5

Snow filtered down, and as the light over the Allier River and the hills beyond it became a deeper grey in the gathering dusk, the line of waiting traffic moved ahead a few metres. Homeward-bound farm wagons and gazogène lorries that had obviously hauled firewood and other produce into Vichy were ahead of them and, at the very end, this lonely Peugeot.

‘Merde,’ swore Louis bitterly. ‘The nation that expects the Blitzkrieg from us at all times provides delays that can only impede progress! Deschambeault cuts short an important meeting to visit a racing stable but makes certain he takes along the resident rat catcher? Inés Charpentier insists on joining them and wears Shalimar when first encountered but no longer does so, and no longer carries the flacon in her valise because I was foolish enough to have mentioned it? The 1925, Hermann, and, as you well know, the same as Céline Dupuis was wearing when killed! That dress, the necklace and earrings could all be from the same year!’

And Marie-Jacqueline had had three-fifths of a bottle of the Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale in her, the 1925.

‘Our sculptress worries me, Hermann. She’s like a leech that has to draw blood, only with her it’s a fascination with what we are about that is so troubling. Did she once possess a knife like this?’

Louis dragged the thing out. ‘Does she know Paul Varollier and his sister, Blanche?’ asked Kohler. ‘The soles of Monsieur Paul’s shoes matched those the flics circled in the snow.’

‘And you let me wait in this line-up? You don’t tell me things like that right away? Sacré nom de nom, how could you not have done so?’

‘I just did. Blanche had keys to both Céline’s and Lucie’s rooms but says she returned the latter.’

‘And was able to come and go at will, leaving love letters presumably to taunt Ménétrel; the identity card to warn Bousquet that les gars are indeed being watched?’

‘Those letters are to Céline, aren’t they?’ asked Kohler.

‘Of course they are! Ah mon Dieu, you doubt my word? Look, then!’

Madame Dupuis, Hôtel. d’Allier was written on the top envelope, the hand firm enough, the cancellation stamp dated Monday, 1 February 1943.

‘Read it,’ said Kohler. ‘Go on, don’t be shy. Since when did you owe the Maréchal any privacy?’

‘Must I?’

‘And spoken like a loyal poilu! I might have known!’

They were both exhausted and bitchy. Kohler yanked the packet from him and tore it open, freeing the envelope to let him have it verbatim. ‘Ma chère Ange,’ – my dear angel – ‘your eyes are like the blue of the finest sapphires, your breath the soft, sweet nectar to whose scent the bee finds he must come.’

‘Foragers are females!’ snorted St-Cyr. ‘Doesn’t the old drone know anything about bees?’

They’d just come off the case of a Parisian beekeeper …

‘When I see you dancing, I want to make you my Goddess of the Water Sprites. More bullshit, and even more of it,’ said Kohler, flipping impatiently through the thing until … ‘There are places we can meet where no one else will know. Please say the word and still the quivering of a heart that longs to kiss its little flower and caress its soft and exquisite petals. Oh-oh, the horny old goat, eh, Louis?’

The line of traffic moved ahead one space, the car jerked as Hermann let out the clutch, then slammed on the brakes.

‘I must embrace you. Bernard can arrange everything. Bernard, my sweet. Look upon him as a friend in need and his loyalty and absolute discretion will be yours, as they are my own. No wonder Ménétrel wants the letters, Louis. They as much as say he arranged the liaison that led to her death, but why the hell would anyone, even Blanche Varollier or that brother of hers, remove and then return them?’

‘To be found not by Bousquet or the doctor, Hermann, but by ourselves.’

‘But … but surely our killer or killers couldn’t have known we’d go there soon? Surely Blanche and her brother couldn’t have?’

‘But someone did. Someone who knows us well. The very staircase I would take in that hotel, my name on that list before we even knew we’d have to leave Paris.’

‘Someone so close to things here, he, she or they are not only aware of what’s going on moment by moment, but can come and go at will.’

‘And aren’t even noticed, Hermann, because, like others in the Government and the town, they are a part of the woodwork. They must be, and they know this and are confident of it. Supremely so.’

Lost to the thought – feeling exceedingly uncomfortable because of it – Louis took back the letter and began to retie the ribbon. ‘A good ten letters … no, fifteen,’ he said, ‘but not all of the envelopes, though of the same colour, use identical stationery.’

‘Pardon?’

‘These …’ He quickly sorted through them. ‘Are to a Madame Noëlle Olivier.’

‘And the dates?’ muttered Kohler, knowing now that they had been left for them on purpose!

‘June, July, September, October and November 1925, Hermann, and all from the Maréchal.’

‘To another married woman? Another of his conquests? Was the bugger so arrogant as to have sent them to her home? Well, was he?’

‘To 133 boulevard des Célestins, Vichy.’

‘Jésus, merde alors, take the topmost one and read it, then. Let whoever’s trying to tell us something, tell it!’

Paris, 15 November 1925

My dear Madame Olivier,

You will excuse me if it appears harsh when I tell you enough is enough. Should you wish to pursue your intentions, please do so through my solicitors. Remember, though, that such a scandal as you envision is always a two-edged sword. Your good name and those of your husband and children are at present free from all such concerns. To wound them so grievously is to wound yourself and gain nothing. Love is always a battleground. Some you win, and from some you must inevitably retreat.

Adieu.

Pétain

‘A glacier, Louis.’

‘Oui. But what did she do? This letter has been stained by a flood of tears and then tightly crumpled into a ball, only to be later flattened out.’

‘Did she use the rope, take poison, drown herself, find a gun, or simply go on living?’ asked Kohler.

‘Only to keep the memory of him close and bide her time?’

‘Or are we looking for the husband and is he the one who ducks into and out of rooms to leave things for us to find?’

There were always questions, seldom easy answers. Because of a bend in the road and its rise and narrowness, they hadn’t been able to see the entrance to the bridge but now could. Instead of two men on the Boutiron Control, there were four. Instead of acne-faced teenagers in oversized greatcoats with Mauser rifles, this detail wore winter whites with hoods up and cradled Schmeissers in white-mittened hands to keep the grease on their weapons from congealing.

‘A Sonderkommando?’ asked Louis, sickened by the sight and quickly stuffing away the letters and the knife.

A special command. ‘Waffen-SS,’ breathed Kohler softly. ‘Straight in from Russia via the glorious army of the South that’s now based in Lyons. An airdrop likely. Unless I’m mistaken, mon vieux, Bousquet, thinking the worst and that les gars really were the targets, must have run to Herr Gessler and the nameless one, and they called in the fist.’

There would be motorcycle patrols and arrests – all manner of such things. ‘And if we so much as question someone or take too great an interest in them,’ said St-Cyr sadly, ‘so will they.’

Unsettled by the thought, they waited, and when the car was finally noticed in the line-up, a mittened fist soon pounded on the side window.

Hermann rolled it down. ‘Trouble, Sergeant?’ he asked pleasantly enough in Deutsch.

Shrapnel had once torn the right side of the Scharführer’s face from well above the half-closed, lead-grey eye to the raw-boned chin. The last three fingers of the right hand were missing, the left shoulder permanently hunched forward.

‘Papiere, mein Herr.’

‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central. We’re in a bit of a rush, Scharführer.’

‘That does not matter.’

‘Don’t you need the password?’

‘If you wish.’

Herr Kohler gave out with the Quatsch. Harvests ripe and all, the song perfect, thought Gerd Schepp. But this Kripo was known to point the finger of truth at his own kind and wore the scars of it. Disloyal, not a true believer, and one to be treated as if Scheisse were on the boots.

That thumb and forefinger were impatiently snapped. Finding the papers wasn’t easy. ‘Your right coat pocket, Herr Detektiv Inspektor,’ offered Louis submissively.

‘Ah! Danke.’

