Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

  The one half of Ackermann’s face was more livid than the other, but one should not dwell on such terrible things. Yet still, St-Cyr could not resist antagonizing the man and gave that nonchalant shrug he reserved for infuriating obnoxious Nazis. ‘That I do not know, General. We often work alone before comparing notes. That is the way these things are usually done.’

  Ackermann snapped his fingers and the two men who’d been with him at the funeral service came instantly forward – young, tall, blond Aryans with perfect blue eyes and clean-shaven cheeks that looked burnished by the lotion. Immaculate in their black uniforms.

  Killers if given the chance.

  ‘Find him. Search the grounds and when you have him, take him to the stables and then come and get me.’

  ‘Pistols at dawn is it?’ taunted St-Cyr.

  ‘Pistols at dawn, Inspector. Now if I were you, I’d leave here while you can.’

  St-Cyr ruefully studied his glass. The Domaine Thériault’s demi-sec had been superb. Not too dry, and not too sweet.

  Ackermann could barely control his temper. ‘But you are not me, General, and I have my duties to perform so please don’t get in the way.’

  ‘French pig, I could have you shot for that!’

  ‘Perhaps but then you are in no position to do so if you wish to clear your name, isn’t that so?’

  Ackermann’s right hand swung back. St-Cyr waited. They were alone – isolated from the crowd who had kept their distance for all too obvious reasons.

  ‘You are the prime suspect in the murder of Yvette Marie Noel, General. If I were you, I’d desist entirely from this nonsense of duels. Let the investigation proceed to its conclusion. If you’ve nothing to hide, you have no fears. Then and only then should you settle whatever differences you may have with Hermann.’

  ‘Kohler … you mean Kohler. The Resistance killed the girl, you fool. I’ve the written reports of the préfets of Paris, Fontainebleau and Barbizon as well as those of your superiors, Pharand and Boemelburg.’

  ‘But not that of the General von Schaumburg,’ said St-Cyr quietly.

  The hard blue eyes raked him savagely. Again the hand started its swing only to remember place and protocol. ‘One voice is nothing among so many,’ snorted Ackermann.

  ‘Then you will have no objections, General, to answering truthfully. Did you kill Yvette Marie Noel?’

  That face became a mask of control.

  ‘I did not kill that girl. I had no reason to. I didn’t even know her. I’d only seen her once with Gabrielle.’

  Ackermann touched the scar tissue to calm the twitch. St-Cyr gave him a moment. Exhaling sadly, he said, ‘And me, I believe you did, General, and what is more important, I can prove it.’

  Again there was that contemptuous snort, a lifting of the right hand.

  ‘You’re bluffing. I wasn’t anywhere near Fontainebleau on the night she was killed.’

  ‘Yet you answer so readily, General? Is it that Yvette in her last moments failed to tell you of the little diary she kept? That girl meticulously recorded everything, General. Places, times – your name is repeatedly mentioned in connection with that of her brother.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying. Produce the diary. Let’s see it then.’

  His voice hadn’t climbed. He’d been exceptionally cool, the face a mask to thoughts. Had he known that bit about his being mentioned had been a lie? Had Jérome told him what was in the diary? Ah now, had he? What if he had? Mon Dieu, this thing … Another thread …

  ‘I demand to see it,’ snapped Ackermann angrily.

  A reaction at last! St-Cyr gave that infuriating shrug again. ‘Because of the … ah, how should I say it, General? The delicacy of the matter, it is being kept securely in the General von Schaumburg’s private safe. Together with our signed reports, of course.’

  The snort of contempt was even harsher than the last one. ‘If you’re so certain, then why are you here?’

  The lie had really worried the general. ‘Because of Jérome. To complete the case we must find his killer.’

  One could read nothing in the Frenchman’s gaze. ‘And have you?’

  St-Cyr turned away to sweep his eyes over the assembled chairs. ‘One for the abbot, one for the parish priest, two for the parents Noel, one for the countess, and one for René Yvon-Paul who must, of course, take his father’s place as the future head of the Domaine Thériault. Six chairs, General. Six.’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  Pale and badly shaken by the sight of them, Mademoiselle Arcuri had started towards them and then had thought better of it.

