Both women were in their mid- to late forties, and one Sûreté glance at them sufficed. Both turned away to look out at the rue Saint-Blaise through curtains that held that same gossamer of tired lace he’d seen as a boy. Lace that cried out in despair for a wash or an airing in the rain but, even so, wore the patina of stains – those largely of tobacco smoke and fly spray – with a frayed dignity.
‘I’ve asked them to come, Inspector. As a man who was denied his conjugal rights, Alexandre made his visits to the house of Madame Thibodeau. A sin, God, I am certain, readily forgave but never would his wife. Never. And the question is, Why did he continue to visit a house so close to home? Was it to humiliate her?’
Both women were hard, time-worn filles de joie well on their way to that charlady-Valhalla of all such types.
‘Though a scientist and Président de la Société Centrale d’Apiculture, Alexandre prided himself on his roots. His father was head clerk in the shop of Juliette de Goncourt’s father on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. One de was simply exchanged, admittedly, for the dubious respectability of another, and with it eventually went her father’s money.’
‘And the son’s real father?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘She never told anyone, not even that father of hers, though de Goncourt loved his little grandson and did come to the boy’s baptism. I insisted, for her sake, Inspector, as much as for the child’s. In Charonne, as in any village or on any street, for that matter, the women always seem to be able to count better than their menfolk. Six months was all it took, and everyone knew it and that she had come from being far better off than them.’
‘De Goncourt must have been a very stubborn man.’
‘But he loved his Juliette and thought he was doing what was best. Now let me call those two over to our table. They’ll talk more freely if I’m present. Together we’ll find what answers they can give, for I see that you will need help with this murder and that it was not so straightforward and simple as I had at first felt.’
‘Juliette?’
‘And an end to the agony of his refusal to help her free the son for whom he had no love and little use.’
Leather, lead and copper, beeswax and candles, thought Kohler as he sat behind the wheel of the Citroën in the avenue Matignon. Flowers … mein Gott, hothouse roses and a birthday cake. Picnic hampers stuffed with pâté, Brie, caviar and champagne. Beautiful society women and très chic Parisiennes were being accompanied by well-turned-out Wehrmacht NCOs, many of whom were old enough to have fathered them.
There was constant traffic into and out of the former hôtel particulier of Gustav Eiffel. The boys of Das Deutsche Beschaffungsamt sure knew how to do things. Not a stone’s throw from the Rond Point of the Champs-Élysées and the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the Wehrmacht’s Procurement Office had been here right from the start in June 1940. Specialists in banking and industry, most of the staff had been drafted, of course, or had volunteered their expertise but why not make life enjoyable while you’re away from home?
Vélo-taxis drew up to the entrance of that tidy little mansion whose soft grey stone, Louis Philippe ironwork, tall French windows, and slate-covered, mansard roof, fitted in eloquently with the rest of the street. A Peugeot negotiated one of two arched carriageways. People on the street said hello, the men politely touching the peak of a cap or brim of a freshly blocked fedora.
Cement for the Todt Organization which was building the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall. Iron and steel. Gold and silver, too. Butter, eggs and cheese, the French big shots of the black market, the BOFs as the people called them – the beurre, oeufs et frontage boys – were everywhere and the cars they drove made the avenue like a dream of what the city must have been like before the Defeat.
There was even an open carriage parked in the snow of the courtyard, the poor nag too old and decrepit for the Russian Front. Ignoring its driver, he stroked the mare’s muzzle and, finding a lump of sugar deep in a pocket, whispered, ‘You’re beautiful, chérie. This is for you.’
Leather, priced officially by Vichy at nine francs the kilo, became fifteen and then thirty by the time the middlemen had got through with it. From there it went through still more dealers until here, bought on the black market, for that was the express, if unofficially acknowledged purpose of the Palais d’ Eiffel, it would skyrocket to seventy or eighty.
Lead went from six to thirty; copper from fifteen to eighty-five. But nearly everything was paid for in Occupation marks and since the Occupier printed these, and they couldn’t be spent anywhere but in France, why everything worked out just fine and didn’t cost a pfennig.
