Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘This is a good size room you have here, Madame Simone,’ James heard himself say. ‘I guess it comes with long service.’

  The woman didn’t answer.

  ‘Exactly how long have you worked as the pianist here, Madame?’ The Chief Inspector had his notebook out.

  ‘About five years, Monsieur.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Oh here and there,’ she was deliberately vague. ‘Madame Rosa has been very kind to me. We help each other.’

  ‘Indeed. And you also help a certain Marcel Caro?’

  Simone flashed an invidious glance at James. ‘I don’t know that name, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Perhaps you know the man in question by a different name. We shall have to take you down to the Quai des Orfèvres to have a look at him.’

  The woman’s face turned even pastier than before. ‘I have so much to do today. Perhaps you could describe the individual to me.’

  Durand offered a terse sketch and James reminded her, ‘The man we know as Caro came with you to the Café Dauphine when we met.’

  ‘No one came with me. But I think you must be describing Maro. Yes I know Maro a little. Just a little, mind.’ A tension had mounted in her body, so that she looked a little less like a blancmange. She played with the bangle at her wrist, smiled her co-operation at the Chief Inspector.

  ‘And this Maro,’ James said, ‘introduces girls to your premises, looks after them, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘I don’t know that for certain.’

  ‘You don’t know that for certain,’ the Chief Inspector mimicked her coyness. ‘May I suggest to you in plain language that what you do know for certain is that he’s a trafficker and a pimp.’

  The woman didn’t answer.

  ‘Come now, Madame. We have the man behind bars. And we’ll have you behind an equally rigid set in no time.’ The Chief Inspector was standing. He moved closer to her, his attitude menacing.

  Simone flinched.

  ‘Unless we have your co-operation, Madame, of course. All we need from you is a statement, a signed statement.’

  She looked around her wildly, searching for an escape route.

  ‘You have no need to worry,’ James murmured. ‘Caro or Maro won’t be out of prison for some time, if ever.’

  ‘But Madame Ro …’ she stopped herself, pretended a cough. ‘Is that where it ends, Chief Inspector?’ she asked in a strangled voice.

  ‘Almost. The statement will have to be repeated in front of the investigating magistrate and perhaps again in court. And, of course, just a small point, you will tell us where this Maro of yours gets his girls.’

  ‘I don’t know that,’ her voice suddenly boomed.

  ‘But, Madame Simone, don’t you remember? You told me very clearly at the café, that these girls, like Eugénie, were far better off here than in the Pale of Settlement or whatever points east, because of the pogroms, because …’

  ‘I said nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Funny, I recall …’ James paced, put on his best thinking face. ‘It was when we were talking about your friends, Rachel and Judith Arnhem. Judith is dead, too. Did you know that? Dead like that poor girl who tumbled to her end in the metro shaft. You knew her, too, didn’t you? You told me that Olympe, that Rachel had put ideas into her head.’

  ‘Judith dead?’ The woman trembled. ‘But he couldn’t …’ She started again. ‘Maro didn’t know Judith,’ she said bleakly.

  ‘But he knew Olympe Fabre.’

  She covered her face, whimpered. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything.’

  ‘I think you had better get dressed, Madame.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No, buts. We’ll carry on this interview at Headquarters. It will throw a different light on things.’ Durand patted her shoulder, suddenly amiable. ‘There, there, Madame. It’s not you we’re after. It’s that Maro. We need your help, that’s all.’

  ‘Eugénie blabbed to you, did she? Did she?’ She was shouting at James. ‘I knew that girl was no good. As soon as he brought her.’

  ‘Brought her from where?’

  She buttoned her lips.

  ‘We’ll just wait here and you go behind your pretty screen and you put on some clothes. Some nice clothes. We want to make a good impression on the magistrate.’

  ‘I’m only earning my keep, Chief Inspector. Nothing outside the law. Nothing, I promise you.’

  ‘Of course.’ Durand soothed.

  James positioned himself at the oozing dresser. There was a jewellery tray on it and his eyes strayed over the contents. He gasped. There, at the bottom of the tray, half buried amidst an assortment of bangles and earrings, lay chains with the telltale Hebrew character.