  ‘Six chairs, General. A most interesting observation and the very key I’ve been looking for.’

  As St-Cyr and the general stood there, the six filed out of the side door and began to make their way towards the chairs.

  ‘I demand an answer,’ seethed Ackermann.

  ‘Then I will give it to you, General. Yes … yes, I believe I have now found the killer of Jérome Noel.’

  ‘The countess? Gott in Himmel, you’re an even bigger fool than I thought!’

  Like the lady she was, the head of the Domaine Thériault indicated the abbot was to sit in the chair with the footstool while the parish priest sat on his left and she herself on his right.

  The Noels waited until René Yvon-Paul had taken his place next to the countess, then they, too, sat down.

  Coffee was served, a glass of wine …

  It was all so beautifully clear. The countess, by arranging the chairs at the head of the room, had simply ensured everyone would see that the abbot, the priest, the Family Thériault and the Noel family had agreed the matter of the land claim had been settled once and for all.

  The price had been paid and the sum accepted because that was the way things were really done in the countryside. The law and justice came second because there was a greater law and that was the one they had to live by.

  ‘General, you must excuse me. My glass needs refilling. Please do not leave the premises until your name has been cleared.’

  *

  ‘You took the heat off me. Why did you do a thing like that?’

  Without the veil, the mirage was still a mystery. ‘Because, Mademoiselle Arcuri, you and I have much to say to one another and the sooner we do so, the better.’

  She refilled his glass without spilling a drop. ‘He’ll try to kill you and your friend.’

  ‘Perhaps, but then …’

  ‘He’ll try to make your death look as if the Resistance had done it.’

  The violet eyes were anxious. A tough woman, just like the countess, but tough in her own way. Not on the run, not yet but in fear of her life, that was all too clear. ‘Will you answer my questions freely?’

  His tone of voice, it had been … Ah, what could she say? That of a man who could be moved to compassion? Or that of subterfuge? ‘Yes … yes, I’ll answer if I can, but not here.’

  ‘Then please find us a place where we won’t be disturbed.’

  ‘Let me ask René to take you to my room. As soon as I can, I’ll join you there.’

  ‘René is needed here to fill your late husband’s shoes.’

  Damn him! ‘Then give me a moment to speak to Jeanne.’

  Any excuse. Was it to be like that? ‘The countess won’t miss you, Mademoiselle Arcuri, so please, which door must we use?’

  He was sharp – but she’d felt this since that first sight of him at the club. ‘The main one but wait until I’ve left. I don’t want the general seeing us together.’

  ‘He already has.’

  She found a clean glass and filled it. ‘Then follow me, Inspector. This place is like a warren. Secret doors and secret passageways. I wouldn’t want you to get lost.’

  Corridors and corridors, room and rooms. They walked and walked, neither of them saying a thing, and when they entered yet another wing there was at last a distinct change in the décor.

  ‘The servants’ quarters,’ he said.<
br />
  ‘Paris is where I live. Remember?’

  The room was plain – excruciatingly so when one thought of the flat she had in Paris. The single iron bed with its high, curved iron tube and straight rod ends had been painted white so long ago that the ivoried, flaking paint lent a flea-market desperation to the thing.

  The quilted coverlet was a homespun green with pink and cream-coloured roses. Two hooked rugs half hid the bare wooden floor. There was a bureau, a mirror, none too big at that and mounted at an awkwardly low angle for a woman as tall as she … an armoire, a chair, a chamber pot beneath the bed …

  Few pictures were on the walls – country scenes that had been cut from magazines and then pasted into rescued frames. A cross.

  An antique chiffon dress, a gorgeous thing whose gladiolus print fairly leapt from the off-cream fabric, hung from a hanger to one of the armoire’s hinges.

  St-Cyr was at once puzzled and deeply troubled by the sight of the dress. Was it to be something to wear at the club or in a casket? It had that look about it. The bed, the room … Had she chosen the room to spite the countess? Perhaps.

  She found the will to laugh at him and to smile with her lovely eyes as she unpinned her hat and veil and tossed them on the bed, but had she misinterpreted his concern?

  ‘So, Inspector, you find me at home in the ChâTeau Thériault. No secrets any more.’

