Paris Requiem (39 page)

Durand pointed to a comfortable armchair. ‘Except for the assault on you, we have no witnesses. No proof.’ He shrugged. ‘But we can go and see Maître Chardon later. For your deposition.’

James didn’t sit. He stared at Durand in disbelief. ‘I don’t understand you, Chief Inspector. Either this attack has addled my brain or there’s something wrong with your interrogation techniques. I suggest we go and interview Caro together right now.’

Durand shook his head. ‘The vice squad officers are with him.’

James examined him closely. He thought of Touquet’s warnings about the corruption in the morality police. Caro would inevitably have old friends in their ranks, let alone new ones who were probably extracting not a little material benefit from his scabrous activities. ‘Are they the problem?’

Durand’s only answer was to finger his lavish moustache reflectively. ‘You should sit down, Monsieur Norton. All this agitation can’t be good for you.’

‘Waiting isn’t good for me either. Or for anyone else. Is the problem with Caro’s friends in the vice squad?’

Durand shrugged. ‘We’ll see, we’ll see. Never forget, Monsieur Norton, that the vice squad is a useful tool of public
order. These officers are right in the thick of the criminal world. They see things in those brothels, on the streets. They hear things … about the plans of anarchists and royalists and any variety of agents of public disorder. Politicians are, how shall I say it, “attached” to them.’

‘And they line their pockets. I worry, Chief Inspector. I worry about those young women trapped in this labyrinth of corruption. They have nowhere to turn.’

‘I worry, too, Monsieur Norton.’ Durand was visibly downhearted.

‘I worry about the progress of our murder enquiry. It seems to lead only to more deaths.’

It came to James again that he genuinely liked the man. The strategy presented itself to him in a flash. He sat down and looked Durand in the eye. ‘We’re going to get you a promotion, Chief Inspector. I suspect your new cabinet, not to mention the upstanding Monsieur Waldeck-Rousseau, would not be averse to seeing at least one branch of the force demonstrating that its position on the Jewish question is the best of Republican ones.’

‘I don’t understand you. What are you suggesting, Monsieur Norton?’

‘My brother has probably already mentioned much of this to you, but let’s take it step be step.’ James told him about the prostitutes who wore the Hebrew character on a chain round their necks. The charms came from Caro. A similar charm had been found in the metro shaft where the supposed suicide of the prostitute had taken place. He emphasised that with a little help from their journalist friends, Durand’s investigation would take on the aura of a campaign. A police intervention to stop the traffic in Jewish women could not but be popular with the new government and even with a substantial sector of the public. It would be in keeping with Dreyfus’s return from Devil’s Island and his new trial. It would demonstrate that the police treated all sectors of the population
with equal respect. It would also demonstrate that the police, Chief Inspector Durand foremost amongst them, were not afraid of seeking out corruption in their own ranks.

Durand listened with distinct scepticism. ‘This is all fine and well, Monsieur Norton. But an investigation deals in facts and witnesses, not vague accusations.’

‘I can help you round up some witnesses immediately, Chief Inspector. Trust me. But you may need to persuade them a little – a promise of papers might not come amiss, perhaps even a change of address, a move to some small town where the witnesses are not at the mercy of Caro’s henchmen and your morality police. What do you say? No, don’t answer me now. Just come with me.’

An hour later, they were outside the Hotel Monpiquet. In the daylight, the building had an innocuous air. It was a slightly shabby edifice, indistinguishable from its neighbours. The door was locked. It took three long rings to rouse a response.

While they waited, Durand questioned him. ‘I thought your primary interest was in the death of Olympe Fabre. With the best will in the world, I can’t see how any of this helps you.’

‘Didn’t Raf mention it? Olympe Fabre used to visit this establishment. She had an interest in the girls’ welfare. Her sister, you should know, after the tragic death of their mother, worked in a similar place for a short while. One of the women we need to interview here knew both the sisters from that time. And Caro could well be implicated in Olympe’s death as well.’

‘I see. So that’s what your brother’s been up to.’

‘What we’ve both been up to.’

Durand threw back his shoulders as the door opened. He held his walking stick like an offensive weapon. ‘Police,’ he announced to a young aproned woman with heavy-lidded
eyes whom James didn’t recognise. She stood to nervous attention.

‘We wish to see Madame Simone,’ he said, imitating Durand’s tone.

