‘Near the lift? Was the room near it?’ he heard himself asking. They were all watching him closely. Élisabeth de Fleury moved her cup and saucer from in front of her, the teaspoon telegraphing a nervousness that alarmed the others.
‘Next to the service staircase,’ she said, not averting her gaze though she must have wanted to. A rather pleasant-looking, very pale and fair-haired woman in her early forties. ‘Inspector, I … I know this only because I had to see where my husband and Madame Dupuis had been meeting.’
‘And you’re certain he spent the night of 6–7 January with the dancer?’
Ballet instructress, piano player, cabaret singer and whore. Honoré would have his alibi, and she herself? she asked, and answered, I will have mine. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m absolutely certain.’
Ah damn the woman! ‘Then please explain how you know this.’ He held up a hand. ‘Neither of you ladies are to answer for her.’ Hermann … why the hell hadn’t Hermann come to listen in and help? The sculptress, he reminded himself. Inès Charpentier is with him. The table was directly behind and he couldn’t, daren’t turn to throw a pleading glance that way. Merde!
‘I …’ began Madame de Fleury only to hesitate.
‘Madame, one of your sons was gravely ill. You were at his bedside. You couldn’t have left him until what? Well after noon that Friday? You were exhausted, hadn’t slept, were sick with worry …’
‘All right! All right! I asked my daughter, Monique, to stay home from school while I went to that hotel to … to touch the pillows!’
And smell their cases before throwing back the covers to examine the sheets of an unmade bed? ‘You had a key, did you?’
‘No! I …’
‘She paid the concierge two hundred francs, Inspector,’ said Sandrine Richard, taking out a cigarette only to remember suddenly, at a look from Madame Pétain, that she shouldn’t have. ‘We often did this, she and I, if you must know. Eugénie also, for proof. Solid proof!’
Fresh tears wet Elisabeth de Fleury’s cheeks. Madame Richard reached across the table to take her by the hands, scattering shreds of tobacco, for she’d unconsciously crushed the cigarette.
‘Can’t you see how upset she is?’ spat Madame Pétain, having seen that this Sûreté had taken note of the spilled tobacco. ‘Aren’t the photographs sufficient for you, Inspector? Must you have all the details, coarse as they are?’
‘Everything,’ he said.
‘Merde, how can you be so insensitive? A man whose first wife left him with an empty house … the house of his mother, I understand, the second wife running off with the Hauptmann Steiner, only to be blown to pieces by a Resistance bomb on her reluctant return to that same house? Her child as well!’
Ah! what could one say? ‘We police are seldom sensitive, Madame la Maréchale. It’s part of the job. The victims, the blood, the oedematous fluid and aborted foetuses … Always a certain detachment is necessary, but they don’t teach this at the Academy, of course, and wisely, I think, as it might dissuade some from taking up the profession.’
‘Touché, eh? You didn’t even know of that room, did you?’
‘We’re learning.’
‘Then listen, Inspector. Though the doctor is certainly no friend of mine, he will tell you Elisabeth did awaken him that evening at about 2 a.m., and if you. press him, I’m sure he will confess to having made a little joke of it. The first words uttered to her by that jackal were that if she desired extramarital sex, she must come to his office during the day, never to his home!’
One had best let that pass. ‘And this room at the Hotel Ruhl, madame. How long have you ladies known of it?’
‘Since early last summer. Since Sandrine and then Élisabeth found the courage to admit their suspicions were more than justified. It was Sandrine who first saw her husband leaving that place just before that nurse of his, he going to the right, she to the left.’
Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux.
Would it hurt to volunteer a little without first consulting madame? wondered Élisabeth. ‘It’s an old place, Inspector, whose rooms are mostly taken by long-term residents who are not well off.’
‘A few of the rooms are reserved for visiting civil servants whose positions demand little better,’ said Madame Pétain tartly. ‘Gaëtan-Baptiste Deschambeault found it for them.’
Julienne’s husband, Lucie’s lover …
‘That grigou would have made certain the bank covered the cost, Inspector,’ shot Sandrine Richard.
