4

It was freezing in the study, and when the one from the Sûreté indicated the tin, Danielle told herself she must listen to his voice as if from beneath the ground and she already in her coffin.

‘One part safrole by volume, mademoiselle. Two of nitrobenzene, and the same again of gasoline. A small amount of the solution is dabbed on to a rag which is then stuffed through the entrance to the hive, so as to place it in the centre of the floor.’

‘Normally the fumigation is repeated every second day, Inspector, until all four decimal-five cubic centimetres of the mixture have been used.’

On waking, the girl had changed into a dark grey, woollen skirt, white blouse with Peter-Pan collar, and a knitted, powder-blue pullover. No pearls, no rings, no jewellery of any kind, not even a wristwatch. She was not nearly so tall as the father, but taller than the mother and thin, now that he could see her without the coat. Thin and small-breasted, underweight and no doubt this was all due to the severe lack of calories, and the energy expended in the hunt for food.

Becoming aware that she had remained just inside the doorway to the study, the girl thought to come forward, hesitated and then thought better of closing the gap between them.

Would the Sûreté understand that most of the honey they had produced had been taken from them? wondered Danielle. Would he realize that the rest had been severely rationed except for that given to clients among the Occupier and their sickening friends?

‘A lot of the bees are killed and must be removed from the hives, Inspector, but they are usually the ones with the acarine mites. Papa … My father felt the best time for such a fumigation was in the late winter, and after the bees had had a good flight to clean themselves. Bees are very clean, you understand. They will not defecate in the hive unless very ill, and fly away from the hive before doing so. But some people don’t realize this at first and hang their laundry near the hives in the garden, only to … to find it yellowed by the droppings.’

Modestly she had lowered her eyes, and when he gently said, ‘And the fumigation, mademoiselle?’ she looked up suddenly and swallowed with difficulty.

‘He would seal the entrance after placing all of the solution in there at once. “Quick and easy and thorough,” he said. “Danielle, never mind doing it bit by bit. Get it in there and over with! Hurry, petite. Hurry!”

‘The … the carnage was terrible but … but if you ask me, Inspector, he was invariably correct.’

Inadvertently the girl had recounted the first time the father had made her do it. And for how many years had she carried the guilt of those first little murders? he wondered. ‘How old were you then? Five or six?’

‘Seven. We … we had had a scare and papa wanted me to know best how to deal with it. I cried myself to sleep for nights afterward.’ There, he could think what he liked of that!

‘And was the recent infestation the reason so many of the hives had been brought into the apiary?’

Say only what is necessary; look steadily at him, she warned herself and answered flatly, ‘Yes.’

‘And the number of hives?’ she heard him ask and dug her fingernails into her palms to more firmly awaken herself to the threat of him before answering, ‘Usually about twenty here. Sometimes a few less or more. It depended.’

‘On the need to service an orchard or vineyard.’

‘The out-apiaries also. He … papa has – well, he had … Well, we have; I have, fifty-seven to … to look after.’

‘Then twenty-seven of them are still out on rooftops and in gardens?’

‘Papa … Papa and I were still bringing them into the apiary. He … he felt it necessary due to … to the threat he perceived. The disaster he said would happen.’

‘Acarine mites.’

‘Yes! But …’ She clamped her eyes shut and turned away, burst into tears and tried to stop herself. ‘Forgive me,’ she blurted. ‘He … he would not tell me why he felt so certain there would be such a terrible infestation, only that … that we must guard against it for the good of France.’

And has he believed me, this Chief Inspector of the Sûreté? she silently asked herself and heard that one gently saying, ‘Would you like to sit down?’

‘In his chair, at his desk? No. No, I … I will stand over here. Yes, here.’

And next to the microscope under which a Russian bee had been opened.

Her back remained ramrod stiff, her hands gripping the edge of the workbench, but when she realized that he would notice this, the girl relaxed her hold and turned to face him. She hadn’t yet dried her eyes or wiped her nose – did she want him to see her like this so as to engender sympathy? he wondered. Merde, what was she attempting to hide?

Everyone hides things these days, he cautioned himself. And please don’t forget grief takes many forms and she is in great distress.

As in the honey-house, he’d have to be kind, but was she hoping to block him from further viewing what was under that microscope? She’d admitted to the presence of acarine, but not to its source in Russian bees. ‘Mademoiselle, it’s good of you to have come downstairs. You must still be exhausted and are understandably in shock.’

‘I want to help, Inspector. There is only myself who can. She … Maman won’t be of any use. Papa didn’t … didn’t tell her anything about his work or …’

‘Or even about his private life?’

That brothel? That filthy place and those two bitches – was this what he was implying? ‘Yes. Yes, that is how it was with my parents. Mother didn’t do it, Inspector. I made her tell me. I said we had to talk, that the time for insulating herself from me must end.’

‘And her response?’

Instinctively the girl touched her left cheek, disturbing a camouflage of last-minute powder whose pale chalkiness had hidden the welt.

‘Mother slapped me hard. I … I forgave her immediately, of course.’

‘Would you prefer we didn’t talk here?’

‘No. No, here is fine. I … I will just have to get used to it, won’t I?’

The girl waited for him to say yes, but he would simply take out his pipe and tobacco, thought St-Cyr.

‘Inspector, I don’t know who could have poisoned him. That bottle of liqueur was not in the study when I left here early on Thursday morning. My father was already at work at five when I came in to kiss him goodbye. He was happy – earnest, that is, about his work. Our work.’

‘And did you know the contents of the address he was revising?’

‘I knew only that he was working on an important paper, but … but not the subject of it. Papa refused to tell me. “It’s too controversial,” he said. It … it had to be about his bees, of course. They are our dedicated and loyal little friends, isn’t that so? Tireless and always bringing beauty and the gold of their honey, the light from their wax, while at the same time pollinating the very plants without which we could not survive.’

Quickly Danielle wiped her nose and eyes with a hand and tried to smile, and when she heard him ask, ‘Was he to have given the address that evening?’ vehemently shook her head.

‘Tomorrow at two p.m. The Jardin du Luxembourg. A … a room in the Palais is still not possible so, again, as since the Defeat, the Society must meet in one of the greenhouses, but it … it is really quite pleasant and perhaps far more in keeping with the subject. I, myself, though forced always to sit at the back, have never objected to our holding the meetings there. The bees love it, and one can watch them going about their tiny lives as if in total peace.’

Her voice had strengthened but was she now on firm ground? he wondered. She was also, in a way, striking a blow for equality and the injustice many women and young girls felt at the hands of men who often knew far less than they.

‘Aren’t you going to light your pipe?’ she asked.

‘Ah! I’ve forgotten. I often do. Would you like a cigarette?’

Would it help? ‘No. I don’t. I haven’t ever. I’ve had no desire to use them.’

And now need no such crutches? Merde, what was there about her? The need to constantly be on her guard, the need to hide the fact she must know the mites were from Russia? ‘While away, you stayed, I believe, at the family’s country house.’

‘Only at night. My route took me too many kilometres from it otherwise. I arrived after dark on Thursday, crept into bed and was up and away before dawn on Friday. Today also. It’s … it’s just an old place. Not much to look at and sadly in need of repair.’

