Stanislas dipped his head. “Officer Leclair, if I show up with police, what’s going to happen? Nothing. Whoever’s inside will stiffen, and I’ll get nowhere. I want to see how they react when I’m there with no backup. Besides, don’t you think dowager Le Brune’s harmless at her age?”
Leclair gave up with a shake of his head and switched off the engine. “Remember your cell. We’re here if you need us.”
Leclair was right, he thought, limping off toward the town house. Harm could come without warning. He would have to accept the risk.
Like other mansions in the Faubourg Saint-Germain district, this nineteenth century one hid its luxury and pedigree discreetly. A wrought-iron fence along the sidewalk and a blind of fir trees on the grounds walled the town house off from passersby who might barely notice it as they strolled past. Whatever mystery it guarded, it kept out of sight and deep within.
He waited on the sidewalk near the gate several minutes. He heard nothing except his breathing and occasional police sirens in the distance. The grounds appeared deserted, and the mansion in mist stood dark till light suddenly brightened through the louvers of a shuttered window off to his left.
When he at last gripped one of the bars, the gate oddly creaked open. He stepped inside the enclave, committing himself, and knew he had to proceed to the entrance.
There, he paused. The front door lay ajar. He pressed his fingertips against the heraldic knocker and gave a slight push. The door eased open further. He braced for a blow on his head or an arm yanked around his neck. Nothing happened.
He leaned inside and squinted into the dimness ahead to a dead men’s row of busts on pedestals. Still he heard nothing. As he stepped into the corridor, a rich smell came to him. Someone had passed through moment’s ago, smoking a brand of cigarette he couldn’t recognize.
“Madame Le Brune.” He realized the hush had made him say her name too loudly. Turn back, he warned himself. She’s not here, and someone else is, and you can’t handle him.
He remembered the flash of light through the louvers and thought, She must be here somewhere, or at least a servant or two, and limped down the hallway. “Madame Le Brune, are you in?” From somewhere to his right, deep within came the whoosh of a toilette flushing.
He rattled the doorknob to his right and discovered the room was locked. “Hello anyone. I’m Examining Magistrate Stanislas Cassel.” Even that announcement of his position brought no response from whoever had used the WC.
As he felt his way forward, his hand grazed a door to his left with enough force to crack it open. He nudged it open further and peeked inside to a grandiose salon that looked appropriate for a monarch or the very rich. An immense rug fringed in gold covered the parquetry. From gold cords plunging from the ceiling dangled lit chandeliers. At the far end, a desk seemed to ooze gold from its edges in swirls and to drip in curls down its legs that ended in lions’ paws. He picked up voices at last, rough murmurs that sounded like an argument from a room off to the right side of the salon.
A heel scuffed behind him. As he turned, someone slammed him against the door. His forehead hit the gold molding. His hands sprang open from pain. His cane clattered to the floor. He felt the attacker yank his right arm behind him. “Who are you?” he heard screamed into his ear. “Whose messenger boy are you?”
“Hey, Danny. Easy. Does he look like some ghetto hood?”
Danny held him pinned against the door. He appeared to relish inflicting pain, Stanislas noticed, as he felt the man thrust a hand into his right pocket.
“I was taking a leak and smoke when I heard a noise, Monsieur Fuchs. I shouldn’t have left my post.” Danny released his grip and displayed a cell phone in his palm.
Stanislas rubbed his forehead and felt a little blood. As he shifted around, he saw in the doorway at the far end of the salon a lean, youthful man smile at him.
“You okay?” the man named Fuchs asked. “No bones broken? Danny will safeguard that piece of property till we know what’s going on.”
“Want me to get more help?”
“That won’t be necessary right now, Danny.”
“What’s the commotion about, Rudi? Who’s disturbed our peace at this hour?” A man’s querulous voice came from inside the side room.
Stanislas frowned; he had heard that voice somewhere.
“We seem to have an uninvited guest,” Fuchs said over his shoulder.
