Secrets and Showgirls

by Catherine McCullagh

  ‘Lily, Guy ... we think Coco’s been a bit hard on one of her clients ... and the poor man has come off second best.’

  ‘Don’t they always?’

  ‘I thought they preferred it that way!’ added Guy as they laughed together. But the serious expression on Poppy’s face ended their hilarity.

  ‘Best go and see ... but take a deep breath before you do.’ Lily and Guy disappeared into the room at the end of the corridor. A split second later there were exclamations of disbelief.

  ‘Coco, what have you done to him?!’

  ‘He’s definitely not breathing!’

  ‘Should we take him to the hospital?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit late for that!’

  Ten minutes later there was a meeting in progress. The man was undeniably dead and a decision had been reached. He had to be moved. Should they wake Monsieur Maurice? No, all agreed that this was both unnecessary and overly taxing on the poor man who had enough to worry about with a fragile wife and a company that boasted an inordinate number of potential targets for the Gestapo. That left the minor matter of the disposal of the body. First of all, Guy suggested, perhaps they should establish the unfortunate man’s identity. They turned to Coco as one.

  ‘Scum,’ she replied casually. Silence.

  ‘That was his name?’ asked Poppy incredulously.

  ‘Of course not,’ retorted Coco hotly, ‘men who want to be punished just love to be demeaned. It’s all part of it.’

  ‘Didn’t he have a real name?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ rejoined Coco, ‘their names are immaterial to me as long as they pay.’ Guy stood up.

  ‘I’ll see if I can find his papers. That should at least give him a real name.’ He shot a sideways glance at Coco. He had been careful to stay well away from the dominatrice’s orbit and tonight was ample evidence that this was a wise course of action.

  ‘Coco, it’s important that we know who he is,’ Lily told her seriously, ‘what if he’s a high-ranking German officer? They’ll come looking for him and we’ll all be in trouble!’ Coco snorted.

  ‘My clients don’t make a habit of advertising when they’re coming to visit me.’ Crecy hooted loudly in Lily’s direction.

  ‘Lily-pilly, you’re such an innocent! Do you think this man told his wife he was just dropping out to be spanked by Coco for a few hours? Or asked his driver to wait until he was less tied up?’ He dissolved into ribald mirth at his own wit. Lily laughed too. Yes, it was a silly suggestion, but she had to be sure that this unfortunate man would not bring the wrath of the occupying force down on them all.

  Guy emerged from Coco’s den.

  ‘Took me a while to find his clothes,’ he explained, slipping another sideways glance at Coco who was more interested in the strapping on the handle of her whip. He unravelled the pile of papers. ‘He seems to be an accountant from the Renault factory named Gaspard Laurent. Not married ... lives at 16 rue de Campion ...’ He looked up. ‘Nothing to link him to the Germans, just an accountant who was keen on livening his daily fare.’

  ‘Poor man,’ murmured Lily, ‘what an awful way to go.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ responded Crecy, ‘I can think of worse ways to go. And he was probably enjoying himself at the time.’ He winked at Coco who simply slapped her thigh with her whip.

  Now that the mystery of the man’s identity had been solved, the discussion moved to the tricky task of the disposal of the body. Between them, they could wrap it in a rug and move it downstairs, but what then? They could toss it in the Seine and leave it to be fished out by the police, but there was the undeniably complicating matter that the Seine was some distance away and the curfew was in force. No, moving the body from the building was all they could hope to do. For the actual disposal, they would need help from an expert. Guy knew just the man.

  ‘Napoleon!’ he announced, ‘he can do almost anything. And he has a truck!’ The others nodded in unison. They would hand the problem of disposing of the body to Napoleon. Crecy would persuade him — after all, the hairy black marketeer would do anything for his idol.

  ‘You do put a girl under pressure,’ he complained, ‘what if I have to seduce him and sacrifice my virtue?’ Poppy and Lily laughed out loud, while Guy took refuge in a confused grin.

  ‘We all have to make sacrifices,’ he told the buxom blonde with mock gravity, ‘after all, there’s a war on, you know.’

  Half an hour later, a strange procession made its way silently down the staircase and out the side of Madame Gloria’s apartment boarding house. It was preceded by Coco, who strolled out the side door, ostensibly to lounge in the darkness and smoke a cigarette. She smoked for a minute and then ducked her head inside the door.