A gangster’s dream, a gambler’s paradise. ‘A palais de l’illusions,’ he said to the mare who wanted more sugar.
Purchases were also made in neutral countries – Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland – but paid for in pounds Sterling or Swiss francs. Unlimited bankrolls, then, and temptation like you wouldn’t believe, since no records were ever kept, especially of the pay-offs to those who found the goods for them. Again, everything worked out fine. One happy family, with secretaries, interpreters and clerks all anxious to assist, since they, too, shared in the dream. No wonder von Schaumburg was edgy. The Führer might not like it if he knew what actually went on here.
‘Wait, let me help you with that hamper,’ he called out to a delivery girl. ‘It must be heavy.’
Uncertainty registered in her brown eyes. He was too tall, too big, and there was a cruel scar down his face …
‘Relax. Look, I’m going in and right upstairs. Who’s it for?’
He did have a nice smile. ‘The General Thönisen.’
The boss himself. ‘He’s just the man I have to see.’
‘It’s almost noon, m’sieur. They close for three hours over lunch during the week but on Saturdays, stop completely.’
And this in an Army office? Mein Gott!
Five hundred francs was five hundred more than she would have got as a tip from the orderly on the desk. ‘Merci, monsieur,’ she hazarded, then finally grinned hugely and was gone before he could change his mind.
Silk- and brocade-covered armchairs and sofas made waiting in the hall pleasant. Cigarettes and cigars had been laid on. Helping himself to the freshly opened tin of pipe tobacco for Louis, he went over to the desk, waited his turn, and said, ‘Herr Schlacht. A little something for him but I’d like to take it up.’
‘Third floor, turn right. He’s not in. He seldom is, but Käthe – Frau Hillebrand – should be able to help you. She usually stays for a bit, in case someone has to contact him or one of the others.’
‘Danke.’
A plaque on the door read: Scrap Metals, but that could encompass a lot of things. The foyer was unoccupied, the office small, but with windows overlooking the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, the view nice even in winter.
‘Mein Herr …’ came a pleasant, if hesitant voice from the outer corridor.
‘Magdeburg,’ he said and grinned. ‘You’re from Magdeburg.’
‘Not quite. Schönebeck.’
She had a welcome, if nervous grin, and why, really, was she nervous? he wondered and sighed, ‘On the Elbe,’ as if it was home. And lifting the hamper up, said, ‘These are for Herr Schlacht. I’ll just keep the card.’
Had he really noticed her accent? she wondered. ‘And from yourself?’
‘Two tonnes of scrap lead. We came across it in an abandoned quarry in Charonne, near a graveyard. The leftover coffins they used hundreds of years ago, I guess. All flattened, of course. I thought Herr Schlacht might be interested.’
Coffins! ‘Very, I should think,’ she managed and, turning her back on him, led the way out of the office and along the corridor to her desk, where she sat down and reached for a pencil, had to. hold on to something – anything, she told herself.
Although one of the Blitzmädels, the similarity ended here, thought Kohler. Blonde, blue-eyed, about thirty-five and wearing a soft blue woollen dress that accentuated
every curve, she was a Hausfrau who had heard the call of duty and had left child and home to take it up. But somewhere along the line she’d forgotten to wear her wedding ring. A snapshot of her little boy, and one of his father in a Luftwaffe uniform faced her anyway.
‘Your name, mein Herr?’ she asked again.
He had to hand it to the boys of the Procurement Office. She was really very pretty. ‘Look, you wouldn’t know where I could find him, would you?’
‘I might.’
And still tense about it? wondered Kohler. He’d open the hamper and take out a box of chocolates from Fouquet’s, one of the city’s foremost restaurants and over on the Champs-Élysées at number 99.
She shook her head. The offer of champagne was no better.
‘You’re not a businessman, mein Herr, so I must ask myself how would such as yourself really have found a load of old coffins?’
Her fingers were no longer fidgeting; the nails perfectly manicured and as red as her lips. ‘We were looking for something else,’ he confessed and, grinning, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her.
