9

At 8:10 they gathered in the kitchen of the beekeeper’s house. The gun was gone; the girl was gone. Louis held the oilcloth the Lebel had been wrapped in while hidden under the floorboards of the honey-house.

A broken-open packet of 11mm cartridges revealed that a handful had been hastily pocketed. The suit, stockings, sweater, blouse and shoes the girl had worn to the meeting had lain in a crumpled heap on the floor of her bedroom. She had dressed warmly in her khaki trousers, and no doubt a flannel shirt, two sweaters, woollen knee-socks and hiking boots, and had taken her rucksack, with what food, matches, blankets and money she could grab.

The Terrot bicycle was also absent.

‘An hour’s start, at most, Hermann, but it’s a good fifty kilometres to Soisy-sur-Seine. The road follows the river for some distance to Villeneuve-Saint Georges, then moves inland and doesn’t return to it until south of Draveil. There are short cuts she will know of and use. The Forêt de Sénart also presents a problem, since it will offer easy retreat should she and her half-brother feel it necessary.’

An hour in this weather … Ten kilometres, fifteen at the most since she was used to winter cycling, thought Kohler. ‘But the snow … Louis, she might have to ditch the bike. If so, we’ll never find her.’

‘Inspectors, sometimes I would find the two of them at a hunters’ hide near the Carrefour du Chêne-Prieur. My husband always thought the worst; I knew the truth but could not bring myself to tell him for fear of his hurting the boy.’

The Crossroads of the Prior’s Oak … ‘Your son must havecome into the city, and finding that bottle, added the poison, madame,’ said Kohler. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but that’s how it appears.’

‘And Danielle, who loves him dearly and understands him totally, has finally realized this and is trying to save him – is this what you mean?’

‘You know it is.’

‘Sacré nom de nom, why couldn’t Madame de Trouvelot have told me she had secured his release? I could have spoken to him, calmed him. He’d have listened to me.’

‘Madame, would your daughter have written to your son about how terrible things were for you at home?’ asked St-Cyr.

‘Yes, and often, I think.’

‘And did you tell Herr Schlacht of the country house?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘Louis, that SS major will have let our Bonze know the kid’s on the loose.’

‘And that waiter at Maxim’s, Hermann, would have contacted him as soon as Madame de Trouvelot had paid the first fifty thousand.’

‘Schlacht knows the boy has come home, then,’ sighed Kohler, ‘and exactly where the girl will run.’

‘But do the SS?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Has he told them of the house?’

‘Drive, damn it! Drive! We’ve still got to get Oona.’

‘Calm down. Have courage, Hermann. Courage!’

‘Louis … Louis, why the hell would Schlacht have to get to Danielle before we do?’

It was a good question to which Frau Hillebrand offered no answer, and neither did Honoré de Saussine. Only Father Michel had anything to say as they raced out of the city. ‘I was afraid of this tragedy. When we first spoke, Chief Inspector, I feared the boy had come home and that Juliette had not yet learned of it, but that Danielle not only knew her half-brother had returned but that her father would have him arrested. I knew I couldn’t let it happen and begged God to intervene.’

‘And did God listen, Father, or merely guide your hand?’ demanded Louis, negotiating a difficult bend in the road.

‘God doesn’t choose to notify the messengers of His will, Inspector. Men like myself are simply here to pick up the pieces and salvage what we can.’

‘As you did with Héloïse Debré and with the rapists of Angèle-Marie?’ asked Louis sharply.

‘Héloïse was being punished and so were the others. My position has always been not to interfere but to counsel patience, hear confessions, and beg all to make their peace with God and those they have wronged.’

‘That custodian wants you dead.’

‘He’s a weak man, and I have known for years of his disregard for me.’

‘Then don’t go into the catacombs, Father, or he’ll do what he tried to do to me!’

Just south of Saint-Mandé, they cut through the Bois de Vincennes and then crossed the Marne before returning to the Seine. There was so little traffic, the road was like a blind, dark tunnel across which the falling snow tried only to obscure everything. Left to themselves, the three in the back seat had clammed up. Frau Hillebrand went to offer Hermann a cigarette from her case only to find it empty. ‘My purse, Herr Kohler,’ she said, trying to reach for it. ‘It’s on the floor at your feet.’

‘Let me,’ interjected St-Cyr. ‘I have to get out anyway to remove the black-out tape from the headlamps. A moment, please.’

The purse was heavy, and as he handed it to the woman, she held her breath, and he had to wonder if she’d a gun of her own.

To the south of Choisy-le-Roi there were railway freight yards. Here they were stopped at a control and their papers demanded, and it was all Herr Kohler could do to keep them from having to get out of the car, thought Käthe. But then they were on their way again. Forty … fifty kilometres an hour, often less. St-Cyr knew the roads and was an excellent driver. They were so different, these two, and yet … and yet that same intuitiveness existed between them. When Kohler, impatient at their progress, drummed his fingers on the dashboard, St-Cyr was ready and calmly said, ‘Oona will be all right, mon vieux. Schlacht won’t touch her, not after Oberg has said she’s to go to Spain.’

‘And since when could the SS ever be trusted?’ scoffed Kohler, and took to irritably scraping the frost from his side window. ‘Our Bonze wants Giselle in exchange, Louis, and the SS have agreed.’

‘Then we must settle things for the good of all.’

But how? wondered Käthe, as the two of them dropped into silence and only the throb of the engine was heard. Danielle de Bonnevies knew too much as did her mother. If taken before the Kommandant von Gross-Paris and questioned, either one or the other, or both, could so easily destroy everything. The Höherer SS Oberg had been adamant about this when he’d given her the pistol.

And what of the priest? she asked and told herself, it would be best if he, too, were silenced. But would Oskar really go back to Uma? Oberg would insist on it until this whole business had blown over and he had made up his mind what to do about the woman. Uma knew things the Führer must never hear; Oberg would want all the account and safety deposit box numbers and keys, especially those Uma had used for Oskar. He had said, ‘Don’t fail me, Frau Hillebrand. Do it for the Fatherland and as a loyal SS should.’

‘We are entering Draveil,’ said St-Cyr companionably to her. ‘Once beyond it, you will find one of the finest stretches of the river. A gentle peace before the storm of the city, a reprieve for those wanting to get away for the weekend. On the Left Bank there are the smokestacks, cranes and loading docks of increasingly crowded industrial complexes; on the Right Bank, as if by pure magic, the villas with their expansive lawns and tennis courts, the sailing clubs and quaint little hotels of the bourgeoisie.’

‘My father loved our country house, Inspector,’ said Juliette from behind them, ‘but it was far from being a villa!’

‘There are riding trails throughout the forest and along the river bank, Frau Hillebrand,’ he went on, ignoring Madame de Bonnevies as if he was a tour guide for some low-priced agency, thought Kohler. ‘Peaceful walks, picnics and diligent hunts for morels, but always the river which here flows quietly. No barges these days, of course, but do you know, Hermann, I have yet to investigate a murder along this stretch of the river. Such contentment has to mean something.’

‘He’s overtired. Ignore him. If you don’t, he’ll soon be going on about the little farm he wants to retire to!’

‘Messieurs, please! It is not a joking matter. The turn-off to the house is but a few kilometres now. Once past a little wood on your right, Inspector, you take the first turn towards the river, but … but we will have to walk in, I think.’

And Étienne? wondered Juliette. Should she cry out a warning? Would he then attempt to escape or use the gun to defend himself?

The road was even lonelier than the one they’d come along and it was covered with about fifteen centimetres of snow. As light from the headlamps passed quickly over the house and then returned to settle on it, the two detectives searched the ground ahead for footprints and tyre marks but could see none.