A packet of long-forgotten cigarettes – emergency rations – was now more than slightly crushed, Louis having tucked it in there and four left, only four.

Offered up, straightened and lit – one each and the French half of the partnership totally left out – the papers were found and handed over to be closely scrutinized.

‘You’re a long way from home,’ tried Hermann. ‘Ferleiten … the Hohe Tauern, near the Italian border?’

He’d deliberately got the location wrong so as to encourage conversation, thought St-Cyr, only to hear the Scharführer grunt, ‘Mathausen. I used to work in the granite quarry but now they have plenty of cheap labour though they could, perhaps, still use someone with a knowledge of explosives if you’re interested.’

A concentration camp!

‘The north bank of the Danube near Enns? Mein Gott, Louis, how could I have missed it? One tries so hard but I’ve been away too long, I guess. Here, sorry I forgot to light a cigarette for you. Have mine.’

‘Destination?’ demanded Schepp.

‘A cabin downriver. A crime scene,’ said Kohler blandly and never mind about their heading for the racetrack!

‘Recent?’

‘Not so recent.’

‘Then there’s no rush, is there?’

‘Not really.’

‘Length of stay?’

Verdammt, were they going to be watched that closely? ‘An hour or two, Scharführer. More if we find something we need to follow up.’

‘Curfew has been rolled back to twenty-one hundred hours. Make sure you’re tucked in by then.’

The buzzing drone of a low-flying Storch interrupted them. Camouflaged, sand-coloured from the desert war in North Africa and looking like a skinny dragonfly with stiff legs, the plane roared overheard at 200 metres, then quickly throttled back to drop to river level.

‘The tiny aerodrome below the village of Charmeil,’ explained St-Cyr humbly. ‘It’s only five kilometres from here, Inspektor. The Maréchal Pétain has a large farmhouse in the village; Herr Abetz a chateau, I believe.’

Hermann paid no apparent attention, would continue to try to break through that armour.

‘Were you at Stalingrad with von Paulus and the 6th, Scharführer? I ask only because my boys were there and still are.’

‘And not on the long march into Siberia? They’re among the lucky then, aren’t they, Herr Hauptmann der Geheime Stattspolizist?’

Fish only when there are fish to be caught and then you won’t be humiliated, thought St-Cyr ruefully. The whole of the 6th Army, what had been left of it, had been taken. Over 90,000 men were on that march, but the Scharführer was letting Hermann know his sons were heroes, their father something far less. Paris had informed Herr Gessler of who Hermann was, and Gessler had spread the word.

‘Lucky, yes,’ muttered Hermann tightly. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘The same war.’

‘Banditen in the hills? That was a spotter plane, wasn’t it?’

‘Terroristen, ja. Communists. FTPs. We’ll soon clean them out. Who’s he?’

‘Him? The Frenchman they gave me to run errands. St-Cyr, Sûreté.’

‘The Oberdetektiv Jean-Louis St-Cyr of 3 Laurence-Savart in Belleville, Paris? The one who gets his name splashed all over the papers?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s him.’

‘Then just remember the two of you are on your own. We have enough to do as it is and won’t be lifting a finger to help should you get into difficulties. Oh, I’ve forgotten my hand. This finger.’ The roof was banged. ‘Pass. Erich, let this one pass,’ called out the Scharführer. ‘They have to pee.’

‘Sorry, Louis,’ muttered Kohler. ‘You know I didn’t mean that bit about running errands.’

The Sonderkommando would net the innocent, the terrified who would bolt simply because they wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, and perhaps even a few maquisards would be caught. But was the threat really from the Résistance as Bousquet and the others thought? And had the Führer not also used the opportunity to make absolutely certain Pétain didn’t go over to the Allies?

The aerodrome would still have French aircraft sufficient for a night flight to Morocco or Algiers, and Hermann … Hermann had been told by the nameless one that the Reich didn’t want anything happening to the Maréchal or else.

They had reached the stables.

‘Hermann, will you be okay in there?’

Louis was remembering the SS and the scar of a rawhide whip that his partner had earned in the stables of a chateau on the Loire near Vouvray early last December, the château of Gabrielle Arcuri’s mother-in-law. ‘Me? Fine. No problem.’

Perhaps. ‘There are two cars parked outside, and one engine is colder than the other.’

‘Ferbrave’s come running, I think.’

‘And Albert?’

‘Has found more rats than he bargained for.’

Built at the turn of the century, their heavily timbered cupolas rising above the loft, the stables’ stalls were arranged off an aisle that was more than 300 metres in length and held the accumulated tack of all those years. There were thoroughbreds, quarter horses, trotters, hunters and those for just plain pleasure. Lucie Trudel’s dappled grey was a splendid gelding; the stall was immaculate, even with a snapshot of her pinned up for the horse to look at if lonely.

Stablehands, and the usual hangers-on every track seemed to have, were about, riders still coming in. Two of the Blitzmädchen, the grey mice who had come from the Reich to work as telegraphers and typists, et cetera, were rubbing down a bay mare and whispering sweet nothings to it. A Wehrmacht général and his orderly were dismounting to hand over the reins. Everything seemed quite normal. A busy place. Bicycles had been parked outside and at least two staff cars were at the far end.

‘No trouble, then,’ breathed Kohler.

‘But trouble all the same,’ sighed Louis.

To the north-east, there was the racetrack and, just to the west of this and in line with the stables, the grandstand with the Jockey Club’s reception rooms, restaurant and bar on the ground floor and first storey.

The showjumping course and paddocks were closer to the stables. The whole area must be lovely even in winter, thought Kohler. Fantastic if one had the money and time. And good to see that the Wehrmacht felt at least some horses should remain in France. A necessity.

‘Please don’t forget the sports club and golf course that are behind us, Inspector,’ said Louis tritely. ‘The tennis club and its swimming pool also.’

‘And the clay-pigeon shoot which is a little to the west so that the noise won’t disturb things here, eh? Merde, where the hell are Deschambeault and Ferbrave and our two innocents?’

If one of them was indeed innocent!

Not here, one of the hangers-on seemed to say, nodding curtly towards the way they’d come.

Blue-blinkered lanterns were being lit, but above them were strings of paper ones, from the Mikado perhaps, which once would have illuminated the dances that the owners must have held at the Jockey Club after successful races. Champagne and les élégantes de tout Paris wandering up into the loft to soft lights and beds of hay. Cigars, too!

‘A bloody firetrap, Louis!’ snorted Kohler, the pungency of manure, hay, horse piss and oats mingling with that of occasional and not-so-occasional tobacco. ‘Stay down here. I’ll take a look above.’

Again St-Cyr asked if his partner was all right; again Kohler had to reassure him.

Torch in hand, Hermann began to climb one of the ladders. In many ways it was similar to the stable at Vouvray. He hesitated – that bad knee of his, cursed St-Cyr silently. He went on, was soon out of sight. Perhaps they’d come a third of the way along the main aisle, perhaps a little more, but … Ah mon Dieu, what was going on? Everything had suddenly stopped. Even the Blitzmädchen hesitated …

Shrill on the damp, cold air came a high-pitched, ‘no, monsieur! please, no!’

From the far end of the aisle a stallion neighed in fright and began to kick its stall. Inès Charpentier shrieked again and again, which only frightened the horse more. It kicked and kicked and neighed, the girl trying desperately to dodge its hooves. Others became restless. Others began to join in …

Hermann moved past him in a blur. He ran, he reached the stall ahead of the stablehands, snatched a prod from the wall, opened the door and vanished.

Sickened by what they must surely find, for the sculptress had given one last, piercing shriek that had been abruptly cut off, St-Cyr brushed past the others to enter the stall. Hermann had a firm grip on the halter and had tucked the prod under an arm, having used a shoulder to force the stallion against a wall and away from the girl.

