Venetian chandeliers gave light, deep Prussian-blue velvet drapes hid the crisscrosses of sticking paper on the windows. Paintings still hung, but there were now so many, some leaned against others on the carpeted floor: a Dürer, a Frans Hals—all of them stolen, of course, but why had Hermann decided to come here, to Number 72 the avenue Foch? Why hadn’t he met up with his partner first, if for no other reason than to let him mention Sonja Remer’s being assigned such a pistol, any pistol?
Dejected, the spirit totally beaten, Hermann was staring at those big, once capable hands as if he had done something terrible. Ashen, he didn’t look up, not even when this partner of his, caught between two SS Teutons and hustled by them, was suddenly jerked to a halt before him.
In spite of the presence of the guards, one had to blurt, ‘Mon Dieu, mon vieux, what has happened? Is it Giselle?’
‘Giselle?’ arched Hermann, flinging up his head.
He couldn’t have known of the passage de l’Hirondelle attack—mustn’t be told of it yet. ‘Not Giselle.’
Was it a lie? the look he gave asked, he ignoring the two SS.
‘Here, down this, and have one of these,’ said St-Cyr, ‘then tell me all about it, eh?’
The proffered cigarette wasn’t taken …
‘Rouget. You didn’t tell me who Denise Rouget’s father was!’
‘Ah, merde, I honestly didn’t connect the two. Now toss off the rest of this.’
‘Is it the Rémy-Martin Louis XIII? Am I to enjoy an El Rey del Mundo Choix Supreme?’
Sacré nom de nom, what was this? ‘Not at all. Of course the bottle isn’t the Molotov cocktail these two felt before roughing me up. It simply contains the last of the marc we had in the Citroën’s boot.’
‘What the hell are we to do, Louis? Our telephone caller, Élène Artur, was nearly four months pregnant. You know what that belle-époque plumbing’s like on the rue La Boétie. Her killers tried to flush the evidence but the cord got caught and I had to pull it out so gently. A boy, Louis. I know it’s hard to tell at that stage, but you can, can’t you? A son. She’d been beaten, raped …’
Out it came in a torrent of French the orderly, an Unterscharführer, and his Sturmmann couldn’t understand—even Oberg, head of all of this, couldn’t speak a word of the language. ‘Leave us,’ said St-Cyr in Deutsch.
Unterscharführer Bruno Pruetzmann wasn’t happy. ‘You can’t stay here alone.’
‘Then back off to the other end of the room. This is private.’
They didn’t move, wouldn’t move.
‘We weren’t supposed to find her, Louis. The judge was, but Élène Artur’s killing may not have been done by whoever’s been terrorizing the streets.’
‘Chez Rudi’s, I think. We can’t talk here.’
‘I’VE GOT TO LET OBERG KNOW! If I don’t …’
‘Of course, but it can wait since he’s not likely to come in at this hour. Besides, I’ve got a few things to tell you and something in the car that Rudi wants.’
‘Sonja Remer, age twenty-four years, seven months and five days,’ breathed Rudi—had he felt they wouldn’t be able to retrieve the girl’s handbag? wondered St-Cyr.
‘Mädelscharführerin at the age of ten; leader of a Gruppe at eleven, a Ring at twelve. When a Bund Deutscher Mädel such as this comes along, others take notice.’
He’d give these two a moment to digest the lump they’d been fed, but would the regurgitation of it sink into Hermann? The idiot looked like death in a greatcoat and should, for he hadn’t only stolen a car from two of the Propagandastaffel, he had had them consigned to scrubbing toilets! ‘Not for her the Glaube und Schönheit, Hermann.’
The Faith and Beauty brigade of the BDMs—girls selected not only for their physical attributes as examples of Aryan Nazism but to be trained further in the arts of homemaking or made to tease secrets from high-ranking civil servants and captains of industry.
‘Untergauleiterin at that same age,’ went on Rudi.
A leader of five or six Ringe.
‘Only when young Erich Straub was about to leave for his Heldentod did she break down and reveal what she’d been up to with that boy whose family her father couldn’t tolerate.’
‘The happy couple became engaged,’ said Louis with a sigh. ‘The third of March 1940, and on the twenty-ninth of April she and the boy’s family received notice of the hero’s death.’
‘Kommen sie,’ urged Rudi. ‘Sit, ja. Helga, bitte, the soup first and then the Eintopf. Your Hermann needs nourishment. We’re offering the Reichsführer SS und Reichskommissar Himmler’s one-pot meal at noon today and nothing else but the soup, the same as is on the menu at Horscher’s.’
On the Lutherstrasse and central Berlin’s famous restaurant, it having apparently escaped the RAF’s nightly bombing raids.
‘Red cabbage from home, meine Lieben. Pieces of roast meat—I’m using sausage with Charolais beef and New Zealand mutton that was taken off a freighter bound for England but captured by one of our raiders. Potatoes, of course, and onions and beef stock. The trick is to let the meat marinate in wine and not be impatient. A full day if possible. A decent Bordeaux, a Château Lafite perhaps, but I have used a Mouton Rothschild, the 1929. Baked in individual casseroles to preserve all the flavour and juices. Served with chunks of crusty bread—those French sticks I have to make for the curious from Berlin are suitable enough and will have to do since there are extra and they shouldn’t be wasted.’
To be forced to listen to this with Hermann so upset and needing answers was hard enough for a French patriot, and Rudi knew it too, which could only mean he had more in mind. ‘The soup is excellent, Herr Sturmbacher.’
‘Ich Linsensuppe mit Thüringer Rotwurst.’
Lentil soup with Thuringian sausages. Rudi was giving them time, but for what? Kohler had to wonder. ‘The Tokarev, Rudi.’ It lay all but hidden by the still opened handbag.
‘Ach, einen Moment, bitte! First you must see with whom you’re dealing. Helga, bring your big brother what he has borrowed from the library of the Propaganda-Abteilung, which is so close its staff are among my most valued customers.’
And if that wasn’t warning enough, what was? wondered Kohler.
Photo magazines made life easy for readers in the Reich, seeing as they’d just been introduced to full mobilization. The cover of one of last autumn’s Die Woche, The Week, revealed a very determined blonde Mädchen tying barley sheaves. The Nazi Party’s Illustrierter Beobachter gave an even more heroic stance, facing into the morning sun, standing with a sheaf under each arm and all of Russia before her, though she couldn’t possibly have seen it.
