Flykiller (31 page)

His voice broke over her and she knew he was watching her closely. ‘Mademoiselle Pascal, is this how you remember its being there?'

That dark blue bottle on its side without its stopper, the Laguiole next to it, Madame Noëlle's crumpled French silk pongee step-ins so soft and cold. ‘Yes … Yes, that is approximately as I first found them but that was nearly two months after she had killed herself. Auguste had locked the room and had tried to shut it all out of his mind. I …'

‘You were to have packed away her things, weren't you?'

‘He wouldn't have given them away. “The town's too small” – too spiteful is what he really meant. “Burn them,” he said but later I knew he had realized I hadn't, though we never spoke of it.'

‘How often do you come here?'

To lie in Madame Noëlle's bed, to touch her things and smell them, to care for them and wonder why Auguste had loved her so much that he had been blind to her affairs, blind until that moment she had drunk the contents of that bottle and had thrown herself into the river?

‘I came. At first it was not often, and only when he was away on one of his walks, but then, as the years progressed, I needed to discover things and came more often.'

‘Waited?' asked the Sûreté softly.

‘Waited, yes, for him to come to me, to me!'

‘
Toute nue
?' he demanded.

‘Sometimes,' she answered.

‘Louis … Louis, don't be so hard on her. It's life,
n'est-ce pas
? Mademoiselle, come and sit down. Rest a little. We'll soon be done here.'

Done
, having stripped her feelings naked!

‘The château in this photograph?' Herr Kohler asked.

‘Aux Oiseaux Splendides!' she blurted tearfully, couldn't help herself. ‘Monsieur Charles-Frédéric Hébert made certain she and the Maréchal were alone together in the late summer of 1924. He had always envied Auguste and saw a chance to destroy him.'

‘And recently? Have this Monsieur Hébert and your employer spoken?'

‘Never.'

‘Ah
bon
,' said Louis sadly. ‘And now, mademoiselle, please tell us if you've recently seen your employer's children.'

‘I
what
?' she shrilled from where she was now sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘Surely they're not in Vichy? Well, are they?' she demanded fiercely.

Anger tightened the lines in her face, making it appear even more sharply angular in the candlelight. ‘Hermann, remind her of to whom she's speaking.'

‘Louis …'

She would clench her fists, thought Edith, but keep them in her lap, would let her voice erupt in a torrent of derision. ‘Inspector,
quelle folie
! I could not possibly have seen them.
Mon Dieu
, they were children when they left. I … Why, how could we have met? They wouldn't have remembered me. A secretary at a bank they seldom went to with their mother? Believe me, Inspector, to keep such news from Auguste would have been for me to have denied everything I've felt for him.'

‘Then you saw no signs of forcible entry?'

She must not yield! ‘None. Had there been any, I would have told Secrétaire Général Bousquet of them when he came here this afternoon to tell us of the theft.'

He'd shrug nonchalantly. That would be best. ‘Hermann, the housebreaker must have entered unobserved and vanished just as easily.'

‘Auguste … Auguste often leaves the gate unlocked.'

‘Especially if he's out for a stroll after curfew?' asked St-Cyr.

Ah
Saint Mère!
‘I … Why, yes. Yes, then, too.'

‘Louis, go easy, eh?'

‘The truth is often so hard to reach,
mon vieux.
Blanche Varollier, her hair, please?'

‘Auburn, Chief. Long, dark and fine,' replied Hermann perfectly and on cue, even throwing Mademoiselle Pascal a questioning glance and a shrug as if he, too, didn't know what the hell was up.

‘The brush; mademoiselle, suggests other than what you've told us. Someone with just such lovely hair has recently thought to use it frequently.'

Ah no. ‘They … they forced me to let them in.'

Tears streaked her mascara. Agitated fingers tried to stop this as she bowed her head in defeat.

‘They … they said that if I did not let them in they would go to
les Allemands
and cause trouble for Auguste. Much trouble. Don't you see that I had to?'

