‘Good, Bob. There’s my soldier,’ said Hermann, seemingly ignoring everyone as he folded the stockings and placed them in Élène Artur’s fitted case.
He scratched Bob behind the ears and under the chin. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he went on. ‘Bien sûr, I’ve known a lot of dogs and loved every one of them, but never a prince like yourself. I’m envious, Colonel.’
As his hand dropped, he looked up at Hubert Quevillon, let that emptiness his partner knew only too well fill his gaze and give warning of its own. ‘So how is it, my fine one, that you had that stocking in your desk?’
‘Kohler …’
‘Colonel, let him answer.’
To smirk would infuriate this Kripo the SS had marked for life, thought Quevillon, so he would do that and then tell him how it was. ‘I’m constantly gathering things that might be useful.’
A smart aleck—was that it, eh? The hair was dark brown and carelessly parted so that a hank of it fell rakishly over the brow. The dark-blue eyes were hooded, the expression at once intense and looking always for signs of the mischief his words might cause, the perpetual evening shadow something the girls might or might not like, but a regular at any number of brothels so that he could make his choice and do as he liked. ‘And is it that you simply stole it while that girl was hurrying to get dressed because you had told her to?’
Hermann, urged St-Cyr silently. Don’t accuse any of them yet. Wait! ‘The time, please, Agent Quevillon?’
Please … ? What the hell was this? ‘Louis, you leave him to me.’
‘Hermann, there’s likely a plausible answer. Colonel, from time to time I have to remind my partner that the blitzkrieg our friends demand must still have its little pauses.’
Though taken aback, Hermann was still ready to charge blindly forward and could not be warned of what had been discovered in that desk, nor on it or under it, nor could he be told yet of what had been on and in Flavien Garnier’s. For now this information, especially the sawdust and wood shavings that must have been emptied from the turn-ups of Quevillon’s trousers, would have to be kept from him, since these last were identical to those encountered in the Jourdan household and the gerbils would have loved them.
These two, they were nothing but trouble, thought Delaroche. ‘The time, Hubert. As close as you can give it.’
‘Nine. Maybe nine ten. Élène and the other girls were hurrying to get back on stage. One of her butterfly wings wouldn’t stay up so I had to help by tightening its wires.’
‘Ja, ja, mein Lieber. And the stockings?’ persisted Hermann.
‘Kohler, Kohler,’ interjected Delaroche. ‘The girl had other such stockings that were much better. Why should it matter if Hubert, thinking it was long past its useful life, should borrow one? Why not tell us where and how you found her?’
‘I thought you knew.’
‘How could I possibly? Chief Inspector, please inform this colleague of yours that the Agence Vidocq is not, and never has been, engaged in murder.’
‘Was she murdered, Colonel?’ asked Hermann.
‘If not, how then did you come by her wedding ring?’
These two would go at it now if a companionable gesture wasn’t given. ‘Colonel,’ said St-Cyr, ‘just tell us why Agent Quevillon was in the Lido’s dressing room at 2110 hours or thereabouts last Thursday.’
‘Yes, please tell us. It would help, I think.’
Had Kohler been mollified by his partner and if so, why the need if not the contents of that damned desk of Quevillon’s? wondered Delaroche. ‘I had asked Hubert to check if any of them had heard or seen anything that might help us find Lulu. Madame de Brissac—Catherine-Élizabeth—has not long to live but the telephone is there beside her, you understand, and she was constantly using it to call me.’
‘And now you’re going to have to tell her what’s happened,’ breathed Hermann, his patience all but gone.
Delaroche studied the glowing end of his cigar. ‘What did you find in the Parc Monceau? It was there, wasn’t it? You must have found something of Lulu’s—why else your chasing after me to Chez Bénédicte’s?’
Bob barked. Bob got all excited and had to be calmed. Louis told them the remains were in the Citroën’s boot and that Élène must have wanted to bury what she could where Lulu’s spirit would be most content and as close to her mistress as possible.
