Flykiller (35 page)

‘Thus agreeing to the little proposition Ménétrel had put to you,' said Louis sadly. ‘Monsieur, exactly what reward did the doctor promise?'

The others must know, thought Kohler, but even so it would hurt to have to say it.

‘He said that if I could convince Céline to answer the Maréchal's love letters with a little visit, he, the Maréchal's personal physician and confidant, would see that I became Directeur de Finance, but that if I didn't, I could kiss my crummy job goodbye.'

‘And Céline … what was she offered?'

‘Two hundred thousand francs as well as the
laissez-passer, sauf-conduit
and necessary residence papers.'

‘Fernand de Brinon, our Government's representative in Paris, is a shareholder of our little enterprise,' confessed Deschambeault, not looking at any of them.

‘Everything had been taken care of,' offered de Fleury. ‘Céline was happier than I'd seen her in weeks but was still very worried about Lucie having an abortion. That, I think, is why she wanted to talk to her.'

‘And the earrings, monsieur?' asked Louis.

‘Believe me, I knew nothing of them, nor do I know why she would have tried to hide them from her killer.'

‘Jean-Louis, you spoke to Auguste-Alphonse Olivier. How did you find him?' asked Bousquet.

‘Withdrawn and very reticent to discuss the robbery. I did get him to admit that the jewellery hadn't been in his safe-deposit box but had been left where his wife had always kept it. When Hermann and I came downstairs from examining the room, he had gone out for another of his walks. A defeated man, Secrétaire.'

That was good of Louis, thought Kohler, but God help them if Gessler found out the truth!

‘And the robbery?' asked Bousquet.

‘The housekeeper confided that he often forgets his key and that she has then to leave the door unlocked.'

Good again.

‘Ah
bon
,' nodded Bousquet. ‘A veteran, a war hero. It's sad what life can do to a man.'

‘Pétain made a cuckold of him,' snorted Richard, ‘but fortunately Olivier poses no threat.'

‘Sadly none whatsoever,' said Louis. ‘A recluse no one pays the slightest attention to. And now, Monsieur de Fleury, since you keep the accounts, would you tell us, please, who the other shareholders are?'

‘Charles-Frédéric Hébert at the chateau – it was only proper of us to include him.'

‘Ménétrel?' asked Hermann, only to see de Fleury shake his head.

‘The doctor has always the well-being of the Maréchal in mind,' said Bousquet gruffly.

‘And the others?' asked Louis blandly.

‘Inspector, is this necessary?' asked Deschambeault.

It was. ‘Jean Bichelonne, Minister of Production and Communications,' said de Fleury. ‘Philippe Henriot, Minister of Propaganda and Information.'

Radio-Paris's Number One Boy.

‘Herr Otto Abetz, the German Ambassador.'

And owner of the château.

‘Édouard Guillaumet, Sous-directeur of the Tabac National at Vanves.'

And necessary.

‘Gérard Ouellette, Inspecteur des caves de la Halle aux vins.'

The huge Paris wine store: champagne and cognac too, of course – perfect.

‘Jean-Louis, the rest are prominent men of industry and commerce and members of the Cercle Européen,' said Bousquet, as if this ought to put them beyond reproach. ‘Aeronautics, automobiles and lorries, locomotives and railway trucks, coal, iron, steel, aluminium, beet sugar, cement and textiles, chemicals also. All keep horses at the racing stables.'

‘And occasionally enjoy a party or two?' asked Hermann, having momentarily lost his appetite.

‘Of course.'

‘Then the vans aren't the only vehicles that are used to transport goods, are they?' he said.

‘That is correct.'

‘And anything you need you can get at a price?'

‘That, too, within reason, is correct.'

‘So last December who ordered in the 1925 Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale that Marie-Jacqueline downed, and the Shalimar that Céline Dupuis was wearing when killed?'

‘Charles-Frédéric Hébert,' said Bousquet. ‘He's very fond of the Maréchal, though he no longer sees him and hasn't since the tragedy. The Bollinger and the Rémy-Martin Louis XIII were, I believe, Christmas gifts, but extra arrived with the consignment. As to the perfume, I don't think any was ordered.'

‘What tragedy?' asked Hermann innocently.