‘When first?' asked Louis. There had been a German Embassy in Vichy, and still was for that matter.

‘A year ago, then again in midsummer and last autumn. In October, and … and since then two more times. Never long, I swear it. An hour, perhaps a little more. They would speak quietly to one another, rediscovering their childhood haunts. The attic, the cellars, their father's study, the kitchen. I … I could not stop them and was always so afraid Auguste would suddenly turn up.'

‘But were they left alone in here?' asked the Sûreté.

Bâtard!
she wanted so much to shriek at him. ‘They … they insisted, went everywhere they wished, even into their father's bedroom and mine. Mine!'

‘And the most recent visit?' asked Louis. Her head was now bowed again, fingers agitatedly twisting and untwisting tightly.

‘Last Monday afternoon.'

With Lucie Trudel already dead. ‘And you didn't realize anything had been taken?'

The knife, the dress and shoes, the earrings, sapphires and a sample of Noëlle Olivier's perfume, also some of the
billets doux
Pétain had written to her. ‘They'd never taken things before. Why should they have done so then? I was only too glad to see them gone from the house!'

‘And when Secrétaire Général Bousquet came here did you inform him of what Paul and Blanche Varollier must have done?'

‘I … I couldn't. Auguste … Auguste would never have forgiven me if he'd found out I'd let them into his house and not told him they had returned. Each visit had to be arranged so carefully, the moment seized only when he was certain to be absent for more than an hour.'

You're the fool, not the monsieur, one wanted so much to say, St-Cyr told himself sadly, for those same times could so easily have been used to pin down Olivier's meetings with others of the FTP.

Repocketing the knife and taking the laudanum bottle – feeling like examining magistrate, judge, jury and hooded executioner, and not liking himself one bit – he said as gently as he could, ‘For now we've seen enough, Hermann. Mademoiselle, please don't think of leaving Vichy. You will only be hounded down.'

‘And Auguste?'

‘Will, I believe, have gone for one of his strolls.'

A Peugeot two-door sedan can't outrun a Wehrmacht motorcycle patrol in the dark of night, in a strange town where armed controls are on every bridge. It can try, of course, but when it finds itself wedged into the narrowness of a medieval street in the heart of the old town, with all exits blocked, it has to give up.

Unblinkered headlamps – an emergency – blinded them. Steel helmets hid riders' heads, goggles their eyes, black leather their massive shoulders and bulging arms. Gauntlets their hands.

VAROOM
…
VAROOM
!

BANG
!
BANG
! farted a wounded muffler. The shortages these days …

‘Talk to them, Hermann.'

‘Louis, you let Olivier go!'

‘I had to! I had no other choice.'

‘And Giselle and Oona and Gabrielle, eh? Did they have a choice? Gessler won't stop if he lays his hands on him. It won't just be you and me!'

‘I'm sorry, but …'

‘Admit it, that son of a bitch is Vichy's section head of the FTP and your patriotism got to you.
Jésus, merde alors
, don't I know all about it!'

Hermann got out from behind the steering wheel, leaving his door open so that the thirty degrees of frost and its softly falling snow would find his little Sûreté Frog, his constant passenger.

Strolling into the light, he gave the boys a nonchalant wave, a rush of banter, which was cut off by an Unterfeldwebel shouting, ‘Arrest?
Ach! mein lieber
Hauptmann Detektiv Inspektor, we aren't to arrest you.
Mein Gott
, what gave you such a crazy notion? We're to escort you to a meeting with the Chief of Police.'

He didn't say anything. For once Hermann was at an absolute loss for words, didn't even lift a tired hand to indicate they would obediently follow.

Tears frozen to his cheeks, he got back into the car to grip the steering wheel with bare hands.

‘You left your gloves on the bonnet,
mon vieux
.'

‘Fuck my fucking gloves!
Think
, Louis! Gestapo Gessler! We've got to have answers for him we can readily give.'

