Gypsy

by J. Robert Janes

  These days such a manner was mandatory. ‘They?’ he asked, giving his head a slight upward lift.

  Her pudgy, ringless fingers moved things aside. ‘Les chanteurs de Monsieur Simondi. The madrigal singers are habitués of Le Café de la mule blanche affolée.’ The cafe of the panic-stricken white mule.

  As proof, she found a greasy, sweat-stained bit of cardboard on which had been written a list of six names. Beside each one, the latest credit extended was shown next to all other additions and cancellations. Two hundred and seven francs … four hundred and thirty …‘Mademoiselle de Sinéty’s name isn’t on your list,’ he said.

  ‘That one seldom had the time, or the money. Nor would she beg for credit like the others. Too proud, if you ask me. She only came here if in need of one of them.’

  ‘And Monsieur Simondi?’

  Had the Sûreté smelled trouble already? ‘Sometimes he joined them. Sometimes he took one of them away with him, or two, or three as the need demanded, the others always letting their eyes and thoughts hunger after those who were departing. He has, of course, a wife.’

  The taint of trouble with that wife was all too clear. Swiftly Madame Emphoux watched him to see if her confidence had registered and when he returned nothing, she let escape, ‘An absinthe drinker.’

  ‘That’s impossible. It was outlawed in 1915.’

  Her rounded shoulders lifted with an uncaring shrug. ‘So it was,’ she said, fingering her left cheek as if in thought, ‘but one cannot help but overhear students. Absinthe was often discussed.’

  ‘In relation to Madame Simondi?’

  And to the students themselves? She could see him thinking this, but said simply, ‘Yes.’

  Jules Pernod had had an absinthe factory at Montfavet not six kilometres to the east of Avignon … St-Cyr indicated the card with its accountings. ‘Was Madame Simondi known to all of them?’

  ‘Including Mademoiselle de Sinéty?’ fluted the patronne, her eyebrows knitted fiercely again.

  This one was deep, thought St-Cyr, but no well should ever be overdrawn lest there no longer be water to drink. ‘Including her.’

  ‘Then, yes. The girl did sewing for Madame Simondi as well as for the Kommandant’s wife and others.’

  A small token would have to be offered in expectation of more information later. ‘She wasn’t violated but I am curious as to why you should think she might have been.’

  Now she had his ear, and now he wouldn’t give up trying to get her to whisper little things into it! ‘Because she was pretty and full of joie de vivre when so many these days are not, and because … Ah! What can one such as I say, Inspector?’

  He waited. Again he held his breath – was this a sign with him, she wondered. Every muscle was tense, so, bon; oui, bon, she had him hooked. ‘Because I have seen the way others have looked at her. The singers, especially the two girls among them. Monsieur Simondi aussi – ah! One can see such a thing in a married man’s eyes, is it not possible? Brother Matthieu also, but only when she and others couldn’t see him doing so and then the eyes quickly averted.’

  She compressed her lips, grunted firmly and nodded tersely.

  ‘And Bishop Rivaille?’ he asked, wincing at the possibility of being totally out of his depth with her.

  ‘That one also. From time to time in the dark of night, even the Bugatti Royale of a bishop can draw up to a café such as this and its owner enter to enquire of where he might find a young girl to mend a robe, sew on a button he has somehow misplaced, or sing a little to soothe a soul in torment. God forgives all such thoughts, is that not so, Inspector?’

  The table was at the left side of the café, and halfway to the back. It was surprising how intuitively one sought such seating but, like the réfractaires, the draft dodgers of the Forced Labour, and others in trouble with or simply avoiding the Occupier and the Vichy police, one tended automatically to sit where one could observe and yet blend into the crowd. It was never customary for a patron or patronne to give credit to students and seldom if ever to others, so there had to be a little something on the side, but one didn’t ask of such things. One sat quietly minding one’s business and, in between one’s thoughts, observed.

