Madrigal (51 page)

Schlacht, though hidden behind goggles and under a wide-brimmed felt trilby and tweed overcoat, had the stance, the look of a Berliner. Solid – maybe weighing as much as no kilos. A real
Bürgermeister
type. The face was round, fleshy and double-chinned, the forehead wide and blunt, the nose not unlike Louis's but no boxer, no such refinements – simply a pugilist come up from the streets. The lips were a little thin, but maybe that was because the stub of a cigar was clamped fiercely between his teeth.

Two Alsatians, guardians of the smelter, slept on the cooling firebricks of a nearby hearth.

The pour came to an end, the goggles were pushed up until they covered the forehead.
Ja, das ist gut
– Kohler could almost hear Schlacht saying it. Gold and candles … What the hell else was this little entrepreneur into?

Again the tingling in his spine came to him, again he thought to step back from the window and did so this time.

Frozen in its little cage beside the door opposite to the smelter, a dead canary watched him through hollow-eyed sockets. The hanging wire cage had been dented several times and often straightened to no effect.
Mein Gott
, why had someone left the poor creature out here to sing its heart away until no more?

There was a notice on the door.
Avertissement: Peine de mort contre les saboteurs.
Sentence of death against saboteurs.

For the acts of terrorism on 15 November, 3. and 16 December 1942 …

Father, brother, mother, sister, cousins, too – all had been taken, since that was the rule these days. But whereas the
résistant
would have been shot right away, the other men would be held as hostages, as
Sühnepersonen
– atoners – until needed in retribution for some other act by some other poor idiot whom they wouldn't even know. And goodbye to the rest of the family. They'd all have been deported.

Oberg had added these little twists to the ordinance. The Brigadeführer und Generalmajor Karl Albrecht Oberg, Höherer SS und Polizeiführer.

Judging by the custom-made wafers, Herr Schlacht could well have friends in. high places and that could well be von Schaumburg's greatest worry.

Stepping into the canary's abandoned building, Kohler prepared to wait and find out what he could. Louis would preach caution. Oberg was simply not a nice fellow and they'd already had too many run-ins with him.

Behind closed doors, through slightly parted curtains, the neighbours watched and held their collective breath, thought St-Cyr. Once on the Impasse de champ de parc de Charonne, the feeling was only more intense. Father Michel had orchestrated the whole interview, but why, really, had he seen fit to take him back to 1912 and the sister?

A parted curtain fell into place, another and another. Were the women of these houses afraid of what Hermann and he might discover and what their parish priest could well have initiated? Certainly a field for vegetables was one thing, the smashing of the hives and theft of the honey directly related to it, but did their guilt run deeper? And why, really, had Josiane always, it seemed, to play the part of a witness?

All of these former villages, once suburbs, had had their gangs of toughs. As a boy, he had had to defy that natural fear of all such boys when venturing into the territory of others. And in the summer of 1912, as today, de Bonnevies, no matter his penchant for taking a drink in the neighbourhood café or visiting the local house, would still have been classed as an
original.
Had the sister been picked on because of it? Had she not been alone in the Père Lachaise at all but with a friend – a witness who had hidden in terror, only to later confess to her mother the names of those who had raped the girl?

Father Michel might always have suspected this and now could not fail to see a connection between the murder and the rape, or had he deliberately begun by almost accusing Juliette de Bonnevies and then used the past to distract the investigation so as to hide something else?

‘I don't quite trust him,' said St-Cyr to himself. ‘I can't afford to, not yet.'

Knowing that he had best talk to Josiane and her sister before the priest got to them again, he retraced his steps. Father Michel had made no mention of the Caucasian bees de Bonnevies had been examining, none whatsoever of the address to which the beekeeper had been making last-minute revisions. Either he hadn't known of these, or had simply chosen not to discuss them.

At the rue de Bagnolet, St-Cyr crossed over and, once beyond the parish church and heading down the rue Saint-Blaise past the café to a side street, was right back in his days on the patrol.

Like all such houses,
Le Chat qui crie
had no need to announce its presence to the rue Florian or to this Sûreté. But like them all, there was intermittent traffic, the steps either hesitant or dogged, and then, of course, the absolute ease of entry. Swift and secure, and no one the wiser, perhaps.

