Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

  The face had the look of dissipation. Too much drink and too many women.

  Von Schaumburg popped the monocle into the hand which had hung there all this time as if waiting for him to spit it out. ‘Behave like the soldier you once were, Sergeant Kohler. This,’ he indicated the corpse, ‘is to be handled with discretion not with the fingers of a clumsy ox. The General von Richthausen, the Kommandant of Barbizon, has asked for my assistance in the matter as have others. Discretion, Kohler. Discretion. Need I say more?’

  Old Shatter Hand himself. ‘No, General. I think I’ve got the message.’

  ‘Good. Then I give you exactly two days to clear the matter up. Any suggestions of impropriety from either the corpse or yourselves and I will take the appropriate action. Am I understood?’

  Not just down to sergeant, but stripped of all rank. ‘Yes, General, you’re understood.’

  ‘Now see that the body is treated with respect.’

  He fixed them each with a last glance, hesitating but a fraction longer with St-Cyr.

  Then he turned and left them.

  ‘Probably going to inspect the brothels,’ snorted Kohler. ‘That always gets him in an uproar.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about the possibility of the boy being a priest,’ offered St-Cyr.

  ‘Did I have a chance? The Jew business was better.’

  ‘Von Schaumburg’s no fool, Hermann. He knows far more about this than he’s saying.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  St-Cyr ran his eyes over the boy. A name had been called out into the darkness as the sound of the bicycle had approached. Then the brakes had been applied. There’d have been hesitation, the boy searching the roadside before saying softly, ——is that really you?

  Yes … Yes, it’s me,——

  But you were supposed to meet me at——. Why didn’t you?

  We were late. Something came up. Did you bring the purse?

  Yes … Yes, I’ve got it.

  Then the boulder – grasped fiercely in both hands and smashed against that forehead with all the strength of her tender years.

  Or did they argue first? Did the boy not demand something in exchange for the purse?

  Did he honestly have that look about him? A blackmailer? Ah no, not him.

  A priest, a saint, a novice.

  Tears … terror – the realization of what she’d done. A torn stocking. No time. Must climb. Must run!

  Now wait – wait, Louis. The position of the hands, eh? The hands, my friend.

  The forest then, and then, at the end of that footpath, scraped and bruised and still in tears, she would have yanked the car door open. Madame … Madame, I have lost the purse!

  Idiot! Go back and find it. You must!

  No … No, I can’t, madame. I have hit him. He’s dead. I know he’s dead!

  Weeping, the girl collapses on the seat.

  End of scene, end of frame. No splicing needed yet. But why madame? wondered St-Cyr, strangely exhausted by the film his imagination had conjured for him.

  Why not mademoiselle?

  It was an excellent question for which he had no adequate answer, only a feeling that was so hard to explain.

  ‘Louis, I hate to interrupt your thoughts, but have a look at this.’

  Kohler came back into focus through the misty eyes of the cinematographer. There were three small bruises in a tight little row on the fair skin of the boy’s upper right thigh.

  ‘Were you thinking what I am?’ asked the Bavarian. ‘If so, von Schaumburg’s interest may not be out of place.’

  St-Cyr smoothed a thumb over the marks as a wave of sadness engulfed him. ‘No … No I wasn’t, Hermann. My film was quite different and only of the boy’s last moments.’

  * The most notorious of the Intervention-Referat gangs.

  2

  Les Halles had once been the belly of Paris, full of shouts, full of produce, but now … ah, Mon Dieu, it was such a shame, a mere vestige of its former self.

  Pathetic! Yes, that’s what it was. And all because of the curfew! And the gasolene and diesel fuel restrictions, of course.

  St-Cyr flung the cigarette butt away as he strode beneath the first of the colossal iron-and-glass pavilions that had once contained the heart and pulse of Paris and its environs.

  Because of the curfew, the farmers couldn’t get their produce to market until two or three in the afternoon when, normally, they would have started the long journey homeward.

  Because of the fuel restrictions and the requisition of virtually all motor vehicles, only a paltry number of gasogenes struggled into the city, to here.

