Carousel (27 page)

The face was on the narrow side and very much of the middle class but with suggestions, in the sharpness of the features, of misadventure among her ancestors with the aristocracy.

The rose was tickling her nose. The cold made her shiver until at last she saw him looking at her and came to look up at him.

So many seconds ticked by, the drawing mistress, a woman in her mid-fifties, said, ‘Oh, all right. Take another break. This lack of heat! If any of you could assist, it would be most helpful.'

They were there to draw, not to arrange for coal to bypass the authorities who had none to give unless they got something in return.

The girl's voice came softly up to him. ‘It's all right, madame. I will continue to sit.'

St-Cyr began to study her as the cinematographer would, dredging character, motive and action from her very pores.

The thighs were not heavy – a girl who walked a lot and rode her bicycle. A girl who had once been married, so Georges had said, and who had purchased a tombstone in the cemetery of Montparnasse to mark what had to be an empty grave.

They'd met by accident in that cemetery. Love takes all angles, but had it been love, eh?

He didn't think so.

Her knees were dimpled. She'd a small scrape on the inside of the right calf – an episode with the bicycle perhaps.

There was a small brown mole to the left of her navel and near the hip. No stretch marks that he could see. Had she wanted children only to find the war had interfered with that dream? He thought not – not yet in any case. Not with this one.

The pubic hairs were curly but there, was not the breadth and thickness of hair Christabelle Audit had dyed black.

The left breast seemed as if in need of suckling, for its nipple had stiffened under observation from the balcony's brass viewing telescope which stood on a little tripod by the railing.

The lips were wide and sensuous when in repose but tight now in the grim realization of what must surely lie before her.

‘Monsieur,
do you mind?
'

It was the drawing mistress. They must get all types coming in here. ‘Ah,
pardon
, madame. Forgive me. I was but thinking of Renoir.'

The girl's eyebrows were thick and pleasing but would cause concern as she grew older. The frown that furrowed her clear wide brow was earnestness itself. At twenty-eight, a girl could still frown like that.

‘If you do not desist, monsieur, I shall have to ask you to leave the studio at once!'

‘Forgive me, please. I will cease in a moment.'

He had to have one last look and began it at her ankles, running it up the length of her until he found the rose and found Marianne St-Jacques looking at him. Her eyes were of a greeny-brown with amber flecks, and they did not waver as she held her breath.

They were good eyes, lovely eyes, but he could not help but see them as in death.

The mannequin's dressing-room had a tiny stove and she saw no reason to wrap herself in anything.

‘What is it you want with me, Inspector?'

‘Merely a few questions.'

‘Are they about that girl who was murdered?'

St-Cyr took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. What would the cinematographer have done? Asked her to put something on, or merely told her, Yes, yes, that's what it's all about?

He helped her to feed some of the fist-sized balls of dried papier mâché into the stove and stood beside her as she warmed her hands.

She couldn't look at him now, knew he'd find out the truth, but when his voice came, it was gentle. ‘Mademoiselle, what is it you are trying so valiantly to hide from me? A chance encounter with that murdered girl, a few words passed in haste, in the darkness after curfew? Come, come, I know she was an artist's model, a student here. You met, you talked, you shared your meagre lunches, and if I am not mistaken, you have never had a husband to bury under a “purchased” stone in the cemetery of Montparnasse.'

She clasped her shoulders. She
wouldn't
look at him. The stove … the stove … she must concentrate on it.

He struck a match and she shuddered, gripping her shoulders more tightly. ‘Please, it is essential that you tell me everything and quickly. Your life is in danger. This …' he thrust his bandaged hand in front of her – blood had seeped through, ‘is but an example of what they can and will do to you. Now come, please come, I am not a lover of the Nazis, Marianne. You can and must trust me.'

It had hurt to use her name. It brought back memories of his wife and son …

Her shoulders were unclasped. ‘Please, your nakedness won't deter me from asking you the things I must in order to save your life.'

‘How did she die?'