The Charonne métro station was just behind the house and perfect for those who liked to travel from another quartier for their little moments, but had it been closed to save on the electricity? Rapidly he counted off every second station, concluding that it must still be open.

Between the glass and the lace curtain of the door to the house, a small card stated simply:
Entrer.

‘Monsieur, what can the house do for you?'

Sûreté had registered in the sixty-year-old madam's eyes. Instant suspicion, total defiance. Outrage, even. So
bon
!
Oui, oui
! He'd heard it all before, and many times. ‘Josiane and Georgette, madame, and hurry.' He snapped his fingers. ‘A few small questions, nothing difficult unless, of course, you feel I had best call in a little help.'

Bâtard
! she silently cursed, tossing her head in a huff and saying tartly, ‘You may sit with the girls or wait here.'

‘Here will suit perfectly.'

He was already thumbing through her accounts ledger. There were no names of the clients there for him to peruse, only those of the girls, but once her back was turned, he would put the lock on the door and then what? she demanded.

St-Cyr … wasn't it St-Cyr those two had said?

She let a breath escape and murmured to herself. ‘The ave' Ménilmontant. The house at number six.' And now? she wondered. Why now it must be more than thirty years since that house had been raided. Would he have remembered her from among those who'd been swept into the
panier à salade
– the salad basket – the Black Maria?

Deciding that their brief encounter of today was more than sufficient to last her for the rest of her life, Madame Thibodeau hurried into the waiting room to hush the whispers.

‘Josiane and Georgette, that parasite from the Sûreté wishes to prolong his moment at the expense of the house. Take him up to the graveyard. Strip if you wish, but watch out with him. He's a bloodsucker.'

‘It's freezing up there. It's always so cold,' lamented Georgette.

‘Cold or not,
ma petite
, it is exactly what you will do. Now go. Hurry.
Hurry
! Then get him out of here!'

No cat would venture down the courtyard to the smelter, no rat either, thought Kohler, for here they'd all been trapped and eaten. He was certain of it, was damned cold and tired of waiting in the building across the way. But at last Herr Schlacht left the smelter. Seen briefly through the grime of a broken, iron-barred window, the Berliner appeared even more of a pugilist, very sure of himself and satisfied with the latest of the day's efforts. Business was booming, and all that really mattered to one such as this was business.

The chubby chin wore its midday shadow, not brown, not blue-black but something in between; the collar of the beige tweed, herringbone overcoat was tightly buttoned up under it. Pausing to relight the cigar stub, Schlacht then collected the shiny black attache case he had set on the paving stones at his feet. A man in his mid-fifties with beautifully polished, alligator-leather shoes – Italian? wondered Kohler. The case was hefted, the grey eyes passing swiftly over the window to come to rest on the canary in its cage.

Crossing the courtyard, Schlacht looked up at it through narrowed eyes and said, ‘
Meine Liebling
, are you cold? As cold as those who put you in your cage? Forgive me but I had to send them away. They were taking too much notice of things and I couldn't have that.'

Berliners, like Parisians, loved their birds, and this one, by his accent, was solidly of the Luisenstädter Kanal. Scrap metals, Kohler reminded himself. And, no doubt, crowded tenements near the Schlesischer Bahnhof in the Fiftieth Precinct.

‘The charge was over nothing,
meine Liebling.
A mere mistake on my part, but …' Schlacht savoured his cigar as if searching for the right words. ‘But these days, little one, such mistakes once made cannot be retracted and unfortunately seem always to lead to far-reaching consequences. You should have warned them to move, or at least to take no notice of my comings and goings.'

He was gone then. Too soon he had reached the bend in the courtyard and had passed from view.

As Kohler stepped from the building, he realized Schlacht had seen his footprints in the snow. Louis, he said silently. Louis, I think we've got a problem.

