‘You’re forgetting, my son, that for me, and not the German lady, or yourself to have poisoned one of my oldest and dearest friends I would have needed a key to his study.’
‘Madame de Bonnevies left one on the table for you! Her absence had been agreed upon and was deliberate. Admit it, this “oldest and dearest of friends” was a distinct liability. He would accuse his son and have the boy arrested. He’d have that sister of his brought home from the madhouse, and … and, Father, he’d continue to make madame suffer.’
‘You took the million francs Oskar had offered, didn’t you, Monsieur de Saussine?’ swore Käthe, having quietly got out of the other side of the car.
There was something in the woman’s hands, thought de Saussine, and she was resting them on the roof of the car and pointing it at them. ‘I was terrified,’ he said, his voice climbing, ‘but refused, so that leaves only yourself.’
‘Or the Father, or madame, or the son or his half-sister,’ she answered calmly.
‘Or Oskar himself,’ said Juliette anxiously wondering if the woman was about to shoot them. ‘Oskar wanted you, Monsieur de Saussine, to do it, and you, too, Frau Hillebrand, but if neither of you were willing, then what was he to have done?’
‘You knew where the poison was kept, didn’t you?’ said Käthe. ‘You had a set of keys!’
Was she going to shoot her first? wondered Juliette and tried to keep calm … calm. ‘Oskar knew my husband would go with those two whores after visiting his sister because Alexandre had always done so and I had told Oskar of this often enough.’
‘You knew about the bottle of Amaretto, didn’t you?’ said Käthe.
‘A liqueur which smells of bitter almonds, as does the oil of mirbane,’ interjected de Saussine nervously. He’d run. He’d have to, he told himself.
‘Which is why it was chosen,’ sighed Father Michel, ‘though Alexandre would not have cared for it in the least.’
‘But Oskar does like liqueurs,’ countered Käthe. ‘And Uma knew he would sample it and not just casually, isn’t that right, Juliette? Well, isn’t it? Oskar would have had you pour him a tumblerful and would have downed it all at once and you … you knew he would because when naked you had served and serviced him often enough!’
‘What’s in your hands?’ quavered de Saussine.
‘A Beretta 9mm, but Herr Kohler seems to have removed its clip, although I did not hear or feel him do so.’
The studio, some distance beyond the house and closer to the river, must once have been a carpenter’s shop, thought St-Cyr. Skylights and French windows had been added, and a nineteenth-century Belgian cookstove with inlaid ceramic tiles. But it was the almost unbelievable clutter that drew the beam of the torch and caused it to flit from place to place. Tubes of oil paint, canvases and easels were everywhere. Fruit jars held upended fistfuls of cleaned brushes, others, a dried stew of paint and brush. There were plaster and clay maquettes and figurines and these threw shadows, small bronzes, too. Experiments with pottery and the firing of sculpted heads and figures were mingled with dried leaves and wild flowers, hanging bits of coloured glass, ropes of it and spirals …
Imprints of dead fish, in slabs of sunbaked river mud that must have been carefully excavated years ago, were near prints of the half-sister’s bare feet and those of the boy, as if the two of them had walked out from the dawn of history. The bleached skeleton of a seagull flew towards that of a rook some farmer must have shot and the boy or girl had carted home one day. Among the many portraits were sketches of Danielle that had been done in charcoal, in a soft, reddish ochre, in watercolours, too, and in oils. Yet everywhere the torch shone, it seemed the dust had settled.
‘Except on the chaise longue,’ said Kohler, having found him at last. ‘The kid must have slept here on Thursday and Friday nights, Louis.’
She had been going through a number of sketches of herself. Whatever pose the half-brother had wanted, she had adopted. Naked at the age of four, and often up until that of fifteen, she had let him draw and paint her, had been completely at ease. Just as often, though, she was fully dressed; often, too, in a bathing suit or an old pair of coveralls and weeding the vegetable garden or cradling, with evident delight, an errant hen she had just captured.
They had gone rowing on the Seine, had swum naked and not, had fished and explored and done so many things together.
