‘Yes, of course. Jeanne is in the kitchen and will show you where it is.’ Were the maid and he old friends? she wondered apprehensively. Had he spoken to Jeanne in the street that time before …?
‘Mademoiselle St. Onge,’ began Louis, ‘your relationship to the Sonderfuhrer Kempf, please?’
‘Is he suspected of anything, of this … this robbery, this girl …?’
‘The girl. Yes, yes,’ said St-Cyr as if reminded of it and dismissing totally any question of Kempf. ‘The poor thing suspected nothing, mademoiselle. An advertisement in Le Matin. A call for mannequins. No experience necessary. Here … here, I have it on me somewhere. May I?’ he asked indicating the coffee table between them.
‘Mais certainement,’ she said and saw him quickly begin to empty his pockets. An invitation to the Jeu de Paume just like the one on her mantelpiece … a small pencil sketch of the … the girl. Was it really her-where had he got it? Where? A square pad of cotton-cotton! A card announcing the engagement of …
‘Angelique Desrhieux and Captain Gaetan Verges, mademoiselle,’ he said, looking at her with those priest’s eyes of his! Ah Jesus, cher Jesus, how much did they know of this affair and why was he trying to single her out and hold her here while the other one, he … he went through the things in her bedroom? Is this what he was doing, the one from the Gestapo?
A cancelled ticket for the Metro, a …
‘Ah, at last,’ he said. ‘You must pardon me, mademoiselle. I’m not used to a dinner-jacket and find, alas, that its pockets are not as accommodating as those of my suit.’
St-Cyr unfolded the torn little square of newspaper and, glancing over it to give her time to worry, finally handed it to her. This is the advertisement, mademoiselle. We’ve obtained photographs of the girl. Apparently she was asked to pose and to wear certain things.’
‘Photographs …?’
Was it such a devastating revelation, so utterly unexpected?
‘Yes. Scattered all over the floors of an empty house.’
Sickened, she tried to tell herself he was only bluffing but she couldn’t stop herself from trembling and this, why it shook the scrap of newspaper, telegraphing its little message to him. ‘Photographs …?’ She blanched. ‘Of what, exacdy?’
It would only unsettle her more if he were to raise his eyebrows and shrug, so he would do so and claim the matter of little consequence. ‘Of this one and other girls modelling clothes as I’ve only just said, mademoiselle-jewellery like you have in the window of your shop.’
‘Girls …? Jewellery …? My shop …?’
The deep brown eyes had rapidly moistened, the lovely red lips that had pouted only a few moments ago, now quivered.
‘Fourteen young girls, Mademoiselle St. Onge, all of whom were photographed in exactly the same poses and wearing the same things-things we believe came from your shop. The jewellery …’
‘Marie-Claire … She has purchased it for the shop! She was the one to find it. She has borrowed things from time to time. Dresses, skirts, blouses … I …’
‘What, mademoiselle?’
She shook her pretty head and touched the base of her throat. ‘I … I don’t know how she could possibly be involved in such a thing. Fourteen girls …? So many? What … what has become of them, Inspector? Lured by this … this advertisement to some house. What house, please?’
Anger reddened her cheeks, sharpening the features.
‘For now the location of the house can’t be divulged, mademoiselle, but you can be certain someone scattered photographs of all of those girls.’
All of them … ‘I don’t know anything of this! How could I?’
‘That’s exactly what my partner and I would like to know.’
She dropped her eyes to the scrap of newspaper in her lap and read it silently.
Wanted by a noted fashion house, girls of suitable ability … Hair of chestnut brown, eyes of the same …
‘My hair, my eyes,’ she said, desperate now.
‘And your ear-ring, I believe,’ breathed Kohler, dangling the thing in front of her face.
‘You … you had no right to …’
‘We have every right. Where’s the other one?’ he demanded.
Furious with them, she raised a dismissive hand, tossed her head and all but shouted, ‘How could I know? One loses things like that all the time!’
‘Louis, do we take her in and lock her up?’
The other ear-ring, Mademoiselle St. Onge, where might you have lost it, please?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Hermann, could I see this one, please?’ St-Cyr took the trinket and held it to the light, then found his reading glasses and put them on. The same,’ he sighed, the sadness all too clear. ‘Joanne,’ he said. The last one was very brave, mademoiselle.’
As he unfolded a clean white handkerchief, stains of blood appeared against the cloth and dried little crumbs of it fell to the table to lie on the notice of engagement and others on the invitation to the Jeu de Paume and afterwards the supper at the Ritz.
There was blood on the tiny scarab of turquoise that dangled by its thread of gold to match those that were around her neck and wrist. ‘Inspectors, I … I know that is mine-yes!’ she cried and hugged her knees to bury her face in them. ‘But … but I don’t know where I lost it’
They stood over her, these two detectives. She could feel their eyes on the back of her neck and shoulders … Ah merde … merde, what was happening to her?
‘Hermann, see that she accompanies us to the Jeu de Paume.’
‘Like this?’ she cried out, looking up at them in tears. ‘How could I?’
‘Because you must,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Because perhaps to save yourself, we may have need of you.’
‘I didn’t do it!’
‘But you knew of it, mademoiselle, and for us, that is enough.’
‘He … he made me.’
‘Who?’
‘No one. No one! I … I shouldn’t have said that!’
‘Hermann, take her. I can’t stand to look at her any more. I’m sorry.’
They both heard Louis throwing up into the kitchen sink but when he came back, he was all right. ‘The paintings, Hermann, and then the supper, I think, if necessary.’
‘Shall I put the bracelets on her?’ The handcuffs …
‘No. She’s to appear as though free but must accompany us. We’re going as her guests. Please inform her of this.’
‘What about Gabrielle?’
‘She’ll realize that I’ve been detained, Hermann-police work, always the work-and will meet us there.’
The Jeu de Paume had once been a place for court tennis. Occupying the north-western corner of the Tuileries Gardens, it had, before the Defeat of 1940, housed contemporary works by foreign artists. Now it had become a legend that even the long arch of its glassed-in iron roof, blued with black-out paint, could not hide.
In gallery after gallery there were oil paintings, charcoal sketches and watercolours in gilded, richly carved frames, superb pieces of sculpture, altar cloths, Gobelin tapestries, Savonnerie carpets, displays of estate jewellery and silver, diamonds, topazes, emeralds and rubies, porcelain and crystal.
Everywhere there was the glitter, the animated gestures and loud talk of well-dressed men with fashionable women, old, young, the not-so-young, everywhere the smart uniforms and medals of the Occupier.
It was as if all the boredom of winter, the Occupation and the war had been set aside and everyone who was anyone in Paris was desperate for a good time. Old friends met, new ones were made. Lovers kissed and held hands or sipped the free champagne and smoked cigarettes in ivory or ebony-and-silver holders or chose from trays of canapes to loud exclamations, lots of laughter, the delighted oohs and ahs of dumbfounded browsers who had come for the gossip, the excitement, the fun, the titillation and the food, of course. Canapes au caviar-little rounds of unsweetened brioche toasted a golden brown, spread with caviar butter and heaped in the centre with black caviar sprinkled with chives. Paupiettes d’anchois Monselet-scrolled anchovies stuffed with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs on small rounds of toast, covered with anchovy butter. Shrimp, herring and smoked eel with mustard butter … pates, fresh oysters in the half-shell, bouchees … puff pastry stuffed with a paste of smoked, Norwegian salmon. Ah nom de Dieu! the flavour … To refuse such temptations, the price of honour, but one must. The city was starving!