‘They’ll have sold Céline Dupuis’s other papers. You know as well as I do there’s one hell of a racket in stolen bread cards, to say nothing of the other ration tickets.’
Before the Defeat, the French had become accustomed to eating – and tasting – their food only if it was accompanied by bread. From around a kilo per day, the adult consumption had dropped to about 200 grams if one could get it, and then it usually came in the form of 25-gram slices of the grey National, or in its thumping-hard and very questionable loaves.
‘If they were that desperate, Hermann, then our two assailants are not entirely the professionals we’ve come to believe and could well be résistants.’
‘The one was sick, Louis. She threw up in the portable toilet when she dropped the knife. No sign of the cigar, though, or of its ashes. I checked just to make sure.’
‘A killer with a queasy stomach!’ Louis dragged out two mégot tins, one of which had once held mints; the other, dressmaker’s pins. ‘Camille Lefébvre’s,’ he said of the former. ‘Bousquet let it slip that she greedily smoked cigarettes whenever she could get them and that her father had accused her of selling herself for them. That’s what made me take this from her bag, and then, that of Marie-Jacqueline.’
The wealthy, the middle class and the poor, it didn’t matter, thought Kohler. Priest, cardinal and gangster, pimp, prostitute and disgruntled housewife, schoolboy, urchin and banker, these days all of them had become butt collectors. If one didn’t smoke, one sold or traded the tobacco for something else. Seldom was anything but life wasted.
‘Lucky Strikes from downed American aircrew,’ he said, fishing about in Camille Lefébvre’s tin. ‘Baltos and Russians.’ He savoured several, crumbling one after another, was good at this, thought St-Cyr. A connoisseur. ‘Gauloises bleues, with dried herbs, straw and other Quatsch added as usual, the bastards. Cigars … Three of them. No bands, but good. A cigarillo also. A wayside inn, I wonder. A place where both Occupier and Occupied can meet over drinks to discuss things.’
‘Like songs, sex and using vans that belong to the Bank of France?’
‘Chez Crusoe, and if you ask me, mein Kammerad der Kriminalpolizei, I think our groundskeeper’s son must have watched a good deal more than those vans.’
They’d have to talk to Albert, have to get him alone and go to work on him, but gently. ‘Merde, we’re going to be run off our feet, Hermann. Is that what Bousquet wants? To keep us so busy we can’t possibly uncover the truth? And Ménétrel … What of the doctor? What, please, was his part in all of this?’
‘That driver of Bousquet’s refused to cough up, Louis. I tried. I used every threat in the book, but our Georges’s mouth has been zipped so tightly, you could put a bullet in his brain and get more.’
‘A cabin,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘A small hotel downriver of it, to which Bousquet’s driver conveniently goes to stay the night.’
‘And a local inn to which some of the girls go after work.’
‘And where one of them meets that same secrétaire général to bum a lift home in the small hours – is that how it really was?’
Kohler opened the other tin only to find an almost identical selection, but here there were also two carefully flattened cigar bands: another Choix Supreme perhaps, and a Romeo y Julieta, both bright red and with gold coins on either side of the brand name.
‘Our nurse must have known Albert, Louis.’
‘She had a private practice. Was he one of her patients?’
‘Was she accustomed to caring for the girls at Camille Lefèbvre’s school?’
‘Where Céline Dupuis may have taught ballet part-time?’
‘A bird lover, Louis. One who wore diamonds she tried her damnedest to hide.’
‘But hadn’t worn the dress, the shoes or this because she couldn’t have had them.’
The beads of a very wealthy flapper.
‘Which, by rights, should have been stolen from her room,’ breathed Kohler. ‘The Hotel d’Allier, mon vieux. I think we’d better hear what our shorthand typist has to say if alive and still at home.’
The Hôtel d’Allier rose up from behind its iron fence, grey and slate-roofed against an even greyer sky. Shutters open, others closed.
In the foyer, a simple bell and desk stood before dark, wooden pigeon-holes with their infrequent messages. Keys absent or left on the run, others long forgotten. Maybe sixty or seventy rooms …
The head-and-shoulders portrait of Pétain in uniform, looking sternly down from the papered wall, was crooked.
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté. Mademoiselle Lucie Trudel, and hurry.’