“What’s this nonsense about?” With his fingertips on Fuchs’s shoulders like a concerned brother, the second man poked his head out the doorway, and for an instant the two heads looked fused to one body. Then André Dray stepped around Fuchs and into the salon. “Who are you?” And just as quickly he relaxed into his public smile. “Aren’t you…? Yes, I believe you are that examining magistrate. Monsieur Stanislas Cassel?”
Stanislas nodded while he patted his forehead with his handkerchief.
“You’ve lost your boyish good looks the media liked to play up,” Dray said. “I suppose age does that. You’re heavier in the face these days. And gray, too.”
“The camera no longer agrees with me,” Stanislas said, trying to sound pleasant as he stooped to pick up his cane.
“Or with me,” Fuchs said as he stepped into the salon.
“With any of us.” A third man appeared at the threshold of the side room. He stood taller than his companions and had a ruddy complexion, as though suffering a permanent blush over something obscene. In his left hand he held a notepad with a page filled with handwriting. “André, you see that video clip of Rudi and me at our last Pan-European conference? My wife warned me to permit shots only of my good side. To capture my Roman profile, she insisted. I told Greta that was my good side.” He chuckled at his joke, a swagger in his tone, and winked at his friends before turning to Stanislas. “Luckily, the people like our ideas.”
They had buried what shock over his intrusion beneath practiced amiability, Stanislas noticed. They had turned actors, who covered up whatever argument he had overheard. Only the security guard off to his left remained natural, eyeing him suspiciously, convinced he was armed.
“The young.” Fuchs shook his head at their folly. “Always too eager to impress. Danny’s seen too many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. And you, Monsieur Cassel, you’re a spoiler,” he continued, aiming an edgy smile at him. “Shame on you. You’ve stumbled onto our little secret.”
“I had hoped,” Dray said, “for a surprise at my upcoming appearance at Bercy Stadium. One security lapse, thanks to young Danny, and the secret’s out: ‘The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse,’ as those press infidels have styled us, together in Paris.”
“Those enemy propagandists,” the ruddy-faced man said. “Oh well, what’s done is done. You’re here, Monsieur Cassel.”
Apart from his voice, Fuchs’s and Dray’s were oddly soft for demagogues, Stanislas noticed. Maybe that partly explained their success. Their voices and jocularity had seduced the unwary.
“Our guest’s obviously here for a reason, André. Offer him a drink, and we’ll chat.” The ruddy-faced man eyed him and Fuchs, seeming to gauge how they would react in the presence of the law.
Before Stanislas could respond, Dray strolled past the desk to a cart in front of it. “What is your pleasure? Campari? Some St-Amour Beaujolais? Martell Cognac? Or Vittel? No Coca- Colas.”
“He means nothing American,” the ruddy-faced man said, “and I quite agree. Why feed the Anglo-Saxon rapaciousness by buying anything from them?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Oh nonsense,” Dray said. “Vittels for everyone to keep our heads clear.”
Fuchs flung his arms open as he advanced on Stanislas. “It’s an honor meeting Marcel Cassel’s grandson.” He clasped his hand in both of his and pumped out his joy. “I’m Herr Rudolph Fuchs—Rudi, if you prefer. Founder of Austria’s One People Party. Unlike other countrymen, we’re smart enough not to publicly admit admiration for our Hitler. The big gentleman over there with the paun
ch is Dr. Franz Streible, professor of philosophy at Heidelberg and leader of Germany’s National Unity Party. Franz, if you wish. I assume you already know of Monsieur André Dray? The French First Party? A rising star.”
“We all are, Rudi,” Franz said. “And thank God for that.”
“I prefer to place my faith in the people,” Fuchs said. “Monsieur Cassel, do you know my grandfather met yours once at a rally at Vichy during the war?”
“Your grandfather understood the Manichean struggle in Europe like few did, Monsieur Cassel,” Franz Streible said. “The Forces of Good pitted eternally against the Forces of Evil, and the need for essence. Like a Mercedes that needs the purest gasoline to race to its potential.”
“His assassination deprived us of a great strategist,” Rudi Fuchs said.
