7

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

‘Gott im Himmel, Louis. Paradise instead of prison and the firing squad!’

‘Don’t count on it.’

‘No sign of Gessler.’

Fin-de-siècle decor was everywhere if a trifle moth-eaten, the main dance floor huge, its timbered ceiling smoke-stained from the turn of the century and before. Probably 1890, or 1880.

‘I’ll get us a couple of drinks and see if there’s any food left.’

‘You won’t get through the crush.’

‘Pastis, right? Beer for me. It’s straight in from home.’

Hermann was like a small boy greedily eating stolen chocolates at his first film. Mesmerized by it all, rejoicing and automatically joining in because that’s the way he was. Giselle and Oona would certainly have their hands full if he ever did get that ‘little place’ on the Costa del Sol.

‘Your hat, monsieur, and coat?’

She wasn’t any more than fifteen, reeked of cheap perfume and underarm talcum powder. ‘I’ll keep them. These days that is often best.’

‘Suit yourself. Monsieur le Secrétaire Général Bousquet makes the telephone call while that one, he …’ Her bare arm pointed to a distant corner table all but hidden by the dim lighting and the smoke. ‘He awaits your pleasure. Personally … and I’m just saying this for myself, you understand,’ her childlike eyes widened mischievously only to duck away at the fierceness of a Sûreté frown, ‘he can have you.’

Alone, Alain Andre Richard, Ministre des Vivres et du Rationnement – Supplies and Rationing – seemed impervious to the grey-green uniforms of the Occupier intermingling with the Occupied, the constant commotion, the comings and goings of cigarette girls selling everything including tobacco, and waitresses who should have known better than to wear such draughty costumes among soldiers and Government employees who only wanted to forget the war and their humdrum lives.

An intense little man in his mid-fifties, the face was pinched, the black hair thinning and carefully groomed, its dye-job perfect just like the rest of him. Even the blue serge suit had a gold Francisque pinned to its lapel.

‘Ah merde,’ muttered St-Cyr under his breath as he all but reached the table. ‘Must our top civil servants always be so difficult?’ The glass before Richard had remained untouched, perhaps because it was dirty or because he simply didn’t think a gin and gazeuse would help the stomach that had been giving him trouble of late. The cigarette that wasted its little life in the chipped ashtray had company of the same, but what, really, had Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux seen in this one besides money?

‘Monsieur …’

‘You’re late! Why is this, please?’

Even the voice was tight. ‘A small matter, Monsieur le Ministre. Unfortunately detectives can’t always determine beforehand if their time will be used unnecessarily. Please pardon the delay.’ And never mind that we weren’t even aware we were to meet you!

‘St-Cyr, Sûreté. I know all about you.’ Richard sniffed in as if wishing a pomander were to hand.

‘Good. That’s as it should be.’

The despicable fedora was summarily dropped on the table, the dishevelled overcoat removed to be perfunctorily dumped over the back of a cane chair.

‘It’s hot in here,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Now perhaps, monsieur, while we have a moment to ourselves you would be good enough to provide me with a clear statement of your illegal activities?’

‘Cochon! Imbécile! Bâtard! Do you think you can mess with me?’

Pig, and the rest of it, and not bad for a start. ‘Ah bon. Let’s see now. How can I put this down?’

A little black notebook was opened to a half-scribbled page, the Sûreté, with that black-stitched bulge above his left eye, wetting the end of his pencil, to write and say: ‘Opportunity given.’

That bushy moustache was touched with a knuckle, the fist clenched.

‘A few cigars, Inspector. A little flour and sug—’

‘Ministre, we’ve heard it all before. One blows the dust away, n’est-ce pas, only to find that the floor needs to be washed, only to then find that the varnish is cracked and the boards are in need of replacement, the joists also.’

‘I came here to discuss the murders, damn you, and whether they’re the work of one or more assassins!’

Spittle, too, had erupted. ‘Then please proceed.’

‘And we’ll get to the other later, is that it, eh?’

‘Begin, monsieur, by telling me about Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux.’

A hand was irritably tossed, a shrug given.

‘The silly bitch made a mockery of me. Always flaunting her ass when at the office on one of her impromptu visits. Always cheeky. Did she think others would not notice?’

‘Your wife and children perhaps?’

‘Are among those who noticed, yes. Scene after scene. I had constantly to warn her that she was going too far. She shouldn’t have ridiculed my wife in front of others. That was unforgivable but Sandrine should also have understood Marie-Jacqueline meant nothing to me. Nothing, absolutely!’

‘Elaborate, please.’

Again a hand was waved. ‘It’s not important.’

Patience, mon vieux, patience, St-Cyr counselled himself. ‘Everything is important.’

‘A party. A small gathering. A little fun – what could have been more innocent? Nom de Jésus-Christ, the stress has to be relieved now and then, does it not?’

Mon Dieu, the arrogance! ‘Where?’

‘Le Château aux Oiseaux Splendides.’

‘And your wife turned up. A little surprise?’

‘Oui. It … Ah …’ He threw out both hands, gesturing with them and raised a cautionary finger. ‘It was nothing. Marie-Jacqueline and I on a …’

‘A staircase?’ It was just a shot in the dark.

‘To the small tower that was off the bedroom we were using. The beam of Sandrine’s torch found us. Instead of trying to cover her parties sexuelles, Marie-Jacqueline leaned back on the stairs, laughed at my wife and … and spread her legs. We’d … we’d just had sex.’

‘Unprotected?’

‘Inspector …’

‘It’s Chief Inspector, Monsieur le Ministre, and unless I’m mistaken, which I’m not, you are already guilty of misuse of your office and misappropriation of goods you yourself are in charge of rationing, so let us have the truth.’

‘Not protected.’

One could imagine the rest, the wife with her gaze riveted on the offending female, jealousy, hatred and unbridled rage in her eyes and acid on her tongue. But it would be best to sigh and say, ‘Let’s have the date and time.’

‘The Saturday six weeks before she drowned. As to the time … perhaps my wife found us at midnight, perhaps a little after that.’

‘And she had clearance to be out after curfew?’

Ah damn this one! ‘I have a pass, the car its Service Public sticker.’

And signed by the Commissaire de Police, a petrol allocation also. Party, chateau, 24 October 1942, was jotted down. ‘These parties, Monsieur le Ministre, who else was there and how often were they held?’

Maudit salaud! ‘One never really knows at such gatherings.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘René and the others, as well as still others. Maybe forty, maybe a few more. It depended on …’

‘On what?’

‘The success of …’

‘Your little enterprise?’

‘Oui.’

‘So, a party every fortnight?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Netting how much a month, please, this enterprise?’

Was St-Cyr a saint? ‘Four or five hundred thousand francs, seldom more.’

‘A week?’ asked Hermann, setting a double pastis without water on the table before his partner and chum, and two of Paulaner’s Münchner Hells for himself.

‘A week,’ sighed Richard, realizing only too clearly that Bousquet had buggered off and had left him to face the music on his own.

‘One and a half to two million a month, Louis. Between eighteen and twenty-four million a year. Among how many shareholders, monsieur?’

These two … René had been warned not to let Boemelburg assign them to the investigation. Laval would intercede on the detectives’ behalf by personally telephoning the Gestapo Chief! ‘Fifteen. No more. It’s always best to minimize such things.’

‘All well-placed in the Government ministries or doing business with it? Good business?’ asked Kohler.

‘All.’

‘That four or five hundred thousand a week is too little, Louis. Think of the expenses, the buying on the marché noir, then selling on it. Two breaches of the law, of course, but the commissions also, the pay-offs. Travel to and from Paris and other cities and towns. The price of flour alone tells us it has to be more. What’s Henri-Claude Ferbrave’s cut?’

Ah merde! ‘Ten per cent.’

‘And Jean-Guy Deschambeault’s?’ demanded Hermann.

‘Another ten.’

‘And the guards and drivers of those armoured vans of his father’s? Their hush-money?’

Must Kohler threateningly lean over the table and not sit down? ‘Ten again.’

‘Five million a week, Louis. At least five and probably fifteen.’

‘Look, I … I don’t know the details. How could I? Ask Honoré de Fleury. He … he oversees the accounts.’

‘Our Inspector of Finances, Hermann. Supplies and rationing, the police, the Bank of France, and finance.’

‘And no income tax because none of it’s reported, since de Fleury makes certain of that, and Bousquet lets him.’

