Beekeeper

by J. Robert Janes

  The carpet was not an Aubusson or a Savonnerie or any of those to which, as a child and then a university student, she might have been accustomed. But the soft, warm and very light beige of its wool went well with the armchairs and the rest of the furniture. In the mirror he could see the oil paintings she had hung, and knew they were good and must have been in her family for years.

  ‘Inspector, my husband had his enemies – the petty jealousies of other beekeepers. He was president of the Société Centrale d’Apiculture, and for the third year in a row, and so had trampled on a good many toes. But … but who the hell would do that to him? Who?’

  And had that person come in through the apiary? wondered Kohler.

  For a moment they looked at each other and finally, realizing what she was fingering, the woman let her hand fall away from the sculpture of her son. ‘That is Danielle,’ she said acidly of the other bronze. ‘My son is very talented but his sister did not pose like that for him. Not without her bathing suit. I’m certain of it.’

  But not quite, was that it, thought Kohler, and wrote it all down for Louis and himself to digest. ‘Your daughter, madame. How old is she?’

  ‘Eighteen. Étienne is twenty-two. Why can’t you people let him come home? He was badly wounded, and is still in need of a long convalescence. He can do you no harm, not now, not even then, in ’39 and ’40. A stretcher-bearer, an artist … He who had never wanted to hurt anyone, especially not his dear maman, his bienaimée.’ His beloved. ‘They shot at him, even though he wore a Red Cross armband.’

  ‘Madame, your husband.’

  She waited, letting him know she wanted to shriek, That bastard, yes?.

  ‘Thirty hives. Were there more?’

  Out-apiaries – that was what the Inspector was thinking. ‘Several. One here, one there. Maybe two or three. It depended on the locations. A flat with a roof-top that was sheltered and not much frequented; the garden of a private house or villa. The city has plenty of such places.’

  Have fun chasing them, she seemed to imply. ‘And the honey, madame. Did he sell it and the pollen and the propolis – the bee glue? The gelée royale also, his extra queens and the wax?’

  The detective had forced her to look at him in a new light, that of one who was well versed on the little slaves Alexandre had adored. ‘He had his “clients”, yes. There’s a book, a list with all the addresses and details. Your partner will have found it unless … unless, of course, whoever poisoned my husband took it away with him, or the sous-préfet and préfet, since both came here briefly to view the body yesterday at noon, and to discuss the matter.

  ‘Now if you will excuse me, Inspector, it’s very late and I’m very tired. My bedroom is at the back, overlooking the garden and that field, but while I’m in my bed, avail yourself of the rest of the house. Search all you like. I’ve nothing to hide and I don’t think he had either. We didn’t sleep together, not any more, and not in a long, long time. Ours was always a marriage of convenience. I’ll not deny it, and you would soon have discovered this in any case, so please don’t bother to ask the neighbours. Life is hard enough.’

  Alone in the study, St-Cyr drew on his pipe as he sought out each detail, but this killing had not – he was now certain – been as it had first appeared.

  The smell of bitter almonds, of nitrobenzene, though minor, was still present, for the corpse exuded it. Some, too, had been spilled on the worktable and tiled floor, and some had been absorbed by a fistful of rags. These things had had to be cleaned up and removed by Hermann and himself, both wearing rubber gloves and before they had gone out into the apiary to find that the hives had been robbed. Hermann had put a match to the stains and had burned the rags in the stove – no other course of action had been possible. The damned stuff was just too dangerous.

  He, himself, had capped the bottle of ersatz Amaretto and never mind the fingerprint artists fooling around with it while open. He had picked up and had capped the tin container of nitrobenzene that the beekeeper, in his panic, had taken down from a shelf and had hastily opened.

  Flung wide, the doors to the garden still let in the cold night air as an added precaution, while the heavy black-out curtains kept in the light. Fortunately, the Occupier hadn’t chosen to switch off the electricity to this quartier or the whole city in reprisal for some act of ‘terrorism’ or because the Citroën and Renault works, et cetera, were in desperate need of the power to make things for the German war machine.

