6

The rue Froideveaux ran alongside the southern wall of the Cimetière du Montparnasse, and here the quartier was perhaps at its quietest, thought St-Cyr. Distant were the hustle and bustle of the Carrefour Vavin, boulevard Raspail and avenues du Maine and du Montparnasse where flocks of servicemen and their girls crowded the cafés, cinemas, bars and legendary brasseries. The Club Mirage also. Its rue Delambre was just off the northern wall of the cemetery, Gabrielle really quite near, yet he mustn’t visit her. Things were far too close to the Occupier, though Hermann could well go there, thinking to meet up with him, and he might well need to do likewise.

Number 53’s roof rose among the jumble across the street. Mansard windows haunted the steeply sloping slates. Wind stirred the barren branches of the chestnut trees. It was 11 p.m. and the métro’s lines would all have begun their final runs. Soon the streets would be cleared, the city dead quiet except for the sudden squeal of Gestapo tyres or the approaching tramp of a patrol.

‘And number 3 rue Laurence-Savart, in Belleville, is one hell of a walk,’ he sighed.

The entrance was steep. Threadbare carpet exposed raised nails. The stairs, given off a small courtyard, rose to a cramped landing and a small window behind a grill.

His fist hit the bell, though there was no need since he could see the concierge through the slot. ‘St-Cyr, Sûreté.’ How many times had he heard himself saying it like that? Mon Dieu, must he be so hard? ‘To see M. Jean-Claude Leroux, monsieur. Hurry, I haven’t time to waste.’

The day’s Paris-Soir was carefully set aside. Thin pages, controlled reading …

‘Leroux … Leroux …’ came a voice thick with the gravel of disinterest and too much black-market tobacco. ‘Ah! Here we are, Inspector. That one has gone out again. Always when the moon is on the wane he gets anxious.’

‘Don’t give me an ulcer, monsieur. They bleed.’

‘Merde, all that is required is a little patience!’

‘That takes time, and as I have already indicated to your tender ears, I haven’t any. Now hurry, or I will call in reinforcements.’

‘The catacombs.’

‘They’re closed at this hour.’

‘Of course. But he’s one of the custodians and always, towards the end of the month, the complaining increases.’

‘What complaining?’

‘The Germans. He says they are always buggering off on him and he’s afraid one of them will get lost down there in those tunnels and go mad, and he’ll be held responsible.’

‘And madness, is that a fear he harbours?’ hazarded the Sûreté.

Harbours … were they talking about ships? wondered Hervé Martin. ‘He gets his kicks out of recounting how, in 1848, some fool tore up the graves of our cemetery to uncover the bodies of recently buried females, the younger the better, I’m sure.’

The Inspector said nothing, only waited for more of the meal. ‘They were laid out in less travelled places among the stones and undressed, or so it is maintained by those in authority, and then were mutilated savagely. The breasts, the womb, the private parts. One was shaved. A girl of …’

‘Yes, yes, I’ve heard it all and every time my ears are exposed to that canard, monsieur, it has been embellished by the fool who tells it! How long will M. Leroux be underground?’

‘Hours, perhaps. It really depends on how agitated he is and if he can calm himself.’

‘Let me have the rest of it. I’m listening.’

They still hadn’t looked at each other, this Sûreté and himself. The wall was between them, the door closed but for its little window.

‘He’s like a woman, Inspector, only his time may differ from some, you understand. Every month, as I’ve said, when the moon is on the wane and down, he gets agitated. The constant pacing in his room at night – merde, the racket! The sounds of him … Well, you know, eh? A little relief, oh bien sûr, but with silence, if you please! It’s then that he has to check the catacombs more often than usual; it’s then that he finally leaves the quartier of a Sunday evening and returns much calmed.’

A visit to the Chat qui crie, then, and Charlotte, and de Bonnevies must have known of it, but still something would have to be said. ‘A woman?’

‘The younger the better, Inspector, but not from around here, not with that one. Others would talk, isn’t that so?’

‘Returning when?’

‘Before curfew, of course. Inspector, this one spends much time with the dead and not just with their bones. On his day off, he often visits our cemetery or one of the others.’

‘The Père Lachaise?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Any friends? Any visitors?’

The Sûreté was anxious. ‘None that I know of. Not to see him here, in any case.’

‘And letters? Well, come on, eh?’

‘Seldom. But he did receive one this Tuesday after he returned from work. Yes, yes, from a woman, a Madame Héloïse Debré, number 7 rue Stendhal. Urgent, I think, since he immediately went outside to read it and stayed away for hours.’

Héloïse Debré had been the ‘friend’ of Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies in the summer of 1912; the girl who had accompanied her to the Père Lachaise …

‘Then another today, Inspector, and from exactly the same source and urgent!’

The grille shot aside, the grizzled moon face and large brown eyes of the concierge filling its slot with determined concern. ‘Inspector, it’s a good thing you people are finally taking an interest in him. My daughters are afraid and whisper bad things to each other when in their bed at night. They’re only fourteen and fifteen, and one can understand such innocence, but when left alone here on duty they shudder when he approaches and later tell my wife he looks at them in such a way they each feel violated.’

Two letters … One before the poisoning and one afterwards.

From the house at number 53, and eastward along the rue Froidevaux, it wasn’t far to place Denfert-Rochereau and the entrance to the catacombs. But everything was in darkness or its shades of grey, and memory struggled. Always there was this problem during the blackout, only the more so if in the car with Hermann at the wheel.

Something … something had to be seen with which to fix location and find direction. The silhouette of a building, statue, bridge or quai …

‘The twin pavilions,’ muttered St-Cyr. Neoclassical villas. Marvellous with their friezes and perfect lines, they’d been used as tollhouses in the early days and had been built in 1784.

The entrance was in the west pavilion. The custodian would, of course, have locked the door after himself. One would have to beat a fist on solid oak; the sound would be certain to bring a flic or worse. The bell … you can ring the bell, he reminded himself and, feeling for it first, hesitated still as he gripped a wrought-iron ring that must have dated from when construction of the ossuary had begun in 1785.

The bell’s jangling would reverberate within, the sound finding its way throughout the building and straight down the twenty-metre-deep spiralling stone staircase to where the accumulated bones of 500 years and more had been placed. Those of the Cimetière des Innocents, the main Paris cemetery, had filled only a portion of the designated abandoned and reinforced quarries. The contents of other cemeteries had joined them. The ground beneath him was honeycombed with quarries and the maze of tunnels that led to them. Even after individual houses and whole streets had vanished due to underground caving, the quarrying had gone on. Le vieux Paris had been built of the limestone, gypsum, clay and sand that had been removed. A city of moles even from years and years ago.

In 1823 further excavations had been forbidden. Fully 325 hectares of openings riddled the bedrock upon which the city had been built. And in one small region of these openings, the bones of the centuries had been piled, arranged, festooned with rows of empty-eyed skulls and gaping jaws, crossed tibia and femurs, too, such artistic licence being variously attributed to Louis, Vicomte Héricart de Thury, Inspector General of Quarries in 1810, and to Frochot, the Préfet of the Seine, who had thought it best to cheer the place up!

The entrance door was unlocked. Pushing it open, throwing a hesitant glance over a shoulder at the darkened place where the snow still fell softly and one single blue-washed streetlamp glowed, he stepped inside, said silently, I’m a fool to do this without backup. But Hermann had seen too much of death. The bones would only have driven him mad – who knows? They’d have brought back terrible memories of that other war, the trenches, the shelling and bayonet charges, the bloodied chunks of flesh, those of rotting corpses, too. The murders, yes, of millions of young men.

One would need a light and there were candles in plenty. Boxes and boxes of them.

Striking a match instantly gave their price. ‘One hundred francs,’ he sighed. ‘In parties of forty at a time, at least twenty candles – two thousand francs an hour. Plus the admission charge of ten francs. Two thousand four hundred, then.’

The candles looked as if all had been dutifully returned many times to be offered for sale again and again until too short.

‘Eight … ten … a dozen parties a day – twenty-four thousand francs gross at least, and seven days a week.

‘Candles,’ he muttered, not liking the implications. And taking two spares in case of need, soon found the staircase and started down.

There was no sound but that of his own breathing. The air was heavy with mould – was someone raising mushrooms? he wondered. The air was also damp and cold. Hoarfrost clung to the stone walls and to places above him. Tiny crystals and little icicles, warmed by candlelight, glimmered.

At the foot of the staircase, a narrow tunnel accepted his light, but drew it in only so far. This passage, he knew, would end in a door upon whose lintel had been inscribed ‘Arrête! C’est ici l’Empire de la mort! ’ Stop! Here starts the Empire of Death!

A thick line, patiently drawn and redrawn over the years in charcoal on one of the walls of the passage, and then on the ceilings of the galleries, gave guidance. A sort of Ariadne’s thread.

‘Ariadne …’ he muttered, at the thought, for she’d been a necessary part of what had happened in Avignon. A coin, then, with a maze in relief on its reverse and the suggestion from the victim that they find the thread. ‘And now here she is again,’ he whispered. Hermann wouldn’t have liked it. Hermann could, at times, be very superstitious.

Everybody had to have their piece of paper these days, thought Kohler. They’d bitch and fart about in abject misery, but if you slapped a freshly franked wad of nonsense into their hands, they might or might not read any of it in the freezing cold and blue-blinkered light of their torches, and like as not they’d say, ‘Jawohl, Herr Oberst, this way.’