‘Grigou, madame?’
Visibly flustered – realizing she had inadvertently said something she shouldn’t have – she managed a brief and self-conscious grin. ‘A nickname he uses with his wife and family when they demand too much.’
Had she read the notes Deschambeault and Céline had left for Lucie? he wondered. Had these three ‘ladies’ murdered that poor girl, the others also, or hired someone to do it? ‘Is the hotel a maison de passe?’ he asked.
‘Haven’t we just said it was used for that purpose?’ spat Madame Pétain.
‘Committee members know the hotel well,’ he muttered, jotting it down in front of them. ‘And at the Grand établissement thermal, Madame la Maréchale?’
This one was trouble. Vipère that he was, the little doctor had been correct about that! ‘Mademoiselle Mailloux couldn’t resist letting us know she and Alain André often shared a bath.’
The three exchanged glances, Sandrine Richard taking up the thread of it. ‘About three months before she was drowned, that woman entered our steam room as if by mistake, Inspector. No towel, le costume d’Ève complet and flaunting herself in front of me and my friends. I … I was so taken aback, I didn’t know what to do. Eugenie calmly told her to leave.’
‘Calmly?’
The Inspector had put his question to Elisabeth and was again holding up the hand of justice to prevent interference.
‘She … she shrieked at her to leave,’ confessed Madame de Fleury. ‘Mademoiselle Mailloux blanched and muttered, “Sorry”.’
‘What, exactly, was shrieked?’
That we’d kill her if she didn’t go? ‘I … I can’t recall the precise words. “Get out!” I think.’
‘But she lost her smile, lost composure, was frightened and turned abruptly away? Apologized?’
‘There was not time for that, but as to the rest, yes.’
‘Three months …’ he muttered.
‘Prior to 9 December, Inspector. I didn’t kill her. I swear it!’ said Madame Richard.
Élisabeth de Fleury quickly took her by the hands to anxiously say, ‘We’re in the restaurant. Others will hear you!’
‘The 9th of September,’ he said. ‘One always has to jot these little details down.’
‘The 10th,’ grated Madame Pétain. Others were trying hard to listen but not let on! ‘Thursday afternoons are always our times at the thermal palace. First the steam and then the baths, the hot and then the cold, and then the douche to tighten up the pores. Mademoiselle Mailloux really did want to embarrass Sandrine in front of us, Inspector. That tart was shameful and totally without conscience.’
‘And like Noëlle Olivier, Madame la Maréchale?’
To say, How. dare you, would be of little use. ‘Eventually you had to get at that, didn’t you, Inspector? The knife, the earrings – even the perfume that bitch wore? Well, listen closely then, mon pauvre Sûreté. The Maréchal and I have always had two places of residence. His and mine. It’s very discreet and convenient, and he has always made certain of this. In Paris, after our marriage in September of 1920, he rented and furnished two flats at 6 and 8 square de Latour-Maubourg – you know the Left Bank well, I’m sure – and then … then in the house at numéro 8 when a suitable one became available for me. Here, too, in the Hotel du Parc, myself in the Majestic. Bien sûr, in our marriage we live apart and together, my being invited only to some of the many dinner parties and functions he attends; he and his current mistress, if he has one, to others. That’s how it has alwa
ys been with us.’
‘Madame, I merely …’
‘Did you think to insult me so as to let my anger give you an advantage? Did you think I wasn’t aware of Madame Olivier’s infatuation or that of the countless others Henri Philippe has had? In June 1920, not three months before our wedding – the banns had been announced well ahead of time, let me assure you! – he took up with Marie-Louise Regad, an old flame who had recently been made a widow. Then just a few months after our wedding, it was Madame Jacqueline de Castex, another widow and old flame whose daughter and her husband now live in the Hôtel du Parc to constantly remind me of that affair and to whom he regularly makes visits, not me. Never me! The Maréchal has a reputation for going after the married ones, hasn’t he, even to chasing myself, and widows especially! But … but I must tell you.’ She would pause now to catch a breath and hold it, Eugenie said to herself. ‘No other woman in France can lick the back of her husband’s head every time she mails a postcard to the north, or a letter in the south. Moi-même, seulement, Inspector.’