  ‘All clear!’ she hissed.

  A conga line carrying a rolled rug from which a pair of feet protruded at one end made its way silently down the alleyway to the garage at the back of Madame Fresange’s apartment where Monsieur Maurice kept his car. The Germans had requisitioned all vehicles, so Maurice’s car was shrouded in dust sheets and kept in a locked garage, clumsily hung with a large, battered sign that proclaimed it as a storeroom. Poppy had picked the lock with a hairpin and the garage now presented a suitable temporary morgue. The little procession delivered its cargo, the garage was locked again and the pallbearers crept back to the apartment, confident they had not been seen. Tomorrow they would tackle Napoleon.

  Lily lay for a while with her arms around Guy as they mulled over the night’s events.

  ‘You must think you’ve landed in a lunatic asylum,’ she told him. He rolled over and kissed her.

  ‘Never a dull moment, for sure. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ He mused for a moment before telling her, ‘At least tonight has solved one little problem.’ Lily propped herself up on one elbow. As far as she was concerned, the night’s dark doings had created problems rather than solved them.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ she quizzed him. He laughed softly.

  ‘Now I have some papers!’ Lily was horrified.

  ‘Guy, you can’t!’

  ‘Why not? He doesn’t need them any more.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘although I will have to grow a moustache and put on some weight so that I look more like him.’ Now it was Lily’s turn to ponder.

  ‘You’re right, you know ... and a moustache might just do the trick, although putting on weight might be more difficult.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But what if his family comes looking for him?’

  ‘Are they likely to come to a cabaret?’

  ‘His friends might.’

  ‘True. But I wonder whether he had told them about his fetish for Madame Lash.’ Lily shook her head. Oh no, the accountant with the predilection for bondage had almost certainly kept this fantasy a secret. They would also keep his secret. After all, Lily was sure he would have preferred to have disappeared a respectable man rather than have his secret exposed and bring shame on his family. She sighed with relief and snuggled into Guy feeling safe ... for the moment, at any rate.

  Chapter 21

  An inconvenient corpse

  The swarthy Napoleon paled and his furred brow shifted in consternation as Lily and Poppy revealed the existence of an inconvenient body. Lily was intrigued. She had thought absolutely nothing could unseat the supreme confidence of the bear-like black marketeer.

  ‘Ah,’ he began, stroking his verdant moustache, deep in thought, ‘a body ... hmm ... could be tricky ... know what I mean?’ The girls nodded in unison. They knew precisely what he meant.

  ‘We wouldn’t ask you, cherie,’ began Poppy, dripping sincerity, ‘but we needed help and we also needed someone who could be trusted to be discreet and tactful. You see,’ she readied her ace, ‘Mademoiselle Crecy has such a soft-hearted and sensitive nature that she can’t bear the thought of the poor, deceased man lying in the garage just at the back of the apartment.’ The ace did its job.

  ‘Mademoiselle Crecy?!’ Napoleon was suddenly concerned. ‘Oh, non
, non,’ the big head shook with concern, ‘we must protect her from such dreadful thoughts. She is a delicate, fragile lady and this will cause her much distress.’ He puffed his chest and set his jaw, the moustache acquiring a determined air as its wearer settled on a course of action. Poppy swallowed her guilt and allowed herself a sly glance at Lily who, she noted, was clearly harbouring no such guilt.

  ‘Have to be at night,’ Napoleon pronounced as the girls nodded, ‘after curfew is best,’ more nods. ‘Have to get it into the back of the truck,’ he looked at them hopefully, ‘might need some help, know what I mean?’

  ‘We could ask Guy and Alain, they would help,’ offered Lily. A grunt from Napoleon settled the deal.

  ‘Tonight,’ he told them, ‘I have a curfew pass to make some deliveries for the Germans. I will meet you at the garage at midnight.’ The girls were delighted.

  ‘Crecy will be so grateful to you,’ murmured Poppy, ‘I’m sure she’ll tell you how much she appreciates your bravery, rescuing us like this, when she sees you on Thursday.’ She winked at Lily as they left the big man to his dreams of the luscious blonde with the voluptuous figure.