‘Easy … Easy,’ he said, his voice soothing. ‘Now calm yourself, my beauty. You pinch them on the neck or cheek, Louis. That distracts them, then offer the carrot if you have one. You’re a handsome devil, aren’t you?’ he went on to the stallion, a magnificent three-year-old but still very high-strung. ‘You’re worth plenty and are certain to take the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp this October, only it won’t be held there due to possible acts of terrorism, they say, so it and the other races will be held at Le Tremblay to the north-east of Paris. Please don’t worry.’

On and on he went, talking to the horse. He asked about the cinder track at Vincennes and how it was, said he was sorry that racing at Deauville had had to be cancelled in 1940. ‘The RAF simply don’t understand, do they? Louis,’ he said in that same carefully modulated voice. ‘Louis, the sculptress.’

Curled into a ball, trembling so hard she couldn’t move, Inès Charpentier cowered in a far corner. No tears, nothing but shock.

‘Take her out now,’ said Hermann. ‘Just do it gently.’

Her wrists were cold, her hands freezing, that lovely coat from the thirties, with its deer-horn buttons, in a mess that she didn’t even notice.

Clinging to him, she quivered as they squeezed past Hermann; she was so thin, could be a killer, but couldn’t, St-Cyr told himself, and finally said, ‘Let the tears come, mademoiselle. Please don’t be ashamed.’

‘I can’t,’ she gasped. ‘I haven’t cried in years.’

‘And you’re terrified of horses, aren’t you,’ he said, ‘yet chose to come here anyway?’

‘I have to sculpt them, don’t I?’ she snapped, pulling away from him to place a steadying hand flat against the boards of the nearby wall.

‘Argue if you wish, mademoiselle, but anyone who claims to be fascinated by horses, as you did to Monsieur Grenier, must have been around them enough to know they can and will sense fear and often react accordingly.’

‘I hit the horse. I was flung right at it!’

‘But didn’t think to try to calm it.’

‘Ferbrave … Henri-Claude Ferbrave of the Garde Mobile saw you coming and wanted to keep you from talking to Albert.’

Closed for the season, the Jockey Club’s bar and restaurant would be pitch dark, Inès told herself. Still terrified by what had happened, still shaking, she knew the building must be huge, knew the beams from St-Cyr’s and Kohler’s distant torches must be flickering over empty tables with chairs leaning inwards. Sometimes she could hear the detectives, most often not, for in their haste to stop Henri-Claude, they’d left her far behind, hadn’t realized, grâce à Dieu, that her eyes were giving her such trouble. They couldn’t know that always now it was like this for her when going from a lighted room into darkness. Everything totally black. No use in blinking the eyelids to clear the eyes, though she often did this and must learn to stop. Always the panic, the terror, that cloying sickness of never knowing if and when someone might grab her or her handbag.

The detectives must be going up a staircase, for Herr Kohler’s voice suddenly echoed. ‘Louis, you leave that salaud to me!’ To me …

‘Never, and you know it!’ shouted St-Cyr.

Their shoulders hit a door, Herr Kohler shouting at the occupants as it burst inwards, ‘Ferbrave?’ The answer, one she knew the detectives could only dread: ‘Outside.’

And in the grandstand.

Feeling her hesitant way forwards – telling herself that she absolutely must somehow continue to keep from them her not being able to see – Inès stumbled blindly into a table, knocked over a chair, then … then started up the staircase. Henri-Claude had cared only to find out how much Albert really knew of the killings and the knife he’d found, and what the groundskeeper’s son had told the detectives of the transport of illegal goods by vans of the Bank of France. There’d been no time to prise such answers from him in the stables. Ferbrave hadn’t cared a damn about what might happen to her. She was expendable. She must hide the darkness from him, too, for he could just as easily have slit her throat and might still do so. He had run after Albert. Monsieur Gaëtan-Baptiste Deschambeault hadn’t cared either and had run after them.

And now? she asked herself, pausing to listen closely and to still the panic the darkness always brought. Now the curved iron of what must be an art nouveau balustrade was cold beneath her hand. Now Ferbrave would either protect himself and the others, and what had been going on for far too long, or fail.

The others, she thought and wept inwardly. Bousquet, Richard – Minister of Supplies and Rationing – the banker also and, yes most certainly, Honoré de Fleury, Inspector of Finances, to say nothing of their friends and associates.

‘Louis … Louis, where are they?’ asked Kohler, dismayed by what lay before them.

Ice clung to the rows of seats, and in the beams from their torches, falling snow swept along. Away towards the far side of the grandstand, Kohler knew that neither he nor Louis could make out more than this; towards the lower railing and the racetrack, they could see little else.

There wasn’t a sound but that of the wind and the incessant flapping of what were, most probably, swastikas on the flagstaffs that rose from the lower railing to stand well above the roof overhead. Having arrived on 11 November last, the Army of the South must have held a parade here, a show of force, and still the flags remained.

‘I’ll work my way among the boxes,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘You take the lower rows of seats.’

‘They’re not here. They’re above us,’ sighed Kohler, the beam of his torch having found a flagstaff cleat whose rope now trailed in the wind.

‘There has to be a better way.’

Albert had shinned up the flagstaff; Ferbrave had used the ladder that was at the back of the grandstand, behind the seats. The one had thought he could reach the trapdoor to hold it shut by lying on top of it; the other had beat him to it.

‘It’ll be a skating rink, Louis. That’s why they’re so silent. Give me a moment, will you?’

Lowering a flag, he cut off its rope and let the wind take the rest.

‘Me first,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Tie it around one of my ankles and anchor me to something. You know that knee of yours will only cause trouble.’

Gun and torch were handed over, hat and overcoat too. Up on the roof the little ridges, glazed and with wide and shallow troughs, ran straight downslope, the wind making mischief as it whipped the snow along.

‘Albert …’ muttered St-Cyr to himself. ‘Ah merde, Hermann,’ he yelled. ‘Keep your light on them!’

Spreadeagled next to the lower edge of the roof, the groundskeeper’s son clung by one gloved hand to Henri-Claude who, in turn, clung bare-handed to one of the flagpoles.

‘I didn’t tell them anything! what vans?’ shrieked Albert. ‘I’m not hearing you?’

‘You keep that mouth of yours shut or else!’ cried Ferbrave.

‘Can’t shut what isn’t open!’

‘Who used that knife and then dropped it?’

‘Vipère! serpent! I’m not listening!’

‘Then fly, asshole. fly!’

Ah no … No! The roof was slippery, the rope loose, but was it long enough or too long? wondered St-Cyr.

Careering down over the ridges and hollows, he tried to slow himself by turning sideways, wasn’t going to reach them, was going to shoot right past …

Snatching at Albert’s ankles, he grabbed one and hung on as the rope tightened. Ferbrave winced at the strain. A moment passed and then another. ‘Hermann, take up the slack!’

‘Now pray, messieurs. You, Henri-Claude, that he doesn’t fall to his death and walk you to the guillotine; and you, Albert, because we need you.’

‘I don’t know who dropped that knife in the shit. I don’t know anything about the vans. I thought I did but can’t remember.’

Inès blinked and blinked hard but still couldn’t see a thing. The door St-Cyr and Kohler had broken in was almost closed, but a wedge of light flooded out from an office of some kind, precious light that lifted her spirits and made her feel whole again.

Deschambeault and his son were in there – she knew this for she’d heard them arguing, their voices always muffled. But now they, like her, had to listen as, with agonizing slowness, Herr Kohler pulled his partner and Albert back up the roof.

Ferbrave had been left for the moment – he must have been, but where, exactly, he was located she couldn’t tell and that, she warned herself, was a worry.

Pressing a cheek against the wall, she strained to hear the sousdirecteur and his son above the noises from the roof.

