by Allan Massie
‘May I join you, superintendent?’
‘As you like.’
Lannes stubbed out his cigarette. The priest smoothed his soutane over his backside and sat down.
‘We’ve never met,’ he said, ‘but I know you by reputation, and I understand that you have been charged with a private investigation. This surprises you, that I know of it?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Madame d’Herblay is one of my parishioners. Naturally she has confided in me in her distress. So when I saw you here, I thought it expedient we should speak.’
Lannes picked up his glass, rolled the brandy round in it, made no reply. The priest placed his hands on the table. There was sweat on his forehead and his fingers were very white and pudgy. They tapped out a little tattoo.
‘Marie-Adelaide is a sweet child,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad business.
Have you made any progress?’
‘None at all. But then it was only this morning that I saw Madame d’Herblay. So I’m surprised that you already know she has asked me to look into the matter.’
‘If I can be of any help.’
‘Do you know anything of this Aurélien Mabire?’
‘The name is familiar, but it’s only a name. I can’t put a face to it.’
‘In that case, Father … ’
‘Paul. Father Paul.’
‘I can’t see that you can be of any assistance. The gentleman you were lunching with … ’
‘The advocate?’
‘Has a certain reputation,’ Lannes said.
He almost added, but a girl of nineteen is too old for him.
‘He’s a distinguished citizen of Bordeaux,’ the priest said. ‘But you must know that, superintendent. I call you that though I understand you have been suspended.’
‘Did Labiche tell you that?’
‘He mentioned it, and I wondered if Madame d’Herblay was aware of your position when she sought your help.’
‘It’s irrelevant,’ Lannes said.
‘It’s been suggested to me that the business is more complicated than it may appear to you.’
‘Suggested by Monsieur Labiche?’
‘That’s as may be. I was merely asked to pass on the message. When you lift a stone you never know what may be revealed underneath it. Especially in times like this.’
The priest mopped his brow with a white-spotted blue handkerchief.
‘I know nothing myself,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘But I’ve done what I was asked to do.’
It had been a puzzling conversation. Lannes couldn’t make head or tail of it. First, Madame d’Herblay had evidently told the priest that he would be searching for her granddaughter even before she had asked or commissioned him to do so, and the priest had seemed concerned about the girl. Then he had in effect warned him off, and hadn’t denied that it was the advocate who had deputed him to do so, while being nevertheless in a sweat of embarrassment or even fear. But what on earth was Labiche’s connection to the girl’s disappearance, elopement, whatever, which appeared to have been entirely voluntary? It must surely be something to do with the man Mabire, rather than the girl.
The restaurant was now empty. Jacques came over, the bottle of Armagnac in his hand. He sat down and poured them each a drink. He looked worried and it struck Lannes that he was no longer a boy, but a young man. Was that how Alain would look when he returned, as Lannes forced himself to believe he would, some day, when this was over and France was liberated?
‘It’s Father,’ Jacques said. ‘I’m worried about him. He’s on edge, and I don’t know what he’s up to. He disappears for hours and won’t say where he’s been.’
‘A woman?’
‘That’s not something he usually makes a secret of. You must know that as his oldest friend.’
‘It’s a worrying time for all of us.’
The reply was inadequate. He knew that.
‘He won’t speak to me,’ Jacques said, ‘except of course to discuss menus and staff problems of which I don’t mind telling you we have plenty. But he’s not himself, I’ve never known him like this. I think he might open up to you.’
There had been no secrets between them when they were boys. But that was long ago. In middle age you rarely exchanged confidences with others. It occurred to Lannes that it must be at least ten years since he and Fernand had spent an evening together, engaged in the sort of conversation in which anything and everything can be said. As we grow older we are no longer willing to reveal ourselves to others. There is too much we are ashamed of; it’s a mistake to think the young are more vulnerable, for they can still believe themselves capable of controlling the future.