‘On the death of her Erich, Hermann, the girl needed time to gather herself and then, after the blitzkrieg’s dust had settled in the west, volunteered for duty with the Landvolk. She was sent to Vresse in the Semois Valley to supervise female Belgian farm labourers.’
‘An admirable ambition and location, Rudi, but shouldn’t she have been harvesting tobacco?’ asked Hermann.
A good sign felt St-Cyr, not because the area was famous for that crop, but because the comment had come from the old Hermann. ‘She looks healthy enough, Herr Sturmbacher, which would seem to indicate sufficient time for her to have come to peace with her loss, but did she learn French while among the Walloons?’
‘Ach, mein lieber Oberdetektiv, how is it, please, that you even knew the girl could speak such an inferior language?’
One mustn’t react. ‘I didn’t. I just assumed.’
‘You did neither. The boys who stole that handbag and roughed her up told you.’
‘Rudi, listen,’ urged Hermann. ‘They were only boys. Mein Gott, my Jurgen and Hans might have done the same under similar circumstances.’
‘But would have been punished, isn’t that so?’
‘She wasn’t beaten up,’ muttered Louis.
‘NOT THREATENED WITH A KNIFE?’ demanded Rudi.
‘Is that what she claims?’
‘That and other things, Louis,’ said Kohler with a sigh. ‘Oberg had her into his office to tell Hercule the Smasher all about it, but I don’t think she was asked to bare the breasts she claimed had been badly bruised.’
Sickened, the Oberdetektiv St-Cyr was at a loss, Rudi knew, and couldn’t lift his gaze from the soup he had been trying to enjoy, but what was this about Hercule the Smasher? Was the judge in trouble?
One had best continue and not let on. ‘So, it’s serious, meine Lieben, and now you know a little of why.’ He would flick a glance at each of them, would check out the customers before taking Helga’s hand to fondly kiss it, since the girl still dreamed that Hermann would someday realize what he was missing and fall madly in love with her. ‘The Höherer SS saw this photo spread in late October and, needing a listener to the Mundfunk, Hermann, asked for her to be reassigned to the Paris office.’
The city’s mouth-radio, its radio-trottoir. The girl’s left knee was firmly pressed on that sheaf, her skirt rucked up, she grasping the braided tie as if a hawser.
A regular little Nazi. Slim-waisted, tight-breasted, firm and shapely from all that exercise and something for the boys along the eastern front to hunger for. A classic and exceedingly capable Fräulein, but why did that God of Louis’s have to do this to them?
‘And when the blackout assaults began to heat up in December?’ asked the Sûreté.
There was no avoiding it, Kohler knew. ‘He realized he had to do something. That’s why the target shooting, that’s why the gun, isn’t it, Rudi? He assigned her to also work on this little Mausefalle of his.’
‘Eat a little, please. You’re going to need your strength. The Höherer SS wishes a truly SS settlement to this problem the French have created for us. The Fräulein Remer is an excellent shot—oh please don’t get the wrong idea about this girl. It has definitely been understood and accepted by all that her body is hers alone, even in the service of the Führer und Vaterland. The mother was French from the Lorraine and a devout Catholic. Having sinned once, the girl has accepted that she must do penance and remain true to that one love, if for no other reason than to set an example to the French and to other Blitzmädchen. The father, a POW you understand, in that other war like yourself, Hermann, thought the language might be useful to her, as did yourself, isn’t that correct, since we had lost that war but won’t lose this one, will we?’
‘Rudi, what is it you want?’
‘Of you? Well, there is a long list, but your undying loyalty to the Führer and Party must come first. The blood oath, I think, and then … why then you could start paying sufficient attention to Helga. Dinner twice a week when you’re in Paris—slow things down a little but not the current investigation, of course. With others it’s not necessary that you solve every crime in a matter of minutes. Try to leave a few. And no more of these other women of yours, Hermann. It doesn’t look good. A film—she loves them. Dancing …’
‘It’s illegal both here and in the Reich, but ja, ja, get on with it.’
‘Be patient. You’ll cooperate in all matters, especially by taking the Fräulein Remer and myself fully into your confidence. Knowledge is power, Chez Rudi’s by far the best source of all gossip, but to maintain such an enviable reputation—and I do have one—that gossip must be founded on the cement of absolute truth.’
Gaston Morel was that cement, of course, and Rudi must know of him but was fishing for something else: the judge. ‘And if Louis and I agree?’
‘Then I can help you with this handbag and its owner. Helga will simply tell the Sicherheitsdienst*** that it was thrown on to the doorstep by the driver of one of those bicycle taxis. The Red Cockade or Rooster’s Tail, isn’t that korrekt, Helga?’
‘It happened so quickly, Rudi.’
‘But between four thirty and five in the afternoon. Not earlier and not later.’
‘Yes, Rudi.’
‘The licence had an RP, of course, but you can’t possibly be certain if it was followed by a fifteen or a ninety-eight.’
And definitely Luc Desrocher’s The Red Comb of the Magnificent Cock, owned and operated by Hervé’s dear papa but leased last night to Albert Vasseur whose Take Me was still in police custody.
‘The boys who stole this handbag, and their families, could then rest more easily,’ went on Rudi. ‘Otherwise I can tell you duty calls, and that should word of what I know get out, I have it on good authority the Höherer SS will not turn the other cheek. He will seize the opportunity to make an example of them, one the French will not forget.’
‘Mont-Valérien,’ blurted Louis, aghast at what had been revealed.
‘Or the rue Laurence Savart, outside of number 3,’ said Rudi, watching them closely.
The execution ground of the fort in the industrial suburb of Suresnes and just across the river, to the west of them. It was that or outside Louis’s house, in his beloved Belleville.
‘Now eat,’ said Rudi, getting up to leave them to think about it. ‘Enjoy—don’t waste a morsel. Helga, a glass or two of that stuff we used for the marinade. We’re about to accomplish the impossible. We’re going to make a good Nazi out of this Landsmann of ours. That, too, is something the Höherer SS demands, and that, my friends, is not gossip.’
* * *
The restaurant had grown quiet. Rudi did bang pots in the kitchen and hum the Horst Wessel Lied, the marching song of the Nazi Party, but Helga had gone off to dream the dream of dreams.
‘God always extracts a price, Hermann, and then squeezes a little more.’
‘I’m going to have to tell Rudi something.’