‘Jean-Guy, it’s got to stop. Things are getting far too close,’ said the elder Deschambeault.

‘Stop, mon père?’

‘Merde, imbécile, must you taunt me at a time like this? One van and no one was the wiser, but then another and another and what am I to do now, eh? Go to the Maréchal and beg forgiveness when there are assassins about? Assassins, Jean-Guy!’

‘Résistants?’

‘It’s possible. Those people from Paris also. Doriot or Déat may have sent in the Intervention-Referat or the Bickler Unit to teach us a little lesson.’

The son took a moment to consider this, felt Inès, then she heard him asking suspiciously, ‘Did you inform Secrétaire Général Bousquet of your concern?’

‘Pah! Don’t be a fool. He’s the one who suggested it and knows far more about them than I do!’

Again the son took his time to reply but now there was sarcasm. ‘You worry too much, Papa.’

‘Will you never learn?’ demanded the sous-directeur. ‘Lucie’s dead. It’s over. Will that not satisfy you and that … that mother of yours?’

That bitch of a mother? she could hear the son thinking.

‘Maman hasn’t yet heard of your loss, and neither have Thérèse or Martine. Was it a boy or a girl that putain of yours dropped?’

Ah merde!

‘Bâtard, how can you speak to me like that? I who brought you here from Paris and saw that you were given the position you have? You were always the lanterne rouge of the class, Jean-Guy.’ The rear light. ‘Failure at mathematics, at chemistry, at everything else. This job, that job. Gambling, losing, cheating, lying. Mon Dieu, the number of times I’ve had to cover for you, yet you treat me like this? Ah! I admit you’re good at what you do here. One of the best. And perhaps in time, when this Occupation is over and things settle down, these stables will be yours.’

Sugar there. Some sugar, thought Inès.

‘What is it, then, that you want, Papa, the olive branch?’

‘You know very well. Quit visiting that brothel Ferbrave knows you visit because it’s his also. Leave it and stop all use of the vans. Tell the drivers they’ll continue to receive their extra wages for the long runs but are to keep silent or face immediate dismissal. Enough is enough, Jean-Guy. Good while it lasted. Oh bien sûr, but finished for now because it has to be.’

‘And Lucie?’

‘I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Admit it, she was trouble.’

‘Trouble? Tell your mother I’ll visit her soon. All right, tell her I’ll even sleep with her if that will satisfy her.’

Again the son took his time before saying, ‘Broken fences are never easy to mend.’

‘And that doctor of hers? That quack who claims to calm her at my expense?’ hissed the father. ‘What part has he had in breaking those same fences, eh?’

‘Has he been fucking her – is that what you think?’

‘You know it isn’t, but why should I care, eh?’

‘She’s very ill,’ said Jean-Guy. ‘Why can’t you realize she’s psychotic? Torn by delusions, lives in hell because of you and your mistresses! Not just Lucie. The others before her!’

Still they hadn’t raised their voices. ‘How self-righteous you are,’ said the elder Deschambeault. ‘You who prefer the tenderest.’

Girls of fourteen and fifteen, said Inès to herself.

‘Ménétrel knows that “quack” as you call him, father. Everything Maman has ever said to Dr Normand has been repeated to Ménétrel.’

The father must have been taken aback, for he hesitated and then asked suspiciously, ‘Have you seen him there when you visited her?’

Perhaps the son smiled. ‘Of course. Thérèse and Martine have also seen him at the clinic with Dr Normand, discussing Mother’s progress.’

‘And Lucie?’

‘Most certainly.’

‘At Chez Crusoe and the parties at the chateau?’ asked the sous-directeur.

‘Just as he makes a point of knowing everything else, Ménétrel knows, Papa.’

‘Because you told him? Or was it Thérèse or Martine?’ shot the elder Deschambeault.

‘I didn’t!’ retorted the son. ‘I can’t, of course, vouch for my sisters whose eyebrows are always raised when they speak of their father having sex with his latest, but in any case, since none of us ever attended any of those “sessions” at the chateau, how could we possibly have known of what went on?’

‘Sessions? Meetings of the board, idiot! Nom de Dieu, you must hate me.’

‘Not at all. I simply know you.’

Again the father paused. ‘Then tell Ferbrave he’d better find out everything he can from Albert before taking care of him. We can’t have the rat-catcher coughing up our blood to those two from Paris.’

‘And Henri-Claude?’

‘Must be told that it has to end, Jean-Guy, that I won’t submit to blackmail from him or anyone, and that if he doesn’t stop, I will go straight to Herr Gessler with things our Garde Mobile would rather not have the Gestapo hear.’

Inès nudged the door open a little farther. Both were standing, the father and son facing each other across the latter’s desk, but the sous-directeur’s back was to her and this partly blocked Jean-Guy from catching sight of her.

Silver trophies and ribbons adorned the shelves beyond them. Paintings of famous racehorses hung on the walls, a map of the course and grounds, one of the town of Vichy too.

Jean-Guy Deschambeault wore the buttoned-up, burnt-umber, single-breasted jacket she’d been told he would. Beneath it there was the charcoal turtleneck pullover he often favoured and yes, the whipcord breeches were of a soft shade of olive, and yes, the tan riding boots were well greased and polished.

No spurs, not now. No sand-coloured, tweed golf cap either.

Thirty years old, he was unmarried because he chose to be, but never lacked girlfriends who were willing enough, though none had been able to give him what that maison de tolérance could and did. Blue-eyed and handsome, of more than medium height, he was well built, masculine, ah yes, a polo player too, with thick, wavy, curly dark chestnut hair and the bluish four-o’clock shadow of one who often shaves but can never quite dispel that mildly dissipated playboy image. Cold, too, Inès reminded herself, but utterly charming in his own right when he wanted to be.

The two had stopped talking. The noise from the roof had ceased. Now there was only that of the flags.

‘Mademoiselle, what did you overhear?’ came a whisper.

Someone had switched on the corridor lights. Ah merde, it was St-Cyr, standing so close to her she could feel the icy breath of him and see the suppurating, black-stitched, throbbing bulge above his half-closed left eye. Behind him at a distance was Albert Grenier, behind that one, Henri-Claude Ferbrave and lastly Herr Kohler. ‘Nothing. I … I was looking for you. Albert,’ she tried. ‘Albert, are you all right?’

‘Inside, I think. Take a seat while we warm ourselves at the stove. Compose yourself, Mademoiselle Charpentier. You’ve had a terrible fright and are perhaps still in shock, but please prepare your answers better.’

The nineteenth-century, cast-iron stove in the office was decorated with a pair of turtledoves that drank from a birdbath above its little door, and through the mica windows Inès could see the flames. Herr Kohler had sat right next to her on the leather sofa but Albert hadn’t wanted to sit anywhere else and had tried to ask him to move over. He’d refused, of course, and had deliberately driven poor Albert to tears, causing him to abruptly turn his back to them and sit down anyway, squeezing himself between them and satisfying Herr Kohler as to exactly how close a relationship she had managed to establish with the groundskeeper’s son.

These days such friendships were often automatic, the old and the young enjoying each other’s company as if their differences in age were of no consequence. Sculptresses of twenty-eight and boys, young men of what? she asked herself. With Albert it was so hard to tell. Thirteen perhaps, or six or seven, but sometimes a young man. And yes, both Kohler and St-Cyr thought she’d deliberately formed the friendship. And yes, she had to remind herself, Albert can be difficult. I must be careful.

St-Cyr had remained standing halfway between the desk and stove. He had helped himself to the container of pipe tobacco, even filling both pouch and pipe, and had offered his partner a cigar from the humidor, a Choix Supreme no doubt, which had yet to be lit. Hadn’t offered one to the father who now sat stonily in one of the club chairs, the son tense and watchful behind that desk of his.

