They had gone rowing on the Seine, had swum naked and not, had fished and explored and done so many things together.
There were photographs, pinned to a cupboard door, of the blind near the Carrefour du Chêne Prieur, snapshots of the boy in uniform, September 1940.
‘Two notes,’ said St-Cyr, shining the light more fully on them. A pencil dangled from a string into which a drawing pin had been recently stabbed.
Friday 29 January, 1943
Mon chear Étienne,
It has been some time since I’ve stayed overnight here, so I don’t know when you arrived. A week, two weeks … Perhaps as long ago as the three and a half weeks since my last visit ended on the third of the month. When I got here late last night, I found your things in the shed. I cried, Étienne. I laughed. I ran to the house calling your name but could not find you even here in the studio and pray you haven’t gone into the city to see maman. Papa will not allow it. He will swear things about you to the police that are untrue and will try to have you arrested and taken away. He wants Angèle-Marie to come home and insists maman must look after her, myself also.
Today I will visit some of our old haunts and friends in the hope of finding you, but I must also go to Brie-Comte-Robert, as I have a farmer there who has promised me a good breeding pair of rabbits, some sausage and cheese. It’s a deal I mustn’t pass up, so please forgive me and wait for me if you return.
Friday 29 January, 1943
Étienne,
It is now very late and I am so tired. Still there has been no sign or word from you and I have worried all day. Please don’t let it be that you’ve gone to see maman. I couldn’t bear having papa do that to you. I would kill myself, but I know you’ve always had a set of keys to the gates, the house and his study. I had them made for you years ago so that you wouldn’t feel hurt, but these keys, Étienne, they are missing from the tin box where you always kept them. Missing, mon cher!
If you should read this, please stay put as you will be far safer here. There is some food, not much, that I’ve stored in the stove’s oven, so don’t light a fire before removing it and then only late at night, as there are those in the district one can no longer trust.
I will try to return on Monday but must be careful, as the controls are becoming increasingly difficult and we now have the Milice who watch the metro, the railways and bus stations and the streets as well. Maman, though she cares nothing for me, will be beside herself with joy, Étienne, but I must be very careful how I tell her. We can’t have her running here without thinking of the consequences, but I will try to find a way to bring her to you in secret.
For now, may the love I have for you keep you safe and warm.
Your dearest friend and companion, as always, Danielle.
Like the footprints in dried river mud, the notes stepped out from the past.
‘Admit it, Louis. She couldn’t have poisoned that father of hers. She was definitely here.’
‘The girl accuses her mother, then one of the Society, then publicly de Saussine, but lies so badly she gets confused …’
‘She knew her brother was coming home and felt he must have done it. All along she’s been trying her damnedest to hide this from us.’
‘And Father Michel opens a parish wound to keep us from finding out what he believes has happened: that the boy has returned and is responsible.’
‘When she left us, the kid was heading here to save him. They’ll die together, Louis. That’s what she intends.’
‘But he isn’t here, Hermann, and yet … and yet, Madame de Trouvelot received a letter from him written on the fourth of the month from here.’
‘A letter?’
‘On its receipt she paid the final instalment.’
‘That kit in the shed … It reminded me of the war, Louis, of the things we had to send home for so many.’
‘And there’s a fruit jar of fine white sand by the sink in the kitchen.’
‘Sand?’
‘Don’t worry so much. It may mean nothing.’
‘Frau Hillebrand had a loaded pistol in that purse of hers, Louis.’
‘Could she have written the letter Madame de Trouvelot received?’
‘We’ll have to ask her, eh, since I’ve got what she may well have been ordered by Oberg to use.’
In the shed, torchlight fell on the rucksack which yielded only pieces of worn clothing that could have been the boy’s. The map case held the few rolled sketches of life in the POW camps that the censors hadn’t removed, but each one of them bore, dead centre, the heavy black imprint of the official rubber stamp.
The paintbox had a few dried-up tubes of oil paint, one brush and some bits of charcoal.
Hermann turned the map case upside down and like last leaves, the boy’s identity papers fell out. All had been officially stamped as ‘Cancelled. Died 28 December 1942. Pneumonia.’
‘Schlacht must have known, Louis, yet he let Madame de Bonnevies continue to beg for her son’s release.’
‘And the girl, Hermann? What if she, too, has known of this all along?’
‘She can’t have.’
‘But if she had?’
‘Then she wasn’t heading here at all, but has gone after our Bonze. Oberg will kill us, if she succeeds. He’ll make it slow and painful and will insist Oona and Giselle watch before he also hangs the two of them with the same piano wire.’
Like the rest of the city’s streets at 4:20 in the morning, the boulevard Ornano was dark in the grip of winter and empty. Breath billowed, and as they went up the street, Louis shone his torch over the entrances until at last he had picked out the soot-streaked placard on a flaking wall beside the rat-hole entrance to the maison de passe Schlacht had bought.
HOTEL
Chambres et Cabinets
TITANIA
au jour et nuit ou à la semaine
The blackened, doorless cavern that was the entrance led immediately to a narrow flight of wooden stairs. There was no light except that of the torch. At midnight the patron would have doused the faint, blue-washed beacon that would have drawn in the passing moths, with or without their yellow work cards, but with the boys they would love ‘for ever’.
Now, of course, and since midnight, they’d all have been locked in until the curfew ended. Snores and farts and spills of vin ordinaire or brandy, or the ‘champagne’ that was flogged even in places like this, the beds covered not with sheets and blankets, but with a single, greasy, stained and worn length of oilcloth. Cold as Christ; wet as Christ. Drunken legs sprawled, naked bodies dead to the world beneath scatterings of greatcoats, dresses, trousers and underpants, as if these could ever keep out the cold while snoring it off in the sweaty, unbathed clutches of a lover who was lying, like as not, in a puddle of piss.
Kohler knew he had seen it all; Louis had, too. They had left the Citroën opposite the rue du Roi-d’Alger and its passage, had parked Juliette de Bonnevies and the others in the cells of Charonne’s Commissariat de Police on the rue des Orteaux, and had refused to listen to their objections so as to come here alone.
Just the two of us, as always, he said silently to himself but would Oona have been raped by several? Would they find her half out of her mind with Danielle naked in the same room, the kid stone-eyed and beaten into submission?
‘Louis, let me go first. You know I’m better at this.’
‘That foot of yours will only complain of the shoe you’ve forced it into.’
‘Me first. That’s an order. We’ll take our time.’
‘We haven’t much of it and already are late, and at five we both know this can of worms will empty and we will be trampled in the rush.’