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Together they turned on the woman, who had caught herself by the throat. ‘All right, all right, messieurs! It is my envelope and paper but I swear I did not see who wrote the note, only that it was left on my counter.'

‘And the time?' breathed the one with the terrible slash. ‘Just for the record, eh?'

‘Eight … eight-twenty. I … I was in the toilet – even a concierge has to go!' Ah
Mon Dieu
, what was she to do? ‘It … it is at the far end of the corridor, messieurs, beside the tradesmen's stairs. It's Turkish,' she sweltered. ‘I have not had the opportunity to modernize. I have always had the trouble when they flood.'

She was practically blushing. A hole in the floor over which one had to squat, a chain too far to the left, a rush of water et cetera often covering the cubicle's floor as the chain was finally yanked.

No escape. Kohler grinned hugely but he'd be kind. ‘The truth always hurts, madame. Now give us the key to that room up there and tell us who else had a key besides the girl.'

‘Hermann, let her think about things, eh?'

‘They both had keys, messieurs, but Monsieur Antoine always came after.'

‘Did you read it?' asked Kohler, waving the note at Madame Minou.

Her expression hardened. ‘No I did not.'

‘It's good of you to have said so, madame, because otherwise we'd have had to charge you with being an accomplice.'

‘Hermann, Madame Minou knows all about such things, don't you, madame?'

She wouldn't sing like a canary for them, not even after that! ‘Please do not disturb my tenants unduly, messieurs. They are upset enough and threatening to move elsewhere if I cannot guarantee them the peace and quiet I have advertised for so many years.'

The forensic boys, such as they were these days, had chalked the position of the body. Otherwise, the room had been left much as they'd last seen it. The curtains were still drawn.

One after another Louis began to open the bureau drawers, leaving each of them partly closed.

Kohler went over to the bed to look at the position of her scattered things.

‘So, what about the girl, eh?' asked Louis, more of himself than of his partner. ‘There are still plenty of undergarments. Silk and Chantilly lace, meshed stockings, two garter belts, a rose-red chemise and teddy. Lots of things for a girl who must have been playing a very dangerous game.'

‘She threw her underwear the farthest, Louis. It's my guess, more in anger than in fear.'

‘Did she know her assailant then?'

Kohler lifted the plain white briefs that had been worn only once. ‘He'd found her out perhaps, but then …'

‘Ah yes, why dye the hair below the waist as well unless, perhaps …'

‘One feared arrest or being caught up in some
rafle
and then strip-searched at the prefecture to give the boys a bit of fun.'

‘These days it's best to be on the safe side.'

‘Most French girls don't shave their armpits, Louis. She did.'

Good for Hermann. ‘A girl of some distinction.'

‘Well educated?'

‘Schooled perhaps in something, Hermann, but alas naïve when it came to gold coins unless, of course, she knew only too well they were forgeries.'

Kohler examined the lie of her belt. In anger, her cheeks hot with embarrassment perhaps, she had made a clumsy flick of it and the belt had landed half on the bed and half off it.

‘She knew him, Louis. She'd been expecting something like this.'

St-Cyr ran a hand in under the silks and satins to the far corners of the drawer. ‘It can't have been the mackerel. By then he was dead.'

‘It can't have been her M Antoine either, so who the hell was it, seeing as she might quite possibly have known him?'

Louis was smelling a crushed fistful of pink satin, a chemise. He took a grab of silk – a half-slip – then a black, see-through brassière.

‘There is some bitter orange, Hermann, a little lemon grass and rosemary, the touch of coumarin. The scent is not common, not cheap either, and she did not use much, so she knew of its value. It is very faint, my friend, but still very much alive.'

‘Just a touch or two then. Try the briefs. I won't mind.'

‘You should have left everything here for me!'

‘Sorry, Louis. Was it Madame Minou's son, Roland? Was he the one to make her undress without too much of a fuss because she thought, my fine Frog friend, that if she could but distract the bastard long enough, her pal Monsieur Antoine would come along?'

