Salamander

by J. Robert Janes

  He had known she’d been worried, then, and was pleased about it. He did not put the notebook away but set it to one side on the coffee table whose patterns of sandalwood, gum and cherry splintered their designs around it as if shattered.

  Again he let the silence grow until she wished he would say something. Anything! ‘How did Mademoiselle Claudine die, Inspector? Was it her chest? She … she came to ask again for money. She was not well. This time pneumonia once more, I think. I …’ She shrugged helplessly but could not bring herself to face him. ‘I did give her our bottle of friar’s balsam. I told her how best to use it, Inspector. For myself, I am sorry to hear that she has passed away.’

  Their bottle of friar’s balsam … He would favour his moustache in thought. He would ask the question she would not want him to ask. ‘How is it, please, that your brother knew Mademoiselle Claudine Bertrand, a woman of the night, Mademoiselle Charlebois, a woman of joy, a known prostitute?’

  There was a quiver, a loss of colour though there had been little enough of that. ‘Henri knew Claudine from the years before her descent into the night, Inspector. When he was very young and I was much, much younger of course, our parents and grandparents on our mother’s side always took us to the seaside for the holidays. Claudine’s family knew our parents.’

  It was all he could do not to breathe, Good! That’s good!

  The front door opened. They heard a voice. She cried out, ‘Henri, is that you, chéri?’ and bolted from the room. Throwing herself into her brother’s arms, she touched his face, his hair and kissed his cheek, saying, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere. I was so worried. Terrified, Henri. Desperate that we had been parted again, this time for ever.’

  Sobbing, she clung to her brother and shook so hard he had to hold her tightly until he noticed, ah yes, that they had a visitor.

  From a rat-hole shack outside the stone-and-iron fence of the Basilica, the old woman who was the caretaker’s wife sold black-market candles and other religious nick-nacks in the plunging darkness. Kohler let her serve the frozen customers she seldom greeted with anything more than a grunt of distaste or a scathing remark. Though not blind, she could have done as well, for she knew the feel of each bill and coin. ‘Another, monsieur,’ she said to one, sucking on her cheeks. Age had made her small and bent and when he stood before her in the darkness, she tossed her shawled head back as if struck by the size of him. ‘Monsieur …?’

  ‘Madame Philomena Cadieux?’

  Hastily she crossed herself but said nothing and said it defiantly. ‘Look, Madame Cadieux, I’m like Jesus. I come in peace, eh? Here’s five hundred francs to prove it.’

  ‘The Christ Child would have come with more,’ she said doggedly. ‘An old woman whose bladder is full but frozen. A bishop who hoards his silver on this day of giving and takes not the half as agreed these past countless years, but three-quarters.’

  Ah merde, a family feud! ‘Then here’s another and another, eh, to warm the bones and the heart.’

  ‘What is it you want?’ Suspicion was in every particle of her and he had to grin, had to say to himself, What a delight it was to deal with the French.

  ‘Why not let me help you close up. Here, let me buy the rest of your stock and we’ll leave it right here for another time.’

  The Germans were fools, but God had made them that way and who was she to question Him? ‘Five thousand then, and I will allow you to close down the front shutter. It’s too heavy for me but my husband will not listen.’

  There was no thought of her inviting him into the two rooms she begrudgingly shared with that husband. This little stucco building was at the front and just to the right of the Basilica’s entrance—joined to the main body as if a growth of accident, the builders having realized at the last that there had to be some place to dump the caretaker.

  ‘It’s too cold in there,’ she said. ‘Come with me. Come into the bishop’s study. Let that one’s fire take the ice from us even though he will be furious and will say it is the last straw, that that useless husband of mine and my good self have been dismissed!’

  So much for the bishop and the husband. Kohler found her the half of another bottle of Calvados and wished her a happy Christmas. Her button eyes were fierce and full of rheum. Both nostrils ran. She sipped, wiped and wiped again with fingerless black woollen gloves that were frayed.

  ‘Tell me about the gasoline,’ he said. He would not grin. She was freezing and could hardly keep her fingers still enough to clutch the glass with both hands.

