Salamander (23 page)

‘Hey, calm down, eh? She was only doing what I asked.'

Dufour clenched a fist then dropped it, realizing that Philomena Cadieux would never change. ‘Father Adrian was a good man, Inspector, a true servant of Christ. Please don't let the scandals of a wicked imagination sully a character that was without blemish.'

Kohler removed his scruffy shoes from the desk and helped himself to the last of the Calvados. He would give the bishop a moment to clear the cobwebs of religion.

‘Inspector, what is it you want?'

That was better. He'd let him sit down behind his desk, would take in the florid, frost-burned cheeks and carefully brushed iron-grey hair, the red nose and horn-rimmed glasses. The crinkly smile, the open-handed gesture of …

‘So, what is a little misunderstanding among friends, eh, Inspector? Mademoiselle Aurelle … that one believed the spirit of the devil was within her flesh and that her body had to be purged. Mademoiselle Bertrand … Ah with a woman like that, what is one to do? Father Adrian administered to his little flock, that is all.'

Son of a bitch, Mademoiselle Claudine Bertrand had been among them! ‘What about Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois, Bishop? Was Father Adrian also her confessor?'

Ah
merde
! ‘What … what has she to do with this, my son?'

Kohler flicked his empty glass over the bishop's left shoulder. As it shattered among the flames, Dufour leapt, then settled down. ‘You tell me, Bishop. My partner found her name on the list at the temporary morgue. Did Father Adrian hear her confessions, too, and is that perhaps why he died?'

‘Monsieur … Monsieur, what is it you are saying?'

Dufour looked positively ill. ‘It's Inspector, Bishop. Gestapo HQ, Paris Central.'

‘Yes, yes,
Inspector
, as you wish. Father Adrian was confessor to several. Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois was among them but her brother, Henri, he came to me.'

‘Good. Then start by telling me about him. We'll work from there. Did he know Claudine Bertrand, Bishop? Claudine is also dead.'

‘Lost in the fire?'

Perplexed about it, was he? Kohler hunted among the clutter for the bishop's cigarette box and relieved it of its contents. ‘Not in the fire, Bishop.'

The bushy, dark eyebrows lifted questioningly behind the horn rims. ‘Ah, not in the fire,'
Maudit
, what was one to do? wondered Dufour. ‘Er … how … how did she die, monsieur?'

‘Inspector.'

‘Inspector, how did she die?'

‘First tell me if Henri Charlebois knew Claudine?'

‘Yes, yes, he knew her from a long time ago. Now, please, how did she die?'

‘Silently and without a struggle. I just had a call on your line and the other two, Bishop, so Madame Charlady may have listened in. Vasseur, the coroner, says that I am to tell my partner Claudine Bertrand died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Trouble is, it wasn't an accident. When she breathed in what she thought were the steaming vapours of friar's balsam, she took in enough CO to drop a horse.'

‘Murder?'

Kohler lit up and sat there drawing on the cigarette, watching the bishop closely.

Dufour silently cursed the unmitigated arrogance of the Germans. Oh for sure, he could claim the sanctity of the confessional, but this one, ah he wouldn't listen. Too much had happened, too many had already died but Henri …? Henri Charlebois could have had nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing. ‘Philomena is not always correct in what she invariably states so emphatically, Inspector. It's true that someone other than Mademoiselle Aurelle might—I say might—have telephoned Father Adrian in the twilight of that terrible day. But it could not have been Mademoiselle Claudine Bertrand or even Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois since neither of them would have known of her desires for Father Adrian's person.'

‘Yet someone did, Bishop. Father Adrian knew very well what was about to happen to that cinema. It's my belief, though I can't yet prove it, that he found Mademoiselle Aurelle already naked and tied to her bed. He saw for the first time perhaps that others knew only too well what he'd been up to with her, and he went downstairs and into the cinema hoping to find his accuser and beg forgiveness, only to burn in hell.'

‘The anonymous letters … the préfet has given them to your friend but they … they can mean nothing, Inspector. Nothing! Merely the poison of the unforgiving.'

