Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

  The brothers had given him much to think about and a new and pressing task but ah! that was the nature of a good murder case. Threads and threads and lots of little unexpected things, all of which had to be followed up. Now more than ever Hermann and he would have to compare notes. This new development, it had that feel about it, like the taste of a good ripe olive or that of a glass of the Vouvray moelleux!

  Gabrielle Arcuri’s husband. Dead, of course, but what if dead only in name?

  The voice of money and breeding over the telephone. Had Jérome discovered her secret? And what of Yvette? ‘Tell Mademoiselle Arcuri it’s all going to be fixed.’ Those words had that certain ring about them, didn’t they?

  And what of the countess and of Gabrielle herself? What of Ackermann, the distant cousin?

  And the monks … the monks … the monks …

  As he pedalled towards the Luxembourg Garden, St-Cyr passed along the rue Vivan. It took him several minutes to realize exactly where he was. Then he remembered the girl with the shoes. She’d lived at number 23, ‘upstairs at the top’. She’d lived with her sister and brother-in-law. ‘They’ve two kids,’ she’d said.

  Number 23 was just across the road and down it a little. Several cyclists passed – it was still early, perhaps not yet nine o’clock. There was a gap in the traffic and then the car of some German official and more cyclists.

  The doorway to number 23 was inset a little. He remembered standing there, remembered how impulsively she’d thrown her arms about his neck.

  That kiss … such innocence. So poignant a memory. The excitement darkness had brought – it had been very sexual, very instinctive, very dose and feral … yes, feral. Like animals in the wild.

  Ah, to be young again and in a free Paris, a free France. To live again!

  But had he ever been young – really young at heart? Weren’t some men meant to go through life like slightly used rubber tyres? The sort that are always second-hand and a little worn when you buy them, and therefore suspect?

  Used tyres give comfortable rides, he reminded himself. He must stink of pastis, but wasn’t the fear of a puncture a part of the excitement, eh?

  So, okay, he’d cross the street and introduce himself. He’d tell her he hadn’t forgotten the shoes.

  He’d do no such thing, and he knew it. Shyness perhaps, he admitted. Fear too. She’d been so young and eager.

  There was a café on the corner, a place much frequented by the locals, a good sign. Chaining the bicycle to a lamppost, he straightened his tie and marched into the place. A good morning’s work demanded a reasonable feed but … ah! damn it, had he remembered to bring his ration tickets?

  Deep down in an inside pocket he found the cursed things Marianne had left out for him. They were now out of date! Would the colour have been changed?

  The bar was crowded with workmen all standing shoulder to shoulder. The tables were filled. There was only one vacant chair. Green tickets were still being used, so that was okay in so far as the colour was concerned. The things one had to do these days! Ah Mon Dieu, it was a pain in the ass, this war.

  He took off his hat, nodded to the proprietor and made his way among the tables.

  A girl was sitting right at the back and at first this puzzled him because she’d have a good view of the door and the street, of the whole place, even of the telephone … but she’d have had no reason to watch such things, would she? A friend perhaps? The table was too well chosen just for that.

  The pile of books spelled student; the swollen right jaw spelled tooth.

  She sipped her ersatz coffee – no milk of course. She dunked the bread into it.

  ‘Mademoiselle …’ he began.

  Watering suddenly, her brown eyes fled anxiously to the door, the street, and back up to him. ‘This chair,’ he said, ‘would you mind if I …?’

  ‘The chair …? Oh! Yes, yes, of course. I was just leaving.’

  ‘But… but you’ve not finished?’

  The bowl with its coffee shattered on the floor, the books spilled about as she made a grab for them and the beret. The proprietor called out, ‘Liline, is anything the matter?’

  ‘My tooth, Monsieur Henri. I’m sorry about the mess. I have to rush. They’re fixing it at the Dental School’s clinic. Those guys, you know how they are. No freezing any more – straight in with the drill or the hammer and chisel. It’ll take three of them to hold me down.’

  She paid up and darted out the door. Twice she looked back, and then a third time from the street.