  At midnight, as promised, a large truck entered the driveway at the rear of Madame Fresange’s apartment block and pulled up outside the garage that held Monsieur Maurice’s car — and the recently departed accountant. Lily, Poppy, Guy and Alain waited in the shadows, the girls watching nervously for any sign that the noise of the truck had woken the eagle-eyed Madame Fresange whose vigilance was legendary. Several brief manoeuvres saw the truck’s tarpaulin-covered back positioned as close as possible to the doors of the garage. Napoleon leapt from the cabin with a cat-like agility that surprised the watchers, followed by a shorter henchman wearing a beret and smoking a cigarette. The henchman opened the tarpaulin at the back of the truck to reveal neat rows of boxes and a line of butcher’s hooks replete with produce. Lily caught sight of a small pig, a goose, a deer and what looked like an enormous rabbit. Napoleon clambered into the back and pushed boxes and swinging produce aside to clear a path for his next rather more macabre load.

  Guy and Alain appeared carrying a long, tightly wrapped rug, a pair of feet protruding from one end the only tell-tale sign that this was not simply a large roll of carpet. They set it down on the edge of the truck tray where the henchman helped them push it forward into the gap. It proved just a little too long and the feet hung over the edge at the back.

  ‘Can you bend it around a bit? Know what I mean?’ whispered Napoleon.

  ‘We can’t,’ hissed Guy, ‘it’s as stiff as a board, it won’t bend!’

  ‘Merde!’ expostulated the henchman in a rumble that was more cigarette than voice. The black marketeers clambered up onto the truck’s tray to jostle the boxes of deliveries and create more space. Several minutes later they had settled on a compromise. The roll containing the body was propped at an angle between the baleful goose and the mournful pig, both of which had turned to regard their new companion. If it had not been such a desperate situation, thought Guy, it might have been comical. It was certainly farcical. Napoleon, satisfied that the corpse would stay in place the short distance to the river, where he planned to dump it unceremoniously, signalled to the henchman that the job was done. They leapt out, fastened the tarpaulin at the back and headed to the cabin for the drive to the Seine where they hoped to find a quiet spot to consign the deceased to the next life.

  ‘Merci!’ whispered Lily and Poppy in unison as Napoleon signalled his farewell.

  The truck lurched forward a few feet and hit the rutted side of the driveway, giving it an almighty shake. Immediately a rolled bundle slid from under the fastened tarpaulin at the back of the truck onto the driveway, standing upright on its feet like a gruesome sentinel. Lily and Poppy gasped in horror, while Guy and Alain raced to the truck’s cabin to alert the black marketeers. The operation began again, this time with more urgency and voluble curses. The rolled body was hastily returned to the back of the truck with much shoving and pushing and this time piled with boxes and wedged in place with such determination that Lily began to wonder if they would ever be able to extricate it. Finally, the job done, the truck began its journey once again, belching fumes into the night, the onlookers following it as far as they dared, just to ensure that the dear departed did not make another bid for freedom.

  It was the following Thursday when Napoleon arrived for his weekly afternoon tryst with Crecy that Lily and Poppy managed to persuade him to part with the details of the body’s consignment to its final resting place. Poppy distracted Madame Gloria as she prepared a cup of acorn coffee and some rather dubious-looking hazelnut cake which she was sure featured everything except hazelnuts, while Lily pummelled the swarthy giant for information.

  ‘We drove to the river,’ Napoleon told her, ‘we planned to dump it anywhere that looked a bit lonely that was close to the road, know what I mean?’ Lily nodded, that sounded sensible. ‘So we pulled up in one of those spots that the Germans use to meet their girlfriends and parked under some trees in some shadows where we thought no-one could see us.’ He looked around to check that Madame Gloria was still busy with Poppy, who was receiving copiously detailed instructions on the brewing of the acorn coffee.

  ‘We were just about to unload the body when a car pulled up. So we jumped behind the truck, out of sight, but where we could see what was going on. A German gets out of the car and helps his lady friend out of the other side. They haven’t seen us, ’cos we’re in the shadows under the trees. They have a little hug and a kiss and then they start to walk towards the river. An’ that’s when I realised we have a perfect place for a body. It’s better than the river, ’cos they might hear the splash when we drop it in and come to see what was going on. Know what I mean?’ Lily was listening with increasing consternation. Where was the perfect place for a body? Napoleon paused briefly to check that Madame Gloria was still engaged with Poppy before resuming his whispered narrative.

