Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

  When the courtyard door swung open at a touch, St-Cyr had the thought the Corsican brothers had fled. He leaned the bicycle against the only free space of wall, slipped off the trouser clips and fitted the sturdy pre-war kilogram of Sûreté brass through a ring in the wall and through the spokes of the back wheel.

  Locking the courtyard door, he undid the buttons of his overcoat and jacket, then loosened the Lebel in its holster. All very meticulous, all a routine.

  Satisfied, he started for the stage door. Hermann would, no doubt, be busy with von Schaumburg or be on his way to Kiev. Right now there was only time for questions. All other thoughts must be erased, though he’d have liked to say goodbye if it should come to that.

  Goodbye to a German, a Nazi, but not a very good one, a member of their Gestapo … but then, Hermann was Hermann and in better times they might well have gone fishing together, so what was the sense of making excuses to himself? The war had tossed them together and that was all there was to it.

  He was standing in the dimly lit corridor, had almost reached Gabrielle Arcuri’s dressing-room, when one of the girls suddenly appeared in her housecoat. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she shrilled hoarsely. ‘A copper?’

  How easily one could tell if one had the experience.

  ‘St-Cyr of the Sûreté.’

  ‘Jesus, another one! Hey, Remi! Remi! I’m being robbed!… That’ll bring him,’ she said, the pale blue eyes grey with suspicion. ‘If I’d said raped, he’d not have bothered. So, what’s it this time, eh? Hey, you’re the one with the partner. You’re the guys they told us about. You’re off the case, Inspector. We’re not supposed to talk to you. St-Cyr … yes … yes, that was it, and Crowler or Cowler …’

  ‘Kohler.’

  ‘Yes … yes, that was it. Kohler. You’ll get nothing from us. We run a respectable club.’

  The Corsican ‘brothers’ squeezed into the corridor, each moving so swiftly they jostled one another and fought for space. Remi Rivard, the one with the face like a mountain, was the taller of the two. He lifted his wife out of the way with one hand. She didn’t say a thing.

  ‘A few questions,’ offered St-Cyr.

  The fists were doubled, the dark eyes leapt at him. ‘Beat it, Inspector. Your fangs have been pulled. Talbotte himself has said he’ll shut us down if we so much as fart your way.’

  ‘Then it’s what Talbotte didn’t tell you that you’d better listen to, my friend. A pastis, I think, and a little chat before the fire.’

  ‘Fire? What fire?’ shrieked the Corsicans. They were both livid.

  ‘Yes, fire. You’ve been targeted by the Resistance. Talbotte won’t have told you this but I, Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté, offer it on the platter of my friendship.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ said the shorter of the two.

  ‘Then warm your hands at the blaze knowing I could have stopped it.’

  He was unlocking the bicycle when the three of them came into the courtyard to brave the day. The woman looked dusty. Her slippers didn’t match. The fake feather trim on the pink housecoat caught the ugly twisting of a frigid eddy.

  She clutched the garment’s throat and huddled between the giants.

  ‘So, okay, smart-ass, you can come in but it had better be good,’ rumbled Remi. The barrel of his chest was clothed in plaid and the leather jerkin was open. Did the two of them never change their clothes?

  The woman went first, and disappeared up a thin flight of stairs through a door one would have thought to be that of a water closet.

  The Corsicans led him down the linoleum path and into the bar whose perpetual light gave the half-glow of the desolate. The bottles looked like so many rows of coloured water.

  Leon Rivard was the one with the face of ground meat, the shorter of the two, but not by much. It was he who poured the pastis – one glass – and set a small pitcher of water beside it on the zinc. ‘So, my friend, this little business of the fire?’

  St-Cyr knew he’d have to lie like Tarzan.

  The water had a skin. He added some to the pastis anyway. He’d take his time.

  The green became cloudy – Philippe had thought it magic. Philippe … He shut the boy out of his mind and took a sip. ‘So, what Talbotte would not have told you is that this thing is very much a matter of the Resistance and that they’ve got your number.’

  ‘We’re waiting,’ breathed the mountain.

  The two of them were now behind the bar. ‘Yvette Noel was executed for her part in things. Now it is your turn, and that of Mademoiselle Arcuri. They’re serious. Talbotte hasn’t been able to make contact with them, and neither have the Gestapo or the SD, but I have.’