  Madame la patronne had realized that to take too evident an interest in him would only draw further attention to herself. Satisfied he’d be left alone, St-Cyr took out his pipe. Letting his mind drift back to the largest of the keys that had hung from the girl’s belt, he recalled that it had been all but free of decoration, as was typical of fourteenth-century keys. But, of course, the lock to the entrance of the Palais couldn’t possibly have survived. Yet had this ancient key and the others been worn to indicate that she had a key to that door, or to something else? Did everything about her person present a riddle, or had the door been left unlocked in expectation of her arrival?

  Finding the tin of sardines and the pomander, he took them out as he drew on his pipe and asked, Why had she carried the sardines in her purse, if not to give it to the person she had come to meet, if indeed that had been why she was there?

  Why had she gripped the pomander so tightly if not to keep it from her assailant?

  Suddenly the entrance door to the café was violently sucked shut by the mistral. Few could not help but look up. Some briefly sought out the newcomer whose back was thrown against the etched glass. ‘Mon Dieu!’ exclaimed Madame la patronne. ‘Be more careful. And don’t come in here unless you are prepared to pay your bill. Enough is enough!’

  Shock registered. Flashing dark eyes under finely arched jet black brows rapidly searched the faces of the clientele, the warning taken. ‘Forgive me, madame. I … I only wanted to ask if … if the others had been in.’

  A lie if ever there was one, thought St-Cyr. The charcoal corduroy overcoat was of the thirties and trim, the jet black cloche matched the protruding curls.

  Clutching a small parcel that was wrapped in newspaper and tied with old bits of string, she hesitantly approached the caisse. A girl of more than medium height and light on her feet. ‘Enfant, I have told you,’ seethed Madame la patronne under her breath. ‘Don’t be an imbécilel’! She jerked her head to one side to indicate the company from Paris.

  Outside on the place, the local detachment’s brass band began to sound the noon hour. As the belfry’s clock rang it out, strains of Preussens Gloria faltered in the mistral. The swastika above the entrance to the Hotel de ville and Kommandantur was nearly being ripped to shreds by the wind. None of the pedestrians took any notice. Why should they?

  The fullness of the girl’s gaze left him. ‘Just let me leave a message for them,’ she said demurely to the patronne.

  ‘I’m not the PTT!’ shrilled Madame Emphoux.

  The package was placed on the counter. ‘A pencil, if you have one, and a scrap of paper,’ and when these were reluctantly slid under the scrollwork, the girl quickly wrote a few words, then, tossing her pretty head at the clientele, made her exit but deliberately held the door open so that all would hold their breath and she could then ease it shut without a sound.

  When confronted, Madame Emphoux knew there was little sense in arguing, for already the Sûreté was unwrapping the parcel. ‘That was Christiane Bissert, one of the singers,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Twenty, I think.’

  ‘Let’s not think about it. My partner and I already have too many questions and are being given no time to consider them.’

  ‘Twenty, then.’

  The parcel contained four paperback detective novels from the thirties. On the cover of one, a cigarette wastefully smouldered its life away in an ashtray full of butts Hermann or anyone else would have given their eyeteeth for. On another, a semiautomatic Colt .45 lay next to a pool of blood and a purse which had been torn open and dumped in a mad search for whatever the killer had been after.

  An interrupted petite infidélité, no doubt, but had the killer been a woman wronged?

  Feeling foolish at being so easily su
cked in by a jacket illustration, he said, ‘Does Mademoiselle Bissert understand English?’

  ‘No. These have been offered in exchange for some of her debt.’

  ‘How much?’

  Madame Emphoux teased the books away from him. ‘What, then, does this one say?’

  ‘That’s The Maltese Falcon. It’s one of Dashiell Hammett’s very tough, no-nonsense pieces. Bang, bang.’

  ‘And this one?’ she asked.

  She was being coy, thought St-Cyr, and said, ‘An Erle Stanley Gardner, a Perry Mason, The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat.’

  ‘Four hundred francs for the lot.’

  This sum was well below the trade in such things – detective novels were avidly sought, but in English would they not command less? he wondered.

  ‘For the Kommandant,’ she confessed. ‘And … and others.’

  He’d have to let it be but wondered if the girl had deliberately left the parcel so as to distract him. ‘Where did she get these?’ In addition to British nationals who had sought refuge in 1940, there had been plenty of Americans in the Free Zone before 11 November of last year. Many had come to Provence from Paris when the Führer had declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941 and they had had to leave for the south.

