Tapestry

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Of course, but I’m glad to know the agence is involved.’

  All thirty-two or -six of them stopped whatever they’d been doing. They waited for answers. They damned well wanted them. ‘Well?’ said a forty-year-old with the stretch marks big babies invariably leave for one to hide.

  Bob nudged the fitted case, pushing it across the cracked linoleum until it rested not at the colonel’s feet, but at those of this Kripo. Sorrowfully he looked up and waited, too, for an answer. A missing dog and a missing showgirl.

  That answer was not long in coming. It couldn’t be, if only partially given. Reaching into a jacket pocket, Kohler took out the girl’s wedding ring—Ach, he’d wrapped it in a pair of white pongee step-ins he must have taken from the judge’s flat, but had no memory of having done or even of where, precisely, among those rooms he’d found them, but … ‘This is it, eh, Bob?’ he heard himself asking, heard the collective gasp, saw lips part, despair enter the gazes of some, tears those of others.

  ‘Élène’s,’ said one. ‘I knew she was for it. I had a feeling.’

  ‘Kohler, where the hell did you find that?’ hissed Delaroche.

  ‘Maybe Bob had best tell us, Colonel, or is it that you already know?’

  Not a feather moved. Cigarette smoke trailed.

  ‘Would I even be asking if I did?’ asked Delaroche.

  ‘Lulu’s gone and Bob’s no longer worried about her, Colonel,’ said one to break the impasse.

  ‘They had a fight. Bob’s ear was badly torn,’ said another.

  They looked at each other, these girls, and nodded at one of their number.

  ‘Élène took her, Colonel,’ said the forty-year-old den mother. ‘We knew Madame de Brisac had hired you to find Lulu. We weren’t going to tell you but now … now that Élène hasn’t come to work, we’d best, since that one has her ring.’

  ‘Lulu was causing Élène lots and lots of trouble,’ said another. ‘Madame Rouget would insist on bringing that damned dog of her friend’s down here to see us.’

  ‘And do the same when we were up onstage.’

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ said Kohler. ‘Was Madame Rouget asked to do this by Madame de Brisac?’

  The girls threw glances at one another. ‘It’s possible,’ said one, ‘but not likely.’

  ‘It wasn’t Élène’s fault, Inspector. You are a cop, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘I did too.’ ‘So did I …’ ‘Et moi aussi,’ came the chorus. ‘One can always tell with those.’

  Heads were nodded.

  ‘Lulu wasn’t a regular like Bob, Inspector. Oh for sure, she was friendly enough but she hated Monsieur le Juge who had savagely kicked her in the park last October.’

  ‘The Parc Monceau?’

  ‘How is it that you know this, please?’ asked the den mother suspiciously.

  ‘Never mind, but why did Élène Artur ask to meet the judge there? That’s not the usual sort of place for a girl like that, is it?’

  They all shrugged. Some looked away, others stared right back at him. Pregnant, wasn’t she? he wanted to ask but didn’t need to and had best not since the colonel was taking a decided interest in things. ‘Continue.’

  ‘Ah, bon, since you ask it of me. Lulu could be very friendly with Élène, too, you understand, but hated Monsieur le Juge, and when Lulu smelled him on the girl after those two had been together during the cinq à sept or even earlier in the day, she just went crazy even though the judge was no longer present.’

  ‘Angry,’ said one.

  ‘A real hothead,’ yet another.

  ‘Would bite and bark and sometimes even tear at Élène’s coat or dress when she came in.’

  ‘Irish terriers are good with most people but can be …’

  ‘Bitchy,’ said another, ‘especially with big dogs like Bob who was only trying to defend Élène from attack.’

  ‘Madame Rouget also had her daughter Denise bring Lulu in to see us, Inspector. Twice, I think, or was it three times?’

  ‘Four. Poor Élène didn’t know what to do.’

  But she did.

  It wasn’t wise of her to leave the chief inspector alone in the outer office, Suzette told herself, but she absolutely had to get cleaned up. He would go through the papers on her desk. He’d see beyond a shadow of doubt that Madame Henriette Morel was being billed ten thousand francs each this month for the Barrault and Guillaumet investigations, as she’d been billed last month. He’d find M. Garnier’s files on Madame Barrault and Madame Guillaumet, files that were to have been locked up in the colonel’s office had that one come back from Chez Bénédicte’s or not have left the door to his office locked as always when he was away, and sometimes even when he was here and in there with a particularly beautiful client.

