Beekeeper (35 page)

‘Will be fine unless the bees have been infected with foul brood, chalk brood or other diseases which do get into the honey. In spite of the danger to his own hives, Monsieur de Saussine was selling it to other beekeepers.
Papa
tried to stop him. They often argued vehemently, and Monsieur Jourdan, the vice president, and Monsieur Richaux were against him also.'

‘Yet all three must have known the honey was contaminated?'

The girl glanced at her guard and shuddered, but was determined to reply.

‘Of course but … but when your winter stores have been depleted by the ever-increasing demands of others and you cannot buy sugar with which to make syrup so that the bees can feed on it, you do what you have to and buy what you can. We didn't. We refused the excessive quota demands and made certain our little friends would always have what was needed to best tide them over the winter. Good, clean, disease-free pollen also, for that, too, is necessary at times.'

‘How many hives does de Saussine keep?'

‘Forty in out-apiaries about the city; thirty in each of two home apiaries – he fights the disease and fumigates also, but believes my father was overreacting. Monsieur Jourdan has only fifteen hives; Monsieur Richaux, about twenty.'

‘And de Saussine works for Herr Schlacht?'

‘Very much so, both as an adviser and in selling some of the honey, so you see, Inspector, my accuser deals on the black market himself!'

‘How much of the honey?'

‘A considerable amount. After all, he's a beekeeper, isn't he, and what could be more natural than for him to sell it to those he first provides with extra ration tickets?'

‘Which Herr Schlacht gives him?'

‘As a way of legitimatizing everything so that Monsieur de Saussine will not have to face arrest, should the authorities question his dealings.'

Had the girl finally agreed to tell them everything? wondered St-Cyr, or was she merely giving what she could in order to hide something else? ‘My partner and I are almost certain, mademoiselle, that the bottle of Amaretto sat unattended on your father's desk for at least a few hours.'

‘From when he had returned from the Salpêtrière, until after the brothel, yes.'

‘Did you know the two he went with?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘A moment, then.'

The notebook was again consulted. Danielle felt her heart sink as the Inspector found what he was after and said tersely, ‘Georgette purchased a cigarette lighter from you.'

‘All right, I do know of them. I'm not proud of myself, Inspector, but … but I had to see who they were.'

‘Did Georgette and Josiane let you visit his cemetery room?'

‘Angèle-Marie was my aunt. I had a right to … to know what had happened to her.'

‘And what your father had been up to for all those years since he had returned from the war. Did you know of Héloïse Debré? Well, did you?'

‘And of Monsieur Leroux, the custodian? Yes! I … I visited the catacombs once. Only once to … to see what kind of a man would … would do such a thing when but a boy.'

‘On last Thursday afternoon, mademoiselle, were the gates to the apiary and garden left unlocked?'

‘They shouldn't have been, but …'

The girl looked desperately across the aisle to where her mother gazed steadily back at her from behind the veil of mourning.

‘But
maman
could have unlocked them, yes.'

‘Using whose keys?'

‘Mine. I left them in my room.'

‘Unlocked for whom, then?'

‘For that one, perhaps.'

‘Father Michel?'

‘
Oui
.'

‘Mademoiselle, please explain yourself.'

‘Many times over the past few months Father Michel has watched us fumigating infected hives. He
knew
where my father kept the nitrobenzene, knew exactly how poisonous it was. He … he was receiving candles for his church, was benefiting from what was happening.'

‘The candles, yes.'

‘The mother church,' she said harshly. ‘Any of them could have … have done it.'

‘Any priest, bishop, or cardinal?'

She bowed her head and, choking back a sob, said, ‘Please, I … I can't give you more. I'm so afraid.'

‘Mademoiselle, did you return to the house on Thursday?'

‘In time to poison that bottle?' she yelped.

‘Please just answer the question.'

‘Then no, I did not!'

‘The names, please, of those who can corroborate this?'

‘The guards on the controls. Ask them! I … I stayed overnight at … at the country house, as I told you earlier.'

‘Near Soisy-sur-Seine.'

‘Yes. I … I arrived late, and well after dark, as is my custom always, and I left in darkness before dawn.'