  ‘Chief Inspector. Over here.’ He pointed to the charms.

  Durand smiled, and with a finger to his lips, put the chains in his pocket. ‘You go and find the other one. I’ll meet you downstairs.’ They were whispering.

  James hesitated. His head was pounding again. ‘You’ll be gentle with her.’

  ‘Sweet on her, are you?’ Durand mocked.

  ‘No, but she’s very young.’

  ‘This was your idea, remember. And she’s a direct witness to the trafficking. Go on.’ Durand’s face was suddenly as cheerful as if Waterloo had been won.

  James knocked softly at the remembered door on the first floor.

  ‘Tell Madame I not well. Sick,’ a voice called.

  James inched open the door. Eugénie was lying in bed, her hair a tangle over the bolster. She sat up, stiffly. ‘Not working yet. Not working.’ Her eyes were vast in her thin face.

  ‘I just want to talk to you.’ James let himself in and closed the door silently behind him.

  She drew the sheets up to her chin.

  ‘I need you to come with me, Eugénie. To tell the police what you told me the other night. About how you got here. No, don’t be afraid. Afterwards you’ll be free. We can find you work, perhaps. Other work.’

  ‘Not police. They send me back. My father …’ Her face grew contorted. ‘He kill me. Maro say. No police.’

  ‘Maro’s in jail. Now, get dressed. Please. I promise you’ll be all right.’ He took some money out of his wallet and placed it on the bed.

  She stared from it to him and back again. Then with a shrug, she nodded. ‘I bring everything. Not come here again. Promise.’

  James nodded, without quite knowing how he would make good his vow, though do so he must, for too many reasons. He turned his back. He could hear the spring of the bed, the sounds of her dressing, the snap of a case. He wondered for a moment what either of the women could tell them about Comte.

  ‘Ready.’

  Eugénie was wearing a worn brown serge dress that barely reached her ankles. Her hair was neatly clipped back in a tail. Her face was bare of make-up. She looked like nothing so much as a schoolgirl and he realised she must be wearing the clothes she had arrived in. She smiled at him faintly. ‘My own dress. Only my own,’ she pointed to a small round bag with a tie at its top. ‘Better so.’

  As they neared the bottom of the stairs, the Chief Inspector’s voice reached them. It was raised high in angry threat. A woman’s voice matched it.

  Madame Rosa, her black skirts spread like a vulture’s threatening wings, was blocking the door, barring the Chief Inspector’s progress. He had his arm through Madame Simone’s who cowered a little.

  ‘You’ll not get away with this, Chief Inspector. I run a perfectly legal business and you have no grounds on which to take my right hand with you. None at all. I shall lodge a complaint. My complaints, I should add, find their way to very high places indeed. You may find yourself not only reprimanded but demoted.’

  ‘Which high places are we talking of exactly, Madame?’ The Chief Inspector was surly, but for a moment James feared he might give in and wash his hands of the whole business.

  ‘And who’s this now? Oh no. No. You don’t take Eugénie with you. She owes me … she o
wes me a substantial sum which she hasn’t worked off yet.’

  ‘And whom did you pay that sum to, Madame?’

  A black look crossed Madame Rosa’s face. ‘That is not what I meant. There is always an investment in taking on a girl. None of which is your business, Chief Inspector. You shall have Commissaire Caille to deal with.’

  The Chief Inspector took on his Napoleonic posture, one hand in his jacket, his weight balanced on a single leg, his head held so high that the bowler seemed to metamorphose into a tricorne. ‘Indeed, Madame. I begin to quiver already. But I will have to take my chances. A murder inquiry is a serious matter.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ Darts flew from her eyes and landed on James. ‘You!’ She scowled. ‘I remember you now. I should have trusted my instincts. So very humble. So very gentlemanly. I knew it was all a fraud. Well, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be wise, Madame. Not now. Not today. For a woman of your delicacy and your contacts, a night behind bars might not prove the pleasantest of experiences.’

  ‘Leave it, Madame Rosa,’ Simone intervened. ‘And don’t worry. The Chief Inspector has promised me … He only wants a simple statement. It will do us no harm.’