‘Hurry?’ yelped the ancient concierge, having ducked behind the desk. ‘The police are always in a hurry, no more now than before. Nor have they changed their coats or their politics, only the weight of their truncheons.’ Cloves of garlic spilled from his left hand. ‘My lunch,’ he hissed. ‘There’s no bread.’
‘Kohler, mon fin. Gestapo, Paris-Central.’
‘Concierge Rigaud, it’s a matter of some importance,’ tried Louis.
‘My soup, is that not important? This place. The constant comings and goings and no one signing in or out, eh? What’s it this time? Drugs? Syphilis? Or did she have something worse? Is that why she had to go home? Well, is it?’ he shrilled.
Sacré nom de nom, a tough one! ‘Did she really go home?’ bleated St-Cyr.
‘Three messages now and not collected. Aren’t they evidence enough?’
Rigaud, for all his years and apparent frailty, was fiercely protective of his territory but the snap of Hermann’s fingers broke the air. Swiftly handed over, the slender slips of paper were quickly scanned and pocketed.
‘She was rounded up, wasn’t she?’ rasped the concierge, biting back on his gums, then clucking his tongue for good measure. ‘Grabbed off the street and hustled to the commissariat. Forced to strip for the doctor to have a look and a swab, eh? They’re disgusting, the girls these days. Dropping their underwear whenever they get itchy. No morals. No sense of decency. These old ears of mine don’t want to listen but cry when they hear the goings on!’
Venereal diseases had become so rampant in Paris that the Occupier had insisted the flics routinely round up for medical checks whatever females were available, not just the filles de joie.
‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Louis. ‘The key, monsieur. Room 4-17.’ He pointed to the empty pigeon-hole.
‘She left very early on Saturday and has not returned,’ said Rigaud spitefully.
‘Stay here. If we need you, we’ll get you. Louis, it’s this way. I’m not taking that lift or any other.’
Caught once by the hanging thread of a broken cable, Hermann had a thing about lifts. Old or from the late thirties, repaired and constantly serviced or otherwise, it simply didn’t matter.
‘The exercise will do you good,’ he said, only to gasp in pain on the stairs and grab his left knee. ‘Ach!’ he shrieked. ‘Scheisse!’
He sat down hard. Pain blurred his eyes and twisted the whip scar on his cheek. ‘Go ahead,’ he managed. ‘I’ll join you in a minute. It’s nothing.’
‘Nothing? Remind me to fix that poultice for you tonight.’
‘Who sleeps? Not us. Now beat it. Fourth floor at the back, since Céline’s room in the attic was number 3 and at the front. Oh, here. You’d better take these.’
The messages.
Friday, 29 January
Chérie, je t’aime, toujours je t’aime. You know I want only what is best for you. Paris, chérie. Paris tomorrow. Though we won’t be able to travel together, I promise I’ll be with you when we get there.
It was signed: Ton petit grigou. Your little penny-pincher.
Saturday, 30 January
Lucie, please come back soon. We have to talk. It’s urgent.
Céline
Tuesday, 2 February
Chérie, I needed you. Every day without your warm embrace was a day of constant despair. Paris no longer held its magic and now I find that you w
ent home in spite of our having discussed things and agreed.
This final note was unsigned but was obviously from her penny-pincher. Merde, were they to have yet another killing, wondered St-Cyr, or had it already happened?
As before, the stairs and corridors were narrow and poorly lit. Noises carried. Though most of the rooms would be unoccupied at this time of day, cooking was in progress somewhere, a gramophone was playing – Lucienne Boyer singing ‘Sans Toi’, Without You …
The room was not at the back of the hotel as Hermann had thought, but at the front, though here the blackout curtains were still drawn, the bed mounded with covers. Slacks, a woollen pullover, a blouse, brassiere and underpants lay in a heap beside it. One sock, her shoes, her overcoat, ah Jésus … Jésus … The pale blue glass bottle of water was on the bedside table. Woven wicker where the hands would hold it. The Buvette de Chomel … the Chomel …
Switching on the overhead light, he hesitated, asked silently, Was she smothered – is that how it was done?
The smell … always there was that clinging, throat-clawing sweetness Hermann now found so terrifying.
Flinging back the covers, St-Cyr sucked in a ragged breath and held it, forced himself to look closely as, grey and bloated, cut open, festering and crawling with maggots, five dead rats lay belly up, their entrails trailing.
