‘There are also others he uses it for. The judge doesn’t stay the rest of the night, you understand. Only the hour or two unless he …’
‘Falls asleep?’
‘Oui. She …’
‘Elene.’
‘Oui. Elene comes down to the cellar, to the furnace room to get me, and … and together we put him into the taxi.’
‘Pretty, is she?’
‘Tres belle.’
‘Come on, there’s no perhaps about it, is there? Twenty-two, is she? Twenty-four?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Leaves by the side entrance, does she, in the morning after she’s rested up?’
‘Leaves it at five, when the curfew ends. She has a child her mother looks after.’
A child. ‘Whose?’
‘This I don’t know since she doesn’t wear a wedding ring and I’ve not asked.’
The stage doorman at the Lido had said that all its girls had been accounted for but he wouldn’t have said anything of one who had had to leave early, especially not when he’d have known of the judge’s interest in her.
St-Cyr was certain the photos on the Trinite victim’s desk revealed far more of the husband than of herself and the children. Captain Jean-Matthieu Guillaumet had spent time in the colonies. The first tour of duty had been in French Polynesia. After that, he had had a lengthy stay in Indochina, then in the Sudan and, more recently before the 1939 call-up had summoned him home, French West Africa. Like his papa before him, he’d been a graduate of the Ecole Militaire and a career officer.
The wife had, apparently, been left to fend for herself. Bien sur, the husband would have come home on leave-six months perhaps, though three or four were more usual. There were no contraceptives amongst her most personal things-she’d been a good Catholic. There was, as yet, not one hint of her having strayed in all those years. No silk stockings but, like so many women had to these days, had they been sold on the black market? Among the rest, there were no seductive undergarments. One garter belt was neatly to the side of four pairs of plain white cotton briefs. There was not even one pair of the latter for each day of the week. Two slips, one of satin, had seen their wear, an extra brassiere also, but nothing fancy. All of these things were prewar and most of them had been mended, but had she worn the last of her finery? He couldn’t ask the children. Perhaps Madame la Concierge would have noticed?
Attempts at writing the next letter to the husband had been done on thin notepaper first and then scratched out. I must tell you. I have to tell you. I tell you I have no other choice.
On the back of that slip of paper: If only you would ask your parents to accept me as I am and not continue to prejudge.
And on yet another piece of notepaper: If only they could bring themselves to help us a little. They’ve plenty. They don’t need what the government allows of your wages. We do!
Each page had been tightly crumpled before being thrown into the wastepaper basket in despair and left ready for the fireplace.
It was on another piece of paper that he found: Why can they not forgive my one indiscretion? I was young. You were away for months on end and didn’t seem to want me anymore. You could have taken me with you-at least for a little. It wouldn’t have cost that much, but when you did come home, and we did go out, I knew from the looks your fellow officers gave me that you had been with others.
All these efforts had had to be scrapped-for one thing the censors would have played havoc with them, for another, there simply wouldn’t have been enough space.
Oh for sure, I went to Deauville for a little holiday when you were in Indochina. It was only for a few days, as I have told you many times and, yes, I didn’t ask your father’s permission since you were unavailable to me, but why must he and your mother continue to hold it against me and believe the worst? I did nothing wrong. I kept to myself. I walked along the beach in my bare feet or sat in the sun, or watched others as they played tennis or danced in the evenings while I sat alone at my table.
Trying to get a grip on her life-he knew that’s what she’d have been doing, just as Marianne must have done during the constant absences of this detective husband of hers.
Then Madame Guillaumet had had a son, and then a daughter, the cement of them making things all the harder, and then the Defeat had come.
He’d have to ask the concierge and went downstairs. Madame Ouellette had switched to Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris.
‘She wore her street clothes, Inspector, but as always, tried to look her best, particularly as she had to spend two hours or more in front of her class. One of her students brought the message from the Ritz where he’s employed as a doorkeeper. I don’t know his name, only that when he came here early last Friday, he was wearing his uniform, so there can be no mistake in that regard.’
And weren’t all such doorkeepers suspected of being procurers? Francine could see him thinking this as a detective should.
‘If my partner shows up, madame, please tell him I’ve gone to find Giselle. First to their flat, then to the House of Madame Chabot and then to the Club Mirage, unless he catches up with me beforehand. Let’s hope he does.’
And then to the Ritz? she wanted so much to ask but knew she mustn’t, that they would go there soon enough. Adrienne had had to sell the use of her body but should never have been condemned. Many had had to do it during that other war, though many had also resisted, herself among them, but each day the loneliness had become harder to bear. Then in 1918, on 4 October, a Friday, and right near the end, the notice had come and she had found that the waiting, it had all been in vain and she was a widow.
And afterwards? she asked, still finding it hard to resist not being bitter. Afterwards so few men had remained, God had left no one for her. Two casualties: the husband and the wife.
6
One by one the girls came down to the viewing room at the House of Madame Chabot. Some wore slippers and a flimsy chemise or see-through negligees, one a dishevelled schoolgirl’s tunic. They didn’t cry as friends should over Giselle’s not being found. Their expressions were hard and watchful, the odours of them mingling with the ever-present fug of Gauloises, the acid of vin ordinaire and the perfume each had chosen as her own little signature but Hermann hadn’t come by. ‘I want answers, damn you,’ rebelled St-Cyr. ‘Giselle is not at the flat, as Madame Chabot has claimed!’
That one, that fifty-eight-year-old with the made-up eyes, blonde wig, round rouged-and-powdered cheeks, vermillion lips and double chin who still insisted on claiming she was thirty-eight, gave but the swiftness of a green-eyed gaze that would have startled a cobra.
‘She has said she would spend the night there, Inspector. Who am I to …’
‘It’s Chief Inspector!’
Ah, bon, he was now shouting. ‘That’s a zero to me, you understand. The police are the police, but the girl came to the house asking of Herr Kohler and expecting-yes, expecting, I must emphasize-to pass the time of day with friends? What friends?’
‘Now, listen. Giselle le Roy was one of your girls. My partner …’
‘Decided to make a petite amie of her and rob the house of one of its top earners? Rented a flat around the corner to constantly remind me of my loss and to tempt others into giving up the profession and moving in with another of les Allemands? Pah, quelle folie! When spring comes, the Resistance will strip her naked and cut off that jet-black hair your partner loves to rub his fingers and other things through.’