  ‘No harm at all, ladies, if the crimes are not yours.’

  ‘This is an honest establishment, Chief Inspector.’ Madame Rosa’s face turned crimson. ‘Altogether honest. Nor are you to believe a word the young one says. For one thing, she speaks no French. You’ll have to get Madame Simone to translate.’

  Durand tipped his hat. ‘It’s kind of you to offer her services, Madame. But I think I may just have an equally reliable translator to hand.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The lower reaches of the police station, which bordered on the Palais de Justice and were connected to it by various passages, held a subterranean chill. Natural light had never penetrated here. The shadows the lamps cast were long and deformed by the repetitive guillotine of iron bars.

  Despite the woollen shawl she had wrapped around herself, Eugénie shivered.

  ‘We won’t be long, Mademoiselle. All you have to do is identify the man as the one who met you in Paris and took you to the Hotel Monpiquet. You translate that for me, Arnhem.’

  Arnhem clutched his black hat and did as he was told. The roll of the incomprehensible language went on for far longer than Durand’s words and James, who trailed behind them, had the impression that Arnhem must be adding a few comforting asides of his own.

  There had been a touch of brilliance in the Chief Inspector’s sending for Arnhem to act as their translator. The notion hadn’t occurred to James. Eugénie had not only relaxed and opened up instantly to relay her ghastly tale, but it had permitted Arnhem and Madame Simone to confront each other. Both James and Durand had been surprised by the fact that Arnhem didn’t know the woman who claimed a long friendship with both his daughters. But it made sense. The girls would hardly come running home and recount their friendship with a whore to their father.

  But the sight of a grieving Arnhem had nonetheless had an effect on Madame Simone. Perhaps he woke memories of her own father, of a distant family. In any event, she became softer, more tractable. She confessed that all of them at the Monpiquet were afraid of Maro, even Madame Rosa herself, though Simone suspected that their relationship was a long one, and dated back to the days when Rosa was a simple prostitute who had no establishment of her own. Indeed, Simone let slip in one of her more voluble moments, she had speculated that it was Maro who had helped her set up and provided the essential protection.

  She had caught herself then and protested that though Maro might be lustful, he had no need to stoop to murder. She was certain he wasn’t implicated in Olympe’s tragic end. There was no need. He had no reason to fear her. He had too many friends in high places. She repeated that several times. When they pushed her on the death of the girl in the metro shaft, she merely shrugged. Yes, she had been one of Maro’s girls, but again he had no need to kill her. She was worth far less to him dead than alive. And he hardly needed to fear exposure from that end. Who would take the word of an illiterate prostitute, a Jew at that, against a former police officer, a man with so many contacts? No it made no sense. The girl had simply done away with herself. And, yes, it had been wrong of Olympe to put ideas into her head. Not everyone had the talent and intelligence of an Olympe. As for Judith, that made even less sense. Maro might have temper outbursts, but he was a practical man.

  There was an air of disingenuousness in all Simone’s comments, James thought, but they had their own logic – the pragmatic, amoral logic of a woman who had an experience of brutal circumstances, but was yet oddly cloistered from the rest of the world. Caro or Maro, for her, was exactly the grand, the powerful and frightening figure he wished to appear. She could not see beyond the fear he engendered. He hoped that if this episode did nothing else, it would save Eugénie from growing into Simone.

  They had reached the cell Durand had had the man transferred to. There were no bars here, but a solid wooden door with a peephole at the top, so that Eugénie could see the man without herself having to suffer the panic his presence so evidently produced in her. She was so small that she had to be lifted to look in. Arnhem did that and held her there for several moments.

  When she nodded, he brought her down gently. In that tenderness, James had the sudden impression that Arnhem had found a replacement for at least one of his daughters.

  ‘It’s him. Maro,’ Eugénie said in French, her face fierce. She poured out a stream of words to Arnhem.

  His translation confirmed that this Marcel Caro was indeed the man who had met Eugénie and her two friends and had brought her to the Monpiquet. She wished they could find the other two girls and free them too. Maro had done unspeakable things to her. Had indoctrinated her, Arnhem said, though the girl’s flush told them that perhaps her description had been more graphic.

