Plunged into the damp, cold darkness of the rue La Boétie at 2107 hours Berlin Time, they were moving now. They weren’t wasting time, having just left the Agence Vidocq. ‘It’s this house, Louis. This one,’ insisted Kohler.
‘No it isn’t. It’s this one.’
‘Merde, how the hell would you know?’
‘Try me.’
The candle stub had gone out. Uncanny, that’s what Louis was. ‘Why didn’t you tell me they had a photo of the boys?’
‘I couldn’t. There wasn’t a chance.’
Jeannot Raymond hadn’t been in his office. ‘Have they got Giselle?’
‘Later … We can discuss it later.’
‘Garnier and Quevillon took Élène Artur. I’m certain of it.’
‘Did I not say “later”?’
The door was locked. Fist to it, Louis summoned the concierge. ‘Louveau?’ he demanded. ‘Sûreté and Kripo.’
‘Messieurs …’
‘The flat of Judge Rouget and hurry!’ They didn’t take the lift. They went up the spiralling main staircase two and three steps at a time, Louveau soon falling far behind.
‘Armand Tremblay hasn’t been in yet,’ said Louis when they got to the flat. ‘The seals haven’t been broken. If Jeannot Raymond paid this a visit, he must have only wanted to confirm that you had found her.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why he didn’t come back to the agency.’
Collectively the seals were examined. Nothing could have been disturbed since Hermann’s departure. Nothing.
‘Boemelburg can’t have let our coroner know of the body, Louis.’
‘And that can only mean Oberg didn’t want him to. Oberg, Hermann. Monsieur, was Jeannot Raymond here to examine these?’
The seals were indicated, Louveau taken aback. ‘M. Raymond? Whatever for? He simply brought the Mademoiselle Dunand home and stayed with her awhile.’
‘Ah, Jésus, Louis …’
‘Vite, vite, monsieur, her flat!’
They took the side stairs this time. Ach, why hadn’t they considered that the girl might live in the same building?
Louveau knocked on the door of a fifth-floor flat nearest to that staircase. ‘Mademoiselle Dunand?’ he quavered. Impatiently they waited. Would the detectives insist on entry? ‘Monsieur Raymond told me the girl had been upset over the murder and that he had thought it best to stay to calm her, Inspectors, and to reassure her that my building was absolutely safe otherwise and that she had no need to concern herself further. He said he told her he would see her Monday morning at the office and that she was to enjoy her day off.’
‘He actually came downstairs to tell you all of that?’ asked Kohler.
‘But certainly.’
‘Your passkey, monsieur. Don’t argue,’ said Louis, nodding curtly at the door.
‘Mademoiselle Dunand,’ sang out Louveau. ‘C’est moi, your concierge. Are you all right?’
From behind the still locked door came the hesitance of, ‘Oui, I was just getting ready for bed. Is … is something wrong?’
‘Mademoiselle, it’s me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr.’
‘I’M NOT DRESSED! YOU … YOU CAN’T COME IN! CAN’T IT WAIT?’
‘Louis, leave her. She’s okay.’
‘Mademoiselle, what exactly did Jeannot Raymond say to you?’
‘Only that I wasn’t to worry about losing my job because of what you did. That … that Monsieur Quevillon would apologize for hitting me and that … that the colonel would be asked to dismiss him.’
‘You lied to me, mademoiselle. You deliberately caused me to believe your flat was on the Champs-Élysées.’
‘And for that, I’m sorry. It … it was only because I didn’t know what had happened in this building, that there … there had been some trouble.’
‘Louis, she was afraid of you. How many times must I tell you to …’
‘Hermann, those salauds have out-Vidocq’d Vidocq! And tomorrow, mademoiselle?’ he asked.
‘I’m not even going to leave the building to go to Mass. I’m going to stay right here.’
‘As she should,’ muttered Kohler softly. ‘There, didn’t I just tell you she was okay?’
On the staircase down, Louveau ingratiatingly confided, ‘She usually does her laundry on Sundays afterwards unless …’
‘Out with it,’ said Louis.
‘Unless she goes to visit her relatives in Charenton but that’s only on the last Sunday of the month.’
The night was like ink. Ignition switched off, the Citroën coasted up the last of the rue de Birague and into the place des Vosges where it could just as easily, if not better, be stolen or robbed of its tyres.
Kohler rolled down his side windscreen. Through the freezing, damp, dark, quiet of the night came the incessant cooling of the engine and the silence.
‘This is crazy, Louis. You can’t be serious.’
‘Wood shavings, Hermann, and sawdust.’
Merde, what was he on about now?
‘Sometime today, probably early in the afternoon and while sitting briefly at that desk of his, Hubert Quevillon emptied the turn-ups of his trousers. Mahogany shavings, cedar of Lebanon, French oak and walnut, also teakwood from the Far East. Certainly not the plain spruce of the no-name coffins the Hôtel-Dieu use for its unfortunates.’
‘A carpenter’s shop. A furniture repair place …’
‘Noëlle Jourdan likes to give the gerbils she keeps something to burrow into. Matron Aurore Aumont thought the shavings must have come from the coffin shop but obviously they can’t have.’
It had to be said. ‘Noëlle and her father could never have owned the items she pawned.’
‘Nor had a right to the stamp collection of Bernard Isaac Friedman of 14 rue des Rosiers.’
‘And Delaroche must have easy access to beautiful things.’
‘Some of which even that agency of his could never have afforded.’
‘Judge Rouget, too, Louis? The things I saw in that vitrine of his.’
Sickened by the thought of their being led ever deeper into the morass Paris and the country had become, Kohler wiped fog from the windscreen. ‘Just what did you find in that bastard’s desk and please don’t tell me that before this Defeat of yours he worked in La Villette.’
The largest of the city’s two abattoirs and where all but 20 percent of the sheep and cattle consumed each year in the city used to be slaughtered, as well as nearly eighty thousand horses. Now, of course, little of this work was required since most of the stock was simply loaded on to railway trucks and sent to the Reich.
