Tapestry (12 page)

But not without good reason. ‘And then?’

‘The one in the photos went out to the taxi stand.’

‘Time?’

‘At about five thirty in the afternoon.’

‘
Ah, bon.
At last we’re getting somewhere. Now tell me, did they come here often?’

Martel shook his head. ‘Only the poorly dressed one and not often, but … but not always with the child.’

Oh-oh. ‘The
cinq à sept
?’

The customary hours from five to seven for
les liaisons sexuelles
. The detective could think what he wished but would have to be told a little so as to get him out of here and quickly. ‘Then and earlier. Sometimes the monsieur is busy and telephones to say he can’t make it. Sometimes he can only spare a moment to say hello to his wife’s stepsister, paying her bill as he leaves. At other times they have the half-hour, never more, so the order is always taken quickly to his table. He presses food upon the woman and she always puts most of it into her handbag. And always he tries to give her money and always she refuses and says, “You know I will only leave it on the table.” ’

‘M. Gaston Morel of
Cimenterie Morel
?’

‘Oui.’

The finches were gone from the cage, and in their place were gerbils. Handful by handful, Noëlle Jourdan spread wood shavings and sawdust, having saved the soiled for the stove.

‘They like to burrow,’ she said, knowing that the questions would come and that there was nothing she could do to stop them. ‘They make good company and love to play.’

‘Noëlle, please don’t get too attached to them,’ rasped the father, Jourdan having taken one of the two cane chairs in the tiny kitchen, the daughter having drawn the black-out drapes as soon as she had got to the flat.

‘They all know me, don’t they, and trust me as a friend, but I won’t,’ she said, scattering rosehips for the captives, a little treat she had somehow acquired. ‘I mustn’t, must I?’

Two rabbits occupied the small, screened airing cabinet that had, in better days, held the bread, butter, cheese, milk and meat, et cetera, to keep the flies, the cockroaches and mice from them. A single electric bulb hung above the plain deal table, its height being adjusted by a sliding lead weight along the frayed cord that passed over a pulley whose block was hooked to the wall. As far as one could determine, there were few if any other lights.

Supper consisted of a stew, which had, no doubt, been put to the boil at 4.30 a.m. on the building’s communal stove downstairs and had then been placed in the hay box up here to cook all day in its own steam and juice.

She was capable, this Noëlle Jourdan. She was everything a father such as hers needed, but had she any life of her own?

Three rutabagas, some half-rotted cabbage leaves, a scattering of sow thistle roots, a few carrots and a bulb of garlic tumbled from the string bag, the sum total perhaps of the hours of standing in line. A parsimonious bit of sawn soup bone was removed from a pocket, two thin handfuls of macaroni, six Brussels sprouts and a cloth-clad lump of
chèvre
that oozed goats’ milk on to the counter. Félix Picard had said he thought she had brown hair but must have been totally mesmerized by the stamp collection.

She was
une belle
. The brow was high, smooth and wide, the eyebrows richly dark and perfectly arched. Modigliani would have longed to use her as a model, Picasso to seduce her. Though the chin was determined, it was soft, the eyes of the darkest Midi olive­, their lashes long. Certainly, even after Jourdan’s comments about the Trinité victim, the girl must still be a worry, what with the way things were on the streets during the blackout. The ears were free of earrings—had they, too, like so much of the family’s things, been sold off piece by piece? The hair was jet black, not brown at all, and worn with a natural wave that suited admirably, the skin of the softest shade of Midi brown, the mother either from the south of France or Italian perhaps, or Spanish. There wasn’t a hint of lipstick or eye shadow. Had the father insisted on this?

She was of just a little more than medium height and delicate, yet not delicate, though hiding her thoughts perfectly under such a scrutiny. Bathes regularly, he would have said to Hermann had the two of them been discussing her. Visits the local bathhouse at least once a week. Insists on it even though the cash of such a modest expense is desperately needed. ‘Mademoiselle, you sold a stamp collection.’

‘Noëlle, what is this, please?’

‘It wasn’t mine,
Papa.
I found it on the
métro
.’

‘And didn’t turn it in to the lost property office?’

‘
Papa
, I was working the night shift. I didn’t want to be late. I …’

‘Sergeant, a moment, please. Am I correct in concluding that you didn’t know about this “grandmother’s” stamp collection?’