‘But only a little. You can’t be perceived by Oberg as wanting to protect the boys and their families, nor can you go to that one without first reporting to Boemelburg. The chain of command, n’est-ce pas? Offend the one and you offend the other. Besides, Walter can perhaps find a way to cushion the theft of that Ford, especially as Himmler is demanding his recall should the perpetrators of these blackout attacks fail to be immediately apprehended.’
‘You’ve been busy, but I’m not going to let them use Giselle. I can’t. Not anymore. You’ve seen her, haven’t you? She’s okay, isn’t she? She’s with Oona and the kids …’
‘Hermann, listen to me. I did what I could but obviously needed more time. There are still places where she …’
‘Could have holed up? Madame Chabot’s?’
‘Not there. Not at the flat either. Look, I’m sorry. I was going to tell you.’
‘You were going to break it to me when convenient, eh, like Rouget?’
‘Sit down. Please! Giselle is probably fine.’
‘Safe is the word you want, mein Lieber. Safe!’
Even Rudi had stopped humming, but Hermann mustn’t be told of the rape and killing in the passage de l’Hirondelle and all the rest of what this partner of his had yet to impart. He must be shielded from it, had had enough for one evening, had already forced himself to do the impossible. ‘Oona may have heard from her. Giselle might simply have been delayed by a film. You know how she is. I didn’t stay. I only checked in briefly.’
‘And then tried to find Giselle. What’s happened to her, Louis?’
‘I don’t know but wish I did.’
Louis wasn’t telling him everything.
‘We’ll leave the Ford out in front of the Propaganda-Abteilung, Hermann, but will have to siphon off what’s left of their petrol.’
‘And take the food. I’m not leaving that. We’ll drop the keys in their tank so that no one will try to steal the car unless they smash a side windscreen first.’
The sound of a carrot being crunched was followed by that of another. St-Cyr opened his eyes but otherwise told himself not to move.
More of each carrot was taken. They were standing in their pyjamas, woollen socks and pullovers, staring curiously down at him: Adrienne Guillaumet’s Louisette to his right; Henri to the left. The curtain of the puppet theatre had been opened.
‘Did you put the coffee on?’ he asked.
‘The acorn water. I told you so, Henri,’ whispered his sister, cupping the carrot to hide it.
‘We had to move you in here with me,’ went on St-Cyr. ‘Hermann …’
‘Needed to be with Oona,’ said Henri severely.
‘We heard him, Monsieur l’Inspecteur Principal. He was very distressed.’
‘Giselle,’ said the brother.
‘Is she dead?’ asked the sister.
‘Don’t say that. Never say it until certain. We’ll find her. Don’t worry. Ah! help me up. These cushions, this rug, that left shoulder of mine, the left thigh … Old bullet wounds, you understand. I slept, can you believe it?’
They hadn’t cut into the baguettes from the Ford, had valiantly resisted that temptation. Potatoes were sliced thinly, onions diced. There were no eggs but there was a sprinkling of dill, some oregano too.
‘Add some of the meat,’ said Henri.
‘Just a little,’ said Louisette. ‘A taste.’
‘Don’t forget the garlic,’ said the brother.
It was nearly noon.
‘You should have gone off to school. It’s still Saturday, isn’t it? And don’t tell me you’re on strike. I’ve already heard that one. I’ll just have a wash. There isn’t a razor, is there?’
‘Papa’s extra one,’ said Louisette. ‘We were not allowed to send it to him. Prisoners of war are not allowed such weapons.’
‘Good. Take over here. Turn the hot plate down in a moment. Add more oil from time to time. It’s good, isn’t it? From Mouriès in Provence, I think. The village is close to Arles, which became Caesar’s number-one city, even better than Marseille. There’s an amphitheatre that would seat more than twenty thousand. Bullfights are still held. Well, they were before this Defeat of ours. I’m not sure since, having been too busy.’
‘And the wine?’ asked Louisette.
‘First take a sip and tell me what you think.’
‘It is thin,’ she said.
‘It’s been watered, idiot!’ said Henri.
‘It’s a village wine, a blend of Pinot Noir and the Gamay. A Clos Saint-Denis. The vineyards are not far from the tiny village of Morey-Saint-Denis in the Côte de Nuits and perhaps twelve or so kilometres to the south of Dijon where our mustard used to come from. You are both right, though, but since it’s all we have, refill my glass. I won’t be long.’
‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’ said Louisette when she had Henri to herself. ‘He has lost his little son and wife. Everyone in this house of ours has lost someone.’
‘Maman’s not lost. She’s just waiting to get better.’
‘Of course, but I was thinking of Papa.’
From the rue Saint-Dominique to the quai d’Orsay wasn’t far. Once there, they would follow the Seine upriver to the Pont d’Austerlitz. Hermann hadn’t insisted on driving, a bad sign, nor had he asked where they were going. Clearly he was still worried about Oberg, the judge and Giselle, but miracle of miracles, the sun was out. Those in the endless queues outside the shops had taken heart. One old woman had even allowed a young mother to step to the head of the line, obeying the rule from Vichy. A twenty-year-old cyclist really did walk his bike, forgetting entirely that the STO thugs could immediately grab and transport him into forced labour, but was it all some sort of sign God wished to give, wondered St-Cyr, or was He merely getting the hopes up so as to make the crunch all the harder?
‘Hermann, I’ll just have a quick word with Armand, if he’s here. If not, perhaps his autopsy on the police academy victim will have been completed.’
‘Oona, Louis. Giselle’s become like a sister to her in spite of their both living with me when I’m here.’
A clipping, hastily torn from some newspaper, was smoothed out. It was the notice Hermann had repeatedly placed in Paris-Soir.
‘I found it under the pillows. She’d been clutching it.’
To say, ‘I warned you Madame Guillaumet’s children would remind her of her own,’ would do no good. To say, ‘Wait, let me be the one to find out about Giselle,’ wouldn’t suit either.
‘Oona’s convinced her children are dead, Louis. I can’t shake her thinking on this. I wish to hell I could and now what have I done but made certain Giselle will be …’
He couldn’t say it, was blaming himself for what could well have happened.
At the confluence of several arteries, and near the Gare de Lyon, the place Mazas and its adjacent streets were busy—there was panic, though, at the sight of the car, vélo-taxis and bicycles turning away. ‘I’ll park on the quai Henri IV, Hermann. It’ll be warmer there and you won’t have to keep the engine running.’
