Would the countess or Gabrielle have asked if they’d known the certificate was a fake? Had they been so clever as to have done this to cover their tracks in anticipation of someone like himself checking into things, or had it been in case the abbot should ask?
‘Is the paper the same for the other certificates?’ He knew it was.
Again the walnut felt the certificate. He held it up closely against the desk lamp, scanned it carefully for the watermarks all such genuine certificates possessed.
He pushed his glasses up and peered at the stamps and then at the signatures. Like so many, the certificate had been filled out after the Defeat. Vichy had then sent it on to Paris for filing.
‘Perhaps the captain’s mother, or his wife, got to somebody at the Ministry of Defence in Vichy, Inspector. Perhaps they want him listed as dead – all three of these people,’ he tapped the list, ‘but me, I have no reason to question the validity of this certificate.’
Could Gabrielle Arcuri’s husband have run from the battle as so many officers had?
It was the unpleasant thought that had led him here and he still wasn’t satisfied. Far too often fake death certificates had been used to cover such things, but damn! He’d hoped for proof. It would have made things so much simpler.
Patiently the walnut crossed out the three and wrote a four, then turned the certificate over and added, Inspector St-Cyr of the Sûreté, 8 December 1942.
‘What’s he done if he isn’t dead?’
St-Cyr took in the toothless grin. ‘Murdered a young boy and his sister for having discovered his secret.’
But then why leave the purse at the scene of the first crime, why the diamonds, why the cigarette case, the condoms in their little silk sleeves, the perfume …
Why, indeed, unless it had been someone else who’d done the killing and had wanted to point the finger at Gabrielle Arcuri.
Then why execute the girl in that fashion, why try to pin her killing on the Resistance?
The two killings had all the appearances of having been done by different people but had that been the case and had the killings been done by men?
From what he’d seen of the countess, she could easily have done them both to protect her son and the Domaine Thériault.
But not Mademoiselle Arcuri, eh? he asked himself as he left the building and went to unlock the bicycle. What of her, my friend? Is it that, after one meeting in an abandoned grist mill, you feel so sympathetic towards the woman you can believe her claims of innocence for Yvette and herself yet discount the fact that she had every reason to protect her husband?
Even to her singing in a club like the Mirage, where the Germans wouldn’t think to question her loyalties because she was so popular with their men.
She’d have despised her husband for having run away. She’d have had nothing more to do with him.
Then perhaps that was the reason she’d gone back to Paris, to the life she’d once led?
Chantal Grenier, the petite designer of the shop, Enchantment, composed herself before earnestly saying, The Lune Russe, Louis. Gabrielle Arcuri was the chanteuse there before the war and before her marriage. Night after night Muriel would go there to listen to her. Me, I thought my Muriel was going to leave me, that she’d a crush on someone new. I could not understand her doing such a thing to me. I wept, Louis. I thought of suicide but, ah no, it was only that voice. Muriel had become entranced by it. She was like the archaeologist with a new bone, gazing raptly, always raptly. She simply could not leave the Lune Russe alone. Such magnetism, isn’t that so? Such intensity in that voice. It is very sexual, very erotic. Muriel could not be blamed, and for this, I have long since forgiven her.’
There was a smile, never too much, always just perfect. The bleached blonde hair was tossed the appropriate amount. Sentiment registered in the large brown eyes beneath their long dark lashes.
Muriel had gone off on one of her ‘scrounges’ for materials. There were only the two of them in the office. St-Cyr sat back in his chair. ‘So, when Muriel learned that Mademoiselle Arcuri was singing in Paris again, she went to hear her?’
There was a frown, the brief look of one so lost by doubt one must surely die for love, but all this passed at the thought of a recent kiss. ‘Yes, several times since almost a year now, since … since she has discovered Gabrielle was back. Muriel has named our latest perfume after the club.’
‘You should have told me. It was very naughty of you not to have.’
‘You stole a vial of our perfume, Monsieur Louis! You behaved as a common thief, a shoplifter! This I can never forgive, not in a man I have always thought of as having principles. It’s no wonder your wife has left you for a German officer, even though he came into the shop not an hour ago to buy her a going-away present.’
