Beekeeper (36 page)

But she would consider the matter, thought St-Cyr and said, ‘Then let us move on to Monsieur de Saussine and his associates.'

‘Who had every reason to kill him,' hissed the woman, ‘and who knew exactly how to do it!'

‘Alexandre always considered M. de Saussine to be beneath him, Inspector,' confided Vallée. ‘A student to whom he had devoted considerable energy, and had helped to become established, but a great disappointment. Not dedicated enough, he'd say. Too greedy.'

‘Too cavalier. Monsieur de Saussine had little interest in selective breeding to produce disease-resistant stocks, Inspector, and was more interested in selling his queens which he shipped to beekeepers in competition with Alexandre.'

‘Disease-free queens?'

‘Ah!' clucked the woman. ‘How could they have been in times like these? AJexandre would never do such a thing, no matter the circumstance, and had sent notices out to warn others, even though Monsieur de Saussine threatened legal action.'

‘And Messieurs Jourdan and Richeaux?'

‘Are like most politicians, simply front men for others. The one has been placed in a position of power by his friends so as to be used by them. But always, as in a hive, there are parasites to guard against and battle.'

‘Alexandre knew M. de Saussine was a threat, Inspector, and feared he would convince Herr Schlacht to take serious measures against him.'

‘To clip his wings. To not let him speak out,' said Mme Roulleau, ‘and to silence him for ever, perhaps.'

‘Inspector, is it true that Mme de Bonnevies was having an affair with this German?' asked Vallée. ‘Alexandre was convinced that she was. I tried to urge caution. One of the Occupier, but he wouldn't listen and swore he had followed her to a hotel near the omnibus yards and the freight yards of the Gare du Nord. “Many German servicemen go into that hotel,” he said, “and so does that wife of mine, though she always looks first to see if there are those who are waiting for her.”‘

‘And Herr Schlacht?'

It was Mme Roulleau who touched his arm to softly confide, ‘Monsieur Durand, over there, kept bees on his roof for Alexandre, who found his daughter Mariette a job as housemaid to the wife of this businessman. But that was before our troubles started.'

‘The girl followed Madame de Bonnevies to that hotel,' said St-Cyr.

‘And then confided to her
papa
what she knew was happening,' went on Mme Roulleau. ‘Mariette was very worried, Inspector, and insisted that Frau Schlacht was insanely jealous and very angry.'

‘This German woman wanted him to poison her husband, Inspector. He was to lace a bottle of Amaretto with the nitrobenzene but had adamantly refused in spite of her many threats.'

‘To have done so would have brought the Gestapo down on him, Danielle also,
n'est-ce pas
?' said Madame Roulleau. ‘
Mon Dieu
, to poison one of the Occupier, at least the firing squad. That also for Juliette and her son, of course, though he didn't care about them, only Danielle.'

She caught a breath. ‘That bottle of Amaretto was in his study, on his desk, wasn't it?' she sighed. ‘The doors would have been locked, the gates also, but were they really locked?'

‘Could M. de Saussine, or one of the other two, have had access to it?'

‘For this they would have to have known of it,' muttered the woman, again lost in thought. ‘But then … why then, someone must have told one of them of it and, of course, Monsieur de Saussine could well have brought along his own nitrobenzene.'

‘Why not ask him and the other two, Inspector?' advised Vallée. ‘Why not demand the statement, the
procès-verbal
they must sign and swear to?'

The furnace and boilerworks in the cellars of the School of Mines were gargantuan and warm … m
ein Gott
, so cosy, thought Kohler. Coals glowed when the firebox door was opened – coals like he hadn't seen since before the Great War.

Leaning the crutches against the bin where sacks of anthracite, no less, were piled, he pulled off his greatcoat and draped it over some of the hot-water pipes.

Neither Jurgen nor Hans had ever experienced a fire like this – at least, he didn't think the boys would have. He warmed his hands and, when female steps hesitantly picked their way in from the Jardin du Luxembourg's greenhouses, gingerly lighted a twig and brought its flame up to the cigarette he offered to Frau Käthe Hillebrand.

