Kohler indicated the passbook. ‘This thing only goes back to January 1939. We’ll have to ask the bank to give us the records. We’ll put it to Monsieur Andre-Philippe de Brisson that we absolutely have to know.’
‘Try last May,’ hazarded St-Cyr. ‘It’s just a hunch.’
‘The 6th, Louis. The day the body of that girl who had the acid dumped on her was found. The day after …’
‘After Marie-Claire de Brison last tried to kill herself, Hermann, and Denise St. Onge rescued her.’
‘A deposit of 5000 francs. Wednesday 6 May 1942.’
‘Now let’s see if we can connect the deposits with any of the other girls.’
Try as they did, there was no apparent connection. Sometimes only a month would pass between deposits, sometimes two or even three months and once, only a matter of a week. ‘3000 francs both times,’ breathed Kohler.
Tonnerre had obviously been getting money from someone but it had all started well before the kidnappings and the killings, before the Defeat.
‘Gaetan Verges?’ asked Hermann.
‘Or Madame de Brisson, our woman in the street?’
There was no sign of the jewellery Tonnerre had once tried to sell for his friends and fellow droolers. No list of clients, no bills of sale. Nothing, not even a photograph. ‘Denise St. Onge could just as easily have gone straight to the source,’ offered Kohler, ‘but if so, then did this one tell her of it?’
‘Things of elegance and refinement for the shop, Hermann, because to forget is to survive.’
‘And the boss knows exactly what she wants.’
At 3.37 p.m. it was early yet for a woman of substance to view paintings at the Jeu de Paume. Denise St. Onge was not puzzled or particularly alarmed by the visit of two detectives to her flat on the boulevard de Beausejour. She was simply bemused. The thick, dark brown hair that had been cut and waved was worn without pins or parting and a trifle impudently. The angular face that was quite beautiful was cocked to one side as she looked quizzically at them.
She was sitting in one of the deep, soft cream armchairs of her salon that overlooked the Bois de Boulogne, had drawn up her long, black-stockinged legs, her gorgeous legs, and had wrapped her arms about them. The black silk gloves extended well above her elbows, the dress, of black silk, was bare at the shoulders and neck and held by two thin and fragile-looking spaghetti straps.
There was a lace-fringed slip around splendid thighs. There were black briefs and garters-she wanted to be disconcerting. Again St-Cyr swept his eyes over those long legs, again the black, high-heeled shoes and the lower part of the dress, a very fine crepe de Chine that, in this light, had a silvery look to it.
A gold necklace of thin, triangular plaques held turquoise scarabs. There were small gold ear-rings to match. A bracelet too.
A very beautiful and self-possessed woman of twenty-seven years of age, now pouting with indecision.
At last she said, ‘Inspectors, what you ask is confidential. Marie-Claire is both valued friend and employee. She couldn’t possibly have known who her natural father was. Those things are kept secret, aren’t they, with the nuns, the Mother Superior …?’
‘Yes, quite secret,’ said St-Cyr. ‘It was just a thought, mademoiselle. In cases such as this, all avenues must be explored.’
‘But this … this Monsieur Tonnerre couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the robbery of her father’s bank?’
‘That’s a question we have to settle,’ went on Louis gravely. ‘You see, mademoiselle, a young girl was kidnapped at the same time. My partner and I are, unfortunately, faced with the two problems.’
‘Eighteen million and the disappearance of a girl …? How old, please?’
‘Eighteen. One million, mademoiselle, for every year of her life.’
‘But … but you haven’t found her? She … she’s not dead, is she?’
The knees were hugged. Louis tossed his head back and shrugged. ‘The matter is still in God’s hands but we’re working on it.’
They fell to silence, the two of them. The Bavarian, who had come to see her previously, had the better view of her legs and could see more deeply up them when he wanted, which was constantly. A bold man, one bent on unsettling her. The one from the Surete had hit his hand rather badly-in a fight? she wondered. The skin over the knuckles was tight and swollen, the hue decidedly yellow but red also and throbbing still. He really did look tough, and wasn’t that a gun bulging beneath his dinner-jacket?
‘Mademoiselle de Brisson …’ began the Surete as if still in doubt as to how best to proceed, ‘could your friend have told anyone about the shipment of such a large sum to the bank of her father?’
She would swing her legs out and, putting her elbows on her knees, rest her chin in her hands and look at them both but only for a moment. ‘Marie-Claire …? Ah! you can’t know her. She hardly speaks to her father, Inspectors. They’re estranged. Oh bien sur, she lives above their house. It’s because of the rent. The bank pays for the house so the rent, it is modest.’
‘Someone learned of that shipment, mademoiselle,’ said Louis.
‘Someone who knew that car you borrow would be ready and waiting,’ said the one called Kohler, reminding her of his previous visit when he had most emphatically said the same thing.
‘Marie-Claire wouldn’t have told anyone of that shipment, Inspectors. She would simply not have known of it. Her father isn’t one to reveal such confidential information.’
‘Ah, the father,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Is it that you know him well, mademoiselle?’
Was this how it was to be between them? she wondered. The one asking and then the other, both keeping up the pressure? ‘Not well,’ she said of de Brisson. Had the one called St-Cyr the eyes of a priest?
‘Where were you when the robbery took place?’ asked Kohler.
The Bavarian had started to look around the salon, letting his eyes drift from her body. ‘Me? I was in the back of the shop with … with Marie-Claire, of course. A conference. She wanted to discuss several things.’
‘Such as?’ asked St-Cyr quietly.
‘The lingerie, the lipstick, the perfumes-we don’t make our own, Inspector, but a shop I know of on place Vendome, it … it has such a marvellous scent. Tres dangereux, isn’t that correct?’
‘Mirage,’ he acknowledged, curtly nodding at her. ‘What else did you discuss?’
Would he ask Marie-Claire the same question? Had he already done so? she wondered. If so, then perhaps he had already discovered that she hadn’t been in the shop at all.
‘Why, what else but little things?’, she said, giving him a delicate and very shy shrug. ‘The girls and their problems-they do get jealous of one another from time to time, Inspector. The need for us to use better mannequins, the …’
‘The jewellery in the window, mademoiselle?’
‘Ah yes, the jewellery. Tonnerre … is this what you think? That he has supplied the shop? If so, you are mistaken. Marie-Claire is always searching for things that please me, Inspector. The jewellery suits-you can see I have an interest in such things.’
A slender arm indicated the scattered bibelots, gold signets with hieroglyphs, clay tablets, bits of pottery, bits of gold, silver and bronze.
‘They’re lovely,’ he said, ‘as is the necklace you’re wearing. Mannequins?’ he asked suddenly.
The girl … how much did they know? she worried and found the will to say, ‘Yes, but we don’t use them so much, Inspector. For the time being, we’ve decided to set the question aside.’
The Bavarian got up suddenly and she saw him pass before her without a downward glance. He went over to the small round table, the one with the scattering of things picked up in the bazaars of Cairo and Alexandria in the summer of 1936. He searched, he paused, he picked up and put down, and at last he asked, ‘Could I use the toilet? I need to drain the battery. All this rain …’ He grinned as a schoolboy would but it was not a nice grin.