Salamander

by J. Robert Janes

  Gott im Himmel, he was getting too old for this! The telephone rang and rang—jangling forlornly until suddenly it was answered at the half-ring and listened to.

  Shit! Retreating, he found the stairs quite by chance and almost fell down them—had to grab the curtains to steady himself. Oops! Verdammt!

  Counterweights would be swinging somewhere. Ropes wound around belaying pins would be straining.

  There had been no sign of Robichaud or of Leiter Weidling for that matter or of any of Barbie’s Gestapo watchers.

  Keeping to one side, he went down the steps and when he came to the wig room, he ducked in there. Felt again the dyed horsehair under the hand, the stiffness of it, then that of a human. Much softer, much silkier … Perfume … was that perfume?

  The head was round … Bald—was it bald beneath the wig?

  It sat so still and at first he thought—ah, what did he think? That … that whoever it was had been sitting there for some time. A woman …

  Plaster met his fingers as they explored the featureless face and neck of the wigmaker’s dummy. Étranger? he asked. The scent was so strong now.

  From chair to chair he went, feeling always—always ready to dodge aside, drop down, feint to the left or right.

  Robichaud was not here—indeed, there was no one else but himself, but had there been someone?

  Hesitating, he finally decided to go back up on stage and walk loudly across it just for spite. At once there were the curtains, heavy, cloying and, opposite them, why nothing but the floor—backdrops over there, then. Yes, yes, and directly ahead of him, the electrical switchboard and the pin-rails with their coiled ropes and belaying pins for lowering and raising scenery flies from the gridiron above the stage.

  The smell of the place, of chalk dust and mould, greasepaint and powder, sour wine, old garlic and scenery paint. Mice probably and rats—that fetid, close smell of their dens, sour with their urine.

  In the darkness, he could not touch the switchboard for fear of electrocuting himself. Everything in him wanted to cry out, I’m here, damn you! Yet there’d been no sign of Robichaud, and the fire chief was his responsibility. Ah merde.

  Something moved. Stiffening, Kohler heard it again and then again, a gentle see-sawing. When he looked up into the inky blackness, he felt a droplet hit him on the forehead.

  Crouching, he ran his fingers delicately over the floorboards, tracing out the gaps between them as he did so.

  Again he heard the see-sawing high above him and when he found the pin-rails with their ropes, he found one rope that was much tighter than the others.

  Unwinding it, he eased the heavy object down and down and down until it touched the stage. Then he let it collapse, and he waited.

  Her perfume was stronger now and at first he thought she was standing so near he could but reach out to touch her. He remembered the belfry of the Basilica, the shoes that had been left for him to find, the gasoline. He remembered standing among the columns of the Palais de Justice and in the rue des Trois Maries.

  Louis, he said. Louis, we’re in trouble. He knew it was a body he’d lowered, knew that if he crouched over it, the killer might well strike again. But had the Salamander any need now, having removed the one man they needed most?

  He did not need to touch the body to know that it was Robichaud. A sadness entered. Élaine Gauthier would never leave the Hotel Terminus alive, he knew that now. The couple had gone to the cinema to meet with Resistance leaders among the railway workers, or simply to see a film, La Bête humaine, and to be with each other. She wouldn’t be able to tell Barbie much. Robichaud would have made certain of that for her own safety.

  There was no knife or other sharp instrument sticking out of the throat or chest, yet there was blood, lots of blood and it soaked the sweater and had seeped right down to fill the shoes.

  Kohler wiped his fingers on a trouserleg. He wished he’d been able to find the weapon but knew only that it had been removed.

  Multiple stab-wounds then, an act of frenzy or one so clever, it had been made to look like that.

  A Salamander …

  Listening hard, he cautiously straightened up and waited, willing his mind to reach out into the darkness, but to where … where …?

  Close … so close, he could feel the distance between them and yet … and yet …

  ‘Shears … a pair of dressmaker’s shears, idiots!’ shouted St-Cyr desperately in German to the Gestapo watchers sitting warm and cosy in their car. ‘Can you not get it into your thick skulls that the Salamander is already inside that theatre? My partner …’

  He gave up. Furious with them, he banged a fist against the roof of the car and stared futilely at the blue wash of paint which all but hid the lamplight and gave the vague outline of the place des Célestins.

