Lost in thought, he looked up. Vasseur, long into retirement, had been called back to work because of the fire. An excellent coroner in his day, the old man was diligently bent over the body, searching for needle marks.
He seldom spoke but often ground his teeth and swallowed as if constantly thirsty. A man of some eighty-four years dressed in a black serge suit, vest and tie. There’d be elastics at his elbows when the jacket was removed. And suspenders. Men like Vasseur knew only too well that comfort’s enemy was a leather belt no matter how loose.
‘Monsieur the Chief Inspector,’ said the coroner, straightening to ease his back. A legend of formality and correctness, he had been pleased to be called in. ‘This one has allowed her private parts to be burned from time to time and most recently.’
He had said it with sadness and was still shaking his head. ‘The labia, the vagina and the clitoris all bear the scars of cigarettes perhaps. The inner thighs also and no doubt the buttocks and the anus. Some are from a few days ago, others quite old. Some even from childhood perhaps. But there are no needle marks as yet.’
‘Childbirth, Monsieur the Chief Coroner Vasseur?’
It was like old times. ‘At least one difficult birth, perhaps two,’ he indicated, tracing the marks with a forefinger. ‘What sort of men would burn a woman like that? What sort of woman would willingly submit to it?’
These questions were always asked no matter how accustomed one became to the depravities of human existence. Carefully St-Cyr folded the shards into a tiny packet and put them away. ‘A special woman,’ he said-one had to speak clearly even when wishing to do so quietly. The hearing, it was not so good any more but the eyes and mind still inspired confidence. The former were aided by spectacles. ‘She was a prostitute, Monsieur the Chief Coroner Vasseur. I should have informed you of this but felt the prefet would have filled you in after my telephone call to him.’
‘Monsieur the Prefet Guillemette is a busy man these days,’ grumbled Vasseur testily. Saying no more, he went back to searching. Painstakingly notes were made and for the first time, St-Cyr had a twinge of doubt, for the handwriting was not as steady as it should have been were someone else required to read the notes.
‘There was a powder, Monsieur the Chief Coroner Vasseur.’
The old man paused over a left breast whose nipple and aureole bore the scars of burns. ‘What sort of powder? Come, come, Monsieur the Chief Inspector St-Cyr, you have said nothing of this powder and now … now you tell me of it? Morphia?’
‘No. Ah, no, monsieur. I think it is something else. It will need a chemical analysis.’
The teeth were ground. ‘The little hairs of this aureole have recently been curled by the heat of a cigarette but the flesh nearest them, it has not been recently touched by fire. Did your woman do this to herself, Monsieur the Chief Inspector? Did she so enjoy the excitement, she willingly submitted herself to its threat?’
Vasseur was apologizing for the lecture about holding back on the powder. St-Cyr found its tiny packet and once more the coroner straightened up. Adjusting his glasses, he took hold of the proffered hand so firmly, St-Cyr was surprised and pleased by the strength.
The open packet was placed under the lamp. ‘Sugar. Refined sugar,’ said the coroner distastefully since the black market was implied.
‘The granules are not cubic or nearly so, Chief Coroner. Their adamantine lustre is much less.’
Their eyes met. ‘There is enough for an analysis,’ said St-Cyr.
‘You’ve divided it in half?’
‘For security? Yes. Yes, I have.’
‘Then let me have the other half, just in case. The prefet need not know until long after the fact, if that is your wish.’
A curt nod would suffice. ‘We’ll need a …’
‘Yes, of course, the blood tests. It’s not arsenic or cyanide. I will do the carbon monoxide test first since she bears every indication of having died that way. The rapid relaxation of the sphincters, the very pale pinkish cast to the skin-it would have been more noticeable at first. The collapsed state of the body. Vogel’s test is still the most reliable for me.’
‘Do it privately, then, and let only myself or Hermann Kohler know of the result.’
It could not be nice working under the Nazis but everyone had to do that these days. Vasseur patted St-Cyr’s wrist and asked how he’d found the powder.
‘Among the bristles of the broom in the kitchen. All the rest must have been disposed of elsewhere or washed down the drain.’
The old man was not above giving praise where it was due and sagely nodded. Again the room fell to silence as he hovered over the woman’s right breast, noting two small bruises on its underside, three small and very recent burns and yet more singed hairs which could not have come from the cinema fire since the hairs on the head and the eyebrows had not been touched.
The old scars on the breast were deep and there were several of them, indicating again that she’d had a long history of submission to the exquisiteness of pain brought on by fire.
Patiently St-Cyr stood watching him. Carbon monoxide preferentially united in the lungs with the blood’s haemoglobin preventing it from taking in the oxygen necessary for life. At one-twentieth of one per cent in air, giddiness resulted on exertion, if breathed for a half to two hours.
One-tenth of one per cent prevented walking. One-fifth of a per cent led to loss of consciousness and quite possibly death. Four-fifths of one per cent brought almost certain death within a very short time.
With one per cent, the victim became unconscious in but a few minutes, and this was followed quickly by death. There was no odour. The victim would never know the silent killer had done its work.
Uniting with the haemoglobin, the carbon monoxide formed a cherry-red carbonyl haemoglobin and it was this which, when the blood was diluted by 200 times its volume with distilled water, gave a decidedly pink solution not the yellowish-red of uncontaminated blood.
‘I will do the test on the mother, Jean-Louis, and spend a little time with her at the morgue. It is best, is it not, for us to keep this one on ice? Now, please, if you will assist, let us turn her over. I am most interested in the back of her neck and ears, the knees and the base of the spine as these are often among a woman’s most sensitive places. The shoulders too. Oh by the way, I believe she was wearing that perfume.’
St-Cyr nodded. Claudine Bertrand had allowed herself to be burned by cigarettes or some such object in all those places and in others and very recently, yet there were no rope-burns at her wrists or ankles.
Again he said she was special, but he said it to himself. Even the soles of her feet bore the scars. They were even between her toes.
Kohler leaned forward in his chair to let the words come carefully. ‘What do you mean, Mademoiselle Bertrand was “interesting”?’
The projectionist’s grin was small and short-lived and utterly revealing. Quickly he ducked his eyes away to hide the truth, settling them on the coffee table, the floor, the usherettes and then Madame Elaine Gauthier, before turning to Therese Moncontre, the young woman who had operated the ticket booth at the cinema. Fiercely she returned his gaze, colouring as she doubled her fists and held them defiantly against her thighs. Ah now, what was this? The expected? asked Kohler, inwardly patting himself on the back. All had not been well among the staff of Monsieur Artel’s little nest of celluloid.
He exhaled softly. ‘Your answer, eh, my friend?’
The man shrugged nonchalantly and muttered, ‘The usual.’
His chin was forcibly tilted up so that their eyes had to meet. ‘How usual?’ asked the detective.