The woman looked from one to the other of them, seemed about to say something, then changed her mind and with a shrug led them in.

The red-upholstered main room was all but deserted. It looked tawdry in the light. Two girls in loosely fitting robes sat by the window palms and played cards. Neither of them was Eugénie.

‘Wait here, Messieurs. I’ll fetch her.’

‘No, no.’ James was adamant. He didn’t want the tricky Madame Simone to disappear before their eyes. ‘We’ll come with you.’

‘As you please,’ she repeated the shrug, her tone sullen.

She led them up the stairs James remembered and then up a further three floors. The last staircase was dusty and uneven and James began to rue his earlier determination. His body ached. The wound felt raw.

Their guide paused before she reached the end of the corridor, pointed at a door, then scuttled away with an anxious glance over her shoulder. ‘Don’t tell her I brought you,’ she whispered.

Durand knocked at the door with his stick. ‘Madame Simone,’ he called authoritatively.

‘I’m not dressed,’ a voice grumbled at them.

‘Open up. Police.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘One moment, please. Just one moment.’ The voice was suddenly polite. ‘Did Madame Rosa send you?’

Durand grumbled an indeterminate sound and the door opened.

In the gloom Madame Simone looked like a pudding that had escaped its mould. She was wearing some shapeless yellowish garment which matched the pouches beneath her eyes. Her chin careened down her neck. Her mouth had lost its outlines.

‘You,’ she hissed at James. She collected herself to try a smile at the Chief Inspector who brushed past her into the room. It had the aura of a den in which all the treasures of a lifetime had been stashed. Shawls draped from drawers. Hats with an assortment of smooth and speckled feathers lived their own life in a dingy corner. Cheap beads cascaded from the rim of a mottled dressing-table mirror. A half-open wardrobe poured clothes. The bed was a jumble of greying sheets. Catching his eye, Madame Simone smoothed a limp brocade spread over it. It couldn’t obliterate the musty smell.

‘My apologies, Officer. I had a lie-in this morning.’

‘Chief Inspector.’ Durand moved to open the windows.

‘Chief Inspector. Will you sit?’ She hastily cleared two upright chairs and the clutter at the small table. ‘There. That’s better.’ She smiled at the Chief Inspector, studiously avoiding James, though she left the second chair for him and perched herself at the edge of the bed like some outlandish Antipodean bird.

‘This is a good size room you have here, Madame Simone,’ James heard himself say. ‘I guess it comes with long service.’

The woman didn’t answer.

‘Exactly how long have you worked as the pianist here, Madame?’ The Chief Inspector had his notebook out.

‘About five years, Monsieur.’

‘And before that?’

‘Oh here and there,’ she was deliberately vague. ‘Madame Rosa has been very kind to me. We help each other.’

‘Indeed. And you also help a certain Marcel Caro?’

Simone flashed an invidious glance at James. ‘I don’t know that name, Chief Inspector.’

‘Perhaps you know the man in question by a different name.
We shall have to take you down to the Quai des Orfèvres to have a look at him.’

The woman’s face turned even pastier than before. ‘I have so much to do today. Perhaps you could describe the individual to me.’

Durand offered a terse sketch and James reminded her, ‘The man we know as Caro came with you to the Café Dauphine when we met.’

‘No one came with me. But I think you must be describing Maro. Yes I know Maro a little. Just a little, mind.’ A tension had mounted in her body, so that she looked a little less like a blancmange. She played with the bangle at her wrist, smiled her co-operation at the Chief Inspector.

‘And this Maro,’ James said, ‘introduces girls to your premises, looks after them, in a manner of speaking.’

‘I don’t know that for certain.’

‘You don’t know that for certain,’ the Chief Inspector mimicked her coyness. ‘May I suggest to you in plain language that what you do know for certain is that he’s a trafficker and a pimp.’

The woman didn’t answer.

‘Come now, Madame. We have the man behind bars. And we’ll have you behind an equally rigid set in no time.’ The Chief Inspector was standing. He moved closer to her, his attitude menacing.

Simone flinched.

‘Unless we have your co-operation, Madame, of course. All we need from you is a statement, a signed statement.’

She looked around her wildly, searching for an escape route.

‘You have no need to worry,’ James murmured. ‘Caro or Maro won’t be out of prison for some time, if ever.’

