Beekeeper (3 page)

‘And the daughter?'

‘It would be best if she were to come upon us by surprise, but then these days anything is possible, and a daughter who is absent without a
laissez-passer
and a
sauf-conduit
will have to be questioned about what she missed.'

About the missing permit and safe-conduct pass or the murder? wondered Kohler but let him have the last word, for Louis was in his element.

‘Madame …' hazarded Kohler on entering the salon.

The woman didn't look up or turn from the stone-cold hearth. ‘
Oui.
What is it, Inspector?'

‘A few small questions. Nothing difficult.'

His voice was gentle but this grated on her nerves, though she told herself he was only trying to be kind. She heard him sit in one of the other armchairs, knew he would have noticed there wasn't a speck of dust in the room and that she must have an obsession about cleanliness. Would he smell the
eau de Javel
, she wondered, or just the lavender water she used when wiping down afterwards?

The Javel, she said to herself. He has the sound and manner of it.

‘Your husband, madame. I gather he spent all his time with his bees.'

And didn't go out to work like normal husbands with responsibilities? ‘Ours was old money, Inspector. My money.'

Under Napoleonic Law a husband had control of his wife's money and property and could do as he pleased, even to gambling the lot away.

Kohler found his cigarettes and offered one, only to see her vehemently shake her head and hear her saying, ‘I haven't since the Defeat. Women aren't allowed a tobacco ration, isn't that so? He … my husband refused to share even his cigarette butts and delighted in my anguish as he lit up.'

‘I take it, then, that you weren't getting on?'

‘Not getting on? We hardly spoke.'

‘Then is there anything you can tell me that might help us?'

She pulled the bulky white dressing gown more tightly about herself and thrust her hands deeply into its pockets, still hadn't looked at him. A woman with very dark brown, almost black hair, cut short, kept straight, and worn with a bit of a fringe whose carelessness suggested an irritable, hasty brush with a hand.

‘He wouldn't have taken that stuff by mistake, Inspector, not of his own accord.'

In tears, she faced him now, was angry and afraid and didn't really know what to make of things, thought Kohler. Was still in shock, was very much the
Parisienne
, but not of the quartier Charonne. Definitely of the Sorbonne and probably of the quartier Palais-Royal or some other up-market district. Of medium height and slender—weren't so many women slender these days? – she had a sharply defined face with high and prominent cheekbones, skin that was very fair, a jutting defiant chin, dark brown eyes, good brows, lips, a nice nose, nice ears, throat and all the rest probably.

The hair was thick, and as he looked her over and she fought to return his scrutiny, her right hand nervously tried to brush the fringe from her brow.

‘Your daughter, madame …'

‘Danielle, yes. Something … something must have happened to her. The Gestapo, the
Service d'Ordre
…'

The Vichy goons, the
Milice.

‘A control … Was she stopped and taken into custody, Inspector, or did they just “requisition” her bicycle again and force her to walk home?'

Hastily she wiped her eyes with the back of her left hand and snapped, ‘
Well
?'

The daughter, like so many these days, had gone out into the countryside to search for food, but that had been on Thursday, well before dawn, well before the murder. ‘Look, we don't know yet what, if anything, has happened to her. We'll find out. Don't worry, please. She's probably okay.'

The Inspector had been writing notes in his little black book. A big man, broad shouldered and comfortable with himself even though there was a savage scar down his left cheek; others, too …

When he didn't look up at her but let her continue to look at him, she told herself he could know nothing and she was not to worry.

It was small comfort. And what about Danielle? she demanded of herself while waiting for his questions. Danielle who had never been the first-born, always the second and had therefore become so defiantly independent and competent. But … but these days, even those qualities could go against a person if arrested.

‘The timing, madame?' he said, and she realized he was using the notebook to avoid looking at her so as to gain her confidence.

‘Last night … Well, Thursday night, at … at about ten o'clock the new time. Berlin Time. My husband … he hadn't left that study of his, that “laboratory” as he loved to call it. When I went to knock on the door, he … he didn't answer.'

