And you’ve found out as much about me as possible, noted St-Cyr, but asked, ‘What rewards did you offer the victim and Monsieur de Fleury?’
The chin tightened. The doctor took a moment to answer.
‘I see that our Inspector of Finances has been indiscreet, but such rewards as I offered are a private matter, Inspector. Find this assassin before he kills his intended target. Bring him to justice and I will see that you are awarded one of these.’
‘The Francisque,’ sighed St-Cyr. The medal for the faithful that the doctor had had a retired jeweller design. ‘Modelled after the Victor of Verdun’s swagger stick, the blades after those of’ — Ah! one wanted so much to say Madame Petain but must humbly substitute — ‘a two-headed battle-axe.’
‘Be the detective inspector I know you to be. Go where you wish, interview whomever you feel necessary, but be discreet. Leave the Marechal and that wife of his totally out of it. Madame la Marechale knows nothing of the matter and will only slow you down.’
And interfere? wondered St-Cyr. Menetrel had been the one, it was said, who had arranged for the arrest of Premier Laval on 13 December 1940 when Petain had dismissed the Auvergnat for assuming too much power. The Garde Mobile had locked up Laval in his chateau but had been stopped short of the requested assassination by an armed contingent of SS, under the leadership of Otto Abetz, the German Ambassador, who had arrived to whisk the former premier off to the safety of Paris.
Such were the state of things in Vichy then, and probably still.
‘Who knew of this little visit she was to have made?’
The doctor waved an impatient hand. ‘Ask de Fleury. He or Madame Dupuis must have let something slip. I didn’t.’
‘Yet you excused the Garde from their duties?’
The needle was put away, the excess gut dropped into an envelope for later sterilization.
‘They were called away. A false alarm.’
‘Not all of them, surely.’
Jesus, merde alors, must this salaud persist? ‘All right, I did tell them things would be secure enough. The visit would be in the evening. It’s the depths of winter … How was I to have known an assassin would strike so closely and in our hotel, a hotel that is always guarded?’
‘Then she wasn’t challenged as she entered the foyer?’
The bag was closed, the catches secured.
‘The lift attendant was also absent,’ confessed Menetrel, not looking at him. ‘The Marechal needed to have his self-confidence restored, Inspector. If I have erred, it was only for his sake, and I don’t really know how anyone else could have learned of her visit but someone obviously did.’
‘And were there any other such visits recently?’
‘From her, no!’
‘From others, then?’
Ah damn him! ‘Bousquet had to be summoned late one evening last autumn. The woman’s husband had got wind of the liaison and was pacing up and down outside the hotel in a fury. Fortunately our secretaire general has the ability to pacify not only the Boches, but even a distraught cuckold whose wife is upstairs being penetrated by another.’
St-Cyr didn’t smile and that was as expected. Early last December he had lost his wife and little son to a Resistance bomb that had been meant for him but had been purposely left in place by Gestapo Paris-Central’s Watchers. She’d been coming home from a particularly torrid affair with the Hauptmann Steiner, nephew of the Kommandant von Gross-Paris, and yet St-Cyr was still missing her, still blaming himself for what had happened!
‘Did you see the victim after she’d been found, Doctor?’
Such coldness of tone was commendable. ‘I did. I was the one who pronounced her dead. That imbecile of a groundsman who found her was incoherent.’
‘Then describe how she was. Leave nothing out.’
‘Were things tidied? Is this what you’re, wondering?’
‘I would not ask otherwise.’
The clearing of a throat next door indicated Petain was waiting for his daily massage and the heat treatments Menetrel would administer. ‘A moment, Marechal,’ sang out the doctor. ‘Let me just tie my shoelaces.’
‘Breakfast, Bernard. I want to go down. The hotel is up.’
‘Begin the exercises, please. The arms …’
‘Yes, yes,’ came the reedy answer, heard as clearly as if there’d been no connecting door.
‘Sometimes at night he drums his fingers on the wall above his bed,’ confided Menetrel. ‘The older he gets, the less he sleeps. Now where were we? Oh yes … She was lying on her back, the left arm extended well above the head, the legs parted slackly. One knee — the left — was bent a little.’
‘And you’re certain the legs weren’t turned either to one side or the other?’
‘How did you find her?’
‘For now, Doctor, please just answer.’
‘The legs were as I’ve described. One hand, the right, was flattened over the wound. She’d been knifed, I felt, but didn’t move her hand to make certain of this. There was no sign of the weapon.’
Menetrel took a moment, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
‘Anything else?’
‘Her earrings. I had the feeling her killer must have taken one but had then panicked and left the other.’
‘Which one?’
‘The left. I’m certain of it.’
‘Blancs exceptionnels, Doctor. Who gave them to her?’
How pleasant of this Surete. ‘I only wish I knew.’
It seemed strange, stepping back into the Hall des Sources knowing what he now did, thought Kohler, carrying the victim’s overcoat, scarf, gloves and beret, but not her handbag. The place was still pitch dark in its recesses even with the lanterns glowing — hell, the dawn wouldn’t break until well past seven the old time and it wasn’t quite seven yet.
She couldn’t have cried out when confronted by the bastard on that balcony, hadn’t struggled, nor had the curtains or windows been damaged.
A gun, then? he asked himself again. Had she recognized her assailant’s voice? Had he been afraid of this? Had there really been two of them? The one here and waiting in an unlocked Hall — a woman with a knife and wearing no overcoat or woollen cardigan — the other bringing the victim to her at pistol point?
But the wrong victim.
‘Then they hadn’t wanted to kill Petain in his bedroom for fear of awakening Captain Bonhomme, or someone else,’ he sighed, longing for a cigarette and for time to think it all through with Louis.
She’d got away from the one who’d brought her here. He would have called out to the killer, would have told her what had happened and that they had no choice but to silence Celine …
‘Madame Dupuis. I’ve got to think of her only that way,’ he said.
‘Inspector …’ came a voice.
It was the ‘iron man’, the police photographer and fingerprint artist — nothing ever upset these guys. Tough … Mein Gott, they could photograph anything and then patiently dust all round for prints. Old men who’d had their brains blown out, horizontales who’d been carved up, kids, housewives, it didn’t matter.
‘Marcel Barbault, Inspector.’
Merde alors, the son of a bitch looked like a defrocked priest! The body was round, the face round, the precisely clipped and black-dyed Hitlerian moustache perfect, the cheeks smooth, the throat no doubt dry and regretting the sour red it had consumed last night.
‘Ah bon,’ said Kohler, offering fresh nourishment and a light, for it took all types to make this world. ‘Give us shots of her and the buvette from all angles, Marcel, then one or two of the Buvette de la Grande Grille and another two of the Buvette Lucas, just for local atmosphere.’