Louis waited. Kohler told him. ‘Madame Rébé’s son, Julien, age twenty-six and nigh on useless except for one thing, unless you count the hours he puts in playing mannequin to the life-drawing classes at the Grande-Chaumière over in Montpar-nasse and one hell of a lot closer to home. Hey, I’ll leave all that to your imagination until we get him out of bed unless that mother of his has gazed into her crystal ball and told him to bugger off before it’s too late.’
In the pitch darkness of the rue de l’Eperon, the rolling clang of opening steel shutters mingled with the sounds of shop doors coming unstuck as their owners coughed. Pedestrians, their heads shrouded by scarves, coat collars, toques and fedoras, hurried along, the sounds of their boots and wooden heels timidly sliding and clacking on ice that threatened to dump each squeaking-wheeled vélo-taxi or cyclist.
Faint pinpricks of blue light and of pre-dawn cigarettes appeared. The Seine was near, the dampness even more bone-chilling, the house at Number 10, a former mansion from the reign of Louis XVI now long since gutted, hollowed out and made over several times.
Like the rest of the quartier Saint-André-des-Arts, it was worn, not of the present, but the past and unwilling to relinquish its lingering passion for a more tranquil life.
‘Hermann, go easy, eh?’ cautioned St-Cyr. ‘You live just around the corner. The neighbours will know you or know of you. Don’t damage your reputation. It’s not necessary. A few simple answers, that is all we require.’
‘Piss off.’
The street resounded to his fist on that door, reacting with utter silence. Not a soul moved, not a foot stirred. For one split second fear gripped those nearest and instinctively it spread like wildfire to the rest.
Ah merde, it was as if God had struck them all numb, and both ends of the street had been sealed off for a rafle, a house-to-house round-up and arrest.
Again and again the door was bashed until, breathlessly, the terrified concierge managed, ‘A moment … a moment,’ and began to slide the bolts free and open the locks.
The Gestapo always favoured the small hours of the night or those just before dawn when sleep was at its deepest and one was too befuddled to escape.
‘Messieurs …’
‘Madame Rébé and son. Vite, vite, imbécile, we haven’t all day,’ said the giant.
The black-and-white-chequered tile and wrought-iron stairwell was huge and spiralled up and up, and right in the centre of it, the gilded iron birdcage of an elevator had been added perhaps in 1890.
‘The stairs, Louis.’
‘It’s on the fourth floor.’
Hermann snatched the key from the concierge and began the climb. He wouldn’t trust the lifts. Having been caught once and left hanging by a thread, he had sweated ever since at the thought of them.
‘Please,’ cautioned the Sûreté, a last attempt. ‘Madame Rébé is well liked and respected. She’ll sleep until noon.’
‘Not today.’
A brass plate gave details. Palms read, fortunes divined. Tea leaves, horoscopes, Tarot cards and crystal gazing are specialties. Dreams interpreted. Destiny foretold.
The hours were given as from 2.00 until 7.00 p.m., six days a week with sittings also from 9.00 until 11.00 p.m., except when séances were held on Thursday evenings.
Enter only those who earnestly desire to learn the truth.
There were no refunds, and the fees ranged from ten francs for fifteen minutes, to fifty francs for more intense consultations. Those for the extended sessions were ‘negotiable’.
‘Shall I knock?’ asked Kohler.
‘Discreetly, I think.’
‘He’ll only bolt.’
‘He might not even be here.’
‘Then I’d best use the key, hadn’t I?’
‘We haven’t a magistrate’s warrant, or had you forgotten?’
‘You don’t need one. Not when I’m along.’
The flat smelled of scented candles, dust, dried flowers and a coal fire that had been awakened in the kitchen to add the aroma of real coffee to all the rest.
Kohler switched on a lamp. They were in the ante-room where clients waited their turn. Two flaking, gilded, straight-backed chairs with faded red velvet seats stood against a thread-bare tapestry which hung on the wall beneath an arbour of dried flowers. Roses, hydrangeas, carnations, sunflowers, corn-flowers and asters were bunched with sheaves and single stalks of ripened wheat and barley, oak leaves, too, and chestnuts. A squirrel’s feast of them. All covered by a fine coating of household dust, impossible to remove in these troubled times when business was so brisk.