‘Four murders, Hermann.’

‘The threat of further and more important assassinations, Louis.’

Hermann would now leave the rest of the interview to his partner and enjoy his beer and the scenery. ‘Monsieur le Ministre, unless you fully cooperate you will accompany me to the morgue where we will continue our little discussion over the corpse of your former mistress.’

Must the fun, the laughter, the sound of the pianos, the singing and dancing swirl around the island of their little table? wondered Richard acidly. ‘Marie-Jacqueline told my wife that Sandrine couldn’t possibly be any good at making love since I had not only sought her company but had done so repeatedly and for almost two years. They fought. They screamed at each other and tumbled down the stairs and out on to the carpet next to the fireplace and the fire. Sandrine’s coat was torn open, her hair pulled, the dress and blouse ripped and a breast repeatedly grabbed and squeezed; Marie-Jacqueline’s skin was deeply scratched and bled in several places. Threats were shrieked. Fists pummelled one another. Sandrine did cry out several times that she would kill Marie-Jacqueline but it meant nothing, I’m certain.’

‘And that one’s response?’

How cautious of the Sûreté. ‘She laughed at Sandrine and then cheered the crowd who’d gathered to watch, and turning back to my wife, shrilled, “Why not strip and we’ll see which one of us causes his cock to lift?”’

Ah merde! ‘Had you told the nurse you’d get a divorce and marry her?’

‘Inspector, surely you are aware that family is everything to a man in my position and that what I say to such women is of little consequence? She knew it was impossible but couldn’t resist making the taunt.’

‘And your wife?’

‘Spat in her face, slapped her hard, and left.’

‘Then I’m going to have to interview her.’

‘That’s impossible. I can’t allow it.’

‘You will whether you like it or not, and that is final.’

Six of those little grey pills of Benzedrine the Luftwaffe’s night-fighter pilots took to stay awake were shaken from Hermann’s inexhaustible supply, to lie like gravel on the linoleum-topped table.

‘Down those, Louis. You’re going to need them.’

‘Six! We’ve been up for nearly forty-eight hours! You know those won’t sit well on a stomach that has had only beer or pastis to wet it!’

Unsteadily Herr Kohler got up and, a head and shoulders above nearly everyone else, picked up his two empties and began to make his way back to the bar.

‘He’ll be awake all night now and asleep tomorrow when I need him,’ grumbled St-Cyr.

‘Don’t you two ever stop?’ demanded Richard caustically.

‘Never. Now where were we? Oh yes, the older scratches and bruises the coroner noted on Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux and this supposed threat to assassinate les gars.’

*

Caught unexpectedly, their voices low and urgent only to be suddenly silenced, the cabaret troupe remained motionless in their dressing room. ‘Oh, sorry,’ quipped Kohler. ‘I was looking for the toilets.’

Still the three of them didn’t move, nor did they grin or laugh at such an obvious lie. They’d left the stage, he the bar and right after them. Now they knew he’d deliberately invaded their privacy and they didn’t like it one bit.

Their gazes taking him in, their black velvet chokers setting off the kind of women men imagined them to be, their expressions were, as one, cold, and silently demanded, why is it that you want us to be the way you do? But then … each, in her own way, realized why he must have come.

‘Kohler,’ he heard himself saying, his throat still dry at the accusation but also at having interrupted something he should have quietly listened to from the corridor. ‘Kripo, Paris-Central.’ The dressing room was crowded. Underthings, skirts, blouses and winter coats hung on wooden pegs even around the much-stained mirror. Stage make-up, grey rolls of unbleached toilet paper, lipsticks, et cetera, cluttered the shared dressing table. In a far corner, a rusty iron hole in the floor with stirrups, a pull-chain and one hell of a rush of icy water – a Turkish – was not only wet and slimy but reeked.

‘A detective,’ croaked the one with the clarinet, moisture rapidly filling wounded dark brown eyes that only moments ago had wantonly gazed down the length of that instrument she had blown into and fingered on stage. Her thick chestnut hair was long and still shaken out but now it fell forward, for she was lying, tummy down, on a lumpy, moth-eaten day bed and had had to turn her head his way. Ass up a little, legs slightly parted, knees dug in and waist bare, the off-white satin bra no doubt binding her so tightly it pinched and chafed her nipples.

Unbidden, Herr Kohler’s faded blue eyes fled emptily over her body, Aurélienne told herself – Madame Tavernier to you, Inspector. He didn’t pause at her frill-clad bottom and black-meshed legs, but noted the holes in her stockings and, realizing that they couldn’t be mended because they helped to create that seedy, sluttish, twenties look of Berlin that was so in demand, especially now, paused only at her black high-heels and cleats. Was he thinking of footprints in the snow? Was he? she wondered desperately.

He blinked as if a little drunk and tore his gaze from her to look suddenly at Carole – that’s Madame Navaud to you, Inspector – who stood with lighted cigarette poised. The flowered grey silk kimono was thrown well off that bare left shoulder, that hand placed firmly above a provocative hip, while the barbed tattoo of a wild rose climbed from her belly button and the equator of pink peekaboos to just below her satin bra. Black garters and black net stockings too, and her long, light brown hair all over the place and all but hiding the hard hazel eyes that looked sideways at him.

‘Kohler,’ Carole said in that way she always did when forced to caress some bastard’s quiverins cheek. ‘Here to find a killer or killers.’

‘Not us,’ whispered Nathalie, her expression unchanged, and still sitting facing the back of that Thonet chair of hers. Its bentwood waist was slender and curved beautifully upwards just like her own, her thighs tightly gripping it, her chin on the hand that was folded delicately over the top rail as if she was caressing the back of a lover’s neck. A chair that she often used as a stage prop and had insisted she must have when she’d arrived in Vichy in the late autumn of 1940. Madame Nathalie Bénoist, Inspector. Nathalie who holds us all together and writes our songs and routines and makes us work. She has such lovely shoulders hasn’t she? And yet … and yet her expression can be so hard and uncompromising.

Nathalie’s black teddy gave Herr Kohler’s swift scrutiny a glimpse of lace, flesh and garters, of smooth white thighs and black lisle stockings that had no holes above the tops of her jackboots.

‘What’s to happen to us?’ she asked at last, but with that same penetratingly cold voice she used on insufferable men. ‘Are we to be next?’

‘Just who the hell is doing this?’ demanded Carole, abruptly taking a quick drag, then curling back her upper lip to spit, ‘Detectives! Merde, haven’t you salauds from Paris thought it could well be the wives?’

‘A knife?’ Nathalie said softly from her chair. ‘Noëlle Olivier’s, is that so, Inspector? Well? Damn it, tell us.’

‘Yes! Louis … Look, my partner has it.’

Had Herr Kohler been startled by Nathalie’s vehemence? wondered Carole. Did he, too, think there could well be a connection to that little legend? Edith Pascal, eh, Inspector? La Mégère as we call her – the shrew – when she hounds Albert for newspapers and about other things.

‘And is it true that Albert Grenier found it?’ bleated Aurélienne from where she lay, her back still to him.

‘Yes, again.’

‘Ah Sainte Mère!’ she cried, and, shutting her eyes, bowed her head to press it against her own stage prop which Albert had seen her lewdly sucking and fondling often enough. Albert …

‘Chérie, it can’t have been him!’ insisted Nathalie.

‘Ma foi, quelle stupidité, idiote!’ scathed Carole. ‘Albert loves us all. You know he’d never touch a hair on your head. He’d die for us just as he would for the Maréchal. He couldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘Just the rats, eh?’ blurted Aurélienne, defiantly swinging her legs off the bed to sit on its edge. ‘He presses a thumb under the chins of those that haven’t quite been done in and watches as they struggle for breath or all but cuts off their heads by tightening that wire of his!’

‘Or uses the chair leg, so why make such a thing of it?’ shot back Carole.

‘Because I’ve seen him watching me! Oh bien sûr we used to say he should at least have a little fun in his life and why not let him watch us, but now I’m afraid of him. I am, Nathalie. I am!’

Hurriedly Herr Kohler pushed things aside on the dressing table to set his drinks down but knocked over the bottle of cologne that was always left open as an air-sweetener. Futilely he made a grab for it only to realize he was too late as it shattered on the concrete floor. ‘Verdammt!’ he swore and desperately searched his pockets for a cigarette until Carole gave him hers.

