Carousel (16 page)

‘Not with Cueillard listening in. So, my friend, we have a name to attach to the mackerel's big toe.'

‘You didn't really mean that about gangsters killing gangsters, did you, Louis? Madame Giroux's insisting you're full of cotton wool. She says Schraum must have done it and if not him, then Monsieur Antoine Audit.'

‘She's really got it in for the brother, hasn't she?'

Louis was at the wheel and enjoying it. The streets of Montmartre were easing past. Traffic had more than enough chance to get out of the way. The Citroën was purring.

‘So, how does a mackerel like Morande come to be running a carousel?'

‘Precisely, Hermann. It's not exactly the racket one would expect of him.'

‘At least he found himself a place to live rent free.'

‘But when, Hermann? When?'

‘Just after the Defeat. Within a week of it, he was here. I asked her.'

The Defeat? Were Hermann's sympathies making him careless? ‘The Conquest, Hermann. Must I correct you, for your own sake?'

‘I still say Morande had no business wasting time with a carousel. Seven long years in stir, Louis. The Santé and then Fresnes. Nineteen thirty-three to 'forty for armed robbery and assault. Ran two girls on the side, but that was a secondary matter. Got out in June, in time to meet the New Order. That old dame's a Bible.'

‘Maybe the carousel suited him?'

‘At five sous a ride? Come on, Louis, you know better. Even with the depressed market, he'd not have had the cash to buy it. The Préfet's boys recovered the loot before they put him away.'

‘Then maybe someone told him to stay off the streets?'

‘Ostracized, was that it? He spent fourteen weeks in solitary for hitting a prison guard with a shovel in an attempt to escape.'

‘That should have earned him more than five dots. Perhaps his attempted escape was the act of a desperate man. Perhaps our friend Morande had to get out before someone killed him.'

‘If so, then that person waited for two and a half years.'

‘Revenge is sweet, Hermann. Like the carbuncle, it is best squeezed when full of pus.'

To that there was no answer. The car had stopped in front of the entrance to a courtyard. A small bronze plaque, now covered in heavy black paint to protect it from thieves, gave Number 23, the rue Polonceau.

‘A villa just like the grandmother said,' sighed the Sûreté.

‘It's too close to the Hotel of the Silent Life, Louis. Too close to the Church of Saint Bernard.'

‘My thoughts exactly. Madame Minou would have known the girl by her real name.'

‘The girl wouldn't have chanced a liaison in such a familiar neighbourhood.'

‘Then why Number twenty-three, Hermann?'

‘Madame Giroux would not have made a mistake, Louis. She sucked on her eyes every time she mentioned Charles Audit.'

Number 23 was one of those delightful little surprises so typical of the city. A quiet, walled courtyard, a bit of peace from a troubled world. Chestnut trees, lilacs, rose-bushes, wisteria and trumpet vine, all without their leaves. A scattering of brick-red paving-tiles among the limestone flags. A small fountain, a faun with cloven feet, the pipes of Pan. A bird-bath.

The shutters were open. Two low steps led to the entrance path that ran through clipped box and Yew towards a terracotta urn.

The curtains were drawn. There were scrolled, Louis XIV ironwork grilles on the lower part of the tall windows. Not a sign of anyone.

‘Very nice, and very private, Hermann. Very bourgeois too. The businessman in retreat.'

There was a bell – tidy links of wrought iron and a ring to grasp. Kohler yanked it down. Louis told him to turn his bad cheek away. ‘We don't want to frighten the mistress of the house unduly, eh?'

‘The stitches don't come out for another three days. They're beginning to itch.'

He gave the chain another yank. Somewhere beyond the door, the faint sound of ringing came to them.

‘There's no one home, Louis. The place is empty.'

‘Try your fist. They might be hard of hearing.'

‘Want me to break it down?'

‘No. No, we'll leave it for now, but it isn't right. Something's wrong.'

The Hotel of the Silent Life was just up the street and across from the bakery; the Church of Saint Bernard was down the street and around the corner. ‘It's all too convenient, Hermann. Did the girl know of the district and come back to use it, hence the dyed hair, or did Madame Minou's “Monsieur Antoine” know of it and wish to use it for purposes of his own?'

