Beekeeper

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘This won’t take long, mon vieux, and will, I think, save much time.’

  ‘And if we refuse to go in there?’ shrilled Frau Hillebrand.

  ‘Then my partner will have the SS drag you in, meine gute Frau,’ said St-Cyr in deutsch. ‘If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.’

  Father Michel said in French that it wasn’t right and that the deceased deserved to be left in peace. ‘He never did that to me, Father!’ countered Juliette. ‘Why not tell the Inspectors everything? Why not confess?’

  ‘My child, you’re overwrought.’

  ‘You came to the house on Thursday afternoon, Father. You had just been to see Angèle-Marie.’

  ‘Inspectors, is this really necessary?’ asked de Saussine.

  ‘I guess it is, eh, Louis?’ snorted Kohler.

  Danielle de Bonnevies said nothing but was so tense, he could feel her pulse racing and, finding an ear, whispered, ‘Don’t even think of it. Those boys behind us have two dogs and Schmeissers. We’d only be laying you out on a slab.’

  ‘I heard no dogs,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, maybe not, but you do understand, eh? Now you first, and easy, then me. Here, hang on a minute, I need to lean my crutches against the door.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ she muttered as the door was opened.

  ‘Forgive …’ echoed Hermann, only to shriek in agony as the girl stamped on his wounded foot and tumbled out of the car. She fell. She dragged herself up and began to run as the guards cried, ‘Halt!’ and Juliette shrilled, ‘Danielle …’

  ‘Don’t shoot! Please don’t!’ yelled St-Cyr in German, and then, ‘Ah merde. Mademoiselle, arrêtez-vous! You cannot escape.’

  Cursing, the SS bundled back into their cars, one racing up the avenue Ledru-Rollin with high beams fully uncovered and the fronts of the buildings staring out into the passing light as if suddenly awakened; the other tearing up the boulevard de la Bastille. Simultaneously they must have reached the rue de Lyon, for two sets of tyres screeched, both horns blared. A bicycle taxi had perhaps got in the way.

  ‘Louis, shouldn’t we go after her? Those roots …’

  ‘What roots?’ demanded Frau Hillebrand in perfect French.

  ‘Hermann, we had best leave her for now. Inside, I think.’

  They heard the cars taking the short little side streets that lay between the rue de Lyon and rue de Bercy.

  ‘Verdammt!’ swore Kohler still gritting his teeth in pain, and gathering up scattered crutches. ‘Why the hell couldn’t she have listened to me, Louis?’

  ‘The half-brother, I think. Now come on, let me help you.’

  ‘No. I’m all right. I should have listened to myself. I knew she was going to make a bolt for it.’

  They crowded into the entrance, blinking as the electric light hit them. Frau Hillebrand was nervous and withdrawn; Father Michel tense and watchful; Juliette de Bonnevies sickened by what Danielle had just done and by the nearness of what they must now go through.

  And de Saussine, wondered St-Cyr, and answered, is no longer sure of himself.

  ‘This way, tnes amis. Monsieur,’ he said to the attendant on the desk, ‘St-Cyr of the Sûreté and Kohler of the Kripo to see the autopsy reports on Alexandre de Bonnevies and to view the corpse.’

  ‘Louis, must I?’ muttered Kohler.

  ‘Why me, why you, why us, eh?’ It was a plea Hermann often made.

  ‘My son …’

  Stung, Kohler swung round. ‘Father, get that butt of yours in there and speak only when spoken to!’

  They went into a room so big and cold and white, her shivering would be noticed, thought Juliette and swallowed hard. There were several corpses on table-like slabs, with draining boards and sinks and blood … blood seeping from a cut-open chest and abdomen. Blood pooled around someone’s heart and lungs and splashed on a limp penis and marble-white thighs.

  Alexandre was hideous. His iron-grey hair was parted in the middle and slicked down hard with pomade – he’d never worn it that way. Not like a gangster or pimp! The nostrils were blackberry blue, the eyelids and lips, the fingernails …

  Turning swiftly away, she choked and threw up.

  ‘And you, Frau Hillebrand?’ asked the Chief Inspector St-Cyr, watching her closely, too closely, thought Käthe. ‘You’re not sickened, but are fascinated.’