  The inspector would see that on her desk there was also the invoice she had typed for the parents of Captain Jean-Matthieu Guillaumet, who was in the officers’ POW camp at Elsterhorst. Twenty thousand francs they’d been billed this month alone for the agence’s finding ‘conclusive evidence’ of Madame Guillaumet’s plans to commit adultery. The Ritz, no less!

  ‘And then?’ whispered Suzette to herself. ‘Then he will discover that the Scapini Commission in Berlin, the Service diplomatique de prisonniers de guerre, have requested an estimate of the cost of just such a “conclusive” investigation of her and that this estimate has been placed at between forty thousand and fifty thousand francs.’

  It would do no good for her to stand here stupidly and cry. She must get back, but he would also find that that same commission, at the insistence of Madame Marie-Léon Barrault’s husband, who was in the camp for common soldiers at Stablack in Poland, had demanded that such an investigation of his wife be done. Cost: ten thousand francs a month, but that since Corporal René-Claude Barrault had no money of his own, Madame Henriette Morel had willingly volunteered to cover that cost as well. Thirty thousand francs then, this month alone to Madame Morel: ten for Madame Barrault, ten for Madame Guillaumet and ten for the Scapini’s request.

  ‘Un gogo,’ M. Hubert Quevillon had said of the woman. He had flashed some of the photos he used from time to time to convince prospective customers that their husbands were indeed fooling around behind their backs. Totally naked girls.

  ‘A sucker,’ she swallowed, glancing accusingly at herself in the mirror that was above the washbasin. Madame Morel was being billed twice for the Barrault investigation and once for the Guillaumet, whose in-laws were also forking over twenty thousand francs for that one, and soon it would be the Scapini Commission also, whose cost those same in-laws would gladly pay since the Scapini could recommend to the courts that charges be laid and a divorce granted.

  A racket, that’s what it was. She knew the chief inspector would find out all of this from her desk alone—Madame de Brisac’s invoice was there too, the search for Lulu, a lost dog: no charge at all. Nothing. Absolument rien simply because that one was not only an old friend but had recommended the firm to Madame Rouget who in turn had recommended it to her daughter Denise and to Germaine de Brisac, the daughter of the other one. The things one did for business. But having scratched the surface, would the inspector not want more?

  Hurriedly she took off her slip and underpants and, rolling them into a tight ball, tucked them into her bag. She would put on her overcoat to hide the skirt’s dampness, had best get ready to go home—oui, oui, that is what she’d do. Lock the door and lock him out of the office.

  ‘Inspector, I must close up now. Grand-mère, she will worry. Always it’s the same with her, you understand. She watches the clock, poor thing, and worries especially now with … with all of these terrible attacks.’

  A lie, of course, but had he believed her? He gave no indication, hadn’t been standing anywhere near her desk, had been sitting—yes, sitting patiently by the door—and said, ‘Ah, bon, mademoiselle. It’s best my partner and I come back in the morning.’

&nbs
p; ‘Sunday … It will be Sunday, Inspector. The agence will be closed.’

  ‘Ah! I’ve completely lost track of the days. Always the work, never the rest. Monday, then.’

  Throwing on that overcoat, he took that fedora of his from her desk and said, ‘Aprèz vous, mademoiselle.’

  ‘I … I must switch off the lights, then put the lock on.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As she did so, he didn’t take that gaze of his from her, but held the door, then watched as she pushed the little button in and let her go first, he pulling the door tightly closed behind them and testing it to make certain it was, indeed, locked.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry.’

  No one was taking any notice of them. No one! Not M. Raymond and not M. Garnier … ‘Merci,’ she heard herself saying.

  ‘I’ll just walk you to the entrance of the métro. That way I’ll not worry either.’

  Ah, merde! ‘There … there’s no need, Inspector. The flat’s just along the way.’

  They reached the avenue, which was now in total darkness. The glow from occasional cigarettes was as if that from fireflies in the night and not yet a moon. ‘Bonne nuit, mademoiselle.’