A large and similarly coated bouquet, in a raffia-covered jardinière, sat on the floor between the chairs keeping lover from lover, husband from wife, friend from friend, or total stranger from stranger.
‘Messieurs …’
‘Ah!’ began St-Cyr, touching Hermann’s arm to silence him. ‘Mademoiselle, please do not be alarmed. We are here to see the madame and her son.’
The girl was no more than seventeen, a maid of all work and receptionist also, the uniform changing with the passing of the hours. ‘But … but Madame, she sleeps, and Monsieur Julien, he … he has not returned and has stayed elsewhere overnight because of the curfew.’
‘Where?’ demanded Hermann, flashing his badge.
Her large brown eyes began to moisten at the sight of that thing. ‘I … I do not know, monsieur. He … he seldom tells me.’
She looked like death and why not? Gestapo … Gestapo … But there was no sense in stopping. ‘Which one, eh?’ he asked and snorted lustily.
She gave a quick, instinctive shrug and blurted tearfully, ‘He has many. They … they all find him hard to resist. These days a young man like that, he can have any woman he wants, and Monsieur Julien, he … he has the appetite.’ Dear Jesus save her now, she begged. Madame would be furious. ‘He … he meets them at the … the life-drawing classes where he is a mannequin. There and … and at other places, of course. The Lutétia Pool as well.’ Oh God.
Well-endowed, is he? snorted Kohler inwardly. ‘Has he an overcoat?’
‘A cape, made out of a horse blanket.’
‘Is it black, as in coal black?’
‘Yes … Yes, it is black and coarse.’
‘Good. Switch on the lights and tell Madame we’re here for an early-morning reading of her son’s future.’
‘Hermann, must you?’ hissed St-Cyr when the girl had fled.
‘A horse blanket—isn’t that enough? Hey, I’ll just find the woman’s ledger, Chief, and scan it for names, visits and times.’
‘You do that.’
‘Then you look for other things, eh? Hey, that’s an order.’
A tall and translucent trifold screen allowed those who waited to see those beyond it but only as blurred shadows, the viewer hearing every word of prophecy except for the whispered confidences and, at the completion of the session, seeing the results as the client then came back around it towards them.
St-Cyr was intrigued by the screen. Two young lovers, dressed in the finery of the late 1800s, embraced in secret on the middle panel before tumultous thunderclouds at dusk, while up in the sky the sun’s last rays revealed among those same threatening clouds the shadowy face of the girl in multiple images. Now grave and wondering about her lover, now coy, now lecherous, the mask of old age removed and held away as the young girl laughed at life and fate and mischievously touched the back of her front teeth with her tongue.
Flowers embraced the central panel, cream-coloured roses climbing through gold to branch out and blossom next the cloud-faces that included the girl’s skull.
It was magnificent, and he knew the work had been adapted from a painting by the Viennese artist Gustav Klimt.
Behind the screen, draped cream brocade with silk tassels formed a puffed and pleated backdrop to the bouquet of dried hydrangeas and roses that all but dwarfed the lace-covered table Madame Rébé used for the lesser readings. Zodiac signs were scattered throughou
t the lace, whose centrepiece was a deck of Tarot cards spread to reveal the Queen of Wands, the King of Pentacles and the Fool.
The straight-backed chairs were uncomfortable-looking, and he gave credit where due. Fifteen minutes in one would seem an hour to most, especially as they had already been kept waiting in a similar chair.
From here, more screens channelled the select client into the inner sanctum of a small private sitting room where the more serious readings and the séances were held. Louis XVI settees in pistachio green and gilt, still with their original, now threadbare fabrics, mingled with armchairs covered in the same material. Silk orchids were everywhere—a tall pale, off-white and pink-fringed cymbidium, a deep pink cattleya and the butterfly gold-to-white and reddish amber of a paphiopedilum were reflected in the crystal ball that sat on a three-pronged stand of bronze cobras that were poised to strike the unwary.