And nothing for you to worry about – was this the impression she wanted to impart? ‘You use it only once in a while.’

‘Yes.’ And damn maman for telling him of it. ‘I must vary my route and so must stay overnight in other places. Sometimes where we have out-apiaries. That way I can check on the hives also.’

And let me give you those locations? Let us talk no more of the country house – was that it, then? ‘Could someone have come here on Thursday evening to see your father?’

‘And bring him such a gift?’

The frown she gave was deep. ‘Well?’ he heard himself ask.

‘Perhaps one of the Society might have arranged to visit him, but he didn’t tell me this, and I … why I did not ask. I was in too much of a hurry to be on my way. I did not think. I just assumed everything would be the same when I returned – fine, do you understand?’

Flinging herself around again, she stood with head bowed and her back to him. Tears spattered the workbench, hitting the hands she pressed flat against it. Splashing between her fingers. Hands that, washed in ice-cold water and without soap, still held dirt and looked chapped and worn.

The Inspector took hold of her by the shoulders. ‘There … there were those in the Society who did not want him to give that address,’ she said bitterly. ‘They … they were afraid les Allemands would close down the Society and arrest everyone. Cowards, papa called them. Cowards!’

Her hair was very fine and light and when he released her left shoulder, his right hand remained in comfort, deliberately touching it and she knew – yes, knew now – that he would stop at nothing to get his answers, that he had, indeed, the eyes and insidious curiosity of a priest! Of Father Michel, yes!

‘But he was determined to give the address?’ she heard him ask and felt herself instinctively nod then blurt, ‘It was his duty to do so. His duty, he said!’

The girl was thin, and she shook hard when he wrapped comforting arms about her. ‘Please go upstairs, mademoiselle. Go back to bed. There will be time enough for questions.’

But will there? she silently asked, still clinging to him but opening her eyes now to see, through the mist of her tears, the desk, the wall with its collection of bees under glass, the paintings, the whole of it, of life itself and what it had become. The French windows to the garden also.

‘Inspector …’

It was Madame de Bonnevies and the look she gave condemned both himself and her daughter for sharing grief’s moment in such an intimate way.

The girl released her hold but remained defiantly standing beside him so that her right arm touched his and now … now that hand found its timid way into his own and he felt her close her fingers about his and tightly. She was still trembling.

‘Mother, what is it? What’s happened?’

Had the girl been expecting an absolute disaster? wondered St-Cyr and thought it probable.

The mother’s voice grated.

‘That one’s partner has arrived and is waiting in the car for him. A matter of some urgency. This,’ she said acidly, and held out the flattened remains of what must once have been a birdcage!

‘All right, Hermann, enlighten me.’

‘Not here, idiot. Somewhere quiet.’

Was it as bad as that? wondered St-Cyr as the Citroën roared up the impasse, crossed over the rue Stendhal, made a hard right on to the rue de Prairies, a right again and then shot down the rue de Bagnolet. Of course there was so little traffic these days, it really didn’t matter if one stopped where one was supposed to stop. Mon Dieu, it took only ten minutes to cross the city from suburb to suburb at peak times, even with the clutter of bicycles, bicycle-taxis and pedestrians, far less to reach Chez Rudi’s on the Champs-Élysées, especially with Hermann behind the wheel!

‘This is not somewhere quiet!’ seethed the Sûreté acidly.

‘But it is the centre of all gossip and gossip is what we need, mein lieber Französischer Oberdetektiv. Let me do the talking – that’s an order, eh, so don’t object!’

Hermann was really in a state but one mustn’t take crap like that! ‘Inspektor, my lips are sealed. After all, you, too, are one of my German masters.’

‘Piss off. This is serious. Act natural.’

‘I am.’

‘Then don’t look as if the ground had just fallen out from under you! Try smiling.’

‘You know how much I resent having to come here when most of the city is starving!’

‘But you do get fed, so please don’t forget or deny it. And don’t seal your lips to a damned good feed. I’m going to order for you.’

Nom de Jésus-Christ, must Hermann be the same as all the others of the Occupier only more authoritarian, more forceful, more blind and insensitive to even the simplest wishes of his partner?

Of course. After all, like Rudi Sturmbacher, he was a Bavarian.

Beerhall big and at the tea-and-coffee stage at 3:47 p.m., the restaurant was in one of its more genteel modes. Couples here, couples there. Uniforms and pretty girls who should have known better than to consort with the enemy in a place so visible.

But none of this caused Hermann to stop on the threshold, to gape in surprise and dart his eyes over the walls and ceiling, then hesitantly grin only to caution himself and finally croak, ‘Mein Gott, Louis. Was it done overnight?’

From wainscoting to ceiling, and over that too, huge murals revealed the heart, the mind, the sympathies and loyalties of the restaurant’s owner.

‘It’s Rudi’s little contribution to morale,’ whispered St-Cyr. ‘Be sure to praise it. You’ll have to and so will I.’

Across the far wall, Arminius, conqueror of three Roman legions in AD9, rode a white stallion through the brooding forests of the Teutoburger Wald. Chained centurions and legionaries were among the captives, their former slaves, too, and in front of the pommel of his saddle was bent all but double, a naked maiden, she forced to moon her gorgeous backside to the heavens and to all and sundry, her long, blonde tresses trailing.

There were crowded shields and swords and drinking horns of mead among the barbarians who wore wolfskins and whose women were dressed in blowsy, off-the-shoulder gowns that were belted at the waist. Smiles and grins were on most of the conquerors, outraised arms of welcome from the humble citizens of their forest abode. Babes in arms, babes on shoulders to better see the victorious, and babes voraciously suckling from under bearskin comforters. Kids everywhere.

‘I like the helmet, Louis.’

It was big and it was winged. ‘What about his brassiere?’

‘Did they wear such things – the men, that is? I don’t think the women did.’ It was of iron – two mounds shaped like tumuli that had been forged by Vulcan himself. A battle-axe in hand, the expression on that thick-bearded, big-boned Teutonic countenance was ever-grim even in conquest. ‘Muscles … mein Gott, look at his arms and thighs!’

‘Look at the prize he’s brought home. There is something vaguely familiar about her but I can’t quite put my finger on it. The hair perhaps.’

‘Her ass, Dummkopf! and the women who are looking on.’

Most of the female faces were similar. ‘Rudi’s little Yvette and his Julie were models.’

‘Helga, too, idiot!’

Rudi’s youngest sister waited on tables and was still hoping for a husband. ‘But they all wear boar-tooth necklaces?’ hazarded St-Cyr.

‘That’s because they like the feel of teeth!’

There were always a few plain-clothed Gestapo about, a few of the SS too, in uniform, and burly Feldgendarmen, et cetera. Saying hello to some, ignoring others, Hermann found a table right in the middle and, throwing himself into a chair, sat staring up at the ceiling in wonder to where Stukas dived through thunderclouds, Henkel-ms dropped their bombs and Messerschmitts chased Spitfires which exploded into flames.

‘Well, my Hermann. You say nothing?’

