Gypsy

by J. Robert Janes

  Merde, what had happened to the women of France that they would even think of such a thing? Too few men, he said sadly to himself. Too few opportunities for a little happiness.

  ‘Well, Louis, tell me what went on here,’ asked Boemelburg, offering a cigarette to fingers so desperate they shook.

  St-Cyr inhaled deeply and paused to hold the smoke in. Flames had reached the belfry. No attempt had been made to recover Tshaya’s body. ‘When they got here, De Vries saw the caravans and the littered rubbish of the kumpania and realized his companion had betrayed her family. For a time, I think, he said nothing, Walter. She danced for him and the other terrorists in the cellars. They slept and ate down there. Then at the height of a dance or at its conclusion, she was accused and taken up to the chapel. This, perhaps, was when he found out that Nana Thélème had not been the cause of his going to prison.’

  ‘Tshaya did not resist being hanged?’

  ‘The others must have been with him but left De Vries afterwards, perhaps to seek escape routes. They’ll see the fire or will be told of it. They won’t come back.’

  ‘So we’ve no hope of finding them?’

  ‘Not here. Not in Paris either. It will simply be too dangerous for them. No, I think they will head south, perhaps to the Camargue, to Les Baux and Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.’

  A gathering ground and holy place of the nomades before the war. ‘Will there be others of their kind for them to take refuge with?’

  ‘This I really cannot say. I’ve no knowledge of how effective the deportations have been.’

  Was St-Cyr simply guarding that tongue of his, or had he finally seen the light and would now no longer be so difficult? ‘What went on with the Spade?’

  ‘Tshaya lured him to the house on the rue Nollet. Together, she and De Vries murdered him.’

  ‘You’re certain of this?’

  Had an autospy been done? Had they found something? he worried but would have to take the chance. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m certain of it.’

  ‘And the robberies?’

  ‘The loot will, I think, be totally recovered, the cyanide capsules as well.’

  For a time they smoked their cigarettes in silence. The remains of the belfry’s roof were collapsing. The men were now watching the fire. The two women knelt beside the body of their friend, with Kohler standing near them, looking lost and alone. ‘Herr Max returns to Berlin with the diamonds, Louis. The Untersturmführer and the rest of his Sonderkommando will go with him as security. The villa in Saint-Cloud will be occupied by others. It’s much-needed accommodation.’

  ‘And the banknotes?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘The jewellery, the sapphires …?’

  ‘Will go up in smoke. Tell Kohler to see that they are loaded into my car. Go with him to make certain none are stolen.’

  ‘And Nana Thélème?’

  ‘A small funeral, a quiet burial in the Père-Lachaise. No members of the press. This matter is closed. See that your little songbird sings her heart out. Understand that even the Führer listens to her when not attentive to his Wagner.’

  Understand that this is a final warning.

  They would walk in the Bois de Boulogne as they had before the problem of the Gypsy had begun. They would each in their own way try to find that moment to settle things between themselves but would Jean-Louis understand and forgive?

  ‘I could sleep like a dormouse,’ said Gabrielle sadly. ‘Never have I been so exhausted.’

  In Provence, in the late fall of each year, the dormice come indoors to find themselves a hole in which to sleep until spring.

  ‘Nana’s death couldn’t have been helped,’ he said. ‘None of us, not you, not Hermann, nor I or Suzanne-Cécilia could have prevented it.’

  ‘Two shots. One in the left arm; the other in the abdomen.’

  ‘I’ve seen it happen too many times and so has Hermann.’

  ‘We could have done something! We could have …’

  Gabrielle burst into tears and he had to hold her tightly. ‘We couldn’t have done anything,’ he pleaded with her. ‘We were trapped! Things simply happened too quickly.’

  She bowed her head and tried to stop herself, blurted, ‘At first, when he arrived in Paris, the Gypsy led us to believe he was on our side and that he would pull off the robberies we had lined up for him. We would get the funds to the Resistance. We would see that he got safely back to the British, but then …’

  ‘He turned against you as he fully intended. He and Tshaya went out on their own determined to cause trouble and to take advantage of the situation.’

  She took the proffered handkerchief. ‘We had to stop him before it was too late. We had to!’