‘Louis, take a look at this.’ Kohler waved the appointments book. ‘Madame Vernet has been coming at least three times a week for the past four and a half months. Usually at three p.m. and staying until four or later. Five sometimes, even six p.m.’
‘But others have their fortunes told while she waits.’
‘Or does she wait at all?’
‘The tiepin,’ breathed Louis. ‘Did she step on it here?’
They moved into the corridor beyond and from there went quickly through to the bedrooms. Madame Rébéls door was closed, but when they found the son’s cold unrumpled bed, they found the clutchback of the pin among the clutter of cheap cufflinks, assorted male jewellery and female ear-rings, garters, safety pins, and miscellany in the plain pine box on his commode.
It was enough.
Returning to the anteroom, they dutifully waited for the maid until Madame Rébé was at last ready to receive them in the grand salon, which was, of course, off limits to clients and reserved only for those most special, most private of guests.
‘Messieurs, it’s so good of you to be patient. One has to dress. One simply cannot snap the fingers or wave the wand.’
She was reclining nonchalantly in a gilded Louis XVI arm-chair whose slim arms and high, rounded back were covered with a flowered tapestry of soft faded gold that matched exactly the gown she wore. The fine silk crepe de Chine was from the twenties, from the designer Fortuny, the sleeves pushed up a little to give the effect of a slight carelessness, the shoulders all but bare.
Her right arm lay along the arm of the chair so that her long slim fingers dangled over its end, while the fingertips of the left hand delicately touched a naked collarbone. Only two rings were worn and they were identical. One on the third finger of each hand, of diamonds.
The jet-black hair was piled up so that the carefully arranged wisps fell to fringes that all but touched her dark eyes and framed an animated, smiling face whose strong brows and long lashes had been further strengthened by pencil and mascara. The chin was determined, the nose was long. Diamond pendants dangled from half-hidden ears.
Ah! it was such a scrutiny they gave her, these two detectives from Paris-Central, but it was, yes, nothing to the scrutiny she returned and they knew it. The big one fiddled self-consciously with his fedora—had his lover ever come to her for consultations? Giselle … was the girl’s name Giselle le Roy? Of course it was. Kohler the lover; Kohler the husband-to-be—was it possible? The stars, they had strongly advised against it, but the girl, she had not wanted to hear such a thing. ‘He loves me,’ she had said. ‘Ah, I think he might. I must come back again for another reading—yes, yes, madame. Would this be possible?’
The other one, the Sûreté, was bemused perhaps but curious, and she did not like the look of either of them, but for different reasons. ‘Inspectors, you flatter me with the urgency of your desire for a consultation, but, please, how may I help? So often I have prayed the police would come. I see things. I have powers.’ She shrugged, but just the right amount … ‘It’s a gift one treasures, isn’t that so? But one always worries that some day such a gift, it will vanish.’
The fringe over the brow was given just the lightest of touches. The head was turned but a little.
‘Your son, madame,’ said St-Cyr diffidently. ‘We would like to know where he is.’
She sucked in a breath. Her bosom rose. ‘My Julien? But at work, of course. He is the riding master in the Bois de Boulogne. Every day he starts so early, I … why, I hardly ever see him, the poor boy, although we’re very close.’
A shit-shoveller elevated to riding master! snorted Kohler inwardly, but Louis’s diffidence continued.
‘Yes, yes, madame. Apparently he did not come home last night?’
‘Nor has he been at his job today,’ breathed Kohler. Giselle would hate him for this.
Madame Rébé tossed her head a little but did not frown. ‘Not home? Not at work? But … but that is impossible, messieurs.’
‘It’s Inspectors,’ grumbled Kohler, hauling out his badge only to hear her sing, ‘Impossible. Julien is very conscientious. We barely make enough to keep this place. Both of us need to earn our way.’
Ah nom de Dieu, her composure was magnificent, thought St-Cyr, and cleared his throat, excusing himself. ‘A touch of the flu, I’m afraid—no, please, madame, do not concern yourself unduly. I will not sneeze. Your son?’
Consternation registered. ‘But he teaches les Allemands? He must take them riding every morning before the sun rises and guide the new ones along the trails. He has eight men working under him. Oh! you are mistaken. Please telephone his office at once. Apologize for interrupting him.’