‘But Madame Ro …’ she stopped herself, pretended a cough. ‘Is that where it ends, Chief Inspector?’ she asked in a strangled voice.

‘Almost. The statement will have to be repeated in front of
the investigating magistrate and perhaps again in court. And, of course, just a small point, you will tell us where this Maro of yours gets his girls.’

‘I don’t know that,’ her voice suddenly boomed.

‘But, Madame Simone, don’t you remember? You told me very clearly at the café, that these girls, like Eugénie, were far better off here than in the Pale of Settlement or whatever points east, because of the pogroms, because …’

‘I said nothing of the sort.’

‘Funny, I recall …’ James paced, put on his best thinking face. ‘It was when we were talking about your friends, Rachel and Judith Arnhem. Judith is dead, too. Did you know that? Dead like that poor girl who tumbled to her end in the metro shaft. You knew her, too, didn’t you? You told me that Olympe, that Rachel had put ideas into her head.’

‘Judith dead?’ The woman trembled. ‘But he couldn’t …’ She started again. ‘Maro didn’t know Judith,’ she said bleakly.

‘But he knew Olympe Fabre.’

She covered her face, whimpered. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything.’

‘I think you had better get dressed, Madame.’

‘But …’

‘No, buts. We’ll carry on this interview at Headquarters. It will throw a different light on things.’ Durand patted her shoulder, suddenly amiable. ‘There, there, Madame. It’s not you we’re after. It’s that Maro. We need your help, that’s all.’

‘Eugénie blabbed to you, did she? Did she?’ She was shouting at James. ‘I knew that girl was no good. As soon as he brought her.’

‘Brought her from where?’

She buttoned her lips.

‘We’ll just wait here and you go behind your pretty screen and you put on some clothes. Some nice clothes. We want to make a good impression on the magistrate.’

‘I’m only earning my keep, Chief Inspector. Nothing outside the law. Nothing, I promise you.’

‘Of course.’ Durand soothed.

James positioned himself at the oozing dresser. There was a jewellery tray on it and his eyes strayed over the contents. He gasped. There, at the bottom of the tray, half buried amidst an assortment of bangles and earrings, lay chains with the telltale Hebrew character.

‘Chief Inspector. Over here.’ He pointed to the charms.

Durand smiled, and with a finger to his lips, put the chains in his pocket. ‘You go and find the other one. I’ll meet you downstairs.’ They were whispering.

James hesitated. His head was pounding again. ‘You’ll be gentle with her.’

‘Sweet on her, are you?’ Durand mocked.

‘No, but she’s very young.’

‘This was your idea, remember. And she’s a direct witness to the trafficking. Go on.’ Durand’s face was suddenly as cheerful as if Waterloo had been won.

James knocked softly at the remembered door on the first floor.

‘Tell Madame I not well. Sick,’ a voice called.

James inched open the door. Eugénie was lying in bed, her hair a tangle over the bolster. She sat up, stiffly. ‘Not working yet. Not working.’ Her eyes were vast in her thin face.

‘I just want to talk to you.’ James let himself in and closed the door silently behind him.

She drew the sheets up to her chin.

‘I need you to come with me, Eugénie. To tell the police what you told me the other night. About how you got here. No, don’t be afraid. Afterwards you’ll be free. We can find you work, perhaps. Other work.’

‘Not police. They send me back. My father …’ Her face grew contorted. ‘He kill me. Maro say. No police.’

‘Maro’s in jail. Now, get dressed. Please. I promise you’ll be all right.’ He took some money out of his wallet and placed it on the bed.

She stared from it to him and back again. Then with a shrug, she nodded. ‘I bring everything. Not come here again. Promise.’

James nodded, without quite knowing how he would make good his vow, though do so he must, for too many reasons. He turned his back. He could hear the spring of the bed, the sounds of her dressing, the snap of a case. He wondered for a moment what either of the women could tell them about Comte.

‘Ready.’

Eugénie was wearing a worn brown serge dress that barely reached her ankles. Her hair was neatly clipped back in a tail. Her face was bare of make-up. She looked like nothing so much as a schoolgirl and he realised she must be wearing the clothes she had arrived in. She smiled at him faintly. ‘My own dress. Only my own,’ she pointed to a small round bag with a tie at its top. ‘Better so.’