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He squished his toes together. Memories of the rue Bènard kept coming back. Memories, too, of that girl Marianne St-Jacques and her foolish, foolish bravery, and of thirty hostages. Thirty of them!

He'd been to headquarters in search of Hermann only to find closed doors. Osias Pharand, who should have been screaming with territorial rage, had
refused
to see him. Walter Boemelburg had been ‘busy'.

Reports seemed unwanted, advice not freely given, the streets of Paris left waiting only for the assassin's knife. Vouvray had made them outcasts. Hermann and he had been pitched into the maelstrom and told to find the loot or else! Never mind the murders. M Antoine Audit must be running scared
and
not just because of an insignificant Resistance cell of young and dangerously careless hotheads.

No, my friend, he said as the hard-boiled eggs of the vélo-taxis passed through the eerie mist, Antoine Audit has much to lose.

The traffic took on more motion, the speed increasing as a horn blared angrily and he thought, he hoped that it was Hermann. But it was a white Bentley, and when it passed, showering a wall of water over him, Nicole de Rainvelle smiled and laughed and left her silk handkerchief in the gutter.

St-Cyr picked it up. Mirage … the perfume of Gabrielle Arcuri. ‘BASTARDS!' he screamed. ‘YOU LEAVE THAT ONE ALONE!'

Still quivering, he threw up a hand and whistled sharply. The vélo-taxi skidded as it swirved to avoid a cyclist and swung in to the kerb. ‘The corner of the boulevard Raspail and the rue du Cherche-Midi, and hurry,' he said. ‘
Hurry!
I have to get there.'

‘The prison?' gasped the girl, dismayed by the fare.

‘Just do as I say. Don't argue! I'm from the Sûreté. It's a matter of life and
death
, mademoiselle.
Death
!'

‘Ah no, the rue des Saussaies?' The dreaded rue des Saussaies! She swallowed. Drenched red curls were matted to her brow.

‘Look, just take me to the convent, eh?'

‘The convent! The
prison
, monsieur! Four hundred and sixty francs.'

Forty times the going rate! He thrust his bandaged hand at her and shouted, ‘It's getting wet, eh? I'll give you ten francs and that's an order!'

Gestapo! she said to herself.
Merde
, what was she to do?

The vélo was a converted antique settee of little value on wheels that wobbled. The cushions were, of course, soaking!

‘Drive on. Relax, eh? I'm sorry if I've upset you, mademoiselle. I'm on a murder investigation. Assassins are out to kill me and I have, alas, no weapon.'

She began to peddle much harder and, as they joined the flow, the casserole of the settee floated well enough.

Hostages … potential witnesses. Lafont and Bonny – had they killed those who might count, thereby eliminating critical information they themselves already knew?

Four murders … and where was Hermann? Had he followed up on Schraum? Had he found the warehouse where the corporal had worked? Had he managed anything at all on the collector of stuffed canaries?

Christabelle Audit could well have been killed by Captain Dupuis. The girl Mila Zavitz lent weight to this. Had her death not come to light, things might have been more difficult. Hers was the wild card every criminal dreaded, but it didn't quite fit. Ah no, it didn't.

Yet Mila Zavitz could well have looked in those two suitcases and been caught in the act by Charles Audit, Roland Minou or someone else. Except that Father Eugène had said the cases had been locked … But had they really been so? Had they? Ah,
Mon Dieu
, why couldn't this girl hurry? If only God would not mock His lonely detective so much, if only He would give but once, the kind whisper, the little benediction, not the sacrament of death by assassination! The witnesses …

‘Monsieur, we … we are almost at the corner of the boulevard Raspail. Could you … Would you, for my sake? I …'

He blinked. He saw the girl straddling her bike, still holding on to it by the handlebars and turned so as to face him.

They were on the rue du Cherche-Midi. ‘Monsieur …?' she said again.

St-Cyr heard himself saying, ‘Drive on. Don't be afraid. I won't be long and when I come out, I hope my clumsiness has not made me too late and that there will be two of us and one hundred francs for yourself.'

His rumpled fedora was soaked. The Sûreté looked like a tramp, except that the Nazis had all but ‘cleansed' the city of such people.