‘Wait here,’ breathed St-Cyr softly. ‘Make a sound and you will answer for it. Hermann, let me go in alone, but follow at a distance.’

‘Then take my gun.’

The head was shaken; the Lebel Louis carried was preferred. Danielle de Bonnevies had stated that she had stayed overnight here on Thursday and Friday, arriving well after dark and leaving well before dawn.

Finding her footprints under the fresh snow would take time, the tyre marks of her bike also.

But had she really stayed here on Thursday night? wondered Kohler. Had the kid not lied about that, too?

It was not good walking in here alone, thought St-Cyr. Though a dark shape on a moonless night, he would still show up against the snow-covered ground. Fruit trees, old, many-branched and left to nature, marked the remains of a small orchard and offered cover. Four beehives had been set out in a tidy, well-spaced row among the trees and as his gaze passed quickly over them, he realized Danielle and her father had kept one of their out-apiaries here. A logical place, a perfect location, but there were no recent tracks under the snow when he crouched to brush it away, and perhaps it was true what she had said, that she tried not to use the house often, so as to keep attention from it. ‘I arrived well after dark, Inspector, and left well before dawn.’

From the hives, it was but a short walk to the house whose dark silhouette gave a sloping-roofed shed, a ground-floor wing, with attic dormer, and then, at a right angle, the main two-storeyed part of a stone building that probably dated from about 1850. Peering through a window revealed only a lack of black-out curtains. Trying the doors as stealthily as he could yielded only a decided need for their keys. But there were recent tracks, though not since this snowfall or the one before it. The prints were those of the girl’s hiking boots.

‘Thursday and Friday nights, then,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Merde, I wish Hermann was with me. Hermann is far better at this and can see things I don’t.’

The door to the shed wasn’t locked. Danielle had pushed her bike in here on those two nights but there was no bike. There were garden tools as old as the centuries, fishnets, two pairs of oars, and he couldn’t help but admire Juliette de Goncourt’s father for both having kept the house as a family retreat and making sure Étienne de Bonnevies had the use of it and perhaps even its ownership.

Soisy-sur-Seine had been lovely. Marianne had adored the little holiday they had managed when Philippe had been six months old. They had left him nearby with a farm woman and had danced to an accordion on the grand porch of one of the fabled guinguettes, the rustic riverside restaurants and dancehalls. They had gone out on the river in a skiff, he with his shirtsleeves rolled up and wearing an old straw hat, Marianne in a brand-new flowered print dress that had been so light and gay, he could remember it still. The fritures, the deep-fried little fish from the river, had been superb. They had shared a chocolate mousse and she had spilled some on the dress and been so worried about it he had bought her another the very next day.

‘But such holidays were always too rare and brief, and now she’s gone and so is Philippe,’ he reminded himself and, passing the torch beam over the remainder of the shed, felt his heart sink.

On the other side of a wheelbarrow, hidden as if set out of sight in haste, there was a tattered khaki rucksack. Atop this, tightly rolled and tied with linked bits of old boot laces, was a darkly stained French Army trench coat that still bore a frayed and faded Red Cross armband. A metre-long, stiff, leather-covered map tube from the Great War lay on the stone floor and beside it there was an artist’s paintbox. Étienne de Bonnevies had indeed come home.

Kohler leaned on his crutches and listened hard to the night. Louis had been gone too long. There wasn’t a sound, save that of the wind in frozen reeds now dry and old along the bank. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let him go in there alone,’ he softly swore. ‘Verdammt! What the hell am I going to do if something’s happened to him and I haven’t his help?’

Try to get Oona to Spain, no matter what? Try to outrun the SS with this foot? And what about Giselle, eh? Giselle …

Sickened by what would surely happen to both of them if he tried and failed to get them to freedom behind Oberg’s back, he started out again. Louis had often paused, and that was good. He had done the wise thing and had approached the house obliquely.

When he came to the shed, Kohler leaned the crutches against the wall and hobbled inside. Only then did he switch on his torch and curse Gestapo stores for the lousy batteries they supplied. Striking two matches which flew apart in a rush of sparks, he again cursed, this time the State-run monopoly Vichy now managed but no better than the Government of the Third Republic. The French had been putting up with the same lousy matches ever since the damned things had been invented!

Finally one of them lighted and his frost-numbed fingers added two more. As though it were yesterday and he still deep in that other war, he saw the map tube and rucksack. He remembered the battery of field guns he had commanded, the fierceness of the shelling, the constant stench of cordite, wet, mouldy earth and death, of opened French bunkers and upheaved trenches, the scatterings of last letters from home. ‘Ah Scheisse,’ he said. ‘Louis …’

Hobbling as quickly as he could, he raced to find the main door of the house and bang on it. ‘Open up!’ he yelled. ‘Police!’

‘Louis …’ he bleated. ‘Louis, I heard no shot. Has the kid killed herself?’

Only silence answered, and as he nudged the door, it swung open.

It was freezing in the car, the endless waiting an agony, and when Honoré de Saussine got out, Juliette did so too.

Then Father Michel decided to stretch his legs. ‘It is not good, this silence,’ he said. ‘I think we’d best go to the house and find out what has happened. I might be needed.’

‘Suit yourselves,’ said de Saussine. ‘For me, I will walk back to the main road. There must be a small hotel or restaurant nearby – is there one, madame?’

‘All will be closed. It’s nearly curfew,’ she answered emptily. Had Danielle done something terrible; had Étienne?

‘You’ve no laissez-passer or sauf-conduit, monsieur,’ cautioned Father Michel. ‘If I were you, I would stay with the rest of us.’

‘What makes you so certain the German woman wants to remain here?’ asked de Saussine.

‘We’ll ask her, shall we?’ countered Father Michel swiftly.

‘A moment, mon Père,’ cautioned de Saussine. ‘She knows far more than she’s letting on. Herr Schlacht had keys to Alexandre’s gates and study. Since I did not take them when offered, who, obviously, do you think he gave them to?’

‘Madame de Bonnevies and myself were in the kitchen, monsieur. We would have heard Frau Hillebrand. And please do not forget that from the window there is a clear view of the honey-house and garden. I myself sat facing that window; Madame de Bonnevies with her back to it.’

‘And you didn’t look away, didn’t go into any other room, Father?’ scoffed de Saussine.

‘We spoke in earnest.’

‘And couldn’t have done much looking up and out of that window, eh?’ taunted de Saussine.

‘But … but, Father, you do remember that I went upstairs to Étienne’s room to bring you his last letter,’ said Juliette in distress. ‘I couldn’t find it on his writing table. I searched the drawers, searched Alexandre’s bedroom and only when I went into Danielle’s room, found it beside her bed. It was so censored I … I wanted your opinion as to how it must originally have read. You do recall this, don’t you?’

Merde, why had she had to mention it? cursed Father Michel silently, only to hear de Saussine sigh and say with evident delight, ‘Then madame was away sufficiently, mon Père, and I will be certain to inform the detectives of this.’

‘You’re forgetting, my son, that for me, and not the German lady, or yourself to have poisoned one of my oldest and dearest friends I would have needed a key to his study.’

‘Madame de Bonnevies left one on the table for you! Her absence had been agreed upon and was deliberate. Admit it, this “oldest and dearest of friends” was a distinct liability. He would accuse his son and have the boy arrested. He’d have that sister of his brought home from the madhouse, and … and, Father, he’d continue to make madame suffer.’

‘You took the million francs Oskar had offered, didn’t you, Monsieur de Saussine?’ swore Käthe, having quietly got out of the other side of the car.

There was something in the woman’s hands, thought de Saussine, and she was resting them on the roof of the car and pointing it at them. ‘I was terrified,’ he said, his voice climbing, ‘but refused, so that leaves only yourself.’

