This sûreté waited. He didn’t say a thing. He simply rang it one more time.
‘You questioned Jennifer Hamilton and Caroline Lacy at length prior to agreeing to let the latter become a sitter,’ said Herr Kohler.
‘I did. I was in my cabinet, in that room of rooms which you had the audacity to invade without my permission.’
‘First the palm readings,’ said Kohler, ‘the tarot, the Ouija board and crystal balls, but when the bell rang, it did so from inside that enclosure of yours, you signalling to them that each answer given had been accepted and that you were satisfied.’
‘That is correct.’
‘But then that pendant was stolen, madame, and you had to know who had taken it,’ he countered. ‘You needed it. You were desperate.’
‘All right, I was. Does that satisfy you?’
‘But stolen when, madame?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘After their fourth visit. It. . it was always kept on my dressing table with. . with everything else of mine when not in use.’
‘Set down in haste?’ he asked, taking out his pipe and tobacco.
‘I. . I was called away.’
‘To Herr Weber?’ asked Hermann.
‘Oui. Marguerite came to tell me I had been urgently summoned. Léa and Hortense went with me.’
‘And the interconnecting door between your bedroom and the other and its cabinet, was it locked?’ asked Herr Kohler.
Ah, damn him, damn him. ‘Always but. . but I may not have done so that one time.’
‘It’s as the goddess would have informed us, Louis. Even though her maid was still present, and that thing was pinched, Madame still agreed to allow Caroline to become a sitter.’
‘I felt it best so as to keep an eye on them.’
‘Yet it’s a puzzle,’ said St-Cyr, gesturing with that pipe of his, ‘since the thief from whom it has been recovered stole only items of virtually little use or monetary value.’
Lighting the pipe, he didn’t take his gaze from her. ‘Mine was the exception,’ she said.
‘But Jennifer Hamilton didn’t know that, madame. Her kleptomania took over, and in the haste to have something of yours, she thought as we first had and you had claimed, that it was some inconsequential thing. But in that exception lies the solution to this whole matter.’
‘Caroline wanted to know what had happened to Madame Vernon’s husband,’ said Kohler, lighting himself a cigarette. ‘Jennifer encouraged her because Jennifer had been and still was, very much in love with that one.’
With Marguerite Lefèvre.
‘Earlier, madame, you had banished Jennifer Hamilton,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Though she was very much in love with your maid, and that one no doubt with her, you told Marguerite Lefèvre to end the affair. Things were being stolen, albeit little things but far too many of them. There was rising discontent. You suspected Jennifer and sent her away, but then. . ah, then, love found a means of returning.’
‘Jennifer encouraged Caroline to plead with you and Léa to let her become a sitter,’ said Kohler.’
‘Marguerite Lefèvre,’ asked St-Cyr, ‘did you, when asked by your lover and her new partner, allow them in to see Madame’s bedroom when she was called away to Herr Weber, and did Madame not soon discover what you had done in her absence?’
There was no answer, only silence.
‘And from that point on, madame, since your reputation was fast falling,’ said Kohler, ‘you realized there could well be some benefit in encouraging Caroline, particularly if that goddess of yours found the answer to what that girl desperately wanted to know.’
‘You gave her the L’Heure Bleue presentation phial to cement things,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Knowing full well that Caroline would show it to Madame Vernon and fan the flames, and that we would soon see through the lie you had told us,’ said Kohler, ‘because you wanted to draw our attention away from the Hôtel Grand and to the Vittel-Palace and that very woman.’
‘If you could prove, through Cérès, that Madame Vernon had killed her husband and we were convinced of it, that would be the crowning touch to a triumphant return,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Laurence Vernon, inspectors,’ said Élizabeth. ‘I see that you have rightly dropped the de. I was certain she had killed him but knew not of her nor even what she looked like then, having only the present vestige to go on. The sûreté-’
‘Suspected Irène Vernon but couldn’t build an adequate case,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Such things happen more often than we would like, and she was and still is abundantly aware of her legal rights.’
‘Once I got to know Laurence a little in this life, in July 1920, he readily told me of his marriage and that he was worried his family might have got in touch with her.’
‘To tell her he had inherited a bundle, Hermann, from the estate of his mother.’
‘But the tables soon took it all, didn’t they?’ asked Herr Kohler.
‘He. . he wanted a loan,’ managed Madame Chevreul. ‘He said he needed it, that his luck would change.’
‘But you refused,’ said St-Cyr.
‘He became impossible. I left my room and went to the casino’s cercle to place a few modest wagers of my own.’
‘Having asked the management to chuck him out if he followed you,’ said Kohler.
‘Yes, damn you. Yes!’
‘But he persisted. He must have, Louis.’
‘Returning again and again to the casino, Hermann.’
‘I didn’t kill him. She did!’
‘Me?’ countered Irène Vernon. ‘At which casino, please, was I to have found my Laurence, inspectors? Me, in Paris and with hardly a sou to my name? Bien sûr, I received just such a letter but could travel nowhere without the cash to do so and did not even know where he was.’
‘Irène. . Irène,’ interjected Brother Étienne, ‘I must tell them that is not correct. Though much younger and really quite chic for one so poor, you were there on the morning after the fire. You wore a light beige beret, a marvellous Hermès kerchief you had picked up somewhere, and a thin brown raincoat, secondhand, I thought at the time, but still very stylish, and you watched from among the gathering as I assisted my brother the abbot when he gave your husband’s charred remains the last rites.’
‘You fool,’ she said. ‘Why could you not have held your tongue?’
‘Because he’s a marvellous gossip, my dear Irène,’ said Élizabeth. ‘Inspectors, I didn’t attend the removal and identification of the body. It had but one arm and Laurence had also lost a huge amount at the tables. Everyone would have known who he was, and I had been seen in his company, so I simply left for Paris on the early morning train. Oh for sure, I suspected what she could well have done, but I had no proof and felt it best to absent myself.’
‘Let’s ask Cérès, shall we?’ said Louis.
‘Léa. . Léa, tell them I’m innocent.’
‘With you, was she, in 1920?’ asked Herr Kohler. ‘Called her in for a little help-is that it, eh?’
‘Not at all, Inspector. We didn’t meet up again until Besançon in December of 1940.’
‘But did Laurence Vernon purchase that pendant for you, madame?’ asked Louis.
‘When he still had most of his new bankroll?’ asked Herr Kohler.
Men! They would now be at her if she wasn’t careful. First the one and then the other, each baying for the sheer joy of it. ‘He became insufferable and made a terrible scene, begging me to return it to him so that he could cover his bets. He had suffered to save France, he said, was a hero, but had no medals to show for it, just an empty arm.’
‘You first loaned him fifty thousand francs,’ shouted Irène Vernon. ‘Admit that you did or I will swear to it in court!’
‘Garce, he hated you! Frigid-that is what he said of you.’
‘Better that than une fille des rues, eh Madame? Inspectors, this impostor killed him. She hit him with an empty champagne bottle and then had a little problem only a fire could solve.’