of this agency now?’ he asked.
Should she pause and bait him with the silence? wondered Vivienne, especially as it was another coincidence, he having digested the first of them. ‘The Arcade de le Champs-Elysees.’
The Lido had an entrance off that arcade and hadn’t the press blabbed on and on about a call having been made from there about a murder at the police academy, and hadn’t Madame Rouget known all about it?
‘M. Garnier has often seen Madame Barrault leave the table first at the Cafe de la Paix, Inspector,’ said the daughter, her voice one hell of a lot firmer now that the news was out. ‘She doesn’t always go home, you understand, but often into the Hotel Grand to take the lift.’
‘Gaston Morel then pays their bill and follows,’ added the mother tightly. ‘Time and again it’s the prisoner-of-war wives who are conducting themselves in such a shameful and disgustingly unclean manner, Inspector. Madame Morel had every right to be alerted and have the proof of it. Disease is rife, is it not? Disease!’
‘Vivienne, control yourself. Denise had no other choice but to inform the woman that her suspicions had been verified, Kohler. Far too many of these prisoner-of-war wives don’t just need lessons in how to care for themselves and their families and manage the finances while their husbands are absent. They need a damned good lesson in morals and should have their heads shorn and breasts bared in public. Madame Barrault has told you she works the odd night as an usherette, but has she also admitted to having stayed well after closing not on one or two such occasions, but on at least three?’
And so much for a social worker’s sense of confidentiality.
Denise would have to be spared the embarrassment but one had best be positive about it, thought Vivienne. ‘The regular usherettes have informed M. Garnier that the woman is most definitely having sexual relations with the manager of that cinema, Inspector. They have caught the two of them at it in his office and even up on the stage behind closed curtains!’
But when the lights were down and after hours. ‘The cinema?’
Had Herr Kohler not believed her? ‘The Imperial.’
On the boulevard des Italiens and right around the corner from Madame Barrault’s flat.
‘Father Marescot, the priest of the Notre-Dame de Lorette,’ said Vivienne, ‘has sent a letter of complaint to the Scapini commission in Berlin.’
That organization, the Service diplomatique de prisonniers de guerre, first received all such complaints. The names of those judged serious enough by the Vichy government’s Berlin office were then forwarded to the Kommandant of each husband’s prisoner-of-war camp, who then called the poor bastard in to let him know what was going on at home.
‘Father Marescot is worried about Madame Barrault,’ said Denise uncomfortably. ‘In no uncertain terms he has told our detective prive that she is just like the others.’
Louis would say it never snows but it rains. ‘I’d best find my partner then, hadn’t I, Judge?’
‘Do finish your cognac, Inspector. You’ve hardly touched it. Take the cigar. It must be cold outside,’ said Vivienne, having retreated into herself already. ‘I hate the cold. It makes me feel as though I were poor and didn’t deserve a fire.’
At 8.40 p.m. the old time, 9.40 the new, the rue Saint-Dominique was pitch-dark. One found direction purely from memory, St-Cyr knew, the silhouettes of the buildings having been lost entirely to the downpour, and when he reached the little square with its delightful Fountain of Mars still unseen, he drew the Citroen in beside it. The quartier had, for the last century and more, been definitely an entrenchment of an educated upper middle class. Though virtually nothing could be discerned, the arcaded walks of the surrounding buildings would have arched entrances, the first-storey balconies, their Louis Philippe ironwork railings.
The building at number 131 was heated and that could only mean that at least one of the Occupier had taken up residence.
‘Monsieur, what is it you desire at this hour?’
There were concierges and concierges and this one with the reading glasses and volume of Proust was not only well dressed and well read but a war widow from the 1914-1918 conflict. ‘Ah, bon, madame. The Guillaumet residence. Surete.’
‘Inspector, what is going on? The other tenants … There have been complaints. Madame Guillaumet has done nothing here to bring offence. There have been no visitors, no such men friends, you understand, none that I have seen and I assure you I would have, but …’
‘But what?’
‘Some of the tenants are demanding that I serve her a notice of eviction, others that it is not right for us to be having detectives coming here at all hours asking questions about her.’