  ‘Nitrobenzene is nothing to fool with, is it, monsieur?’ he said to the dark blue-suited, scarved and cashmere-sweatered victim who lay on the floor near the desk, curled into the fetal position by a final spasm, and in rigor. ‘The poison is rapidly absorbed through the skin and lungs, and that is, I fear, what really killed you. Death by misadventure, albeit with intent.’

  The right side of the head, and a portion of the white woollen scarf, were awash in now frozen vomit. Everything, at first glance, had pointed to the bottle of Amaretto that sat on the desk among his papers. Oil of mirbane was soluble in alcohol, not in water, so there was, perhaps, no problem there. But drinking it was to experience its fiercely burning taste and to die long after ingestion.

  De Bonnevies had probably first smelled the liqueur, and finding its bouquet acceptable, for Amaretto’s flavour came normally from apricots and their stones which have the odour and taste of bitter almonds, had apparently taken a sip or a mouthful and then had instantly spat it out and set the bottle down.

  ‘In panic, you thought the worst, monsieur – your wife, perhaps?’ he said, gesturing companionably with his pipe. ‘You rushed over to the shelves and took down the tin which you had kept in here for safety’s sake, and not in the honey-house in the garden. You had to see if it had been the source of the poison. You had to, mon ami. Let us make no mistake about this.’

  Giving the matter a moment’s thought, St-Cyr then said, ‘The container had been put back in haste, n’est-ce pas? The cap was loose, wasn’t it? Accidentally you spilled some. You grabbed the rags to wipe it up. You were extremely agitated. Angry, I should think. Your fingers shook. Did the realization of what you felt had happened cause your shaking hands to accidentally knock that tin over? Had you argued with your wife, monsieur? Had she threatened you?’

  The fingerless gloves which de Bonnevies had used while working in the cold at his desk, had absorbed some of the spilled nitrobenzene. He had dragged them off and, yes, they, too, had been burnt in the stove by Hermann.

  ‘You tried to wipe the residue from your hands with the rags, monsieur. There was also some on the workbench. In your haste, your panic, did you then knock the tin over again and is this what caused it to fall to the floor?’

  Suddenly feeling very dizzy, had he cried out to madame? Had he seen in the container lying on its side on the floor, the truth of what he felt she had done to him?

  ‘Did you then look at the door which you had kept locked so as to shut her out? A door that opens into a narrow corridor and a set of stairs down which that woman would have had to walk each time she wanted to talk to you?’

  The rest was clear enough. Breathing in more and more of the fumes and unable to get the pale, lemon-coloured oil from his hands, de Bonnevies had started for the garden. ‘Suddenly you felt very drunk, monsieur. You had a splitting headache. You began to throw up – first over there by the table you used when selecting queens for your colonies, then by the one on which is the apparatus you use for artificially inseminating them. You had left the tin lying on its side on the floor. You had to get out. Out!

  ‘You tripped and fell. You hit your head and threw up violently. Your vision was blurred, your skin began to itch. Drunk … you felt very drunk and as you got up, you stumbled, only to realize then that you had just put your hand down into the spill and that container had rolled across the floor towards you.’

  A bloodied froth of vomit and mucous had erupted from the mouth and nostrils. The rictus was far from pleasant and exposed tobacco-stained
and gold-filled teeth. The lips and mucous membranes, the fingernails also, were the deep shade overripe blackberries give to their juice when crushed. The skin was but a paler shade of the same.

  At fifty-eight years of age, de Bonnevies had once been distinguished-looking – tall, but otherwise of medium build, and with a face that was broad and strong. The hair was iron-grey, coarse and rapidly receding, the eyes grey and with heavy, horn-rimmed glasses that had been knocked askew.

  The nose was long and broad, fierce and determined, a full Roman even in death; the eyebrows those of an academic, a professor perhaps: thick, bushy, well arched and demanding. The cheeks were cleanly shaven … Had he been about to go out? These days shaving was not a priority due to the scarcity of soap, razor blades and hot water but de Bonnevies had shaved early on Thursday evening.