‘Handcuffs, lipsticks, compacts, earrings and other jewellery, handbags too, some of which can no doubt be linked to victims. A spool of piano wire and clippers, a length of bloodstained sash cord and two bottles of chloroform, one of which was half-empty.’
Giselle … ‘What else?’
‘The usual photos.’
‘And?’
‘A jumble of negligees, brassieres, underpants and garter belts. The ticket stubs of the Cinéma Impérial—no doubt the colonel charged the expense to Madame Morel’s account for the Barrault subject’s investigation. Blouses that had been ripped off. Keys—lots of them. Jetons, too, for the telephones they might need to force some girl to use. I couldn’t have let you know any of this when we were in that office. I tried to give you a hint but even that failed.’
More … there must be more.
‘A note from Delaroche reminding Quevillon not to forget to pay his PPF dues.’
The Parti Populaire Français of Jacques Doriot whose militants, along with others, formed the backbone of the Intervention-Referat and who had eagerly assisted the nine thousand Paris police, and student police, during last year’s grande rafle.
‘Quevillon may well be the Agence Vidocq’s only member, Hermann. Otherwise the colonel would, perhaps, have paid the dues himself.’
‘Delaroche simply wants to give himself and the others a bit of distance yet show support. Funds will have been passed under the table. The PPF have friends in the Propaganda-Abteilung and can call on the press any time they want.’
‘Especially if there’s a student nurse who had best do as she’s told.’
‘You first, or me?’
‘Me, I think, but let’s hope the agence hasn’t yet anticipated a second visit.’
‘Since they’ll probably have been told of the first?’
‘Among other things, Flavien Garnier had a tube of Veronal in his desk and nearly fifty tobacco cards. The girl’s father needs the one for the constant pain he suffers, and writes appeals to former comrades-in-arms for help; the daughter found eggs, shoes, a chocolate bar and other items for Matron Aumont’s grandchildren, purchases and appeals that could perhaps only have been facilitated by the current and most popular medium of exchange.’
‘You’re full of surprises. I hadn’t realized you could be so light-fingered.’
‘Then realize that under Garnier’s blotting pad there was a list of résistants, some of whom had ticks beside them and lines through them, and that under Quevillon’s photo of the boys, was one of Giselle as she left Oona yesterday.’
Ach, where was it all to end? wondered Kohler. The PPF had been funded by the Abwehr, the counterintelligence service of the Wehrmacht, and had supplied them with the names and locations of résistants and other ‘troublemakers’ the Occupier had wanted but with the defeat at Stalingrad, everyone had started having second thoughts and, as if that weren’t enough, that fanatic ex-chicken farmer and Head of the SS, the Reichsführer Himmler, had all along been jealous of the Abwehr and had sought to undermine it, and submerge it entirely within the Sicherheitsdienst.
One happy family. And guess what? he silently asked as he found the main staircase of the house at Number 25 and followed Louis up it. Given the ever-shifting sands of Paris and the Occupation, the PPF had seen the light and gone over to the SS. The Agence Vidocq must now be supplying them with those names and locations, Judge Rouget sentencing those taken, Oberg seeing that they were either shot as hostages for some act of ‘terrorism’ or shipped east to one of the camps no one wanted to mention, though everyone knew of them, especially Hercule the Smasher.
Having anticipated his thoughts, Louis was waiting for him on the second storey’s landing to softly confide, ‘That’s not what worries me at the moment, mon vieux. If Oberg ordered the agence to take Giselle as bait for his Mausfalle and they failed to do so, is that not, perhaps, reason enough for rage in the killing of the passage de l’Hirondelle victim? To fail when working for such a one can’t sit easily.’
‘Giselle and two honest cops who’ve been getting in the way far too many times.’
‘And are to be made martyrs of, in the line of duty, Hermann.’
The French loved their martyrs. ‘The press will be adoring. Occupier and Occupied die in battle to clean up our streets and make them safe again.’
‘I can see the smile on your corpse. Now let’s deal with the Jourdan household and talk about it later. If Jeannot Raymond or anyone else from that agency has beaten us to it, he or they have either left the premises or been far quieter than ourselves.’
The tiny kitchen was a shambles. The single electric lightbulb that had hung above the plain deal table with its toppled cane chairs had been flung against the wall, its frayed cord and sliding weight yanked on.
Having escaped the prison of their overturned birdcage, the gerbils had vanished in fright, the girl having put it between herself and her assailant, but far more wood shavings had been scattered across the floor than even it would have held.
She had snatched up a knife and thrown it, then smashed the light. Under torchlight, two rabbits in the screened airing cupboard beyond the drainboard and sink, watched detective proceedings with evident alarm. The drawstring of the cloth bag Noëlle Jourdan must have earlier filled with wood shavings, was loose, the throat wide open, the bag empty.
Among the dark, nutbrown to honey-brown shavings and bits of sawdust on the floor, there were pieces of brightly coloured porcelain: the curly-haired, ash-blonde, cap-wearing head of a pretty, blue-eyed peasant girl, the loose, knee-length pantaloons of the fisher boy she had come to meet.
‘Russian, Hermann. A pair of figurines from the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory.’
‘Things must have seemed okay at first, Louis, the visit perhaps a little late in the day.’
‘The girl in here on her own and getting tomorrow’s supper ready …’
‘The father in with whomever had come to see him.’
‘But then she must have heard something.’
‘That bag would have been hidden.’
‘Only to then be dragged out and opened by the visitor, the figurines removed.’
‘Stood side by side, the accusations given, but was she still hearing things from the other room? Was she, Louis?’
‘These date from about 1825 to 1850. The porcelain is exquisite.’
‘And once worth what? Ten thousand francs at least; five hundred Reichskassenscheine.’
‘Stay here and don’t pop any more of those Benzedrine pills. Let me see what has happened.’
