‘Louis …’
A side window of the Daimler had been rolled down a fraction. ‘Yes, Walter?’
‘Get in there and see what’s taking that partner of yours so long.’
The stairs were steep. One of the steps had been broken. Hermann had never let anyone hear him if he hadn’t wanted them to. Had he been so nervous he had become careless?
When he reached the garret, St-Cyr switched off his torch in alarm. Drunkenly the beam of Hermann’s torch shone across a barren floor. There was no sound, only the smell of charred wood and burnt flesh. Ah nom de Dieu …
Hermann was on his hands and knees. He had tried to vomit but had had nothing to throw up. His hat had fallen off. The collar of his greatcoat was up.
‘Merde, mon vieux, you have given me a scare,’ said St-Cyr gently as he took his friend by the shoulders and felt the splash of tears.
‘In … in the next room. I can’t take any more of this, Louis. I want out. I want to take Giselle and Oona to Spain, to live like decent human beings.’
‘Stay here – here, sit with your back to the wall. Switch off your torch. Save the batteries. You know how difficult it is for us to get replacements.’
Frisking him, and himself, St-Cyr at last found what was needed, and lighting the bent and crumbling cigarette, placed it between his partner’s lips.
‘You’ve been holding out on me,’ came the complaint, a good sign.
‘Only for the emergency of emergencies. You’re having a breakdown. You know that, don’t you? Try to be calm.’
Kohler motioned with a hand and gasped, ‘In there, like I told you. Look for yourself. It’s … it’s been cleaned.’
There were no bombs – Hermann had forced himself to check it out thoroughly. The garret was the equal of the other one but when the beam of the torch fled from the window to the floor, rats scurried away. ‘Ah merde!’ exclaimed St-Cyr as the sickly sweetness hit him. Henri Doucette was spread-eagled on the floor. His wrists and ankles were tied to ringbolts. The light fled over a patchwork of horribly charred and blistered skin where fluid-filled encrustations had become glued to the tatters of clothing and then frozen.
Rigor had set in. He’d been dead at least a day. Lengths of a rawhide whip had been used to tie him down. Anointed with cognac, he had been set afire and had been allowed to scream.
But not to see.
‘A skewer,’ St-Cyr heard himself saying, detached and remote, for this was murder. ‘His killer used a skewer to blind him, Hermann. Is this what caused you to be so ill?’
From the darkened corridor came the broken response. ‘That and … and the rats.’
The cognac bottle had been left near the corpse. It was empty and one look at the blistered, encrusted face with its gaping mouth and eye sockets, told St-Cyr the killer had forced Doucette to drink.
Then she – had it really been Tshaya? he asked, for he had always to question such things – had found a match and had sat back to look at the victim before striking it. Had he been tormented first with the skewer? Had the killer then provided another mouthful of cognac? The Gypsy … had it been De Vries who had done it?
Revenge.
The skewer had been stabbed into the floor next the head. No attempt had been made to hide the thing. It was simply from a kitchen and would have been readily available in most households. ‘But why put out his eyes, Hermann? Did hatred run so deep, or did the killer not want him to see something should death fail?’
‘Don’t they skewer the eyes of live rabbits in the markets of the Loire?’ blurted Kohler shrilly from the darkness of the corridor. ‘Don’t the peasants swear it makes the poor things taste better?’
How could you French do such a thing? – the accusation was very clear. Hermann had a file as big as a mountain in that brain of his about all things French and the curious. In 1850 a law had been passed forbidding such cruelty but it had been found unenforceable.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
Tshaya had worked in a brothel in Tours and would have seen or heard of such a thing. ‘Yes. Yes, they still do it but now, of course, rabbits are so very hard to come by.’
‘But do they taste better?’
‘Did she tell the Spade she was doing it for the sake of the rats?’
‘You know that’s what she’d have said!’
‘Go downstairs, Hermann. Immediately! Tell Boemelburg we’ve got a murder on our hands and that I will have to go over this place thoroughly.’
‘She did it, Louis. Don’t get to thinking otherwise. We haven’t time.’
‘Of course, but then … ah mais alors, alors, mon vieux, the cognac.’
‘What the hell’s the matter with the cognac?’
‘Nothing. It must have been superb. A Bisquit Vieille Reserve, VVSOP and fifty or more years in the cask for the youngest of its crus, the youngest, Hermann.’
‘So, what’s the problem?’
‘Tshaya. Wouldn’t any marc have done as well? Why choose something so fine and rare? Why not use something cheap and rough and easily obtainable, since it would burn just as well and for just as long?’
‘Are you trying to tell me Tshaya had expensive tastes?’
‘No. I am simply saying that not everything is as one would think it should be.’
9
The last of the papier-mache balls went into the kitchen stove. Alone, cold and deeply troubled – afraid, yes – St-Cyr brought the lighted taper to the bowl of his pipe, but chopped blotting paper, sun-dried herbs, sawdust, carrot tops and beet greens were no substitute for tobacco.
‘Diable!’ he cried, and spitting furiously several times, cleaned out the pipe and laid it on the table, another failed experiment in what the Occupation had produced, a nation of experimenters.
The house, he had to admit, was lonely without the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper who could, in moments, bubble with laughter or play the imp only to become serious. A terrorist, a resistant.
Suddenly he remembered the book he had taken from her shelf and cursed himself for having carried it all this time. Page by page he burned it, watching the flames but seeing her standing between the cages of poisonous snakes, ready to kill herself.
Three women, all very intelligent and resourceful but desperate and driven to extremes – each asking what they could possibly do to save themselves when … when, really, nothing could be possible.
That business in the house on the rue Nollet was not right. Oh for sure Tshaya would hate the Spade and would want to kill him but would she have taken such a risk as to notify Je suis partout ahead of time, knowing only he would come and not with others? At the least, she would have requested a private meeting there ahead of time and would have notified the paper later. And where, please, had the Gypsy been? In hiding, in a forest somewhere, among old ruins and in an encampment known only to other gypsies who were now with him, or in Paris at the killing with Tshaya? It must have taken at least two persons to have forced Doucette to lie on the floor like that and then to have tied him to the ringbolts. A gun would have been necessary also.
The leather binding of La Cryptographie Nouvelle refused to burn – the fire was simply not hot enough. The gilded letters on the spine remained, a damning indictment should they be found.
Cutting them off the charred leather, he ate them – it was the only thing to do. The ground outside was frozen solid, the drains could be opened and searched …
‘We were in Tours,’ he said so silently no Gestapo bug could have picked it up. ‘On Wednesday the twentieth we were away from Paris and on Thursday also, until 0500 hours Friday.’