A bottle of the local marc had been found but this had been rejected by St-Cyr. ‘The Louis XIII,’ he had insisted. ‘The 1925.’

It hadn’t been available.

‘Inspector …’ hazarded the elder Deschambeault.

St-Cyr turned on him.

‘It’s Chief Inspector, Sous-directeur. Let’s observe the formalities since this is an official inquiry and you are now under suspicion also of trafficking.’

‘Jésus, merde alors, what the hell is the matter with you? A few cigars, a couple of bottles of champagne – gifts I’d managed to find in Paris for an old and very dear friend?’

‘The 1925 Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale? Need I remind you that Mademoiselle Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux had been drinking that when found in the bath she shared with your colleague, Alain Andre Richard, Minister of Supplies and Rationing?’

‘Look, I … I know nothing of this. Bousquet would never have told me what was in her stomach. Mon Dieu, why would he?’

‘Inspector Kohler, please record what has just been said and get him to sign and date it,’ said St-Cyr.

‘Now listen, you …’

‘No, you listen, monsieur. Last year in the Department of the Seine alone there were over four hundred thousand arrests for violations of the food regulations—that is, for illegally buying and selling on the marché noir. The courts and jails are clogged with lampistes. Never the big fish, always the small fry, eh, Hermann, but now we’ve landed one of the biggest!’

In the silence that followed, St-Cyr yanked the cork from the bottle of marc and, finding four cut-glass tumblers, poured goodly measures into all but the last. ‘Albert,’ Inès heard him saying. ‘Albert, mon ami, would you care to join us? It’ll warm you up a little.’

And there’s much that you can tell us, thought Inès.

The big, raw hands, with their thick and stumpy fingers, were suddenly stilled atop the coarse, dark grey woollen gloves in his lap. Dirt lay beneath the cracked nails.

‘He’s trying to bribe me,’ whispered Albert into her right ear. ‘I knew he would!’ The breath of him was warm with the anise he must have been chewing. Anise and garlic.

‘He’d like to join us,’ Inès heard herself saying too loudly, too awkwardly, she felt.

Abruptly a glass was handed to her and another to Albert. ‘This friend?’ went on St-Cyr, sucking on that pipe of his and causing the elder Deschambeault to curse under his breath and look to his son for help that was not forthcoming.

‘The custodian of Herr Abetz’s château,’ said the sous-directeur flatly.

‘His name, please?’

‘Inspector … Chief Inspector, is this really necessary? He can’t have had anything to …’

Kohler knew Louis would tell him that everything was of interest, and smiled when he did.

‘Charles-Frédéric Hébert,’ muttered Deschambeault.

Herr Kohler wrote it down, then flipped back a page in his little black notebook. ‘The parties, Louis,’ he said, not looking up but leaning across Albert’s lap to let her see the entry, the names of Paul and Blanche Varollier, and below the first of these: A deep gouge in the right, wooden sole.

‘Parties? Informal meetings. A few nights of cards, an occasional game of backgammon or chess, Inspector,’ objected the elder Deschambeault. ‘Brief respites from the affairs of state. Chances to discuss matters in private and away from the office. Often it’s best that way.’

‘Was any help called in?’ asked Herr Kohler. Deschambeault was sweating, the son’s expression empty, thought Inès.

‘Help?’ said the father. ‘I really wouldn’t know. One is too busy talking shop. The economy has been a terrible strain, the demands for new policy papers … Surely there’s hardly time to notice the help at such functions?’

‘A translator,’ muttered Herr Kohler, his partner watching everyone’s reactions and filing them away, Inès told herself.

‘My Deutsch is more than sufficient,’ said Deschambeault.

‘Then some of my compatriots attended these little gatherings of yours?’ asked Herr Kohler.

To say, They’re not mine, would be unwise. ‘A few.’

‘Girls?’ asked Kohler.

‘Lucie sometimes accompanied me but found it rather boring.’

‘Birds?’ demanded Herr Kohler.

Salaud! the elder Deschambeault must be thinking, thought Inès, and heard him saying, ‘The custodian keeps a few, but I’ve never seen them.’

A lie for sure, she told herself, chancing a glance at Henri-Claude Ferbrave, who must have torn the skin from the palm of his left hand – frost on bare metal would have done that. He had bandaged the hand with the white scarf he’d worn but now was realizing the silk would cling to the wound …

‘Lucie Trudel,’ sighed St-Cyr, deliberately pausing to relight that pipe of his and to drop the match into the stove. ‘Lucie, Albert. She wanted a bottle of the Chomel.’

‘Her father Was sick!’ yelped Albert. ‘She was co-old.’

‘You took her down into the cellars, to your nest.’

‘She was free-zing!’

Taking him by the hand, Inès gently squeezed his fingers and then knitted her own among them. ‘You’re so very kind, Albert,’ she softly confided. ‘One of the kindest men I’ve ever met. The inspectors mean no harm, so please don’t be afraid. Just try to remember what Mademoiselle Trudel said to you. They’ll want to know. It might be important.’

And why, please, are you taking such an active part in this investigation? wondered St-Cyr.

A little of the untouched marc spilled over the rim of Albert’s glass. ‘Don’t know anything. Can’t remember.’

Merde, one would have to go so carefully and be so very gentle with him, thought St-Cyr, but the presence of Henri-Claude and what had almost happened on the roof was still very much with the boy. ‘You reached up to the board for the key to the Hall des Sources, Albert. Lucie would have seen you do this.’

‘She was cry-ing. She was co-old. I hadn’t put the coffee on. Always I gets to make the …’ Oh-oh, I shouldn’t have said that, said Albert to himself, using the secret voice in his head. Henri-Claude was staring at him and so were Monsieur Jean-Guy and his father. ‘I … I found a clean rag for her and she wiped her eyes.’

Albert had gripped her fingers so tightly he was hurting her. Inès winced, but better to be hurt than to have him take his hand away.

‘You went outside to the Hall,’ continued St-Cyr. ‘You removed the padlock and chain, and opened the door. Could you see her tears then, in the torchlight? You must have had a torch.’

‘Tears?’ yelped Albert. ‘What tears? She had just dried her eyes. Do you think I don’t remember what I said?’

‘Albert, what the Chief Inspector wishes to know is did Lucie tell you anything that might be useful?’

‘Can’t say. Don’t know.’

‘You filled the bottle for her,’ tried St-Cyr.

‘She hugged it. She was free-zing. She said she’d love to have a bathe in it, but …’

‘But was too afraid to go to the établissement thermal?’ he asked.

‘My nurse was drowned there. Now I don’t have my nurse any more. It hurts.’

‘What hurts?’ asked Inès.

‘My back, my shoulders, my spi-ine!’

‘Albert, did Lucie speak to anyone else that morning?’ asked the Chief Inspector, his voice too insistent, Inès felt.

‘Don’t know. Can’t say.’

‘Inspector …’ began the elder Deschambeault, only to be silenced by, ‘Must I remind you it’s Chief Inspector and that you will speak only when spoken to?’

‘Albert, you’d best tell him,’ said Inès. ‘If you don’t, I’m afraid the Chief Inspector will think I spoke to Lucie. I couldn’t have, of course, for I wasn’t here, hadn’t yet met you, but he’s a detective, and they are always suspicious.’

‘No one spoke to her.’

‘And the rats, Albert?’ asked Inès gently. ‘He’ll want to know who you think might have taken them.’

‘The owner of the knife.’

‘A woman?’ asked Inès.

‘What do you think?’

‘I … I don’t know,’ she blurted. Albert had released her hand and had turned to stare at her as if she had owned that knife, as if she’d taken the rats from his shed without even having paid for them! ‘I … I didn’t kill her, Albert. I swear I didn’t.’