Dried hydrangeas now had mushrooms tucked in among them—such a waste. These flowers were everywhere and they, too, needed a careful dusting. Had Julien once had the job? ‘There isn’t a telephone at the riding stables,’ grumbled Kohler, testily tossing his fedora on to a table.
‘No telephone? But … but that is just not possible. Jeanette … Jeanette, ma chère, please bring me the address book at once The Inspectors need Monsieur Julien’s number at work.’
‘Yes, madame.’ The kid ducked her head and all but ran.
They waited for her to return. They stood there, these two from the Sûreté and the Kripo, saying nothing, not even sitting in the chairs that had been prepared for them, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask, What has he done this time? But Madame Rèbè knew she mustn’t.
‘He’s a good boy, Inspectors,’ she crooned.
‘But there is no telephone,’ sighed the one called St-Cyr.
‘Which café or bar is he using, Louis?’
‘The tearoom, I think.’
When the girl returned, Louis took the book from her but let her point out the number. ‘The tearoom,’ he said and sighed again. ‘I recognize the middle two numbers, a double seven. They’re sufficient for now.’
‘So whom did he sleep with last night?’ asked the one called Kohler, and he did have something about him, something very dangerous. The scar of a rawhide whip down the left cheek only proved it. The SS had done that, his Giselle had told her, because of a truth he would not ignore.
‘I … I don’t know,’ Madame Rébé said and shrugged hotly. ‘What is a mother to do, eh, my friends? I have only one son, one child. Shall I let les Allemands conscript him into forced labour in the Reich or …’ Ah, bon Dieu, why had she said it? ‘Or keep him gainfully employed in Paris?’
‘And on the list of those who can’t be taken,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Those whose jobs are far too important.’
They were making her very angry, but she would not give in, would not get up to pace about and demand a cigarette. Ah no—no, she would not let them see her like that. ‘I tell you I do not know which of them he slept with.’
Louis let her have it. ‘Then simply tell us about the Relève, madame. The “voluntary” labour service that is soon to become the Service de Travail Obligatoire, the forced labour. Antoine Vernet has influence. Madame Vernet is, it appears, a valued client. Or is it, Madame Rébé, that the industrialis
t’s wife comes not to consult the future but to lie naked in the arms of your son?’
Vipère! Cobra! Ah damn him … ‘I … I had nothing to do with their affair. If she wants to make love with my son, who am I to deny him the pleasure?’
‘But you did have a lot to do with it, madame,’ offered Louis. ‘You ran, in effect, a clandestin. How much did she pay you for the use of your son?’
An unlicenced brothel … The matter was serious. ‘Two hundred francs a visit. Three hundred if extended.’
No crystal ball was needed. ‘And a guarantee of your silence,’ grunted Kohler, ‘so long as she made sure your Julien was not taken by the S.T.O. to find himself working eighteen hours a day in Essen tapping blast furnaces the R.A.F. had targeted.’
‘Did Madame Vernet agree to see that your son’s name went on the preferred list?’ asked the Sûreté, hurling the words at her.
She wished they would leave but was a realist and knew they wouldn’t. ‘Yes! But he’s done nothing wrong. Pah! So what if the woman craves a lover’s arms when she is married to a cold fish? My Julien is good to her—ah yes, we have discussed her most intimate of needs. We’re very close, as I’ve said. She’s a Scorpio and very determined. She likes to have everything exactly right for her. The seat, the back, the mons, they are to be massaged both before and after the release of his little burden and hers, messieurs. Hers. The feet, the hands, the throat and forehead. If she is with child, it’s her affair, not ours.’
Ah merde …
‘Is that possible?’ managed Kohler.
She had them now. ‘Very! since she wanted the feel of him in her. The ejaculation, yes? Ah! don’t look so disconcerted, Inspectors. Some women do want to drink a man in and rob him of the life only he can give. She is one of them and insatiable. Always he has had to smother her cries of joy lest the clients be disturbed.’
They didn’t say a thing. They simply left the flat in a hurry and didn’t use the lift. She heard their car start up and, from the opened windows, watched in despair as they drove off towards the Seine.
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