‘There’s more!’ hissed Sandrine Richard, finding a stark photo of Abel Bonnard, Minister of Education and Member of the Academie Française, whose tear-streaked baby cheeks were stained with mascara. Bonnard had frantically thrown up a hand to shield himself from the camera’s flash. This little man with downy, snow-white hair, this asthmatic, part-time poet and collector of porcelain whose blatant love of high living was legendary, was with two naked schoolboys both of whom had obviously been recently fondled.
‘It’s disgusting!’ spat Madame Richard. ‘He takes care of them and they take care of him, and we have that on photo too!’
‘Ah merde, if I don’t confiscate these and destroy the negatives, madame, all hell will break loose!’
Standing behind the crowd of onlookers, a head and shoulders taller than most and fully dressed, were Blanche and Paul Varollier. Both translator and croupier were withdrawn from the proceedings, their expressions passive and yet … and yet so much a part of things.
‘Ich heisse Ellinor Schlesinger, Herr Inspektor Kohler.’
The kid handed over her passport and ID as a good German maiden should. The room, in a newer part of the chateau and above the present kitchens, was plainly furnished but private, considering the crush in Vichy. The single, iron-framed bed, small desk, washbasin and jug, lamp and chair, armoire, vase de nuit and throw rug were neat as a pin.
Even the shrine could pass the stiffest of inspections. Crossed swastika flags flew over carefully laid-out knick-knacks. The stainless-steel Victory Rune of the SS; the Mann Rune, the sign of the German Women’s Corps; the red lanyard, whistle and badge of an Untergauführerin, an under-leader of a group of BdMs, Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of German Girls; sayings of the Führer on printed, unbleached cards in black Gothic script: Strength Through Joy; Blood and Honour; Learn to Sacrifice for your Fatherland; Who wants to Live has to Fight, and Whoever refuses to Fight in this World of Eternal Challenge has no right to Live.
‘In your Race is your Strength,’ he read aloud, picking up the card as if impressed.
There was the usual portrait photo of the Führer under the crossed swastikas and he knew that this carrier of National Socialist dogma, this little Nazi, would stand stiffly to attention on waking to the cold light of dawn or clanging bell from Herr Whatever, the major-domo, to proudly say, ‘Morgens grüsse ich den Führer,’ et cetera, and before bed – this bed – ‘Und abends danke ich dem Führer.’
In the morning I salute my Führer. And in the evening I thank him.
‘My boys grew up with this, too,’ said Herr Kohler, having only glanced at her papers. He did not explain further, this giant with the cruel scar, but was, Ellinor said to herself, much saddened. Had he lost someone dear? she wondered.
He opened the little drawer of her bedside table but found no prayerbook or Bible, though the rest of her family were still staunchly Lutheran. He said, ‘I remember Strasbourg as being a lovely city. Number 42 rue des Hallebardes … the street of the pikes with the battleaxes at one end … It’s near the cathedral, your home?’
What did he want of her? she wondered. He had such a way with him. Easy-going and then suddenly he’d be after something, but would sometimes come at it obliquely. ‘It’s right in the cathedral’s shadow, Herr Inspektor.’
‘Born 7 September 1925. That was quite a year.’
He gave no further explanation of why the year of her birth had been so notable, but leafed through the thin pile of letters from home in that drawer, found her pessary and took it out, found the jar of petroleum jelly, too, and a clutch of Kondoms and, laying them with the other things, said, ‘Four have been murdered, so you know why we’re here and had best answer truthfully. Is that understood?’
There was nothing in his pale blue eyes but an unsettling emptiness. ‘I know little, Herr Inspektor. The girls of whom you speak were informants, yes, but Herr Schleier was always wondering if they had given him everything they had overheard their lovers say when among themselves. Marie-Jacqueline seemed to treat it all as a joke – saying the pay was never enough for such a risk, and she constantly threatened to go on strike even though Herr Schleier could have had her taken away to one of the Konzentrationslager. Camille Lefébvre was quite possibly the best, he thought. Everything of interest that Bousquet said in her company she would dutifully report in hopes that her husband would be freed and sent home, but that was not possible, though we were to continue to encourage her to think it was. Lucie Trudel had much to offer also and often brought papers and documents from the bank, but of late, she and the others had become “hesitant”, he said, and needed to be reminded.’