  ‘Madame, I …’

  ‘Charles is very dead, Inspector. He isn’t here. We’re not hiding him. That’s all a crazy notion.’

  ‘I didn’t ask if you were.’

  Her gestures were quick. ‘Not yet, but me, I know you’ll get around to it, eh? It’s not possible to discuss things without considering him.’

  She began to unhook the back of her dress. ‘I hate black. I always have, ever since I was a little girl and they made me watch my grandmother’s funeral. The Russian Orthodox Church, Inspector. Black is very black there, and most of the priests have black beards or ones that are fiercely grey with black hairs in them.

  ‘Could you …? Would you …?’ she asked. ‘This blasted hook … Jeanne insisted I wear the dress. It’s one of hers. How any woman could possess two mourning dresses is beyond me. You’d think she would have given it away years ago but not her. Ah no, not that one, my fine Inspector. A miser, a real miser.’

  The hook was bent. The touch of her – the crescent of black mesh, of very fine lace across the back, the feel of her skin was like satin and warm, so warm … Ah, Mon Dieu, was she taking him back through the years to the streets? Would that be her method of attack?

  ‘When my family and I became separated during the flight from the Revolution, I saw black funerals night after night and sometimes now, I see them at the oddest times.’

  She was waiting for him to undo the buttons. ‘My funeral,’ she said. ‘Jérome’s – Yvette’s, of course. Those two are still so fresh in the mind, isn’t that so, Inspector?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Arcuri …’ Her hair was so soft …

  ‘Gabrielle … I thought we’d agreed to that at the mill.’

  Still her back was to him. ‘Gabrielle, then.’ He hesitated. At last he began to undo the buttons.

  ‘Jean-Louis St-Cyr. It has a nice ring to it. Like Natasha Kulakov Myshkin, Inspector, but once a cop, always a cop, eh? And once a girl of the streets, always one. Me, I think I liked you better at the mill. Then there was a confrontation, and once that was over, a sense of kindness, a genuine concern. You’re a man of the world. You know all about life, all about young girls who have nothing and must somehow eat. Girls who are caught, trapped …’

  The last button was just above the slender waist and when it was undone, she slid her hands deftly under the shoulders and stepped out of the thing.

  ‘Mademoiselle Arcuri …’

  ‘Gabrielle, remember?’

  ‘Yes … yes … Ah, Mon Dieu, madame.’

  ‘It’s not as if I was naked, Inspector. This slip is decent enough and if not it …’ She dragged the thing off. ‘… then what is underneath.’

  St-Cyr watched as she crumpled the slip into a ball and threw it at the bed. ‘A warm shirt, I think, and a sensible skirt – I mustn’t taunt my mother-in-law too much by wearing trousers on a day like this even though she often wears them herself. Relax, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, I’m not about to seduce you.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Arcuri, a few questions … Please, we must…’

  ‘There you go again,’ she said, tossing a hand as she went over to the armoire to open one of its doors. ‘Mademoiselle this and Mademoiselle that. My God, it’s freezing in this lousy place! Always freezing or boiling or damp. God, it’s damp when the rains come in the spring and in November. Water pissing on that roof, pissing, always pissing.’

  A soft yellow hunting shirt, forest-green pullover and flecked beige skirt came out of the armoire, she handing them to him and then pausing to run her fingers through her hair before shaking it out. ‘Funerals, ugh! Why can’t we just be allowed to go to sleep in peace? They’re so undignified. No privacy whatsoever. One can’t even be allowed to remember what a person once looked like.’

  The shirt went on but she wouldn’t button it just yet. Ah no, she’d let him have an eyeful of her breasts. She would grab the skirt and purposely bend forward as she stepped into it, then think better of the brassiere. ‘I hate these things,’ she said. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘What?’ he managed.

  Petrified now, the poor man. ‘Holding the shirt again.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Arcuri …’ Ah, Mon Dieu, such magnificence! So round and firm and gently uptilted, the nipples rosy … the scent of perfume in his nostrils. No thoughts of Marianne … no thoughts … A mirage … a mirage … ‘Please cover yourself,’ he winced. The bed … He felt hot, confused … What was she really up to? Death … was she defying death by forcing him into a corner?

