6

FROM THE PLACE TERREAUX TO THE PONT Morand it was not far to the Parc de la Tête d’Or and the allée des Villas which overlooked it.

St-Cyr paid off the vélo-taxi, wondering if he oughtn’t to tell the man to wait, since the streets had been so difficult. He searched the identical grey-stone façades whose precise elegance of tall French windows and Louis XVI iron railings was matched only by the view across the park.

The wind had died, the snow had stopped and in the soft blue blush of the closing day, the solitary trees, long walks, distant woods, lake and iron-and-glass dome of the arboretum were sharply defined.

There were a few cross-country skiers, a few walkers, some with their dogs, one throwing a stick. Children, of course. Children always loved the magic of a park like this.

There were a few Germans, two black Mercedes, a general in one with a motor-cycle escort, but these were both too distant to matter and no one seemed to pay them any mind.

He searched the changing light, sought out each tonal variation and what it delineated, breathed in deeply, thought of the Loire, of Gabrielle and her son, then returned to duty with regret.

There were only two apartments on each floor at Number Twelve, and the central staircase, with the warm, dark amber of its polished banisters, made a rectangular spiral above him. Tall mahogany doors—good, solid things—led into each apartment. The concierge, if there was one, was not about and probably lived in a couple of rooms at the back, looking out on to the central courtyard. That’s where the girl would have left her bicycle, but had she been the one to leave the lock off the outer door?

Unbuttoning his overcoat and loosening the scarf his mother had knitted for him thirty years ago, he rang the bell.

The bolt was undone, the door yanked open, the girl’s, ‘Henri … Oh, pardon,’ was caught in the air and held until it was too late for the shock to be hidden.

‘Monsieur …?’ Ah no. It was him!—and he could see this written in the anguish of her expression. ‘My brother,’ she said, running a worried hand through her light brown hair. ‘I … I was expecting him, monsieur.’

Her brother. She was every bit the school mistress he had settled on. Affably St-Cyr motioned with his trilby. ‘Permit me to introduce myself, Mademoiselle …?’

‘Charlebois.’

‘Mademoiselle, I am Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté Nationale from Paris Central, but please do not be alarmed.’

‘My brother … You have found his body among the deceased. Ah no. No!’

She buried her face in her hands and broke into tears. He tried to comfort her but she turned her back on him, making him feel terrible. Always there was this time bomb of the Sûreté introduction. One used it often but one never quite knew how it would be taken. ‘Mademoiselle, I did not come to tell you your brother was among the dead but merely to return this.’

‘What?’ She would blow her nose and wipe her eyes—yes, yes, that would be best so as to distract him—and she would pray to God and the Blessed Virgin for assistance in this moment of crisis. ‘What?’ she asked, her back still turned to him, her head bowed, the shoulders thin.

St-Cyr closed the door behind him. ‘The yellow work card of a woman who is now dead, Mademoiselle Charlebois. Dead!’

‘Ah no! No! Dead? But … but how can this be?’

He tried to be kind as he spoke to her back. ‘A few small questions, mademoiselle. Nothing troublesome, I assure you. Please, why not sit down? It … it would be better, would it not? You’re worried. You’ve had a terrible shock. Come, come, let us go into the salon. Ah! I will remove the shoes and you will forgive the holes that have developed in my socks since I last washed them.’

She wasn’t having any of it. ‘Why have you come? I hardly knew Mademoiselle Claudine. She was not a friend of mine, not even an acquaintance.’

Her eyes were smarting. Tears glistened in them making greener still their greeny-brown. There were freckles over the bridge of her nose and on the pale cheeks and chin but these served only to heighten a gentle handsomeness that was really quite attractive were she not so distressed and wary, and touching her pearls as though grasping for a lifeline.

St-Cyr indicated his overcoat and hat, and reluctantly she allowed him to put them on a chair. ‘This way, then, Inspector. My brother and I live alone. He’s away a lot and I … Well, I have thought a fire like that … We’re both great lovers of the cinema. It’s our only form of relaxation these days. I have thought … well, you know … The worst, of course.’

‘And the work card of Mademoiselle Bertrand?’

It was no use. ‘She came to see me on the day of the fire, in the afternoon. I … I said that … that I didn’t think my brother could help her any more, but that when he returned I would ask.’

‘And the card?’ he asked again. ‘How did you come by it?’ Her back was still to him.

‘It … it must have fallen from her purse. I … I have found it on the sofa between the cushions.’

For now that was enough and he would not push the matter yet for fear of upsetting her too much. ‘Your brother, mademoiselle, what does he do?’