  ‘He and Tshaya robbed the pay-train.’

  ‘It … it had all been looked over – arranged, you understand, well ahead of time. By then we thought it the end for us but later that day he and Tshaya paid Nana a visit. They wanted me to take them to the ruins. They … they wanted out of Paris.’

  ‘But Nana had prepared a little something for yourselves should things go wrong.’

  Gabrielle ducked her head away. ‘She … she gave them each a glass of the eau de vie de cassis she had made herself from grain alcohol, saccharin, artificial blackcurrant flavouring and colour.’

  Lots of people made such things these days. They were invariably dreadful and horribly sweet. ‘Strychnine is very bitter. How long did it take?’

  He was so grim and sad. She wanted desperately for him to take her in his arms and to tell her things were well between them. ‘Seven minutes for Janwillem; ten for Tshaya. Nana … Nana did it on Wednesday at about two thirty in the afternoon. They … they had told her where they had left the loot.’

  ‘In the house on the rue Nollet.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who telephoned the Spade at the Avia Club Gym?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And he came running all by himself.’

  ‘Yes! We were desperate, Jean-Louis. Frantic. You and Hermann were not around. We felt you must have gone to Tours and then to Senlis, to the quarry. What, please, were we to have done?’

  They had reached a copse of birch trees. Leading her among them, he asked, ‘Was it you who lit the match that set the Spade afire?’

  She blinked her tears away. ‘Will you despise me now?’ she asked. ‘Will you turn your back on me if I tell you I did it?’

  ‘You pierced his eyes.’

  Only Suzanne-Cécilia had been with her, but Céci had already told him she hadn’t killed anyone, so it was no use avoiding the truth and she had best get it over with. ‘Yes, I did it. There, does that sanctify your self-righteousness, Monsieur l’lnspecteur principal? I am a résistant. We had each to make terrible sacrifices and we had, Céci and I, drawn straws to see who would do it.’

  When he said nothing but simply fiddled with a tiny shred of bark, she said, ‘We had to make it appear as though Tshaya had done it, otherwise those of the rue Lauriston and the Gestapo would have done the same to us or worse. Besides, he knew too much and we couldn’t have that.’

  Was the war within France to become one of outright savagery? he wondered.

  ‘Later that night we … we robbed the villa in Saint-Cloud. We had to make it appear as if …’

  ‘Yes, yes, as if De Vries and Tshaya were still alive. Which of you gave the Generalmajor Wehrle the cyanide?’

  He would hate her now. He would never be able to find it within himself to sleep with her for fear of … ‘I did. I know a lot of those at the Ritz, so it was no problem my going there to leave a little envelope for him when I got back to Paris. I went there first before giving my statement to the police. Wehrle …’ She shrugged. ‘He must have seen he had no other choice but … but as to his having ordered caviar and champagne for Nana, that can only have been a parting gesture, his little revenge.’

  ‘But he didn’t kill himself until Friday.’

  ‘He waited to see what would happen.’

  ‘Only to find he ha
d been recalled to Berlin.’

  A tiny shred of the paperbark was pulled from the tree and examined. ‘The bomb in the zebra house,’ he said, and she told him Suzanne-Cécilia had put it there. ‘Only Nana and I went to the ruins with the bodies of Tshaya and Janwillem, the loot and the explosives. We started out soon after the villa robbery. It was very dark and bitterly cold. Perhaps this is what saved us, who’s to say? And yes, I was supposed to have been at the club and I worried all the time that the Gestapo would come looking for me there or to Monseigneur for Nana, or to the Schéhérazade. The car … would the engine seize up? The snow … We … we were stopped only once. I … I simply told the Feldwebel the Hauptmann and his lady friend were asleep and not feeling well, and that we were driving them to their country house. It worked. Don’t ask me why. Fear of the flu perhaps.’

  ‘And on the return?’

  Must he have everything? ‘We each went our separate ways. I stole a bicycle but then managed a lift to Les Halles in a gazogène lorry full of rutabagas. Nana walked until able to catch a lift in a Wehrmacht lorry full of troops. They were coming into the city to help search for the Gypsy.’