  Others, of course, had better luck but they unloaded at the best hotels and restaurants, or sold straight off the back and quickly.

  As a result, a flourishing black market existed and those without the cash or trade went hungry while in the north, milk was being fed to the pigs and the potatoes were all being shipped to Germany.

  ‘The Boches are fools,’ he said to the cavern of that empty place. As in the morgue, his steps echoed and seemed to follow him as a man’s conscience should.

  Hermann had gone to his hotel to collect the address book. The Bavarian would stop in at the office to pick up the purse and to check with Records. They’d meet later at Fournier’s.

  He, himself, would try to settle the perfume business.

  Let’s face it, my friend, he said to himself, we’re running scared. This whole thing is beginning to smell.

  There were no vegetable sellers, no carrots to be had, no cabbages, no apples either. As he passed the Bistro St Ruby-Martin, he recalled the 5 a.m. onion soup, the steaming vapours of a late night’s ending over wine as well as coffee and a marc. Sipping and sorting his notes while listening to the background shouts of the market and drinking in the aromas.

  Out on the rue St Denis, he headed for his second choice: the Taverne Moderne, cast out of the 1870s, still complete with its gaslights and Belle Époque etched windows.

  Subdued lighting and crowded little tables with red chequered cloths. Water and ration tickets and maybe … just maybe a bowl of their leek soup with a few croutons to raft about and make the memories come.

  ‘Hello, Henri. Can you look after me, eh?’

  ‘The soup is very good today, monsieur, as is the lamb casserole.’ (The two items were scrawled in chalk on the blackboard.)

  Lamb, squirrel or cat – was it cat? ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed St-Cyr with a famished grin. ‘My wife and little son have gone to see her mother for a few days, so I must fend for myself.’

  Henri couldn’t have cared less. Courville, the great talker and former owner of the Taverne, had sensibly sold up on the day before the Defeat and hadn’t been seen since.

  We’re all new to each other, no matter how many years we’ve known each other, said St-Cyr to himself as he crowded into a shared table with a heavy-set businessman who liked to have the table for his elbows and was forced to move his plate and cutlery into full retreat.

  ‘Monsieur,’ acknowledged St-Cyr with a curt nod, while smoothing out the recovered territory.

  The man merely grunted and continued breaking bread into his casserole. Not a crumb was wasted.

  Water in the lamb. Was it a stew, then? wondered St-Cyr. These days one took what one got.

  He spread two bread tickets and one meat coupon on the table only to hear his other half grunt, ‘You’ll only need the one for bread. Don’t tempt the bastard with two. There’s no wine, so forget it.’

  No wine. The blood of France. He thought to ask, just in case, then looked around and thought better of it. To a man, the patrons attended to their lunch with dogged determination.

  So what are we to do? he asked himself. That business of the tiny bruises was not healthy, nor was the business of the negative Barbizon’s photographer had retained.

  He would send a money order off from the post office, then he’d head for the classy shops of the Place Vendôme. But would knowing the perfu
me lead to the woman, and what if she were found, what then?

  The leek soup was perfect. Magnificent! Such an aroma, one could derive sustenance from its vapours alone.

  He longed for a little grated cheese.

  The man across the table said, ‘Use some of your bread. You’ll get no croutons from them.’

  St-Cyr wished he’d go away.

  Two days … that’s all they had. Perhaps a third if there was significant progress.

  He hoped the thing really had nothing to do with the Resistance. Hermann couldn’t be expected to tread lightly.

  So far they had avoided the inevitable. Each day, however, had brought them closer and closer to that final moment of decision.

  To kill or not to kill Hermann. He’d hate to have to fire the shots. The Resistance would hunt him down in any case. They’d never listen. Not to him.

  I live on the edge of a chasm, he said to himself. Is it any wonder Marianne could no longer stand it?

  Like so many these days, she had had to make up her mind. She wasn’t a bad woman, ah no, one mustn’t get that idea. Like most Bretons, she was immensely capable, self-reliant and resilient. That business of her not liking the garden was simply because she’d had more than her fair share of farming and had come to Paris to escape it.