  ‘In shock!’ she said harshly in deutsch, and dragging a handkerchief from her purse, clapped it over her nose. Rage moistened her lovely eyes – guilt also? wondered St-Cyr.

  Father Michel had kissed the rosary he had dragged from a pocket and was muttering an Ave.

  De Saussine was pale and shaken. Slowly, gradually, his gaze moved from the blue-black lips and gold-filled teeth to the scars of war that had lacerated and punctured the chest and arms, to the varicose veins and putrid, greenish-yellow blotches that were spreading under the pale, blackberry-hued and hairy skin.

  ‘Ah bon!’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘He’s been opened twice and …’

  The Inspector consulted a sheaf of typed pages, pausing when he found what he was after, thought Juliette. ‘A good sixty cubic centimetres were downed in one gulp from that bottle. The “Amaretto” was between thirty and forty per cent mono-nitrobenzene, but its excess, beyond that which had dissolved in the alcohol, would have risen to the top so he did not even look at the drink he took.’

  ‘Oil of mirbane,’ whispered Kohler to Frau Hillebrand who darted a startled and hurtful glance at him.

  ‘Apparently our victim had eaten little since the early morning, Madame de Bonnevies,’ went on Louis. ‘A “coffee” taken without milk, a small piece of the National bread and a teaspoon of pollen.’

  ‘He always swore it gave him energy,’ she said emptily.

  ‘A little wine during the day. A dried apple, a few chestnuts and one or two of your daughter’s vitaminic biscuits.’

  The woman shrugged and said, ‘I really wouldn’t know what, if anything, he ate during the rest of that day. I took him his breakfast at seven. We didn’t even speak. We … we seldom did.’

  ‘And that afternoon?’

  ‘Father Michel came to see me after he’d been to the Salpêtrière. He said … I’m sorry, Father, but I have to tell them. He said that it had all been taken care of and I need not worry any longer about Alexandre’s bringing Angèle-Marie home.’

  ‘I gave that poor unfortunate a taste of honey, Inspectors, and freely admit it.’

  ‘Later, mon Père. We’ll deal with you later,’ grunted St-Cyr. ‘Madame, at what time, please, did your husband return from the hospital?’

  ‘At … at about ten past four.’

  ‘And where were you at that time?’

  ‘In the kitchen. Father Michel hadn’t wanted Alexandre to find him there but my husband came through as usual, saying only that he was going out again.’

  ‘And your answer, madame?’

  ‘My answer …? Why, the silence of a wife who knows, Inspector, exactly where her husband is going.’

  ‘To Le Chat qui crie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And early that evening?’ asked Louis, glancing again at the autopsy reports as if there was information he had deliberately withheld, thought Kohler, and saw the priest warily watching Juliette.

  ‘At eight thirty Alexandre went out to unlock the gates.’

  ‘And where were you when you heard this?’

  ‘In … in Étienne’s room.’

  ‘And you heard your husband from behind closed windows, black-out drapes and closed doors – remember, please, that the study is quite separate from the rest of the house?’

  Ah damn him! ‘I had opened my son’s bedroom window a little. I … I felt Alexandre must be meeting someone because he … he had been so agitated. Nothing had been right. It never was, but …’ She shrugged. ‘I just had to find out who could be coming at such an hour.’

  ‘Yet you had hardly spoken during the whole of that day?’

  Merde alors, would
he not leave things alone? ‘It … it was a feeling I had. Nothing else.’.

  ‘Then we’ll let the matter rest, shall we? Death occurred between eight twenty and nine twenty, give or take a half-hour on either side.’

  ‘Alexandre hurried back through the garden. I heard him quickly close the outer door to the study. There were a few minutes of silence and then … then …’ She gripped her forehead and, covering her eyes in despair, said, ‘I heard him cry out suddenly, heard him shrieking my name and … and gagging. I thought he was just angry. Really I did. Oh mon Dieu, mon Dieu, why could I not have gone to help him? I didn’t, Inspectors. I waited, and may God forgive me.’

  A reasonable performance, thought Kohler, but not quite believable. ‘And then?’ asked Louis with that same unruffled patience he always had when a corpse was between himself and a suspect.

