Reams of patiently hand-copied sheet music were scattered on the floor. The music stand had been knocked over and had broken. An embroidered Louis XV canapé was all but threadbare but still held the needles and thimbles of a patient restoration that had been suddenly left off, never, by the look, to be taken up again.
Marie-Madeleine didn’t hesitate. Her mind long since made up, she led the way down a corridor. In the near distance there was a narrow anteroom whose mahogany bureau drawers, to one side, were half or partially open and in disarray. Beyond the anteroom there was an oval dressing mirror on a moveable stand, positioned so as to give warning of visitors.
In its reflection, and past the girl’s shoulder, he caught a glimpse of the richly carved blanket box that sat at the foot of a canopied bed. A nightdress was spilled over the box. Lace and fine white silk …
‘Inspector, please stay here.’
Concern filled her dark brown eyes. Marie-Madeleine indicated a visitor’s chair on the other side of the anteroom. ‘Frau von Mahler will have seen you in the mirror. Promise me you won’t come nearer.’
From somewhere distant came the muted sounds of children. Their nounou was trying to cheer them up. And surely this household needed laughter.
When two little girls raced down the hall, dragging their towels and dripping, the Kindermädchen, of about seventeen, tore after them with an upraised bath-brush, and the excited howls of the chase echoed. The children darted past him. The nanny stopped abruptly and blanched.
Her chest rose and fell. St-Cyr indicated that the girl should collect the children. ‘It’s their bedtime,’ she said sheepishly in deutsch. ‘I … I would never hurt them, mein Herr. It’s … it’s only a game we play. They’ve been so sad. I had to …’
She couldn’t say it. Things quietened down. Wearing their towels and frowning, not daring to look at him, the girls trooped by and were soon gone from sight.
Time and again Frau von Mahler had been at the bureau. Slips, half-slips and silk stockings had been yanked aside or half out. Sweaters and blouses …
When he saw the butt of the pistol she had repeatedly taken out and put back, his fist held the crumpled negliges it had been under.
The gun was a Belgian FN semiautomatic. There was a box of cartridges and this had been broken open and spilled, but some time ago, he thought, for there were 9mm Parabellum rounds under many of the things.
Mireille de Sinéty hadn’t taken the two rounds Hermann had found in Xavier’s pockets from the Kommandant, to give to Dédou Favre before dawn on Monday. She had taken them from here.
The gun was fully loaded. A thirteen-shot Browning Modéle à Grande Puissance (High Power). Many of such weapons were being made in Belgium for the Wehrmacht now and most of them, this one included, had deliberately had the safety catch removed. But Frau von Mahler had understood enough to leave the firing chamber empty and that could only mean she knew well how to use the gun.
Ah nom de Dieu, he silently cursed, what was he to do? Had she been about to kill herself? Had the murder put a temporary stop to it?
With uncertainty, his mind so obviously in a turmoil, the Chief Inspector held the gun, and when he looked at her, thought Frau von Mahler, he too, like all others at first sight, sucked in a breath.
‘Inspector, it’s good of you to come but my husband doesn’t know about that. I’d be grateful if you would put it back and say nothing of it to him.’
‘Might I ask, please, how you came by it?’
Tough … he must really be so, for he gave no further hint of dismay or alarm at the sight of her. ‘You might, but I, like so many these days, wouldn’t tell you unless tortured.’
The black market then, and perhaps a good 10,000 francs.
‘Forty thousand,’ she said and turned to lead him into her room. ‘It’s better we meet face to face, then you can judge for yourself if the answers I give are lies.’
In the café, Genèvieve Ravier let the fullness of her stunning blue eyes fill with concern as she sought Herr Kohler out to hold him fast with her gaze. ‘The girl could swim a little,’ she said of Adrienne de Langlade whose photograph, found behind the mantelpiece in their common room, he had set on the table before them.
‘A little,’ echoed Kohler.
The soprano unbuttoned her overcoat and pulled her scarf aside to bare a soft and slender throat. ‘Christiane was positive the girl couldn’t. I was not so sure.’
I’ll bet, thought Kohler.
‘Inspector, we helped her,’ insisted Christiane. ‘She was very shy and ashamed of her fear of the water. A childhood mishap. A near drowning …’ Maudit! Why had she mentioned drowning? ‘One of the lakes in the Bois de Boulogne. Yes … yes, it happened there. Madame Simondi would often force the girl to recount the incident.’
‘César’s wife was always pumping her for news of Paris, even such old news,’ offered Marius Spaggiari.
‘The girl wanted us to hold her under the water for a moment. She trusted us,’ said Guy Rochon.
‘And exactly where did this “holding under” happen?’ asked Kohler.
Rochon threw the Basso Continuo a questioning glance. ‘Why, at the mas, Inspector. The cave. The picnic’
‘Inspector,’ said Spaggiari, ‘the girl couldn’t swim from here to Madame la patronne without one of us holding her about the waist.’
‘And exactly what happened at that picnic?’ he asked.
‘The picnic? Why nothing much,’ said Norman Galiteau.
‘She got a little drunk, didn’t she?’
Genèvieve nonchalantly shrugged and handed the photograph back to him. ‘After the swim we had our lunch and then … then we cycled home.’
And even girls can lie, especially the pretty ones! ‘The Kommandant issued your laissez-passers,’ said Kohler, flipping through his notebook. ‘Your reason for the visit … Now where did I put it down? Ah, yes, here it is.’
They waited. He gave them time to digest this, then flipped the page over, letting them think a little more of what von Mahler might or might not have told him.
Then he let them have it. A lie if ever there was one, but to all good lies must come a solid element of truth. ‘The Feldwebel in charge of the control on the bridge recorded that one of your group failed to show up. That one had been left behind. She was …’ He paused. ‘Too ill to return.’
There was nothing in Herr Kohler’s pale blue eyes but emptiness. ‘She was badly sunburned, Inspector,’ said Spaggiari levelly. ‘We did what we could but had to leave her with Madame de Sinéty.’
‘Goat’s milk and butter …’ blurted Galiteau, his gold-rimmed glasses framing a nervousness that couldn’t be hidden.
It had to be asked. ‘Where was Xavier?’
‘Xavier?’ blurted Christiane. ‘Why he-’
‘He had had to remain in Avignon, Inspector,’ said Spaggiari. ‘A small matter Brother Matthieu was upset about.’
‘A penance,’ swallowed Galiteau. ‘Xavier had to scrub out the dog run.’
‘Okay, so the boy was with you — that’s what Feldwebel Jacob Dorst wrote down.’
‘Xavier … Inspector, if you’re so certain he was with us, why don’t you ask him?’ said Spaggiari.
‘I already have.’
‘That boy lies … You can’t trust him,’ said Christiane earnestly.
The ersatz lime-green apéritif hadn’t been touched but when he laid the photographs of that picnic on the table before her, she reached for it only to suddenly withdraw her hand.