She would shrug and say, ‘It was nothing to me, you understand, but Madam Jacqmain had disowned her son for living in sin with the blacks and the coffee-coloureds. That poor man had pleaded with her for forgiveness in his letters home. He said he had scourged the girls most completely but … but then had succumbed to base desires and had had his way with them.’
Verdammt! ‘So you let Jacqmain come in here even though the house was off-limits, and nur für Deutsche?’
And only for Germans.
‘Well?’ he demanded, startling her for he’d raised his voice.
‘I … I had known him from before the Defeat. A regular, you understand. From time to time, after the war had ended for us, he would inquire if we had anyone suitable and if I would let him in but this … this was not possible.’
Kohler waited while she fingered her lace blouse in thought. ‘Then this … this Lucie-Marie arrived and I … I knew at once how relieved Monsieur Jacqmain would be. The stress in a man, you cannot imagine.… I let him watch her.’
‘And broke the rules.’
‘Was it such a crime? He did not touch her or any of the other girls. He only watched. One night a week … Two nights occasionally, when things were very bad with him. He paid well and it … it was good for business.’
‘But you worried about it. There could be problems. She was intransigent – you’ve said so yourself. Her papers might have been good enough to let her walk freely about town but her skin was too dark, right? yet she hungered for a little freedom. Oh bien sûr, you had paid off the préfet and probably even the Kommandant but it couldn’t last, so you informed the authorities in Paris. There was the reward of 100,000 francs to consider, eh? And they, realizing what you had, came at once to put her to use.’
Kohler set the album of photographs Louis had given him into her hands. Some showed Tshaya with her wrists tightly tied and roped to an eye-bolt in a ceiling timber, the girl objecting until told what would happen to her if she refused. The back, the buttocks, the body extended. Defiance when forced to face the camera.
‘I … I was ordered to feed this … this strange desire of his by … by letting him watch her and then to let him talk to her, and to photograph her.’
‘Ordered by whom?’
The lights were dimmed, a first warning that things were about to begin in the adjacent room. ‘By Henri Doucette, her husband, the pugiliste. Gestapo of the rue Lauriston in Paris came with that one, and some of the SS also. They … they were interested in her, but … but also in Monsieur Jacqmain.’
‘Just why were the French Gestapo and the SS interested in the prospector?’
May God forgive her. ‘The diamonds some said he kept in secret.’
Diamonds that would have to be sold so as to be finally free of their threat or else face arrest and their outright theft.
‘When, exactly, did Henri Doucette and his friends come to see you?’
When had she informed on Tshaya? ‘Not until the late summer of last year. Inspector, I would have let the girl stay. I did not want to turn her in but the times, they are difficult, isn’t that so?’
‘Save the tears. Was there anything else that led them to take an interest in the prospector?’
‘They … they were watching a friend of his, a chanteuse and dance instructress he often spoke very highly of.’
Nana Thélème … ‘So, two things came about. Tshaya was here from late August 1941 until September of 1942, and the prospector visited her, and then you informed on her and Paris took a decided interest in the diamonds and immediately saw a way of finding out a little more about this friend of his, this other woman, by using Tshaya.’
‘She agreed to work for her husband. She had no other choice, nor did I.’
Again the lights were dimmed, this time urgently and repeatedly as a warning to keep silent.
Madame de Bonnevies indicated the eyepiece. ‘This girl is one we keep because the one you call Tshaya had to be replaced and there are those among you who desire that which is forbidden to them by their Nazi laws.’
When he did not respond to the rebuke, she softly added, ‘Besides the colour of the skin, the marks of the whip also excite others, Inspector. Some of those choose to come to this chamber first before taking the one you are about to see, as they did this Tshaya. It’s a spectacle. Nothing else. All is in the eye of the beholder and quite innocent.’
Still lost in thought and worried, for it was obvious the rue Lauriston had been interested in Nana Thélème for some time but for purposes of their own, namely loot, Kohler hesitated. Madame de Bonnevies motioned to the chair and softly crooned, ‘It’s begun. Please avail yourself of the pleasure. I will send Malou to you with a little wine, and Brigitte will come to pour it.’
