Flykiller

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘She … she was where you found her, yes.’

  ‘And the rats?’

  ‘Rats?’ blurted Bousquet.

  ‘Were in her bed.’

  ‘Did you know she would go to the Hall des Sources for that bottle of the Chomel? That one. That one right there,’ demanded St-Cyr.

  ‘I did not. I arrived well before seven when I knew the hotel would be asleep, and I quickly left.’

  ‘Pausing only long enough to write Friday’s note?’

  ‘Inspector, I …’

  ‘Please just answer.’

  ‘Then, yes. No one saw me enter or leave the note or building – at least, I don’t think anyone did. She hadn’t been dead long, was still warm when I felt her neck for her pulse.’

  ‘And you saw no one?’

  ‘I’d been very lucky. After all, Marie-Jacqueline and Camille had been done in by this … this assassin. I had to leave. The fewer who knew of my being here, the better.’

  The urge to say, It sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Secrétaire? was there but it was unnecessary. Bousquet was clearly unsettled and now extremely worried.

  ‘Then it’s true, Jean-Louis,’ he muttered. ‘The bastards intend to kill us one by one, having paved the ground with corpses.’

  It would do no good to show them L’Humanité’s list. For now it would be best to let them think they alone were the targets. ‘Who knew you would go to Paris last weekend, Sous-directeur?’

  The abrupt softening of tone and absence of aggression were noted, Deschambeault taking out his cigar case and offering one. ‘It will help, I think,’ he said as only he indulged. ‘My director knew of it, Inspector. My two most senior assistants, the wife and family of course, and those I was to meet in Paris.’

  The cigar was lit, the fool even savouring it, thought Bousquet, silently cursing such stupidity. If St-Cyr thought anything of it – and he did, most certainly – he didn’t let on. ‘The ambassador also, Gaëtan.’

  ‘Another telephone call, yes. To Paris.’

  ‘Even members of the Government, myself included,’ interjected Bousquet, ‘must apply for and often wait days or weeks for a permit to cross the Demarcation Line.’

  ‘Fernand is occasionally difficult, as Rene suggests, but usually such things are easily arranged,’ said Deschambeault with a magnanimous wave of his cigar.

  ‘Fernand?’

  Jean-Louis must surely know who was meant! ‘De Brinon,’ said Bousquet gruffly. ‘Delegate Général of the French Government to the Occupied Territories.’

  The former zone occupée. ‘Our laissez-passers came through quickly, of course,’ said St-Cyr, ‘but only because Gestapo Boemelburg requested them from the Kommandantur, as he does each time he sends my partner and me south of the line.’ A glance of warning passed between the two but had best be ignored for the moment. ‘How often did you see Mademoiselle Trudel socially, Sous-directeur?’

  Socially … En garde, eh? Was that it? ‘Twice, occasionally three times a week.’

  ‘Alone, or in the company of others?’

  ‘Both. It depended entirely on circumstance and who was in town. Sometimes we’d meet up with others for a few drinks or a bit of a meal, sometimes not.’

  ‘Since when, please?’

  St-Cyr had now taken to looking about the room. Being careful to touch nothing, he used the blunt end of a pencil when needed. He was still hunting for that other sock, thought Deschambeault, and answered, when asked again, ‘Two years.’

  ‘And how many weekends in Paris?’

  ‘Merde alors, is this an inquisition, am I a suspect, René?’

  ‘Please just answer him, Gaëtan,’ said Bousquet. ‘It’s necessary.’

  ‘Once a month. Perhaps less, perhaps more. My presence is often required at the bank in Paris, so it is only natural.’

  There was the inconsequential wave of the pencil-hand. ‘Of course. But each time Mademoiselle Trudel accompanied you, laissez-passers were required?”

  ‘For both travelling to and from, yes. It’s a fact of life, isn’t that so? One does not argue. One compromises.’

  The aroma of cigar smoke didn’t mingle well with the stench of the body and the rats. ‘And your wife, monsieur? Please, I must ask again, was she aware of the affair?’

  ‘I hadn’t realized you’d already asked.’

  ‘I hadn’t.’

  ‘Bâtard, my Julienne isn’t well and spends much of her time at a private clinic! Migraines, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Dr Raoul Normand?’