There were photographs, pinned to a cupboard door, of the blind near the Carrefour du Chêne Prieur, snapshots of the boy in uniform, September 1940.
‘Two notes,’ said St-Cyr, shining the light more fully on them. A pencil dangled from a string into which a drawing pin had been recently stabbed.
Friday 29 January, 1943
Mon chear Étienne,
It has been some time since I’ve stayed overnight here, so I don’t know when you arrived. A week, two weeks … Perhaps as long ago as the three and a half weeks since my last visit ended on the third of the month. When I got here late last night, I found your things in the shed. I cried, Étienne. I laughed. I ran to the house calling your name but could not find you even here in the studio and pray you haven’t gone into the city to see maman. Papa will not allow it. He will swear things about you to the police that are untrue and will try to have you arrested and taken away. He wants Angèle-Marie to come home and insists maman must look after her, myself also.
Today I will visit some of our old haunts and friends in the hope of finding you, but I must also go to Brie-Comte-Robert, as I have a farmer there who has promised me a good breeding pair of rabbits, some sausage and cheese. It’s a deal I mustn’t pass up, so please forgive me and wait for me if you return.
Friday 29 January, 1943
Étienne,
It is now very late and I am so tired. Still there has been no sign or word from you and I have worried all day. Please don’t let it be that you’ve gone to see maman. I couldn’t bear having papa do that to you. I would kill myself, but I know you’ve always had a set of keys to the gates, the house and his study. I had them made for you years ago so that you wouldn’t feel hurt, but these keys, Étienne, they are missing from the tin box where you always kept them. Missing, mon cher!
If you should read this, please stay put as you will be far safer here. There is some food, not much, that I’ve stored in the stove’s oven, so don’t light a fire before removing it and then only late at night, as there are those in the district one can no longer trust.
I will try to return on Monday but must be careful, as the controls are becoming increasingly difficult and we now have the Milice who watch the metro, the railways and bus stations and the streets as well. Maman, though she cares nothing for me, will be beside herself with joy, Étienne, but I must be very careful how I tell her. We can’t have her running here without thinking of the consequences, but I will try to find a way to bring her to you in secret.
For now, may the love I have for you keep you safe and warm.
Your dearest friend and companion, as always, Danielle.
Like the footprints in dried river mud, the notes stepped out from the past.
‘Admit it, Louis. She couldn’t have poisoned that father of hers. She was definitely here.’
‘The girl accuses her mother, then one of the Society, then publicly de Saussine, but lies so badly she gets confused …’
‘She knew her brother was coming home and felt he must have done it. All along she’s been trying her damnedest to hide this from us.’
‘And Father Michel opens a parish wound to keep us from finding out what he believes has happened: that the boy has returned and is responsible.’
‘When she left us, the kid was heading here to save him. They’ll die together, Louis. That’s what she intends.’
‘But he isn’t here, Hermann, and yet … and yet, Madame de Trouvelot received a letter from him written on the fourth of the month from here.’
‘A letter?’
‘On its receipt she paid the final instalment.’
‘That kit in the shed … It reminded me of the war, Louis, of the things we had to send home for so many.’
‘And there’s a fruit jar of fine white sand by the sink in the kitchen.’
‘Sand?’
‘Don’t worry so much. It may mean nothing.’
‘Frau Hillebrand had a loaded pistol in that purse of hers, Louis.’
‘Could she have written the letter Madame de Trouvelot received?’
‘We’ll have to ask her, eh, since I’ve got what she may well have been ordered by Oberg to use.’
In the shed, torchlight fell on the rucksack which yielded only pieces of worn clothing that could have been the boy’s. The map case held the few rolled sketches of life in the POW camps that the censors hadn’t removed, but each one of them bore, dead centre, the heavy black imprint of the official rubber stamp.
The paintbox had a few dried-up tubes of oil paint, one brush and some bits of charcoal.
Hermann turned the map case upside down and like last leaves, the boy’s identity papers fell out. All had been officially stamped as ‘Cancelled. Died 28 December 1942. Pneumonia.’