  And never trust a police officer, said St-Cyr silently as he gave her time to lose herself in the crowd. That pin tumbler, mortised lock of the colonel’s, with its bevelled bolt and dead bolt above, allows you to ‘put the lock on’ the former but not the latter, which needs its key. Delaroche must always come by to put the dead bolt on, but with the other there are two little buttons mounted on the lock face just below the bolts. Pushing in the one as you did, activates the bevelled bolt, pushing in the other as I did, deactivates it.

  The colonel, like any détective privé worth his salt, felt Kohler, had a table exactly where it should have been. Right at the back, tucked into a corner in full view of the coat check and entrance and with the whole club spread before him, including its tobacco-fogged horizon.

  Bob sat on two of the chairs nearest to that master of his and watched the girls from this distance. He didn’t bark, seemed oblivious to the brassy racket from the orchestra and that from the crowd, was mesmerized apparently by the lights and the action.

  Wehrmacht boys were everywhere, several with their petites amies. BOFs, too, and other black marketeers and collabos. Maybe a ratio of eight from home to two of the French, the club filling up fast and no different than any other in this regard.

  ‘Bob has impressive control, Colonel. You’ve trained him superbly.’

  Just what was Kohler after and where the hell was that partner of his? wondered Delaroche, though he’d have to smile and affably say, ‘You’ve no idea how good Bob is for business. Prospective clients, especially the women, take one look at him and are not only reassured but convinced. The younger they are, the harder they fall—isn’t that right, mon vieux?’

  Bob agreed. Husbands would fool around; wives would demand answers, or vice versa. ‘A fortune, that it, Colonel?’

  ‘Hardly. A good living, though. Surely you must have thought of going into business for yourself?’ Delaroche turned to a waitress. ‘Angèle, ma belle, would you be so good as to bring Herr Kohler a little something from Munich? The Spaten Dunkel. It’s fresh in today, Kohler.’

  ‘Et pour vous, mon cher colonel?’ brown eyes asked.

  ‘The usual.’

  ‘Un double de Byrrh. Is that not correct?’

  Jésus, merde alors, those bedroom eyes of hers would have melted butter.

  ‘Bob, give Angèle her little gift. Now don’t be stingy.’

  A five-hundred-franc bill was gently teased from a bankroll that would have impressed even the wealthiest, the girl taking it between her teeth, too, as she set her tray down to mother Bob, modestly tidy her halter straps and tuck the bill between her breasts.

  ‘It pays to keep them happy, Kohler. You’ve no idea the things girls like that can tell you.’

  Cigarettes were offered and why not accept a couple? A light too.

  Kohler blew smoke towards the ceiling and sat back to enjoy the show as if a regular without a care in the world but surely Boemelburg had let him know the Gestapo and the SS employed the agence from time to time and had been very satisfied with the results?

  Oberg must have told the agency to work with Sonja Remer and to tail Giselle, thought Kohler, but had they found her, or had this one simply vented his rage in the passage de l’Hirondelle because they hadn’t? ‘Tell me about Lulu, Colonel.’

  There was still no sign of St-Cyr. ‘Catherine-Élizabeth de Brisac is an old and much valued friend. Her husband, Paul, and I were at Gallipoli. The Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient. Kum Kale on the Asian shore, April twenty-fifth, 1915, a diversion that, though the only successful venture of that whole campaign, fooled no one. We then withdrew and went to assist the Australians and New Zealanders on the Peninsula. Brave boys, all of them, but a debacle. An absolute cockup. The damned British High Command let us down as they then did in 1940. One simply can’t trust the bastards. Pigheaded, incompetent, arrogant and dishonest. Undermanned and under-supplied, the Turks were savage, Mustapha Kemal Pasha absolutely brilliant. Paul de Brisac didn’t come home. I caught him as he fell.’

  Their drinks came. ‘Salut,’ said Delaroche, raising his glass. ‘Byrrh had become our national apéritif even before that other war, Kohler, but do you know why?’

  ‘The colonies. The malaria and a need for quinine to be sweetened, else it wouldn’t be taken. Hence a dry, vermouth-style drink that caught on. Let’s cut the crap and the old soldier bit, Colonel. Élène Artur kidnapped Lulu.’

