by Allan Massie
* * *
The girl was late. Léon’s instructions were clear: wait for no more than fifteen minutes after the appointed time, then leave and walk to the second meeting place, which was a brasserie on the corner of the rue St-André-des-Arts and the rue Dauphine. Get there exactly an hour later than the time fixed for the first meeting. He looked at his watch. The fifteen minutes were up, but he would give her another five. He lit a cigarette, folded his newspaper and thrust it into his coat pocket. He would have liked to dispose of it in a bin. He felt contaminated – there was an article denouncing ‘the Jewish plague’ which was altogether vile.
He was shivering and told himself it was only the cold. But he felt a tremor of fear. Of course there were innocent explanations. Anything might have detained her. The metro might have broken down for example. That sometimes happened these days on account of a power failure. But he feared for the worst. You always feared for the worst. He would finish his cigarette and then leave. Two policemen were approaching. He forced himself to sit still and not look at them. If the girl had been arrested and had talked, then it wouldn’t be just two cops – surely. But you couldn’t tell. That was the frightening thing, you never could tell. A middle-aged man on a bench on the other side of the statue pulled the brim of his Trilby hat down as the policemen passed. Then he got up and turned his back on them.
Léon dropped the stub of his cigarette and put his foot on it. He made himself walk slowly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, and out of the gardens to cross the road and turn into the rue de Tournon. He had more than forty minutes to kill before he should be at the brasserie. Of course he might go there early and order something to eat. But instructions were instructions and anyway the idea of food made him feel sick. He turned into a bookshop. The woman at the desk paid no attention to him. He took a book from the shelves, but the print was a blur, and his hands were shaking.
‘I couldn’t help noticing you in the gardens.’
It was the man in the Trilby hat.
‘You looked anxious,’ he said, ‘when these policemen passed. Are you in trouble?’
‘Trouble?’ Léon said. ‘No trouble. Not that kind anyway.’
‘What kind then? I can’t believe somebody stood you up. Not a boy like you. If that’s the case, you must allow me to buy you a drink.’
Léon relaxed. Nothing to worry about, just an attempt at a pickup.
The man took the book from him.
‘Gide,’ he said. ‘You have good taste. I used to know him well when I was young. He’s got away, you know. I believe he’s in North Africa, Tunis, they say. What about that drink? What do you say?’
Léon smiled, ‘I can’t I’m afraid. I have an appointment.’
‘Shame. Some other time perhaps. Here’s my card. Do please give me a ring. I find you quite charming. What do you say to lunch tomorrow?’
Léon looked at the card. Joachim Chardy. He recognised the name, had read one of his novels. About delinquent schoolboys. He’d enjoyed it when he was – what? Fifteen? So why not?
‘I’d like that,’ he said.
‘I’m delighted. Shall we say Lipp at 12.30, best to be early these days. You know Lipp, I take it.’
‘I’ve never eaten there.’
‘Then it will give me great pleasure to introduce it to you.’
He stretched out his hand and touched Léon lightly on the cheek.
‘Charming,’ he said again, ‘I look forward to it. Now I mustn’t keep you from your appointment. But first, allow me to buy you this book.’
‘I’ve already read it actually.’
‘No matter. Let me inscribe it for you. But I don’t know your name?’
Léon glanced at the book Chardy was holding.
‘Olivier,’ he said.
It’s all right, nothing to be afraid of, he thought as he left the shop and descended the hill, just an old queen, normal life, and why not? Lipp, something to look forward to. But what if the girl didn’t come to the brasserie? If he was cut off? The ridiculous idea came to him that he could drop out, and, thinking this, he was ashamed. Then he remembered how Chardy had pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes and got up and turned away as the policemen passed. What did he have to hide? Not, surely, just his interest in him? After all, he no longer looked like a minor, he was sure of that.