‘When he comes in in the morning,’ Jacques said, ‘I can tell he hasn’t slept well.’
‘That’s not unusual, after a certain age. I don’t sleep well myself.’
‘But will you speak to him. Like I say, I think he might open up to you. Otherwise I’m at a loss.’
He agreed of course. How could he not? Jacques’ anxiety was evident and he had to admit that his curiosity was aroused. Nobody he knew had ever seemed as comfortable in himself as Fernand; it was one of the things that had made him a rock-like presence in Lannes’ life. He had always been there, from the days when as boys they crouched in hides by the pond on his grandfather’s farm, guns at the ready as they waited for the evening flight of ducks.
VI
Afternoons were the worst time, nowhere to go and nothing to do. Marguerite certainly wouldn’t want him back in the apartment because his presence there would deepen the gulf of silence that divided them. It was hard to remember that there had been a time when they talked about everything, except his work of course. She had never wanted to know about that and he had preferred that she shouldn’t. It should be good to think he now had something to work on, and yet he still felt strangely detached. Was finding this silly girl important? She was nineteen and had taken off, of her own volition it seemed, with a middle-aged man who might after all be sincerely in love with her. Meanwhile, to put things in perspective, it was a beautiful afternoon in May, rumours of an Anglo-American invasion buzzed around him, and the Resistance, whatever it might exactly be, was engaged in what was already almost a civil war with what remained of Vichy, notably the Milice, that paramilitary body made up, so far as he could tell, of thugs, ne’er-do-wells, young men who had joined up to avoid being sent to Germany as labourers, and, he supposed, a number of anti-Communist zealots, natural Fascists many of them. Then there was also the auxiliary police force, generally known – and feared – as the French Gestapo. Yet, sitting in the sunshine with a glass of beer on the terrace of the Café Régent, he shrugged his shoulders at all of it. He was a superfluous man. Perhaps he was going mad? What other explanation could there be for his indifference? For, more immediately, his reluctance to do as he had promised young Jacques, and seek out Fernand to find out what was wrong with him? Fernand had done well out of the Occupation, like countless others. Was he afraid this would now be held against him? Yet he couldn’t imagine Fernand afraid, or indeed ashamed. He could hardly have barred Germans from his brasserie or refused to serve them. Certainly there was a time of retribution coming. Many would suffer, some deservedly, like the advocate Labiche he hoped, others too for less reason: Yvette who had gone with Germans, engaging in what they were already calling ‘horizontal collaboration’, and the rent boy Karim, guilty of the same crime. Yet everyone had in a sense collaborated, sleeping as it were unavoidably in German arms. Almost nobody was innocent including himself, Moncerre and young René, and all those other officials who had done their duty to the French State. Collaboration had been enjoined on all of them, and some like his own Dominique and his friend young Maurice had engaged in it enthusiastically, certain that they were doing good work with the deprived city boys entrusted to their care. How would they stand when accounts came to be settled? Was anyone, except those like Alain, Léon and little Jérôme who had escaped France to join t
he Gaullists, free of guilt? And where were they now? Were they indeed still alive? It was more than two years since they had had word of Alain. The thought appalled him: all the youth of France had been betrayed, one way or another.
He finished his beer, got up and walked away.
***
Mériadeck slept in the sunshine, but, whereas in the years before the war women would have brought chairs on to the pavement to enjoy the weather, the streets were now all but deserted. The deportation of the Jews had sucked the life out of the quarter.
Old Mangeot in shirtsleeves and braces sat behind the reception desk in the Pension Bernadotte, a half-drunk bottle of beer by his right hand and an extinguished half-smoked cigarette stuck to his lower lip. A bluebottle buzzed round the naked bulb that hung above him.
‘You’re in luck, superintendent,’ he said, ‘for I take it you’ve come to see Yvette, since I’ve done nothing that might concern you, and she’s in her room and alone without company for once. I’ve no doubt she’ll welcome yours.’
