‘His voice is changing to that of a cicada and the matter can no longer be hidden. Even God has refused to intervene.’
‘The tonsils could be removed,’ quipped Christiane, feeling a little better, a little more secure.
‘The testicles, I think, but Monsieur le Maréchal would never allow such a thing.’
Not with over 500,000 dead so far in this war, 1,500,000 locked up in POW camps in the Reich and still others away with the British or in Africa. So many had died in the Great War of 1914 – 18, the birthrate had remained disastrously low, and as a result, Maréchal Pétain and his government in Vichy preached the code of the family, rewarding fruitful mothers, frowning on birth control and denying abortion on pain of imprisonment and even death.
‘Today women need servicing, no matter how young the sperm,’ offered Genèvieve.
‘But will the widow’s basket take his head before a harvest has been sown that lasts?’ asked Christiane softly.
The guillotine …
They looked at one another steadily and each reached out with a forefinger to tenderly silence the lips of the other.
‘Xavier!’ came the thunderous shout. ‘Xavier, you little bastard, don’t you dare defy me!’
‘Be quiet,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Sit down, shut up and let the rook crow.’
‘Maudit salaud!’ hissed the boy. ‘If that cocksucker lays another hand on me I’ll kill him!’
‘Doucement! To admit to such a desire in front of a detective is foolish.’
The blue eyes narrowed, the sensuous lips compressed. ‘Foolish or not, I mean it! I’ve taken all the crap I’ll ever take from him.’
Xavier yanked off the white surplice he had been wearing when found rooting around in the props room. Crumpling it into a ball, he defiantly waited for his mentor to kick the door in.
They heard Brother Matthieu encountering Hermann upstairs, heard Christiane Bissert and Genèvieve Ravier laughingly calling out, ‘But he left us ages ago, Father.’ ‘To the Cathedral, I think.’
When the double doors finally opened, it was a subdued but still distrustful brother who entered, searched among the props, and finally confronted them in a far corner. ‘Xavier, the bishop is angry. You know how important this funeral is to him. The Kommandant has to see the full strength of the Church, its magnificence, its power.’
‘Forgive me, mon père. The detective detained me. I … I couldn’t leave.’
Liar! hissed St-Cyr silently, we had only just met.
A nod passed from brother to boy. Sadness filled the elder’s dark grey eyes. The rugged cheeks and chin, with all their scars and grey-black bristles, were gripped in thought, a decision soon made. ‘Go now. Apologize as only you know how. Tell His Eminence you’ll sing your heart out for him tonight, no matter what happens to your voice, and that you and I have spoken. Beg him to choose whatever time is most convenient.’
The surplice was dutifully untangled by the boy. Clucking his tongue, and automatically sucking at his twisted, wounded lips to stop himself from slobbering – a constant problem so many of the Broken Mugs had to face – the brother tugged the garment down, smoothed it over the boy’s shoulders and sadly shook his head. ‘How many times must I tell you your future is with God? Xavier, your voice will return as that of a man, and will be perfect in every way. A tenor, I have it in my prayers and God listens, believe me.’
‘You should’ve come earlier,’ said the boy softly.
The gueule cassées head was tossed as if struck. ‘I was detained. An errand, idiot! Now don’t defy me any more!’
‘A moment, Brother,’ cautioned the Sûreté. ‘A few small questions.’
‘Must you?’ leapt the priest.
‘Unfortunately, yes. You lied to my partner. You told him Xavier had run off home at news of the murder when, really, he had returned to the city well before dawn on the very day she was killed. Was it a week or ten days at the harvest, Xavier?’
Warning glances passed between the two. ‘Ten days.’
The boy would offer little; the brother even less. ‘You stopped in to see the victim,’ said St-Cyr.
‘I took her some things.’
Must he always be so insolent? ‘Olives, a bottle of oil, a rope of garlic, another of sun-dried tomatoes. She was “special”, Xavier, but in what way, please?’
‘She made me nice outfits. One always massages the neck of those who make one look good.’
The little bastard, thought St-Cyr.
‘Inspector, is this necessary?’ asked Brother Matthieu.
‘You know it is.’
‘Then can’t it wait?’