‘Henri …? Henri runs the shop of our grandfather, Inspector. The Henri Masson of Lyon. Fine antiques and estate sales. Jewellery, rare and old books, porcelains, crystal and paintings. Silver too, of course. It’s … it’s on the rue Auguste Comte near place Bellecour. Henri was always there with our grandfather and when the old monsieur died, why he left the shop to my brother. And … and the one in Dijon, of course, though Henri, he has a manager for that—well, two of them. One for the Lyon shop and one for Dijon.’

Through the awkward silence that developed between them came the sound of a finch and then that of a canary. ‘Excuse me, please, a moment,’ she said, giving a brief, shy smile while wiping her eyes. ‘My family, Inspector. My little friends. I have been so worried about the tragedy, I have forgotten to give them seed and water.’

He knew she needed a moment to herself and gave it to her. He could not believe their luck. A brother. Estate sales and fine antiques. A link at last to the jewelled cross and Father Adrian. Ah nom de Dieu, had they struck so close?

Everywhere the eye settled it fell on a gorgeous clutter of exquisite pieces. A Buddha, fourteenth-century at least, in a lime-green glaze, complemented the satin damask that covered the walls with soft green and gold floral patterns. There were paintings in richly gilded frames—oils that impressed. A bouquet of roses, tulips, peonies and lilacs by Jan Frans van Dael, a vase of lilacs by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. A Gobelin tapestry of Africa with chattering monkeys and parrots. A chinoiserie cabinet in a deep-red lacquer that glowed. Art deco vases with etched patterns, the colours sea-green, amber-rose and turquoise from the Daum-Brothers’ glassworks—not old, probably 1925, but totally in keeping with all the rest. Another glass vase from that same period was by Maurice Marinot. An almost Gauginesque nude in a wash of pale citrine mended a net against a background of dimpled, frosted glass, the lines so simple yet masterfully evoking the rhythm of life for which Marinot was justly famous.

A sixteenth-century portrait of a lady reading an illuminated breviary. Savonnerie carpets, a fluted white marble chimney-piece, a large gilt-framed mirror and a Louis XVI clock with flanking elephants in silver. Louis XVI armchairs whose velvet upholstery had been faded not so much by use as time, yet venerated throughout those years.

A far more modern sofa and comfortable armchairs were in an off-cream and flowered silk velveteen. There were apricot-coloured taffeta drop-curtains with tassels and fringes, bits of statuary, bronzes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Italian, he thought. Eighteenth-century leather-bound books, bibelots, snuffboxes, jewel cases, bits of crystal and ivory, a sapphire bracelet … Ah nom de Dieu, three chains of superbly matched dark blue beads, each with a tiny clear-white diamond and diamond-encrusted clasp. It was just lying there on the secretaire as if cast off in despair.

‘As you can see, Inspector, my brother is a collector whose fancy does not always run to things that are very old. That bracelet is from Cartier in New York, not twelve years ago. Ah no, it was thirteen years. Yes, the stock market crash on Wall Street. A suicide in the family and the wife on holiday in France and forced to part with it at once. Henri bought it from the estate of the aunt to whom she had sold it for a pittance, believing the old lady would then leave it to her in her will.’

‘And the icons?’ he asked. They were centuries old.

‘Purchased from German soldiers on holiday from the Russian Front. Oh they’re stolen, of course—everyone knows this including Henri, but saving them from the ravages of such careless hands is better than having them destroyed through misadventure.’

The soft yellow mohair cardigan, strand of pearls and plain beige skirt suited her but she stood as if condemned. ‘And yourself, mademoiselle?’ he asked gently. ‘What do you do besides keep house for your brother?’

She was still some distance from him, she thought, and he would not see the pain she felt, revealed as it must be in her eyes. ‘Me? I am a teacher, an assistant professor at the Lycée du Parc. Germanic studies and French literature.’

‘Then you must speak German very well.’

‘Of course. It is essential, is it not? Otherwise the students would become bored with their studies and do quite badly.’

To avoid any further awkwardness, she decided to break with tradition and offer coffee. ‘It … it is already made, Inspector, and just needs warming up. Henri … it is my brother’s and my custom to always share our day’s events over coffee at this hour of the apéritif. Neither of us take alcohol, not even wine. Henri says that it destroys the brain cells and in this I am forced to agree, though at times, of course, one longs for a little taste.’

Had she once been under the empire of alcohol? he wondered. She didn’t look the type, but then with those it was often so hard to tell. Shattered dreams, a love affair never consummated … There were any of a thousand reasons.

The ersatz coffee would be fine and when she brought it on an antique silver tray, the complete service was a deep Prussian blue and jewelled Sèvres porcelain with beaded white and gold rims and a jade-green, rose-red, white and turquoise floral pattern. Ah mon Dieu, it would be like sipping vinegar out of a fortune among kings and princes.

