Beekeeper (10 page)

‘It's my job to do so, as it is your own.'

A cigarette was offered – it was extremely rare for one to do so these days, so the priest was not only telling him they had things of importance to go over, he was warning him to tread carefully. And, yes, he was also telling the assembled that here was a Sûreté they would have to recognize but that it would be wise to first funnel everything through himself.

‘This murder …' began Father Michel, adding a touch of water to the pastis in both of their glasses.

‘My partner and I are not absolutely certain yet that it really was murder, Father. Amaretto isn't common, even on the
marché noir
, but it could have come from there. Did our beekeeper buy such things?'

‘Not from around here. Alexandre didn't even care for the stuff, but what you really mean to ask is, could Madame de Bonnevies have added the poison to it.'

‘I'm waiting, Father.'

‘Then wait. God is still hearing dispositions on the matter. Madame de Bonnevies tried repeatedly to get me to intercede on her son's behalf. She begged me to find her three skilled workers who would willingly leave their jobs, their families and loved ones, to work in Germany, in return for which, her son would have been released.'

This was the
Relève
, the exchange programme whose poster, of a male Germanic fist holding an upraised key, was to the right of the priest. But now that scheme, having been introduced in mid-1942 and having failed utterly, had been replaced by the
Service du Travail Obligatoire
, the forced labour draft, so even posters like that of the radiant young mother telling her four children money was now on the table, were passé. Now all non-essential males born between 1 January 1912 and 31 December 1921 immediately faced being called up.

The priest cleared his throat, then wetted it.

‘I refused, of course, and advised patience. It was wrong of me.'

‘Why so?' asked the Sûreté.

‘Alexandre might still be alive. It's a question that haunts me. Madame de Bonnevies has suffered greatly and is a very distraught, very desperate woman who has had two and a half years of agonizing over that son of hers and has, I should surmise, tried everything possible to free him.'

The hands that fingered the glass so delicately were not big, but finely boned. Beneath the jacket, the priest wore a grey cardigan that had lost none of its original buttons yet had probably been purchased back in 1930.

‘The past is food for the present, Inspector, but at its table the future is nourished. If ever there was a woman wronged it was Juliette de Bonnevies. Oh for sure, Alexandre was not only one of my parishioners but also a very dear friend, and I am much saddened by his unfortunate and untimely death. And certainly I tried to intercede in that marriage. Love for his wife – a wife who had borne him the son of another man. Pah! He refused her this just as she refused it him. They tried, of course, at first, but very soon it became apparent both were prisoners of the other; she to dote on her son and ignore the daughter she and Alexandre shared; he to do exactly the reverse.'

‘He lived on her money.'

‘He married her because of it. He
knew
she was pregnant with the child of another. It had all been arranged. Her family, his family, the matter settled. You see, I married the couple, and when I leave here to walk back up the street, I will see my church's beautiful and ancient bell tower stained by the mistake I made.'

‘They hated each other.'

‘Of course they did.'

‘And Danielle?'

‘Has always felt she meant nothing to her mother, and everything to her father.'

It would be best to give St-Cyr a moment, and to replenish his pastis. ‘Inspector, that child has no other choice than to peddle merchandise. Alexandre had no head for filling the family larder, even in the good times, except for the produce of his bees. Since the Defeat, the mother has had little head for it either. Those two existed solely because the child they had produced chose to hold them together and feed them.'

It had to be asked. ‘Could Danielle have inadvertently picked up that bottle during one of her trading circuits?'

‘Then why did he choose to drink from it days or perhaps weeks afterwards?'

A good point, but was Father Michel still trying to suggest the mother was guilty?

They finished their second cigarettes in silence. None of the other patrons watched them now. All were huddled in close conversation. But two women had entered the café so quietly, thought St-Cyr, he was troubled by the fact he hadn't noticed them and the priest hadn't let on.