  ‘We’re still waiting,’ said Leon.

  Would they now think to set their knives on the bar? So, okay, my friends, here goes. ‘Last night my partner chased a couple on a borrowed Wehrmacht motorcycle. During the chase one of the saddlebags fell off and guess what?’

  ‘You do the guessing,’ grunted the mountain.

  ‘Incendiaries,’ said St-Cyr, reaching for his glass. ‘Property of the Sicherheitsdienst over on the avenue Foch, though don’t ask me how the Resistance got them. These incendiaries are of a new type – perhaps you’ve seen them, eh?’ He gave the brothers a moment. ‘They have excellent timers – delays of up to four hours. You know how those people in the SD are. Always playing games. Murders, countersubversion, actions against the Jews and political people, et cetera, et cetera. Well, along with the incendiaries was the address of your club.’

  ‘We’re still waiting,’ offered Leon, but this time he reached for a bottle of marc and poured his brother and himself a shot.

  St-Cyr raised his glass and said, ‘Salut!

  ‘We’re still waiting,’ said Remi.

  No one could have guessed what the two of them were thinking. ‘So, okay. It’s what was in the other saddlebag, eh? Six more of those little beauties – six, my friends! Our contact tells us that the lover of one of the Resistance people loaned the couple that bike and that the Resistance plan to use you as an example to others. You won’t know who carries those nasty little things into the club and you won’t know when they’ll be set to explode because, my friends, one of them has a boyfriend in the German Army and this kid has got his heart set on deserting rather than face the prospect of the Russian Front. Or perhaps it’s merely for love, who knows, eh? Sex is a funny thing. People do the craziest things because of it, isn’t that so?’

  St-Cyr took a sip and held the pastis on the back of his tongue. They’d either buy the story or forget it, but they couldn’t afford not to give it some consideration.

  The brothers ignored their drinks. It could be true. It was far more likely the puddle of a departing goose.

  Remi Rivard fingered the rim of his glass. They could leave it but what was this flic really playing at? Elements of truth mixed in with fiction? ‘What do you want in exchange?’

  A wise people, the Corsicans. ‘Another pastis and a few answers. Talbotte can screw himself as far as we’re concerned. We’ll pick the boy and his girlfriend up and throw a wrench into their little plans but only if you co-operate. Otherwise,’ he shrugged, ‘we can always leave them for a few more days just to make sure we catch the lot of them.’

  It was the shorter one, Leon, who made the decisions but there was no nod to his brother, nothing but the slightest movement of the eyes, or had it been the way he’d put his weight on the left foot?

  St-Cyr dug deeply into a pocket and took out the pair of dice he’d had since joining the Sûreté. Much worn, the ivory dull and yellowed by innumerable nights spent tossing them while trying to squeeze answers, he held them a moment in his open palm then tossed them on the zinc.

  ‘A pair of threes,’ he said as if in wonder. ‘Everything in life is such a gamble, eh? The Resistance gamble with their lives, you do it with money and perhaps your lives as well, eh? And I do it. Gabrielle Arcuri does and so did her maid, Yvette Noel. Fire’s a gamble too, especially now wit
h all those planes flying over and keeping the pumper trucks busy elsewhere.’

  ‘Some guy telephoned Yvette after you and that partner of yours had left the club.’

  ‘She smiled at me,’ offered Remi. ‘Yvette, she has said, “I have to go out. Tell Mademoiselle Arcuri it’s all going to be fixed.”’

  ‘Pardon?’ asked St-Cyr, grabbing the dice.

  ‘Fixed – you know …’ offered the mountain.

  ‘Yes, of course I know what it means, but are you absolutely certain that’s what she said?’

  ‘Leon, this prick isn’t worth talking to.’

  ‘Now wait, my friends. We must be certain, eh? It’s important.’

  Remi gripped the edge of the bar as if he were about to lift it out of the way. ‘Fixed, fixed, fixed! In the name of Jesus, what the hell else do you want me to say?’

  It was Leon who urged caution. ‘The guy picked her up in a car about half an hour later. By then Yvette had changed her clothes and got dolled up a bit. She was never much, that one. A little lipstick, a bit of perfume maybe, but… Ah, she didn’t have the money to dress.’

