Beekeeper

by J. Robert Janes

  Another skull was smashed. Femurs and tibiae were struck. The bar hit solid stone. The woman shrieked again, and finding the exit corridor at last, ran.

  ‘Monsieur, give yourself up this instant!’ managed the Sûreté and from the steps of the spring, thought Leroux. ‘You’re under arrest!’

  Perhaps the custodian shifted the bar to his other hand, perhaps the letter opener. Nothing was said. Water trickled constantly.

  In the far distance, the woman stumbled and fell but dragged herself up and went on in terror, screaming for Leroux to spare her. ‘HE POISONED ALEXANDRE, INSPECTOR,’ she shrilled. ‘HE WAS ONE OF THOSE WHO RAPED HIS SISTER.’

  His sister … His sister … came the echoes.

  ‘You killed a comrade, monsieur,’ charged the Sûreté, catching a breath. ‘You robbed the corpses of your officers.’

  ‘And that … that, mon fin, was said exactly as one of them would have!’

  Leroux began to move forward, feeling always the porous texture of the knuckles in the walls, the skulls also, and recalling every change so as to guide himself.

  He’d have to kill this Sûreté. There couldn’t be any more than one of them. This one had come alone, and would therefore vanish without trace.

  ‘Monsieur, I’m warning you,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘INSPECTOR, PLEASE HELP ME!’ cried the woman.

  Help me … Help me … The chambers resounded with her terror.

  Taking out his box of matches, he tried to light three or four of them.

  He hasn’t moved yet, said Leroux to himself. The spring is to his left …

  The matchsticks broke, the Sûreté swore and tried to take others from the box. Silently he stepped away from the spring and soon the sound of it was far behind him, for he had reached the corridor Héloïse had taken. Yes, yes, said Leroux to himself, silently following.

  Try as he did, St-Cyr knew it would be impossible to hear the exit door being opened. They were just too far from it. Turning back, he felt the draught on his face – searched the impenetrable darkness, smelt the musty damp air, the fetidness of bone meal, the taint of anise, too. Anise and garlic and onions … Where … where the hell was Leroux? How close now? How close …?

  When the iron bar cut the air, it struck the wall, shattering the stone and raising sparks. The woman shrieked as the custodian gave a savage grunt, a stab with the letter opener which flew out of his hand and hit the floor.

  ‘Bâtard!’ he rasped. ‘Let me kill you.’

  Each man waited for the other to make a move. The one must back towards her, the other must advance, thought Héloïse, hastily wiping tears from her smarting eyes. If she could hold the Sûreté, Jean-Claude could kill him and then … then maybe he would let her go.

  You fool! she said. He will only smash your head in, too.

  Franctically her fingers fled over the bones – she was in another of the chambers. If only she could find its exit. If only she could make her way from chamber to chamber and then … then climb the stairs back up to the street. This place exits on the rue Dareau*, she told herself. Please, God, help me.

  God would only damn her. ‘God can’t forgive you yet, my child.’ Father Michel had said this to her in the afternoon. Today … No, yesterday. Saturday …

  ‘Candles … I lit a candle for our Lady, Father,’ she had said.

  ‘God is kind. God is generous. God provides,’ he’d answered.

  Candles … did the Inspector know who left them on the steps of the church? Could she use the information to barter for clemency?

  The iron bar was savagely swung. Distant from her, she heard the Sûreté gasp in pain and cry out, ‘ARREST, DAMN YOU!’

  The bar clattered at his feet. Perhaps he held Jean-Claude in an arm-lock, perhaps he had thrown him up against a wall and was now fastening the bracelets on him.

  Perhaps … perhaps … But Jésus, merde alors, what the hell has happened? she wondered. And crawling forward, found the exit, bowed her head into her hands and wept.

  At 5 a.m. Berlin Time, the Club Mirage was all but deserted, the air heavy with stale tobacco smoke. Up on stage, in a feather-trimmed pink housecoat that dragged its hem, the wife of one of the brothers pushed a broom but avoided the soiled heap of a Wehrmacht greatcoat. Her slippers didn’t match, and the Gauloise Bleue that was glued to her lower lip had a good two centimetres of ash clinging to it.

  Silent, the Rivards were giving the zinc a final wipe.