  Marie-Jacqueline had worked part-time at the clinic but did St-Cyr know of this yet? ‘A crisis of the nerves. Several of them. Somehow the good doctor manages to calm her, particularly after she’s stayed in that hospital of his for a few days or a week or two.’

  ‘And your children, were any or all of them aware of this infatuation of yours?’

  ‘Jean-Guy? Martine? Thérèse? Why do you ask?’

  ‘Monsieur Jean-Guy manages the racecourse and its stables, Jean-Louis. The Jockey Club and riding stables as well.’

  Lucie Trudel would have known the son … ‘And the other two, the sisters?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Thérèse teaches ballet; Martine, having taken her degree in horticulture, tries to brighten the Government’s solitude with her flowers. We’ve a labrador retriever, also a cook, housekeeper, chauffeur, groundskeeper and two, or is it three, maids of all work. My wife keeps firing and then rehiring them.’

  ‘But were your son and daughters or any of the staff aware of your running around?’

  ‘My fucking Lucie? Why should they have cared, especially as it kept me happy and content?’

  ‘It must have cost you plenty.’

  ‘I’ve private money. I’ve always had it.’

  ‘And the riding crop, monsieur? Why did her killer or killers place it in her hand?’

  Ah damn this infernal Sûreté! ‘I’ve no idea. How could I have?’

  ‘It’s curious, that’s all.’

  ‘Then if you’re through with me, I’m already late for a meeting with Dr Carl Schaefer, the coordinator of the Bank of France and director of the Office for the Surveillance of French Banks.’

  ‘Das Bankenaufsichtsamt,’ said St-Cyr in Deutsch just to increase their uneasiness if possible.

  ‘The reparations,’ countered Deschambeault in French without a whisper of disquietude. ‘Try as we consistently have, our friends refuse to reduce them.’

  Five hundred million francs, nearly seventy per cent of the value of the whole economy, went to the Reich every day of every year. Two and a half million pounds sterling at the official rate, or eleven and half a million US dollars.

  ‘Secrétaire, transport was promised and is urgently needed.’

  ‘A Peugeot two-door sedan has been left for you and Kohler outside the Hôtel du Parc. The keys, together with petrol and food tickets, are with the concierge. It’s the best I could do under … under the circumstances.’

  ‘Merci. Then please notify the sous-préfet that we again require the services of his iron man. Felix Laloux is to do the autopsy on this one also, and I’m grateful you arranged his release from prison. There were only four of you in your little group? If there are others, now is the time to say so.’

  ‘Four only,’ said Bousquet guardedly.

  ‘An bon. Then for now that is all, but please remind the others to take precautions. No one leaves town. Not today, tomorrow or any other day until this matter is settled.’

  ‘And the killer or killers?’ demanded Deschambeault.

  ‘Have ears that have been wrapped around each and every one of you. Let us hope my partner can pin things down a little more firmly.’

  Already St-Cyr had gone back to his probing, easing a drawer open, leafing through a novel with the blunt end of that pencil. Totally absorbed as if he’d forgotten them.

  ‘He won’t,’ swore Bousquet as they left the building and headed for the car where Georges sat behind the wheel.
He had kept the engine running in spite of the ordinance to do no such thing. ‘He’ll remember every word you said, Gaëtan, every nuance. The cigar, the riding crop, the laissez-passers Fernand so generously parts with from that allocation of his when you grease his palm, as do I and others. How could you have gone to Paris without telling me she’d been murdered?’

  ‘You worry too much, René. He’s only a cop.’

  ‘His partner’s a Gestapo.’

  ‘Who has yet to visit Herr Gessler to pay his respects.’

  ‘Then let us hope he doesn’t.’

  ‘Gessler says Herr Kohler’s loyalties are being constantly questioned and that Gestapo Paris-Central would just as soon be rid of him and St-Cyr.’

  ‘Idiot, both are considered far too honest and seek only the truth. But it’s you I’m also worried about, Gaëtan. You would take Lucie to Paris. You know how I’ve warned you about Doriot and Déat and the others of the far right. Any excuse to let us have it is excuse enough for them.’

  ‘The Intervention-Referat, the Bickler Unit?’