‘Inspector, what's the meaning of this?' she shrilled in
deutsch
, not liking things, for the SS major's adjutant had brought her to the cellars in silence and then had departed.

‘A quiet word, that's all. Why not sit down? The caretakers use that broken chair, but I've given it a wipe just for you.'

The Höherer SS Oberg must have been convinced of the usefulness of the meeting, Käthe warned herself, but why had Kohler left the door to the firebox open? Why had he switched off the electric light? ‘I'll stand,' she heard herself saying emptily. Flames licked upwards from around each glowing coal and clinker, but every now and then gases would erupt and the flames would rush to unite and race about the firebox. The smell of sulphur was in the air …

Unbidden, the woman's fingers began to nervously pluck at the top button of the beige overcoat she wore. Light from the firebox flickered over her, making her lipstick glisten and burnishing the fair cheeks. Uncertain still, her blue eyes tentatively sought him out, and finally she took a hurried drag at the cigarette.

‘What the hell do you want with me that couldn't have been asked in the greenhouse?' she demanded. The boyish grin he gave only upset her more.

‘Look, if I'm to help that boss of yours, I'm going to have to know everything you can tell me.'

Oberg must have agreed. ‘All right, a private conversation. Just the two of us.'

‘I've been the blindest of fools, haven't I? Herr Schlacht is up to his ears in mischief and wallowing in the shit.'

‘I … I'm only a part-time secretary for him. I've others I must look after.'

‘Others you've had sex with?'

‘
Verdammt
! What if I have? It's got nothing to do with this business!'

‘But one that must have kept on for a good long time, otherwise, why would he have blamed you for losing his little pin?'

‘That was a mistake.'

‘Then why did the affair end, if it did?'

‘I was new. I was inexperienced. It … it just happened, that's all.'

‘Maybe yes, maybe no, but how many of those gold wafers does he agree to let you send to Switzerland with that wife of his?'

‘Switzerland …?
Bitte
, I … I don't know what you mean.'

A button came undone, and then another, and when he'd undone them all, Kohler took her coat, hat and gloves and, indicating the chair, said in best Gestapo form, ‘Get comfortable. It'll be easier for you.'

The dress she wore was off-white, of cashmere like the scarf he had let her keep. Fine goods, thought Kohler appreciatively, but not suitable for a furnace room, and she knew it and was worried about this, if not about other things. Silk stockings, too, and high heels. Bracelets of gold, and a citrine brooch to match the superb stone on the middle finger of her left hand. No wedding ring, of course, he reminded himself and heard her tartly ask of his scrutiny, ‘
Well
, what is it?'

‘Lovely,' he said and grinned as he turned to hang her coat on a nail, ‘but I told you to sit down, and I really do want an answer to that question I asked.'

‘From time to time Oskar lets me send the few wafers I can manage to buy from him. A small favour, in return for the one that I rendered,' she said acidly.

‘And what, exactly, is that favour worth?'

There was no feeling in the look he gave, only an emptiness that made her tremble. ‘Five each quarter. Sometimes a few more; sometimes a few less.'

‘Then that wife of his is important to you and you wouldn't want anything to happen to either of them.'

‘No … No, I wouldn't.'

‘It's big, what he's doing, isn't it, and I really have been blind?'

‘Candles aren't the only thing he deals in.'

‘I didn't think they were, but what he does for one, he does for all, right? He claims to buy the beeswax on the black market, even though his relatives steal much of it for him.'

‘There are prices and prices.'

‘And no accounting beyond what he writes himself and you type up for him – that's another little service you offer, by the way, but never mind. The wax is “bought” many times over, even though he's already acquired most of it. The candles are made and sold to that same black market and then … then, and this is where I've been so blind, they're bought back at even higher prices.'

‘And are shipped to the Reich. Well, most of them. What he … he doesn't sell to the churches here and … and to the catacombs and other places.'

‘But the ones that go to the Reich are at vastly inflated prices, so the profit is pretty good.'

She would sit down now, Käthe told herself. She would cross her legs and finish her cigarette while gazing openly up at this Hermann Kohler who had such a reputation with the ladies but was far from the brutal Gestapo he had tried to indicate.