  Somewhere high over the city a lone aircraft had lost its way perhaps. From the corner of the rue André came the tramp of the patrol which constantly circled the theatre.

  ‘Please, I … oh for sure I know I’m begging, my friends, and that you have no orders to enter the theatre with me, but …’ He shrugged expansively, throwing his hands out in futility towards the frost-covered windows, one of which had been rolled down a centimetre. Dark … it was so dark within the car, except for the glow of their cigarettes. ‘But I have tried everywhere else. Leiter Weidling left the theatre some time ago. Hermann—’

  ‘Robichaud and Kohler have not yet come out,’ grunted their driver.

  ‘Yes! At last you being to under—’

  ‘No one else has gone inside. No one could have got past us. Everything’s locked up tighter than a termite’s ass.’

  Ah merde, the idiots! Had they not thought others might have keys? ‘Then have you a key to one of the entrances?’ he asked.

  They had, and this was dangled through a gap of no more than ten centimetres. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Enjoy myself …? But—’

  ‘Obersturmführer Barbie says that if you want so badly to find out where your partner is, you had better go in there yourself.’

  ‘Does he not want to stop the Salamander?’

  ‘Not until tomorrow night.’

  The key was to the stage door and they let him find this out too. As he felt his way gingerly along a corridor, images kept flashing through his mind of theatres past and murders past, of an actress who had been hanged in the full costume of a lady-in-waiting but had had a bad job done of it, for the pipe above her had broken under her weight and had showered her corpse with effluent; of a promoter who had been shot for a failure, not by a disgruntled backer but by a young actor whose brilliant career had come to an abrupt end and justly so, according to the notices. He saw the furtive, crowded liaisons of urgent lovers both of whom had had jealous mates who would savagely kill them; he heard the gossip, the insidious backbiting, the carping and the cajoling, the commotion that always went on behind stage and beneath it during a performance.

  There was no one in the wig room, no one in any of the dressing rooms, but Hermann was very good at this, and Hermann would have checked them all out.

  Martine Charlebois and Ange-Marie Rachline would have gone to the brother’s shop on the rue Auguste Comte, which was not all that far from the theatre if one cut diagonally across place Bellecour. Perhaps the shop had been closed when they got there, perhaps not. Frankly, he had no way of knowing. Henri Charlebois could just as easily have been out at his supper with Frau Weidling perhaps, for Leiter Weidling had said only that his wife was dining elsewhere …

  When he heard a pair of shears close, he knew he was in a large yet crowded room. The costumes were everywhere, some half finished, others complete; some hanging in bunches from hooks on the walls, others from wires that dangled from the ceiling. Still others on the dummies, both male and female.

  He ran a hand lightly over one. Ruffled satin and silk velvet with pompon buttons. A clown, a harlequin?

  Again the shears closed tightly, quickly, and in his mind’s eye he s
aw a cutting table long and cluttered, was taken right back to Ange-Marie Rachline’s house and those two children.

  Cocking the Lebel, he pointed it at where the sound had been and waited.

  When nothing further happened, he knew that whoever had closed the shears had left the room, or had they?

  The scent Étranger rushed at him only to dissipate, and for a time there was silence.

  ‘Louis … Louis, it’s me. You wouldn’t happen to have a match, would you? I seem to have run out.’

  The savagery of the killing suggested a torment that had gone beyond the bounds of sanity. In thrust after thrust the shears had been plunged into the fire chief’s chest, the heart, the lungs, and then the throat, cutting the jugular. Then again in a last desperate embrace that had seen the shears pulled out by his killer and dropped on the stage only to be picked up later and … what wondered St-Cyr? Washed and dried, taken back to Madame Rachline’s work room, hidden among those here, or thrown into the Saône on departure?

  They would have to search outside. Surely there would be a thin trail of blood, surely a bloodstained overcoat, sweater or blouse? And why hadn’t Hermann heard a thing?