‘Merci,’ he said. ‘Christ, I needed this! Four girls and Albert knew them all. Did he watch them too?’

‘Getting undressed?’ asked Nathalie.

‘Fucking their lovers?’ went on Carole. ‘Céline was one of us, Inspector. The others were friends.’

‘And she was killed with that knife!’ wept Aurélienne. ‘I knew she was going to be next. I begged her not to go to the Hôtel du Parc when Honoré de Fleury came in here to give her that nightgown and told her to put it on. Albert knew what she was up to with Pétain. I’m certain of it. Certain, do you understand?’

Svelte and looking taller than she was, the one called Nathalie lifted herself from that chair of hers, its back slipping between and behind her legs in one gracefully fluid motion. Putting a bare arm about the clarinet player’s shoulders, she kissed that tear-streaked cheek and, pressing her forehead against it, rocked her head from side to side, saying soothingly, ‘Petite, don’t worry so. Albert couldn’t possibly have killed Céline or any of the others. Mon Dieu, didn’t he leave flowers for you in your room last summer, in mine also, and now sometimes a gingerbread his mother has baked especially for him?’

And gazing up with superb china-blue eyes under bobbed and parted jet-black hair à la Madame Noëlle Olivier—yes, damn it! thought Kohler – said, ‘It was nothing, Inspector. Albert overheard Lucie telling Aurélienne and Céline that she was going to have to go to Paris. Gaëtan-Baptiste, her banker, was insisting on it and had …’

‘Had what?’

Ah merde! ‘Arranged everything.’

‘An abortion?’

‘She wasn’t going to refuse, Inspector,’ said Nathalie. ‘She couldn’t, she said. But for me, I think she wanted very much to keep the child.’

‘And Albert? How did he react?’

She shrugged. ‘He got angry. He thinks girls lead men astray – at least that’s what his mother has told him often enough. She’s very religious and had wanted a child so badly but had had to wait nearly for ever, so Albert, he doesn’t feel abortion is right either.’

And neither does the Maréchal he worships, thought Kohler. ‘Where is this peephole of his?’

‘Actually there are two of them,’ said Carole. Picking her way round the day bed and past the doorless armoire, she found the crack high up in the wall and ran a finger along and right into it. ‘He stands on the wooden crate he uses as a footstool when reaching difficult places to set his snares.’

‘The other one is in the ceiling above Aurélienne, Inspector,’ said Nathalie dryly. ‘There’s a storeroom in which Albert must also set snares. Chez Crusoe would rather their kitchens and our dressing room were inundated every spring during the annual floods, than have all that stuff up there get wet.’

‘Cigarettes and pipe tobacco?’

‘Sugar, flour, chocolate, wine and champagne,’ said Carole, giving him the blankest of looks.

‘Orders are placed here, then, and the vans come and go?’ he asked, not missing a trick.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but please don’t tell anyone we let you in on it.’

‘And you all have rooms at the Hôtel d’Allier?’

‘Yes,’ said Nathalie. ‘Inspector, forget about Albert. Think about the wives, as Carole has said. You see, they came here to Chez Crusoe. Not Bousquet’s – she’s in Paris – but Richard’s, de Fleury’s and Deschambeault’s. What they saw they did not like and were only too vocal about it. Everyone in the audience laughed, of course, ourselves especially. Mon Dieu, to be presented with such an opportunity for humour was too much to resist, but … but their husbands had left the club by then.’

‘Marie-Jacqueline, Camille, Lucie and Céline had gone with them to the Chateau aux Oiseaux Splendides,’ said Carole, lighting a cigarette for herself. ‘We joined the party later.’

Louis had shown him his notebook: ‘“Party, 24 October”,’ he muttered, ‘and just before the Allied landings in North Africa and total Occupation …’

‘But there have been other parties since,’ confessed Aurélienne, taking Nathalie’s hand in hers to kiss and grip it tightly. ‘Like Camille, Inspector, each of us has a husband who is a prisoner of war in your country, but unlike Céline’s, ours are still alive. Alive!’

‘Those bitches had the nerve to accuse us in public of being unfaithful,’ snorted Carole. ‘Oh for sure, they despise us for letting a little fun come into our lives now and then, but to threaten to tell our husbands we’ve been unfaithful? To write letters to the Maréchal demanding that he get les Allemands to send us to the Reich and into forced labour in a munitions factory? Merde, how could anyone think of doing such a thing to another?’

‘We’re not saints, but we didn’t deserve what they said of us,’ said Nathalie. ‘I’ve two sons I board at a farm on the other side of Charmeil where I know they will get enough to eat. Carole has a daughter she left with her husband’s parents.’

‘I couldn’t stand to live with them any more. It drove me crazy, their constant carping. Now I work and save and hope we’ll have a future when my husband is released.’

‘Aurélienne comes with me, Inspector,’ said Nathalie. ‘Every second Sunday we visit the farm and take the boys to Mass at the same little church Pétain sometimes attends. They call her auntie, and as for me, I know she loves them as much as I do, if not more.’

‘I haven’t had any of my own yet,’ confessed Aurélienne, shyly blinking away her tears. ‘There … there wasn’t time. One day we were married and the next my Yvon was sent to the front. Now a heavily censored letter still comes every once in a while but what’s a girl to do, eh? Pine away the whole of her life?’

‘Starve?’ said Carole.

‘Wear black?’ said Nathalie.

‘Wait when one never knows if her husband will ever come home and if he does, will he still feel the same way about her; will she still love him? Me, I can’t even remember his face!’ swore Carole.

‘We’re not here to judge.’

‘Don’t men always judge?’ she snapped. ‘And their wives too? Especially those who have everything and consequently think they’re better than those of us who have nothing?’

‘And at this chateau party, did any of the other wives join in the fight between Marie-Jacqueline and Sandrine Richard?’

‘Madame de Fleury found Honoré with Céline and wept but couldn’t seem to move or say a thing. She just stood in the centre of that room with her head bowed and fists clenched,’ said Nathalie. ‘Never have I seen a woman more devastated.’

‘And Madame Deschambeault?’ he asked.

‘Her?’ snorted Carole. ‘For that one, Inspector, you have to understand that her mind isn’t at all well. She remained in the car with Madame Pétain.’

‘Ah Christ!’

They were subdued, these men of influence, said St-Cyr to himself and, for just this once in their corrupted lives, reduced to silently watching two overworked detectives enjoy a much-needed meal. Bousquet, again absenting himself had gathered the unfaithful around their table at Chez Crusoe, but Laval had made certain of the meal. From one of the restaurants he frequented along the Allier, the Premier had sent a splendid sampling of the rustic fare for which the Auvergne was justly famous.

Pounti could be no more than a hash of bacon with onions, Swiss chard and eggs, but here it was golden brown, piping hot, cut into wedges, containing chopped ham, pork, raisins, cream and herbs – tarragon and chervil especially – and was accompanied by the dark green lentils that were grown only in the Puy de Dôme and had such a remarkably distinctive flavour.

Two bottles of the Chanturgue red – ah, not a Beaujolais of course – were totally acceptable. Truffades were waiting. A kind of potato cake, but shredded coarsely, fried in lard with Cantal cheese cut in strips over them and left until melted only to be then turned over, the fire now low, the aroma superbe.

A salade de lentilles aux saucisses also waited – dried country sausage cut in rounds, the lentils, which had been soaked overnight with onions and carrots, simmered and drained, the carrots, et cetera, saved for the never-ending pots of soupe aux choux, the lentils cooled, mashed with a fork and given a drizzle of whisked egg yolks, vinegar, olive oil and Dijon mustard.

The bread? he asked himself, refilling Hermann’s glass and then tearing off a fistful from the round and golden cross-hatched loaf, was a meal in itself.

But, to business, he said, looking silently round the table and asking himself, Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux and this acid little Minister of Supplies and Rationing, this Alain Andre Richard? A patently indiscreet nurse with a private practice who was on call at the girls’ school where Camille Lefebvre was a teacher, and who had also worked part-time at the clinic of Dr Raoul Normand where Julienne Deschambeault sought constant help? Marie-Jacqueline, monsieur, age thirty-seven, not thirty-two or -three, and born in Tours. A divorcee at the age of nineteen who had just given birth to twin girls she had given up to the Carmelites. A woman with jet-black hair, dark blue eyes, an angular face, sharp nose and chin and dimpled apple cheeks. What, please, had Julienne’s reaction been when attended to by such a creature? Intense hatred, a traumatic fit perhaps, or did Madame Deschambeault simply swear to drown her?

