‘They’re not happy,’ grunted St-Cyr on returning, abruptly yanking his side door closed. ‘A visit to the morgue will do them good, Herman!’
The morgue … Ah Jesus, cher Jesus, Celine, what have you got me into?
The lights were blinding. Always, too, it was like this when coming straight from darkness into strong light, the pain suddenly searing.
‘You should have told me of this!’ Olivier had said of her night blindness. He’d not been happy to have discovered it, had hauled her up sharply and had said harshly, ‘You can’t see, can you?’
They’d been on the street, had just left the cafe and its crowd of railway workers …
The morgue was cold and brightly lit, the stench of disinfectant, attendant cigarette smoke, blood and rotting corpses, formaldehyde and bad drains causing her stomach to tightly knot.
Madame Petain took a firm grip on her. Blanche and Sandrine Richard were behind them.
‘This way, ladies,’ said St-Cyr, as if enjoying the discomfort he was causing. ‘We will only be a moment but the visit is necessary. Either we have one killer or two, and Dr Laloux may, perhaps, now be able to enlighten us.’
‘Laloux …’ muttered Madame Petain. ‘Isn’t he the socialist Henri Philippe put on trial at Riom in the spring of ’41 with Daladier, Blum and the others of the Front Populaire? You’ll get nothing useful from him, Inspector. No matter what the courts decided, people like that are parasites.’
‘Doryphores, madame?’
‘Precisement!’
‘Then you’d best meet him.’
Elisabeth de Fleury had stayed in the outer office with Herr Kohler, Ines told herself. They went along a corridor, a steel door was opened, the sound of it echoing, the air now much, much colder, the stench sharper. Water … water was running. A tap? she wondered.
The sound of it was silenced at the sight of them. Hands were now be being dried — coroner’s hands.
‘Mademoiselle, you don’t look well,’ hazarded Madame Petain. ‘Inspector, surely it’s not necessary for this one to join us? Here, let me take your case.’
Smile faintly, Ines told herself, say, ‘Merci, Madame la Marechale, it’s most kind of you.’
‘Get her a chair, imbetile!’ said the woman to the attendant. ‘A chair! Surely you know what that is?’
‘There are none,’ the man replied. ‘No one ever sits in here.’
‘I’m all right really. I … I’ve already seen Celine.’
Her left hand was quickly guided to a railing of some sort, her fingers instinctively wrapping themselves around it.
‘Merci, madame,’ she heard herself say again as the sound of metal rollers grew louder and one drawer was opened, then another, another and another.
‘Draw back the shrouds,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Fully?’ yelped the attendant.
‘Merde alors, had I not wanted this, I’d not have asked for it, monsieur, and if you smirk again at these ladies, you can kiss your job and pension goodbye!’
Although they were still clear enough, the images were blurred by her tears, Ines knew. Madame Petain had left her at some distance, standing beside an empty pallet. The large hats she and Madame Richard wore were of felt and widely brimmed, Madame la Marechale’s with a silvery pin and of a striking blue to match the woollen overcoat, scarf and gloves, the back straight, the woman tall; Sandrine Richard’s chapeau had a wide band and was charcoal grey, the overcoat the same.
Blanche stood alone, a little apart from them. Her back, too, was straight, her head held high but not proud, for apprehension was in her look, despair also.
‘The rats, Jean-Louis,’ said a scruffy-bearded, grey little man with wire-rimmed spectacles whose right lens was broken. A man who’d been in prison, Ines told herself. ‘One can always tell with them,’ Olivier had said.
Hurriedly the coroner threw Madame Petain a glance but otherwise ignored her.
‘The rats,’ said St-Cyr, ‘five of which were found in this one’s bed.’
Their putrid little corpses lay belly up and split open, the mush of entrails puddled. Madame Petain was curious, seeming to tower over St-Cyr and the coroner; Madame Richard stood back a little and tense, so very tense, not at the sight of those little corpses, ah no, Ines told herself, but in expectation of what the coroner might have to say about their butchering.
‘Snared, Jean-Louis, by one who is very skilful at such things. Two of them finished off with a stick of some sort.’
‘The leg of a kitchen chair,’ acknowledged St-Cyr. ‘And the others?’ he asked, raptly leaning over them himself in spite of the stench.
‘Death by strangulation in their snares, the time at least a good twenty-four hours before that of the victim.’
‘And then?’
‘All of them more recently butchered with one of these, I think. The blade has a deep nick in it — one that hasn’t yet been ground out and is burred. As it cut towards the scrotum, it caught on the penile bone and tissues and ripped the genitals out of three of them. A hasty butchering. One that took, I would estimate, no more than three or four minutes. The blade was then wiped on the sheets, tearing the cloth as well.’
Coroner Laloux took from his smock a worn, black-handled Opinel pocket-knife, its blade more robust than that of a Laguiole, somewhat shorter, too, and wider, not nearly so graceful or piercing a weapon, though a knife that sickened all the same, if not more …
‘Albert Grenier uses a butcher’s knife,’ Ines heard herself blurt. ‘Albert doesn’t have a knife like that, but …’ She caught herself and turned away, saying silently to herself, But I know who does. I do!
‘As to whether a man or a woman, Jean-Louis, I can but say that whoever it was knew anatomy well enough.’
The sex and the livers … Sandrine Richard hadn’t moved in all this time. Lips parted in apprehension, her gaze was fixed on the little gap between St-Cyr and Madame Petain and her cheeks were drained of colour. She was swallowing hard, and one could imagine her thinking, Gaetan-Baptiste killed his mistress, Honore his, and Alain Andre his. Or did she simply think, St-Cyr knew who had done it?
But could he?
They moved to the victims, Blanche trailing them, herself staying put because Celine had been so beautiful, so full of hope and yet … and yet so worried.
Scared shitless — why can’t you admit it? Ines asked herself harshly, only to hear St-Cyr saying to Madame Richard, ‘Madame, please take a good look at this one and tell me if you killed her?’
Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux …
Revolting to look at, putrefaction’s suppuratingly livid encrustations of bluish green to yellow and blue-black blotches were everywhere on her legs, mons and stomach, her breasts, shoulders, throat and face. A network of veins, dark plum-blue to black, ran beneath an opalescent to translucent skin. The brow was high and wide, the skin like wax where not yet discoloured, the chin narrow, the nose sharp, the stench terrible.
Discharge webbed an unplugged nostril, the cotton wool having fallen out.
‘There are bruises, Jean-Louis, and scratches,’ said Laloux. ‘Though drunk on champagne, Mademoiselle Mailloux fought hard and her killer must surely have borne evidence of the struggle.’
‘Scratches?’ demanded Madame Petain.
Dr Laloux did not look at her. ‘Though mostly removed during the initial autopsy and not saved or detailed sufficiently, some scrapings of the assailant’s skin were left.’
‘How can you be sure It was a male?’ Madame Petain asked.
‘I can’t, nor can I say it was from a female, madame, but …’
‘Hair … the colour of the killer’s hair?’ she demanded. Sandrine Richard winced, St-Cyr noticing the exchange as he noticed everything.