Ah mon Dieu, what had they been up to? ‘Tuesday the twenty-second and you have let her suffer all this time? When did she lose them and for how long has she had to live in fear their loss would be discovered?’
‘A week prior to that Tuesday,’ offered the boy Fernand. ‘We searched everywhere, Inspector.’
A week! The fifteenth … ‘And yet you kept the keys a further three days knowing how distressed she was?’
‘Only to make the present more suitable,’ said Jean-Pierre.
‘Pah! If I were your father, I would soon straighten you out! Wearing rubbish like that. Dealing on the black market. Now get out of here. Be home and indoors well before curfew.’
‘It was only a set of keys, Inspector,’ said the girl.
He stepped out into the hall after them and closed the door behind him. He knew he was edgy and unreasonable-that he’d defied authority himself as a boy and had paid dearly for it, but this … this was something else, something so deliberate it hurt. ‘One hundred and eighty-three are dead, my little birds. Three others also. Some sixty are still in hospital, some so badly burned they will be horribly disfigured for the rest of their lives. At present, I do not know if the keys have even the slightest importance, but if they have, you had best tell me everything and do so immediately.’
They objected. They said the keys could have nothing to do with the fire, that he must be crazy.
They begged him not to tell their teacher. They said she must have set them on the pavilion’s railing and that she’d been upset and distracted for days prior to their being lost.
Days prior to the fifteenth. The Weidlings had arrived on the tenth. Claudine had had to get away …
When he returned to the flat, the sister had excused herself and gone to her room, the brother held his coat, scarf and hat at the ready.
The desire to ask where Charlebois had been on that Tuesday of the lost keys, and from then until the finding of them on the twenty-second was there, but for now had best be left. ‘Monsieur, if it would not be too much trouble, could I ask that you drive me to Number Six, rue du Boeuf? I must take another look at the flat of your childhood friend and link up with my partner, Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo.’
‘Is this necessary?’
Ah mon Dieu, the guarded anger. ‘Absolutely, monsieur. Lyon is a city in fear and we must put a stop to it before there is another fire.’
‘Don’t the Surete and the Gestapo grant their detectives transport?’
‘Not since some gangsters shot my Citroen all to pieces in Montmartre. It’s still under repair.’
‘Then I will drive you to Claudine’s and answer any further questions you might have of me.’ Ah damn, the Surete had found out about the car.
‘Just the ride to save time, monsieur. Perhaps if you could wait in the street outside Number Six, then the lift over to the temporary morgue? We can talk on the way. You can fill me in on Mademoiselle Bertrand and the cross of Father Adrian, I think, and then a little more about your sister, the Lycee du Parc and her studies to become an assistant professor. Yes, that would be excellent!’
Questions, there were always questions, thought St-Cyr. The streets were treacherous and the cold could easily cause the car to stall. Left alone inside, the two of them would talk as the windows iced up. Ah yes. Already the cinematographer’s cameras were rolling but there would be no floodlights, only darkness in the rue du Boeuf outside the house where a friend had been killed to keep her silent.
‘Oh by the way, Monsieur Charlebois. My compliments to your sister for the tastefully simple way she has decorated the fir tree in your salon. Those gilded glass pears are exquisite and must be very old. Venetian, I believe.’
Bishop Frederic Dufour was not happy. A busy man on this busiest of days, he threw off his vestments, tossing hat, robe and dangling scarf-was it called a scarf?-into a chair. ‘That vile old woman, Inspector Kohler. May God have mercy on her. Saint Peter will have to cut out her tongue if the Devil doesn’t get her.’
He spotted the dregs of Calvados and one dirty glass. The detective still held the other.
Snatching up the scrubwoman’s glass, he threw it into the fire. ‘The bitch!’ he swore. ‘I’ll show her. This is the last time, absolutely, that she violates the sanctity of my study! Vermin … did she tell you my church was full of lice, eh? Well, she’s the one who is carrying them!’
‘Hey, calm down, eh? She was only doing what I asked.’
Dufour clenched a fist then dropped it, realizing that Philomena Cadieux would never change. ‘Father Adrian was a good man, Inspector, a true servant of Christ. Please don’t let the scandals of a wicked imagination sully a character that was without blemish.’
Kohler removed his scruffy shoes from the desk and helped himself to the last of the Calvados. He would give the bishop a moment to clear the cobwebs of religion.
‘Inspector, what is it you want?’
That was better. He’d let him sit down behind his desk, would take in the florid, frost-burned cheeks and carefully brushed iron-grey hair, the red nose and horn-rimmed glasses. The crinkly smile, the open-handed gesture of …
‘So, what is a little misunderstanding among friends, eh, Inspector? Mademoiselle Aurelle … that one believed the spirit of the devil was within her flesh and that her body had to be purged. Mademoiselle Bertrand … Ah with a woman like that, what is one to do? Father Adrian administered to his little flock, that is all.’
Son of a bitch, Mademoiselle Claudine Bertrand had been among them! ‘What about Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois, Bishop? Was Father Adrian also her confessor?’
Ah merde! ‘What … what has she to do with this, my son?’
Kohler flicked his empty glass over the bishop’s left shoulder. As it shattered among the flames, Dufour leapt, then settled down. ‘You tell me, Bishop. My partner found her name on the list at the temporary morgue. Did Father Adrian hear her confessions, too, and is that perhaps why he died?’
‘Monsieur … Monsieur, what is it you are saying?’
Dufour looked positively ill. ‘It’s Inspector, Bishop. Gestapo HQ, Paris Central.’
‘Yes, yes, Inspector, as you wish. Father Adrian was confessor to several. Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois was among them but her brother, Henri, he came to me.’
‘Good. Then start by telling me about him. We’ll work from there. Did he know Claudine Bertrand, Bishop? Claudine is also dead.’
‘Lost in the fire?’
Perplexed about it, was he? Kohler hunted among the clutter for the bishop’s cigarette box and relieved it of its contents. ‘Not in the fire, Bishop.’
The bushy, dark eyebrows lifted questioningly behind the horn rims. ‘Ah, not in the fire,’ Maudit, what was one to do? wondered Dufour. ‘Er … how … how did she die, monsieur?’
‘Inspector.’
‘Inspector, how did she die?’
‘First tell me if Henri Charlebois knew Claudine?’
‘Yes, yes, he knew her from a long time ago. Now, please, how did she die?’
‘Silently and without a struggle. I just had a call on your line and the other two, Bishop, so Madame Charlady may have listened in. Vasseur, the coroner, says that I am to tell my partner Claudine Bertrand died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Trouble is, it wasn’t an accident. When she breathed in what she thought were the steaming vapours of friar’s balsam, she took in enough CO to drop a horse.’
‘Murder?’
Kohler lit up and sat there drawing on the cigarette, watching the bishop closely.
Dufour silently cursed the unmitigated arrogance of the Germans. Oh for sure, he could claim the sanctity of the confessional, but this one, ah he wouldn’t listen. Too much had happened, too many had already died but Henri …? Henri Charlebois could have had nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing. ‘Philomena is not always correct in what she invariably states so emphatically, Inspector. It’s true that someone other than Mademoiselle Aurelle might-I say might-have telephoned Father Adrian in the twilight of that terrible day. But it could not have been Mademoiselle Claudine Bertrand or even Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois since neither of them would have known of her desires for Father Adrian’s person.’