‘And the door?'

‘Was locked as usual.
Mon Dieu
, he could have been up to anything in there and I'd not have known, but always with him it was his bees.'

‘You went in by the garden?'

‘I went outside, yes, and around to that field.'

‘You took the footpath that leads down from the cul-de-sac, the
impasse
, here to the gate that's off the rue des Pyrénées?'

‘Yes. From there a lane leads to it.'

‘The apiary your husband leases from the city?'

‘
Yes!
And … and then I came in through the garden.'

‘The gate to that field's kept locked but you've got a key?'

‘No I don't have. It … it wasn't locked, nor was the one to the garden.'

‘Could anyone else have come in that way?'

‘The thief, the destroyer of the hives?'

‘You noticed in passing that they'd been robbed?'

‘Not then, no, but …' She shrugged. ‘I don't really know when that happened. Yesterday – on Friday, probably, and after … after one of the neighbours had discovered he'd been murdered and would no longer have need of the hives.'

Kohler scribbled:
Hives not robbed night of murder but next day (?) Neighbours a problem
. ‘Anyone else?' he asked, not looking up.

‘Whoever delivered that little gift he drank from, the seller of it perhaps?
Yes
!'

‘Do you mean your husband left those two gates unlocked because he was expecting someone?'

‘I … I don't know.
How could I have
?'

‘Okay, okay, calm down. So you found a brick in the garden and broke a pane of glass in one of the doors.'

‘I had to. He … he did not answer me.'

‘And you found him lying on the floor, dead?'

‘
Merde alors
, must I shout the obvious to you? The fumes alone were enough!' she shrilled and gripped her head in anguish, shut her eyes and wept – let him see her like this. Ashamed, terrified, completely exposed and totally unable to control herself.

Kohler lit a cigarette and forced it between her trembling lips. ‘
Merci
,' she gasped and inhaled deeply. Calmed a little, she tossed her head back, but gave him a hard look to warn him off, thinking he was getting too close. Still fighting for control, she turned her back on him.

‘I choked. I ran back outside and tried to think. He … he hadn't been dead for long, Inspector, because we'd spoken through that damned door of his at about seven thirty, or was it eight thirty? I … I can't remember. I'm so confused. Eight thirty … yes, it was eight thirty. He hadn't wanted to eat what little I had prepared. Soup … endless days of soup. A few cooked carrots. A little endive … No wine. We'd run out and you can't buy any, can you? Not here. Not in Charonne anyway, and one must shop at those places where one is known, isn't that so?'

Everyone was bitching about the shopkeepers, many of whom abused their positions and lorded it over their customers, selling a little to their favourites and nothing to the rest.

Kohler told her to sit down.

‘And freeze?' she snapped. ‘Forgive me. I'm … I'm just not myself,' but thought he would only wonder if this really
was
herself. Shattered and unable to think, and so afraid.

Instinctively the woman's fingers sought the gilt-bronze sculpture of a naked young man which stood, perhaps some thirty centimetres high, on a glass and bronze table in front of the fireplace. There was a vase of long-stemmed red silk roses beside it and, as he watched, she fingered the sculpture's shoulders, arms and thighs, couldn't seem to stop herself and trembled at the touch.

Complete in every detail, handsome and virile, the sculpture was one of a pair but its mate, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, stood not on the table but up above it and dead centre on the white mantelpiece of fluted wood, and before its mirror. The girl's right foot was down a step from the other foot on her pedestal, her torso turned towards the viewer, her head away and to the right.

Tiny acanthus leaves made a delicate tracery of chained ovals on the flat frame of the mirror that was as wide as the mantel. Two life-sized white marble faces, those of a boy and a girl, flanked the statue, looking out into the room.

‘My son … our son, did these,' she said as if afraid of sounding foolish. ‘Étienne … Étienne is in one of your prisoner-of-war camps.'

Along with one and a half million other Frenchmen, but they aren't
my
camps, thought Kohler and said, ‘Look, I'm sorry to hear that. You obviously need him with you.'

