‘What detective? What questions?’
‘The other one from the Surete.’
‘What one?’
‘The one with the heavy black-rimmed eyeglasses, the Hitler moustache and the new fedora and overcoat. The one who constantly smokes a pipe, “His little friend.” I didn’t ask to see his ID. I …’
‘Just answered him?’
‘Oui. One has to, doesn’t one?’
‘And?’
‘Four times he has been here. The first, a month ago, then two weeks later, then a week more and … and lastly three days ago.’
On Tuesday, then. ‘And did you reveal this to Madame Guillaumet?’
She would shake her head, Francine Ouellette decided. She would tell this one exactly how it had been for he looked far more trustworthy. ‘Each time I’ve told him I have seen nothing to condemn Madame Guillaumet in the eyes of God or anyone else. Her life is her own, is that not so? Who am I to question what she does away from here? I checked on the children when she went to her teaching job, but always refused to take payment, since at present she has none to spare, but …’ She would shrug now. ‘What else is one to do?’
But make allowances.
‘Inspector, has Adrienne died? What, please, is to become of Henri and Louisette? The father’s parents won’t take them in. His was a marriage of which they didn’t approve and now they’ve been making her life very difficult, since the son’s wages go to them, not to her.’
‘She’s holding on. I saw her only a few hours ago.’
‘But did she speak? Did she describe the one who did that to her?’
‘Not yet. Look, has my partner, Herr Kohler, been in?’
‘Not today or tonight. The girl named Giselle has gone out, though, and has not yet returned. The other one-Madame Oona Van der Lynn-is alarmed, you understand, and rightly so, what with these … these criminals still at large and the curfew nearly upon us and always threatening to be moved ahead without notice. The girl will become lost, Madame Van der Lynn has said, if she tries to find her way back here in the dark. She doesn’t know this quartier or any other than the one in which they live.’
The quartier Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Though they seldom if ever did, and he had never heard them do so, it had to be asked. ‘Did they argue down here in the foyer?’
‘And in the lift. The one named Giselle …’
‘Mademoiselle le Roy.’
‘Oui, oui. That one has said she could no longer stand being cooped up and that she was going to find Herr Kohler and tell him what he’d done. It’s a tragedy, is it not, Inspector? Madame Guillaumet at death’s door and Madame Van der Lynn finding not just two children of the same ages as her own would have been but exactement a boy and then a girl? I have heard them comforting her. Shouldn’t it be the other way around, or has God forsaken us all?’
The Line 3 metro entrance at place Malesherbes had been permanently closed just like every other alternate station to save on the power. Bicycle taxi, licence 43.75 RP18, the marechal’s bloody Baton, couldn’t have been spending the night picking up fares here. Ach, where was he to be found? wondered Kohler. Pedestrians blindly felt their way through the rain, narrowly colliding with him. Other taxis squeaked past, heading up the boulevard Malesherbes to the Wagram entrance at place du Bresil and not that far: eight hundred metres, maybe a thousand but on a night like this and without a torch?
He’d have to do it, would have to leave the Ford where he’d left it back on the rue Henri Rochefort, mustn’t terrify anyone. Denise Rouget had said she’d not been certain the Trinite victim had been fooling around, though there’d been ‘some evidence,’ and that could only mean she’d had the woman followed.
So how was it, please, that a social worker had not only known where to look for a firm of private detectives but had hired one that was right next to the Lido? Vivienne Rouget had been far too uptight, even to letting him know in advance that she had heard the Vichy gossip about Louis and himself and would use it if necessary.
When Didier Valois pulled in to the stand outside the Wagram entrance, several clamoured to hire him, but only one person succeeded. ‘Inspector …’
‘Take me back to my car. I must have lost my way.’
The door to the Guillaumet flat was answered, hope registering and then dismay. They’d been expecting Giselle and, like children the world over whose hopes have been dashed, their expressions fell as they thought the worst.
‘Jean-Louis …’
‘Oona, I’m not here about Giselle.’ The eyes were red and swollen, the fair cheeks pale and strained. There was none of that calmness one had come to expect of her, none of that willingness to accept things, hard though they were. Hermann’s unthinking act of getting her to look after the Trinite victim’s children hadn’t been good. ‘We’ll find her, I promise. These must be Henri and Louisette?’
A slim, warm hand was taken and formally shaken, man to man, the boy tall for his age, the dark brown hair still curly but newly trimmed-Giselle would have done that. The eyes were brown but not so large or deep as the sister’s, harder, more instantly accusative-those of the father? he had to ask. Each child was different, exactly themselves of course, and yet … and yet he knew with a certainty he couldn’t understand that the girl must be more like the mother. Their faces were pinched and drawn, they, too, fighting back the tears even as Oona, tall, willowy, blonde, blue-eyed and everything Hermann would need in a woman had he but the sense to see it, fought for control to softly say, ‘It’s as I have thought. Giselle has stayed the night at the house of friends. She must have.’
The House of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton.
‘Or at the flat on the rue Suger which is just around the corner,’ said Henri gravely. ‘Are you really a chief inspector?’
‘I’m even armed. This is my gun, this one, that of my partner.’
‘And that?’ asked Oona tensely of the glossy black, regulation-issue handbag under his arm.
‘A little something for Hermann to return to Rudi Sturmbacher as soon as possible.’
They didn’t ask further and that was a good sign. Louisette hesitantly took his fedora, Henri more assuredly the overcoat and overshoes, Oona the handbag, she mastering the shock of its weight and knowing only too well what it must contain.
‘The kitchen,’ she said, ‘or would you prefer our room?’
‘Our petit salon,’ said Henri.
‘Our very own,’ said Louisette, whose hair brushed her shoulders every time she tossed her head. ‘Maman has helped us with it, you understand, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal. There it is warm and there we are allowed to keep the things we love and to have adventures.’
‘Then that’s where we’d best go,’ St-Cyr heard himself saying. Merde, was he, too, about to burst into tears?
‘Maman would not have done what they are saying in the papers or on the stairs and in the halls at school,’ said the boy.
‘She didn’t need to be punished,’ Louisette added with, she felt, the necessary amount of severity. ‘She is a good woman, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal, not a bad one. A tramp!’
‘A slut,’ muttered Henri. ‘A paillasse!’
‘Henri, Louisette, mes chers, make the inspector some tea, please. The camomile … do you think that would suit him best?’
‘Et pour toi?’ asked the boy, using the familiar.
‘Moi aussi, merci.’
‘But first our salon,’ said Louisette. ‘Our very own place of magic.’
The room was all of that and more. A clutter of flea- shy;market gleanings, paintings and drawings by the resident artists, a puppet theatre d’apres Guignol, brass urns, candlesticks, mushroom- shy;shaded lamps, carpets, divans and pillows, a library, too, and wireless set.