‘Your brother has exceptionally good taste, mademoiselle.’

She would lift her chin and proudly say it. Yes … yes, that would be best. ‘We both had an excellent teacher in our grandfather, Inspector. When one has access to such fine things, it elevates the soul to use them now and then in the fashion for which they were originally intended.’

He would give her several moments of silence and deliberately let them grow into uncomfortableness. He wished he could take out his pipe and begin to pack it—always that tended to set people off and was most useful, but the shortages … that last crumb of tobacco had already been used.

She thought she had best say something, but she would do so demurely since he had not grimaced at the taste of the acorn-and-barley water. A disgrace, of course, to sully such pieces with such mud. ‘My brother specializes in breaking up estates whose owners have died and left them to heirs who do not care to keep them, Inspector. This salon—indeed, the whole of the flat—changes its décor often as pieces come and go. One mustn’t become attached to anything.’

‘And the shop in Dijon?’ he asked, taking out his notebook to unsettle her more.

Flustered, she pressed her knees together and tried to shrink from things. ‘On the boul de Sévigné, of course, near the place d’Arcy. Inspector, why are you writing this down? Is Henri suspected of something?’

Of what, mademoiselle? his look said, but he shook his head. ‘Ah no. No, of course not. A mere ritual, I assure you. One becomes so accustomed to interrogating people, one automatically takes out the little notebook.’

He had known she’d been worried, then, and was pleased about it. He did not put the notebook away but set it to one side on the coffee table whose patterns of sandalwood, gum and cherry splintered their designs around it as if shattered.

Again he let the silence grow until she wished he would say something. Anything! ‘How did Mademoiselle Claudine die, Inspector? Was it her chest? She … she came to ask again for money. She was not well. This time pneumonia once more, I think. I …’ She shrugged helplessly but could not bring herself to face him. ‘I did give her our bottle of friar’s balsam. I told her how best to use it, Inspector. For myself, I am sorry to hear that she has passed away.’

Their bottle of friar’s balsam … He would favour his moustache in thought. He would ask the question she would not want him to ask. ‘How is it, please, that your brother knew Mademoiselle Claudine Bertrand, a woman of the night, Mademoiselle Charlebois, a woman of joy, a known prostitute?’

There was a quiver, a loss of colour though there had been little enough of that. ‘Henri knew Claudine from the years before her descent into the night, Inspector. When he was very young and I was much, much younger of course, our parents and grandparents on our mother’s side always took us to the seaside for the holidays. Claudine’s family knew our parents.’

It was all he could do not to breathe, Good! That’s good!

The front door opened. They heard a voice. She cried out, ‘Henri, is that you, chéri?’ and bolted from the room. Throwing herself into her brother’s arms, she touched his face, his hair and kissed his cheek, saying, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere. I was so worried. Terrified, Henri. Desperate that we had been parted again, this time for ever.’

Sobbing, she clung to her brother and shook so hard he had to hold her tightly until he noticed, ah yes, that they had a visitor.

From a rat-hole shack outside the stone-and-iron fence of the Basilica, the old woman who was the caretaker’s wife sold black-market candles and other religious nick-nacks in the plunging darkness. Kohler let her serve the frozen customers she seldom greeted with anything more than a grunt of distaste or a scathing remark. Though not blind, she could have done as well, for she knew the feel of each bill and coin. ‘Another, monsieur,’ she said to one, sucking on her cheeks. Age had made her small and bent and when he stood before her in the darkness, she tossed her shawled head back as if struck by the size of him. ‘Monsieur …?’

‘Madame Philomena Cadieux?’

Hastily she crossed herself but said nothing and said it defiantly. ‘Look, Madame Cadieux, I’m like Jesus. I come in peace, eh? Here’s five hundred francs to prove it.’

‘The Christ Child would have come with more,’ she said doggedly. ‘An old woman whose bladder is full but frozen. A bishop who hoards his silver on this day of giving and takes not the half as agreed these past countless years, but three-quarters.’

Ah merde, a family feud! ‘Then here’s another and another, eh, to warm the bones and the heart.’

‘What is it you want?’ Suspicion was in every particle of her and he had to grin, had to say to himself, What a delight it was to deal with the French.

‘Why not let me help you close up. Here, let me buy the rest of your stock and we’ll leave it right here for another time.’

The Germans were fools, but God had made them that way and who was she to question Him? ‘Five thousand then, and I will allow you to close down the front shutter. It’s too heavy for me but my husband will not listen.’