‘Or the Father, or madame, or the son or his half-sister,’ she answered calmly.

‘Or Oskar himself,’ said Juliette anxiously wondering if the woman was about to shoot them. ‘Oskar wanted you, Monsieur de Saussine, to do it, and you, too, Frau Hillebrand, but if neither of you were willing, then what was he to have done?’

‘You knew where the poison was kept, didn’t you?’ said Käthe. ‘You had a set of keys!’

Was she going to shoot her first? wondered Juliette and tried to keep calm … calm. ‘Oskar knew my husband would go with those two whores after visiting his sister because Alexandre had always done so and I had told Oskar of this often enough.’

‘You knew about the bottle of Amaretto, didn’t you?’ said Käthe.

‘A liqueur which smells of bitter almonds, as does the oil of mirbane,’ interjected de Saussine nervously. He’d run. He’d have to, he told himself.

‘Which is why it was chosen,’ sighed Father Michel, ‘though Alexandre would not have cared for it in the least.’

‘But Oskar does like liqueurs,’ countered Käthe. ‘And Uma knew he would sample it and not just casually, isn’t that right, Juliette? Well, isn’t it? Oskar would have had you pour him a tumblerful and would have downed it all at once and you … you knew he would because when naked you had served and serviced him often enough!’

‘What’s in your hands?’ quavered de Saussine.

‘A Beretta 9mm, but Herr Kohler seems to have removed its clip, although I did not hear or feel him do so.’

The studio, some distance beyond the house and closer to the river, must once have been a carpenter’s shop, thought St-Cyr. Skylights and French windows had been added, and a nineteenth-century Belgian cookstove with inlaid ceramic tiles. But it was the almost unbelievable clutter that drew the beam of the torch and caused it to flit from place to place. Tubes of oil paint, canvases and easels were everywhere. Fruit jars held upended fistfuls of cleaned brushes, others, a dried stew of paint and brush. There were plaster and clay maquettes and figurines and these threw shadows, small bronzes, too. Experiments with pottery and the firing of sculpted heads and figures were mingled with dried leaves and wild flowers, hanging bits of coloured glass, ropes of it and spirals …

Imprints of dead fish, in slabs of sunbaked river mud that must have been carefully excavated years ago, were near prints of the half-sister’s bare feet and those of the boy, as if the two of them had walked out from the dawn of history. The bleached skeleton of a seagull flew towards that of a rook some farmer must have shot and the boy or girl had carted home one day. Among the many portraits were sketches of Danielle that had been done in charcoal, in a soft, reddish ochre, in watercolours, too, and in oils. Yet everywhere the torch shone, it seemed the dust had settled.

‘Except on the chaise longue,’ said Kohler, having found him at last. ‘The kid must have slept here on Thursday and Friday nights, Louis.’

She had been going through a number of sketches of herself. Whatever pose the half-brother had wanted, she had adopted. Naked at the age of four, and often up until that of fifteen, she had let him draw and paint her, had been completely at ease. Just as often, though, she was fully dressed; often, too, in a bathing suit or an old pair of coveralls and weeding the vegetable garden or cradling, with evident delight, an errant hen she had just captured.

They had gone rowing on the Seine, had swum naked and not, had fished and explored and done so many things together.

There were photographs, pinned to a cupboard door, of the blind near the Carrefour du Chêne Prieur, snapshots of the boy in uniform, September 1940.

‘Two notes,’ said St-Cyr, shining the light more fully on them. A pencil dangled from a string into which a drawing pin had been recently stabbed.

Friday 29 January, 1943

Mon chear Étienne,

It has been some time since I’ve stayed overnight here, so I don’t know when you arrived. A week, two weeks … Perhaps as long ago as the three and a half weeks since my last visit ended on the third of the month. When I got here late last night, I found your things in the shed. I cried, Étienne. I laughed. I ran to the house calling your name but could not find you even here in the studio and pray you haven’t gone into the city to see maman. Papa will not allow it. He will swear things about you to the police that are untrue and will try to have you arrested and taken away. He wants Angèle-Marie to come home and insists maman must look after her, myself also.

Today I will visit some of our old haunts and friends in the hope of finding you, but I must also go to Brie-Comte-Robert, as I have a farmer there who has promised me a good breeding pair of rabbits, some sausage and cheese. It’s a deal I mustn’t pass up, so please forgive me and wait for me if you return.

Friday 29 January, 1943

Étienne,

It is now very late and I am so tired. Still there has been no sign or word from you and I have worried all day. Please don’t let it be that you’ve gone to see maman. I couldn’t bear having papa do that to you. I would kill myself, but I know you’ve always had a set of keys to the gates, the house and his study. I had them made for you years ago so that you wouldn’t feel hurt, but these keys, Étienne, they are missing from the tin box where you always kept them. Missing, mon cher!

If you should read this, please stay put as you will be far safer here. There is some food, not much, that I’ve stored in the stove’s oven, so don’t light a fire before removing it and then only late at night, as there are those in the district one can no longer trust.

I will try to return on Monday but must be careful, as the controls are becoming increasingly difficult and we now have the Milice who watch the metro, the railways and bus stations and the streets as well. Maman, though she cares nothing for me, will be beside herself with joy, Étienne, but I must be very careful how I tell her. We can’t have her running here without thinking of the consequences, but I will try to find a way to bring her to you in secret.

For now, may the love I have for you keep you safe and warm.

Your dearest friend and companion, as always, Danielle.

Like the footprints in dried river mud, the notes stepped out from the past.

‘Admit it, Louis. She couldn’t have poisoned that father of hers. She was definitely here.’

‘The girl accuses her mother, then one of the Society, then publicly de Saussine, but lies so badly she gets confused …’

‘She knew her brother was coming home and felt he must have done it. All along she’s been trying her damnedest to hide this from us.’

‘And Father Michel opens a parish wound to keep us from finding out what he believes has happened: that the boy has returned and is responsible.’

‘When she left us, the kid was heading here to save him. They’ll die together, Louis. That’s what she intends.’

‘But he isn’t here, Hermann, and yet … and yet, Madame de Trouvelot received a letter from him written on the fourth of the month from here.’

‘A letter?’

‘On its receipt she paid the final instalment.’

‘That kit in the shed … It reminded me of the war, Louis, of the things we had to send home for so many.’

‘And there’s a fruit jar of fine white sand by the sink in the kitchen.’

‘Sand?’

‘Don’t worry so much. It may mean nothing.’

‘Frau Hillebrand had a loaded pistol in that purse of hers, Louis.’

‘Could she have written the letter Madame de Trouvelot received?’

‘We’ll have to ask her, eh, since I’ve got what she may well have been ordered by Oberg to use.’

In the shed, torchlight fell on the rucksack which yielded only pieces of worn clothing that could have been the boy’s. The map case held the few rolled sketches of life in the POW camps that the censors hadn’t removed, but each one of them bore, dead centre, the heavy black imprint of the official rubber stamp.

The paintbox had a few dried-up tubes of oil paint, one brush and some bits of charcoal.

Hermann turned the map case upside down and like last leaves, the boy’s identity papers fell out. All had been officially stamped as ‘Cancelled. Died 28 December 1942. Pneumonia.’

‘Schlacht must have known, Louis, yet he let Madame de Bonnevies continue to beg for her son’s release.’

‘And the girl, Hermann? What if she, too, has known of this all along?’

‘She can’t have.’

‘But if she had?’

‘Then she wasn’t heading here at all, but has gone after our Bonze. Oberg will kill us, if she succeeds. He’ll make it slow and painful and will insist Oona and Giselle watch before he also hangs the two of them with the same piano wire.’

