‘ “Let’s keep it to ourselves,” Jeannot said. His fingers trembled when he kissed me on the cheek and I felt the warmth of him. He said, “Please don’t worry. Everything will be fine. It’s probably best that you’re not here when the coroner and the police come to remove that body.” I can’t have the police asking me any more questions. I can’t. I know too much. I’ll lose my job if they make me tell them things.’
And what about that bite you saw? Did Bob do it or some other dog like that Lulu?
‘Bob wouldn’t have bitten him. Not Bob. I … I don’t know how he got the bite. I wish I did but couldn’t ask.’
10
Plunged into the damp, cold darkness of the rue La Boétie at 2107 hours Berlin Time, they were moving now. They weren’t wasting time, having just left the Agence Vidocq. ‘It’s this house, Louis. This one,’ insisted Kohler.
‘No it isn’t. It’s this one.’
‘Merde, how the hell would you know?’
‘Try me.’
The candle stub had gone out. Uncanny, that’s what Louis was. ‘Why didn’t you tell me they had a photo of the boys?’
‘I couldn’t. There wasn’t a chance.’
Jeannot Raymond hadn’t been in his office. ‘Have they got Giselle?’
‘Later … We can discuss it later.’
‘Garnier and Quevillon took Élène Artur. I’m certain of it.’
‘Did I not say “later”?’
The door was locked. Fist to it, Louis summoned the concierge. ‘Louveau?’ he demanded. ‘Sûreté and Kripo.’
‘Messieurs …’
‘The flat of Judge Rouget and hurry!’ They didn’t take the lift. They went up the spiralling main staircase two and three steps at a time, Louveau soon falling far behind.
‘Armand Tremblay hasn’t been in yet,’ said Louis when they got to the flat. ‘The seals haven’t been broken. If Jeannot Raymond paid this a visit, he must have only wanted to confirm that you had found her.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why he didn’t come back to the agency.’
Collectively the seals were examined. Nothing could have been disturbed since Hermann’s departure. Nothing.
‘Boemelburg can’t have let our coroner know of the body, Louis.’
‘And that can only mean Oberg didn’t want him to. Oberg, Hermann. Monsieur, was Jeannot Raymond here to examine these?’
The seals were indicated, Louveau taken aback. ‘M. Raymond? Whatever for? He simply brought the Mademoiselle Dunand home and stayed with her awhile.’
‘Ah, Jésus, Louis …’
‘Vite, vite, monsieur, her flat!’
They took the side stairs this time. Ach, why hadn’t they considered that the girl might live in the same building?
Louveau knocked on the door of a fifth-floor flat nearest to that staircase. ‘Mademoiselle Dunand?’ he quavered. Impatiently they waited. Would the detectives insist on entry? ‘Monsieur Raymond told me the girl had been upset over the murder and that he had thought it best to stay to calm her, Inspectors, and to reassure her that my building was absolutely safe otherwise and that she had no need to concern herself further. He said he told her he would see her Monday morning at the office and that she was to enjoy her day off.’
‘He actually came downstairs to tell you all of that?’ asked Kohler.
‘But certainly.’
‘Your passkey, monsieur. Don’t argue,’ said Louis, nodding curtly at the door.
‘Mademoiselle Dunand,’ sang out Louveau. ‘C’est moi, your concierge. Are you all right?’
From behind the still locked door came the hesitance of, ‘Oui, I was just getting ready for bed. Is … is something wrong?’
‘Mademoiselle, it’s me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr.’
‘I’M NOT DRESSED! YOU … YOU CAN’T COME IN! CAN’T IT WAIT?’
‘Louis, leave her. She’s okay.’
‘Mademoiselle, what exactly did Jeannot Raymond say to you?’
‘Only that I wasn’t to worry about losing my job because of what you did. That … that Monsieur Quevillon would apologize for hitting me and that … that the colonel would be asked to dismiss him.’
‘You lied to me, mademoiselle. You deliberately caused me to believe your flat was on the Champs-Élysées.’
‘And for that, I’m sorry. It … it was only because I didn’t know what had happened in this building, that there … there had been some trouble.’