Folding screens, their paint flaked and ancient, crowded closely. Fourteenth-century scenes of gardens, villas, turtledoves and bathing nymphs appeared – trysts under moonlight along the river with lutes and shawms, the Palais in the background or the Pont Saint-Bénézet. Carved fruitwood panels were festooned with carnival masks, banners and ribbons, heraldic shields and crossed horns, a cittern …
‘We’re like marchands forains,’ spat the boy on noticing how sharply the Sûreté had stepped over to the wooden-tined rakes, flails, scythes, hoes, shovels, butter-churns and cartwheels supposedly from a mas of some six hundred years or less ago.
Like travelling stall-keepers …‘Your sickle’s missing,’ said the Sûreté flatly. ‘Where is it, please?’
Ah dear Jésus…‘The sickle?’ blurted Brother Matthieu.
‘It was stolen in Aix on our last tour,’ said Xavier, only to see the Sûreté look away through the maze of props past the andirons of a Renaissance farm kitchen to the shoulder-high candlesticks of a sixteenth-century villa and a mirrored trumeau. Sheaves of wheat and barley, dried lavender, sage, thyme and winter grass met the detective’s eye until at last that one said coldly, ‘Does your God excuse lying? Must an examining magistrate decide?’
‘Inspector …’
‘Brother, let the boy answer. You may, however, remind him that my partner found him with two nine-millimetre rounds in his pockets. Sufficient, as you and I both well know, for the Kommandant or the District Gestapo to send him into deportation.’
‘The killer must’ve taken our sickle, Inspector,’ said Xavier blandly. ‘Wasn’t it found with the other things in the Latrines Pit?’
The page-boy styled dark brown hair had been smoothed in place by the brother, but the boy had shrugged off the hands and had moved aside.
‘Did you tidy up after the killing,’ asked the Sûreté, ‘or did your mentor?’
‘Inspector …’
‘Silence, Brother!’
The boy found his mégot tin and, selecting three choice butts, crumbled them into a palm and proceeded to deftly roll himself a forbidden cigarette.
‘I “tidied” nothing. Why not ask Salvatore, since he was the one who found her a moment after the killing when he could so easily have found her a moment before?’
‘Now listen, you …’
‘Xavier, tell him.’
A drag was taken and held until exhaled through the nostrils, the boy sizing the two of them up as if they were already old men whose time had passed.
‘The rounds were for Dédou Favre who was to have met her in the Palais that night. Dédou had a stolen Luger but no bullets, so Mireille took a couple from the Kommandant’s house when he wasn’t looking. When I got to her place on the rue du Rempart du Rhone, it was well before dawn and freezing, but Dédou never showed up. Mireille was worried about him coming to the Palais to meet her after her audition as they’d planned. She felt the préfet might somehow have found out about the meeting. She wanted me to give Dédou the rounds and to tell him not to come if he felt it best, but I couldn’t find him.’
A member of the maquis … The 100,000-franc reward for all such betrayals would have had to be forgone, thought St-Cyr, so too praise from the préfet, the bishop and the Kommandant. It just didn’t seem possible. The urge to accuse the boy of lying was very strong but it would be best to draw in an impatient brea
th and leave the matter for now. Brother Matthieu looked as if searching the Sûreté to see if the lie had taken hold.
‘You arrived at her flat at about what time?’
‘Five-thirty, the new time.’
Berlin Time. 4.30 a.m., the old, and after walking all night from les Baux, lugging a heavy rucksack.
‘She was really pleased to get the soap,’ hazarded the boy. ‘She’d asked for it especially.’
He was grinning now at the thought of her naked, no doubt, but Brother Matthieu looked as if ready to smack his charge’s face for being so cheeky. ‘How long did you stay with her?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Not long. I had to find Dédou, remember? There’s a hollow along the ramparts not far from the Porte du Rhône – I’ll show it to you if you like. I knew he’d be waiting there because that’s where she said he’d be.’
‘And when you didn’t find him?’
‘She was most distressed and said, “I have to go through with it anyway. I must.”’
‘With what, apart from the audition?’
The Sûreté was like a dog after a scent. Well this one would cock its leg, thought Xavier.