  ‘The gasoline …’ She clucked her tongue. ‘Yes. Yes, I warned Auguste not to leave it where he did but that one never listens. You should have let this Salamander torch the place, monsieur. Rats … mice … vermin … lice and fleas … You’ve no idea. It takes forever to wash that floor in there and I’m the only one who does it.’

  She had to pee, and he had to turn his back while she used the bishop’s best potted begonia and felt good about it.

  ‘The gasoline was not taken by a woman, monsieur, but by a man. I have seen the footprints in the snow myself but no one has bothered to consult me. He was wearing Father Adrian’s shoes, the ones with the cracked soles but it could not have been that one, could it, since he was already dead.’

  Kohler tossed back his Calvados. ‘Then who knew Father Adrian well enough to have taken his shoes and gained access to where he lived—where is that, by the way?’

  ‘In two rooms, not far from the bishop’s quarters in the manse that is next door. Oh yes, I have thought he may well have borrowed a cassock too.’

  ‘And this person?’

  She would let him have it, since to have a crumb was not to have the loaf but only a taste. ‘Someone who knew Father Adrian had oiled his way among the women, though may God forgive me for saying it.’

  ‘Was Mademoiselle Aurelle one of those women?’ he asked.

  The slut had been tied to her bed, thought Madame Cadieux, but there was no need to remind this one of it. ‘And others, monsieur. Oh mais certainement, the good father had the Church in mind when he visited them and asked for donations and did whatever else he did to encourage them in the Blessed Sacrament, but me, I have seen the evidence no priest should ever have in his rooms.’

  Jesus! ‘What evidence? Here, your glass is empty.’

  And you are eager for another few crumbs, said the woman to herself. This time she would drink it all. She would drain the fine glass of the bishop who knew only too well what his secretary had been up to but had turned a blind eye. ‘Oil, in a small bottle. Perfumed.’

  ‘Condoms?’

  She would duck her head aside to indicate a speck of modesty. ‘The capotes anglaises, monsieur. I have counted them and noted when some were missing.’

  The English bonnets, hoods, greatcoats or ‘riding’ coats. ‘Who knew Father Adrian so well that person was aware the priest would be visiting Mademoiselle Aurelle the night of the fire?’

  ‘But … but Father Adrian was not supposed to visit her, monsieur, ah not on such a busy night.’

  ‘He received a call?’

  ‘Oh but of course, from one of his women. Madame Béatrice, that slut of a housekeeper for the bishop, that one says it was Mademoiselle Aurelle who telephoned Father Adrian in urgency for a visit, yes? But me, I do not personally think it was Mademoiselle Aurelle at all. I think it was someone else who only said she was Mademoiselle Aurelle.’

  ‘Are there two telephones?’ She was making him feel totally out of his depth.

  ‘There are three, monsieur. Extensions here in the study and two in the manse.’

  ‘And you listened in.’

  She held out her glass. ‘At about five thirty the new time, the German time.’

  ‘And it wasn’t Mademoiselle Aurelle?’

  He was so eager for the crumbs. ‘That one always called in tears, monsieur. There were none. Indeed, for myself, I felt the voice too educated.’ There, she had said it and may God forgive her.
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  Too educated … ‘And Father Adrian, did you see him before he left?’

  ‘How was he—is this what you wish?’ She would wet her lips and stare at the bottom of her glass, and she would give him a last crumb and hope he would find the loaf. ‘Agitated.’

  Kohler looked away to the book-lined shelves and gave his thoughts aloud and with a sigh. ‘Then he really did know what was up and that’s why he took the cross with him.’

  The cross was lying on the coffee table between herself and her brother, thought Martine Charlebois. Diamonds and rubies and sapphires and Henri looking so distressed. Tall and thin, and sitting up stiffly, for his back was bothering him again. Wan and almost jaundiced-looking now that the cold had left his cheeks, poor darling. Tired from working so hard—the train from Dijon had been late, held up by another of the interminable delays. And now this, a detective from the Sûreté with the cross from the Family Rouleau once more in this room.