‘Your eyes are wet. You’re afraid. I can tell.’

Ah Sainte Mère, Sainte Mère! ‘I’m just worried about you.’

‘No you aren’t.’

‘Albert, please!’

‘Hermann, take these three into another room and grill them. Leave me to deal with these two! Mademoiselle, you arrive supposedly on the same train as my partner and me, but take a sleeper so as not to be disturbed at the Demarcation Line. You say you are bringing cigars for the Maréchal, a gift from your director. You wear Shalimar, the perfume of the most recent victim, when found hanging about the lobby of the Hôtel du Parc. You then wander into the Hall des Sources to view that victim and leave your fingerprints all over the place thus destroying others we desperately needed. In the Chante Clair restaurant I find you hanging about watching my partner while he’s having a little meeting with Bousquet, Ménétrel and Premier Laval, and now … now we find you in the stable here and then following us to take a decided interest in the proceedings.’

‘I … I can’t explain coincidences. I had time on my hands and wished only to help.’

‘And have just provided one explanation but is it the truth? Your papers, mademoiselle. Papers, please.’

‘Of course. Albert, they are in my handbag. I’m sorry but you will have to move a little.’

Handed over, the papers were scrutinized. St-Cyr was obviously unhappy with himself for having demanded them as so many did these days. Her place of work and residence were there – he’d see those quickly enough. Her age, physical features, all such things, but would he ask what he would need?

‘You had a good look at the corpse of Céline Dupuis, mademoiselle. Why such interest?’

‘The artist in me. Death has always interested that part of me. Must I apologize for something I, myself, don’t fully understand? The compulsion, the drive … Yes, that curiosity!’

And no mention of the tears Hermann had noticed. Tears she had since said she hadn’t been able to shed in years. ‘You attended the Sorbonne?’ he asked.

‘The École des Beaux Arts. Painting, life-drawing and sculpture.’

‘And the uncle and aunt who raised you didn’t mind?’

‘I’ve already stated they encouraged me. Why shouldn’t they have?’

‘The expense.’

‘Papa had left everything to Maman, and through her, since there was no male heir, it passed to me, as did the small estate my uncle and aunt left.’

‘Your father was killed at Verdun?’

‘Buried near there, yes. I’ve already told you this earlier.’

‘Killed when, mademoiselle?’

‘In May 1917. The … the exact date I … I was never told.’

‘But tried to find out?’

‘I was a child! I needed to know.’

‘Was it during the mutinies, mademoiselle?’

‘The shelling. You and Herr Kohler must surely have experienced this in that war? Men dying like flies. He … he was ordered over the top as were the 137,000 others of his compagnons d’armes who manned the trenches along the Chemin des Dames and would die in that battle. He obeyed, Inspector. He did not run.’

‘Forgive me. One always hates to force those under questioning, mademoiselle. Even a Chief Inspector of the Sûreté – this one at least – is not without compassion. Albert, would you get her another marc, please? A cigarette, mademoiselle?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

Damn you, was implied. And yes, said St-Cyr sadly to himself, as the horror of that ten-day battle swept back in on him, one could never forget the screams of the dying. But the battle had begun at dawn on 16 April and had lasted for ten days. In May the médecin de l’Armée, as the poilus had started calling Pétain, had been sent in to deal with the mutineers. Men who, for good reason, and with no shame attached to their terror, had thrown down their arms and refused to take the madness any more.

‘Let me just see if my partner needs anything,’ he said. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Inès told herself he had realized Pétain had given the order to the firing squad’s captain and that Papa had been buried in an unmarked grave with the other fifty-six the army had admitted to having executed. He couldn’t know the love Papa had had for Maman, that at the last he would have cried out her name, that all he had wanted was to see her and hold them both.

The Jockey Club’s boardroom was not nearly so wide as it was long. Always mystified by these ritual dens of the corporate elite, Kohler took a quick look around. Magnificent horseflesh here, there, and wouldn’t Cro-Magnon man have been thunderstruck? Another Lascaux, as in the Dordogne on that stonekiller investigation Louis and he had had to settle, but a modern one.

Ferbrave sat midway to the side of the Luan mahogany landing field. The father was at its head, the son begrudgingly at his right; wasn’t it marvellous how readily such rooms sorted people out, and didn’t these three need sorting? There was even a portrait of Marcel Boussac, the textile manufacturer and racehorse owner who, after the Defeat, had got racing started again by hiring a Prussian baron to manage his stables.

Good thinking that. No better horsemen than those boys, but to be fair, had Boussac not done this he’d have lost his stables and France its leading bloodlines.

‘Invincible,’ he said, not turning to look at them.

‘Gladiateur’s line, Inspector,’ offered the son, and by way of further explanation: ‘The Avenger of Waterloo was winner of the Derby, the Grand Prix de Paris and the St Leger in 1865. Proof undeniable that France could at last not only produce champions but would take the lead.’

He’d mutter, ‘History,’ and still not turn from the photos and paintings. ‘Normandy Dancer … I gather Hyperion, 1933’s fabulous British stallion, was felt necessary as that one’s sire?’

‘Inspector …’

‘Oui?’ He would let the Chairman of the Board stew a little more.

‘Inspector, shouldn’t you clear things first with Herr Gessler?’

It was time to face them. ‘Our Ernst? An unemployed shoemaker from Schrobenhausen?’

‘I was merely suggesting …’

‘One of the beefsteak boys of the Sturmabteilung, the Assault Section of 1933?’

‘Inspector, please …’

‘Red meat inside those brown shirts, eh? Must have kept a low profile or been whispering into Herr Goering’s ear about his pals in the SA before and during the purge of 30 June to 2 July 1934 – the Night of the Long Knives, that – because, voilà, he surfaces in the Berlin Kripo as a detective no less, and not a bruise on him. Even when I was assigned to the Lichtenberg district in ’37 and then the Prenzlauerberg in ’38, the boys in the cop shop used to whisper about him. I never met him, so can’t really say, but it’s a big city, or was.’

Merde, what were they to do? wondered Gaëtan-Baptiste. Gessler had warned that Kohler would be trouble but had also hinted he would let the two from Paris sort things out and trust the French would then take care of their own problems! ‘He’s a most proficient policeman, Inspector, and already has a firm grasp of things.’

‘Poland in 1939, of course, and that ghetto in Warsaw in late ’40 when almost a half-million of what Herr Himmler and others call the racially undesirable were bottled up until October ‘42, when they’d finally got the numbers down to a manageable seventy thousand and could spare him. Good at sniffing out trouble and valuables, the weak and deceitful. Came to the attention of several higher-ups. Sent to Rotterdam to deal with Dutch terrorists, then to Antwerp where he excelled in ferreting out housewives who were illegally hiding the enemy and still others of those R-people, the Rasenverfolgte, their children especially. And now …’

‘Inspector …’

‘No, you let me finish so that we all understand exactly who it is you want me to clear things with. Now considered so reliable that Klaus Barbie, over at the Hotel Terminus in Lyons – yes, that’s the SS-Obersturmführer himself – recommended his transfer to Vichy. Barbie’s an old acquaintance, by the way. A case of arson in Lyons, a salamander. Now give. Cut the horseshit and don’t ever try to threaten me.’

Just like the corporate elite, they would pull together, thought Kohler, but he’d had to tell them and somehow would now have to break them.

‘I was merely suggesting that Herr Gessler could well offer much-needed assistance, Inspector. After all, should anything happen to the Maréchal, the Führer would be most displeased.’

‘And Louis and I’d be held responsible? Good Gott im Himmel, you don’t listen, do you? Monsieur Jean-Guy Deschambeault, please stand up!’

‘Up?’

‘Verdammt, you heard what I said!’

Blanching, the son looked to Ferbrave for support but that one was busy gently teasing the bloodied scarf from his hand and sucking on a dead fag end.