There was no thought of her inviting him into the two rooms she begrudgingly shared with that husband. This little stucco building was at the front and just to the right of the Basilica’s entrance—joined to the main body as if a growth of accident, the builders having realized at the last that there had to be some place to dump the caretaker.

‘It’s too cold in there,’ she said. ‘Come with me. Come into the bishop’s study. Let that one’s fire take the ice from us even though he will be furious and will say it is the last straw, that that useless husband of mine and my good self have been dismissed!’

So much for the bishop and the husband. Kohler found her the half of another bottle of Calvados and wished her a happy Christmas. Her button eyes were fierce and full of rheum. Both nostrils ran. She sipped, wiped and wiped again with fingerless black woollen gloves that were frayed.

‘Tell me about the gasoline,’ he said. He would not grin. She was freezing and could hardly keep her fingers still enough to clutch the glass with both hands.

‘The gasoline …’ She clucked her tongue. ‘Yes. Yes, I warned Auguste not to leave it where he did but that one never listens. You should have let this Salamander torch the place, monsieur. Rats … mice … vermin … lice and fleas … You’ve no idea. It takes forever to wash that floor in there and I’m the only one who does it.’

She had to pee, and he had to turn his back while she used the bishop’s best potted begonia and felt good about it.

‘The gasoline was not taken by a woman, monsieur, but by a man. I have seen the footprints in the snow myself but no one has bothered to consult me. He was wearing Father Adrian’s shoes, the ones with the cracked soles but it could not have been that one, could it, since he was already dead.’

Kohler tossed back his Calvados. ‘Then who knew Father Adrian well enough to have taken his shoes and gained access to where he lived—where is that, by the way?’

‘In two rooms, not far from the bishop’s quarters in the manse that is next door. Oh yes, I have thought he may well have borrowed a cassock too.’

‘And this person?’

She would let him have it, since to have a crumb was not to have the loaf but only a taste. ‘Someone who knew Father Adrian had oiled his way among the women, though may God forgive me for saying it.’

‘Was Mademoiselle Aurelle one of those women?’ he asked.

The slut had been tied to her bed, thought Madame Cadieux, but there was no need to remind this one of it. ‘And others, monsieur. Oh mais certainement, the good father had the Church in mind when he visited them and asked for donations and did whatever else he did to encourage them in the Blessed Sacrament, but me, I have seen the evidence no priest should ever have in his rooms.’

Jesus! ‘What evidence? Here, your glass is empty.’

And you are eager for another few crumbs, said the woman to herself. This time she would drink it all. She would drain the fine glass of the bishop who knew only too well what his secretary had been up to but had turned a blind eye. ‘Oil, in a small bottle. Perfumed.’

‘Condoms?’

She would duck her head aside to indicate a speck of modesty. ‘The capotes anglaises, monsieur. I have counted them and noted when some were missing.’

The English bonnets, hoods, greatcoats or ‘riding’ coats. ‘Who knew Father Adrian so well that person was aware the priest would be visiting Mademoiselle Aurelle the night of the fire?’

‘But … but Father Adrian was not supposed to visit her, monsieur, ah not on such a busy night.’

‘He received a call?’

‘Oh but of course, from one of his women. Madame Béatrice, that slut of a housekeeper for the bishop, that one says it was Mademoiselle Aurelle who telephoned Father Adrian in urgency for a visit, yes? But me, I do not personally think it was Mademoiselle Aurelle at all. I think it was someone else who only said she was Mademoiselle Aurelle.’

‘Are there two telephones?’ She was making him feel totally out of his depth.

‘There are three, monsieur. Extensions here in the study and two in the manse.’

‘And you listened in.’

She held out her glass. ‘At about five thirty the new time, the German time.’

‘And it wasn’t Mademoiselle Aurelle?’

He was so eager for the crumbs. ‘That one always called in tears, monsieur. There were none. Indeed, for myself, I felt the voice too educated.’ There, she had said it and may God forgive her.

Too educated … ‘And Father Adrian, did you see him before he left?’

‘How was he—is this what you wish?’ She would wet her lips and stare at the bottom of her glass, and she would give him a last crumb and hope he would find the loaf. ‘Agitated.’

Kohler looked away to the book-lined shelves and gave his thoughts aloud and with a sigh. ‘Then he really did know what was up and that’s why he took the cross with him.’

The cross was lying on the coffee table between herself and her brother, thought Martine Charlebois. Diamonds and rubies and sapphires and Henri looking so distressed. Tall and thin, and sitting up stiffly, for his back was bothering him again. Wan and almost jaundiced-looking now that the cold had left his cheeks, poor darling. Tired from working so hard—the train from Dijon had been late, held up by another of the interminable delays. And now this, a detective from the Sûreté with the cross from the Family Rouleau once more in this room.