  He had been too far away perhaps, but had the killer known the theatre so well as to be aware of this?

  Robichaud had come up on stage to see about the lights, but had his killer known this was what he’d do, that Hermann could not possibly have found the main switch? The fire chief had not been wearing his overcoat and hat—these had been left in the manager’s office, upstairs at the back of the theatre. He’d been digging into every nook and cranny, but had he been killed because of what he’d found or simply as insurance against the future?

  Everywhere there were Gestapo agents supposedly trained to search out hidden documents, et cetera, et cetera, now looking for the phosphorus. They were thorough, of course. Certainly they’d look in all the logical places but were they dealing with logic?

  When Hermann came up to him, the Bavarian was shaking his head. ‘Are we supposed to think it was the sister, Louis, or did she really do it? The first wound was to the heart—I’m almost certain of it. But would the kid have had the strength or knowledge to hang him up like that, or did she have help?’

  ‘Are we being played for a pair of fools, Hermann? Is the third fire even to be here?’

  Hermann imagined he could see the flames and hear the screams, he could see himself straining to reach yet another fire-starter even as the smoke enveloped him. ‘Patience, mon ami. Patience,’ cautioned St-Cyr. ‘If there is to be another fire, then the sequence is not the same as in 1938. It took fires in Lübeck, Heidelberg and finally Köln to do away with Martine Charlebois’s lover.’

  ‘But this time round, if indeed Father Adrian ever touched her―’

  ‘Oh he did. That priest most certainly did and several times.’

  ‘Then there need only have been one fire, that of the cinema.’

  ‘Precisely! And that is the sadness with which we must deal, Hermann, for now we have a Salamander who must strike again in order to hide the truth about another person.’

  ‘Or else it’s Leiter Weidling and that wife of his. Claudine set her up, Louis. As sure as we’re standing here, Frau Weidling was there to have some fun. If you ask me, that husband of hers was using her as bait.’

  ‘And the Salamander, Hermann?’

  ‘Knew all about it and made use of them.’

  They would meet up here on the terrace in front of the Basilica, said St-Cyr grimly to himself with satisfaction. They would look out over the darkened city as he was doing to see where so much went on behind closed doors yet was seldom admitted beyond a secretive whisper or nod. Guillemette, the préfet, would come first with Madame Rachline. She couldn’t refuse the chief of police and part owner of her house. The bishop would bring Henri Charlebois who would have come to him for succour in his hour of need. Lastly, Klaus Barbie would find and bring Frau Weidling and her husband, if for no other reason than sadistic curiosity.

  Within that select group lay all the answers they would need, but had it been wise to summon them at the same time?

  Hermann hadn’t liked the idea. It offered too many outs; darkness alone would shield escape.

  Yet in darkness was there truth, for without light, the voice tended to betray the deeply hidden thoughts. And the silence of the city was an asset, for it allowed each inflection to be magnified.

  Alone and desperately afraid, Martine Charlebois would hide or roam the city until both the cold and the curfew drove her to seek refuge.

  Not at her home, ah no, poor thing, nor up here under the bishop’s wing. With her zazous perhaps, but he did not think so—she was fundamentally too kind to want to involve them any more. Not with Ange-Marie Rachline either, or at La Belle Époque which she hated with a passion.

  A room … would she have taken a room in one of the tenements as she had before only to hang herself this time?

  He shook his head over such a thing and sadly said to himself, She will not attempt to do so until after the concert.

  At the sound of steps, he turned.

  ‘Louis, if this doesn’t work, we’re going to have to have transport. Let’s take the préfet’s car and say to hell with the consequences.’

  ‘Why not Klaus Barbie’s?’

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘Unless I am very much mistaken, Hermann, the Obersturmführer will be only too glad to allow us the use of his car.’

  ‘Louis, we’re dealing with a Salamander that can change its colour any time it wants.’

  ‘But usually when warmed, Hermann, by the heat of the sun or a fire.’

  ‘Thanks! Gott im Himmel, I wish you’d tell me what you’ve got in mind for this little conference of yours! I can’t watch all the exits by myself.’