‘What grandmother? Noëlle, what is this one saying?’

Clearly the father hadn’t known of the stamps or even of the grandmother and just as clearly the girl felt trapped, she looking to this Sûreté for help when, of course, none could be offered, or could it? ‘Mademoiselle, when, exactly, did you find the collection?’

Had he believed her? ‘About three weeks ago. The
métro
is always crowded these days. I was tired, you understand. Suddenly a seat became available. Others didn’t see this at first. I squeezed past them and dropped into it and … and only then realized that there was something on the floor at my feet.’

‘A package.’

‘
Oui
. I thought to leave it—one never knows if touching such a thing might bring trouble. In the end, I …’

‘Picked it up.’

‘Oui.’
Would he now ask if anyone had seen her do so?

‘And at the hospital you put it into your locker?’

‘
Oui
. I didn’t even know what it was. I swear it. All night I was run off my feet. Pneumonia, babies, the flu, the epidemic we’ve been having of appendectomies due to those damned rutabagas. In the morning, I forgot all about it and … and hurried home.’

She should have been an actress. ‘You left it in your locker under lock and key.’

Ah, merde
, was this Sûreté on to her? ‘That is correct.’

Now to give her a little more line. ‘Day then passed into day, shift into shift, until you realized you could no longer turn it into the lost property office without explaining the delay.’

‘That, too, is correct. I … I sold it instead.’ Confessing to such a thing, even though he had known of it, was still a gamble but sometimes if one didn’t take a chance, one didn’t get anywhere.

‘
Chérie,
I know things haven’t been easy, but to sell something that belonged to another …’

‘
Papa,
I couldn’t control myself!’

How many times had he heard that same excuse from unlicenced prostitutes? wondered St-Cyr, sighing inwardly, but he’d have to lie a little to keep the fish on the line. ‘For now we’ll leave the press photo session, mademoiselle, as I wouldn’t want your dinner to get cold. Please be prepared, though, to offer clear and precise answers when next called upon. Sergeant …’

‘Inspector …’ began Jourdan.

‘See that she tells you everything,
mon ami
, then when we next meet, if she’s out, you can relay it to me.’

Three weeks … to keep a collection like that under wraps for even that length of time had to imply control and/or fear, but at the door, he said, ‘Mademoiselle, your father has corroborated the matron’s statement to my partner that you willingly allowed and then went out of your way to assist the press in photographing last night’s Trinité victim.’

A hardness entered, a breath was taken and held. ‘I did and don’t deny it.’

‘Two thousand francs wasn’t much.’

The shrug she gave was curt. ‘I did what I had to for
Papa
’s sake.’

That, too, would have to be entered into. ‘And now, what will you do?’

‘Me? Do like everyone else. The
système D
.’

From the verb
se débrouiller
, to manage. ‘And write letters to relatives in the country?’

‘Ours are all dead.
Papa,
he … he writes to old comrades-in-arms.’

The ‘grey’ market, the using those one knew, even if in but the remotest of ways, for help. ‘A ham, a chicken, some potatoes …’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘And do they send him such in the post?’

Like everyone else was doing if they could. ‘Sometimes.’

‘And what is offered in exchange?’

‘Tobacco …’
Ah, Sainte-Mère,
he had made her so edgy she’d let it slip, and he had known she would!

The father had been desperate and had had to budget himself, but had he lied and was he also spreading that hatred of his towards those women who were having sex with the enemy, their husbands and fiancés being absent as prisoners of war? ‘Cigarettes have become the preferred currency, haven’t they? You cleaned out your locker at the
Hôtel-Dieu,
did you?’

This one was trouble! ‘My locker … ? Why … why, yes. Matron stood over me while I did. “Quickly, quickly,” she said. I was in tears, you understand. I could hardly see. I … I just grabbed my handbag and things, changed into my street clothes and left.’

Having then been escorted to the door. ‘Tears. Yes, I can understand those. Your father’s Légion d’honneur, mademoiselle. Why doesn’t he wear it?’

‘He misplaced it. I’ve looked everywhere. One of the kids in the building must have been in and taken it. I’ll get it back. I know I will.’
Merde,
why had he had to notice it was missing? ‘I … I’ve just lost my job, Inspector, haven’t yet had the time to ask around.’