‘I've always “needed” him, Inspector. Always.'

But not the daughter? Then why put her sculpture up there front and centre and with her gorgeous backside reflected in the mirror? The father? he asked himself. Had de Bonnevies insisted on her placing it there?

The chairs, the sofa and chaise all matched the mantelpiece with white and fluted wooden frames and the clean, sharp lines of the late 1920s. Moderne, then, or post-moderne, and all covered in a cocoa-brown fabric that was almost silvery in the lamplight. Italian silk velvet, he told himself, and very expensive even then. Had the furniture been a wedding gift from her father, he wondered and thought it probable.

The carpet was not an Aubusson or a Savonnerie or any of those to which, as a child and then a university student, she might have been accustomed. But the soft, warm and very light beige of its wool went well with the armchairs and the rest of the furniture. In the mirror he could see the oil paintings she had hung, and knew they were good and must have been in her family for years.

‘Inspector, my husband had his enemies – the petty jealousies of other beekeepers. He was president of the
Société Centrale d'Apiculture
, and for the third year in a row, and so had trampled on a good many toes. But … but who the hell would do that to him?
Who
?'

And had that person come in through the apiary? wondered Kohler.

For a moment they looked at each other and finally, realizing what she was fingering, the woman let her hand fall away from the sculpture of her son. ‘That is Danielle,' she said acidly of the other bronze. ‘My son is very talented but his sister did not pose like that for him. Not without her bathing suit. I'm certain of it.'

But not quite, was that it, thought Kohler, and wrote it all down for Louis and himself to digest. ‘Your daughter, madame. How old is she?'

‘Eighteen. Étienne is twenty-two. Why can't you people let him come home? He was badly wounded, and is still in need of a long convalescence. He can do you no harm, not now, not even then, in '39 and '40. A stretcher-bearer, an artist … He who had never wanted to hurt anyone, especially not his dear
maman
, his
bienaimée.
' His beloved. ‘They shot at him, even though he wore a Red Cross armband.'

‘Madame, your husband.'

She waited, letting him know she wanted to shriek, That bastard, yes?.

‘Thirty hives. Were there more?'

Out-apiaries – that was what the Inspector was thinking. ‘Several. One here, one there. Maybe two or three. It depended on the locations. A flat with a roof-top that was sheltered and not much frequented; the garden of a private house or villa. The city has plenty of such places.'

Have fun chasing them, she seemed to imply. ‘And the honey, madame. Did he sell it and the pollen and the propolis – the bee glue? The
gelée royale
also, his extra queens and the wax?'

The detective had forced her to look at him in a new light, that of one who was well versed on the little slaves Alexandre had adored. ‘He had his “clients”, yes. There's a book, a list with all the addresses and details. Your partner will have found it unless … unless, of course, whoever poisoned my husband took it away with him, or the sous-préfet and préfet, since both came here briefly to view the body yesterday at noon, and to discuss the matter.

‘Now if you will excuse me, Inspector, it's very late and I'm very tired. My bedroom is at the back, overlooking the garden and that field, but while I'm in my bed, avail yourself of the rest of the house. Search all you like. I've nothing to hide and I don't think he had either. We didn't sleep together, not any more, and not in a long, long time. Ours was always a marriage of convenience. I'll not deny it, and you would soon have discovered this in any case, so please don't bother to ask the neighbours. Life is hard enough.'

Alone in the study, St-Cyr drew on his pipe as he sought out each detail, but this killing had not – he was now certain – been as it had first appeared.

The smell of bitter almonds, of nitrobenzene, though minor, was still present, for the corpse exuded it. Some, too, had been spilled on the worktable and tiled floor, and some had been absorbed by a fistful of rags. These things had had to be cleaned up and removed by Hermann and himself, both wearing rubber gloves and before they had gone out into the apiary to find that the hives had been robbed. Hermann had put a match to the stains and had burned the rags in the stove – no other course of action had been possible. The damned stuff was just too dangerous.