Flykiller

by J. Robert Janes

  There was a vertical, two-centimetre-long scar directly above the bridge of Olivier’s nose.

  ‘Shrapnel,’ he grumbled, ducking his eyes away from such a close scrutiny. ‘A centimetre to the left or right and we wouldn’t be talking. Even so, I was out for hours and had blood all over my face, and when I came to, it was to discover that the Boche had overrun our position. Like yourself, Inspector, I managed to crawl away and use my Deutsch to good advantage, reporting back their positions and strengths when I was finally able to cross their lines and return to my own.’

  So we’re blood brothers now, was that it? ‘Who told you the jewellery had been found?’

  ‘Bousquet. I knew beforehand, of course, and had prepared myself. Edith took him up to the room this afternoon.’

  And made no mention of the dress, the shoes and missing love letters? ‘Your former secretary’s loyalty is admirable.’

  Did St-Cyr suspect Edith? ‘With some women, as with some men, Inspector, life must always be on the horizon. Her father was a cheminot, her brothers still work on the railways, and yes, you’re wondering how I, a former businessman and owner, could no longer say as most still do, Better Hitler than Stalin. After all, this Occupation has been good for many businessmen, and for the upper crust also. For them and the professionals and other hauts to support the Resistance would be to deny their most cherished beliefs. But after eighteen years of Edith’s socialisme, even I, who in 1936 feared another October when one and a half million voted for the communists, now pray it will happen. The communists are the only ones with guts, and guts are what is going to be needed in the struggle to come.’

  Ah oui, but had Olivier deliberately used their Résistance connection to throttle further suspicion and ensure that Hermann was told as little as possible?

  ‘Inspector, even though Ménétrel presumably now knows where this jewellery came from, he won’t go to the Germans with the news since he has no love of them. He’ll play it safe by alerting his Garde Mobile and waiting for you or Bousquet to tell him of it. And since our Secrétaire Général won’t do this because Laval has ordered him not to, it will be left to you and Kohler. You see, for all his sources and intrigues, the doctor has blind spots, and without the Maréchal, he knows absolutely that he is nothing. With Pétain, there is still hope for him, even if it is to go over to the Allies, for our Head of State won’t travel without his precious doctor.’

  ‘And Laval?’

  ‘Dismisses Pétain by asking who needs a flag except to stand in its shade in summer. Of course he’s the true authority. He has always been very anti-British and still tries constantly to form an accord with Hitler so that France can be restored to her rightful place in the new European Order.’

  ‘Does he really consult a clairvoyant?’

  ‘If he does, he believes only the half of what he hears, but believes that half all the same.’

  ‘And her name?’

  ‘Madame Ribot, Hôtel Ruhl, 15 boulevard de l’Hôtel de Ville.* Don’t talk to her. Leave her out of things.’

  ‘That may not be possible.’

  ‘Sacré nom de nom, is your head so thick you can’t take a hint, eh? L’Humanité’s list, remember? Don’t tread where you’ve been told not to.’

  ‘Or you will arrange a little Resistance accident for Hermann and me?’

  ‘Anything is possible. Anything. Edith … Well, Edith, what is it? Where is Kohler?’

  Rooted in the doorway, her expression one of shock at what had so obviously been revealed, she seemed unable to react.

  Outraged, she finally spat, ‘You fool, Auguste!’ and, finding a candle, departed.

  The flame from the matches had gone out almost as soon as Edith Pascal had left him. She hadn’t wanted to go, Kohler told himself, but had needed to get away from him, to check on her boss and Louis, to be alone, if only momentarily to settle herself and gather her thoughts. A very troubled woman. A heart that had yearned for far too long.

  The smoked-glass, trifold mirror of the dressing table was off to his left through the darkness. Beautiful cut-glass bottles, too, some a soft blue, others clear or citrine and all with silver caps or glass stoppers. A comb and brush set – Russian that had been, in blue enamelwork and silver. Jars of face cream, rouge and powder, lipstick too …

  A small, cut-glass ashtray served as a lamp, perfume as the fuel. Within a minute or two of her leaving him, he had what was needed, a beautiful blue flame just like that from burning cognac, but Jésus, merde alors, there were no dustsheets in the room. The soft grey satin-and-lace spread on the gilded Louis XVI cane bed was rumpled; the generous, white silk-and-lace-covered pillows were propped against the headboard as if the bed had only just been slept in.

