‘Don’t leave me!’ shrilled Inès.
‘Louis, stay with her. I’ll find him.’
It didn’t take long. ‘The salaud was on the telephone to Ménétrel,’ shouted Kohler. ‘We’ve trouble, Louis, but this one has lost his tongue!’
Dragged from the switchboard’s little room, thrust up against the Carrara marble desk where half-sized copies of Carrier Belleuse’s La Source emptied amorini from the shoulder while supporting the rest of the structure, the concierge threw a terrified glance at each of them, then apprehensively wet his lips and let his faded grey eyes settle doubtfully on herself, Inès noted. He was hoping for sympathy no doubt.
‘Verfluchte Franzosen!’ shrieked Kohler. ‘Ein Gestapo Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter, Dummkopf Schnell! Schnell!’ Hurry! Hurry! ‘Open up that can of worms of yours and spill out everything the doctor said!’
The echoes came. The echoes rebounded. Hermann was really very good at this play-acting of his when necessary, but something would have to be said. ‘Herr Hauptmann der Geheime Stattspolizist, please go easy on him. He’s too old to be shoved around like that and can’t understand a word you’re saying.’
‘Comfort from a Sûreté, eh? Then you shoot him and we’ll claim he tried to escape and died of a heart attack!’
Herzlähmung – would they really do so? panicked Inès. Cardiac arrest was a favourite excuse of the Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies, the SS of the avenue Foch, and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston. ‘Monsieur, these two …’ she blurted. ‘They’re in a terrible hurry.’
The doctor hadn’t mentioned a valise-carrying girl. ‘I’ll lose my job. I’ll not be able to find work, not at my age!’
‘Fuck your age!’ railed Herr Kohler, jamming the muzzle of his pistol into him.
‘Ménétrel … The doctor, he has telephoned in great urgency to … Ah sacré nom de nom, must you force me to say what I’ve been forbidden? You … you had no right to arrest Dr Normand and steal his file on Madame Deschambeault. You have now initiated a national crisis that Dr Ménétrel will be forced to deal with.’
‘Angry was he?’ breathed Kohler.
‘Furious.’
‘And demanding that we return the file and stop everything immediately?’ he asked.
‘Most certainly.’
‘Gut!’
Herr Kohler snatched the key from among a scattering of others and headed for the stairs, bypassing the bronze birdcage of a dubious lift. Out of the shadows, a life-sized Cupid and Psyche adorned the first landing, a copy of the Louvre’s shy and lovely Bather, by Falconet, the second, the figure caught gracefully looking down at the water while timidly dipping an exploratory toe.
A copy of Paju’s Psyche decorated the third landing; a superb Venus stood beside a mural of voluptuous women taking the cure. One suckled a child, another raised her measured glass in salute, a third gazed raptly into a Cupid-held mirror as satyrs picked fruit and hair was combed, but all were as if removed, as if suppressed by the faded light the Occupation demanded.
‘Room 3-17 must be at the far end of the gallery, Louis.’
How haunting the sculptures were, but could she remember their locations? wondered Inès. Could she find her way in the dark if necessary?
‘Ménétrel will call out the troops, Louis. If not the Garde Mobile and Henri-Claude Ferbrave, then the local Milice!’
The formation of France’s newest militia had been announced by Pétain not long ago right here in Vichy but already they were old acquaintances. ‘Stay close, mademoiselle. It seems that we’ve ruffled more than the feathers of a few stuffed birds.’
Caught in a large cheval mirror, the sculptress appeared pale and shaken at the sight of the room, which was, of course, nothing like the wives and Madame Pétain had indicated.
Instead of a bed that squeaked when used and stank of stale piss, one could see at a glance, St-Cyr told himself, that this canopied masterpiece was simply unmade, its sheets, blankets and spread thrown back but of excellent quality, if of that other time and a touch worn.
There was no second-hand water pitcher, but an unblemished Sevres jug; a copper bath that gleamed even in the faded electric light; a large, handsome marble sink with gilded bronze and porcelain taps, the hot and the cold; even the luxury of a bar of soap that could be left lying around; and plenty of towels, most certainly not thin, for one could hardly have worn them out.