‘Trapped … They were first trapped,’ he heard himself muttering and wondered where her corpse must be. Her corpse …
‘On Saturday,’ he said, his voice stiff with control, ‘30 January. Almost six days now, but was Bousquet supposed to find these?’ he asked when Hermann hobbled into the room to swear under his breath.
‘Where’s the girl, Louis?’
‘Don’t open that armoire. Let me.’
Dresses had been flung aside, others had fallen from their hangers. A brown velvet hacking jacket, a paisley silk cravat and brown whipcord riding breeches covered her. A slip, a half-slip, then a pair of lace-trimmed underpants, silk and expensive, were hooked over the end of the riding crop in her hand.
The cheeks were ashen to a contused greyish purple; her eyes were closed, sprays of petechiae dusting the lids, the bridge of her nose and forehead. Effluent and bloodstained oedematous fluid and froth had erupted and then oozed from her nostrils and mouth. There were blotches. The stench was terrible.
‘Smothered,’ he said softly. ‘Held down under a pillow on the bed, Hermann, then carried here while unconscious to be crammed into a corner and finished off, the other sock no doubt jammed into her mouth. She’s lost the child. About three months, I think. Laloux will be more precise. Aborted foetuses are a speciality with him, among other things.’
She had also voided herself.
‘These rats are all males,’ managed Kohler. ‘Why only those, unless they’re the next to get it?’
‘De Fleury, Bousquet, Richard, this one’s “lover”, and Pétain, eh?’ snapped St-Cyr.
‘Mademoiselle Trudel was to have left for Clermont-Ferrand, Louis. There’s a third-class ticket on the floor with her clothes.’
‘Yet she changed her mind.’
‘Was agitated. Didn’t pick up Friday’s message. Went out very early Saturday morning to meet Albert and get that bottle. Forgot her hat and mittens. Must have been freezing, yet walked all the way there and back in the dark.’
‘Then took off her clothes and climbed into bed.’
‘To freeze and wait for her lover?’ hazarded Kohler.
‘Who was to have checked in with her before the couple made their separate ways to catch the train to Paris, or to give her a lift to it, eh?’
‘She’s scribbled two items on a bedside note. A seven with a plus and minus sign and then a half-hour for the train to Clermont Ferrand, and an eight with the same for the early train to Paris, kidding herself that they still run so closely on time.’
‘A grigou.’
‘One of les gars, mon enfant.’ One of the boys.
4
The room was quiet, the hotel also. Alone with the corpse, St-Cyr tried to get a sense of what had really happened.
Lucie Trudel, the common, the ordinary working girl – certainly it was unfair to use such terms, but best to get things in perspective – had had every intention of going home to see her father but had suddenly changed her mind.
On her return, she had hurriedly unpacked a rather shabby cardboard suitcase – one of thousands these days – and had placed inside it, at a tight fit, an all but new one from Goyard Aîné, at 233 rue du Faubourg St-Honoré in Paris, founded in 1792.
This second suitcase had been packed well beforehand and with loving care. The scarlet silk Charmeuse evening dress and velvet shawl were from Pinnel, at 18 ave. de l’Opéra – not designer originals but, especially with the shortages, exceedingly expensive. ‘Eighty-five thousand francs,’ he said flatly. The grey worsted suit that accompanied it was of an exquisite cut and worth probably fifty thousand.
There were slips and brassieres – two changes of everything – garter belts, silk stockings that most women and men could only dream about, silk underpants and nightgowns, all from J. Roussel, at 166 boul. Haussmann. Again, not quite designer originals but sufficient for all but the most discerning taste.
Two rough flannel nightgowns, some small, plain white towels and a bundle of sanitary napkins gave pause. The brown leather handbag was from Raphael, at 99 rue de Lafayette, the red leather high heels, with their thin and elegant ankle straps, were from Bonnard, at 53 Faubourg St-Honoré, as were the brown Oxfords, except that no one used such terms in France any more. ‘Pumps,’ he grunted, ‘but with laces.’