  ‘Hired assassins who know how to hide behind the Resistance and have or have not the sanction of their Gestapo friends. Georges, drop the sous-directeur off at La maison des saumons plus beaux for a taste of that fish he and Lucie used to love, and where I know he’s to meet with Schaefer, then run me round to the commissariat. We’ve found another one.’

  As the car drove off, Kohler let the blackout curtains at the end of the sixth-floor corridor fall back into place. No sound came up from the lift, or from anywhere else. It was eerie how quiet the hotel could be; it simply wasn’t good.

  Room 6-11 was as close as peas in a pod to being above that of Lucie Trudel and below that of Céline Dupuis. And why the hell did the Resistance have to put Louis’s name in print and do so in advance of their visit?

  That, too, was eerie and not good.

  Kneeling – ignoring the sore-tooth pain in his knee – he tried to peer through the keyhole only to find the key had been inserted into the other side of the lock. ‘Okay, mein Liebling,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘two can play this game.’

  Using a half-round feeler from the ring of lock-picking tools in his jacket pocket, he silently gave the key a gentle push and felt it move, hoped there’d be a carpet and heard the bloody thing crash on the parquet floor. Through the keyhole he saw a plump white rabbit suddenly lift its head and prick up its ears, then return greedily to its feeding.

  Slices of dried apple had been tossed on to the worn Aubusson carpet to keep the creature quiet. Beyond it, there was a plain wooden coffee table, a carpenter’s bench in years gone by perhaps, with books, ashtrays, a japanned chest, a bronze model of the place Vendôme’s column, an Empire-style desk lamp with jade-green shade and, at either end of the table, two china mugs: blue as well, to match that of the carpet.

  Steam issued from the mugs but there were no knees or hands in sight.

  Beyond the table, beyond a narrow space with piled tin trunks, cluttered shelves with square openings rose all but to the ceiling. More books, some porcelain – Chinese perhaps – a few figurines, a soft purple tulip-glass with white silk narcissi and, at the very top, four experiments in beginner’s taxidermy: a dove, a rook, a starling and a seagull.

  ‘Un moment,’ confessed a faint but carefully modulated female voice, the accent perfect. Not a trace of the rolling, singsong accent of an Auvergnate, more of Paris and the Sorbonne. Of wealth and place and the long, long tumble from it. Of hesitation too, and fear? he wondered.

  Fabric moved to block his view as the key was collected. She didn’t tremble when fitting it back into the lock, was outwardly calm. ‘Monsieur?’ she said, the look in her dark blue eyes empty.

  ‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central.’

  Her throat was lovely and slender, what he could see of it, the collar of the black and crimson brocade dress all but touching the delicately smooth fantastic line of her lower jaw and chin. About thirty, he told himself, the hair a dark, rich auburn and long but pinned up and worn in the style of the fin de siècle, her brow partly hidden by it, the face thin and sharply featured, aristocratic, yes, the whole of her being from that other time and nervous. Yes, nervous.

  ‘Well, Herr Kohler, to what do we owe this pleasure?’ she asked.

  It would sound foolish, but he’d have to say it. ‘A moment of your time, Madame …’

  ‘Mademoiselle Blanche. Everyone calls me that, but I suppose you will need another label. Varollier. Grand-papa was an architect. The mairie, the hotel de ville – how do you say it in Deutsch, Inspector?’

  The town hall. ‘Das Rathaus, but my French is good enough. Please continue using it and don’t worry.’

  ‘Forgive me. It’s just that … that so few of our visitors speak our language. Japanese, of course, at their embassy, Spanish, too, at theirs, and Italian at theirs, but seldom what is so often required, which makes me of some small service when needed. The mairie of the eighteenth arrondissement has magnificent stained-glass windows which cover its courtyards. The Église de Notre-Dame-de-Clignancourt, opposite it, was finished at about the same time, in 1896 and four years later, I think.’

  She was almost as tall as he was, and the dress went right to her ankles, belted by linked art nouveau silver plaques with intriguing patterns in dark green, red, blue and white enamel.

  ‘My brother, Inspector. Paul … Paul, darling, this is Herr Kohler.’

  Open book in hand, back to the door and facing one end of the shelving, the brother continued to read.