That sympathetic, empathetic, old-soldier-understands tone of voice just couldn’t be tolerated anymore. ‘Confronted, Noëlle made a run for it, Louis. Since the door to the flat was wide open and she wasn’t on the stairs, she may have escaped.’
‘Which leaves the father and what she must have heard. Now please … Ah, mon Dieu, be sensible. He’s a grand mutilé. He’ll only bring back the memories.’
The poor bastard with the stumps and the dyed black moustache, the shrapnel scars and thinning black hair had snatched the vase de nuit from under the moth-eaten bed that was heaped with blankets. Somehow he had managed to get his trousers down but had collapsed on that one leg of his and had broken the chamber pot.
Christ, the constant diet of vegetables and fruit if one could get them. Ripe on the already ripe air, he had drawn that one knee up and in at a spasm and had emptied himself, had vomited as well, the reactions so swift, he hadn’t known what was happening to him and had died within what?
‘Less than five minutes,’ said Louis. ‘Remember, please, that I did warn you.’
Wearing a knitted blue toque, three pullovers, heavy cords and two socks on that one foot, Jourdan had been bundled up in bed when offered the drink and …
‘The last half of a litre of eau-de-vie de poire, Hermann.’
Uncorked, the bottle stood upright on the rickety night table and next to a spent tube of Veronal, but Jésus, merde alors, how could Louis remain so detached?
The glass tumbler the girl must have unwittingly handed to the visitor was still on the bedside table. Under torchlight, its dregs were not like water, the smell not sweet and pleasant but stingingly pungent.
‘Exposure to air and light darkens it …’ began Louis.
‘Nicotine, damn it?’
‘Usually such an eau-de-vie de poire is either clear or a very pale yellow. This is a dark yellowish brown …’
‘You heard me!’
‘An insecticide, a fumigant?’
‘Please don’t try to convince me you’re really serious about that little farm you keep saying you want to retire to. Worm powders also, idiot, and sheep dip. We once had to put down a neighbour’s Alsatian that wouldn’t stop chasing our flock and killing the lambs. Vati made me hold the dog while he gave it two drops. Only two.’
‘Three or four are sufficient for an adult human—less than sixty milligrams, but more has been used, I think. Though oily, nicotine is soluble in most liquids. The taste is violently acrid and instantly burns the tongue and stomach, but by then it has already struck the central nervous system and most especially the sympathetic and parasympathetic ganglia, where it stops the production of acetylcholine which the nerve endings would normally produce in an attempt to counteract the poison.’
End of lecture. ‘But who the hell in the agence uses sheep dip, if indeed that was what was used?’
‘Someone like yourself who has either worked on a farm or sheep ranch, or has used it simply as an insecticide but witnessed its potential.’
‘Jeannot Raymond … Did he go back to the agence to get it, while we were both in with the colonel and the others?’
‘Earlier I didn’t have time to look in his office. It might not even have been there.’
‘And the pear brandy?’
‘Enjoys it as I do on occasion, but perhaps more often. Noëlle Jourdan is of the same age and looks a lot like Giselle, Hermann. Please remember that if we find her, it may not be Giselle. Let me be the one to look closely, not yourself.’
Duels, eyes pierced and poisons, place des Vosges had seen them all and too often. Number 24 had been de Vitry’s hôtel particulier in 1617 when he’d assassinated Concino Concini, the Florentine, on the whispered orders of a sixteen-year-old boy, King Louis XIII. Concini had, of course, been his mother’s probable lover and definite favourite, Marie de Medici who’d been queen of France for ten years and had been married to Henry IV, that ‘chicken-in-every-peasant’s-pot-every-Sunday’ king who’d been stabbed to death in 1610, and certainly Concini, made maréchal de France and marquis d’Ancre by her, had been too greedy and had used his spies too often, but to behead that one’s wife, Leonora Galigai, for sorcery and then to burn her at the stake?
Christ, the French; Christ, this place. Louis would be feeling it. Louis had brought him here in the autumn of 1940 and had taken him from house to house as that grandmother of his must have done. ‘To understand Paris and its crime,’ he had said, ‘is to understand its history. Wealthy or poor, it binds each citizen, even those whose families have more lately adopted the city as their own. Though all might seem oblivious to this history, they breathe it in every day whether you think they do or not.
‘Know the city like your hand, Hermann. Know its moods, its quiet places, its intricate avenues of fast retreat.’
Wise words. The courtyard of Number 2 was paved with cobblestones that had felt the centuries. Beyond it there was the stable Noëlle Jourdan must have run to, for she’d found that car of theirs and not thrown away the stained white apron she’d been wearing, but had dragged it off and hung it out as a flag for them under one of the colonnaded arches. Louis had found it and had softly said, ‘This way, mon vieux.’
‘Just tell me why the one or ones who are after her also left it out for us?’
Up from the cobblestones came the mist, down from the heavens that first sprinkling of the usual.
The stable door was open, the stench of horse piss as present as the centuries of it.
‘Are you okay?’ whispered Louis.
‘I’ll just go up its ladder. I won’t be a minute.’
‘Giselle, Hermann. Remember, please, that Noëlle Jourdan really does look a lot like her.’
Made of poles, hammered together with hand-forged spikes, the ladder’s rungs were worn and slivered in places, and on one of these the girl had caught her skirt and had pulled a thread.
On another, she had caught the heavy, cable-stitched pullover she must have been wearing, but of course detectives can’t climb such a ladder with gun and torch in hand. It’s either the one or the other.
‘Hermann … ?’
‘Louis …’
He had reached the loft and had swung himself up on to it, the beam of that torch of his cutting a quick swath across time-darkened roof timbers.
The light was gone—Hermann knew its brightness would only destroy his night vision when needed and had switched it off. Back pressed to one of the timbered uprights, St-Cyr waited. Merde, it was dark. Leaking, the roof let water piddle on the stones of the floor, increasing the stench of the years.
‘Louis …’
It wasn’t a cry, wasn’t even a gasp, seemed only to embody despair. ‘I’m coming, Hermann. Please hold on. Watch out, too, eh? We’re not alone. He …’
Time had no meaning. Time had suddenly evaporated. One moved only when absolutely necessary and then solely by feel. One didn’t dare to show a light.