  ‘I thought you were a man who understood the streets, a hunter of animals,’ she said. He looked so ill at ease it was almost comic. Perhaps after all his wife had had good reasons to leave him? ‘You poor, poor man. They’re good breasts, aren’t they? Nice to look at, but I won’t let you touch them,’ she said harshly.

  A girl of the streets.

  ‘The past must always be forgiven, madame. Circumstance is the measure of us all.’

  And one must not be bitter, eh? She let go of her breasts and began to tuck the shirt into the skirt and to button up. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I went to the Lune Russe and had a talk with its proprietor. He didn’t say you’d once worked the streets. He said you would never have done such a thing.’

  ‘All Russian men are the same. Full of sentiment in a world that has no place for it.’

  Dressed, she brushed out her hair and tied it with a red velvet ribbon. ‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?’ she asked.

  At the sight of the cigarette case she was momentarily lost in thought. ‘Victor’s a good man, Inspector. The Lune Russe treated me like a real chanteuse, but since I’ve gone back to Paris to live I’ve not had the courage to face him.’

  ‘No artist would, but why work at the Club Mirage? Oh, for sure, you had a deal with the Corsicans. Ten per cent of the take and you knew with that voice of yours, you’d soon pack the place. That was very shrewd of you, and me, I admire such a quality in a woman.’

  St-Cyr took two cigarettes from the case and lit them. ‘But there was something else,’ he said, placing a cigarette between her lips. ‘Another reason, isn’t that so?’

  Was she a suspect after all? she wondered, indicating that they should sit at either end of the bed. His eyes were watering.

  ‘Madame, the Kommandant of Greater Paris okayed the necessary permit for your car and gave you an excellent gasolene allocation, am I not correct?’

  The mirage tilted back her beautiful head and blew smoke towards the ceiling. ‘It’s no more than I’d have got had I worked at any of the other clubs.’

  ‘Ah yes, but c
ould it be they had singers in plenty?’ He coughed.

  ‘Not of my class. Believe me, Inspector, I know where I stand in things. One has to.’

  ‘Spoken like a true artist, not the star performer of a third-rate club. No, madame, it’s my belief you chose the Mirage after very careful consideration. As its only star you could pull in the troops, making quite a name for yourself and stifling any questions the German security forces might have asked about you.’

  She tapped ash carefully into a palm and leaned back to gaze steadily at him. This one was good, so very good. ‘I didn’t kill Yvette and I didn’t kill Jérome.’

  ‘Jérome I have settled. It’s Yvette’s killer I need to pin down.’

  St-Cyr took a drag of his cigarette and let the smoke rise before his eyes, fighting down the need to choke. ‘Jérome was blackmailing you, Mademoiselle Arcuri. He knew your husband was alive and in hiding here. Under the decree of this past spring, by aiding an escaped prisoner of war you, your son and the countess were liable to be sent to Germany, the two of you women into forced labour and an almost certain death, the boy to a reform school and probably death as well. The General Hans Ackermann was after you. He’d read the Sicherheitsdienst file on the wife of his cousin’s son. The countess had said a few things perhaps, let a hint or two drop, or simply shown she didn’t really care for you the way a mother-in-law should. Jérome threatened to sell you out to Ackermann, and you gave him these.’

  He found the diamonds in a pocket and pitched the little velvet pouch on to the bedspread between them.

  Deliberately it landed next to the cigarette case but she gave no sign of recognition until he took her hand in his and guided it to the pouch. ‘Open it,’ he said.

  ‘I … I don’t need to. My father asked me to carry those when we escaped from Leningrad. The children were often the last to be searched. I could run faster than my brothers and sisters. I … I ran. God forgive me, but I ran.’

  St-Cyr drew in a breath and held it for the longest time. With a sigh he said, ‘And you’ve kept them ever since in spite of your needing money when you first arrived in Paris.’

  ‘Was it such a crime? I loved my father and my family. I hoped we’d see each other again – we’d need the money the diamonds would bring. I didn’t hear the shots. I swear I didn’t. Jérome was horrible. Poor Yvette, she knew he was being used by Hans. She tried to intervene.’