Dufour's swarthy hands favoured the edge of his desk, caressing thoughts too deep and sad to reveal. He heard, in snatches, the mumbled, secretive words of a young woman who had brushed her body with flames while thinking thoughts no girl of such a tender age should think. He knew that spying on another's confession was paramount among ecclesiastical sins and he begged God to forgive him. He had had to discover what hold Father Adrian had over those women—there'd been too many whispers, too many visits outside the duties of a bishop's secretary …

‘Who knew him well enough to borrow a spare pair of his shoes, Bishop?'

Irritated by the interruption, Dufour left off touching the desk. ‘Yes, yes, Philomena made me aware of the footprints but they could just as easily have been from the day before. She's no detective, whatever else that old bag of bones and lice might claim.'

‘Tell me about the cross. Why was he given it? What favour was exacted in return?'

Mademoiselle Claudine was dead. The image of her at the age of seven came and then at the age of ten and then, alas, at the age of eighteen in the flower of her beauty. ‘Monsieur Henri Masson gave it to him as I have already informed your associate, Inspector.'

‘Yes, but why did he give it to him?'

The Gestapo lit another cigarette, pinching out the butt of the first and pocketing it for later use. The laws of the Church said to remain silent; the laws of humanity said that all must be revealed, that that same Claudine Bertrand, that same child had been tormented by and terrified of the beast within her. That she could not understand why God had made her the way she was and Ange-Marie and young Henri had … had revealed her to herself. ‘Henri Masson gave the cross to Father Adrian in return for his promise to … to watch over his … his only grandson.'

Henri Charlebois. Ah
merde.
‘And not the boy's sister?'

‘No, not the sister.'

‘Was he given it to keep silent?'

‘About what?'

‘Bishop, you know damned well what I mean! Don't fuck about with me.'

‘Then God must answer you, Inspector. When he was presented with the cross, Father Adrian did not tell me the reason for such a gift. It was Monsieur Henri Masson who felt it necessary to ask in return that I keep Father Adrian on here as my secretary.'

‘Would the grandson and/or his sister have known the workings of this place?'

‘Of course, but so would others. People come and go all the time. Both Father Adrian and myself and my other clerics have had many visitors in the past. Once a month we dine with close friends at the manse; others come for an apéritif or cup of tea or coffee in the afternoon. It's natural when one is at the centre of a city's religious life.'

‘Tell me about the grandson, then, and his sister, Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois.'

‘There's nothing to tell. Both are above reproach and I happen to know the young Monsieur Henri was not even in the city at the time of the fire.'

St-Cyr switched off the lights in Claudine Bertrand's bedroom and, parting the curtains, looked down into the darkness of the rue du Boeuf as a cold-hearted cinematographer might have done.

Henri Charlebois sat in his car waiting for him, the engine running in spite of the extreme shortage of gasoline. They'd been stopped twice on the icy streets by German patrols and, each time Charlebois had handed over his papers, the Feldwebel had noted the pass.

The antique dealer was free to come and go as he pleased long after curfew. Though he didn't offer any explanation, it was obvious he had an in with the German authorities and probably supplied some of them with antiques and works of art.

Though he had grown up with Ange-Marie Rachline and Claudine Bertrand, there was not one photograph of him in the album. Had they all been carefully sorted through on the night of Claudine's murder and all trace of her killer's past removed?

Charlebois was too close with his information, too uptight and wary and yet … and yet, the arrogance and the aloofness were only too typical of the well-to-do and those accustomed to dealing with them.

He should have asked him to come up here to look at those empty beds and the bowl and towel that had been used as a vaporizer. He was certain Claudine and her mother had been murdered, certain too, that her killer had been cleverer than most. Hermann might now have the answer.

Things were not right between the brother and sister. Their relationship suggested a naiveté no assistant professor should possess. Clearly the woman needed the affectionate adoration of her
zazous
, failing completely to realize they would be only too willing to use it against her.

She had spoken of her, ‘family', her ‘little friends', a finch and a canary. Devoted to her brother she might be, but was the relationship one of suppression and fear?

