by Pirate Irwin
His words were not supported by the look he gave Lafarge. It struck the Chief Inspector as that of a friend offering support rather than telling him the brutal truth.
Lafarge leant back against the grubby, stained wall, rubbed his face with his hands, and reluctantly accepted that if he was to enjoy a life with Berenice, their child and Pierre then he would have to accede to de Cambedessus’s blackmail. He would one day probably have to pay for his crimes – there appeared to be too many people who knew, or thought they knew, what he had done but he was damned de Cambedessus would be the man to bring him down.
“Very well, you can tell your client he has a deal, but he is to remain in the room until I return as I have to clear it with my superiors. However, given what I witnessed in the Ritz this should not be a problem,” he said bitterly.
Gerland nodded, patted him on the shoulder and made to return to the room, but as he did so Lafarge grasped his arm.
“I want to know two things, Henri. Firstly, what is going to happen to this dossier, and who is the helpful soul who passed it on to de Cambedessus?”
Gerland reflected for a moment before replying.
“The dossier you can have. It was Drieu, according to de Cambedessus, who handed it over to him. He refused any payment for it; he just explained he was fed up with hypocrites escaping their deserved fate,” said Gerland.
“Quite what he thinks his should be I don’t know. It is hard to believe the authorities haven’t helped him on his way already, rather than leaving him free to destroy good people like you,” added Gerland with a sad smile.
Lafarge nodded his appreciation for Gerland’s sympathetic remarks. He walked down the corridor to where Petiot was being interrogated so he could get Pinault and then see if Luizet was still around so they could draw up a legal document freeing de Cambedessus.
He still wanted it set down on record even if it would then be locked away in a safe and gather dust until they were all probably dead. However, his reasoning behind this was that de Cambedessus could only be kept in check if he knew the authorities had a hold over him. An admonishment and a warning over his future conduct would not suffice.
In the end it took him an hour to both convince Pinault and Luizet a document was essential and then to add a couple of details to it that gave him special pleasure. It also required assent from Palewski, or at least one of them did, because the other one was a personal demand.
Neither Pinault nor Luizet offered up much resistance nor indeed asked questions as to his sudden change of mind, indeed they looked mightily relived that his crusading spirit for having a public trial had undergone a pragmatic conversion.
All through this process his mind spun round regarding the base behaviour of Drieu. His bitterness over Lafarge’s refusal to help him escape had boiled over and combined with his hatred of de Gaulle had opened up the route for him to save himself. Or so he thought.
The other matter that troubled Lafarge more was what was the damning evidence Drieu had accrued, which could have caused him so much trouble, regarding the deaths of Marguerite Suchet, von Dirlinger and Mathilde.
He would have to wait to get his hands on the dossier before the second question was answered.
That was only minutes away as he descended the stairs and greeted the gaunt figure of Courneuve escorted by a uniformed officer. They were both seated outside the room holding de Cambedessus. Lafarge felt almost sorry for Courneuve as despite his pathetic state there would be no escape for him, no grand offers from high up of a deal.
No, he and his wife, whose silence had made her seem like the one who had had their tongue virtually extracted from their mouth, would face trial for the murder of the count.
Any hope they might have of exposing dastardly plots and de Cambedessus’ involvement would be dashed as Luizet had informed him it would be held ‘in camera’ with no admittance to press or public.
Lafarge had interjected they might as well execute them now, which had not been received well by Luizet, but to the Chief Inspector it was galling that at the end of the whole affair only a rather pathetic couple of blackmailers would end up being fully punished.
He didn’t think that such clemency would have been part of the conspirators’ programme had they succeeded.
“Then again,” he said to himself, “it is my fault de Cambedessus is even getting a deal, so I don’t have any right to be morally superior to the others.”
Pulling himself together he opened the door and gestured for the gendarme to come forward with Courneuve.
“Colonel de Cambedessus, please stand up and turn around,” he said curtly.
