Beekeeper

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘The son …’

  ‘What about the son? Well, come on, damn it, tell me.’

  ‘F.M.’

  Out in the garden, not a sound came up from the city at nearly 5 a.m. Far beyond the Bois de Boulogne, far over England and freedom, a shooting star streaked long and hard and cleanly until snuffed out.

  Up from the ground came the terrible dampness and the cold.

  ‘F.M., Hermann. What, please, have the Honorary Members of the SS to do with this little murder which was not murder at all, simply the attempted variety, if what we have seen of it so far is true.’

  ‘It could so easily have been a black-market mistake, idiot. How else these days is one to find the smell or taste of bitter almonds?’

  Everyone knew there were hazards with black-market products. No questions were ever asked. To complain was to get nothing further and to have one’s name passed on to other traffickers. ‘Well, what about the F.M., Hermann? Please don’t spare me.’

  In 1932 there had only been about 13,000 Honorary Members, recalled St-Cyr. Collectively they had contributed a modest 17,000 marks to the SS’s ‘cultural, charitable and social pursuits’. But in 1934 membership had grown to over 342,000, with an increase in funds of nearly 600,000 marks. Since then he had lost track, but the sky must be the limit.

  ‘Jeder an seiner Stelle, Louis,’ said Kohler. ‘Es ist eine Ehre, förderndes Mitglied zu zein.’

  Each in his appointed place, translated St-Cyr. It is an honour to be an honorary member. By caving in and joining the F.M., not the SS or the Party, one made a little contribution every year, thereby avoiding the strong-arm boys and the constant squeeze. Guaranteed a little peace, the Honorary Members and another, similar group, the Friends of the Reichsführer-SS, got on with their business interests – shoes, beer, tanks, cigars or whatever. All were involved.

  ‘Siemens-Schuckert, Hermann. I.G. Farben. The Krupps, the Norddentsche Lloyd and Hamburg-America Shipping Lines, the Dresdner and Deutsche banks – all of the really big companies sent board members to join the Friends, and often the F.M., and in doing so, dragged in the little fish.’

  ‘Himmler still has a good thing going with them, Louis. That little badge I saw only proves it. Silver no less, not zinc’ As were many of the medals these days.

  ‘And the name?’ asked the Sûreté, looking up to that God of his with tears no doubt, thought Kohler.

  ‘We haven’t got a name yet, but we’ve got a menu.’

  Everyone who was anyone listened to rumours these days and knew that among the waiters at Maxim’s there were some who would offer to help those wealthy enough to want to free their loved ones from POW camps in the Reich.

  ‘Fifty thousand down, as the menu says, Louis. The rest when the “meal” is delivered.’

  Madame de Bonnevies had been trying to buy her son’s freedom. ‘But why does she have the badge, Hermann? Why keep it with a photo of her son and with the menu?’

  ‘Why, indeed, when her. husband had control of all of her money, eh, and let her have only enough for the house?’

  ‘You found expensive underwear. If she’s having an affair with a Nazi …’

  ‘We’ll have to go carefully.’

  These days things were always so complicated. ‘Our beekeeper had planned his rounds for Friday and had made a list of those he intended to visit,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘You’ve found his little book,’ sighed Kohler.

  ‘His is an eclectic list.’

  ‘And?’

  Hermann could nearly always sense when there was more. ‘Old Shatter Hand is a valued customer. Three jars of honey.’

  Shit! ‘And?’

  ‘The honey, the royal jelly and pollen were to have been delivered first thing yesterday morning to his villa.’

  ‘Then I’d best deliver them, hadn’t I?’

  It was a plea, a cry to God for help. ‘Yes, I think you’d better.’

  2

  Alone once more, St-Cyr again surveyed the study. He was grateful for the silence, for the opportunity, but were there things he had missed?

  De Bonnevies had had a real love of bees. Pollen, sealed in 100cc jars, formed a collection as eclectic as the directory of his clients. Several of the samples were from prewar Poland; others from Russia. Italy was represented, Belgium, Holland – England, Wales and Scotland. Shades of yellow mostly; those of green, too, and orange and purple but muted, the tiny, microscopic grains being packed together by each forager to form granules from about two to three millimetres in diameter and irregularly rounded. All would possess the scent of the blossom most prevalent. Lavender, clover, linden, pear or apple. When mixed with nectar or honey, and stored in the cells, the pollen would form the beebread Hermann had mentioned.

