Carousel (7 page)

Reluctantly Lagace gave up the address. ‘Number 37. She has a room on the third floor. She … she rents out the rest of the flat to some friends so as to make ends meet. We … we met quite by accident in the Cemetery of Montparnasse, she to see her husband, me the wife and kids – the stones anyway. Not the bodies. They're all buried elsewhere but it's closer here, and for a small charge you can, if you know the right people, have a stone to remember.'

One was always learning. ‘What's her name?'

‘Marianne St-Jacques. Look, she's … she's only twenty-eight. An … an artist's model, that and part-time in a hat shop, but there's less of that work now so she has to do more of the modelling. Because there's no coal, she's got two days off. We were going to meet to –'

‘Georges, there was a murder.'

‘She didn't kill him and neither did I. I swear we didn't, Inspector.'

‘Look, I know that. It's the other murder I'm interested in.'

‘Oh, that one. Marianne won't know anything useful. You'd be wasting your time. She didn't come here all that much. I usually went to her place.'

‘Then what about yourself, eh? Did you see anything that might help us?'

‘Me? I'm far too busy fighting off the bitchers and the forgers to worry about what goes on across the street in that place. It's full of shits. Misers! who don't pay their bills.'

The forgers … the ration tickets for the bread, of course. It was happening all the time now.

‘At least I was too busy. Now …' He tossed his hands in despair. ‘Now I no longer have to care.'

‘Let me see what I can do.'

St-Cyr went back to the street. Twenty-nine of the hostages had been taken. Only the tidying-up remained.

Boemelburg was sitting in the back of the Daimler, Hermann in the front with the driver.

The window was rolled down. ‘Well, Louis?'

‘Walter …'

‘Herr Sturmbannführer, if you please.'

‘Sorry. Herr Sturmbannführer, regardless of what the man knows, he is responsible for supplying the local barracks with their bread. It would be better not to choose him.'

‘Then who do you suggest, Louis? Pick one. Any one, only hurry it up.'

Kohler found the old man with the pigeons. ‘This one, Herr Sturmbannführer. Take this one.'

The car rolled away. The street held its silence, immobile as a carousel before the gears began to mesh.

Louis, poor fool, was crying. ‘Come on. Let's go and get something to eat.'

The music had begun.

‘Two eggs on horseback, the split-pea and ham soup, the sausage, lentils, cabbage and beer. Bread and borsch on the side.'

Poised on the balls of his tiny feet, Rudi Sturmbacher took the order with gusto. A Brown Shirt from the days of the Munich Putsch, a man with fists – a survivor – he had received his just reward.

Chez Rudi's was on the Champs-Élysées just across the avenue from the Lido through the naked branches of the chestnut trees. Right in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe itself – well, almost. A bustling place, now in its mid-morning quietude.

The ham-fat fingers stopped their scribbling. The small, pale-blue eyes blinked up and out from their red rims under thatches of ripened flax.

At 166 kilos Rudi wasn't losing any weight. Paris had been good. So, too, his little Julie and Yvette who took such care of their ‘big' Rudi. Big in the loins.

Greed and larceny brightened his eyes. A student of the black market, Hermann could usually be ‘touched' when necessary, but Hermann had cut himself. Mein Gott, the whip, it could do wonders!

‘And for your “friend”, my Hermann?' fluted the mountain, enjoying the sight of the stitches and the gossip they'd entail. ‘I regret there is no asparagus.'

‘What? No limp asparagus?' shouted Kohler. ‘
Gott im Himmel
, Rudi, I thought all things were possible under the Third Reich?'

The cook-proprietor let his voice fall to caution. ‘Some little things are beyond us, Hermann, but the Gestapo could always oblige?'

‘And change the seasons?' roared Kohler. ‘Give Louis the hero food, damn it! He needs feeding up.'

Another whisper came. ‘Or cutting down to size.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' asked Kohler darkly.

The grin was huge; Chez Rudi the centre of all gossip, a minefield of it. ‘That you are to enjoy your lunches, or your dinners.'

Or your breakfasts for that matter.

‘Hermann, must you?' groaned St-Cyr when the man had departed. ‘You know how I hate coming to this place. I cannot eat in any case.'

