Tapestry (29 page)

Bob sat on two of the chairs nearest to that master of his and watched the girls from this distance. He didn’t bark, seemed oblivious to the brassy racket from the orchestra and that from the crowd, was mesmerized apparently by the lights and the action.

Wehrmacht boys were everywhere, several with their
petites amies
. BOFs, too, and other black marketeers and
collabos
. Maybe a ratio of eight from home to two of the French, the club filling up fast and no different than any other in this regard.

‘Bob has impressive control, Colonel. You’ve trained him superbly.’

Just what was Kohler after and where the hell was that partner of his? wondered Delaroche, though he’d have to smile and affably say, ‘You’ve no idea how good Bob is for business. Prospective clients, especially the women, take one look at him and are not only reassured but convinced. The younger they are, the harder they fall—isn’t that right,
mon vieux
?’

Bob agreed. Husbands would fool around; wives would demand answers, or vice versa. ‘A fortune, that it, Colonel?’

‘Hardly. A good living, though. Surely you must have thought of going into business for yourself?’ Delaroche turned to a waitress. ‘Angèle,
ma belle,
would you be so good as to bring Herr Kohler a little something from Munich? The Spaten Dunkel. It’s fresh in today, Kohler.’

‘
Et pour vous, mon cher
colonel?’ brown eyes asked.

‘The usual.’

‘
Un double de
Byrrh. Is that not correct?’

Jésus, merde alors
, those bedroom eyes of hers would have melted butter.

‘Bob, give Angèle her little gift. Now don’t be stingy.’

A five-hundred-franc bill was gently teased from a bankroll that would have impressed even the wealthiest, the girl taking it between her teeth, too, as she set her tray down to mother Bob, modestly tidy her halter straps and tuck the bill between her breasts.

‘It pays to keep them happy, Kohler. You’ve no idea the things girls like that can tell you.’

Cigarettes were offered and why not accept a couple? A light too.

Kohler blew smoke towards the ceiling and sat back to enjoy the show as if a regular without a care in the world but surely Boemelburg had let him know the Gestapo and the SS employed the
agence
from time to time and had been very satisfied with the results?

Oberg must have told the agency to work with Sonja Remer and to tail Giselle, thought Kohler, but had they found her, or had this one simply vented his rage in the
passage
de l’Hirondelle because they hadn’t? ‘Tell me about Lulu, Colonel.’

There was still no sign of St-Cyr. ‘Catherine-Élizabeth de Brisac is an old and much valued friend. Her husband, Paul, and I were at Gallipoli. The Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient. Kum Kale on the Asian shore, April twenty-fifth, 1915, a diversion that, though the only successful venture of that whole campaign, fooled no one. We then withdrew and went to assist the Australians and New Zealanders on the Peninsula. Brave boys, all of them, but a debacle. An absolute cockup. The damned British High Command let us down as they then did in 1940. One simply can’t trust the bastards. Pigheaded, incompetent, arrogant and dishonest. Undermanned and under-supplied, the Turks were savage, Mustapha Kemal Pasha absolutely brilliant. Paul de Brisac didn’t come home. I caught him as he fell.’

Their drinks came.
‘Salut,’
said Delaroche, raising his glass. ‘Byrrh had become our national
apéritif
even before that other war, Kohler, but do you know why?’

‘The colonies. The malaria and a need for quinine to be sweetened, else it wouldn’t be taken. Hence a dry, vermouth-style drink that caught on. Let’s cut the crap and the old soldier bit, Colonel. Élène Artur kidnapped Lulu.’

‘Such things happen all the time these days, don’t they? Leave one’s pet off the lead for a moment, or let the cat out, and
voilà,
it has vanished into the oven or the stew pot of another.’

‘Or the soup pot, given her
indochinoise
background and that of her mother, Colonel, but didn’t you realize Élène had taken her?’

Kohler had yet to mention the judge. ‘I didn’t. I did know of the trouble Lulu had been causing. Bob wasn’t the only dog to have suffered defending that girl and certainly Lulu could have benefitted a great deal from further training. Spoiled,
oh là, là,
but … Ah! what is one to do when asked by a friend of long standing who is in great distress? I immediately offered help. The Agence Vidocq was, as I have already stated, working on it.’