‘A marc.’
A brandy. ‘As you wish. Both will, of course, be free to love you for ever tonight – it’s on the house – but if it is your wish, you may have the slave, though I must tell you that one has no faith in her fidelity and there are many who want her.’
A top earner.
‘Monsieur Jacqmain hated what she represented, as he did that of the girl Tshaya. To him, both represented the evil in all women, especially that of a hypocritical mother who constantly preached piety and self-denial, with the reward of everlasting life in the hereafter among the choirs of angels.’
The girl behind the amber latticework of the screen was a coal-black Senegalese with short-cropped, crinkly black hair and when her eyes flashed whitely in that finely boned and beautifully aristocratic face, they did so with an intensity Kohler found disturbing.
From time to time she turned to cross her wrists high above her head as if strung up taut. Light played softly on her back and buttocks. There were whip marks, the scars some slaver must have left. The blue-black, dusty-grey to red marks of his shackles were around her wrists, ankles and neck.
Often she clung to the latticework, seeking to join the copulating couple on the bed. At such times her pink tongue would wet her lips in hesitation. The firm dark breasts would be caught, the rosy dark nipples held.
When she began to do the only thing that was left to her, this trapped little fly in amber watched the bed with an intensity that haunted.
The couple took no notice of her for they were far too busy and the client totally unware of her in any case – he could not have seen her at all. The blonde on her hands and knees on the bed was thick-thighed and as strong as a plough-horse; the Oberfeldwebel in his undershirt, swarthy and pockmarked with old bullet wounds. The deepness of the blonde’s sighs and groans soon filled the room, the grunts of him as he stolidly rutted at her.
Canopies of heavy, wine-red velvet were draped about the headboard of the bed. The coverlet beneath the couple was armorial with fleurs de lis and fringed with tassels. The Oberfeldwebel had pushed the blonde down so that her head was well over the edge of the bed just like Marianne St-Cyr’s had been in the films … the films … ‘In … in …’ she cried. ‘Oh mon Dieu, mon Dieu, your shaft, it is so big and strong. I must come … I must!’
A tall, leaded glass terrarium on a bureau held dead branches to which iridescent sunbursts of butterflies clung as it shook. Orange on black, indigo on amber, gold on emerald green, a soft, soft lavender, all entombed.
When the slave threw her head back and gave her body to ecstasy, as did the blonde, both quivered. The scars glistened. The blonde’s naked back held none of them. Breasts, shoulders and arms throbbed until again the wrists were pressed together high above the slave’s head, and again her body felt the lash of an imaginary whip and all but buckled under each blow.
A regular circus but, ‘Ah Christ!’ breathed Kohler sadly. Had she really been beaten like that and so savagely?
The blonde was disinterestedly washing herself. The sergeant wasn’t pulling off his regulation issue rubber boot. Having paid extra not to use it, he had gambled on the bimonthly medical checks every licensed house had to have, and against the infirmary, loss of ra
nk and the guardhouse for himself if wrong.
‘Monsieur, is it that you wish to see more?’ hazarded a sweet and hesitant voice.
Kohler felt the glass of brandy in his hand but had no recollection of either of them having put it there. The one who had spoken was a sturdy little brunette with a self-conscious smile. The raven-haired one behind her was taller, bolder and more pronounced in every way.
Neither of them wore a thing. ‘Which of you is Malou?’ he asked, ‘and which is Brigitte?’
His grin was nice and the look in his eyes one of warm appreciation. A gentleman for one so big and frightening. Would he take both of them or only the slave?
Kohler downed the brandy and patted each of them on the rump. ‘Another time,’ he sighed. ‘Merde, the life a poor detective leads. I want to stay but duty calls.’
He kissed them both and held them a moment so that neither would feel slighted and the house could rest in peace.
