Turning swiftly away, she choked and threw up.
‘And you, Frau Hillebrand?’ asked the Chief Inspector St-Cyr, watching her closely, too closely, thought Käthe. ‘You’re not sickened, but are fascinated.’
‘In shock!’ she said harshly in deutsch, and dragging a handkerchief from her purse, clapped it over her nose. Rage moistened her lovely eyes — guilt also? wondered St-Cyr.
Father Michel had kissed the rosary he had dragged from a pocket and was muttering an Ave.
De Saussine was pale and shaken. Slowly, gradually, his gaze moved from the blue-black lips and gold-filled teeth to the scars of war that had lacerated and punctured the chest and arms, to the varicose veins and putrid, greenish-yellow blotches that were spreading under the pale, blackberry-hued and hairy skin.
‘Ah bon!’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘He’s been opened twice and …’
The Inspector consulted a sheaf of typed pages, pausing when he found what he was after, thought Juliette. ‘A good sixty cubic centimetres were downed in one gulp from that bottle. The “Amaretto” was between thirty and forty per cent mono-nitrobenzene, but its excess, beyond that which had dissolved in the alcohol, would have risen to the top so he did not even look at the drink he took.’
‘Oil of mirbane,’ whispered Kohler to Frau Hillebrand who darted a startled and hurtful glance at him.
‘Apparently our victim had eaten little since the early morning, Madame de Bonnevies,’ went on Louis. ‘A “coffee” taken without milk, a small piece of the National bread and a teaspoon of pollen.’
‘He always swore it gave him energy,’ she said emptily.
‘A little wine during the day. A dried apple, a few chestnuts and one or two of your daughter’s vitaminic biscuits.’
The woman shrugged and said, ‘I really wouldn’t know what, if anything, he ate during the rest of that day. I took him his breakfast at seven. We didn’t even speak. We … we seldom did.’
‘And that afternoon?’
‘Father Michel came to see me after he’d been to the Salpêtrière. He said … I’m sorry, Father, but I have to tell them. He said that it had all been taken care of and I need not worry any longer about Alexandre’s bringing Angèle-Marie home.’
‘I gave that poor unfortunate a taste of honey, Inspectors, and freely admit it.’
‘Later, mon Père. We’ll deal with you later,’ grunted St-Cyr. ‘Madame, at what time, please, did your husband return from the hospital?’
‘At … at about ten past four.’
‘And where were you at that time?’
‘In the kitchen. Father Michel hadn’t wanted Alexandre to find him there but my husband came through as usual, saying only that he was going out again.’
‘And your answer, madame?’
‘My answer …? Why, the silence of a wife who knows, Inspector, exactly where her husband is going.’
‘To Le Chat qui crie.’
‘Yes.’
‘And early that evening?’ asked Louis, glancing again at the autopsy reports as if there was information he had deliberately withheld, thought Kohler, and saw the priest warily watching Juliette.
‘At eight thirty Alexandre went out to unlock the gates.’
‘And where were you when you heard this?’
‘In … in Étienne’s room.’
‘And you heard your husband from behind closed windows, black-out drapes and closed doors — remember, please, that the study is quite separate from the rest of the house?’
Ah damn him! ‘I had opened my son’s bedroom window a little. I … I felt Alexandre must be meeting someone because he … he had been so agitated. Nothing had been right. It never was, but …’ She shrugged. ‘I just had to find out who could be coming at such an hour.’
‘Yet you had hardly spoken during the whole of that day?’
Merde alors, would he not leave things alone? ‘It … it was a feeling I had. Nothing else.’.
‘Then we’ll let the matter rest, shall we? Death occurred between eight twenty and nine twenty, give or take a half-hour on either side.’
‘Alexandre hurried back through the garden. I heard him quickly close the outer door to the study. There were a few minutes of silence and then … then …’ She gripped her forehead and, covering her eyes in despair, said, ‘I heard him cry out suddenly, heard him shrieking my name and … and gagging. I thought he was just angry. Really I did. Oh mon Dieu, mon Dieu, why could I not have gone to help him? I didn’t, Inspectors. I waited, and may God forgive me.’
A reasonable performance, thought Kohler, but not quite believable. ‘And then?’ asked Louis with that same unruffled patience he always had when a corpse was between himself and a suspect.
‘I heard him vomiting and wondered at this, but … but someone was opening the gate at the back of the garden. It needs to be oiled, you understand, but there is no oil to be had. This person came on and opened the outer door to the study. Light fell briefly on her and I … I saw who it was.’
‘The time, please — as close as you can estimate?’
‘Nine, I think, or … or eight forty-five.’
‘And the name, madame?’
‘Frau Schlacht. She … she didn’t stay more than a minute or two and, making certain the lock was on, closed the door and hurriedly left by the way she had come. I ran downstairs and went out the front door to the street and nearly collided with her, but … but she simply hurried away and got into a vélo-taxi that was waiting for her. Only then did I hear her voice, in German. She was swearing at her driver and telling him to hurry.’
‘And then?’ asked Louis.
‘I went back inside and tried to get my husband to open the door to the study, but … but there was no sound.’
‘No sound … Ah! a moment, madame. I have it here.’
Kohler knew the look Louis gave the woman, that of a Sûreté who hadn’t believed for a minute what she’d said.
‘By itself, and simply drinking the nitrobenzene, madame, any reaction would have been delayed for at least an hour, but your husband, as you know, realized what had happened and immediately tried to check the contents of the container, and during this, spilled the oil of mirbane and got it on his hands and clothes. As a result, the reaction was much more rapid and death took place within an hour. An hour, Madame de Bonnevies.’
‘Between eight twenty and nine twenty,’ muttered Käthe Hillebrand, ‘or between seven fifty and eight fifty …’
‘Or between eight fifty and nine fifty,’ said St-Cyr, ‘which would be suitable, of course, but we want that hour prior to death, don’t we, and Madame de Bonnevies has just told us her husband had gone out to open the gates at …?’
‘At eight thirty. My watch, it’s … it’s not so good any more.’
‘Off by an hour?’ asked the Sûreté. ‘Still on the old time perhaps?’
She swallowed hard and admitted that this was possible.
‘Then let’s get it straight once and for all, madame. Your husband lay on the floor in agony — vomiting, passing out only to awaken moments later with a ragged gasp. Twitching, getting up — falling — knocking things over and …?’
‘And crying out my name, but … but I did not kill him. I swear it. I … I thought he was drunk.’
Her tears were very real, but still it would have to be asked. ‘Had he ever been drunk before in his study?’
‘No! Father … Father, tell him I didn’t do it. Tell him I sat in the kitchen, listening to Alexandre — knowing something must be wrong and that I should go to him, but that the years of bitterness had been too many.’
‘Inspector …’
‘Later, Father. Later. And Frau Schlacht, madame?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘She came to the front entrance and I let her into the house. Together we broke a pane of glass in the back door and found my husband on the floor.’
‘Dead?’
‘Of course.’
‘At what time, please?’