  The lips were thin, their expression probably often tight with impatience. The white shirt had been freshly laundered in cold water without soap, of course, and with fine sand for the collar stains – there were still sufficient grains to indicate the shirt hadn’t been well rinsed but had been washed in a hurry. The tie was a dark royal blue and had many golden-threaded bees woven into it. A meeting of the Society? he wondered.

  The gold signet ring bore the image of a honey hive with a tiny cloud of departing workers – a swarm perhaps.

  Madame de Bonnevies was deeply asleep. Exhausted, no doubt, thought Kohler has he stood in darkness at the foot of the woman’s bed. She had closed and had locked the door, but had left the key in the lock. And as any housebreaker worth his salt knows, he snorted inwardly, that’s as good as giving him the key.

  Her breath came easily – a clear conscience, he wondered, or relief at last that it had finally been done?

  As with the rest of the house, the room smelled strongly of Javel and he had to wonder about this too. Lavender water had been liberally sprinkled and used when wiping down the furniture, but it couldn’t begin to suppress the other. He had found bottles of Javel in the armoire by the bathtub, more of it in the toilet down the hall and still more in the kitchen. All from late 1940 or even up to mid-1941 probably, but as with so many things people had taken for granted, now it was no longer easy to come by unless she had a ready source.

  There were lace and silk in the mirrored armoire, the soft wool of a dress, another of crêpe de Chine, a suit, a pair of slacks, a chemise, full and half-slips … Silk stockings were in a bureau drawer. Five, maybe six pairs and virtually unobtainable except in certain places. And oh bien sûr women kept those with runs in them – nothing was thrown out these days and one of the pairs had laddered runs in it. He could imagine her despair.

  The brassiere he fingered was light and airy. There were two garter belts, and these had the same lace. But so, too, were there serviceable, everyday undergarments of cotton, linen and satin. All prewar. Nothing ersatz for her in that department, and damned hard to get in any case.

  She sighed and murmured in her sleep, and turned on to her other side. He wanted to switch on the torch to see the faces in the photographs on the bureau and those that hung on the walls and were on her writing table.

  Had she, unlike the husband, only those of the son; he only those of the daughter? The girl, Danielle, had had plenty of both herself and her brother in her room, and of happier times. A country house, a weekend retreat before the war. The boy lithe and handsome and laughing, with an arm draped fondly across his mother’s shoulders, both in their swimsuits.

  When he ran his fingers over what he knew to be a foundation sheet of wax for the combs in the hives – the bees built on these – Kohler felt each hexagonal indentation, the design covering the whole of the sheet. She’d been making a candle, but had left this off.

  Gently he eased open the drawer of her writing table and began to explore its contents. He looked towards the bed; he put his back to her and, wrapping a hand over the end of the torch, let only a sliver of light escape.

  There was a photograph of her son in uniform and taken before the Defeat. Clipped to it was a menu from Maxim’s, no less, and at the bottom of this someone had scribbled 100,000 francs. The going rate. Half down, half on arrival.

  Searching for a cheque stub, a bank passbook – something to indicate monies had been paid out – he found none, simply a small oval badge in silver with the letters F.M. – Förderndes Mitglied – the runic double ‘S’ and the swastika.

  Sickened by its implications, Kohler silently closed the drawer and returned to the foot of her bed. Again he listened to her breathing until satisfied she hadn’t awakened.

  Quietly he left the room, locking the door behind him while leaving the key in the lock on her side.

  ‘Louis …’

  Hermann had returned to the study. ‘A moment, mon vieux.’

  Louis was bent over the beekeeper’s microscope. He had taken off the battered brown fedora that had seen such rough handling in Avignon. The shabby overcoat with its threadbare collar had been flung open – had he been tucking things into his jacket and waistcoat pockets, wondered Kohler and answered, Probably.

  A fisherman at heart, though that pastime was forbidden and subject to forced labour or imprisonment, Louis was not tall or short, but something in between and still a trifle portly in spite of the extreme shortages. A muse, a reader of books in winter when he could get the time, which was seldom, he had the brown oxeyes of the French, the wide forehead of the police academy’s boxing champ and flic he’d once been. The hair was thick and dark brown, and carelessly brushed to the right. The eyebrows were bushy, the nose that, too, of a boxer. The lips were broad and determined, the moustache thicker and wider than the little corporal’s and grown long before that ranting maniac had ever come to power.

