‘Consider it a down payment. The sergeant understands that we need their help but aren’t about to run to Weber or the Kommandant about anything incidental we might discover, since none of these boys would have killed either of those girls. You can see it as well as I can, so it’s best we ask for their help.’
‘And is that an order, Herr Hauptmann und Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter?’
‘Jawohl. Now, let’s pack up and get some sleep. We’ve an early morning ahead.’
3
Vittel and its environs were pitch-dark at 2122 hours, their voices overly loud, or so it seemed.
‘How could you, Hermann? Am I to call you “Boss” from now on? When a chief inspector is conducting an interview, his subordinate does not, I repeat not, start in as if “fresh.”’
‘I think they heard you, Louis, even though I had them convinced I really was your boss. Now, tell me what I need to know. How many of those boys knew of you?’
From the old days, those of sûreté and flic raids that had smashed doors, windows, and walls to grab the running and apply the truncheon both before and after the bracelets.
‘I seldom took part in such things. I was away from Paris a lot.’
Hence the loss of the first wife who had run off with a door-to-door salesman or truck driver to marry a railway worker from Orléans.
‘I stood back and observed, Hermann. It’s what a detective does best.’
And no mention yet of the sénégalais dockworkers in places like Marseille and Nice. ‘Oh for sure, but did any of them remember you?’
‘One, perhaps two. Ah, mon Dieu, the Santé and Fresnes prisons were second homes to them. The murder of a disobedient wife who was cleaning maid to the Marquise de Montreuil yet her secret lover; the robbery of the Crédit industriel et commercial at 66 rue de la Victoire that was so bungled, the manager, M. Olivet, who had opened the safe, was able to slam it shut and press the alarm button. If I hadn’t put them away for threatening to shoot him to death and giving him a heart attack, someone else would have.’
‘But are they apt to understand and forgive?’
‘Of course not.’
‘That sack of golf balls came from somewhere.’
‘Merde, I was on the point of teasing that out of them!’
‘Now, don’t go on. Libby’s beans, hibiscus leaves, chocolate. . ’
‘And night after night the juju woman!’
They hit the main doors of the Hôtel Grand, crossed its massive, high-columned marble foyer and started up one of the twin staircases as the crowd poured from the dining room and surged to a stop.
A sea of female faces looked up at them: round, thin, dimpled, pasty, hollow-eyed, or not-lipstick and rouge on some, and all startled.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ came the soft-spoken voice of a tiny bit of a thing. ‘Those doors are customarily locked at sundown. Men are not allowed in after dark.’
‘Police officers are.’
‘Hermann. . ’
‘Louis, let me deal with this.’
‘As you shall, Inspector, for I have long awaited your visit. Now, if you gentlemen would be kind enough to come down and follow me to the Pavillon de Cérès, we can discuss the matter of these tragedies there while enjoying the peace to which I am accustomed when working.’
‘Cérès, Louis?’
‘The Roman goddess of agriculture.’
‘The mightiest of asteroids, Chief Inspector, as defined and discovered by the Italian astronomer, Giuseppe Piazzi, on New Year’s Day of 1801. She lies between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter and graciously guides us in our travels.’
A flower in a garden of oft-broken, dried, and crowded stems, a belle both firm and clear, she entered the Pavillon de Cérès but couldn’t help but step to one side so as to catch and study their expressions.
The room, projecting from the ground floor of the Grand and overlooking the Parc Thermal, was solarium, sunroom, and more, especially in winter and in spite of its drawn blackout drapes. Art Deco pillars geometrically rose like great golden, honey-coloured lances at some medieval yet modern jousting match, the light automatically stepping the gaze and heart aloft to a central lamp.
‘Is there a more godlike room, inspectors? Immediately one feels at peace and in communion.’
The doors had been quietly closed behind them. Three wooden-slatted café chairs had been positioned under that light, two side by side and the other facing them.
‘Inspectors, be so good as to sit and close the eyes but for a moment in repose. Let the spirit cleanse itself as the problems of this world arrange themselves in trine, gracing harmony with utter unanimity. When at peace, I will answer truthfully every question you should choose to put to me.’
They did as asked, noted Élizabeth, the Bavarian so much taller and bigger than the Frenchman, but it was in the hands that one felt the difference between the two. The fingers of both were hard and worn, the Frenchman’s no more sure, she felt, than those of the other, but in these last there was yet again a delicacy of touch that must surely have come from his having defused unexploded bombs and shells in the Great War. Recently he had suffered a terrible loss and then another. Two young sons in battle, and then a wife, a childhood sweetheart who, having a relative amongst the Nazi Bonzen, had been allowed a divorce in order to marry an indentured French farm labourer, a paysan from his partner’s country.
And that one? she silently asked. That one has also suffered a terrible loss but bears the guilt of having received in the post the challenge of the Résistance, the little black pasteboard coffin reserved for collaborators that have been marked down for working with the Germans, and yet. . and yet, being away from Paris on an investigation at the time, he had been unable to warn his new wife and little son of what those people and then the Paris Gestapo might well do and did. Leave the bomb the first had left.
‘Are we at peace, my brothers?’
‘Jésus, merde alors, Louis, what the hell is this?’
‘Zen, Hermann. Don’t blaspheme.’
‘Merci, mon cher Chief Inspector. The gods are present, the planets observe, and between two of them Cérès flies.’
‘Let’s start with Mary-Lynn Allan,’ said Louis.
‘I never discuss the outcome of a séance. I leave that to the sitters.’
‘Make an exception,’ said Hermann.
‘Really, Inspector Kohler, is it that you know so little of my work? I personally am not present except as in the physical sense. If the séance is to be successful, I must transcend the human state so as to be in clairaudience with the one who controls who I am to reach and what that person then has or has not to say, Cérès speaking through me to those whose hands have remained joined and whose eyes have remained closed.’
And if that wasn’t a dressing down, what was? ‘Not all séances are successful, Hermann.’
‘Ah, bon, Chief Inspector, you do have some experience. I thought so!’
‘Hermann, if not all the sitters have reached that state of peace. . ’
‘In trine, Inspector.’
‘The result can be either a total or partial failure.’
She would have to keep the pressure up, decided Élizabeth. ‘All must be united, inspectors. Only then will they receive, measure for measure, what they have given.’
Madame Chevreul’s accent was definitely of les hautes and well educated, too, thought Kohler, but was there not something a touch off? ‘OK, so what about that late-night session of last Saturday, early Sunday?’
Herr Kohler was clearly not a believer, nor did he seem to have the self-control to transcend the practical. ‘Once again I must stress, Inspector, that I have no knowledge of what went on, only that the séance was a great success. Colonel Kessler, our former Kommandant, was most appreciative, as was Mary-Lynn Allan, whose tears were those of joy. I did worry about the aura the girl exuded, for it was especially pronounced and vibrant. I did decide to warn her to take great care, and insisted on this more than once. As a result, Colonel Kessler offered to escort her and Nora Arnarson home, as a gentleman should, and right to the door of their hotel.’