‘Your name, madame,’ said St-Cyr, ‘so as to clear up that little problem and remove the necessity of my asking one of the others.’
The shit! ‘Léa Monnier.’
‘I knew it! Your husband was at Verdun, a corporal and terribly wounded, but one of the lucky.’
Ah, mon Dieu, what was this, sympathy from a sûreté? ‘He never came back. I had to leave his medals at home when the cows rounded me up and gave me a lift in the salad shaker.’
The Black Maria, but one had best shrug and gesture at the helplessness of turning fate aside. ‘So many didn’t survive, did they, but I seem to recall that neither shell nor bullet, bayonet, poisoned gas, or illness got him, yet he left you with a bronze.’
The medal for five children that was pinned high on the left breast of her coat! ‘The youngest turned seventeen in November, so the green beans, having decided that they’d better, had to let her go home, since she wasn’t eighteen.’
The Wehrmacht wore grey-green, thus earning that epithet, but concern had best be shown. ‘Home, and without the benefit of a mother’s guidance? The salauds! It makes no sense, does it, when you could have made a fortune with all those boys on leave and wanting company?’
‘Don’t try to pound the bread dough too much, Inspector. Tell me what else you want and I’ll see to it.’
She would never back off, not this one. ‘Peace for now and the right to talk to those among you who might be able, if you were to persuade them, of course, to shed a little light on the investigation. A couple of cigarettes, too, if you can spare them so that all present will see that we have parted on the best of terms.’
The Lucky Strikes were not from a British Red Cross parcel, and were taken not from a packet, but from the silver, diamond-and-emerald-encrusted case Van Cleef amp; Arpels had crafted in the ’20s to go along with the diamond-and-emerald bracelet that went with the first of those rings.
‘Ah, bon, merci. My partner will be certain to return the favour with interest as soon as possible.’
Hermann’s Walther P38 had all eight Parabellum cartridges in its box magazine and one up the spout.
‘We don’t steal things, Inspector.’
How watchful she was. ‘Only the Americans do that?’
‘They’ve plenty now, yet they still torment us.’
‘And you’ve ways and means of finding out who the thief is?’
‘A magpie, that’s all we know for sure. Things are stolen for their colour or the temptation of it, the thrill, n’est-ce pas, le grand frisson.’
L’orgasme, the great shudder. ‘And not for their use or need? A kleptomaniac?’
‘Call the slut what you will, but it’s still stealing. If you find her, remind her that Madame Chevreul keeps asking, and that soon Cérès will give us the answer even if you don’t.’
Hermann was still standing up there with Nora Arnarson, who was confiding something to him. Just what that was, one couldn’t tell, but it must have been given with a certain desperation, for they faced each other and the girl had at last managed to free her hand.
‘Léa Monnier isn’t the ringleader of the British, Herr Kohler. She’s just head flunky.’
As he came down the stairs and into the foyer, the others having left, Hermann was in high spirits. ‘Limehouse, Louis. The docks along the Thames in London couldn’t hold our Léa, and she came over here in 1914 as a truck driver in that other war but found love drove her. Married a Claude Monnier in the autumn of 1917 while he was on extended leave. Learned the language, had five kids, collected his medals and his pension-Verdun as usual.’
Such naiveté always needed clarification. ‘While working her way up to becoming madame of the clandestin at 27 rue des Lombardes, mon vieux, to support Monnier in the style to which he had become accustomed. Sénégalais porters, coal sellers from the Auvergne, farmers from the Vendée, Orléans, Nantes, and other places. All as customers bearing ducklings, fresh-picked asparagus, young spring leeks, Charolais beef, sausage from Lyon and oysters from Concarneau. Good country people with a little time on their hands after the onion soup.’
Les Halles after that war to end all wars, and with overblown memories of what it must have been like before this Occupation!
There was a sigh.
‘But she had kept her passport,’ said Kohler. ‘How many of those British women did you know?’
‘None, but working with you has been good for me. Ah, your Walther P38, Inspector. Please see that better care is taken of it.’
‘Still got that Lebel six-shooter I made sure the Geheime Staatspolizei were good enough to let you carry?’
‘The Modèle d’ordonnance 1873?’
‘The one with the eleven-millimitre low-pressure, black-powder cartridges no one wants when things get tight because they’ve been stored for such a long time and might be damp.’
‘It’s where it ought to be. Silent until needed.’
‘Maybe you’d better let me have it and I’ll get the Kommandant to lock up the firepower.’
‘Don’t be crazy, not with Madame Monnier and her hatpins. Now, please be so good as to carry your own overboots. You might need them.’
The first victim wasn’t easy to get at, for the elevator, in the farthest wing from the entrance of the Vittel-Palace, had been decommissioned like all the others in September of 1939, its cage left in the cellars at the bottom of the shaft.
‘Someone opened the gate on the third floor, Louis. The corridor lights were blinking on and off-another electrical problem for which the electrician from town was later brought in. Caroline Lacy had had a rough night and was out along the corridor trying to get her breath and light one of her cigarettes. Mary-Lynn Allan, from Sweet Briar, Virginia, was coming toward her and Caroline thought the girl might need a little help, but then there was a scream.’
‘Why help? I thought Caroline Lacy was the one who needed it?’
‘Mary-Lynn was unsteady on her feet. Drunk perhaps, on home brew.’
‘And Nora Arnarson, who divulged this information, where was she?’
‘On the stairs. She swears it.’
‘And also drunk?’
‘A little.’
‘Date?’
‘Saturday to Sunday, the thirteenth and fourteenth.’
‘Time?’
‘About 0100 hours on the Sunday and the reason for that urgent call to summon us.’
‘And why was Nora on the stairs, Hermann, since she obviously hadn’t gone to help Caroline Lacy?’
‘She and Mary-Lynn had been to a séance in the Hôtel Grand.’
‘Madame Chevreul?’
‘How the hell did you know that?’
‘The Ouija board I found under Nora’s bed and the words of Madame Monnier, but for now it would take too long to discuss it. Find us a flashlight. This candle stub of mine won’t last.’
‘Ach, I’ll have to go out to the gate. No one here is allowed one.’
‘And when the lights go out, it’s pitch-dark. Ah, merde, Hermann, what have we got ourselves into?’
‘A problem, especially since the Kommandant who asked for us but has now been replaced must have given the two permission to be out late that night, as well as letting them keep such personal items as watches, rings, and bracelets.’
With the cellars at close to freezing, only now were there touches of yellowish-green to copper-red discolouration, but the veins in the neck and on the backs of the hands, where marbling was present, were a dark purplish blue.
St-Cyr looked up the shaft of the elevator’s well. Mary-Lynn Allan had fallen the four floors from that third storey, had instinctively grabbed at cables that were shamefully frayed, considering it had been a deluxe hotel when built in 1899 and partially renovated in 1931. The palms of both hands had been badly torn, the left cheek as well.