‘But not too hard. Élène must have kept Lulu alive until very recently. Maybe a guilty conscience, maybe she sincerely felt the dog was desperately needed by its owner.’

‘We haven’t charged Madame de Brissac a sou, nor will we. I had kept Bob away from the girls because of the fight he’d had down there with Lulu. Damn it, Kohler, Lulu had challenged Élène and had bitten the girl twice at least. Bob simply leaped in to defend her as he would have done for any of them.’

A real ladies’ dog but at other times, at least some of them, Élène, must have got on quite well with Lulu. ‘Now what are you going to tell Madame de Brissac?’

‘Nothing until it is absolutely clear to me.’

‘Lulu hated Judge Rouget, Colonel. Vivienne Rouget hired you to tail that husband of hers and not only find out who her Hercule was fucking but how serious things were.’

‘Where did you find that girl’s wedding ring?’

It couldn’t hurt to tell him, might even help to shake the son of a bitch. ‘Under a radiator.’

Out in the Arcade de Champs-Élysées the shoppers took their time, as Germans on leave would, while others hurried homeward, using the arcade as a short cut. Alone in the
agence
, St-Cyr waited beside Suzette Dunand’s desk. He had been about to switch on her lamp, had heard something against the foot traffic …

Ah! there it was again. Ever so gently the door was being tried. The bevelled bolt had come free … yes, yes, that lock had been successfully picked but now … now whoever it was discovered that the dead bolt had been engaged and since Colonel Delaroche had not returned to lock up, that could only mean the
agence
’s security was in the act of being breached.

There wouldn’t be time to do what had to be done, but there had to be something more than the
agence
just sharking the clients. Whoever it was might leave. There’d been no cries for a
flic
to come running, no pronouncements of a robbery in progress, simply a waiting for himself to try to slip away, but was there more than one of them out there?

Retreating, he felt his way through the pitch-darkness until he got to the corridor the girl had taken to the washroom, was hurrying now, found gold-rimmed porcelain cups and saucers and a coffeepot—Sèvres? he wondered—under the light switch. Everywhere he looked in this room he’d entered, there was a tidiness that troubled, a décor that didn’t fit the usual image of
détectives privés
but was clean of line, the furnishings very of the
nouveau riche
. A large desk with Lalique pen-and-ink stand, bronze figurines from the twenties. Several oil paintings hung on the walls—landscapes but also family portraits, some dating back more than a century. Surely these weren’t of relatives of M. Flavien Garnier or of M. Hubert Quevillon, whose names in bronze were apparent?

Everything spoke of money. There was none of what one would have expected, none of the stale tobacco smoke from endless Gauloises bleues, none of the sweat of the unwashed, the garlic, the cheap toilet water or cologne such individuals were wont to splash on themselves when in the urgency of plotting to seduce some suspecting or unsuspecting female client.

Conclusion: The office was seldom used and then but briefly and really for show, since those passing by on the way to the washroom would be bound to notice, especially if this one’s door was left open. Messieurs Garnier and Quevillon were foot soldiers kept on the move by the colonel.

Garnier was also a veteran of that other war, a member of the sometimes ultraconservative UNC, the Union Nationale des Combattants. A former sergeant, wounded at Verdun, but one with ties or leanings to Action française? he had to ask. Fascist anyway, and definitely pro-German and
collabo.

The in-tray held requests, notes, thin file folders on investigations one of the others must have handed over to Garnier but not yet collected to be stuffed into jacket pockets on the run; the out-tray, the dossiers of Adrienne Guillaumet and Marie-Léon Barrault.

Suzette Dunand had typed up the following for the Scapini Commission and must surely have been worried this Sûreté would find it:

Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, wife of prisoner-of-war Captain Jean-Matthieu …
et cetera.

Thursday, 11 February 1943: Subject leaves residence at 131 rue Saint-Dominique on foot at 1410 hours. Couple’s children are left alone, but Concierge Ouellette reluctantly reveals that she checks on them from time to time and that this is not the only such occasion but one of many
.

Proof positive of marital infidelity, eh?

Subject walks to the Deutsche Institut on the rue Talleyrand, entering it at 1430 hours.

And not far from the flat.

Subject pleads for an advance on part-time wages. Said advance denied. In distress, subject hurries from the building and makes her way on foot to bathhouse on the rue Las Cases but decides at last moment to go into the Église de Sainte-Clotilde.