Only myself. ‘Did all, or any of you, pay to have those girls killed?’
‘And not kill them ourselves – is this the reason you sigh? Really, Inspector, that is so typically male-chauvinistic of you! Not capable of killing to save our marriages? Not able to vote, of course, nor to open a bank account without one’s husband’s or father’s permission? That, too, is only understandable in such a male-dominated society, though one has to wonder about it when so many of our men are either dead or in prisoner-of-war camps. But women are allowed to go out to work and each day eight million of us do. More than in any other country in Europe, even now during this dreadful conflict. And of course, when they get home, there are always the meals, the washing, the cleaning, the children, the endless queues for food …’
‘Madame, please just answer the question!’
‘And not complain about the disgraceful conditions in this and the other hotels to which we have been assigned? Cooking on a single hotplate? Washing the clothes, the sheets and blankets in a hand sink if one is lucky? The tisane of linden blossom here, an occasional meal, but endless days of drudgery in overcrowded quarters, and on top of all of this, we are expected to ignore the philandering!’
‘Madame, the question.’
‘First, the billets doux that old fool wrote to Céline Dupuis.’ Her fingers snapped!
‘There were others he wrote to Noëlle Olivier,’ cautioned St-Cyr.
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Is it that you wish to strike a bargain?’
‘It could be arranged. A small fire.’
‘Then listen closely once again. Ménétrel found out those girls were informants for les Allemands. Though he has swelled far beyond the mediocre capacity of his head, even I would never underestimate his loyalty to my husband. He’d have definitely had those girls singled out and killed, both to teach them a lesson and to set one for others, and to remove the breach of security they represented.’
‘And even though you must hate him for what he did to you with Noëlle, Charles-Frédéric Hébert would have been the one to do it for him?’
‘Yes!’
‘The Hôtel Ruhl, then. Would the doctor have been aware of Room 3-17?’
No glances were exchanged. Madame Pétain noticed a pulled thread in the tablecloth and plucked fastidiously at it.
‘Sandrine and Élisabeth haven’t had to watch that place in some time, Inspector. Even when they did, their surveillance was limited to those occasions when they felt certain something must be going on, often during the cinq à sept. Fortunately there is a café just across the boulevard de l’Hôtel de Ville, one not much frequented by those of the Government.’
‘Seedy?’
‘A little.’
‘Madame, these two would have stood out like sore thumbs. Yourself also!’
‘Certainly, but the patron is a very understanding man, a White Russian who is married to a Jewess. Ménétrel, to his shame I must say, is our most violent anti-Semite, so you see he could not possibly have been aware of our having used that café unless …’
Merde, what the hell were the three of them after now?
‘Albert Grenier,’ said Élisabeth de Fleury softly. ‘On several occasions I saw Albert going into or coming from that hotel, and often just after Madame Dupuis had left it.’
The resident rat-catcher …
‘And once, Elisabeth, someone else,’ prompted Sandrine.
‘Ah oui. His mother. At least, at first that is who I thought it was, but then Madame la Maréchale corrected me.’
‘Edith Pascal,’ sighed St-Cyr, for Edith obtained newspapers from Albert. Sacré nom de nom, must he feel so completely out of his depth with these three?
It was Madame Pétain who said, ‘Albert would have told his grand-uncle of that room, Inspector.’
‘And Charles-Frédéric Hébert would have told Dr Ménétrel,’ said Sandrine Richard, ‘but more recently, I think, and just before the killings started.’
This thing goes round and round, Hermann would have said.
‘Inspector,’ confided Madame Pétain, her forearms now resting on the table, ‘Charles-Frédéric is indebted to the doctor for the position he holds at that château of Herr Abetz’s and for the dreams he harbours of its return. Hébert must have known those girls were informants. Once the doctor had learned of their betraying the country, he would not have let that one forget it.’