Both women were in their mid- to late forties, and one Sûreté glance at them sufficed. Both turned away to look out at the rue Saint-Blaise through curtains that held that same gossamer of tired lace he'd seen as a boy. Lace that cried out in despair for a wash or an airing in the rain but, even so, wore the patina of stains – those largely of tobacco smoke and fly spray – with a frayed dignity.

‘I've asked them to come, Inspector. As a man who was denied his conjugal rights, Alexandre made his visits to the house of Madame Thibodeau. A sin, God, I am certain, readily forgave but never would his wife. Never. And the question is, Why did he continue to visit a house so close to home? Was it to humiliate her?'

Both women were hard, time-worn
filles de joie
well on their way to that charlady-Valhalla of all such types.

‘Though a scientist and
Président de la Société Centrale d'Apiculture
, Alexandre prided himself on his roots. His father was head clerk in the shop of Juliette de Goncourt's father on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. One
de
was simply exchanged, admittedly, for the dubious respectability of another, and with it eventually went her father's money.'

‘And the son's real father?' asked St-Cyr.

‘She never told anyone, not even that father of hers, though de Goncourt loved his little grandson and did come to the boy's baptism. I insisted, for her sake, Inspector, as much as for the child's. In Charonne, as in any village or on any street, for that matter, the women always seem to be able to count better than their menfolk. Six months was all it took, and everyone knew it and that she had come from being far better off than them.'

‘De Goncourt must have been a very stubborn man.'

‘But he loved his Juliette and thought he was doing what was best. Now let me call those two over to our table. They'll talk more freely if I'm present. Together we'll find what answers they can give, for I see that you will need help with this murder and that it was not so straightforward and simple as I had at first felt.'

‘Juliette?'

‘And an end to the agony of his refusal to help her free the son for whom he had no love and little use.'

Leather, lead and copper, beeswax and candles, thought Kohler as he sat behind the wheel of the Citroën in the avenue Matignon. Flowers …
mein Gott
, hothouse roses and a birthday cake. Picnic hampers stuffed with pâté, Brie, caviar and champagne. Beautiful society women and
très chic Parisiennes
were being accompanied by well-turned-out Wehrmacht NCOs, many of whom were old enough to have fathered them.

There was constant traffic into and out of the former
hôtel particulier
of Gustav Eiffel. The boys of
Das Deutsche Beschaffungsamt
sure knew how to do things. Not a stone's throw from the Rond Point of the Champs-Élysées and the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the Wehrmacht's Procurement Office had been here right from the start in June 1940. Specialists in banking and industry, most of the staff had been drafted, of course, or had volunteered their expertise but why not make life enjoyable while you're away from home?

Vélo-taxis
drew up to the entrance of that tidy little mansion whose soft grey stone, Louis Philippe ironwork, tall French windows, and slate-covered, mansard roof, fitted in eloquently with the rest of the street. A Peugeot negotiated one of two arched carriageways. People on the street said hello, the men politely touching the peak of a cap or brim of a freshly blocked fedora.

Cement for the Todt Organization which was building the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall. Iron and steel. Gold and silver, too. Butter, eggs and cheese, the French big shots of the black market, the BOFs as the people called them – the
beurre, oeufs et frontage
boys – were everywhere and the cars they drove made the avenue like a dream of what the city must have been like before the Defeat.

There was even an open carriage parked in the snow of the courtyard, the poor nag too old and decrepit for the Russian Front. Ignoring its driver, he stroked the mare's muzzle and, finding a lump of sugar deep in a pocket, whispered, ‘You're beautiful,
chérie.
This is for you.'

Leather, priced officially by Vichy at nine francs the kilo, became fifteen and then thirty by the time the middlemen had got through with it. From there it went through still more dealers until here, bought on the black market, for that was the express, if unofficially acknowledged purpose of the Palais d' Eiffel, it would skyrocket to seventy or eighty.

Lead went from six to thirty; copper from fifteen to eighty-five. But nearly everything was paid for in Occupation marks and since the Occupier printed these, and they couldn't be spent anywhere but in France, why everything worked out just fine and didn't cost a pfennig.

