Kaleidoscope (22 page)

Kohler removed the bloodied handkerchief from his throbbing nose but still stared at the ceiling of the tiny dressing-room. He'd come half-way across the city, right back to Montparnasse, hoping to find Louis and the girl with Gabi at the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre. But they hadn't been here.

Now the
chanteuse
was on deck singing her heart out like a nightingale while he soaked his beleaguered feet in warm and soapy water.

Gingerly he explored his nose as he listened to her. Had Louis broken it this time? A logical mistake of course. But why did he have to stamp on the toes as well as knee him in the groin?

He shut his eyes and marched or waited beside the guns of both sides in this lousy war as she sang ‘Lilli Marlene'. He saw his two boys in better days, picked apples with them – hey, they'd had such a good time then. One of those rare weekends he'd been home. They'd gone fishing – yes, yes. Gerda had packed them a fantastic hamper. Beer, schnapps, cold ham, hard-boiled eggs, pickled beets.

A tear fell and then another and he said, ‘Jesus, Louis, what the hell are we going to do? It's a set-up, my old one. Delphane is trying to frame us.'

He took out the Abwehr's pay envelope and ripped it open, dropping the handkerchief into the foot-bath, still dropping blood too.

Bleicher had given him the dead airman's identity disc. Flight Lieutenant Charles Edward Thomas. A serial number followed. Lost in thought, Kohler ran a worried thumb over the thing, asked, Why had Bleicher given it to them and, knowing of the airman's body, why had he not jumped on Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi himself?

Jean-Paul Delphane had been after her. Yes, yes, but he was working for Gestapo Cannes.

Bleicher's been watching Delphane. Bleicher suspects him of something. Gestapo Cannes are playing a wait and see.

The man from Bayonne, ah yes, a man who could threaten a whole village and think nothing of it.

He felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder and realized that the song was over and he'd failed to hear the thunderous applause of the boys out front. ‘You're exhausted, Hermann. Why not try to sleep? Louis won't come here, not if he feels it might endanger me.'

She was absolutely gorgeous. Tall and willowy. ‘Then I've put my foot right in it, haven't I?'

‘Only because he is your friend – no, no, don't deny it. Louis and you … Hey, you're something special, isn't that so?'

Another tear fell and she knew then that Hermann Kohler was really worried and that the cognac must have got to him a little. ‘Is it a matter of the Resistance?' she asked, cutting right to the heart of things.

‘Why the Resistance?' he asked, taking hold of her by the hand. She had such long and slender fingers, looked absolutely smashing in that sky-blue silk sheath with its vertical rows of tiny seed pearls.

‘Because Jean-Paul Delphane of the Deuxième Bureau came to see me here last night. I am to telephone their office immediately either of you contact me.'

‘And?' he asked, for more than worry had come into those violet eyes of hers.

She shrugged the fantastic shoulders. ‘The Abwehr … as of late this afternoon they, too, have demanded that I do the same for them.'

The identity disc was still in his palm and there was no need for her to ask about it. The implications of such things were all too clear. ‘What will you do?' she asked.

Her hair was the colour of a very fine brandy. It was swept up and pinned to expose a slender neck that was soft … so very soft. ‘Go back to the village in Provence. Sort it all out where it happened. Pick up the rest of the pieces.'

He was really upset, a lion in the winter of his life, knowing the jackals were out there waiting to devour him.

‘The thing I can't understand, Gabi, is why Delphane doesn't want us to get to the twin sister Josette-Louise. That one lives here in Paris. She was estranged from her mother and hasn't seen her sister in Provence in years.'

She asked him to tell her what he could and listened as Hermann Kohler found the need within himself to tell her everything. He told her of the cottage, of the village and its herbalist, of the ruins of a Roman or Saracen stronghold high on the hilltop above it all. He said, ‘Those ruins, Gabi, I've got a feeling they can only mean trouble for us.'

‘The Affair Stavisky?' she half asked, losing herself in thought, her mind leaping ahead. ‘A kaleidoscope whose platelets have been cut from gemstones.'

‘Thirty-five thousand francs to redeem it.'