‘So Hébert and Albert killed them?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And when, please, Madame de Fleury, did you first see Albert and Mademoiselle Pascal going into that hotel?’
‘First?’ she bleated.
‘First,’ he said.
‘Last August. The 16th, a Sunday afternoon. Honoré and I were to have taken the children to the town’s swimming pool in the Allier, but … but at the last moment, my husband said he had to go in to work and that I should take them myself. “The children mustn’t be disappointed,” he said. “Here, let me give you a little something for their ices.”’
The bastard. Saccharin and ersatz flavours, and well before the raid when photos were taken at the château.
The sculptress had had some soup and a few of the egg-salad sandwiches from one of the trolleys and was now on her first cup of tea – ‘Real tea,’ she had exclaimed, ‘and petits fours like Céline and I used to buy from Monsieur Bibeau’s pâtisserie in the rue Mouffetard.’
Kohler knew he shouldn’t have let her enjoy herself. He hadn’t put the squeeze on her all the while Louis had been at that other table – still was, for that matter – though they desperately needed answers from her, if for no other reason than her own safety. Yet he couldn’t ask if she’d delivered messages in Paris for Olivier – that would be far too risky for Louis and himself, should Gessler get his hands on her. Somehow he had to go around that one and yet prise what he could from her about it.
‘You get sick a lot, don’t you? First in that snow-bound toilet and then in the sacristy.’
Flustered – caught out as if having taken something she shouldn’t have – Inès reluctantly set aside the half-eaten little wedge of Genoese sponge cake, with its filling of butter cream, glaze of apricot jam and coating of white icing. The meringues had looked so heavenly, the miniature éclairs also, but had Herr Kohler fed her simply to loosen her tongue?
‘My stomach hasn’t been right since the Defeat, Inspector. The constant diet of vegetables is impossible. Carrots always; rillettes and chops of rutabaga when I can’t stand the taste and woody texture of swedes and know the hospitals are full of appendicitis cases and other bowel complaints. The “rabbit stew” in the little restaurant I sometimes go to only tells me Monsieur Lapin has leaped the casserole and made good his escape, leaving mystery meat behind. The grey National causes gas and diarrhoea, and I can understand fully the concern of the doctors. I once dissolved some of that bread in a bowl of water to see what rose to the top and sank to the bottom, and have ever si
nce wished I hadn’t. What one doesn’t know is often better than what one does, n’est-ce pas? Sawdust, little bits of straw, the wings and carapaces of beetles or weevils perhaps, fibres of some kind – cotton, I think, but hemp also from the grain bags – and a slimy coagulation of grey-green to black particles that are greasy and not of pepper.’
Rat shit but merde alors, hadn’t she unwound her tongue about it! ‘And at the bottom?’ he asked.
‘Sand-sized grit and larger particles from the grinding stones. That is what gave me the toothache I complained of and still have. A hairline crack, I think, in an old filling.’
‘And oil of bitter almonds instead of cloves …’
Had he not believed her? ‘Yes. Cheated twice. First by the Government adding weight with sand, and then by the salaud I had to deal with on the marché noir. He swore it was oil of cloves and I … I was stupid enough to have trusted him.’
Dentists seldom could offer anaesthetic. These days everyone was avoiding the drill, even Louis. ‘Albert didn’t just reject you. At the Jockey Club he tried to stick as close to you as possible and then, at the chateau, tried to kill you. Any ideas?’
‘None. I know it looks bad and, believe me, I’m trying hard to understand and forgive him.’
Her tea was getting cold. ‘Then start by telling me why that one is also wary of you.’
‘Blanche …?’ Did Herr Kohler suspect Monsieur Olivier had warned her about them, that Blanche and her brother had forced Edith Pascal to let them into his house? ‘Perhaps it is that she’s afraid of what Céline might have told me in the letters Lucie brought.’
‘That she and her brother live alone and share the same bed?’
Incest … was this what Herr Kohler wanted her to say? ‘That Blanche and Paul, being all but identical twins, are very close and that she worries constantly about his health and looks after him as a mother would.’
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