Hermann called out, ‘Louis!’ once again and louder. No answer was possible because none could be given. The stalls were not empty but cluttered with the parsimonious hoarding of the stable’s owner or past owners, the building no longer kept under lock and key, and yet things that could have found use had been left in place. Wooden water buckets, a scythe … Had one of the gardeners once stored things here? Frayed rope, a shovel, another and another—the police academy killing? St-Cyr had to ask—a rake, an axe and the instant relief of having found it first.
Had the owner a son? he wondered. Though Matron Aurore Aumont had stated that she hadn’t known if the girl had had any friends, Noëlle Jourdan had obviously known of the stable.
A side door gave out on to a slender passage, but did this lead to another courtyard, another house and then to the rue de Birague?
A breath was taken … Ah, sacré nom de nom, Hermann, our killer is standing in this passage, not a metre from me.
Down on his hands and knees in the loft, Kohler tried to steady himself. The blood was still hot and rushing from the throat, the wound from ear to ear. He knew her eyes would be open in shock, felt her nose, her lips. Giselle? he had to ask, for her hair had been worn short, worn just like this one’s, the shoulders were just as fine, the back, the seat, that gentle mound, all still clothed, the girl lying face down in a puddle of her draining.
I’m sorry, he tried to say but knew he mustn’t. Louis hadn’t answered him. Louis …
Softly St-Cyr drew back the Lebel’s hammer to full cock, knowing that this would be heard by the killer, knowing too that he had but one chance.
Plank by plank, he traced out the boards from that door to where he and the killer were standing, only the wall between them. Had the killer come alone? Had a Sûreté the right to shoot without first giving the challenge?
A breath came and he heard it, but it was closer now, much closer, and with it came another sound but …
‘IT WASN’T A CUTTHROAT, LOUIS!’
The hammer fell on a damp, dead cartridge. The hammer had to come back and fall again. The flash of fire momentarily blinded as boards splintered, the sound of the shot rolling away …
‘LOUIS!’ cried out Kohler.
The acrid stench of spent black powder filled the air. ‘I missed him, Hermann. He realized he’d been given a reprieve and took it. Those cartridges you got me from stores …’
Up in the loft, Louis took one look at her under torchlight and said, ‘You’re right, that was no cutthroat. Blood has shot a good metre from the end of that knife as he swung it away. Has he slaughtered sheep? She was on her hands and knees and trying to scramble away, was taken from behind, grabbed by the hair, the head yanked back as the throat was cut, and then … then was held down, clamped firmly between his knees as if on a farm or ranch until all motion had stopped.’
All quivering even. ‘Otherwise she might still have run for a little.’
Good for Hermann. Such a thing was definitely possible. ‘But she would never have made it down that ladder.’
‘Could well have pitched off the edge of the loft.’
‘He wanted us separated and realized that if she had fallen to the floor below, we wouldn’t have been.’
‘He’s trouble, Louis.’
‘Most definitely.’
‘And now?’
‘We must find him, but first the Jourdan flat again.’
‘He might have gone back there …’
‘Having anticipated that we would realize we had to.’
Ah, merde, trust Louis to have seen it: ‘If we are ever to find out how that girl came by the things she did.’
‘And what, exactly, that father of hers has been stating in his letters to former compagnons d’armes. Jourdan praised the girl for having let the press in to photograph Madame Guillaumet and cursed the hospital staff for admitting such women. He was all too ready to blame them for betraying their husbands.’
‘Spreading the gospel, was he?’
‘Enlisting support?’
‘But letters only within the zone occupée, Louis. It’s still forbidden to send anything south into the former zone libre.’
Even though the Occupier now occupied the whole country. ‘A campaign against wandering wives and fiancées of prisoners of war. Matron Aumont felt the girl’s attitude was that of the father who had raised Noëlle from the age of five, Hermann. Apparently when asked about her mother, the girl would only state that she was dead, but such hatred on the part of the father demands answer.’
‘As does everything else. Just what the hell are we really up against?’
It had best be said. ‘The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Noëlle Jourdan must somehow have been getting things from one of their warehouses, as must Delaroche. Where else could that girl have picked up those figurines, where else, the colonel, that Ysenbrant painting and other objets d’art in his office?’
The Rosenberg Task Force, the Aktion-M squads, the plunderers of the household furnishings and other items of deported, transported individuals. Whole families, many of them, and certainly not all had been poor. ‘But why steal the stamps back?’
‘Especially as we were not to have been assigned to that robbery.’
‘Chance having been allowed to play its part, eh? Chance, Louis.’
‘Fate, Hermann. Was it fate?’
‘But we were told to head on over to the Restaurant Drouant.’
‘Having been assigned to it and the Trinité, should assaults take place at both, which they definitely did.’
‘The Agence Vidocq must have learned of Boemelburg’s assigning us to blackout crime even before we did, Louis.’
‘They’re very well connected and have more than adequate sources of information …’
‘Boemelburg has always kept us busy and has so far been able to counter SS and Gestapo rank-and-file hatred of us, simply because he has to display some semblance of law and order but now Berlin aren’t just being adamant. They’re demanding his recall should he fail.’
‘Oberg wants an end to us and hires the agence to work with Sonja Remer, using Giselle as bait …’
‘But she doesn’t let them take her, Louis. She wouldn’t have. I’m certain of it.’
Hermann was no more certain than himself, felt St-Cyr, but shouldn’t be contradicted. ‘Berlin want the streets safe and an end to this plague of assaults …’
‘Otherwise it’s bad for the image. Even the Swiss are citing Paris as an example of how bad things can become, so the chief does what he always does.’
‘He unwittingly assigns us to the task.’
‘Not knowing what Oberg really wants because that one hasn’t quite told him.’
‘And Oberg might well want the POW wives to be targeted, Hermann, since they’re being held responsible for the huge increase in venereal disease the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht have been bitching about.’