‘You’ll let me have them, won’t you?’ asked Delaroche, ignoring the fiction of an indochinoise superstition—was it really fiction, wondered Kohler, and did Delaroche really feel so duty-bound? Flavien Garnier didn’t seem to give a damn. He simply budgeted his cigarette as if still mired in the trenches and waiting for the tempest of fire to start up all over again.
‘At 2313 hours Thursday, Colonel,’ went on Louis, ‘Élène Artur was forced to telephone the Commissariat of the quartier du Faubourg de Roule to alert them to the killing at the École des Officiers de la Gendamerie Nationale. Hermann and myself didn’t get there until 0511 hours Friday but believe the young man, still unidentified, must have been killed at between 2000 and 2130 hours the previous evening.’
And right when Quevillon was supposed to have been helping Élène with her wings, thought Kohler, but if Garnier considered any of this important, he didn’t let on. Was the expression always so grim? he wondered. A blunt man, made blunter by the blotched bald dome of his head, the greying brown fringe above and behind the ears, the heavy, dark horn-rims with the big lenses and the Hitler soup strainer. Prominent jowls reinforced the grimness, deep creases the rarely parted lips. A man of few words, was that it, eh, or one who simply knew too much and felt it best to say little? ‘She had, we understand, Colonel, first been forced to let the press in on things. Bob, as you know, went straight to that telephone.’
Kohler was definitely the one who had found her. ‘But of course Bob would have. All of those girls use it, as they do that staircase. The scent was old. Maybe she made a telephone call, maybe she didn’t. How could any of us possibly know?’
And stubborn to the last, eh? ‘Your agency was tailing three of the victims Louis and I had to encounter that evening, Colonel. Madame Guillaumet was the first, and voilà, what did we later find but that the press had been in to photograph her at the Hôtel-Dieu?’
Ah, merde, Hermann, go easy, said St-Cyr to himself. ‘Colonel, we’re not accusing anyone, merely trying to get at the facts.’ There was a knock. ‘Ah bon, I’m famished.’
Louis had said it as if relieved.
‘A little wine?’ asked Delaroche. Relieved too, was he? wondered Kohler.
‘If you have it, that would be perfect,’ said St-Cyr, gesturing appreciatively with pipe in hand. Jeannot Raymond had still not returned from escorting Suzette Dunand home. ‘The flat is just along the way,’ the girl had earlier said. Then why the delay? he had to ask himself, but would have to be patient.
The lift began its journey. Suzette knew she should say something, but M. Raymond had spoken privately with the concierge about her and about the trouble she had mentioned. Monsieur Louveau had looked her over as they’d spoken—she knew he had. Even though she had instantly dropped her gaze, she had felt him doing so. A girl in an overcoat and slippers? A secretary who had been slapped hard but one who had also, he would have been told, deliberately misled a Sûreté just to keep him from this building where she lived and where there had been some terrible trouble—she knew there had.
M. Raymond didn’t say anything of what had happened in the building nor of what Concierge Louveau had told him about herself. Perhaps it was that someone had been taken away. People were being arrested all the time. No restaurant, café or bar was safe, no street, but surely not here, not when two of les Allemands lived in the building and all the other tenants must have been given security clearances, herself included?
The lift continued making all the noises that were usual in this quietest of residences. They reached her floor and Suzette watched as he opened the cage, she faintly saying, ‘It is this way.�
� Had she not said that very same thing to him out on the street?
He was so silent and when, at last, they did reach her door, it was ajar. M. Quevillon had not pulled it tightly closed. Dieu merci, her handbag was still on the little table under the oval of the Empire mirror whose mahogany gleamed because she had made certain it would.
‘I’m so very lucky,’ she heard herself saying, her back still to him. ‘Never in a thousand years could I ever have afforded a place like this. There are so many beautiful things. A Beauvais tapestry chinoise that is very old, Gallé, Lotz and Lalique glass figurines and vases, and others, too, from Czechoslovakia. An absolutely magnificent vitrine has a superb collection of Sèvres porcelain.’
Had she said too much? M. Raymond was silently studying her reflection in the mirror, he having closed the door to lean back against it, but had he put the lock on? Had he sensed how uncertain she was, a girl who knew far too much? Was this why his gaze didn’t waver?