The same light that was thrown back by the diamonds was absorbed by the rubies until they glowed with fire and the sapphires were warm.

As always, when there were others present, Henri did the talking.

‘Our grandfather came across it years ago, Inspector. A very wealthy family with land-holdings in the Rhône Valley to the south of here. Five farms in excess of a total of two hundred hectares. Vineyards and orchards, cattle, sheep and pigs. I was with him when he broke up the estate and we found the cross tucked away in the back of a kitchen drawer.’

‘Did he declare it to the owners?’ asked the detective quietly. No doubt one of the kitchen help had been about to steal it.

‘Of course he declared it, Inspector. Our grandfather had a reputation for being the most honest of men. How else could he have become the Henri Masson? Everyone trusted him absolutely. There was never any suggestion of impropriety. How could there have been?’

A saint—one could see this pass through the detective’s mind, causing nothing but jaded doubt, even though the cross had been purchased from the owners for more than its value. The big ox-eyes lost themselves in studying Henri. They observed the delicate chiselling of the face, the fine and aristocratic nose, high cheekbones, dark brush of the eyebrows and long curve of the lashes. The lips that were not wide and coarse but soft and lovely, though they hardly ever smiled and were now so serious their expression matched the darkness of his eyes. The hair, jet black and fastidiously trimmed because Henri was such a tidy person. Tidy about his life and hers—everything was to have its proper place. Tidy about the affairs of business because one had to be so tidy there and grandfather, he had been so tidy himself. Ah yes.

‘Tell me about Father Adrian Beaumont, please, Monsieur Charlebois. Your relationship to him, last contact—anything that might be of use no matter how seemingly insignificant.’

It would not go well, and she knew this now. Henri was so tense and irritated by the unpleasant surprise of finding a detective in the house and his little sister entertaining him.

‘There is not much to tell, Inspector. We attend Mass at the Basilica, as our parents and grandparents did. Father Adrian was known to us, of course. Any dealings with the bishop went through him. We met a few times recently but only to discuss some of the paintings that are stored in the church. I was adamant that they be moved to more suitable quarters—drier, you understand. The constant humidity of these parts plays havoc with old masters. Father Adrian would not hear of it and in this, I am afraid, Bishop Dufour concurred.’

The detective would note all Henri’s little mannerisms, the way he nervously rubbed the back of his left hand, the way he used his seriousness to force home a point, the way, when pressed, he would touch his left cheek and let the fingertips linger until they trailed down to the lower jaw, his mind still deep in thought. Every word so carefully debated before escaping from his lips.

‘Your sister thought you might have gone to see La Bête humaine?’

Henri shook his head with that rapid little motion of firmness he always used on such occasions. ‘I distinctly told Madame Doucette, the senior secretary at the Lycée du Parc, that she was to tell Mademoiselle Charlebois I had been summoned to Dijon.’

‘Why?’

Ah, such an expression of sympathy and concern had entered Henri’s eyes. It showed exactly how clearly he had been worried about her but his use of ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois’, not Martine—why must he always use her formal name when dealing with others?

The detective asked again why he had gone to Dijon.

‘The shop had been broken into and some things taken, Inspector,’ said Henri firmly. ‘An icon, four canvases that were cut from their frames, some silver and a few small pieces of jewellery. Good pieces. In all, about seven hundred and fifty thousand francs.’

The detective’s expression became grave at the size of the loss. ‘When … when did this happen, monsieur, and when did you leave Lyon and return?’

Henri gave the brief, tight little smile he always saved for such grim moments of relish. ‘Last Tuesday night, the twenty-second. I’ve only just returned, Inspector. There are several who will gladly tell you I took the train on the afternoon of the twenty-third at four o’clock and that, as is my custom always, I stayed in Dijon at its Hotel Terminus, room seventeen. You may ask the manager, the desk clerk, the maître d’ and the maids if you like. All will swear to my being there from the evening of the twenty-third until today at two o’clock.’

‘I did not ask for the precision of an alibi, monsieur. Is it that you felt the need to give me one?’

Ah merde, Henri …

‘Why else, then, are you here, Inspector, troubling my sister?’

The detective ducked his head to signify that this might or might not have been the reason for his visit. ‘Tell me about Claudine Bertrand,’ he said, knowing that she had had no chance to warn Henri whether anything untoward had already been said.

St-Cyr was troubled. They looked at each other, this brother and sister, the one perhaps thirty-six years of age and the other not more than twenty-six. Alarm in Monsieur Charlebois’s eyes but carefully masked by concern; nothing but concern in hers. Ah maudit, what were the two of them up to behind closed doors?