  The risks they had taken, the chances … ‘Suzanne-Cécilia is being transferred to Lyon, to a private zoo.’

  ‘But … but the Untersturmführer Klaus Barbie is head of Section IV there? He’ll … he’ll have her constantly watched.’

  ‘It’s his little zoo. We could do nothing. She’s Boemelburg’s insurance that we behave and say nothing further of the loot. It simply had to be.’

  ‘Ah no …’

  ‘Please don’t do anything more, not for a good while. Lie low, Gabrielle. Keep out of it. Let others take up the sword.’

  ‘She’s in love with you. I saw it happen. It … it was quite beautiful, but … but it made me hate her for a brief moment.’

  ‘Love has no place in war. It can only intrude.’

  They walked in silence through a frozen land where those who were in uniform enjoyed themselves on skis, sleighs or on horseback. When asked what was to become of Nana’s little boy and the daughter of Janwillem and Tshaya, she told him that she’d already asked the General von Schaumburg to allow the children laissez-passers to Vouvray and Château Thériault. ‘Nana’s mother agrees and so does Madame Moreel in Senlis.’

  They had reached the Carrefour de Longchamp. ‘And now we must part,’ she said. ‘Please don’t hate me. What was done had to be done.’

  Hermann had caught up with them in the Citroën. ‘Avignon, Louis. Something about a madrigal singer who suddenly lost his or her voice. I can’t quite make out the telex Boemelburg handed me. It’s blurred. He wants us to get out of town for a bit. Hop in.’

  ‘A moment, then.’ Turning to Gabrielle, St-Cyr took hold of her mittened hands, saying earnestly, ‘Give me time. Let us speak of things when I get back.’

  ‘Kiss her, Louis. Ah! you French. The Italians could teach you plenty!’

  ‘And the Boches?’ came the swift retort as Louis got into the car.

  ‘More again if you’d only listen. Hey, there’s a bottle of pastis and a tin of pipe tobacco on the seat.’

  Kohler got out of the car to take Gabrielle in his arms, to kiss her on each cheek and draw in the faint scent of that fabulous perfume, and to tell her to stop worrying. ‘He’s just being self-righteous. He’ll be okay. I’ll straighten him out.’

  ‘Even though detectives make such lousy lovers?’

  ‘Hey, ask Oona and Giselle about that. They’ll give you an earful. Ah! would you see that they get this? I forgot.’

  The roll of banknotes was bigger than needed to choke a zebra. Thousands … ten thousands … He peeled off 100,000 at least. ‘Expenses,’ he said. ‘Boemelburg will never miss it. Oh, I forgot these too.’

  In the palm of his hand were the sapphire ear-rings from the jewellery she had ordered at Cartier’s. ‘Keep them out of sight until spring comes, eh? They’re from Louis but he’s just too shy to give them to you.’

  Alone, she watched the car cause the snow to swirl and billow until she could see them no more and they were gone from her.

  ‘Au revoir, mon cher vieux,’ she said. ‘Alles ist Schicksal. All is fate.

  Acknowledgement

  All the novels in the St-Cyr-Kohler series incorporate a few words and brief passages of French or German. Dr Dennis Essar of Brock University very kindly assisted with the French, as did the artist Pierrette Laroche, while Ms Bodil Little of the German Department at Brock helped with the German. Should there be any errors, they are my own and for these I apologize but hope there are none.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the St-Cyr and Kohler Series

  1

  As the sound of high and ancient iron wheels constantly hammered at him, Jean-Louis St-Cyr tried to find a moment’s refuge to dwell on the murder investigation. But the coach’s wooden benches were bolt upright, the buttocks numb, and there was hardly room to squirm. The Germans had taken over sixty per cent of France’s rolling stock, thus pressing relics like this into service, even for the first-class carriages. And all around him, through the smoke-hazed, dim blue, fart-and-sweat-tainted air, the battered, dented steel helmets touched one another, and all around him there was the muffled sound of men not knowing what to expect.

  Russia had taught these boys a lesson. The Battle for Stalingrad had been lost.