‘Why the suicide of Noëlle Olivier. It was Charles who brought the couple together and he still blames himself for what subsequently happened. He was a major shareholder in Olivier's bank and lost a fortune when it failed in 1933. Oh, by the way, Jean-Louis, I'll take those
billets doux
, if you don't mind.'

‘Later, Secrétaire. Later. For now they must be considered as evidence.'

At 10 a.m. Berlin Time, Friday 5 February, the sun was ringed with frost. The wind, gusting like a bastard, swept snow from every ridge and hill, and in the valley of the Allier below, the river was gripped in iron, the gunmetal light enough to make the bones ache.

‘
Mon Dieu
, Hermann,' said Louis, reverently ignoring the weather, his breath fogging an already iced-up windscreen, ‘it's
exactement
as Caesar would have seen it in 52
BC.
He'd been defeated by Vercingetorix and his Arverni at Gergovia, their hill fort, and had had to cross the ford down there to lick his wounds in the hot springs.'

Christ, were they to have another tiresome lecture at a time like this? They'd just driven through the little village of Charmeil, some seven kilometres north-west of Vichy, had first crossed the Boutiron Bridge without a murmur from the boys on the control, a bad sign. ‘That little aerodrome with the swastika wasn't there,
mon enfant
, nor were the two Storchs or that Dornier that are warming up!'

Grumpy still and no imagination! ‘Nor was the railway spur that's at the foot of this hill from which Herr Abetz's chateau commands such an imposing view.'

After leaving Chez Crusoe, they'd spent the rest of the night in yet another of the lousy flea-bitten hotels honest detectives had had to become accustomed to. Searing pain in that left knee and no time to boil chestnuts and mash a poultice as promised. ‘Caesar wouldn't have campaigned in the dead of winter!'

A sigh had best be given. Hermann had tossed and turned all night. Sleep had been impossible! ‘You're missing the point. Every schoolchild in this country your Führer thinks is his has to memorize the heroics of that twenty-year-old warrior, less now, of course, due to the Maréchal's policy of collaboration. But still, when he or she hears that Vercingetorix was defeated later that same year at Alesia, they learn that, like all noble Celts, he praised his vanquisher and led the Arverni in the victory parade, only to be courted by the Romans and then put to death. I tell you this simply to emphasize first that treachery is common to the Auvergne, though not limited to its natives.'

‘And the château?'

Hermann found a cigarette and, breaking it in half, lit both halves to pass one over.

‘
Merci.
Is like Vipiacus, the former estate of the Roman, Vipius, now corrupted into Vichy and owned by one of your countrymen.'

‘When in Rome, do as the Romans, eh; when in Occupied France, as the Occupier?'

‘Buy up everything you can.'

‘Then let those who once owned it, look after it.'

‘You're learning. I'm certain of it.'

‘And second?'

Ah
bon
, Hermann had risen to the bait. ‘That those same natives, having kept their beloved Auvergne independent of Paris for over a thousand years until Louis XIV made the mistake of finally taking it, are still tough but toughest on themselves. Just look at this chateau of your ambassador. Its towers and square keep, which have been often repaired, are all that remain of the lava-stone feudal fortress. The villagers have repeatedly raided its ruins for building materials, not only out of necessity but because of a deep-seated hatred of its owners and former owners, all of whom had not only robbed but brutalized them. Of course the Revolution also took its toll, although even then it was the peasants who suffered. But then … then along came new money and a gentler time to give us the gracefully sloping roofs that are covered with
lauzes
, the walled gardens, fishponds and statuary of a
maison de maître
, the baronial mansion of a
grand seigneur.
'

‘Who, like as not, is still from outside and still keeping the peasants in thrall.
Mein Gott
, haven't you heard that “effort brings its own reward”?' snorted Hermann, quoting the Maréchal.

‘“Salvation is above all in our hands,”
mon vieux.
“The first duty of all Frenchmen,” and I count you one of us, “is to have confidence”.'

‘You sort out the former owner and bird lover. Leave the staff to me.'

‘
Les bonnes à tout faire
?'

The maids of all work. ‘Only those who have eyes and ears and are pretty enough to have been chased at parties! Coffee and cakes in the kitchen when you're ready, Chief?'

Hermann had been lifted out of his slump and was now looking forward to opening this little can of worms, so it would be best to let him have the last word since he always liked to have it, except … except that, having now passed through the last set of gates, they had a visitor.