Gaëtan-Baptiste Deschambeault, the husband and Sous-directeur of the Bank of France, was tall and not unhandsome, broad-shouldered under an open black overcoat, the black hair thinning, the aristocratic blue eyes swift to every nuance. Was he thinking of his little Lucie who’d been smothered at the age of twenty-three? His very personal shorthand typist, the one he’d got pregnant? Was he remembering the foetus between her blotched and putrid thighs, the effluent and bloodstained oedematous fluid that had still oozed from her, or was he thinking instead of her chestnut curls and dark brown, mischievous eyes, the riding crop clutched licentiously – was that not so, monsieur? – and leather thongs waiting, but to tie up which of you?

And Honoré de Fleury? he asked. For the first time we get a good look at you and I have to say you’re quite ordinary, even for an inspector of finances, all of whom look ordinary. Nervous still, and not liking being forced to sit here – Bousquet must have told them all they had no other choice. And Laval would have made certain his Secrétaire général did just that!

De Fleury’s faded green eyes were closely set in a finely boned and freckled face. Age fifty-six and greying, the reddish hair rapidly receding, the hands small and light. A man of numbers, an accountant and yet … and yet he’d had a mistress who’d been knifed. Age twenty-eight, a dancer, a piano player, teacher, singer … blonde, blue-eyed, a widow with a little daughter Annette to whom she had written postcards using the quills from increasingly exotic birds. Céline Dupuis, formerly of 60 rue Lhomond. Taught ballet part-time to the girls at Camille Lefèbvre’s school, as well as at the ballet school of Thérèse Deschambeault. Ah yes!

Céline, who had worn two costumes and a black velvet choker, and whose hair, of below shoulder length, had been all over the place due to someone’s desperate search for something they’d left behind.

As always, one had to wonder what such a gorgeous and hardworking woman could possibly have seen in such a moth-eaten older man. Position, money, the good times, the ‘fun’, but really oughtn’t there to have been something else? Unattached in a place like this, a girl would always be badgered. Attached, she would have got a good meal every now and then, and others would have left her alone. And she hadn’t believed de Fleury could possibly divorce that wife of his, that Éisabeth. A little game they had played, he had said to Hermann. A game! But had Éisabeth de Fleury wanted Céline Dupuis murdered? Had she hired a professional?

All three victims had been friends of Camille’s, the teacher with thick auburn hair and brown eyes, her carte d’identité had stated. Chestnut hair and deeply warm brown eyes with flecks of green and gold, Bousquet had said. Her husband a POW, a captain; her father one of the disbanded Army of the Armistice who hadn’t liked his daughter playing around and had always bitched about what a coward his son-in-law was. Garrotted savagely by another professional, or the same one. Born in Lyons – had she, too, been caught in flagrante delicto but with Bousquet at that infamous chateau party?

Real coffee, black and strong and made over a wood fire in an iron pot, nothing fancy, awaited, as did fouaces, pancakes made with fine, unleavened flour, cooked sous la cendre, under the ashes, with butter, egg yolks, saffron, cinnamon and nutmeg and filled with that marvel of marvels of the Auvergne, its crystallized fruit, with even a few glazed walnuts being added for good measure.

Wedges of Cantal and Saint-Nectaire also waited, bringing moisture to this poor detective’s eyes. It had been years since he’d seen such simple, wholesome fare but, alas, he’d best continue to deal with the matters at hand.

‘Messieurs,’ he said, as the racket of the club constantly swirled around the table, ‘we are presented with a plot to kill you. Résistants perhaps. A Flykiller, in any case, or two of them, and the ominous threat of an imminent civil war and yet … and yet.’ He stabbed the air with his fork. ‘We find the mistresses are the victims and that in each case, not only is the intended target passed over and no attempt made on his life, but that he, to save his reputation, keeps silent and buggers off, leaving the corpse for others to find and tidy up.’

‘Now listen, you …’ began Deschambeault, still not even having bothered to remove his coat and scarf.

‘No, you listen, Sous-directeur. If what my partner has just learned is true, your wife was not alone in that car on her little visit to the chateau you boys use, but was sitting beside Madame Pétain.’

‘That woman interferes, Inspector,’ swore Richard acidly.

‘Why not tell him she wields enormous power?’ shot Honoré de Fleury.

‘Which is always veiled,’ sighed Deschambeault. ‘Merde, I’ve no idea why she was there. My Julienne was to have been at Dr Normand’s clinic. Total rest and further treatments. The hydrothérapie sauvage and électrothérapie. Thirty cubic centimetres of the Chomel six times a day …’

‘And your wife, Monsieur de Fleury?’ asked Louis.

‘Knew only that I would be late and not home for dinner.’

Louis wouldn’t let him get away with that! thought Kohler.

‘And where, please, is home?’

‘The Hotel Majestic. We’ve three rooms just along the hall from Dr Ménétrel and his family, and …’

‘Near Madame Pétain’s suite?’

‘Near enough. All right, they know each other. They talk. Élisabeth and Madame Pétain use the same coiffeur and … and visit the Grand établissement thermal every Thursday, as does Madame Richard.’

This was getting better and better! ‘And do they share a bath?’ asked Kohler. ‘The steam room perhaps?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Tea once or twice a week, or coffee and cakes in the Chante Clair?’ he asked, ripping off more bread and still eating like a soldier in the trenches of that other war, as if it was his last meal.

‘Often enough, yes,’ flustered de Fleury. ‘Mon Dieu, you’re not suggesting my Éisabeth entered into some pact to kill them? She’s not like that. She’s meek and mild, the perfect stay-at-home mother and wife. Certainly she’s upset about how crowded things are, living as we have to, but … but I’ve made a full confession that she has accepted. Never again will I … Well, you know.’ Agitatedly he passed worried fingers over that brow of his.

‘Stray from the fold?’ quipped Hermann, helping himself to more of the truffades.

‘Sandrine has been appeased, Inspectors,’ said Richard dryly. ‘Revenge, yes, but as to her drowning Marie-Jacqueline …? It’s impossible. Nothing could have been further from her mind.’

‘And yet … and yet,’ motioned Louis with his fork. ‘You and your lover shared a bath at the établissement thermal and your wife, since she also visits the baths, must have known the two of you were accustomed to doing this, as did Madame Pétain. It wasn’t the first time, was it?’

‘Inspectors … Inspectors,’ chided Bousquet, grinning affably as he rejoined them, ‘in the heat of a jealous rage a woman will say anything!’

‘And Madame Pétain?’ asked Hermann, wolfing most of a truffade. ‘Just what the hell was she doing there last 24 October?’

‘In the middle of the night, messieurs?’ demanded Louis. ‘Was it raining? And which of you escorted Mesdames Sandrine Richard and Élisabeth de Fleury to the car, only to find the Maréchal’s wife staring out through her side window at him?’

‘I did,’ said Bousquet, that lambskin-collared overcoat of his falling open to reveal the very finest of suits – did he change his shirts several times a day? wondered St-Cyr. Image was so often everything to the Occupier. Wealth and power went hand in hand with that.

‘I told her the matter had been taken care of,’ said Bousquet stonily, ‘and that there was no cause for further alarm.’

‘When, really, it hadn’t been taken care of at all,’ sighed Louis, helping himself to the salad. ‘Further parties at that same chateau led to further flagrant infidelities; here, too, I should think, and at the Jockey Club, wouldn’t you say, Hermann?’

‘I’d give him a month’s wages, Louis, just to hear what Madame Pétain had to say!’

‘Mon Dieu, how were we to know then that all four would be killed?’ demanded Bousquet.

The dishes were, of course, covered, the porcelain not Sevres or Limoges but eminently serviceable. Renowned for his love of the table, Laval had stood them proud, but why?

‘Messieurs,’ said St-Cyr, ‘let us admit that you were up to mischief and that it had to stop if for no other reason than that of the scandal and embarrassment to the very Government you serve. Marie-Jacqueline was killed but the rest of you carried on as if nothing had happened, and certainly for you, Ministre Richard, this first killing was a blessing in disguise. She was trouble – you, yourself, have stated this. She was drunk – she must have been, a little at least – and had slipped below the water in that bath. The electricity had gone off – another power failure you went to investigate – and when you returned, you stated to the investigating officer later that you thought she was still alive, wanting only to caress you with her foot.’