‘Schlacht must have known, Louis, yet he let Madame de Bonnevies continue to beg for her son’s release.’
‘And the girl, Hermann? What if she, too, has known of this all along?’
‘She can’t have.’
‘But if she had?’
‘Then she wasn’t heading here at all, but has gone after our Bonze. Oberg will kill us, if she succeeds. He’ll make it slow and painful and will insist Oona and Giselle watch before he also hangs the two of them with the same piano wire.’
Like the rest of the city’s streets at 4:20 in the morning, the boulevard Ornano was dark in the grip of winter and empty. Breath billowed, and as they went up the street, Louis shone his torch over the entrances until at last he had picked out the soot-streaked placard on a flaking wall beside the rat-hole entrance to the maison de passe Schlacht had bought.
HOTEL
Chambres et Cabinets
TITANIA
au jour et nuit ou à la semaine
The blackened, doorless cavern that was the entrance led immediately to a narrow flight of wooden stairs. There was no light except that of the torch. At midnight the patron would have doused the faint, blue-washed beacon that would have drawn in the passing moths, with or without their yellow work cards, but with the boys they would love ‘for ever’.
Now, of course, and since midnight, they’d all have been locked in until the curfew ended. Snores and farts and spills of vin ordinaire or brandy, or the ‘champagne’ that was flogged even in places like this, the beds covered not with sheets and blankets, but with a single, greasy, stained and worn length of oilcloth. Cold as Christ; wet as Christ. Drunken legs sprawled, naked bodies dead to the world beneath scatterings of greatcoats, dresses, trousers and underpants, as if these could ever keep out the cold while snoring it off in the sweaty, unbathed clutches of a lover who was lying, like as not, in a puddle of piss.
Kohler knew he had seen it all; Louis had, too. They had left the Citroën opposite the rue du Roi-d’Alger and its passage, had parked Juliette de Bonnevies and the others in the cells of Charonne’s Commissariat de Police on the rue des Orteaux, and had refused to listen to their objections so as to come here alone.
Just the two of us, as always, he said silently to himself but would Oona have been raped by several? Would they find her half out of her mind with Danielle naked in the same room, the kid stone-eyed and beaten into submission?
‘Louis, let me go first. You know I’m better at this.’
‘That foot of yours will only complain of the shoe you’ve forced it into.’
‘Me first. That’s an order. We’ll take our time.’
‘We haven’t much of it and already are late, and at five we both know this can of worms will empty and we will be trampled in the rush.’
There were no hidden tripwires, no ‘alarms’ to warn résistants who might be hiding in such a place and were fond of using them.
But not this hole, thought Kohler, checking the stairwell out anyway.
Hermann was good at this sort of thing, conceded St-Cyr. His night vision was so clear he could see things in a darkened room or stairwell that no one else could. And hear things, too, and yet not be heard or seen. But Hermann was afraid of what they’d find and now felt great sympathy for Danielle, having forgotten entirely that it was he who had first thought she might have poisoned her father.
There had, as yet, been no sign of the bicycle, though they had watched the sides of the country roads and had tried to find it.
‘Louis, this door’s not locked,’ came the whisper. Hermann’s fingers trembled as he emphasized the point. Pistol in hand, he nudged the door open. The carpet was frayed, and as he felt for the tripwire that might be here, hole after torn hole was found.
The ‘desk’ was vacant. The patron had been told to bugger off. There were no snores, only Louis’s breathing and that of his own. ‘Switch on the torch,’ he sighed. ‘Come on mein lieber Oberdetektiv, this place has been emptied in expectation of our little visit.’
‘So have my batteries.’ But had Herr Schlacht prepared a welcome for them?
Time was lost, all sense of its passing gone. On his hands and knees St-Cyr crept forward to another door which, he knew by now, must open at a touch but one could never touch without searching first.
Dust … a feather in a place where there were so few … a coin, a pfennig dropped as Reichskassenscheine or francs were hauled from a pocket and one mark or twenty francs given for a little moment, or cigarettes, for these had fast become the preferred currency. A packet of twenty for the night, maybe with an extra ten if there were two girls and the soldier boy was living the dream he’d had while lying up in a barracks, waiting to go on leave.