  ‘Are you sure it was a man who picked her up?’

  The brothers shrugged. ‘Would a woman have killed her?’ asked Leon.

  ‘That’s not impossible but, yes, it’s far more likely the murderer was a man,’ offered St-Cyr.

  ‘But not from the Resistance, eh?’ said the face of ground meat, watching him so closely one could see the ghost of a wily smile behind the suspicion in his eyes.

  ‘The Resistance don’t drive cars so easily,’ countered St-Cyr. ‘The SS do.’

  Ah now, so a certain general was at the top of the list and all that shit about firebombs was just the puddling of a goose. But why had the flic let them know?

  St-Cyr gathered in the dice – there was only one way to distract the brothers. He rolled a seven, then an eleven, then snake’s-eyes and a pair of sixes.

  ‘They do what I tell them to,’ he said.

  ‘Yvette was happy when she left here,’ offered the mountain. ‘If we’d known that was going to happen to her, we’d have separated his skull even if he was an SS general.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better explain the “general” part,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Just for the record.’

  Remi, you idiot! thought Leon. Sometimes Remi got carried away, but did he have to fall into that old trap?

  ‘What my brother means, Inspector, is that the General Ackermann often paid the club a visit. Like a lot of other high-ranking Nazis, he came to hear Gabrielle but that was as far as it went, of this I’m certain. Gabrielle … Ah! some women. You know it with them instinctively, isn’t that so? They don’t sleep around. They’re chaste, even if their soldier husbands have been killed and it’s now more than two years since they’ve had it.’

  ‘So, why the condoms that were found in her purse?’

  ‘Rubbers? Gabrielle?’ The brothers were genuinely mystified.

  ‘Why the working in a place like this?’ asked St-Cyr, striking while he could. ‘Excuse me, my friends, but with that voice and that body, Mademoiselle Arcuri could have done much better. Let’s not kid ourselves, eh? The Lido, the Moulin Rouge, the Alhambra, the Shéhérazade, the Cirque Medrano …’

  The two of them leaned over the bar. The mountain spoke through his teeth. The Lune Russe, the Deux Anes and the Noctambule, my fine Monsieur the Detective. Gabrielle is an artist, idiot! She writes a lot of her own material, as she did before the war. Is it that you know so little about her? The Lune Russe used to be her place. Night after night, but then she got married and had a son.’

  ‘So, why did she come to work here?’ The Lune Russe … The Russian Moon …

  ‘Because … because she did and that’s all there is to it, isn’t that so, Leon? One day she walks in the front door and we see the money she’d bring us. We’re not stupid, eh? Cash … a voice like that’s worth millions. She wanted ten per cent and we gave it to her.’

  St-Cyr studied the dice. The Lune Russe, the Deux Anes and the Noctambule were chanteuse clubs in the old tradition, very genteel, very intimate and respectable but not much favoured by the Germans.

  The dice told him to leave it for a moment, to let their suspicions lapse. He rolled a miserable three. ‘Did the General Ackermann ever take her out for dinner, that sort of thing, eh?’

  ‘Sometimes. Maxim’s a couple of times perhaps, the Ritz too … So what? Wouldn’t you have tried?’

  ‘Not with my bankroll. Did he show up here last night?’

  Leon Rivard reached for the dice and rolled a seven straight off and then a pair of snake’s eyes. ‘That one came in later than usual – about twelve, I think – and when he heard that Gabrielle wasn’t singing, he left.’

  ‘What sort of car does Mademoiselle Arcuri drive?’

  So it was on to cars, was it? All by himself the cop was using his noodle. ‘A Peugeot, two-door sedan. Dark blue.’

  Remi tried the dice. St-Cyr let him have a go. The Peugeot was a sensible car, so, too, the colour. Von Schaumburg, as the Kommandant of Greater Paris, would have signed the permit and issued the gasoline allowance. None of the chanteuse clubs would have suited, had this been what she’d had in mind.

  But she could have got the same from any of the more popular places – entertaining the troops gave one special privileges. The brothers had made a decent financial deal with her as well. So, okay, she had the freedom to drive to the château or to Fontainebleau Woods, and she had good enough reasons for working in this dump. Perhaps fewer questions would be asked as well.