‘Stop mothering me. You know damned well Giselle could be in there under a sheet. Just go in and find out for me.’
Louis pressed cigarettes into his hand but held on to them. ‘When we get to Walter, you’re definitely not to take any of these out. Walter has marked them.’
‘Don’t tell me we’ve a petty thief at HQ, other than myself?’
‘Apparently, but I’ve yet to determine how the head of Gestapo Section IV marked his pipe tobacco and these.’
Identity cards, ration cards and passes … Ausweise, laissez-passers and sauf-conduits … Five sets, only five? Not one for Giselle—was that it, eh, or was Louis not planning to join them?
There were tears in Hermann’s eyes. His hands shook but he realized the dilemma too, for if Walter Boemelburg had marked his cigarettes, had he not also marked and counted these?
‘You really have been busy, haven’t you?’
It still wasn’t the moment to let Hermann in on everything but a start had best be made. ‘Rouget, mon vieux. Give me a little on that flat of his.’
The cigarette was passed. Hermann was always best when kept busy. Out came his little black notebook. Pages and pages—how had he written them, knowing what had happened?
‘Concierge Louveau says that the judge let others use the flat from time to time. “Important people.” Some older than the judge, some younger, but none in the past five weeks—he was certain of this because the last one, a retired general smoked a cigar on the way up at two thirty p.m. on a Wednesday and also at six thirty p.m. on the way out and both times with the same brunette. She’d a nice, if timid smile and “he wore leather gloves, real ones, and had a beautifully trimmed, snow-white moustache and hair just like the Maréchal Pétain’s.” ’
‘A general.’
‘In a French army greatcoat with ribbons and medals. Do you want more?’
‘Give me something on Élène Artur, if possible.’
‘Half Indochinese and not permitted to use the front entrance for fear of upsetting the other tenants. Had a key to the other entrance. Wasn’t to take the lift, either. Used the side staircase. Never came with, or left with, the judge. Had a key to the flat. Both keys used by her assailants who must have known of them.’
Merde, how had Hermann done it? ‘And?’
Kohler took a deep drag, though God alone knew what Vichy’s state-run tobacco company was using now to cut the tobacco. Last autumn’s oak leaves, pine needles perhaps …
‘Entry at between 0030 and 0100 hours Friday. Dead by 0130 hours at the latest. It can’t have gone on for much longer but they took their time and knew they must have been able to. One of them a butcher, or former butcher—he sure as hell knew how to gut. The knife not the usual—it spurted blood a good metre and more when he withdrew it. A week ago the girl showed up around midnight, but the judge didn’t. Louveau was positive about this. His loge is only a few steps from the lift, so he definitely would have heard it, especially as he claims to have stayed awake listening for Rouget.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a week prior to that Friday evening, the judge had done the same thing—not come—and on the following Tuesday and Thursday, and this Tuesday as well. The girl hung around after that last visit to ask Louveau if he thought the judge had been acting strangely. “It’s not like Hercule to pay me in advance and not want me.” ’
‘ “In advance”?’
‘Apparently Rouget had taken to slipping her the money at the Lido, but it definitely wasn’t his usual way of doing things. “Always after he has finished with me,” she said. “Never before.” ’
‘Had she a pimp?’
‘The concierge didn’t think so. “She was too independent,” he said, and claimed she “wasn’t like a woman of the streets or houses.” ’
No pimp could only mean, as Hermann must have realized, that the academy victim definitely hadn’t been hers. ‘And on the night of her murder nothing was heard?’
‘Not a thing. Earlier though, on the previous visit, the girl “thought she might have done something that had offended the judge.” She couldn’t understand how Rouget could possibly have found out about it. “He’s too busy,” she said to Louveau. “He never goes there. Not anymore and certainly not with me, not since last October and only once then. Others would have seen us together.” ’
‘What others?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘But where? The location, Hermann?’
‘I couldn’t establish that either.’
‘But others must have seen them. Others who went to the same place regularly …’
‘And guess who must have discovered she was carrying his child?’
Another cigarette was needed. Dieu merci, it was like old times.
‘She would have had to tell the judge, Louis, but who else found out? Rouget isn’t just a member of the Cercle Européen. He also belongs to the Cercle de l’Union Interaliée.’
God had definitely not smiled at them. ‘Your Pétain-look-alike general could well be a fellow member, as could, perhaps, the former captain I may have uncovered in the taxi theft, if indeed he was a captain, but let me hold that one in reserve. Please continue.’
‘Are you sure you want more?’
‘You know I don’t like to be kept in suspense.’
‘Good. At the repeated insistence of Henriette Morel who believes that husband of hers is having a torrid affair with her stepsister, that one’s social worker hired a …’
‘Permit me, mon vieux. A détective privé who impersonates a Sûreté and who calls the pipe he is fortunate enough to constantly smoke, his little friend.’
‘Monsieur Flavien Garnier of l’Agence Vidocq?’
‘The Arcade de Champs-Élysées. It’s a small world, isn’t it? Adrienne Guillaumet had asked the owner-operator of Take Me to drive her to the Ritz.’
And more generals but definitely not French. ‘Did Garnier find this out?’
‘He must have. Three men were involved in her assault. One to set it up and get the timing down—that’s my “captain” who is the same, I’m sure, as was at the police academy and who lost his little red ribbon, though it wasn’t his to lose, and two to carry out the taxi theft, one of whom made certain that the other did. These last two were of medium height, the other almost as tall as the General de Gaulle, the Trinité rapist having broad shoulders like a wedge.’
‘And the one with the gut and smelling of fish oil?’
‘Our Drouant assailant, no doubt, and from Montmartre, but both likely wearing worn oilskins that must have needed a little help on such a night. A supply of Norwegian margarine, Hermann, that obviously didn’t need its ration tickets.’
Quicksand, were they stepping into it? ‘Now tell me why not this “captain’s” own Légion d’honneur ribbon?’
‘Because I’m all but certain I’ve encountered the owner of it in Noëlle Jourdan’s papa, but for now the judge’s flat, Hermann. Let’s stick to that.’
‘Two assailants, one of whom must have been to the flat often enough since he was tidy even after what they’d done. When he went through her handbag, but didn’t take it, he spilled cigar ash and took time out to try to wipe it away but failed entirely to find her wedding ring. I did.’