‘That was 9 December, Louis, at about 6.50 p.m. Then all but a month later, Monsieur le Secrétaire Général meets Camille Lefebvre at a cabin he rents out for just such a purpose, and let’s not kid ourselves about that.’

‘And at 2.45 a.m. finds her garrotted, fires two or three shots into the wilderness but can’t remember how many and buggers off to Paris to an important meeting.’

‘Inspectors …’ attempted Bousquet.

‘No, please,’ cautioned Louis, taking more bread with his salad. ‘Lucie Trudel then dies and she, too, could have been a substantial embarrassment to you, Sous-directeur Deschambeault, so much so that you even failed to inform your friend and business partner, our Secrétaire Général de Police, of the murder.’

‘Then Céline is persuaded to agree to do something she didn’t want to do, and is taken to the Hall des Sources at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, 2 February,’ said Hermann. ‘Trouble is, mon vieux, if this one had owned up as he should have, Céline might still be alive.’

‘Two of those murders rest on your shoulders, Sous-directeur. I’m even certain you read her note: “Lucie, we have to talk. It’s urgent”.’

‘What was?’ asked Hermann. ‘The abortion? The murders of Marie-Jacqueline and Camille and were they to be next, eh? Or had Céline discovered who the killer or killers were?’

‘Jean-Louis … Herr Kohler … listen to me, please,’ urged Bousquet, no longer dashing, just damned worried. ‘It can’t have been the wives. Merde alors, it’s crazy to even think such a thing.’

‘It’s the terrorists,’ said Deschambeault vehemently. ‘Why else would your name be at the top of L’Humanité’s list? Those bastards are out to get us!’

‘The Résistance,’ said Hermann. ‘There’s only one problem. Since when did they start killing the innocent only to forget entirely about their intended targets?’

‘They want to make us afraid of them!’ seethed Richard.

‘To prolong our agony!’ hissed de Fleury.

‘Or is it, messieurs, that the killer or killers wish you to blame the Résistance, as you have?’

‘Herr Gessler and Herr Jännicke will sort it out, Jean-Louis,’ said Bousquet gruffly. ‘I had no choice but to ask them to bring in a little help.’

‘To snatch people from their farms and streets?’

‘By questioning anyone they think necessary,’ he countered.

‘Then let us hope we’re allowed to continue unhindered, or is it, Secrétaire, that you still want roadblocks thrown up in front of us?’

‘Not at all. We’re here to cooperate.’

‘Then do so. Begin by realizing that we’re dealing with one or perhaps two persons who not only know Vichy extremely well, but are also in on everything you do.’

‘They know beforehand when things will happen,’ said Kohler.

‘Yet so far we really know very little about our victims,’ lamented Louis.

At a curt nod from Bousquet, Deschambeault said, ‘Inspectors, Lucie carried letters to Paris for Céline. Who they were to, I’ve no idea, but I warned her to be careful. Innocent … I’m certain the matter was perfectly innocent.’

But against the law.

‘She simply posted them for her in Paris,’ said Bousquet.

‘One or two or more per trip?’ asked Louis, draining the last of the bottles.

‘One, always, and to the same person,’ replied Deschambeault uncomfortably. ‘I know this because she told me not to worry so much, that they … they were simply to an old friend of Céline’s.’

‘And not to Madame Dupuis’s daughter?’ asked Louis, who was always such a stickler for detail, especially when someone had tried not to give him the whole truth.

The head was shaken.

‘Secrétaire,’ said Louis, ‘I found no such letter among the things Mademoiselle Trudel had packed for her Paris trip. Not in her day-to-day handbag, not in the one she would have used in the city, nor in her suitcase.’

‘Maybe there wasn’t one,’ said Bousquet. ‘Maybe Céline, thinking that Lucie was going home to see her father, hadn’t given her one.’

‘Maybe, maybe,’ sighed Kohler. Louis hadn’t liked Bousquet’s response either. Had the letter been taken by her killer, or by Deschambeault? Was it all a cover-up?

Bousquet gave another curt nod, this time to Honoré de Fleury, who said, ‘Inspectors, after Camille’s death, Céline felt certain Marie-Jacqueline hadn’t just drowned accidentally and that she would be next. She had always wanted to leave Vichy and return to her daughter, but she … she then became desperate.’

‘Thus agreeing to the little proposition Ménétrel had put to you,’ said Louis sadly. ‘Monsieur, exactly what reward did the doctor promise?’

The others must know, thought Kohler, but even so it would hurt to have to say it.

‘He said that if I could convince Céline to answer the Maréchal’s love letters with a little visit, he, the Maréchal’s personal physician and confidant, would see that I became Directeur de Finance, but that if I didn’t, I could kiss my crummy job goodbye.’

‘And Céline … what was she offered?’

‘Two hundred thousand francs as well as the laissez-passer, sauf-conduit and necessary residence papers.’

‘Fernand de Brinon, our Government’s representative in Paris, is a shareholder of our little enterprise,’ confessed Deschambeault, not looking at any of them.

‘Everything had been taken care of,’ offered de Fleury. ‘Céline was happier than I’d seen her in weeks but was still very worried about Lucie having an abortion. That, I think, is why she wanted to talk to her.’

‘And the earrings, monsieur?’ asked Louis.

‘Believe me, I knew nothing of them, nor do I know why she would have tried to hide them from her killer.’

‘Jean-Louis, you spoke to Auguste-Alphonse Olivier. How did you find him?’ asked Bousquet.

‘Withdrawn and very reticent to discuss the robbery. I did get him to admit that the jewellery hadn’t been in his safe-deposit box but had been left where his wife had always kept it. When Hermann and I came downstairs from examining the room, he had gone out for another of his walks. A defeated man, Secrétaire.’

That was good of Louis, thought Kohler, but God help them if Gessler found out the truth!

‘And the robbery?’ asked Bousquet.

‘The housekeeper confided that he often forgets his key and that she has then to leave the door unlocked.’

Good again.

‘Ah bon,’ nodded Bousquet. ‘A veteran, a war hero. It’s sad what life can do to a man.’

‘Pétain made a cuckold of him,’ snorted Richard, ‘but fortunately Olivier poses no threat.’

‘Sadly none whatsoever,’ said Louis. ‘A recluse no one pays the slightest attention to. And now, Monsieur de Fleury, since you keep the accounts, would you tell us, please, who the other shareholders are?’

‘Charles-Frédéric Hébert at the chateau – it was only proper of us to include him.’

‘Ménétrel?’ asked Hermann, only to see de Fleury shake his head.

‘The doctor has always the well-being of the Maréchal in mind,’ said Bousquet gruffly.

‘And the others?’ asked Louis blandly.

‘Inspector, is this necessary?’ asked Deschambeault.

It was. ‘Jean Bichelonne, Minister of Production and Communications,’ said de Fleury. ‘Philippe Henriot, Minister of Propaganda and Information.’

Radio-Paris’s Number One Boy.

‘Herr Otto Abetz, the German Ambassador.’

And owner of the château.

‘Édouard Guillaumet, Sous-directeur of the Tabac National at Vanves.’

And necessary.

‘Gérard Ouellette, Inspecteur des caves de la Halle aux vins.’

The huge Paris wine store: champagne and cognac too, of course – perfect.

‘Jean-Louis, the rest are prominent men of industry and commerce and members of the Cercle Européen,’ said Bousquet, as if this ought to put them beyond reproach. ‘Aeronautics, automobiles and lorries, locomotives and railway trucks, coal, iron, steel, aluminium, beet sugar, cement and textiles, chemicals also. All keep horses at the racing stables.’

‘And occasionally enjoy a party or two?’ asked Hermann, having momentarily lost his appetite.

‘Of course.’

‘Then the vans aren’t the only vehicles that are used to transport goods, are they?’ he said.

‘That is correct.’

‘And anything you need you can get at a price?’

‘That, too, within reason, is correct.’

‘So last December who ordered in the 1925 Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale that Marie-Jacqueline downed, and the Shalimar that Céline Dupuis was wearing when killed?’