  It’s her, said St-Cyr to himself. The girl with the shoes. And she had known him but that was not possible …

  The night came back … the feel of her in his arms. He ordered a coffee and some bread – there were no croissants to be had any more, not in the places of the common people. ‘Some jam if you have it, please,’ he said.

  That night … that street… the girl and her boyfriend … the patrol …

  Out after curfew … out last night on a borrowed motorcycle? Was it possible? Had they come to collect her shoes or to kill him?

  At that hour, it could only have been the latter. But she was such a pretty thing – most girls of that age were. It’s what attracted the bees, wasn’t it?

  The furrowed brow, the swollen jaw, the anxious eyes … these all came rushing back to him and then the chin with its touch of swelling, the turned-up nose, the kissing lips, good lips, wide and sensual, the long lashes, the fine brush of her brows … A girl not unlike Yvette Noel but a student.

  And a member of some fledgeling Resistance cell? he asked. Was it possible?

  It would explain the kiss, the eager thanks for his having saved her life, the panic …

  The mess at his feet was cleaned up. Bread, margarine, a dab of blackcurrant jam – pre-war perhaps – and coffee were set before him. There’s no milk,’ said the proprietor with a shrug.

  St-Cyr asked him how many tickets he needed.

  ‘Two – one for the kitchen and one for the bread. And thirty-five francs.’

  ‘That young girl, what was her last name?’

  ‘Marleau. She comes in here sometimes.’

  ‘She lives across the street at number 23, doesn’t she, with her sister and brother-in-law? They’ve two kids?’ asked St-Cyr.

  The proprietor put his back to the crowd and his hands firmly on the table. ‘So, what’s she done, eh?’ Was this guy a cop?

  ‘Nothing,’ said St-Cyr. ‘I just happened to meet her one night, after curfew. A close thing for both of us, you understand. That’s how I came to know her address.’

  The man’s face broke into a wide grin and then into laughter. ‘Hey, you’re the one who rescued her, eh? And the two of you sat here face to face and didn’t know each other? Ah, Mon Dieu, that’s life! Liline has told us all about it.’

  St-Cyr gave him a moment before quietly saying, ‘Look, is she involved in something? Her boyfriend ran off and left her to face the music.’

  ‘He’s one of those. He dodges the labour round-ups and makes trouble.’

  St-Cyr reached for his bread. ‘Has he the use of a motorcycle – you’d have heard it in the night perhaps?’

  The proprietor had. It was written all over him, in the doubt, the anger at himself for having been such a fool as to have placed the girl’s life in danger and that of everyone else, himself and his family included.

  ‘It’s okay, my friend. I only wanted to ask,’ said St-Cyr, ‘but now you must tell her something for me, eh?’

  The man nodded grimly.

  ‘Tell her that I’m on her side and that she must not let the others make a mistake about this. There’ll come a time when they’ll need me again and I’ll be there.’

  ‘Why not tell her yourself, at the dental clinic?’

  St-Cyr shook his head. ‘She’ll have avoided it like the plague even though that tooth is killing her. Besides, I have another matter that is far too important to leave. Tell her also that I will have her shoes repaired and
returned just as soon as I can. She’s not to worry.’

  The proprietor slid the thirty-five francs back across the tablecloth. ‘Let me see if I can’t find you a little something else.’

  He hadn’t even bothered to touch the tickets. All along he’d known they were out of date.

  But how had the girl known who he was?

  *

  Boemelburg was waiting for him when Kohler tried to slip into number 11 rue de Saussaies by a back door. Osias Pharand had been livid and screaming that it was all a matter of honour! St-Cyr had betrayed his chief and so had a certain Bavarian.

  As he entered the office, Boemelburg remained standing with his back to him, looking up at the Army ordnance map of the Loire he’d had fixed to the wallspace immediately behind his desk.

  ‘Hermann, let me tell you something.’ He took a pin and stabbed it into the location of the Château Thériault. So much for a certain countess, the distant cousin of the SS General Hans Ackermann. ‘You will go to Kiev, my Bavarian friend, if I’ve anything to do with it. It’s only a matter of time.’

  The chief seized another pin and drove it into the location of the Monastery of Saint Gregory the Great. So much for monkish things!