Lannes knocked on Yvette’s door, and, without waiting for an answer, turned the handle and entered. She lay stretched out on the bed, as he had so often imagined her, wearing a cream-coloured blouse, half-unbuttoned, and black knickers.
‘Stranger,’ she said, and, smooth as a cat, was off the bed, put her arms round him and kissed him. She made to force her tongue into his mouth, but he disengaged her arms, saying, ‘No, Yvette.’ He sat down on the only chair and she sighed, took a bottle of white wine from a bucket where it stood in water that was no longer cold, poured them each a squat tumbler, and handed him one.
‘If you don’t want what I offer,’ she said, ‘why are you here? Not that I’m not pleased to see you.’
Why indeed was he there? Not surely only to refuse what she so willingly offered and what he knew – she knew – he wanted so badly? He had thought about it so often, so urgently as he walked through the sad streets of Mériadeck, in the sunshine that seemed a reproach to the misery there, or a mockery of it, rather than a summer promise of better days, and yet, now that she was standing in front of him, her lovely legs parted, and he had only to reach out his hand to draw her to him, he knew that he was indeed going to say, ‘It’s no good, Yvette, you know it’s no good, you know why it’s no good.’
She leaned forward and stroked his cheek.
‘You poor man,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know it wouldn’t matter? It’s only natural after all.’
When he made no reply, she returned to the bed, glass in hand and sat there, the upper half of her body upright and her legs tucked under her bottom.
They sat and looked at each other, and, because he feared what she might read in his eyes, he said, ‘It would matter too much.’
‘Lots of married men come here because they say their wives don’t understand them. You’re different, I think. You come because she understands you too well.’
‘You may be right,’ he said, ‘but that’s not why I’m here today. Anyway, who wants to be understood? Who can bear to be thoroughly known? But I haven’t come to discuss such things. Do you happen to know of a man called Mabire? Aurélien Mabire?’
‘Most of my visitors don’t give me their true name or any name at all. You’re the exception. But in any case it doesn’t ring any bells. Who is he?’
‘I don’t know. Said to be an art dealer. He’s a middle-aged man who has apparently run off with a young girl.’
‘How young?’
‘Nineteen, I’m told.’
‘Nineteen. And so? Old enough to know what she’s doing. I was fifteen when I left home.’
‘Nineteen,’ he said. ‘But young for her age, it seems.’
He lit a cigarette, passed it to Yvette, then another for himself. The cat that had no name but Cat and had belonged to the old Jewish tailor who had killed himself emerged from under the bed and leapt on to Yvette’s lap, where it lay purring as she scratched it behind the ear.
‘Not like me then,’ she said.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Lannes said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Is your mother still alive?’
‘Oh yes, it’ll take more than a war to see her off.’
‘You should go home to her.’
‘That’s a good one. What makes you think she’d have me? I’m adisgrace to the family. And my father would beat me – again – if I so much as showed my face. You don’t know my story, superintendent, and I’m not going to tell it you. But take my word for it. Home is a place I’m not welcome. Why anyway?’
‘Because,’ Lannes said, ‘when the Germans have gone – and that won’t be long now – things are likely to be difficult for girls like you, difficult and unpleasant.’
‘Then you’ll just have to protect me, won’t you?’
‘I may not be able to.’
VII
The metal plate read: ‘Family Pension – Moderate Prices’ with, below, the promise of hot and cold water and showers. It was a small two-storey building in a narrow street behind the Gare St-Jean. The brickwork, unusual in Bordeaux, was dirty yellow, and, even in the sunshine the place gave off an air of squalor and, he thought, misery. It seemed an unlikely place for Aurélien Mabire to be holed up in, especially in the company of a young girl of good family. But René Martin had been certain.