Cigarette ash was insolently flicked aside.
‘I’ve no idea. She had her little secrets. One didn’t press.’
I’ll bet! scoffed St-Cyr inwardly. ‘You took her a grive last autumn, in November.’
One must match tone with tone. ‘Nino had brought it to me instead of to His Holiness, so by rights it was mine. One less would not have mattered.’
The memory was savoured, a touch of softness entering until asked who Nino was.
‘One of the hounds. A beagle bitch with the name of a male.’
‘A friend?’ asked the Sûreté softly.
‘They’re all ‘friends’. Each one of the pack is special. They’d only get jealous of one another otherwise. Don’t you know anything about dogs?’
Nino. ‘When was the grive taken?’
‘In October. The first week, I think. I can’t remember.’
‘But you kept it for a while?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then that’s all for now. You’re free to leave. Get out, the two of you.’ But when they had reached the door, he called to them from well within the room and barely in sight. ‘A moment. I almost forgot. Who gave her a key to the Palais or left the entrance door open for her since the concierge was attending a film?’
Brother Matthieu swore.
Xavier hesitated and then said calmly, ‘César. He didn’t want her to be late.’
Christiane Bissert had said Brother Matthieu had given the victim the key. ‘And Monsieur Simondi told you this?’ asked St-Cyr.
The boy shook his head. ‘Mireille did. She wondered if the third judge would be Madame Simondi since Avignon’s petite pomme frite had told her the Kommandant was certain to refuse.’
Avignon’s little French fried potato … Frau von Mahler. How cruel of the boy to have called the woman that, a victim of Köln’s firestorms. ‘And was Madame Simondi that third judge?’
The urge to ask, What do you think?, was there but unwise. ‘That little matter was always kept secret, Inspector. How could I possibly know?’
‘There was also Monsieur Renaud, Inspector. A notary,’ interjected Brother Matthieu. ‘An old friend of Monsieur Simondi and of the girl’s family. Mademoiselle de Sinéty often went to see him when in search of information or to borrow things.’
‘Enseignes, jewels and coins?’ asked the Sûreté and waited for the brother to oblige.
‘The rue des Teinturiers, near the fourth waterwheel, or is it the fifth?’
The street of the dye-workers.
The door was closed, the storeroom soon quiet. For a moment St-Cyr argued with himself. Should he have Xavier taken into custody, or could he leave things for the present?
When he found, under folded tapestries in an old trunk, a wine-purple, gold-embroidered ecclesiastical pouch, he sighed.
There were wrist-watches, diamond rings, necklaces, brooches, cufflinks, several pairs of ear-rings, a gold lipstick, gold compact, a cigarette lighter and two cigarette cases, both of which were engraved with the names, no doubt, of the owners of the abandoned villas from which they’d been taken.
Xavier’s little hoard had been laid by for a rainy day, and from this, quite obviously, had come the wrist-watch Hermann had found in the victim’s handbag. But there was more, much more.
There was a thick twist of reddish blonde hair.
‘Herr Kohler, why do you ask about a girl we hardly knew?’ Marius Spaggiari, the bass, looked to the others for support.
‘Students come and go all the time,’ offered Norman Galiteau, the baritone.
‘Few succeed, no matter their discipline, be it the violin, piano or voice,’ hazarded Guy Rochon.
They’d made damned certain he wouldn’t talk to them one at a time. ‘Something’s come to light. My partner will be expecting me to see if I can’t find out a little more.’
‘But … but what’s there to tell? A strawberry blonde …?’ blurted Galiteau.
‘We get a few of those,’ countered Spaggiari.
Fixed up by the students as a lounge, the lower of the tower rooms was furnished with sagging armchairs, chaise longues and sofas from the twenties. The carpet was worn and stained by booze, vomit and food. The flea-market lamp shades were yellowed and unravelling. Above a marble mantelpiece, a gilded Venetian mirror, with streaked and stained backing, was being held by the outstretched arms of sumptuous, avant-garde nudes who licentiously defied the viewer not to look at them while gazing in the mirror.