  The same light that was thrown back by the diamonds was absorbed by the rubies until they glowed with fire and the sapphires were warm.

  As always, when there were others present, Henri did the talking.

  ‘Our grandfather came across it years ago, Inspector. A very wealthy family with land-holdings in the Rhône Valley to the south of here. Five farms in excess of a total of two hundred hectares. Vineyards and orchards, cattle, sheep and pigs. I was with him when he broke up the estate and we found the cross tucked away in the back of a kitchen drawer.’

  ‘Did he declare it to the owners?’ asked the detective quietly. No doubt one of the kitchen help had been about to steal it.

  ‘Of course he declared it, Inspector. Our grandfather had a reputation for being the most honest of men. How else could he have become the Henri Masson? Everyone trusted him absolutely. There was never any suggestion of impropriety. How could there have been?’

  A saint—one could see this pass through the detective’s mind, causing nothing but jaded doubt, even though the cross had been purchased from the owners for more than its value. The big ox-eyes lost themselves in studying Henri. They observed the delicate chiselling of the face, the fine and aristocratic nose, high cheekbones, dark brush of the eyebrows and long curve of the lashes. The lips that were not wide and coarse but soft and lovely, though they hardly ever smiled and were now so serious their expression matched the darkness of his eyes. The hair, jet black and fastidiously trimmed because Henri was such a tidy person. Tidy about his life and hers—everything was to have its proper place. Tidy about the affairs of business because one had to be so tidy there and grandfather, he had been so tidy himself. Ah yes.

  ‘Tell me about Father Adrian Beaumont, please, Monsieur Charlebois. Your relationship to him, last contact—anything that might be of use no matter how seemingly insignificant.’

  It would not go well, and she knew this now. Henri was so tense and irritated by the unpleasant surprise of finding a detective in the house and his little sister entertaining him.

  ‘There is not much to tell, Inspector. We attend Mass at the Basilica, as our parents and grandparents did. Father Adrian was known to us, of course. Any dealings with the bishop went through him. We met a few times recently but only to discuss some of the paintings that are stored in the church. I was adamant that they be moved to more suitable quarters—drier, you understand. The constant humidity of these parts plays havoc with old masters. Father Adrian would not hear of it and in this, I am afraid, Bishop Dufour concurred.’

  The detective would note all Henri’s little mannerisms, the way he nervously rubbed the back of his left hand, the way he used his seriousness to force home a point, the way, when pressed, he would touch his left cheek and let the fingertips linger until they trailed down to the lower jaw, his mind still deep in thought. Every word so carefully debated before escaping from his lips.

  ‘Your sister thought you might have gone to see La Bête humaine?’

  Henri shook his head with that rapid little motion of firmness he always used on such occasions. ‘I distinctly told Madame Doucette, the senior secretary at the Lycée du Parc, that she was to tell Mademoiselle Charlebois I had been summoned to Dijon.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ah, such an expression of sympathy and concern had entered Henri’s eyes. It showed exactly how clearly he had been worried about her but his use of ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois’, not Martine—why must he always use her formal name when dealing with others?

  The detective asked again why he had gone to Dijon.

  ‘The shop had been broken into and some things taken, Inspector,’ said Henri firmly. ‘An icon, four canvases that were cut from their frames, some silver and a few small pieces of jewellery. Good pieces. In all, about seven hundred and fifty thousand francs.’

  The detective’s expression became grave at the size of the loss. ‘When … when did this happen, monsieur, and when did you leave Lyon and return?’

  Henri gave the brief, tight little smile he always saved for such grim moments of relish. ‘Last Tuesday night, the twenty-second. I’ve only just returned, Inspector. There are several who will gladly tell you I took the train on the afternoon of the twenty-third at four o’clock and that, as is my custom always, I stayed in Dijon at its Hotel Terminus, room seventeen. You may ask the manager, the desk clerk, the maître d’ and the maids if you like. All will swear to my being there from the evening of the twenty-third until today at two o’clock.’

  ‘I did not ask for the precision of an alibi, monsieur. Is it that you felt the need to give me one?’

  Ah merde, Henri …

  ‘Why else, then, are you here, Inspector, troubling my sister?’

