Sandman (47 page)

They left the kitchen and took the steep, narrow staircase on and up – they didn't want to. He's armed and dangerous, they would have said if they could have found the words. Their heads were buzzing so hard from the fumes and the dizziness, it was all they could do not to bolt and run, to gag and clear the street.

The Empire bed was huge and sturdy and heaped with rumpled covers. No one hid in the massive Breton armoire that held the woman's clothing. No one was in the spare room, a nursery perhaps in bygone days or a tiny sitting-room, but now jammed with suitcases and the bits and pieces from the mistress's former flat.

The bathtub on its four cast-iron legs had been painted green too many years ago. The geraniums were wilted, the towels cold.

Kohler nodded towards a shuttered door. Louis saw him do so in the gilded mirror above the tub.

Shots would be exchanged out on that roof – there was no hope of preventing them. Hermann ducked out on to the little porch where in summer the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper would have sunned herself or cooled herself after a bath, her lover too. He slipped and fell, went down hard, the Walther P38 banging off two rounds as he rolled aside and threw himself behind a low railing that was lined with stone planters.

Nothing … there was no answering fire. ‘I thought …' he blurted.

‘You thought incorrectly, so did I.'

They heard the Citroën start up – hell, there were so few cars in Paris that wasn't hard to do – and when it left the street where they had parked it, they knew he had taken it.

‘The keys,' swore Kohler. ‘I put them under the driver's seat when I got our guns.'

‘
Idiot! Now what
?'

‘We find us a telephone and call the bomb-disposal boys, but first we turn off that hotplate before the soup boils dry.'

Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire lay under the covers, bound hand and foot and gagged. A not unpleasant-looking young woman, she was furious at what had happened to her and embarrassed that anyone should see her wearing four heavy flannelette nightgowns, two sweaters, three pairs of thick woollen kneesocks and gloves, her auburn hair put up in
papillotes
for the night, her eyes weeping from the fumes.

‘
Bâtards
!' she shrilled when released. ‘
Who the hell are you, and who the hell was he
?'

The hands of caution were raised and she was told the street would have to do for the moment, and quickly.

Hermann almost kicked over one of the little bottles. It had been left for them on the doorstep. Sickened, he watched as the woman paled and sucked in a breath. Tears streamed from her. A lower lip quivered. ‘No one told me this would happen,' she blurted. ‘He's
crazy
! He said that if I knew what was good for me, I should lie very still.'

The quartier Saint-Marcel had been cleared of every living soul but those of the Wehrmacht's bomb-disposal unit. The Café of the Deceiving Cat, on the avenue des Gobelins, was teeming with disenchanted residents and merchants all shouting about Sûreté incompetence and loss of income. The Gestapo never got publicly blamed.
Never
!

‘By five o'clock it'll be in all the newspapers,' sighed Kohler ruefully. ‘Hero boils it up. Shots exchanged. Sûreté car stolen in getaway.'

‘They'll make a living legend of him,' said Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire, her soft brown eyes clouded with worry, hesitantly cradling her ‘
café au lait'
, no milk, no sugar, no coffee but hot. With the paper curlers removed and her hair combed, she looked a little better but was far from sure of things.

‘Why not go and find the car, Hermann? Try the quartier de l'Europe. He may have friends there. He can't drive around, not for long.'

Louis wanted to be alone with the woman. ‘And if not there?'

The woman threw Louis an apprehensive glance, was watching everything.

‘The Avia Club Gym but I would prefer to be with you for any interviews.'

She took this in.

‘The Spade, ah yes. Okay, Chief. I'll find you back at the house on the rue Poliveau?'

As if on cue, the thud of a massive explosion several blocks away brought dust from the ceiling and everyone to a crouch.

Silence followed. It was as if the rain of rubble was still up in the sky and had yet to come down.

‘Ah Christ, Louis. Widows and orphans!'

Everyone began to move. A hand shot out and grabbed Suzanne-Cécilia by the arm; she threw the Sûreté a look of panic, more tears springing from her.

