‘Hairs would, I feel, have been present, madame. At least one or two, but whatever evidence was present has since been removed.’
And lost, but deliberately: was that what he implied? wondered Ines. It must be, for Laloux was not at all content.
Blanche couldn’t take her gaze from the corpse. Revulsion, fear … ah, so many emotions were registered in her expression, thought Ines, having at last joined their little group.
The Surete’s voice was harsh. ‘Sandrine Richard, I ask you now in front of these witnesses, did your husband, Alain Andre Richard, bear any such scratches on the evening of 9 December last or in the days following?’
They would have all but healed and vanished by now …
‘Since we were no longer sleeping together, Inspector, I noticed none.’
A cold answer.
‘And you yourself?’ he asked.
Madame Petain caught a breath and held it.
‘Have a conscience that is clear.’
‘The other victims, then,’ he said, swiftly turning to the coroner and obviously furious with Madame Richard’s response.
‘With this one, the same wire, as you noted before,’ said Laloux, ‘the assailant at least of medium height and perhaps a little taller.’
‘Then not Albert Grenier, Louis,’ said Herr Kohler, having reluctantly joined them.
Laloux acknowledged the contribution. ‘With this next one, perhaps the assailant who drowned the first victim, smothered the third. There is that same sense of downward force, that same weight, that same ruthless determination.’
‘A professional?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Why then the necessity of finishing her off in an armoire? Surely if that were so, the killer would have completed his task in the bed.’
Not a professional then, though the killer had wanted it to look as if Albert Grenier had done it.
‘And with the most recent killing?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Was the lifting on the haft of the knife simply due to jealousy?’
Laloux removed his glasses, for Madame la Marechale’s jealousy had been implied. ‘Or hatred, or both, but desperation, I think, Jean-Louis.’
‘Male or female?’
Blanche had turned away, was fighting for composure, thought Ines, as Coroner Laloux said, ‘I’ve puzzled over this and wish I could be more precise but there is no clear evidence. The same person may have killed all of them, but then, each could also have been killed by a different assailant.’
‘Surely the garrotting of Camille Lefebvre took strength?’
‘But that of a man — is this what you mean? Really, Jean-Louis, are women not as strong as men? Many of them most certainly are.’
A man, said Ines sadly to herself and wept inwardly for Celine who had trusted him as she had. That Opinel, Inspectors. Monsieur Olivier has one. I’ve seen it, for my valise had a rope tied round it when I left the train and this he cut while we were in the cafe, a place where only those he was certain of would be present.
Two of them had looked her over as she’d shown him the portrait mask of Petain. Two of them.
The Clinique du Dr Raoul Normand was on the rue Hubert Colombier in the old part of town. St-Cyr knew this well enough but with no lights, street names would be impossible and he had used, Ines surmised, the silhouette of the nearby Eglise Saint-Blaise against the night sky for guidance. ‘Part fifteenth century, part 1930s, Hermann,’ he had said, no doubt peering out his side windscreen. ‘The latter with magnificent art deco mosaics and stained glass.’
And a black Virgin, Ines said to herself. The Notre-Dame-des-Malades to which I have, during my brief visit, already prayed. The Madonna is surrounded by the commemorative plaques of the faithful, each of which attested to her having answered their prayers and cured them of their afflictions, but could the Virgin ever cure Vichy of what ailed it?
Monsieur Olivier had told her to meet him there after the Marechal’s viewing of the wax portrait. ‘But I don’t yet know when that will be,’ she had said and he … he had answered, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll know.’
As he had known everything? she wondered. When Celine would go to Petain, when Lucie would leave for Clermont-Ferrand or Paris … Paris. And the portrait mask? Tomorrow, monsieur? At 9.50 a.m. and just after the Marechal’s breakfast briefing? How, please, could he have known of this so far ahead of time?. And why was she to meet him? More messages to deliver in Paris, but now … now with Lucie dead, there could no longer be a way for him to get them to her, unless … unless he was counting on her to take them across the Demarcation Line.
Two knives: the Laguiole of the wife who had killed herself in despair on 18 November 1925, at the age of thirty-four, and the cold and worn Opinel of his own pocket.
Had he killed Celine? Had he killed them all?
The clinic, a manor house, was not of the new-Gothic, Flemish style, nor was it neo-Venetian or neoclassical as some buildings in Vichy were, thought St-Cyr, but was, in itself too, superbly of the fin de siede, of art nouveau and of old money. Lots of it.
Lustrous curves and flowing lines were in the mahogany panelling, banisters and mouldings. Tall corridors opened upwards to floral; stained-glass lights which gave the sense of being in a verdant, year-round garden. Kentias, in cylindrical jardinieres, glazed white and blue, lined the walls at intervals. Stylish red, morocco-covered, cushioned benches allowed for rest and patient reflection. Water played musically in the distance. A mosaic of soft blue lilies, submerged in the white of the tiles, was underfoot, each flower revealing a yellow-dusted stamen that opened into a gorgeous naked nymph whose arms were thrown wide in rapture. Youth, health and beauty were everywhere, especially in the painting of nereids au bain above the doorway at the far end of the corridor, where limpid-eyed girls stood in foam-flecked shallows splashing a buck-naked Nereus, as dolphins swam and seashells basked.
The grey-skirted, trimly aproned little maid of twenty with the clear complexion, brown eyes and chestnut hair, paused. ‘Messieurs et mesdames,’ she announced hesitantly. ‘It is this way, please. The doctor awaits.’
‘And is expecting us?’ asked Kohler from behind the ladies.
‘As he expects all who come here, monsieur.’
‘Foie, diabete et estomac, Hermann,’ grunted St-Cyr. Liver, diabetes and stomach problems. ‘Gout, too, and obesity. It’s all in the mind. You need the cure, you want the cure and voila, you take it and feel better.’
‘Having paid a fortune! Louis!’
Venus et Diane stood on either side of the doorway in their gilded birthday suits, life-sized and all the rest. The lighting became softer, the corridor turning as the playful sound of water increased and one saw, as if looking down through a leafy tunnel between full-frontal nudes of a teenaged boy and girl whose arms were languidly raised to pick dream-fruit perhaps, others bathing in a secluded forest pond. Some were half-undressed, most were naked, some were submerged right up to their pretty necks. The farthest bather wore a gossamer sheath that clung to her in the most favourable of places.
‘I like it, Louis. Maybe my knee would too.’
‘And that aching shoulder you forgot to tell me about?’
‘Quit worrying so much. I’ll be there when you need me.’
‘It’s the needing I’m worrying about.’
They were moving quickly now. A spacious lounge held a bar, billiard and card tables, armchairs and kaftan-clad, felt-slippered curistes, among them the greying local Kommandant and others of the Occupier. Too many of the others …
‘Ignore them!’ hissed Kohler as men, women, young boys and girls watched their progress, the conversation falling off. No sign of Petain, though. None of Menetrel either.
The room, the examining office-cum-dispensary, was a clutter. Weighing scales for the patients to step on, others for preparing their prescriptions. Pharmaceutical jars of herbs, bottles of the various Vichy waters, the Celestins, Hopital, Dome and Boussange among them. The bank of wooden filing drawers must hold each patient’s card and record of progress; carved models of hands and feet would be used for arthritic enlightenment, gout too. Even an array of the regulation, measured glasses stood sentinel with a graduated cylinder.