  Kohler still hadn’t been told to sit down. ‘How much time …?’ he began, only to blurt, ‘Herr Sturmbannführer, I can explain the von Schaumburg business. I…’

  Still the chief didn’t turn to face him. ‘I think you’d better explain, Hermann. You took an oath of allegiance when you joined the Gestapo. To the Führer, to the Party and the State but most of all, Hermann, to us, your associates and superior officers. Herr Himmler, Hermann. We must all answer to him, even myself.’

  So it was to be like that? Kohler began. Boemelburg moved aside to study the map of France. He stuck pins into Fontainebleau Woods – the location of the girl’s body, then that of her brother. He stuck one into Paris and stood back a little to eyeball the distances someone would have had to drive. Not satisfied, he pulled a length of thin yellow ribbon from a pocket and measured them off before fixing the ribbon to the three centres of this stupid little affair.

  ‘Ackermann, Hermann. Did you have to accuse him of being a homosexual?’

  So much for wind in a guy’s sails. ‘It was just talk, Herr Sturmbannführer. I had to buy us time. Glotz …’

  Boemelburg chose his moment swiftly and turned on him. ‘Yes, Glotz, Hermann. The brother of the wife of one of Herr Himmler’s brothers. What about Glotz, Hermann? Glotz, you dummkopf!’

  ‘He was going behind your back and reporting straight to Berlin. There’s talk, Herr Sturmbannführer …’

  God help him now!

  ‘Talk of what,’ seethed Boemelburg.

  So Glotz was related to Himmler … ‘That you’re becoming forgetful – it’s garbage, Herr Sturmbannführer. We in the ranks …’

  ‘Hermann, skip the crap and tell me the truth.’

  ‘That you’re becoming forgetful and will have to be replaced.’

  ‘By Glotz? Gott in Himmel, Hermann, if it were not so silly I’d be furious, but all the same, Gestapo Mueller will hear of this.’

  ‘No doubt he has, Herr Sturmbannführer. He’d have ordered Glotz to investigate St-Cyr’s wife.’

  ‘Films,’ muttered Boemelburg, running an irritated hand over the all-but-shaven dome of his blunt head. ‘The woman should have known better. Von Schaumburg has demanded the films. In a hand-delivered note, Hermann. Stamped with the seal of the Kommandant of Greater Paris and written in such terse terms a child could read them.’

  Again Boemelburg turned his back on him to study the maps. Glotz would have to be dealt with but first this business must be settled. ‘So I’m forgetful, am I, Hermann?’ He seized another pin and drove it into Barbizon, the start of this whole affair. He strung yellow ribbon from there to Paris, said, ‘Kommandant to Kommandant, Hermann, and the Army out to sink the Gestapo in France! Did you and Louis not think the General von Richthausen had some axe to grind? The Hôtellerie du Bois Royal in Barbizon, Hermann? July 8th – was that not in your little diary, eh? Ackermann, Hermann. Ackermann and that boy feeding their faces while von Richthausen said hello.’

  ‘Herr Sturmbannführer, your blood pressure …’

  ‘Never mind my blood pressure, Hermann. You’ve opened the wasps’ nest with that little tête-à-tête you had with von Schaumburg. Accusations of unnatural sexual practices among the heroes of the Waffen-SS! Oh, Mein Gott, how stupid can you get? Did it never cross your mind that Ackermann could have been up to something else? Information, Hermann. Information for the Sicherheitsdienst!’

  He turned, but didn’t pause. ‘If Ackermann doesn’t kill you and Louis, the Resistance will. And if not them, the salt mines and the partisans in Kiev. You’ve gained yourself one week. That is all! Now open that envelope and take a look at its contents. Worry about your own blood pressure. I want everything, Hermann. No more of your little secrets, no more things like a few uncut diamonds that have been conveniently put out for evaluation and not mentioned in your report! Your loyalty, Hermann. The oath you took.’

  And the penalty for breaking it: that of desertion but not the firing squad as with the Army. No, the Gestapo reserved for themselves the choice of using the wire and slow strangulation or the axe. What they did to others, they did to those few among them who dared to betray the cause.

  One never knew which method it would be until the very end, so there was always that little extra bit of suspense.