  Elsewhere in the study, filing cabinets held correspondence that, before the war, had gone on at a pace. America, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, India … Wherever bees were kept, de Bonnevies had sought answers or given advice. An address to which he had been making last-minute revisions was entitled: ‘WILL NO ONE SPEAK FOR THE BEES OF RUSSIA? Reliable estimates tell us that over one half of all Russian honey bees have already perished. When will this madness stop?’

  And never mind the human casualties at Stalingrad. A brave man to have thought to speak out like this. Foolish, too.

  Folding the address – planning to read it later – St-Cyr tucked it away in a pocket. The desk was functional, not big or wide, but with a rampart of pigeon-holes that would take much time to go through. Could they be left for the moment? he wondered.

  Something … was there still something in plain sight that he was missing?

  Pens lay on the desk with a spare pair of glasses. Snapshots covered a tackboard on the wall behind. The daughter was attractive in her own right: not too pretty but secure enough in that department. There were lots of photos of her, but none of the son. ‘And why not?’ he asked. ‘Surely a few of the boy in uniform to remind the father of him?’

  There weren’t any in the drawers or even in the pigeon-holes, many of which contained letters of one sort and another.

  The Amaretto bottle had probably once held gin, not olive oil or wine. The new label had been stained by the contents when the bottle had been quickly set down. Of brown sticking-paper, its bold black letters had been crudely executed. An associate, perhaps, or a client – one of the less fortunate. Or had the bottle really been purchased from a black-market supplier and was that all there was to it? Death by mistake.

  Then there would surely have been other poisonings. But would the préfet and his men make Hermann and himself aware of them? Not likely.

  Though their visit could only have been brief due to the fumes, Talbotte hadn’t taken the beekeeper’s directory of clients, and neither had the sous-préfet of the local commissariat. A puzzle unless it had been left as a warning.

  When Juliette de Bonnevies came downstairs, she found the Chief Inspector sitting in Alexandre’s chair quietly perusing the directory, and she couldn’t help but ask herself, How could he be so calm with that lying so near?

  Alexandre hadn’t been covered. Retreating, she went softly upstairs to find a bed sheet in the walnut armoire, the one from Aix that her mother had treasured, as had she and Étienne who had often, as a boy, hidden in it.

  In play, never in fear of me, only of Alexandre, she told herself and touched the compartment where he had curled himself in with his bony knees pressing against his chin.

  ‘Mon cher,’ she whispered. ‘Mon petit, I mustn’t cry, must I? He’s gone now, Étienne. Gone.’

  Everything would pass to Danielle – she knew this, knew that Alexandre would have left her son nothing in his will. Nothing of hers. But it would take time to settle things, and there would have to be a funeral.

  Knowing she couldn’t face one, she took a moment to steady herself, then blurted softly, ‘Maybe they will let you come home for it. Home, Étienne.’

  Compassion? Had the Occupier any? she demanded bitte
rly, and using a corner of the sheet, dried her eyes.

  In the study, she said nothing, only covered the corpse and then stood waiting patiently.

  He’d let her wait, thought St-Cyr.

  Every detail was there, she told herself, in that little book Alexandre insisted on keeping. The names, the clients, the people who kept bees for him too. The out-apiaries … The Inspector seemed glued to the precisely crisp, neat handwriting. He’d see that keeping the directory had begun long before the war. In October of 1921, Inspector? she silently demanded. The 31st to be precise. The day he brought me here to this house of his mother and its awful furniture that my father soon rectified.

  He’d see that there were actors, doctors, lawyers, but among those less fortunate, Madame Roulleau, the concierge who kept bees for him on the roof of her apartment house and had done so for all those years and even some that had not been recorded. Mme de Longueville, too, and Monsieur Durand.

  He’d see that there were socialites, politicians and businessmen, and now German generals and others of the Occupier, and that Alexandre had had access to the grand salons of the elite. He’d see that they had all trusted him with their little secrets.