It was Helga. The round, milkmaid’s eyes were bluer than blue, the blonde braids cut shoulder length, the chunky hips firm under a pale-blue workdress that hugged them.

‘Helga, meine Schatze.’ My treasure. ‘I can’t believe it,’ swore Hermann, still taken aback and trying, perhaps, to find a deeper meaning where there was absolutely none.

She indicated the other wall on which a naked Brünnhilde rode a comparable white stallion but at one of the Munich torch-lit fêtes. Surrounded by lusty, young torch-bearing Brown Shirts with swastika armbands, the girl had risen up in her stirrups for a better look at the bonfire.

‘That’s you,’ he murmured, half in surprise perhaps, half in interest – it was hard to tell.

‘I modelled for it,’ gushed the girl. ‘Rudi let me.’

The blaze was huge, a pillar of fire whose light glistened in her eyes and on her pale white thighs and ample breasts, but lost itself among the tangled mat of pubic hair which glowed more softly.

‘Good for Rudi, Helga. You deserve it. Alle Halbeit ist taub, eh, Louis?’ Half-measures are no-measures.

‘Such poise, mein Kamerad der Kriminalpolizei. Were you one of the BDMs?’ asked Louis of her.

The Bund deutscher Mädchen, the League of German Maidens. ‘Of course. It’s gesunde Erotica, is it not, my Hermann?’

Healthy eroticism designed to increase the birthrate and produce cannon fodder. ‘This …’ Kohler indicated the murals. ‘Is fantastic, Helga.’

‘If only the Führer knew,’ exclaimed Louis.

‘He does. Rudi sent him photographs,’ she said and proudly blushed.

‘The murals are bound to be the talk of Paris and Berlin then,’ enthused St-Cyr. ‘Ah! not Braque, you understand, or Picasso who is also out of favour but also thinks he’s so good. Still … what can I say, Hermann? I, a lover of art?’

And bullshit! Braque and Picasso were the fathers of cubism! ‘Art for the people and of the people.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s it exactly!’ said Louis, still full of enthusiasm.

‘Pea soup with pig’s snout and trotters, Helga,’ said Hermann positively.

She screwed up her face in distress and frowned deeply. ‘Rudi won’t like it. You know how he is. Meals at mealtimes. Coffee and cakes at other times.’

Kohler put a hand firmly on her hip. ‘Tell him it’s necessary and that I’ve managed something sweet for him. Now after the soup, we’ll have the grilled Franconian sausages with pork rind, sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. And two big steins of that Münchener Löwen he saves for friends like us. The sight of you up there on that wall has made me hungry.’

But had it made him see her as she really was? wondered Helga, and wetting the end of her pencil, took longer at this than necessary.

‘Encouraging her will only get you in trouble!’ hissed St-Cyr when the girl had disappeared into the kitchens.

‘Trouble,’ muttered Kohler. ‘Our days are clouded with it just like those of the Romans on that wall.’

From a pocket he took a small ball bearing of silver perhaps, and after rolling it around in a palm, let it trickle slowly across the table towards his partner and friend. ‘Don’t bite on it, Louis. I already have.’

The days of the Munich Putsch, the uprising of 8 November 1923, lived on in the triumph of murals. A Brown Shirt from them, a survivor with fists, the mountain of flesh that Rudi Sturmbacher had become weighed 166 kilos. The hair was flaxen and cut short in Wehrmacht and SS style; the eyes were small, red-rimmed, pale-blue and wary.

A moment ago there had been greed and larceny in those eyes – the expectation of profit which had accompanied the huge platter of sausage, potatoes, sauerkraut, et cetera, to the table.

Uneasily the mountain’s gaze flickered over the little silver ball bearing Hermann had placed in an ashtray. That gaze passed beyond this humble Sûreté, thought St-Cyr, and took in at once the whole front half of the restaurant, the reward for years of service and loyalty, the murals, the entrance – everything. Even the newspapers and magazines that had come straight from the Reich that very morning.

Rudi hadn’t touched the ball bearing and wouldn’t. ‘Something sweet,’ he breathed and pursed the big lips that had only just lost their grin.

‘Honey,’ confided Hermann, conspiratorially leaning over the table, and why must he do this? demanded St-Cyr silently. Didn’t he care about the SS and Gestapo who were now taking note of them, even the GFPs, the Secret Police of the Army? Didn’t he know that gossip was instantly passed to, and generated here at the centre of it?

‘Honey from Russia,’ confessed the Sûreté – one had to say something, especially after having had to listen, over their soup, to Hermann’s long-winded discourse on the subject.

Steam rose from the platter, and with it came an aroma which made the juices flood to remind one that meals, even though from the Occupier as this one was, were seldom seen and often taken on the run.

‘We could get you some,’ offered Hermann – merde, even when bluffing he could be blithe about it!

‘How?’ asked Rudi. He wouldn’t let on to these two what he knew. Not yet. But in the past Hermann had often been a useful source, a student of the black market, so one had best make a pretence of being attentive.

‘Two lorries. Drivers who won’t say anything. Yourself and myself, I think,’ said Hermann. ‘Tonight would be best. Let’s set it for 22:00 hours, me to meet you and the lorries, you to choose the meeting place.’

‘Honey … Whose honey, mein Lieber?’ puzzled Rudi softly.

Hermann gave the shrug he always did when meaning, It could be anyone’s, so why bother worrying?

Was Hermann slipping? wondered Rudi. Had the Kripo’s most disloyal Detektiv left little messages along his route today only to forget all about them? ‘Oskar,’ he indicated the little ball bearing of silver and gold, ‘is very well placed, my Hermann. But it’s good you’ve come to me – yes, yes it is. Oskar could do a lot for you and this one.’ He indicated the Sûreté, the traitor, the patriot who was, at the moment, being treated with felt gloves simply because Gestapo Boemelburg needed him to fight common crime and keep the people quiet. ‘I’m certain of it, Hermann. Herr Schlacht is a man of many talents and a valued client. Enjoy your dinners. Drink your beer. They’re on the house.’

Rudi abruptly got up, deliberately knocking the table a little and sloshing their beer. ‘Now wait!’ bleated Hermann. ‘Sit down, eh? Come on. We’re friends.’

‘And friends are what you and this one need.’

Sacré nom de nom, were things that bad? cursed St-Cyr and managed – yes, managed somehow to dig the serving spoon into the platter and load his plate without spilling a drop.

‘You’ve such splendid linen, Herr Sturmbacher. Everything complements the meal.’ Beer instead of wine!

Louis stabbed a chunk of sausage and brought it up to let those nostrils of his flare as he drew in the aroma – no cat meat, no rat meat, no sawdust either, thought Kohler.

Repeatedly dumbfounded by Louis’s coolness in the face of a crisis, he watched as his partner and friend blew on the morsel, chewed it slowly as a connoisseur would, and pronounced it magnificent.

‘Don’t try to flatter me,’ breathed Rudi. ‘I know it’s perfect. So, eat, yes, and let’s talk a little. This is serious, Hermann, and you’d better listen.’

Word had got to Rudi from Frau Hillebrand of the Procurement Office. Whispers of a birdcage had come from Schlacht himself.