Louis should have heard that. ‘And Céline Dupuis?’
‘Did not like reporting things at all and gave Herr Schleier much cause for concern. She was always asking when she would be permitted to leave Vichy and return to her daughter in Paris as promised.’
Then Céline, in addition to being very worried about being murdered, had realized the other just wasn’t going to work and had agreed to give Pétain his little moment … ‘Were they recruited before or after they’d first taken up with their lovers?’
‘After, of course. It’s not hard, is it, to convince such girls to cooperate once they know what could happen not only to them but to their families? Temptation is also dangled but only as a sweetener.’
This kid was really something. ‘And are the others who come here required to report what they overhear?’
Was he thinking of the rest of the cabaret singers and dancers, or of Blanche and Paul Varollier? ‘The four who were killed were the most important and were recruited long before the Gestapo had an office here but, yes, the others also. Herr Schleier, you understand, does not report directly to Herr Gessler, but only to his superior officer, Herr Abetz.’
Whom the SS and SD seldom if ever listened to!
‘You collect goldene Zigarrenbände,’ he said, having opened her tin to fish about in it with a nicotine-stained forefinger.
‘A few, for Albert Grenier when he comes. Blanche usually brings him when Monsieur Hébert or Frau Nietz, our German cook and housekeeper, feel it necessary. This old place …’ She shrugged. ‘We can’t have vermin, can we? Albert should be sent away, I know, but … but he’s very good at his job, so they must keep him, I think.’
‘And on the night of 24 October last was Albert busy here?’
Had Albert watched – was this what the detective was wondering? Albert who had secretly been in love with each of those girls and had been so ashamed of them for their having had sex with men who were not their husbands. Sex like animals. ‘He was asleep in the chapel. Monsieur Hébert has a straw mattress brought in for him and the bed made up. Albert always sleeps there when he visits. It’s close to the kitchens and the main staircase to the cellars, and is “safe”, he says, but he never looks at any of us. He’s very shy, isn’t he, as well as being … well, mentally retarded.’
‘And Hébert and Albert, how do they get along?’
‘Very well. Both of them are fond of the Maréchal. Monsieur Hébert is Albert’s grand-uncle, so always Albert is asked for news. How is the Maréchal’s health, does he still take his daily stroll in the Parc des Sources, or have the affairs of state so saddened him he no longer listens to his operetta recordings? And of course, now that he is having a wax sculpture made, is the sculptress doing a good job?’
‘Wait a minute. How did you hear about that? Is Albert here now?’
‘Ach! I thought you knew. He’ll be in the stables or cellars, or out where the birds are kept.’
‘And Blanche Varollier?’
‘Is in the kitchens with the sculptress, I think Both will be patiently waiting for him to finish so they can go back to town. Or maybe they’re out with the birds? Ja, the sculptress did say she wanted to gather some feathers to take back to Paris for Madame Dupuis’s little girl.’
8
Snail shells, along with oyster shells and fishbones, were being smashed
to give the birds their necessary minerals. Dried apples, pears and apricots were being finely chopped with walnuts, chestnuts and acorns, carrots, beets, potatoes, brussels sprouts and the green tops of still-frozen leeks. Cheese was being crumbled, hard-boiled eggs, too. Dried redcurrants, seeds, buckwheat, barley and lentils by the handful were tossed in to be blended with the rest.
A truly domestic scene, given the shortages, thought St-Cyr wryly. Not a word was being spoken between Blanche Varollier, Inès Charpentier, Albert Grenier and the former owner of the château who’d put them to work and to silence, no doubt, at the present intrusion.
Alone on the squared lava-stone floor, the white rabbit named Michel stood on hind legs looking for more of the dried grapes it had found so sweet.