‘
Sit down
!' he ordered. ‘Hermann, go and find the car. Neither of us can do anything for them. It's impossible,
mon vieux
.'

‘Boemelburg, Louis. He'll demand hostages. He'll say it was a Resistance plot. Ah, hell!'

‘Calm down. We can only take it as it comes.'

‘That's what I'm afraid of.'

He left them then and they had a last glimpse of him agonizing over things on the boulevard. Like the soldier he had been, Hermann began to run towards the disaster knowing exactly what he'd find because he'd seen it all before.

‘My partner was a bomb-disposal expert, among other things, in the last war.'

Filled with despair, she darted her eyes away, and for a moment could not find her voice, then said abjectly, ‘You must know each other very well. What one thinks, the other is aware of.'

‘Usually, but not always, and he's the stubborn one. Now please, mademoiselle …'

She pulled her shoulders inwards to wrap the bathrobe about herself more tightly. Terrified by this new development, she said hollowly, ‘It's Madame Lemaire. My husband was killed in 1940 at Sedan. A woman has needs, Inspector. My Honoré left me no money but the widow's pension and, as we have no children and I'm too young to stay that way, I have to think of the future.'

‘Laviolette …' he muttered, passing her his handkerchief which she took with a faint, ‘
Merci
.' ‘It seems an odd choice. Your lives are so different, your interests … Do you share
anything
in common?'

Ah
Jésus, Jésus
, she said to herself, why must he ask a thing like that at a time like this? The house in pieces – had it really been the house? How many dead, and she the only tenant? The Gestapo would come for her – they would have to, yet here he was trying to distract her. ‘We … we met in the zoo. Clément would come to feed the animals – he knew we had little to give them and for him, it took him away from his wife on a Sunday afternoon and allowed him to exercise a kindness. I found him one day with oats he had gathered handful by handful in Normandy – can you imagine him doing such a thing?' Quickly she dried her eyes. ‘My zebras loved it, Inspector, and he genuinely loved them and was not at all like most who come to see them. And to think,' she sighed and shrugged and tried desperately to smile faintly, ‘he had brought the oats from far away. Not for himself, you understand, but for my animals.'

‘
Bon
. Compassion's rare these days. You met when, exactly?'

‘Inspector, is my private life suspect?'

‘Ah no. No of course not. I merely wish to establish why Monsieur Laviolette should leave the keys to that house in his private safe.'

Again she threw an anxious glance towards the street as if expecting the Gestapo momentarily.

‘They … the keys were with the deeds. For this, you must understand that Madame Laviolette holds him constantly under suspicion and frequently includes his private office and desk among her searchings.'

‘Henpecked, is he?'

‘The roots of your suspicions are deep, Inspector. Why is this, please?'

‘Just answer the questions.'

‘Or you will get angry with me, eh? Hey, monsieur, you're perturbed enough when it is
I
who have been subjected to such indignities, I …'

He wasn't having any of it. ‘
Yes
, then. He
is
henpecked and not just by that wife of his, by his four daughters, two of whom are married. They constantly examine every aspect of his life and criticize him amongst themselves.' She blew her nose.

Creases framed the frown she gave. Her lips were parted slightly as if she wondered, still, what he was thinking of her answers. The nose was not big or small but decidedly impish. The thick, auburn hair was a little less than shoulder length, in waves and curls, masses of them, and worn over the brow with only a part in the middle to all but hide her frown and emphasize her eyes.

‘Life on the sly with a thirty-two-year-old zoo-keeper and veterinary surgeon must be better,' he grunted. ‘Should they ever discover the affair, your Monsieur Laviolette will immediately blame his wife and daughters to their faces for having caused him to stray!'

Taken aback, she said softly, ‘He's not vindictive. Oh
bien sûr
, the house, it was an investment and not much – he wouldn't let me spend a sou fixing it. He always said she would only find out if he did. But …' She clutched the robe about her throat and tossed her head. ‘But he has made his promises and I believe he'll keep them.'

New laundry for the old and she beginning to distance herself from the explosion. ‘You're far too intelligent to believe it, Madame Lemaire. So when, please, did the two of you first meet?'

