Beekeeper (56 page)

‘Pétain and his right hand; Laval and his. And why, please, did Monsieur Bousquet not drag along the local
flics
, eh? Look for little things, Hermann. Things that will tell us not only who our victim really was but why the Secrétaire Général de Police should have such a lapse of duty.'

‘Things that may have been missed by our visitor or left on purpose,
Dummkopf.
Things we might never know the reason for their being here but others will.'

A Saint Louis crystal perfume bottle was still in its presentation box, tucked away at the back of her dressing table drawer. Right inside the lid, and probably never read by Pétain, there was a note:
Maréchal, please accept this small token for your dear wife in recognition of our esteem and devotion to you both.
It was signed M. Jean-Paul Brisset and Mme Marie-Louise of 32a
bis
rue Dupanloup, Orléans. Though their numbers had dwindled, Pétain still regularly received such gifts from supporters all over the country. A bit of lacework from Normandy, a Sèvres soup tureen or vase, silver tea and coffee services, paintings too, signed and sent by their artists, books by their authors. All such things ended up in storage rooms at the stately home, the
maison de maître
, he had rented as a weekend retreat in the tiny village of Charmeil just six kilometres by road to the north-west of Vichy.

Céline Dupuis had obviously read the note and had carefully returned it to its place before shoving the box well out of sight.

Hermann was thumping a book he'd taken from the pile she'd been reading when time allowed …

‘
La Cuisinière Bourgeoise et Économique
, Louis. Well thumbed, somewhat tattered and probably published in 1890.'

The charming housewife on the cover wore a long, striped white and red dress, with white apron and frilly cap, but was holding a bloodied butcher's knife that was far more than needed to decapitate the chicken she'd just finished plucking for the steaming pot on the stove behind her.

‘But why learn to cook, Louis, unless you plan to leave here or at least to leave the profession you're in?'

The wicker hamper at the woman's feet had spilled a rush of vegetables on to the floor. Pots hung in the background; pots that now would have been commandeered for scrap metals!

‘Do you really need the reminder, eh? You know damned well people go to the films to watch the feasting, and that they read cookbooks that are centuries old just to taste the food they can only dream about.'

She hadn't heated the leftovers of some ‘coffee' in a pot on the simple electric ring that served for all cooking. There were three carrots in the little larder, a thin slice of questionable cheese, a bit of bread – the grey ‘National' everyone hated – two onions, a few cloves of garlic and some cubes of Viandox, a beef tea that was all but absent from the shops. Little else.

Her underwear, beyond a couple of pairs of pre-war silk, was nothing special, thought Kohler. Manufactured lace on the brassieres, a pair of black, meshed stockings she'd rolled up and had set aside to try to mend, a few slips and half-slips …

‘Blouses, Hermann. Part of a costume, perhaps. The uniform of a troupe. Look for ones with cheap, mother-of-pearl cufflinks that may have been left in. Her killer might have been a colleague.'

Kohler went quickly through the contents of the armoire. Evening dresses, halter-necked and off-the-shoulder ones, a couple of suits with trousers, a few skirts …

The flat box of pre-war cardboard, a gift, was lined with tissue paper, the halter-necked dress of a soft, silvery silk over which were panels of see-through, vertically pleated strands, each about three millimetres apart and five centimetres long, separated by horizontal panels of scalloped, sequined lace. A long strand of blue sapphires lay atop the dress. A fortune.

‘The earrings, Louis. Were they to have been worn with this?'

‘The shoes … There are leather high heels to match.'

‘She'd have looked fabulous in them.'

‘No attempt has been made to steal the sapphires.'

‘Then were these left for us to find along with the love letters?'

‘The perfume, Hermann. Unless I'm mistaken, it's the same as our sculptress wore. It's Shalimar, one of Guerlain's, and was a smash hit in 1925. Sandalwood, bergamot and jasmine, absolute rose and iris, but vanilla also and that is what set it off to create the sensation it did at the International Exhibition in the Grand Palais. Our victim was wearing it when killed. This cheap little phial was on her dressing table.'