Behind which the bathhouse, serving the
bourgeoisie
of the quartier des Invalides, was located, but why the need to pray, why the
douche chaude
?

Subject is forced to wait for shower bath and doesn’t leave until 1610 hours.

And always the delays in such establishments. Though her flat, unlike so many, had had a bathtub, there’d been no provision for hot water since the Defeat. She had obviously wanted to be as presentable as possible, even though it must have cost her a good fifty francs she didn’t have. Five it would have cost before this lousy war. Five and no more!

Subject takes métro to
place
de l’Opéra and enters Café de la Paix at 1655 hours where she meets and conspires
—Why not confers?—
with subject Marie-Léon Barrault and that one’s daughter Annette. On recommendation of the Barrault subject, Madame Guillaumet hires
vélo-taxi Prenez-moi. Je suis à vous,
which is to pick her up outside the École Centrale after classes at 2115 hours and drive her to the Hôtel Ritz, there to wait until again needed. Wait estimated at from two to four hours. ‘As long as is necessary,’ subject stated to driver.

A half-hour to three-quarters becomes such a different length of time?

Subject then leaves Café de la Paix at 1756 hours, catching the métro to the École Centrale where she arrives at 1827 hours in time for her classes to begin.

There was nothing else. It was as if the rape, the vicious assault on her person, the savage beating had never happened.

The signature was firm but hasty.
Salauds
, that is what this gang were. Shark to the woman’s in-laws, shark to the husband and the Scapini, shark to Madame Henriette Morel, too, and the ‘subject’ no matter what but he was racing now. Marie-Léon’s ‘dossier’ was thicker and there were photos. One of Gaston Morel and the ‘subject’ at a table in the Café de la Paix, his expression one of deep concern or, as implied, one of, Don’t worry,
chérie
. Go on up to the room. No one will ever know we’ve been together.

Another of the photos revealed her waiting for the lift at the Hôtel Grand.

There was a shot of the manager of the Cinéma Impérial who grinned, leered and sucked on a damp fag end: ‘Of course I took what she offered. When it is presented in such a package, one cannot be impolite. Pay … ? What is this you’re saying? She came to me often.’

How much had Garnier bribed him? Five hundred?

A copy of Father Marescot’s damning letter to the Scapini Commission was enclosed, even a photo of the priest, and one of the ‘subject’ entering the confessional at the Église de Notre-Dame de Lorette, and another of those who were waiting to do exactly the same thing, including Annette Barrault, who looked to be all but in tears.

Still it wasn’t enough to link the
agence
to any of the attacks and if he heard about the break-in here, as he well might, Boemelburg would hit the roof, as would Oberg. Where was what was needed? Something … there had to be something more than these.

‘Forged tobacco cards?’ blurted St-Cyr, having opened the desk’s central drawer, that catchall of things detective and otherwise. ‘Fifty of them at least. Evidence … I’d best take a few.

‘A tube of Veronal … ?’ Now why would Garnier have such a thing? Old wounds? A girl, a woman he used regularly? So many
filles de joie
would use drugs of one kind or another if they could get them to dampen the discomfort of too much sex, but …

‘Noëlle Jourdan,’ the whisper came. ‘Sergeant Jourdan of the Fifty-Sixth Chasseurs à pied, and from one old soldier to another.’

To compound their troubles, beneath the desk’s green blotting pad there was a list, in pencil, of names with lines through some to indicate that they had already been executed at the Fort du Mont-Valérien or sent east to camps. Beside these, and still others, though, there were also ticks. M. Flavien Garnier had been busy nailing
résistants
at one hundred thousand francs apiece, the going rate as advertised by the Occupier, but was there still more?

Ignoring the lights, the girls and the action, Bob laid his chin on the table’s edge, his mournful gaze on this Kripo as the wedding ring spun itself to silence. ‘ “
Louis-Maurice Artur, Colonel
and
Élène Nadine Lemaire
.” ’ Two hearts cut in gold to overlap till death do us part. ‘ “
Paris, 27 September 1939
.” ’

Kohler had found her. There was even the mist of sentiment in his eyes, or was that merely the effects of too much Benzedrine? wondered Delaroche. Too little sleep in any case, or simply those beers from home and a clap-sized dose of nostalgia.