‘Claudine was a childhood friend, Inspector. From time to time I tried to help her a little. I once gave her a job in the Dijon shop but she was unhappy away from Lyon and unsuited to the work.’

‘And Madame Ange-Marie Rachline?’ he asked, his voice so quiet the question startled them both.

‘What does she have to do with this?’ asked Henri.

There was still that hostility when questioned about Ange-Marie, even after so many years. Henri, she wanted to say. Henri, be careful. He would not look at her, he would not see the tears collecting so rapidly she was forced to excuse herself and go into the kitchen to stand before the sink with head bowed, gripping the edge of the basin.

‘Henri … Henri … Dear God, please guide his tongue,’ she whispered and heard:

‘My sister and Ange-Marie have never seen eye to eye, Inspector. Mademoiselle Charlebois blames Ange-Marie for the situation Claudine found herself in.’

‘And yourself, monsieur?’

‘I did not judge. Both had been childhood friends. One retains that special sense of loyalty. One does what one can to help and leaves judgement to God.’

‘You gave Mademoiselle Claudine a supplier’s bottle of perfume.’

‘Étranger, yes. From an estate sale, It pleased her and it pleased me that it did, though I must confess I had little liking for the scent. It was much too strong. There was far too much musk and civet.’

‘When did you give it to her and where?’

Ah how guarded their questions and answers were!

‘In the shop on the morning of that fire. Claudine came to see me. She wanted help—financial help—to start a new life somewhere else. She was insistent but …’

Henri’s expression was pained. The back of the left hand was touched and then the top button of his jacket … He could not know that Claudine had come to see her that very same afternoon. Ah no …

‘But I had given so much in the past, Inspector, I could not give any more—there was the robbery too, you understand, and the cash that would be needed to carry on. Claudine owed me … A moment, please. I have the account book.’

‘A moment yourself, monsieur. Please,’ cautioned the detective with an upraised finger. ‘A new life some place else?’ he asked.

Henri gave that shrug she knew so well, that reassuring smile. ‘Claudine was always short of money, Inspector, and always wanting to leave Lyon. It was nothing new, I assure you. She keeps two daughters in a convent school in Orléans. She was always saying she wanted to live closer to them but of course, with the Occupation, that was impossible. Virtually all her earnings went to them and now I shall have to take care of it for her.’

Two daughters. ‘Who is the father, monsieur?’

‘That … that I do not know nor … nor did I ever ask.’

Henri went over to the secretaire to pause briefly as if struck by the sight of the bracelet just lying there—how could his little sister have been so careless? Is that what he was thinking, the poor darling? wondered Martine.

Quickly he opened a drawer and found the red, moroccobound booklet that was no bigger than one for listing telephone numbers.

The detective accepted the proffered evidence. He would note the precision of the penmanship and that, in each entry, the sum was the same. Ah yes. ‘Two thousand francs to the total of one hundred and sixty-eight thousand?’ he said.

‘Over the past ten years, Inspector. Ever since my grandfather died and Claudine went to work for Ange-Marie at La Belle Époque.’

‘She would have been twenty-two at the time; Ange-Marie twenty-four and yourself, monsieur?’

‘Twenty-six but it’s of no consequence.’

Though the detective kept his thoughts to himself, he would not leave things so simply defined. Ah no, he was too persistent, too dedicated, thought Martine. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but then … ah then, Monsieur Charlebois, age so often has its meaning. One is older, another is much younger, and one is in between.’

Had it been wise to tell him of the money, of loans that could never be repaid?

Henri said nothing. What could he have said about those days when the three of them were young and so much had happened?

An interruption at the door brought the impasse to its close. She would let Henri do the answering. Yes, yes, it would be best to get him away from the detective.

It was Jean-Pierre and Fernand and Lorraine, her three zazous in dark glasses, and they had come with a little gift for their teacher. Henri was irritated and upset on seeing them at his door. He did not like their grins or constantly erratic motion. He did not value the attentions they paid his little sister and thought such an extracurricular association undignified and unprofessional of her. Yet he could be very nice to them when he wanted. Had they startled him for some other reason? she wondered. Had their presence alarmed him? He was afraid.

With difficulty and muttered apologies, he allowed them to come in and called her from the kitchen.

