‘Kohler, if you don’t mind, I’ll take Bob and leave.’
‘I do mind, Colonel. Stay put. When I’m finished with this one, I’ll deal with you.’
The Cimetiere des Chiens, that private last stamping ground of dogs and other pets, was on the Ile de la Recette (the “takings”) in the Seine. Tombs and mausoleums, rows of little headstones, wreaths of artificial flowers in winter and more than twenty thousand graves at last count**** but formerly the island home of those who had been paid a pittance to drag corpses from the river.
‘Lulu had just been given a tidy up, Inspector. Three times a week. The Monday, after her walk in the park …’
‘Which park?’
‘The Monceau, of course, so that Madame de Brisac might hear her cries of joy and catch glimpses of her from the bedroom window.’
‘Continue.’
‘Then Thursday, the school holiday-that is when the Mademoiselle de Brisac’s children are home and could play longer in the park with Lulu, sometimes even letting her have a run.’
The park warden and his underwardens wouldn’t have liked that, French parks being what they were. ‘Not married?’
‘The husband was killed during the invasion.’
‘The daughter taking back her maiden name?’
‘They were to have been divorced.’
‘Wasn’t divorce almost as hard to come by under the Third Republic?’
This one was like a barracuda after its dinner! ‘There were family problems. Perhaps the husband wasn’t suitable. Who am I to …’
‘Husband fooling around on her?’
‘I didn’t say that, Inspector.’
‘Kohler …’
‘Be quiet, Colonel. And on Saturday?’
‘Lulu came for the bath and the grooming so as to look her best for Mass, and then …’
‘Her Sunday run in the park.’
‘Oui.’ He would tell her nothing of Lulu.
‘And on which Saturday was she snatched from the park?’
It would have to be said. ‘She wasn’t. Mademoiselle Germaine de Brisac, coming straight from work, had the car, of course, and had put Lulu safely into the backseat. Mademoiselle Rouget had gone into the Lido to see if her dear papa was spending the evening at home and would like a lift.’
And nicely put. ‘Time five twenty or six?’
‘Six thirty.’
‘And Lulu was taken from the car when Germaine de Brisac went to find Denise Rouget in the Lido?’
Dieu merci, he hadn’t asked her the reason for such a delay, which could only mean that he’d find out elsewhere. ‘That … that is correct. Monday, the eleventh of January. It was bitterly cold. I … I went out with my torch to wrap the shawl I always wear at such times around Lulu so that she wouldn’t catch a chill.’
‘Shawl taken?’
‘I had clients to attend to. Lulu was safe. I swear it. I shut the car door and checked to see that it was secure as always.’
‘Describe the shawl. One never knows.’
Must he sigh like that? she wondered.
‘Kohler …’
‘Be patient, Colonel. Take a leaf from Petit Bob. Listen, since it can’t be helped, but don’t make a sound. Have a half a carrot stick and give him the other half. He’s earned it.’
‘I can’t. They make his stools loose.’
‘And that troubles him, doesn’t it?’
‘As much as it does those who might inadvertently step in them.’
Petit Bob looked questioningly from one to the other but grace a Dieu, he hadn’t let out a moan. ‘Inspector, the shawl was of hand-woven wool. Russet, crimson and gold, the colours of a Canadian shy; autumn, for the man who gave it to me when I was a girl of seventeen, was one of those and French too. There was a brooch of my mother’s, a shield in silver with the cabochons of banded ironstone like one of my rings. This one.’
A real knuckle-duster. ‘Louis and I’ll see what we can do. Dog snatching at about six thirty, Monday, January eleventh. That right?’
Serpent! she said silently, sucking in a breath as he wrote it all down. ‘Oui, c’est correct.’
‘And Denise Rouget and Germaine de Brisac went to school together?’
Why could he not understand that one had to be so careful these days, that everyone was listening as they watched and that among them were those who would quite willingly, if encouraged, write damning letters to the authorities while hiding behind the innocence of anonymity? ‘I did not say that, Inspector. It’s not my practice, or that of any of my girls, to divulge information of any kind about my clients even to such as yourself, but since you demand it before reliable witnesses, then, yes, they did.’
‘The bac and after that the Sorbonne or whatever?’
‘Those, too, of course.’
‘Kohler …’
‘Now it’s your turn, Colonel, but let’s go into the Lido so that Petit Bob can say hello to all the girls and you can buy me an aperitif.’
* * *
To the muted sounds from the Arcade came the urgency of someone’s trying the door to the Agence Vidocq. Was it Monsieur Raymond or Monsieur Quevillon? wondered Suzette Dunand. Chief Inspector St-Cyr was still perusing the papers in his hand. Monsieur Garnier would have shaken the doorknob and then banged a fist against the door. He would have silently cursed her, thinking that she had left before the 7.00 p.m. closing, a thing she had never done but now that door was no longer being tried, now the steps were receding, and why was it, please, that Colonel Delaroche wouldn’t allow any of his agents prives to have a key, even the most trusted of them?
Monsieur Raymond had tried that door-it must have been him, she decided: M. Jeannot Raymond who had been with the colonel since the very beginning and well before the Defeat. Though he seldom smiled, M. Raymond always saved the best of those for her but never tried to get too close. Not once. He wasn’t like M. Hubert Quevillon who always knew the nearness of himself filled her with revulsion but that she would have to tolerate it in silence.
M. Quevillon enjoyed her despair. Secretly he laughed at her-she knew he did, whereas M. Flavien Garnier could as easily have had one of his ‘fifty-year-old boots’ behind this machine for all the attention he paid to her.
‘Inspector …’
‘A moment, Mademoiselle Dunand.’
‘Have you the magistrate’s order?’
‘At your age it’s hard to put force into such words. I wouldn’t try, if I were you.’
She coloured-could feel her cheeks getting hot again. ‘I HAVE A RIGHT TO DEMAND THAT YOU SHOW ME THE SEARCH WARRANT! I MUST GO AND CLEAN MYSELF UP!’
‘In a moment.’
Salaud, she winced. Tears would streak her mascara-Well, let them! He knew she had peed herself. He must know she was but the latest of the secretaries the colonel had employed, the fifth in the past two-and-a-half years of this Occupation, and that she desperately needed to keep the job or else the STO would come and take her away to Germany to work in a munitions factory and she’d be blasted to pieces by the bombs of the British RAF. Hadn’t that been what M. Hubert Quevillon had whispered into her ear the last time he had caught her alone and found her cringing at the nearness of him? Wasn’t that why so many other girls had left the agency?
Or was it, perhaps, that Colonel Abelard-Armand Delaroche had let each one go before she had found out too much?
‘This statement of invoice, mademoiselle.’
He had yanked it from the machine. Stricken, she had stiffened and he had noticed this, as he did everything.
‘It … it is simply Madame de Roussy’s account. On the fifteenth of every month she is …’
‘Oui, oui, but …’
‘But what, Inspector?’
‘Twenty-five thousand francs? For what, please?’
‘I only do as I’m told. Here … here is the invoice in pencil, as Colonel Delaroche has written it for me to type up.’