Carousel (24 page)

I'll teach him. Yes, yes I will, as God is my witness.

God and the Devil.

6

The dream was different, the dream was very real. Another nightmare! Incongruously the carousel had been transported to what must be Devil's Island. The galloping stallions slavered. The ducks cried out for water. The heat sucked the moisture from their wild dark eyes, deadening them to wicked slits as the thing came round … round, the animals all going up and down, faster, faster, the music jarring, jarring … A girl in a cage of bright-red iron and gold wire, a laughing girl who took the money in, the money. Naked … naked, so young and beautiful and lying on her back. An arm unfolding, the slender legs parting, she taking her breasts in her hands to wet their nipples with her fingers. Nipples … nipples … A panda – why a panda? The thing chasing the girl … The thing rising and falling … Slow … too slow … The girl … the girl …

St-Cyr awoke in a panic. Ah, Mon Dieu, must he have constant nightmares about this case? They were in a terrible fix. The rue Lauriston … the avenue Foch … the Abwehr … Gabrielle Arcuri and Giselle le Roy … Hermann … ah yes.

Christabelle Audit's mother had died at the age of fifteen while giving birth to the child. Antoine Audit and Michèle-Louise Prévost had raised the girl until the age of six. Then Charles Audit had returned to take her from them. He'd bought the carousel for her – bribery, had it been bribery?

Ah
merde
! The Île du Diable. Two square kilometres of barren rock and scrub and more than a thousand convicts. Nothing but the hardest of them and the immenseness of trackless jungle lying across but a few kilometres of ocean.

The coast of French Guiana would have beckoned with the lure of a naked harlot who carried syphilis and cried out as a leper, ‘You can't! You mustn't! There is no escape from here. Absolutely none!'

He wet his lips. ‘The villa,' he said. ‘It all began at the villa so long ago. A touch of lemon grass, a whisper of rosemary, a suggestion of coumarin.'

Had the panda really been about to rape that girl, or had his subconscious been trying to tell him something?

Swallowing with difficulty, St-Cyr lay back as the whisper of her perfume mingled with the heady scent of Cream of the Walnut in his mind.

Christabelle Audit had shaved her underarms and had dyed her hair, but why? To please her grandfather, or to please his brother, or to hide herself from one or both of them, or neither, but someone else?

She'd lived at Number 10 rue Bènard, apartment six.

Fumbling for his cigarettes, he took one and lit it, let the darkness of the bedroom he'd once shared with Marianne close about him.

To go from shoes to utter desolation to a carousel and a granddaughter one loved so much one put her in a little red-and-gold cage to take the tickets as the thing went round, was something. A cage within a cage, the canary singing its lungs out in competition or chorus with the calliope.

M Charles Audit and his granddaughter. Around those two elements the carousel had revolved, the years from 1926 until the day of the Defeat seeing the girl grow into womanhood.

Then the carousel is sold – quickly, decisively. Charles Audit goes where? To Number 10 rue Bènard, apartment six, in Montparnasse?

Perhaps, but then …

A year later the granddaughter has good false papers in the name of Christiane Baudelaire, a name she must have chosen herself but one so close to what a criminal might choose, it has to make one wonder. Change it only a little, eh? That way if someone calls out to you or questions you, the name is almost as natural as your own and causes no difficulty. Ah yes. A criminal.

She meets M Antoine – was it really her grandfather's brother? A man of some fifty-six to sixty years of age from Périgord, a bourgeois who brings her gifts of pâté and liqueur from one of his businesses. Presents which she leaves outside the door to Captain Alphonse Dupuis' room as if, though in need of money and food, she still cannot bear to bring herself to touch them.

For nearly a year she meets with this M Antoine once or twice a week in that room, always at about the same time, between 8 and 9 p.m. The Captain Dupuis is driven crazy with thoughts of her naked body and what the two of them must be doing in there.

She has been taking pieces of her grandmother's jewellery from the Villa Audit on the rue Polonceau and selling them in the flea markets, or trying to.

Then she is killed – forced to strip naked before her killer. Why?

She knew him. She expected help to come from M Antoine, who'd left a note for her but she hadn't picked it up. Did Dupuis take it, read it and put it back? The envelope had been unsealed.