XXXIV
‘There is never,’ Lannes said, ‘well, only rarely, a single reason for a crime, not for murder anyway. Something like theft, that’s different, easily explicable. But murder, it’s the culmination of a series of other acts, of a variety of emotions, hopes, fears. Of course there may at the end appear to be a single motive, but the crime itself, the act of killing, is the product of a whole series of different and often conflicting motives which swirl around like a gusty wind and eventually impel the man or woman who is not yet a murderer to become that. This crime of which we spoke at our last meeting is a tangle of different motives. The dead woman, the victim, some would say she was asking for it – that’s been made clear to me. She did things which were not only illegal but wrong – you’ll admit there is a difference – the law’s one thing, morality another, I’m sure you understand that.’
He broke off, uncertain where his words were leading him, and traced a circle in the dusty earth with the point of his stick. It was extraordinary to be speaking like this to a German, but Schuerle made no immediate reply, merely smiled, encouragingly perhaps.
They were sitting again in the public garden, on the same bench actually, in sight of the fountain, and it was a beautiful clear winter morning, dew still sparkling, the sky cloudless, blue as the French rugby jersey which, in moments that now seemed fantasy, he had dreamt of seeing Alain wear. He lit a cigarette and drew the smoke, comfortingly, into his lungs.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘something of what the dead woman, Gabrielle, was engaged in, procuring girls, some of them minors, little girls, for the perverted pleasure of those whom she would have called her clients, a number of them, I’ve no doubt, men of position, perhaps in the general view utterly respectable, some of them anyway. There’s the possibility – I put it no more strongly than that – that some may have been members, officers even, of your army. That’s what you were afraid of, isn’t it?’
‘What my superiors were afraid of,’ Schuerle said.
‘Quite so, but which are the more guilty? The woman or her clients? And what brought her to it? Greed, resentment, innate viciousness? I don’t know. She didn’t like men herself, I’m sure of that. Was she abused herself as a child? It’s possible, even probable, I think. And the men themselves, her clients. What brings a man to seek that sort of pleasure? I know a couple of them, one her client some time back. A miserable feeble fellow, a drunkard too, terrified of his domineering father. Repulsive certainly – the sort who might inspire a man who thinks of himself as normal and decent with the desire to kick him, punch him in the face, beat him up. But pitiful too, pitiable even. Am I making sense?’
‘I was on the eastern front,’ Schuerle said, ‘from the first day of Barbarossa. I’ve seen Jews rounded up and shot and thrown into a pit. You may have heard of the Einsatzgruppen responsible for what, between ourselves, I don’t hesitate to call atrocities. Some of them were, as you say, normal and decent, not themselves monsters, good husbands and loving fathers. You don’t need to tell me that the nature of man is intricate, baffling. Do you know why I sought you out, superintendent, why I suggested we should meet and talk again? It’s because I felt a sympathy between us, and hoped that we might talk, as we are indeed talking, of these matters that I cannot keep to myself, and dare not speak of to my comrades. So I put myself in your power.’
‘As I am in yours,’ Lannes said. ‘Your predecessor, Kordlinger, nearly broke me, you know. If I hadn’t been supplied with information that would have damaged him … ’
‘I don’t want to know about that,’ Schuerle said, ‘but this case of yours, does it in fact, as far as you have discovered, compromise any
officers of the Wehrmacht?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘And what we are learning to call the Resistance, that would interest my superiors too.’
‘It is easy to be led astray. The circumstances of the murder pointed in one direction, and yet they weren’t convincing. That was its first interesting feature to my mind.’
‘And the second, if I may ask you.’
‘The murdered woman herself, getting to know her, and all the more so because much of what I have learnt is contradictory. That’s why I say that the roots of crime go deep, and are twisted, like the roots of many plants. You know the weed which we call nettles – I’ve no idea what the German name for them is. If you tear up a nettle you encourage other ones to grow. You don’t eradicate the weed. On the contrary it spreads and proliferates.’
‘Brennnesseln,’ Schuerle said. ‘They sting nastily, but my grandmother used to make excellent soup from them. So what pains may also nourish. Strange, isn’t it? If I had not lost an eye, I wonder if I would see things as clearly as I do now. I speak metaphorically of course.’
