Kaleidoscope

by J. Robert Janes

  A skirt and blouse for summer.

  ‘That one, she has pawned practically everything, monsieur,’ muttered the concierge. ‘The blanket is mine, as are the sheet and pillow slip. Rented, of course.’

  ‘Of course. Did she cry, my friend?’

  ‘When undressed? Yes, yes … it is the sinner’s duty to weep, is it not?’

  ‘At other times?’

  ‘Yes, yes, often there was much weeping behind the closed door.’

  ‘Did she ever receive any letters?’

  ‘Three since she came to this place in the early summer. She always used to ask if anything more had arrived. Always she was so eager for money, always so distraught when nothing more came.’

  ‘Money?’ asked the Sûreté, raising the eyebrows and carefully moving the curtain aside again to have another look.

  ‘Money, yes. From the south but posted here in Paris. When no more letters had arrived for some time, she said, “My friend, she has let me down and this I cannot understand. Something must have happened to her.” Then she pawned her things, Inspector, bit by bit and then …’

  ‘You caught her trying to leave without paying the rent. Yes, yes, continue.’

  ‘She gave up hope. I have seen that look in others, Inspector. I know what it is to relinquish all trust in God.’

  A pathetic mirror and brush were on the bureau beside the tiny tin wash-basin and toothbrush … Ah, Nom de Dieu, why had she left the toothbrush if she’d gone to stay with a friend? The things were almost impossible to obtain these days. Rubbish when one managed it. Carpet bristles, cheap glue, and as a consequence, the mouth full of bristles at the first tasting of non-existent tooth-powder!

  Satisfied that the boys in the street would wait, and that they probably had already known the girl had flown the coop, he went back to picking through her meagre belongings.

  When he found the locket in the toe of a shoe that had lost its low heel, his fingers trembled. Immediately he was taken right back to the mas on that hillside in Provence. He heard the sister’s terrible shrieks and moans while the old woman steadfastly ground her goose livers.

  The locket, though similar to that of Josianne-Michèle, was badly dented and deeply incised with scratches. Cherished still, perhaps, but not clutched as one would the anchor of lost love when exhaustion overcame all else.

  Not worn any longer. Ah no, of course not. Josette-Louise had come to Paris to succeed at all the things her sister had dreamed of.

  The same two curly-headed girls of ten or twelve looked at him from their rings of gold. The cinematographer’s eye saw the village, the ruins of its citadel higher still. He smelled the sage and thyme of those hills, heard the goats and felt the mistral on his cheeks.

  Why, if those two girls had ceased to speak or see each other, had Josette-Louise bothered to keep her locket?

  There were teeth-marks sunk into the gold. He ran a thumb over them. He asked, what has happened here?

  There was no other jewellery, no perfume or traces of the rouge and carefully budgeted lipstick she would most certainly have worn when attempting to find work.

  A dancer … a designer’s mannequin … one who posed for artists and sculptors when she could find no other work.

  He brought the slender scrap of soap up to a nostril but age and wear had banished whatever scent there might once have been.

  ‘Has anyone else been here asking questions? Come, come, monsieur, it will do you credit to answer truthfully.’

  ‘Credit? You talk of credit?’

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘One who is much taller and bigger than yourself. Also from the police, eh? A man of no patience.’

  ‘When … when was he last here?’

  The Sûreté was worried. Could a bribe be asked? Ah no, not this time. ‘Late yesterday and … and again this morning. That one searches, monsieur, but not as a man after a woman. Is it that she is hiding from him?’

  Delphane had not gone to Bayonne as expected but had used it to delay Hermann and himself from reaching Josette-Louise.

  ‘That one, he has paid her the little visit some weeks ago, monsieur. The dress, the hat, the handbag and the shoes of that photograph in your hand, those things she had yet to pawn and wore them later on another occasion when … when she went out to meet him. The silk stockings as well and the … the white underpants. White … she … she only wore white ones.’

  The weaver had known Jean-Paul – probably also from before, at least from Chamonix. Josette-Louise must also have known him or of him. Ah yes. He tossed a hand to indicate the concierge should continue.

  ‘Me, I have wondered why the work it should have completely dried up for her after his visit, monsieur. But day by day it did and since then there has been nothing.’

