How stark of her. ‘They may or may not. Though I was single when I had her, and the name of the birth certificate was Vilmorin, as was mine, Leon, on Josef’s advice, took care of it in 1935. A lost certificate, a new one, new papers, too, and money on the side. The Church records as well, although that was by far the most difficult.’
But would it take the Moffen and the Paris police long to discover the truth? ‘She must really miss being here with you. I know I would.’
‘As she was life to Josef and to myself and my husband, so were we to her. Even on that last, brief visit, he somehow found a way to bring her a little gift to tell her that everything would soon be all right, and she had no need to worry.’
‘And that, what was it?’
‘An aquarium with tropical fish.’
And brought through all that chaos. ‘Might I see it?’
‘Of course, but why?’
‘I’m simply trying to trace the route he may have taken.’
The room overlooked the rue Victor Noir, and on a table in front of the windows was everything that would be needed, all left in readiness for when the Occupation would end. ‘There’s no sand.’
‘Michele knew the fish wouldn’t survive without her. After Claudette-Madame Besnard-had dealt with them, my daughter buried them in the cemetery, and when she came back, said that was what Josef would have expected her to do.’
‘And the sand, did she bury that too?’
‘Some of it is in the cellar. Before she left us to stay with Laurence, she made us promise never to throw any of it out.’
‘Sand is sand,’ impatiently said Madame Besnard, having brought two twenty-kilo cotton bags up to the kitchen.
‘But it isn’t,’ said Anna-Marie, digging a hand down to the bottom of one to feel about, since diamonds were heavy, and with all that vibration on the train, would have settled, and Josef would have known that too, had he not put them there first, but there were none and that could, or could not mean Michele had taken them with her. ‘This is perfectly clean. It’s the extra Mijnheer Meyerhof must have brought. It’s from Zandvoort, a resort town on the Noord Zee. The beaches are fabulous and behind them, ranked one on another, are superbly sculpted dunes of this pure white sand. My Henki …’
‘Henki?’ asked Claudette.
‘My fiance, but … but he was then shot by the Moffen. A resistant.’
Out on the rue Victor Noir, and still with the diamonds, there was, felt Anna-Marie, now no longer any choice. She would have to meet with that Surete who, having found what she had hidden, had understood there had to have been a reason and had left them for her, the shoes as well.
Wide open, the gates to the driveway of Gestapo Boemelburg’s Neuilly villa awaited, and as he drew the car in, Kohler swallowed tightly, for two small suitcases sat in readiness. Boemelburg had flatly refused to intervene because of Kaltenbrunner.
‘Oona, Louis. Giselle …’
Drancy first, then Dachau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz or any other of the Konzentrationslager-they both knew absolutely what all of those would be like, having experienced Natzweiller-Struthof in Alsace last February.
Shattered, Hermann still couldn’t seem to move. Reaching over to switch off the ignition, St-Cyr said, ‘Easy, mon vieux. Easy, eh? Together we’ll sort this out.’
‘How? That verdammt eingefleischter Nazi with the peptic ulcer’s in there waiting for us to see the smile on his face.’
Sharing a cigarette might have helped. ‘Stay here. Let me find out what’s happened, and please don’t take any more of those damned pills. Even Messerschmitt night fighters get shot down.’
‘He’s onto us. He’s found out that we must have known where Anna-Marie was living and the name she’d been using, and now knows you must have been in that room of hers and up on that roof, too, to have a look.’
‘But perhaps not where she might quite possibly be meeting me.’
‘We can’t let him send Oona to a KZ, Louis. Giselle will go out of her mind and Oona won’t be able to hold her together.’
Two women, two loves, and when Hermann glanced into the rearview, he said, ‘That black Citroen of his is now behind us. Here, take this stupid letter from Kaltenbrunner and keep it for us. Otherwise he’ll be after me for thinking I could use it again to see them and will be demanding it back.’
The cloud of cigarette smoke, shabby grey fedora and overcoat were the same, the expression that of Frankfurt’s having received a round-the-clock flattening yesterday.
‘Well, Kohler, you and that Franzosischer Schweinebulle have been lying to me. I’ve just been to see a concierge who was pistol-whipped and guess what he had to tell me after a little persuasion.’
‘He was a veteran of the Great War,’ said Louis.
‘Verdammter Franzose, when I want anything from you, I’ll ask. It’s this verfluchte Kripo who is to answer. You have a choice, Kohler. Either you will be shot or you’ll do your duty to the Fuhrer und Vaterland.’
‘Let me take the suitcases.’
‘And your two women?’
The son of a bitch. ‘Louis, put the bags in the car and go and get Oona and Giselle.’
‘So that I won’t be able to hear what you say, Hermann?’
‘All right, I’ll ask him first if he’s spoken to Hector Bolduc’s former mistress and then to Bolduc himself and those two overseers of that bank of his. After all, Kriminalrat, this is still a murder investigation and that girl was a witness or as close to it as we can get so far.’
A gut-wrenching spasm caused a desperate gasp and cry, the cigarette falling to the pavement. Another was fiercely lit, the latest bottle found empty and flung aside.
‘Since you’re not listening, Kohler, perhaps it is that you should come with me. That girl was seen and stopped outside the Sante late last night, armed, too, and with, I believe, the very pistol our Frans Oenen had been allowed. So if it is a murder investigation you’re wanting, then his will suffice. Standartenfuhrer Kleiber is presently commanding a rigorous house-to-house and there is every indication he will find and arrest her. Banditen, Kohler. Banditen! Even the Kommandant von Gross-Paris can’t argue with that.’
‘Louis … Louis, do the best you can.’
Built in 1938, the Jardin d’Hiver was beside two much older greenhouses from which the plants and trees had been moved here to make way for others. Cup-of-flame, passion flower, trailing orchids and the hanging flowers of the pitcher-plant were so close, St-Cyr felt he could touch them from where he was sitting. Lianas climbed to reach the sunlight. Coconut palms spread their fronds. Papayas, grapefruit trees, silk ferns and tree ferns seemed everywhere, and the irony of it was, that like the artist Henri Rousseau, who had visited greenhouse after greenhouse, the Jardin d’Hiver had become his very own jungle. Whereas Rousseau, in The Dream, could place a beautiful and very naked young woman lounging naively oblivious to all threats among jungle plants, so, too, was he naively waiting. Self-taught, having never left Paris, Rousseau had been a customs clerk whose paintings had been dismissed as ‘nonsense,’ but he had painted what he had wanted others to see and feel. The strange and varied leaves, the bright and often wildly coloured flowers made larger and bolder by himself and all but lost in his jungle, more apelike than human, a recorder-playing savage who, one supposed, was trying to entice that maiden to himself.
Until he and Anna-Marie met-if indeed they ever did now that photos of her were out there and everyone who could was looking for her-he wouldn’t know how to proceed, for what really, had he and Hermann to offer, especially with Giselle and Oona so threatened?
Alone beneath a jacaranda whose fernlike leaves threw shadows, the fragrant soft-purple flowers drew his undivided attention. Lots of the Moffen were about, the sounds of their voices, and their French companions and others, periodically clashing with the warmth, the humidity, the closeness and the faint but gentle murmur of trickling water.