‘Charles-Frédéric Hébert,’ said Bousquet. ‘He’s very fond of the Maréchal, though he no longer sees him and hasn’t since the tragedy. The Bollinger and the Rémy-Martin Louis XIII were, I believe, Christmas gifts, but extra arrived with the consignment. As to the perfume, I don’t think any was ordered.’

‘What tragedy?’ asked Hermann innocently.

‘Why the suicide of Noëlle Olivier. It was Charles who brought the couple together and he still blames himself for what subsequently happened. He was a major shareholder in Olivier’s bank and lost a fortune when it failed in 1933. Oh, by the way, Jean-Louis, I’ll take those billets doux, if you don’t mind.’

‘Later, Secrétaire. Later. For now they must be considered as evidence.’

At 10 a.m. Berlin Time, Friday 5 February, the sun was ringed with frost. The wind, gusting like a bastard, swept snow from every ridge and hill, and in the valley of the Allier below, the river was gripped in iron, the gunmetal light enough to make the bones ache.

‘Mon Dieu, Hermann,’ said Louis, reverently ignoring the weather, his breath fogging an already iced-up windscreen, ‘it’s exactement as Caesar would have seen it in 52 BC. He’d been defeated by Vercingetorix and his Arverni at Gergovia, their hill fort, and had had to cross the ford down there to lick his wounds in the hot springs.’

Christ, were they to have another tiresome lecture at a time like this? They’d just driven through the little village of Charmeil, some seven kilometres north-west of Vichy, had first crossed the Boutiron Bridge without a murmur from the boys on the control, a bad sign. ‘That little aerodrome with the swastika wasn’t there, mon enfant, nor were the two Storchs or that Dornier that are warming up!’

Grumpy still and no imagination! ‘Nor was the railway spur that’s at the foot of this hill from which Herr Abetz’s chateau commands such an imposing view.’

After leaving Chez Crusoe, they’d spent the rest of the night in yet another of the lousy flea-bitten hotels honest detectives had had to become accustomed to. Searing pain in that left knee and no time to boil chestnuts and mash a poultice as promised. ‘Caesar wouldn’t have campaigned in the dead of winter!’

A sigh had best be given. Hermann had tossed and turned all night. Sleep had been impossible! ‘You’re missing the point. Every schoolchild in this country your Führer thinks is his has to memorize the heroics of that twenty-year-old warrior, less now, of course, due to the Maréchal’s policy of collaboration. But still, when he or she hears that Vercingetorix was defeated later that same year at Alesia, they learn that, like all noble Celts, he praised his vanquisher and led the Arverni in the victory parade, only to be courted by the Romans and then put to death. I tell you this simply to emphasize first that treachery is common to the Auvergne, though not limited to its natives.’

‘And the château?’

Hermann found a cigarette and, breaking it in half, lit both halves to pass one over.

‘Merci. Is like Vipiacus, the former estate of the Roman, Vipius, now corrupted into Vichy and owned by one of your countrymen.’

‘When in Rome, do as the Romans, eh; when in Occupied France, as the Occupier?’

‘Buy up everything you can.’

‘Then let those who once owned it, look after it.’

‘You’re learning. I’m certain of it.’

‘And second?’

Ah bon, Hermann had risen to the bait. ‘That those same natives, having kept their beloved Auvergne independent of Paris for over a thousand years until Louis XIV made the mistake of finally taking it, are still tough but toughest on themselves. Just look at this chateau of your ambassador. Its towers and square keep, which have been often repaired, are all that remain of the lava-stone feudal fortress. The villagers have repeatedly raided its ruins for building materials, not only out of necessity but because of a deep-seated hatred of its owners and former owners, all of whom had not only robbed but brutalized them. Of course the Revolution also took its toll, although even then it was the peasants who suffered. But then … then along came new money and a gentler time to give us the gracefully sloping roofs that are covered with lauzes, the walled gardens, fishponds and statuary of a maison de maître, the baronial mansion of a grand seigneur.’

‘Who, like as not, is still from outside and still keeping the peasants in thrall. Mein Gott, haven’t you heard that “effort brings its own reward”?’ snorted Hermann, quoting the Maréchal.

‘“Salvation is above all in our hands,” mon vieux. “The first duty of all Frenchmen,” and I count you one of us, “is to have confidence”.’

‘You sort out the former owner and bird lover. Leave the staff to me.’

‘Les bonnes à tout faire?’

The maids of all work. ‘Only those who have eyes and ears and are pretty enough to have been chased at parties! Coffee and cakes in the kitchen when you’re ready, Chief?’

Hermann had been lifted out of his slump and was now looking forward to opening this little can of worms, so it would be best to let him have the last word since he always liked to have it, except … except that, having now passed through the last set of gates, they had a visitor.

A black, four-door Citroën traction avant, just like their own in Paris, was drawn up in front of the main entrance, empty.

‘The bonnet is still warm,’ said Louis, noting its melting snow.

‘Hot, if you ask me. There are even skid marks.’

Sandrine Richard was waiting for them. Not in the grand salon with its Régence furniture and floor-to-ceiling murals of the hunt. Eighteenth-century, those, thought Kohler. Flemish by. the look. Gorgeous paintings of long-necked swans and geese hanging upside down to mature, pheasants too. Stags, boars and lunging hounds, the wounded at bay under crystal chandeliers whose light would be reflected from the gilded frames and bevelled mirrors.

Even the parquet underfoot would gleam, their quickening steps echoing as they passed a seventeenth-century harpsichord and followed the maid with the short blonde pigtails and blue, blue eyes. One of the Blitzmädchen. Eighteen, if that, and with an urgent, self-deprecating walk, her arms kept stiffly to the sides of the prim black uniform with its dentelle of white Auvergne lace. Black lisle stockings, too, and glossy black leather shoes with low and slightly worn heels.

Madame Richard, wife of the Minister of Supplies and Rationing, wasn’t in the billiards room either, its life-sized Hellenic nudes of Carrara marble gracing the decor of dripping, tassled green and maroon velvet, lozenges of crystal dangling from the low-slung lights above the table, the smell of cigars lingering in the musty air. Nor was she on the staircase that rose beneath baronial shields and crossed pikes to landing after landing, opening on to a long corridor that led to an even older part of the château.

She was in a high-ceilinged bedroom whose canopied bed was of dark rosewood and whose walls were covered with faded, patchy Renaissance frescoes but had the remarkable added touch of perched, exquisitely mounted birds. Hawks in full flight or having just come in to roost; eagles too, an owl … Another and another, one so small it was no bigger than a fist. All looking at the intruders, all caught as if alive. A snipe, a rail, a cock pheasant, a partridge. Eighty … a hundred … two hundred of these birds, the chicken-coop smell of their feathers mingling with that of cold wood-ashes.

‘Messieurs …’

‘Hermann, interview our guide and what staff remain. Leave this one and Monsieur Hébert to me!’

Turn-of-the-century, long-necked glass lamps with rose-coloured globes and wells of kerosene would shed the softest of lights on the assembled aviary, thought St-Cyr. An ormolu clock, its Olympian gracefully raising her garland from above the blackened fireplace, gave the exact time, even to its minute hand moving one step further into the current hour beneath a sumptuously reclining, all but life-sized nude whose back was slightly arched, throwing her pubes into full view.

Leaded windows let in the cold, grey light of day.

Madame Richard wore no hat or scarf – even the charcoal-grey woollen overcoat hadn’t been buttoned, so eager had she been to jump into that Citroën of her husband’s.

No gloves either, and watchfully tense, he noted. A woman in her late forties with straight jet-black hair that had been pulled to the right and back but had remained unpinned in haste, her eyes the hard and unyielding chestnut brown of the betrayed wife, socialite and mother, one of the Parisian beau monde, no doubt, with money, lots of money. Hers and his, ah yes. No wrinkles furrowed that most diligently tended of brows. Only at the base of the neck, above the everyday woollen dress, were there the cruel signs of ageing. A woman of more than medium height but not tall, the figure trim not because of the rationing, but because she ate only enough and never too much.

‘Inspector,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘We have to talk.’

‘A few small quest—’

‘Don’t you dare patronize me! That …’ She pointed accusingly to an oaken door, centuries old, which had seen the hammering blows of countless invaders. ‘Is where I found them and.’

She waited, still watching him as the hawks and eagles did.

‘Is where I had them photographed not once but several times!’