  ‘Paul … Paul, you heard me. Please don’t be difficult.’

  ‘We’ve done nothing. Why, then, does he have to bother us?’

  Whereas she tried desperately to be calm, the brother was highly strung and wary and didn’t seem to give a damn if it showed.

  ‘Well, come in if you must,’ he said. Her twin, he had the same height and build, the same blue eyes but much lighter, more reddish-brown hair, a hank of which had flopped down over the left side of his brow, the expression intense. ‘Blanche, please ask the Inspector to be seated. Offer him some coffee, otherwise ours will just get cold.’

  ‘It’s made from wild-rose petals Paul and I. collected and roasted, Inspector. It’s sweetened with a purée of chestnuts we also gathered.’

  The water was hot, the stove warm. Trays of the papier-mâché balls most people used these days as fuel were in various stages of drying. A few twigs were on the verd antique sideboard whose style Kohler couldn’t determine. Floor-to-ceiling curtains – Russian Imperial, he thought – were parted and of a steel-grey blue. Lace hung behind them, and through it he could see a grimy window, no balcony and, probably from there, the river and Boutiron Bridge.

  Paul Varollier seemed all bones and knuckles as he sat awkwardly in a brass-studded armchair with brocade cushions jammed in on either side and behind him, one mug now cradled for warmth in thin, long-fingered hands.

  Kohler took the proffered mug from the sister. ‘Our “coffee”,’ she said, managing to smile faintly.

  ‘A tis sane. My partner loves them.’

  ‘Was Céline really killed by this assassin everyone whispers of?’ she asked, still standing before him. ‘You see, we were good friends, Inspector. I often looked after Michel for her and now must salve his loneliness. He misses her terribly, poor thing. Rabbits have feelings, don’t they, Paul? They’re not just God’s dumb creatures as Père Paquette preaches. They’re almost like us.’

  Knowing she had said too much, she found her mug and gracefully composed herself in one of three dining-room chairs. The rest of the set and its table and sideboard had either not been available at the sale or had been sold when the family’s estate had been settled and the bailiff had taken damned near everything. Louis XVI, he thought. Directoire period anyway.

  He’ll flip open his little black notebook now and balance it on his knee, thought Blanche. He’ll be very proper, isn’t really like a Gestapo. Usually it isn’t hard
to tell with those, but this one is different and therefore far more dangerous. But such a terrible scar on his face. How had he got it? Duelling? she wondered and told herself, He’s not of that class. Barbed wire from that other war, then? It’s far too fresh. The slash of broken sugar, she said firmly. A pimp or …

  ‘Céline Dupuis left early on Tuesday morning,’ Kohler heard himself interrupting her thoughts. The hotel was still all but as silent as a tomb.

  ‘The older students,’ said Blanche. ‘She was always so conscientious. This job, that job. She lived entirely for the day when she could return to Paris to be with her daughter. Will we soon be allowed to send letters to the former zone occupée, Inspector? Céline wanted so to write them to Annette. Every day if she could have. Now I’ll have to do it when possible. Paul, I must send the child a postcard. How will I tell her what’s happened? She’ll be devastated.’

  ‘She’s not our responsibility. How many times must I tell you stray cats and rabbits are definitely not our concern unless we are to eat them?’

  ‘Annette is not a stray,’ she said petulantly, the Inspector noting the exchange and writing a terse comment. Brother heartless: sister deeply caring, or something like that. Impolitely, Paul started to read again. Not aloud as often, thank God. Balzac, a banquet scene probably. Oysters, chicken and fish, or is it cakes and ale and naked whores, my darling?

  ‘We’re not being of much help, are we?’ she hazarded before taking a sip and, finding the coffee to her brother’s liking, gave a curt nod his way.

  The rabbit was looking for more to eat.

  ‘I often cared for it. Céline was away so much, she gave me a spare key to her flat. Paul and I would gather grasses and other things for it. Sometimes a carrot or a few leaves of lettuce.’

  Has key to Céline’s room – was that what the Inspector scribbled? she wondered, wishing he’d leave. Just leave!

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked, and for the first time since their meeting, a lifelessness filled his pale blue eyes – eyes that until this moment she had felt certain would keep a woman happy, or several.