Hermann had been so certain it had been a woman in that belfry. He'd been certain, too, of a woman in the rue des Trois Maries last night, the scent of
Étranger
in his nostrils. Was it yourself, Monsieur Charlebois? he asked and said, You are finely boned, tall and thin … yes, yes, monsieur. The long dark eyelashes, the lack of hair on the backs of your hands—is that why you touch the left one when nervous? Do you like impersonating women?

Given kohl and powder, rouge and lipstick, a dress, coat, gloves, scarf and hat with its bit of veil, would the concierge here not think you Madame Rachline, or is it that you came in afterwards when he was busy elsewhere?

The Dijon alibi—would they have time to punch holes in it? Probably not, and Charlebois probably knew it too.

Then I will take him to the morgue and make him view Claudine's body, said St-Cyr silently. A positive identification, monsieur. Yes, yes, cruel though that might be. Vasseur's incision right from beneath the chin down to the sexual organs. We will look at the lungs, the heart, the stomach.

He would take him to the Lycée Ampère and make him walk among the corpses. He would break him if he could just as Charlebois, if it had been him, had inadvertently stepped on the Christmas-tree ornament Claudine must have had in her left hand before slipping off into oblivion. An ornament that had either come from his own apartment or from La Belle Époque, but also one, perhaps, that Frau Weidling had been photographed with while naked and holding it in the cup of her hands. Ah yes.

Could Charlebois have been so cruel as to have planned it all so carefully? Two women, then three, then one, a man. A Salamander.

Claudine had needed money to leave Lyon and start a new life. She had either known exactly what must happen, or had been convinced that only a meeting with Frau Weidling was planned for that cinema.

Someone had called Father Adrian to summon him. Had it been Claudine or Martine Charlebois, or Ange-Marie Rachline?

The high-heeled shoes that had been left in the belfry were of dark blue alligator, pre-war and handmade in Italy for the firm of Stadelmier und Blechner on the Leipziger Strasse. Good goods and probably the best pre-war shopping street in Berlin.

Kohler was impressed. Which Cinderella had the Salamander chosen to target by leaving the shoes up there or had she left them herself? Madame Rachline—were her feet that small? One of her girls at La Belle Époque? Claudine perhaps? Frau Kaethe Weidling née Voelker, or Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois, the girl with the bicycle?

The shoes had hardly been worn. Indeed, though they were well kept, he had the thought they'd not been worn since those other fires in 1938. They'd been bought on impulse perhaps and then hidden away. Had she been ashamed of them and what they'd shown her of herself, or had the joy of such pretty things been taken from her by those fires?

Madame Philomena Cadieux didn't want to give them up but he told her she'd better. ‘You'd look ridiculous in them at your age. Right? Besides, I have to find the feet they shod.'

Oxalic acid, Louis, he said to himself as he went out into the night. A white, crystalline powder looking not unlike granulated sugar. Used as a cleaning agent and as a bleach.
When combined with sulphuric acid
,
it produces carbon monoxide
AND
carbon dioxide.

Deadly if breathed in concentrations of one per cent CO, which would have been the least case, and not a hint of what was happening, poor thing.

Whoever had fed Claudine the vapours of friar's balsam had made damn certain she'd die. So, too, her mother.

But Louis would not yet know of this. ‘Ah
merde
, be careful,
mon vieux.
Don't take anything for granted.'

*
from the verb
se débrouiller
, to manage

7

‘M
ADAME
R
ACHLINE, IT IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL
that you accompany me to the central morgue. I regret the necessity but …'

‘But business is business, Inspector St-Cyr. Is that it?'

Ah
nom de Dieu
, had he struck a sensitive chord at last? ‘Madame, a childhood friend and employee is dead. Please, I must insist. I've a car waiting.'

A car … ‘Did she die in peace?'

What was the woman thinking? ‘Yes. She would not have known.'

‘Then what is the concern? For years Claudine has wanted release, Inspector. If she died in her sleep, then her soul is at rest.'

He would have to be firmer. ‘Madame, murder is suspected. A positive identification is necessary of both Mademoiselle Bertrand and her mother. The law requires that you accompany me. If you refuse, then I will ask the magistrate to issue you with a summons and the préfet to provide you with the necessary escort!'