The woman ducked her eyes and waited pensively.
Poor Louis … it had been very naughty of her to have told him. ‘This young officer was nearly in tears, Louis. Broken-hearted. Three days, that’s all they have left together. Three! She’ll be back and then, why then Gabrielle and you …’
She couldn’t say it. St-Cyr raised his eyebrows. ‘Will not go to bed together,’ she admitted. ‘Gabrielle would have been much better for you than your wife.’
So Hermann had been to von Schaumburg and the general had put a stop to things. He felt sad for Marianne’s sake. It would have been much better if she’d left Steiner of her own accord.
But as for his going to bed with Mademoiselle Arcuri … ‘Chantal, let us bury our hatchets, eh? For myself, I regret stealing your vial of perfume and will gladly pay for it.’
‘For my part, I apologize too, but it would have been much better, Louis, if you had confided in me fully. That’s what dear friends are for, isn’t that so?’
It was, but were the tears that had formed in her eyes really genuine?
‘Is Gabi in trouble, Louis?’
Gabi… ‘Her life may well be in grave danger. Her maid was murdered.’
‘In Fontainebleau Woods. The Resistance … an execution, Louis! An execution!’
The news had been in the papers. She’d have got it there. ‘Chantal, please don’t distress yourself. Murders like these happen all the time.’
‘But not to people you’ve touched, Louis! She was such a pretty thing. Yvette Noel … Muriel gave her a vial of our Mirage for herself when she presented two of them to Mademoiselle Arcuri.’
‘Backstage?’
‘But of course. Between acts.’
‘What was Mademoiselle Arcuri’s reaction?’
‘To Muriel’s naming the perfume after her and the club? Very pleased, very excited – enchanted that someone from before the war could remember her like that. After all, she’d been away for several years. Six, I think, or was it seven? But this was last year, Louis, and can have no bearing on the case.’
So Yvette had had her own vial of perfume and could easily have put it in that purse. ‘Did Gabi ever come into the shop?’
‘But of course. Several times after the episode of the perfume. Lingerie, stockings … whatever she needed.’ Gabi … oh dear, what had she done?
‘But not the dress she wore at the club?’
Louis knew all about the dress but was pretending ignorance. Very well, my dear detective! ‘No … No, she had that made elsewhere. She didn’t agree with us. I tried to tell her the pearls would only detract from the effect she wanted so much to achieve, but she wouldn’t listen. She can be very stubborn, very determined, Louis. This you must believe.’
‘Did Mademoiselle Arcuri ever smoke cigarettes in your presence?’
‘Ah yes, lots of times.’
‘Did she have a monogrammed cigarette case?’
‘With the initials NKM?’ asked Chantal mischievously. Oh, it was all so exciting. Muriel and she would discuss it for days.
‘NKM,’ confessed St-Cyr. ‘You knew of this?’
Bird-like, the designer flashed him a brief, shy smile. ‘But of course. One noti
ces such things, isn’t that so? But me, I could never get up the courage to ask her what the initials stood for. A man, perhaps. A lover – discretion, Louis. Me, I had to use discretion.’
‘And Muriel?’
‘She is convinced Gabrielle bought it in a flea market.’
A flea market! ‘Had she had it long, do you think?’
Again there was a brief smile, no longer shy. ‘What you really want to ask, Louis, is could she have been given it by the people at the Lune Russe when Charles Maurice Thériault asked her to end a fine career and marry him.’
St-Cyr heaved a helpless sigh. Outwitting the ‘girls’ was almost impossible. Age had put the mustard of wisdom on them. ‘Well, yes, that is what I would have liked to ask.’
‘If you had trusted me completely, Louis, there’d have been no holding back but I shall tell you, my friend, that if Gabrielle had been given it as a going-away present, the initials would not have been NKM unless her real name was something else.’
‘Something Russian?’ asked St-Cyr, catching a fleeting glimpse of the mirage Gabrielle Arcuri had created and wondering about it. What had the woman been hiding then, what was she hiding now?
