‘Unoccupied, the house was perfect,’ said St-Cyr sadly.
‘We’ll have to find Tonnerre and quickly.’
‘Those two droolers couldn’t have come and gone between here and Paris without laissez-passers, Hermann.’
‘They couldn’t have robbed that bank.’
‘No, of course not, since their faces would have been seen, but is it possible, perhaps, that Madame Lemaire’s maid saw Luc Tonnerre in the attic of that house?’
‘Waiting for the photos to be taken downstairs,’ said Kohler. ‘Did Tonnerre and Verges hire the photographer and that woman to help them?’
‘Perhaps, but …’
At a shout, they were forced to run through the rain to the kitchen of the main house where the former help had been brought from their homes and assembled. A cook, a housekeeper, a gardener and caretaker, all were greatly distressed and very afraid.
St-Cyr took off his soaking hat and let it drain over the cluttered sink. Kohler emptied his shoes and squeezed the turn-ups of his trousers, then dragged off his overcoat and draped it over the back of a chair. He, too, drained his hat.
The prefet of Provins had been instructed to report to Talbotte on the interviews, but was now told to leave. ‘We will call you when we need you,’ said Louis. ‘Let these good people speak freely, prefet. None of them were responsible.’
It was only in bits and pieces that the truth came out. Monsieur Verges senior had died in the fall of 1939 and from then on things had deteriorated rapidly. ‘Occasionally, at first, Monsieur Gaetan’s friend would come by car from Paris,’ said the caretaker, ducking his ancient head and clutching his black beret in deference. ‘They would “talk”, Inspector, in the only way such as they can talk. Very serious, always close. The walks, the fishing, the ether at night-yes, both took it, and the friend brought it in two-litre bottles-three or four of them, sometimes more. The cognac aussi, of course. Five or six bottles at a time.’
‘Then the withdrawal,’ hissed the cook, a wasp of a woman, thin and tall and nearly seventy. ‘That one,’ she spat. ‘He would drive away and leave Monsieur Gaetan without another drop to tide him over. We could not buy ether-how could such as we have done such a thing? The brandy of course. Oh bien sur a little cognac, no matter how rough. But the ether, ah no. Doctor Audet was against it. The liver, the kidneys …’ Her hard, little eyes said, You can see how it was. Do you need us to say it?
‘Without it, Monsieur Gaetan, he … he would slip into despair,’ said the housekeeper, who had obviously known the son since his birth. Her tears were constant and silent, and she had remained a little detached from the others as had been her station in life.
‘But he didn’t go on periodic rampages through the house until when?’ asked St-Cyr gently.
‘Until just after the Defeat, monsieur,’ grumbled the gardener. ‘Until after he had dismissed us in July of 1940. We who have always been so kind to him and have never avoided his gaze or turned away from that face of his!’
Florid, pug-nosed and pockmarked, the man was quivering with indignation.
‘Was the dismissal after a visit from his friend?’ asked Louis.
They glanced at each other. The cook said, ‘Yes!’
‘Bon, that, fits,’ said St-Cyr, wishing he had tobacco with which to stoke the empty furnace he had taken from a pocket. ‘But there is a small problem. Since the Defeat, cars are no longer common. Did Luc Tonnerre still drive his?’
Again they glanced at each other as only country people can, swift with alarm and hidden meaning. Each shrugged in his or her own way.
‘Come, come,’ urged St-Cyr. ‘We haven’t all day and must return to Paris.’
‘Always since the Defeat, he … he has walked in from the main road, Inspector,’ confessed the gardener. ‘He has come alone but without the ether or cognac’
The detectives waited for more. At last the cook could stand their silence no longer and said, ‘But I have heard a car passing my house, Inspectors.’
They were both startied, and that was good, she said to herself.
‘When exactly did you hear this car?’ asked St-Cyr cautiously.
Was it too much to hope for a little break, a smile from God perhaps?
Shrewdly the woman tasted the triumph of her little success. ‘Late at night-1.30 or 2.00 the old time. In the beginning, early in October 1940, within the first week.’
‘It has come and gone every once in a while for these past two years, Inspector,’ acknowledged the caretaker. ‘Always late at night, always leaving well before dawn. A big car with a powerful engine and the lights blinkered for the black-out.’
Had the caretaker been out illegally trapping rabbits? wondered Kohler, and thought he had. ‘How many in the car?’ he asked. ‘Come on, don’t clam up now. I’ll only have to run you in …’
‘Hermann, please! A simple walk in the night doesn’t mean hunting with a ferret and the pate or stew at morning! How many in the car, monsieur?’
Both detectives were looking intently at him. Would they understand how difficult it had been to even see the car? ‘I … I can’t say for certain, Inspectors, but think there must have been more than one person.’
It was the gardener who said there had been smoke coming from the house at dawn. ‘At first I thought Monsieur Gaetan was burning old tyres but as this is now forbidden because of the shortages, I … I found the smoke did not smell of burning rubber.’
‘Thick and black and full of soot?’ bleated the Surete! ‘When …? What day, what month?’
Again they looked at each other swiftly. There was hesitation, a curt nod from the cook to the gardener, a ‘Tell them, Monsieur Romand. You must.’
‘Always at dawn the last of a fire that must have begun some time before. First seen in the fall of 1940, in late November, Inspectors, then … then in mid-March of this year and … and again in September, on … on the morning of the 12th.’
‘Three times, Hermann.’
Boemelburg had given them photos of eight of the victims’ bodies. Joanne made nine and now … another three?
Next to the stove there were brick ovens with sheet-iron tops that, in the earliest years, had been used to do the cooking. Louis opened the nearest firebox door to a spill of wood ashes and fragments of bone.
‘Part of a femur, Hermann. Part of a tibia …’ He crouched and peered into the firebox and lifted the lantern close. ‘Also a piece of a pelvis … some ribs-these have been sawn. A jaw, fragments of a skull, some teeth.’
They were enough. ‘We only need two more, Louis, and we’ll have accounted for all fourteen of them.’
8
Paris in the rain and slush was miserable, thought St-Cyr, the rue des Saussaies silent and unfriendly. Boemelburg was not pleased to see them. Rain poured down the windows that overlooked the courtyard where their car was parked. The Chief studied the gobs of slush that accompanied the rush of water while Hermann and he, like two errant schoolboys in steaming overcoats and shoes, sat uncomfortably in front of the antique limewood desk to which the bare planks of expediency and enlargement had been thoroughly nailed the day Boemelburg had taken over the office.
‘Kempf, Louis,’ breathed the Chief as he studied yet another gob of slush. ‘The Sonderfuhrer comes from a very old and wealthy family-Prussian to the core, you idiots. He’s a cousin of the Reichsfuhrer Goering or were you unaware of this?’
Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, a cousin! ‘Walter, over the past two years …’
Boemelburg didn’t turn from studying the weather. He would be very formal with these two. ‘Don’t interrupt me, Chief Inspector St-Cyr, and please don’t assume a familiarity you shouldn’t just because we once worked together in the old days.’
‘Sturmbannfuhrer, there were …’