Her breasts were firm, the skin clear. Her underarms had not been shaved or clipped.

‘How did she die, damn you!' cried the girl.

He would give her a whisper, though it would distress him to deal with her in such a manner. ‘Terribly.'

She burst into tears and he hated himself for having had to do it, but …

Her nose was quickly wiped with the back of a hand, her eyes with the fingers. ‘It's true I knew her a little, but we were not working together on anything.'

‘Then you had been following her?' he asked.

‘Yes … Yes, I was following her. Sometimes.'

St-Cyr reached out to the stove to strike the match. A cloud of tobacco smoke billowed about him; he waved it away. ‘For the Resistance?' he asked sharply. ‘Come, come, Marianne, to me you can speak the truth and it would be best if you did so that I can help you and the others if necessary, and keep my Gestapo partner or anyone else from learning of your connection with the case.'

The Resistance!
Maudit!
What would they think of next? he wondered.

Her backside needed warming. She would turn to face him boldly now, this detective from the Sûreté whose shabby overcoat had been ripped and whose hand had been cut.

‘Christabelle wasn't the target, monsieur.' She gave a brave smile. ‘He was. The man she had been meeting for sexual favours, the one who had bought the use of her body. M Antoine Audit, the industrialist and the maker of explosives, Inspector.
Explosives
and parachute silk for the
Nazi's!
'

Her breasts heaved with the force of her young words. Her fists clenched.

‘We … our group … myself … that is Georges and myself …' It would do no good to try to hide the truth from this one.
Merde
! Had he no sympathy for tears, no interest in her naked body, nothing in his heart for a young girl in distress and trapped by him? Had he only the cold brown eyes of a whoremaster choosing his whore?

‘Your group? Come, come, out with it, Mademoiselle St-Jacques.'

He would hit her now, slap her, tear her by the hair and beat her! ‘We were going to assassinate him. Georges –'

‘Georges Lagace is nothing, mademoiselle. Nothing! A baker trapped by the dough of your stupid, stupid scheming. Now quickly, the rest, before madame the drawing mistress begins to pound on the door.' Assassination!
Merde
! Did they not know the SS and the Gestapo would most certainly have caught them?

She would lift her eyes proudly to his, she would let him see how brave she was. ‘Georges was my dead sister's husband. He's weak and yes, you are correct, he is innocent. He didn't want any part of things, but we forced him into letting me stay with him when … whenever the girl … whenever she went to be with her industrialist.'

‘Are you a Communist?' he asked. The answer was fiercely given in the affirmative and he gave a sigh at the stupidity of the young, for the Nazis hated the Communists almost as much as they hated the Jews. ‘How did it all start?' he asked.

She gave a shrug, unconsciously rubbing the base of her throat and between her breasts. ‘We'd been kicking things over – the need to do something.
Anything
! The topic of those industrialists who are co-operating so well with the Nazis came up. I'd been to visit Georges a few times. One night I met Christabelle quite by accident. Things began to fall into place. Last summer I saw Audit for the first time in the rue Polonceau and then my friends showed me photographs of him and some of his factories. He … he was to have been our choice.'

Antoine Audit. ‘Did he ever suspect this, do you think?' he asked, letting her detect the note of caution that had crept into his voice.

She shook her head. ‘I was very careful, as were the others.'

I'll bet you were! he said to himself with a sigh. ‘I don't suppose you possess a gun, a pistol perhaps – a nine millimetre Luger, eh?'

His shoes were muddy. One lace had come undone. If he was Gestapo-friendly, he'd have arrested her by now.

She filled her lungs. ‘I … I do not do such things. I'm only used as a courier or to keep a watch on someone. It's better for a girl. There's always less suspicion.'

St-Cyr gently lifted her chin. The skin of her throat would be so soft. The wire would cut into it. Why … why must he see her as in death? Was there nothing he could do?

