Tapestry (16 page)

‘Of course, but didn’t he ask how much the fare would be?’

‘Like most of them here, he couldn’t have cared less, even though he was French, and if you know anything, you will know what I mean by that.’

‘Tall or not?’

‘Not so tall that he reached the clouds like the one in London.’

Général Charles de Gaulle. ‘The accent?’

‘A
bac
.’

The
baccalauréat
and entrance to higher education.

‘A former military man, perhaps. These days the mothballs shouldn’t try to roll around so much in the armoire they get in the road of the mice and disturb them.’

The Résistance invariably wanted no part of such officers who, now that the war was turning, increasingly wanted to command them.

‘Though it was dark, Inspector, I could see that he stood like a soldier,’ said Vasseur.

‘Was he wearing his French army greatcoat and cap? You’d have smelled the wool.’

‘And the aftershave and tobacco, but he had asked me to hurry, and by the time we reached the intersection, I was worn out.’

‘One can’t argue with such, Inspector,’ said one of the others. ‘His boots, Albert. Tell him.’

‘Were hobnailed. What else would one have expected?’

‘And?’

‘The red ribbon,’ admitted Vasseur. ‘When one sees it, one obeys, isn’t that so?’

‘You shone your light at him?’

‘Briefly, but not in the face. The ribbon stopped me from lifting the light further and when he asked me to bring him right back here, I didn’t argue.’

‘The times, please, as close as possible?’

‘Times?’ arched Vasseur. ‘I don’t have a watch. I had to sell it to one of our “friends” to make ends meet.’

‘Then how could you possibly have known how to be on time when picking up Madame Guillaumet at that school?’

‘I ask others. I have to. I asked him too. We got back here at seven thirty-eight.’

Leaving lots of time for the urinal and the first of the others to steal the taxi and get to the École Centrale, but not enough for the one with the red ribbon to reach the police academy unless he had had a car and therefore friends in high places. ‘Where did Madame Guillaumet arrange for you to take her?’

This Sûreté wasn’t going to like the answer. ‘Fifteen place Vendôme.’

‘The Ritz?’

Was it so surprising, given what many of the wives of prisoners of war were doing, even those of officers? ‘It has no other address, has it?’

One of several homes away from home for visiting generals and others of high rank from the Reich. ‘Were you to have waited there for her?’

There would have been plenty of other taxis she could have taken after her little liaison, but this one must know the stepsister of Gaston Morel’s wife had sent the woman to him and that he would have had to wait. ‘ “The half-hour, the three-quarters of an hour,” she said. She didn’t know exactly how long it would take, but felt not too long. She was worried about leaving her children alone at home and said, “I’ve never done anything like this before.” ’

But had she? Didn’t the wife who was having an illicit love affair often worry about her children? wondered St-Cyr. His wife had, his Marianne.

Hermann wasn’t going to like what had turned up but where was he?

The judge was still not happy, the rise in blackout crime due entirely to the ineptitude of the police and a total lack of moral fibre among the citizenry in the face of hard times. The salon and adjoining study, however, were draped in the tassels of a cushioned
fin de siècle
.

‘Delinquents, Kohler,’ he went on. ‘Girls as young as thirteen.’ He gave the daughter a stern glance. ‘Boys of ten. Not a week ago the savage mugging of a
Blitzmädel
in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Four of them attacked her. While the one shoved her back on to the toilet, another snatched her cap away, another the handbag, the last one darting in to pummel her breasts and yank her hair. Bruises, I tell you. Bruises, Kohler.’

Mein Gott
, Rudi hadn’t been the only one to know of it!

‘ “Boche pig,” they shouted,’ continued Rouget. ‘ “Fascist scum! Communist-killer! Go home where you belong.” ’

He’d take a breath now, decided Rouget. He’d show this Kripo how lawless the city had become. ‘I ask you, Kohler. What, please, would you do if you were me, when these boys were brought before you? Understand that when cornered, one of them brandished a knife.’

Louis’s boys … The cognac, normally long in its breath, burned the throat, the Choix Supreme offering no comfort. The judge, wife and daughter were all watching him closely. Madame Rouget—Vivienne, he reminded himself—having taken command of things had suddenly lost it with the judge’s opening barrage and now sat so tensely, she was unaware of constantly picking at her fingernails, the daughter sitting like a harried little mouse, but something would have to be said. ‘Judge, my partner and I haven’t yet been briefed on the assault. We’ve been kept busy ever since we got in last night.’

