The photos had not all been taken by Luc Tonnerre-some had been done by professional photographers and presented to Verges as gifts from the mannequin and future bride with love and tenderness.
Kohler eased the bedside table drawer open … a Bible, a rosary, a simple cross on a neckchain … a packet of photographs tied with pink ribbon …
Angelique Desthieux had had a splendid body. She lay naked on a magnificent Louis-Philippe chaise-longue he recognized from the photographs they had found in the Paris house. She was looking up into the camera lens not with fear but lust in eyes that, though lovely, were hard and demanding.
Naked, she stood on tiptoes and leaned against a Louis XVI commode, facing a superbly carved and gilded wall mirror in which were reflected her breasts squeezed between stiffened arms, lips that were parted as if in orgasm, dusky eyelids that were closed, the thick triangle of her pubes …
In another of the photos, her seat was pinned to the edge of that same commode. She was facing the camera and her gorgeous backside was reflected in the glass, but she was not biting back the tears, ah, no. She wanted to be fucked and everything about her said this. Same, too, with her lying on the carpet both facing up into the camera and with her face down.
Kohler retied the ribbon and slid the packet into his overcoat pocket. All the photographs had been signed Luc and had carried the message Gaetan, mon cher compagnon d’armes, this is how she was and what she was really like.
Ah merde …
Beside the cross on its chain there was a packet of eleven-millimetre cartridges for the revolver. Several were missing.
Beside the cartridges, there was a small bell jar-the memento the doctors had presented to him on release from the operating table. Verdammt, the French! Had they no more sense than to do a thing like this? Perhaps as many as sixty pieces, many of them the round lead pellets so common in the shrapnel of that other war, had been picked from Verges’s body. Varying in size from coarse to fine, from perhaps a half-centimetre to two centimetres, some had little burrs or ragged edges, others nicks-mere imperfections of the casting or deliberate, they had become their own special brand of razor.
When he went downstairs, Louis was crouched over the body oblivious to everything else and intent on memorizing, as only the cinematographer in him could, every last detail.
‘I’ll go out to the car, and fetch the local boys in blue and the coroner.’
The Surete’s gumshoe didn’t even look up or turn away. ‘Insist on Tremblay. Be positive, Hermann. Use your Gestapo cudgel if necessary. I want Tremblay to have a look at this and the other one. Bring the torches when you return. Say nothing of the house in Paris-make up some story. Hey, it doesn’t matter, eh? The less they know the better. Total secrecy. A blanket order from Boemelburg. We need to buy us some time, mon vieux. Time!’
When the coroner found them, St-Cyr and Kohler were standing in the barn near the lorries with the prefet of Paris.
‘The girl has been dead for at least two days, Jean-Louis, the man also,’ said the coroner, ‘but I do not think he was the one who killed her. There are no rope marks on his hands and there should be since both died at about the same time.’
‘Idiot, of course he killed her!’ roared Talbotte, the prefet of Paris, furiously. ‘He was fucking her eyes out, imbecile! Banging her ass, her mouth, her cunt until she was blue in the face and …’
‘Prefet, please. I knew the girl,’ said St-Cyr, tapping him on the chest. ‘I know her mother and father.’
‘Louis, go easy, eh?’ cautioned Kohler. ‘It’s Talbotte’s beat. We’re within his jurisdiction and we need him.’
The Bavarian as pacifier? ‘Then tell him to go easy with his own mouth!’ snapped the Surete!
Ah nom de Dieu tired and still wound up. ‘Look, he’s taking it hard, Prefet. Back off,’ urged Kohler.
‘Piss off and suck lemons!’ hissed Talbotte. ‘The one in the cottage discovered he could no longer live with himself and ended it. That’s fair enough. He has saved the taxpayer a considerable expense.’
Louis drew the prefet aside. Alarmed, Kohler hesitated, wanting to go after them but Tremblay, the coroner, judiciously pulled him back and quietly said, ‘I know Jean-Louis, and I know Talbotte. Let them work it out between themselves. They hate each other and it’s obvious.’
Wise words or those of disaster? wondered Kohler apprehensively. Ah merde, the French! they were so territorial. The fingerprint boys from Paris were busy dusting down the cabs of the two lorries. Up in the tower room, a police photographer was doing close-ups of Joanne Labelle, while in the cottage, another caught Gaetan Verges from every possible angle.
Paris and its environs were Talbotte’s beat. No sooner had the prefet of Provins been alerted, than his phone line to Paris had started buzzing the big cheese himself.
No fool when it came to money, the Occupier, or a chance to keep a finger in his own pie, Talbotte had driven out himself.
Kohler offered the coroner a cigarette which was gratefully accepted as was the light. At fifty-six years of age, Armand Tremblay had seen enough murder-suicides to form his own conclusions no matter how inconvenient. Robust and ruddy-cheeked, with lively dark brown eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles that had been mended with surgical tape, he looked a man who loved his comforts.
‘That revolver, Inspector,’ he said, giving his head a little toss and shrugging magnanimously as if to forgive whatever oversights he might make, ‘it’s just not right. Ah no, no, most certainly not’ He took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke aside. ‘You see, Inspector, on firing a revolver or pistol, the hand is automatically jerked upwards and only settles back a little unless deliberately pulled down. Then, too, with such a violent cessation of the nervous system there is very often cadaveric spasm, a tightening of the muscles which would grip the revolver as if in life. Unfortunately this one’s fingers are slack, whereas all his other limbs, they are rigid from the spasm which has the same effect as normal rigor but comes on instantly at the moment of death.’
‘Merde alors,’ breathed Kohler, knowing he would have seen it himself had he not been so preoccupied with death itself. ‘The barrel wouldn’t have remained pointing directly at the entry wound. The fingers show the pressure marks of having had their rigidity broken so as to force the hand to hold the revolver.’
‘Precisely!’ enthused Tremblay, pleased at having got the better, not of a detective, let alone one of the Occupiers, but of the killer. ‘These are simple things and they should not have been overlooked, especially if the killer knows anything of guns.’
‘Was Verges forced to lie on the carpet first?’
‘Mais certainement. One has only to look at him.’
‘Then the muzzle was pressed against his forehead?’
‘Ah no, not quite. Your Monsieur Verges has co-operated, Inspector, by first cutting a cross in the bullet that killed him.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Don’t forget your cigarette. Don’t waste it. Not these days, eh? It’s simple. The cartridges are nearly thirty years old and there’s a thin film of grease on them. Monsieur Verges has this grease on the fingertips of his left hand. He has held the cartridge as he cut the bullet. There are also a few flakes of lead in the grease and a little of the lead has rubbed off on the skin itself. We will, I am sure, find his fingerprints on the pocket-knife and the spent cartridge case but not those of the killer.’