‘And a hugely expensive dress from the twenties,' breathed Kohler. ‘Did de Fleury give it to her, and if so, why the hell didn't he tell her to wear it?'

‘You're forgetting the sapphires.'

‘And that she must have put the earrings on after de Fleury had let her out at the hotel.'

‘But were the necklace, the dress and the earrings all from the same person?'

‘Blue eyes and fabulous blue stones, Louis. Nice and dark.'

The strand was dangled. ‘Surely no
résistant
worth his salt would have left these when funds are so desperately needed by them?'

‘And the ID, Chief?'

‘Could well have been left by a
résistant
, yes.'

A tail feather from a male hen harrier had been used as a quill in an unsuccessful attempt at writing a postcard to the daughter. That of a pigeon had proved little better but the victim was, she had stated, ‘planning next to use those of the quail, the merlin and guinea fowl or even one from a peacock'.

The postcard was a photo of the Maréchal in uniform with the words of the song every schoolchild in the country had to sing each day during opening exercises. Maréchal,
nous voilà! Devant toi, le saveur de la France.
Marshal, here we are before you, France's saviour.
Nous jurons, nous, les gars, De servir et de suivre tes pars.
We, your ‘boys', swear to serve you and follow in your footsteps. For Pétain is France and France is Pétain!

And weren't they all now worried that the Resistance, the ‘terrorists' or some other unknown would
bousiller les gars
? Smash the boys, bump them off?

3

The morgue was nowhere near the Hotel du Parc, and certainly not within easy ‘walking' distance, swore Kohler silently. Well to the south of the old town, it was near the river and above the marshy flats into which the town's septic bed drained. A cruel breeze, out of the west, stirred the frozen reeds, bringing a thin dusting of snow and the stench. Over the snow-covered hills beyond the river, the light was like gunmetal, the frost so hard that the branches of the trees would snap and creak – had it been like that at Stalingrad when his boys had died? he wondered. Of course it had. Woodsmoke would rise, marking the site of a camp fire – Jurgen and Hans would have known this only too well by then and would have agreed that, huddled over cold ashes, any
maquisards
out there would freeze to death rather than show themselves.

War was like that, like Christ on a platter in cold storage.

‘Look, I know this won't sound right,' said Bousquet, cupping his hands as he lit the last of their cigarettes, the three of them standing but a few steps from the car whose engine idled, Georges, the driver, still behind the wheel and minding his own business because he'd been told to. ‘The second victim … Camille Lefèbvre. She and I … An evening or two. Ah! it was nothing, I tell you. A chance meeting at a local inn well before last Christmas, a small gathering, a few friends. Who would have thought anything would have developed? Certainly I didn't.'

‘Married?' snapped Kohler.

‘The daughter of an officer, one of the recently disbanded Army of the Armistice.'

Demobilized 21 November of last year.

‘I was careful. So very careful. One has to be in a little place like this and with a position such as mine.'

‘We're waiting,' sighed Louis, impatiently flicking his cigarette away and not bothering even to save it for his little tin. ‘You've not answered my partner's question.'

These two would think the worst but would have to be told. ‘We had agreed to meet downriver at one of the cabins the open-air cafés let to people in summer. Swimming, boating, water-cycling and sunbathing, that sort of thing, but closed in winter.'

‘Except that you've a year-long lease on this one,' muttered Kohler. It was just a shot in the dark but …

‘I hardly ever have the time to go there. Friends use it, my wife and family in summer when they come for a little visit.'

‘Hermann, ask him what he told those who needed to know where he'd be?'

‘En route to Paris. There were three rooms. Not big, quite small. She got up during the night. Perhaps she had to take a pee, perhaps she heard a shutter banging – one was loose. I awoke when I heard her struggling. I reached under the pillows for my gun and called out that I was armed. There … there was still a good fire in the kitchen stove, light from its firebox and from her torch which had fallen. She … she was lying in a heap on the floor, twitching. Her robe was open, the back door swinging in towards me. I fired into the night. Twice, I think. Maybe three times.'