  ‘So we took the body out of the rug and carried it over to the car. We opened the back door and slid it onto the back seat.’ Lily swallowed a squawk of horror as the big man continued. ‘I’m sure they didn’t see us, ’cos they were in the grass, and in the middle of —’

  ‘Is that my big, bad man?’ cooed a voice as a waft of perfume washed through, momentarily relieving them of the fumes of Napoleon’s more pungent cologne. Lily, hand on mouth and eyes wide open at this crucial point in Napoleon’s story, quickly recovered herself and smiled her thanks to the hairy giant. She drifted back into the kitchen with a wide-eyed look at Poppy as Crecy tripped through the door, clad in a softly flowing pink gown that accentuated his voluptuous curves, his platinum curls tumbling from a bright pink clip that matched the loud vibrancy of his latest lipstick.

  ‘Hello Glory dear, hello girls,’ he tossed as he flounced through the kitchen and into Gloria’s little salon. ‘Dahling!’ he fluttered at Napoleon who stood beaming, clutching his hat and taking the bejewelled hand which was proffered as the curvaceous blonde erupted through the door and plumped himself down. ‘You clever man, you,’ and he tapped the clever man on the chest with a long, pink talon, ‘you know you absolutely saved us all from our difficulties with that very inconsiderate client of Coco’s, how I do adore a big, brave man. Now,’ and he crossed his slim legs allowing an ample vision of thigh for the gaping Napoleon, ‘do tell me all your wicked black market news.’ Somehow the hairy gent managed to avoid telling the sensitive singer the ultimate fate of Coco’s deceased customer.

  It was Lily who told the horrified Poppy, Guy and Alain of the deposit of the hapless accountant in the back of the amorous German’s car for the young man and his French girlfriend to discover — or not, as the case may be.

  ‘It was dark,’ gasped Poppy, ‘they might not have looked in the back of the car — that poor man might have been there for days!’

  ‘You don’t think they would have noticed?’ questioned Lily. ‘After all, the body would probably ha
ve rolled around as they drove away.’ They looked at one another in mute horror. ‘Imagine hearing a strange noise in the back of the car and finding a body!’

  ‘What a way to end a tryst,’ observed Guy as Alain shook his head and the girls wore looks of horrified amusement.

  ‘I wonder how he explained the body to the French police,’ mused Alain aloud. Guy looked at him with a wry grin.

  ‘He probably didn’t. If he had any sense, he’d have dumped it somewhere else and sworn his lady friend to secrecy.’ He winked at Lily. ‘That’s what I’d have done!’

  As the heat of summer dissipated and the cool winds of autumn heralded the onset of the winter months, Parisians began to prepare for the dark months of privation. Stockpiling and hoarding had become second nature to housewives throughout the city, many of whom, by the end of summer, had harvested crops of potatoes, onions, carrots and tomatoes and were preparing to plant the humble turnip-like rutabagas previously fed to livestock in the country, now an essential element of the Parisian diet. At the end of the alleyway at the back of Le Prix, Madame Gloria’s bright red geraniums had long since given way to tomato plants, the climbing roses on her wall trellises now competing with beans. Pots of vegetables filled the back courtyard of the apartment building where old furniture and any other salvageable item had been converted to a miniature garden. Potatoes grew in an old cupboard, onions sprouted from tyres. The feathery tops of carrots poked out of an ancient bathtub and a pumpkin entwined an enormous old copper so densely that only Madame Gloria and her gardeners, Alain and Guy, knew what held the plant in place. Pride of place in the little courtyard, however, was given to the enormous rabbit hutch, the cleverly converted abandoned bed from which a steady turnover of rabbits had ensured that Madame Gloria’s tenants enjoyed the soft meat in every conceivable form. Rabbit pie, rabbit stew, grilled rabbit and even boiled rabbit stretched the little landlady’s ingenuity. Pigeon also graced the menu on occasion as Madame Fresange had persuaded Napoleon and Guy to re-engineer the dear departed Gaston’s greenhouse — minus a portion of its glass, replaced with the grill from the front of a wrecked car — as a pigeon coop. In this part of Paris, cottage industry thrived and flourished.