  ‘Talbotte was here, yesterday at noon,’ said Kohler.

  The préfet of Paris, on Friday. ‘I could have told you as much. I recognized his footprints in the snow. Flat and expensive leather shoes, not those of a real cop nor the soles of wood most of us have to wear these days. Now, please, I’ve the corpse of a bee before me and it’s not one of our beekeeper’s.’

  A half-open matchbox held several said corpses. The broad and somewhat rounded shoulders of the Sûreté hunched closer to the instrument. A meaty, no-nonsense thumb was jerked up and behind to indicate a framed collection under glass on the wall nearest the desk. ‘The varieties and their clans, Hermann. The offspring of their unfettered inbreeding.’

  Each bee in the collection of nearly two hundred had been stabbed with a tiny silver pin. ‘Apis mellifera carnica …’ began Kohler, trying not to think of the corpse on the floor. ‘Apis mellifera caucasia …’

  ‘The Carniolan and Caucasian bees,’ said St-Cyr, not looking up from the microscope, ‘and beside them, the dark German bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, and the golden-banded Apis mellifera ligustica, the Italian bee.’

  ‘You’re learning,’ quipped his partner. De Bonnevies, like many French beekeepers, had kept Italians primarily because they were gentle and productive, while the Germans, as with their human counterparts, thought Kohler wryly, had strong tendencies towards aggression.

  ‘So, what’s the verdict, Chief?’

  ‘Acarine mites in Caucasian bees. Our beekeeper had collected some of the diseased corpses and was proving his diagnosis.’

  ‘Only to be poisoned by a remedy for them. Fumigation with …’

  ‘Yes, yes. Here our beekeeper has cut off the head and forelegs, then has used a needle to expose the tracheae which bear the characteristically brownish stains caused by the mite.’

  ‘You’ve been reading his reference books.’

  ‘It’s not a simple murder, Hermann,’ sighed St-Cyr, as if warming to the thought of a long and complicated investigation.

  ‘That of the bee or of the human?’

  ‘Both! Now listen, forget about the colour of the fingernails and the rigor – forget all such things. Take a look around you, eh? The well-ordered, well-loved shelves of a dedicated scientis
t. Two microscopes, Hermann, and good ones. The watercolours of flowers, the oils – the catalogue he kept of pollen in bottles, of honey, too, and its many varieties.’

  The sketches, painstakingly executed, of dissected workers, drones and queens. All sacrificed, thought Kohler, to the greater good of others. ‘So, why hasn’t Talbotte got his boys working on the case?’ he asked.

  Charonne, like all of Paris and the Île de France, was the préfet’s beat; theirs the rest of the country. ‘And préfets tend to stick together,’ said St-Cyr, leaving the microscope to pick up the trend of thought.

  Both knew that word of what had happened in Avignon must have been passed on ahead of them. Those in power so seldom liked being challenged and did tend to stick together.

  ‘Perhaps Talbotte doesn’t want to dirty his hands with this, Hermann, for fear ours won’t be dirtied enough.’

  ‘And von Schaumburg has asked for us,’ said Kohler, not liking it.

  Caught between the Occupier’s opposing factions, they had simply had to tough it out. But these days events were piling up and everyone was uneasy.

  And suspicious too.

  ‘Death occurred sometime between eight thirty and ten p.m. on Thursday,’ said Kohler. He’d save the worst until the last. ‘The couple weren’t getting on, Louis, and didn’t sleep together, but …’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t see her as having tried to poison him. I really can’t.’

  Hermann always had a soft spot for the pretty ones. ‘But she may well have laced that bottle,’ chided St-Cyr gently and led him patiently through how the killing had come about. ‘She’d have felt he wouldn’t have taken more than a sip, Hermann. His every reaction would have been known to her. The instant suspicion, the anger, the race to check the tin – a woman can’t have lived with a man for more than twenty-two years and not have known about such things.’