De Cambedessus did as he was told. He turned round with a smirk on his face before it faded smartly as Courneuve entered the room and pointed at him and tried in vain to say his name. In the end he could not and had to resort to nodding when asked was this the man who had ordered him and his wife to murder Count de Boinville.
However, while words failed him he was still capable of physical action and in a desperate effort at avenging the attempt on his life shuffled towards the colonel.
The gendarme made to restrain him but Lafarge flashed him a look to desist, allowing the circus to continue. He enjoyed the sight of de Cambedessus flinching as he backed away and felt the table barring his way. Gerland remained silent, he too seemingly enjoying the spectacle of the crippled prisoner advancing on his client.
De Cambedessus looked desperately at Lafarge for help and then to Gerland and found none forthcoming. Courneuve got closer and closer and a look of genuine fear flashed across his prey’s face. It was at that moment Lafarge stepped forward and restrained Courneuve.
He was hauled out of the room, still vainly fighting to get at de Cambedessus, while Lafarge settled in his chair and told the other two to sit as well.
De Cambedessus shot him a look full of hatred, but didn’t utter a word as he sat down.
“Right, de Cambedessus, I am sure your lawyer has informed you that you will be free to go and no immediate charges will be proferred against you,” said Lafarge, his tone businesslike.
De Cambedessus nodded, though it was clear he hadn’t appreciated Lafarge addressing him without his army rank.
“Good, well all that remains is for you to read through this document that I have drawn up with Prefect Luizet and Commissaire Pinault and for you to countersign it. I would impress on you no alterations are going to be made to it, so if you refuse to sign we will have no option but to place you under arrest and the original charges will be reinstated against you. Is that clear?” said Lafarge.
De Cambedessus looked surprised and turned to Gerland and then pointed to the dossier lying on the table between them.
Lafarge laughed and shook his head. He seized the dossier and placed it beside him and for added emphasis put his elbow on top of it. He allowed Gerland to explain to his client what was going on.
“I’m afraid once Chief Inspector Lafarge agreed to the deal the dossier became his property. He made me aware there would be conditions drawn up for your release. Quite frankly, Colonel, given what you attempted to do today I didn’t feel I was in a position to oppose him imposing them.
“The dossier does not justify you walking out of here scot-free. I talk here as both a lawyer and a Frenchman who has had his fill of tyranny these past few years and is not willing to have it return under any guise,” said Gerland.
De Cambedessus looked both stunned and furious at Gerland’s remarks. However, seeing he now had no option he angrily picked up the two-page document in front of him and read through it.
Lafarge remained silent, content to chain-smoke as de Cambedessus pored over it. He looked as if he enjoyed the first part but once he turned the page his features clouded over and he started sweeping his hand across his chin in ever more violent fashion, like a nervous tic.
Once he’d finished he looked up and Lafarge noticed immediately all his self-confidence and assurance had dissipated.
He whispe
red in Gerland’s ear and they moved to the far corner of the room. Lafarge recalled he had brought with him a half bottle of cognac, which he withdrew from his pocket and plonked on the table before rising and calling to a uniform in the corridor to bring them three glasses.
He poured out three generous measures and settled back in his rickety old wooden chair. He was beginning to feel the adrenaline prompted by the day’s events start to ebb away and fatigue sweep over him.
Lafarge took a gulp of the cognac hoping it would give him a second wind as he prepared for the final denouement of this battle. Nevertheless an idea was forming in his mind, tired as he was, of completing another task once he was free of the Quai.
De Cambedessus and Gerland returned to the table. Both were clearly at odds with each other but it looked as if the lawyer had won the debate because the colonel asked for a pen.
He paused before he signed, however, and took a sip of the cognac, registering his disgust at the contents.
“Ah, of course, de Cambedessus, you always preferred Armagnac, sorry I couldn’t provide that for you but I’m sure where you’re going you will have worse tasting drinks than this,” said Lafarge maliciously.