Cold ashes lay in the grate, ample charcoal and wood indicating that a welcome fire could always be lit. The regulation notice as to safe and unsafe sex had, of course, had to be posted just inside the door, he noted, but here violets, dried long ago, had been woven round it, probably by Mademoiselle Marie-Jacqueline.
The carpet was an Aubusson. The armoires, desk and chairs were Marjorelle and nothing to be sneezed at, even if not neo-baroque but most certainly of the turn of the century.
‘Louis, I’d best check the street.’
‘You won’t see anything,’ yelped Inès. ‘They’ll not let you.’
‘It’s what I’ll hear that counts.’
Herr Kohler left them, left the door wide open. Again Inès took in the bed, again she told herself Céline couldn’t have had time to make it, for that had been the rule. After each visit, each of them had tidied up.
Tuesday … last Tuesday afternoon, she said, 2 February, lying naked there in the arms of Honoré de Fleury. Céline whose laughter had been so gentle and yet full of warmth and excitement. Céline whose smile had always been so encompassing.
‘There’s … there’s a ballet shoe under that chair, Inspector,’ she heard herself saying. ‘A practice slipper.’
And we are alone at last, mademoiselle, but you haven’t yet decided if you should tell me all you know. ‘It’s the other shoe that puzzles me,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Don’t ballet teachers who have to rush off early in the morning throw their things into a bag of some sort? Her handbag hasn’t turned up, yet her ID has.’
‘The bag, it … it was of a soft brown suede, a rucksack I bought her before the Defeat.’
‘Before the death of her husband?’
And attempted suicide? ‘Yes. Well before that. She was so happy, so full of life. Annette had just been born. On my way to see them at the Hôpital Cochin, I came across it in the window of a second-hand shop on the rue Mouffetard and knew she’d have the baby to carry and everything else, so would need something easy to handle.’
‘You were still living at the home of your aunt and uncle then?’
‘They … they had passed away. I …’
‘Had you the studio then, the job at the Musée Grévin?’
‘Yes! The … the student who had owned the rucksack had been on holiday in Switzerland but had run out of money. Please … please don’t look at me like that in the mirror, Inspector. I … I can’t tell you. I mustn’t!’
Sconces on either side of the mirror held candles whose soft light would have bathed Céline’s reflection …
The Chief Inspector went straight to the chair and bent to pick up the shoe. He would come to her now, this Sûreté, and would place it in her hand – she knew this, knew, too, that the tears couldn’t be stopped.
‘I loved her as one does a sister. I had no one else. No one, damn you!’
‘On arrival here in Vichy, mademoiselle, you met with Auguste-Alphonse Olivier. You’d been couriering messages for him in Paris. Perhaps he’d a snapshot of you that Mademoiselle Dupuis had given him, but she felt the perfume necessary as well – a little password, n’est-ce pas, and had asked you to wear it.’
Her head was bowed; the faded pink satin slipper, with its tightly wound ties, was in both hands; the finely curving lashes were wet.
‘He discovered you couldn’t see when going from a lighted room into darkness. He warned you not to tell us of your night blindness so that he could use it. You were to watch what you said to us and what you did, but you began to look for things yourself. ‘Why was this, please?’
The Inspector
was still looking at her reflection in the mirror, a glass in front of which Céline would have stood to be admired, made love to, fucked! ‘He … he was upset with me for not having told him of my night blindness. When … when I asked where Céline was, for she, not him, was to have met me at the train, he … he said he didn’t know.’
Yet he must have. ‘You then found out and threw up before seeing her for yourself.’
Ever so slightly she nodded.
‘He didn’t want you coming to this hotel, did he?’
‘It … it was not even mentioned.’
The delicately boned chin and lower jaw were still determined. The sea-green eyes avoided him. ‘Then can you think why Monsieur Olivier would have warned me to stay away from it and threatened me if I didn’t?’
‘Monsieur Laval’s clairvoyant … You asked him about her?’
‘I did.’
‘Then perhaps it is that you should ask her yourself, Inspector?’
‘Shall I leave you here, then, while I do?’ he said angrily.
‘Céline was silenced; Lucie also, Inspector.’
‘And the others?’
‘Most probably.’
‘But she tried to protect him? She tried to hide the earrings?’