‘And the Reichsführer Himmler wants to impress the Führer and the High Command so that it and the army, like everything else can be put better under an SS thumb.’
‘And Oberg wants to take over complete control of the French and Paris police. What better way, then, than to prove them utterly incapable of controlling the streets at night?’
‘He also wants Judge Rouget taught a damned good lesson, Louis.’
‘And hires the Agence Vidocq to take care of the matter?’
‘Or did he? Couldn’t the agence have had another reason?’
‘Élène Artur is forced to make a phone call concerning the police academy victim, indicating that the agence is responsible for both.’
‘But why kill her in a building you’ve a flat in, one you let your secretary use, unless there is another reason? Why not simply kill Élène out on the streets where some would say she had definitely belonged?’
‘Some like Vivienne Rouget?’
‘I think so.’
‘We’re going to have to keep an eye on Mademoiselle Dunand, Hermann.’
‘And on Oona and Giselle, if we can find her before it’s too late, eh? And on Adrienne Guillaumet and her kids, and on Marie-Léon Barrault and her daughter. Gaston Morel can take care of himself.’
‘Come on, then. Me first, Hermann.’
‘No, me, and that’s an order simply because I’m better at it than you.’
‘Then let’s not become separated, for I think we are dealing with one who will not hesitate because he and the others can’t afford to.’
‘And that’s what Oberg really wants.’
‘An end to us.’
The house at Number 25 was far quieter even than when they had first encountered it. Rainwater, piddled on the lower stairs, glistened under torchlight but didn’t leak from above. Shoulders rubbed as they touched each other, first Hermann going ahead, felt St-Cyr, and then himself, the one hesitating and then the other. Landing by landing, and not a sound. No further sign of the rainwater on the third floor except for that from themselves. Had this killer realized the splashes would give warning and removed his shoes and coat, even to rolling up his trouser legs to stop the leakage?
The door to the Jourdan flat was closed but hadn’t been left that way by them. The string was loosely looped around its nail, but this could easily have been done from inside and then the door closed.
Hermann fingered the string—had their killer a gun? he’d be wondering. The SS might have supplied the Agence Vidocq with them; alternatively such weapons could simply have not been turned in after the 1914–1918 war; alternatively, too, they could be purchased on the black market, either from one of the Occupier or from any number of others—the German troops on leave were notorious for selling things. Hence Sonja Remer’s Tokarev TT-33 could just as easily have come by that route but would have been bought with a purpose. Always there would be a purpose behind such an acquisition by the SS.
The string was teased from around the nail, the door given but the slightest of nudges.
‘He’s in there, Louis,’ said Hermann, his lips moving silently under finger-shielded torchlight. ‘We split. We have to even things up.’
Showing a light only meant showing a target and yes, there was little enough furniture to contend with. The table at which Jourdan had written his letters and neatly stacked them for the daughter to post was empty of all but its ink bottle, pen, blank paper, blank envelopes and loose stamps. A gerbil scurried across the floor and one could hear it rooting around in a tin box, but then even that sound ceased. Now only the rain hitting the windows could be heard.
Kohler knew, from the feel of it, that he was in the girl’s bedroom and not alone, but had the son of a bitch wanted to separate him from Louis again or had he been unable to lay his hands on what he’d not wanted them to find?
The blackout drapes were of doubled burlap, dyed black no doubt and with a dyed sheet behind them next to windows that would overlook the gardens. Along from the curtains, in a far corner against the wall, there was an armoire whose doors were open. Clothes had been scattered as if the search had been in haste and desperate.
A thin cardboard gift box had been discovered but had fallen to scatter its contents and tempt the unwary.
The throw rug under this debris had been made of woven rags.
He lifted the Walther P38 and took aim, the darkness all around them and complete.
‘He’s gone, Hermann. As quickly and decisively as he came.’
Noëlle Jourdan hadn’t had a lot. The mirrored doors of the armoire were losing their backing and gave reflections that appeared as if silver filings were being thrown at the viewer. The lower drawer had been yanked out and gone through, the box uncovered.
‘What was he after, Louis?’
‘Something that girl would have hidden from her father.’
It wasn’t under her pillows or under the mattress or in it, nor was it under the rug or behind the armoire. It was on top of this last and hidden behind the trim of a scalloped moulding.
The envelope was of plain brown kraft and when shaken out, gave photos of Jourdan and the girl’s mother at their wedding, 10 July 1914, in Nancy. There was another of the couple taken at the Gare du Nord on Jourdan’s return from being a POW, the sergeant evidently still in a lot of pain but proudly wearing his Croix de guerre and Médaille militaire.
‘His Légion d’honneur also, Hermann.’
Louis found the red ribbon he’d recovered from the police academy killing and momentarily put the two together as an old soldier should.
‘Did one of them borrow or buy it from her?’
‘She’d not have sold it, even if threatened, Hermann, but told me that one of the building’s children must have been in and taken it, and that she’d get it back.’
‘And the boy, the young man in these?’
At the age of seven and that of nine perhaps, Noëlle and her friend had been photographed by someone in front of the stable; at the age of ten and twelve they’d used one of the Photomaton booths at the Bon Marché to catch themselves holding hands, Noëlle not grinning, not smiling, the boy doing so and thinking it all a lark.
At the age of fifteen and seventeen, they’d kissed and recorded the event in secret; at the age of nineteen and twenty-one the young man had found himself a camera and film and had photographed her both alone and with himself last autumn in front of that same stable.
He’d money. He’d a good job by the look and yes, he’d not been called up, hadn’t become a POW. ‘Our academy victim, Hermann?’
‘The loft, then, for another look.’
‘Just give me a moment with Jourdan.’
Louis could examine a corpse for the longest time.
‘His papers are missing, Hermann. They weren’t in the right trouser pocket or his shirt pockets, nor under him, nor on the night table or in the overcoat the daughter would have had to help him into.’
‘Was he searched?’