Warily her eyes fled down over him and up again. ‘And what, exactly, were you looking for?’
‘A little badge, about the size of my thumbprint. He didn’t lose one, did he? The letters F.M.?’
Moisture rushed into her eyes. Hurriedly she stubbed out the cigarette and, trying to still the quaver in her voice, blurted, ‘Bitte, how did you know?’
‘I didn’t. I just guessed.’
And you’re from the Gestapo, she told herself, sickened by the thought. He didn’t quite have the manner but sometimes a person couldn’t tell with those types. ‘Herr Himmler presented it to Herr Schlacht on 31 August 1937. Oskar, he … he has worn it ever since.’
‘He didn’t accuse you of losing it, did he?’
‘Me? Why would he?’ she yelped.
The urge to say, ‘when partly undressed and in the heat of the moment’ was there, but it would be best to shrug and tell her something else to ease her mind. ‘Rudi told me about it.’
Everyone who was anyone knew of Chez Rudi’s on the Champs-Élysées, across from the Lido. Both restaurant and centre of all gossip.
‘Oskar may still be at the smelter on the rue Montmartre. It’s near a café called À La Chope du Croissant and is run by some Russians. A narrow courtyard … Lots of little ateliers. If he isn’t there, he might have gone over to the Hotel Drouot to … to look things over.’
The Paris auction house. ‘And afterwards?’
‘Lunch at Maxim’s, I think.’
And a bull’s-eye.
As he turned to leave, she called out desperately, ‘Your name, mein Herr?’
‘Oh, sorry. Denke. Tell him Karl Otto was in. He’ll understand.’
‘And the badge?’ she asked. ‘He … he really did blame me for losing it.’
You poor thing. ‘Then tell him not to worry, eh? Rudi says it’s in good hands for now. No problem.’
The two prostitutes were sisters, and it hadn’t taken a moment to see this, thought St-Cyr, surprised that Father Michel had still not mentioned it. Both had implored this Sûreté to guarantee the sous-préfet and préfet wouldn’t have them hauled in for questioning or worse, a licence suspension. They were really very worried and had kept coming back to the matter so much so, it was abundantly clear the priest had used the threat to get them to the table.
But why that of a licence suspension? he asked himself and sighed inwardly at the intricacies of life under the Occupation. ‘Danielle de Bonnevies trades in many items,’ he said, looking from one to the other of them. ‘Toothbrushes, compacts, razor blades and carpenter’s nails … Two bars of beautiful hand soap. With all of these she must have had help in acquiring them.’
‘Not us, Inspector,’ swore Josiane, the elder of the two, reaching for a sip of the red.
‘Inspector, what has this to do with the murder?’ demanded Father Michel, as if, in having set it all up, he could now claim innocence.
‘Only that the J-threes are very busy these days, Father.’
Everyone knew the teenagers were working the black market for all it was worth. Designated J-threes by their ration category, many were roaming around after classes flashing thick wads of fifty- and one-hundred-franc notes. Five-hundreds also.
‘Danielle deals with some of the local kids,’ admitted Josiane, her auburn hair permed and piled beneath its petite chapeau. ‘They buy and sell, and then she sells for them and splits the profit, I guess.’
‘Lipstick,’ murmured Georgette, not daring to look up from her playing cards, for Père Michel was sternly watching her. ‘Cigarette lighters. I … I have bought one from her. Was it a crime, Father?’ Was the Chief Inspector on to her and Josiane? she wondered.
‘You know that the Church has now advised everyone that it is perfectly within the will of God to deal on the black market,’ chided Father Michel. ‘It’s no longer to be considered a sin, Georgette.’
Like some? she wondered, sickened by the thought.
St-Cyr had been assigned to the pussy patrol in his early days as a policeman, recalled Father Michel, satisfied that the Chief Inspector had finally gauged the drift of things. ‘Neither Georgette nor Josiane would ever have anything to do with underage clients, Inspector. Now would you both?’ he asked, and saw another moment of panic rush through them.
‘No, Father,’ came Georgette’s hushed answer, she still concentrating on her game of solitaire.