‘The Hotel Drouot, Hermann. As you were consorting with a certain chanteuse who shall remain nameless, a call was being placed from the ground floor. I could even hear crockery in the background.’

‘He’s lost his little badge,’ swallowed Kohler. ‘I should have told him where it was.’

‘Certainly not here and not with the Bzp Qbergruppenführer Denke who is, I believe, already heading for the Russian Front, courtesy of the Kommandant von Gross-Paris. Your miliciens, by the way, were taken directly to the Santé and shot. I … why I just thought you ought to know, Hermann, that when a flea tickles an ear these days, the elephant is likely to sneeze.’

Or fart! ‘It’s the trunk you mean. The flea tickles the elephant’s trunk, Rudi,’ muttered Hermann. He hadn’t meant for those two to be shot, thought St-Cyr, but had merely felt a few years of forced labour would have been good for them.

‘Eat,’ urged the mountain. ‘Don’t let that little taste of home you wanted go to waste. It’ll be in every mouthful.’

The two of them dug in. Mein Gott, but they discovered they were hungry! Beer was taken. Bread – good Bavarian Roggenbrot – was broken and savoured with tears, so gut. Ja gut! ‘Now listen. you get that little badge for me, you two, and I will forget we even spoke of it. Oskar separates the honey when he recovers the wax, and a little of that “sweetness” already comes to me.’

Ah Scheisse! ‘He also makes little wafers for you, doesn’t he?’ gulped Kohler.

Rudi brushed ham-fat fingers over the linen before sampling the sausage. He toyed with a curled wedge of pork rind, judged it crisp enough and fully flavoured. ‘I did not hear that, Hermann. The restaurant pays for itself. What little is left, is sent home to my parents who are getting on and finding things somewhat more difficult than anticipated.’

But to send money home from an occupied territory was illegal, therefore Rudi had to have another route. Switzerland …? The wafers are going there, thought Kohler. Merde but hadn’t he stepped in the shit this time! ‘I’ll get you the badge, Rudi. That’s a promise. No problem.’

‘If this beekeeper of yours was murdered, who cares, eh, Jean-Louis? What? Is the sauerkraut not to your liking?’

‘No. No, it’s perfect, Herr Sturmbacher.’

‘And you’re not even sure it was murder, are you?’

Had the news travelled so fast and in such detail? ‘Not yet, but I believe we will soon be satisfied. One thing does puzzle me, but I …’

Louis left the thought dangling while he helped himself to more from the platter and then peered deeply into his stein.

‘Helga … Helga, meine Schwester, another beer for each of my friends,’ sang out Rudi.

The whole restaurantheard it, a good sign. ‘Danke,’ said St-Cyr. ‘You see, Rudi – may I call you that when in …’ He indicated the cosy friendship of their table and said, ‘In such Gemütlichkeit?’

‘Herr Sturmbacher, I think.’

‘Gut! It’s always best for me to be reminded of where I sit in this Occupation of yours. You see, Herr Sturmbacher, the victim was what we French call an original and this, I feel, must have contributed much to his demise.’

‘He doted on his daughter,’ confided Kohler, quickly picking up the thread Louis wanted him to pick up.

‘But hated and despised his son,’ said the Sûreté.

‘Whom the mother loved with a mother’s love, thereby all but totally rejecting the daughter, Rudi,’ insisted Kohler.

‘Who held the couple together and fed them as well as she could.’

‘And helped her father with his bees.’

‘While revering her brother.’

‘Who hadn’t shared the same father with her,’ tut-tutted Hermann.

‘And remains lost in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Reich.’

‘Oflag 17A, Rudi,’ swore Hermann, sadly shaking his head. ‘A Kriegsgefangener.’

‘A Kriege,’ echoed the mountain, giving the slang for such and immediately taking note of what these two were really after. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Hermann. The badge in return for a little help.’

‘Maxim’s,’ breathed Hermann conspiratorially. ‘Did our Bonze of the gold wafers and the candle wax pay the fifty thousand francs down for her to get her son released? Save us time, Rudi, and the expense of going to that restaurant. You know the beer there always gives me gas, the soup also.’

‘Candles …?’ asked the mountain, ignoring the question of Maxim’s, but had he forgotten he’d mentioned Schlacht separated the honey when recovering the wax, wondered St-Cyr, or was he but testing the air for the perfume of how much they really knew?

‘Old Shatter Hand coughed up that crap about the candles,’ confessed Hermann, shrugging broadly.

These two were known for the speed and ruthlessly thorough determination with which they sought their answers and steadfastly upheld the truth. One law for all and only one, the fools. ‘Oskar does make candles, yes.’

‘Where?’ shot Hermann, forgetting about Maxim’s for the moment.

‘That I do not know nor ask. Really, meine Lieben, have you not listened? Can you not realize who your friends should be? Der Führer has …’

Rudi leaned over the table, looked to one side and to the other for listening ears not wanted, then thinking better of confiding it to both of them, got up and crooked a finger at this fellow countryman of his who was so delinquent, and whispered, ‘Der Führer has a secret weapon, Hermann. Yes, I have heard this. Everything of such interest passes through, here, but one must be careful to whom one imparts such confidences? The Vergeltungswaffe-Eins, Hermann. Even as we speak, the ground is being prepared for the launching ramps from which they will be sent. Normandy and Picardy have been mentioned.’

‘V-is?’ Revenge weapons.

‘Fliegende Bomben, Hermann.’

Flying bombs.

‘Some kind of rocket. So you see, Stalingrad is but a minor reversal and we are still going to England.’

That little saying hadn’t been heard since the Führer had abandoned such plans in the fall of 1940.

‘Behave,’ said Rudi. ‘Become a good Nazi. Join the Party. Now you must excuse me. My kitchen calls.’

‘And Maxim’s? Did Schlacht …’

‘Pay to get the woman’s son released? Really, my Hermann, how could I possibly know of such an intimate matter?’

The city was now pitch dark and, at 17:22 hours, bitterly cold. Infrequently, pale dots of blue penetrated the darkness from struggling vélo-taxis and vélos. Pedestrians were caught but momentarily in the slim blue slit-eyes of the Citroën’s headlamps. A mother and two little children …

Hermann jammed on the brakes – skidded, and then stopped. The three of them had remained standing right in front of the car …

‘Hermann, we haven’t time.’

‘Her kids are hungry, Louis. She’s prepared to commit suicide.’

‘Merde, how soft can you get?’ But it was happening all over the city. Desperate measures for desperate times, and every car would have to hold the privileged, since no one else was allowed to drive.

‘There’ll be a Wehrmacht soup kitchen at the Gare d’ Austerlitz. I can fix things for her there, then drop you off, and come back to take them home.’

Hermann was rolling down his side window. The woman and her children were approaching … ‘Jésus, merde alors, idiot! We’ve a murder investigation on our hands!’

‘We could simply say the beekeeper’s death was an accident.’

‘Was that what Rudi advised? Well, was it, eh?’

‘Monsieur,’ began the woman. ‘Could you …’

‘Well, was it?’ demanded St-Cyr.

‘Something like that. The heat’s on, Louis. We can’t afford to get burned, not with the Milice after Oona and her papers not so good.’