  The armoire, of perfectly matched walnut, glowed richly in the softly flickering light, and was still crammed with Noëlle Olivier’s dresses and suits. A hacking jacket, waistcoat and whipcord riding breeches, silks and soft woollens, satins too. Cotton summer frocks, crêpes de Chine, grey flannel slacks, blouses, shirt-blouses, some sheer, some with ruffles, some with lace, a ball gown, another and another. And yes, that silvery silk halter-necked dress and the shoes must have come from here.

  A Boulle commode held lingerie one couldn’t buy now except at a fortune: chemises and half-slips, several brassieres, a black lace teddy, black mesh stockings, a black garter belt and frilly pink peekaboo undies à l’Ange bleu, but that film had first come out in Berlin in Deutsch in 1930 and who could ever forget Marlene Dietrich singing ‘They Call Me Naughty Lulu’ and ‘Falling in Love Again’?

  Peacock lariats hung from one of the footboard’s posts, their black-centred eyes greeny-blue to a deep coppery-orange ringed with white. Why, really, do some birds dress up?

  The thongs were black, not more than a metre in length and tightly bound by spirals of silver wire at both eye and loop, but had she liked to be tied up with them?

  On a bedside table there was a Sevres gold-and-enamelled cup and saucer. Empty, of course, but the tisane’s leaves were still damp, not frozen, and the ashes in the fireplace still warm.

  A photo of her standing, leaning against the edge of a half-opened door, was behind the bedside lamp. Only the fingers of the left hand could be seen gripping the edge just above her head. The right hand, with its cigarette, was pressed against that forward thigh, the diamond ring catching the light, the sequined dress with black halter-neck and deeply plunging neckline, the laughing smile coy and alluring and full of fun, the hair jet black and bobbed.

  Another framed photo found Noëlle Olivier wearing a black bowler hat, cabaret costume and smoking a cigar.

  ‘Louis has to see the room,’ he muttered. ‘Louis is always better at this.’

  Books – novels – a photo album were also on the table. Laying the latter on the bed, Kohler quickly flipped through it, could hear Edith Pascal saying something downstairs, had little time now, must hurry … Hurry.

  There were snapshots of men on leave behind the lines of that other war, none of the boys actually in the trenches, of course. No, wait, there was one, and to send such things home, if one could get them past the censors, had been definitely against the rules, yet here it was. Two men in uniform, wearing open trench coats and officers’ caps, were sitting face to face with a board between them on their knees. Mud and pools of water around their boots, ammo boxes strewn about and barbed wire – skeins and skeins of that fucking stuff – up above them, the timbers shattered and not, tin mugs of coffee and cognac to hand, the one man not much older than the other, if at all.

  Rain, too, and the ruined remains of a canvas fly strung above them to sag and piddle its constant stream. 15 April 1917. Chemin des Dames.

  ‘Ah Christ,’ he said as he read the rest of the pencilled note on the back. Playing chess in the warmth and comfort of the Hôtel des belles tranchées, our Lieutenant Charpentier and Captain Olivier await the game of war.

  Charpentier.

  ‘Louis … Louis …,’ he croaked an
d, feeling moisture welling up in his eyes, cursed himself, for detectives should never get sentimental. Never!

  Blurred, the light from the little lamp that was cupped in his hand was reflected in the mirrors of her dressing table and he saw himself first in one, then another and another, old now and beaten. ‘I was there, too,’ he said of that other war, ‘and so was Louis, but he took part in that battle, I didn’t.’

  Dreading what he’d found, for that lieutenant had to have been Inès Charpentier’s father, he pocketed the snapshot, closed the album, then reopened it to the back, to more recent snapshots of Noëlle Olivier on horseback, a goddamned grey gelding, a stable … ‘And as a cabaret dancer. A chateau, a party …’

  These last two photos joined the first but Edith Pascal would be certain to realize he’d taken them. The pungently sweet and heady smell of burning perfume was now everywhere.

