Hermann’s conscience was troubling him. ‘The column, idiot. After our defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the citizens got to hating what it represented – all those deaths and failures in Napoleon’s Russian Campaign. They set up a government here in opposition to that of Versailles and one of the first things they did was to pull that thing down.’
‘They didn’t? Hell, the damned thing’s the height of a blastfurnace stack. It must weigh tonnes.’
‘It does. Thousands watched as it broke into three pieces before hitting the ground, and then into at least thirty. There were clouds of dust.’
‘Yet it was put back.’
Louis gave the Gallic shrug Kohler knew he would. ‘They were bound to, but that’s another matter. What’s important for you people to grasp, Hermann, is that they did pull it down, and in one day. 1 May 1871, a Monday at 5.40 p.m.’
You people … ‘Rudi only asked me if I had a source for him. Some cheese.’
How lame of Hermann. ‘And did you?’
‘You don’t trust me.’
‘I’m your partner. I have to.’
And I’m your friend, arent’ I? – Kohler could sense this in the tone of voice. Crises they had had before but never anything like this. Giselle would be yanked from the flat or the street and thrown into a cell – beaten probably. She’d lose the kid. And Oona …? Oona would be deported and never heard of again. Shit!
Kohler gazed well down the street over the jostling sea that all but imperceptibly flowed towards them. He saw Oona in rags, her eyes bluer still and gaunt with hunger. She’d be worrying about Giselle. ‘All right, Rudi warned me. Herr Max is after your head.’
Twelve hundred Russian and Austrian cannons had been taken at Austerlitz in 1805 by blood, tears and sweat and hauled all the way back to Paris to be melted down and cast into the bronze sheathing of that first column. In 1875 that sheathing had been recast using moulds still kept from the time of the First Empire. ‘It’s a small world, as your countryman has only just informed us, Hermann. Moscow and Russia were Napoleon’s nemesis. Stalingrad, Leningrad and Russia will be Hitler’s.’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘But that might not help us.’
‘Gabrielle can’t be involved in this business, Louis.’
‘That’s what we must endeavour to determine.’
Gabrielle Arcuri was Louis’s chanteuse, the new love of his life, though that affair had remained unconsummated – Kohler was certain of this, certain, too, that Louis was still missing Marianne and Philippe and blaming himself for what had happened to them.
He had met Gabrielle not two months ago while on that nothing murder in Fontainebleau Forest. She’d been a suspect then, was she a suspect now too? Ah verdammt! lamented Kohler silently. Why did the Occupier have to be such bastards?
Leaving the car in the centre of the street, they managed to lock the doors, then thread their way to the pavement and along to Cartier’s.
Gabrielle was involved with the Resistance – a tiny cell, a nothing cell. They both knew it of her, knew also, as did she, that Gestapo Paris’s Listeners had recently bugged her dressing-room at the Club Mirage, so the matter, it was serious.
‘Is her group hiding the Gypsy, Hermann?’
‘Merde alors, I wish I knew. The idiots! Don’t they know what Gestapo Paris will do to them? Boemelburg, Louis. Boemelburg!’
The post, the shots at dawn if still alive.
Clement Laviolette, the sous-directeur, was distraught. ‘A tragedy,’ he lamented, on seeing them enter the shop. ‘Irreplaceable, Inspectors. Twelve cushion-shaped sapphire beads of a depth of blue and clarity I have never seen before. Never! Years … it has taken years to accumulate such stones. Each bead has a round diamond brilliant of two carats in its centre. There are thirty-two matching sapphire cabochons graded as to size and linked so as to drape from the neckline of cushions. Each cabochon is separated from the next by a pearl of such exquisiteness, they, too, have taken years to accumulate.’
‘There was a bracelet,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Ear-rings, too, and a ring. Matching stones. Ah mon Dieu, Inspectors, what are we to do? The pieces had been paid for, you understand. 8,600,000 francs up front, the receipt for which I myself have signed.’
A tragedy, like he’d said, thought Kohler. ‘You didn’t lose the cash, too, did you?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Yet you did not inform us of these items last night?’ exclaimed St-Cyr. ‘Surely you must have known …’
‘They weren’t in the vault, were they?’ bleated his partner.
Vehemently the sous-directeur shook his head. ‘They were in my private safe. It’s in my office behind the painting. We … we did not think … Ah! the door to it was securely closed and the dial turned to the number 47 just as I myself would have left it.’
Believing the worst, Kohler sighed, ‘So, when was the payment made, eh?’
‘On Saturday. There had been a few minor adjustments to make – nothing much. Mademoiselle Arcuri was really very pleased. A little something new, to go with the dress that is her trademark. We’ve been trying for some time to get just the right pieces together for her. She was ecstatic’
I’ll bet she was, thought Kohler ruefully. Five numbers to the combination – would there have been that many for her to have memorized?
It was Louis who said bluntly, ‘Please show us your copy of the receipt.’
Dated the sixteenth, the same day as the Gypsy had ordered the cigarette case, it was clear enough.
‘She came in at about eleven for a fitting. As with our other special clients, this was done in the dressing-room that is just off the office. There it is very private, and if the client chooses, why the door can be closed so as to dress or undress as much as one wishes.’
‘Left alone, was she?’ demanded Kohler.
Again Laviolette vehemently shook his head. ‘There was only one tiny alteration for us to do – she had hoped to take everything with her and to wear the pieces that evening, but could not wait while it was done. One of the linkages had to be shortened a half-millimetre.’
A nothing business. ‘And she paid in cash?’ he asked.
‘In 500 franc notes.’
It wasn’t good, thought St-Cyr, but the receipt might just save her since it offered an alibi of its own, she having made a substantial investment and placed great trust in the firm. And as for carrying around that sort of cash, some did it these days. Her take at the Club Mirage was ten per cent of the gross, kept in an old trunk perhaps to avoid taxes – he was going to have to speak to her about this. It couldn’t go on. ‘Monsieur le sous-directeur, think back, please. At any time was Mademoiselle Arcuri or any customer other than the Gypsy left alone in that office while the wall safe was uncovered?’
‘No. No, of course not. We’re most careful.’
‘Yet you didn’t bank the cash,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Why was that, eh?’
‘Such a large sum,’ hazarded the Surete, grimly gesticulating. ‘One would have thought a little caution perhaps? Oh bien sur, business is booming, but even so …’
‘Noontime had come upon us. The bank was closed for two hours. I myself had to eat.’
‘Yet you had all day Monday to make the deposit,’ countered St-Cyr softly.
They had best be told something. ‘With such a sum, and with such pieces, we always want to know absolutely that the sale has gone through.’
‘So the money was in the safe, along with the necklace and other pieces?’ said Kohler.
‘That is correct.’
‘Then why, please, did she not pick up the jewellery yesterday?’ asked Louis.
Ah damn these two. ‘She … she said she wished to argue with herself a little more. It was, she said, a great deal for her to spend. The authorities … she was worried someone might question such an expense. It would have to be declared, of course. That is the law.’