A last look revealed that the girl behind the lattice had vanished and that the lights there had been switched off. Had they done it with mirrors? he wondered.
The sergeant was doing up his boots, the blonde was smoking a cigarette and fixing her nails, having forgotten all about the ‘lover’ who had just ‘possessed’ her.
He’d had his moment, and it would soon be time for the next one.
The Paradox gun had been considered too old to confiscate and the authorities had unwittingly let the prospector keep it as a curiosity. Sometimes such things happened in the provinces, but seldom if ever in Paris. Each lead ball was nearly two and a half centimetres in diameter – enough to drop an elephant at one hundred metres. Each cartridge held nearly thirty grams of black powder. A hero’s gun.
Pocketing two of the lead shot for the library of the curious one always tried to build, St-Cyr went through to the sitting-room. Both Gabrielle and Nana Thélème had come here on that Tuesday. Jacqmain had needed Mademoiselle Thélème’s continued reassurances that it would indeed be safe for him to sell the diamonds to her friend.
Yet the 850,000 francs were nowhere to be found.
The Generalmajor Wehrle had come at 7 p.m. that night. The woman feeding the pigeons in the square had complained of late comings and goings. ‘Whores if you ask me,’ she had said.
Enough flypapers to kill an elephant had been purchased by Mademoiselle Thélème.
Vouvray and the Château Thériault were quite close and it would have been easy enough for Gabrielle to have returned after Wehrle had departed.
The boucherie was closed, as was the marchand de couleurs, but banging hard enough brought the owner of this last, and it was from him that the woman’s address was obtained.
She lived directly above the shop but on the third floor.
‘Madame Horleau, a few small questions. Nothing difficult, I assure you.’
In the faded light of the landing, the rheumy grey eyes were suspicious, the door all but closed. ‘What’s happened to him?’ she asked. ‘I heard a dreadful bang.’
‘It would be best, madame, if you simply answered my questions and did not attempt to ask any of your own.’
‘Did he shoot himself with that blunderbuss the Kommandant was fool enough to have let him keep for the memories it held?’
‘Please, the blonde you said had arrived on that Tuesday morning a week ago. Did she return later that evening?’
‘A week ago … Why, please, did they come?’
He sighed. He retrenched and asked if she wished arrest for withholding information.
‘Arrest would be perfect for such as myself. Is it that you are unaware the Vichy Government and the police must feed their prisoners under the conditions of the Geneva Convention?’
He’d best not ask why she would consider herself a prisoner of war! ‘The soup is water, and unclean, madame. The bread, if they get any, is grey and full of harmful things your old insides could not withstand but, please, let me help with the war effort.’
A wallet was found, but its state was such that she had to say, ‘It needs remending. Have you no wife to call your own? Fishing line … Pah! men know nothing of such things and should all be raised in skirts for the first ten years!’
He grimaced. He said silently, Sometimes dealing with the provincials could be so very difficult.
He handed over 50 francs which she took and waited for more. ‘The pigeons,’ she said.
‘You can’t buy bread on the black market. No one can. It’s one of the few things which are, by some unwritten rule, forbidden by all, both buyer and seller.’
She snapped arthritic fingers and he handed over another 50. ‘Does the blonde from Paris drive a small Peugeot?’ she asked.
‘It’s dark blue.’
‘The same as arrived early that morning. That one returned at eight o’clock in the evening, the new time, but stayed no more than five minutes.’
‘And?’ he asked.
Did he always suspect there must be more? ‘She left with a small suitcase.’
‘But … but it was dark outside?’
‘Dark enough for an old woman to hear her bang it against the car as she opened the door. She said, “Merde alors, my nerves. I can’t drop it! Everything will be all right. We’ll soon get him on his way.”’
‘Was Monsieur Jacqmain going for a trip?’
‘The other one, I think. The one who came with the small suitcase at seven that night and left before this woman returned.’
The Generalmajor Wehrle. ‘How can you be sure it was the same suitcase?’