The rue du Cherche-Midi was in the sixth
arrondissement.
In better times St-Cyr would have thought it a pleasurable journey back into the seventeenth century and if he could but shut his eyes as a cinematographer would, the tumult of those times would come readily enough. But, ah! one had so little time for life these days. The pleasurable lunch had practically vanished except from the lies of the cinemas where the crowds gathered to watch in rapture celluloid diners eating celluloid meals. The better the banquet, the greater the rapture.

The Prison of the Cherche-Midi beckoned. Even the blush of exertion had disappeared from the girl's cheeks. ‘Wait for us, please,' he said grimly. ‘We shouldn't be long.'

Her green eyes glanced uncertainly at the heavy door and though he hated himself for saying it, he felt he had to. ‘Please do not run off, mademoiselle. I have taken down your licence number.'

She crossed herself and he left her to the mist.

The prison had been a convent in the days of the Sun King. Its airless, windowless cells had found another use during the Revolution and ever since then it had kept that use, God having deserted the place along with the nuns.

‘St-Cyr of the Sûreté to see the prisoner Madame Gilbert. She was one of the hostages taken from the rue Polonceau after the shooting of the Corporal Schraum.'

She was the housekeeper at the Villa Audit.

The
flic
on duty took in the clothes, the rips in the overcoat, the leaking shoes. ‘Gilbert … Gilbert?' he said. ‘I seem to remember seeing that name, monsieur.'

‘It's Chief Inspector St-Cyr.'

‘Don't they pay you people any more?'

‘Not the honest ones, so don't get wise.'

‘Pneumonia then.'

‘The rue Lauriston?'
Nom de Jésus-Christ
! could nothing go right?

The
flic
got stiff. ‘That name does not pass my lips, Inspector. It was simply a case of double pneumonia. Paris in winter is the shits!'

‘Chantal, you must excuse my appearance. I have come the back way so as not to bring trouble to your door.'

She touched a blonde wave delicately, so delicately. A flutter. ‘But my poor Louis, you have hurt yourself! Ah, there is blood …'

He swept the hand behind his back. ‘My pardons, my pardons, please forgive me.'

That little bird from yesteryear, vivacious as always, had to fan herself as she sat down. St-Cyr said, ‘Please don't let it upset you, Chantal. A cat after a canary. Nothing more, I assure you. Merely a scratch.'

‘You are
wrong
to come to me in this … this state, Monsieur Louis! Your shoes, your trousers – that coat. Muriel … Muriel, a moment, please,' she called out urgently. ‘Ask one of the girls to join us. Louis, you must remove those things at once. Hurry! Hurry, I say. They stink. You need a bath.'

His ‘Forgive me,' sounded weak and lame. Unable to shrug out of the overcoat with ease, he was clumsy. ‘The hand … it really is nothing.'

A scratch! ‘What
have
you been doing?'

Chantal Grenier and her friend Muriel were both over seventy and had run their shop Enchantment on the place Vendôme for almost fifty years. Lingerie – silks, satins and lace, perfumes, bath oils and soaps.

‘Another murder case,' he apologized, handing the girl his coat but telling her please to empty the contents of its pockets on to the desk for him. ‘I must lose nothing, you understand.' She was really quite obliging, but then they all were.

The office was cluttered with bolts of material, books of fabric designs and samples, perfumes from everywhere, so many things the years had brought to light and they had stored. Muriel, in a severe grey pinstripe with wide lapels, smoked one of her endless cigarettes, did the designing, the buying and made up the perfumes; Chantal, in flowered silk today, handled the sales, helped pick the trends, fought off the creditors when Muriel couldn't, which was seldom, and managed the staff, though Muriel always got to choose the girls.

‘Now the tie and shirt, Louis. We will find something to keep you warm.'

‘Me, I will retire to the bath, please. Your hospitality is more than I deserve but,' he gave the shrug of a vagrant on the run, ‘I have no place to call home at the moment.'

‘No place …' Those large brown eyes flicked apprehensively to Muriel's stern grey gaze. ‘You shall stay here, Louis. It is the least we can do.'

‘Make sure you clean the tub.' Muriel puffed on her cigarette. ‘
Don't
use the bath oil. It always leaves a ring.'

His wallet, keys and Sûreté bracelets were placed on the desk, his pipe, tobacco pouch, et cetera. ‘Shall I send the clothes out to be cleaned, Mademoiselle Grenier?' asked the girl who doubled, as did all the salesgirls, as lingerie mannequins.