‘A need for cash, then, but a will so firm she would sell nothing from her father's villa.'

‘Stubborn … she must have been one hell of a stubborn woman.'

‘Aren't we all?'

He tried to grin and, realizing that he still held her hand, finally released it. ‘Louis is a fool, Gabi. I'd have told Pharand and Boemelburg I'd had enough. I'd have taken you away and married you.'

‘Compliments are always nice to receive.' She bent to kiss him on the cheek, a brush so soft and warm he could not fail to notice her perfume even though his nose was such a wreck.

But when he said nothing, she thought Louis had not told him about the makers of Mirage, that Louis still must keep his little secrets from his friend and partner.

‘Louis does his thing, Gabi, and I let him,' said Kohler, having figured it all out.

She kissed him on the cheek again and brushed a hand fondly over his hair. ‘You saved my son, Hermann Kohler, but even so, I cannot reveal where Louis is.'

‘But he's safe?'

‘Yes, yes, for now, I think, though it is only intuition which tells me where he must have gone.'

The shop called Enchantment on the Place Vendôme. The underwear store. And the perfume of Mirage …
ja, ja
… the juice for the loins.

‘Wait while I do this set, then I will drive you around until we find him,' she said, resigned to having lost the battle, for she'd seen he'd understood only too well.

Kohler did what she so desperately wanted. He shook his head and put his feet up, said, ‘Leave the door open, Gabi, and sing this old soldier to sleep. I've had it.'

Dawn forced a gun-metal hue between the bars of pitiful harshness in the sky over St-Cyr's beloved Belleville. Wearily he slogged round the corner and into the rue Laurence-Savart. Already the boys were heading off to school. Playfully they pushed at each other, snatched the toque of one, tried to trip another or merely trudged along with schoolbags strapped to the back as welcome protection against the snowballs, ah yes.

When one of them saw him, they all stopped. Stood rooted like frozen elves muffled in their heavy coats, long scarves, toques and mittens. And the old grey canyon of the street, filled with its iron-blue fog of frost, held them against the paving stones.

St-Cyr tried to give a cheery wave though still haunted by the unfortunate death of the dancer at Les Naturistes.

In a rush, the breath blowing, Dédé Lebelle said, ‘It's him. He's back already.'

The detective looked like a guilty mole, hunched before the shattered gate of its little house. ‘He's lost the briefcase,' whispered Hervé Desrochers whose father operated a
v
é
lo-taxi
in the Place de l'Opéra and had already left for work one hour ago.

‘First the car,' whispered Guy Vachon. ‘That great big beautiful black Citroën. Then they have taken away the revolver only to give it back
after
the shooting has begun.'

‘Then the demotion with loss of pay,' swore Antoine Courbet who lived directly across the street from the detective and therefore knew much more about him than anyone else. ‘Then the wife drops her underpants and planks herself out beneath a German general.'

‘He was a lieutenant, idiot!' swore someone. ‘They did it standing up. All Germans do it that way! It's part of their training.'

Courbet tossed the indifferent hand of his father. ‘Oh for sure, my apple-cart, what does it matter whether the woman is up or down, eh? Or the man a general or a private? The shaft of one Boche is the same as that of another, and that one down there, he has turned the blind eye and the cowardly cheek of the cuckold!'

‘Then she came back to him,' said Dédé, shaking his head, ‘and
boom!
That was the end of her.'

‘And the little son,' said someone else. ‘The Resistance. Did they make a mistake or did they not?'

‘He's got a mistress,' seethed Antoine whose mother had once looked after the detective's house but had lost her job in the bang. ‘He couldn't
wait
to get rid of the wife. He
let
the Resistance do the job for him.'

‘The Nazis shot his car to pieces on that last job,' offered Guy Vachon hesitantly. ‘At the garage where my father now works for the Boches, they got the job of fixing it.
Fixing
a car like that these days? Pah! It's unfortunate.'

‘Me, I
never
want to become a detective,' sighed Hervé. ‘Breakfast could be your last meal.'

‘Shall we wave?' suggested Dédé, half in hopes the others would agree. He looked so sad, the detective.

‘My father would kill me,' swore Antoine. ‘Until the windows of our house are replaced, that one is to be ostracized.'

