Still no light showed. He switched on his torch. Instinctively ducking her face away, the woman who had answered the door tried to shield her eyes, then her flesh-her corset had slipped, the flimsy night-gown was open. It was freezing. Her long dark hair was everywhere. About fifty-five, if a day, and flushed … still flushed!
‘Messieurs, the house … Please, I must insist. The curfew. It is forbidden to …’
‘That does not matter,’ said Louis grimly. ‘We’re detectives.’
‘Detectives?’ she shrilled. ‘And have you brought the magistrate? Ah, you could not do so, could you, my fine messieurs, because that one, he is already here!’
‘We knew he was,’ snorted Kohler, impatiently pushing past her scented plumpness and into the foyer, into the warmth and the lively smells of wine, food and perfume, ah yes. Lots of it.
She closed the door and slid a bolt home. Louis switched off his light and crowded her.
‘Please, messieurs, I beg you not to disturb the clients. We have had the revellion, yes? The Christmas Eve feast. Ah it was such a meal but now they … why they are at the moments of their hearts’ desires. Please, I am Madame Berthe Morel, the sous-maitresse of this place. What is it you want?’
‘Some coffee and a marc. A cigar,’ breathed Kohler. ‘And a little information.’
A Nazi, then. A fresh duelling scar, a bullet graze on the forehead … ‘Please come this way. Come into the grand salon. Yes, yes, that would be best. It is a little untidy, you understand, but it will do. Madame will perhaps receive you there.’ She gestured impatiently and spoke her thoughts aloud and only to herself as she turned away. ‘It’s her affair. She’s the one who pays the sharks that come to feed in spite of the prefet’s blessing. How could I have stopped such as these? Les Allemands …’
‘I’m French,’ hissed St-Cyr, not failing to notice her comment about the prefet.
She tossed her head and didn’t look back over her shoulder. ‘Well, that’s not bad, your being French, but it’s not good either. Courage, my little one. Courage. Each saint has his candle.’
Ah merde, a tough one! ‘And to a good cat a good rat, eh, madame?’ he snarled. ‘Tit for tat, eh? Come, come, you insult an officer of the Surete, a chief inspector of detectives!’
‘Very well, it’s all right. It’s just as you please, monsieur.’
Her corset slipped but she would not bother to pull it up or close the neglige. She would face them coldly with her two pistols and her hairy snatch! ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘Please do not move about the house until Madame has spoken to you.’
She was plump and round and curved in all places, and her splayed feet with their bunions were as bare as the rest of her beneath the corset and the frilly, see-through thing she wore. The peignoir blew about like cheesecloth in a storm as she strode away, soon disappearing behind the little jungles of palm and fern and rubber plant, leaving them utterly alone in this jade-green and gold paradise.
‘Don’t let her bother you, Louis. Hey, me, I know you’re a patriot.’
‘Then perhaps you’d best tell me what happened in the street?’
‘A woman, Louis. Perfume. Too damned good, that’s all. I couldn’t find her.’
St-Cyr nodded grimly and swept his eyes around the room. Ah mon Dieu, it lived and breathed la belle epoque. Against a backdrop of gold and gold-tasselled drapes that fell from ceiling to floor, an immense chandelier glowed with lozenges of clear crystal and fountains of gold that rose and arched or twisted to white candles that could no longer be lit because they would drop wax on the carpet.
‘It’s magnificent, Hermann. Rosewood and ebony. Mahogany in the style of the Second Empire but updated a little. Yes, yes. Refined. Squared off-fluted and trimmed with gilding. Green baize-covered armchairs that are so wide and comfortable one could spend a whole day reading and never move. Wine-red morocco on the sofas and settees with throw-cushions of paisley in rich, dark blues, red and saffron.’
Two faience cockerels in their glory of peacock-hued glaze and gold crowed lustily from either side of the room. There were maidenhair ferns in porcelain pots on which storks flew. The walls were a wash of pastel water-lilies with naked nymphs lurking in the depths or riding frogs or lying asleep on beds of reeds or frolicking with male dragonflies.
Corsets and stockings-a garter that would have encircled a shapely leg just below a shapely knee …
A woman’s ivory fan, a singularly tall dracaena with spiked leaves that were slender and jade-green, a bamboo palm with long and elegant fronds. Jungles of plants everywhere. Oil paintings between the murals. Cigar butts in manly ashtrays beside deeply sunken armchairs. Empire table lamps in malachite and gold with parasol-shaped shades of pleated cream silk.
Everything was of that period from about 1890 until just prior to the Great War.
‘I like it, Louis, but are we supposed to think one of those two women came from a place like this? The one I tried to follow in the street out there?’
‘Was the girl with the bike leading us, eh?’
‘Perhaps, but …’ began Kohler like a parrot only to shut up.
The sous-maitresse had come back. In defiance, her corset had not been yanked into place or used to draw in the fleshy waist and make it the stem of the hour-glass figure the fashionable women and demi-mondes of that era had so desired.
‘Messieurs, if you will come this way, I will take you to Madame.’
‘Louis, you handle it. I’ll wait here.’
Madame Morel knew enough not to argue but even so the plump cheeks tightened and the dark eyes narrowed in warning. ‘All our doors are locked, monsieur. Absolute discretion is our policy. To each in his own taste, the extended hour of privacy since all have paid for the night.’
There were butterfly palms and rhododendrons, fiddleleaf figs with deep green, papery leaves-did they wear them sometimes? thought Kohler as he waited. There were orange and lemon trees in fruit-none of the Occupation’s horrible ‘approximate’ jam or marmalade for this place. Ah no. They grew their own fruit and would have plenty of sugar.
Two ornately carved, high-backed ebony armchairs with Gobelin tapestry coverings flanked the open doorway to which Louis and the woman headed. Beyond this doorway, beneath the raindrop cascades of another chandelier, a huge, dark green and flowered jar stood on bent golden legs holding the establishment’s Christmas tree: a gorgeous kentia palm that had been simply and tastefully decorated with but a few small handfuls of golden pear-shaped ornaments.
‘Wait here, please,’ the woman said. Louis reached out to touch one of the pears. They were so light, so exquisite. Gilded Venetian glass and worth a small fortune because they were so old.
Ivy trailed over the lip of the pot. The carpet was an Aubusson. Crimson and mauve. Ah mon Dieu, the money in this place. The need, perhaps, to constantly replace things, thought St-Cyr.
‘Monsieur, please state your business.’
The madam of the house was dark-eyed and dark-haired but here the similarity to the sous-maitresse abruptly ended. The long, tight-bodiced dress of black silk that positively glowed was matched by swept-up hair, diamond pins and dangling ear-rings that glittered. Black silk gloves extended to her elbows. There was a choker of black velvet around her slender neck. Her skin was perfect and of a satiny lustre, the cheeks not rouged but red as if from frost. Had she only just come in from outside? Her perfume … it was so fresh. She was taller than himself-almost as tall as Gabrielle and slim, would have the figure of a goddess too, just like her.