‘He cut the bullet that killed him, mademoiselle,’ said Louis. Why didn’t he shoot himself?’
‘Because he refused to let us get away with things that easily, and because Franz said we would have to make it look like a suicide anyway.’
‘And Tonnerre?’ asked Louis sharply, his patience all but gone.
‘We gave him ether and when he was out, Franz made me soak a pad and … and hold it over that horrible face. I wanted to, do you understand? I wanted it an to end!’
They were silent for several moments and she didn’t know if they were done with her. Then the Surete asked, ‘The bodies of the other two girls, Mademoiselle St. Onge? Please, we’ve been able to account for only twelve of them.’
‘Buried at the farm in … in the kitchen garden.’
Now it only remained for them to ask why the teller had had to be killed and this information she would give quite readily. ‘Franz said the teller had to be killed. We didn’t argue. I … I knew the teller would recognize Franz, since he had seen us on more than one occasion going upstairs to Monsieur de Brisson’s office.’ She shrugged. ‘It had to be done, that’s all there was to it. Now I would like a cigarette. May I have one, please?’
Ignoring her, the Sturmbannfuhrer, signalled to the one called Kohler to read through her statement, while the one called St-Cyr fiddled uncomfortably with his pipe and finally put it away.
Troubled, he still had matters to settle.
‘On the day of the robbery, Mademoiselle St. Onge, what exactly did you do?’
‘I … I followed the girl as I usually did with the others until I was satisfied they were alone. I … I saw Madame de Brisson about to warn her. I panicked. I hurried to the house and … and waited but then … why, then the girl came. I couldn’t believe it, but there she was at the door.’
‘And then?’ he asked so quietly she knew he was following every step.
‘I … I calmed her fears. I gave her a little wine-she said she had only just had a cup of coffee, that a boy across the way had … Ah no, the forged papers …’
‘Paul Meunier,’ acknowledged St-Cyr curtly. Marie-Claire de Brisson couldn’t have caused the deaths of the engravers. The banker must have called in the alarm. Madame de Brisson must have become aware of her daughter’s visits to Paul Meunier and finally told her husband of them … ‘And then?’ he asked.
‘Michel came but he was very late and the girl wanted to leave. I …’
‘Please, the truth, Mademoiselle St. Onge. Joanne was uneasy. She knew she had been followed-isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes, but I … I was able to convince her that … that pretty girls often thought such things and that if she stayed, why she’d be sure to get the job.’
‘Had you not been there to answer the door and welcome her in-had it been le Blanc or Kempf, mademoiselle-what would she have done?’
Again there was that twisted smile. ‘They all needed the presence of a woman to reassure them-isn’t this what you wish me to say, Inspector? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Me, I welcomed them in.’
‘Le Blanc finally arrived and …?’ he asked, unruffled.
‘We began the session.’
‘The session … Is that what you called it?’
She didn’t answer. He asked her again.
‘Yes.’
Louis thought for a moment, then sadly asked, ‘And how did you feel as you greeted each of those girls?’
Was it so important to him? ‘Very excited but … but terrified also-afraid that it would all go wrong and the police would come. Fear and sex, Inspector? Is it not fear that sometimes heightens sexual arousal? The fear of discovery, the fear that others are watching as you gratify yourself with another, with a girl who can’t escape and must submit, sometimes with a man also and that girl, the three of us-oh I knew Franz and Michel and then de Brisson, too, watched me as I had sex with those girls and with one of them but this … this only seemed to make it all the more exquisite and it pleased Franz to watch me. Don’t you see, I couldn’t have kept him otherwise?’
‘Two days, Louis, and then she walks,’ breathed Boemelburg. ‘No trial, no judge, no priest. The less said the better. Kempf came of a good family.’
There could be no argument. Absolutely none. Gestapo Mueller would demand it.
Two days … Shattered by the news, she couldn’t stand when released and had to be helped from the office. Heavily sedated, she lay on an iron cot in one of the cells in the cellars of the rue des Saussaies but even then her wrists and ankles were securely shackled so that she couldn’t try to kill herself.
As they closed the cell door, it was nearly 5.00 a.m. Berlin time 4.00 a.m. the old time. ‘Come on, Louis. Let me buy you a drink,’ said Kohler.
‘With what?’ asked the Surete, startled.
Kohler showed him two fat wads of 1000-franc notes. ‘Goering will never miss it. Hey, he gets to keep the art work and the money. Fair’s fair. These are for expenses. Take one and shut up about it!
‘One … ah yes,’ said St-Cyr, and splitting the wad into four parts, tucked it away to be returned in total to the bank in Lyon. ‘Dede,’ he said. ‘The money can never bring Joanne back but the boy will get the new bicycle she promised him if she got the job.’ It would have to come out of his wages but the prices, the black market …
‘Don’t be a sap. We’ll borrow a bike. I know just where to find one.’
As they crossed the place Vendome, the ice was treacherous. ‘No one in their right mind should attempt to ride a bike in this weather, Louis. Think of it as saving a life, eh? Or avoiding an unfortunate accident!’
Luftwaffe Security Paris had the best bikes in town. Stolen of course. Requisitioned. They borrowed two just in case Louis might need one to replace the one he had lost on another case. They wheeled them through the empty streets which glistened at every rare blue-shaded lamp as if in a place of magic.
Gabrielle Arcuri had just finished her last set when, with the bicycles safely tucked away in the courtyard behind the Club Mirage, they stood at the bar. Without a word she joined them. She didn’t ask how it had gone. She simply touched Louis’s hand and let her warmth extend to both of them.
They drank in silence, glasses raised to the New Year and an uncertain future.
Two days later the guillotine fell. There were only the Sturmbannfuhrer and St-Cyr as witnesses. Each signed the papers releasing the body to the parents.
Outside the Sante’s walls, Boemelburg paused as he was getting into the back seat of his car. ‘I almost forgot, Louis. See that Kohler gets this, will you? Read the other one, enjoy yourselves on the coast and keep out of trouble.’
Alone, St-Cyr watched as the car, probably the only one in Montparnasse at that moment, drove slowly down the boulevard Arago. It reached the rue de Faubourg Saint-Jacques and turned northward towards the Val de Grace, the military hospital where, perhaps, it had all started, this affair of the mannequin.
He glanced down at the pale yellow telex and saw immediately that it was from Army Headquarters Eastern Front. Hermann’s two sons were missing in action and presumed dead.
The other slip of paper contained something about ‘dolls’ in Brittany but he found his eyes were giving him trouble.
Stuffing the thing away, he started out on foot but soon stopped and found a match. As long as there was hope, Hermann would be okay. He couldn’t bring himself to tell him the news. He knew that eventually he would have to, but who was to say? Maybe the boys were still alive? Maybe another telex would arrive, cancelling the original.
‘For now let him sleep with his little Giselle and his Oona,’ he said aloud and to no one but himself. They would catch the evening train to Brest, then they would make their way south along the Breton coast to Lorient. They would certainly not take the car. ‘The submarine pens, the air-raids every night, the coast in winter!’