  ‘About what time did Mademoiselle Arcuri leave the club?’

  ‘Soon after she discovered Yvette had gone to meet someone. She changed out of her dress, wouldn’t take the last three acts. I gave her 10,000 francs against her wages – we’d often done it before,’ said Leon. ‘Gabrielle’s always been straight with us. This is the first time she hasn’t sung all night.’

  ‘There’s always a first time but like I’ve said, the Resistance are now after her and you’d do well to tell me everything if you want her back.’

  ‘Then get them for us!’ breathed the mountain, still clutching the dice.

  ‘Today. This morning, Very soon,’ said St-Cyr. ‘So, a pastis for your thoughts and for the road, my friends?’

  No self-respecting cop would offer to pay for the drinks in circumstances such as this and he didn’t offer. They’d only have been doubly suspicious if he had. ‘The boy, Jérome – Yvette’s young brother – did he ever come here to see her?’

  The bottle stopped. The pastis dribbled down the glass. Leon Rivard finished pouring. ‘We didn’t know she had a brother.’

  No, of course they didn’t. Merde! They were so difficult!

  St-Cyr reached for the water and added a drop just to let them know he liked his pastis almost neat at times like this. ‘Me, I think he did and I think you should tell me about it while there’s still time.’

  ‘Was he murdered too?’ asked Remi.

  St-Cyr set his empty glass on the bar between them and picked up the dice. Without a word, he turned and walked away. He was unlocking the bicycle when the brothers stepped into the cold.

  It was Leon who did the talking. ‘Yvette had to find her brother a place to stay. Number 17 rue Daguerre, on the other side of the cemetery. Our Aunt Isabella … she’s the concierge. Jérome … Jérome didn’t stay there often. He’d come for a few days. Yvette would be upset, in tears – frantic – and then the brother would go away and she’d settle down again.’

  ‘We advanced her money for him against Gabrielle’s share,’ said Remi.

  ‘And Mademoiselle Arcuri, what was her part in all of this?’ asked St-Cyr.

  The two of them exchanged glances. Leon said, ‘Gabrielle had no use for Yvette’s brother and told the girl she was a fool to help him.’

  She said the family ought to disown him, that to fail as a priest was to bring disgrace down on the whole of Vouvray and its s
urroundings,’ offered the mountain.

  ‘But she didn’t kill him, Inspector. Not Gabrielle, and she wouldn’t have killed Yvette either, not even if to murder them had meant saving her son from losing his rightful inheritance.’

  They were full of news but it was time to leave. ‘Don’t telephone your aunt to tell her I’m on my way. The Gestapo will only be listening in and we wouldn’t want that.’

  Leon had the darker eyes. ‘They listen in all the time so what’s the difference? They probably have a recording of the guy who telephoned Yvette.’

  But they haven’t told you about it, have they? It was in the gazes of the two of them.

  It cut the timber out from under him. Glotz … had Glotz access to that recording? Had he told Hermann? Had Hermann kept that little gem to himself?

  ‘Was it Ackermann?’ he asked, clearly in their hands.

  The brothers shrugged. ‘How should we know?’ said Leon.

  ‘Because the accent wouldn’t have been French.’

  ‘Then, Monsieur the Inspector, you can rest easy, eh, because the guy who telephoned her was as French as the three of us.’

  ‘That’s not good enough and you know it. Was it the voice of money and fine breeding?’

  The aristocracy – a château on the Loire perhaps? The husband of a certain chanteuse … One could read a flic so easily. ‘We wouldn’t know about such things, Inspector,’ offered Leon. ‘He was just French like the rest of us. Impatient to get on with life.’

  ‘And a murder,’ breathed St-Cyr. ‘A murder, my friends. Please don’t forget that you were among the last to speak with that poor unfortunate girl. Keep her death on your consciences while you warm your hands at the fire!’

  The Corsicans’ aunt Isabella had conveniently gone to see her sister in St Lazare and wouldn’t be back until evening. The slug she’d left in charge didn’t even know his own name and was hard of hearing.

  With no food in his stomach since the previous night’s supper, and three pastis sloshing around inside him, St-Cyr began to look for a café.