  ‘Jean-Louis …’ said Gabrielle, coming along the corridor from her dressing room to find him staring at the coat. ‘Jean-Louis, what has happened to your arm?’

  They kissed on each cheek, first the right and then the left, and then the right again, as was her custom. He drew in the lovely scent of her perfume and momentarily shut his eyes, wishing for a calmer time. ‘Perhaps you’d best tell me,’ he said, indicating the coat on the floor. ‘Dead Caucasian bees, bits of willow twigs … Buckwheat honey, unless I’m mistaken. That of lavender, too …’

  ‘Remi,’ she called out softly. ‘A pastis for our friend. Please leave the bottle and a pitcher of clean water, then let us have the place to ourselves. This is private.’

  ‘Oui, madame.’ They often called her that out of respect. She brought in the money and took ten per cent of the take, had the voice of an angel, was regularly heard over wireless broadcasts that reached the front lines of both the Reich and the Allies.

  ‘Arlette, we can do that tonight,’ said Léon to his wife who hadn’t stopped her sweeping to greet the visitor.

  Left alone with Louis, Gabrielle made him remove his own overcoat. ‘There is blood,’ she said. ‘Ah merde, you’ve really been hurt. Is it broken?’

  He shook his head, suddenly ached to be at peace. ‘I’d like to go fishing with René Yvon-Paul.’

  ‘He’d like that, too.’

  She peeled off his suit jacket and the woollen cardigan his mother had knitted for him perhaps ten … no, fifteen years ago. There were holes in the elbows, mismatched buttons …

  ‘It’s a part of me,’ he said apologetically. ‘Hermann complains.’

  ‘And is that a hint, because if it is, I have to tell you I want to look at this first before letting you know who took him away.’

  ‘Away …?’

  She nodded. Tears moistened her eyes, sharpening their violet shade. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you terribly and now don’t know what’s to become of either of you. The Milice dump Oona’s purse out on the street while you are still on your way home from Avignon. They scrutinize her papers which are not so good, as you know very well, and now …’

  ‘Has he been arrested?’

  ‘Later. In a moment.’

  ‘Just what the hell has he been up to, Gabrielle? He was to question a Frau Schlacht, nothing else, and then return to the Salpêtrière to pick me up. A … a woman with two small children had stopped us in the street. Hermann … Hermann and I gave them a lift to the soup kitchen at the Gare d’Austerlitz. He was going to …’

  ‘Calm down, please. For now I need you to keep still.’

  The gash in his upper left arm was deep and ragged, and of about ten centimetres in length. ‘Who did this?’ she asked.

  He sighed heavily. ‘I tried to arrest two murderers. One was difficult. Both got away and can now await a little visit. There’s no hurry even if they should happen to kill each other.’

  ‘There is for this, and you know it.’

  ‘Then please telephone the morgue and ask if Armand Tremblay is going through the autopsy notes on the corpse of Alexandre de Bonnevies and doing his own as I requested. Armand can patch me up. I need, also, the analysis on the bottle of Amaretto.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. I’ll do this myself. Now be quiet.’

  Everything that was necessary was kept behind the bar. Deftly she cleaned the wound and refilled his glass. ‘I’ve done this lots of times,’ she said.

  ‘You continue to surprise me.’

  H
er hair, worn loose at this hour, was of shoulder length and not blonde as he’d first thought, but the soft shade of a really fine brandy, and it spilled forward as she set to work. Her hands were slender, the fingers long.

  ‘Hermann was taken by the Milice but we still do not know where to. Remi has asked two trusted friends to quietly find out. For now you are to rest and keep out of it.’

  ‘You like giving orders. I could sleep for a year.’

  ‘With me, I hope.’

  ‘You know I can’t. Gabi, listen to me, please. It’s not safe for you to be seen with me. The SS, the Milice, will only cause further trouble.’

  ‘Avignon was unpleasant?’ she hazarded, not looking up from her needle.

  ‘A handful of madrigal singers. The Cagoule caused difficulties.’

  ‘And Gestapo Boemelburg is not happy with the result?’

  Still she hadn’t looked up. ‘We’ve been warned to behave. An explosion on the tracks, then what happened to Oona. Boemelburg wants us to do one thing; the Kommandant von Gross-Paris another.’

