There were creams on half the faces, black hair, blue hair, blonde hair being teased by hot irons or combed and clipped, dyed and sprinkled with some sort of ersatz silvery powder. Ground aluminium probably.
The place smelled like a brothel after a bath or a raid. The talk, which had been a sharp crossfire of insidiously cruel gossip from chair to chair, had ceased entirely.
Now there were only the sounds of increasingly hesitant scissors and the tap that was still running.
Kohler picked up a bottle of scented lotion then put it back. The dog began to sniff nervously at his heels and then to do its other business on the floor.
Madame tossed a no-nonsense nod at the nearest assistant. Still nothing was said. The assistant exposed nice knees as she crouched, giving him a good view up her stockinged legs. Silk, no less! Demurely she picked up the hard little turds and primly left.
They heard the front door open and then close.
‘Madame …’ he began.
‘Monsieur?’ she asked.
At first Kohler thought the red hair and sea-green eyes a coincidence but when the assistant returned, Madame Rogette could not stop herself from asking if there’d been any sign of her daughter. ‘I sent that girl on an errand first thing this morning and she’s not back yet,’ she confided to the rinse job and all others.
The assistant thought to help. ‘It’s not the first time, madame. Suzanne will be all right. It’s only that old …’
‘These days …’ began Madame, thinking to ease the tension. ‘Ah, what can one do with the young, mesdames et mesdemoiselles? That girl, she is seeing someone. Me, I have had my suspicions for some time but a mother, pah! One cannot interfere too much or else they vanish.’
Into the cellars of the Gestapo. Kohler knew it had to be the kid Munk and Delphane had worked over. ‘Madame …’ he tried again.
‘Has anything happened to my daughter, monsieur?’
He met the look in her eyes. Without being told, she’d known right away he was a cop. ‘No. No, not that I’m aware of,’ he said. ‘I’m from Paris Central.’
Still no one moved. Even the scissors had stopped. ‘A case of missing persons. Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi has asked us to find her daughter, Josette-Louise. The girl’s in Paris.’
‘Then I ask again, monsieur, why are you here?’
‘Madame Buemondi thought you might have a suggestion or two – nothing specific, you understand. Just an idea perhaps.’
It was meant to let her off the hook in front of the customers and it would have to do. ‘Babette, please attend to Madame the Countess. Madame, excuse me for a moment, please. I will not be long. We’ve finished with this, Babette. Now please, the combing out and then the electricity of the drier but lightly, yes? Very lightly.’
The dark eyes of the countess flashed the fire of curiosity. ‘Have you done anything?’ she asked, detaining Madame by gripping a wrist.
‘No. No, of course not,’ said Green-Eyes. ‘Monsieur and I will simply be a moment.’
They didn’t go into the front office but passed behind a curtained doorway into a narrow corridor whose flanking shelves were crammed to the ceiling with bottles and tins of soap and powder, et cetera, et cetera.
From there, they entered a small but comfortable sitting-room. She closed the door and leaned her back against it.
‘Madame Buemondi is dead, Inspector. Me, I suppose you are aware of this only too well, as are all those in my shop. But Suzanne, she knows nothing, you understand? A few errands, a little of the herbal shampoo for the countess from time to time; a bar of the lavender soap for that one’s husband or Monsieur Jacques, the head croupier over at the Palm. Nothing. The child knows nothing.’
Kohler wished she’d sit down. Crucified on that door of hers, she looked like Christ in her agony of doubt.
‘Did Ludo Borel supply the soaps and other things?’ he asked.
The shrug was genuine. ‘A man from the hills, that is all I know. Monsieur, Madame Buemondi would not have given that one’s name to anyone, not these days when soap is impossible to acquire without … without the proper connections.’
‘What did you give her in return?’
‘What do you think, eh? Is it so hard to see?’
‘I just want to hear it from yourself.’
‘The manicures, the coiffures – the hair stylings, yes? For herself and her friend.’
‘Which friend?’
‘Her companion. Her favourite. Her little protegee. Mademoiselle Angelique Girard.’
‘Not the weaver?’
‘No … No, not the weaver. Others, too, in … in exchange for the things Madame Buemondi had to dispose of.’
‘Anything else?’
‘The hot mud treatments, but those are done over at the other place, on the rue Buttura. Chez Paulette, the House of the Eternal Life.’
‘Sulphurous mud?’ he asked.
‘Yes. But of course. Modelled after the hot waters and mud baths in the grottos of Vesuvius. My elder daughter is in charge. My husband, he … he has died in the last war, monsieur. At Verdun. Now, please, you will tell me what has happened to Suzanne. When one is accustomed to reading the truth in the eyes, monsieur, it is very hard for others to conceal it from me.’
Kohler touched her arm as he was leaving but could not find the courage to face her any longer. Out on the street, he drew in several deep breaths and swore he’d kill Munk and Delphane.
When he found a telephone to ring the villa and warn Louis, he knew Gestapo Cannes would be listening in for just such a thing, and gave it up.
Louis would just have to look after himself.
They came in two cars and they arrived very fast. One moment they were at the front gates of the villa; the next, the weaver was saying, ‘For the love of Christ, don’t let them find me here! There’s a door at the far end of the garden. I’ll go out that way.’
‘What about the bicycles?’ shot St-Cyr.
‘Ah merde!’ She bit her lower lip. ‘Look, could you handle the two of them? Please, Inspector. I beg it of you. Carlo mustn’t find me here and neither must Jean-Paul Delphane.’
In mirror after mirror he saw the look of tragedy in her eyes and was transported right back in time to Chamonix and that other villa. An entrance room of some sort. Yes, yes … she looking up at him from a chair – what had there been in her eyes besides that look of anguish? A quivering uncertainty? The dare of one who has gambled hard and is uncertain if she will be found out?
An entrance room? he asked, puzzled. White … the walls, the ceiling, an inner door opening. Shoes … a pair of shoes … a nurse in a light blue uniform with a white apron. Yes, yes, he urged himself. Think, St-Cyr. Think!
Remember. ‘Jean-Paul, it’s been a long time,’ he said, still feeling Chamonix intensely, still smelling the fear – everywhere the fear.
‘Fuck off. You, you and you,’ said Delphane. ‘Search the house and grounds.’
‘Please do,’ enthused the Surete. ‘I came alone and entered using this.’ He held up the key. The three Gestapo hesitated and when their leader came in with someone else, they decided not to take orders from the Deuxieme Bureau but to await further instruction.
The key, of course, was to the weaver’s house, but they could not have known this.
He pocketed it and took out his pipe, only to remember the lack of tobacco.
‘Jean-Louis St-Cyr?’
‘Yes. Yes, that is me.’
‘You are under arrest for high treason.’
‘Don’t be silly. I am merely doing my job.’
The Gestapo Munk leapt. ‘Silly?’ he shrieked, swinging his gloves. ‘French pig, I’ll teach you who is silly!’
St-Cyr feinted to the left, grabbed the Gestapo’s wrist and carried the arm straight up and back, pivoting the man so that Munk was now between himself and the troops. ‘Don’t ask for help,’ he said. ‘Tell them I will break it, Herr Munk, and gladly die in the process.’