‘And Giselle? Were they also after her?’

‘Monsieur …’

‘Get in the back. Vite, vite, before this one changes his mind. I’m going to have to see about Giselle, Louis, but that explosion on the tracks between here and Lyon could really have been a warning to us. Please don’t forget it!’

‘And this one, Hermann? Has she a grenade or a revolver hidden beneath that shawl she has wrapped about the children?’

‘A grenade …?’ managed the woman.

‘You worry too much. Mein Gott, your ears are even bigger than Rudi’s!’

‘And you are far too trusting and forget entirely, mon ami, that the Résistance still have my name on some of their hit lists!’

A problem, a little misunderstanding. ‘There’s a rumour of something big,’ said Kohler stiffly. ‘I’ll tell you about it later. I promise.’

‘A rumour?’ managed the woman. ‘Bread here, milk there. Cheese … has one of those salauds really got cheese, or are we simply to eat rumours, messieurs?’

Many of Paris’s forty thousand concierges were grassroots black-market traffickers. Flour from one, cheese from another, but always a city of rumour.

Her tears were very real, and when Hermann stopped the car outside the railway station, they both looked into the back seat at her through the darkness.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Some bastard stole my purse and all of our ration tickets.’

To say nothing of her papers, but such ‘petty’ crimes were happening all too frequently. ‘Look, I’ll fix it. Don’t cry. Chewing gum, Louis. In the compartment. It’s banana flavoured. I was going to give it to you-know-who, but …’

To Oberg, the Head of the SS!

‘Banana …?’ hazarded the woman only to see the big one toss a carefree hand and hear him say, ‘Well, something like that. Here .. here, take it. Look, I know it won’t do much but …’

‘But that is all you can do. I might have known.’

‘No! Now just calm down, madame. You’ll see.’

‘Merde, you’re too easy, Hermann. One of these days I’m going to be picking up pieces of you.’

Like those of Marianne and Philippe – Louis’s second wife and little boy? wondered Kohler. Louis was right, of course. The mood of compliance was bound to change. The Résistance would warm up. Though still disorganized, widely scattered and few in number, they had tried to kill Louis last November, and Gestapo Paris’s Watchers, not liking the finger of truth these two humble servants of justice had pointed, had known all about that bomb on his doorstep but had deliberately left it in place. His wife had been coming home to him after a torrid affair with the Hauptmann Steiner and Louis hadn’t been able to warn her there might be trouble – they’d been out of the city at the time. And, yes, Steiner had been the nephew of the Kommandant von Gross-Paris who had packed him off to Russia to protect the family’s honour. And, yes, Steiner had died there just as would likely happen to the Bzp Obergruppenführer Otto Denke. Ah Christ!

‘A bomb?’ asked the woman with difficulty.

‘Madame, please don’t let it trouble you. Just go with this one. He’ll look after you like he does everyone else.’

The Gare d’Austerlitz was indicated somewhere out there in the cold.

‘Relax, Louis. I won’t be a minute.’

There was a can of pipe tobacco without a lid next to where the chewing gum had lain. The Procurement Office? wondered St-Cyr.

Somewhat mollified, he began to pack his pipe, and when he had it alight, sat waiting and waiting. Thinking, too, and asking, Murder … had the beekeeper’s demise really been intended, and was Hermann honestly suggesting they avoid the issue entirely so as to make life easy for once?

Madame de Bonnevies had gone through her husband’s book of clients and had tried to keep them from finding the name of Frau Uma Schlacht.

Danielle de Bonnevies hadn’t wanted him to look through the microscope at the mite-infested innards of a Russian bee. Her father had been terribly worried about an infestation, but also about the decimation of French bees, though she had claimed not to know the contents of the address he had planned to give.

She had also not wanted him to take any notice of the family’s country house near Soisy-sur-Seine. And ever since the Defeat, the mother had been trying desperately to free her son, the child of another man. Had the son been freed, then? Had the girl known this and feared her stepbrother had come in through the apiary and garden to poison that bottle? It hadn’t been in the study at 5 a.m. on Thursday. Early in the evening de Bonnevies had shaved, had spruced himself up – a woman? he wondered again. Perhaps the childhood friend of his sister, a Madame Héloïse Debré of 7 rue Stendhal? A woman whose husband had repeatedly beaten her until one day he had vanished and she had sworn not to know where to.

Had Father Michel been hiding something? Why else, but to distract this Sûreté, would he have mentioned such a parish disgrace as the gang rape of Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies? And ever since 1919 there had been a cemetery room at Le Chat qui crie and word of a settlement of accounts at any price. A very stubborn beekeeper, then, and one with not only a very troubled conscience, but a long memory.

When Kohler got behind the wheel all Louis said was ‘Four names, mon vieux. One of whom was killed at Sedan during the invasion of 1940. Another who no longer lives in the quartier but visits a certain lupanar late on Sunday evenings and takes Charlotte whose age is eighteen in that very room.’

‘What room?’ blurted Kohler, baffled by the thought trend but intrigued.

‘Please don’t interrupt me. Two others, Hermann, who are married and with families but are locked up in POW camps in the Reich just as, supposedly, is Madame de Bonnevies’ precious son.’

‘Oflag 17A.’

‘It’s just a thought.’

‘Louis, Rudi says Schlacht’s fucking Madame de Bonnevies.’

‘Did he really say that?’

‘Not really, but enough.’

‘In return for which?’

‘Schlacht must have put the fifty thousand francs down at Maxim’s for her to get her son back. Why else was that little badge of his in her drawer? Why else the expensive lingerie and the menu?’

‘The son, then, and that’s what the daughter tried to hide from me, but really, Hermann, Herr Schlacht could have any …’

‘He has.’

‘Who?’

‘His secretary.’

‘Then you will have to prove to me that he really is consorting with madame.’

‘Why me? Why not you?’

‘Are you ordering me to keep a watch on her when I have already too much to do?’

‘Louis, this is serious. Boemelburg has warned us to lay off.’

‘Even though the Kommandant von Gross-Paris is insisting we do no such thing?’

They’d be shouting at each other in a moment. ‘Oberg won’t stand for our interfering again. Let it lie, Louis. Say it was an accident.’

‘An accident.’

‘Misadventure. Rudi says there are flying bombs and that they’re to be pointed at England from launching ramps that are already being built in the north. He wouldn’t have told me that had he thought it wouldn’t convince me to be a good Nazi for once.’

‘And has it convinced you? Is the one-thousand-year Reich really here to stay, Hermann?’

‘I don’t know. Verdammt! I wish I did.’

‘Then in the interim, mon ami de guerre, let me visit the sister while you …’

Hermann knew he’d have to say it. ‘Visit Frau Schlacht.’

‘Who may have paid our beekeeper a little visit on the night of his death – is this what worries you, Hermann?’

‘Not really, but now that you’ve brought the possibility to my attention, I’ll be sure to ask her.’

‘Bon! For all we know at present, she could just as easily have given him that bottle as anyone else!’

‘Idiot, it’s the wife she’d have wanted to get rid of, not de Bonnevies, particularly if Schlacht is running around with madame!’