  Kohler shook out the contents of the envelope but found he couldn’t speak.

  Boemelburg waited. There were forty-three copies of the photograph of Kohler and St-Cyr at the edge of a road in Fontainebleau Woods. The body of the boy, looking as if it had just been bagged, was between them, and the photographs had been gathered up from all over Paris. ‘You fool, Hermann. What did you think you were playing at? A memento to send home to that forgotten wife of yours? Do you know what’s happened? Can you even guess?’

  ‘The Resistance have the negative,’ he managed.

  ‘They’ve more than that.’

  ‘They’ve made copies and had them circulated,’ he said, swallowing with difficulty.

  ‘At least two or three hundred of them. Who knows? Some left in the Métro, some posted on our billboards, but … what am I thinking of? Please don’t be shy. Turn one over and read what it says.’

  In pen someone had printed the words, Down with Gestapo killers like these!

  ‘They’re blaming you and St-Cyr for the murder of that boy.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts about it, Hermann. Of course the matter’s got out of hand, but then, so, too, were your accusations.’

  In the name of Jesus, what were they going to do?

  ‘You’re going to sit down, Hermann. You’re going to take your time – pretend I’m the Reverend Father of that monastery – the Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great, wasn’t it? If my memory serves me right. Everything about the man who took this photograph, Hermann, and then …’ Boemelburg gave him a moment. ‘And then, Hermann, everything about this pair of broken shoes St-Cyr’s housekeeper found in his kitchen.’

  Glotz … had Glotz interrogated the woman who lived across the street from Louis?

  ‘We’ll be using Louis as bait, Hermann. You’re not to tell him, no matter how much you seem to have slipped from our ways. All Resistance must be crushed, even if it foolishly hovers in the small recesses of what you might think to call a brain.’

  ‘Thériault,’ shouted St-Cyr impatiently. ‘A captain from the Vouvray area, age about thirty-six, killed in May 1940, during the breakthrough at Sedan, I think.’

  ‘You think!’ shrilled the walnut. ‘And what am I to think, eh? Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dead, my fine monsieur, and you, like millions of others, want me to pluck one certificate from among them? Well, look yourself, Inspector. See what it’s like.’

  Angrily the man tossed an arm to indicate the first of the din
gy rooms in the cellars beneath what had once been the Ministry of Defence. Rows and rows of damp wooden filing cabinets held the legions of the dead back to the first of the Napoleonic wars. Apologetically St-Cyr said, ‘Hey, my friend, I know it’s not easy, eh? But surely the Ministry and the Germans wouldn’t have left you in charge had they not thought you capable?’

  Margarine was it? The walnut merely shrugged and went on with sorting the stacks of mail – all similar requests for the proof absolute! ‘I didn’t ask for this mess,’ he said acidly. ‘The records will be destroyed down here and everyone knows it but no one gives a damn. The Minister of Defence and his colleagues should have taken them to Vichy when they ran away.’

  ‘A cigarette?’ offered St-Cyr. ‘Me, I know what you mean. It was the same with the Sûreté. A few of us stayed while the others scooted, including my chief who is still the chief.’

  It took two hours of patient encouragement and searching but in the end he had it.

  Captain Charles Maurice Thériault, born 25 August 1902; killed in action, Sedan, 13 May 1940.

  Several others from the Vouvray area had been killed. St-Cyr pulled out their certificates as well and went to work comparing them with the captain’s. The stamps on Thériault’s certificate looked genuine, so too, the signatures, but purchasing a fake death certificate, particularly in the confusion of the Defeat, would have been relatively easy especially if one had the money and the determination.

  ‘That one died,’ said the walnut, only too familiar with the possibility. He fingered the certificate as a bank teller would a questionable note. ‘Three requests were made for proof of death. See?’ He tapped the bottom left corner.

  The number three had been scribbled on the certificate.

  The man turned it over. ‘One request by the Countess Thériault, in the fall of 1940 – October 2nd, to be precise – then one by the wife, Gabrielle, a week later – that one came here just like you. See, there’s a star beside her name. That’s the code I use. And then a final request by the abbot no less, of the Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great, on 23rd November 1940. He also paid us a visit.’