De Cambedessus flashed his eyes contemptuously at the remark.
“I will sign but I would like it put on the record I object to the conditions placed on me. To be sent to Indochina, well that happens to a lot of my colleagues, but to be reduced to the ranks is a humiliation and a malevolent act on the part of the Prefect,” said de Cambedessus.
“Furthermore, I am hardly being given enough time to put my personal matters in order, only enough to officially divorce my wife to facilitate the Chief Inspector making an honourable woman of her before she gives birth to their bastard.
“It may be commonplace among your level of society, Chief Inspector, to switch wives constantly but in my family divorce is unheard of and brings shame upon our name,” he hissed.
Lafarge was thoroughly enjoying the final skirmish and poured himself and Gerland another glass.
“Well, de Cambedessus, which is the greater shame: to be the first in your family to divorce; or the first to be guillotined for treason?” said Lafarge drily.
De Cambedessus squirmed as Lafarge’s words sank in. Sighing deeply he picked the pen up once more and signed before pushing back his chair and standing up making ready to go. Lafarge and Gerland downed their glasses and quickly finished off the remants of the bottle before they joined an increasingly impatient de Cambedessus.
Lafarge escorted them up the stairs and then out into the courtyard which was now lit as dusk had set in. They were confronted by the sight of the massed ranks of uniformed officers and plain clothes detectives who ringed the courtyard in ranks.
In the middle stood Luizet, now dressed in his official Prefect’s uniform, and Pinault.
De Cambedessus stepped back but was prevented from retreating into the building by Lafarge.
“Go on, de Cambedessus, I thought you wanted nothing more than to leave the premises,” said Lafarge.
“We arranged a little formal farewell parade for you,” he added sarcastically.
De Cambedessus proceded down the stone steps warily, Lafarge and Gerland staying behind, and approached Luizet and Pinault. They greeted him formally before Luizet raised his voice and addressed the assembled men.
“We are gathered here this evening to complete a fine day’s work, built on the back of months of hard but brilliant intelligence-gathering and detection most notably by Chief Inspector Gaston Lafarge,” said Luizet.
The Prefect raised his hand and pointed to Lafarge who for a brief moment felt the fatigue dissipate and a feeling of exultation replace it as his colleagues cheered his name.
Luizet allowed the cheers to die down before moving on.
“By contrast we have before us in our headquarters a man who has disgraced his rank, his uniform and his nation. But for the courage shown by Chief Inspector Lafarge he might well have been sitting in my office this very evening with your fates in his hands.
“Thus with the special power invested in me by General de Gaulle I have the pleasure of stripping you of your rank and ordering you off this hallowed territory, which you threatened to desecrate, for good,” added Luizet coldly.
With that Luizet stepped forward and ripped de Cambedessus’ epaulettes from his shoulders.
He stood to the side to allow the former colonel and wannabe powerbroker of liberated France trail disconsolately to the gates of the Quai, boos and jeers echoing in his ears.
Lafarge stood and watched, taking great pleasure as his once arrogant and cocksure adversary disappeared under the arch, which led out to the Seine, a broken man.
Now he would sort out another foe and this one would not be offered a cosy political deal for his bargaining currency had run out.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Gaston, this is a surprise!” said Drieu who, judging by the look on his face, did not find it a welcome one.
Lafarge smiled thinly and without waiting to be invited in entered the apartment on the Avenue de Breteuil which was situated close to Les Invalides, the former military hospital where Napoleon was interred in a sumptuous tomb.
He had driven over in an unmarked car from the Quai, having decided the metro was too unreliable and that walking, while it would have freshened him up, might also have caused him to rethink what he was about to do to his former close friend.