‘What else is there?’ he asked, giving her that smile of his, she instantly grinning with relief.
‘Fabulous dolls in one of the Boulle armoires. Jumeau Parisiennes and bébés, Kammer and Reinhardts and those of Armand Marseille. Their party dresses are of velvet, silk and satin, their jewellery so real, it must be.’
She swallowed hard. He didn’t move. ‘Was I not to have touched them?’ she heard herself asking. ‘I know the colonel has said I’m only to use the smallest of the bedrooms and that, from time to time, he would be sending others to stay here, but … but there hasn’t been anyone yet and if I’m to keep the flat clean, I … It does get lonely. One does wonder what’s in a drawer or armoire …’
Where, please, had it all come from—wasn’t this what the silly thing was wondering, but something would have to be said. ‘From time to time Colonel Delaroche picks things up and keeps them here or in one of the other flats the agency has for clients who feel they have to leave home for a little. Some of them have very young children who are desperately in need of reassurance, and for each child, he tries to find what’s best.’
‘There’s a teddy bear in my room,’ Suzette heard herself saying but was he demanding she tell him everything? ‘His eyes are like polished anthracite. There are little felt pads on his paws.’ Pads that she kissed every night—would he wonder this? ‘I … I keep him on the side table next to the music box I borrowed whose larks sing to me every morning when the lid is opened, after … after I’ve managed to switch off the alarm clock.’
How young and inexperienced she must seem to him—young and with a tongue that had been loosened? ‘The music box is of gold and enamelled flowers and was made in Geneva in 1825, but its wind-up mechanism was stuck. I felt I might have broken it and was so very worried, but Monsieur Frères Rochat, its maker, did exceptional work, so the trouble was not his or mine but simply the dust of the years.’
The girl had taken it to a shop.
‘But I really don’t know much about such things,’ she gushed. ‘How could I, coming from where I do?’
Charenton and the house of the aunt and uncle who had taken her in before the Defeat, the father having been called up and now a prisoner of war. ‘You must know the Bois de Vincennes well.’
One of the city’s largest and most popular of parks. ‘A little, yes. Charenton is right next to it and when I visit with my aunt and uncle on the last Sunday of every month, I … I sometimes go there afterwards.’ Why had he asked it of her?
He said no more of this but did he know they had put themselves out to send her to secretarial school and that she was trying to pay them back and desperately needed to keep her job, that with the rationing it helped them tremendously to have her living here? He must know that Maman and the rest of the family, except for Papa, were at home in Dreux, at least eighty-five kilometres to the west of the city and that she sent money and things to them when she could but hadn’t been home since coming to Paris, not with the travel restrictions and the need for laissez-passers and sauf-conduits. The cost too.
Indicating that she should show him the flat, he told her he had best look through it but didn’t explain further. She took off her slippers, he his shoes, which he set neatly side by side, even to cleaning a bit of mud from the toe of one.
But had he really put the lock on? wondered Suzette. The Savonnerie carpet in the salle de séjour was soft and warm underfoot, the living room perfect—Louis XVI chairs and sofas she never sat in, lamps she never used, even a glazed cheval screen before a fireplace in which she had never once lighted a fire, the stove in the kitchen being hers to use. Oil paintings hung on the walls with the tapestries—landscapes, portraits, sketches—beautiful things were everywhere and worth an absolute fortune and yet … and yet it was but one of such flats the agency kept for its clients—hadn’t that been what he’d said? Flats here, flats there. ‘I … I don’t use any of the rooms except for the kitchen and my bedroom,’ she said.
Teddy was waiting. Teddy would look up at him. ‘It does get lonely,’ she said and stupidly had to shrug, was nervous too, nervous at the nearness of this man she had sometimes thought about when in bed with Teddy—would he have realized this? ‘Working six days a week, I … I haven’t had a chance to contact any of my friends from school here and am not from Paris anyway—ah, mon Dieu, how could I be?’
Which only showed how well Abélard vetted their secretaries, thought Raymond, but he wouldn’t give her one of those rare smiles she welcomed, not yet. He’d make her wait for it.