‘As I've said, Inspector, Oskar isn't just into candles. He makes a water-proofing compound as well.'

‘For the Wehrmacht –
ja
, I've heard all about it.'

‘Propolis is bought and made into varnish, and this is shipped at a modest profit which is donated to the SS, as a loyal member of the
Förderndes Mitglied
should.'

‘And the honey?'

‘Some of it is donated to the
Secours National
– the National Help – for the soup kitchens, where it is doled out to young children and nursing mothers.'

‘But not much of it, I'll bet. And the rest?'

‘Is sold to beekeepers, to the black market, and also “bought” back from it and shipped to the Reich.'

‘Again at a very healthy profit.'

‘He's a businessman and everything he does for the Palais d'Eiffel is done under that mandate, so what, please, is wrong with that?'

‘Nothing but the ten or twenty or fifty times profit the “creative” book-keeping allows.'

‘Nobody cares so long as the needs are met.'

‘And they'll only become greater now, won't they, with the defeat at Stalingrad?'

She shrugged and did so beautifully, thought Kohler. He'd take the cigarette from her now and would stub it out. ‘For my little tin,' he said. ‘With us, nothing is wasted.'

‘Us?' she asked.

‘My partner and me, and the two women I live with but seldom see.'

‘Look, I really must get going. Herr Schlacht—'

‘Wanted you to keep track of things here for him. De Bonnevies was a distinct threat – bitching about what was happening; going to the Kommandant von Gross-Paris with tales of robbed and butchered hives and diseased bees. Old Shatter Hand's no fool, Frau Hillebrand. He's not some dumb
Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter
like me.'

‘Oskar didn't kill this beekeeper.'

‘I didn't say he had but we both know he's in deep trouble, and not just with von Schaumburg.'

‘Trouble …? What trouble, please?'

‘Rumours – whispers – that there are slackers behind the lines. People in cushy jobs who are helping themselves and getting too greedy while others do the fighting for them.'

Sickened by the thought that the good times were about to end, Käthe tried to stop her eyes from smarting. Herr Kohler found another cigarette and lit it for her, and though she took it from him and said softly, ‘
Danke
,' her fingers trembled and she knew he had noticed this. ‘Are there really rumours the Führer might shut us down?' Oberg would be furious; Oskar in a panic …

‘They're not just rumours. They're serious. Oberg's just asked for my help.'

Ah Jesus, sweet Jesus! ‘Oskar was very worried, yes. He … he didn't want de Bonnevies to give that address his daughter gave this afternoon. It would ruin everything, would make things very difficult for him, as it will. Always word of such things is passed so quickly. He … he wanted him stopped, that's all I know. I swear it is, but … but felt he couldn't have him arrested.'

‘Too obvious, eh? Too blatant for the Kommandant von Gross-Paris to swallow. Besides, there was this other little matter of Frau Schlacht's having one of his mistresses followed to a certain hotel. The beekeeper's wife, to be precise.'

‘Frau Schlacht had purchased a bottle of Amaretto. Oskar, he … he watches constantly, or has others do the watching for him, so he knew Uma was up to something with that bottle, but … but didn't know exactly what.'

‘Does he like the stuff?'

‘Yes!'

‘Then let me elaborate. Fearing the worst, he had me taken to that smelter of his and had his friends in the
Milice
try to pry the answer he wanted from me, but since the beekeeper had refused to help Frau Schlacht poison your boss, who added the nitrobenzene to that bottle?'

The cigarette was teased from her lips to be shared. Nervously she touched the base of her throat, then fiddled with her scarf. ‘Oskar learned of the poison from one of the other beekeepers – de Saussine, I think – but … but said it had to be done so as to make it appear as if Juliette had done it. She despised her husband and was very unhappy in her marriage. She knew where the poison was kept and had told Oskar of this. A tin on a shelf in the study, above the workbench. A skull and crossbones on its label … Oil of mirbane in bright lemon-yellow letters, mono … mono-nitrobenzene beneath this in brackets. Juliette was to suspect nothing. The daughter would be away …'