‘Then your half-brother, mademoiselle. Is it that you're afraid he really has been released and that, to free the mother you both share and put a stop to Angèle-Marie's return, he killed your father?'

‘My brother would have had to have known what was happening,
n'est-ce pas
? But, you're right, of course. War hardens us all, doesn't it, Inspector? It makes monsters out of house painters, butchers out of banana merchants, so why not killers out of sculptors?'

‘It also makes liars out of decent, law-abiding citizens, mademoiselle. For now that is all I want from you.

‘Herr Unterscharführer,' he said in
deutsch
to the guard who had understood little, if anything, of what had been said, ‘you may escort this one back to her chair. Next …? Who's next?'

The small glass jar of honey was twisted open by work-worn fingers that might, at one time, thought St-Cyr, have cared about manicures and lotions, but had long since set all such concerns aside.

‘Lifelong apiculturists, especially those such as myself, are nothing compared to Alexandre, Inspector,' said Mme Roulleau. ‘To comprehend what has happened regarding his sister, it is necessary for you to understand this.'

A forefinger was dipped into the honey and held up. ‘Immediately
les abeilles
are attracted to the aroma and greedily rush to gorge themselves – it's easier, since the honey is ripe and the whole process of making it cut short. They show no fear, neither do I, and this, too, they intuitively know, but …'

The rheumy, large and soft brown eyes, with their sagging pouches and scars, looked up at him. ‘But unlike others, Alexandre loved bees as a man sometimes loves a woman. Intensely, you understand. Fiercely, passionately, protectively and possessively.'

‘Angèle-Marie was the cross he had to bear for his love of all things about bees,' coughed Captain Henri-Alphonse Vallée, clearing a chest that had obviously been gassed several times during the Great War. Quickly he brushed a fingertip over his moustache to tidy it. ‘Often he would have tears in his eyes when we discussed that sister of his, Inspector. At Verdun, on 21 February of ‘16, he broke down completely when
la tempête de feu
seemed like all the world had come crashing down upon us and death swept too close. He was badly wounded and begged me to look after her and to see that the wrong was righted. She was his little queen.'

The tempest of fire … The shelling …
Das Trommelfeuer
, Hermann had called it from his side of that terrible war. The drumfire.

‘He was her worker, Inspector. Never her drone,' interjected Mme Roulleau with a curt nod to dismiss all such Sûreté suspicions.

‘But he was always conscious of who she should marry?' he asked.

‘Ah
oui.
He wanted Angèle-Marie to have a good match. Position, enough money and all the rest. A foolish thought, of course, for life is seldom so kind.'

‘Others shamefully mated with her, Inspector, and because of this, Alexandre knew no peace and vowed he would punish them for the rest of his life. Many times I implored him to go to the police. He said too much time had elapsed and that, you will forgive me, the police seldom cared about young girls being deflowered against their will and would only accuse her of seducing her attackers.'

‘His queen had flown, and several drones had mated with her, Inspector. It's what would have happened quite naturally among the bees, only the queen would have ripped out the
parties sensibles
of each of them on completion of their coupling.'

‘They'd have died,' said Vallée, clearly uncomfortable at discussing such things.

‘And Danielle?' asked St-Cyr. ‘Did he feel the same about her?'

Bees now covered Mme Roulleau's finger, the woman watching them with keen interest. ‘Danielle,' she softly said. ‘Danielle and Étienne.'

‘Alexandre feared those two were far too close,' muttered Vallée fidgeting uncomfortably. ‘He always regretted that he'd had to give Étienne the family name. “That boy is useless,” he would often say, “yet Danielle, who should know better, will have nothing said against him.”‘

‘An artist, a sculptor … She posed for him, I gather.'

‘Posed?' snorted Mme Roulleau. ‘As mannequins will before the artists who hire them.
Toute nue
and without even a feather!'

‘But as a child of three or four, and surely not since then?'

‘Not since this war and the Defeat took him away,' huffed the woman. ‘But who am I to say what went on in that country house where the boy lived alone and she went regularly and often stayed for nights on end until Alexandre was forced to fetch her home?'