‘Don't forget our Christiane or Christabelle took the trouble to dye her locks below the waist.'

‘A virgin, Hermann. It is a puzzle, unless, of course, the room was only made to look as if it was for that purpose.'

‘Then why the jewellery, why the canary? Things from M Antoine for her to sell, or from her to him
if
, my fine Frog friend, if selling at the fleas wasn't working out to her satisfaction?'

‘Then Antoine was the buyer, she the seller and the gold coins, eh? What of them?'

‘This thing goes round and round.' He'd open the hotel's courtyard door for Louis, he'd show mutual respect and let the baker who was hanging on to his window glass see that the Gestapo could back off when it suited them.

Madame Minou was in her cage and nervous. The coffee wasn't ersatz but black and strong. A sacrifice. Pre-war and hoarded, and therefore against the law, leading not just to confiscation but to incarceration.

‘Me, I have passed the miserable night, messieurs. I'm an old woman. God should be kinder. Word of the murder has now got round to all of the tenants. The hotel is abuzz.'

St-Cyr crowded in after Hermann. The woman was forced by the lack of space and nerves into the sagging armchair that had always given comfort in troubled times.

Arfande, the cat, disappeared under the narrow cot she used as a bed.

Hermann offered a cigarette but it was refused, then taken at his insistence. ‘For later, yes,
merci.
'

She avoided looking at them and gazed perhaps into a finer, more distant past.

‘Madame Minou, did you know the girl who was killed –'

‘Murdered! Violated! In my hotel! As tenants die, messieurs, others will not come to replace them.'

So much for the future, bleak though it was. ‘Madame, did you know her by any other name than Christiane Baudelaire?'

The grey eyes swam. ‘Why should I have?'

St-Cyr hushed her with a gesture of his hand. ‘Was the girl new to your neighbourhood, or a resident from before the Defeat?'

The Gestapo had taken out one of the coins. Now a toss, now a fall. He had that look about him, that one had. ‘New, of course. I would have known otherwise. Since 1912 I have been concierge of this place.'

Thirty years … To live like this. Hermann was still flipping the coin. Good! ‘Then what about Monsieur Antoine?'

‘No. With that one I would have known from fifty years even though he is like so many men of his age and station in life. The big shot, isn't that so, Inspector? The young girl naked and on her knees between his own.'

Kohler nodded. The coin went up a little higher. ‘There's more than one way of using a young girl, eh, madame?' he taunted, flustering her.

‘You men are all the same! Filthy minds when your buttons are undone and a girl, a wife is –'

Louis lit her cigarette. She drew in, but coughed. A glass of water was needed.

Again the questions started up. The one from the Sûreté would not be distracted. Ah
merde
! what was she to do? The Gestapo had seen it too. They were a pair of shit-miners!

‘Madame, we have an informant – no, please do not distress yourself, eh? Hermann, a little more water for madame. The ashtray, my friend. Yes, yes, that one will do nicely. The one with the broken parrot.'

He'd not stop now. ‘Madame, our informant tells us that a Monsieur Charles Audit had the villa at Number twenty-three. Do you remember him?'

Questions – always they would ask her questions. Roland would come to mind. They'd find out. Was there nothing she could do to stop them?

‘How should I know who owned that place, eh? I do not push open doors I should not push open. It's rented perhaps, or perhaps the owner is in the South for the duration. Many left the city before the Defeat, monsieur. The streets … such emptiness. Ah Mon Dieu, it was like walking through the Devil's shadow and coming home to cancer.'

‘Then you did not know of this Monsieur Charles Audit?'

‘She's lying, Louis. Let's call up the salad basket and have her over to the rue Lauriston for a bit of undressing.'

Her eyes leapt. Her cigarette fell from quivering lips and began to burn a hole in the flowered dress that had seen too many years.

Kohler picked it out of her lap and put it back between her lips. ‘Three coins, madame. Three deaths. I'm holding the fourth.'

‘They were all fake. Take them, damn you!'

‘They're like your son, eh, madame? Phoney beneath the wash of gold. Where is he?'

Hermann had a way with him when he wanted it. The rue Lauriston … Her eyes began to drain at the thought.