“Strategist?” Dray scoffed. “Rudi, you’re parochial. His tragic death deprived us of a great visionary.” He gave a muscular twist around the neck of a Vittel and broke its seal. “Your grandfather was quite a spellbinder.” He glanced over his shoulder at Cassel, sparkling with warmth. “I watched those old Pathé newsreels of him. His arms outstretched. Pounding the lectern. Trying to warn the world about the Judeo-Communist threat. What conviction!”
“Little good it did, André,” Fuchs said.
“Pay attention, Rudi. Never, ever give in to defeatism,” Streible warned. “That’s exactly what those Anglo-Saxon and Zionist plotters want.”
Dray focused on Stanislas. “I tried speaking like him until one of Franz’s charming factotums was kind enough to point out the give-em-hell style wouldn’t work on TV. Could I please be a little more modern, as he put it, and speak conversationally? Alas, I had to adopt.”
“Alas, our acclaimed speaker could serve us,” Streible said.
There was a sharp knock, and a young woman with red-rimmed glasses peeked inside. “Franz, don’t forget your honey-and-water tonic later, if you want to be in your usual good form at Bercy. That is, if André will consent to sharing the podium spotlight.”
“Consent or not, I’m speaking,” Streible said without any humor. He waved her inside and gestured to Stanislas. “My dear, Monsieur Stanislas Cassel, Marcel Cassel’s grandson.”
“His grandson?” She looked closer. “Yes, it is him. Franz, you should have told me he was coming. I’d have brought my copy of The Phalanx for his autograph.” She clasped Stanislas’s hand warmly. “I found a copy of that gem, Monsieur Cassel, at one of those secondhand bookstalls along the Seine. I’m Mademoiselle Caroline Le Brune, Madame Isabelle Le Brune’s granddaughter.”
“A part of the Le Brune fortune’s contribution to the Pan-European Council,” Streible said. “Along with this mansion when madam winters on the Côte d’Azur.”
“In other words, their press secretary,” she said. “I’m their concession to modernity. Don’t let their occasional growls put you off, Monsieur Cassel. Despite those media alarmists, none of them have the slightest touch of evil in them. They’re grandparents, even.”
“Do this grandparent a favor,” Streible said, “and go over my final draft.”
“I hope your writing’s improved, Franz.” She shielded her mouth with a playful aside to Stanislas. “None of them have ever heard about the typewriter, let alone the word processing program.”
“Be a good girl and go type,” Streible said.
“I’ll correct your spelling and untangle your metaphors, Franz, but I won’t tolerate your servant girl handling of me. You should know that by now.”
Streible smiled anger at her and shrugged at Stanislas. “The rich, too much money and education. What can I say?”
“I know what I can say. Grandmama’s favorite treatment of you can change awfully quickly.” She snatched the notepad from his hand and scanned the speech as she strode from the room. Danny followed with a quick glare at Stanislas.
A subtle shift in the mood had occurred, Stanislas could tell. He could pick it up in their eyes that averted each other’s in the uneasy silence as Dray served him his Vittel. She had broken some taboo, unwittingly revealed in her prideful outburst a family secret to an outsider, and nothing any of them could say could change that.
Streible cleared his throat and indicated a section of the room to his left set off from the rest of the salon by a quartet of Louis XV armchairs. “Monsieur Cassel, we’re busy men of affairs. You are too. How can we be of assistance?”
Stanislas glanced at his watch. Where was that loping bit of decency to keep him company? And to memorialize the interrogation? Had Christophe gotten caught in a police roadblock search and been delayed? He had never missed him like now. Another minute more alone with these three seemed intolerable.
They seemed to observe a protocol, he noticed when he moved to his chair. Streible seated himself first and in the middle, the Movement’s animating intelligence, no doubt, followed by Fuchs to his left and Dray to his right, the three already having the self-possessed look of men in power.
“I’m looking for a man in a murder investigation,” he explained to Streible. “White. Long dark hair. Well above average in height. We have reason to think he works or at least lives at this address.”
The others glanced at the German, then leaned back, waiting for him to lead. The illusion of comradeship had vanished, Stanislas could see. They realized he had come strictly on business that might threaten them.
“That must be Luc.”
The Luc who had helped keep him captive in that tenement? Stanislas kept his features impassive.