  ‘Was she afraid to go out?’ snapped the Sûreté testily.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  The photograph had been taken in the Place de la Concorde. Early October perhaps. A very troubled young woman who had looked towards the camera with … with such pleading in her eyes. Ah yes, yes, but had she not also been startled by the photographer only to realize she could not object? He tossed his head and nodded grimly.

  The father had wanted to sell the villa in Cannes; the mother had refused but more than this, had been unwilling to part with anything in that villa in spite of her apparently desperate need for cash.

  When opened again, the locket revealed nothing but the happiness of twin sisters in far better times. When closed, it seemed to want to say so much.

  Sliding the thing into a pocket, he said, ‘Touch nothing. This room is to be treated as if sealed until further notice from myself.’

  It was only as he went to close the bureau drawers that he saw a scattering of dust. It had been beneath one of the pairs of socks. Greyish to greenish-white. Each particle larger than that of freshly ground pepper. The edges slightly curled.

  Quickly he unravelled the socks and carefully shook them over the drawer.

  Three tiny scabs of lichen fell out and he heaved a sigh that was far from contented.

  Collecting them into a simple fold of paper, he said, ‘Now show me the way up on to the roofs and suggest the most possible avenue of exit. The slush will have to be conquered and that is all there is to it.’

  The woman was very nice and Kohler thought her very good. Unlike the two schmucks who had tailed him in their car, this one had used her pins and her head. She had let him dodge the two of them, had had it all figured out well ahead of time and had known exactly what he’d do.

  Only then had she let him become aware of her. The Odéon had been running newsreels. Tanks, tanks, and more of them but not in the snow and hard-frozen mud of a Russian winter. In high summer. Stukas plummeting through naked skies to bomb the Jesus out of baffled peasants and scatter Cossack cavalry.

  She had slipped from row to row and had sat right down beside him. Half-way through the destruction of some miserable Ukrainian village, he had felt her knee against his own.

  She had asked for a light, the accent of Normandy, had said softly, ‘It’s a bunch of shit. Let’s go to my place.’

  Then had got up but had hesitated in front of him, her backside firmly blocking his view and those knees of hers between his own. He’d got up. He’d had to! Some fanatic four rows behind had shouted at them to sit down and somehow she had turned around. Had stood there frozen in the fringes of the projector beam. Nice eyes, nice lips, a generous smile. Nose to nose and body to body. ‘I meant it,’ she had said. ‘I think I could show you a few things, monsieur, and perhaps you could teach me something.’

  Ah Nom de Dieu, what was he to have done, eh? He had buttoned up that coat of hers and had said, ‘Beat it. I haven’t got the time.’

  Admonishingly a forefinger had been pressed against his lips, the catcalls coming. The crowd jeering at some victory Goebbels was trying to put over on the French, that bastard behind yelling his head off, too, and threatening violence. Flames on the s
creen, a fuel dump that time. Nomadic Arab goats scattering like hell across Saharan sands and then …‘The male orgasm it takes only seventeen seconds. We could do it right here and no one would be the wiser than yourself. But,’ she had tossed those lovely eyes of hers, had shrugged and touched his cheek ‘at my place it could be prolonged.’

  She’d had a car all ready and waiting. The flat was on the fashionable rue Pergolése not far from the Arc de Triomphe. A piano took up one corner with a tall crystal vase of roses and litter of sheet music. Handel, Bach, Schubert and Brahms …

  On the corner walls behind the piano were two gorgeous murals, done perhaps in the mid- to late 1700s. Eve caught in the clutches of a giant oak around whose twisted trunk coiled a boa constrictor after the juicy apple in her frightened hand. Succulent breasts uplifted, the torso thrown back and cringing, one arm clutching a branch for dear life as those same branches formed the crude fingers of a brutal and lustful curiosity that had Eve firmly within its grasp. Oh to be a boa.

  The other mural was of a sleeping Psyche lifted on a robe of gold among pitch-dark thunderclouds by cupids with smiles and grins and teenaged boys in the buff and up to mischief.

  Both paintings drew the eye and he could not decide which he liked better.

  ‘Perhaps this is what you want?’ she said, startling him. ‘But, alas, my poor detective from the Gestapo, I am already spoken for.’