  ‘How could I possibly know where they came from, Inspector?’

  No questions were ever asked in the black market. One didn’t haggle or complain lest one never get another chance to deal. But it was interesting that credit was extended in exchange for such things since this implied there had to have been other deals.

  ‘The note,’ he said firmly, and she knew that the Sûreté, like a cobra in its little basket, would let the matter lie only until ready to strike.

  Inspector, please find me at the hôtel particulier called the Villa Marenzio. It is on the rue Banasterie where I await your questions with a heart that is open.

  Hermann … where the hell was Hermann?

  The Oberst Kurt von Mahler hadn’t come in with the tide on 11 November 1942 when the whole country had been occupied. He’d been here since the blitzkrieg in the West, had been in Avignon since the Defeat and partition of 1940, both as head of the Reich’s legation and as the Wehrmacht’s liaison officer with the Occupied North. But now the Allies were on his doorstep, a constant worry.

  ‘I’m telling you, Kohler, I want no trouble with this matter. The girl was like family. My wife and children adored her.’

  Yet how was it von Mahler’s family had been allowed to join him? That wasn’t official Wehrmacht policy. Wives and kids were to be left at home.

  ‘She’s young,’ said von Mahler, having anticipated the question. ‘She’s not well. The rape of Köln was too much for her.’

  Nearly 60,000 had been left homeless by the RAF raid on the night of 30/31 May of last year. Hundreds had died, thousands had been injured, many of them horribly. Incendiaries – the resulting firestorms – had consumed twelfth- and thirteenth-century half-timbered houses. Over 20,000 buildings, the very heart of the historic city, had gone up in flames. ‘Colonel, my partner and I will do everything we can to apprehend the girl’s killer. We do need help. Transport, for one thing.’

  ‘A Renault has been arranged.’

  ‘Food and lodging …’

  ‘Sixteen rue des Trois-Pilats. It’s near the villa Simondi uses for his students. If the meals aren’t to your taste, try La Fourchette in the rue Racine or the Auberge Julius Pallière on the place de I’Horloge. Acclimatize yourselves. Get to know the city and get to the bottom of this thing. The faster the better.’

  Von Mahler was in his early forties, but was the expression always so severe, the frown so constant? The dark brown hair was crinkly and cut short. The wide-set eyes under knitted brows were iron-grey, the lips firm in resolve and slightly turned down at their corners as if to silently cry out, Don’t you dare involve me.

  He’d probably been an academic in civilian life, an economist in the military until the war had torn him from his desk. Good at polo and the steeplechase – he had that look about him. He’d have got to know the powers that be among the French in Avignon and the Vaucluse. He’d have made a point of that. ‘Herr Oberst, what can you tell me about the night of the murder?’

  ‘What have the others told you?’

  No cigarettes were in evidence, no ashtrays either. ‘The others?’ asked Kohler.

  ‘Rivaille, de Passe and Simondi.’

  ‘Very little, and I’ve yet to speak to the singing master.’

  ‘Then you’d better. It was Simondi’s idea to hold yet another of his infernal auditions. I refused to sit in on it. I’m not competent to judge such things. To me Mireille was an absolutely beautiful musician. Pure magic. A natural.’

  ‘This audition, Colonel. If you refused …’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then who took your place?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Simondi may, for all I’m aware, have cancelled it yet failed to notify Mireille.’

  There it was again. Not Mademoiselle de Sinéty or even the girl, but Mireille, one of the family. ‘The concierge says no audition was planned.’

  ‘Then it had been cancelled.’

  ‘Could she have gone there to meet someone?’

  ‘I’d spoken to her about the boy she was infatuated with. I’d told her it was foolish of her to even think of him and that she had best, for all our sakes and particularly that of herself, keep her distance.’

  One of the maquis, then, as de Passe had said. ‘And how did she greet this advice?’

  ‘With fortitude and with that inherent practicality both my wife and I found so engaging. She wasn’t ordinary, Inspector. She was extraordinarily gifted and, in another age, would have been the daughter of a nobleman, the wife of a king.’