‘Gut,’ snapped Kohler in Deutsch, just to remind them that he was Gestapo, before switching back to the lingua franca. ‘That wireless set in your office had its dial glued to the forty-metre band. “Ici Londres,” eh, mon fin? “Des Français parlent aux Français.” You’ve been listening to. Général de Gaulle.’

‘I …’

‘Jean-Guy, why must you be such a fool?’ swore the father sadly. ‘Inspector, I’m sure we can come to an understanding.’

Best to glance at the open door and the corridor beyond it, thought Kohler. Best to hesitantly wet the upper lip and softly say, ‘I’m listening.’ Inès Charpentier had also noted the position of that dial but had lowered her eyes when she’d realized that this Kripo had been looking at her.

‘Three years’ forced labour in the Reich,’ he went on, letting them have it. ‘Gessler will, of course, have to respond in the appropriate manner since I’ll have to put it into my report to Gestapo Boemelburg and never mind what you’ve been told about how well we’re regarded by the rue des Saussaies in Paris. My partner and I produce, and that’s all Boemelburg really wants because, by doing so, we give some semblance of law and order to a nation that’s sadly lacking in it.’

Gessler, if he wanted, could then easily take the heat off himself by claiming Jean-Guy was a suspected résistant, thought Ferbrave, impressed with what Kohler had just implied. Old money – and there was plenty of it with what had been added – would vanish into Gessler’s pockets and the son would be shot, the father, mother and sisters deported to camps. ‘You said you were listening, Inspector?’

This little dur obviously fancied himself as a ‘number’ – damned dangerous in the lexicon of such – and maybe he even had dreams of becoming an ‘individual’, but one must play it out. ‘I am. Cut me in and I’ll turn a blind eye to what’s been going on.’

‘And if your partner should notice those same things?’ asked Ferbrave. A cigarette and a light were offered by the Kripo. The other two were seemingly forgotten for the moment, Jean-Guy still stupidly standing.

‘Louis? He does what he’s told. Don’t get the wrong idea. He may be a chief inspector but I still pull the strings.’

The rope! snorted Ferbrave silently. ‘What is it you’d like to know?’

‘First, how many trips a month to and from Paris with the vans?’

‘One a week.’

He would have to kill Kohler. St-Cyr’s name was already on the FTP’s latest list. No one, not even Gestapo Boemelburg, would question the loss. Ménétrel would be convinced the Garde Mobile was more necessary than ever and there would be no more threats of dismissal, no more shrieking about assassins lying in wait or about finding who had betrayed the Government, his precious Government!

‘Four a month, then – I’d better jot that down,’ said Kohler.

‘Perhaps fewer, Inspector. Once or twice a month,’ acknowledged Ferbrave.

‘Bon. And for how long has it been going on?’

‘Inspector, we’ve a crisis on our hands,’ interjected the elder Deschambeault.

‘And had best get this out of the way so that we can deal with it. How long?’

Kohler was just ragging them. ‘A few months,’ said Ferbrave cautiously.

‘Sometimes a month would go by and there’d be no requests on the list, Inspector, no deliveries,’ offered Jean-Guy.

‘List? What list?’ demanded Kohler.

‘There was no list!’ swore the father.

‘Requests?’ snapped the Kripo, not turning to look at him and still sitting across the table from Henri-Claude.

‘Inspector, my son was merely trying to say that the whole matter didn’t amount to anything. Enough flour for a child’s birthday cake, a little powdered sugar for the icing. Alain Andre would …’

‘Marie-Jacqueline’s lover? Richard, the Minister of Supplies and Rationing?’

‘Would kindly offer to assist and the child would have its cake.’

‘And get to eat it from Government warehouses that are under lock and key?’

To smile ingratiatingly would be wrong. ‘Look, I know such luxuries are forbidden,’ acknowledge Gaëtan-Baptiste, ‘but everyone bends the rules a little. Mon Dieu, these days one has to do many things one never would have done in the past. It was nothing.’

And like ripe fish, nauseating. ‘When, exactly, did it all begin?’

‘A year ago. One van. Only one. Two drivers and the security guard who always rides in the back,’ said the sous-directeur.

‘Armed?’

‘Of course. Even with the policing our German friends provide and the tightening up of our own police, there are still those who will try their luck.’

Didn’t he know detectives were only too aware of this! ‘Began two years ago,’ muttered Kohler, scribbling down the truth. ‘The late autumn of 1940, Sous-directeur, when things came into such short supply it looked to you and the others as though what little remained would be hard to obtain through the regular channels. Who buys it- what you don’t consume or give to those you need to pay off?’

Jean-Guy was still standing. Shattered, broken – terrified and now utterly useless. ‘Everyone who is anyone.’

‘But you’re so distant from it that you and Richard and the other lovers of those four girls are in the clear?’

‘I was and, yes, I still am, as are they.’

Was that a hint, eh? wondered Kohler. Ferbrave and a little accident, the FTP getting the blame and everyone lamenting the loss of two detectives from Paris who were only doing their duty but couldn’t have understood the difficulties of the terrain and the urgency of their being ever-vigilant? ‘This Flykiller or killers of Monsieur Laval’s, Sous-directeur. Who could have such an inside track?’

‘I only wish I knew, but it can’t have anything to do with the vans. Merde alors, why should it?’

‘The perfume, the cognac and champagne from 1925. Who requested those?’

‘I really wouldn’t know, nor would my son or that one.’

Ferbrave.

‘Inspector, you are only too aware of the scandal that will erupt if word of this gets out,’ said the sous-directeur. ‘Surely you must realize we could soon be on the verge of a civil war and that the Reich, for obvious reasons, doesn’t want this to happen and wishes the Maréchal to remain in office and in Vichy. Ambassador Abetz is a personal friend and part-owner of the stables my son manages. If you were to speak to him, the Ambassador would’ satisfy you that what was done with the vans was necessary. Pour l’amour de Dieu, we had to keep up appearances. Thirty-two embassies, the papal nuncio among them. Constant delegations from the Reich, visiting dignitaries from all over the new Europe, submissions from our citizenry in the zone libre and even from the zone occupée. One couldn’t have undertaken such receptions in an aura of defeat, could one? The nation had to maintain an image, and in a small and humble way what I and my associates did, helped.’

A saint. ‘And the rats in that girl’s bed, the knife that was recovered?’

‘Albert Grenier may well know who took them and killed her but he’s a difficult boy. I would not have harmed him in the slightest. Henri-Claude arrived unexpectedly and … Well, you know the rest, and fortunately no one was seriously hurt.’

‘That hand,’ said Kohler of Ferbrave. ‘Merde, it doesn’t look good. I’d best get our sculptress to have a look at it. Hang on a minute.’

Ferbrave hadn’t screamed when she’d done as Herr Kohler had asked and had poured the iodine on to that torn strip of flesh. He had simply looked at and through her, thought Inès, and she had realized he had been convinced she knew more than she was letting on. Bien sûr, Herr Kohler had warned him that if anything further should happen to her or to Albert he would be held responsible, but Henri-Claude would find a way. Albert hadn’t revealed a thing. Adamantly he had refused to tell the detectives who he’d seen dropping that knife into the outhouse. And now? she asked herself, hunching her shoulders under her overcoat for warmth and cramming her hands deeply into its pockets. Now my ten minutes of utter darkness have again passed undiscovered by the detectives and moonlight bathes the snow-covered garden that runs behind the Grenier house on the boulevard de l’ Hôpital. Moonlight that is so beautiful as it glistens off the rows of cloches beneath which vegetables will soon be started, the garden extending straight out to the railway embankment above the marshalling yards and the station beyond. And at its very back, next to the family’s outdoor toilet, is the shed Albert uses.