‘The date and time?' grumbled Louis.

‘7 January, a Thursday at … at about 2.45 a.m.'

‘A Friday?'

‘Yes … Yes, it was Friday by then.'

‘Knifed, garrotted – what, exactly, Secrétaire?' demanded Louis, using that Sûreté voice of his.

‘Garrotted, the wire still embedded in her throat.'

‘And blood all over the place,' sighed Kohler. ‘The jugular, the carotid artery …' They'd seen it all in Avignon ten days ago. One of a group of madrigal singers, the Palais des Papes …

‘Her pessary had fallen out. I reached to pick it up but … but hesitated because I felt whoever had killed her would come back to finish the job.'

‘Footprints, Secrétaire? Two sets or one? A man and a woman or only …'

‘Jean-Louis, that is all in the report but, yes, I think now that there could well have been two of them.'

Confusion, then, and doubt, the prints not clear. ‘And were you the target or was she?'

‘
Merde alors
, why would anyone have wanted to kill her? I was the target.
Me!
And now Georges is always kept near and always ready, and I am more than convinced of the danger, but at the time was far too concerned with …'

‘With saving your own ass and buggering off,' sighed Kohler.
Mein Gott
, were they all the same? De Fleury and now Bousquet.

‘Be reasonable, eh? I had to leave her. I had no other choice. Paris … I had to be in Paris by four that afternoon.'

‘To meet with Oberg and others of the SS, and Gestapo Boemelburg?' demanded Louis.

‘Marseille … Since you appear to think you know everything about the destruction of the Old Port, you will understand why I had to leave her.'

‘Threw the pessary into the stove, did you?' quipped Hermann.

‘Yes. I … I gathered up all evidence of my having been with her. I'd often let others use the cabin. Sous-préfet Robert was well aware of this since he and his family had stayed there for a week this past summer. Camille had come on skis. There was really nothing to link me with her.'

‘And Ménétrel, was he told in confidence?' demanded Louis.

‘Don't be absurd! Of course, if I had felt for a moment they would make an attempt on the Maréchal, I'd have spoken up. That private army of the doctor's is supposed to keep our Head of State as secure as a termite's ass in a beehive but obviously didn't. And that, messieurs, is why you're here.'

Grey in the light, the river looked muddy where the ice had failed to form due to heat from the septic outfall. A lone hawk, a male hen harrier perhaps, thought St-Cyr only to mutter absently, ‘They migrate don't they?'

‘
What
?' yelped Bousquet, flinging his cigarette down.

The hawk was indicated.

‘Idiot, it's searching for mice and voles.'

And waiting to have its tail feathers plucked for quills? wondered Kohler.
Merde
, what were they to do? ‘Where was your driver, Secrétaire?'

‘Downriver at a small hotel. He was to collect me well before dawn and did so. No one was to have known I'd be there. No one.'

‘But someone obviously did,' grumbled Louis, giving that Sûreté nod his partner would understand only too well.

‘And now you'll have to be charged with withholding evidence,' sighed Kohler. Oberg would hit the roof and threaten piano wire! Boemelburg would simply carry through his threat to send Louis to the salt mines of Silesia and himself to man a machine-gun on the Russian Front!

‘But I haven't withheld it, have I?' said Bousquet. ‘I've come clean.'

‘Then join us in the morgue, Secrétaire,' said Louis with all the acid he could summon. ‘Tell us who and where her husband is. Flesh out the little details while we examine the corpses.'

‘Hermann, a quiet word.'

They drew away from the counter, Bousquet offering the attendant behind it a cigarette and trying to exchange pleasantries so as to cover his being here with two detectives from Paris.

‘There's no need for you to see them,' said Louis, those big brown ox-eyes of his moist with concern. ‘Get Georges to drop you off at the Hotel du Parc. Pump him dry and find out what really went on the night of that little rendezvous, then talk to the switchboard operator that Ménétrel will probably have dismissed. Dry her tears. She may be a bank.'

‘Bousquet won't tell you everything.'