  ‘Such things happen all the time these days, don’t they? Leave one’s pet off the lead for a moment, or let the cat out, and voilà, it has vanished into the oven or the stew pot of another.’

  ‘Or the soup pot, given her indochinoise background and that of her mother, Colonel, but didn’t you realize Élène had taken her?’

  Kohler had yet to mention the judge. ‘I didn’t. I did know of the trouble Lulu had been causing. Bob wasn’t the only dog to have suffered defending that girl and certainly Lulu could have benefitted a great deal from further training. Spoiled, oh là, là, but … Ah! what is one to do when asked by a friend of long standing who is in great distress? I immediately offered help. The Agence Vidocq was, as I have already stated, working on it.’

  ‘But not too hard. Élène must have kept Lulu alive until very recently. Maybe a guilty conscience, maybe she sincerely felt the dog was desperately needed by its owner.’

  ‘We haven’t charged Madame de Brissac a sou, nor will we. I had kept Bob away from the girls because of the fight he’d had down there with Lulu. Damn it, Kohler, Lulu had challenged Élène and had bitten the girl twice at least. Bob simply leaped in to defend her as he would have done for any of them.’

  A real ladies’ dog but at other times, at least some of them, Élène, must have got on quite well with Lulu. ‘Now what are you going to tell Madame de Brissac?’

  ‘Nothing until it is absolutely clear to me.’

  ‘Lulu hated Judge Rouget, Colonel. Vivienne Rouget hired you to tail that husband of hers and not only find out who her Hercule was fucking but how serious things were.’

  ‘Where did you find that girl’s wedding ring?’

  It couldn’t hurt to tell him, might even help to shake the son of a bitch. ‘Under a radiator.’

  Out in the Arcade de Champs-Élysées the shoppers took their time, as Germans on leave would, while others hurried homeward, using the arcade as a short cut. Alone in the agence, St-Cyr waited beside Suzette Dunand’s desk. He had been about to switch on her lamp, had heard something against the foot traffic …

  Ah! there it was again. Ever so gently the door was being tried. The bevelled bolt had come free … yes, yes, that lock had been successfully picked but now … now whoever it was discovered that the dead bolt had been engaged and since Colonel Delaroche had not returned to lock up, that could only
mean the agence’s security was in the act of being breached.

  There wouldn’t be time to do what had to be done, but there had to be something more than the agence just sharking the clients. Whoever it was might leave. There’d been no cries for a flic to come running, no pronouncements of a robbery in progress, simply a waiting for himself to try to slip away, but was there more than one of them out there?

  Retreating, he felt his way through the pitch-darkness until he got to the corridor the girl had taken to the washroom, was hurrying now, found gold-rimmed porcelain cups and saucers and a coffeepot—Sèvres? he wondered—under the light switch. Everywhere he looked in this room he’d entered, there was a tidiness that troubled, a décor that didn’t fit the usual image of détectives privés but was clean of line, the furnishings very of the nouveau riche. A large desk with Lalique pen-and-ink stand, bronze figurines from the twenties. Several oil paintings hung on the walls—landscapes but also family portraits, some dating back more than a century. Surely these weren’t of relatives of M. Flavien Garnier or of M. Hubert Quevillon, whose names in bronze were apparent?

  Everything spoke of money. There was none of what one would have expected, none of the stale tobacco smoke from endless Gauloises bleues, none of the sweat of the unwashed, the garlic, the cheap toilet water or cologne such individuals were wont to splash on themselves when in the urgency of plotting to seduce some suspecting or unsuspecting female client.

  Conclusion: The office was seldom used and then but briefly and really for show, since those passing by on the way to the washroom would be bound to notice, especially if this one’s door was left open. Messieurs Garnier and Quevillon were foot soldiers kept on the move by the colonel.

  Garnier was also a veteran of that other war, a member of the sometimes ultraconservative UNC, the Union Nationale des Combattants. A former sergeant, wounded at Verdun, but one with ties or leanings to Action française? he had to ask. Fascist anyway, and definitely pro-German and collabo.

  The in-tray held requests, notes, thin file folders on investigations one of the others must have handed over to Garnier but not yet collected to be stuffed into jacket pockets on the run; the out-tray, the dossiers of Adrienne Guillaumet and Marie-Léon Barrault.