Lannes made no immediate reply. It was strange how they seemed to be drifting into intimacy, strange too how deserted the Garden was on such a morning. It felt, briefly, as if they had somehow detached themselves from the war and the Occupation. And yet that question of Schuerle’s about the Resistance which would – how had he put it? also interest his superiors, wasn’t it? – did this mean that he wasn’t off-duty as he appeared to be?
There might indeed seem to be a flow of sympathy between them, and Schuerle might have spoken at their first meeting too in a way which suggested that he not only believed that Germany was going to lose the war, but was anti-Nazi himself. But could he be trusted? Might he be trying to lure Lannes into indiscreet talk? Whom or what could you take at face value now?
‘I spoke to you of my grandfather,’ Schuerle said, ‘an upright man, but also narrow and harsh. A devout Lutheran who nevertheless fathered more than one child on village girls, to my grandmother’s distress. Yet he was regarded as a man of honour, and indeed prided himself on his honour. You’re a policeman. You don’t need me to tell you that, as I have already said, the nature of man is intricate. Do you know who killed that woman or do you at least have suspicions?’
‘You always suspect people who tell you lies, or less than the truth, and yet the innocent do that too. But, yes, I have someone in mind.’
‘And this would not concern my superiors?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Good. That is satisfactory.’
‘In any case,’ Lannes said, ‘the man may be innocent.’
‘Which of us is truly that? Don’t we all commit crimes in our imagination?’ “Der Mensch ist doch wie ein Nachtgänger; er steigt die gefährlichsten Kanten im Schlafe.”’
‘You forget that I don’t speak German.’
‘A thousand pardons: Man is like a sleepwalker; he climbs dangerous ledges in his sleep. Goethe. But he also said “Die Menschen sind im ganzen Leben blind.” Men are blind throughout their entire lives. I often wonder what our Führer pictures in the night. Does he have bad dreams? He has made ours a nation of sleepwalkers, and the ledges we climb are perilous. Do you have Jewish friends, superintendent?’
Lannes lit a cigarette, surprised to find his hands steady.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because they should know that the ledge on which they are perched is about to give way. Even if they are French Jews. And there is no shortage of men in your administration ready and willing to co-operate.’
‘Thank you,’ Lannes said. ‘Strange too, isn’t it, how one feels obliged to thank the bearer of bad news.’
‘In some cities of Ancient Greece they put such messengers to death.’
XXXV
Lannes was sitting, smoking, in Gabrielle Peniel’s apartment. The concierge hadn’t been pleased to see him.
‘I thought you’d have finished here,’ she said, ‘and I hope you will soon have done with us. My employers are anxious to let the apartment again. You can’t blame them. And my other tenants don’t like to see you people coming and going. There can’t be anything more for you to do here, surely.’
Lannes said, ‘That’s none of your business. We’ll decide when the place can be let again. You may assure your employers that we are as eager as they are to be done with this investigation.’
Everything in the apartment spoke of the high regard Gabrielle had had for herself, and yet at the same time it was curiously impersonal. How had she worked? The encounters she arranged had surely taken place elsewhere; he couldn’t imagine her permitting such activity in this place which bore no resemblance to a brothel. He went through to the bedroom where she had been killed. It didn’t make sense. Assuming her murderer was a man, why had she allowed him in there, and why was she in a state of undress, given what he had learnt of her inclinations? Perhaps he had proposed taking her out to dinner, and she had gone through to change, and he had surprised her when she was attending to her maquillage? That made sense of a sort. So it was surely someone she knew well and trusted, for there had been no evidence that she was alarmed, no evidence certainly that she had put up any resistance. He thought of what he had said to Schuerle about the roots of crime and of his belief that to solve a case you must first solve the mystery of the victim. Was he any closer to doing that? Dr Duvallier had said she suffered from anxiety, but he had found no evidence of that; Adrienne Jauzion that she had a terrible temper and was given to fits of rage, yet everything here, so cold and impersonal, spoke to him of restraint and composure. The style of the killing too; that, as he had concluded some time before, simply didn’t fit either the Boches or the Resistance. So Moncerre was right; it was a pre-war crime, even if he was wrong also and it wasn’t, despite appearances, a crime of passion, not what was normally meant by the phrase anyway. Hatred, yes, quite probably, but cold hatred, and calculation.