The girl followed him to the kitchen, but had she realized he’d known of the teddy bear? She would take that music box to have its mechanism freed, a problem for sure. An offer would have been made, but had she been stunned by the value and come away only to then realize what the contents of the flat itself must be worth?
‘Colonel Delaroche gives me vouchers,’ she said of the kitchen. ‘I use them with my ration tickets but only at certain shops. He has said my time is better spent at my desk and not in the queues, so I … I just hand the vouchers in and each shopkeeper takes what tickets are needed and I, in turn, take what I’ve been given.’
She had set the table for two and had piled books on to the chair opposite the one she would use, the day’s events at the agency to then be relayed to her little friend. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays were meatless days, and though there must be meat available, the frying pan hadn’t been taken down and set to ready on the stove. Instead, noodles were in soak. The Maréchal Pétain would have been pleased.
‘Were some of the shopkeepers I go to once men under the colonel’s command?’ she asked. ‘Most are veterans, many from Verdun. Some even wear their medals and ribbons on their smocks.’
Fear of himself, of a man and all that it must entail yet the forbidden excitement of it, too, had made her breath come quickly, but she wasn’t aware of this and certainly the little fool had been taking note of far too much. ‘Look, I must get back to the office. Please don’t worry about Hubert. Everything will be fine.’
Pressing her forehead against the door, her fingers still on the lock, Suzette didn’t hear him take the lift. He had gone down one of the staircases. A floor, two floors—on which had the trouble been and why, please, had he to check? Hadn’t Concierge Louveau told him all about it?
Teddy didn’t help. Teddy said, Don’t you dare!
The side staircase was the closer, stocking feet the best, no sign of M. Jeannot Raymond in the corridor below, nor was he on the third floor, not that she could see, but one of the flats nearest to this staircase had been sealed with stickers, they having been placed both above and below the lock and covering the seam between the door and the jamb. Stickers whose eagle clutched a swastika.
‘ “Zutritt verboten. Défense d’entrer,” ’ she whispered as she read the notice. ‘ “Befehl der Kripo Pariser-Zentrum. Par ordre du Préfet et de la Police Judiciaire.” ’
Herr Kohler had signed the notice. The building was quieter than quiet but … Suzette glanced up at th
e ceiling—had she heard someone in that corridor?
There was no one there, and Dieu merci, it was the same on the fifth. The door to her flat was still tightly closed, she having silently eased it shut. Hurriedly she stepped inside, closed the door, put the lock on … warned herself to do so quietly.
Sighed when it was done, and pressed her forehead against the door again. ‘There,’ she said but couldn’t find the will to turn, couldn’t find her voice anymore, knew only that she wasn’t alone and that he was right behind her.
The cigarette box that Hermann kept digging into on the colonel’s desk was Czechoslovakian, the mid-1930s and a time when such things could still be made. It was of beautifully banded, polished malachite, whose frosted green glass lid held in relief, as if in gauze, a reclining nude, full exposure. At once it was evocative and provocative, and one had to wonder if the box had been deliberately placed there to incite further jealousy in already embittered female clients.
‘You enjoy the finer things in life, Colonel. Again I commend your taste,’ said St-Cyr. Quevillon, Garnier, Hermann and himself were sitting in front of the desk, the colonel behind it, his gestures effusive, the cigar hand slicing the air when emphasis was needed.
‘Come, come, what is this? More suspicion? You know as well as I, the market is flooded with objects of virtu. Business has been good and when I can, I pick up what fancies me.’
Hubert Quevillon couldn’t resist darting a knowing glance at his mentor, Flavien Garnier, who patently ignored his subordinate. ‘Of course, I meant nothing other than that I, too, appreciate such things, Colonel.’ If Hermann had any further thoughts of being incautious, he had, one hoped, now thought better of it. ‘Let’s get back to our discussion of the Ritz. Surely Agent Garnier must have some idea of who our Trinité victim was to have met.’
‘For sex,’ muttered Hubert Quevillon.
‘None,’ grunted Garnier, the black horn-rims lending severity to the silent warning he gave his subordinate.
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