And why should M Antoine know what to do? Had he training in such things?

She'd taken off her clothing garment by garment in the hope that help would soon come.

Then she'd been killed – garrotted, savagely raped, a virgin all this time – and left to lie on the floor with thirty forged Roman gold coins scattered about her body and no answers. Only a warning that this detective from the Sûreté had instantly taken to have been left for himself. Ah yes.

Did the killer throw the coins or did someone else? Lafont perhaps? Nicole de Rainvelle or Pierre Bonny? They'd visited the scene of the crime, they'd photographed the body. Any one of them could have placed that coin on her forehead.

Talbotte had washed his hands of the affair. Boemelburg, Oberg and Knochen had insisted on Hermann and himself. Lafont and Bonny had offered help, he himself suffering the humiliation of having to go before them or else.

All of them believed there were real gold coins to be had, loot in plenty.

Find the forger, find the loot. Never mind the killings.

And two and a half years before these killings, another young girl, another strangulation, rape and withdrawal during ejaculation. Mila Zavitz.

Two heavy suitcases. M Charles Audit.

He'd been sent to Devil's Island in 1905 at the age of thirty. This meant that he was now sixty-seven years old, still spry perhaps, tough perhaps, and well able at sixty-five to carry two heavy suitcases
if
he'd wanted to.

But he'd left them hidden in the courtyard beside a draper's shop that was not very far at all from the place where Schraum had been shot, and not very far either from the Church of Saint Bernard.

Antoine Audit was seven years younger than his brother. In 1905 he would have been twenty-three years old and now he was sixty.

And Michèle-Louise Prévost? he asked, flicking ashes into the darkness. The sketch of herself on that
chaise
had shown her to have been about twenty or twenty-two. The same age as the granddaughter.

But if twenty-two in 1905 when Charles was sent away, then forty-three in 1926 when he came back to buy the carousel, and now fifty-nine years old if still alive.

A woman of great determination, one so skilled she could copy the works of others far better than they could have done themselves.

Prévost … Prévost … It didn't ring any bells in the male-dominated art world he knew. And certainly to make it as an artist was still exceedingly difficult for a woman. The copying could simply have been an act of rebellion.

Four killings all linked to the villa on the rue Polonceau or not linked to it at all. Each one done by the same person, or by separate individuals, or two by one, three by one … It was just guessing, but …

Find the forger, find the loot, find Charles Audit who'd been so financially in need his brother had ‘helped' him out and had possessed the villa
and
the young wife in payment of those debts, not to mention having consigned him to Devil's Island for fifteen years on a charge of attempted murder.

It made one thankful one had no brothers or sisters, no granddaughters either.

Or sons like Madame Minou had.

Christabelle Audit's ‘lover'. A successful businessman of between fifty-six and sixty years of age. Pâtés and liqueurs from
Antoine Audit and Sons of Périgord.

Charles Audit was sixty-seven. It had to be the brother of Charles Audit, or someone using his name so as to implicate him.

The girl might well have undressed in front of her great-uncle for reasons financial or otherwise – relatives were always the first to take advantage of the young. She might not have known the coins she was trying to sell were fake; alternatively she might well have been in on the swindle.

In any case, she must have let him see the jewellery she'd taken from the villa. He'd have known about it. He'd have paid the rent by leaving the money with her.

But why, if it
had
been Antoine Audit, would he not have used the villa?

Because it was rented to the Germans. Because it was occasionally being used and he didn't want to chance being seen there with her or anyone else.

Dragged out of sleep at 3.15 in the morning, the concierge of the house at 10 rue Bènard in Montparnasse had nothing but venom on his tongue. A scarecrow in faded flannel and nightcap.

‘The Sûreté, eh? Well suck lemons, my fine. You'll find no tits to play with here! The house you want is next door!'

The door began to close … ‘Monsieur, please! The Sûreté, eh? A detective – a chief inspector. Please permit me to put the bicycle inside, eh?
Don't
crush the wheel! Ah! In the Name of Jesus, my only mode of transport!'

‘CRUSH? I'LL CRUSH YOUR TESTICLES, YOU BASTARD!'

‘No … no. Ah
merde
! Now look what you've done!'

