Salamander

by J. Robert Janes

  There were three floors, with a broad, spiralling staircase rising right in the middle to a huge chandelier of Baccarat crystal just waiting for a bomb to fall. No sign of Frau Weidling yet or of Henri Charlebois. Old friends? he wondered. Old lovers?

  There were clocks, clocks and more of them. There were paintings big and small, tapestries long and short—weavings of silk and embroideries …

  ‘Monsieur, is there something I can do for you?’ sniffed someone.

  The little squirt gave him the once-over from shoes to fedora. ‘Gestapo,’ breathed Kohler. ‘To see the boss and the woman who is with him.’

  The clerk started up the stairs. Kohler grabbed him and said, ‘Don’t. It’s a surprise.’

  ‘Then … then they are with the fabrics and the estate lingerie, monsieur. The shoes and dresses. It is on the third floor, at … at the back. There are three rooms. The Monsieur, he … he has said they … they were not to be disturbed.’

  ‘Good.’

  Martine Charlebois had got to the flat first. There were droplets of water near the mat just inside the door. Gingerly St-Cyr set his shoes down and drew the Lebel. Should he call out her name? She must have heard the concierge unlocking the door for him, must have heard them talking in the hall. Ah merde, where was she?

  Not in the salon, not in the dining-room or kitchen, not in the brother’s bedroom or her own … Had she killed herself? Had there been enough time? Yes, there had, idiot!

  He hit the door to the bathroom and burst inside to find it empty. The lavatory? he shouted at himself, racing for it.

  She’d been and gone and he did not know if she had taken the phosphorus. Two jars … two of them in a woven rush hand-bag, perhaps wrapped in a towel for safety.

  And with bottles of gasoline? he asked and shuddered at the thought, smelling the garlic odour and seeing on the cinematographer’s screen of his mind in black and white, with no fooling about in colour, the phosphorus bursting instantly into flame and giving off dense clouds of white smoke. The girl naked and on her knees in front of that priest who then had knelt facing the flames of retribution. The girl so desperate, she would defy all logic to come back here …

  Like a cold, hard wind he went furiously through the flat. It was all so tidy it made him angry. Assistant professors of lycées had virtually no time, yet to have kept a house like this without help, she must have worked herself to the bone.

  Even the superb Louis XV desk, with its regimented stacks of exercise books, was tidy.

  It was a Hitlerian tidiness he could not understand. Sweating, he dragged off his overcoat, letting it fall where it would with a clunk, reminding himself to empty its pockets.

  He tossed his fedora onto one of the Louis XVI armchairs whose gilt and pistachio-green trim was flaking. The scarf, he reminded himself, removing it. Ah merde, the place was like a mausoleum and a museum in which life had passed and the history of its artefacts had been jumbled. Royalty might once have slept in her bed, a superb lit à la duchesse with sumptuous drapery in gold and pale green brocade. Certainly it had come from well before the Revolution.

  There was a magnificent, gilt-framed eighteenth-century Venetian mirror that reflected almost the whole of the room. And though he saw himself, shabby and diffident and lost among such refinement, he saw her too, naked and kneeling on the sumptuous Savonnerie carpet, saw her reflected in the mirror. Had Father Adrian made her watch herself as he had had sex with her?

  The brass of an antique cage held a finch that sang, startling him for it must have been singing all along.

  The canary was quiet. Soft and as golden yellow as a canary he remembered from another case, it lay on its side with the little door open.

  She had had only enough time to kill the one. It being winter, she would not have released them, but would she have thought of this? Would she, in all her haste?

  Trembling, he could not keep his hand still enough to get it inside the cage and had to calm himself. The canary felt cold but, then, little birds that die lose their body heat very rapidly.

  No drawer had been untouched by himself, no door to either of the two magnificent armoires, and he knew then that he had been so frantic to find the phosphorus, his mind hadn’t bothered to record if any of them had been partially closed.