Herr Oberst … it sounded good. But getting receipts and requisition orders had meant stealing them from the appropriate desk at Gestapo HQ, 11 rue des Saussaies; HQ, too, of the Sûreté Nationale. Even at 23:42 hours that little hive had been busy. Trouble in the halls; trouble on the main staircase with two teenagers. That bastard Heinemann had been on the duty desk but had rushed to help out, a stroke of luck but bad for the kids. Boots and fists, et cetera.

God only knew what the papers were really for. Works of art or gold coins, cognac or someone’s prized stamp collection. And using Herr Oberst could well yield difficulties of its own, but what the hell, they were on their way at last!

‘You sign here,’ he said, leaning in on one of the lorry’s opened side windows. ‘And you, here,’ he indicated where the fresh stamp had been applied. Swastikas, eagles and all.

They’d brought two lorries and lots of help, and that was good.

‘And you?’ asked Franzie Jünger, lorry driver for the Wehrmacht’s Supply Depot number seven.

‘What does it matter, since you both will have lied and neither of you had to pay Occupation marks to get these. Five thousand Reichskassenscheine, miene lieben Honig-Bienen - that’s one hundred thousand francs, eh? so please don’t forget it.’

Stuffing the papers into a pocket of his greatcoat, Kohler thumped the bonnet of the lorry and strode off to the Citroën, giving them a nonchalant toss of a hand. Easy … this was going to be easy.

The honey bees would follow. They’d hit the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon first, would plunder its lard pails from Peyrane and then would empty Shed fourteen at the Gare de l’Est.

‘Confidence is everything,’ he sang out and grinned as he got behind the wheel. Louis should be with them but wouldn’t agree, of course – he’d be terrified. ‘Trouble … we’re already in enough trouble, Hermann.’ And worry, worry. ‘Your horoscope, mon vieux … Permit me to tell you that it said you weren’t to venture out after dark!’

‘Piss off. You know I don’t believe a word of that crap.’

‘You do! Don’t lie to me. Giselle reads them faithfully.’

Schlacht wasn’t going to like it. Relatives would have to be contacted. New supplies brought in. Production halted. But maybe, just maybe, the hive of this whole thing, having been well stirred, would open up with the truth.

In any case, Mariette Durand would have a far better chance of running to Giselle and Oona, and if not to them, then to Gabrielle. Frau Schlacht would miss her little maid and begin to put two and two together – he’d have to trust her concierge would use the girl’s absence to cover her own indiscretion.

But word of the missing F.M. badge would reach Schlacht via that wife of his or from Rudi, and one Nazi big shot would come to realize exactly with whom he was dealing!

‘And we’ll have something he needs,’ sighed Kohler. ‘His wax, which we’ll return with pleasure via the Kommandant von Gross-Paris or not at all.’

The Gefreiter on guard at the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon wasn’t helpful. Reluctantly Lance-Corporal Kurt Becker moved out of his little nest to shoulder his rifle and stare bleakly at the papers that had been stuffed into his hand. ‘Herr Oberst, this is highly irregular.’

‘We’re simply shifting it to a more secure location. Gott alone knows why Old Shatter Hand wants it done or insists guys like you should numb your balls guarding it, but an order is an order, eh, and I’ve mine.’

Kohler stabbed at the papers but the Lance-Corporal breathed, ‘I’m not alone.’

Oh-oh. ‘Who’s with you? Well, come on. Out with it.’

The concourse below was indicated. ‘The soup kitchen,’ said Becker. ‘Unterfeldwebel Voegler is warming his toes. Apparently this “Old Shatter Hand” of yours feels the two of us are necessary, especially as the curfew has begun and the doors are all supposed to be locked.’

A wise one; and a sergeant too! ‘And how long will he be down there?’

‘A half-hour, maybe a little more. You see, Herr Oberst, he was a shoemaker in his other life and likes to keep his boots warm and dry and away from the Russian Front so as not to spoil the leather.’

‘Okay, okay, I’ll speak to him.’

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you. He’s a very loyal member of the Party and a true believer in the Führer.’

Jésus, merde alors, this guy was really something! ‘Got any suggestions?’

Becker folded the papers and stuffed them into a pocket. ‘Ten thousand Reichskassenscheine for the little dent you will put in the back of my head.’

‘Ten …’

‘And please don’t bother to go through my pockets looking for it while I’m asleep, since Herr Voegler will most certainly order me to empty them, and I will have tucked your little reward inside my shirt.’

‘Look, you can trust me.’

‘It’s the others who are with you that worry me.’

A cigarette was offered to cement the bargain and then a long pull at the antifreeze of the bottle of three-star cognac that would be used. ‘Another,’ said Becker, ‘and another. It’s always best to take precautions when expecting pain.’

‘Idiot, he’ll accuse you of drinking while on duty!’

‘Please don’t trouble yourself. I’ll leave enough to be showered. That way he won’t think of it, particularly if you take my rifle and cartridge case and I tell him it was the terrorists.’

Mein Gott had things among the troops in Paris really degenerated so far?

‘I’d hurry, if I were you,’ said Becker. ‘Once the mind is made up, it’s best to carry through. Take the walnuts, too. Then I can say the terrorists were after potatoes and made a mistake.’

The guard on Shed fourteen, was not so easy. Retaliating against the rape of a young woman and collusion between the railway police and the Milice, von Schaumburg had placed Wehrmacht sentries two by two with Schmeissers and dogs.

It wasn’t good. Even from a distance this could be seen. Breath billowing from man and beast. Helmets battened down. Greatcoat collars up. Snow softly falling to give the lines of track the uncomfortable look of a lost world just waiting for trouble.

‘You’ve met your match,’ confided Franzie Jünger. ‘Sorry, Herr “Oberst”, but this is too much even for us.’

‘Not at all,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Find the air-raid sirens.’

‘You’re serious.’

‘It’s the only way.’

‘Just what the hell are you really up to, eh? This place will be crawling with wardens and a person such as yourself must know how those bastards behave. If we get arrested for failing to run to the shelters, it’s not only a loss of rank and a few days in the clink. It’s Russia.’

‘I’ll deal with them. This is good. It’s everything I could have hoped for. First the terrorists get the blame for the Gare de Lyon job, and now Old Shatter Hand is going to have to think the guy who brought this stuff in, stole it back!’

‘Who is he and why are you after him?’

‘That’s not your concern.’

‘It is. You see, mein Herr, someone such as yourself, with such easy access to Gestapo Headquarters, must be one of them.’

‘He’s wanted for questioning in a murder investigation.’

‘So you get us to steal his wax and honey?’

‘You ask too many questions. That’s not healthy and you know it. Now find the sirens and let the world hear them. We won’t take everything. We’ll just take what we can. That’ll make it look even better and will seal the rest so tightly, that little Bonze will never get his mitts on it.’

‘You’re a bastard.’

‘The world’s full of them, or hadn’t you noticed?’

‘And this “partner” of yours?’

‘Don’t even ask. He hates guys like you. I don’t. With me, you’ll get what you want.’

‘Amaretto … is that what this is all about? Well, is it?’

‘I need its source.’

‘Ersatz?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that bastard behind the bar at the Brasserie Buerehiesel put you on to me?’

‘Why ask?’

‘To get things straight.’

‘Well?’ demanded Kohler.

‘One of his regulars wanted a bottle. I did it as a favour.’

‘When?’

‘On Tuesday. The customer had to have it in a hurry. Don’t ask me who she was or why. I simply don’t know, but you must, since you mentioned she would like a few tins of my condensed milk for her face.’

‘And you didn’t even bother to tell me,’ sighed Kohler.

‘There were other matters, if I remember it, Herr “Oberst”. The honey and the wax.’

The candle guttered as its flame was quickly teased by the draught that moved constantly through the catacombs. Pinching the flame out, St-Cyr felt molten wax run over his fingers, the smoke smelling strongly of buckwheat honey.

Water dripped. Water hit puddles on the stone floor, and the sound of this was very clear, now near, now far against the muted, constant trickle of a spring.

He was well along the entrance corridor, in pitch darkness, hadn’t called out on entering the pavilion above, had decided to go cautiously, but whoever had been whispering must have sensed his presence.

Feeling his way forward, he remained in darkness. A lantern glowed faintly in the chamber ahead. The sound of the spring was now much clearer.

‘Héloïse, I tell you I heard something,’ came a man’s voice, thick with the accent of the quartier Charonne. Madame Debré, could not as yet be seen.

Yellowish, ochre-brown to grey-white femurs and tibiae were packed solidly, their knuckles facing outwards and all along the chamber’s walls and to its ceiling high above. Shadows from the custodian passed over them and the empty-eyed skulls that grinned from long rows among the bones. Some skulls had a few teeth, most had none; others were without the lower jaw.

Swastikas had been painted in lipstick on the foreheads of many. Two flagrant violations of the regulations sat on the steps of the spring where Jean-Claude Leroux knelt. Army-issue condoms had been stuffed into the eye sockets and dangled limply from them. Grinning lips had been crudely painted on each skull with lipstick also.

‘Bâtards,’ hissed Leroux. ‘Fornicateurs. If I catch them, I’m going to report those fuckers and their putains to the Kommandant von Gross-Paris himself. I’m not going any lower in rank than that!’

He was so worried he was sweating even though he wore an overcoat, was portly and of less than medium height, but with big hands, a broad, flat nose, and wide lips that were grimly turned down. A short, iron wrecking bar, with a nail-pulling hook, lay on the steps next to his right hand.