St-Cyr wrenched the bicycle back from the gap in the door and flung the thing aside. ‘The boot, the whistle or the fist,
mon ami
?' he shrilled. ‘I'm on a murder investigation and even an old stick like yourself will not stand in my way!'

His shoulder hit the door. The chain snapped, the bolt was torn free. All bones and knuckles, the concierge grabbed him and stumbled backwards. Jesus, the fists! ‘MONSIEUR, STOP IT THIS INSTANT!'

So much for the quiet word, the unobserved journey.

Amber eyes threw daggers up at him, accompanied by the hot wind of garlic. ‘The Sûreté, eh? you dog's green offal! I'll show you!'

He'd the strength of ten! Several of the tenants had come rushing to the rescue. St-Cyr let a rush of breath escape as he tried to hold the raft of bones down. ‘Okay … okay, you win, eh?
Did you hear me
?'

He dragged him up. ‘That bitch!' sang out the concierge. ‘I'll show that bitch! This is the last time, I tell you. The very last time!' The man sucked in his grizzled cheeks and spat.

The crowd of tenants cautiously approached. Some were armed with brooms, others with chairs, one had a cricket bat, another a butcher's knife. Sleep is so deceptive, the ravager of us all. ‘Go back to bed. That's an order, do you hear me?' shouted St-Cyr.

‘Your badge. Your papers. Quickly, quickly,' rasped the concierge. ‘Don't give me the shit, monsieur. I, Phlegon Yvode, know very well what you were after.'

‘But that's next door.'

‘Yes. Did your mother suck all the goodness out of your father's prick before he penetrated her to breed you, eh? Or did neither of them have any brains?'

Hermann should have been with him. ‘My chest is hammering, monsieur. It's the Benzedrine – no, please, do not trouble yourself. Merely an after-effect, I assure you. The heart … I'm afraid for my heart.'

‘Fuck your heart! With brains in your ass, it must be in your boots!'

St-Cyr drew himself up. He'd give the bastard a moment, he'd allow the tenants one more chance to bugger off. ‘Monsieur, you remind me of my days with the cape, eh? Ah yes, me I came up the hard way. I know very well how to deal with turds like yourself but please don't force me to violence. You're too old to have a broken nose and six caved-in ribs. Those teeth of yours would be hard to replace.'

A
flic
, a cow! He might have known but had best give the rush of breath defeat would bring.

With a yank, Yvode hitched the torn nightgown back over a bare shoulder. ‘Well, I am waiting, my fine Inspector. What is so important that you should awaken the whole of a decent, respectable house at this ungodly hour?'

‘Shh! Don't start the engine again, eh? Please, the key to apartment six and everything you can tell me about its tenants. The girl was murdered – strangled. Raped.'

‘Ah no. This … this cannot be. Me, I have thought …'

Devastated and suddenly spouting tears, the man turned away to search the corridor and the stairs down to the entrance. To the stragglers he said, ‘Mademoiselle Audit, my friends. Christabelle.'

‘Monsieur, what was it you thought?'

‘Nothing. My lips are sealed. You may see the flat but you will find nothing there either, Inspector. They came and took it all away yesterday.'

‘Who came?'

‘The Gestapo, who else?'

‘Which Gestapo?'

‘The French ones. Those of the rue Lauriston. Monsieur Charles has gone to see his brother. Mademoiselle Christabelle … Ah that one, to think she is dead. Never the unkind word, always in such a hurry.'

St-Cyr found his cigarettes crushed in the tussle. He tried to take two of them out but gave it up. ‘When did Monsieur Charles leave?'

‘On Tuesday. He … he has said he would return in a week, that Lyon would be a pleasant change at this time of year but that Saint-Raphaël would be even better. His brother had places in both and in Périgord.'

‘How long had they lived here?'

‘Since a few weeks before the Defeat.'

His slippers flapping on the tattered runner, the concierge reluctantly led him up one flight of stairs and along the hall to Number six. ‘The curtains are gone. Everything is gone. We cannot show a light. The regulations…'

A little kindness wouldn't hurt. ‘We'll leave the door open. I just want to see it. Come … come … you first, monsieur. You've nothing to fear from me.'