‘Discreetly,' said the detective, Muriel giving her a nod that would have splintered a bank robber's knuckles.

A slightly wheedling tone entered Chantal's voice as the pencilled eyebrows took on what might have been construed as a frown if frowns had not long ago been known to be damaging. ‘I will make us some tea, Muriel. Let us send out for sandwiches and a little something to sweeten his tooth. Louis will want to talk to the both of us this time. He will need the knowledge you alone possess.'

Those clear brown eyes that missed nothing and were so sensitive, had already noticed among the trash of his pockets a half-filled crystal vial of perfume and a lipstick. Ah yes.

Muriel snorted. ‘When he's ready, dearest, and not before then!'

The bath was heaven. St-Cyr lowered himself into the suds and when, at a discreet knock, one of the mannequins asked if he would like his tobacco pouch and pipe, he said dreamily, ‘Yes … yes, you may bring them in.'

Muriel had lit the pipe for him. The girl wore nothing but Chantilly lace, an apology of sorts. She was not plump except in those parts where a little plumpness suited. ‘There is a cognac, too, Monsieur the Chief Inspector, a double.'

She touched the tip of a forefinger to remove a spilled droplet. ‘Please enjoy the bath for as long as you wish.'

Chantal and Muriel occupied the flat directly above the shop, as they had all these years. They owned the building, had lived through the times of war and those of the Depression, the inflation and the repeated devaluations of the franc. They had weathered a lot of storms together, those two, and they had done it exceptionally well.

He knew the shop would be full of high-ranking Germans and their French girlfriends and that neither Muriel nor Chantal would approve, but business was business and the Decree of 1940 had spelled out the rules. Business was, of course, booming, though many things were now becoming quite difficult to acquire. Silk especially unless, of course, one bought it on the black market or from German corporals who might fiddle on the side.

If, of course, Schraum had really been involved in such things to any great extent – Hermann would find that out. Hermann … where was he?

St-Cyr waved the pipe smoke away, reminding himself that Schraum must have been involved with coal and firewood and that these would have been how Victor Morande had first made contact with him.

Then why in the Name of Jesus did Lafont and Bonny have to question the housekeeper of that villa? Why had they had to kill her?

‘They don't trust us any more than we trust them. They must have wanted to silence her, or perhaps things simply went too far.'

‘Pardon, Monsieur the Chief Inspector?'

This one wore black right from her silk-stockinged legs to her garters, briefs and brassière. She had a generous smile and raven hair to match the undergarments that were not, of course, under anything!

‘Muriel has thought you might like another cognac, Monsieur the Chief Inspector. Please forgive us for disturbing your thoughts.'

Another apology? ‘Please thank her for me. She's being very kind.'

Perhaps an hour passed, perhaps a little more. Yet another mannequin, an auburn-haired girl this time, ducked her head discreetly round the door to inquire if a salmon pâté would suit?

She laid a pair of flecked beige tweed trousers over the back of a chair, then a new shirt, new woollen socks, a new tie and gold cufflinks.

She was wearing nothing. Another apology from Muriel! ‘Ah, Mon Dieu, you are like a gift from heaven, mademoiselle.'

The girl let him feast his warm brown eyes on her body as Muriel had requested. ‘You are to be forgiven, Monsieur the Chief Inspector. New shoes are on their way and should arrive after you have had your tea. The overcoat and hat will also be replaced as they are considered to be beyond repair and unworthy of a man of your calibre.'

A new man but one who was getting sleepier by the moment!

Muriel Barteaux laid the experience of her perfumer's eye on the vial that was nothing exceptional in the world of Laliquesque and showed a naked girl scenting her body in frosted glass among some leaves. ‘It is not new, Jean-Louis,' she said, and he thought he detected a speck in her eye.

The cigarette smouldered in its ashtray – the tenth or was it the twentieth? He had opened his heart to them, had told them everything connected with the case, well, almost everything. A few details here and there had been left out to protect Chantal's great sensitivity. Only by winning their absolute confidence could he ask what he needed to know.

‘I think it is one of Cartel's, or perhaps it is one of M Coty's earlier works. A perfume of …' She unscrewed the silver cap and removed the tiny glass stopper.