  They trudged back to the Chief Inspector’s office, grateful for the clang of the door and the turn of the heavy key behind them. ‘What do we do with her now?’ Durand muttered to James. ‘We can’t keep her here and the nuns who usually serve in such circumstances might not be suitable.’

  ‘She’ll come with me.’ Arnhem had overheard them and was definitive.

  ‘You can’t take her back to Madame de Landois’s,’ James burst out.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that.’

  ‘And she shouldn’t stay alone at your place. That wouldn’t be safe.’

  They had reached the Chief Inspector’s office and Arnhem paused at the threshold.

  ‘I know where there’s a room with two other women. Women of her own kind.’

  ‘You mean prostitutes.’

  ‘No, no. Shame, Monsieur Norton. Eugénie is not a prostitute. She’s simply an unfortunate creature. We must try and change her fortunes. No, good women, honourable women. Of our faith.’

  ‘We have to be able to reach her at all times.’ The Chief Inspector urged them in. ‘I’ll need an address.’

  ‘Of course.’ Arnhem paused. ‘But you know the address. It’s the same building as Isak Bernfeld’s. The women are neighbours of his. And they have a small spare room. I saw them today.’

  ‘You went to see Bernfeld today?’

  ‘He came to me first. To mourn. The Inspector had told him … interrogated him about Judith’s death.’

  James sank into an empty chair. Every part of his body ached now.

  ‘We needed to talk to each other. I walked him home.’

  ‘And …’ James urged him on, but Arnhem had sunk into some kind of reverie. He kept looking out at the trees which fringed the window and then back at Eugénie who stood utterly still in the corner of the room.

  ‘What did he say about Judith?’ James asked again.

  ‘He said she was perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, but sadder than a soul in hell. She remembered him apparently. He held her hand and they wept together. Wept over Rachel.’

 
‘So until the Inspector told him, he knew nothing of Judith’s death?’

  Arnhem shook his ragged head. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. He was utterly devastated to learn of it. He cried, sobbed in front of me. He said he had helped to end the lives of both my daughters. I wept then too.’

  ‘And you would trust Eugénie to this man?’ James was aghast.

  ‘He will look after her with his own life. He will protect her. And the women are there. It is altogether respectable. Have you any better ideas, Monsieur Norton?’

  ‘Yes, let her go with him.’ Durand interrupted them. He had been reading a letter on his desk and he crumpled it now with an angry gesture. The anger was in his voice too. ‘But you’re responsible for her, Monsieur Arnhem. Should we need her, you’ll bring her to us.’

  ‘On my word.’

  ‘That’s fine. Off with you both.’ With a brief goodbye, he waved them from the room, then pressed the buzzer on his desk. ‘We’re going to send Madame Simone off too.’

  ‘What’s got into you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘That letter’s got into me. All in vain, I knew it. Madame Rosa was right. Caro is all too well connected.’

  ‘Who was the letter from?’

  ‘The Deputy Head of the vice squad. He says we have nothing on Caro except alleged assault, which will most likely be proved to have been in self-defence. Nor can one trust the word of prostitutes. And so on. And so on. I knew it. I knew it in my bones. There is no way that any of these prostitute’s evidence will stand up. And Caro probably has so much dirt on everyone – on policemen, on politicians – that we’ll never get to trial.’

  ‘We need Dr Comte.’

  ‘We do indeed.’ The Chief Inspector paced, straightened one of the prints on his wall. ‘One of my men is at the hospital with him. The last word, about two hours ago now, was that he was still out. And if Comte dies, that’s it. Only he can identify his assailant. If he saw him.’

  He slumped into his chair, despondent. All energy had left him.

  The two men looked at each other in silence, then James burst out. ‘We have to keep going, Chief Inspector. Dr Comte may still rally. And Touquet and my brother will find the other girls Caro sold. I think they already know who they are. If the women are as personable, as young and obviously innocent as Eugénie, a good lawyer will know how to let them impress a jury. And you really can’t let Madame Simone go just yet. She knows too much, far more than she told us I imagine. She’s a sly one. And she did have the charms in her room. We don’t want her suddenly to disappear.’