A gangster's dream, a gambler's paradise. ‘A
palais de l'illusions
,' he said to the mare who wanted more sugar.

Purchases were also made in neutral countries – Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland – but paid for in pounds Sterling or Swiss francs. Unlimited bankrolls, then, and temptation like you wouldn't believe, since no records were ever kept, especially of the pay-offs to those who found the goods for them. Again, everything worked out fine. One happy family, with secretaries, interpreters and clerks all anxious to assist, since they, too, shared in the dream. No wonder von Schaumburg was edgy. The Führer might not like it if he knew what actually went on here.

‘Wait, let me help you with that hamper,' he called out to a delivery girl. ‘It must be heavy.'

Uncertainty registered in her brown eyes. He was too tall, too big, and there was a cruel scar down his face …

‘Relax. Look, I'm going in and right upstairs. Who's it for?'

He
did
have a nice smile. ‘The General Thönisen.'

The boss himself. ‘He's just the man I have to see.'

‘It's almost noon, m'sieur. They close for three hours over lunch during the week but on Saturdays, stop completely.'

And this in an Army office?
Mein Gott
!

Five hundred francs was five hundred more than she would have got as a tip from the orderly on the desk. ‘
Merci
, monsieur,' she hazarded, then finally grinned hugely and was gone before he could change his mind.

Silk- and brocade-covered armchairs and sofas made waiting in the hall pleasant. Cigarettes and cigars had been laid on. Helping himself to the freshly opened tin of pipe tobacco for Louis, he went over to the desk, waited his turn, and said, ‘Herr Schlacht. A little something for him but I'd like to take it up.'

‘Third floor, turn right. He's not in. He seldom is, but Käthe – Frau Hillebrand – should be able to help you. She usually stays for a bit, in case someone has to contact him or one of the others.'

‘Danke.'

A plaque on the door read:
Scrap Metals
, but that could encompass a lot of things. The foyer was unoccupied, the office small, but with windows overlooking the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, the view nice even in winter.

‘
Mein
Herr …' came a pleasant, if hesitant voice from the outer corridor.

‘Magdeburg,' he said and grinned. ‘You're from Magdeburg.'

‘Not quite. Schönebeck.'

She had a welcome, if nervous grin, and why, really, was she nervous? he wondered and sighed, ‘On the Elbe,' as if it was home. And lifting the hamper up, said, ‘These are for Herr Schlacht. I'll just keep the card.'

Had he really noticed her accent? she wondered. ‘And from yourself?'

‘Two tonnes of scrap lead. We came across it in an abandoned quarry in Charonne, near a graveyard. The leftover coffins they used hundreds of years ago, I guess. All flattened, of course. I thought Herr Schlacht might be interested.'

Coffins! ‘Very, I should think,' she managed and, turning her back on him, led the way out of the office and along the corridor to her desk, where she sat down and reached for a pencil, had to. hold on to something – anything, she told herself.

Although one of the
Blitzmädels
, the similarity ended here, thought Kohler. Blonde, blue-eyed, about thirty-five and wearing a soft blue woollen dress that accentuated every curve, she was a
Hausfrau
who had heard the call of duty and had left child and home to take it up. But somewhere along the line she'd forgotten to wear her wedding ring. A snapshot of her little boy, and one of his father in a Luftwaffe uniform faced her anyway.

‘Your name,
mein
Herr?' she asked again.

He had to hand it to the boys of the Procurement Office. She was really very pretty. ‘Look, you wouldn't know where I could find him, would you?'

‘I might.'

And still tense about it? wondered Kohler. He'd open the hamper and take out a box of chocolates from Fouquet's, one of the city's foremost restaurants and over on the Champs-Élysées at number 99.

She shook her head. The offer of champagne was no better.

‘You're not a businessman,
mein
Herr, so I must ask myself how would such as yourself really have found a load of old coffins?'

Her fingers were no longer fidgeting; the nails perfectly manicured and as red as her lips. ‘We were looking for something else,' he confessed and, grinning, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her.