A dark Renaissance table was swept bare of its lamp and sundry other items. ‘Here, damn you!’ she shrilled as the sound of the breakage died and, sucking in a breath, snapped down print after twenty-by-twenty-five-centimetre print. ‘See for yourself what we were expected to put up with week after week, month after month. Élisabeth’s Honoré de Fleury and that … that dancer of his; Madame Bousquet’s husband, our Secrétaire Général and his school teacher; Julienne Deschambeault and her Gaëtan-Baptiste and his secretary. You should see what he’s done to that wife of his. Ruined her life. Made a decent, healthy woman into a nervous wreck who is constantly ill!’

She stamped a foot. ‘Of course I swore I’d kill Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux. That slut was always in heat.’

‘And those photographs, madame?’ asked St-Cyr, his voice somehow remaining calm while hers had climbed.

‘Were taken by the photographer I hired to accompany us.’

Trust the husbands not to have mentioned it! ‘And the negatives?’ he asked.

How good of him to worry about Alain André being blackmailed by the photographer! ‘For now I will keep them.’

‘No, madame. For now you will allow me that privilege.’

‘They’re not with me.’

‘Then when we leave here, you will take me to them.’

‘They’re at the clinic. I … I couldn’t keep them at home. Alain André would … would only have found and destroyed them.’

Had she threatened to blackmail her husband into behaving? ‘Did Monsieur le Ministre tell you to come here?’

His use of the word Ministre had been deliberate! ‘What do you think? That to save his career and reputation he begged me not to and I compromised by saying I wouldn’t give them to Herr Gessler who knows all about what went on here in any case?’

‘Madame, please just answer.’

‘Ménétrel, you imbécile! That bastard telephoned to say that it would be wisest of me to destroy them.’

Then she had threatened Richard and he had then asked Ménétrel to intervene.

‘If I could have tarred and feathered that slut I would have, Inspector. Instead, when I realized fully what was happening to my marriage, I was fool enough to take my troubles to Ménétrel who suggested I masturbate to relieve the tension! Mon Dieu I hate it here. I always have and always will. The hypocrisy of the Maréchal’s return to family values. All women are chaste, all girls virgins, is that it, eh? Pah, what idiocy! And what about the husbands? The fornicateurs? And Pétain himself? A dancer? Well, he got what he deserved and so did she!’

Ah merde, her voice was echoing and she shouldn’t have said that. ‘I … Forgive me. This room. The memory of it. You can see the state I’m in. Well, can’t you?’ she shrilled.

‘Certainly.’

‘Then look at the photos. See for yourself!’

‘I will, but first, madame, who informed you of the party on 24 October last, and gave you not only the appropriate time to strike but also the precise locations of the four pairs of lovers that you would confront and have your man photograph?’

‘My husband was the last we surprised. As to who helped us, I can’t say.’

‘You’d best.’

‘Or you will arrest me?’

‘Just answer!’ At last the inspector had been moved to raise his voice.

‘Mademoiselle Blanche Varollier.’

‘Hired to inform on her employers?’

‘It was she who first came to me, but yes, I agreed to pay her ten thousand francs.’

‘One hundred thousand?’ It was a shot in the dark.

‘Two hundred and fifty.’

‘Then where were you, please, during the cinq à sept of Wednesday, 9 December last when Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux was drowned?’

The briefest smile of triumph was not reflected in the hardness of her eyes.

‘A dance recital at Thérèse Deschambeault’s ballet school. Élisabeth de Fleury’s daughter is very good and presently needs all the support we can give her.’

Merde, this town, this investigation! ‘And was Céline Dupuis there?’

No hint of triumph passed her lips.

‘Monique de Fleury was her best student. A dance from the Ballet Russe. It was marvellous. Madame Dupuis played the piano.’

Sacré nom de nom, the acid of that put-down! But did everyone know everyone in this town? ‘And were Madame de Fleury’s daughter and Céline Dupuis close, as a teacher and her prized pupil would have to have been?’

‘Very. So you see, Inspector, Céline did not just betray Élisabeth, but her daughter as well!’

The kid with the pigtails was uneasy and with good reason, felt Kohler. In November, when the Wehrmacht had suddenly taken over the zone libre, her boss had been recalled to Berlin. Urgent consultations, questions about his loyalties and loving the French and all things French too much. Abetz’s wife, Suzanne, came from France’s de Bruyker family and was a sensation when the couple had taken up residence in Paris in July 1940, never here. Mein Gott, who’d want to live near Vichy in a draughty old chateau in a winter like this when the City of Light beckoned? France and Germany together in happy alliance and marital bliss in the showcase of showcases. Reception after reception, designer dresses, jewels, champagne and all the rest, the races too. Abetz and Fernand de Brinon, that pedlar of laissez-passers and Vichy’s ambassador to the Occupied Territories, had been old friends from the mid-thirties when Abetz had got de Brinon and other like-minded collabos to join his Comité France-Allemagne. A hotbed of sympathizers, some of whom had willingly spied on their own country and helped to place Sicherheitsdienst agents in France.

But now, as could happen with the most loyal of former drawing instructors – and Abetz had been one of those – there were doubts.

And this little Mädchen für alles, this bonne à tout faire, had been up to more than mischief and had realized he knew it.

‘Look, relax,’ said Kohler and grinned. ‘All I want is a little information.’

‘Sicherlich!’ – I’ll bet! she swore and pulled away to stop in the corridor with her back to him. ‘I only did what I was told.’

‘Befehl ist Befehl, eh?’ An order is an order.

‘All of us used to report to Herr Schleier who came from Paris once every so often, but now … now we have yet to be informed of who our new contact will be.’

Schleier – who was Abetz’s assistant and, at forty-one, the embassy’s oldest member and most senior Nazi of the 568 Paris staff, of whom 367 were from home – was now temporarily in charge.

‘Ach! don’t worry so much,’ he said, chucking her under a chin that could, no doubt, be soft and tender when necessary. ‘Gemütlichkeit prise useful information. Rudolph won’t forget that such cosy friendship with the Occupied is useful and that your loyalty is beyond reproach. He’s just busy. Mein Gott, doesn’t he like uniforms, medals and official receptions even more than Herr Abetz? He’ll delegate someone. Just give him a chance to put his glass down.’

‘They’ll close this place and send us home. I know they will!’

To live like God in France had been everyone’s dream, except that this kid was Alsatian and her bilingualism had been deemed useful.

‘Show me your room and tell me what went on.’

‘My room …?’

‘We’ve lots of time. That partner of mine’s a bird-lover.’

As she stabbed at the photos, Sandrine Richard sucked in a breath and said, ‘A bordel, Inspector? A maison de tolérance? Oh for sure in such places these things go on, but here? Here in an official residence of the German Ambassador?’

‘Calm down, please.’

‘Why should I? Look, damn you! See for yourself what those bitches were up to with our husbands. Feathers … torn pillows? Does she have to pee? Is that why she holds a fistful of feathers against herself and also blows them from her lips?’

Jésus, merde alors, Bousquet and Camille Lefebvre had been caught in a state of total undress and more than a little drunk, their laughter frozen by the camera’s intrusion!

Deschambeault and Lucie Trudel were tout nus also, the shorthand typist stretched up on tiptoe, her wrists bound tightly together to an iron ring in the wall of a tower room or dungeon, the sous-directeur with the riding crop raised to fiercely strike her shapely but already welted buttocks. Fear, tension, excitement and apprehension – lust, that pent-up urgency for the grand frisson, the great shudder – were only too evident in her expression as, puzzled that her lover had paused, she had looked over a shoulder past him and into the camera.

Honoré de Fleury and Céline Dupuis had been caught on their hands and knees on a leopardskin throw before a roaring fire, the Inspector of Finance having taken the dancer and instructress from behind while tightly gripping her breasts, her hair in his teeth and her head thrown back as if in ecstasy.

‘Can you imagine how Elisabeth must have felt?’ shrilled Madame Richard.

Céline’s eyes were closed and there were tears, but it would be best to say nothing of them.

‘Monique de Fleury is fifteen years old, Inspector,’ seethed Sandrine, ‘but now no longer wants to dance or strive for excellence in anything, her schoolwork especially. Endless tears for the mother who was betrayed; floods of them for herself because, like girls of that age, she adored her father and idolized him. Must Vichy corrupt everything? That child worshipped Céline Dupuis only to discover her father was fucking the woman!’

‘But surely she needn’t have been told?’