‘My poor Louis, she’s exactly what you need. A beautiful woman not all that much younger than yourself, eh? A woman of mystery, not a Bretonese plough horse, even if she is pretty. But sleep well, my dear. Have fabulously exciting dreams, not nightmares. Muriel is usually right about such things.’
A flea market.
‘Natasha Kulakov Myshkin. It was our little secret.’ As he fingered the cigarette case, the White Russian proprietor of the Lune Russe gazed into the distance of memory. A big, sad man with the nomad’s yearning for home, he tugged at the iron-grey beard. ‘In 1917 she fled the Revolution of the Bolsheviks and became separated from her family, all of whom were killed perhaps, who knows? At the age of fourteen she arrived in Paris but she didn’t do what most penniless girls of that age are forced to do. Natasha was a chanteuse, Inspector. She’d always wanted to be one, right from the earliest days. A real artist. It took her time to achieve success. Ah yes, a thing like that often does. She changed her name to Gabrielle Arcuri. Me, I knew right away that she was Russian but I let her tell me in her own good time and I was happy to have her here for nearly five years.’
‘But then she met Charles Maurice Thériault and he wanted her to quit.’
‘That one insisted. Some men are like that, Inspector. They can’t stand to see their wives a success – so popular in Gabrielle’s case she could wring tears from the coldest of hearts but… but why is it you have not known of her? Surely …’
St-Cyr gave the shrug he reserved for fate and time and internal politics. ‘Paris and its environs are the Préfet’s beat; the Sûreté has the rest of the country. Me, I’ve usually been out there some place or in the sewers. You were saying …?’
‘Thériault, yes. He was madly in love with her. Night after night he’d sit here listening to her. She hesitated, she wanted to keep on singing. Gabi’s like that – a natural. She just has to sing. His family … Ah! what can one say, eh? Snobs, if you ask me. The mother didn’t like it one bit. He took Gabi away to the country, took her from us – my God, the trouble I had explaining things to the patrons. From time to time she’d come back and if she could, she’d sing a little for old times’ sake. Never when he was around, of course. She was like a daughter, Inspector. A daughter.’
‘But she always insisted on being called Gabrielle Arcuri?’
‘Yes, of course. Arcuri was the name of a family that had helped her. The Natasha was from a time before, a time of great sadness.’
‘Yet she kept the cigarette case, knowing it would identify her?’
‘She told people she’d bought it in a flea market. Me, I didn’t mind. It was a part of her, Inspector, our little secret. Natasha Kulakov Myshkin came from a very wealthy family. They had a dacha in the Urals and a fine big house in Leningrad. Her father had been a doctor in the court of the Romanovs.’
‘And you gave her the cigarette case?’
‘But of course. A parting gift as I’ve said.’
‘Would she have told her husband her real name?’
‘Perhaps, but me, I don’t think so. You see, Inspector, with that ear of hers, Gabrielle had picked up a pretty good accent. She’d have told her husband her parents were dead. The Arcuri name is what’s on her papers. You won’t tell the Germans, will you? She’ll not have done anything, not that one. A heart of gold and kindness itself. A real diamond in the rough, but not so rough at all. Ah no. Please tell her that we wish her well and miss her. The Club Mirage is no place for her.’
And the husband? asked St-Cyr of himself. Could the husband or the mother-in-law have now wanted to get rid of her?
The cutting room of the Salon Chez Nadeau was as busy as ever. No sign of Julian Nadeau but his assistant, Sylviane Valcourt, waited impatiently for him to speak.
St-Cyr stood to one side of the cluttered windows looking down at the rue de la Paix. There were lots of pedestrians, lots of German officers and their French girlfriends, cyclists and velo-taxis. Good places to hide, good places from which to watch.
When he found the man, apparently window shopping and using the glass as a mirror, he passed on until he had the other one. Both of them were in their forties, dressed as if notaries or accountants – so nothing shabby about them. Good papers, no doubt, and good on their feet and on their bicycles. Ex-Army? he wondered. They had that look about them. Had it not been for his dodging the Gestapo earlier, he’d have spotted them.
