Grâce à Dieu, Schlacht had departed. There were others in the room — four Wehrmacht officers and their Parisiennes.
‘Your Führer has a passion for Leda and the Swan,’ confided Gabrielle, conspiratorially clucking her tongue as she ran her eyes over the voluptuous, classical nude in alabaster. ‘Nineteenth century and by Albert Carrier-Belleuse. It’s exquisite, is it not? Mon Dieu, your man has very good but expensive taste.’
Asleep, the swan was nestled over upraised, cloth-draped knees and thighs, with its head next to a plump, soft breast and Leda’s hand resting on a feathered wing.
‘Both of them are asleep,’ he said. But it was true, the Führer did have a passion for Leda and her Swan, and she did figure heavily in Nazi art. And every time she’d been just as voluptuous, just as slender, just as asleep and waiting to be ravished. ‘She was the Queen of Sparta,’ he said. ‘Zeus came to her in the form of a swan.’
Hermann’s tone of voice indicated how distracted and worried he was. ‘And now?’ asked Gabrielle, turning to search his pale blue eyes. ‘Now will the one you wish to know more about, come back to bid on this?’
‘To send it to his Führer as a little gift?’ he bleated.
She touched his hand in sympathy. ‘I’ll bid against him, if you like.’
‘No you won’t. You’ll find out what he pays for it and if he asks to have it crated and shipped to you know where.’
Outside, on the street, the Renault was gone but in its place were the flattened remains of the birdcage and its canary.
4
It was freezing in the study, and when the one from the Sûreté indicated the tin, Danielle told herself she must listen to his voice as if from beneath the ground and she already in her coffin.
‘One part safrole by volume, mademoiselle. Two of nitrobenzene, and the same again of gasoline. A small amount of the solution is dabbed on to a rag which is then stuffed through the entrance to the hive, so as to place it in the centre of the floor.’
‘Normally the fumigation is repeated every second day, Inspector, until all four decimal-five cubic centimetres of the mixture have been used.’
On waking, the girl had changed into a dark grey, woollen skirt, white blouse with Peter-Pan collar, and a knitted, powder-blue pullover. No pearls, no rings, no jewellery of any kind, not even a wristwatch. She was not nearly so tall as the father, but taller than the mother and thin, now that he could see her without the coat. Thin and small-breasted, underweight and no doubt this was all due to the severe lack of calories, and the energy expended in the hunt for food.
Becoming aware that she had remained just inside the doorway to the study, the girl thought to come forward, hesitated and then thought better of closing the gap between them.
Would the Sûreté understand that most of the honey they had produced had been taken from them? wondered Danielle. Would he realize that the rest had been severely rationed except for that given to clients among the Occupier and their sickening friends?
‘A lot of the bees are killed and must be removed from the hives, Inspector, but they are usually the ones with the acarine mites. Papa … My father felt the best time for such a fumigation was in the late winter, and after the bees had had a good flight to clean themselves. Bees are very clean, you understand. They will not defecate in the hive unless very ill, and fly away from the hive before doing so. But some people don’t realize this at first and hang their laundry near the hives in the garden, only to … to find it yellowed by the droppings.’
Modestly she had lowered her eyes, and when he gently said, ‘And the fumigation, mademoiselle?’ she looked up suddenly and swallowed with difficulty.
‘He would seal the entrance after placing all of the solution in there at once. “Quick and easy and thorough,” he said. “Danielle, never mind doing it bit by bit. Get it in there and over with! Hurry, petite. Hurry!”
‘The … the carnage was terrible but … but if you ask me, Inspector, he was invariably correct.’
Inadvertently the girl had recounted the first time the father had made her do it. And for how many years had she carried the guilt of those first little murders? he wondered. ‘How old were you then? Five or six?’
‘Seven. We … we had had a scare and papa wanted me to know best how to deal with it. I cried myself to sleep for nights afterward.’ There, he could think what he liked of that!
‘And was the recent infestation the reason so many of the hives had been brought into the apiary?’
Say only what is necessary; look steadily at him, she warned herself and answered flatly, ‘Yes.’
‘And the number of hives?’ she heard him ask and dug her fingernails into her palms to more firmly awaken herself to the threat of him before answering, ‘Usually about twenty here. Sometimes a few less or more. It depended.’
‘On the need to service an orchard or vineyard.’
‘The out-apiaries also. He … papa has — well, he had … Well, we have; I have, fifty-seven to … to look after.’
‘Then twenty-seven of them are still out on rooftops and in gardens?’
‘Papa … Papa and I were still bringing them into the apiary. He … he felt it necessary due to … to the threat he perceived. The disaster he said would happen.’
‘Acarine mites.’
‘Yes! But …’ She clamped her eyes shut and turned away, burst into tears and tried to stop herself. ‘Forgive me,’ she blurted. ‘He … he would not tell me why he felt so certain there would be such a terrible infestation, only that … that we must guard against it for the good of France.’
And has he believed me, this Chief Inspector of the Sûreté? she silently asked herself and heard that one gently saying, ‘Would you like to sit down?’
‘In his chair, at his desk? No. No, I … I will stand over here. Yes, here.’
And next to the microscope under which a Russian bee had been opened.
Her back remained ramrod stiff, her hands gripping the edge of the workbench, but when she realized that he would notice this, the girl relaxed her hold and turned to face him. She hadn’t yet dried her eyes or wiped her nose — did she want him to see her like this so as to engender sympathy? he wondered. Merde, what was she attempting to hide?
Everyone hides things these days, he cautioned himself. And please don’t forget grief takes many forms and she is in great distress.
As in the honey-house, he’d have to be kind, but was she hoping to block him from further viewing what was under that microscope? She’d admitted to the presence of acarine, but not to its source in Russian bees. ‘Mademoiselle, it’s good of you to have come downstairs. You must still be exhausted and are understandably in shock.’
‘I want to help, Inspector. There is only myself who can. She … Maman won’t be of any use. Papa didn’t … didn’t tell her anything about his work or …’
‘Or even about his private life?’
That brothel? That filthy place and those two bitches — was this what he was implying? ‘Yes. Yes, that is how it was with my parents. Mother didn’t do it, Inspector. I made her tell me. I said we had to talk, that the time for insulating herself from me must end.’
‘And her response?’
Instinctively the girl touched her left cheek, disturbing a camouflage of last-minute powder whose pale chalkiness had hidden the welt.
‘Mother slapped me hard. I … I forgave her immediately, of course.’
‘Would you prefer we didn’t talk here?’