Was it that this Sûreté did not want to believe the truth? ‘Monsieur Olivier took her from the Hôtel du Parc and she went willingly with him, Inspector. She tried to remove and hide the earrings both to protect Blanche and Paul – she must have known they’d taken them – and to let you and Herr Kohler know who had betrayed her.’
‘He’d have taken them, then, would he?’
‘Yes. Yes, I tell myself that must have been so.’
‘But he didn’t, mademoiselle. Had Monsieur Olivier seen even one of his wife’s earrings, he’d have removed it and left us to find the other, or come back himself to search it out.’
‘Then why didn’t her killer take it?’
‘Because, I think, the assailant wanted us to find it. That is certainly why the cigar band was left, but to point us towards Albert Grenier and the past.’
An earring had been loosened … ‘And Edith Pascal?’
‘Would not have left any of it, for she would not have wanted to implicate in any way the man she loved.’
‘A résistant.’
A grâce à Dieu, the girl had broken at last. ‘You were his courier in Paris. Please, mademoiselle, you can trust both Hermann and myself. Monsieur Olivier told me he was district leader of the FTP. Hermann knows of this also.’
‘Then you will know, as I do, that Monsieur Olivier has people at his command. The slogans we saw on those walls, the warning Monsieur Bousquet was given …’
Mademoiselle Dupuis’s carte d’identité. ‘The civil war the boys speak of.’
‘Has started.’
As he listened to the street, listened to the town, Kohler hoped Louis could prise what was needed from the sculptress before it was too late. At the very edges of the pollarded, tree-lined boulevard de l’Hôtel de Ville, the shadows were deeper, the darkness complete in places, thinner where the stumpy, naked branches reached out to the snow-covered road. Two vélo-taxis struggled towards him. A few pedestrians were about but none of the town’s autobuses aux gazogène, for those would have stopped running at 7 p.m. as they had done even before the Defeat. Like towns and villages all over France, Vichy shut down hard and early for most people, even with the presence of the Government.
Far in the distance, a Wehrmacht motorcycle patrol let the world know it was busy. Out of the darkness urgent voices came.
‘Chéri, I forgot the blankets.’
‘Merde, Heloïse, you know how cold it is in that flat of theirs. Now we’ll have to keep our overcoats on and play cards in mittens!’
Parsimoniously the light from the blue-blinkered torch was rationed. Now on, now off, the husband smoking an American cigarette, the tobacco mild, totally foreign, raising hackles only to have them die as the couple hurried past, not even realizing he was standing in the shadows. Shivering. Not wanting, at the moment, to think about Giselle and Oona and Paris, for people there said exactly the same things, and if one stayed out beyond the curfew, one stayed put until 5 a.m. or else!
Giselle, he knew, often went round the corner to see her friends and former colleagues at the house of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton. Hadn’t he leased the flat on the rue Suger just so that she could do that and not feel lonely when he was away?
Oona would have gone after her by now. Oona never said a thing about Giselle’s little visits. Close … those two had become really close.
‘But their living with me can’t go on,’ he said aloud and to himself but softly. ‘Louis and I’ve crossed too many. One of these days we’ll all be taking a train east to nowhere unless I can get them out of France and to safety. Louis, too, and Gabrielle.’
As if to mock him and the night and Vichy, and the Occupier, some son of a bitch put his wireless set next to an open window and cranked the volume up.
‘Ici londres … ici londres … des français parlent des fran-çais …’
‘Jésus merde alors, idiot, have some sense!’
‘Radio-paris ment.’ Radio-Paris lies …
Kohler fired two shots harmlessly into the night sky above him. Kids … it was probably just that couple’s kids!
Immediately the waveband was switched to ‘Lily Marlene’* and he heard the voice of Louis’s chanteuse reaching out to the boys on both sides of this lousy war.
‘Gabi …’ he said, swallowing with difficulty at the thought. Some stopped on their way to listen. Others hesitated. One even began to hum along with her.
A last glance up the street revealed that a van – perhaps an armoured one – had drawn to a stop some distance away.
When he looked back down the boulevard towards the rue du Pont, he thought he could detect another one but they made no sound; he hadn’t even heard them. Like soldiers everywhere in this bitter winter, he’d been sucked right in by that voice.