‘Hermann, you are absolutely brilliant. Of course that is how it must have been! She took off her things in hopes of rescue.'

‘Then M Antoine was not just a successful businessman, eh? but also good with his hands.'

‘Or the pistol or the knife.'

‘And she knew this, Louis – knew she could count on him.'

‘Did M Antoine kill the mackerel?' asked the Sûreté.

‘Perhaps, but then why stick around, eh? Why meet so soon afterwards?'

‘A last meeting, Hermann. An emergency- the crisis, no? They had to agree quickly on a course of action.'

‘He tried to warn her off; she believed he'd be coming here.'

‘She was late and in a hurry. Madame Minou could not stop her on the stairs to pass her the note.'

Kohler went over to the windows to part the curtains a little and look down at the rue Polonceau.

The street was empty. The black Citroën engendered only terror, as did all such vehicles.

He hated himself a little. ‘When I was a kid shovelling shit on the old man's farm, Louis, I dreamed of being a big-city detective, not this.'

The dresses bore traces of the scent. ‘Is it that you are trying to apologize for the present state of things, Hermann?'

In other words, the interference of criminals who could no longer be brought to justice because they were now above the law. ‘You know I am, Louis. We'll have to question the hostages. Von Schaumburg will expect us to.'

‘It will be painful for me, Hermann, and this I freely admit.'

‘Maybe we could get them off if we could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Schraum didn't deserve a medal but only the proper end of a burial shovel, and that the Resistance had nothing to do with the killing.'

This was heresy coming from Hermann. St-Cyr let go of the red dress. ‘And if that proves impossible, what then?' he asked quietly.

The Bavarian was grumpy. ‘Maybe we'll just have to find another way. Maybe we won't. Lots of good men are dying on the Russian Front, Louis, on both sides. I'm no judge.'

They went back to work in silence. Hermann was always very thorough when goaded by guilt and ashamed of his fellow Germans.

The girl and M Antoine had spent no more than an hour or two at a time in the room, once or twice a week for nearly a year. Always from between eight and nine o'clock in the evening except for Tuesday when they'd met at four.

M Antoine hadn't stayed long then and afterwards she'd been most distressed. She hadn't changed out of her clothes, nor had she washed herself.

She'd been the one to pay the rent and each week she'd done so in advance.

A girl who'd known her own mind? Had she been an equal partner in this thing, this scam, or the innocent and naïve accomplice?

St-Cyr took out the canary to replace it in its nest of velvet. The box was beautifully made and of some type of gumwood, very light in colour and weight. There were no designs, no initials. It was just a simple box, perhaps once intended for cigarettes but with its lid missing now and so made into a little bed for a little friend.

He could see the girl as a child in her cage taking tickets for her grandfather; he could hear the music of the carousel.

‘Louis, there's something I should have told you. Madame Minou was not all that sure the client's real name was Antoine. Maybe we're not dealing with the brother at all but with the girl's grandfather.'

‘M Charles Audit?' It was a thought. ‘Madame Minou hasn't seen him since 1905. He must have changed a good deal.'

‘I wish we could find the girl's identity papers, Louis. I wish we could find her purse.'

The light had shifted a little and now there was not so much shadow in the courtyard of Number 23. Louis stood just inside the door, breathing in the essence of the place. Kohler knew he had to leave him to it, that at times like this the Frog was best on his own.

To the left, a slightly raised kerb of cut limestone separated a metre-deep strip of garden and its wall from the flagstones with their brick-red tiles. To the right, across a space of no more than twelve metres and the width of the house, there was a somewhat deeper strip of garden, another wall of equal height, and a sycamore now bare of leaves like all the rest.

St-Cyr shut his eyes and breathed in deeply. Without motorized traffic, the city had a hush like no other. He could smell the bark of the sycamore, the dead leaves and round, tassled, prickly seed pods that always reminded him of Christmas-tree decorations in some ancient and far-away land. The chestnuts, too, and the rhododendrons.

It was at once that kind of garden and he had the thought that it hadn't changed much in the last thirty or more years.

