Kohler fired twice. Someone fired back. Glass shattered. Marble shattered. That someone ran, hit something, stumbled and fell, got up, fired again and again, then ran out of the room and up the stairs.
‘Louis … Louis, are you okay?’ whispered Kohler urgently.
‘Perhaps!’ came the hiss.
‘Those stairs he took only go up to the second floor.’
‘Was it de Brisson?’
‘The banker …? I … I don’t know. Is he in so deep there’s no other way out for him?’
‘Perhaps he’ll tell us, perhaps he won’t.’
‘It was Kempf,’ breathed Kohler. ‘I’m certain of it.’
‘Then where is de Brisson?’
‘Take the back stairs up to the attic, Louis. Leave this one to me. Check it out and wait for me. The stairs are off the kitchen.’
‘And what if he gets past you and comes back down again?’
‘He won’t.’
‘Then what if he fires down the stairwell as you are on your way up?’
‘He won’t because he’ll hear you go up the other stairs.’
Kohler waited, and when he heard Louis start up the other stairs, he swore and called himself an idiot. Le Blanc could just as easily have come back from that balcony and be waiting at the top of them and if not him, then de Brisson.
St-Cyr was grim. The back stairs were steep and narrow. Up the right side, there was a railing and it was along this that he slid his gun. Nothing could be seen. It was far too dark. No shape, no degree of change. Each step was first felt and then … then the weight gradually increased until … yes, it could be done and another taken.
When he reached a point perhaps one-third of the way up, he wondered if he should not retreat. The draught, always cold, seemed to have increased. Had the door at the head of the stairs not opened a little? Could he not hear the freezing rain more clearly?
He took another step only to feel the boards sag. Crouching, he waited. The door at the top moved. The draught increased. There was a rush, a …
Aiming up the staircase, he waited.
The rush came down the stairs and when it reached him, it meowed and rubbed itself against his leg. ‘Ah nom de Jesus-Christ!’ he whispered.
Reaching down, he felt the thing and ran his swollen hand over its back, then rubbed it behind the ears and let it rub its face in his hand.
Its whiskers were wet. The fur under its chin was wet and sticky. It was not water, not milk-even with the almost total absence of milk from a city of 2,500,000, in houses such as this, it would have been common enough for the cat.
‘It’s blood,’ he breathed. Marie-Claire de Brisson’s? he asked and started up the stairs once more, leaving the cat to seek its mistress.
Once in the attic pied-a-terre, the darkness was less. A set of french windows to the balcony was wide open and the night sky, with the falling sleet, was of a still lighter darkness.
The sound of the ice pellets filled the flat as they hit the floor nearest the window. Quickly he crossed the small sitting-room and sought the deeper darkness of the opposite wall. He waited, listened-tried to shut out the sound of the ice.
A corridor led to the bedrooms. There were framed pictures on the walls-photographs, Hermann had said. Sweet things, pretty things, not of death and gunshots and bastards like Kempf and le Blanc or of girls like Joanne whose bodies had been left for others to find and deal with.
There was nobody in the smaller of the bedrooms, not that he could be certain without a light, but in the larger of them, the carpet was wet.
De Brisson must have come upstairs to find his daughter throwing things into a small suitcase-it was still open on the bed. Some underwear … a toothbrush … a bottle of pills, a straight razor, a diary …
The banker lay face down on the carpet and it was clear that the muzzle of the gun had been jammed against the back of his head. One shot.
Mademoiselle de Brisson must have somehow used that second to escape onto the balcony.
The hammering of the ice pellets swept back in on him and he heard them pinging off each other, the windows and the floor. Now a blast, now a lessening.
Le Blanc, he said. Le Blanc has gone after her. Should I follow? Isn’t this what they want? Le Blanc will have heard the shots.
St-Cyr went back to the head of the stairs to look down them and raise his gun. Kempf, he said to himself. Kempf will have to come up them.
Or will he? And if not Kempf, then Hermann who would do it so silently no one, not even his partner, would know he was there until he had reached the top and said so.
Withdrawing, he waited as Kempf had waited for them, never taking his eyes from the top of the stairs but thinking of Mademoiselle de Brisson who knew everything and could tell others what had happened.
The scattering of the photographs in an empty, empty house, the purchasing of forged papers for men who had known absolutely nothing of them.
The room was empty, the house was empty and they were going to kill her … kill her!
Clasping a hand tightly over her mouth to stop herself from crying out, Marie-Claire de Brisson huddled on the floor against the wall. They would grab her by the hair, they would throw her down and jam a gun against her head. She would try to get away, would plead with them. Michel would pin her legs. Franz would kneel on her back … her back … Bang!
She wept. She couldn’t stop herself from shaking. Her father-that bastard who had come up the stairs for her so many times-was now dead. Dead!
No more would he come for her.
A shape, a silhouette, appeared on the other side of the tall french doors that opened onto the balcony. Suddenly this shape threw out its hands to stop itself from slipping. Michel … was it Michel? He banged against the glass and fought to right himself.
She huddled. She got ready to run. He shook the door handle and tried to force it. She waited. She dropped the hand that had covered her mouth. ‘Michel … It is Michel,’ she said.
He broke the glass, showering it into the room. She screamed and ran, banged into a door frame, went down a corridor in darkness, darkness … tried to catch a breath, dragged it in … in. The stairs … she must find the stairs.
Le Blanc threw himself into the corridor. She grabbed the railing and raced down the stairs with him after her … after her … Fell … fell … shrieked, ‘No! No!’ dragged in a breath and hit the stairs, tumbling down them.
He fired once. Plaster dust flew into her face. ‘No! No!’ she shrieked again and rolled away until she hit another wall and could go no farther.
‘Michel …’ she managed, dragging herself up. ‘Michel … don’t do it, please.’
There was no answer. In all that house there were only the silent cries of girls who once had been so full of hope, her own ragged breathing, the ache in her chest and outside on the balcony, why, only the sound of the sleet as it hit the windows.
‘Michel …’ She swallowed hard. ‘Let me go. I won’t tell them anything. I promise.’
How contemptible of her to beg.
Still he didn’t answer and when, having hesitantly pulled herself up on to her feet, she stood with her back to the wall, the touch of the plaster was dry and rough beneath her hand, and the waiting was cruel.
Somehow she had reached one of the bedrooms on the second floor. There must be a short bit of corridor and then the staircase. She had pulled herself into a ball as she had rolled away but had no memory of having done so.
Windows overlooked the rue de Valois but these were not nearly so tall as those either upstairs or downstairs.
‘Michel … I … I haven’t told them anything. I … I have the travel papers and other documents I had made for you and Franz. They’re … they’re sewn into the lining of my coat. I couldn’t carry them in my purse, could I? The controls, the checkpoints, the Gestapo searches … Here … here, I can rip them free for you.’