Hoarfrost had grown on many of the skulls and knuckles, and this caught the light and made them appear as if varnished.

Suddenly the custodian’s shadow flew up over the ceiling. ‘Héloïse, I was speaking to you,’ he whispered urgently.

Removing the navy-blue cap, with its shiny peak and gold braid, he dipped a hand into the Fountain of the Samaritan Woman and wet his brow and the wide dome of an all but bald and greying head. ‘Héloïse, please answer me. Don’t wander off!’

Large, wounded brown eyes glistened as he looked up in surprise at some hidden sound and held his breath. Swallowing hard, Leroux cupped a hand and drank a little. ‘The water is very cold tonight,’ he muttered to himself. ‘But, then, it is always cold.’

‘The curfew’s begun,’ cursed the woman from somewhere distant in the darkness of the next corridor. ‘Now I’m going to have to stay here until it’s over. Merde, it was crazy of me to have come.’

‘Why did you then? Letters … you had to send me letters. Why should I listen to such as you?’

‘Because I was fool enough to think you were one of us and that you mattered. I felt I had to warn you.’

‘One of whom, please?’ he taunted.

‘You know very well,’ she countered acidly. ‘Angèle-Marie, idiot. The Père Lachaise. The four of you.’

And so long ago.

Leroux took another drink of water and wet his forehead again before moving the lantern up on the steps, to the lip of the spring.

‘Why did you tell us she’d be there after hours, Héloïse? Why did you promise André and the others the reward of their lives if we took care of her for you?’

‘Why? Ah! Why does one do such things when one is told by a dear friend’s father that one has lice and is too dirty to enter his house?’

‘No one bathes regularly, Héloïse. There is always perfume or cologne. You’d do better to tell me the truth.’

‘That brother of hers took me in that shed of his and refused absolutely to marry me.’

‘You tempted Alexandre?’

‘What if I did?’

‘Merde, and you got even by making us go at his sister.’

‘André first, then Jacques and then Thomas, and after them, you.’

‘Salope!’ Slut!

‘Violeur!’ Rapist!

Very much of Charonne, too, her hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of a charcoal woollen overcoat that had been made over years ago, she hesitantly came out of the darkness, but remained standing in the entrance to the exit corridor.

Leroux got to his feet. ‘It was nothing,’ he said of the sounds he thought he had heard. ‘My nerves, that was all.’

‘Your nerves. I’m terrified and you talk of them? Just what the hell are we going to do? You’re in this as much as I am. You’ve got to help me.’

Her face was pinched, the frown deep; the eyes and lips heavily made up. A purple woollen scarf had covered her head but was now loose about her shoulders and neck; the raven hair thick, unpinned and of more than shoulder length, and streaked with grey.

‘Help you?’ he snorted. ‘Why? For old times’ sake?’

Still she hadn’t moved from the entrance to the corridor. Of medium height and thin, she was prepared to run from Leroux if necessary, thought St-Cyr, anxiously gauging the distance between himself and the iron bar.

She shrugged and tried to smile, looked particularly defenceless which, he knew with Sûreté clarity, would not be the case. Not with this one.

‘Alexandre was blackmailing you, too, Jean-Claude. Admit it. That’s why you went to Le Chat qui crie once a month like clockwork. Élène, Nicole, Michèle and others, the latest Charlotte and first when she was sixteen and had just gone to work for that old mare Madame Thibodeau. Girls of such tender ages, I have to wonder if Alexandre didn’t see that they were brought in especially for you.’

The custodian said nothing. Her shadow passed over the bones as she took a hesitant step forward and then another.

‘Admit it, Jean-Claude. He insisted you do so once a month or else.’

‘Why … Why would Alexandre have insisted on such a thing?’

‘To entice the truth from others. He had to know who else had raped that sister of his. Admit it, you and I are both aware of this.’

‘What if I am? He’s dead now and that business is ancient history.’

‘Not to the Sûreté and the Kripo. Not to me, either, unfortunately. Did he ever let you know he knew you were one of them? Well, did he?’

‘Never, and I did not admit it. Always he would go on and on about what I’d done in the war.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘Nothing. I just didn’t win any medals. Few of us did, he also.’

‘Yes, of course, but … but please, Jean-Claude, why would Alexandre have said of you many times, “A robber of corpses should work among them”?’

Leroux dragged out a crumpled handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘How should I know why he should have said such a thing?’

‘But … but, mon Dieu, Jean-Claude, how ungrateful can you get? He got you this job. Right after the war when so many could not find work, he made certain you were employed.’

‘ Héloïse, that business of his sister happened a long time ago.’

‘And yet … and yet he can continue to blackmail you even now. It’s curious, n’est-ce pas? “The corpses of officers,” he said to me. “Their gold pocket-watches, wedding rings and fountain pens – especially their cigarette lighters and money.” Apparently you burned the photographs they carried of their loved ones, their last letters from home also.’

‘What else did that salaud tell you? Well, what, damn you?’

She didn’t back away.

‘That you tried to desert and that he and a comrade caught up with you and forced you to return to the lines. That this other man was then found dead of a bayonet attack in the dark of night when no others were harmed or heard a thing, and that ever since then he felt he had had to watch out for himself.’

‘And you … What hold did he have over you, Héloïse? A husband who was a drunkard and often beat the shit out of you?’

She stiffened. She glared back at him.

‘I lost my babies one after another and now … now have no one. When my Raoul went away like that never to return, Alexandre came to tell me he was going to look into the matter. He said that I’d get the …’

‘Wait! Please wait. Maybe I did hear something. I’ll check.’

‘Don’t leave me in the dark. Please don’t! My candle … I put it out and set it on the floor. These old bones … I hate them.’

‘As I have had to, eh?’ he shrilled only to calm himself and say, ‘Ah! forget that. I will only be a few minutes. Stay where you are. Don’t move. You did lock the door behind you, didn’t you?’

‘Lock …? Ah merde, I’m sorry. I … I must have forgotten.’

Smoke rose from the kerosene lantern Leroux had set on the floor at the foot of the stone staircase. ‘Raoul …’ he muttered to himself. ‘Raoul Debré was murdered by her and now Héloïse is afraid the cops will discover this, so asks for my help. Well let her ask, the bitch!’ he said vehemently. ‘Now that Alexandre is dead, only she knows what I did in the war.’

He began to climb the stairs, his shadow seeming to reach up the circular well ahead of him. Exhaling, he said, ‘But I know the hold Alexandre had over her.’

When he reached the top of the staircase, he held the lantern up and let its light shine about the offices of the Quarries Inspection Service which, with the one small room that served as ticket counter and reception desk to the necropolis below, occupied the pavilion.

‘No one,’ he grunted. ‘I should have checked the door right away. She has slid the bolt home as I told her to. HÉLOÏSE,’ he shouted. ‘HÉLOÏSE, IT’S OKAY. YOU CAN RELAX.

‘Relax? How can I when she knows so much about me and when detectives from the Sûreté are breathing down our necks and the Boches have sent one of their own to add gasoline to the fire?’

Going into the reception office, he found a steel letter opener and, examining it for a moment, decided it would do. Hermann would have said, Stop him, Louis, said St-Cyr to himself, but Hermann wasn’t here, and one must wait to hear everything these two had to say to each other.

The custodian’s steps grew distant. At one point he paused, perhaps to listen, but no, it was to take a leak.

‘No one will notice,’ muttered Leroux softly to himself. ‘The Boches are always doing it and thinking it funny. Mine will simply add to the stench for when I fetch the Kommandant to witness what those bastards of his have been doing. Fungus … There is fungus growing on the bones. It’s serious. So many visitors not only warm the caves but increase the humidity and bring it on. The ossuary will have to be closed or else the bones will go quickly to dust. In either case I’ll lose my job.’

‘Jean-Claude, is that you talking?’

Sounds carried.

‘Oui. To myself. Don’t worry. We’re alone.’

‘Bon. We’ll make a night of it, the two of us. You won’t leave me again, will you? Not until after the curfew.’

Relief had filled her voice. Sitting on the steps of the spring, she dipped a hand into the water, looked so like that woman from the Biblical past, Leroux told her so.

‘Then let me give you a real drink, mon vieux.’

The bottle had been in the pocket of her overcoat. ‘It’s an eau de vie de poire from one of the little orchards Alexandre’s bees serviced. In a rare moment of concern for what he had just done to me, he left it on my kitchen table. Or perhaps he simply forgot it. But,’ she shrugged. ‘I never touched it until now.’

‘Is it poisoned? Well, is it?’ he demanded.

‘Would I be drinking it? A pact – you and me both dead in this place – is that what you think I want it to look like?’

He took the bottle from her. ‘Merci,’ he said. ‘Salut!’

Momentarily her hand touched his as he returned the bottle. ‘To the past, Jean-Claude. To the present, of course – one must drink to it, n’est-ce pas? And to the future. You poisoned him, didn’t you? You couldn’t stand being blackmailed any more than I could. So, what, please, did he confide to you about me and that husband of mine? Was it what the neighbours all thought in any case?’

Leroux set the lantern on the steps at her feet and took the bottle from her, but remained standing.

‘First, you tell me what you wanted to warn me of.’

So it was to be like this, was it? thought Héloïse. ‘The one from the Sûreté will be watching that house of Madame Thibodeau’s for you, Jean-Claude. If I were you I would give Charlotte up and find another somewhere else. Of course, there will not be the cemetery room, but I’m sure you know it well enough to imagine it.’