‘But will, and you’ll get another.’ But had she been forced to give up the ribbon and to then let the press take those photographs?

He walked away from her, this Sûreté, the brim of that shabby fedora yanked determinedly down, the collar of an equally shabby overcoat turned up. He didn’t look back until he had reached the bottom of the stairs. Only then did he see her standing here at the railing, hands on the laundry that would never dry completely but always remain a little damp and frozen.

It wasn’t far to the
Hôtel-Dieu
, especially not if one had a motorcar, and this she heard starting up, as did everyone else in the building.

When opened by an attendant and carefully searched by this Sûreté, especially along its metal seams, the locker yielded three pale green tickets bearing dates of the fifteenth and twenty-third of December last, and as recently as the seventh of January, all from Ma Tante
,
‘My Aunt,’ the
mont-de-piété
of the Crédit Municipal de Paris, the pawnshop at 55 rue des Francs-Bourgeois.

Kohler gripped the Ford’s steering wheel. The rue Laffitte, which wasn’t far to the east of the rue Taitbout, threw up the faint blue firefly lights of its bicycles and bicycle-taxis. The slit-eyed headlamps of a
gazogène
-powered lorry nudged into the stream only to find two petrol-driven Wehrmacht lorries hungering after it for half the load of black-market goods, the usual tariff.

A rare
autobus au gazogène
burped in rebellion, the sodden line of stragglers impassively boarding, while here and there the glow from cigarettes was hardly noticeable due to the extreme shortage of rationed tobacco and the
verdammter Frost
!

Parisians were in misery and this Kripo was definitely among them. Madame Marie-Léon Barrault, Victim Four, hadn’t been home. The concierge of the former mansion on the rue Taitbout, that droopy-shouldered
salaud
of a now run-down tenement, had let him waste valuable time climbing five flights of lousy threadbare stairs and then had let him come right back down.

‘But, monsieur, you haven’t asked it of me? Normally when one gives the floor and flat number, one expects such a request, especially if from one of
les Allemands
.’

And now? he had to wonder, the car idling at kerbside, he staring up the ever-darkening slot of the street to the Église de Notre-Dame de Lorette and beyond it.

High on the butte of Montmartre, the white dome of the Sacré-Coeur caught the last of what had passed for daylight, dwarfing all else as it frowned upon the church he sought that had offered succour to the demimondes of this once virulently bohemian
quartier
. But that had been in the mid-1800s when the owners of these former mansions had had to accept all tenants, and that, of course, had led to the district’s increasingly being used in the last half of that century as a dormitory from which the girls could pound the pavements of the
grands boulevards
and the Champs-Élysées until, in turn, the quality of those girls had degenerated to the common. And hadn’t the Église de Notre-Dame de Lorette given the name
lorettes
to those girls because it had become their church as well as that of others, but was all this still ancient history, that was the question?

‘Madame Barrault must feel the need to confess,’ the concierge of her building had fluted. ‘That one comes and goes, Inspector, and often leaves the child alone.’

Had he been so wrong about this Drouant victim? wondered Kohler. He had had to wait for more from that concierge. ‘Many times my wife has had to calm the child whose refusal to unlock the door to that flat of theirs has always led to my having to use the spare key of this office.’

The shit! but had Madame Barrault refused the offer to look the other way when she went out alone if only she’d give him a bit on the side? Had she come here to confess?

Cop registered in made-up eyes, and as one they sat immobile, now wondering if there’d be a roundup and they’d all be taken for the swab and locked up if failing to have a proper licence.

Maybe one hundred and fifty sat about. All ages from sixteen to seventy. Fur coats and fur-trimmed hats on some, and money there; blankets made into overcoats on others, the church not large, its interior
d’après
Louis-Philippe perhaps. Relax! he wanted to shout at them but knew it would only lead to an immediate exodus and that it would be best to say, ‘Stay put or I’ll blow my whistle.’

‘Vipère!’
muttered one under her breath,
‘Cobra!’
another,
‘Couillon!’
yet another, she hastily crossing herself as this ‘asshole’ searched over the lot of them, noting family medals on some: a bronze for five children, a silver for eight, a gold for ten and how the hell else were they to feed the kids these days?