Ah grâce à Dieu, this was definitely the old Hermann. ‘Do you want me to have a look at the flat? We’re pressed for time as it is.’
‘Aren’t we always?’
This, too, was the old Hermann, hedging his bets but still, one had best be cautious. ‘Wait for me. Have a stroll. It’ll do you good. That sun should be with us for a while.’
‘Then let’s hope Giselle is alive and looking at it and that Oona doesn’t try to join her children by throwing herself in front of a train.’
‘Oona didn’t say that. She’s far too level-headed.’
‘Well, maybe she is, but I thought it and that’s enough for me.’
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté, to see the passage de l’Hirondelle victim. Hurry.’
‘There’s no hurry where that one’s going.’
‘Is it that you fancy working in the salt mines of Silesia? That is where Gestapo Boemelburg usually threatens to send me if I don’t work fast enough. Ah! I’m late as it is for our meeting. Merde! Shall I tell him you delayed me and that, as a result, I might get lonely unless I had some company?’
‘It is this way, Inspector.’
‘It’s Chief Inspector, and I know the way.’
‘Clothing—do you want to look at it first?’
‘Was any of it taken?’
‘Scattered, I think. No boots or shoes. No ID, no handbag either, or jewellery of any kind.’
It had been raining hard in the late afternoon. Though darker in the passage, there would still have been sufficient daylight. Giselle would have known of the route as a short cut through to place Saint-Michel from the rue Gît-le-Coeur. Rapes, muggings, murders, births, deaths from old age, the plague or other natural causes—sex by the moment and paid for or not—the passage had seen them all and yes, her native instinct would have caused her to dart into it, though it was also one that could easily have been blocked off at its other end. Trapped, she would have had to turn to face her assailants.
Giselle’s dark-blue woollen overcoat, with its broad 1930s lapels and flaps over the pockets, had been thin and a little threadbare. Hermann would never use his position as one of the Occupier to better the state of his household or himself. Stubborn … mon Dieu, he could be stubborn.
Folded, the coat had lost four of its buttons and had obviously been torn open. The soft grey tartan scarf that had set off the colour of her eyes was wet and cold, the grey-blue knitted mittens also. The angora cloche she had been particularly fond of was drenched and filthy.
A girl with short, straight, jet-black hair, half Greek, half Midi-French.
‘Is there nothing else?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Late yesterday afternoon probably.’
Friday. ‘Found when?’
‘At just after eight last night, the new time. Someone tripped over her.’
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t say.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘None.’
‘Examining flic?’
A name was given but it meant nothing. Paris’s police force had expanded so much and now there were also ‘auxiliary police’ and ‘order police,’ neither of which needed the full qualifications of the first.
‘Leave me. If Herr Kohler comes looking for me, don’t let him in. If you do, I’ll hound you until you die.’
Mud-grey to brown, the river moved swiftly. Upstream there were no barges; downstream it was the same. Der Führer, in his wisdom, had had them all taken in the early autumn of 1940 for the invasion of England that had never happened. Now, of course, they lay rotting in the north, cluttering up the harbours unless dragged away and beached or sent to Belgium and elsewhere, and the citizen-coal that should have come to Paris, didn’t. Even the compressed dust of its poorest briquettes.
Louis wouldn’t be able to identify Giselle, not if they’d done what they had to the police academy victim. She’d a thumbprint-sized mole in the small of her back he wouldn’t know of, a blemish she had constantly worried about.
‘Giselle,’ he said, looking off across place Mazas to the morgue. Louis was taking far too long and that could only mean …
Irritably he lit another cigarette only to fling it away. This war, this lousy Occupation, the terrible loneliness and the shortages that should never have happened, the runaway inflation, too, all of which could and did put decent mothers and wives or fiancées down on their hands and knees or backs and made others hate them.
And if it isn’t Giselle, the detective in him had to ask, then have the bastards got her?
Telephone calls were always listened to by others, but … ‘Allô? Oui, oui, c’est moi, St-Cyr. Once pierced but definitely closed up? The Madame Van der Lynn was certain of this?’
She was. ‘Ah, bon. Merci.’
Replacing the receiver was not difficult, tearing his gaze from it somewhat harder. The call to the commissariat of the quartier du Gros-Caillou had been by far the hardest he had ever had to make, the waiting for its return a positive agony.
They had sent one of their staff to the residence of Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, there not being a telephone in that building, up-market though the district was.
‘Please tell Coroner Tremblay that he’s to look for the marks of hobnails and to compare the passage de l’Hirondelle’s victim with that of the police academy killing. No one else is to examine either victim, is that clear?’
‘No one. Do you want to see the loose dental fillings?’
It would be best to shake the head. ‘Put what clothing was found with her out of sight in the lockup and don’t release it to anyone other than Coroner Tremblay or myself. Not to Herr Kohler, you understand. Definitely not to him.’
Fifty francs were found in a wallet that had been mended with fishing line, the cash a sacrifice, but would it help to cement the bargain? These days one had to pay for everything.
Hermann had been impatiently waiting but had best be steadied. ‘Not her,’ said St-Cyr, taking him by the arm. ‘This one had pierced earlobes. Age perhaps twenty. Jet-black hair, what was left of it. Now listen, Giselle may have gone to ground.’
‘Not taken? Not abducted and held in reserve?’
He was really rattled. ‘This one was wearing Giselle’s overcoat, cloche, scarf and mittens.’
‘And they followed the wrong one?’
‘They must have.’
‘Then they made a mistake and it went harder on the girl they caught?’
‘Harder, yes.’
‘Rage?’
‘Uncontrolled. Hermann, the sooner we meet with Walter, the sooner we can get back to work.’
‘You leave Denise Rouget to me, then, Louis, and that mother of hers.’
‘Walter, mon vieux, but first a little stop en route. Now give me one of those cigarettes. It’s not like me to steal things. Usually you are the one who does.’
‘Not Giselle …’
‘Hermann, Oona will have understood this from what was relayed.’
‘She and the children won’t go out, will they, or open the door to anyone but us or Giselle?’
‘That, too, was relayed.’
‘Then I’ll drive. We’ll get there faster.’
The rue des Francs-Bourgeois was busy, the queues in front of the mont-de-piété of the Crédit Municipal de Paris among the longest Kohler had ever seen. The wealthy, the poor, the middle class, all had come to pay homage to that great leveller of humanity, Ma Tante.