  The Cagoule had many friends and supporters among the Milice, thought Gabrielle. Others were members of it, and their lines of communication throughout the country were tragically getting better. ‘Then that must explain why an SS major wanted to talk to Hermann but got those people to haul him in.’

  There was a sadness to her voice that said much more. An aching for France and what had happened to a once splendidly humane nation. Refilling his glass, she told him to drink it neat. From a silver cigarette case he knew well, she took two Russian cigarettes, the tobacco black and much stronger than he liked, but …

  ‘For me, for you,’ she said on lighting them. ‘For the first time we met, and for the times since then.’

  ‘For my partner, too, wherever he is.’

  Would Jean-Louis and Hermann live to see the end of the Occupation; would she herself, or Oona and Giselle? wondered Gabrielle.

  Rolling his shirt sleeve down, she buttoned it. ‘You know I want us to have a life together.’

  ‘Don’t be difficult. It’s impossible. It’s far too dangerous for you.’

  ‘For you also?’ she asked.

  ‘For all of us,’ he said and did not offer to brush her tears away, just looked so steadily at and through her, one instantly saw Sûreté!

  ‘Then you had better come to the house anyway, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal,’ she retorted acidly. ‘You see, my concierge telephoned here last night and then discreetly came to see me rather than give the news to Gestapo ears, even though those salauds are still probably aware of it since they constantly watch the club and I could not tell her this. Apparently I have acquired, through no effort of my own, you understand, a new maid. Sixteen years of age and very capable, so much so, among her references it is stated that she was trusted implicitly, Inspector – implicitly – by her former mistress and made four trips a year to Switzerland with her. Heavy suitcases in; light ones out, in spite of the desperate need for canned goods here. Speaks more than a smattering of German which will be helpful, you understand, since the girl can’t possibly stay in Paris and must go underground immediately. Giselle brought her to my place. Giselle, Jean-Louis.’

  ‘Not Oona?’

  He was desperate. ‘No, not Oona.’

  ‘Arrested also?’

  ‘Oui.’

  The Citroën had remained in darkness in front of the club. No one had touched it or tried to steal it, thought Gabrielle. Things were so bad, word had spread rapidly and it had been avoided like the plague, but left by the arresters so as to give the other half of the partnership wings.

  Reaching under the driver’s seat, Jean-Louis soon found what he wanted, and dragged them out. ‘As keeper of our guns until needed, Hermann is, at times, careless,’ he confessed.

  She knew his would be the 1873 Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, six shots, the calibre 11mm. Hermann’s was a Walther P38, a semiautomatic 9mm Parabellum, with eight cartridges in the clip.

  ‘Jean-Louis, I meant what I said about your sleeping. You can’t run on that stuff like your partner does.’

  ‘I will if I have to.’

  Digging into the side pocket of the door, he found a spare phial of the little grey pills of Benzedrine the German night-fighter pilots took to stay awake, and downed how many? she wondered.

  ‘Four,’ he said. ‘After a while the system grows accustomed to them, so one must increase the dosage.’

  ‘Mon Dieu, will you not listen to me? Where … just where do you think you’re going to find him?’

  ‘At a smelter. You know it and so do I, so why try to hide the fact? Just take care of that new maid you’ve acquired. Let me drive you home and then forget about us.’

  ‘I can’t. I won’t.’

  ‘You’d best, for the sake of your son.’

  The furnace was white hot. The Alsatian guard dogs were restless and had had to be chained.

  Awakened in the dead of night and forced from their garrets, the Russian smelter workers and their families huddled in grey nightshirts and nightgowns. Teenagers, kids, thumb-sucking toddlers with runny noses, grandparents and parents mutely watched from the rickety, soot-encrusted staircase that climbed above the wall of cages.

  Frantic, one of the guinea pigs was dangled by a hind leg over the gaping mouth of the furnace. Heat roared up, smarting its glistening dark eyes and causing it to madly squirm.

  Sweat poured from Kohler. Blinded by it, he tried to clear his eyes. His wrists ached like hell. The bracelets – his bracelets – were cutting into them. Strung up, stripped naked, he hung from a chain and hoist pulley near the furnace. Only his toes touched the floor.