‘We’ll come to that.’

‘Was this
Blitzmädel
able to give the investigating police accurate descriptions of the boys?’

Had it been a plea for extenuating circumstances? ‘Surely you must be aware, Kohler, that in such cases everything happens far too quickly. The girl was in shock—
mon Dieu,
who wouldn’t have been? Her stockings were ruined.’

‘Yes, but …’

Was it clemency Kohler wanted? ‘They will be caught. They will definitely be brought before me along with their parents. Communists, are they? The Höherer-SS and Polizeiführer Karl Oberg is insisting on the severest of sentences and will expect it of me. A uniform has been disgraced. It’s no small matter.’

Uniforms were sacred and, yes, Oberg did have designs on taking over the French police, but … ‘Judge, just how sure are you that the girl was threatened with a knife?’

‘Very. Two days ago I was in Karl’s office to discuss another matter. He had the girl brought in to tell me herself. He’s being considerate, I must say, and doesn’t want the case publicized until it’s settled. Now what, exactly, was it that you wanted to ask my daughter?’

‘Yes, please do ask,’ breathed Vivienne.

Whereas the judge was corpulent and big-boned, the wife was delicate and definitely one of
les hautes
, yet defiantly wary and absolutely under that one’s thumb—was that it, eh? The soft auburn hair was worn swept up and back. The eyebrows were perfect, the eyes not mud-brown like the judge’s but azure, the lips tight as a quick breath was impatiently held, the chin defiant under a scrutiny she didn’t appreciate.

‘Inspector, I asked you to tell us,’ she said.

‘
Ah, bon
, madame. For some reason your daughter, having arranged for two of last night’s victims to meet in the afternoon at the Café de la Paix, chose not to be present. I’d like to know why.’

Had Hercule not put him in his place? wondered Vivienne. ‘There was no reason for her to have been present. Madame Guillaumet needed a
vélo-taxi
driver she could depend on; Madame Barrault knew of such a one.’

But was it as simple as that?

The judge, as if deliberating in court, had bowed his head to study knitted hands that could well have been those of a plumber. The double chin and jowls drooped, the forehead was wide and high, the jet-black, greying hair well oiled and combed back to frame the grimmest of countenances, the full lips drawn into a pout, the eyes half-closed, so deep was he in thought and waiting for detective questions.

‘Madame, how was it that your daughter even
knew
Madame Barrault would be familiar with that café or know of the taxi driver?’

‘Henriette …’ began the daughter, like a frightened little mouse.

‘Denise, let me,’ said the mother firmly. ‘Madame Henriette Morel has many times informed my daughter of that woman’s “familiarity” with the café, Inspector, and the company that stepsister of hers chooses to keep. It seemed the most suitable of rendezvous. Denise merely put forward the suggestion to both women during each of their respective counselling interviews.’

‘I’m with the SN, Inspector. I’m …’

‘Denise, offer nothing. Your mother is before the bench.’

‘Papa …’

‘Daughter, hold your tongue.’

‘Hercule,
please,
’ said Vivienne. ‘I must be allowed to continue. Denise has advanced degrees in social work, Inspector, and is employed by the Famille du Prisonnier
,
which is now under the Secours National, the National Help, whose Maison du Prisonnier is on
place
Clichy.’

The
maisons
, though few and far between, were one of those rare places where the wives of prisoners of war could go for help they invariably wouldn’t get, but what the hell was bothering this little family other than the immediate presence of an uninvited Kripo?

‘I have my office there, Inspector. Madame Morel drops in from time to time.’

‘She makes a nuisance of herself and is not of our class,’ said the mother, raising a forefinger to silence the daughter. ‘Her stepsister is a good twenty years younger and quite naturally the woman is concerned.’

‘Marie-Léon Barrault hasn’t been sleeping well,’ offered the daughter stubbornly.

‘Worried about her husband, is she?’

Would Herr Kohler really understand? wondered Denise. ‘They all are. Certainly those who have been …’

‘Running around?’

‘Denise, did I not instruct you?’ demanded the judge.