Ah damn him. ‘Last summer. 13 June.'

‘And he was feeding oats he had gathered in early summer to the zebras?'

Merde
! how could she have been so stupid? ‘He had purchased a small sack of last year's harvest from a farmer. I thought …' She shrugged. ‘Well, that you would understand that's what I meant.'

‘And when, exactly, did the affair begin?'

Laviolette would be questioned closely, therefore she had best answer as truthfully as possible. ‘The end of June,' she said. ‘I … I only make 650 a day, Inspector. It's not so much for a woman who does a man's job, is it? That's when we decided on our little arrangement. He wanted someone to live in the house, otherwise the authorities would have taken it over, isn't that so? It was close to my work. In a few minutes by bicycle, a little longer on foot, I could be there without the expense of the
métro
or
autobus
but now … now I don't know what I'll do. His wife is bound to find out. The press … Ah
nom de Dieu
, I had not thought of them.'

A study in contrasts, the expressions she gave in quick succession changed from firmness of resolve to doubt, hesitation and despair as she realized they had already mentioned the press.

‘The bolts on your side door, madame?' he said.

‘Pardon?' she managed, startled by this new direction.

‘Why were they left open? Ah
certainement
, the Gypsy had the key but there were two other bolts, one at the top, the other at the bottom. The owners of those old houses felt they never could take chances. The
cambrioleurs
of those days were tougher than they are today.'

The housebreakers … ‘The bolts stick in winter because the cold freezes the dampness in the wood, so I …' She shrugged. ‘I left them open, otherwise it would have been a window for me and those are – were, I should say – stuck tightly and shuttered also.'

She'd try to have an answer for everything. ‘Then only the key was necessary. The Gypsy entered at about 4 or 5 a.m. Did he have two suitcases or a rucksack – what, please?'

She drew back, and again threw a frantic look towards the street. ‘I … I wouldn't have known, would I? He wouldn't have carried all that loot upstairs. He'd have needed his hands, his wits …' Why was the Sûreté so suspicious of her?
Why
? she wondered anxiously. ‘I awoke to find a gun pressed under my chin and a hand clamped over my mouth. He was lying on top of me, Inspector.
Me
! Can you imagine what I thought? Ah! a woman's worst nightmare. He assured me that wasn't the case, and since he had the gun, I did not resist.'

The Inspector fiddled with the pipe he had taken out but had yet to pack with tobacco. He was waiting for her to add to what she'd just said and she knew that if she did, it would not be wise of her, but if she didn't, he'd believe her evasive. ‘He lit the candle I have beside my bed – or had, I should say. It's necessary to have such things due to the frequent electricity outages, is it not? He let me see him. He was tall and thin and blond and had the sharpest blue eyes of any man I've ever met. Swift, calculating – far ahead of my thoughts or anyone else's, I must think, and very sure of himself with women – with men, too, I suspect, though I cannot say for certain. The nicest smile, the gentlest hands.
Très caressant
, you understand, even when tying a vulnerable woman and gagging her.'

‘Yet he warned you to lie still.'

‘
Yes
!'

‘And when we left the house together, madame, you said on the doorstep …' St-Cyr flipped open his little black notebook. ‘“No one told me this would happen.”'

‘I … I didn't know what I was saying. I was angry. I was scared. I'd been put upon.'

‘
Who
was it that failed to warn you?'

‘No one. I'm not lying, Inspector. I've no reason to. How could I have?'

Ashen, she threw another glance at the street. He couldn't let her go. He had to keep an eye on her and keep her from the Gestapo. ‘And now you have no house or clothing beyond what you wear. Permit me, please, to offer the use of my house until you're settled once again.'

‘Is it that you wish to keep me a prisoner?'

‘Ah! of course not. The house is empty. There are two bedrooms and if I am ever there, you may lock your door and leave the key in the lock though, as a detective, I would not advise this elsewhere.'

‘Why is that, please?'

‘Because as every experienced housebreaker knows, such a key can easily be manipulated.'