  Kohler grinned. The tight-fitting woollen dress was the colour of Moroccan lemons. The stupendous eyes were of a soft amber that matched the hair and the single topaz that hung from fine gold links in the centre of her cleavage.

  He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Mademoiselle Suzanne Labrie,’ he said. ‘Former proprietress of the Pelican Bar in Caen and now …’

  Swiftly she pressed that finger against his lips then kissed him, withdrew a touch. ‘Now the lover of Hugo Ernst Bleicher, better known as the Abwehr’s Colonel Henri.’

  The hero of German Military Intelligence in France. ‘The man who nailed Brutus and put that one and a hundred of his Interallié escape network behind barbed wire.’

  Ever so slightly she nodded that pretty head of hers, still held his hand, did not indicate her part in that affair. ‘Henri, he wishes to talk to you – yes? – but finds the Abwehr’s Hotel Lutétia on the boul’ Raspail somewhat conspicuous. If you get my meaning.’

  Kohler laid a hand on her shoulder. It was a nice shoulder and she did not seem to mind. ‘Henri will be here soon,’ she whispered. ‘In the meantime …’ She gave that little shrug.

  ‘Seventeen seconds?’ grinned Kohler, nibbling a topaz-studded ear lobe.

  ‘Coffee, I think, and a glass of marc or would you prefer, perhaps, the pastis of your friend?’

  ‘I hate the stuff.’

  ‘Then I can assure you of a very fine cognac but first …’ She touched his lips again and listened for the lift. ‘First, I would like another sample for the record book of my memory.’

  Kohler slid the Gestapo’s dossier on Anne-Marie Buemondi across the antique desk as though through a minefield.

  At forty-three years of age, Hugo Bleicher was a specialist in counterintelligence attached to the Abwehr’s Group III F. Fluent in French, he was equally and far more notably proficient in Spanish, ah yes. He had the freedom to travel where and when he liked and to employ whomever he wanted in his never-ending search for enemies of the State and for his own advancement. Bayonne? wondered Kohler apprehensively. Had Bleicher been there too?

  ‘So, Kohler, why show me this?’

  The backs of the hands were hairy, the thin brown locks were rapidly receding. The heavy brown hornrimmed glasses did nothing to hide the bleak emptiness of dark brown eyes.

  Kohler knew he’d best say something. ‘By rights, Colonel, as a member of the Deuxième Bureau, Jean-Paul Delphane ought to be working for the Abwehr, but we find him under the Gestapo Munk. Maybe you’d like to tell me why that horse has changed its rider?’

  ‘Then why not ask your superior officer, the Sturmbann-führer Walter Boemelburg?’ Bleicher indicated the telephone and took the trouble to move it cautiously through the minefield towards his opponent.

  ‘Walter’s getting forgetful, Colonel. Rumour has it that he’s soon to be replaced.’

  An accomplished pianist, Bleicher had been the former chief clerk in the Jewish export firm of Bodenheimer, Schuster and Company where he’d dipped the whole lot of them, friends and all, into the net without batting an eye. He had a wife and son in Poppenbuttel, near Hamburg.

  ‘What can you do for us?’ asked the Abwehr’s man. ‘Come, come, Kohler, when my little Suzanne found you, you were in Montparnasse on your way to see me so let us not beat about the bush.’

  The crunch had come. ‘Give you a link in a possible escape network.’

  The thin and shadowed cheeks and chin were favoured in thought. ‘A certain telephone list?’ asked Bleicher, deciding to quietly reveal a little of what the local gossip had yielded.

  Louis wasn’t going to like it but … ah, Gott im Hitnmel, something had had to be done. If Suzanne hadn’t intervened, Kohler would have gone to Bleicher anyway. Besides, the bastard had known it and had prepared himself in advance. He’d seen the airman’s body, then. He had known all about it. Shit!

  ‘All right, I’ll give you the list once my partner and I are satisfied about Delphane and his part in the murder of that one.’

  ‘This partner of yours, could he be used to our purposes?’

  Ah damn! Bleicher must be only too well aware of the maquis link. He was smelling blood so hard, had he been a dog after a bitch in heat, his nose would have been running. ‘Louis and I are buddies, Colonel. You know what it’s like. You work so closely with a guy, you step right into his shoes. If you don’t, then the bullet or the knife that’s coming could well be your last.’