  Unlike so many, she had resisted the streets even though desperate. She’d been employed as a domestic in a banker’s villa near St Raphaël. Murder had intervened and he had faced her across an Aubusson carpet and known.

  She had agreed to become his housekeeper – on a trial basis. A virgin at twenty-nine years of age. Can one believe it?

  That job had led to marriage after a year – a year of absolute chastity! Of walking in the parks or along the quais, of sitting shyly in a café when time and work allowed.

  All of which had been thrown away in one month with the Lieutenant Steiner.

  Von Schaumburg’s nephew.

  ‘Don’t you like the casserole?’

  St-Cyr blinked. ‘It’s too hot. I was letting it cool.’

  In the name of Jesus, he cried out to himself, what the hell has happened to me? It was as if God had not only deserted him but had crooked a finger and told him to climb up into Heaven to have a look down at himself.

  If the truth were told, it was the life that she’d hated most but that still didn’t explain why he’d been forced to work for the Germans.

  That I could have done without, he said, but knew it was no use.

  What does one do when one must calm oneself? One walks. One absorbs – takes an interest in one’s surroundings. The Paris of 1942 was vastly different from the Paris he had known. Oh for sure, the streets still beckoned but they were often so empty, so silent. As if on the moon perhaps. St-Cyr felt himself reaching out to them, his body being dissolved through extensions of the pores.

  He began to think of the film of the murder, to run it back through the projector, stopping at each frame.

  From a vendor’s steaming charcoal burner outside the National Library he didn’t ask, How come the charcoal, my friend? but only for a bag of roasted chestnuts.

  From a flower-seller on the Place Vendôme he bought two last white roses and a red carnation.

  The chestnuts, half gone by then, were meaty and full of flavour. The roses piqued his nostrils.

  The film had stopped again at the positioning of the body, the hands in particular. Had the woman done that and then left no trace of her having done so? Had the girl still been sobbing her heart out in the car?

  It was a thought – one certainly couldn’t expect a maid, a silly young thing who’d just killed her lover, to …?

  Ah, her lover? He continued cranking the projector … one certainly couldn’t expect the girl to have paused after having killed the boy, to have done such a considerate thing as to have laid the arms to the sides and turned the hands outwards, to have turned the head sideways and laid it on a bed of leaves …

  No, the woman, the driver of that car – and by now he was thinking it must have been a big car, something flashy – the woman must have brought the girl back and done it herself. But then … why then, that would indicate the boy must have meant something to her.

  And, of course, she did not go after the purse. At least, he didn’t think she had.

  Again he brought the roses up to his nose, first pinching the left nostril and then the right.

  After a decent interval it was the carnation’s turn, he filling his lungs slowly while cursing the habit of tobacco which only ruined one’s sense of smell.

  Then the chestnuts, first the crumpled bag and both nostrils for a whiff, then a single nut broken with the front teeth, the pinching of a single nostril.

  The frames of the film were now being seen before the Place Vendôme whose column of stone rose beneath spiralled bronze and Trojan horses to a bust of Napoleon as Caesar.

  Unsandbagged by the Germans who thronged the Place with their French girlfriends or who walked stiffly as they always did, among the Parisians who had come, as always, to window-shop if not to buy.

  There were a few staff cars, suitably polished, a few generals …

  If one discounted the uniforms and took in the lingerie, one could almost believe there was no Occupation.

  This, too, was a sadness. The fashion industry’s ready acceptance and open doors.

  But, he gave a shrug, not to have opened those doors was to have gone against the decree of 20 June 1940, and to have lost the businesses.

  From the Opéra to the Étoile, from the Madeleine to the Champs-Elysées, the rue Royale and the Faubourg St-Honoré, business was still booming, though things were, of course, more difficult to obtain.

  The lingerie grew closer. Silks, satins and midnight lace, through which the mannequins’ figures could not but show, were seen beyond the film, the girl, the boulder, the instant of death, the woman in her car, anxiously smoking a cigarette while waiting for her maid to bring her that purse. Waiting …

  St-Cyr wiped his shoes on the mat and removed his hat before entering the shop which had, so suitably, been named, Enchantment.