  There were six miliciens and one of them had removed his tunic and beret to don goggles and asbestos. The others, their expressions dark with hatred, waited. There was no sign of the SS major now. No sign …

  When dropped, the creature didn’t even squeal. It simply flashed to steam with little smoke, and this rushed from the furnace, white and sudden and carrying still-glowing bits of its fur.

  Frantically Kohler searched for a way out. These bastards weren’t just angry about the loss of two of their own. They’d had word from Avignon and were out to put an end to him!

  Goggles removed a gauntlet and took from a small, slag-encrusted crucible, a fine gold neckchain and locket.

  ‘Don’t! Please don’t,’ managed Kohler. There had, as yet, been no sign of Oona.

  The locket was opened. The hoist was released a little, and now his feet could rest flatly on the floor. In relief, he shut his eyes tightly, then opened them.

  ‘Look, be reasonable, eh? It’s the only picture she has of her two children. They were lost during the blitzkrieg in the west – killed, she believes, on the trek from Holland, and I … I can’t make her see that there could still be hope. I can’t.’

  ‘Half-Jewish,’ grunted Goggles. ‘Johan would have been nine years old now; Anna, seven. The father, Martin Van der Lynn, was a Jew the woman you shelter tried to hide in Paris.’

  ‘The French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston killed him in the Velodrome d’Hiver.’ The cycling arena.

  ‘And good riddance,’ said Goggles.

  The locket was dangled over the furnace. The photograph began to turn brown, to curl and finally to burst into flame.

  ‘Gone,’ wept Kohler. ‘Ah, Oona … Oona, forgive me.’

  Blood and sweat trickled from his left eye to run down the scar the rawhide whip of an SS had left a good two months ago at the chateau of Gabrielle Arcuri’s mother-in-law near Vouyray, and overlooking the Loire. Yet another murder investigation whose outcome had definitely not been appreciated.

  Blood and sweat found the one that cut diagonally across his chest. ‘Maudit salauds!’ he cried. ‘What the hell have you done with Oona?’

  ‘That’s not for you to know.’

  Godonov was summoned and told to charge the furnace. ‘We need enough to bathe this one’s feet.’

&n
bsp; Scrap silverware, sand, charcoal, lead oxide, bone ash and the yellowish peroxide of sodium were added.

  ‘Now we must wait,’ cautioned Godonov. ‘Please.’ He ducked his shaggy head to one side in deference. ‘A little vodka, mes amis. Pickled cucumber and beetroot will be served on blini, the small pancakes we usually eat with caviar. There is coulibac also, and made in the old way, you understand. A superb cabbage pie whose origins date from the sixteenth century. Pel’meni sibériens, too. These are a kind of ravioli that we have stuffed with a delectable forcemeat of guinea pig.’

  He paused to let his gaze sift over the assembled. ‘Of course, messieurs, we apologize for there not being any sour cream or caviar, but such things are difficult these days, as is the vodka, although God makes allowances.’

  Clothing that was Oona’s was dangled over the furnace and allowed to catch fire before being dropped.

  Herr Kohler was hoisted up so that his toes no longer touched the floor.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Godonov softly. ‘There is, alas, nothing I can do.’

  Tendrils of tobacco smoke rose into the beam of the cinema’s projector. On the screen, an ancient rerun, approved by those idiots in the Propaganda Staffel, was telling the French how decadent they were.

  An abortionist was about to attend to a young girl of misfortune who was afraid and hesitantly undressing. Flames rose from the skirt and sweater she removed. Flames caught at the woollen knee socks, cotton blouse, half-slip and brassiere. Oona … was it Oona?

  Giselle was sitting all alone beneath the projector beam. Tears streaked her face; she tore her hair. Blood ran from her beautiful lips. Pregnant … was Giselle pregnant?

  Oona, idiot. She’s worried about ‘OONA!’

  With a shriek, Herr Kohler awoke from his little nightmare as the ice-cold water hit him. Shaking his head to clear it, he realized at once where he was still hanging.

  ‘Were they raping them both,’ asked Godonov softly with deep concern, ‘or just the one they have taken?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Worried about repercussions, Godonov hesitated. ‘Three or four a.m. I have not asked.’

  The Russian lowered the bucket and, at a word from behind, deferentially stood aside and returned to the staircase to join the others of his little flock.