  The detective ducked his head to signify that this might or might not have been the reason for his visit. ‘Tell me about Claudine Bertrand,’ he said, knowing that she had had no chance to warn Henri whether anything untoward had already been said.

  St-Cyr was troubled. They looked at each other, this brother and sister, the one perhaps thirty-six years of age and the other not more than twenty-six. Alarm in Monsieur Charlebois’s eyes but carefully masked by concern; nothing but concern in hers. Ah maudit, what were the two of them up to behind closed doors?

  ‘Claudine was a childhood friend, Inspector. From time to time I tried to help her a little. I once gave her a job in the Dijon shop but she was unhappy away from Lyon and unsuited to the work.’

  ‘And Madame Ange-Marie Rachline?’ he asked, his voice so quiet the question startled them both.

  ‘What does she have to do with this?’ asked Henri.

  There was still that hostility when questioned about Ange-Marie, even after so many years. Henri, she wanted to say. Henri, be careful. He would not look at her, he would not see the tears collecting so rapidly she was forced to excuse herself and go into the kitchen to stand before the sink with head bowed, gripping the edge of the basin.

  ‘Henri … Henri … Dear God, please guide his tongue,’ she whispered and heard:

  ‘My sister and Ange-Marie have never seen eye to eye, Inspector. Mademoiselle Charlebois blames Ange-Marie for the situation Claudine found herself in.’

  ‘And yourself, monsieur?’

  ‘I did not judge. Both had been childhood friends. One retains that special sense of loyalty. One does what one can to help and leaves judgement to God.’

  ‘You gave Mademoiselle Claudine a supplier’s bottle of perfume.’

  ‘Étranger, yes. From an estate sale, It pleased her and it pleased me that it did, though I must confess I had little liking for the scent. It was much too strong. There was far too much musk and civet.’

  ‘When did you give it to her and where?’

  Ah how guarded their questions and answers were!

  ‘In the shop on the morning of that fire. Claudine came to see me. She wanted help—financial help—to start a new life somewhere else. She was insistent but …’

  Henri’s expression was pained. The back of the left hand was touched and then the
top button of his jacket … He could not know that Claudine had come to see her that very same afternoon. Ah no …

  ‘But I had given so much in the past, Inspector, I could not give any more—there was the robbery too, you understand, and the cash that would be needed to carry on. Claudine owed me … A moment, please. I have the account book.’

  ‘A moment yourself, monsieur. Please,’ cautioned the detective with an upraised finger. ‘A new life some place else?’ he asked.

  Henri gave that shrug she knew so well, that reassuring smile. ‘Claudine was always short of money, Inspector, and always wanting to leave Lyon. It was nothing new, I assure you. She keeps two daughters in a convent school in Orléans. She was always saying she wanted to live closer to them but of course, with the Occupation, that was impossible. Virtually all her earnings went to them and now I shall have to take care of it for her.’

  Two daughters. ‘Who is the father, monsieur?’

  ‘That … that I do not know nor … nor did I ever ask.’

  Henri went over to the secretaire to pause briefly as if struck by the sight of the bracelet just lying there—how could his little sister have been so careless? Is that what he was thinking, the poor darling? wondered Martine.

  Quickly he opened a drawer and found the red, moroccobound booklet that was no bigger than one for listing telephone numbers.

  The detective accepted the proffered evidence. He would note the precision of the penmanship and that, in each entry, the sum was the same. Ah yes. ‘Two thousand francs to the total of one hundred and sixty-eight thousand?’ he said.

  ‘Over the past ten years, Inspector. Ever since my grandfather died and Claudine went to work for Ange-Marie at La Belle Époque.’

  ‘She would have been twenty-two at the time; Ange-Marie twenty-four and yourself, monsieur?’

  ‘Twenty-six but it’s of no consequence.’

  Though the detective kept his thoughts to himself, he would not leave things so simply defined. Ah no, he was too persistent, too dedicated, thought Martine. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but then … ah then, Monsieur Charlebois, age so often has its meaning. One is older, another is much younger, and one is in between.’