So: who hated her? Kiki certainly, and she had reason to wish her dead, might even have been capable in her misery of killing her. It was possible to construct a scenario. They had been lovers once. Suppose Gabrielle, in her complacent narcissism, had suggested they resume their old relationship. How would Kiki have reacted? The question dismayed him because the answer wasn’t impossible. There would perhaps have been contempt in any suggestion Gabrielle made, and Kiki snapped.
No, that wasn’t convincing; but was this not perhaps because he didn’t want to be convinced? Perhaps not, surely not: he could envisage Kiki killing her in the circumstances he had imagined, but not subsequently staging that set-up, smoking a good cigar and drinking champagne. Not even pouring most of the champagne down the sink.
What was it Schuerle had said? The nature of man is intricate, baffling. True enough; Gabrielle baffled him. What he had learnt of her didn’t come together to form a coherent picture. What was the key to her character? These photographs of herself over which he could imagine her lingering? What else? She liked money, was greedy for money, he was sure of that. And she had a taste for corruption.
Did any of it matter really? (He lit a cigarette from the stub of the one he was smoking.) Set aside everything else – Marguerite’s unhappiness, Alain in danger wherever he was and whatever he was doing, his fear that Dominique’s work in Vichy would be held against him when the wheel completed its revolution, Clothilde’s love for that brave foolish boy who was running hard to disaster – set against all that, why should he care that a greedy and nasty woman had been murdered?
Because you’re a cop, was the answer. Because a murderer shouldn’t escape the consequences of his crime? Certainly, though on both sides murderers were doing that all over France – in the name of course of some Higher Good!
And then there were the Jews. Why had Schuerle given him that warning? Was it a test? Or a kindly warning, expression of genuine sympathy?
He liked him; felt indeed a surprising affinity with him. And yet he had asked
that question about his knowledge of the Resistance, asked it tentatively, certainly, hadn’t probed further but had that question been the reason for seeking out the meeting? He didn’t want to believe this was the case. Yet the suspicion was there. Whatever the answer, he couldn’t doubt that what Schuerle said was true. He must warn Miriam, and the old tailor, Léopold also, who would probably give him a sour smile and reply: ‘So you think, superintendent, it is now time I reach for the brandy?’
He got up and realised he was tired. There was nothing for him here, and yet this visit hadn’t been in vain. Sitting in the dead woman’s apartment had helped him think things through. He knew who had told him a lie.
Leaving the apartment, he didn’t trouble to replace the seals. There was nothing more for them there.
‘You can look for a new tenant,’ he told the concierge. ‘We’re through here. However, I would like another word with the little maid, Marie. Do you know where I can find her?’
‘That poor child, she’s suffered enough without being plagued further by you people.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Lannes said, ‘I’ve a question I must put to her.’
‘If you insist. Well, as it happens she’s cleaning for Madame Farage on the third floor. But she’s not in today. That lady’s as mean as a Jew and won’t pay for a maid to come every day. She’ll be here the day after tomorrow.’
‘What time will she finish work then?
‘Between twelve and one usually.’
‘Keep her in your lodge when she finishes. I promise you I’ll try not to distress her. Please assure her she’s not in any trouble.’
XXXVI
Lannes sent a note by messenger to Adrienne Jauzion asking if he might call on her that afternoon, around four; he had a couple of further questions about Gabrielle Peniel. Then he arranged for the dead woman’s father to be brought to his office at two o’clock and sighed to see the pile of paperwork on his desk. He lit a cigarette, leafed through the letters and documents, scribbling his name here and there, taking nothing in. It was a relief when the