Like so many these days, she had had to make up her mind. She wasn’t a bad woman, ah no, one mustn’t get that idea. Like most Bretons, she was immensely capable, self-reliant and resilient. That business of her not liking the garden was simply because she’d had more than her fair share of farming and had come to Paris to escape it.
Unlike so many, she had resisted the streets even though desperate. She’d been employed as a domestic in a banker’s villa near St Raphael. Murder had intervened and he had faced her across an Aubusson carpet and known.
She had agreed to become his housekeeper – on a trial basis. A virgin at twenty-nine years of age. Can one believe it?
That job had led to marriage after a year – a year of absolute chastity! Of walking in the parks or along the quais, of sitting shyly in a cafe when time and work allowed.
All of which had been thrown away in one month with the Lieutenant Steiner.
Von Schaumburg’s nephew.
‘Don’t you like the casserole?’
St-Cyr blinked. ‘It’s too hot. I was letting it cool.’
In the name of Jesus, he cried out to himself, what the hell has happened to me? It was as if God had not only deserted him but had crooked a finger and told him to climb up into Heaven to have a look down at himself.
If the truth were told, it was the life that she’d hated most but that still didn’t explain why he’d been forced to work for the Germans.
That I could have done without, he said, but knew it was no use.
What does one do when one must calm oneself? One walks. One absorbs – takes an interest in one’s surroundings. The Paris of 1942 was vastly different from the Paris he had known. Oh for sure, the streets still beckoned but they were often so empty, so silent. As if on the moon perhaps. St-Cyr felt himself reaching out to them, his body being dissolved through extensions of the pores.
He began to think of the film of the murder, to run it back through the projector, stopping at each frame.
From a vendor’s steaming charcoal burner outside the National Library he didn’t ask, How come the charcoal, my friend? but only for a bag of roasted chestnuts.
From a flower-seller on the Place Vendome he bought two last white roses and a red carnation.
The chestnuts, half gone by then, were meaty and full of flavour. The roses piqued his nostrils.
The film had stopped again at the positioning of the body, the hands in particular. Had the woman done that and then left no trace of her having done so? Had the girl still been sobbing her heart out in the car?
It was a thought – one certainly couldn’t expect a maid, a silly young thing who’d just killed her lover, to …?
Ah, her lover? He continued cranking the projector … one certainly couldn’t expect the girl to have paused after having killed the boy, to have done such a considerate thing as to have laid the arms to the sides and turned the hands outwards, to have turned the head sideways and laid it on a bed of leaves …
No, the woman, the driver of that car – and by now he was thinking it must have been a big car, something flashy – the woman must have brought the girl back and done it herself. But then … why then, that would indicate the boy must have meant something to her.
And, of course, she did not go after the purse. At least, he didn’t think she had.
Again he brought the roses up to his nose, first pinching the left nostril and then the right.
After a decent interval it was the carnation’s turn, he filling his lungs slowly while cursing the habit of tobacco which only ruined one’s sense of smell.
Then the chestnuts, first the crumpled bag and both nostrils for a whiff, then a single nut broken with the front teeth, the pinching of a single nostril.
The frames of the film were now being seen before the Place Vendome whose column of stone rose beneath spiralled bronze and Trojan horses to a bust of Napoleon as Caesar.
Unsandbagged by the Germans who thronged the Place with their French girlfriends or who walked stiffly as they always did, among the Parisians who had come, as always, to window-shop if not to buy.
There were a few staff cars, suitably polished, a few generals …
If one discounted the uniforms and took in the lingerie, one could almost believe there was no Occupation.
This, too, was a sadness. The fashion industry’s ready acceptance and open doors.
But, he gave a shrug, not to have opened those doors was to have gone against the decree of 20 June 1940, and to have lost the businesses.
From the Opera to the Etoile, from the Madeleine to the Champs-Elysees, the rue Royale and the Faubourg St-Honore, business was still booming, though things were, of course, more difficult to obtain.
The lingerie grew closer. Silks, satins and midnight lace, through which the mannequins’ figures could not but show, were seen beyond the film, the girl, the boulder, the instant of death, the woman in her car, anxiously smoking a cigarette while waiting for her maid to bring her that purse. Waiting …
St-Cyr wiped his shoes on the mat and removed his hat before entering the shop which had, so suitably, been named, Enchantment.
The silver bell rang. The polished oak panelling, glass display cases and marble columns met his eyes. Aphrodite beckoned in life-sized alabaster with splendidly uptilted breasts and the scents of perfume and toilet soaps about her. Diana stood in gold with arrow pointing, and a laundry-basketful of undergarments scattered at her feet.
‘A woman must undress to dress, Louis.’
‘Chantal, it’s magnificent to see you looking so lovely.’
St-Cyr took her hand in his and brought it to his lips – never mind the Nazis browsing in the shop with their French whores, never mind the war, being married and deserted by one’s wife and only child, never mind any of it.
‘How’s Muriel?’ he asked. ‘Me, I don’t see her, Chantal. Has she …?’
The tiny bird of a woman smiled – she had such a beautiful smile. Perfectly done. Never too much. ‘She’s fine. And you, my friend?’
They were both well up in their seventies. ‘Me? Ah, fine, of course. Here, I have brought you each one of the last roses I could find.’
She kissed his cheek and embraced him as such women do. Like a feather, like a breath of delicately scented air.
Vivacious, made-up, wearing a dress of the latest cutting – dark blue, very close-fitting, calf-length and matching the high heels – Chantal Grenier had been in the business all her life, as had her partner and associate.
The hair was blonde – never grey – cut short and bobbed in the latest fashion. The rings and bracelets were of silver today, of lapis lazuli. A blue day then – did it have some meaning or was it merely the whim of fashion?
She had a very tiny voice, very clear and bell-like. ‘You are suitably impressed, Louis. This pleases me.’ She tossed her little head and smiled again before pursing her lips. ‘But come … come.’ She gathered him in by the arm. ‘Let me show you the shop. We’ve changed the decor. Did you not notice more than those?’ She indicated the statues with a toss of a hand. ‘Mere trifles, Louis. Stone and fake gold. Men need the real thing, eh? Isn’t that so?’
At once the energy flowed from her in motion, the eyes, the tossing of the head, the purposeful strut.
Still very beautiful, she made him welcome. After all, he was a cop, and God would not have had it otherwise, eh? Ah no. Not with this one.
‘Your wife was in this morning with a certain someone,’ she whispered coyly. Cruel … it was so cruel of her to do that. Muriel would be sure to scold her. Muriel.
‘Jeanette, see to the Captain, would you please, dearest? He’s shy, that one, eh? Try to ease his mind. You’re so good at it.’
A burly, plod-minded Prussian the size of Kohler. A general with an Iron Cross First-Class with Oak Leaves was gazing benignly on.
To the Eurasian shopgirl, Chantal said, ‘Kim, I want the silks brushed. Please, I insist, dear. All of them. You do such a superb job of it. Ah, Mon Dieu, Louis, if all our girls were as good as this one, there’d be no troubles.’