‘Just one,’ confessed Josiane. ‘I swear I didn’t realize it, Father. Madame put him out of Le Chat before … before anyone else had noticed him.’
‘Then the matter is settled,’ said the priest, calling for another carafe of the red to soothe the sore throats of his two guests who had obviously, thought St-Cyr, been up to things with more than one of the local teenagers.
They settled down, each of the sisters no doubt silently cursing their parish priest for having exacted a promise from them by using a confrontation with a Sûreté over the unfortunate death of a former client!
Warming to the interview, for it was so much of Belleville and Charonne, St-Cyr took out his pipe and prepared to stay for as long as it took to get what he could from these two. Both were heavily made-up. Still in their fur-trimmed overcoats, thin scarves and hats, only their gloves had been removed. Both had the same broad faces, wide lips, double chins and carefully tweezed eyebrows. But whereas Josiane had dark brown, cataract-clouded eyes, Georgette’s were sea-green and clear, but with a pronounced cast in the left one. Hence the cards and the endless games of solitaire, though even here one of those nuances of character had caused her to taunt the good father and tempt him into distraction, just for the fun of it and to have something to recount to the other girls!
‘Now tell the Inspector a little about Alexandre and your dealings with him,’ grunted Father Michel. ‘Go on. You can speak freely. God knows everything and will understand.’
Trust a priest to say such a thing! thought Josiane. ‘God would have shut His eyes, Father. Besides, it’s a private matter. The rules of the house, isn’t that so?’
‘Private,’ echoed her sister.
One by one the greasy, well-thumbed playing cards, each with a full-length portrait of a naked girl in an awkward pose, were placed face up.
‘He liked to take you both, didn’t he?’ prompted Father Michel, helping himself to more pastis and another Gauloise Bleue from the packet of cigarettes they had brought.
‘Sometimes,’ said Josiane a little stiffly, ‘Alexandre would …’
‘Father, details of his sex life with these two really are of little interest. I want to question …’
‘Then they should be, my son. Please don’t be so impatient.’
‘Oh là, là, Josiane, will you look at that!’
The younger one had lost her game.
‘He … he liked to call us names,’ she confessed and began to gather the cards.
‘What sort of n
ames?’ prodded the priest, exhaling cigarette smoke and fastidiously picking a shred of tobacco from his sleeve.
‘Father, you know very well what sort of names.’
‘Angele-Marie,’ whispered Georgette darkly, again concentrating on the game before her.
Merde alors, why had he had to ask? cursed Josiane. ‘And Suzette, and Élène or Michèle. Pouf! Father, it meant nothing. Just a whim of the moment.’
Retreating behind his little cloud of cigarette smoke, the priest waited.
Finally the dark eyes of the older sister ducked away.
‘Angèle-Marie …?’ hazarded St-Cyr. The cards had stopped.
‘Alexandre’s sister, Inspector,’ sighed Father Michel. ‘I rather thought you might be interested, especially since he went to see her last Thursday. Teased as a child by an older brother who loved bees and knew all about virgin queens; raped repeatedly on a summer’s evening in 1912, and so violently at the age of fifteen, by some animal or animals in the Père Lachaise – we never did get the story of it in full; the custodians had forgotten about the poor child and had locked her in for the night – she has long since become a permanent resident of the Salpêtrière.’
Almost the size of a small town, the Paris asylum for women held more than six thousand inmates and had a staff of over a thousand.
‘Alexandre was very worried about her safety, Inspector,’ said Father Michel. ‘Given the willingness of our German friends to destroy all such signs of mental or physical weakness, he had, I should think, cause for alarm.’
‘It was only play,’ hazarded Josiane, picking at her handbag. ‘Georgette would take her name, I would watch and when … why, when his little moment was over, we would sit and talk for old times’ sake.’
Jésus, merde alors, these village quartiers and their priests! ‘And how old, please, was Georgette when Monsieur de Bonnevies first visited Le Chat?’
‘Fifteen,’ grunted Father Michel. ‘Alexandre would have been … Now, let me see …’
‘Twenty-seven, Father,’ said the older sister.
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