She would throw on an apron and seize a tea towel—would pretend to wipe her hands as she went toward them. Each removed the dark glasses and the huge cock-hate, the earmuffs of gold and orange and livid green. Ear-rings on the boys no shirts this evening but leather jackets open to the navel in spite of the freezing cold. And pegged trousers that exposed bare ankles and sockless feet that were tucked into laceless shoes which had not a trace of polish. Lorraine was opening the umbrella that was always carried closed in the rain to infuriate passing adults who had none. There was long, greasy hair on all three of them. Lorraine’s pleated skirt was so short her shapely thighs half exposed their pinkish blush of frost. They’d all get pneumonia. They were rebellious youth unleashed and wanting to show the Occupiers and everyone else exactly what they thought of them. But ah mon Dieu, mon Dieu, they were so lovely! Her two heroes and her little heroine.

St-Cyr watched the greetings of the sister with interest. While the brother remained aloof and uncomfortable, the sister hugged each of them, kissed their cheeks and made a fuss.

‘Come in … come into the kitchen and warm yourselves. A little gift … Ah, you shouldn’t have. What is it?’ And so the chatter went until the three of them clutched mugs of herbal tea that had been sweetened with a purée of chestnuts.

‘Inspector …’ began Charlebois, hoping to get him back into the salon.

‘Ah no, monsieur. For me, the kitchen is fine.’

The teenagers were ebullient. They threw themselves around in states of sloppiness but were grateful for their teacher’s warmth and admiration. ‘A detective,’ said the one called Jean-Pierre with awe. ‘Paris … Monsieur, permit me, please, to ask are we …’

‘Are we like the zazous of the clubs on the Champs-Élysées? The Ledoyen?’ asked Lorraine with a seriousness one found disconcerting.

He would take them all in with a sweeping glance. He would exercise caution and preach patience to himself. ‘Very,’ he said, finding the will to grin. ‘Exactly as those I’ve seen at the Colisée, the Bar Select and other places.’

This set them to talking rapidly amongst themselves while their teacher basked in the praise and fluttered around with ersatz biscuits of some sort. Fig perhaps.

Fernand, a pimply-faced youth of fifteen, produced Swiss chocolate with a flourish. Jean-Pierre ignored the loot and offered real coffee and cigarettes.

Lorraine had several tubes of lipstick to display. All the items were offered for sale and this was quietly understood.

‘Inspector …’ began Mademoiselle Charlebois. ‘It’s Christmas Day. Please do not be too hard on them. These are little things, isn’t that so? Lyon, it … it is not under your … your … well, you know. The préfer, he …’

‘My jurisdiction, is that what you mean, mademoiselle?’

‘Martine, how could you?’

‘Henri, the coffee was to be for you, the chocolate also.’

‘And the lipstick?’ asked the brother sharply. ‘You know how much I hate the sight of your wearing such things. It cheapens you.’

‘And the present?’ asked the Sûreté, for it still lay on the table. Clearly the students were working the ‘System D’*, making do and taking care of themselves by playing the black market. Every lycée had its System Ds and the zazous were a part of it. A chicken for the pot, a roast of veal perhaps or packet of salt—clothes, the leather jackets, the girl’s skirt … all were products of the system.

‘The present …?’ he said again, seeing them look questioningly at each other while the brother watched them with alarm.

‘Open it, please,’ breathed the detective, ‘or would you prefer I did?’

It was the girl who kept her eyes focused on the thing while Monsieur Charlebois stood across the table from her, frantically trying to get her to give him a hint as to what it contained. She refused to raise her lovely blue eyes to meet his gaze but whispered, ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, our Assistant Professor of Germanic studies, must open it, Monsieur the Detective from Paris. It is just a little something. It is nothing much.’

‘Henri, you open it,’ said his sister but the brother refused and went into the other room saying, ‘You should be ashamed. They should not have come here.’

Upset by his words, her pale lips quivered, and her fingers shook as she undid the wrapping and tried not to damage the paper.

There was a small cardboard box and, inside this in tissue, a ring of keys that made her gasp and burst into tears of relief and gratitude. ‘My keys!’ she blurted, fondly touching each of her students and hugging them. ‘The keys to the Lycée du Parc, Inspector. I dropped them some place. I never lose a thing—I’ve never lost anything until … Ah, I was so upset and distracted—the examinations, their grades. My Director, le Docteur Taillander, he … he would have dismissed me, had he known of my carelessness.’

She clutched the keys in her left hand, held them to her lips and, shutting her eyes with relief, bowed her head to steady herself.

The zazous reached out to her comfortingly. They were distressed and embarrassed at the depths of her relief. Perhaps they had not known she would have been dismissed. Perhaps one of them had taken the keys and now all three were united in the shame of returning them.

It would be some moments before she recovered. St-Cyr signailed to them to leave and went with them to the front door. ‘Who found the keys and where?’ he asked. ‘When were they lost and when was their absence first discovered? Come, come, answer truthfully.’