  When Bleicher didn’t respond, Kohler said lamely, ‘The Frog trusts me, Colonel, but yeah, we can use him, only he mustn’t know I’m feeding you things.’

  Kohler was known to be untrustworthy and defiant of authority. He had disgraced the SS in front of his superiors, defying all of them in his search for the truth.

  ‘What’s in it for yourself?’ hazarded Bleicher, closing the dossier and noting the stamp of the Gestapo Cannes.

  Kohler knew exactly what had just run through Bleicher’s mind. ‘I’ve two sons at Stalingrad and a wife back home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg.’

  ‘Let’s dispense with the wife and sons.’

  ‘I want to clear my name, Colonel. I’m a good German. I can’t help the indiscretions of others. Like yourself, I …’

  ‘Dislike the traditional officer class?’

  Bleicher was an NCO and had never risen above the rank of sergeant. ‘No, Colonel. Like yourself I was in the last war and taken prisoner.’

  ‘But did not try to escape?’

  Ah merde, the bastard was tricky! Four times Bleicher had busted out of a camp near Abbeville only to be taken back because he’d enjoyed the intellectual exercise of beating his captors again! ‘Look, we need help. Delphane smells just about as badly as the corpse he let us find in that woman’s house in Bayonne.’

  ‘What corpse?’ asked Bleicher quietly. One could not reveal too great an interest.

  Kohler dreaded what he was about to say, but knowledge of the corpse could not have been kept back for much longer. Someone in authority had had to be informed, otherwise the charge of hiding evidence and sympathizing with the enemy would have stuck.

  In his heart of hearts, Louis would have agreed. Kohler could hear him saying, ‘One must take the lumps with the rest of the custard, Hermann, if the dessert of life is to be digested.’

  He told Bleicher what the bastard must already know. ‘A British airman, Colonel. Dead for at least two or three weeks.’

  Bleicher exhaled exasperation slowly. It would be best that way. ‘And you come to see me with such as this when you know the Buemondi woman was involved?’ />
  ‘We don’t know that, Colonel. Not really. Instead, we and others – yourselves and Gestapo Cannes perhaps – are being deliberately led into believing it.’

  ‘An escape line, Kohler. Is there anything else perhaps?’

  Let’s have the whole of the dirty laundry, eh? ‘A whisper of the maquis in the Alpes-Maritimes but it’s not definite either.’

  ‘Suspicions have always been good enough in the past for the Gestapo?’

  ‘But not for the Abwehr, Colonel. For some reason the Wehrmacht still prides itself on doing things correctly. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  This was heresy on Kohler’s part. So be it then. ‘Jean-Paul Delphane no longer works for us. Yes, yes, that one is of a good family, he’s a “good” Frenchman and of the Action Française but …’ Bleicher shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is that he felt he could better serve the Reich by working for the Gestapo Cannes.’

  Or that of Bayonne? wondered Kohler. To ask more was to ask for the impossible. A man like Bleicher never laid all his cards on the table. But sure as that God of Louis’s made little green apples, the Abwehr had seen Delphane going into or out of that house in Bayonne and at some point – earlier perhaps – had put the skids under him. ‘You make me feel like I’ve just been taken to the cleaners, Colonel.’

  One should not yield to flattery yet it was gratifying to know one’s reputation had spread even to the dingy corridors of the rue des Saussaies and what had formerly been the Headquarters of the Sûreté Nationale but was now that of the Gestapo in France.

  Bleicher motioned to the lovely Suzanne who’d drifted into the study at some point in the discussion but had remained unobtrusively in the background. ‘Please show the Inspector out, my dear. We’ve taken up enough of his valuable time.’

  She kissed her lover on the head and passed a lingering hand down over the back of his neck while smiling the Gestapo’s way. They made a lovely couple. The Abwehr and his collaborator. Ah yes. Kohler was glad Louis hadn’t been with him.

  At the door she handed him one of the Abwehr’s small brown pay envelopes and when he thought it was money, held his fingers and his eyes. ‘Show it to that friend of yours, that Frenchman you so admire. Tell him that Colonel Henri wishes to express to you both this small token of interest.’