He picked their bikes out, noting that each was chained to something. Were they armed and out to kill him? Had it gone that far? Surely they’d have had opportunity enough this morning. The bikes would be left as a diversion. They’d vanish into the crowd on foot.
Sylviane began to fret. ‘Julian is out to lunch, Monsieur Louis. Me, I have to go myself. Is everything all right?’
She’d been fifteen years of age when he’d plucked her from the streets, not much older than Gabrielle Arcuri had been when she’d first come to Paris.
Again the girl asked if everything was all right. The incessant sound of scissors and sewing machines formed a background to their voices.
Still St-Cyr didn’t turn from the window. ‘Yes … yes. For the moment. Sylviane, I have only one question for you, but it’s very important. Did Mademoiselle Arcuri’s maid, Yvette Noel, call to ask you to make her mistress another purse?’
Snatching up a pair of scissors and a remnant, the girl moved to the window and began to study the street with the eye of an expert. ‘Is someone after you?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Sylviane, please answer my question – there are two of them. The one looking at the ladies’ hats, the other pretending to tie a shoe.’
‘Me, I have already spotted them. Yes, the girl called and asked me to make another. She said the original had been stolen.’
‘Not lost?’
‘No, stolen, Monsieur Louis. Of this I am positive.’
‘Was she in great distress?’
The girl continued to watch the men. ‘In tears. Yes, she was in tears. It … it was not two days before she … she was murdered.’
‘Who took the purse over to her?’
‘Myself. Julian … You know how he is, Monsieur Louis. She was special, this Gabrielle. He … he had his eye on her, I think. Ever since the dress, you understand, the fittings. Julian, he is like the miser who always has a little something under the floorboards. Another prospect. A war widow. What could be better?’
Was Sylviane secretly in love with her boss? Was that why she was so upset? ‘A murderess, if he’s not careful, Sylviane. Please tell him it’s hands off until the case is settled, unless he wants to deal with me.’
‘You’re angry with us?’ she said, still looking down at the street. She had cut the remnant to pieces, was clutching the scissors.
‘You should have told me about that second
purse,’ said St-Cyr quietly. The girl was pale …
‘You did not ask, eh? How was Julian to know you suspected this … this chanteuse of … of murder? Of which murder?’ she asked sharply.
Ah Mon Dieu, what was the matter with her? The girl’s brother, or the two of them. Me, I’m not sure of anything yet. When you delivered the purse how did you find Yvette?’
The two men hadn’t moved. ‘Agitated. She didn’t say much, only thanked me for having brought it over so quickly. If you ask me, Monsieur Louis, I think her mistress didn’t know of the loss and the girl was trying to cover up.’
‘What did you make of the Corsicans?’
It would start to rain soon – a freezing rain – but would that help him to get away? Would it? Ah Mon Dieu … ‘Rapists with their eyes. Like most men, they undressed me with their filthy minds. In a second!’
Her chest heaved defiantly at the thought, moving him to kindness. In profile she was very pretty, very engaging but upset – yes, definitely upset and trying desperately to keep control. A puzzle to be sure. ‘Don’t be so hard on us men, my dear Sylviane. Life’s small pleasures, eh? You’re a very attractive young woman. Those two out there would be certain to look your way.’
The one with the troublesome shoe had moved along to the café. ‘Are they Gestapo?’ she asked, hoping that he’d say it was so.
Shoelace had now found his paper and was fighting December’s curse to read the want ads. ‘I lost them long ago, Sylviane. No, these two are something different.’
How wary he was. ‘The Resistance?’ she asked, turning to let him see the tears that had flooded into her eyes.
‘Yes … Yes, I believe it is them, Sylviane, but it is all a terrible mistake.’
‘Then you’ve seen the photographs – they’re everywhere, Monsieur Louis. Me, I have tried so hard to gather them up.’
The girl had eighteen of them in her tiny office which was just off the cutting room. Choking back the tears beneath a fatherly hand, she had broken down completely at the prospect of the Resistance executing him.
How well she had tried to hide it. Ah, Mon Dieu, the Nile, the Amazon …
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