‘Louis, she was afraid of you. How many times must I tell you to …’
‘Hermann, those salauds have out-Vidocq’d Vidocq! And tomorrow, mademoiselle?’ he asked.
‘I’m not even going to leave the building to go to Mass. I’m going to stay right here.’
‘As she should,’ muttered Kohler softly. ‘There, didn’t I just tell you she was okay?’
On the staircase down, Louveau ingratiatingly confided, ‘She usually does her laundry on Sundays afterwards unless …’
‘Out with it,’ said Louis.
‘Unless she goes to visit her relatives in Charenton but that’s only on the last Sunday of the month.’
The night was like ink. Ignition switched off, the Citroën coasted up the last of the rue de Birague and into the place des Vosges where it could just as easily, if not better, be stolen or robbed of its tyres.
Kohler rolled down his side windscreen. Through the freezing, damp, dark, quiet of the night came the incessant cooling of the engine and the silence.
‘This is crazy, Louis. You can’t be serious.’
‘Wood shavings, Hermann, and sawdust.’
Merde, what was he on about now?
‘Sometime today, probably early in the afternoon and while sitting briefly at that desk of his, Hubert Quevillon emptied the turn-ups of his trousers. Mahogany shavings, cedar of Lebanon, French oak and walnut, also teakwood from the Far East. Certainly not the plain spruce of the no-name coffins the Hôtel-Dieu use for its unfortunates.’
‘A carpenter’s shop. A furniture repair place …’
‘Noëlle Jourdan likes to give the gerbils she keeps something to burrow into. Matron Aurore Aumont thought the shavings must have come from the coffin shop but obviously they can’t have.’
It had to be said. ‘Noëlle and her father could never have owned the items she pawned.’
‘Nor had a right to the stamp collection of Bernard Isaac Friedman of 14 rue des Rosiers.’
‘And Delaroche must have easy access to beautiful things.’
‘Some of which even that agency of his could never have afforded.’
‘Judge Rouget, too, Louis? The things I saw in that vitrine of his.’
Sickened by the thought of their being led ever deeper into the morass Paris and the country had become, Kohler wiped fog from the windscreen. ‘Just what did you find in that bastard’s desk and please don’t tell me that before this Defeat of yours he worked in La Villette.’
The largest of the city’s two abattoirs and where all but 20 percent of the sheep and cattle consumed each year in the city used to be slaughtered, as well as nearly eighty thousand horses. Now, of course, little of this work was required since most of the stock was simply loaded on to railway trucks and sent to the Reich.
‘Handcuffs, lipsticks, compacts, earrings and other jewellery, handbags too, some of which can no doubt be linked to victims. A spool of piano wire and clippers, a length of bloodstained sash cord and two bottles of chloroform, one of which was half-empty.’
Giselle … ‘What else?’
‘The usual photos.’
‘And?’
‘A jumble of negligees, brassieres, underpants and garter belts. The ticket stubs of the Cinéma Impérial—no doubt the colonel charged the expense to Madame Morel’s account for the Barrault subject’s investigation. Blouses that had been ripped off. Keys—lots of them. Jetons, too, for the telephones they might need to force some girl to use. I couldn’t have let you know any of this when we were in that office. I tried to g
ive you a hint but even that failed.’
More … there must be more.
‘A note from Delaroche reminding Quevillon not to forget to pay his PPF dues.’
The Parti Populaire Français of Jacques Doriot whose militants, along with others, formed the backbone of the Intervention-Referat and who had eagerly assisted the nine thousand Paris police, and student police, during last year’s grande rafle.
‘Quevillon may well be the Agence Vidocq’s only member, Hermann. Otherwise the colonel would, perhaps, have paid the dues himself.’
‘Delaroche simply wants to give himself and the others a bit of distance yet show support. Funds will have been passed under the table. The PPF have friends in the Propaganda-Abteilung and can call on the press any time they want.’
‘Especially if there’s a student nurse who had best do as she’s told.’
‘You first, or me?’
‘Me, I think, but let’s hope the agence hasn’t yet anticipated a second visit.’
