The girl was amazingly beautiful but sat woodenly staring up at the stage, unconscious of the looks she was getting from the crowd, remembering how it had been and wondering what the future held. Ah yes.
To be blonde, blue-eyed, tall, slender and forty years of age was not to covet Hermann Kohler or get jealous of Giselle le Roy, though sometimes those sorts of feelings intruded. One was only human and yes, of course one worried for that same future. At any moment the rifle butts could come even at Hermann’s door. Giselle and herself could well be dragged away and ‘deported’.
One must live for the present and accept the situation as it was.
The two detectives had drawn a sketch of the quadrangle of the Palais Royal and its environs and were deep in conversation over it. Hermann was in his element, smoking, tossing glances up at the stage, grinning, drinking beer, thinking that he would like to get a hand between a pair of legs up there, yet all the time his mind was flitting back and forth, recalling little things, projecting on into the future.
Jean-Louis always questioned everything. A thinker, he was not at all interested in the naked girls who kicked their legs above his head. She knew he longed to be alone with his pipe and tobacco, his little furnace, so as to examine the disappearances and murders from as many angles as possible. One so committed, he lived only for each case, especially this one. A cuddly man, Giselle had once said and laughed delightedly at the thought of seducing him, for men over fifty made good lovers sometimes, and the girl had thought it might be ‘very interesting’ to compare the two detectives in such a way.
St-Cyr traced out Joanne’s route from the Bourse station of the Metro westward along the rue Quatre Septembre towards the bank which was on the other side of the street. Then back again and south down the rue de Richelieu past the Bibliotheque Nationale to the Theatre du Palais Royal in the north-western corner of the quadrangle.
She had picked up the final letter and had, at 1.15 or 1.20 p.m., entered the garden and gone into the shop of Meunier the engraver.
Then finally she had walked out of the garden and around to the rue de Valois to knock at the door of that house.
‘For three days she’s kept a prisoner, Hermann. Three days of … ah, I can’t bring myself to think of it. Then suddenly they leave and the house is emptied.’
‘The photos are then scattered either by one of the kidnappers or by someone else,’ said Kohler grimly.
‘But the photos only tell us so much. The rapes aren’t shown, but were they photographed?’
‘For someone else to view?’ breathed Kohler, watching him closely. ‘Someone who wasn’t present?’
St-Cyr nodded curdy and passed a smoothing hand over the rough sketch map he had drawn. Oona van der Lynn was very still, and when he looked across the table at her, he saw her flinch, saw moisture rush into her lovely eyes.
Giselle le Roy was tense and pensive-ashen, so much so that the paleness of her fresh young cheeks contrasted sharply with her jet-black hair.
‘A sadist, Hermann? A psychopath-one with money enough to hire those who would do his every bidding?’
‘A man and a woman …’ said Kohler, lost in thought.
‘Madame Lemaire’s maid, Nanette, heard the crying not just of Joanne, but of others,’ said St-Cyr.
Kohler told him of Renee Marteau’s body and that the former mannequin had been kept for at least forty-three days. ‘Between 3 July 1941 and 15 August. The throat was slit, Louis, the hair hacked off, the breasts …’
‘Say it, please.’
Ah merde …‘Removed.’
‘Months-years, Hermann. How long has it been going on in that house? Fourteen girls all with the same colour of hair and eyes, the same height, weight, size of bust …’
‘Louis, take it easy. Try not to get so close. A man probably took the photos but a woman may have greeted each girl at the door.’
‘One whose purpose was to lead them on,’ blurted Giselle le Roy, all broken up about it. ‘How could any woman do such a thing?’
‘She was essential,’ said Oona, instinctively reaching out to comfort Giselle. ‘If she hadn’t been at that door to welcome them in, some of those girls would have turned away and saved themselves.’
‘Joanne was very nervous. She knew she was being followed …’ muttered St-Cyr.
‘But did she see the robbery?’ asked Oona earnesdy. ‘Could she have identified one of the men or perhaps the woman who watched the street for them?’
‘Ah, I wish I knew,’ said Jean-Louis.
‘And was that not the woman who followed her?’ asked Giselle.
The girl shrugged when St-Cyr looked at her-she could appear so innocent at times, so fragile.
‘If so, then it couldn’t have been the one who answered the door,’ she said more decisively.
‘Then there were two entirely unconnected women,’ concluded Oona positively. ‘One who watched the street for the bank robbers, and one who opened the door when Joanne rang the bell or knocked.’
Two women It was a thought.
‘They couldn’t have been the same because Joanne would have recognized her, Louis,’ said Kohler. ‘The one she knew was following her must have been the one who watched the street.’
‘Did both women follow her, but only that one was seen by Joanne?’ asked St-Cyr grimly.
‘Verdammt, Louis. The one who opened the door would have made damned certain Joanne had come alone!’
‘And to do so, she would have had to follow Joanne right from the Bourse Metro to the Theatre du Palais Royal,’ said St-Cyr, ‘then leave her so as to get to the house on time.’
‘But wouldn’t she have seen the other woman, then,’ asked Oona, ‘and thought the girl hadn’t come alone?’
‘Perhaps but … ah mais alors, alors …’ muttered St-Cyr. It was all speculation.
‘Girls with specifics,’ said Giselle, giving Kohler the tremulous look of a young woman who was still not certain her lover really cared enough about her to obtain false travel papers for them.
‘Specific physical features,’ said Jean-Louis, gravely brushing both hands over the table, ‘that match the girl who was once engaged to the son of the house’s owner.’ He fingered a richly gilded announcement. ‘Le Chateau des belles fleurs bleues near Provins. A Mademoiselle Angelique Desthieux, a mannequin.’
‘Ah no,’ gasped Giselle, clutching the base of her throat and feeling quite sick.
‘A mannequin …?’ managed Oona.
‘Engaged to Captain Gaetan Edouard Verges, 13 April 1916.’
‘And then?’ asked Kohler, hearing the guns of that other war as if only yesterday, feeling the mud, the shit, the shells …
‘A drooler, Hermann.’
Giselle quivered and couldn’t look up but seemed only to shrink into herself. ‘The face …’ she managed. ‘The constant drooling as he paws your naked body and then fucks you. No lips, sometimes half a nose, no jaws … Nothing but noises, mes amis. Noises!’
‘Verdammt!’ Kohler grabbed her hand. ‘Did you …? Hey, petite, have you ever had to …? Well, you know.’
‘Me?’ She arched her lovely eyebrows at him, pleased that he should care so much but distressed also, for it was not any business of his! ‘No, Herr Haupsturmfuhrer, one such as that has never slobbered over these breasts you hunger so much to suckle, nor has such a one ever fucked me. But …’ Ah! poor Hermann, he was so mortified and embarrassed … He must really love her a little. ‘But I have heard others talk of it, not at our house. Ah no, Madame Chabot would not allow it. But at other houses.’
‘Les baveux,’ said Oona, watching the two men closely and asking herself what she really felt about Hermann Kohler. Jealousy after all? Envy that Giselle, who had such a splendid young body and was so very beautiful, gave him such pleasure while she …