Like the rest of the city’s streets at 4:20 in the morning, the boulevard Ornano was dark in the grip of winter and empty. Breath billowed, and as they went up the street, Louis shone his torch over the entrances until at last he had picked out the soot-streaked placard on a flaking wall beside the rat-hole entrance to the maison de passe Schlacht had bought.

HOTEL
Chambres et Cabinets

TITANIA
au jour et nuit ou à la semaine

The blackened, doorless cavern that was the entrance led immediately to a narrow flight of wooden stairs. There was no light except that of the torch. At midnight the patron would have doused the faint, blue-washed beacon that would have drawn in the passing moths, with or without their yellow work cards, but with the boys they would love ‘for ever’.

Now, of course, and since midnight, they’d all have been locked in until the curfew ended. Snores and farts and spills of vin ordinaire or brandy, or the ‘champagne’ that was flogged even in places like this, the beds covered not with sheets and blankets, but with a single, greasy, stained and worn length of oilcloth. Cold as Christ; wet as Christ. Drunken legs sprawled, naked bodies dead to the world beneath scatterings of greatcoats, dresses, trousers and underpants, as if these could ever keep out the cold while snoring it off in the sweaty, unbathed clutches of a lover who was lying, like as not, in a puddle of piss.

Kohler knew he had seen it all; Louis had, too. They had left the Citroën opposite the rue du Roi-d’Alger and its passage, had parked Juliette de Bonnevies and the others in the cells of Charonne’s Commissariat de Police on the rue des Orteaux, and had refused to listen to their objections so as to come here alone.

Just the two of us, as always, he said silently to himself but would Oona have been raped by several? Would they find her half out of her mind with Danielle naked in the same room, the kid stone-eyed and beaten into submission?

‘Louis, let me go first. You know I’m better at this.’

‘That foot of yours will only complain of the shoe you’ve forced it into.’

‘Me first. That’s an order. We’ll take our time.’

‘We haven’t much of it and already are late, and at five we both know this can of worms will empty and we will be trampled in the rush.’

There were no hidden tripwires, no ‘alarms’ to warn résistants who might be hiding in such a place and were fond of using them.

But not this hole, thought Kohler, checking the stairwell out anyway.

Hermann was good at this sort of thing, conceded St-Cyr. His night vision was so clear he could see things in a darkened room or stairwell that no one else could. And hear things, too, and yet not be heard or seen. But Hermann was afraid of what they’d find and now felt great sympathy for Danielle, having forgotten entirely that it was he who had first thought she might have poisoned her father.

There had, as yet, been no sign of the bicycle, though they had watched the sides of the country roads and had tried to find it.

‘Louis, this door’s not locked,’ came the whisper. Hermann’s fingers trembled as he emphasized the point. Pistol in hand, he nudged the door open. The carpet was frayed, and as he felt for the tripwire that might be here, hole after torn hole was found.

The ‘desk’ was vacant. The patron had been told to bugger off. There were no snores, only Louis’s breathing and that of his own. ‘Switch on the torch,’ he sighed. ‘Come on mein lieber Oberdetektiv, this place has been emptied in expectation of our little visit.’

‘So have my batteries.’ But had Herr Schlacht prepared a welcome for them?

Time was lost, all sense of its passing gone. On his hands and knees St-Cyr crept forward to another door which, he knew by now, must open at a touch but one could never touch without searching first.

Dust … a feather in a place where there were so few … a coin, a pfennig dropped as Reichskassenscheine or francs were hauled from a pocket and one mark or twenty francs given for a little moment, or cigarettes, for these had fast become the preferred currency. A packet of twenty for the night, maybe with an extra ten if there were two girls and the soldier boy was living the dream he’d had while lying up in a barracks, waiting to go on leave.

There was no wire, no taut bit of string but still … the door could have been booby-trapped from within. They’d had that happen before. A safe cracker, the Gypsy, the Ritz and not so very long ago. Was it a week or ten days? One lost track of time. Before Avignon … yes, yes. Before its Cagoule had taken such an exception to them.

Sacré nom de nom, were friends of friends simply out to silence Hermann and himself, and never mind Oona and Giselle, never mind the murder of some beekeeper who had, one must agree, done everything to ensure sufficient would want him dead.

Not just his wife.

The room held no one but himself. The vase de nuit had been used but accidentally overturned in the rush to get out. A raid, then, he said. A raid …

A door banged; it banged again and the sound of this carried through the pitch darkness of the attic where garrets, close under the roof, held filthy mattresses, rags and scatterings of female clothing. A torn dress … a brassiere, a shoe … Was it Oona’s? wondered Kohler, moving silently and swiftly from room to room for that door hadn’t been banging until now.

Stepping out on to the roof, he hooked the door open to silence it. ‘Oona …?’ he called softly. ‘Oona, it’s me.’

There, was no answer. A flat stretch of tarred roofing had been swept clear by the wind which had piled the snow up against the base of a brick wall that rose a storey and a half.

Crossing the roof, Kohler looked up through the darkness at the iron ladder that was bolted to the wall and would lead whoever it was to the chimneypots of the adjacent building. ‘Don’t do this to me,’ he sighed. Louis … should he get Louis? Someone had put through an alarm and the Paris flics, the Sûreté’s vice squad and Gestapo’s bully boys with guns had come running.

Résistants? he wondered. Had the person told them that? No doubt Schlacht had clearance and had paid off the local sous-préfet and all others, but who among the rank and file was going to worry about such little details at two or three in the morning when the alarm must have come in?

His foot hurt like hell and he really didn’t want to climb the rungs. His hands were freezing, but he had to tell himself Oona would have gone up this in her bare feet if necessary. Oona could be up there.

Had she been missed in the raid? Had she heard something or sensed there was someone else in the attic and not known it was him? She must have. But it hadn’t been Oona. Jammed between the chimneypots at the top of the ladder was a thick Manila folder that had been put there while clambering on to the roof, and then left in haste.

The folder held sketches and snapshots of Danielle de Bonnevies at the age of fourteen and fifteen, and in most of these the girl wore nothing but her birthday suit. But there were others in Room 4-18, some tucked in around the mirrored doors of an armoire, some pinned to the walls, or, if a large sketch, framed and hung, and all must have come from the studio. While most recently there, she had realized that several were missing and must have wondered where they were and who had taken them.

‘Frau Hillebrand and Schlacht,’ said Kohler, nursing his right foot and trying to rebandage his wounded toes. ‘Our Bonze didn’t just want to raid the hive for the mother, Louis. He was intent on the kid.’

‘And the mother must have known of it, Hermann.’

‘And done something about it, eh? Like lacing a bottle that was intended for him.’

‘Perhaps, but then … Ah mon Dieu, this murder, Hermann. Positively no time to sort things out except while on the run. The run, mon vieux. Turning in an alarm is not so easy after the curfew has begun. Mademoiselle Danielle would have needed to either tell the flics in person and risk certain arrest, or have had access to a telephone.’

An instrument the Hotel Titania lacked as did most of the quartier Clignancourt.

‘But what the hell had she really in mind?’ asked Kohler. Room 4-18 was a cut above the others. Plush wine-red drapes covered French windows that must lead to the little balcony Juliette de Bonnevies had said had a view of the Sacré-Coeur. There were carpets on the floor, pillows on the iron-framed double bed, silk sheets, too, soft woollen blankets and an antique, white lace spread. Two straight-backed chaises, an armchair, a footstool … Champagne flutes placed in readiness – there was even some ice left in the bucket, no bottle of Krüg, though, for those who had raided the hotel would have helped themselves with pleasure.