It was Jean-Pierre who reluctantly confessed. ‘I found the keys last Tuesday, Inspector, beside the lake in the park. There is a pavilion which is used for the band concerts. It …’

‘It is one of our meeting-places, Inspector,’ said Lorraine, not looking up. ‘The keys were lying in the snow below the railing.’

Ah mon Dieu, what had they been up to? ‘Tuesday the twenty-second and you have let her suffer all this time? When did she lose them and for how long has she had to live in fear their loss would be discovered?’

‘A week prior to that Tuesday,’ offered the boy Fernand. ‘We searched everywhere, Inspector.’

A week! The fifteenth … ‘And yet you kept the keys a further three days knowing how distressed she was?’

‘Only to make the present more suitable,’ said Jean-Pierre.

‘Pah! If I were your father, I would soon straighten you out! Wearing rubbish like that. Dealing on the black market. Now get out of here. Be home and indoors well before curfew.’

‘It was only a set of keys, Inspector,’ said the girl.

He stepped out into the hall after them and closed the door behind him. He knew he was edgy and unreasonable—that he’d defied authority himself as a boy and had paid dearly for it, but this … this was something else, something so deliberate it hurt. ‘One hundred and eighty-three are dead, my little birds. Three others also. Some sixty are still in hospital, some so badly burned they will be horribly disfigured for the rest of their lives. At present, I do not know if the keys have even the slightest importance, but if they have, you had best tell me everything and do so immediately.’

They objected. They said the keys could have nothing to do with the fire, that he must be crazy.

They begged him not to tell their teacher. They said she must have set them on the pavilion’s railing and that she’d been upset and distracted for days prior to their being lost.

Days prior to the fifteenth. The Weidlings had arrived on the tenth. Claudine had had to get away …

When he returned to the flat, the sister had excused herself and gone to her room, the brother held his coat, scarf and hat at the ready.

The desire to ask where Charlebois had been on that Tuesday of the lost keys, and from then until the finding of them on the twenty-second was there, but for now had best be left. ‘Monsieur, if it would not be too much trouble, could I ask that you drive me to Number Six, rue du Boeuf? I must take another look at the flat of your childhood friend and link up with my partner, Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo.’

‘Is this necessary?’

Ah mon Dieu, the guarded anger. ‘Absolutely, monsieur. Lyon is a city in fear and we must put a stop to it before there is another fire.’

‘Don’t the Sûreté and the Gestapo grant their detectives transport?’

‘Not since some gangsters shot my Citroën all to pieces in Montmartre. It’s still under repair.’

‘Then I will drive you to Claudine’s and answer any further questions you might have of me.’ Ah damn, the Sûreté had found out about the car.

‘Just the ride to save time, monsieur. Perhaps if you could wait in the street outside Number Six, then the lift over to the temporary morgue? We can talk on the way. You can fill me in on Mademoiselle Bertrand and the cross of Father Adrian, I think, and then a little more about your sister, the Lycée du Parc and her studies to become an assistant professor. Yes, that would be excellent!’

Questions, there were always questions, thought St-Cyr. The streets were treacherous and the cold could easily cause the car to stall. Left alone inside, the two of them would talk as the windows iced up. Ah yes. Already the cinematographer’s cameras were rolling but there would be no floodlights, only darkness in the rue du Boeuf outside the house where a friend had been killed to keep her silent.

‘Oh by the way, Monsieur Charlebois. My compliments to your sister for the tastefully simple way she has decorated the fir tree in your salon. Those gilded glass pears are exquisite and must be very old. Venetian, I believe.’

Bishop Frédéric Dufour was not happy. A busy man on this busiest of days, he threw off his vestments, tossing hat, robe and dangling scarf—was it called a scarf?—into a chair. ‘That vile old woman, Inspector Kohler. May God have mercy on her. Saint Peter will have to cut out her tongue if the Devil doesn’t get her.’

He spotted the dregs of Calvados and one dirty glass. The detective still held the other.

Snatching up the scrubwoman’s glass, he threw it into the fire. ‘The bitch!’ he swore. ‘I’ll show her. This is the last time, absolutely, that she violates the sanctity of my study! Vermin … did she tell you my church was full of lice, eh? Well, she’s the one who is carrying them!’

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

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

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

‘Inspector, what is it you want?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Lost in the fire?’

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

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

‘Inspector.’

‘Inspector, how did she die?’

‘First tell me if Henri Charlebois knew Claudine?’

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

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

‘Murder?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, but why did he give it to him?’

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

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

‘No, not the sister.’

‘Was he given it to keep silent?’

‘About what?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* from the verb se débrouiller, to manage