‘Since they’ll probably have been told of the first?’
‘Among other things, Flavien Garnier had a tube of Veronal in his desk and nearly fifty tobacco cards. The girl’s father needs the one for the constant pain he suffers, and writes appeals to former comrades-in-arms for help; the daughter found eggs, shoes, a chocolate bar and other items for Matron Aumont’s grandchildren, purchases and appeals that could perhaps only have been facilitated by the current and most popular medium of exchange.’
‘You’re full of surprises. I hadn’t realized you could be so light-fingered.’
‘Then realize that under Garnier’s blotting pad there was a list of résistants, some of whom had ticks beside them and lines through them, and that under Quevillon’s photo of the boys, was one of Giselle as she left Oona yesterday.’
Ach, where was it all to end? wondered Kohler. The PPF had been funded by the Abwehr, the counterintelligence service of the Wehrmacht, and had supplied them with the names and locations of résistants and other ‘troublemakers’ the Occupier had wanted but with the defeat at Stalingrad, everyone had started having second thoughts and, as if that weren’t enough, that fanatic ex-chicken farmer and Head of the SS, the Reichsführer Himmler, had all along been jealous of the Abwehr and had sought to undermine it, and submerge it entirely within the Sicherheitsdienst.
One happy family. And guess what? he silently asked as he found the main staircase of the house at Number 25 and followed Louis up it. Given the ever-shifting sands of Paris and the Occupation, the PPF had seen the light and gone over to the SS. The Agence Vidocq must now be supplying them with those names and locations, Judge Rouget sentencing those taken, Oberg seeing that they were either shot as hostages for some act of ‘terrorism’ or shipped east to one of the camps no one wanted to mention, though everyone knew of them, especially Hercule the Smasher.
Having anticipated his thoughts, Louis was waiting for him on the second storey’s landing to softly confide, ‘That’s not what worries me at the moment, mon vieux. If Oberg ordered the agence to take Giselle as bait for his Mausfalle and they failed to do so, is that not, perhaps, reason enough for rage in the killing of the passage de l’Hirondelle victim? To fail when working for such a one can’t sit easily.’
‘Giselle and two honest cops who’ve been getting in the way far too many times.’
‘And are to be made martyrs of, in the line of duty, Hermann.’
The French loved their martyrs. ‘The press will be adoring. Occupier and Occupied die in battle to clean up our streets and make them safe again.’
‘I can see the smile on your corpse. Now let’s deal with the Jourdan household and talk about it later. If Jeannot Raymond or anyone else from that agency has beaten us to it, he or they have either left the premises or been far quieter than ourselves.’
The tiny kitchen was a shambles. The single electric lightbulb that had hung above the plain deal table with its toppled cane chairs had been flung against the wall, its frayed cord and sliding weight yanked on.
Having escaped the prison of their overturned birdcage, the gerbils had vanished in fright, the girl having put it between herself and her assailant, but far more wood shavings had been scattered across the floor than even it would have held.
She had snatched up a knife and thrown it, then smashed the light. Under torchlight, two rabbits in the screened airing cupboard beyond the drainboard and sink, watched detective proceedings with evident alarm. The drawstring of the cloth bag Noëlle Jourdan must have earlier filled with wood shavings, was loose, the throat wide open, the bag empty.
Among the dark, nutbrown to honey-brown shavings and bits of sawdust on the floor, there were pieces of brightly coloured porcelain: the curly-haired, ash-blonde, cap-wearing head of a pretty, blue-eyed peasant girl, the loose, knee-length pantaloons of the fisher boy she had come to meet.
‘Russian, Hermann. A pair of figurines from the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory.’
‘Things must have seemed okay at first, Louis, the visit perhaps a little late in the day.’
‘The girl in here on her own and getting tomorrow’s supper ready …’
‘The father in with whomever had come to see him.’
‘But then she must have heard something.’
‘That bag would have been hidden.’
‘Only to then be dragged out and opened by the visitor, the figurines removed.’
‘Stood side by side, the accusations given, but was she still hearing things from the other room? Was she, Louis?’
‘These date from about 1825 to 1850. The porcelain is exquisite.’