The ashtrays were clean. Sash cord for tying up the willing and unwilling had been neatly coiled, a gag laid out, a blindfold …

In a drawer, beneath heaps of lingerie, were boxes of Wehrmacht regulation-issue condoms, jars of petroleum jelly, rolls of surgical tape any hospital in the city would have been glad of, since they had none or very little. ‘Even godemkhés, Louis!’ Dildos. ‘Look, I know our Bonze wasn’t having it off tonight, or watching through some peephole as others went at it, but what I want to know is why the hell did that kid see fit to lay on a raid?’

Hermann was really worried and had best be calmed. ‘To get at the truth of the missing sketches. To see for herself the room where her mother had been forced to prostitute herself and perhaps even offer up her daughter in hope of freeing her son.’

‘Whom Danielle believed had returned, but then discovered after writing the last of her notes, that he couldn’t have.’

‘She didn’t want us knowing this, Hermann, until she had done what she felt she had to.’

‘Which was to give that lecture and then poison herself. Louis, Oona may be in the cells at the rue des Saussaies with the rest of those who were carted away from here.’

‘Or Herr Schlacht has now had time to free her and has taken her with him.’

‘Where to?’

‘The candles.’

‘What about them? Danielle …’

‘Though she has denied knowing the whereabouts of the factory, she has patiently discovered everything else.’

‘And will now try to put an end to our Bonze and everything he’s been doing.’

Goods trains shunted in the freight yards, which Kohler knew were just to the east and along the rue des Poissonniers. In the maintenance sheds and yards of the Omnibus Depot across from him and off the north side of the rue Championnet, the racket of misfiring autobuses aux gazogene mingled with that of the others to break the cold, hard darkness, as vélos and their earnest riders hurried to work through the ink of what had, before the Defeat of 1940, been 4:45 a.m. A light snow fell to dampen the rank air from the distillation units which used charcoal to produce the mixture of methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen that, when burned in the cylinders, powered the buses. A lorry parted the stream of bicycle riders; a bus followed, honking furiously.

Louis was to enter the candle factory by another route. He would negotiate the inevitable passages and, on the way, try to find where the girl had hidden her bike. Just precisely what she planned, they didn’t know yet, but would have to stop her. They couldn’t have her trying to kill Schlacht, couldn’t have her causing trouble here and alerting von Schaumburg and the rest of the OKW to the iniquities of the Palais d’Eiffel any more than she already had, couldn’t have her infuriating Oberg.

When a lorry turned in at a courtyard whose entrance had been meant for horse-drawn carriages and wagons, its driver violently cursed and finally, at a lumbering crawl, managed to squeeze it through.

One cylinder wasn’t firing, another missed a beat, so the banging and clattering was intermittent, but it wasn’t wise to switch these things off when the engine was warming up and would soon fire on all cylinders, albeit at three-quarters the power, or less, of a gasoline-fired engine.

Words erupted with the argot – the slang of the quartier. Wax was to be unloaded; candles taken to the Gare de l’Est for shipment to the Reich. Another lorry soon negotiated the entrance, and now the racket of the two of them filled the courtyard and rose up the slot of it to escape into the night sky some four or five storeys above him.

Vacated most probably in the early days of the Great Depression, the building had, no doubt, been cheap and available, and with all the room for expansion Schlacht could possibly have wanted. But it had one big drawback, thought Kohler grimly. There would be far too many places for that kid to hide.

The day shift of fifteen souls began to filter in, their female voices muffled under the constant drone. Kohler thought to join them, but knew he’d stand out as they lined up to punch in at the time clock.

Hacking coughs, sneezes, constant bitching, two teenaged girls discussing a film, a car …

Schlacht’s Renault drew slowly into the courtyard behind the lorries. Out tumbled Frau Hillebrand and the others, along with Oona and Giselle. A full house. Not only had he been up all night, he’d been to the lock-up in the cellars of the rue des Saussaies, and also that of Charonne’s Commissariat de Police.

Soft on the violent air came the sweet scent of beeswax to indicate that after Sunday’s lay-off, the foreman and his assistants had come in at midnight probably to get the wax melted and everything ready for the day’s production.

Soon the clanking of ancient machinery was added to the sound of the gazogènes.

The passage was as dark as pitch and no more than two metres in width, felt St-Cyr, not liking what he’d come upon. It ran the length of the rear of the building and separated it from one of the tenements the Société Anonyme des Logements à Bon Marché had put up years ago out of concrete blocks to house, at low rents, the then increasing waves of immigrants from North Africa. But now this latter building would be all but empty. Blacks, Arabs and other non-whites had been forbidden re-entry to the Occupied Zone after the Defeat and had had to stay in the south, to where they had fled along with so many others. Those who had remained in Paris would be exceedingly careful about where and when they went out, for anyone of colour was suspect and likely to be stopped in the street and, if not vouched for by an employer, then taken for forced labour‥

Makeshift doorways had consequently been cut into this wall, and inside one of them, he found the girl’s bike. The rucksack was open, the gun gone. When barred windows and locked doors prevented entrance to the factory, he found the fire escape and went up it just as Danielle must have done. A broken window gave access to an even deeper darkness through which the distant sounds of slowly moving machinery came.

Pausing to feel the gap where the lift doors should have been, he found, instead, an emptiness that sickened. When someone stepped on broken glass, he hissed urgently, ‘Mademoiselle, it is Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté. Please give yourself up.’

She made no further sound, and after a while he told himself that she had left him. Her half-brother was dead, her father dead, her life in ruins. With nowhere else to run to, she had come here to do what she felt had to be done. But had she caused her father’s death? he asked himself as he blindly searched for the staircase. Had she returned to the house on Thursday to find that bottle on his desk?

The beekeeper would have turned Étienne in and had been very vocal about it. Had he written a letter of condemnation to the Kommandant of Oflag 17A and told her of it? She’d given no hint of this but must have known Frau Schlacht would come to the study on that evening to collect the bottle. Yet much of what Danielle had done and said since they had first met in the garden seemed to indicate she had been terribly afraid the half-brother had committed the killing. Father Michel had sensed this and had believed firmly for some time that the boy had indeed returned.

A set of keys. Those from the studio? he wondered, dreading the possibility, for Frau Hillebrand and Honoré de Saussine had each known the whereabouts of the poison, as had Herr Schlacht who had had, by far, the most to lose.

Pneumonia … At least it wasn’t the ‘cardiac arrest’ the Gestapo were so fond of using, but had the boy been shot? Had the beekeeper, knowing that Juliette would stop at nothing, finally written to the Kommandant of Oflag 17A, denouncing his stepson?

They would probably never know, and certainly the mother, not having been informed of the boy’s death, had had reasons of her own for adding the poison.

When he found the staircase, it descended to a landing where there was light, and as he looked up, St-Cyr saw that the building was in two parts, with a forward hoist bay that extended to the roof above, and rearward offices and storerooms. Down below him, where once electrical generators had been assembled, horizontally mounted, cast-iron wheels, a good two metres in diameter and positioned some three metres above the floor, had candle hoops hanging from them at regular intervals. Each hoop had been vertically strung with an outer and inner cage of wicks, and as each wheel advanced, and each cage came round, an operator pulled down on a lever to lower it into a vat of liquid wax. Dripping, the hoop’s cage was then lifted to cool and set, while successive others were dipped, a candle and cage taking some forty or fifty passes before being completed. Each outer cage held perhaps thirty candles, each inner one, perhaps twenty, and there were sixteen of the hoops suspended from each of five separate wheels.

More rectangular cages and vats held the larger church candles, the cierges without which the Mass would not seem the same. But short, squat, votive candles were also being made – cast in water-jacketed tables that held perhaps thirty dozen at a time and whose piston arrangement pushed the finished candles out and automatically cut off the wicks which were fed from below and through the pistons. For this operation the wax was being melted in galvanized iron drums that stood atop gantries at one end of the tables. There were lighted gas rings under them, and each drum was equipped with a spigot which, when opened, would let the molten wax run down a trough before spreading out to flood and fill the moulds.