‘I’m certain of it.’
‘Then he’s very thorough, this killer of ours, very quick thinking and …’
‘Wants definitely to keep us from seeing something.’
‘But what? We know they’re supposed to be working for Boemelburg and Oberg, know they’re supposed to be helping us put a stop to things.’
‘Yet are the cause of them, Hermann. It begs answer.’
‘Jourdan obviously would have been a member of the Grands Mutilés.’
The association of them. ‘But that, in itself, is no reason to take his papers. Flavien Garnier is a member of the Union Nationale des Combattants, which is ultraconservative and has within it a very right-wing, reactionary, collaborationist faction.’
‘Who would like to see the wives and fiancées of certain POWs punished?’
In the South, in the former Free Zone, and in spite of stiff opposition to their doing so, Pétain and his government had banned all previous veterans’ organizations and had squeezed them into one, the Légion Française des Combattants, but in the north, in the former and still ‘Occupied’ Zone, the Occupier had seen such a single group as a decided threat and had banned it but allowed all the others to remain much to Vichy’s displeasure and consternation.
‘Is it that the Agence Vidocq has its own agenda, Hermann?’
Neither that of the SS and Gestapo, nor even of Berlin and the Occupier at large, but of themselves. ‘And with their former commanding officer again telling them what to do?’
‘Perhaps, but ah, mais alors, alors, Hermann, in the South, the far right of the Légion Française des Combattants is also known for similar attitudes and denunciations.’
‘Especially if hidden valuables are involved, and women are to behave themselves, aren’t they?’ said Kohler. ‘They’re to stay at home where they belong, with the children no matter how tough things get.’
‘Most of us veterans wouldn’t be a party to targeting anyone, but many would, I think, find it difficult to forgive the wife who strays even after what has become such a prolonged absence.’
Every request by Pétain and his government in Vichy to let those million-and-a-half POWs return to France had fallen on stone-deaf ears. ‘A popular cause, then?’
‘One that would at least engender the tacit approval from many if nothing else. Noëlle Jourdan could call on shopkeepers, some of whom were veterans and probably fellow UNCs.’
‘Her father wrote to others and voilà not only are his papers missing but his most recent letters.’
‘Unless earlier posted by the daughter.’
‘And Adrienne Guillaumet is the wife of an officer, Louis.’
‘Whereas Madame Barrault is that of a common soldier, the Agence Vidocq making sure that we would be assigned to both.’
‘But why the Tokarev? Why not a Luger, a Lebel or any other?’
‘Why, indeed, unless such a weapon, having easily been obtained on the black market, and later left at the scene of yet another assault and murder, would definitely point the finger of blame at the Communists.’
The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans . ‘Along with the bodies of two honest detectives.’
There were a number of upright wine barrels in the loft, and among them one whose lid, when removed, yielded wood shavings and sawdust that were to protect the rest of the contents and give comfort to gerbils. ‘A terra-cotta nymph, dated 1784, Hermann, and signed by Joseph-Charles Marin. The boy in those photos with Noëlle Jourdan had good taste.’
‘A silver breadbasket, Louis. Russian, I think.’
‘Gilded and enamelled to give the appearance of its having been woven.’
‘A Fabergé egg.’
And another. ‘Jewellery, Hermann. Earrings, bracelets … No diamonds that I can see, only trinkets perhaps, but …’
‘Good goods all the same.’
And stolen.
The concierge of Number 2 place des Vosges was bundled up in pink kneesocks, pompom slippers and housecoat, and not about to be forthcoming.
‘WHY DO YOU ASK?’ she shrilled when shown one of the most recent snapshots of Noëlle Jourdan and friend.
The cat was clutched. Turning on the charm with this one wasn’t going to work, thought Kohler, but he’d try it anyway. ‘Look, it’s only a general inquiry.’
‘AT THIS HOUR?’
Incredulous at such a thought, she tossed the mangled heap of auburn curls with their bedtime twists of paper and threw still heavily made-up eyes to the ceiling. The damp fag end that clung to her lower lip miraculously remained in place. ‘Here, have one of these.’
A light was also offered but such politeness from the police should not be viewed with anything but suspicion, though the generosity was that of one of les Allemands, it was true, and he did speak French. ‘What is it you really want, Inspector? Has my little Max done something he shouldn’t?’
Max. ‘No, not at all.’
Had he done things in the past—was this what the inspector was now wondering? ‘He’s away in any case. In Lyon, on another pickup.’
Lyon. ‘It’s the girl we want to question, madame … ?’
‘Auger, Nina. And the madame is really quite immaterial since I was fool enough to have married him and mine went to his maker when that one was five years old.’
As did Noëlle Jourdan’s mother. The things one learned. ‘Life is never easy, is it?’
‘WHAT’S SHE DONE?’
‘Let some nosy photographer take some pictures.’
The Hôtel-Dieu. ‘Ah! I thought so. You didn’t find her with that father of hers?’
‘He said she’d gone out.’
‘With the curfew coming at us like an express train?’
Louis should have heard her but was arranging for the district’s iron man to photograph the victims and the local flics to secure the sites.
‘She’s a tease, you know,’ said Nina, flicking ash away from the cat that was now draped across the claw-frayed back of an armchair that should have been thrown out years ago. ‘Always the promise,’ she went on, ‘never the little capital. That father of hers would have killed her too, I think, if she’d let my boy have her.’
Gott im Himmel, she was a treasure, just like Bénédicte Mailloux, but a conspiratorial tone had best be used. ‘What, exactly, happened to her mother?’
‘Ah! who knows? Who can blame her for straying from such a man? The screams in the night, the agony of the shelling relived at the slightest bump and hour by hour. Mine was made of better stuff perhaps. Who’s to say? One day she had a fall and so did my Henri. Two places. The first in that house at Number 25, the second here in the stable out back and a little later. An accident, both of them.’
‘And the boy?’
‘Finally has a good job that pays well and has a future. The colonel saw to it. My husband’s colonel. Things are better now that les Allemands are here, of course, yourself included.’