  Quickly crossing to the dressing table, Kohler wet a tissue with the perfume, tucked it away for Louis and replaced the stopper. Quipped guiltily when the woman sucked in a breath, ‘Oh, sorry. I had to have light and had run out of matches.’

  Louis was right behind her. ‘Hermann, please have Mademoiselle Pascal show us where the jewellery was kept. Check the window catches for signs of forcible entry. The usual, mon vieux. Spare nothing, even if it takes us all night.’

  These two were hateful, Edith told herself. They pried into everything, but unlike the one called Kohler, St-Cyr had infinite patience. For hours it had seemed, while she’d shown the other one the drawer in which the jewellery had been kept, St-Cyr had stood in front of the dressing table, unable to take his gaze from it.

  ‘I remember this,’ he had said, marvelling at it and the thought. ‘It was in one of the room exhibits at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Hermann. Paris, summer, 1925.’

  Had he now memorized the position, style and use of everything on that table? He hadn’t touched the clear, fluted crystal flacon à parfum his partner had half emptied, hadn’t even said anything about its distinctive fan-shaped sapphire-blue stopper, but must have known it was Shalimar.

  For some moments Herr Kohler had deliberately distracted her. St-Cyr, she was positive, had opened the top drawer of the table – he’d have seen the billets doux, would have noted the soft blue envelopes, the handwriting, would have surmised that not all of them were there.

  Perhaps he’d asked himself why Auguste had not burned the Maréchal’s love letters to Madame Noëlle; perhaps he understood that Auguste had locked the room after her death and hadn’t since set foot in it.

  But had St-Cyr noticed what had been lying among the garters and pins in her little porcelain box? Had he taken that cork that once came from a bottle of Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale, the 1925 Madame Noëlle and the Maréchal had drunk?

  He had, she thought when next she was able to glance his way, not touched a thing, or so it seemed. His hand still cupped that cold and empty pipe of his …

  ‘Her hair,’ he said.

  ‘Jet black and bobbed, Louis,’ Herr Kohler muttered, still engrossed in searching through jewellery that hadn’t been taken but should have been if robbery had been the motive.

  The Sûreté spread a printed leaflet of some kind on the only free space and pulled hairs from the brush, didn’t ask, Are you in the habit of using this, mademoiselle? Just did it, and made sure he had what he wanted.

  ‘A téléphone?’ he asked. ‘Is there one in the house?’

  ‘No,’ she heard herself yelp. ‘Not since he … the monsieur was forced to leave the bank. So many made such cruel calls, he … he had to have the instrument disconnected. He who had invested so much of his own money and had worked so hard to bring a modern exchange to Vichy, had to sever all links with it.’

  An old exchange, and then a new one – would St-Cyr think to remember this?

  He gave no indication, said only, ‘Hermann, Madame Olivier’s clothes,’ and pointed to the chair on which Auguste had set them eighteen years ago on his return from the Pont Barrage. The laudanum bottle was still there on top of her things. St-Cyr took out her knife and laid it there, too …

  His voice broke over her and she knew he was watching her closely. ‘Mademoiselle Pascal, is this how you remember its being there?’

  That dark blue bottle on its side without its stopper, the Laguiole next to it, Madame Noëlle’s crumpled French silk pongee step-ins so soft and cold. ‘Yes … Yes, that is approximately as I first found them but that was nearly two months after she had killed herself. Auguste had locked the room and had tried to shut it all out of his mind. I …’

  ‘You were to have packed away her things, weren’t you?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have given them away. “The town’s too small” – too spiteful is what he really meant. “Burn them,” he said but later I knew he had realized I hadn’t, though we never spoke of it.’

  ‘How often do you come here?’

  To lie in Madame Noëlle’s bed, to touch her things and smell them, to care for them and wonder why Auguste had loved her so much that he had been blind to her affairs, blind until that moment she had drunk the contents of that bottle and had thrown herself into the river?

  ‘I came. At first it was not often, and only when he was away on one of his walks, but then, as the years progressed, I needed to discover things and came more often.’

  ‘Waited?’ asked the Sûreté softly.

  ‘Waited, yes, for him to come to me, to me!’

  ‘Toute nue?’ he demanded.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she answered.

  ‘Louis … Louis, don’t be so hard on her. It’s life, n’est-ce pas? Mademoiselle, come and sit down. Rest a little. We’ll soon be done here.’