‘Please don't lie to me, mademoiselle. You left Georges just as the curfew ended. You rode down the rue Polonceau on that bicycle of yours. Schraum, a corporal in the German Army, accosted you. He was drunk. He caught hold of your bicycle. You fell, you cried out as he came at you. You had no choice – no choice, eh? It was kill or be taken!'

He dropped his hand. ‘You've a scrape on your leg. It's evidence enough.'

The misty eyes were steady. ‘I did not kill him. I did not see him. I did not even hear the shot, monsieur. We weren't involved in that business.'

Merde
! she was still being difficult! ‘Who left the note for Father Eugène?'

‘A friend. All right, one of us, but only after the hostages had been taken.'

The hostages … The drawing mistress was standing in the doorway, waiting for the girl. They'd not heard the knock the woman must have given.

‘A moment, please, madame.
Please.
Get out!'

The impasse fell back on them. ‘A last few questions, Marianne. The Captain Dupuis, the veteran with one leg. Did Christabelle ever mention him to you? Was she not perhaps a little afraid of him?'

The girl shook her head. ‘She said Dupuis was obviously quite interested in her but that he could never get up the courage to speak to her. Me, I think his attentions mildly amused her. I had the feeling that she knew all about men and what they wanted of a girl.'

‘And Roland Minou, the son of the concierge at that hotel? Did you ever see him lurking about? Did she ever mention him?'

Again she shook her head. ‘This one I do not know. Christabelle came always in the evening, at around eight or nine, so he could have been some place else.'

Or was simply too clever to have let himself be seen.

‘What about a Corsican? A man of sixty-three or so? Please, it is vital, mademoiselle.
Think
! You must remember.'

‘A Corsican …? But she has met only the industrialist?'

The frown deepened, the left cheek of her seat was unconsciously scratched, first towards the hip and then a little further back.

‘Well, what is it?' he asked.

‘The villa at Number twenty-three. I … I saw her stepping out from its courtyard once. As I came along the street, she turned quickly away towards the door, but did not touch it, monsieur. It closed by itself, and when I asked her who she'd met in there, she said no one, that she had simply gone into the courtyard to see what it looked like.'

‘Did this occur before or after her meeting with the industrialist?'

‘Before. At … at about eight-thirty. It was warm. There were still lots of people about. They would have taken no notice of her, they would have thought she'd simply got the wrong address.'

But you knew she'd left her purse in there, didn't you, eh? and you're not about to tell me this.

It made him sad to think she still didn't trust him. ‘That place used to be her grandfather's house. Did she ever mention him or the carousel?'

‘No … no, she never mentioned those. A carousel
…?
'

‘A canary?'

The girl looked away. ‘A canary. Yes … yes, I once saw her with it. A little bird that had been mounted by the taxidermist, you understand. She was stroking it, so lost in thought she did not hear me and when she did, she put it quickly away in a pocket.'

‘Take Georges' advice. Don't go near him. Do absolutely nothing but your work here and in the hat shop. Stay indoors after curfew. Keep out of draughts and tell your friends to do so as well. The heat is on. I'll be in touch.'

Only then did she clasp her breasts to feel them rise and fall in the sigh she gave.

He'd closed the door behind him. He'd given her a few brief moments in which to compose herself.

He'd not asked if she had ever been in that room of Christabelle's or inside the Villa Audit, or why the girl had met her grandfather and the Corsican at the Café Noir on the avenue de Laumiére near the parc des Buttes-Chaumont.

Or why the girl had taken the canary out of her pocket and had quietly stroked it as the two men had talked so earnestly to her about things. A young girl, a dark-haired girl who had dyed her hair like that – why, why had she done so?

Christabelle Audit; Christiane Baudelaire. Two sets of papers, the one correct, the other false, but the occupation of art student and artist's mannequin the same, as if pride could not let her make some more sensible choice for at least one of them.

The dressing-room was small. The stove had gone out and the door was still closed but would it open suddenly some day, would he come for her also, this murderer?

A Corsican …

Gripping her shoulders, she rubbed them for warmth but stood alone wondering … wondering … How did she die? Terribly.