‘I gave the rabbit to Céline, Inspector,’ said Hébert, the loose, dark blue smock, the biaude they called it here in the Auvergne, the sarrau elsewhere, ending well below his knees to reveal the coarse black trousers and hobnailed boots of the peasant he’d never been. A man of sixty-five perhaps and of medium height and build, with rapidly thinning, greying dark brown hair that was worn straight back to expose an almost bald pate, the side whiskers iron-grey, the eyebrows bushy, the look in the faded blue eyes not straightforward but evasive. ‘One breeds them for the table, of course,’ he said, ‘but I knew she could never have brought herself to kill it. Blanche felt it best to return it to me since her brother did not wish her to keep it in their flat.’
In Vichy one room becomes a ‘flat’? snorted Kohler inwardly. Sandrine Richard, tense and silent, had remained behind them, in the arched doorway to a kitchen that couldn’t have had much, if anything, done to it since the sixteenth century. There was a roaring fire in the blackened hearth beneath a mantelpiece that would have taken a small army to move. All along a side there were lava-brick stoves with black, sheet-iron tops above their fireboxes. No need for an overcoat in here, none either for a woollen pullover. Bunches of herbs hung from medieval spikes in the ceiling timbers. Rope after rope of garlic, onions, dried peppers, winter beans and dried mushrooms were there, too, with coils of sausage and hams that alone could bring a fortune in Paris and probably did, since why return empty vans?
Crocks of goose fat, lard and buttermilk stood alongside wicker-clad bottles of oil, wine and vinegar. Just who the hell was eating rats with all of this available?
The aromas of soup, spices, tobacco and wood-smoke mingled with those of the cheese and other foods.
‘Monsieur,’ hazarded Louis in that deferential way of his that often hid so much, the rabbit hopping across the floor to examine detective shoes whose repeatedly broken and knotted laces caused it to gaze questioningly up at him, as if thawed soles needing better glue and nails had best be overlooked. ‘Monsieur, the birds in that room …’
Hébert let his hands rest on the chopping block. ‘One learns by experience, Inspector, but the taxidermy is not mine. What few attempts I made as a boy I gave to Blanche.’
Who had lied about them by saying they’d been attempts of her own, thought Kohler. A dove, a rook, a starling and a seagull! Blanche silently defied him to admonish her. Hands still gripping a pestle and mortar that were as old as the hills, she stood with shoulders squared, and only when he didn’t say a thing, not even asking, Why did you want us not to know of this place? did that lovely slender throat of hers constrict.
Again, as before, her dark auburn hair was pinned up, but several wisps had come loose to spoil perfection and indicate nervousness.
The dark blue eyes were watchful. A breath was held.
Inès Charpentier, her mouth full of deftly palmed almonds but jaws stilled, had plunged her hands into one of the mixing bowls, not missing the exchange; Albert neither. Albert with a butcher’s knife that bled beet juice on to the floor at the sculptress’s feet.
‘Though my grandfather shared his love of birds with me, Inspectors,’ said Hébert, ‘the taxidermy that so impresses was not his either, but that of the man to whom I owe all I know of the wild. Our head gamekeeper, long since deceased. Aurèle Mandrin.’ Again his gaze was averted.
In 1754 Mandrin, since elevated to a folk hero, had been a smuggler from Dauphine, so the choice of name, beyond that of pure inspiration, was perhaps appropriate, thought St-Cyr.
‘That room was always mine, Inspectors. I loved it as a boy and still do. The predatory instinct in their eyes is everywhere, especially when one looks out and up from that bed. One can’t help but come to admire it, to want it too, and yet … and yet, there is also that immense sense of freedom and joy that the power of flight must …’
‘You let my husband use that room with that woman of his!’ spat Sandrine.