Elsewhere, machines braided cotton threads into wicks of various sizes, while others inserted wicks into candles that had been cast without them. Of the fifteen or so females who operated the machines, sorted, polished and packed candles, only two were white and not of North African descent. The foreman, his assistants and two others, all of whom were busy unloading lard pails of wax and honey, were Caucasian.

Behind the windows of an office on the far side of the working floor, Schlacht was clearly in a rage. Frau Hillebrand stood next to him, irritably smoking a cigarette, while Juliette de Bonnevies sat beside Father Michel and Honoré de Saussine was with Oona and Giselle.

There was no sign of Hermann.

The Senegalese was tall and thin, and when he came upon her suddenly in the room where the wax was being separated from the honey in a press, Kohler touched a finger to his lips.

Startled, confused, she didn’t know what to do. Should she cry out a warning; should she remain silent? she wondered.

He threw an anxious glance over his shoulder towards the door through which he’d come, this giant who was even taller than herself. Everything about him smelled of fear and yet … and yet …

Her dark eyes settled on him. ‘You’re from the police, but are afraid,’ she said.

An observant woman. The jet-black hair was all but hidden under a tightly knotted kerchief. ‘Visitors,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Miliciens from the quartier du Mail et de Bonne-Nouvelle. Old friends your boss has called in for a little more help.’ And nom de Jésus Christ, why had it to be this way?

They had arrived in a hurry in two cars and had parked these across the entrance to the courtyard, thus sealing it. ‘They’ll soon be after a girl,’ he said sadly, only to hear the woman anxiously ask, ‘Which one?’

‘Not one of yours.’

‘What’s she done?’

‘It’s not what she’s done but what she intends to do.’

Once separated from the honey, the wax was cleaned by placing it in flour sacks which were submerged in boiling water – the woman used a stout stick to prod these. ‘As the wax melts,’ she said, ‘it passes through the sacks and leaves behind the …’

‘Ach, I know all about it. The unwanted bits of bee carapaces, et cetera. The wax rises to the surface of the water and you skim it off. No problem, madame, except that there are lots of extra sacks on that washing line of yours and some of them are missing from the end next to that door I came through.’

‘Missing …?’

‘Four, I think.’ Soaked through with residual wax, and then dried, as they now must be, any of them would make an ideal wick, but all the kid really had to do to set fire to the place was to turn up the gas rings under the drums that fed the votive candles. Wax should never be boiled or allowed to get too hot, because if it reached its flash point, it would rapidly expand to vapour and ignite with a deafening bang.

‘Pass the word, will you? Tell the others you’d best go on strike and leave the building while you can.’

Louis … he’d better find Louis. ‘Go on, damn it. Hurry!’

Seen from above, there were seven miliciens and as they poured from the office, St-Cyr watched Juliette de Bonnevies press herself against the windows to cry out, ‘Danielle …,’ though he could not hear her. Each of the miliciens carried a lead-weighted, black-leather truncheon which they now used to herd the shrieking workers into a corner, refusing to let them leave. They knocked things over in their haste. The iron wheels continued to turn; the pistons to spit out the votive candles. The two white girls were joined by another who called out, ‘The burners, messieurs. I must shut them off!’

They let her go and, from high above the working floor, he watched as she went to the gantried drums. She wore a kerchief, a block-printed smock, and wax-covered, charred asbestos gauntlets, showed no fear or uncertainty, knew exactly what she would have to do.

Some of the miliciens, still not realizing who it was, began to search for her and went up the stairs. She gave them time, called out firmly, ‘ Un moment,’ when yelled at to join the others, then, having turned up the burners and flung off the gauntlets, pulled the Lebel from under her waistband.

Firing only once, Danielle put a hole in one of the drums and let a stream of molten wax pour out over the floor.

‘Mademoiselle!’ called out St-Cyr. ‘Mademoiselle, you mustn’t do this! We know your brother couldn’t have come home.’

Against the thud and clank of meshing gears, the sound of his voice echoed.

‘I must!’ she cried. ‘Herr Schlacht had my brother killed!’

Killed … Killed …

‘No he didn’t! If anyone, it was your father.’

‘Papa …? But … but how could this be, please?’

‘By writing to the Kommandant of Oflag 17A.’

‘Ah no. Maman, is this true?’

Someone must have switched off the machines, for the wheels and gears soon ground to silence.

Allowed to leave the office, the mother walked out on to the floor, was pale and badly shaken. ‘Is Étienne dead, chérie?’ she quavered.

‘Maman, I thought he was alive and had come home to us. I thought he was staying at the studio but …’

‘But couldn’t have?’ asked Juliette.

‘He wasn’t there, maman, and only later did I find what had happened to him. I … STAY WHERE YOU ARE! DON’T MOVE!’ she shrieked at miliciens who had been tempted to close in on her. ‘THIS PLACE IS FINISHED, MESSIEURS. I DO IT FOR THE BEES OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE!’

‘Danielle, you mustn’t! You’re not a murderer. Some may be killed, others badly burned.’

‘Maman, did papa write such a letter?’

Letter … Letter …

‘He … he threatened to, yes. He … he even showed it to me. To me!’

‘And did you know Herr Schlacht had been to the studio?’

The studio … The studio …

‘Chérie, listen, please. I could not have stopped him. He …’

‘You knew he wanted to rape me, maman! Me!’

Some of the wax from the hole was flooding down the side of the drum. It was only moments away from curling under to the burner. The burner …

‘The other drum, Louis. The kid was going to come up here and, after torching these, throw them down, but must have felt they wouldn’t work.’

There were flour sacks in Hermann’s hands. ‘Do I shoot the daughter?’ asked St-Cyr.

‘You’re the diplomat. Try that first and buy me a little time. Oona and Giselle are still in that office with our Bonze.’

‘Madame de Bonnevies,’ called out St-Cyr. ‘If my partner and I can negotiate a reprieve for your daughter, would that not be best? The two of you to Spain, perhaps, with sufficient funds to make a new start.’

Juliette looked questioningly at Schlacht as he came out of the office with Frau Hillebrand; she looked at Danielle. ‘Spain, chérie, and a chance to leave it all behind. Is it possible?’

‘THE INSPECTOR IS LYING!’ shrilled Danielle. The fountain of wax was still pouring on the floor; she still had the revolver and would use it if necessary …

‘We’ll die together, is this what you want?’ asked Juliette. ‘I felt certain Étienne wasn’t coming home, Danielle. I had only to look at those sketches that Herr Schlacht had taken from the studio to remind and taunt me, and I knew that something terrible must have happened and would also happen to you. I did not know what to do. Should I add the poison and hope Frau Schlacht’s husband would drink it, should I not do so? And all the while I was so worried about Étienne.’

‘Pneumonia.’

‘Don’t cry. Turn off the burners. You’ve done what you really had to do. You’ve made me see how much my silence has hurt you.’

‘HERR SCHLACHT,’ called out Louis. ‘WILL YOU AGREE TO GET THEM AUSWEISE AND LET THEM ACCOMPANY MADAME VAN DER LYNN TO SPAIN?’

TO SPAIN … TO SPAIN …

Kohler had reached the working floor and would now, thought Schlacht, begin to make his way up behind the two of them. He hadn’t yet drawn his gun, so must be planning to grab the revolver and switch off the burners. But the drums were separated by a good three metres, and while the one began to boil and clouds of heavy white vapour poured from it, the other continued to piss its stream.

‘Oskar, agree! You have to,’ hissed Käthe. ‘If you don’t, and this place goes up, it really will be the end of the Palais d’Eiffel.’