The slut! thought Leroux. Always that tongue of hers couldn’t resist having the razor’s edge. ‘I didn’t poison him, Héloïse. I wanted to—yes, yes, of course and many times considered how best to do it. Down here there are iron grilles that close off countless passages and galleries. Some have locks and I have access to their keys. Any of those would have done and no one … Believe me, no one would have been the wiser. The draught … I had even calculated that the constant draught we have would carry the stench of his rotting corpse well away from the ossuary.’

The look she gave him hardened. ‘Are you threatening me, mon pauvre, because if you are, please try to think of whom I might have told where I was going tonight.’

He didn’t laugh at her or even smile.

‘No one, Héloïse. You would not have told a soul.’

‘Then you’re forgetting the second of the letters I sent you. Today’s … well, yesterday’s, I guess. It’s now Sunday.’

‘I burned them both in my room and enjoyed the momentary warmth they gave.’

Was he going to kill her? wondered the woman, or so it seemed, thought St-Cyr, still waiting and watching, still holding back when perhaps he ought to step in and put an end to their little discussion.

‘Blackmail,’ said Leroux and seemed to relish taunting her. ‘I was not the only one to suffer, was I?’

‘I didn’t poison him.’

‘You could so easily have done so. Please don’t deny it.’

She tossed a hand. ‘All right, all right, I used to help him with his bees, but that doesn’t make me a murderess.’

‘Which you already were.’

Ah Sainte Mère, these two, thought St-Cyr. She took a long pull at the bottle and then offered it.

‘Drink with me, then. Two killers, you and I, eh? Yourself during the war; myself some fifteen years after his sister was raped.’

‘On the night of 14 July 1927. Bastille Day.’

‘He told you?’ she asked, and looking up at him, pleaded for compassion with haggard eyes whose tears began to streak their mascara and shadow.

‘First you got that husband of yours drunk, Héloïse – a state Raoul welcomed and was used to. Then … and this is the fortunate part for you, as a part-time bargee’s assistant, he was alone and on duty during the celebrations.’

Emptily she looked down at the lantern. ‘And headless corpses, even if weighted down with coal and dredged from the Canal Saint-Martin, are hard to identify. The body was never found – at least I never heard or read about its being found and I searched the newspapers. Believe me, but I did,’ she said, suddenly looking up at him and not bothering to wipe her eyes. ‘Every day for months and months, Jean-Claude. Years, damn you. Years!’

‘Not found,’ breathed Leroux and, taking the bottle from her, let a little of its contents piddle on to the top of her head.

‘You cut that out!’ she shrieked and flung herself aside.

OUT … OUT … the caves echoed.

‘A small baptism, just in case,’ he said. ‘Oh by the way, ma chère, Alexandre made certain I knew exactly how he got you to tell him what you’d done and that you had buried Raoul’s head on that little farm of your Uncle Marcel’s. Near Soissons, isn’t it, where old bones are always cropping up in the orchards and fields? An abandoned well the Boches had all but filled in during their final retreat in 1918. What could have been better? A few shovels of fresh earth and a few more stones.’

When she said nothing, the custodian drank deeply from the bottle, then told her to finish it. ‘Go on. You’re going to need it.’

‘Why? Because you will kill me?’

‘Now listen, Héloïse. Take it easy. We’re in this together.’

‘I couldn’t move – did Alexandre tell you that, too? I couldn’t scream. Always there’d be those damned bees of his, always one of his hives on that roof of mine and no record of it in his little book or with that daughter of his. “The perfect excuse to visit you,” he’d say and then … then would let them crawl all over me. I was terrified. He’d laugh at me and I can still hear him, and … and only after I’d passed water in my bed, would he condescend to patiently scrape them off and return them to their hive. He was a monster, Jean-Claude. Of course I wanted him dead! Dead, do you understand?’

‘You were naked.’

‘Completely! That … that’s the sort of hold he had over me. Honey … he always used honey. The bees then gathered it from my skin.’

‘And you poisoned him, didn’t you? Confess. There is only me to listen.’

She was in despair and wrung her hands.

‘I wish I had. God forgive me, but I do, Jean-Claude. He wanted that sister of his to come home – you knew of this?’

‘What if I did?’

Leroux was going to kill her now, thought St-Cyr. Now …

‘Alexandre confided this to you. Well, he did, didn’t he?’ she asked of the sister.

‘Several times. He was worried the Germans would snuff out her life.’

The woman looked away towards the entrance corridor. St-Cyr stepped back and held his breath. ‘Some life, poor thing,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’ve begged God to forgive me. Father Michel has heard my confession many times, so please don’t think he and that God of his are unaware of what happened in Père Lachaise and who was responsible.’

‘Idiot! Did you confess also to murdering Raoul?’

‘I had to. I was distraught and couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop myself. Father Michel made me tell God everything.’

Father Michel! swore St-Cyr. The bottle was forgotten.

‘And yet … and yet,’ said Héloïse, ‘the good father did nothing to stop Alexandre from torturing me like that, and nothing … nothing at all to prevent that husband of mine from beating the shit out of me and causing me to lose my babies.’

‘And would he have wanted Angèle-Marie to return to the house of her childhood?’ hazarded Leroux.

How very cautious of Jean-Claude, thought Héloïse. ‘No. No, I’m certain of it. That old priest has much to answer for and no one but his God to confess to.’

The kid on stage at the Club Mirage wore little and was distracting. Momentarily torn between watching her and searching the crowd for Louis, Kohler hesitated, for when she gyrated the silver hoop about her waist, she juggled ersatz oranges to which white feathers had been glued.

Locked in for the night, eight hundred of the Occupier, most in uniform, some with their girlfriends, others entertaining collabos and big shots from the black market, whistled and applauded. Now the torso moved as well and the sky-blue propellers that hid her nipples began to spin in opposite directions as her head was tilted back.

The oranges went higher and higher; the hoop raced the propellers. One knee came up. A falling orange was hit and lifted into the tobacco-fogged air only to be caught with others on its descent as she turned away and … mein Gott, bounced orange after orange into the crowd with the most beautiful backside on earth.

‘Jésus, merde alors, her timing’s perfect!’ he swore.

The piano player flew over the keys, the drummer gave a parade roll and one by one, as they were dutifully returned, the kid caught the oranges.

She was radiant. ‘As she should be!’ roared Kohler, shoving his way through to the bar. ‘Has Louis been in yet?’ he called out to Remi Rivard, the one with the open leather jerkin, red plaid workshirt and gut of an iron barrel. The brother of the Corsican with the face and hands of ground meat.

‘Not yet. You been rolling around in a beehive or something?’ Remi pointed to the greatcoat.

‘Oh this. It’s just a bit of wax and honey and a few dead bees. I’ve been robbing hives.’

Two beers were set before him, the froth overflowing.

‘Bees or no bees, I’d get that coat cleaned in a hurry.’

Remi, whose face was that of a mountain, all crags and clefts and shadows, with hard dark, empty eyes, gave an almost imperceptible nod in the direction of the balcony. ‘Table four over from the clock, front row. You’ve company.’

An SS major from the avenue Foch sat between two miliciens, one older, the other younger but stronger, bigger. None of them had the slightest interest in the kid on stage. They were concentrating hard on the bar.

‘Tell Louis I’ll meet him at his house.’

A study in perpetual motion, Remi had already surmised as much and had moved away to serve the crush of others. At a run, Kohler headed for the courtyard exit. Crossing the stage, he dragged off his coat and pitched it from him, called out to the kid, ‘Hey, chérie, look after that for me, eh? You were terrific!’

The three on the balcony were making for the stairs. Leaving the stage, Kohler fought his way past the chorus line where bared breasts wore glued pasties and the girls grinned or smiled. Red lips, bare arms and feathers … ostrich feathers …

Miliciens jammed the exit. Others were behind them. All wore black chasseur alpin berets, dark blue tunics and trousers, brown shirts and black ties … Brass knuckles, too, and hatred in their eyes. Hatred for what he’d done to two of their own!

Pivoting, Kohler raced back to the stage, was caught, was dragged down, hit and hit hard. Blood blinded him. Boots felt as if caving in his ribs. ‘MAUDIT SALAUD! VACHE!’ COW! they shrieked, the slang for cop. ‘Dog-fucker!’ The pain was killing him. Curled up, he rolled on to his side and tried to clear his eyes. The kid was stricken. Oranges were bouncing all around her. The crowd was in a rage. Thinking him one of their own, the boys in grey-green were clambering on to the stage. The miliciens were dragging him up. ‘AN ARREST!’ they shrieked at the rescuers but a whistle blew sharply. As one, the men all stopped and stood to attention, or crouched and did not move.

‘Take him,’ said the SS major, with a dismissive toss of his hand. ‘He’s wanted for questioning.’

The kid, bless her, was in tears and on her knees, and when she reached out to him, Kohler felt the trembling urgency of her hand on his blood-smeared cheek. ‘Gabrielle … Gabi asked me to watch out for you,’ she blurted. ‘But I … I had to do my act. Forgive me.’

‘Tell Louis I’m in trouble,’ he gurgled. ‘Trouble, eh? Louis …’

With no whistle to blow, what was one to do? wondered St-Cyr, still in the catacombs, in the darkness of the corridor. The lantern was now resting on the lip of the spring between the custodian and the woman, but had Leroux put it there on purpose? The iron bar was uncomfortably close to hand.

If one said, Sûreté, you’re both under arrest, Leroux would simply tip the lantern into the spring and snatch up the bar. The woman would cry out but not for long.