‘He
can't
ask the Germans to do it for him,' said someone. ‘We'd hate him more than we already do if he did.'

Hervé shook his head in wonder at the way the world turned. ‘He looks like Christ in winter without the benefit of His breakfast of wafers and wine.'

The boys did not wave. St-Cyr stood there by the gate, the hand of friendship raised again and doubtfully yet again.

Yanking open the shattered gate someone had wired in place, he ignored the
Verboten
signs of the Germans and the scribbled
Traitor
of someone else.

The front of the house was a wreck. If something wasn't done soon, the place would be completely finished.

Boards were strewn about. There were bits of splintered wood. To have even touched one would have brought prison – that's what the
Verboten
meant. But he knew that things could so easily have been taken in any case were it not for the unspoken code of the street. They had condemned him to doubt and until the matter of his loyalties and the destruction of his house et cetera, et cetera were resolved, they would not touch a thing.

Whoever had wired the gate shut must have done it at night.

He lit a fire in the kitchen stove. Soon hot water was available. The shave then, ah yes, and the brushing of the teeth …

It was Marianne's spare toothbrush and it took him several moments to overcome the guilt and remorse a detective's life had caused, but nothing could be wasted these days. Besides, he had left his only toothbrush at the cottage in Provence. It had gone completely out of his head. Such an important thing.
Ah merde
!

When Gabrielle Arcuri found him on her way home from work, he was sitting at the table smoking a pipe of Luftwaffe tobacco and musing over bits and pieces. There was no sign of the girl Josette-Louise and she knew then that Louis really had kept her safely hidden. It pleased her immensely to find her mind so in tune with his.

The
santon
of the herbalist was there, a beechwood bobbin wound with russet wool in many shades, a clot of the same. The silver kaleidoscope was beautifully engraved. There was a gold locket and chain containing photographs of two curly-headed girls. ‘And three tiny scabs of lichen, Gabrielle,' he said, nudging them into better view.

‘Where are the lantern slides of the father's artwork, Louis, and the box in which that thing was kept?'

The kaleidoscope … Hermann must have told her everything. ‘Both in a locker at the Gare de l'Est awaiting retrieval on the return journey.'

‘Will you be free by Christmas?'

‘Ask the Nazis. I think they have simply forgotten it this year. Perhaps it was not in Hitler's budget.'

‘You're not pleased to see me.'

‘Of course I'm not. It's far too dangerous.'

‘Hermann said it was now okay for me to come here. I'm to tell you he's gone to see Boemelburg. He'll demand a letter guaranteeing safe passage for you both and the girl, Josette-Louise.'

‘Good. At least it will get us back to Provence. Once there, we will have to look after ourselves again.'

‘God, I'm so tired of singing “Lilli Marlene”, Louis.'

When he didn't say a thing, she dumped her handbag on a chair and pulled off the sable coat. Was dressed quite simply in a plain skirt, blouse and sweater.

‘I don't like it when you're angry with me,' she said.

He removed his pipe. ‘I'm not. I'm angry at a world which no longer allows a detective the patient contemplation of the case before him.'

She sat awhile, letting him look at his little bits and pieces. She picked up the Cross of Lorraine and, as in a game of chess, slid the identity disc into its place.

‘The body in that house,' he said. ‘Who found it?'

She moved the enamelled Cross back into view beside the disc. ‘The Abwehr, Louis.'

Though he nodded, it was as if he'd already known. He laid the photograph of Josette-Louise Buemondi above the open locket. He said, ‘I stood over that girl late last night as she slept. Chantal and Muriel, they were very good about my bringing a fugitive to them. She's so like her sister, Gabi, and yet … and yet there is the world of difference.'

‘The Stavisky Affair?' she said softly. One could not prod the mind too hard at times like this.

‘Ah yes, Stavisky, Gabrielle. The financier took the weaver's father for a fortune.'

‘But Anne-Marie Buemondi's father made one and got out before the crisis.'

‘Did M. Cordeau advise the weaver's father of what investments to make?' he asked.

‘Perhaps,' she said. It was so good to be thinking with him.