  ‘Madame, you will forgive me, but I’m puzzled.’

  ‘Puzzled?’ she heard herself yelp.

  ‘Yes. Did you, perhaps, remove this little book from the desk and then replace it?’

  How could he have guessed? ‘I …’

  The woman swallowed. Flustered and defenceless, she fought to answer but couldn’t. ‘You see, madame, in spite of the need for haste to avoid the fumes, Préfet Talbotte should, by rights, have taken it. A first police procedure is to seize all such records in case they should yield the identity of the killer.’

  ‘I … I did remove it, yes, for safety’s sake, you understand. But—’

  ‘But felt it best to replace it after the préfet and sous-préfet had departed?’

  She knew he was going to force her to answer yes, and wondered why it was so necessary for him to humiliate her like this. Her cheeks felt hot.

  Abruptly pulling the white woollen robe more tightly about herself, Juliette folded her arms defiantly across her chest and answered, ‘One does things in the instant of such a discovery, Inspector, that one later feels differently about and rectifies.’

  Instinct had driven her to protect something in the directory, but he’d not mention this, not yet, nor that she must have known of the danger and had ducked into and out of the study to get it. ‘Then can you tell me anything about these people?’

  Anything at all, or nothing. ‘It’s been a long time …’ she hazarded. ‘He kept things to himself.’

  ‘You didn’t help him in his work? A wife …’

  Had the crisis passed? she wondered and felt herself beginning to relax. Unfolding her arms, she said, ‘At first, yes, but then … why then Étienne came into this world and, with the house to look after and Madame de Bonnevies, I had little time to spare. She was ill and confined to her bed. I—’

  ‘You did not have une bonne à tout faire?’ A maid of all work.

  ‘My husband and his mother thought it too expensive, too “ostentatious” of me.’

  The Inspector would leave that titbit for now, she knew, but would come back to it like a vulture.

  ‘Did he like Amaretto?’

  Was it safer ground? ‘Not that I knew, but what you mean to ask, Inspector, is did he go out of his way to buy that bottle or did someone give it to him?’

  ‘You’ve been thinking it over.’

  Ah merde, he didn’t miss a thing! ‘The café on the rue Saint-Blaise is a possibility and just down from the church. He always went there for a marc or a glass or the vin ordinaire, but not on the no-alcohol days, of course. Sometimes an eau de vie de poir ou de pêche from one of the little orchards in Montreuil – he rented out hives to them and still does. Well, not any more, I guess. Perhaps that’s why there are so many in the apiary. He must have been overwintering some of them here and would have set them out again in the spring.’

  And you really have thought things over, madame, he said to himself. You’ve planned your strategy and want, I think, to lead me away from too close a perusal of this little book.

  ‘A vineyard, an orchard – pear and peach brandies or the plain and rough,’ said the Inspector, and she heard herself saying yes too quickly, and felt her heart sink at being caught out so easily.

  ‘The vineyard is in Saint-Fargeau. It’s not far and … and is not very big, but before the war, the … the wine was exceptional, the brandy passable.’

  Did the Inspector know it well? she wondered. Did he, perhaps, live nearby? Again her heart sank, then again and deeper as she heard him say, ‘The rue Laurence-Savart. My mother’s house also.’

  ‘Was she old and ill, too?’ she heard herself asking and knew he could be cruel for he did not answer.

  ‘Your partner …?’ she asked.

  ‘Has gone to interview one of the names on this list your husband had written for Friday’s deliveries and consultations.’

  ‘List … what list? I saw no …’ Ah SainteMère, he had got the better of her again!

  ‘It was in your husband’s jacket pocket,’ he confessed. ‘Now, if it’s not too much trouble, might we have a look at your son’s room?’

  ‘My son’s …? Inspector, you’ve no right. Étienne can’t have had anything to do with this. He doesn’t even know of it and won’t for weeks and weeks, if then!’

  She had broken into tears and he hated himself for doing it to her but had had to. ‘Do letters take so long to reach him?’ he asked.

  The hint of kindness in his voice only grated. ‘Months, sometimes. My son was being held at Stablack but then they moved him to Elsterhorst and now he’s at Oflag 17A. It’s … it’s somewhere in what was formerly Austria, I think.’