  The silver bell rang. The polished oak panelling, glass display cases and marble columns met his eyes. Aphrodite beckoned in life-sized alabaster with splendidly uptilted breasts and the scents of perfume and toilet soaps about her. Diana stood in gold with arrow pointing, and a laundry-basketful of undergarments scattered at her feet.

  ‘A woman must undress to dress, Louis.’

  ‘Chantal, it’s magnificent to see you looking so lovely.’

  St-Cyr took her hand in his and brought it to his lips – never mind the Nazis browsing in the shop with their French whores, never mind the war, being married and deserted by one’s wife and only child, never mind any of it.

  ‘How’s Muriel?’ he asked. ‘Me, I don’t see her, Chantal. Has she …?’

  The tiny bird of a woman smiled – she had such a beautiful smile. Perfectly done. Never too much. ‘She’s fine. And you, my friend?’

  They were both well up in their seventies. ‘Me? Ah, fine, of course. Here, I have brought you each one of the last roses I could find.’

  She kissed his cheek and embraced him as such women do. Like a feather, like a breath of delicately scented air.

  Vivacious, made-up, wearing a dress of the latest cutting – dark blue, very close-fitting, calf-length and matching the high heels – Chantal Grenier had been in the business all her life, as had her partner and associate.

  The hair was blonde – never grey – cut short and bobbed in the latest fashion. The rings and bracelets were of silver today, of lapis lazuli. A blue day then – did it have some meaning or was it merely the whim of fashion?

  She had a very tiny voice, very clear and bell-like. ‘You are suitably impressed, Louis. This pleases me.’ She tossed her little head and smiled again before pursing her lips. ‘But come … come.’ She gathered him in by the arm. ‘Let me show you the shop. We’ve changed the décor. Did you not notic
e more than those?’ She indicated the statues with a toss of a hand. ‘Mere trifles, Louis. Stone and fake gold. Men need the real thing, eh? Isn’t that so?’

  At once the energy flowed from her in motion, the eyes, the tossing of the head, the purposeful strut.

  Still very beautiful, she made him welcome. After all, he was a cop, and God would not have had it otherwise, eh? Ah no. Not with this one.

  ‘Your wife was in this morning with a certain someone,’ she whispered coyly. Cruel … it was so cruel of her to do that. Muriel would be sure to scold her. Muriel.

  ‘Jeanette, see to the Captain, would you please, dearest? He’s shy, that one, eh? Try to ease his mind. You’re so good at it.’

  A burly, plod-minded Prussian the size of Kohler. A general with an Iron Cross First-Class with Oak Leaves was gazing benignly on.

  To the Eurasian shopgirl, Chantal said, ‘Kim, I want the silks brushed. Please, I insist, dear. All of them. You do such a superb job of it. Ah, Mon Dieu, Louis, if all our girls were as good as this one, there’d be no troubles.’

  They reached the far end of the shop and passed between rows of headless, legless mannequins whose remaining anatomy was flimsily clad.

  ‘One shouldn’t sneeze in the company of such women,’ offered St-Cyr drily.

  ‘Nor in the company of these, Louis.’ She parted the curtains and said, ‘Girls, it’s all right. This is only Monsieur Jean-Louis St-Cyr, the famous detective from the Sûreté.’

  They were naked and there were three of them. All trying on the latest things while Muriel, grey-haired and dressed in a severe suit of grey pinstripe with broad lapels, smoked one of her endless cigarettes and hardly lifted an eye to him.

  ‘They’re a feast, aren’t they, Louis?’ teased Chantal, squeezing his arm. ‘Me, I thought you would like to see them. That one with the dark hair and the splendid breasts is Martine; that one who is very petite like me and so magnificent, is Brigitte, and the last, a favourite for us because she is everything a young girl should be, is Julie. Alas, they are all taken, Louis, but me, I will console you.’

  They took tea in the cluttered office. St-Cyr fingered fabrics – silks, taffetas, crushed velvets, satins and laces. He loved to touch them.