  There were condoms in a lowermost drawer of her dressing table—a loose handful, thrown down perhaps. In the waste-basket there was a pessary that, when held to the light, revealed the sabotage of a pin. Not once but several times.

  Sadly he recalled another case, long distant from this lousy war. A girl in tears. A pessary with similar holes and a brother who had done the damage to a sister who had loved another.

  A pair of forgotten ballet shoes in pink satin hung from the back of her door. Only a pair of shoes. Only their reminder of the dance, of hope and prayers and things one would like to be.

  There were scent bottles on her dressing table and among them one containing Étranger. Gorgeous bits of glass and gold and silver. The photograph of a young man. ‘Max.’ Nothing else. Not, From Max, with all my love, my liebchen, or anything else. A German boy.

  Though he must not feel sympathy for her, a sudden sadness would not leave him.

  There was no sign of the sapphire bracelet he’d seen in the salon the other night. He was certain it had been a gift from the brother; certain, too, that it had been rejected by her. Pins and ear-rings and brooches—one superb pink topaz necklace with a rope of silver and a diamond-encrusted clasp from which finely braided tassels of silver hung. An emerald ring, an opal, a cameo—all of it was from the belle époque, that age of refinement before the guns of war had come.

  The sister had known only too well that life is to be lived on borrowed time with borrowed things. Even the contents of her jewel case would come and go as circumstance dictated.

  Gaps in the leather-bound books on her shelves revealed a missing Baudelaire and a volume of Proust. Had Claudine Bertrand given her that vial of perfume in exchange for the loan of the books? Probably.

  She played the cello and this, a fine old instrument from some estate sale, leaned against a chair in a far corner beside a music stand. Handel’s Water Music, Mozart’s The Magic Flute—she wasn’t among the first cellists but among the seconds. Notations, in a tight, neat hand, were marked on the scores. ‘Andante, Martine; fortissimo, chérie. Don’t be so nervous here. It’s all right. You’ll do it.’

  Flipping through one of the exercise books on her desk, he compared the handwriting. She’d done them both and had probably written the anonymous letters the préfet had given him. Yes, yes, she had.

  Henri Charlebois’s bedroom was every bit as immaculate. Two very fine Empire-style beds, with beautiful mahogany head- and footboards and inlaid ebony posts, had been pushed together. A single antique spread of pure white damask covered them. There were pillows enough for two. A superb Renaissance tapestry hung on the wall above the bed. A cathedral, a wedding … Beside it, and to the right, there was a large painting of a young woman who modestly covered her eyes with the crook of an upthrown arm while the viewer ravaged her splendid breasts and wished the flimsy skirt of transparent gauze would slip from the soft swell of her hips.

  It was of the belle époque and joyously marvellous, but a skylight in the painting, behind and to the left of the woman, let in the only light and this set her off starkly, as if to say, This is what you will get, monsieur, when you pay the price a young virgin commands.

  In the bottom of an armoire he found the ledgers. They dated back to that period of time. La Belle Époque had done very nicely over the years. Had Henri Charlebois been afraid to own it completely or merely astute in selling shares to others? Astute. He had to grant him that.

  Claudine Bertrand had indeed come to work there ten years ago, when the handwriting changed dramatically to a more martial stiffness that indicated Ange-Marie Rachline had first fought with her new employment.

  But had Claudine not had a history prior to this and
had not Ange-Marie Rachline and Henri Charlebois known of it?

  There was a cold purity to the room he could not understand. Certainly things would come and go, and the brother had an eye for interior decorating as well as for his purchases. And certainly the semi-nude was suggestive of carnal thoughts, but had there really been any? Had the brother really coveted his sister?

  The sterility of the twin beds suggested each kept to their own room as was befitting. But was that same coldness not their best defence against discovery of the forbidden?

  Only Ange-Marie Rachline could answer him. The sister would never confess it to another now. The brother would never confide it even to the bishop.

  Henri Charlebois was too astute, too knowing of his position in life. Both servant and master to the needs of others, to their desires for beautiful things and for all the sins of the flesh.