  ‘That’s why we need the car, and that’s why the Obersturmführer will let us have it.’

  Ah merde, he might have known! ‘Because if we fail, the blame for what happens will be ours.’

  ‘And we must force the Salamander into making a move now, Hermann, before it’s too late.’

  Kohler told himself to give it a moment. He’d take a deep breath. ‘We needed Robichaud, Louis. We should have had him with us.’

  ‘And Madame Élaine Gauthier, Hermann? What of her?’

  Did he have to ask it like that? ‘Dead—she threw herself out of a fourth-floor window at the Hotel Terminus. Went right through the glass before the bastards could stop her.’

  It would be best not to sigh. ‘Then that’s all the more reason for the Obersturmführer to allow us the use of his car and the full co-operation of Gestapo Lyon should we need it.’

  ‘Never, Louis. Never! I’d rather shoot myself.’

  Ah no. ‘Please don’t say things like that, Hermann. You can’t tell who might be listening. Besides, we’ve a date to go fishing after this war is over.’

  Louis hardly ever had the last word but this time he’d let him. It’d be freezing at Stalingrad. The boys would be hunkered down behind some pile of rubble trying to keep their Schmeissers warm enough to prevent the gun-oil from freezing and seizing them up. They’d be trying not to think of home.

  And Gerda? he asked. Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, was it not a form of poetic justice to have her wrapped in the arms of a French labourer and suing himself for a divorce?

  He thought of Oona and of his little Giselle in Paris. He thought of all the cases Louis and he had been through, of sleep needed but denied to the point of overexhaustion.

  He thought of Frau Weidling and of the cartridges Louis had found in that woman’s purse, and he said so quietly to himself alone, You’re mine.

  10

  KOHLER HUNCHED HIS SHOULDERS AGAINST THE cold and pulled his collar up more tightly. The little buggers were going to kill themselves. Instead of the silence Louis had depended on, the kids and teenagers were whooping it up on their bobsleighs, and oh mein Gott, what a wizard of a run! Right down Fourvière Hill and
through Vieux Lyon to place Bellecour or place Terreaux! Right down the snaking climb of the jardin du Rosaire past the Stations of the Cross … zip! What Cross? Then straight on down the montée des Chazeaux, hitting each section of steps. Bump, bump, rumble, rumble … Forty … fifty … sixty kilometres an hour—would they hit such a speed? Maudit, they had the guts and the wild abandon of their youth!

  And wasn’t it nice to hear them having such a good time, forgetting all about the fires and the threat of others, forgetting everything about this lousy war?

  It had been years since he’d been on a bobsleigh. Years! He’d led the pack—there’d been no one to catch him, and Gerda … why Gerda had been there too, sometimes on the sleigh, ja, ja, as light as a feather in those days. Sometimes by the old iron kettle of hot cider, cocoa or mulled wine if they could steal it, and always ready for a roll in the hay. Always ready with water for the runners.

  Ah merde, sentiment had no place in a detective’s life. Louis was having trouble. The noise was constantly distracting him. Once a father, always one, the poor Frog would leap in alarm at each gap in the rumbling, each pause that might signal a cliff, an imminent head-on collision with a stone wall or tree, then he’d try to recover only to catch an impatient breath as the next bit of quiet suggested its ugly possibilities.

  ‘Monsieur Charlebois, don’t be so evasive, eh? A tragedy, my friend. Your sister …’

  Rumble, rumble …

  ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois telephoned me here, Inspector. I assure you she could not possibly have tried to kill you,’ said the brother stiffly.

  ‘And herself!’ shouted Louis nervously.

  ‘No, no,’ grunted Bishop Dufour. ‘It’s just not possible in one so tender.’

  ‘Tender? Is that how your secretary found her, Bishop? Ah, must I throw the two of you to the Obersturmführer Barbie? That girl is out there, my friends. Does she have the phosphorus? Is she going to torch another crowded tenement?’

  ‘Inspector, what is this?’ demanded the antique dealer. ‘Are you suggesting Mademoiselle Charlebois is the Salamander?’