Four staff cars, their drivers waiting with engines running, were in a line of their own, their officers inside as prospective buyers of what had been left beyond the required length of time. Six months, was it, or now three?
‘Four,’ came the intuitive reply, Louis not liking what they were seeing, but where else were those who had no firm contacts in the black market supposed to go, if not here?
‘You’d better let me come with you,’ said Kohler. ‘You know how shirty those bastards behind the wickets can be. Muscle is the only thing they understand.’
‘And is it that you still don’t think I’ve got what it takes?’
Three pale-green tickets were dug out of one of those bottomless overcoat pockets. Always Louis was collecting the bits and pieces of each investigation.
‘So often, Hermann, it’s the little things that count. When I found these in Noëlle Jourdan’s empty locker at the Hôtel-Dieu, I knew I couldn’t resist a visit here.’
‘You’re enjoying yourself. Admit it.’
‘That girl has much to tell us and now we are about to pry the secrets from her but …’
‘Boemelburg will insist that we not bother wasting time with the robbery at Au Philatéliste Savant.’
‘And that’s precisely why I’m making certain we do, especially as we were definitely not to have been assigned to that one.’
‘Noëlle Jourdan didn’t pawn the collection.’
‘But it’s curious, isn’t it? Why pawn other items and not that one?’
‘Familiarity. Too frequent a visitor to this place?’
‘Perhaps, but then … ah, mais alors, alors, Hermann, was it that the girl realized how little Ma Tante was given to charity and wished to better herself?’
‘Or knew those tickets could be used to identify her.’
Good for Hermann. ‘But did the robbery of those stamps really have nothing whatsoever to do with the murders and assaults or has chance played its part by sending us to it?’
Chance could sometimes mean everything these days. ‘I’m waiting, Louis. I do know that for the lousy two thousand francs Le Matin paid her, the girl gave up a very promising career.’
‘One that obviously allowed her to acquire the Veronal her dear papa needed.’
‘A papa who should have been wearing his Légion d’honneur. And now what’s she to do, eh? Try her hand at making artillery shells or lorries and aircraft here for the Reich, or get on a train to there and leave that father behind?’
‘Or find some shopkeeper who’ll be willing to hire and not insist on getting into her?’
‘There has to have been a reason.’
‘And we have to find it, even if the theft of those stamps is totally unrelated to the rest.’
‘Which it can’t have been, can it?’
‘Not unless I’m very wrong.’
The tureen, of Augsburg silver circa 1770, was magnificent. Brought out to be laid on the counter of despair, its design incorporated the heads of several Chrysanthemum leucanthemum. ‘A priceless heirloom for such a poor household, Hermann. Mon Dieu, there was hardly any furniture in the flat and never a trace of anything like this.’
‘And that one?’ asked Kohler, still shouldering the curious out of the way.
‘A pilgrim bottle in Augsburg silver-gilt.’
‘Late seventeenth century,’ offered the mouse in the bow tie behind the wicket.
‘Engraved, Hermann. Peasants at table in an orchard. The mark of its maker, that of?’ asked Louis pleasantly enough.
‘Johann Christoph Treffler,’ swallowed Jérome Godet. These two were going to insist on confiscating the items. Monsieur le Directeur Ducasse, who had still not come back from lunch, would be furious and bound to dismiss him.
‘And the last?’ asked the one with the dueling scar who was still toying with the pistol he had lain on the counter.
‘Meissen, Herr …’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten? Louis, can you believe it? Tell him my name.’
‘It’s not necessary. Now please don’t argue, Herr Hauptmann. We haven’t time. An urgent meeting with Gestapo Boemelburg …’
‘Meissen, Inspectors. The work is most probably that of Heinrici, the date perhaps 1750.’
‘A gold-mounted, Commedia dell’ Arte double snuffbox, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter Kohler. The funds released to hold such objects, Agent Jérome Godet?’
Ah, merde! ‘One hundred francs for the box; one fifty for the bottle, and …’ It would do no good to lie. ‘Three hundred for the tureen.’
A fantastic bargain.
‘Pay him, Hermann. That way he’ll be certain to remember your name and not mine. Sign for the objects, too, of course, and tell him that they’ll be returned unless it’s discovered that they’ve been stolen, in which case, by having accepted them and not notifying the proper authorities, he’ll face a charge of compliance perhaps or even complicity.’
Out on the street, back in the Citroën, Hermann sighed as he fondly gripped the wheel of a car that wasn’t even his. ‘I enjoyed that, Louis. It was like old times. I stopped worrying about everything else.’
Newspapers littered the antique limewood desk that had been made larger by the addition of pine planks. Bien sûr, Le Matin and Paris-Soir were there, but also the Berliner Zeitung and Das Schwarze Korps—that of the SS—Der Angriff as well, The Assault—Goebbels’s Berlin afternoon paper. All were splashed with the news from Paris and all were, no doubt, demanding that the crisis be settled and the streets made safe again.
‘Walter …’ hazarded St-Cyr. The Herein, the Come in, had been brutal.
‘SCHMETTERLINGE, LOUIS. DIE KLEINE SCHLAMPE WAS CAUGHT PUTTING THEM IN MÉTRO CARRIAGES. HAND-COLOURED PAPER STICKERS THE SIZE OF MY THUMBPRINT. RAF BULL’S-EYES ON THE WINGS, THE CROSS OF LORRAINE ON THE BODIES. VERDAMMTE HURE, SHE’LL HAVE TO BE SHOT!’
Butterflies were what these little stickers were called, though not always done in the shape of such but, ‘Walter …’
‘Putain de merde, what is wrong with you French? ORDNUNG MUSS SEIN!’
Fucking hell … order must prevail. The big hands were thrown out in defeat, the all but shaven, blunt grey head shaken in despair.
‘Ten hostages are not enough. Twenty will have to be chosen and she’ll have to be one of them. The Höherer SS will insist on it. I’m sorry, Louis. It can’t be helped. Not this time.’
‘Walter, who was the girl?’
A name was searched for but couldn’t be found. The Nordic eyes, bagged by overwork and worry, were ever angry. ‘It was an ATTACK!’ came the shrill response. ‘WE THOUGHT WE HAD BROKEN THE BACK OF THE FTP IN DECEMBER. INFILTRATED, BETRAYED, WE HAD THEM ALL.’
But not quite. The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans …
‘COMMUNISTS. IMMIGRANTS—ROMANIANS, ITALIANS, JEWS, POLISH UNTERMENSCHEN!’