  Subconsciously a fist had been clenched. Irritably a hand was now passed over the crinkly hair to hide the fact, thought Kohler wryly.

  ‘She was extremely well versed in the city’s past and very much wanted others to see it as she did. Heroic in spite of the pit of sin, the “sewer” of Petrarch.’

  Von Mahler hadn’t demanded to know if he and Louis had discovered anything. Instead, he had avoided asking. ‘Colonel, in the course of our enquiries might we talk to your wife?’

  Verdammt! The insolence of the police. Could Kohler not take the hint? ‘Absolutely not. There’s no need. You’d only upset her and I can’t have that.’

  ‘But an independent view? A German view? The girl may have confided things or let something slip.’

  ‘Ingrid sees no one but the staff and myself, and that, my dear Hauptmann Detektiv Inspektor, is an order.’

  Okay, okay. ‘Then can you tell us anything you think might be useful, apart, that is, from questioning Bishop Rivaille, the préfet and the singing master?’

  Would Kohler now leave things well enough alone? ‘Just start with Simondi. He’s a superb musician in his own right.’

  ‘He owns a cinema.’

  The concierge of the Palais must have informed Kohler of this. ‘He owns several – both here and in Orange, Aries and Aix. In smaller centres too. He operates theatres as well and has additional properties either under option or outright ownership. He’s a very astute businessman, Inspector, but music, not money, is the guiding passion of his life.’

  ‘A hobby,’ muttered Kohler. And among the petite bourgeoisie? Merde, did the Colonel take this Kripo for an idiot?

  A faint grin wouldn’t be remiss, thought von Mahler. ‘Far more than a hobby. He’s extremely gifted and therefore intense when it comes to his music. Mireille was very loyal to her teacher and grateful for his help. “He believes in me,” she would say to my wife. “He says I’m almost there.”’

  And kept on the hook, was that it, eh, but for what purpose? ‘So, an audition was planned for the night of Monday 25 January. You were asked to sit in as the third judge but refused. Concierge Biron attended your soldaten-kino to take in a screening of The Grapes of Wrath and didn’
t check through the Palais, as the bishop always insisted, until well after twenty-two hundred hours, after which, Colonel, he went to notify Brother Matthieu and then Bishop Rivaille but could locate neither of them.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  A coldness had entered von Mahler’s voice, a stiffness. Had it been a warning to push this particular part of the matter no further? wondered Kohler, not liking the thought. ‘No reasons were given, Herr Oberst.’ This was a lie, of course. Rivaille had been at a dinner party to discuss the concert the madrigal singers were to give, and then the tour. Aix, Marseille, Toulon and Aries had been mentioned by Salvatore Biron. But a dinner party with whom? The Colonel and his wife – was that it, eh?

  ‘Then is there anything else I can do for you at present?’ asked von Mahler. ‘I’ve a busy afternoon ahead and must check in on my wife and children before we head out into the hills.’

  After Banditen? Un ratissage? wondered Kohler. A ‘raking’ of the countryside – Kommandants didn’t usually do such things, but he had mentioned the boy the victim had been infatuated with. ‘I can’t think of anything, Herr Oberst. Both my partner and I appreciate the help.’

  A hand was extended, the typical salute, Heil Hitler and the crashing of jackbooted heels, not given, the lie of not thinking of anything to ask accepted.

  The Balance Quartier, lying between the Palais and the river, was desperately in need of renovation. Shoulder-to-shoulder slum houses of two and three storeys surrounded once lovely inner courtyards. The years of siege, the visitations of the plague – wars, fires and utter poverty – had left many of them ramshackle and ready to be torn down.

  Though Sister Agnès had roundly condemned it, Number 63 rue du Rempart du Rhône was better than most and had, at the rear of the house, a square tower that rose a storey above the other two so that its windows overlooked both the river to the west and the courtyard and the Palais to the east.

  ‘Our victim chose well, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Plaster over the holes, replace the shutters, fix the chimneys and roof tiles and voilá, you will have the fourteenth-century villa of a merchant, the scant remains of whose coat of arms suggest an importer of cloth.’