The room with the gravestone was in the attic of the brothel. Like all such
maisons de tolérance
, the house catered to the special needs of as many of its regulars as possible. But here …

‘
Sacré nom de nom
,' breathed St-Cyr softly as Josiane and her sister stepped aside. Floor-to-ceiling murals covered the walls, giving ersatz views of the Père Lachaise's tree-lined boulevards. The tomb of Honoré de Balzac was in the near distance – was it really Balzac's tomb?

The entrance to the Ossuary was a parody of Bartholomé's magnificent high-relief sculpture. Instead of a naked couple standing hand in hand ready to step through the doorway into the pitch darkness of eternal peace, here each had a hand on the buttocks of the other.

‘My partner should see this,' he said drolly. ‘Hermann is a student of all things French, especially its
lupanars.
'

Its ‘rabbit hutches'.

‘This is the stone,' said Georgette, picking her way down a narrow aisle between bits of sculpture and other stones. ‘Her name, as you can see, is beautifully inscribed.'

‘The stone is real, as are all the others,' said Josiane quickly. The Inspector would immediately see that others must also have used the room to fulfil their fantasies or to view it in fun, but would he accept that Alexandre had never once complained of this, that to him the room had still been just as sacred a trust as when it had begun, secure and totally private?

A low, Louis XIV iron fence surrounded the plot where masses of silk flowers were forever in bloom. Verbena, fuchsia and hibiscus, thought St-Cyr. Chinese Bell Flower, too, and Mignonette, but not the dreary bunches of red and white carnations so typical of such places.

‘When Alexandre asked his sister to gather flowers for him,' confessed Georgette, ‘he told her to take only the not-so-common.'

Carved into the grey granite was the name
Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies
, and then:
Born 17 June 1897; taken in the flower of her youth, 20 August 1912
.

‘But … but she isn't dead?' he heard himself saying.

It was Josiane who, ever wary of his reactions, answered, ‘Ah no, Inspector, but she might just as well have been.'

‘Did de Bonnevies pay for this room?' he asked and saw her start, heard her sister saying, ‘Everything, and for its continued maintenance. Inspector, none ever knew at whose stone the girl had been violated, so no other name was possible, isn't that right? I would pretend to be gathering samples of these flowers, Josiane would be over there out of sight. The custodian had forgotten all about us and had locked the gates, so we were both a little nervous and would … would call to each other.'

‘Angèle-Marie, have you found any other flowers? Hurry. We must hurry,' sang out Josiane softly and no longer seen.

Georgette was now on her knees, awkwardly reaching well over the fence to almost touch the foot of the stone …

‘I would say, “I've found some,” but so soft was my voice, the name of my friend could never be heard.'

‘They would come upon her,' grated Josiane. ‘Two, maybe three of them – four sometimes. Young, not old. Boys, he thought but never really knew. I swear it. He … he always changed his mind about the number and … and the ages of them.'

‘First one and then another would take me, Inspector. My clothes would be torn from me, my legs forced apart, my head pushed down … down …'

‘Yes, yes. Enough! And this friend of Angèle-Marie?' he asked grimly. ‘What of her, please?'

They didn't say a thing, these two. Josiane made her way among the stones to help her sister tidy the flowers.

‘The friend cried out encouragement,' sighed St-Cyr. ‘Instead of watching in horror at what was happening, she egged them on and had probably agreed beforehand to set the whole thing up. Did he find out who this “friend” was? Please, you had best tell me now.'

Both shrugged and shook their heads. ‘Afterwards, as we would soothe him and ourselves,' said Josiane, taking her sister by the hand to comfort her, ‘he would always speak of a settlement of accounts, Inspector. Things were to be done on the quiet, though.'

‘But at any price; at all costs,' managed Georgette.

‘How many were there?' he asked. ‘Come, come, you must have some idea.'

‘Four,' confessed Georgette. ‘He had finally settled on four of the local boys.'

‘When?'

‘Last Thursday. After he had been to see his sister,' said Josiane, ‘and … and before he was poisoned.'

With a flash, the last of the lead was oxidized and carried away by the strong jet of air from the blowpipe, leaving a white-hot bead of gold and silver in the bottom of the cupel. Kohler was entranced. ‘
Mein Gott
,' he exclaimed, ‘bubbles are erupting from the surface. It's like a tiny volcano.'