Two further Gauloises bleues were laid on the slim oak counter of the loge she had ‘inherited’ from Henri, who’d been fucking Madame Mariette Jourdan up in that stable’s loft. Everyone had known of it. Everyone. Noëlle least of all.
‘Your son, madame. When do you think he’ll be back?’
‘Not for a few days. He’s often away on a job.’
‘A pickup, you said?’
‘Did I?’
‘Zut alors, I’m only trying to fill things in. My partner will ask. He’s a stickler for details.’
A partner … ‘Furniture and other household items. It’s a furniture company, isn’t it?’
‘Which one?’
‘The Lévitan. Very classy, you understand, very expensive in the old days, but a little something for everyone. Business must still be good.’
‘Furniture?’
‘That is just what I said, is it not?’
The Lévitan store was in the Faubourg Saint-Martin, in the Tenth, huge and with several warehouses and shops like carpentry ones, ah yes! ‘It was good of your son to come by and let you know he’d be away. Parents always worry, don’t they? Oh for sure, a mother most of all, but fathers too. I know I did.’
Did … ‘You have children?’
‘Had. Two boys, Jurgen and Hans, but … but they were both killed at Stalingrad.’
Hurriedly Nina crossed herself and kissed her fingertips but did this one with the terrible slash and the faded, warm blue eyes want more from her? ‘The boy didn’t come by. Always he is told at work if he is to be away, and I never hear of it until he’s back and worry just as you’ve said, but …’
He waited, this one. Gently he held D’Artagnan under the chin to look at him and then scratched him behind the ears as a cat lover does. ‘But Colonel Delaroche was passing by and thought to come in to tell me.’
‘Today?’
Why should it matter? ‘On Thursday afternoon. This last Thursday.’
Noëlle would have been at work. ‘That was good of him. Colonels are usually a bitch to put up with where I come from. Mine certainly were.’
He’d a nice smile, this inspector. Had he still a wife back home in that country of his? Was he lonely for her like so many of them were?
‘Merci, madame. You’ve been most helpful. I’d leave you some of my matches but am nearly out.’
‘And don’t have a lighter?’
‘You wouldn’t know where I could get one, would you?’
‘For a price, yes.’
‘And full of good fluid, not that black-market crap that singes the eyebrows and torches the clouds?’
‘Oui.’
‘How much?’
There would be no sense in this one’s haggling and he obviously knew the system well enough not to bother, but was offering to purchase, not threatening to steal. And weren’t friends needed, especially at such times as these?
Max wouldn’t mind, not really. Max would find her another. ‘Five hundred, I think.’
It was from Cartier’s, was easily worth thirty or forty times that and she knew it too, or knew something of it. ‘Here, take a thousand just to be on the safe side.’
Lost in thought, Louis fingered the lighter as they shared a cigarette in the Citroën, the darkness of place des Vosges all around them. The flics were taking their time in getting here and most probably were checking in with their headquarters at the Préfecture de Paris who would then check in with the rue des Saussaies, who would then do so with the avenue Foch, who would then notify the Höherer SS Oberg and maybe wake him up.
‘Did you tell her about her son, Hermann?’
‘I couldn’t. She deserves better, has had a hard life.’
‘Yes, yes, but …’
‘Verdammt, we needed information not tears. And as for her having earlier heard that shot of yours, forget it. That one would only have shrugged if asked, and sucked on her fag. You know as well as I that these days everyone clams up and no one admits to having heard a thing.’
‘Or seen anything.’
‘Why kill him if he was working for them?’
‘Them being the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg, Hermann.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘The Aktion-M squads? One of those furniture squads that go around the city and the country raiding the houses of its citizens?’
‘And clearing them out, even of their Jewish toothbrushes and long-handled shovels, this last if not borrowed from that stable? All right, I admit he must have broken the rules and could no longer be trusted, but why kill him in such a fashion and then let the press know of it?’
Hermann was far from being naïve and knew the answer well enough but was blaming himself for the sins of his confrères and desperately needed support. ‘To set an example for others, especially as the Agence Vidocq must use part-timers, but still, you’re right. To have killed him in such a rage begs answer just as it did with the passage de l’Hirondelle victim.’
‘Max Auger took the stamps, Louis, and must have shown them to Noëlle Jourdan.’
‘Who then took them to Félix Picard of Au Philatéliste Savant.’
‘Having first sized up the shop.’
‘Which can only mean that the girl was working with Max as his partner and fence, Hermann. If not the shop, then Ma Tante, but gradually so as not to arouse suspicion.’
‘Except that someone went looking for the collection and noticed that the stamps were no longer in the Lévitan’s former furniture store.’
‘Where the Aktion-M squads deposit the furnishings of countless homes for further sorting, packing, repairs, if necessary, and shipment.’
‘To the Reich, to party officials who’ve been bombed out or to others of them who are setting up house in the eastern territories.’
The first such shipment had been made in April of 1941, the second in October of that year, but in July of 1940, the Maréchal Pétain and his government in Vichy had passed a law allowing the sale of such confiscated property after six months had passed. All proceeds were then to have gone to the Secours National, which, in spite of continued protests from Pétain and others, hadn’t yet received a sou, nor would it. But Hermann would never taunt his partner with such complicity and collaboration on the part of this country’s government. Hermann was just too conscious of his partner’s feelings, especially at times like this.
‘We have to face it, Louis. The Agence Vidocq aren’t just working for themselves and Oberg, but also for the ERR.’
‘As are others, each supplying the ERR with targets.’
‘As well as giving the SS the names and locations of résistants.’
‘Business must be really good.’
‘And we’ve stepped right into it.’
