It would be tiresome to again say Of course, thought St-Cyr. The urge to do so was almost overpowering, but one must go carefully. The age of the woman in the street had been put at between thirty and thirty-six years. Then why, please, he asked himself, was Madame de Brisson sweltering? Was she about to choke on a fishbone even though her trout had not been touched since their arrival?
De Brisson didn’t like the silence. ‘There was a young girl who window-shopped, Inspector. Eighteen perhaps. Yes, that was the age. Another supposedly stood watching this girl and the street. The woman who reported this to the police could give few details except to say that the girl at the window was aware of the one who watched.’
Gravely Louis tidied the table-cloth in front of himself though it needed none. He looked away across the restaurant, seemed bent on deciding the best course of action. All around them the diners went about their business. The place had now settled down and would take little notice of them until they left.
‘Mademoiselle de Brisson, is there anything you can add that might be of help? I know you were not a witness, but … ah, some little thing perhaps? One of your girls taking too close an interest in the car your employer borrows from time to time? Perhaps someone saw something out front? A window-shopper like this … this … How old did you say she was, monsieur?’
‘Eighteen.’
It was such a fiercely perturbed answer. ‘Eighteen,’ acknowledged the Surete gruffly. ‘Repeated visits, mademoiselle, so as to case the bank of your father?’
‘Inspector, it was a simple hold-up,’ breathed de Brisson impatiently.
‘Not with eighteen million, monsieur. No, it was an operation that involved meticulous planning. Of this my partner and I are certain. So, mademoiselle, have you anything to say? Did anyone notice this girl looking in the window of your shop?’
What did he really know? she wondered harshly. The Meuniers were dead-dead! The Gestapo had shot them before … before Paul could … could say a thing. A thing! These two could know nothing of the papers. Nothing! ‘We get thousands looking in our window each day, Inspector. Sometimes it is only a glance in passing, sometimes a searching for hours on end as the mind, it fantasizes.’
‘The girl, mademoiselle, had long brown hair-was it brown, Hermann? Is that what the prefet said?’
‘Dark brown, Louis, and brown eyes, I think.’
‘One of so many, Inspector,’ said Madame de Brisson tightly. ‘It can mean nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘Or everything, madame,’ said the Surete with that little shrug Kohler knew so well. ‘You have a cat, madame?’
‘A cat? Why … why, yes.’
And now you look as if you had just swallowed your canary. Again he would gravely tidy the table-cloth and pass smoothing fingers across it waiting always for the silence to do its work.
‘My cat, Inspector? What … what has Samson to do with the robbery?’
Moisture had collected around the stern blue eyes behind their glasses. Guilt, fear-the horror of what she had done-was it this that made her tremble? ‘Your trout, madame. I greatly fear my partner and I have spoiled your supper but, as you have a cat, well …’
He left it unsaid. ‘Hermann, mon vieux, we have work to do. Monsieur, madame, mademoiselle, please forgive the intrusion. Merci.’
Outside on the rue de Beaujolais Kohler exploded. ‘You had me believing you were going to slam that bastard against a wall and cut off his balls before confronting the daughter with the forged papers!’
‘Ah, no, Hermann. It’s best, is it not, to add the spices only at the moment of tenderness so that the bouillon becomes the sauce when quickly thickened and allowed to simmer but for a little while?’
‘Hey, for a moment there you had me worried.’
* * *
‘Dede, ah mon Dieu, what are you doing on my doorstep at such an hour?’
Wrapped in a blanket, the boy stood up and shook the snow from himself. ‘Grand-mere, she is saying she has had a vision in the night of Joanne, Inspector. Naked, ravaged and with … with her … her breasts cut off.’
‘Ah damn that old woman! Come in. Quickly. Light the stove. Here … here take this thermos. My partner knows another Bavarian who has a restaurant. It’s a little soup, Dede. Ham and lentils with red kidney beans. There’s a handful of croutons in my overcoat pocket. See that you restore the body’s temperature, eh? while I find a little something from my days as a soldier. Be sure to use the bread. Mop up the dregs. Keep nothing. I’m not hungry.’
The boy would do as he was told but was there no way to shut that old woman up? The breasts … How could she have said a thing like that to the family?
Down in a cellar too dark and dank for comfort even though it was his own, he moved a wine barrel, one of several from the days when he had once tried to make his own wine, and found beneath it yet another barrel.
Moving it, he got down on his hands and knees with his pocket-knife and prised out a stone in the floor. The revolver in the tin box, a Lebel Model 1873, was just as he had left it on the day of the Defeat. Well-greased, in its holster and with two boxes of cartridges.
The gun was heavy-indeed, it was almost as effective as a club. Though some had been modified to eight millimetre, this one still used the eleven millimetre, black-powder, low-pressure cartridges that were slightly less in calibre than the .455-inch cartridges of the British Mark IV Webley.
Hermann wouldn’t expect him to be armed and would probably find something, yet this could not be guaranteed in time and the sacrifice would have to be made.
Returning the army holster and one box of cartridges to their hiding place, he went back upstairs. The boy must have been ravenous. The bowl was clean, the thermos dry. Not a crumb of bread remained. Dede saw the gun in his hand and couldn’t take his eyes from it. What could he let him tell the other boys? ‘It looks like the police revolver I lost in Lyon, Dede, the same as the gun that was used in the robbery. But this one … It’s not quite thirty years since I had to use it in that other war. Please, it’s a private matter between us, eh? Just you and me. No others.’
‘Is it that you know where Joanne is?’
‘Ah, I wish that were so. We’ve made great progress, but must now visit a place of flowers.’
‘A cemetery?’
‘Ah, no. No. Beautiful blue flowers. Lupins perhaps or violets, but in spring.’
‘And the robbery?’ asked the boy. ‘Is it that Joanne has perhaps seen something and this is why she was kidnapped?’
Would it hurt to lie a little so as to give hope? Though he wanted to, he told himself he would have to be honest. ‘We simply don’t know yet. But the robbery and the kidnapping are connected. I’m almost certain of it.’
‘Then you have a suspect?’
‘More than one.’
‘Male or female?’
‘Both.’
The gun, the man, the detective stood before him across the table. How many times had he and the other boys seen the Chief Inspector trudging home to an empty house and a wife who slept elsewhere with another, a German officer? How many times had they kicked the soccer ball to him only to find he had stumbled and fallen asleep from exhaustion to look like a drunkard lying on the pavement?
He had lost his car, his great big beautiful black Citroen to a Boche, a Bavarian. His bicycle-his precious Surete velo with the five kilos of brass for a lock-had been smashed on a case and then stolen. Yes, stolen. A smashed bicycle!
A collabo, they had called him behind his back, the people of this street he loved so much, but only because he had had to work for the Boches, the Krauts-les Allemands, the pork-eaters and sneezers, the pickled cabbages, the Schlocks.