In the years prior to the defeat, the Pleyel had featured all the greats, including France’s pianist, Alfred Cortot, and yet again here next Saturday evening. The Schumann Concerto in A minor was his speciality and the same as he had performed in Berlin with the Philharmonic last year. Fully eighty percent of the audience here would also be German. An ardent petainiste and feted by the Groupe Collaboration of wealthy industrialists and bankers, Cortot had been the first French artist to perform in the Reich after the defeat. Later, a subsequent tour had taken him back to Berlin and triumphantly on to Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Frankfurt even though married to a wealthy Jewess eight years his senior. Now, of course, the bombing of such cities had caused him to cancel further concerts there, but music could, apparently, overcome the forbidden, though for a Dutch under-diver to hide here made absolutely no sense.
But neither had her passeur’s hiding behind the marche noir been the usual.
Completely avoiding the concierge’s loge, he quickly went up and up, and then along corridor after corridor behind the concert hall, only to still feel it was far too exposed. Ballet, waltz, tango and the popular now went on all around him in the private studios in spite of the Fuhrer’s ban and that of Vichy, but finally a rippled glass door with Gothic lettering gave the necessary, indicating at least a year or two of existence.
LES AMIES FRANCAISES
BUREAU D’HOSTESSES, JOUR OU SOIR ET VISITES TRES MEMORABLES
MADEMOISELLE JACQUELINE LEMAIRE
TELEPHONE: CARNOT 33.72
DEUTSCHFREUNDLICH, DEUTSCH SPRECHEN
Soon after the defeat, a number of such establishments had sprung up. Some, like those on the Champs-Elysees, were merely fronts for expensive prostitutes, others but offering German businessmen that tantalizing possibility, but this … That name alone rang far too many bells.
Taking out the little black notebook all detectives should carry, he glanced at what Yvonne Rouget had written of Hector Bolduc’s mistress.
The home address, though different, would overlook the Parc Monceau nearby. Money then, and lots of it, high society, too, and obviously a friend or associate of Madame Nicole Bordeaux, but a delicate matter not just because of the shoes, the dress and under-things that had been delivered here, but because, if approached, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Lemaire would immediately convey that news to Bolduc.
There was nothing for it. Bridges had to be crossed. Retreating to the concierge’s loge next to the artists’ entrance off the rue Daru, he ran a forefinger down the posted list of tenants until one name stood glaringly out to ring bells of its own.
MADEMOISELLE ANNETTE-MELANIE VEROCHE
False papers often did such things, allowing their owners to hide behind similar names so that if unexpectedly addressed, there would be no hesitation. But for that girl to be living here still made no sense, especially as the shoes had been made to fit someone else.
Or had they? Had the size simply been a mistake, Madame Bordeaux being a socialite bent on doing something she had dreamed up on impulse, or alternatively, had she thought that girl a possible candidate for Jacqueline Lemaire to groom as an escort?
Behind him a throat was cleared. ‘Chief Inspector, you have caused me to hurry up all those stairs. These old legs, as you well know, don’t relish such a task. What is it you want this time? Another dancer?’
A previous visit last January with Hermann had been completely forgotten. ‘Monsieur Figeard, please overlook the haste. It’s merely another dance studio, as you have mentioned, but only to refresh something that will then allow progress in yet another direction.’
‘The usual, in other words.’
‘Ah, perhaps I had better just run a finger down your list again.’
‘Chief Inspector, surely you know these old ears have been dinned enough by those who occupy the studios?’
From the Auvergne, and a former deliverer of coal until the back and the legs had given out, Armand Figeard was in his mid-seventies yet still wore the black leather cap, dark grey shirt and sweater, black coveralls, boots and apron of the trade, right to the safety pin that had held fast the chest pocket where he had tucked his daily receipts.
Yet if asked if any of the tenants were away, that too would not be safe. ‘I’ll just have another look upstairs.’
‘Not without me, Inspector. Me, I know the law as well as yourself.’
‘But have unfortunately forgotten that it’s not just “Inspector.”’
‘Mademoiselle Veroche is the only one who is away at present. She hasn’t yet returned from Rethel. The mother again, the chest and pneumonia. Me, I sincerely hope it wasn’t a funeral that has delayed her this time.’
‘Had she been back to Rethel before?’
Such an interest could not be good. ‘Early last December, from Tuesday the first until Thursday the tenth, but was certain her dear mother had recovered. Never have I seen one so relieved. She said a week or two more in hospital would do it. The doctors were all very happy with her mother’s progress; Mademoiselle Veroche so pleased we even had a little celebration, just the two of us. Where she got that wine from the Haut-Medoc, I’ll never know. The half of a Chateau Latour, warm yet full-bodied and as urgent as Rubens’s Portrait of Helene Fourment or Boucher’s L’Odalisque.’
A concubine, but ah mon Dieu, wine from a region Hector Bolduc had a definite interest in.
‘We had rabbit, too, which she helped to cook since she had fed and cared for it as much as myself. We’ve three, with two females that produce like clockwork, chickens too.’
Yet she hadn’t stayed over in Rethel for Christmas. That city was, of course, about fifty kilometres to the northeast of Reims and had all but been destroyed during the Blitzkrieg, false papers using names from there and similar places since only the tombstones could be checked. ‘And now again, Monsieur Figeard, another visit. When exactly?’
Why was there the need to also pin that down? ‘Last month. She left on Sunday, 19 September, would be about a week, maybe a day or two more. It all depended on her mother’s health.’
Was Figeard so gullible? The SS, the Gestapo and the gestapistes francais wouldn’t have hesitated. ‘A student, you said?’
‘Oui. Of medieval history, the role of the Benedictines, especially the Cistercians.’
She had known of that spring. ‘The two of you actually raise rabbits and chickens on the roof?’
‘And have a little garden. The bell jars now, if there’s the threat of frost. Annette-Melanie can’t have done anything a person such as yourself would be interested in. She even has a part-time job here as an usherette at the concerts but also does the Friday afternoons and Saturdays at the German bookstore on the rue de Rivoli.’
The Frontbuchhandlung* but this whole thing was simply going far too deep.
‘She speaks German, does she?’
‘Fluently. Otherwise she would not have been offered either position. None of the other usherettes speak it, though some are taking lessons.’
‘And how long has she lived here?’
‘Since June of 1941, the third week. Me, I … I offered to keep an eye on her bicycle so that she wouldn’t have to walk it up to that room of hers where there’s little enough space anyways, and those stairs … It’s a good one, too, a Sparta, but heavy.’
A Dutch bike, and if that wasn’t taking a chance, what was? ‘And kept where?’