Herr Kohler had gone to look at the railway lines and the ease of access. He would conclude there was no problem at all in getting to and from that shed unseen so long as one could avoid the patrols with their dogs. St-Cyr was inside it with the father; Albert indoors, in tears, his mother beside herself with trying to calm him.

While I … I stand out here where I’ve been told to wait by St-Cyr until he returns, she said, and the moon, so pure and silent, sails high above me, the innocent perhaps, or the condemned. And should I move from my little root, he will see my tracks in the snow.

But had the rats that had been found really come from here? Did Albert really know who had taken them?

She wished she could listen to what was being said but knew she daren’t move …

‘Inspector,’ said the elder Grenier, ‘my Albert was very upset when he returned from the Hotel d’Allier last Friday evening. He said he had done well, and that with what he’d trapped in the cellars of the Hotel du Parc, he’d managed six males and four females – he was positive of this – but that someone had stolen five of the males.’

‘Stolen while he was still at the Hotel d’Allier?’

‘One of the tenants lets him play with her rabbit. Always when he’s on a job there, he takes time out for this. She … she’d been to confession and was still very distressed.’

‘That was Lucie Trudel. Céline Dupuis owned the rabbit.’

‘Yes, but one of the others … a Mademoiselle Blanche – I’m sorry I don’t know her last name – had returned to console Mademoiselle Trudel when Albert knocked on her door. Blanche had a key to the other one’s flat.’

‘And the sack Albert kept his rats in?’

‘Was left in the cellars, as always. Dead of course. Albert finishes them off with a chair leg he keeps for just such a purpose. Even if they’ve hanged themselves in his snares, he gives them a good rap just to be certain.’

A rough-hewn bench served as butcher’s block, its wooden-handled butcher’s knife thin and old, but razor-sharp, the blade a good fifteen centimetres long but worn down at the haft to a width of about a centimetre and a half.

A tin pail caught the skins, the heads and entrails.

One mustn’t alarm the elder Grenier too much. ‘Monsieur, it would be best if you, or one of the others on your staff, could accompany him on his early-morning rounds and at other times. Do so as unobtrusively as possible. Make up some excuse that’s logical, a little schedule with the others perhaps. Just for a few days, until this thing is settled.’

But would it be settled? Would Albert tell them what they needed to know? ‘Four murders, four lovely girls, Inspector. They were each very kind to him. Never a cross word or the disdain and impatience he gets from so many. Though very shy, he’d come to greet them whenever they passed through the park or he’d see them elsewhere in town. If they could, each would always pause to exchange a few words. If he could, Albert would have a little something saved up for at least one of them, a few flowers, an apple … We can’t spare much, but always let him do this.’

‘And Mademoiselle Charpentier?’

‘Has taken their place, I think, until just recently.’

The furnace at the Hôtel du Parc had been banked for the night. At a word from St-Cyr, the firebox door was slammed, the lone man on duty begrudgingly excusing himself to leave the ‘nest’ to the three of them.

Herr Kohler set her valise on the workbench, then stood aside to let her open it. St-Cyr was to her left, the other one reaching up to hold the ceiling light a little closer.

Inès undid the catches. She would hesitate now, she told herself. The inquisition in the car on the return from the Grenier house had been hard: Mademoiselle, remind me of what street in Paris you and your uncle and aunt lived on while you were growing up? The rue Tournefort, numéro 47, she’d said and thought, It’s not far from place Lucien-Herr and the house of Céline’s parents, is it? Neither of them had made mention of this last, nor had they asked if she’d had one childhood friend, one very special person to whom she could confide everything. Well, nearly everything, and receive the same in trust.

The perfume … the Shalimar. Why had she chosen such a scent? It must have cost a fortune. It was my aunt’s, she had said and they had left it at that, causing her to wonder if they’d believed her.

And where is the flacon now? St-Cyr had demanded. In my bag, she had answered, having fortunately resisted the gut-wrenching panic to throw the bottle away.

Boyfriends in Paris? Herr Kohler had asked, as if it was anyone’s business other than her own. Boyfriends? she had asked in return. Haven’t you heard where all the young men have gone?

Into the maquis to avoid the Service de Travail Obligatoire, or in one of the POW camps, or into the ground.

Every compartment of the tray she now removed was cluttered: her tools, her first-aid kit. Certainly the valise had been left here in the care of Albert’s father, but would they wonder if this had been deliberate? Suspicious … they were so suspicious of her, especially St-Cyr.

‘Hermann, there’s the smell of bitter almonds,’ he said, having leaned over, his shoulder rubbing against her as he brought his nose closer to the case. ‘Beeswax and that, mon vieux. This clear glass tube among your first-aid supplies, mademoiselle? What is the oil, please?’

She would have to give him a foolish smile and weakly say, ‘A mistake. I was tricked. For toothache, the oil of cloves, only a switch was made at the last and what I was given was this.’

A little of the oil accidentally trickled down the side of the phial when, with difficulty, she had prised the cork out.

‘Ersatz, Louis.’

‘Strong, too strong,’ grunted St-Cyr. He made no mention of her obviously having purchased the oil on the marché noir, his big brown eyes simply sweeping coldly over her.

‘Ah bon, mademoiselle. For now the portrait, I think.’

Carefully she set the tray aside. She would pause again, though, and take a deep breath, Inès told herself. She would fight hard for control.

Uncovered and incredibly lifelike even though similar to a death mask, the Maréchal stared up at them.

It was St-Cyr who said, ‘When we first met, mademoiselle, you stated that the Musée Grévin was always late in granting its commissions and that an update was felt necessary. You did not say it had all but been done. You gave us to understand that your work would take some time. Your room and board, I believe, was a bargain.’

‘Oui. But is there anything wrong with a person wanting a little break from Paris? From hunger, from the endless queues for a cabbage, a few beets or the tops, a scrap of gristle and mostly disappointment? For six months now I’ve worked on this subject – first the bust in clay, the mould in plaster, then the portrait face.’

‘And now must only check those little details.’

St-Cyr was the constant questioner; Kohler the watcher, content to let him. They would discuss her later, would question possible motives, her wearing the very perfume Céline had worn, the place even where she and Céline had grown up. Had the two girls seen their first film together, met their first fleeting loves, vowed to remain friends for ever? St-Cyr would ask, or would he want still more? Of course he would.

‘Inspectors, must I also remove the portrait?’ she heard herself asking. Not a quaver now.

St-Cyr nodded. Gingerly she lifted Pétain out, cradling him in his swadding clothes and finally uncovering the rest. ‘Six four-hundred-gram blocks of beeswax, Inspectors. You may cut into each of them if you wish.’

It wouldn’t be necessary, felt Kohler. The slight nod St-Cyr gave was curt. He was still not satisfied.

Lifting out one of the blocks, she held it up to him. ‘Soft amber in colour and with the scent of buckwheat, isn’t that so?’ she said. ‘It came from Normandy, from well before the war. Monsieur le Directeur, feeling things might become difficult, wisely laid in a substantial supply that the authorities have fortunately let us keep but only for our work.’

This one was almost too clever, thought St-Cyr sadly. They couldn’t cable Paris to check her story. Gessler would hear of it; they couldn’t even ask Ménétrel for the dossier he must have been sent.

‘Hermann, take her to the Gare de Vichy to pick up her suitcase, then drop her off at her boarding house. I’ll catch a vélotaxi and we can meet up a little later.’

These two, they spoke in silent words, each holding a hidden dialogue with the other. Purposely St-Cyr hadn’t said where they would meet, had left her to wonder. But she wouldn’t ask, Are you satisfied now? She would repack her case and when it was done, softly say, ‘Merci. It’s late and I’ve not eaten since breakfast.’

Kohler, she knew, wanted to feed her; St-Cyr was the one with the heart of stone.