‘Judge, leave it,’ said Kohler with a sigh, and then …

Vivienne waited.

‘Just how certain are you, mademoiselle, that Madame Barrault and Madame Guillaumet were really up to mischief behind their husbands’ backs?’

‘Denise thinks …’

‘Let her answer, madame. You, too, Judge.’

‘Adultery is a very serious crime, Kohler, for which the
maréchal
and our government in Vichy have seen fit to strengthen the law.’

They had done so in 1942 and had made it stiff for the delinquent wife, not nearly so for the husband even if he wasn’t away on holiday in the Reich, but would nothing shut the judge up?

‘Please do not forget that there are more than one-and-a-half million of our boys in your prisoner-of-war camps, Kohler. Fully sixty percent of them are married; most between the ages of twenty and forty, so their wives are also young but have urges they can’t seem to control.’

‘Urges …’ muttered Vivienne, only to silence herself.

‘Forty percent of them have children,’ managed the daughter timidly. ‘Sometimes six, sometimes as many as ten. Madame Guillaumet …’

‘In the départment de la Seine alone, Kohler, the number of
clandestines
on the streets has tripled to nearly six thousand. Oh for sure there are the card-carrying
putains
as well, about four thousand. The figures vary from day to day.’

‘But not the demand, Judge?’ There were at
least
ten thousand streetwalkers in Paris alone, to say nothing of the girls in the legalized brothels.

‘Kohler, this interview is over.’

‘Not yet. And Madame Guillaumet, mademoiselle? You were about to enlighten me.’

Papa
was going to be very angry,
Maman
not happy with her response, but Herr Kohler and his French partner had found the woman and must have seen what had happened to her. ‘I’m not really certain about her, Inspector. Though there has been some evidence, I would like more before judging her so harshly, but with Madame Barrault … Henriette—that is, Madame Morel—is certain her stepsister and her husband are having an affair.’

There, the disgraceful filth was finely out, sighed Vivienne inwardly, but had Herr Kohler been convinced of it?

‘Many times Madame Morel has spoken to me of her concerns, Inspector,’ went on the daughter, having gained a little self-confidence. ‘I really had no other choice but to look into the matter and did so.’

‘
Ah, bon
, and how was that looking-into done?’

‘Denise had the woman followed,’ grunted Rouget.

And wouldn’t you know it. ‘That can’t be in the mandate of the Famille du Prisonniers’s social workers, Judge. Who paid for the
détective privé
? I assume one was engaged?’

‘Madame Morel,’ managed the daughter. ‘Cost, it … it was no object.’

And wouldn’t you know that too. ‘And the recipients of this largesse?’

‘Kohler, this has gone far enough. My daughter has done nothing wrong. She has only acted in the best interests of a wife who is being subjected constantly to the infidelities of a husband who should know better.’

‘Be that as it may, Judge, just let your daughter answer.’

‘Or you will attempt to take her in for questioning?’

‘You said it, I didn’t.’

He would have to be told, decided Vivienne, but it had best come from herself. ‘The Agence Vidocq de Recherches Privées, Inspector. A Monsieur Flavien Garnier, but only after repeated offences and at the insistence of Henriette Morel.’

Vidocq, a convicted criminal among other things, had been the first to head up the forerunner of the Paris Sûreté, itself preceding the Police Judiciaire, the criminal investigative branch. An arch blabbermouth, he had then founded the first agency of private detectives and had published his memoirs and made a fortune. In 1840 he had moved his agency to the Second Arrondissement and near the Bourse and the Bank of France, and not far from the Opéra, and into posh headquarters in, yes, the Galerie Vivienne, and if that wasn’t a coincidence, what was?

‘And the address of this agency now?’ he asked.

Should she pause and bait him with the silence? wondered Vivienne, especially as it was another coincidence, he having digested the first of them. ‘The Arcade de le Champs-Élysées.’

The Lido had an entrance off that arcade and hadn’t the press blabbed on and on about a call having been made from there about a murder at the police academy
,
and hadn’t Madame Rouget known all about it?

‘M. Garnier has often seen Madame Barrault leave the table first at the Café de la Paix, Inspector,’ said the daughter, her voice one hell of a lot firmer now that the news was out. ‘She doesn’t always go home, you understand, but often into the Hôtel Grand to take the lift.’