  Hermann Kohler played Skat in the narrow corridor. Crowded around a Hindenburg Light, a stove that had been dredged from the trenches of that other war in 1914–18, he and two others held the cards. And the phalanx of silent men who were ranked on the nearby benches or stood or crouched, either stared at the guttering flame that brought no warmth but dreams of home, or at the cards, knowing only too well that after four hours of non-stop play, the Vorhand among them was a master.

  He was not handsome, this partner of his, thought St-Cyr. He was a Fritz-haired, greying giant with a storm-trooper’s lower jaw and chin, sagging jowls, and bags under pale blue eyes that seldom revealed anything when they didn’t want to. A bullet graze, still too fresh to be forgotten, creased the heavy brow. The scar of a rawhide whip ran from below the left eye to the chin – the SS had done that to him for pointing the finger of truth. Another case.

  There were shrapnel nicks from that other war and the years, particularly these past two and a half in France as partner to a Sûreté Chief Inspector, and as one of practically the only two honest cops left, had not been kind.

  He was fifty-five years of age, a good three years older than himself. A Detektiv Inspektor from the Kripo, from that smallest and most insignificant branch of the Gestapo, but not like one of those, ah grâce à Dieu.

  No, they fought common crime. Hermann was a citizen of the world and, yes, they had become friends. War does things like that, said St-Cyr to himself, but seeing Hermann sharing such a camaraderie made him think of that other war. Hermann had been in the artillery. Hermann had been taken prisoner in 1916 but not before the shells his battery had fired had come whistling over to bring the taste of mud, shit and rotten flesh or sour boot leather or mustard gas that would stick so fast in the gullet one could never forget it.

  When a thin, cheap blue scrap of paper was passed from hand to hand, St-Cyr took it without a nod. Recognizing the PTT paper, the Poste, Télégraphe et Téléphone stationery, Kohler set his cards down, gave up the loot to be equally shared among the men, and got up to pick his way across the coach.

  ‘Well, what’s it this time, Chief?’ he asked. Hermann had deliberately let the men know he was subordinate in rank to a Frenchman. He was like that sometimes.

  ‘A love-note from an old friend.’

  The flimsy tissue was proffered and quickly read.

  Jean-Louis, though the circumstance is tragic, I welcome our working together again and recall the fisherman’s wife. Everything has therefore been left exactly as you would wish it, and I have placed men on guard to ensure that nothing will be disturbed. May the Bl
essed Saviour keep you safe and bring you to us.

  Alain de Passe,

  Commissaire de Police d’Avignon

  et du Vaucluse

  The Sûreté’s bushy, unclipped moustache was guiltily tidied with a pugilist’s fist. The large and dark brown ox-eyes sought him out from beneath the brim of a battered brown fedora.

  ‘He hates me, Hermann, so please read between the lines.’

  These days everything was in code, even the day-to-day chatter between a husband and wife, or among other members of a family. No one knew who might hear and report or read and report. The SS, the Gestapo, a Pétainist, a Vichy ‘inspector’, a collaborator … it was the age of the anonymous letter or phone call, of old scores being settled, of the payoff and reward. A tragedy. It was 26 January 1943, a Tuesday.

  ‘The fisherman’s wife was a petite lingère,’ confessed St-Cyr, still not taking his gaze from Hermann.

  A seamstress – one who did sewing for others. ‘You sure she wasn’t someone’s petite àmxe?’

  Trust Hermann to think of it! Someone’s ‘little friend’, someone’s mistress. ‘We could prove nothing. Her husband, a simple man, loved her as much as he did his fishing.’

  ‘For the pleasure, eh?’

  The blocky shoulders momentarily lifted. ‘Mais certainement. It’s the only way to fish, n’est-ce pas? Doing it for a living would be far too hard.’

  ‘I meant the other,’ said Kohler.

  Hermann’s French was really very good. He had made a point of learning it in that prisoner-of-war camp.

  ‘The other?’ said St-Cyr. ‘That, too. At forty years of age, and twenty-seven years younger than the husband, she was still possessed of a delectably eloquent figure, though when first seen on the beach at Cassis in the late summer of 1934 and then naked in the morgue, such things are always wanting. She’d been strangled and then for good measure her throat had been savagely opened with—’

  ‘Okay, okay, spare me the details, eh? Why remember ancient history? Why not Avignon and the present?’