  ‘I heard him vomiting and wondered at this, but … but someone was opening the gate at the back of the garden. It needs to be oiled, you understand, but there is no oil to be had. This person came on and opened the outer door to the study. Light fell briefly on her and I … I saw who it was.’

  ‘The time, please – as close as you can estimate?’

  ‘Nine, I think, or … or eight forty-five.’

  ‘And the name, madame?’

  ‘Frau Schlacht. She … she didn’t stay more than a minute or two and, making certain the lock was on, closed the door and hurriedly left by the way she had come. I ran downstairs and went out the front door to the street and nearly collided with her, but … but she simply hurried away and got into a vélo-taxi that was waiting for her. Only then did I hear her voice, in German. She was swearing at her driver and telling him to hurry.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Louis.

  ‘I went back inside and tried to get my husband to open the door to the study, but … but there was no sound.’

  ‘No sound … Ah! a moment, madame. I have it here.’

  Kohler knew the look Louis gave the woman, that of a Sûreté who hadn’t believed for a minute what she’d said.

  ‘By itself, and simply drinking the nitrobenzene, madame, any reaction would have been delayed for at least an hour, but your husband, as you know, realized what had happened and immediately tried to check the contents of the container, and during this, spilled the oil of mirbane and got it on his hands and clothes. As a result, the reaction was much more rapid and death took place within an hour. An hour, Madame de Bonnevies.’

  ‘Between eight twenty and nine twenty,’ muttered Käthe Hillebrand, ‘or between seven fifty and eight fifty …’

  ‘Or between eight fifty and nine fifty,’ said St-Cyr, ‘which would be suitable, of course, but we want that hour prior to death, don’t we, and Madame de Bonnevies has just told us her husband had gone out to open the gates at …?’

  ‘At eight thirty. My watch, it’s … it’s not so good any more.’

  ‘Off by an hour?’ asked the Sûreté. ‘Still on the old time perhaps?’

  She swallowed hard and admitted that this was possible.

  ‘Then let’s get it straight once and for all, madame. Your husband lay on the floor in agony – vomiting, passing out only to awaken moments later with a ragged gasp. Twitching, getting up – falling – knocking things over and …?’

  ‘And crying out my name, but … but I did not kill him. I swear it. I … I thought he was drunk.’

  Her tears were very real, but still it would have to be asked. ‘Had he ever been drunk before in his study?’

  ‘No! Father … Father, tell him I didn’t do it. Tell him I sat in the kitchen, listening to Alexandre – knowing something must be wrong and that I should go to him, but that the years of bitterness had been too many.’

  ‘Inspector …’

  ‘Later, Father. Later. And Frau Schlacht, madame?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘She came to the front entrance and I let her into the house. Together we broke a pane of glass in the back door and found my husband on the floor.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘At what time, please?’

  ‘Time? I … I don’t know! How could I? My watch …’

  ‘Was it at the Hôtel Titania on a night table, madame? Were you nowhere near your house at the time of your husband’s death?’

  ‘Louis, when first interviewed she claimed she couldn’t possibly have known he was expecting a visitor.’

  ‘Absolutely a conflict, Hermann.’

  ‘All right. I … I didn’t find him until about three in the morning when Herr Schlacht dropped me off at the corner of the street. Alexandre’s bedroom door was open and he wasn’t in his bed. That’s … that’s when I broke the window and found him on the floor.’

  ‘And Frau Schlacht?’ asked Louis.

  ‘Must have put the lock on the outer door he had left open for her. I … I really don’t know but didn’t want you to find her name in his little book because … because Oskar had said she was up to something with my husband.’

  He would give her the curt little nod of dismissal he usually gave on such occasions, thought St-Cyr, and then would distract her by going after the priest. ‘And now you, Father. Let’s get this over with quickly.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. I would never have done that.’

  ‘Perhaps, but as his priest and confessor you knew all about what he’d been doing to Héloïse Debré and to Jean-Claude Leroux, the custodian of the catacombs, and you knew he wanted his sister to come home.’

  ‘Angèle-Marie was a madness of his. I couldn’t allow him to destroy Juliette’s life any more than he already had.’

  ‘So you gave the sister a taste of honey.’

  ‘Things had gone too far. Alexandre could be and was a monster and yet … and yet, he had much good in him.’