He had taken every precaution as he entered the apartment building not to be seen – and it had been just as well. A mutual acquaintance of Drieu and his, the writer and collaborationist journalist Lucien Combelle, had been coming down the stairs. Combelle, formerly the secretary to André Gide, seemed as relaxed about parading round Paris as others of his ilk but whilst he may have assumed he was safe Lafarge was astonished that Drieu, who was very much a wanted man, had returned to the apartment he had lived in during the Occupation.
“I saw Combelle on my way in,” said Lafarge.
Drieu smiled and visibly relaxed as Lafarge’s ploy worked in lulling him into thinking there was nothing sinister about this visit, letting him believe it was purely social. For if he had allowed himself to be seen by Combelle then logically Drieu must think he was not there to do him harm.
“Ah yes, Lucien is one of the few who still beat a path to my door and find me pleasant company,” said Drieu wistfully.
“For some reason the people I most expected to pay me a visit – the police – have yet to do so. But then maybe that is why you are here,” he added.
Lafarge could not tell whether Drieu was aware the coup had failed or was hoping his visit was to inform him it had succeeded.
“Is there anyone else here, Drieu?” asked Lafarge casting a glance round the room.
It was a mess. Books lay tossed on the floor and the only orderly part was the desk where there was a typewriter and a thick pile of paper. Lafarge surmised they must be his memoirs or a tract justifying his treasonable behaviour over the past four years.
Lafarge wouldn’t blame him for trying to excuse himself – even if he would have a virtually impossible task in convincing a court – but his handing over the dossier to de Cambedessus was beyond the pale no matter how bitter he was at his former friend refusing to help him escape.
Drieu nodded but Lafarge, just for insurance sake, checked the rooms in any case and found them to be indeed empty.
He dallied in the bathroom longer than in the others, all of which were in a state of disarray, not because the owner was finally leaving but on account of the fact Drieu had seemingly lost the will to even do the simplest of chores.
Indeed he looked unkempt himself. The pinstripe jacket he was wearing was frayed at the edges; his shoes could have done with a thorough polish; and his beard, which had been well clipped when they had met at the Trocadero, was now straggly. He was gaunt, his cheeks sunken and his eyes beginning to protrude and dominate what had once been quite a good-looking if a little to
o well-fed face. His eyes, though, still burned with some sort of passion and enthusiasm, but Lafarge couldn’t tell whether that was real or fuelled by the alcohol he could smell off his breath.
No, the man who stood rather stiffly in front of him was like the room itself – a shadow of his former glory, that is the Drieu of before the war.
The room seemed to have withered just as its owner had. The drawing room-cum-dining room had once been quite a presentable and comfortable room. It was not overly decorated but tastefully minimalist. A large oak dining room table was its main feature. Drieu had enjoyed having people he considered his intellectual equals to dinner, but as a result the table was never fully occupied.
Lafarge had often wondered how he had managed to secure invitations and sit with people of the intellectual stature of André Malraux and Luis Aragon prior to the Nazis’ invasion. The answer he conjectured was because he offered some light relief to Drieu.
For he was someone Drieu could laugh with and also, though he found this far-fetched but perhaps true, he was the sort of person his host would have liked to be: less opinionated, well on the outside at least; more moral, maybe; and certainly more at ease in female company whereas Drieu had always been gauche and awkward in their presence.
“Would you like a drink, Gaston?” asked Drieu.
Lafarge nodded and asked if he had any cognac, to which Drieu ambled unsteadily over to a large wooden cupboard and withdrew a full bottle.
He handed Lafarge a glass, and the bottle, while he helped himself to a generous portion of what looked like whisky.
Lafarge blew the dust away from the rim of his glass and poured himself an equally generous dose of cognac. He settled into a Louis XV armchair which, unlike the one in his apartment, was far grander and more importantly comfortable to sit in.
Drieu threw himself back onto a three-seater sofa and swung his legs round so he was lying on it, placing the decanter on the floor.
“So, Gaston, tell me what is so pressing that you come round here at almost nine o’clock unannounced and I, unlike you, am polite enough not to throw you out,” said Drieu waspishly.