‘Time? I … I don’t know! How could I? My watch …’
‘Was it at the Hôtel Titania on a night table, madame? Were you nowhere near your house at the time of your husband’s death?’
‘Louis, when first interviewed she claimed she couldn’t possibly have known he was expecting a visitor.’
‘Absolutely a conflict, Hermann.’
‘All right. I … I didn’t find him until about three in the morning when Herr Schlacht dropped me off at the corner of the street. Alexandre’s bedroom door was open and he wasn’t in his bed. That’s … that’s when I broke the window and found him on the floor.’
‘And Frau Schlacht?’ asked Louis.
‘Must have put the lock on the outer door he had left open for her. I … I really don’t know but didn’t want you to find her name in his little book because … because Oskar had said she was up to something with my husband.’
He would give her the curt little nod of dismissal he usually gave on such occasions, thought St-Cyr, and then would distract her by going after the priest. ‘And now you, Father. Let’s get this over with quickly.’
‘I didn’t kill him. I would never have done that.’
‘Perhaps, but as his priest and confessor you knew all about what he’d been doing to Héloïse Debré and to Jean-Claude Leroux, the custodian of the catacombs, and you knew he wanted his sister to come home.’
‘Angèle-Marie was a madness of his. I couldn’t allow him to destroy Juliette’s life any more than he already had.’
‘So you gave the sister a taste of honey.’
‘Things had gone too far. Alexandre could be and was a monster and yet … and yet, he had much good in him.’
‘And after you’d been to see the sister?’
‘I went straight to the house to counsel Juliette, as she has stated.’
‘You knew where the nitrobenzene was kept, Father,’ said Kohler, ‘and unless I’m very mistaken, madame confided to you that she had been questioned by Herr Schlacht as to its whereabouts.’
‘The bottle of Amaretto was on the desk,’ continued Louis. ‘Monsieur de Bonnevies would pay the brothel his customary visit.’
‘He’d been very vocal, hadn’t he?’ said Kohler.
‘And had told you, Father, exactly what he’d do if madame’s son should return.’
These two would not stop until they had the truth, sighed Father Michel and said sadly, ‘Alexandre was beside himself with rage to which I, poor humble servant that I am, tried only to plead for reason. Étienne had done him no real harm. How could he continue to blame the boy for a love affair the child in its mother’s womb could have known nothing of.’
‘Your husband, madame,’ said St-Cyr. ‘I believe you knew very well what he intended to do should your efforts to free your son succeed.’
‘And these two were both in the house when that bottle sat alone on the desk,’ interjected Käthe Hillebrand.
‘No poison in it, eh, Louis, and then more than sufficient, even if he hadn’t cooperated by spilling it on himself.’
‘And a million francs,’ swore Honoré de Saussine. ‘Herr Schlacht must have offered it to you as well, Madame de Bonnevies.’
‘A million …,’ countered Juliette lividly. ‘Neither Father Michel nor I went into that study, Inspectors. The door was locked and I don’t have a key. I’ve never had one. Not even when Alexandre first brought me to the house of his mother and introduced me to the hatred and resentment he bore me.’
‘But you do have keys to the gates?’ asked St-Cyr and heard her saying, ‘Danielle has those for when looking after the hives. Not me, Inspector. Never me.’
‘But she has told us she left them in her room when out of the city?’
‘This … this I wouldn’t have been aware of.’
‘Of course you were.’
‘All right, I was, but I didn’t touch them.’
‘And could Danielle, knowing only too well what her father would do if Étienne was freed, not have left the city on Thursday as she claimed, but returned to the house late that afternoon?’
‘Danielle … It’s … it’s possible, but … but Etienne has not been freed. I would have known of this. My son would not have denied his mother the news I’ve been praying so hard for.’
‘Louis …’ Kohler indicated the SS major and two others who had come into the autopsy room. ‘They haven’t found her.’
‘Then let us hope the half-brother has come home.’
In total darkness 42 boulevard Maillot faced on to the Bois de Boulogne. Her heart sinking at what she must now go through, Juliette recalled that before the Defeat there had been tall iron gates, such handsome gates, bearing the de Trouvelot coat of arms, but these had been taken by the Occupier and shipped to the Reich as scrap metals. ‘To the Krupp factories at Essen!’ Madame de Trouvelot had charged, as if she had caused the loss and was still to blame for … What? she asked herself. For bearing her son’s only child and keeping silent the family name.
She remembered begging the woman to free Étienne before he died in the camps. ‘On 5 November of last year I went down on my knees to her, Inspectors,’ she confessed, her voice breaking. ‘Tears that should never have fallen in front of one such as her, wet my cheeks and I could not stop them just as now. I told her the name of the waiter at Maxim’s that Oskar had said could help me. Fifty thousand francs … a hundred thousand — they were nothing to her. Oh bien sûr, the Occupier has requisitioned her beautiful house but pays her a healthy rent, and yes, she now lives in one room — the library. Henri-Christophe loved that room and, when forced to move, she chose it above all others, but the Generalmajor who lives here and commands the Luftwaffe in Paris and the Île de France is an understanding man. Her meals deny her nothing. She has the use of the garden and is free to come and go as she pleases. Sometimes even the car is available, but you’ll get nothing from her. She hated me and hated the thought of her son marrying me. To her I was a tramp and nothing Henri-Christophe could do or say could ever change her opinion. My father was a shopkeeper. I had lured her son into illicit sexual encounters to elevate my own status, disregarding entirely that I would bring down that of his family.’
‘Louis, let me stay here with madame and the others,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Don’t bugger about looking for answers we might or might not need. Just ask the woman if she paid up and if the boy was freed.’
‘She didn’t!’ wept Juliette. ‘She laughed at my attempts to beg and told me that now I must really pay for my sins. My sins, when Henri-Christophe and I were so in love our hearts ached to be with one another and we could hardly wait to go to a hotel. A hotel … Ah! I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Ours was a secret, an amour fou, and I can still feel the first time he kissed me, the first brush of his hands on my breasts, the tenderness of his caresses, the first time he entered me, the rush of it, the joy, the eagerness of us both.’
‘My child …’
‘Father, don’t you dare patronize me! You knew the agony I was living. You, who married me to that bastard!’
‘It was for the best.’
‘Sacré nom de nom, how can you say such a thing? You who knew him far better than anyone else!’
Pocketing the keys, Louis got out and came round to the other side of the car. Kohler saw him look up to that God of his to ask for help. Danielle de Bonnevies was terrified and on the run and probably trying to reach her brother before it was too late for him, but if no brother, then what? he asked himself and answered, A quiet place where the roots of Helleborus niger can be ground or simply eaten as is.
A sentry challenged Louis as he stepped between the stone gates, and the beam of a blue-blinkered torch swept over him before alighting on the proffered Sûreté badge and identity papers. Madame de Bonnevies gave a ragged sob to which Father Michel impatiently said, ‘If Étienne de Bonnevies has come home, Inspector, then I greatly fear you have no need to look further for your murderer.’