‘Like, you examined Madame Olivier's bedroom and the scene of the theft, while I interviewed the recluse who was just that, lonely, bitter, very difficult and of little use to us.'

‘
Bonne chance.
It isn't going to work.'

‘All right. Four murders that could just as easily have been eight and should have been if the boys were the targets, forgetting of course, for the moment, Pétain, Laval and Ménétrel!'

‘Gessler will like it if we say it must be a sadist who's sexually incapable of rape. I'll tell him the girls were killed because the assassins had a thing about marital infidelity and wanted to put the fear of God into their lovers.'

‘Who were obviously up to mischief, not just with them, and who needed to be taught a damned good lesson before the scandal of their using vans from the Bank of France erupted in the Government's face.'

‘Give me that again, will you? Christ, I need a fag!'

The car started off with a jerk – water in the petrol, always water these days. Following the eight bikes, they watched as the headlamp beams fled up and over the walls, revealing stonework and doorways from the days of the Célestins perhaps, when in 1410 a monastery had been established at one of the sources, not far from Olivier's house.

Louis repeated the thought, adding, ‘Is that not why Céline Dupuis's note stated, “Lucie, we have to talk. It's urgent”?'

A scandal of massive proportions in an already shaky Government, not just one of an unfaithful wife and Pétain to titillate the local ears. ‘Madame Dupuis was afraid they, too, would be killed – is that what you're saying?'

‘Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux and Camille Lefebvre already had been. All were friends – fast friends, I'm certain.'

‘Four girls, then, the first of whom constantly flaunted her affair with the Minister of Supplies and Rationing whom we've yet to meet.'

‘We've simply been far too busy for such social calls, but yes, our thirty-seven-year-old nurse must have made a nuisance of herself.'

And Bousquet hadn't exactly been telling them the truth.

‘Lucie was pregnant, Hermann, and had had a c
rise de conscience
over the abortion Deschambeault had arranged. I think she may have been threatened early last Saturday morning on her way home from the Hall des Sources and that this is why she changed her mind and got into bed to await Deschambeault's comforting embrace. She could well have become a considerable problem both to him and that family of his, judging by what little we've seen of it so far. Old money never appreciates a mistress who imperils the family fortune and drives an unhappy wife and mother to seek costly help in a private clinic.'

‘But Camille couldn't have become a nuisance to Bousquet, could she?'

‘A Secrétaire Général de Police whose wife and children reside in Paris and who must have come to know the others here only last summer and not two years ago after the Defeat? He'd have had to take his rightful share of the rewards of their little scheme wouldn't he? One of
les gars
?'

‘Laval trusts him, Louis.'

‘Laval told him to work closely with us and to keep him advised of our progress. An embarrassment, then, at the highest level, Hermann. Let us not forget this.'

‘They didn't kill them, did they?' It was a plea.

‘And try to pin it on Olivier?'

‘Who, in the first place, suggested that they had, right? Or at least that the killer or killers had.'

They were now heading north along the river beside its park, the billowing snow from the motorcycles sometimes hiding the road ahead. The villa the Turkish Embassy used came into sight. Herr Gessler's was next. Was God not watching? wondered Kohler. Did He really have to allow things like this to happen to honest, hard-working detectives?

‘An assassin or assassins, Hermann. One or two who move about this town so unobtrusively as to be seen but not seen, accepted but ignored, passed over and forgotten only until that final moment when truth arrives.'

‘One or two who have his or her ear – or both – to the ground at all times, eh?'

‘And who know well beforehand when things are about to happen and must have impeccable sources.'

‘Olivier,
mon enfant.
Olivier and his Edith, and you damned well let him go!'

7

Chez Crusoe was Hermann's kind of place: loud, brassy and crowded, the tobacco smoke pungent, the girls half naked, their legs wrapped in black-mesh stockings and garters, their songs lewd, ribald, saucy or coy and sweetly virginal, with black bowler hats, stick canes and lighted cigars under spotlights; the keys of twin pianos furiously rippling to a thunderous drumbeat …