‘And that, mon enfant, is precisely what I meant.’

Ah merde, the Amaretto, thought Kohler. Had it not been meant for the beekeeper at all, but for madame?

Out of the darkness and the falling snow, the silhouette of the Salpêtrière grew, and the line of its many roofs stretched from the rue Jenner almost to the Gare d’Austerlitz, along the south side of the boulevard d’Hôpital.

Pausing to search for a visible light – some sign of life within – St-Cyr found only one tiny pinprick of blue above the main entrance. Every window and door would be secured behind heavy black-out curtains. Oh bien sûr, the staff would open those curtains during the day – they were really very conscientious, so much so, the hospital ranked among the finest. But still there would be that mesh of stiff steel wire, still the bolts, the necessary locks, guards, warders, nurses, doctors, cooks, et cetera.

‘Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies,’ he softly said and wondered what he’d find. She’d be forty-six years old now.

The patients would be at their evening meal. Soup … would it be soup? And how many of them did they really have – six thousand … eight thousand? Was the cost what troubled the Occupier as much as an unwillingness to recognize that mental illness was not something society should wipe out with injections of potassium cyanide or air?

There was wing after wing to the hospital – those for the criminally insane, others for the suffering of amnesia, depression, hypochondria and senile dementia. On visiting days, the triangular foyer would be crowded with relatives and loved ones – two thousand, perhaps three thousand of these, with vendors, too. Ersatz chewing gum – yes, yes, banana-flavoured, cherry also, and apple; flower sellers as well; paper collages and cut-outs, picture books done in cloth or otherwise. From the administrative centre, avenues opened up and these were named after the permanent shops they led to. And which one would he follow? Which would she walk every day of her life? The rue de tabac, where now no tobacco would be available? The rue de la pâtisserie where painted plaster and papier-mâché mock-ups would give the lie of plenty as they did all over the city? Éclairs, petits fours and babas au rhum? Would they allow such lies or simply have empty shelves?

The street of the market was one of the most popular, since the hospital was to be as much like a small town as possible.

Of the two bronzes at the entrance, only one remained: that of Dr Philippe Pinel who, in the 1790s, was one of the great pioneers in the humane treatment of the mentally ill. The other, that of the world-famous neurologist Dr Jean Martin Charcot, had been removed by the Occupier last year. Cast out for having influenced Freud, among others of his students. A man who had pioneered the use of hypnotism in the treatment of hysteria, Charcot had lived from 1825 until 1893; Freud had, of course, been Jewish.

Shaking his head in despair at the long memories of the Occupier and what had happened to France, he went in to the administrative desk, pulled out his badge and ID and said, as always in such places, a stern, grim, ‘St-Cyr. Sûreté. It’s urgent, so please don’t argue. Just get me whoever is in charge of the wing in which Mademoiselle Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies resides. Her dossier also.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘As are most things these days until a little persuasion is applied.’

Namely the Gestapo. ‘Wait here. I’ll ring for him.’

‘Bon.’

The smell of eau de Javel was pungent. Water dripped constantly from leaking faucets. The white, enamelled cast-iron washtubs were chipped, the light so dim it was as if a fog had seeped into the corridor.

All that remained of Louis XIII’s gunpowder factory were this wet, grey marble floor and these two limestone walls with their black iron bolts and the heavy ceiling timbers. Later, sconces of wrought iron had been added to give torch- and candlelight, but that had been in 1656 when the Salpêtrière, then so named, had been an asylum for vagrants.

‘Inspector, please be careful. She is … How should I put it? Almost normal. Deceptively so,’ said the doctor.

The woman wore grey – an undershift – and the dress she frantically scrubbed was grey, too, as were the galvanized iron ripples on the washboard she used. Her hair was blonde, but pale and cut short so that it stood well out from her and above the shoulders. Thick and teased by constant, rhythmic brushing.

Apparently she paid no attention to them, to the dripping of adjacent faucets, the damp cold, dim light, fog and constant smell of Javel. And her voice – she was talking to herself – was not shrill but earnest. ‘You will be poisoned, Angèle. I drank water, idiot. You know the poison wasn’t in it! Ah, you think I’m crazy? I know where you are. You were in the chapel. I’m in the garden. There were clowns. You were on the trapeze; Angèle. Madame la sous-maîtresse Durand was riding an elephant. You were …’

‘Angèle-Marie,’ said Dr Henri-Martin Lemoine gently. ‘It’s me. You have a visitor.’

‘I played the drums. He’s a Communist! He’s been sent to poison me! Why am I here?’

‘One of the others spilled their soup on your dress. Remember?’ he said.

‘Will he tune my piano?’

‘Perhaps. Now come along.’

‘A lake. I went swimming. You did!’ she said to herself. ‘Marie-couche-toi-là, you were naked! You sported yourself!’

Harlot … ‘Inspector, please. Let me get her to her room.’

‘They’re going to poison you. You know they are,’ she said to herself and then, ‘Try biscuits, not water. Be reasonable. Take air. I can’t. It burns. There are spies. They’re watching you, Angèle. They’ve seen you peeing!’

‘Please,’ said Lemoine, nodding slightly towards the washhouse entrance. ‘Let me talk to her. We’ll only be a moment.’

The woman lifted her head and listened intently. As if struck by something, she stood rigidly, still clinging to the dress on the washboard. Hesitantly her chest rose and fell in fear, but then the frown she now gave changed swiftly to a smile.

Merde, thought St-Cyr. That bit about the poison not being in water. Does she know why I’ve come?

The wrinkles were there again across the deeply furrowed brow. The large brown eyes were dark with worry, the lips tight as she watched for his every move and he heard Lemoine saying, ‘Go, for God’s sake.’

‘Go?’ she asked, and watched – one could feel her doing so, thought St-Cyr, as he walked to the end of the corridor.

Poison … was her concern over being poisoned normal to her condition, or had she been told and had it registered that her brother was dead?

The Schlacht residence at 28 quai d’Orléans might well be pleasant, for the house it was in faced the river. But at 6:17 p.m. it was shrouded in darkness, fog and softly falling snow.

Kohler stood beside the Citroën. He had no love of the Île Saint-Louis, this ancient kernel from which Paris had grown. Oona had nearly been killed at its upstream end, a matter of his having used her as bait, and ever since that affair, he’d been shy of the place.

Regrettably so, Louis would have said but Louis wasn’t here. And anyway, that had been back in mid-December and, yes, there’d been gold involved then and now there was more of it. Gold and candles, squashed beehives from Russia and acarine mites. Shit!

Though he listened intently, the city was all but silent. Only the gentle lapping of the river came to him, just as it had when Oona had had that knife at her throat. She had trusted him implicitly then and he had put her at risk.

‘I’ve got to find her a really decent set of papers; Giselle, too,’ he said and swore he’d do so. ‘I’ve got to get them both out of France before it’s too late.’

Spain … he’d always felt that would be best. Louis and he had often discussed it. A small café, a little bar-tabac with Giselle behind the zinc and Oona? he asked himself. Oona at home, tending Giselle’s babies, eh? Oona waiting. Oona lying in bed night after night never knowing if he loved her, too, or what the hell would really happen to her.