  Officers’ Lager 17A. ‘Did your son help his father, madame?’

  ‘With the bees …?’

  She had blanched and now realized this. Angrily she brushed the fringe from her brow and glared at him before stammering, ‘I … I don’t know why you should need to ask such a thing? I really don’t!’

  ‘Then let us take a look at his room. He can’t have had anything to do with this murder, of course, but let us make certain of it.’

  Monstre! she wanted to shriek, but found the will to softly say, ‘Then, if you will follow me, I will take you to it.’

  Twenty-four avenue Raphaël was tucked against the Jardin du Ranelagh and not a stone’s throw from the Bois. Once the villa of François Coty, the perfumer, it had been requisitioned like so many others. Drawing that splendid front-wheel drive of Louis’s into the kerb and locking the Citroën’s doors, Kohler stood in darkness as the faint blue lights of workmen fretted feverishly over the lower stonework of the villa. White paint was being removed with wire brushes and cloths soaked in gasoline. There were large, dripping letters nearest to the windows … MORT AUX BOCHES … VICTOIRE! LIBERTÉ!

  Death to the Germans … Victory! Liberty! Von Schaumburg would be in a rage. Not only had the Résistance done a job in the deepest darkness of the night, they had taught the sentries a damned good lesson: both could so easily have had their throats cut.

  ‘Relax, eh? I’ll see what I can do to calm him,’ he said to a pink-cheeked Grenadier who couldn’t be any more than sixteen and was dreading the Russian Front. ‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central.’

  Cigarettes were passed to both of the boys for later. ‘Danke,’ said the other one softly. ‘He’s in there frying our balls, I guess.’

  It was very quiet in the spacious foyer where tapestries hung and gilded Louis XIV armchairs offered respite. But the doors to the salons were all closed, the adjutant not at his desk, the secretary …

  Ilse Gross came through to take one look at him and shake her head. ‘Von Paulus,’ she mouthed the name. ‘Der Führer …’

  Prising off his shoes and dumping coat, fedora and gloves on top of the
m, Kohler headed for the grand salon. Clearly the rolling drumbeat and trumpet call of Die Wache am Rhein came to him and then words over a wireless that crackled.

  Radio-Berlin were broadcasting von Paulus’s faint-voiced gratitude to the Führer who had just made him a Field Marshal and expected him to carry on to the death.

  Looking ill, a grey, bristle-headed giant struck down, von Schaumburg was huddled under blankets before a roaring fire. Field-grey, regulation-issue woollen long johns were pulled up to the knees; the big bare feet plunked into a tin basin of steaming water that smelled strongly of Friar’s balsam. Both his adjutant, Rittmeister Graf Waldersee, and his aides, Major Prince Ratibor and Oberleutnant von Dühring, were with him.

  But only von Schaumburg had the flu. And why must that God of Louis’s do this to them?

  The radio message came to an end as the Führer’s Headquarters signed off.

  ‘Kohler, ach du lieber Gott, Dummkopf, what has happened? Why aren’t you working?’ Phlegm was hawked up, choked on, and spat into a handkerchief.

  ‘Nothing’s happened, General. It’s just a small delivery my partner and I thought you would …’

  ‘Das Bienen …’ he coughed. ‘Have you brought them. Idiot?’

  The bees … ah shit!

  Startled, Kohler threw the others a puzzled glance only to see the three of them quickly retreat and softly close the doors.

  ‘Well?’ demanded von Schaumburg. ‘My knuckles, they’re swollen. Swollen, Kohler.’

  Arthritis, and Louis hadn’t told him everything that had been in that little book of de Bonnevies’. ‘The bees were all dead, General. As soon as we can find replacements, we’ll send their owner to you.’

  ‘Ten stings a week, one on each knuckle. He was to have come to me yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, General, we know that.’

  ‘Verfluchte Franzosen.’

  Damned French …

  ‘Banditen, Kohler. Terroristen. Did you see what you and that … that partner of yours let those people do?’

  Gott im Himmel, were they now to be blamed for everything? ‘General, I’ve brought your honey and pollen, the royal …’