‘Inspector …’
‘Brother, let the boy answer. You may, however, remind him that my partner found him with two nine-millimetre rounds in his pockets. Sufficient, as you and I both well know, for the Kommandant or the District Gestapo to send him into deportation.’
‘The killer must’ve taken our sickle, Inspector,’ said Xavier blandly. ‘Wasn’t it found with the other things in the Latrines Pit?’
The page-boy styled dark brown hair had been smoothed in place by the brother, but the boy had shrugged off the hands and had moved aside.
‘Did you tidy up after the killing,’ asked the Sûreté, ‘or did your mentor?’
‘Inspector …’
‘Silence, Brother!’
The boy found his mégot tin and, selecting three choice butts, crumbled them into a palm and proceeded to deftly roll himself a forbidden cigarette.
‘I “tidied” nothing. Why not ask Salvatore, since he was the one who found her a moment after the killing when he could so easily have found her a moment before?’
‘Now listen, you …’
‘Xavier, tell him.’
A drag was taken and held until exhaled through the nostrils, the boy sizing the two of them up as if they were already old men whose time had passed.
‘The rounds were for Dédou Favre who was to have met her in the Palais that night. Dédou had a stolen Luger but no bullets, so Mireille took a couple from the Kommandant’s house when he wasn’t looking. When I got to her place on the rue du Rempart du Rhone, it was well before dawn and freezing, but Dédou never showed up. Mireille was worried about him coming to the Palais to meet her after her audition as they’d planned. She felt the préfet might somehow have found out about the meeting. She wanted me to give Dédou the rounds and to tell him not to come if he felt it best, but I couldn’t find him.’
A member of the maquis … The 100,000-franc reward for all such betrayals would have had to be forgone, thought St-Cyr, so too praise from the préfet, the bishop and the Kommandant. It just didn’t seem possible. The urge to accuse the boy of lying was very strong but it would be best to draw in an impatient breath and leave the matter for now. Brother Matthieu looked as if searching the Sûreté to see if the lie had taken hold.
‘You arrived at her flat at about what time?’
‘Five-thirty, the new time.’
Berlin Time. 4.30 a.m., the old, and after walking all night from les Baux, lugging a heavy rucksack.
‘She was really pleased to get the soap,’ hazarded the boy. ‘She’d asked for it especially.’
He was grinning now at the thought of her naked, no doubt, but Brother Matthieu looked as if ready to smack his charge’s face for being so cheeky. ‘How long did you stay with her?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Not long. I had to find Dédou, remember? There’s a hollow along the ramparts not far from the Porte du Rhône — I’ll show it to you if you like. I knew he’d be waiting there because that’s where she said he’d be.’
‘And when you didn’t find him?’
‘She was most distressed and said, “I have to go through with it anyway. I must.”’
‘With what, apart from the audition?’
The Sûreté was like a dog after a scent. Well this one would cock its leg, thought Xavier.
Cigarette ash was insolently flicked aside.
‘I’ve no idea. She had her little secrets. One didn’t press.’
I’ll bet! scoffed St-Cyr inwardly. ‘You took her a grive last autumn, in November.’
One must match tone with tone. ‘Nino had brought it to me instead of to His Holiness, so by rights it was mine. One less would not have mattered.’
The memory was savoured, a touch of softness entering until asked who Nino was.
‘One of the hounds. A beagle bitch with the name of a male.’
‘A friend?’ asked the Sûreté softly.
‘They’re all ‘friends’. Each one of the pack is special. They’d only get jealous of one another otherwise. Don’t you know anything about dogs?’
Nino. ‘When was the grive taken?’
‘In October. The first week, I think. I can’t remember.’
‘But you kept it for a while?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then that’s all for now. You’re free to leave. Get out, the two of you.’ But when they had reached the door, he called to them from well within the room and barely in sight. ‘A moment. I almost forgot. Who gave her a key to the Palais or left the entrance door open for her since the concierge was attending a film?’
Brother Matthieu swore.
Xavier hesitated and then said calmly, ‘César. He didn’t want her to be late.’
Christiane Bissert had said Brother Matthieu had given the victim the key. ‘And Monsieur Simondi told you this?’ asked St-Cyr.
The boy shook his head. ‘Mireille did. She wondered if the third judge would be Madame Simondi since Avignon’s petite pomme frite had told her the Kommandant was certain to refuse.’
Avignon’s little French fried potato … Frau von Mahler. How cruel of the boy to have called the woman that, a victim of Köln’s firestorms. ‘And was Madame Simondi that third judge?’
The urge to ask, What do you think? was there but unwise. ‘That little matter was always kept secret, Inspector. How could I possibly know?’
‘There was also Monsieur Renaud, Inspector. A notary,’ interjected Brother Matthieu. ‘An old friend of Monsieur Simondi and of the girl’s family. Mademoiselle de Sinéty often went to see him when in search of information or to borrow things.’
‘Enseignes, jewels and coins?’ asked the Sûreté and waited for the brother to oblige.
‘The rue des Teinturiers, near the fourth waterwheel, or is it the fifth?’
The street of the dye-workers.
The door was closed, the storeroom soon quiet. For a moment St-Cyr argued with himself. Should he have Xavier taken into custody, or could he leave things for the present?
When he found, under folded tapestries in an old trunk, a wine-purple, gold-embroidered ecclesiastical pouch, he sighed.
There were wrist-watches, diamond rings, necklaces, brooches, cufflinks, several pairs of ear-rings, a gold lipstick, gold compact, a cigarette lighter and two cigarette cases, both of which were engraved with the names, no doubt, of the owners of the abandoned villas from which they’d been taken.
Xavier’s little hoard had been laid by for a rainy day, and from this, quite obviously, had come the wrist-watch Hermann had found in the victim’s handbag. But there was more, much more.
There was a thick twist of reddish blonde hair.
‘Herr Kohler, why do you ask about a girl we hardly knew?’ Marius Spaggiari, the bass, looked to the others for support.
‘Students come and go all the time,’ offered Norman Galiteau, the baritone.
‘Few succeed, no matter their discipline, be it the violin, piano or voice,’ hazarded Guy Rochon.
They’d made damned certain he wouldn’t talk to them one at a time. ‘Something’s come to light. My partner will be expecting me to see if I can’t find out a little more.’
‘But … but what’s there to tell? A strawberry blonde …?’ blurted Galiteau.
‘We get a few of those,’ countered Spaggiari.
Fixed up by the students as a lounge, the lower of the tower rooms was furnished with sagging armchairs, chaise longues and sofas from the twenties. The carpet was worn and stained by booze, vomit and food. The flea-market lamp shades were yellowed and unravelling. Above a marble mantelpiece, a gilded Venetian mirror, with streaked and stained backing, was being held by the outstretched arms of sumptuous, avant-garde nudes who licentiously defied the viewer not to look at them while gazing in the mirror.