Stung by this, Hébert tossed his head back but said nothing for a moment, then coldly, ‘Madame, was he not the predator, she the quarry? In any case, I had no say whatsoever in the matter. As you well know, this chateau and its remaining sixty hectares, which had been in my family since before the Ducs de Bourbon were betrayed by their constable in 1527, were lost to others, due to bankruptcy. Your husband could well have chosen any room he wished, or was it that Mademoiselle Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux wanted to bring out the predator in him and loved to be hunted?’
Oh-oh, thought Kohler, only to hear the woman shriek, ‘Maudit salaud, how dare you?’
The custodian waved an indifferent hand. ‘Ah, I dare because for me there is nothing left but that. Albert, are we ready?’
‘Monsieur …’ interjected Louis.
‘Fornicateur, don’t deny it!’ shouted Sandrine. ‘we know everything that went on in this place!’
‘Soixante-neuf, madame?’ taunted Hébert. ‘Les grands spectacles? La fellation, le sadomasochisme et le fétichisme?’
‘Orgies!’ she shrilled, rocketing into the kitchen to take up one of the bowls and dash it on the floor. ‘Rapist! We know you regularly kept a concubine in that room of yours, sometimes two and three of them to fly, eh? Fly while you and others took them, eh? In the ass, in the mouth, seldom where it’s natural. Salut, mon brave.’ She gave him the thumb. ‘This one has a reputation, Inspectors, for both arranging the liaisons sexuelles of others and for often participating in them!’
‘And your poor Madame Deschambeault, that sexually repressed neurotic, what of her son, madame?’ shot back Hébert from behind his chopping block. ‘A son whose taste runs to schoolgirls in uniform who must be held down? Has he got his eye on Monique de Fleury, eh, or need we ask?’
‘Blanche … Blanche has told us everything, monsieur.’
Oh-oh again, thought Kohler.
‘Vermine!’ hissed Hébert, turning on Blanche. ‘Was it you who unlocked the doors and let those bitches in? An informer, is that it, eh? Well, is that how it was, Blanche? Did you think it would help your cause with that father of yours? Inspectors, this one and that brother of hers want what’s rightfully theirs. To think that I offered them help, that I considered myself their friend and in no way asked anything for myself!’
He paused a moment, then said, ‘Albert, les oiseaux, mon vieux. We can deal with this lâcheuse later.’ This rat who has betrayed us.
‘Monsieur, your birds can wait. While we have you gathered, we will settle a few things,’ said Louis.
‘Or call in Herr Gessler and his boys if needed,’ said Hermann. ‘Not that we want to, but if we have to, we will.’
‘Then please don’t forget that the chateau and grounds are an embassy, and that its employees, myself included, have diplomatic immunity.’
‘But not from me, mon fin,’ said Kohler. ‘Not from me.’
The tension in the kitchen had become unbearable. Inès warned herself to be calm, to ignore the covert looks, the suspicion – even the outright hatred between Sandrine Richard and Charles-Frédéric Hébert – and to think clearly … always clearly, but Albert was sitting so close to her, his right leg was deliberately pressed hard against her and he didn’t move, wouldn’t move, and was making her feel so uneasy. Did he sense
she was an enemy? Did he somehow intuitively know she was a danger? What danger, please?
How could he? she asked. The butcher’s knife lay on the table next to his thick, stubby fingers. Hébert had noticed this, too. Hébert who’d known Blanche and Paul’s father …
‘Mademoiselle Charpentier,’ said the Chief Inspector St-Cyr, ‘I asked you a question.’
Madame Richard was watching her closely. Was the woman afraid the truth would come out, that she, the wife, had killed Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux in a fit of jealous rage as sworn?
Blanche Varollier was watching her, too, but Monsieur Hébert had now quickly averted his eyes. Again Inès heard St-Cyr ask his question – the letters that Lucie had carried to Paris for Céline, had they been posted to the studio on the rue du Douanier? To her studio.
One must either lie or confess, said Inès to herself, but to lie skilfully, one must impart elements of truth.
Mentally she crossed herself, kissed her fingertips as if the rosary was in her hands, and said silently, Bless me, Father, for I am afraid.
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