Fed up with himself and the life, he yanked down on the brim of his fedora and took a little walk. Paused to light a cigarette and tried to think.

He’d have to go carefully. Louis and he couldn’t have Oberg breathing down their necks again. And yet … and yet, had Frau Schlacht really intended to poison Madame de Bonnevies? Had the woman gone to that study only to find that the beekeeper, thinking the Amaretto quite safe, since he hadn’t yet poisoned it, was in the throes of death? Had the intended victim added that poison? Had Juliette de Bonnevies beaten them to it?

A soft whipping sound cut the air to interrupt his thoughts and, curious, he leaned over the stone parapet to gaze down through the inkiness at the lower quai. There was a set of iron stairs here, he remembered. There had been chestnut trees, or had they been lindens?

Someone was fishing. Before the Defeat, before this lousy war and Occupation, this quai and all the others would have been lined with fishermen, especially on a Sunday afternoon. Now one could only do it under cover of darkness and still that was a terrible risk to take for a few roach or chub.

He let the fisherman be. He went along until he found the door to Number 28’s courtyard. Rebuilt in the mid-1800s, the house, of five or six storeys, would have superb views of the Notre Dame, the Left Bank, too.

As if totally ignoring him and the war and what had happened, the bell of the Église de Saint-Louis tolled the half-hour as it had for centuries. Christ! was it cracking the ice of the bloody Volga?

‘Fliegende Bomben,’ he muttered disconsolately and asked himself, was the rumour even partly true and if so, must the war go on and on with no end in sight?

Louis would be certain to tell Gabrielle, who would pass the information to her contacts in the Résistance. ‘And God help us all if she’s dragged in again for questioning. I should never have put that responsibility on his shoulders. Never.’

Not one for using the elevators – he’d been caught hanging by a thread once too often – he started up the stairs only to be softly reminded. ‘Monsieur, you have not stopped with me.’

There were concierges and concierges, but to most there was that same look of utter bafflement as to why a visitor – any visitor – should call at such an hour. At any hour!

Brusquely Madame Jeanette-Noëlle Jouvand turned the ledger towards him, having retreated into her loge.

She was not old, not young any more, and of medium height and build, was a war-widow as so many of them were. A quite pleasant-looking woman in a neat, prewar woollen suit of dove blue, with silver Widow’s League button, a constant reminder.

‘Please,’ she indicated the ledger and held her breath while he wrote: Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central, and glancing at the military wristwatch, the time: 18:35 hours, the Schlacht residence.

‘That one has gone out, monsieur.’

He grinned, and it was a nice grin, thought Madame Jouvand, even though he was a Boche and there was the scar of a terrible slash down the left side of his face from the eye to chin. Other scars, too, but from shrapnel and from a bullet graze across the brow.

‘The war,’ he said. ‘Not this one, but the last one.’

‘Barbed wire,’ she said and nodded sadly even though he had lied about the slash and the graze – both were far too fresh. ‘Monmari was found clinging steadfastly to it with his face absent. Come back in three hours, monsieur. Madame dines. The Monsieur seldom goes with her since he is not often home and is, perhaps, too busy elsewhere.’

‘I’ll just go up and leave my card with her maid.’

‘It is as the monsieur pleases, but I will note this in my ledger, should madame wish to question me.’

Verdammt, she was a cool one! A look down at her from the stairs revealed that same puzzled concern. ‘You do not take the lift?’ she asked and heard him say, ‘They’re like some of the people I have to deal with. I never trust them.’

A shrug was given and, delighted by her, he knew she was exclaiming to herself that the Germans were crazy, but instead she said, ‘Well, of course, m’sieur, it’s the exercise. Always les Allemands are at it. Rowing on the river, in the most tragic of weathers. Swimming when full of champagne and where none are allowed to swim even if fully clothed and there is ice. But it’s as God has said. He is with them.’

‘Gott mit Uns, eh?’ he chuckled gently. It was written on every Wehrmacht belt buckle.

‘She will have gone to the salon de beauté first, monsieur, and then to the brasserie.’

‘It’s near the passerelle, isn’t it?’

The iron footbridge that crossed over to the Île de la Cité. The Germans had ordered it thrown up in 1941 to replace the bridge that had been knocked down by a disgruntled barge in 1939.

‘Oui. The salon and brasserie are very close to each other and to it. First the one and then the other, the place of the Alsatian.’

‘And no ration tickets, eh?’

‘None. It is also as God wishes, is it not?’

There was even the innocence of wonder in her deep brown eyes, but concierges seldom offered information and this one had.

Kohler hated to spoil the fun but returned to face her as a Gestapo would. ‘Ihre Papiere, bitte, Frau …’

‘Jouvand. Jeanette-Noëlle, age forty-five.’

Tonelessly she gave her address and position, et cetera, but it didn’t take him a minute to find what he wanted, and when he drew out the slim, bright red- and green-covered little book from under Paris-Soir, where she had hidden it, she shuddered.

‘Relax,’ he said in French. ‘Forget I ever saw it. Look, you’ve a nice coal fire in that furnace of yours. Why not go down to it and do us both a favour?’

Dear God forgive her, thought Madame Jouvand, for being so stupid as to have accepted that little book in the street when it was passed to her.

‘Poésie et vérité,’ said Kohler. Poem and truth.

Paul Éluard’s poems were Verboten but were being published and distributed by the Résistance.

‘I will do so immediately, monsieur.’

‘Bon. And now that we’re friends, I can ask you anything I want about Herr Schlacht and that wife of his, and you’ll be sure to answer without telling anyone else you did. Right?’

Ah merde! ‘Yes. Yes, of course. It shall be as you wish.’

The grainy photo in the dossier was of Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies in 1912. Staring blankly at the camera, the fifteen-year-old clutched the bundle of her clothes tightly to her chest, had just been showered and admitted, was still wet. The hair, worn no longer then than now, was parted in the middle and had been combed flat to cling behind her ears and drip. There wasn’t a frown, a tear – not one hint of anything.

‘Empty … her expression is exactly as it is as she looks at us now,’ said St-Cyr sadly. ‘It’s as if she can never forget.’

Lemoine turned up a companion photo. ‘The father blamed her,’ he said. ‘A walking stick.’

She’d been severely beaten. There were welts, bruises and inflamed cuts across her back, buttocks and thighs; rain after rain of blows. Her arms and shoulders had suffered. The calves, the ankles, the heels … ‘Is there no hope for her?’

‘There is always hope. Why else would we struggle?’

From the wash-house, she had led them to the rue de la pâtisserie and then up staircase after staircase and through common wards which seemed to stretch on for ever.

There were two tall French windows behind the heavy blackout curtains that hung in the centre of each of the outer walls, the corner room having lots of light during the day. The floor was of bare planks, except for a colourful carpet of woven rags. A rescued Louis XIV settee had lost all upholstery but that on the seat and needed repainting and regilding. A worm-eaten narrow table, with a mottled grey marble top, held the grey-stone bust of an unhappy saint; an armoire with mirrored doors, her clothing. A chipped, yellow-and-white-enamelled sink on feet, served both as private bath and basin.