‘That old priest,’ said Leroux. ‘He’ll have to be dealt with.’

‘I can’t kill a priest, Jean-Claude. I won’t.’

‘You told him everything.’

Frantic, her eyebrows arched as she spat, ‘And what of Alexandre, eh? For years now he’s known who the four of you were.’

‘You told him, too?’

‘I had to. A woman’s most private parts are her tenderest. Each time the bees fed … Need I say more?’

‘Then why the charade of his trying to find out all our names?’

‘Another torture of his. Admit it, yours and the other families, mine too, lived in fear of him, as did the four of you and myself. Would he go to the police; would he not do so? When he came back from the war he had that little cemetery of his built and then … then started to work on all of us.’

‘Never once did he suggest to me that he knew.’

‘Of course not! That would have spoiled his fun. He was both examining magistrate and judge, and wanted the torture to last. Look how he despised that wife of his? The son of another – he never let her forget it, not for a moment.’

‘You’ll have to poison Father Michel, too, Héloïse. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. Otherwise …’

Leroux took the letter opener from a pocket and fingered it. ‘Otherwise, ma chère compagne dans le meurtre …’

‘You wouldn’t!’ she hissed and began hesitantly to move away.

‘Agree,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be generous. Do it within the next two days or …’

‘Monsieur, please put that down. St-Cyr, Sûreté.’

‘Ah!’

The lantern went into the drink, the iron bar scraped on the stones as it was dragged up. A skull was smashed. The woman shrieked and began to run – ran into a wall, clawed at the bones, for some fell around her. Cried, wept – begged.

Another skull was smashed. Femurs and tibiae were struck. The bar hit solid stone. The woman shrieked again, and finding the exit corridor at last, ran.

‘Monsieur, give yourself up this instant!’ managed the Sûreté and from the steps of the spring, thought Leroux. ‘You’re under arrest!’

Perhaps the custodian shifted the bar to his other hand, perhaps the letter opener. Nothing was said. Water trickled constantly.

In the far distance, the woman stumbled and fell but dragged herself up and went on in terror, screaming for Leroux to spare her. ‘HE POISONED ALEXANDRE, INSPECTOR,’ she shrilled. ‘HE WAS ONE OF THOSE WHO RAPED HIS SISTER.’

His sister … His sister … came the echoes.

‘You killed a comrade, monsieur,’ charged the Sûreté, catching a breath. ‘You robbed the corpses of your officers.’

‘And that … that, mon fin, was said exactly as one of them would have!’

Leroux began to move forward, feeling always the porous texture of the knuckles in the walls, the skulls also, and recalling every change so as to guide himself.

He’d have to kill this Sûreté. There couldn’t be any more than one of them. This one had come alone, and would therefore vanish without trace.

‘Monsieur, I’m warning you,’ said St-Cyr.

‘INSPECTOR, PLEASE HELP ME!’ cried the woman.

Help me … Help me … The chambers resounded with her terror.

Taking out his box of matches, he tried to light three or four of them.

He hasn’t moved yet, said Leroux to himself. The spring is to his left …

The matchsticks broke, the Sûreté swore and tried to take others from the box. Silently he stepped away from the spring and soon the sound of it was far behind him, for he had reached the corridor Héloïse had taken. Yes, yes, said Leroux to himself, silently following.

Try as he did, St-Cyr knew it would be impossible to hear the exit door being opened. They were just too far from it. Turning back, he felt the draught on his face – searched the impenetrable darkness, smelt the musty damp air, the fetidness of bone meal, the taint of anise, too. Anise and garlic and onions … Where … where the hell was Leroux? How close now? How close …?

When the iron bar cut the air, it struck the wall, shattering the stone and raising sparks. The woman shrieked as the custodian gave a savage grunt, a stab with the letter opener which flew out of his hand and hit the floor.

‘Bâtard!’ he rasped. ‘Let me kill you.’

Each man waited for the other to make a move. The one must back towards her, the other must advance, thought Héloïse, hastily wiping tears from her smarting eyes. If she could hold the Sûreté, Jean-Claude could kill him and then … then maybe he would let her go.

You fool! she said. He will only smash your head in, too.

Franctically her fingers fled over the bones – she was in another of the chambers. If only she could find its exit. If only she could make her way from chamber to chamber and then … then climb the stairs back up to the street. This place exits on the rue Dareau*, she told herself. Please, God, help me.

God would only damn her. ‘God can’t forgive you yet, my child.’ Father Michel had said this to her in the afternoon. Today … No, yesterday. Saturday …

‘Candles … I lit a candle for our Lady, Father,’ she had said.

‘God is kind. God is generous. God provides,’ he’d answered.

Candles … did the Inspector know who left them on the steps of the church? Could she use the information to barter for clemency?

The iron bar was savagely swung. Distant from her, she heard the Sûreté gasp in pain and cry out, ‘ARREST, DAMN YOU!’

The bar clattered at his feet. Perhaps he held Jean-Claude in an arm-lock, perhaps he had thrown him up against a wall and was now fastening the bracelets on him.

Perhaps … perhaps … But Jésus, merde alors, what the hell has happened? she wondered. And crawling forward, found the exit, bowed her head into her hands and wept.

At 5 a.m. Berlin Time, the Club Mirage was all but deserted, the air heavy with stale tobacco smoke. Up on stage, in a feather-trimmed pink housecoat that dragged its hem, the wife of one of the brothers pushed a broom but avoided the soiled heap of a Wehrmacht greatcoat. Her slippers didn’t match, and the Gauloise Bleue that was glued to her lower lip had a good two centimetres of ash clinging to it.

Silent, the Rivards were giving the zinc a final wipe.

‘Jean-Louis …’ said Gabrielle, coming along the corridor from her dressing room to find him staring at the coat. ‘Jean-Louis, what has happened to your arm?’

They kissed on each cheek, first the right and then the left, and then the right again, as was her custom. He drew in the lovely scent of her perfume and momentarily shut his eyes, wishing for a calmer time. ‘Perhaps you’d best tell me,’ he said, indicating the coat on the floor. ‘Dead Caucasian bees, bits of willow twigs … Buckwheat honey, unless I’m mistaken. That of lavender, too …’

‘Remi,’ she called out softly. ‘A pastis for our friend. Please leave the bottle and a pitcher of clean water, then let us have the place to ourselves. This is private.’

‘Oui, madame.’ They often called her that out of respect. She brought in the money and took ten per cent of the take, had the voice of an angel, was regularly heard over wireless broadcasts that reached the front lines of both the Reich and the Allies.

‘Arlette, we can do that tonight,’ said Léon to his wife who hadn’t stopped her sweeping to greet the visitor.

Left alone with Louis, Gabrielle made him remove his own overcoat. ‘There is blood,’ she said. ‘Ah merde, you’ve really been hurt. Is it broken?’

He shook his head, suddenly ached to be at peace. ‘I’d like to go fishing with René Yvon-Paul.’

‘He’d like that, too.’

She peeled off his suit jacket and the woollen cardigan his mother had knitted for him perhaps ten … no, fifteen years ago. There were holes in the elbows, mismatched buttons …

‘It’s a part of me,’ he said apologetically. ‘Hermann complains.’

‘And is that a hint, because if it is, I have to tell you I want to look at this first before letting you know who took him away.’

‘Away …?’

She nodded. Tears moistened her eyes, sharpening their violet shade. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you terribly and now don’t know what’s to become of either of you. The Milice dump Oona’s purse out on the street while you are still on your way home from Avignon. They scrutinize her papers which are not so good, as you know very well, and now …’

‘Has he been arrested?’

‘Later. In a moment.’

‘Just what the hell has he been up to, Gabrielle? He was to question a Frau Schlacht, nothing else, and then return to the Salpêtrière to pick me up. A … a woman with two small children had stopped us in the street. Hermann … Hermann and I gave them a lift to the soup kitchen at the Gare d’Austerlitz. He was going to …’

‘Calm down, please. For now I need you to keep still.’

The gash in his upper left arm was deep and ragged, and of about ten centimetres in length. ‘Who did this?’ she asked.

He sighed heavily. ‘I tried to arrest two murderers. One was difficult. Both got away and can now await a little visit. There’s no hurry even if they should happen to kill each other.’

‘There is for this, and you know it.’

‘Then please telephone the morgue and ask if Armand Tremblay is going through the autopsy notes on the corpse of Alexandre de Bonnevies and doing his own as I requested. Armand can patch me up. I need, also, the analysis on the bottle of Amaretto.’

‘Don’t be an idiot. I’ll do this myself. Now be quiet.’

Everything that was necessary was kept behind the bar. Deftly she cleaned the wound and refilled his glass. ‘I’ve done this lots of times,’ she said.

‘You continue to surprise me.’

Her hair, worn loose at this hour, was of shoulder length and not blonde as he’d first thought, but the soft shade of a really fine brandy, and it spilled forward as she set to work. Her hands were slender, the fingers long.

‘Hermann was taken by the Milice but we still do not know where to. Remi has asked two trusted friends to quietly find out. For now you are to rest and keep out of it.’

‘You like giving orders. I could sleep for a year.’

‘With me, I hope.’

‘You know I can’t. Gabi, listen to me, please. It’s not safe for you to be seen with me. The SS, the Milice, will only cause further trouble.’

‘Avignon was unpleasant?’ she hazarded, not looking up from her needle.

‘A handful of madrigal singers. The Cagoule caused difficulties.’