‘And once worth what? Ten thousand francs at least; five hundred Reichskassenscheine.’
‘Stay here and don’t pop any more of those Benzedrine pills. Let me see what has happened.’
That sympathetic, empathetic, old-soldier-understands tone of voice just couldn’t be tolerated anymore. ‘Confronted, Noëlle made a run for it, Louis. Since the door to the flat was wide open and she wasn’t on the stairs, she may have escaped.’
‘Which leaves the father and what she must have heard. Now please … Ah, mon Dieu, be sensible. He’s a grand mutilé. He’ll only bring back the memories.’
The poor bastard with the stumps and the dyed black moustache, the shrapnel scars and thinning black hair had snatched the vase de nuit from under the moth-eaten bed that was heaped with blankets. Somehow he had managed to get his trousers down but had collapsed on that one leg of his and had broken the chamber pot.
Christ, the constant diet of vegetables and fruit if one could get them. Ripe on the already ripe air, he had drawn that one knee up and in at a spasm and had emptied himself, had vomited as well, the reactions so swift, he hadn’t known what was happening to him and had died within what?
‘Less than five minutes,’ said Louis. ‘Remember, please, that I did warn you.’
Wearing a knitted blue toque, three pullovers, heavy cords and two socks on that one foot, Jourdan had been bundled up in bed when offered the drink and …
‘The last half of a litre of eau-de-vie de poire, Hermann.’
Uncorked, the bottle stood upright on the rickety night table and next to a spent tube of Veronal, but Jésus, merde alors, how could Louis remain so detached?
The glass tumbler the girl must have unwittingly handed to the visitor was still on the bedside table. Under torchlight, its dregs were not like water, the smell not sweet and pleasant but stingingly pungent.
‘Exposure to air and light darkens it …’ began Louis.
‘Nicotine, damn it?’
‘Usually such an eau-de-vie de poire is either clear or a very pale yellow. This is a dark yellowish brown …’
‘You heard me!’
‘An insecticide, a fumigant?’
‘Please don’t try to convince me you’re really serious about that little farm you keep saying you want to retire to. Worm powders also, idiot, and sheep dip. We once had to put down a neighbour’s Alsatian th
at wouldn’t stop chasing our flock and killing the lambs. Vati made me hold the dog while he gave it two drops. Only two.’
‘Three or four are sufficient for an adult human—less than sixty milligrams, but more has been used, I think. Though oily, nicotine is soluble in most liquids. The taste is violently acrid and instantly burns the tongue and stomach, but by then it has already struck the central nervous system and most especially the sympathetic and parasympathetic ganglia, where it stops the production of acetylcholine which the nerve endings would normally produce in an attempt to counteract the poison.’
End of lecture. ‘But who the hell in the agence uses sheep dip, if indeed that was what was used?’
‘Someone like yourself who has either worked on a farm or sheep ranch, or has used it simply as an insecticide but witnessed its potential.’
‘Jeannot Raymond … Did he go back to the agence to get it, while we were both in with the colonel and the others?’
‘Earlier I didn’t have time to look in his office. It might not even have been there.’
‘And the pear brandy?’
‘Enjoys it as I do on occasion, but perhaps more often. Noëlle Jourdan is of the same age and looks a lot like Giselle, Hermann. Please remember that if we find her, it may not be Giselle. Let me be the one to look closely, not yourself.’
Duels, eyes pierced and poisons, place des Vosges had seen them all and too often. Number 24 had been de Vitry’s hôtel particulier in 1617 when he’d assassinated Concino Concini, the Florentine, on the whispered orders of a sixteen-year-old boy, King Louis XIII. Concini had, of course, been his mother’s probable lover and definite favourite, Marie de Medici who’d been queen of France for ten years and had been married to Henry IV, that ‘chicken-in-every-peasant’s-pot-every-Sunday’ king who’d been stabbed to death in 1610, and certainly Concini, made maréchal de France and marquis d’Ancre by her, had been too greedy and had used his spies too often, but to behead that one’s wife, Leonora Galigai, for sorcery and then to burn her at the stake?
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