  ‘And after you’d been to see the sister?’

  ‘I went straight to the house to counsel Juliette, as she has stated.’

  ‘You knew where the nitrobenzene was kept, Father,’ said Kohler, ‘and unless I’m very mistaken, madame confided to you that she had been questioned by Herr Schlacht as to its whereabouts.’

  ‘The bottle of Amaretto was on the desk,’ continued Louis. ‘Monsieur de Bonnevies would pay the brothel his customary visit.’

  ‘He’d been very vocal, hadn’t he?’ said Kohler.

  ‘And had told you, Father, exactly what he’d do if madame’s son should return.’

  These two would not stop until they had the truth, sighed Father Michel and said sadly, ‘Alexandre was beside himself with rage to which I, poor humble servant that I am, tried only to plead for reason. Étienne had done him no real harm. How could he continue to blame the boy for a love affair the child in its mother’s womb could have known nothing of.’

  ‘Your husband, madame,’ said St-Cyr. ‘I believe you knew very well what he intended to do should your efforts to free your son succeed.’

  ‘And these two were both in the house when that bottle sat alone on the desk,’ interjected Käthe Hillebrand.

  ‘No poison in it, eh, Louis, and then more than sufficient, even if he hadn’t cooperated by spilling it on himself.’

  ‘And a million francs,’ swore Honoré de Saussine. ‘Herr Schlacht must have offered it to you as well, Madame de Bonnevies.’

  ‘A million …,’ countered Juliette lividly. ‘Neither Father Michel nor I went into that study, Inspectors. The door was locked and I don’t have a key. I’ve never had one. Not even when Alexandre first brought me to the house of his mother and introduced me to the hatred and resentment he bore me.’

  ‘But you do have keys to the gates?’ asked St-Cyr and heard her saying, ‘Danielle has those for when looking after the hives. Not me, Inspector. Never me.’

  ‘But she has told us she left them in her room when out of the city?’

  ‘This … this I wouldn’t have been aware of.’

  ‘Of course you were.’

  ‘All right, I was, but I didn’t
touch them.’

  ‘And could Danielle, knowing only too well what her father would do if Étienne was freed, not have left the city on Thursday as she claimed, but returned to the house late that afternoon?’

  ‘Danielle … It’s … it’s possible, but … but Etienne has not been freed. I would have known of this. My son would not have denied his mother the news I’ve been praying so hard for.’

  ‘Louis …’ Kohler indicated the SS major and two others who had come into the autopsy room. ‘They haven’t found her.’

  ‘Then let us hope the half-brother has come home.’

  In total darkness 42 boulevard Maillot faced on to the Bois de Boulogne. Her heart sinking at what she must now go through, Juliette recalled that before the Defeat there had been tall iron gates, such handsome gates, bearing the de Trouvelot coat of arms, but these had been taken by the Occupier and shipped to the Reich as scrap metals. ‘To the Krupp factories at Essen!’ Madame de Trouvelot had charged, as if she had caused the loss and was still to blame for … What? she asked herself. For bearing her son’s only child and keeping silent the family name.

  She remembered begging the woman to free Étienne before he died in the camps. ‘On 5 November of last year I went down on my knees to her, Inspectors,’ she confessed, her voice breaking. ‘Tears that should never have fallen in front of one such as her, wet my cheeks and I could not stop them just as now. I told her the name of the waiter at Maxim’s that Oskar had said could help me. Fifty thousand francs … a hundred thousand – they were nothing to her. Oh bien sûr, the Occupier has requisitioned her beautiful house but pays her a healthy rent, and yes, she now lives in one room – the library. Henri-Christophe loved that room and, when forced to move, she chose it above all others, but the Generalmajor who lives here and commands the Luftwaffe in Paris and the Île de France is an understanding man. Her meals deny her nothing. She has the use of the garden and is free to come and go as she pleases. Sometimes even the car is available, but you’ll get nothing from her. She hated me and hated the thought of her son marrying me. To her I was a tramp and nothing Henri-Christophe could do or say could ever change her opinion. My father was a shopkeeper. I had lured her son into illicit sexual encounters to elevate my own status, disregarding entirely that I would bring down that of his family.’