Subhumans.
‘At ten this morning, when you two were no doubt still asleep, one of them tossed a grenade into a lorry on the boulevard Haussmann and close enough for the avenue Foch to have heard the blast. French driver killed, French assistant killed, windows shattered, blood and glass all over the street and everyone rushing in to grab what meat they could and let the bastard get away.’ A breath was caught. ‘Chickens … Alive but a moment beforehand.’
And a black-market lorry, sighed Kohler inwardly and still standing behind Louis but towering over him as the chief would too. Fifty percent of those chickens would have already been removed by the boys on the controls, and as for the FTP, unlike other réseaux if they even existed, and they did, their whole policy was one of armed resistance, hence the hostages that would have to be shot.
‘Now sit down. Kohler close the door. Louis, have a cigarette. Go on. Take one.’
‘Merci. Hermann, would you …’
‘I didn’t offer him one, Louis.’
‘Forgive me, then, if I save it for later.’
‘All right, Kohler, you may take one, but only one.’
‘The butterflies, Walter. Let’s have that, so that we can fully comprehend what has upset you so much.’
That bit of paper was finally found. ‘A schoolgirl. Age seventeen. Geneviève Beauchamp. No previous record but juvenile delinquency has become a problem, hasn’t it?’
Oh-oh, the boys. Antoine and the others, thought Kohler. The squeeze.
‘Walter, the Fräulein Sonja Remer’s handbag was returned by me via Rudi Sturmbacher,’ said Louis.
‘And not thrown there from a passing bicycle taxi?’
‘Not thrown.’
‘But without its chocolate bar, Louis, and tin of bonbons,’ said Boemelburg.
‘That couldn’t be helped, given the shortages and the necessity of returning it as soon as possible, along with its Tokarev TT-33, which was fully loaded.’
Such sang-froid in the face of the inevitable was admirable. ‘À beau jeu, beau retour, then, Louis.’ One good turn deserves another.
‘Kohler, you and Louis will take the Fräulein Remer fully into your confidence. You will involve her, work with her and use her to fullest advantage. Is that understood?’
Rudi had been right. Giselle was to have been the bait. ‘Jawohl, Sturmbannführer.’
‘Gut. Now these murders, muggings and rapes. What have you got for me?’
‘They’re the work of more than one individual,’ said Kohler. Gott sei Dank, Louis had been in and had read the chief’s note, pinned to the left of the map.
‘The level of violence is escalating,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Well planned, Louis?’
‘Exceptionally so.’
‘Good sources of information?’
‘Excellent,’ interjected Hermann. ‘We have a probable source but would like to hold that for the time being.’
‘A gang?’ asked Boemelburg.
‘Most certainly,’ said Louis, ‘though they might not wish to refer to themselves as such.’
‘Terrorist links?’
‘None that are known, but …’ went on Hermann.
‘But what?’
Louis gave a nod. ‘The mothballs are a possibility,’ said Kohler. ‘One of them, or two, or more.’
‘Ex-military types, Walter. This was found at the site of the police academy killing.’
‘The ribbon of the Légion d’honneur. Some honour, eh? I want him, you two. He’s to be made an example of.’
And hadn’t the General von Schaumburg said the same to Hermann? ‘There is one thing that has yet to be clarified, Walter. Whoever wore this may not have been its owner. That is to say, he may have worn the ribbon to …’
‘Facilitate things,’ sighed Boemelburg, ‘since the very sight of it still opens doors and commands respect. Now give me the identity of the police academy victim?’
‘We’re working on it,’ managed Hermann. ‘There’s …’
‘A connection with another killing, Walter. A delicate matter we felt it best to discuss with you first.’
‘How delicate?’
‘Very,’ breathed Hermann. ‘The rue La Boétie. A dancer from the Lido, half-indochinoise and mistress of Judge Hercule Rouget, Président du …’
‘Ach, mein Gott, what is it with you two? The Höherer SS is going to have to be informed of this but have either of you any idea of what he’ll say to me, and it is to me who will be left the task of telling him?’
Calm was necessary. ‘Walter,’ said St-Cyr, ‘her murder was quite possibly done in the judge’s flat so that her killers could hide behind his close association with the Höherer SS.’
‘Rouget would have had to inform him of it so as to hush things up—is this what you’re saying?’
It was.
‘Two men, Sturmbannführer, one of whom was familiar with the flat.’
Kohler had found her then, not Louis.
‘The girl’s killing is definitely linked to that of the police academy,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Though she was not, in so far as we yet know, present during that killing, the girl was most likely taken from the Lido after first having been forced to telephone the press and then the police.’
‘And not killed until last night, Kohler?’
‘Killed at between 0100 and 0130 hours Friday, Sturmbannführer. The child she was carrying was deliberately removed and an attempt made to hide it from investigating officers.’
‘Uncontrolled rage, Walter, was evident also in the earlier killing at the academy and …’ Louis paused. ‘In that of the passage de l’Hirondelle of yesterday afternoon, a girl who was wearing the overcoat and hat of Giselle le Roy.’
‘Who must have discovered she was being followed, Sturmbannführer.’
‘Oberg’s choice of bait, Louis?’ blurted Boemelburg.
‘We don’t yet know where Mademoiselle le Roy is, but are working on it.’
‘There’s something else,’ apologized Hermann. ‘The Trinité victim, and both of the Drouant victims, were being investigated by the Agence Vidocq, a M. Flavien Garnier.’
‘You two … Are you both so blind? The avenue Foch and ourselves use them from time to time. Garnier is one of ours, as is his employer.’
‘The Intervention-Referat?’ managed Louis. It had had to be asked.
‘That I can’t, of course, answer, but I didn’t know the agence was keeping an eye on unlicenced horizontales. You watch yourselves with this. Don’t, and see what happens. Now get out. You have twenty-four hours and, Kohler …’
Boemelburg stubbed out his half-finished cigarette. ‘Don’t steal any more cars. It doesn’t look good for me in Berlin. It can’t, can it, especially when the Kommandant von Gross-Paris has to telephone me about it?’
‘That girl, Walter? Geneviève Beauchamp … That misguided teenager?’ tried Louis, a patriot to the last.
‘I’ll see what I can do but is it that you want me to have the boys in your neighbourhood arrested and their families?’
Instead of executing the girl? ‘Walter, we’ll solve this matter for you. We’re almost there and only need a little more time.’