A late supper was in progress, the Tour d’Argent that epitome of culinary majesty. Ach, mein Gott, how the other half lives, thought Kohler, taking it all in from behind the grill of the patron’s cash desk and head waiter’s stand. Uniforms everywhere, beautiful Parisiennes too. BOFs, of course, in suits and ties, and Bonzen sporting their Nazi Party pins and gongs. Paris-based administrative types too … Dr. Karl Epting of the Deutsche Institut no less, with wife Alice, a Swiss, the legendary hostess entertaining another crowd of writers, artists and musicians: the latest going-away exchange group that would tour the Reich in the name of Kultur, not forced labour or worse, and no ration tickets needed here. Absolutely none. Would Epting even have heard that one of his part-time teachers had been savagely raped and beaten?
‘Messieurs …’ began the maître d’.
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté. Just go about your business and leave us to ours.’
‘But …’
‘No buts. Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central. Is this the register you keep the duck numbers in?’
It was. Pages dated from 1890 when the great Frédéric Delair had bought the place and started smothering six-week-old ducks brought all the way from the Vendée market at Challans. Every last one of them had been given a number. His canard à la presse ou canard au sang. Both the same. Pressed duck or duck with blood.
‘Hermann …’
A battery of silver presses was available, the front row tables next to the heavily draped windows best for viewing as sous-chefs screwed the briefly roasted creatures down. ‘Twenty minutes in a hot oven, Louis. Slice the filets thinly, then squeeze hell out of the carcass to catch the blood. Add a dash of lemon juice, if such is still available, a little salt and pepper, spices—only the current chef knows the alchemy of those—the mashed raw liver of yet another duck, though, and a touch of Madeira, a glass of good port—nothing but the best champagne aussi, the Heidsieck perhaps, or the Dom Pérignon—and cook for another …’
‘Yes, yes, Hermann. Twenty-five minutes and don’t you dare take any more of that Benzedrine.’
‘Serve piping hot from a silver plate, but don’t boil the juice. Look, Louis. The Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia ate number 6,043 in 1900; King Alfonso XIII of Spain bit into number 40,362 in 1914 just as we were pulling on our boots and saying our prayers and good-byes to loved ones. Hirohito, Emperor of Japan, had number 53,211 in June of 1921, so why is he now an ally of the Reich?’
‘HERMANN …’
‘Franklin Delano Roosevelt ate number 112,151,******* though, in 1929. I hope he enjoyed it. Göring … The Reichsmarschall and head of the Luftwaffe had numbers … Ach, I always wondered how many times that one had caused young ducks to be smothered. Ten … fifteen … Surely a trencherman and avid art buyer like Göring wouldn’t have passed this place up?’
‘HERMANN, WE SIMPLY HAVEN’T TIME!’
The restaurant would have been taken over had the owners refused to cooperate and closed the place back in June of 1940. ‘Oh, sorry, Chief. I was just curious and trying to keep myself sane and not worry about Giselle. Found them, have you?’
‘Table thirty. Monsieur …’ Louis turned to the maître d’. ‘If you or any of your staff so much as clear away, I will personally empty my revolver into the ceiling. This is a murder inquiry and my partner and myself have had it up to here.’
‘With bodies,’ confided Kohler, pulling down his lower left eyelid to buttonhole the starched shirt and tails. ‘Young girls who had all of their lives ahead of them, grands mutilés, dancers, boys. Bring us two chairs and hurry.’
‘But … but, please, Inspectors. Madame Rouget has a bad heart. Could it not wait a little? Surely they can have nothing whatsoever to do with …’
Louis let him have it. ‘They have everything to do with our inquiries.’
‘But it is Monsieur le Juge’s birthday celebration?’
‘Then that makes it even better.’
Not bothering to remove that fedora or overcoat, Louis started in among the tables, a dark-blue, gold-lettered Vuitton leather secretarial case tucked under each arm like a government accountant on a tax fraud. Records … case histories that Denise Rouget had brought home from work and that the judge’s sleepy-eyed little maid of all work, having been awakened, had not been able to prevent them from ‘borrowing’ from the entrance hall’s table when they had called at the house to find that he was here.
‘Judge Rouget? Judge Hercule Rouget?’
Others were taking notice. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
Stung, Louis tossed that head of his. ‘The meaning? There’s the body of a dancer in that flat you keep on the rue La Boétie, Judge. We understand that you knew her well.’
‘How dare you?’
‘Élène Artur …’ gasped Vivienne Rouget, unable to prevent the name from escaping.
Quickly the daughter laid a hand over that of her mother, Germaine de Brisac—it must be her, thought Kohler—taking the other. Two very well-dressed, beautiful girls in their mid- to late thirties. Friends for life, ardent social workers. The first, brown-eyed like the father, but not mud-brown, the second with fabulous green eyes and absolutely perfect reddish-blonde hair and what else? he asked and had to admit, she’s uncertain and damned afraid.
‘A few questions, Judge. Nothing difficult. We’ll save those for later,’ said Louis, clearing the plates and glasses aside to set down the cases. ‘But first, Mademoiselle Denise Rouget, I gather from questioning the family’s maid that it was your custom to bring such records home.’
‘My daughter’s caseload is heavy, Inspector. Would you not want her to go over things in the evening in preparation for each following day’s interviews?’
A cool one when the chips were down. ‘Ah! Bien sûr, madame. It’s perfectly understandable. It’s just that …’
‘Well?’
‘May I? It helps the thoughts and makes what I have to say easier.’
Pipe, tobacco pouch and matches came out. Ignored, the judge was far from happy but conscious of the Walther P38 that had been laid on the table and was pointing at him.
‘Hermann, be so good as to check on our Trinité victim. The Hôtel-Dieu is just along the quai de la Tournelle and across the pont de l’Archevêché. Take the first turning to your left when you are on the Île de la Cité. That will lead you quickly to place du Parvis and the hospital. It’s dark outside, but … Ah! I hate to ask it, Mademoiselle de Brisac, but would you be so kind as to show him the way? A few moments of your time. Nothing much, I assure you.’
‘But required of me, is that it?’
Must beauty come in so many forms? ‘Oui, and please don’t bother to argue, Judge. This party of yours is now over.’
Louis had seen it too. The judge’s birthday present.