There was no wire, no taut bit of string but still … the door could have been booby-trapped from within. They’d had that happen before. A safe cracker, the Gypsy, the Ritz and not so very long ago. Was it a week or ten days? One lost track of time. Before Avignon … yes, yes. Before its Cagoule had taken such an exception to them.
Sacré nom de nom, were friends of friends simply out to silence Hermann and himself, and never mind Oona and Giselle, never mind the murder of some beekeeper who had, one must agree, done everything to ensure sufficient would want him dead.
Not just his wife.
The room held no one but himself. The vase de nuit had been used but accidentally overturned in the rush to get out. A raid, then, he said. A raid …
A door banged; it banged again and the sound of this carried through the pitch darkness of the attic where garrets, close under the roof, held filthy mattresses, rags and scatterings of female clothing. A torn dress … a brassiere, a shoe … Was it Oona’s? wondered Kohler, moving silently and swiftly from room to room for that door hadn’t been banging until now.
Stepping out on to the roof, he hooked the door open to silence it. ‘Oona …?’ he called softly. ‘Oona, it’s me.’
There, was no answer. A flat stretch of tarred roofing had been swept clear by the wind which had piled the snow up against the base of a brick wall that rose a storey and a half.
Crossing the roof, Kohler looked up through the darkness at the iron ladder that was bolted to the wall and would lead whoever it was to the chimneypots of the adjacent building. ‘Don’t do this to me,’ he sighed. Louis … should he get Louis? Someone had put through an alarm and the Paris flics, the Sûreté’s vice squad and Gestapo’s bully boys with guns had come running.
Résistants? he wondered. Had the person told them that? No doubt Schlacht had clearance and had paid off the local sous-préfet and all others, but who among the rank and file was going to worry about such little details at two or three in the morning when the alarm must have come in?
His foot hurt like hell and he really didn’t want to climb the rungs. His hands were freezing, but he had to tell h
imself Oona would have gone up this in her bare feet if necessary. Oona could be up there.
Had she been missed in the raid? Had she heard something or sensed there was someone else in the attic and not known it was him? She must have. But it hadn’t been Oona. Jammed between the chimneypots at the top of the ladder was a thick Manila folder that had been put there while clambering on to the roof, and then left in haste.
The folder held sketches and snapshots of Danielle de Bonnevies at the age of fourteen and fifteen, and in most of these the girl wore nothing but her birthday suit. But there were others in Room 4-18, some tucked in around the mirrored doors of an armoire, some pinned to the walls, or, if a large sketch, framed and hung, and all must have come from the studio. While most recently there, she had realized that several were missing and must have wondered where they were and who had taken them.
‘Frau Hillebrand and Schlacht,’ said Kohler, nursing his right foot and trying to rebandage his wounded toes. ‘Our Bonze didn’t just want to raid the hive for the mother, Louis. He was intent on the kid.’
‘And the mother must have known of it, Hermann.’
‘And done something about it, eh? Like lacing a bottle that was intended for him.’
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah mon Dieu, this murder, Hermann. Positively no time to sort things out except while on the run. The run, mon vieux. Turning in an alarm is not so easy after the curfew has begun. Mademoiselle Danielle would have needed to either tell the flics in person and risk certain arrest, or have had access to a telephone.’
An instrument the Hotel Titania lacked as did most of the quartier Clignancourt.
‘But what the hell had she really in mind?’ asked Kohler. Room 4-18 was a cut above the others. Plush wine-red drapes covered French windows that must lead to the little balcony Juliette de Bonnevies had said had a view of the Sacré-Coeur. There were carpets on the floor, pillows on the iron-framed double bed, silk sheets, too, soft woollen blankets and an antique, white lace spread. Two straight-backed chaises, an armchair, a footstool … Champagne flutes placed in readiness – there was even some ice left in the bucket, no bottle of Krüg, though, for those who had raided the hotel would have helped themselves with pleasure.
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