There were no hidden tripwires, no ‘alarms’ to warn résistants who might be hiding in such a place and were fond of using them.
But not this hole, thought Kohler, checking the stairwell out anyway.
Hermann was good at this sort of thing, conceded St-Cyr. His night vision was so clear he could see things in a darkened room or stairwell that no one else could. And hear things, too, and yet not be heard or seen. But Hermann was afraid of what they’d find and now felt great sympathy for Danielle, having forgotten entirely that it was he who had first thought she might have poisoned her father.
There had, as yet, been no sign of the bicycle, though they had watched the sides of the country roads and had tried to find it.
‘Louis, this door’s not locked,’ came the whisper. Hermann’s fingers trembled as he emphasized the point. Pistol in hand, he nudged the door open. The carpet was frayed, and as he felt for the tripwire that might be here, hole after torn hole was found.
The ‘desk’ was vacant. The patron had been told to bugger off. There were no snores, only Louis’s breathing and that of his own. ‘Switch on the torch,’ he sighed. ‘Come on mein lieber Oberdetektiv, this place has been emptied in expectation of our little visit.’
‘So have my batteries.’ But had Herr Schlacht prepared a welcome for them?
Time was lost, all sense of its passing gone. On his hands and knees St-Cyr crept forward to another door which, he knew by now, must open at a touch but one could never touch without searching first.
Dust … a feather in a place where there were so few … a coin, a pfennig dropped as Reichskassenscheine or francs were hauled from a pocket and one mark or twenty francs given for a little moment, or cigarettes, for these had fast become the preferred currency. A packet of twenty for the night, maybe with an extra ten if there were two girls and the soldier boy was living the dream he’d had while lying up in a barracks, waiting to go on leave.
There was no wire, no taut bit of string but still … the door could have been booby-trapped from within. They’d had that happen before. A safe cracker, the Gypsy, the Ritz and not so very long ago. Was it a week or ten days? One lost track of time. Before Avignon … yes, yes. Before its Cagoule had taken such an exception to them.
Sacré nom de nom, were friends of friends simply out to silence Hermann and himself, and never mind Oona and Giselle, never mind the murder of some beekeeper who had, one must agree, done everything to ensure sufficient would want him dead.
Not just his wife.
The room held no one but himself. The vase de nuit had been used but accidentally overturned in the rush to get out. A raid, then, he said. A raid …
A door banged; it banged again and the sound of this carried through the pitch darkness of the attic where garrets, close under the roof, held filthy mattresses, rags and scatterings of female clothing. A torn dress … a brassiere, a shoe … Was it Oona’s? wondered Kohler, moving silently and swiftly from room to room for that door hadn’t been banging until now.
Stepping out on to the roof, he hooked the door open to silence it. ‘Oona …?’ he called softly. ‘Oona, it’s me.’
There, was no answer. A flat stretch of tarred roofing had been swept clear by the wind which had piled the snow up against the base of a brick wall that rose a storey and a half.
Crossing the roof, Kohler looked up through the darkness at the iron ladder that was bolted to the wall and would lead whoever it was to the chimneypots of the adjacent building. ‘Don’t do this to me,’ he sighed. Louis … should he get Louis? Someone had put through an alarm and the Paris flics, the Sûreté’s vice squad and Gestapo’s bully boys with guns had come running.
Résistants? he wondered. Had the person told them that? No doubt Schlacht had clearance and had paid off the local sous-préfet and all others, but who among the rank and file was going to worry about such little details at two or three in the morning when the alarm must have come in?
His foot hurt like hell and he really didn’t want to climb the rungs. His hands were freezing, but he had to tell himself Oona would have gone up this in her bare feet if necessary. Oona could be up there.
Had she been missed in the raid? Had she heard something or sensed there was someone else in the attic and not known it was him? She must have. But it hadn’t been Oona. Jammed between the chimneypots at the top of the ladder was a thick Manila folder that had been put there while clambering on to the roof, and then left in haste.
The folder held sketches and snapshots of Danielle de Bonnevies at the age of fourteen and fifteen, and in most of these the girl wore nothing but her birthday suit. But there were others in Room 4-18, some tucked in around the mirrored doors of an armoire, some pinned to the walls, or, if a large sketch, framed and hung, and all must have come from the studio. While most recently there, she had realized that several were missing and must have wondered where they were and who had taken them.
‘Frau Hillebrand and Schlacht,’ said Kohler, nursing his right foot and trying to rebandage his wounded toes. ‘Our Bonze didn’t just want to raid the hive for the mother, Louis. He was intent on the kid.’
‘And the mother must have known of it, Hermann.’
‘And done something about it, eh? Like lacing a bottle that was intended for him.’
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah mon Dieu, this murder, Hermann. Positively no time to sort things out except while on the run. The run, mon vieux. Turning in an alarm is not so easy after the curfew has begun. Mademoiselle Danielle would have needed to either tell the flics in person and risk certain arrest, or have had access to a telephone.’
An instrument the Hotel Titania lacked as did most of the quartier Clignancourt.
‘But what the hell had she really in mind?’ asked Kohler. Room 4-18 was a cut above the others. Plush wine-red drapes covered French windows that must lead to the little balcony Juliette de Bonnevies had said had a view of the Sacré-Coeur. There were carpets on the floor, pillows on the iron-framed double bed, silk sheets, too, soft woollen blankets and an antique, white lace spread. Two straight-backed chaises, an armchair, a footstool … Champagne flutes placed in readiness — there was even some ice left in the bucket, no bottle of Krüg, though, for those who had raided the hotel would have helped themselves with pleasure.
The ashtrays were clean. Sash cord for tying up the willing and unwilling had been neatly coiled, a gag laid out, a blindfold …
In a drawer, beneath heaps of lingerie, were boxes of Wehrmacht regulation-issue condoms, jars of petroleum jelly, rolls of surgical tape any hospital in the city would have been glad of, since they had none or very little. ‘Even godemkhés, Louis!’ Dildos. ‘Look, I know our Bonze wasn’t having it off tonight, or watching through some peephole as others went at it, but what I want to know is why the hell did that kid see fit to lay on a raid?’
Hermann was really worried and had best be calmed. ‘To get at the truth of the missing sketches. To see for herself the room where her mother had been forced to prostitute herself and perhaps even offer up her daughter in hope of freeing her son.’
‘Whom Danielle believed had returned, but then discovered after writing the last of her notes, that he couldn’t have.’
‘She didn’t want us knowing this, Hermann, until she had done what she felt she had to.’
‘Which was to give that lecture and then poison herself. Louis, Oona may be in the cells at the rue des Saussaies with the rest of those who were carted away from here.’