‘I do not know, monsieur. Roland, he has … he has stolen my purse and emptied my savings box too many times for me to care.'

‘When was the last time?' asked the one from the Sûreté, brushing a knuckle across his thick brown moustache as if he'd just taken custard.

‘Not since the day of his call-up for the army.'

There, she'd said it, and they would not think that Roland had come back to steal more, not once but four times.

‘Two and a half, maybe three years ago, Hermann. It's a mother's love that makes her search for him and think bad thoughts.'

The Bavarian sucked in a breath as he caught the spinning coin. ‘They'll sort her out, Louis. We haven't time for wind. We'd better get to work.'

The Gestapo collected the coins from beside the parrot ashtray and she knew then that he'd meant exactly what he'd said.

There was only one thing to do. She could not give up Roland so easily, not even after all he'd done to her.

‘This Monsieur Charles Audit, messieurs. I have lived in the
quartier
all my life. I have not seen him in years, not since he lost the villa in 1905 to his brother for debts and went away. Colombia, Brazil, Peru, those distant places where there are jungles and … and the monkeys.' Had she said too much?

‘And his brother, madame?' asked the Gestapo with tired breath.

‘I have never seen him. They say he lives in the South, in Périgord, in Lyon and Saint-Raphaël. But all that happened many years ago. Now no one talks of it.'

‘Does Antoine Audit still own the villa he squeezed out of his brother?'

‘That I would not know, Inspector. Father Delacroix might.'

She would give them a shrug, may God forgive her. But Delacroix might not say the right things. A soldier had been killed. A German corporal who'd been seen with the horse butcher's wife enough times to make one wonder whose side that shameless slut was on. Had Roland put the bullet into him, eh? Had her baby done a thing like that? To kill one German was to be killed in turn. All members of the immediate family, regardless of whether they'd stolen from their mother or not even seen her in years except for those few times. All would be taken. It was the rule.

Pity was not for situations like this, yet St-Cyr could only find that quality foremost in his heart. ‘Madame, is there anything else you can tell us? Some little thing perhaps forgotten but now needing desperately to come to light?'

‘Louis, you're being too kind.'

‘Hermann, the warning is taken.'

The rue Lauriston … People went there never to return. Madame Minou swallowed. The coin had stopped flipping. ‘There was a note, a letter for Mademoiselle Baudelaire but …'

‘But what, madame?' demanded St-Cyr impatiently.

‘But this one took it, monsieur.'

‘Hermann?'

‘Yes.'

Kohler dropped the coin and it rolled about the carpet among the cat hairs. He fished for the note in a pocket and finally trod on the coin. ‘Sorry, Louis. The lack of sleep. The loss of my dinner. That girl … her black hair, the look of her … Giselle, I …'

‘Just let me have it, Hermann. Quickly.'

The envelope hadn't been sealed. ‘“
Christiane, leave the hotel immediately. Don't go up to the room.
” It's not signed.'

The girl had been late and in a hurry. Madame Minou had not been able to stop her long enough to give her the note.

‘Who left this with you, madame?'

She knew they'd ask! ‘Monsieur Antoine. The one she was to meet.'

‘When? When was it left?'

‘At eight o'clock. No, eight-twenty. I have noted the time in my ledger. You may check if you wish.'

The ledger was open on the tiny desk. All comings and goings were to be noted.

‘Louis, he must have known the hotel was being watched. He played it smart and came by an hour early to check out the ground.'

This was standard Abwehr, Sicherheitsdienst or even Resistance procedure, but there was no point in mentioning it in front of the woman. Still, it was a thought. ‘Then why didn't he try to stop her at the
métro
, Hermann, or watch for her from some small café, eh? There are a thousand whys with nearly an hour to back them up.
“Christiane, leave the hotel immediately.
Don't go up to the room.
”‘

‘They must have been on to him, Louis. He must have taken it upon himself to give them the slip in the hope they'd follow him and she'd get away.'

‘One doesn't write notes like this on the street, Hermann. One uses a desk and a fountain pen.'

Hermann pocketed the coin in order to examine the note and its envelope. ‘Borrowed, eh, Louis? The pen even has a bent nib just like the one that's squeezed in the centre of a certain concierge's ledger.'