‘Étienneand he fought, of course,' said Vallée. ‘The boy hated his stepfather. Ah! it was not good, Inspector. A girl of fifteen in 1939 …'

‘Alexandre was certain the boy had designs on her,' swore Mme Roulleau. ‘Certain, too, that he did not want Danielle taking after her mother!'

‘Did he know of his wife's attempts to have her son released?' hazarded St-Cyr.

‘Know of them?' seethed the woman. ‘He refused absolutely to let her do so.'

‘He despised that wife of his, Inspector. He knew she had begged this German, this Schlacht to intercede on her son's behalf.'

‘And if the boy had returned?'

‘Alexandre would not have let him enter his house and …'

‘Captain, please continue. It's important,' urged St-Cyr.

Vallée looked to Madame Roulleau for guidance and saw her nod. ‘Inspector, Alexandre vowed he would go to the authorities and accuse the boy of being among the terrorists. He even swore he could find evidence enough to have him shot.'

‘What evidence, please?'

Afraid of speaking about such things, Vallée nervously glanced at the guards who were standing some distance from them. ‘My service revolver. Though I had asked him to do so for me, Alexandre never turned it in when we were demobilized. “I might need it some day,” he always claimed. “Leroux or one of the others might try to do something.”'

The custodian …

The Inspector did not ask where the revolver was hidden, but rather, thought Mme Roulleau, if Danielle would have access to it.

‘For this you must ask her,' she said, and placing the opened jar among some primroses, patiently removed the bees from her finger, tut-tutting when they insisted on returning to it. ‘Or perhaps Madame de Bonnevies might know. A wife always has the keys to the house, Inspector, even if she claims not to, and Alexandre was often away on his rounds.'

‘He kept that study of his locked.'

‘Of course, but perhaps it was only locked to some and not to others?' offered the woman. ‘Juliette de Goncourt was, and still is,
très belle, très adorable, n'est-ce pas
? One of the Saint-Honoré crowd, that also of the Sorbonne and things I know little of. But when it comes to a pregnancy out of wedlock, one shopkeeper's daughter is the same as another, no matter the class of shop. The boy responsible refused to marry her and daily poor Monsieur de Goncourt would look at her growing belly and wince!'

‘It's not the past that I want at the moment,
mes amis
, but the present. Could the mother of that boy have paid to have her illegitimate grandson freed?'

‘
Mon Dieu
, what is this, Inspector?' exclaimed Mme Roulleau.

‘It's just a thought.'

‘Then who, please, was the father of that bastard of hers?'

‘That sculptor, madame,' chided Vallée uncomfortably. ‘The boy is talented. Even though Alexandre would never acknowledge this, I myself happened to see some of his work in a gallery before the Defeat and was much taken with it and surprised.'

‘
Who
, Inspector? Was it Henri-Christophe de Trouvelot? I've long considered this matter, though of course such circles were not mine to question.'

‘It's confidential.'

‘And when you catch the killer?' she hazarded.

‘Perhaps then Mme de Bonnevies will no longer care.'

‘But it is only to you that she gives a secret she has guarded all these years?' muttered Madame Roulleau, concluding that she'd been right all along. Yes, right! ‘What reason, please, did she have for suddenly breaking a vow she had kept even from the Père Michel, her confessor?'

‘Has the boy been released, Inspector?' asked Vallée. ‘If so, then God forgive me for saying it, but there is your poisoner.'

‘And Madame de Bonnevies must, if she doesn't already know what the boy did, be thinking it,' said Madame Roulleau.

‘And Danielle?' asked St-Cyr.

‘Danielle?' leapt the woman. ‘Oh for sure the girl would worry about such a thing, should the half-brother have come home, but she loved her father dearly and worked constantly with him. She would never have …'

‘Well, what is it?' asked St-Cyr.

It made her sad to have to say it. ‘Alexandre would most certainly have told her what he intended to do if … if the boy was released. She'd have been terribly hurt – he was never one to let the feelings of others intrude once his mind was made up. But as for Danielle trying to stop him in such a way, ah no. No, I can't believe it.'