  When he lifted the pillows, he found a pair of plain white cotton underpants with excellent needlework. They were not of today but of the past. They were those of a girl of ten or twelve perhaps but not, he thought, those of the sister.

  Though he could not prove it, and perhaps would never be able to, intuitively he understood they had once been Claudine Bertrand’s. He heard the sea in his imagination; he felt the wind among the dunes as it blew the grains of sand and made them silently roll. He saw a young girl spying on her brother and two others; saw a pair of underpants lying cast aside and forgotten.

  The cotton was not harsh but soft from frequent laundering. Had the sister recently put them here to remind the brother of those days and what he’d done, or had he kept them all that time?

  She had put them here, as a last gesture. He knew she had.

  Frau Weidling had not, in so far as Kohler could determine, known Henri Charlebois from before, from Lübeck, Heidelberg and Köln.

  The woman didn’t even seem to know of him in any other context than that of a shopkeeper of antiques, period costumes, shoes, boots, fine fabrics and ebony godemiches. Ah yes.

  Puzzled, Kohler held his breath. Frau Weidling was being fitted for a shimmering sky-blue silk dress, something old, something from an estate. Charlebois was methodically fixing pins around the hem. The shoes … the ‘boots’ she would wear were the same as those he’d seen before.

  When the hem was done, and she faced one of the dressing mirrors, Charlebois adjusted the puffed shoulders, took a tuck in each of the long sleeves and then one in the back to tighten things up a little.

  She passed a smoothing hand over her bosom, lifting a breast and then proudly tilting up her chin. ‘Yes. Yes,’ she murmured softly in German. ‘That is good.’

  ‘It ought to be. It’s eight thousand, seven hundred francs with the alterations.’

  Charlebois’s German was really very good, thought Kohler and heard him saying, ‘You can take it off now, I think.’

  She did so, stepping out of it to stand in a white undershift beneath the corset that was laced up the front in the French style and hung with garters. He took the dress from her without a second glance at that statuesque bit of pulchritude which was bulging out of the top of the corset.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, folding the thing once over on a cutting table. ‘I will personally see that it is delivered to your hotel by noontime.’

  She shook out her auburn hair, showed no desire to dress—fingered fabrics like a schoolgirl in a candy shop. There were shelves and shelves of them, all colours, all patterns against the highly polished spiralling support posts of mahogany. Fantastic prints in silk and satin, cotton and linen too, a fortune these days. There was a dressmaker’s dummy in the corner nearest her—a cage of wicker over which only a blouse had been stretched so that the skirt of rods appeared as one of birch switches and obscene.

  ‘The petticoats will not cause a problem?’ she asked suddenly.

  He didn’t object. ‘Frau Weidling, if you wish to try them on with the dress, please do. I’ve allowed for them. You can trust me.’

  ‘All the same, I would like to,’ she said demurely. Did she get a kick out of him helping her dress? wondered Kohler, still hidden from them but not, he felt, from the mirrors. Ah merde!

  A shift-blouse was found—no neck or arms or buttons, just pretty bows of pink ribbon at the shoulders and lots of lace through which the corset could be seen to give that extra thrill.

  The petticoats were of deeply pleated silk taffeta that rustled as she stepped into each of them. Not since he’d been a boy had Kohler seen a woman get dressed in such things, and then only in brief glimpses which had been ruthlessly punished.

  ‘This one has a sateen dust ruffle.’ Charlebois was all business. Nothing interfered, not even the nearness of her.

  ‘I like the feel of them,’ she said, smoothing her hands over hips and thighs to touch the pleats. ‘They are like a young woman’s skin, a girl’s, is that not right?’ He didn’t answer. For just a split second he stiffened. ‘So now, the dress again, Herr Charlebois, and then the hat,’ she said. ‘I must see it all once more.’

  Ah nom de Dieu, what the hell were they up to?

  ‘Then you had best put on the stockings and the shoes,’ said the shopkeeper.