A black, four-door Citroën
traction avant
, just like their own in Paris, was drawn up in front of the main entrance, empty.

‘The bonnet is still warm,' said Louis, noting its melting snow.

‘Hot, if you ask me. There are even skid marks.'

Sandrine Richard was waiting for them. Not in the
grand salon
with its
Régence
furniture and floor-to-ceiling murals of the hunt. Eighteenth-century, those, thought Kohler. Flemish by. the look. Gorgeous paintings of long-necked swans and geese hanging upside down to mature, pheasants too. Stags, boars and lunging hounds, the wounded at bay under crystal chandeliers whose light would be reflected from the gilded frames and bevelled mirrors.

Even the parquet underfoot would gleam, their quickening steps echoing as they passed a seventeenth-century harpsichord and followed the maid with the short blonde pigtails and blue, blue eyes. One of the
Blitzmädchen.
Eighteen, if that, and with an urgent, self-deprecating walk, her arms kept stiffly to the sides of the prim black uniform with its
dentelle
of white Auvergne lace. Black lisle stockings, too, and glossy black leather shoes with low and slightly worn heels.

Madame Richard, wife of the Minister of Supplies and Rationing, wasn't in the billiards room either, its life-sized Hellenic nudes of Carrara marble gracing the decor of dripping, tassled green and maroon velvet, lozenges of crystal dangling from the low-slung lights above the table, the smell of cigars lingering in the musty air. Nor was she on the staircase that rose beneath baronial shields and crossed pikes to landing after landing, opening on to a long corridor that led to an even older part of the château.

She was in a high-ceilinged bedroom whose canopied bed was of dark rosewood and whose walls were covered with faded, patchy Renaissance frescoes but had the remarkable added touch of perched, exquisitely mounted birds. Hawks in full flight or having just come in to roost; eagles too, an owl … Another and another, one so small it was no bigger than a fist. All looking at the intruders, all caught as if alive. A snipe, a rail, a cock pheasant, a partridge. Eighty … a hundred … two hundred of these birds, the chicken-coop smell of their feathers mingling with that of cold wood-ashes.

‘Messieurs …'

‘Hermann, interview our guide and what staff remain. Leave this one and Monsieur Hébert to me!'

Turn-of-the-century, long-necked glass lamps with rose-coloured globes and wells of kerosene would shed the softest of lights on the assembled aviary, thought St-Cyr. An ormolu clock, its Olympian gracefully raising her garland from above the blackened fireplace, gave the exact time, even to its minute hand moving one step further into the current hour beneath a sumptuously reclining, all but life-sized nude whose back was slightly arched, throwing her pubes into full view.

Leaded windows let in the cold, grey light of day.

Madame Richard wore no hat or scarf – even the charcoal-grey woollen overcoat hadn't been buttoned, so eager had she been to jump into that Citroën of her husband's.

No gloves either, and watchfully tense, he noted. A woman in her late forties with straight jet-black hair that had been pulled to the right and back but had remained unpinned in haste, her eyes the hard and unyielding chestnut brown of the betrayed wife, socialite and mother, one of the Parisian
beau monde
, no doubt, with money, lots of money. Hers and his, ah yes. No wrinkles furrowed that most diligently tended of brows. Only at the base of the neck, above the everyday woollen dress, were there the cruel signs of ageing. A woman of more than medium height but not tall, the figure trim not because of the rationing, but because she ate only enough and never too much.

‘Inspector,' she said, her voice tight. ‘We have to talk.'

‘A few small quest—'

‘Don't you dare patronize me! That …' She pointed accusingly to an oaken door, centuries old, which had seen the hammering blows of countless invaders. ‘Is where I found them and.'

She waited, still watching him as the hawks and eagles did.

‘Is where I had them photographed not once but several times!'

A dark Renaissance table was swept bare of its lamp and sundry other items. ‘Here, damn you!' she shrilled as the sound of the breakage died and, sucking in a breath, snapped down print after twenty-by-twenty-five-centimetre print. ‘See for yourself what we were expected to put up with week after week, month after month. Élisabeth's Honoré de Fleury and that … that dancer of his; Madame Bousquet's husband, our Secrétaire Général and his school teacher; Julienne Deschambeault and her Gaëtan-Baptiste and his secretary. You should see what he's done to that wife of his.
Ruined
her life. Made a decent, healthy woman into a nervous wreck who is constantly ill!'