‘And Gestapo Boemelburg is not happy with the result?’

Still she hadn’t looked up. ‘We’ve been warned to behave. An explosion on the tracks, then what happened to Oona. Boemelburg wants us to do one thing; the Kommandant von Gross-Paris another.’

The Cagoule had many friends and supporters among the Milice, thought Gabrielle. Others were members of it, and their lines of communication throughout the country were tragically getting better. ‘Then that must explain why an SS major wanted to talk to Hermann but got those people to haul him in.’

There was a sadness to her voice that said much more. An aching for France and what had happened to a once splendidly humane nation. Refilling his glass, she told him to drink it neat. From a silver cigarette case he knew well, she took two Russian cigarettes, the tobacco black and much stronger than he liked, but …

‘For me, for you,’ she said on lighting them. ‘For the first time we met, and for the times since then.’

‘For my partner, too, wherever he is.’

Would Jean-Louis and Hermann live to see the end of the Occupation; would she herself, or Oona and Giselle? wondered Gabrielle.

Rolling his shirt sleeve down, she buttoned it. ‘You know I want us to have a life together.’

‘Don’t be difficult. It’s impossible. It’s far too dangerous for you.’

‘For you also?’ she asked.

‘For all of us,’ he said and did not offer to brush her tears away, just looked so steadily at and through her, one instantly saw Sûreté!

‘Then you had better come to the house anyway, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal,’ she retorted acidly. ‘You see, my concierge telephoned here last night and then discreetly came to see me rather than give the news to Gestapo ears, even though those salauds are still probably aware of it since they constantly watch the club and I could not tell her this. Apparently I have acquired, through no effort of my own, you understand, a new maid. Sixteen years of age and very capable, so much so, among her references it is stated that she was trusted implicitly, Inspector – implicitly – by her former mistress and made four trips a year to Switzerland with her. Heavy suitcases in; light ones out, in spite of the desperate need for canned goods here. Speaks more than a smattering of German which will be helpful, you understand, since the girl can’t possibly stay in Paris and must go underground immediately. Giselle brought her to my place. Giselle, Jean-Louis.’

‘Not Oona?’

He was desperate. ‘No, not Oona.’

‘Arrested also?’

‘Oui.’

The Citroën had remained in darkness in front of the club. No one had touched it or tried to steal it, thought Gabrielle. Things were so bad, word had spread rapidly and it had been avoided like the plague, but left by the arresters so as to give the other half of the partnership wings.

Reaching under the driver’s seat, Jean-Louis soon found what he wanted, and dragged them out. ‘As keeper of our guns until needed, Hermann is, at times, careless,’ he confessed.

She knew his would be the 1873 Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, six shots, the calibre 11mm. Hermann’s was a Walther P38, a semiautomatic 9mm Parabellum, with eight cartridges in the clip.

‘Jean-Louis, I meant what I said about your sleeping. You can’t run on that stuff like your partner does.’

‘I will if I have to.’

Digging into the side pocket of the door, he found a spare phial of the little grey pills of Benzedrine the German night-fighter pilots took to stay awake, and downed how many? she wondered.

‘Four,’ he said. ‘After a while the system grows accustomed to them, so one must increase the dosage.’

‘Mon Dieu, will you not listen to me? Where … just where do you think you’re going to find him?’

‘At a smelter. You know it and so do I, so why try to hide the fact? Just take care of that new maid you’ve acquired. Let me drive you home and then forget about us.’

‘I can’t. I won’t.’

‘You’d best, for the sake of your son.’

The furnace was white hot. The Alsatian guard dogs were restless and had had to be chained.

Awakened in the dead of night and forced from their garrets, the Russian smelter workers and their families huddled in grey nightshirts and nightgowns. Teenagers, kids, thumb-sucking toddlers with runny noses, grandparents and parents mutely watched from the rickety, soot-encrusted staircase that climbed above the wall of cages.

Frantic, one of the guinea pigs was dangled by a hind leg over the gaping mouth of the furnace. Heat roared up, smarting its glistening dark eyes and causing it to madly squirm.

Sweat poured from Kohler. Blinded by it, he tried to clear his eyes. His wrists ached like hell. The bracelets – his bracelets – were cutting into them. Strung up, stripped naked, he hung from a chain and hoist pulley near the furnace. Only his toes touched the floor.

There were six miliciens and one of them had removed his tunic and beret to don goggles and asbestos. The others, their expressions dark with hatred, waited. There was no sign of the SS major now. No sign …

When dropped, the creature didn’t even squeal. It simply flashed to steam with little smoke, and this rushed from the furnace, white and sudden and carrying still-glowing bits of its fur.

Frantically Kohler searched for a way out. These bastards weren’t just angry about the loss of two of their own. They’d had word from Avignon and were out to put an end to him!

Goggles removed a gauntlet and took from a small, slag-encrusted crucible, a fine gold neckchain and locket.

‘Don’t! Please don’t,’ managed Kohler. There had, as yet, been no sign of Oona.

The locket was opened. The hoist was released a little, and now his feet could rest flatly on the floor. In relief, he shut his eyes tightly, then opened them.

‘Look, be reasonable, eh? It’s the only picture she has of her two children. They were lost during the blitzkrieg in the west – killed, she believes, on the trek from Holland, and I … I can’t make her see that there could still be hope. I can’t.’

‘Half-Jewish,’ grunted Goggles. ‘Johan would have been nine years old now; Anna, seven. The father, Martin Van der Lynn, was a Jew the woman you shelter tried to hide in Paris.’

‘The French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston killed him in the Velodrome d’Hiver.’ The cycling arena.

‘And good riddance,’ said Goggles.

The locket was dangled over the furnace. The photograph began to turn brown, to curl and finally to burst into flame.

‘Gone,’ wept Kohler. ‘Ah, Oona … Oona, forgive me.’

Blood and sweat trickled from his left eye to run down the scar the rawhide whip of an SS had left a good two months ago at the chateau of Gabrielle Arcuri’s mother-in-law near Vouyray, and overlooking the Loire. Yet another murder investigation whose outcome had definitely not been appreciated.

Blood and sweat found the one that cut diagonally across his chest. ‘Maudit salauds!’ he cried. ‘What the hell have you done with Oona?’

‘That’s not for you to know.’

Godonov was summoned and told to charge the furnace. ‘We need enough to bathe this one’s feet.’

Scrap silverware, sand, charcoal, lead oxide, bone ash and the yellowish peroxide of sodium were added.

‘Now we must wait,’ cautioned Godonov. ‘Please.’ He ducked his shaggy head to one side in deference. ‘A little vodka, mes amis. Pickled cucumber and beetroot will be served on blini, the small pancakes we usually eat with caviar. There is coulibac also, and made in the old way, you understand. A superb cabbage pie whose origins date from the sixteenth century. Pel’meni sibériens, too. These are a kind of ravioli that we have stuffed with a delectable forcemeat of guinea pig.’

He paused to let his gaze sift over the assembled. ‘Of course, messieurs, we apologize for there not being any sour cream or caviar, but such things are difficult these days, as is the vodka, although God makes allowances.’

Clothing that was Oona’s was dangled over the furnace and allowed to catch fire before being dropped.

Herr Kohler was hoisted up so that his toes no longer touched the floor.

‘Forgive me,’ said Godonov softly. ‘There is, alas, nothing I can do.’

Tendrils of tobacco smoke rose into the beam of the cinema’s projector. On the screen, an ancient rerun, approved by those idiots in the Propaganda Staffel, was telling the French how decadent they were.

An abortionist was about to attend to a young girl of misfortune who was afraid and hesitantly undressing. Flames rose from the skirt and sweater she removed. Flames caught at the woollen knee socks, cotton blouse, half-slip and brassiere. Oona … was it Oona?

Giselle was sitting all alone beneath the projector beam. Tears streaked her face; she tore her hair. Blood ran from her beautiful lips. Pregnant … was Giselle pregnant?

Oona, idiot. She’s worried about ‘OONA!’

With a shriek, Herr Kohler awoke from his little nightmare as the ice-cold water hit him. Shaking his head to clear it, he realized at once where he was still hanging.

‘Were they raping them both,’ asked Godonov softly with deep concern, ‘or just the one they have taken?’

‘What time is it?’

Worried about repercussions, Godonov hesitated. ‘Three or four a.m. I have not asked.’

The Russian lowered the bucket and, at a word from behind, deferentially stood aside and returned to the staircase to join the others of his little flock.

Goggles stood beside the furnace, with a gauntleted hand on the pour-lever which would rock the cradle and tip the melt out. Gradually the other miliciens came into view. Fists were doubled, arms folded tightly across their chests. Bastards … bastards …

‘So, Herr Kohler, a few small questions,’ said the one that was fifty and fast greying but tough, too tough. A butcher, probably, in his previous life. ‘Nothing difficult, you understand.’

‘DID THEY TELL YOU LOUIS AND I SAID STUFF LIKE THAT IN AVIGNON, EH?’

Sweat ran down Herr Kohler’s flanks causing the scars from that other war to glisten, as did those of the whip marks. ‘Please, make it easy for yourself,’ continued Vincent Soulages, Chef de Milice du quartier du Mail et de Bonne-Nouvelle. ‘We’re not monsters and must go home to our families as loving fathers or sons, so as to sleep peacefully.’

‘Piss off.’

Stung, Soulages lashed out with his truncheon, hitting the buttocks. Gritting his teeth, Kohler refused to cry out. The chain creaked as it swung back and forth, finally coming to rest.