The. room wasn’t used for ‘their music and … and other things in winter’, the girl Gina had said and been censored. It had been Galiteau who had led the way, hoping, no doubt, to soon freeze him out, but they’d been getting nowhere until he’d mentioned the girl – not the postcard, never that until needed.
‘Her name was Adrienne de Langlade,’ said Guy Rochon. The boy was twenty-two years old, very fit, tall, good-looking and with wavy, auburn hair and the finely boned features of the French aristocracy. The eyes were a greeny brown, the brows wide and curved, the smile engaging, open and honest if one wanted to believe this.
I don’t, said Kohler to himself. ‘How old was she?’
Rochon shrugged. Galiteau answered. ‘Twenty … the same age as Christiane.’
They were just too wary, and oh bien sûr they had a lot to lose if their little group should be broken up – years of forced labour for them. They were ripe for it. ‘Let me question this one first, eh? Then I’ll get to the two of you.’
They didn’t like it. Spaggiari drifted off to the windows. ‘Monique is returning,’ he announced. ‘She’s talking to one of our German tenants who’s asking her what’s in her string bag. “Some carrots, Herr Freisler. A cabbage,”’ he fluted. ‘Freisler’s suspicious of her violin case and wants her to open it, Inspector, but knows she’ll refuse unless ordered to. Drugs, alcohol, condoms … who knows what students will try to hide? Our Otto is with the Ministry of Trade, an exporter of olive oil, among other things, and a closet pornographer.’
‘His wife attends our concerts,’ offered Galiteau, whose beatific expression suggested mischief, only to hear Kohler saying, ‘I thought I told you two to be quiet?
‘Now where were we?’ he said, flipping open his little black notebook to look over the pages of answers with nothing in them so far.
‘She drowned. An accident, we were told,’ offered Rochon. There was a seven-centimetre scar on the back of his left hand. ‘A cut I received last autumn from a broken bottle.’
‘Drunk were you?’
‘A little. It … it was really nothing. An accident.’
‘Just like this drowning you were telling me about.’
‘Inspector, we’ve already told you, students come and go,’ insisted Spaggiari, not turning from the windows. ‘At times we have fifteen or so living here in addition to our group, at p
resent only five others. All girls. The boys …’
‘Have thought better of hanging around, eh?’
Kohler was referring to the forced labour call-ups. A shrug would be best. ‘We’re “essential” workers and must remain in France, or hadn’t you noticed?’
Very much of the Midi, the Basso Continuo’s strongly boned face wore an expression that seemed always to be grave. In his mid-thirties, a professional singer for years and probably exceptional, thought Kohler, one thing was clear. He knew exactly what had happened to this other girl but wasn’t about to say a damned thing. A leader, and what was it Louis had muttered on the train south from Paris? ‘Everything in a madrigal is built from the bass up.’
The baritone sat on the couch with cushions pulled tightly in on either side of him, for security perhaps – did he need that? He was rotund, cherubic behind those specs of his, very musical no doubt but did he always delight in mischief and in showing up dumb-assed detectives from Bavaria?
Something would have to be done to break the impasse. Never one to sit still for long, Kohler got up and took out his cigarettes but was forced to set his notebook and pencil on the mantelpiece.
Verdammt! Now what was this? he wondered. ‘Hey, mes fins, it’s the little things in life that matter, isn’t it?’ he quipped, not looking at any of them but rather into the mirror. ‘These days the chance happening can so easily change everything. One moment the street is calm and everyone is going about their business, the next you accidentally trip and draw attention to yourself. They rush you. They grab you. “I’ve done nothing!” you cry. “Nothing!”’
He hesitated. He had their attention now. ‘But then those bastards question you for hours, eh? And maybe they beat the shit out of you and make you swear to anything.’
The Gestapo or the Vichy goons, the Service d’Ordre, too, and others. The French Gestapo …‘Inspector, what have you found?’ asked Rochon who was still standing closest to him.
‘A photograph. It’s slipped down behind the mantelpiece but once must have rested on it.’
Taking out the pocket-knife the Kaiser had given to him and countless others in those early days before the Great War, Kohler began to prise the photo from its depths. Smoke from the hearth had darkened the upper half a little, the photo having turned itself around as it had slipped. But it was still clear, still good enough …
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