They watched him closely, the two of them. They saw him tear his gaze from the dial and he heard them sigh with satisfaction and whisper to each other, ‘Just like Herr Kohler, he has looked to see if we have been breaking the law and listening to the BBC Free French broadcasts from London or the Voice of America’s swing music of Messieurs Goodman, Dorsey and others.’
They had their tea. They apologized for not having tobacco and acknowledged that they knew he preferred his pipe, ‘his little friend,’ to cigarettes.
Each in their turn said that they were sorry to learn of the loss of his wife and little son. ‘And of Herr Kohler’s two boys at Stalingrad,’ Henri said.
‘Mes amis, a moment, please. If Hermann and I are to find the one who hurt your mother, I must get to know her better. First, the rest of the flat, and then the desk she keeps-the place where she writes to your father. Photos of her, all such things.’
‘Messages?’ asked Henri.
‘Certainly.’
‘There are none,’ whispered Louisette darkly. ‘She took it with her.’
‘It was from one of her students, I think,’ said Henri. ‘Madame Ouellette, our concierge, gave it to Maman last Friday before the lady from the Maison du Prisonnier came to see us.’
‘The Mademoiselle Rouget,’ said Louisette distastefully. ‘The one called Denise.’
‘It was sealed, you understand, and Maman told us not to say anything of it to that one, and only that it was something she had to do for … for us all.’
‘Jean-Louis, you must understand that Adrienne-Madame Guillaumet-had had trouble paying the rent. Her in-laws …’
‘They receive the three-quarters, in total, of Papa’s military pay, Inspector,’ said Henri, ‘but from that deduct nothing for our rent.’
‘And give her absolutely nothing for the children or herself, or for the parcels they send to him each month. Her sole source of income has been the two francs a day the government in Vichy provides towards the cost of the parcels and …’
‘Her pay from teaching,’ said Louisette, watching him closely. ‘One thousand a month. It is not much, so messages have to be received from time to time, is that not so?’
‘Show me the flat. Come on, you two. Help me to build a profile of her.’
They took him from bedroom to bedroom, all but one of which, it appeared, hadn’t been in use since before the Defeat. ‘We slept with her,’ Louisette said. ‘She read to us just like Oona does.’
‘And the Mademoiselle Giselle,’ said Henri, ‘but she slept on the floor beside us. It was like camping, she said. She’s very beautiful and lots of fun, as … as is Oona, of course.’
‘Certainly,’ said Louisette, taking Oona by the hand to place it fondly against a cheek.
The salle de sejour, closed off and never used, not since the husband had gone off to war, appeared just as that one must have wanted it kept: totally undisturbed by the children or the wife, except when dusted. A mastery of Art Deco into which had been fitted several gorgeous pieces of Biedermeier, it had a chaise longue from among the earlier of such pieces: 1825 by the look-Josef Danhauser’s workshop in Vienna? St-Cyr wondered. Of walnut, though, not of the South American hardwoods, which had first been used. The British naval blockades during the Napoleonic Wars had forced a return to native woods. A vitrine and matching cabinet were of birch, with a black lacquered ormulo clock and tasseled candlesticks to perfectly set off the latter. The pear-wood fauteuils were from 1845 perhaps, the maple side table and breakfront bookcase also, everything exuding that clear, clean and uncomplicated line so characteristic of the style, and of Art Deco too, the name coming, of course, not from any furniture maker but from Gottlieb Biedermeier, the much-loved character of a novel whose bourgeois opinions were those of his readers, bieder meaning honest, worthy, upright or just plain simple.
It was only later that the style, admired at first by the Prussian and Viennese aristocracy, began to be appreciated by the bourgeoisie and no longer thought of as ridiculing them.
In the dining room the Biedermeier was Russian and of birch wood, the room exquisite but also off-limits and kept closed. Had she been a prisoner of this husband of hers? he had to wonder but couldn’t ask, though Oona intuitively knew what he was thinking.
‘Her desk, Jean-Louis. It’s there that she has faithfully kept every shy; postcard they have received from the prison camp.’
‘But only the one letter she was going to send back,’ said Henri.
‘Maman hadn’t started it yet,’ confided Louisette. ‘We’re not allowed to keep any of Papa’s letters. They must all be returned to him for safekeeping.’
‘Idiot, it’s because Maman has to write on the back of them,’ said Henri.
‘Two are received each month and two of the postcards,’ said the sister, ignoring her brother. ‘Unless, of course, Papa sends them to his mother and father.’
Because Madame Guillaumet was a career officer’s wife and not that of a common soldier like Madame Barrault, the allowances the Government in Vichy paid, even though only to wives whose incomes were below five thousand francs a year, wouldn’t have been available to her. Having a salary would have helped, since she would then have been eligible for the family allowance and social security, but unfortunately career officers’ wives had never been allowed to take full-time jobs outside the home, and the part-time teaching wouldn’t have counted.
Trapped again? he had to ask. In Paris alone there were more than thirty thousand POW wives whose incomes were below ten thousand francs a year and who were in desperate circumstances.
‘Her desk is in the bedroom, Jean-Louis,’ said Oona, knowing she should tell the children to tuck themselves in but that she couldn’t bring herself to do this without joining them.
Reassuringly Jean-Louis reached out to her. His, ‘Please don’t worry. Hermann and I will see to things,’ was meant to be comforting. The desk was nothing but a plain table. To Jean-Louis’s right, there was the lamp she had switched on after the children and Giselle had finally fallen asleep. There were only sixteen postcards in that little pile, there having been a good four months at the first when no mail at all had come through to anyone. Eight of them had also gone to the grandparents.
To his left was February’s five-kilogram parcel the woman and the children had been making up to send to the camp. No extra ration tickets were ever provided by Vichy for this purpose even though there were so many men locked up. Everything that went into that box, and everyone else’s, had to come from the family’s own supplies.
There were some cubes of Viandox, once the nation’s most popular brand of beef tea, prewar of course and obtained on the black market. Some packets of camomile and of mint tea followed-not much yet, she knew Jean-Louis would be thinking. A pair of heavy woollen socks that had been knitted from the leavings of an unravelled sweater, two drawings …
‘Cartoons,’ Henri said. ‘My latest.’
‘And one of mine,’ his sister added. ‘It has been marked with my kisses.’
Though her words would sound hollow, Oona knew she had best say, ‘The package won’t be sent until the end of the month, so there’s lots of time yet.’
‘Time for Maman to come home to us,’ said Louisette.
‘We add a bit each day, Inspector. Sometimes once every two days. It depends,’ said her brother.
Though heavily censored-blacked out first by the German censors at the camp and then by Vichy’s at the frontier-each postcard held only seven lines, often reduced to four-and-a-half or less; each letter, written on the regulation return that would fold itself yet again into an envelope, held only twenty-seven lines, reduced usually by the censors to twenty or less.