‘You'll eat because you have to, and that's an order.'

‘The Resistance … one of these days they'll hit it. Me, I would not like to have to scrape you off the walls.'

‘Relax. Rudi's okay. Try to get on his good side, eh? Use your charm, Louis. Oberg's on top of the wave, remember?'

‘He doesn't
eat
here.'

‘Of course he doesn't but we need to. Besides, you're out of ration tickets. Remind me to get you some.'

Two eggs on horseback … unheard of these days unless one ate in places such as this.

A few of the regulars sat about. An SS major was slumming with his coffee and
Berliner Tageblatt
, fresh in on the morning's Junkers JU-52. Were the papers getting thinner yet again?

A girl in a short black skirt, red silk jacket, cream blouse, gloves, chic grey-blue angora cloche and black stockings was sitting all alone over by the windows.

A girl with short, straight jet-black hair, strong, decisive brows, good hips, lips, legs and all the rest. About twenty-two or twenty-three. On her third or fourth cup of coffee and watching the street as if the window was a mirror.

‘She's waiting for me, Louis. We'll let her wait.' Kohler dragged out a vial. ‘Want some?' he asked.

Messerschmitt Benzedrine. ‘Take a couple and we can go for a full forty-eight.'

‘You'll not be of much use to her without them. No wonder you threw up your guts!'

‘Quit suffering. That
rafle
had to be. It was fate, Louis, just like I couldn't avoid meeting her. Here, come on, at least take them with you.'

He shook four of the capsules on to the red-and-white chequered tablecloth. ‘Two for you and two for me.'

With beer. Rudi was in the kitchen. His youngest sister, Helga, slung the suds, giving Hermann a knowing leer and tossing her round milkmaid's eyes towards the windows. Blonde braids and all. ‘She's nice, my little
liebling.
Very nice and anxious.'

‘Tell her to go away then. Louis and I have to talk. We're for it if we don't.'

‘Then let her wait.' Helga trailed teasing fingers over the collar of his coat, then, wetting her ruby lips, touched the wound across his cheek. ‘I like it, Hermann. When it heals it will look exactly like a duelling scar. You'll be able to lie about it.'

Her ample bosom rose. Everyone would know exactly how Hermann had received the gash.

She departed with a saucy flick of her chunky hips, the pale-blue workdress hugging her behind. One
did
have to get a man, a husband! And what better place than Paris? So many of the German women came.

‘They certainly know you here,' sighed the Frog.

‘And you too.'

A pair of sheer, dark-blue briefs with lace was dragged out of an overcoat pocket. A corner of the midnight négligé could not help but show itself.

At last Hermann found what he was looking for. Hunching forward, he lowered his voice in earnestness. ‘Louis, listen to me. As God is my witness, I'm going to tell you everything this time. Everything! I took these from the girl's room. I was going to show them to you anyway.'

A pair of gold and emerald earrings – were they really emeralds?

‘And these,' confessed the Gestapo. ‘A choker of pearls and a single strand of the same. That kid would have looked good in them, Louis. Not a stitch on but the pearls and those.'

The earrings.

The Bavarian nodded towards the windows. ‘Giselle, she's perfect for me, Louis. Just what I've been looking for.'

‘Our girl wasn't dark-haired, Hermann. She was a blonde.'

‘But …?'

‘Never mind. For now let's just chalk it up to experience, eh? Why did you keep these from me?'

‘Why else?' Kohler nodded towards the windows again. The girl had noticed the two of them, of course, but had turned quickly away when she saw them looking at her.

Wounded perhaps. Hurt in any case. ‘Go and talk to her, Hermann. It's all right. I, who now have only
three
murders to contemplate and who could be as old as that one's grandfather, forgive you. It's the times. Fighting with death brings out the worst in us.'

He gave the shrug of a priest in difficulty. ‘Oh by the way, my friend, did the other one have a purse too?'

The murdered girl. Kohler shook his head. ‘It must be some place, Louis. Probably with her papers.'

St-Cyr heard him say to Helga, ‘Hold the eggs on horseback. Give me five.'

‘Rudi won't like it. You know they're a specialty of the house.'

