‘Nothing until it is absolutely clear to me.’
‘Lulu hated Judge Rouget, Colonel. Vivienne Rouget hired you to tail that husband of hers and not only find out who her Hercule was fucking but how serious things were.’
‘Where did you find that girl’s wedding ring?’
It couldn’t hurt to tell him, might even help to shake the son of a bitch. ‘Under a radiator.’
Out in the Arcade de Champs-Elysees the shoppers took their time, as Germans on leave would, while others hurried homeward, using the arcade as a short cut. Alone in the agence, St-Cyr waited beside Suzette Dunand’s desk. He had been about to switch on her lamp, had heard something against the foot traffic …
Ah! there it was again. Ever so gently the door was being tried. The bevelled bolt had come free … yes, yes, that lock had been successfully picked but now … now whoever it was discovered that the dead bolt had been engaged and since Colonel Delaroche had not returned to lock up, that could only mean the agence’s security was in the act of being breached.
There wouldn’t be time to do what had to be done, but there had to be something more than the agence just sharking the clients. Whoever it was might leave. There’d been no cries for a flic to come running, no pronouncements of a robbery in progress, simply a waiting for himself to try to slip away, but was there more than one of them out there?
Retreating, he felt his way through the pitch-darkness until he got to the corridor the girl had taken to the washroom, was hurrying now, found gold-rimmed porcelain cups and saucers and a coffeepot-Sevres? he wondered-under the light switch. Everywhere he looked in this room he’d entered, there was a tidiness that troubled, a decor that didn’t fit the usual image of detectives prives but was clean of line, the furnishings very of the nouveau riche. A large desk with Lalique pen-and-ink stand, bronze figurines from the twenties. Several oil paintings hung on the walls-landscapes but also family portraits, some dating back more than a century. Surely these weren’t of relatives of M. Flavien Garnier or of M. Hubert Quevillon, whose names in bronze were apparent?
Everything spoke of money. There was none of what one would have expected, none of the stale tobacco smoke from endless Gauloises bleues, none of the sweat of the unwashed, the garlic, the cheap toilet water or cologne such individuals were wont to splash on themselves when in the urgency of plotting to seduce some suspecting or unsuspecting female client.
Conclusion: The office was seldom used and then but briefly and really for show, since those passing by on the way to the washroom would be bound to notice, especially if this one’s door was left open. Messieurs Garnier and Quevillon were foot soldiers kept on the move by the colonel.
Garnier was also a veteran of that other war, a member of the sometimes ultraconservative UNC, the Union Nationale des Combattants. A former sergeant, wounded at Verdun, but one with ties or leanings to Action francaise? he had to ask. Fascist anyway, and definitely pro-German and collabo.
The in-tray held requests, notes, thin file folders on investigations one of the others must have handed over to Garnier but not yet collected to be stuffed into jacket pockets on the run; the out-tray, the dossiers of Adrienne Guillaumet and Marie-Leon Barrault.
Suzette Dunand had typed up the following for the Scapini Commission and must surely have been worried this Surete would find it:
Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, wife of prisoner-of-war Captain Jean-Matthieu … et cetera.
Thursday, 11 February 1943: Subject leaves residence at 131 rue Saint-Dominique on foot at 1410 hours. Couple’s children are left alone, but Concierge Ouellette reluctantly reveals that she checks on them from time to time and that this is not the only such occasion but one of many.
Proof positive of marital infidelity, eh?
Subject walks to the Deutsche Institut on the rue Talleyrand, entering it at 1430 hours.
And not far from the flat.
Subject pleads for an advance on part-time wages. Said advance denied. In distress, subject hurries from the building and makes her way on foot to bathhouse on the rue Las Cases but decides at last moment to go into the Eglise de Sainte-Clotilde.
Behind which the bathhouse, serving the bourgeoisie of the quartier des Invalides, was located, but why the need to pray, why the douche chaude?
Subject is forced to wait for shower bath and doesn’t leave until 1610 hours.
And always the delays in such establishments. Though her flat, unlike so many, had had a bathtub, there’d been no provision for hot water since the Defeat. She had obviously wanted to be as presentable as possible, even though it must have cost her a good fifty francs she didn’t have. Five it would have cost before this lousy war. Five and no more!
Subject takes metro to place de l’Opera and enters Cafe de la Paix at 1655 hours where she meets and conspires-Why not confers?-with subject Marie-Leon Barrault and that one’s daughter Annette. On recommendation of the Barrault subject, Madame Guillaumet hires velo-taxi Prenez-moi. Je suis a vous, which is to pick her up outside the Ecole Centrale after classes at 2115 hours and drive her to the Hotel Ritz, there to wait until again needed. Wait estimated at from two to four hours. ‘As long as is necessary,’ subject stated to driver.
A half-hour to three-quarters becomes such a different length of time?
Subject then leaves Cafe de la Paix at 1756 hours, catching the metro to the Ecole Centrale where she arrives at 1827 hours in time for her classes to begin.
There was nothing else. It was as if the rape, the vicious assault on her person, the savage beating had never happened.
The signature was firm but hasty. Salauds, that is what this gang were. Shark to the woman’s in-laws, shark to the husband and the Scapini, shark to Madame Henriette Morel, too, and the ‘subject’ no matter what but he was racing now. Marie-Leon’s ‘dossier’ was thicker and there were photos. One of Gaston Morel and the ‘subject’ at a table in the Cafe de la Paix, his expression one of deep concern or, as implied, one of, Don’t worry, cherie. Go on up to the room. No one will ever know we’ve been together.
Another of the photos revealed her waiting for the lift at the Hotel Grand.
There was a shot of the manager of the Cinema Imperial who grinned, leered and sucked on a damp fag end: ‘Of course I took what she offered. When it is presented in such a package, one cannot be impolite. Pay … ? What is this you’re saying? She came to me often.’
How much had Garnier bribed him? Five hundred?
A copy of Father Marescot’s damning letter to the Scapini Commission was enclosed, even a photo of the priest, and one of the ‘subject’ entering the confessional at the Eglise de Notre-Dame de Lorette, and another of those who were waiting to do exactly the same thing, including Annette Barrault, who looked to be all but in tears.
Still it wasn’t enough to link the agence to any of the attacks and if he heard about the break-in here, as he well might, Boemelburg would hit the roof, as would Oberg. Where was what was needed? Something … there had to be something more than these.
‘Forged tobacco cards?’ blurted St-Cyr, having opened the desk’s central drawer, that catchall of things detective and otherwise. ‘Fifty of them at least. Evidence … I’d best take a few.
‘A tube of Veronal … ?’ Now why would Garnier have such a thing? Old wounds? A girl, a woman he used regularly? So many filles de joie would use drugs of one kind or another if they could get them to dampen the discomfort of too much sex, but …