‘Those two to Spain. The Van der Lynn woman stays in Paris,’ called out Schlacht. Father Michel crossed himself; Honoré de Saussine began to slip away, but was held back by Frau Hillebrand.

‘Dieu merci,’ said Louis as the girl handed the revolver to her mother and crouched to switch off the gas ring under the leaking drum, then turned off the other one.

‘The office, I think,’ said Kohler, ‘so that we can clean this mess off our shoes, eh? You’ve nothing else planned, have you?’ he asked Danielle and saw her shake her head.

The morning grew, the rays of feeble sunlight at last finding the streaked and grimy outer windows of the office. Juliette de Bonnevies tried to clean the windowpane in front of her, to stare better at freedom, but it was no use. Behind her, she knew the others sat or stood waiting, too, to hear what the detectives had to say.

Father Michel would be looking inwardly, his gnarled fingers moving the beads of his rosary as he silently recited the decades. Frau Hillebrand was sitting next to Herr Schlacht who, though impatient, would have to let the detectives proceed.

Honoré de Saussine would be pale and silent, nor would his gaze meet hers or anyone else’s, except but briefly.

‘Mesdatnes, Mesdemoiselles et Messieurs,’ said St-Cyr, and there was a watchfulness to him she sensed right away. ‘A bottle sits alone on a desk for but a few hours. We now know how it got there and what happened those few hours later. We also know that the gates to the apiary and the garden, and the door to the study were locked that afternoon and would have had to have been opened had someone other than the immediate family or Father Michel poisoned that bottle. Frau Schlacht wanted our beekeeper to add the oil of mirbane so that she could give the Amaretto to you, Herr Schlacht, but by then you knew what your wife had planned. Using miliciens to question and torture my partner on Saturday only confirmed your worst fears.’

‘Get on with it. Verdammt, I haven’t all day!’

‘Louis, he had the set of keys he and Frau Hillebrand had removed from the studio.’

‘Yes, certainly, mon vieux, but were they used that afternoon by himself, his secretary, or M. de Saussine?’

‘I didn’t do it!’ shrieked de Saussine. ‘I couldn’t! I … I was too afraid Alexandre wouldn’t drink it. Mon Dieu, how the hell did anyone know he would? He didn’t like that stuff. His was always the …’

‘Yes, yes, monsieur, but you had been offered a million francs and I have your signature to this statement as proof!’

‘I signed it under duress. You forced me!’

Schlacht had taken a bottle of cognac from his desk and had set out several glasses which he now filled, laughing as he did and downing one after another. ‘So, bitte, meine lieber Detektivs, will you join me?’ he asked, enjoying his little joke and causing Juliette to shudder as she turned at last to face them.

‘Of course,’ said St-Cyr, and taking two of the glasses, crossed the room to where the ones called Giselle and Oona sat tightly holding each other by the hand. ‘Relax,’ they heard him say gently. ‘I think we can settle this.’

Impulsively the one called Giselle leapt to her feet to kiss and hug him and let her tears spill down his cheek while the one called Oona smiled faintly and said, ‘Spain. It’s not possible for me, Jean-Louis. You know it and so do I.’

‘This murder,’ said St-Cyr, when the two had downed their cognac. ‘Always there has been the problem of its being intended and yet also accidental. Had de Bonnevies not panicked and thought you had done it, madame, he might well have recovered, had he taken only a sip and spat it out. But he downed a good sixty cubic centimetres, and the rest of what he did only speeded up his demise.

‘Mademoiselle Danielle, you were always a suspect. First with my partner, and then myself. You had continually left candles for Father Michel and yet had denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of this factory. You had, I think – and this is crucial – firmly believed for some time that your brother would return.’

‘Back in November of last year, Madame de Trouvelot asked to see me and revealed that she had paid for Étienne’s release but that it would, of necessity, take much time.’

‘Chérie …’

‘Maman, I couldn’t tell you. Madame de Trouvelot made me promise.’

‘You believed,’ said St-Cyr, ‘and Father Michel sensed this and also came to believe that the boy had, or would, return but that, for very good reasons, you hadn’t told your mother.’

‘Papa would have had him arrested. Everyone knew this. He made certain of it and I … I shuddered every time he yelled it at me.’

Oh-oh, thought Kohler, now it’s coming.

‘On Thursday, mademoiselle, you stated that you left at just after curfew, that your father was already at work, and that the bottle was not present.’

‘That is correct.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Mademoiselle, you know exactly what I have asked and why.’

The sand, thought Kohler. The kid had realized it, too, or that something she’d done and forgotten about had come to light.

‘A flannel shirt. A waistcoat, jacket, scarf, beret and fingerless gloves. Old tweed trousers, two pairs of socks, the gumboots he used when working with the hives. A laboratory coat also.’

‘And what did he demand of you?’

‘He … he asked for a clean shirt. He … he said, “You know I have to do my rounds and that that woman is coming to see me this evening.”’

‘And your mother, mademoiselle, could she not have done this for him?’

‘She was asleep but would have silently refused as you well know, so why, please, do you ask?’

‘Just tell us, mademoiselle. Leave nothing out.’

Why could he not simply accuse her? wondered Danielle. Why must he insist on making her say it? ‘Though he knew I had to leave very early to get past the controls, my father was too filled with his own concerns and wouldn’t listen. I washed a dress shirt for him and hung it up but he said it wouldn’t dry and that I would have to light a fire in the stove and could use some of our old frames for this. Afterwards, as it was then about six, I … I hesitated to leave the city. One has always to be so very careful. I …’

‘You knew Frau Schlacht was coming that evening to collect the bottle she had yet to give him.’

‘Yes, I knew, and may God forgive me.’

‘You also knew or felt that Father Michel, thinking it best, would go to the Salpêtrière to give Angèle-Marie the taste of honey that would bring on one of her attacks and convince the doctors she wasn’t fit to return home.’

‘I … I did not specifically know this, Inspector, but yes, I did believe he might do something like that. Mon Dieu, the house was in a constant state of crisis. No peace. Never a kind word or any love, just a hatred I could no longer stand. I had to leave before the day grew light. Many times I told myself something terrible would happen and that I should not leave, but … but Étienne might finally arrive at Soisy-sur-Seine and I … I knew I had to warn him.’

‘Mademoiselle, the notes you left at the studio clearly stated that you hadn’t been anywhere near the place in three and a half weeks and yet … and yet you have just said, “might finally arrive?”’

‘It … it was not safe for me to visit the country house too often. I … I had to force myself to wait.’

‘For three and a half weeks?’

‘Yes! There are those who watch for me. I … I was afraid of them and for him also.’

‘And before you finally left the house in Charonne at … What time was it, please?’

‘Six a.m. I listened to my father’s harangue, Inspector, listened as he cursed Frau Schlacht and Étienne and everyone else, including maman whom he said was fucking – that is the word he used – fucking every man she could at the Hôtel Titania and enjoying it. Enjoying it!’

The girl was desperate and so very afraid of the truth, but it would still be best to force it from her. ‘You arrived at the first control at about what time, please? It can and will be checked.’

‘Inspector, what more do you want from me? That I stayed in the city but kept out of sight? That I went to the Salpêtrière and while hiding among the milling crowd saw Frau Schlacht hand that bottle to my aunt? That I saw papa take it from her and then … then, later, set it on his desk? That … that it was then that I listened to his hateful harangue and how he cursed me for loving my brother? I … I knew papa would have Étienne arrested and shot. I knew that bottle had to have the poison added to it – yes, yes, a thousand times yes, damn you! But … but …’

Tears filled her eyes as she hung her head in despair. ‘But if you had added the poison,’ said St-Cyr, ‘and your father hadn’t drunk from the bottle – indeed, why should he have – Herr Schlacht, who did like liqueurs, would have done so and died.’