The night would have been dark, the girl afraid but more than this, in a great hurry. She'd have slipped quickly into the courtyard and would have closed the door quietly behind her.

Then she'd have stood here trying to remember through the darkness the locations of things, and listening closely to hear if she'd been followed or if someone had come out of the house. Her heart hammering.

Christabelle Audit … Had there been time for her to walk across the courtyard and up those two low steps, then along the path to the doorstep? He thought not, and he reminded himself that the girl could not possibly have lived here, but then she might well have visited the villa as a child, especially as it had once been the house of her grandfather's brother.

She'd have played in the courtyard all by herself perhaps, been very busy in her own little world of make-believe.

When he saw the rustic birdhouse hanging on the wall not two metres from the courtyard door, he knew he had found her secret place. It was just large enough for a small purse – not a regular handbag, ah no. She'd not have carried one on such occasions.

Kohler watched as Louis lifted one half of the hinged roof of the birdhouse.

The purse was of dark blue, very soft and well-tanned leather. Not deerskin or cowhide but snakeskin. Anaconda perhaps. The photograph was good, the head and shoulders face on. The hair was black, but then that would have been necessary.

‘Christabelle Audit, Hermann. Number ten rue Bènard, apartment six. Here are her residence permit and ID, a few of this week's yellow ration tickets in case she got hungry and went into a café. A lipstick, compact, pair of tweezers, eyelash brush and small bottle of black dye, no label, a few francs and sous, two safety pins, six hairpins, a handkerchief and two keys.'

‘Which one?'

‘Both are of brass and much worn. Take your pick. Neither may fit.'

‘I'll try them both just in case.'

St-Cyr let him go ahead. It was always best this way. The present owner or occupant might now be at home and wondering just exactly what the hell the two of them were up to.

But had the sense of something wrong emanated from the girl's simply having left her purse and identification here, or from something inside the house?

One thing was certain. The girl had lived in Montparnasse, not all that far from the girlfriend of Georges the baker. A widow, just as Georges had said he was a widower. The same cemetery, the same purchased stones, the same empty graves, the bodies of their loved ones elsewhere.

He'd have to talk to this Marianne St-Jacques alone just in case the Resistance was involved. He owed that to Hermann, one could only ask so much.

And he remembered then that other young girl from that other case and how her lips had been pressed against his own.

That house, too, had been in Montparnasse. Where was she now? In Dachau or Mauthausen? Ah yes.

‘It's this one, Louis. Our girl had a key to the front door.'

Toadstools, peonies and the ripening green heads of waving poppies covered the fabric of the
chaise longue.
The designs were at once bold; the colours of mauve, blue, yellow, red and green subdued yet vibrant.

The
chaise
was against a wall. There were two throw cushions propped against the corner so that the bather might well have stretched out after a bath or before it to read, meditate or simply relax.

The floor was bare, but there was a dressing-screen, one of those Art Nouveau pieces fashionable around the turn of the century. Nothing expensive – something picked up in one of the fleas or at auction. It had been painted a beigy-cream to match the background of the spread on the
chaise.
Blue irises had been sketched on its panels.

St-Cyr breathed in deeply. The irises were exceptional.

Storklike ibis waded among the marshes of the Nile on the exposed side of the bathtub. There was a rectangular, bevelled mirror without a frame above the bronze taps and shower head with its coiled brass tube.

The mirror was large enough to see the top half of oneself when standing in the tub. But that hadn't been enough for the former mistress of Number 23 the rue Polonceau. Ah no. With outspread, batlike wings, a Bird of Death clung to the top of the mirror to stare back at whoever thought to examine themselves in that glass, reminding all that age soon overtakes.

There were tulip lamps on either side of the mirror above the sink, which stood against the far wall between the end of the tub and the cushions on that
chaise.
Everywhere there was Art Nouveau – songbirds on the walls, a bronze soap dish in the shape of an outstretched lily pad.

For some time now Hermann and he had been moving quietly about the house, and always there was this sense of its being a time capsule. Used but then not used continuously, not any more. Not since perhaps before the Great War.