‘Good. See that you do but don’t forget what I said about the Agence Vidocq.’
Again they shared a cigarette. Consulting others who must be working on blackout crime would be useless. There was simply too much hatred, too much jealousy. ‘Blitzkrieg is the only thing Walter understands at the moment, Hermann, what with Himmler and the rest of Berlin breathing fire down his back and Oberg no doubt fanning the flames.’
Oberg. ‘I’m waiting.’
‘Ah, bon. While we were on the train home, Oberg sent Walter a note advising him to assign us to the Trinité and Drouant should attacks be committed there.’
As they damned well had been. ‘And when was that written and sent over?’
‘Time 1610 hours Thursday, but there’s something else. Gabrielle was taken to dinner last night by the Standartenführer Langbehn. I think now, that in addition to wanting us to look out for her son should anything happen to her, Gabi may have been trying to warn us, but we didn’t have a chance to discuss anything.’
‘And now you tell me! We’re to take this Sonja Remer fully into our confidence so that she can report everything to this SS colonel?’
‘Who then …’
‘Uses Giselle, if found, in Oberg’s little souricière?’
‘Ostensibly to trap the very ones we’re after.’
‘And us, Louis. Us. Admit it. Oberg hates our guts and would like nothing better than to be rid of us but he can’t do that without Boemelburg’s help, and that one still needs us, so that one doesn’t quite know what’s up and has to go along with things anyway.’
Hermann always would grasp at straws, even that Walter would continue to back them. ‘Oberg must have known we were not only on that train but that Walter was planning to assign us to the investigation.’
‘That little Blitzmädel of his is one hell of a shot. Rudi wouldn’t have said so otherwise. Not Rudi. SS floodlights will make night into day in some stinking passage. That girl will be right behind us and guess who’ll come out of it smelling of roses?’
‘Informants, Hermann. Indics gave Oberg prior notification of the locations of those two attacks.’
‘The Agence Vidocq?’
‘We shall have to ask them.’
‘Oberg can’t have let the chief in on it, can he?’
And stubborn to the last. ‘We’re deliberately assigned to two assaults that give us examples of what’s been happening. Then later on in the evening are found because we are on Talbotte’s roster for the evening and fun is fun, so are sent to the academy for a further example.’
‘Only to then find that Giselle was to have been taken, Louis. She wasn’t to have gotten away.’
‘But ourselves conditioned to the severity of the problem and all too willing to go along with Oberg’s using her.’
‘Knowing that we couldn’t refuse, that an order was an order.’
‘Let’s go back through things. Let’s get it all straight if possible. The academy victim is taken at …’
‘You’re forgetting Lulu.’
‘Ah, bon. Madame Catherine-Élizabeth de Brisac, whose hôtel particulier overlooks Parc Monceau, loses her beloved terrier. The dog is held for a time that must be determined, but then has its scant remains hastily buried on Thursday afternoon at just before closing.’
‘The academy victim is then abducted at about 1930 hours, but we still don’t know from where. The Lido maybe.’
‘He escapes but briefly and is killed by 2030 or 2100 hours.’
‘Three assailants. His fingers, Louis. What did they do with them?’
‘The Seine most probably.’
‘Here, give me a drag and I’ll light us another. And at 2313 hours Élène Artur—it has to have been her—is forced to put in a call to the commissariat, having first tipped off Le Matin. The academy victim may or may not have been a pimp, but she most likely didn’t use one, and beyond those two phone calls there is, at present, only two connections with this earlier murder.’
‘The killers must have been known to each other, at least in part, and the one who wore the red ribbon was involved in both it and the Trinité assault. Earlier he took a taxi ride to size things up from the Café de la Paix, and then must have hurried to get to the police academy which implies he had an SP sticker and an allotment of petrol.’
‘Élène Artur must have been a distinct embarrassment Oberg could well have decided had best be removed, Louis.’
‘And where better to do it than in the judge’s flat.’
‘But with him finding her, not us.’
Such things were always done behind the scenes and the Intervention-Referat were very much a part of them. Hardened criminals but also men drawn from the ranks of the Milice now, and still others, especially here in Paris, from among the Parti Populaire Français, the PPF of the fiery orator and would-be Hitler, Jacques Doriot.
‘But well before the rue La Boétie killing, Hermann, Madame Adrienne Guillaumet finishes teaching her night class at the École Centrale.’
‘And is taken to the passage de la Trinité.’
‘Time 2145 to 2150 hours. No later.’
‘The Drouant attack then takes place at 2352.’
‘With plenty of time for the one with the gut to have got there from place de l’Opéra but perhaps not enough beforehand for that one to have been involved in the academy killing.’
‘The break-in at Au Philatéliste Savant is then committed at between 0020 and 0030 hours.’
‘But with insufficient time for the Drouant assailant to have got there from the restaurant. Not on a night like that, but plenty of time for the Trinité assailant, if needed.’
‘Mud from the sewers.’
‘Fish-oil margarine, but an ample supply from where, Hermann?’
‘The black market probably. In any case, none of the killings and assaults are thought to be related to the stamp robbery, and that’s probably why we weren’t suppose to have been assigned to it.’
‘Perhaps. And early on Friday afternoon Giselle leaves Madame Guillaumet’s flat to find you. She pays Madame Chabot a little visit and …’
‘Was turned away, wasn’t she?’
‘Banished.’
‘Somehow she discovers she’s being followed.’
‘And switches her coat …’
‘She would never have done a thing like that had she known what would happen.’
‘Of course not, but that victim is then discovered in the passage de l’Hirondelle at around 2000 hours.’
‘Was it bad?’
‘I couldn’t identify who it might be beyond taking a look at the earlobes. Oona confirmed that Giselle had had her ears pierced some years ago but that they had become infected, no doubt due to wearing fake silver wires, and that she had sworn off wearing such earrings.’
‘And the little scars had then grown in place.’ How had Louis forced himself to find them?
‘Perhaps the hobnailed boots of our Légion d’honneur wearer are the same, Hermann. Armand may be able to confirm but I don’t envy him the task.’
A deep drag was taken and held for the longest time. ‘And Giselle, Louis? Was the rage shown in the passage de L’Hirondelle meant for her, or because it wasn’t her?’
It was a good question but caution had best be used. ‘I … I don’t know, mon vieux. I wish I did and that she was safely here between us.’