‘I will ask you only once!’ shrieked Soulages. ‘Where did you take the wax and hives?’

‘I don’t know. Hey, it’s not that I won’t remember. It’s simply that I didn’t ask the boys who were with me!’

‘WE’RE WASTING TIME, VINCENT!’ yelled Goggles.

‘A moment, Felix. He has not quite understood.’ Savagely the truncheon was swung back, the blocky shoulders moving with it.

‘Okay, okay,’ shrilled Kohler. ‘Hey, I was only kidding but if you hit me again, my lips will be sealed.’

‘Then we await your reply.’

‘And then you’ll pour the melt – is that it, eh? Ach Du lieber Gott, meine Idioten, you’ve forgotten with whom you’re dealing. Old Shatter Hand, Dummköpfe! He gave us orders to pluck that crap away from your little Bonze and destroy it!’

The furnace, mounted on rollers, was moved a little closer. A trough of firebrick was put in place and sloped to Herr Kohler as he was lowered until his feet once again touched the floor.

‘Look, I’m telling you we had orders from the Kommandant von Gross-Paris.’

‘And we are telling you ours come from the Général Oberg, Höherer SS und Polizei Führer of France!’

Giving them the location might buy a little time. ‘Le Halle aux Vins.’ The central wine store for the city. ‘A cave … The rue de Languedoc, I think, or was it off the Grand Préau? There are, so many caves … One hundred and eighty of them – one hundred and sixteen cellars, two huge magazines …’

Kohler was just fucking about! ‘POUR IT, FÉLIX!’ shrieked Soulages.

‘NO, WAIT! I … I think I’ve remembered. The rue de Bordeaux, the cellars of J.P. Malouel.’

‘We will check it out later. For now, a few other small questions,’ said Soulages. ‘The dipper, if you please, Félix.’

‘The dipper …?’ blurted Kohler. Mein Gott, they were serious!

A scum began to quickly form over the dollop of melt in the dipper. Kohler felt his toes curling up. ‘Don’t,’ he softly begged. ‘Please don’t. I’ll tell you.’

‘Make certain of it, Félix.’

A droplet … just one was allowed to fall and splash on the floor, but the shriek when it came, as surely it had to, filled the smelter, terrifying the others on the staircase, thought Godonov, and causing the guinea pigs to cease their foraging and to watch.

The dogs urinated at the ends of their tightly stretched chains … The pain Herr Kohler experienced was, Godonov knew, excruciating. In and out of the blackness, the detective drifted – he wouldn’t know, couldn’t tell if he’d ever walk again and what the hell good was a detective who couldn’t run?

Weeping, Herr Kohler hung his head, was still too afraid to look down at his feet. ‘Maudit salauds,’ he breathed. ‘Louis will get you for this. Louis …’

‘You questioned Frau Schlacht,’ said Soulages. ‘You were interested in a bottle of Amaretto.’

‘She … she bought it on the marché noir, I think.’

Kohler probably knew more of the source, but that was not important. ‘How much poison was in it?’ shrieked Soulages.

The detective’s eyes leapt as he shrilled, ‘I don’t know! I haven’t had a chance to talk to my partner. Maybe it hasn’t even been analysed!’

Analysed … Analysed …

‘How much did the beekeeper take?’

‘I don’t know! I haven’t seen the autopsy!’

Autopsy … Autopsy …

‘But you are certain Frau Schlacht bought this bottle?’

Bottle … Bottle … Why the hell bother about it? ‘Yes, on Tuesday. She … Look, I’m almost certain she took it to the visitor’s concourse at the Salpêtrière on Thursday afternoon and … and must have left it with his sister.’

‘The crazy one.’

‘Yes.’

‘But why would Frau Schlacht not simply have given it to Monsieur de Bonnevies?’

‘I … I don’t know yet. Honest, I don’t.’

‘Water … You must give him a little,’ hazarded Godonov from the stairs. ‘It’s the sulphur in the air, messieurs. It makes one very thirsty.’

‘THEN BRING IT, IDIOT!’

‘Yes, yes, of course, and right away as you wish.’

The Russian hurried forward with a tumbler in hand, but when he held it to Herr Kohler’s lips, the milicien held it, too.

‘Water … It is only water, monsieur. All of our vodka has been drunk by yourself and your men, n’est-ce pas’? A privilege of ours, of mine, I assure you.’

Soulages backed off. The prisoner tried to take a sip. Some of the water dribbled down his chin. ‘Easy,’ cautioned Godonov. ‘Take just a little at first.’

Fiery, the vodka stung the throat and the prisoner tightened his before gasping, ‘Merci.’

Whetted, the throat eagerly opened to receive the rest. Yanked away, the Russian let the glass fly from his hand to hit the floor and shatter.

‘Amaretto,’ hissed the Chef des miliciens. ‘Who did Frau Schlacht wish to poison?’

Poison … Poison … Gott im Himmel, why did they have to know what she was up to? wondered Kohler, sucking in another breath to clear his head. ‘Madame de Bonnevies, I think. Frau Schlacht is a very jealous woman and, crazy as it must seem, believes Madame de Bonnevies is having an affair with her husband.’

‘So she poisoned the beekeeper instead? Really, Herr Kohler …’

‘Look, I don’t even know yet if there was poison in that bottle when she left it at the Salpêtrière, but it’s interesting you should suggest it.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Then who did, eh? Schlacht … Was it Schlacht who asked you to find out from me if that wife of his was intent on poisoning him? Him! Merde, I should have guessed!’

At 6:17 a.m. Berlin Time there were no other cars parked along the rue Montmartre near the café À La Chope du Croissant. Pedestrians, bundled against the ten degrees of frost, hurried silently to their places of work. Cigarettes occasionally glowed in the pitch darkness. Vélo-taxi bells sounded warnings, their blue-blinkered lights all but lost in the ice fog that had crept up from the Seine to engulf the city.

Alone and cursing the weather, St-Cyr found the courtyard more by feel than memory. Pushing open the heavy door, he started out. Gabrielle had reminded him that the smelter was down at the far end. Russians … she knew some of them. Godonov, he said to himself. The boss man has an admirable handlebar moustache that is grey and bushy like his eyebrows. ‘The eyes are very blue, and he plays the balalaika beautifully,’ she had said.

As if such titbits of information could be of any use! He didn’t know what he’d find, thought only the worst. Now all but convinced the beekeeper’s murder was a ‘village’ affair, if not a ‘family’ one, he didn’t know what Hermann had been up to or why the Milice had suddenly decided to jump him.

But it has to have been something to do with Frau Schlacht, he said silently to himself and, pausing by an iron-grilled window, listened hard for nearby sounds.

There was soot in the air. Soot and the acrid smell of sulphur. The taint of nitric acid, too, and above these, as if the top note of a perfume, that of roasting flesh. Sweet and slightly gamey. A puzzle and a worry.

Moving through the darkness, picking his way over and around the rubbish, he cocked the Lebel and looked through the grimy window to where the soft glow from a furnace gave an all but ethereal light to the dingy interior. Figures, dressed in grey nightshirts and nightgowns, ministered to the prisoner who lay with legs sprawled on the stone floor and his back propped against a heap of broken slag.

‘Er ist vom Tode gezeichnet,’ muttered St-Cyr softly to himself. The mark of death is upon him.

Pale and streaked by sweat and soot, Hermann neither stirred nor was aware of the constant ministrations. A woman bathed him with great tenderness. A man … the boss … fed tea to him, a tiny silver spoonful at a time.

‘He’ll sleep for hours,’ sighed the Sûreté, on silently joining them. ‘No, please do not be alarmed, mes amis. It’s only his partner.’

‘We’ll take the day off, then,’ said the one with the moustache. ‘Sit with him, for he cries out and is anxious for you and about the love of his life, his Oona, and needs great comforting. In a little, we will eat and you must join us. Some soup and stew.’

‘You’re very kind.’

Was it so surprising in this world they shared? wondered Godonov. ‘Kindness is like moonlight, is it not? It comes and goes, and one takes strength and joy from it when one can.’

‘Hermann won’t forget this, and neither will I.’

‘Good. That is good.’

A blanket was brought and the patient covered, though Hermann was obviously warm enough. A scarred and broken armchair, was placed nearby and with it, the last two fingers of a clear-glass bottle of vodka. ‘We make it ourselves from potato peelings the Occupier has little need of,’ confided Godonov, touching the side of his nose with a forefinger to indicate silence in the matter. ‘Za vashe zdorov’e, Inspector. Salut.’ Good health.

‘À votre santé aussi, monsieur. Merci. Ah! a moment, please. This Oona of whom he speaks?’

One could not avoid it and had best get it over with quickly. ‘Is being held by the Milice as insurance, but for what, I do not know, of course.’

‘Oona …?’ muttered Hermann, tossing his head in despair. ‘Oona … Must get her better papers. Must take her to Spain or Portugal before … Too late. It’s too late for that! Ah …’

The faded blue eyes widened then slipped deeply back into slumber beneath their sagging pouches. ‘It’s the Benzedrine,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘His system has finally run out of it.’

Giving a yawn, the Sûreté settled back and, yes, thought Godonov, was, though favouring a left arm, soon fast asleep himself. Two babes in the woods of the Occupier, the moon above.

The burns were small but deep among the toes of the right foot, and surely Occupied France owed much to the refuse that had been left on the beaches of Dunkirk.

