‘About two months ago. In late October. The Captain Dupuis will tell you more than I, monsieur. My Roland, is he …? He hasn’t been seen in some time, monsieur. Me, I had thought … a job at last, something solid. A future …’
‘Bring your shawl and come upstairs. You must identify Antoine Audit to his face. Please, I am sorry but it is necessary.’
‘He did not do it, monsieur. He could not have done such a thing.’
‘Roland or Antoine Audit?’
‘Roland, of course. Oh for sure a mother’s love is blind, but disregarding this, I do know my son, monsieur. He wouldn’t have killed her. That one liked the girls too much.’
St-Cyr took out his cigarettes and offered one. Lighting it, he waited while she filled her lungs, then watched as she let the smoke trail slowly from her nostrils. ‘Last Tuesday, madame, Monsieur Antoine met the girl here in the afternoon at four o’clock. He left the meeting early, after only a few minutes perhaps? The girl seemed quite agitated about it?’
Again her eyes sought some distant place among the rubbish of her cage. ‘Yes, she did not change her clothes or wash herself. I have thought the affair over, that Roland …’
‘Yes, yes,’ he urged, reaching for her shawl but letting her have all the time she needed.
‘That Roland might have …’ She gave the tired shrug of an old woman in defeat. ‘Might have spoken to him about the girl.’
‘About what Victor Morande and the Corporal Schraum had been up to?’ he asked.
‘Roland would have demanded money of this Monsieur Antoine. Blackmail, I think.’
But never murder. He held the shawl for her and she let him place it over her shoulders as she stood to leave the cage.
‘One last thing, madame, before we go upstairs.’
She’d seen it coming all along but now had no way of averting her eyes.
‘The night before the Defeat your son came back to steal money from you. Did he know the girl Mila Zavitz who was strangled and raped in the courtyard beside the draper’s shop on the Pas-Leon?’
Her eyes had blinked but she’d hold her ground. She’d not admit to anything further.
Pity was unwanted at this time but he felt a wave of it for her anyway. ‘Had he been out looting the shops, madame? A few tins of coffee the Germans wouldn’t miss? A bolt or two of cloth – things that would become scarce in the years to come? Mila Zavitz went there to seek help from her employer, madame. A young girl who was so afraid of being alone in the city, of being a Jew. She’d become separated from her family. The Nazis were at the gates. It was evening … sunset. The shop was closed. They’d all fled. There were two suitcases …’
‘I know nothing of this. Two suitcases? Roland would not have killed her, monsieur. Not my son. Not even if he had demanded and taken from her that which she had refused to yield.’
‘Then let us go upstairs and try to get to the bottom of things before it is too late.’
Lost in thought, Kohler fingered the edge of the pistachio-coloured washstand. The room had been tidied. Attempts at sponging off the blood-spattered sickly green walls had failed. Each finger flick of blood had been rubbed with steel wool as if Madame Minou had had to banish the thought of it from her tormented mind. She’d even dug into the plaster with a knife and now there were shrapnel bursts of pock-marked plaster that could only mean the concierge had been worried sick about her son’s involvement.
He’d handcuffed Audit to the painted iron frame at the foot of the bed so as to give himself more freedom and let the bastard sit right next to where the girl’s body had lain.
Louis hadn’t yet come upstairs. He must still be questioning Madame Minou.
‘I threw up my guts,’ he said, more to himself than to Madame Van der Lynn, who, not liking the room, had crowded close and had put a hand on his shoulder for comfort. ‘I saw that young girl’s throat, her eyes and then her body, and I thought of Giselle.’
‘A timid stomach in a Gestapo detective?’ snorted Audit. ‘Tell me another one!’
‘Ignore him, Herr Kohler. Don’t let him get to you.’
‘I’m not. He killed her, madame. That smug bastard with all his truffles and creams of the walnut, wrapped a wire around that poor kid’s throat and strangled her.’
‘Slowly – was that how it was done, eh?’ snorted Audit. ‘If my memory serves me correctly, monsieur, I was never in this room and there are no witnesses.’
‘You’re forgetting the note he left for her,’ whispered Oona.
Kohler nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I’ve been thinking about that.’
‘Are you still in love with Giselle?’ she asked, her eyes so very blue and betraying anxiety.
He glanced apprehensively at her, seeing that she needed the truth. ‘Look, madame, we never agreed to anything permanent. I said I’d take good care of you and I will.’
‘How about a cigarette, eh?’ snorted Audit. ‘What about my rights, since I’ve done nothing and could not possibly have killed her?’
‘Where the hell is Louis, Oona? Why hasn’t he come upstairs?’ asked Kohler.
‘The rue Lauriston?’ she replied sadly.
Kohler cursed their luck. ‘Stay here. This one can’t get away. I’ll be right back.’
‘Hermann, no!’
But he’d left the room, had left her alone with Antoine Audit just as he’d done with that other one on the Ile Saint-Louis. Would the rue Lauriston rush up the stairs? Would they drag her away and demand that she tell them everything? Would they tear her clothes from her and beat her as they had beaten Hermann’s Giselle?
It was so cold in here. Freezing! She clasped her shoulders and began to rub them. There was a small mirror on the washstand and she saw the basin reflected in this, saw the open door to the room and the empty corridor – had someone passed by? Had someone looked in to see her standing here?
‘What’s a good-looking woman like yourself doing with a bastard like Kohler? Hey, listen, madame, it doesn’t take a jackass to see those two are has-beens. Why not save yourself and do me a little favour?’
Hermann … where was Hermann? Where was Louis? Louis would do all he could for her. Louis would …
The hotel seemed to breathe its silence. It was musty and close and yes, the smell of death still lingered in this room in spite of the carbolic that had been used and yes, the rue Lauriston would have kept this place under constant surveillance.
‘What sort of favour?’ she asked, her eyes fixed on the corridor’s reflection in the mirror. There had been someone.
‘Come closer. Come over here where we can talk.’
‘Not on your life! Never!’ she jumped.
A handsome woman, a woman who was so afraid she could not even look across the room at him. ‘Maybe those two won’t be coming back, madame. Maybe they’ve got it all wrong and can’t deliver the goods. What then, eh? The rue Lauriston – please, I know that’s what you’re thinking. Henri Lafont and Pierre Bonny … You don’t want them to hold you down, do you, madame? Others will then have a go at you.’
‘Batard, you killed that girl!’ There was no one standing in the hall. No one had been looking in at them. ‘What … what is it you want?’
That was better. ‘Do yourself a favour and call the Bureau Otto for me, madame. Ask to speak to Captain Brandl personally. Tell him Antoine Audit can deliver.’
The coins? ‘Deliver?’ she asked, seeing his dark-brown eyes flick over her body as if it would soon be naked and she would be standing here like that girl must have done. A piece of jewellery, a choker of pearls, a butterfly pin, a pair of gold and emerald earrings Christabelle could not possibly have worn.
Audit tugged at the handcuff. Four good yanks and the thing might come loose. ‘Yes, deliver. A deal, madame. Brandl will understand. Do this before it is too late for you. They want the loot, the coins. If we give them the collection, they will let us go.’