‘I can’t, but I can tell you the first was a brown alligator bag from Louis Vuitton in Paris. As the vélo-taxi driver handed it to the man, he let a sliver of light fall on it. I have always wanted to possess such a bag.’
‘Your eyesight must be excellent.’
‘That’s because I don’t waste it reading books and newspapers like Monsieur Jacqmain did. Is she known to you, this one who returned?’
What could he say? ‘She was known to me, yes, but now I’m not so sure of it.’
The alligator bag had not been in the house – he was certain of this, certain too, that Gabrielle must have come back for it.
‘Madame, are you sure she said, “I can’t drop it?”’
‘Positive! She was terrified of doing so and gingerly put the bag on the seat beside her. Then the car she allowed only to creep away until, reassured perhaps, she finally gave the accelerator pedal the tiny push.’
‘And you’re certain she said, “We’ll soon get him on his way?”’
‘Must I repeat everything for you?’
‘Egg white,’ breathed Kohler, marvelling at it as he ran his fingers delicately over the scars on the black girl’s shoulders. ‘Who would have believed it?’
Madame de Bonnevies was firm. ‘You did. Monsieur Jacqmain did and so have all others. It is allowed to dry and then is sprayed with artist’s fixative before oiling.’
Exhausted, depressed and afraid perhaps, the Senegalese slept flat on her stomach in an untidy attic room. A well-squeezed tube of Veronal was nearby. Had she taken too much?
A half-bottle of cognac had been downed in an instant. The barbitone before the ‘performance’, the cognac right afterwards.
‘She was afraid you would ask for her and had prepared herself.’
‘Me?’ he managed.
‘The scar. The others too, that accompany it on your face.’
‘Shrapnel nicks from the Great War, and a bullet graze that’s too fresh not to remind me of the bastard who fired the slug that did it. That’s the one across the brow. You should have told her she need not have feared me.’
He was still looking at the négresse’s buttocks. Was he tempted perhaps? ‘She was afraid of Monsieur Jacqmain also, and of the others who took her.’
‘You said he never touched any of your girls.’
‘Yes! but this one “felt” his breath on her skin all the same.’
The girls would know everything that wen
t on in the house. When awaiting a client, they would often spy on the entrance so as to get a little preview. She’d have seen him, then, talking to Madame.
Kohler turned to look at the woman. ‘Did Tshaya “prepare” herself?’
‘In such a way?’
Most girls were drunk half the time, some on dope, too, if they could get it in these hard times. ‘In any way.’
‘That one’s defence was her hatred. She despised the profession and rejected all attempts at compromise. She was taken to Paris many times to be used in other ways, perhaps, but when brought back, was simply more sullen and determined.’
‘Did she ever go to Jacqmain’s house?’
‘After dark?’
The woman had held her breath. ‘You know that’s what I meant.’
‘Then I must tell you that she did on three occasions, each of which was after a session such as you have just seen.’
‘You were told to let her do this?’
Must he constantly push the matter? ‘We were ordered to by that husband of hers. Ah! there was nothing either of us could have done. Monsieur Jacqmain did not beat her, if that is what you are thinking. He merely trailed the bullwhip he had brought from Africa across her flesh. An hour … two hours, little more.’
‘Was she tied up?’
‘Yes.’
She’d have been terrified. ‘And how did he pay her – and yourself?’
There would be trouble if she did not answer truthfully. ‘In diamonds. He made us swear to say nothing of them and we agreed, of course, to do as he wished.’
The fool!
The Auberge of the Priest Who Travelled With Full Saddlebags served crayfish in white wine, pork stuffed with prunes, pike au beurre blanc, Saint-Martin duckling, hare à la chinonaise, touraine de pêches à la royale, le Lochois cakes and macaroons, cheese, wine and cognac. Absolutely no ration tickets were required – one didn’t even discuss such things. There was hardly a Frenchman in the place and though the hour was late, practically all of the tables were in use but Hermann, being Hermann, had managed a quiet corner.
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