‘Then you don’t know Vichy and how crowded are the rooms in which we live! Madame Pétain, who is présidente of the Committee on which Elisabeth and I serve, has tried repeatedly to get better housing for us, but all our complaints only fall on deaf ears. “It’s the Occupation and we must set an example.” Some example!’

Caught among the onlookers at the fight between this one and Marie-Jacqueline were several whom St-Cyr recognized from their photos in the Paris press and other sources. Léon Aubriet of Aluminium Français, the giant cartel that had been set up to guarantee the country’s former position in producing the metal business and to supply the rapacious appetite of the German aircraft industry, was with the Blitzmädel who had guided Hermann and himself to this very room. That one had a pleasing figure and a lingering hand on Aubriet’s bare shoulder. His arm was still around her naked waist. Antoine Chaudet, of La Samaritaine – the Paris department store which, with Le Printemps, Les Nouvelles Galeries and others, had entered into agreements with Karstadt, Erwege and Hertie, their German counterparts – was with a girl far less than half his age. Charles Lenoir of Matériel Électrique and Pierre-Denis Martin of the Compagnie Générale du Téléphone were there with older girls that had, no doubt, been brought in especially for them. So many prominent men were in states of undress and drunkenness, the girls with their garlands of ivy having slipped.

‘There’s more!’ hissed Sandrine Richard, finding a stark photo of Abel Bonnard, Minister of Education and Member of the Academie Française, whose tear-streaked baby cheeks were stained with mascara. Bonnard had frantically thrown up a hand to shield himself from the camera’s flash. This little man with downy, snow-white hair, this asthmatic, part-time poet and collector of porcelain whose blatant love of high living was legendary, was with two naked schoolboys both of whom had obviously been recently fondled.

‘It’s disgusting!’ spat Madame Richard. ‘He takes care of them and they take care of him, and we have that on photo too!’

‘Ah merde, if I don’t confiscate these and destroy the negatives, madame, all hell will break loose!’

Standing behind the crowd of onlookers, a head and shoulders taller than most and fully dressed, were Blanche and Paul Varollier. Both translator and croupier were withdrawn from the proceedings, their expressions passive and yet … and yet so much a part of things.

‘Ich heisse Ellinor Schlesinger, Herr Inspektor Kohler.’

The kid handed over her passport and ID as a good German maiden should. The room, in a newer part of the chateau and above the present kitchens, was plainly furnished but private, considering the crush in Vichy. The single, iron-framed bed, small desk, washbasin and jug, lamp and chair, armoire, vase de nuit and throw rug were neat as a pin.

Even the shrine could pass the stiffest of inspections. Crossed swastika flags flew over carefully laid-out knick-knacks. The stainless-steel Victory Rune of the SS; the Mann Rune, the sign of the German Women’s Corps; the red lanyard, whistle and badge of an Untergauführerin, an under-leader of a group of BdMs, Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of German Girls; sayings of the Führer on printed, unbleached cards in black Gothic script: Strength Through Joy; Blood and Honour; Learn to Sacrifice for your Fatherland; Who wants to Live has to Fight, and Whoever refuses to Fight in this World of Eternal Challenge has no right to Live.

‘In your Race is your Strength,’ he read aloud, picking up the card as if impressed.

There was the usual portrait photo of the Führer under the crossed swastikas and he knew that this carrier of National Socialist dogma, this little Nazi, would stand stiffly to attention on waking to the cold light of dawn or clanging bell from Herr Whatever, the major-domo, to proudly say, ‘Morgens grüsse ich den Führer,’ et cetera, and before bed – this bed – ‘Und abends danke ich dem Führer.’

In the morning I salute my Führer. And in the evening I thank him.

‘My boys grew up with this, too,’ said Herr Kohler, having only glanced at her papers. He did not explain further, this giant with the cruel scar, but was, Ellinor said to herself, much saddened. Had he lost someone dear? she wondered.

He opened the little drawer of her bedside table but found no prayerbook or Bible, though the rest of her family were still staunchly Lutheran. He said, ‘I remember Strasbourg as being a lovely city. Number 42 rue des Hallebardes … the street of the pikes with the battleaxes at one end … It’s near the cathedral, your home?’

What did he want of her? she wondered. He had such a way with him. Easy-going and then suddenly he’d be after something, but would sometimes come at it obliquely. ‘It’s right in the cathedral’s shadow, Herr Inspektor.’

‘Born 7 September 1925. That was quite a year.’

He gave no further explanation of why the year of her birth had been so notable, but leafed through the thin pile of letters from home in that drawer, found her pessary and took it out, found the jar of petroleum jelly, too, and a clutch of Kondoms and, laying them with the other things, said, ‘Four have been murdered, so you know why we’re here and had best answer truthfully. Is that understood?’

There was nothing in his pale blue eyes but an unsettling emptiness. ‘I know little, Herr Inspektor. The girls of whom you speak were informants, yes, but Herr Schleier was always wondering if they had given him everything they had overheard their lovers say when among themselves. Marie-Jacqueline seemed to treat it all as a joke – saying the pay was never enough for such a risk, and she constantly threatened to go on strike even though Herr Schleier could have had her taken away to one of the Konzentrationslager. Camille Lefébvre was quite possibly the best, he thought. Everything of interest that Bousquet said in her company she would dutifully report in hopes that her husband would be freed and sent home, but that was not possible, though we were to continue to encourage her to think it was. Lucie Trudel had much to offer also and often brought papers and documents from the bank, but of late, she and the others had become “hesitant”, he said, and needed to be reminded.’

Louis should have heard that. ‘And Céline Dupuis?’

‘Did not like reporting things at all and gave Herr Schleier much cause for concern. She was always asking when she would be permitted to leave Vichy and return to her daughter in Paris as promised.’

Then Céline, in addition to being very worried about being murdered, had realized the other just wasn’t going to work and had agreed to give Pétain his little moment … ‘Were they recruited before or after they’d first taken up with their lovers?’

‘After, of course. It’s not hard, is it, to convince such girls to cooperate once they know what could happen not only to them but to their families? Temptation is also dangled but only as a sweetener.’

This kid was really something. ‘And are the others who come here required to report what they overhear?’

Was he thinking of the rest of the cabaret singers and dancers, or of Blanche and Paul Varollier? ‘The four who were killed were the most important and were recruited long before the Gestapo had an office here but, yes, the others also. Herr Schleier, you understand, does not report directly to Herr Gessler, but only to his superior officer, Herr Abetz.’

Whom the SS and SD seldom if ever listened to!

‘You collect goldene Zigarrenbände,’ he said, having opened her tin to fish about in it with a nicotine-stained forefinger.

‘A few, for Albert Grenier when he comes. Blanche usually brings him when Monsieur Hébert or Frau Nietz, our German cook and housekeeper, feel it necessary. This old place …’ She shrugged. ‘We can’t have vermin, can we? Albert should be sent away, I know, but … but he’s very good at his job, so they must keep him, I think.’

‘And on the night of 24 October last was Albert busy here?’

Had Albert watched – was this what the detective was wondering? Albert who had secretly been in love with each of those girls and had been so ashamed of them for their having had sex with men who were not their husbands. Sex like animals. ‘He was asleep in the chapel. Monsieur Hébert has a straw mattress brought in for him and the bed made up. Albert always sleeps there when he visits. It’s close to the kitchens and the main staircase to the cellars, and is “safe”, he says, but he never looks at any of us. He’s very shy, isn’t he, as well as being … well, mentally retarded.’

‘And Hébert and Albert, how do they get along?’

‘Very well. Both of them are fond of the Maréchal. Monsieur Hébert is Albert’s grand-uncle, so always Albert is asked for news. How is the Maréchal’s health, does he still take his daily stroll in the Parc des Sources, or have the affairs of state so saddened him he no longer listens to his operetta recordings? And of course, now that he is having a wax sculpture made, is the sculptress doing a good job?’

‘Wait a minute. How did you hear about that? Is Albert here now?’

‘Ach! I thought you knew. He’ll be in the stables or cellars, or out where the birds are kept.’

‘And Blanche Varollier?’

‘Is in the kitchens with the sculptress, I think Both will be patiently waiting for him to finish so they can go back to town. Or maybe they’re out with the birds? Ja, the sculptress did say she wanted to gather some feathers to take back to Paris for Madame Dupuis’s little girl.’