Madame Ribot occupied a suite on the same floor as Room 3-17, but much closer to the lift, noted St-Cyr, the brass nameplate giving: PALMS READ, FORTUNES TOLD. ALL WHO ENTER LEAVE ENLIGHTENED.
Readings were at twenty francs, the Tarot at forty, and under a loosened strip of sticking plaster whose inked UNAVAILABLE had smudged, TEA LEAVES FIFTY FRANCS INCLUDING THE PRICE OF THE TEA.
The hours were from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m., THE TUESDAY, THE THURSDAY, AND THE SATURDAY ONLY. AT ALL OTHER TIMES CONSULTATIONS ARE AS WHEN NECESSARY, THE RATE BEING TWO HUNDRED FRANCS, NOT NEGOTIABLE.
A Louis XV sofa wore its original, ribbed green velvet upholstery; the dented cushions their rescued remnants of tapestry, frayed and with pinfeathers protruding. No two pieces of furniture matched. The sconces were neither art nouveau nor neo-baroque but a mixture of art deco and the fourteenth siécle, he felt. Everything looked as if it had been left by others in payment or as legacies too bulky to be moved in haste from rooms that had had to be vacated, or simply forgotten. Yet, in total, there was the atmosphere, if musty, of something grand and worldly, of ages and lives past, of refinement and fortune, good or bad.
A scratchy gramophone recording gave a lusty chorus from an operetta. The Apollo in Paris, 1912, he thought. Le Soldat de Chocolat, by Oscar Straus. A favourite of Pétain’s? he wondered. The green-shaded, Empire desk lamp in the consulting room-cum-study, with its zodiacal charts and those of the palm, was of the thirties, the desk itself utilitarian but of an indeterminate origin, for it could hardly be seen under the clutter.
Like the half-filled, two-litre, hand-blown wine bottle at her left elbow, Madame Ribot was an ample woman whose watery blue eyes matched the tint of the bottle above the deep red of its Chanturgue and her rouged cheeks. The frizzy mop of grey hair was thick and wiry, the neck of the bottle not straight but suffering from arthritis, too, and bent towards the woman, its distractedly replaced cork loose and tilted the opposite way.
Her glass had
been drained some time ago.
‘Madame Ribot …’ hesitated the petite bonne à tout faire.
‘Fingerprints,’ muttered the woman irritably. ‘Why does Monsieur le Premier insist on emphasizing their importance when it is the hands that can tell us so much more?’
The shoulders were rounded under the tartan blanket that some Scot must have left behind at some hotel …
‘Love, lust, jealousy and murder, even assassination,’ she said, still not looking up. ‘Lisette, ma chère, you’re such a delightfully dutiful creature, a treasure to a stubborn old woman such as myself, but I am conscious of the presence of these visitors. Now you must ask them to wait a little longer. Please stop the music. I thought it would help, but it has not done so at all. Indeed, it is a frightful racket to a woman who dotes on Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Brahms and Chopin!’
‘Monsieur … Mademoiselle …’ blurted the girl to Inès and St-Cyr. ‘Madame, she is working on an urgent matter for Monsieur le Premier.’
‘The fingerprints?’ shot St-Cyr, but no answer was given. Inked palm prints – done by rolling the hand with black ink and then gently pressing it flat on tracing paper, after which the hand and paper were held up to work the ink in carefully and the paper then slowly peeled off – had been positioned on a makeshift light-table of frosted white glass. Bent over this table, the woman used a hand-held magnifier, instead of the spectacles that dangled against the tartan folds.
‘Monsieur Laval has again telephoned to ask if an assassination is in the offing. Four times today, no less,’ said Madame Ribot, still studying the prints. ‘Progress reports, of course, were given.’
‘And the fingerprints he was concerned about?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘The police photographer’s efforts have yielded nothing so far. Not from the envelope in which press clippings were slid under the door, not from the Hall des Sources either, nor from the Hotel d’Allier and the rooms of these two.’
She lifted away the handprints she’d been studying and replaced them with two sets. ‘These, Inspector, are Lucie Trudel’s, and these, Céline Dupuis’s.’
Ghost-like – as if the dead, in terror, were pressing their hands to the underside of a window, with them trapped inside and drowning, thought Inès – the prints cried out to them.
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