  ‘And the necklace,’ she answered.

  Kohler saw him kneel to help her with the stockings. Was he going to stick his mitts up under all that stuff to fish about for garters and not get a hard-on?

  ‘The underwear pants …?’ she said. ‘Where are they?’

  She got her hands up under everything and pulled her briefs off. He held drawers of silk trimmed with lace, into which she stepped. Perhaps he got them to her knees, perhaps a little farther before she took over. Did she have him in the palm of her hand? Was that it?

  Would he kill her? Was he so cold and detached he was planning it even as he helped her, or had they been working together all along, yet she still did not know his true identity? A Salamander …

  The stockings were of dark blue mesh and when he smoothed them over her calves, she let him. ‘Hook them,’ she said, and he saw Charlebois hesitate.

  ‘I will get Mademoiselle Découglis, my shopgirl.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. There is no time. Besides, what harm could you possibly do me?’

  He didn’t like it. As he stuck his hands up there, she held him by the back of the head. Charlebois stiffened. Her fingers began to rub firmly up and down the nape of his neck. ‘You will be at the concert?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. Mademoiselle Charlebois is in the orchestra.’

  ‘Your little sister.’ Had she tasted the saying of it, had Claudine primed her?

  ‘Yes. Yes, my sister. She is always nervous before a concert.’

  Frau Weidling didn’t let go of him. He was on the left leg now, at the back. ‘Isn’t she afraid the Salamander will strike again? My Johann says that the theatre is a perfect location and that, once started, such a fire would be very hard to stop.’

  Ah merde!

  Charlebois found the shoes for her but did not lace them all the way up. Straightening, he removed her hand from the back of his neck. ‘There will be no fire. The Salamander—if such a one even exists—would be foolish to try it, Frau Weidling. Your husband will be very thorough. I happen also to know that the men under the Obersturmführer Barbie’s command have already placed the theatre under the strictest surveillance. Now, please, the necklace, I think, and then the hat.’

  They were like two puppets going through their separate dances. Teasing, flirting in their desperate ways but numb to each other.

  The hat matched the stockings and was like a small mushroom trimmed with rows of fluted braid and ribbons of satin taffeta into which three cock pheasant quills had been thrust. The height of fashion forty or fifty years ago, and as sure as that God of Louis’s had made little green apples, she’d been fucking around with Claudine in La Belle Époque and wanted to play dress-up herself!

  The necklace was of dark blue sapphires and diamonds, and when it was placed around her slender n
eck, she stood before the mirrors tilting her chin up this way and that, saying, ‘It’s perfect. It’s just as I imagined it, and just as you said it would be. This little concert first, so that the General Niehoff and the Obersturmbannführer Knab will notice my husband and me together as the lights are dimmed. Then the New Year’s Eve concert at the Vienna Opera House with the Führer and the Reichsmarschall Goering who will both have heard of the Hero of Lyon and will see that my Johann becomes not just a professor at the Fire Protection School in Eberswald, but Generaloberst der Feuerschutzpolizei for the Reich.’

  Verdammt!

  ‘There are droplet ear-rings in my safe. I think you should consider them,’ said the shopkeeper.

  Christ!

  ‘And the bracelet. Yes, it will not be too much.’

  Every high-ranking Nazi in France-Sud must be attending the Lyon concert. A small fire just to keep them all happy, a handsome couple, a hero.

  She was like a schoolgirl before her first ball; dressed like that, she was exactly like one of Madame Rachline’s girls. Was Charlebois merely the servant, the decorator of this little Christmas tree? Or had he another golden pear for her to hold in her hands when she was naked so that he could secretly photograph her and anonymously drop the print into Gestapo Lyon’s lap?

  ‘Johann says that Herr Robichaud has been placed in custody,’ she confided, turning sideways to examine herself.

  ‘That’s a mistake I would wish them not to to make, Frau Weidling. Over the years, Herr Robichaud has worked very closely with the theatre committee.’