Wrapped in British Army tulle gras – a sterilized gauze that had been treated with balsam of Peru and vaseline – and then in khaki that had been cut from trouser cloth, there was, of course, no room for a shoe. Hermann couldn’t have worn one in any case.

‘Penicillin or sulphanimide powder should be used, if possible,’ said Godonov’s eldest daughter, her black braids tied out of the way. ‘We apologize, but have none to spare, since such wounds are frequent here, you understand. We can, however, let you have a little extra of the tulle gras, as the dressing must be changed frequently. Have you someone who can do this for you?’

‘My partner, if he isn’t too busy,’ retorted the wounded giant, feeling angry with himself for having let it happen and worried … so worried, one had to ignore the taunt and a stitched-up left arm to reach out to him in comfort and urge caution. ‘We’ll get Oona back, Hermann.’

‘And what will we find when we do?’

The Milice had taken her clothing, had burned it here and in front of Hermann. ‘I don’t know. Merde I wish I did, but … but this has to have been a warning.’

‘A squeeze! Jésus, merde alors, can’t you see that they wanted information? Schlacht had to find out if that wife of his intended to poison him.’

‘Him …?’

‘Yes, idiot! Our beekeeper was nervous about his visitor, right? Gott im Himmel, why wouldn’t he have been? A member of the Occupier. A murder. Schlacht was to have been the victim, Louis. Schlact!’

Must God do this to them? ‘We’re to meet him in the Jardin du Luxembourg in an hour. He sent a note earlier but … but I didn’t want to wake you until necessary.’

‘I’ll kill him, Louis.’

‘I’m sure you mean it, and for just this reason and just this once, I’ll be the keeper of our guns. Also, since that right foot of yours would only scream if the brake was applied – which it would have to be – I will, once again, drive my beautiful Citroën, if only for a final moment.’

‘You’re enjoying this.’

‘Not after what you’ve just told me!’

Using a samovar, the girl had made tea and had left a small pot of buckwheat honey to sweeten it. Louis did just that, using a wooden dipper he took from a pocket.

Grimly, the one from the Kripo filled the one from the Sûreté in on things, then listened impatiently for the other side of the affair, observed Godonov, silently watching them from a distance. Both anxious and worried, they shared a cigarette as was their custom perhaps on such occasions, or when short of tobacco. ‘They are like comrades in the trenches, Babushka,’ he confided to the old woman beside him. ‘Those two understand each other so well, one will go for a piss when the other needs to.’

‘Passing water does not repair the damage life in this place has done to my ears. I would like to hear what they are discussing.’

‘A murder, Grandmother. A case of poisoning, but much more.’

‘Fornication? Was money involved or simply penetration?’

‘Both, I think, but trouble. Much trouble, although I’m no detective, just a worker of small miracles.’

Left to themselves, the detectives soon became calmer, conversing earnestly and quietly, the Sûreté spreading a few handfuls of foundry sand on the floor between them before taking two candles from a pocket.

He set them upright and lit them.

‘Made from the wax of hives that were loaded with Russian honey and bees that had suffered from acarine mites, Hermann. Our big shot supplies the catacombs with candles.’

‘And that village priest of yours, finds bundle after bundle of them left by an anonymous donor on the steps of his church.’

‘Madame de Bonnevies …’

‘Or Danielle, eh? Danielle, Louis.’

‘I didn’t find any among the items she brought back from her foraging.’

‘Because she’d already left them, Dummkopf. Ride by the church on the way home, eh? Walk the bike up the steps beside it and on the way, drop the bundle.’

‘Could the donor be helping Schlacht with his factory?’

‘We’ll have to ask her. One thing’s for certain. That factory must be a hell of a lot bigger than the wax we’ve so far found suggests.’

‘Much bigger. Perhaps Herr Schlacht will enlighten us.’

‘That wife of his really did mean to kill him, Louis. The poison in that bottle wasn’t meant for anyone else – well, maybe Madame de Bonnevies, too, but primarily for our Oskar.’

This was not good. Indeed, it was terrible. ‘Please go carefully over things again, Hermann. Leave nothing out.’

‘She makes four trips a year to Switzerland and must have the keys and account numbers to the fortune he’s had her salt away for him and for others of the avenue Foch, namely Oberg, Louis. He fools around, so much so, she’s finally had enough of her Oskar and plans to escape.’

‘So she badgers our beekeeper about his weekly visits …’

‘And gets him to tell her of his sister and the stepson he can’t tolerate – here, take two drags. You’re going to need them. She finds out everything she can about his little life because she’s convinced her Oskar’s banging the hell out of Mme de Bonnevies. She even gets her maid to confirm this by staking out that fleabag Hotel Titania, then demands de Bonnevies admit it’s happening.’

The cigarette was handed back.

‘Frau Schlacht buys the bottle on Tuesday, Louis. Knowing that de Bonnevies always visits his sister on Thursday afternoons, she takes it to the Salpêtrière and slips it to Angèle-Marie.’

‘Whom the brother then caught drinking from it, so the oil of mirabane had yet to be added … But why leave the bottle with her, Hermann? Why not simply take it to de Bonnevies that evening?’

‘You’re too innocent. Have you learned nothing from the years with me? She did so because our beekeeper was proving difficult.’

‘He had refused to have anything to do with poisoning her husband,’ sighed St-Cyr heavily. ‘He was terrified of reprisals and knew he’d be arrested.’

‘And that has to be why she visited the house on Thursday evening.’

‘To collect the bottle after he’d added the poison.’

‘He’d shaved, had got himself spruced up but …’

‘Was very nervous about his visitor and with good reason!’

‘And Madame de Bonnevies knew at least something of what was going on, Louis, and was afraid you’d discover Frau Schlacht’s name in that little book of her husband’s.’

Another cigarette was found but ignored, so lost in thought had Louis become. ‘But when Frau Schlacht arrives, our beekeeper was either in the throes of death or dead,’ he muttered. ‘Yet when you confronted her in the brasserie, she showed no fear of being questioned.’

‘Because she’s as hard as they come and would have done that husband of hers in if she could have, and the beekeeper’s wife, and then … And this is where it’s perfect, Louis. She would have pointed the finger at de Bonnevies and put paid to him, too, and Danielle and Madame and the stepson!’

Death to one of the Occupier only brought more of it. ‘But … Ah mais alors, alors, Hermann, there is just one little problem with what you say.’

‘Go on, tell me, damn it!’

‘There was another visitor to the Salpêtrière that afternoon. A man, since Angèle-Marie, for all the “voices” she hears and the worries she has about being poisoned herself, maintained that it was a “he” who had given her a taste of honey on this little dipper.’

‘A man …’ croaked Kohler.

‘Someone who knew exactly how she would react to the taste, as she did, but before she’d received the bottle. Someone who didn’t want her coming home and wanted to demonstrate to de Bonnevies and her doctors that she wasn’t capable.’

Someone from the quartier Charonne, a member of one of the four families … ‘The custodian, Louis?’

‘His day off doesn’t coincide with Thursdays but it could have been switched, yet he made no mention of it in the catacombs.’

‘He was too busy with other matters!’ snorted Kohler. ‘The son, Louis. Could it have been Étienne?’

‘Did Schlacht pay the first half of the one hundred thousand francs at Maxim’s – is this what you’re now saying? Well, is it?’

‘You’re right, of course,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Schlacht wouldn’t have paid it. He’d simply have used the offer to nail Juliette’s underpants more firmly down around her ankles.’

‘Danielle … Could Danielle have made a deal with him to buy her half-brother’s freedom?’

They were desperate. They were trying to think of every possibility. ‘That priest,’ said Kohler, finally lighting the cigarette. ‘Father Michel …’

‘Would have known exactly how Angèle-Marie would react to a taste of honey and may well not have wanted her to return to the fold.’

‘Yet he opened the past when he could just as easily have left it closed.’

‘He’s hiding something, Hermann. Merde, these village intrigues, these domestic quarrels. Severed heads of wife-beaters, blackmail and rape. A legacy of hatred and a determination for vengeance that reaches back more than thirty years.’

‘That bottle, Louis. It must have been left unattended on the beekeeper’s desk for a few hours. From when he came home from the Salpêtrière and until he returned from Le Chat qui cue and his little cemetery.’

‘But were the gates unlocked then?’ sighed St-Cyr and said firmly, ‘Not likely. Keys would most probably have been needed. Keys, Hermann.’

De Bonnevies had seen his sister drink from the bottle and had thought it okay. Later, he’d had a quick shot, only to discover otherwise.

‘Several would have known where he kept the nitrobenzene, Louis. Danielle …’

‘Yes, yes. How many times must I say I can’t see that girl poisoning her father?’

‘The wife did it, then.’

‘Or Héloïse Debré? Or Father Michel – we can’t discount him yet!’

‘Someone who knew it was there, Louis, and had had enough of our beekeeper who was far from being the saint that daughter of his thought, and far worse than the lousy son of a bitch his wife considered him to be.’

A torturer, a blackmailer, a hider of serious crimes that had been committed by others. A man so seeking vengeance he would prolong the agony of those responsible for years just for the sweet pleasure of it.

Yet a dedicated scientist who had truly loved his bees and had had the wellbeing of the nation’s bees and those of others at heart and suicidally so.

‘But he didn’t care for Amaretto, Hermann, and there was no guarantee whatsoever that he would drink from that bottle.’

‘But would our Bonze have done so, Louis? Our Bonze?’

* This portion of the rue Dareau is now rue Rémy-Dumoncel.