The house … Ah Mon Dieu, the arrogance of the Germans …

‘Then tell him to toss them out and start again. He'll understand. I want to watch my partner enjoying them.'

The pain of the
rafle
in the rue Polonceau began to ease. It would, of course, never go away – how could such a thing vanish?

Nor would the humiliation of being referred to as wet, limp asparagus by that Munich Brown Shirt.

Duty called to take him away from all such thoughts and he welcomed this with a sip of beer. The earrings were quite old. In his haste to pocket them, Hermann had failed to notice that they were far more than simply antique. Tiny gold platelets had been linked to each other to flash and dangle to single emeralds of perhaps three or four carats in weight and of a stunning depth of green. The cut was a tabled square, the ancient facets sharp if simplistic.

The gold platelets had been hammered. They were not precisely round, giving further evidence of great age.

Gold never quite lost its lustre. Inca? he wondered. Had the girl's ears been pierced? Ah now, that was a good question.

An anxious tremble passed through him. He wasn't sure about the ears. They'd have to check at the morgue. He hoped the body wouldn't be disposed of too soon. Surely they'd keep it around for a day or two unless …

Hermann was earnestly explaining things to his girlfriend who was trying not to cry. Rudi had come out of his kitchen …

The SS major had taken an interest in things.

Closing a fist about the earrings, St-Cyr slipped them away, adding the pearls too. As if the moment had been suspended, he saw the other girl lying naked on her back in that room with the coins scattered about her.

Christiane Baudelaire had been expecting someone. Madame Minou had been listening to the BBC Free French Broadcast from London.

A Wehrmacht corporal had been killed in the rue Polonceau or was then but a few brief hours from his death.

The operator of the carousel on the slopes of the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont had already been killed and Madame Minou, when forced to witness the corpse, had been worried it might have been her son but had soon got over this.

The girl had kept a stuffed canary in a bureau drawer in that room. There had been a heavy elastic band around its wings but no need for this.

The earrings … why had she had them? A girl like that, in a room like that?

It was a case, a puzzle, a
real
murder – he knew this now. A crime of passion? Ah no, not in the strictest sense, though hatred must have entered into the savagery of her killing and rape.

The two would have occurred almost simultaneously. A matter which must have taken some skill.

An unpleasant thought. Ah yes. Most unpleasant, as was the coin someone had placed on her forehead.

‘Louis, eat your eggs on horseback.'

Rudi Sturmbacher waited for the verdict. There was a butcher knife in his right hand, a frown …

Each egg covered a layer of shaved Gruyère whose partially melted nest lay atop a thick slice of
pain miel
, of honey bread, the whole concoction toasted in a very hot oven so as to congeal and firm the white of the egg but leave the yolk loose and molten as a summer's sun.

‘In the Name of Jesus, Rudi, me, I have never tasted better.'

The asparagus had meant it too. ‘From now on you're one of us,' roared the mountain, grasping him by the shoulder. ‘Helga, did you hear that? Louis likes them.'

Sometimes it was so easy to flatter the Nazis.

The split-pea and ham soup came – it, too, was good.
Superbe! Magnifique
! As were the sausages and all the rest, so the flattery had not been misplaced after all.

And he did not regret it. One must be honest in war, even more so than in peace.

Food brought out the sage.

The girl, Giselle, sat quietly between them at the table's side, taking morsels from Hermann's fork between sips of ice-cold Chablis. It was really quite a joy to see the slashed-up detective-grandfather with her. But the girl's magnificent violet eyes were wary, full of moisture, not joy. Guilt drove her to the Chablis; fear to the morsels.

The rosy blush young girls get in winter when excited was not there.

St-Cyr lost himself in the sausage with lentils. He'd leave the cabbage and the borsch. He'd eat a little more lightly now, but damn the girl for spoiling what would have been a decent meal. What the devil was the matter with her? Uncertainty over Hermann? That fear of love lost when the security it provided was so necessary these days?

Had her pimp warned her to seek out Hermann or else?

The Gestapo's detective showed no signs of noticing anything. Sparrow to the proffered fork, the girl pecked at another morsel – a bit of sausage dripping applesauce. Was she eating for two? Was that it? These days so many young and not so young girls ate for two.