An unpainted, tin, hospital table-cum-bedside-cabinet held Bible, rosary, lamp, tin carafe of water and one tin cup. There were books with leather bindings but could she even read them for any length of time and make sense of them? There were several Jumeau, Bru and Kaestner dolls with feathered chapeaux and long, flowing gowns of dark blue, emerald green, deep red and gold velvet. Silk and satin, too, with rings, necklaces, pins, bracelets and cameos. Dolls with rouged cheeks, painted lips and long dark or blonde lashes. Had she given them names?

‘My piano,’ she said, at last losing that blankness of expression and indicating the upright. ‘It whispers. It tells me it wants to be tuned, that its strings are hurting. Are you here to paint the room? You did once.’

A metronome had been silenced long ago by the removal of its arm. There were thin stacks of frayed sheet music – waltzes, he supposed, and sonatas. There were cobwebs, too, and flaking varnish, split cabinet wood, and lifting or missing ivories to match the broken plaster of the walls where large gaps exposed the stones.

‘Her brother makes this possible,’ confided Lemoine, discreetly taking the dossier from him. ‘Humour her, Inspector. Sit down and tamper with the keys. She’ll soon pass on to other thoughts.’

‘The brother’s dead.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I meant what I said.’

Lemoine heaved a contemplative sigh. ‘I felt you must have a good reason for coming. She’ll have heard us, by the way, and is very conscious of everything that goes on around her. How did it happen?’

‘Poison,’ she said to herself. ‘You will also be poisoned, Angèle-Marie. I won’t. I drank the roasted barley-and-acorn coffee they have to serve us in this place. I was a squirrel.’

‘Later … I’ll tell you later,’ confided St-Cyr.

Clothing lay drying over a small wooden rack, but the room was damp and cold. She hung the dress with the other things and, finding a nightgown in the armoire, modestly turned her back to them and got ready for bed. Fought with the voices she heard; refused to respond to them; said earnestly, ‘I won’t! I mustn’t! Not now.’ And then, ‘He’s dead. I’m free and can no longer hate him. He hated you. He really did!’

‘Angèle-Marie, you know that’s simply not true,’ said Lemoine. ‘Your brother loved you. He’ll be sadly missed.’

‘His honey is sweet,’ she said and smiled and arched her eyebrows questioningly before again speaking to herself. ‘You tasted it, you little fool. I had to! I begged you not to, Angèle-Marie. He said I had to. He did. He really did! Poison … it was poison. Honey …’

‘Touch the damned keys, Inspector! Play something. Anything!’ whispered Lemoine urgently.

The piano was not the euphonium that he had played in the police band and still practised when time allowed, which was never, thought St-Cyr, but he did know the keys and with effort, picked out Au Clair de la Lune.

Entranced, Angèle-Marie sat down on the settee, then got up quickly to pull an all-but-threadbare Louis XIV armchair over to the piano. ‘Please,’ she said, and nodded at the keyboard. ‘Already it sounds better. As if it wants to be healed.’

‘Find out for me if she had any other visitors last Thursday,’ he sang out, the deep baritone of his voice delighting her.

‘She’ll not be fooled, Inspector. I warned you.’

‘Agreed. But please call downstairs to the desk. There is an intercom in each of the wards. Choose the closest.’

‘There is no need. She had a violent attack early on that afternoon. It took us ages to calm her down.’

‘An attack?’

‘The keys,’ pleaded Lemoine.

‘The keys,’ whispered Angèle-Marie.

‘Please double-check for me,’ sang out the Sûreté.

Il Pleut Bergère – It’s Raining Shepherdess – followed and then, though the piano was desperately in need of tuning, St-Cyr thought he’d try Sur le Pont d’Avignon only to be reminded of Hermann and the agony of their last investigation and to strike up Les Beaux Messieurs.

‘He did bring me honey,’ she said earnestly and then, sharply, ‘He wasn’t supposed to, Angèle-Marie. I told you not to taste it. I did!’

‘Honey …?’ asked St-Cyr. Lemoine had left the room.

She indicated he was to search for something and watched intently while he did. Five minutes passed, perhaps a few more. Baffled, he stood before her and the smile she gave was one of absolute delight.

‘The curtains,’ she whispered and nodded excitedly towards them. ‘Flowers. Stones. Undervest and drawers. Hands, Angèle-Marie. I warned you. Cheese!’

Lying on the floor, and well hidden behind the black-out curtains, was a wooden honey-dipper. ‘Bees,’ she said. ‘You heard the bees, Angèle-Marie. They were in the walls. No they weren’t! Yes they were. Those were mice, idiot! Mice don’t live in solid stones. BEES, ANGÈLE-MARIE! BEES …’

Ah Nom de Jèsus-Christ, what was happening to her?

Lemoine tore back into the room. ‘Inspector, what the hell did you say to her?’

The woman was on her knees by the bed holding her hands tightly over her ears and crying. The sound of bees was clearly all around her. From every wall, the floor and ceiling, too. Tearing her hair, she began to moan, to rock back and forth and then to shriek, ‘DON’T DO IT TO ME! PLEASE DON’T! I’M A GOOD GIRL. I’M NOT A QUEEN … A queen,’ she sobbed.

Holding her tightly, Lemoine indicated the dipper and demanded to know how she had come by it.

‘The brother, apparently.’

‘Inspector, that’s impossible. He wouldn’t have, and in any case, I was certain we had taken that wretched thing from her in the concourse last Thursday. Angèle-Marie, I’m sorry but your visitor must leave immediately. Get out, Inspector. Out, damn you!’

‘No! No! But you want him to go, Angèle? He was going to poison you. Drink … I must not drink the liquid. You did! You did!’

‘What liquid?’ snapped the Sûreté. The woman sucked in a breath and glared at him through her tears.

‘A bottle of Amaretto. After we’d got her calmed down and thought she was well enough to see her brother, some fool must have momentarily set it near her during visiting hours.’

‘And did she drink from this bottle as she claims? Well, did she?’

‘The brother caught her doing so and, in a rage, took it away with him.’

Nothing could have been wrong with it then, said St-Cyr to his other self when alone and out in the corridor. Only later could the poison have been added, but de Bonnevies, believing the liqueur was perfectly safe, had thought no more about it and must have tossed off a stiff shot – Dutch courage perhaps – only to then, in panic, blame his wife for having tampered with it. But for this to be so, he reasoned with his other self, the bottle must have been left alone in the study and Madame de Bonnevies must have had a chance to get at it. Honey … someone among the crowd of visitors on that afternoon had earlier given Angèle-Marie a taste of honey.

De Bonnevies had gone to the brothel. That evening he had left the outer gate to the apiary unlocked and that to the garden also. He had an address he was to give to the Society, had settled on the names of the four who had violated his sister.

‘A woman …,’ he said, he and his other self churning things over. ‘The visit that evening would be difficult, hence the stiff shot from the bottle.’

The French windows to the study and garden had been locked – madame had had to break the glass to get in, or had she simply lied? To hide what, then? he asked his other self and, after holding a breath, finally answered, ‘The identity of the visitor she knew only too well would come calling.

‘Frau Uma Schlacht.’