She’d have put the cardboard suitcase in the left-luggage at the Gare de Lyon, would have taken off the one overcoat and … What? he demanded and, opening the Paris handbag, found a ticket for Chapitel, at 4 boul. Malesherbes. Dry cleaning was prohibitively expensive and all but impossible to organize, yet … yet she’d been able to arrange it. ‘A beige, cashmere overcoat, a small stain on the right sleeve. A smudge. Coffee,’ she had thought. Real coffee.
Sure enough, the Paris suitcase contained brown leather gloves, a soft yellow cashmere scarf and cloche, the handbag enough jewellery to satisfy a banker.
‘A grigou,’ he said tartly and, taking out the notes, read them again.
‘You would have seen that there was a message for you, yet you didn’t collect it on Friday,’ he mused, the doors to the armoire still open. ‘Your penny-pincher had insisted you have an abortion – that was the reason for this particular trip to Paris. You’d spend a few days together beforehand but not afterwards. You understood clearly that you couldn’t travel together. First and third class, the cardboard hiding the leather but no fear of its being searched at the Demarcation Line because …’
Dumping the everyday handbag out on her dressing table, he picked up the necessary laissez-passer and sauf-conduit, the letter also that, especially since it was in deutsch, would have stopped any such intrusion.
It was signed ‘Monsieur Gaëtan-Baptiste Deschambeault, Sous-directeur of the Bank of France’. ‘You reached high, Mademoiselle Trudel, but then, so did he.’
Photographs in a bedside album revealed the girl she’d been: swimming this past summer at the tennis club’s pool, on the far side of the Allier. Sunbathing in the buff on one of the little islands that were just downstream of the Boutiron Bridge and were used for just such purposes; riding near the racecourse, which was also on that same side of the river; even a snapshot taken on the leafy, shade-drenched terrace of Chez Crusoe, with Céline Dupuis, Camille Lefebvre and Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux.
They had all known each other. All were smiling and dressed for an evening out, the dresses either off the rack or sewn by themselves. Delightful summery frocks that complemented the wide-brimmed, flowered chapeaux that had been all the rage in Paris last summer, here too, apparently. Marie-Jacqueline’s hat even had small oranges tucked among the blossoms.
There were several other photos o
f the riding stables, one of a dappled grey grazing in a paddock, another with its saddle empty.
Hugs and kisses, Lucie’s cheek pressed close, the girl fondly stroking the mare’s muzzle. Another with the riding crop hesitantly clutched, her expression one of … Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! Sex?
A girl of twenty-three, he reminded himself. A girl with chestnut curls and eyes, the face a pleasant oval, the lips slightly parted as if in expectation of some carnal excitement, the chin not defiant or proud but determined enough and greedy for it, yes.
‘Born 28 August 1919, at 133 bis 12c, avenue Charras,’ he said – the tone of voice, he knew, was businesslike. ‘That’s near the railway station in Clermont-Ferrand, mademoiselle. Nose: aquiline; mouth: average – my partner would have vehemently disagreed. “Lovely kissing lips,” he’d have said. “A nice der-rière.”’
Again he looked at the photo of her with the riding crop. Hermann would have had much to say about it!
‘Height: one fifty-seven centimetres; weight: fifty kilos; distinguishing marks: none.
‘Why did this pregnancy have to happen, eh? No capote anglaise, no little English riding hood and cape because he didn’t want to spoil things for himself? Was that it, eh, and you at your prayers and taking the chance? It’s typical of such men, so please forgive my impatience but I’ve seen it too often. Deschambeault couldn’t have married you even if he’d been single or a widower. Not a graduate of the grandes écoles, not one of the haute bourgeoisie and product of the système. Certainly discretion was always necessary in such a little place as Vichy – there are no photos of him or any of the others’ lovers, are there? But in Paris he could show you off and did to his friends and business associates to engender envy and gain admiration, hence the clothes and the jewellery, though he couldn’t tolerate your keeping his child, could he, not even with abortion outlawed and its rare practitioners living in absolute terror of the breadbasket.’
Crammed into her corner, naked, stiff and soiled, she couldn’t respond, yet he felt she wanted to. ‘Why did he leave that note for you on Friday and then think it necessary to leave another on Tuesday? Come, come, Mademoiselle Trudel, you had refused him. That’s what he must have thought, and a man like that doesn’t take kindly to rejection. He should by rights have left you to suffer alone, yet he came here to the front desk also on Tuesday. A puzzle.
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