  Done, having stripped her feelings naked!

  ‘The château in this photograph?’ Herr Kohler asked.

  ‘Aux Oiseaux Splendides!’ she blurted tearfully, couldn’t help herself. ‘Monsieur Charles-Frédéric Hébert made certain she and the Maréchal were alone together in the late summer of 1924. He had always envied Auguste and saw a chance to destroy him.’

  ‘And recently? Have this Monsieur Hébert and your employer spoken?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Ah bon,’ said Louis sadly. ‘And now, mademoiselle, please tell us if you’ve recently seen your employer’s children.’

  ‘I what?’ she shrilled from where she was now sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘Surely they’re not in Vichy? Well, are they?’ she demanded fiercely.

  Anger tightened the lines in her face, making it appear even more sharply angular in the candlelight. ‘Hermann, remind her of to whom she’s speaking.’

  ‘Louis …’

  She would clench her fists, thought Edith, but keep them in her lap, would let her voice erupt in a torrent of derision. ‘Inspector, quelle folie! I could not possibly have seen them. Mon Dieu, they were children when they left. I … Why, how could we have met? They wouldn’t have remembered me. A secretary at a bank they seldom went to with their mother? Believe me, Inspector, to keep such news from Auguste would have been for me to have denied everything I’ve felt for him.’

  ‘Then you saw no signs of forcible entry?’

  She must not yield! ‘None. Had there been any, I would have told Secrétaire Général Bousquet of them when he came here this afternoon to tell us of the theft.’

  He’d shrug nonchalantly. That would be best. ‘Hermann, the housebreaker must have entered unobserved and vanished just as easily.’

  ‘Auguste … Auguste often leaves the gate unlocked.’

  ‘Especially if he’s out for a stroll after curfew?’ asked St-Cyr.

  Ah Saint Mère! ‘I … Why, yes. Yes, then, too.’

  ‘Louis, go easy, eh?’

  ‘The truth is often so hard to reach, mon vieux. Blanche Varollier, her hair, please?’

  ‘Auburn, Chief. Long, dark and fine,’ replied Hermann perfectly and on cue, even throwing Mademoiselle Pascal a questioni
ng glance and a shrug as if he, too, didn’t know what the hell was up.

  ‘The brush; mademoiselle, suggests other than what you’ve told us. Someone with just such lovely hair has recently thought to use it frequently.’

  Ah no. ‘They … they forced me to let them in.’

  Tears streaked her mascara. Agitated fingers tried to stop this as she bowed her head in defeat.

  ‘They … they said that if I did not let them in they would go to les Allemands and cause trouble for Auguste. Much trouble. Don’t you see that I had to?’

  ‘When first?’ asked Louis. There had been a German Embassy in Vichy, and still was for that matter.

  ‘A year ago, then again in midsummer and last autumn. In October, and … and since then two more times. Never long, I swear it. An hour, perhaps a little more. They would speak quietly to one another, rediscovering their childhood haunts. The attic, the cellars, their father’s study, the kitchen. I … I could not stop them and was always so afraid Auguste would suddenly turn up.’

  ‘But were they left alone in here?’ asked the Sûreté.

  Bâtard! she wanted so much to shriek at him. ‘They … they insisted, went everywhere they wished, even into their father’s bedroom and mine. Mine!’

  ‘And the most recent visit?’ asked Louis. Her head was now bowed again, fingers agitatedly twisting and untwisting tightly.

  ‘Last Monday afternoon.’

  With Lucie Trudel already dead. ‘And you didn’t realize anything had been taken?’

  The knife, the dress and shoes, the earrings, sapphires and a sample of Noëlle Olivier’s perfume, also some of the billets doux Pétain had written to her. ‘They’d never taken things before. Why should they have done so then? I was only too glad to see them gone from the house!’

  ‘And when Secrétaire Général Bousquet came here did you inform him of what Paul and Blanche Varollier must have done?’

  ‘I … I couldn’t. Auguste … Auguste would never have forgiven me if he’d found out I’d let them into his house and not told him they had returned. Each visit had to be arranged so carefully, the moment seized only when he was certain to be absent for more than an hour.’