Streible relaxed his forearms on the chair’s padded supports and crossed one leg at the knee. The mansion was his territory, the Movement’s temporary headquarters, and he as much as acknowledged his leadership by his posture.
“A low-level staffer on the Council,” Fuchs explained. “He works the evening shift, analyzing profiles of supporters. What’s he done?”
Stanislas found something predatory about him as though ready to spring and claw, despite his smile. “I need to question him. I can’t say more than that.”
“He left an hour ago,” Dray said.
“By the rear entrance,” Fuchs said.
“For the rest of the evening.” Streible raised his hand for quiet like a king to his subjects, intimidation behind the indolence. “You’re really here because of his police record, are you not, Monsieur Cassel? He beat up an African, who taunted him viciously at a rally last year—there were a host of witnesses, and no, none of them belonged to the so-called far right. The Belgian police threw poor Luc in jail to prove their anti-racist stance, thereby staining his life. Don’t play us for fools because we’ve lost a few local elections, and some call us marginalists. I’m sure he’s innocent of any charges.”
His having to shake their hands, to endure their admiration for his grandfather, to suffer through their fellowship that assumed he belonged, all that was too much. He felt anger tighten his throat. “And if you’re wrong?”
“If I’m wrong, which I doubt, whatever he might have done isn’t connected with us. We’re adamantly opposed to any form of violence.”
“In any form?”
“Of course. Without exception. It’s in all our speeches.”
The other two raised their Vittels in a toast to his proclamation.
“Our council’s on record, as a matter of fact, for refusing to admit the British and Italians,” Dray said.
“They’re simply soccer thugs, as far as we’re concerned,” Fuchs said.
“Violence causes violence, Monsieur Cassel,” Streible added. “It’s a cliché men with good ideas and bad tempers never learn. You see, we battle with our program, not our fists. The Pan-European Council’s platform of Compassionate Realism simply asks everyone conform to certain standards. And why not? Do you know hordes of illiterate Africans, Asians, and East Europeans are overrunning us?”
“If you can’t control your own borders,” Fuchs said, “what’s left of your country?”
“Excellent point,”
Streible said. “And let’s not forget immigration brings more crime. It’s a scientific fact.”
“A Paris-Berlin-Vienna axis will change all that,” Fuchs said. “Compassionate Realism, just wait.”
“Time’s our ally, Monsieur Cassel,” Streible continued. “Sooner or later, the people will awake from their misery.”
Stanislas couldn’t remain silent any longer. “My grandfather was like that,” he said, his voice rising as he addressed each. “He merely gave speeches and wrote articles. He only expressed opinions. It was all in a day’s work, what he did with his pen. Like selling shoes or ties. He even claimed on his deathbed he never harmed anyone. In fact, he helped murder innocents with his words that made hatred patriotic.”
Streible gazed across, brows raised, surprised at the vehemence. A further moment of contemplation passed, then his features changed, the last trace of pleasantness gone, replaced by brutal banality. His mouth puckered suppressed anger; his jaw tightened as he seemed to reappraise who sat opposite him. He glanced at Fuchs with a warning look, then stared across again to Stanislas. “Well, so that’s how it is. You, of all people. You sat at the feet of a brilliant theoretician of a New Europe and learned nothing. Aren’t you aware of what’s happening to our countries? I see I misjudged you.”
“We all did, Franz. Here we thought he was in the trenches along with the rest of us.” Their mistake upset Fuchs so much he flexed his fists in a strangling motion on the armrests. “He’s misled to make fools of us.”
Streible eyed Fuchs. “His ploy is quite clear now.”
“He was a fool and a bully,” Stanislas continued. “A mean-spirited little man who used his meager talents to become a mean-spirited big man. That was your Marcel Cassel.”
Streible unwound his legs and leaned forward. He didn’t appear to want any ambiguity in his message. “Enough! No one talks like that here. I don’t care who they are. You’re here without your clerk. I’m not sure this is an official visit. You’ve had your evening’s entertainment at our expense. Now leave.”
Danny burst into the room, this time with a Doberman leashed. The dog lunged toward Stanislas to kill, and Danny strained with both hands to hold it back.
Murder Without Pity Page 18