‘Hermann, I’ll just have a quick word with Armand, if he’s here. If not, perhaps his autopsy on the police academy victim will have been completed.’
‘Oona, Louis. Giselle’s become like a sister to her in spite of their both living with me when I’m here.’
A clipping, hastily torn from some newspaper, was smoothed out. It was the notice Hermann had repeatedly placed in Paris-Soir.
‘I found it under the pillows. She’d been clutching it.’
To say, ‘I warned you Madame Guillaumet’s children would remind her of her own,’ would do no good. To say, ‘Wait, let me be the one to find out about Giselle,’ wouldn’t suit either.
‘Oona’s convinced her children are dead, Louis. I can’t shake her thinking on this. I wish to hell I could and now what have I done but made certain Giselle will be …’
He couldn’t say it, was blaming himself for what could well have happened.
At the confluence of several arteries, and near the Gare de Lyon, the place Mazas and its adjacent streets were busy-there was panic, though, at the sight of the car, velo-taxis and bicycles turning away. ‘I’ll park on the quai Henri IV, Hermann. It’ll be warmer there and you won’t have to keep the engine running.’
‘Stop mothering me. You know damned well Giselle could be in there under a sheet. Just go in and find out for me.’
Louis pressed cigarettes into his hand but held on to them. ‘When we get to Walter, you’re definitely not to take any of these out. Walter has marked them.’
‘Don’t tell me we’ve a petty thief at HQ, other than myself?’
‘Apparently, but I’ve yet to determine how the head of Gestapo Section IV marked his pipe tobacco and these.’
Identity cards, ration cards and passes … Ausweise, laissez-passers and sauf-conduits … Five sets, only five? Not one for Giselle-was that it, eh, or was Louis not planning to join them?
There were tears in Hermann’s eyes. His hands shook but he realized the dilemma too, for if Walter Boemelburg had marked his cigarettes, had he not also marked and counted these?
‘You really have been busy, haven’t you?’
It still wasn’t the moment to let Hermann in on everything but a start had best be made. ‘Rouget, mon vieux. Give me a little on that flat of his.’
The cigarette was passed. Hermann was always best when kept busy. Out came his little black notebook. Pages and pages-how had he written them, knowing what had happened?
‘Concierge Louveau says that the judge let others use the flat from time to time. “Important people.” Some older than the judge, some younger, but none in the past five weeks-he was certain of this because the last one, a retired general smoked a cigar on the way up at two thirty p.m. on a Wednesday and also at six thirty p.m. on the way out and both times with the same brunette. She’d a nice, if timid smile and “he wore leather gloves, real ones, and had a beautifully trimmed, snow-white moustache and hair just like the Marechal Petain’s.” ’
‘A general.’
‘In a French army greatcoat with ribbons and medals. Do you want more?’
‘Give me something on Elene Artur, if possible.’
‘Half Indochinese and not permitted to use the front entrance for fear of upsetting the other tenants. Had a key to the other entrance. Wasn’t to take the lift, either. Used the side staircase. Never came with, or left with, the judge. Had a key to the flat. Both keys used by her assailants who must have known of them.’
Merde, how had Hermann done it? ‘And?’
Kohler took a deep drag, though God alone knew what Vichy’s state-run tobacco company was using now to cut the tobacco. Last autumn’s oak leaves, pine needles perhaps …
‘Entry at between 0030 and 0100 hours Friday. Dead by 0130 hours at the latest. It can’t have gone on for much longer but they took their time and knew they must have been able to. One of them a butcher, or former butcher-he sure as hell knew how to gut. The knife not the usual-it spurted blood a good metre and more when he withdrew it. A week ago the girl showed up around midnight, but the judge didn’t. Louveau was positive about this. His loge is only a few steps from the lift, so he definitely would have heard it, especially as he claims to have stayed awake listening for Rouget.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a week prior to that Friday evening, the judge had done the same thing-not come-and on the following Tuesday and Thursday, and this Tuesday as well. The girl hung around after that last visit to ask Louveau if he thought the judge had been acting strangely. “It’s not like Hercule to pay me in advance and not want me.” ’
‘ “In advance”?’
‘Apparently Rouget had taken to slipping her the money at the Lido, but it definitely wasn’t his usual way of doing things. “Always after he has finished with me,” she said. “Never before.” ’
‘Had she a pimp?’
‘The concierge didn’t think so. “She was too independent,” he said, and claimed she “wasn’t like a woman of the streets or houses.” ’
No pimp could only mean, as Hermann must have realized, that the academy victim definitely hadn’t been hers. ‘And on the night of her murder nothing was heard?’
‘Not a thing. Earlier though, on the previous visit, the girl “thought she might have done something that had offended the judge.” She couldn’t understand how Rouget could possibly have found out about it. “He’s too busy,” she said to Louveau. “He never goes there. Not anymore and certainly not with me, not since last October and only once then. Others would have seen us together.” ’
‘What others?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘But where? The location, Hermann?’
‘I couldn’t establish that either.’
‘But others must have seen them. Others who went to the same place regularly …’
‘And guess who must have discovered she was carrying his child?’
Another cigarette was needed. Dieu merci, it was like old times.
‘She would have had to tell the judge, Louis, but who else found out? Rouget isn’t just a member of the Cercle Europeen. He also belongs to the Cercle de l’Union Interaliee.’
God had definitely not smiled at them. ‘Your Petain-look-alike general could well be a fellow member, as could, perhaps, the former captain I may have uncovered in the taxi theft, if indeed he was a captain, but let me hold that one in reserve. Please continue.’
‘Are you sure you want more?’
‘You know I don’t like to be kept in suspense.’
‘Good. At the repeated insistence of Henriette Morel who believes that husband of hers is having a torrid affair with her stepsister, that one’s social worker hired a …’
‘Permit me, mon vieux. A detective prive who impersonates a Surete and who calls the pipe he is fortunate enough to constantly smoke, his little friend.’
‘Monsieur Flavien Garnier of l’Agence Vidocq?’
‘The Arcade de Champs-Elysees. It’s a small world, isn’t it? Adrienne Guillaumet had asked the owner-operator of Take Me to drive her to the Ritz.’
And more generals but definitely not French. ‘Did Garnier find this out?’
‘He must have. Three men were involved in her assault. One to set it up and get the timing down-that’s my “captain” who is the same, I’m sure, as was at the police academy and who lost his little red ribbon, though it wasn’t his to lose, and two to carry out the taxi theft, one of whom made certain that the other did. These last two were of medium height, the other almost as tall as the General de Gaulle, the Trinite rapist having broad shoulders like a wedge.’
‘And the one with the gut and smelling of fish oil?’
‘Our Drouant assailant, no doubt, and from Montmartre, but both likely wearing worn oilskins that must have needed a little help on such a night. A supply of Norwegian margarine, Hermann, that obviously didn’t need its ration tickets.’