‘And every member of your family, including yourself and your half-brother,’ sighed Kohler, ‘would have been taken in reprisal. That’s the law.’

Louis poured a glass of cognac and gave it to the girl, and as the kid took it, she looked up at him and tried to smile. ‘Merci,’ she said. ‘Oh mon Dieu, I’ve been so afraid and ashamed. I left that bottle untouched, Inspector. I could have taken it with me that afternoon when I rode all the way to Soisy-sur-Seine, but I didn’t. I found Étienne’s things in the shed. I was so excited. He’d understand how I felt and wouldn’t blame me, but … but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t.’

Louis poured her another cognac and then handed one to the mother who quickly passed it to Father Michel and said brittlely, ‘Drink it, mon Père. I greatly fear you are going to need it.’

‘God is my comfort, my child, and as God is my witness, I could not do it. I, too, knew that if Herr Schlacht had been poisoned, Inspector, Alexandre would surely be blamed and that would mean Étienne and he would go to the firing squad, Danielle and Juliette into deportation. Oh bien sûr, I wanted Alexandre dead. He had become a monster even I could no longer tolerate. The bottle was there in the study and I knew this because I’d seen him bring it home from the Salpêtrière and take it into the study to leave it there before going to the brothel. And yes, I could so easily have done it had I fiddled with the lock and opened that door, but …’

‘But someone came in through the garden,’ sighed Kohler. ‘A very attractive German lady. Not Frau Schlacht but another.’

One who would later go to the Society’s meeting with a loaded Beretta in her purse.

‘Oskar, stop them. I did it for us.’

‘Don’t worry. These two have been told to leave me and my affairs out of things. Oberg won’t allow it.’

‘Your wife, mein Herr,’ said Louis, ‘was to have been accused of buying the Amaretto and attempting to kill you. That would, I think, have been sufficient for your courts to have given her a lengthy sentence and you the divorce you so dearly wanted.’

‘She’d have had an “accident”, Louis. Don’t be so kind,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Frau Hillebrand would then have become the courier to Switzerland, and the happy couple could have continued to salt away as much as possible for everyone.’

‘And now?’ cautioned Schlacht.

‘We’ll have to arrest her, mein lieber Bonze,’ said Kohler firmly. ‘Our reports will go in – we’ll cite extenuating circumstances. That speech de Bonnevies was to have given. Very much against the interests of the Reich, et cetera. If she’s lucky, they’ll pin a medal on her. Right, Louis?’

Hermann always liked to have the last word, but was not the law – the law; truth sacred – and yet … and yet the Occupier a formidable presence? ‘Right, of course,’ he sighed. What else was he to have done, especially when they still had two arrests to make? That of the custodian of the catacombs, and of Madame Héloïse Debré, both of whom the French courts would be only too happy to deal with.

Two glasses were filled with the Bonze’s twenty-year-old cognac. ‘One for you, mon vieux,’ said St-Cyr, ‘and the other for … Why, for your chauffeur, I think. Yes, the title suits and the Citroën is, of course, mine to drive, at least until the toes heal. How are they, by the way?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Good.’

When he held the second-class tickets out to Juliette and Danielle, Kohler felt his fingers trembling at the loss and knew that for Oona and himself, and Giselle and Louis, there could only be more of the Occupation.

‘Take care,’ he said, and felt the kid’s lips as she kissed him warmly on both cheeks.

‘Madame,’ said Louis, ‘you will travel only as far as Orange where, leaving your suitcases behind, you will get off the train during its brief stopover. Buy a copy of Le Provençal if possible, but if one is not available, then simply wait beside the news kiosk with your daughter always on your left. When someone asks if you’re from the north, don’t answer or look around. Simply follow this person at a distance towards the toilets. There’s an office near them, and then an outer door to freedom. It’s all been arranged. A farm in one of the remotest parts of the Cévennes, a few hives, a new start.’

Gabrielle had contacted friends in the Résistance. ‘We can’t trust Herr Schlacht, madame, nor can we trust Oberg and the SS,’ said Kohler. ‘You’re carrying five million francs and are just too easy a target.’

‘We know too much,’ said Danielle sadly.

‘All but fifty thousand will be taken by your passeur to be used by others,’ said St-Cyr.

‘And Father Michel?’ asked Juliette.

‘Has been sent to a monastery in the Haute-Savoie and has already left the city.’

‘Then it’s goodbye,’ she said. ‘You two … ah mon Dieu, how can I ever thank you?’

‘By being the friend this one needs,’ he said, and helped them on to the train.

They watched, they waited, these two detectives, as the train began to pull out of the Gare de Lyon. They would not leave, thought Juliette, until certain they had done everything possible to get them safely away.

‘Louis, when you were up in the gods of that factory and calling down to them and to our Bonze, you knew Schlacht would compromise and save face by saying Oona had to stay in Paris. You knew he’d let those two go, at least for the time being.’

‘By keeping Oona here, Herr Schlacht still believes he has a hold over us, Hermann, should we ever think to let the Kommandant von Gross-Paris know what’s really been going on. I admit, however, that I also had self-interest at heart, for with Oona here, I can depend on you to be the person you are. Giselle as well, of course, for she’d give you up in an instant if she felt you had become at all loyal to the Occupier.’

‘Then read these!’

Je Suis Partout’s and Le Matin’s thin and heavily controlled newspapers shrilled outrage in bold black letters: TERRORISTS DYNAMITE HEADQUARTERS OF QUARTIER DU MAIL ET DE BONNE-NOUVELLE MILICE. FOUR DEAD, FIVE TERRIBLY INJURED.

‘It’s those gazogéne lorries, Louis. Their lousy gas tanks invariably leak. Smoke a careless cigarette or cigar near one of them and you damn well know what’s likely to happen.’

‘Candles … They say the lorries were loaded with them and that the fire volatilized – that’s a big word for the Occupation’s Le Matin, but no matter – volatilized the beeswax causing it to explode as well as …’

‘As the dynamite their fertile imaginations felt must have been necessary. Mein Gott, don’t those idiots in the press know anything about wax? Now read this little item my boss so thoughtfully ripped out of yesterday’s rags.’

‘I didn’t know Walter had the time.’

‘It’s Gestapo Boemelburg to you, mon fin, and don’t ever forget it even if you did work with him on international police business before the Defeat!’

Paris welcomes the General Unruh, the Hero’s Friend, who has set up offices in the Hôtel Majestic.

Unruh meant, literally, trouble!

‘He’s already begun a thorough review of the Palais d’Eiffel, Louis. Apparently the Führer has had his eye out for slackers for some time.’*

‘And Schlacht?’

‘Is still looking for his little badge and now trying to explain to the authorities how honey and wax could have been stolen by him from under the noses of armed Wehrmacht guards and air-raid sirens that shouldn’t have sounded. He’ll just have to go along with the rest of the staff. After all, there’s a war on.’

And the Führer is always right.

‘Now read this.’

It was a telex from Pierre Laval, no less. The Premier, in Vichy, the internationally famous spa and home of the Government of France in these terrible times and since June of 1940.

Flykiller slays mistress of high-ranking Government employee in Hall des Sources. Imperative you immediately send experienced detectives who are not from this district. Repeat, not from this district.

‘Not from his jurisdiction?’

‘Outsiders. Of course it smells just like one of those lousy waters they insist are so good for you, Louis, but who the hell can be killing flies in winter? There aren’t any!’

But apparently there were.

* Early in 1943 General Unruh arrived in Paris and within a few weeks had disbanded the staff of the Procurement Office and closed it.