Though he found it uncomfortable, he forced himself to study her naked body knowing that if ever they should meet again, he would have the utmost difficulty facing her.
She had lovely breasts, full and not too big or too small. Had she been proud of them? Of course, but she would seldom have seen them, for good girls, even ones who wanted to become mannequins, didn’t spend long before the mirror. Christ and the Blessed Virgin, God and old Father Taverner, the parish priest, saw to that. And if not them, her mother and father, the crowding of an overcrowded house, and if not that, her grandmother.
Joanne had been left-handed so, while in photos of the other girls a single bracelet had been worn naturally on the left wrist, with her, she had instinctively chosen the right wrist.
She was lying on that chaise-longue staring up into the camera.
In another photo she lay on it but with her head and shoulders hanging just over the edge and her arms straining to stop herself from sliding on to the floor.
Mon Dieu, she was so beautiful it hurt to look at her knowing what had happened to the others.
The bracelet had been removed. She was totally naked, her legs taut and straining too, her eyes clamped shut in fear, a lower lip bitten, the cheeks tense.
Quickly he found the shot of her backed into that corner, having just been told what was to become of her. Somehow she had snatched up the bracelet and had put it back on the right wrist, yet when he examined similar photos of three of the other girls, they had not worn the bracelet.
Fishing in a pocket, he dragged out a small lens and was grateful that the photos had been enlarged. In raised relief, figures appeared on the bracelet. Though their outlines lacked resolution, he saw a naked young woman kneeling with her head uptilted and a hand grasping something so as to hold it in her mouth.
Was she sucking a cow’s teat?
In another, a falcon-headed figure sat in judgment while a jackal-headed figure weighed something on a tall and quite simple beam balance.
The figures had been copied from the tombs of ancient Egypt. There would be hieroglyphics-snakes, scarabs, birds of various kinds and yes, the scales of truth, the weighing of the heart and the suckling so as the soul could enter the otherworld nourished and reborn …
He swallowed hard as he looked at that thing.
Joanne had worn the bracelet in hopes someone would see it. Though he couldn’t prove this, he felt the photographer and his assistant had, perhaps, been too distracted to notice.
If so, that could only mean they had been afraid of discovery and in a hurry.
Cramming everything into his briefcase, he raced for the door, caught himself only at the last moment to leave a brief note for Hermann.
Then he headed for the rue Quatre Septembre with a vengeance, Dede’s words echoing in his head. ‘But … but Joanne, she has had plenty of time? She might have …’
Window-shopped so as to see the type of clothes she would have to model. Of course!
Hermann … Hermann, have I found the answer?
4
‘Excuse me, monsieur, but it will have to be another time. I’m going out’
The banker’s wife was in her early sixties, still quite handsome, and wearing a dove-grey suit that was perfect for her. Good-naturedly Kohler grinned and tossed the hand that held his fedora. ‘Ah, of course, Madame de Brisson, I quite understand but another time is just not possible. It’s an emergency.’
The blue eyes behind their gold-rimmed spectacles hesitated. ‘Emergency? But … but what is this? What emergency?’
‘Gestapo, Paris-Central. Kohler, Haupsturmfuhrer and Detective Inspector. Please step aside.’
‘Most certainly not!’ she quivered.
The rounded shoulders were bunched for battle. So, okay, he would let her have it. ‘Your daughter, madame. We have reason to believe she’s engaged in a criminal conspiracy.’
‘Our daughter …? Marie-Claire …? But … but that is impossible, monsieur. What could the girl have done?’
Moisture was rapidly gathering in her eyes. ‘Why not tell me, eh? Suddenly you feel sick, madame. What’s she been up to?’
‘Nothing!’
The reddened lips trembled, the rouged and powdered cheeks tightened. ‘Then step aside and we’ll have a look. Her flat first, then down the stairs to yours. Anyone leaves and my partner out there on the street has orders to shoot on sight. No questions. Just bang, right in the face!’ Louis was nowhere near but …
The pearls were clutched. ‘Marie … Marie-Claire couldn’t have had anything to do with that robbery, monsieur. It’s monstrous of you to even suggest such a thing. Absurd! Adopted at birth, a treasure to her dear mother and father …’
Adopted … ‘Go on. Please do, Madame de Brisson, or shall I first go through the house and then that flat up there?’
‘You … you’ve no reason to suspect her. She … she’s innocent’
‘Then you’ve nothing to fear.’
‘Have you a magistrate’s order?’
It was a last line of defence and he had to give her credit for trying. ‘Don’t be silly. Be thankful I haven’t brought along the troops to knock hell out of this place.’
The salon de Brisson was rather nice though he saw it only in passing. Fluted columns with scrolled volutes and acanthus leaves held up a ceiling whose ornate mouldings made him think of Rome. A grand piano, Louis XV armchairs in silver with dove-grey fabric were tastefully scattered. The alabaster head of a woman sat on the mantelpiece beside a large bouquet of silk flowers, both reflected in a superb mirror. Then he was in a hallway with doors opening off it, a library, a study, a billiard room, kitchen, pantry, stairs up the back to the attic, to what formerly had been the maid’s quarters, the cook’s or nanny’s.
He skipped the second floor and went on up to the third floor and a change of scenery. Avant-garde, more of the demi-monde and the Left Bank.
Instead of oil paintings on the walls, there were mounted black-and-white photographs. Lots of them. Scenes of Paris, of the gardens, the Champs-Elysees, pigeons, old people, flowers, children …
He drew in a breath, then went through the attic pied-a-terre, swiftly opening doors, checking the two bedrooms, the small sitting-room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, et cetera, even to opening tall armoires that were crammed with clothes. Good stuff too. Evening dresses, sheaths, blouses, skirts and suits, and then, ah Gott im Himmel, a small dark-room. Shit!
The banker’s daughter was an amateur photographer who developed and printed her own photographs.
Joanne Labelle was nowhere in the flat. Hesitating, for he had felt so certain he would find the girl here before it was too late, Kohler went down the front stairs to Marie-Claire de Brisson’s private entrance on the rue de Montpensier, then back upstairs and down the service stairs into her parents’ home.
‘Nothing, monsieur. There is nothing, is there?’ said Madame de Brisson, still looking ashen and so close to tears he had to ask himself, what was she hiding?
He wanted to shriek at her to spit it out while there was still time. Instead, he sighed and pulled off his overcoat. ‘Let’s go upstairs to your daughter’s flat, madame, and you can tell me all about her work as a photographer. Oh by the way, where is she?’
‘At work, of course. Where else would she be?’
‘Work?’
Was it so surprising? ‘Yes, the shop of a friend, Chez Denise. It’s on the rue Quatre Septembre directly across the street from my husband’s bank.’
For hours, it seemed, St-Cyr stared at a bracelet in the window of the shop called Chez Denise. Was it the twin of the one Joanne had worn in that photograph or exactly the same one?