‘He is known to us, chief, and he did indeed used to be an art dealer. That’s how he came to our notice, according to his dossier, handling works of art of what they called ‘dubious provenance’. I don’t know the details. He was never charged, but a year later, his gallery was closed. That was in 1937. We don’t have a photograph of him, I don’t know why. He’s been registered as living in the Pension Smitt for two years now, with no known means of support. He’s a shady customer, there’s no doubt about that. Do you want us to take a look at him? The bull-terrier’s quite eager.’
‘There’s no crime,’ Lannes said, ‘since the girl left home of her own accord. I’ll have a word with him myself, first anyway.’
The truth was he was curious and also happy to have something to do. In any case it was likely that neither Madame d’Herblay nor the Comte de St-Hilaire himself would want the investigation to be made official and Marie-Adelaide’s name to appear in police records.
The reception desk was deserted. There was a smell of dust mingled with the sickly odour that came from a vase of withered carnations standing in water that had been left unchanged for too long. A clock ticked loudly. Otherwise silence, broken only by the rattle of a train from the tracks that ran behind the house. There was a little hand-bell on the desk. Its tinkle was high-pitched but faint. The clock was half an hour slow, and there was a long interval between each tick as if it was struggling not to fall further behind. Lannes rang the bell again, and this time the door behind the desk opened and a woman came through. Her hair, dark and streaked with grey, hung in rats’ tails. She wore a flower-printed housecoat and carpet slippers on her feet.
‘We’re full,’ she said. ‘No vacancies. So you can bugger off.’
Her breath stank of white wine, and the assurance of her words was contradicted by the dead tone of her voice. Lannes had the impression of a woman who had seen and survived more of life than she cared for.
‘I’m not looking for a room,’ he said.
‘So bugger off.’
‘Aurélien Mabire,’ he said.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘That’s strange. He’s registered as living here.’
‘So you’re a flic. I’d have spotted you sooner but I’m not feeling myself today. You can still bugger off,’ she said, and plumped down on the chair behind the desk. She opened a drawer, took out a packet of Gauloises. Her hands shook so violently that she missed the tip of the cigarette and lit the underside.
‘I told him to bugger off too,’ she said.
‘Would a drink help?’
He took a quarter-bottle of Armagnac from his inside breast
pocket.
‘It might go to the right place. There’s glasses in the cupboard behind you.’
She downed hers in one, shuddered, and held out the glass for a refill.
‘So you told him to bugger off? Why?’
She drew on her cigarette and took a sip of the second brandy. Her nails were cracked.
‘Because of the girl,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t having the girl here. He’s my brother and I’ve let him live here rent free because of that, but I didn’t like having the girl here. I don’t know why he brought her. There was something up and I didn’t like it. Aurélien’s a queer, always has been, well, that’s just how it was and there’s nothing to be done about that, some men are and I’ve no time for them. To tell you the truth it disgusts me, what they do, whatever that is, I don’t like to think about it, but he’s my brother, my little brother and I’ve always looked out for him, which hasn’t been easy, I tell you, you know how it is I expect, you being a flic. So I knew from the first there was something up. She was in love with him, I could see that, because you don’t keep a pension for twenty years without learning what’s what, when I say in love, I mean she had the hots for him, stupid girl.’
‘Did they share a room.’
She sniffed loudly, and held out her glass again.
‘This is good brandy,’ she said. ‘Well, yes they did, but what went on in bed I can’t imagine. Well, I don’t care to, though it wasn’t much I dare say. She’s an innocent, that girl, I wondered even if she wasn’t retarded in some way, which is another reason I didn’t like having her here. I’ve a horror of idiots. When I questioned my brother, he said it wasn’t what it seemed and I wasn’t to worry. So I knew he was up to something, it’s a relief really to speak of it. And then when that toad appeared, I’d had enough.’
Lannes passed her a cigarette, lighting it for her, though she might have managed to do this for herself now that the brandy had steadied her and her hands had stopped shaking. He took one for himself, drew the smoke into his lungs, breathed out, and said, ‘The toad, tell me about the toad.’