Clearly the wealth of Lyon and the belle epoque had been poured into the theatre and just as clearly there were far too many places for the Salamander to hide both starter and trailer-up on the lighting bridges that were so cleverly hidden from the audience, up in the high recesses of ventilation and heating shafts.
Down in one of the many wicker hampers of costumes that would be piled in the storage rooms and closets.
There was a boiler room, somewhere below him. There were dressing rooms, practice rooms, offices, workshops, paint rooms, wig rooms, a millinery and fitting room, dye shop, laundry, unloading bay-fly galleries above the stage and out of sight to drop and lift panels of scenery-a lighting board, sound panel and control room, prompter’s box, stage doorman’s office, call system of speaking tubes from the old days, now updated by an intercom but still keeping the bells and clocks of those former days. La belle epoque all right, ah yes. Everywhere he looked there was evidence of that period of refinement when life was supposed to have been at its best and whores were told to bare a breast to the naked embers of a cigarette or cigar. Male or female.
Staircases were lost in the background. At either side of the stage there were private boxes for the wealthy and the establishment. Klaus Barbie and his boss, the SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Werner Knab, General Niehoff who had just arrived as commander-in-chief of the France-Sud military region, i.e. what had formerly been the Free Zone. The bishop of Lyon, too, of course, the prefet and the magistrate, et cetera, et cetera.
Perhaps the theatre would seat a thousand, perhaps twelve hundred. There were fluted columns with globes of light above them, cherubs, maidens and turbanned boys with open arms who offered up the conjured magic of the place. All gilded like some fantastic gateau d’anniversaire just waiting to be torched!
Robichaud handed him the programme for the concert of 27 December. ‘If it is all right by you, Inspector, I will begin a preliminary reconnaisance just to refresh my mind, since my men did not find anything before.’
‘You sure you don’t want something to eat?’ asked Kohler.
‘Ah no. No, Inspector. I couldn’t. Not after … Not knowing …’ He left it unsaid and soon vanished into the warren behind the stage.
The soup in the aluminium canister was good and when that was done, Kohler had the omelette and then a piece of fish and afterwards the baked vegetables in sauce lyonnaise, then coffee and thick slices of gingerbread, the pave de sante* of Dijon, the least expensive cut but most delicious.
Exhausted by the morning and the night before it and the days and nights prior to these, he had a cigarette and began to study the programme.
Was it to be a menu for disaster?
The concert began with the Horst-Wessel Lied in chorus with full kettledrum rolls and male voices in German, of course. ‘Raise high the flags! Stand rank on rank together. Storm-troopers march with steady, quiet tread …’ Quiet? Ah Gott im Himmel, the idiots!
Horst Wessel had been a pimp and a pal of Himmler’s in the Berlin of the 1920s. Both of them had lived on the avails of prostitution. Herr Himmler’s girl had been seven years his senior and they’d fought like hell all the time. Early in 1920 he had suddenly disappeared. Her body was discovered. Arrested on 4 July 1920, in Munich, the future Head of the SS and its Gestapo had got off for lack of evidence, the lucky bastard. Then on 23 February 1930, Horst Wessel, who had put his song to the stolen tune of an old naval ballad, was killed by another pimp in a dispute over another prostitute yet the song lived on as the anthem of the Party.
Immediately after it, the orchestra would plunge into bits from Wagner’s Tannhauser and lift to the Weiner Blut of Johann Strauss Jr., the Vienna Blood Waltz.
Kohler remained unimpressed by the stultifying thunder of Nazi-minded klutzes. Mendelssohn, a good German jew, was next. Fingal’s Cave and a bit from the Fourth Symphony, Opus 90.
And how the hell had the Propaganda Staffel missed it? A Jew?
Bach beat the Jesus out of Herr Mendelssohn’s memory with the Brandenburg Concerto after which came selections from Handel’s Water Music to give prelude to the rush to the bar and the toilets.
Oh mein Gott, what son of a bitch had set this up? A member of the Resistance?
Haydn’s ‘Surprise’ Symphony led off the second half then Liszt with selections from Dante and Beethoven’s Third Symphony in E flat, Opus 55, the second movement done with Marcia funebre-a funeral march, eh?
Mozart, a good Austrian, offered The Magic Flute to brighten things up and suggest that, though the Occupation and the war were long and hard, there was magic on the way. Ah merde!
Wagner came back in for a little more pounding in The Ring of the Nibelung, after which Brahms gave that tasty little morsel, A German Requiem.
For an encore there was Bach’s Fugue in C minor to cheer everyone up and if that didn’t work, there was always that old favourite, Deutschland Uber Alles.
From the lycee to the house was not far. Slogging it hard, St-Cyr grimaced constantly at the turn of events. He’d trusted the girl to wait for him in that laboratory. He had been completely taken in by her timidity!
When he reached the concierge’s room off the inner court-yard, he was furious with himself and adamant. ‘Monsieur, I have no other choice but to ask that you allow me access to their flat. Mademoiselle Charlebois is wanted for the attempted murder of a police officer, myself.’
One should ask for the magistrate’s order, one should demand to see it! ‘You’ve no right, Inspector. Monsieur Henri is absent from the premises. Mademoiselle Charlebois-’
‘Has not come back from her walk in the park, monsieur, and will not unless she wishes arrest. Now, please, I know absolutely the duty of every concierge is to protect the sanctity of the tenants, but if there are complications-another tragic fire perhaps …’
‘The fires …? But … but what has Mademoiselle Charlebois to do with them?’
St-Cyr told him. Tears leapt into the old man’s eyes. He used the back of a forefinger to self-consciously tidy a superb handle-bar moustache. ‘She was worried about her brother, Monsieur the Chief Inspector. Mademoiselle Charlebois is a kind and gentle soul. It … Ah no, no, it’s impossible what you say. Oh for sure they might quarrel-what brother and sister don’t, and he’s much older, she’s never married. But for her to have set such fires and caused so many deaths …? No. No, monsieur, it is just not possible. A mouse … she wouldn’t let me kill a mouse but made me release it in the park.’
‘Where is her brother?’
‘Monsieur Henri …? At his shop. Always that one works. Always he comes and goes. There are so many people dying these days, so many of the old estates being broken up. She’s the anchor, the lamp behind the black-out curtain, the one who keeps house for him.’
‘And teaches school.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ The concierge, a throwback to the days of yesteryear, hesitated. One could see him struggling with things from the past-little incidents-and things from the present. ‘How long will you be, Inspector?’ he asked, defeated at last by some remembered incident.
‘Not long. Now tell me what made you change your mind? Come, come, monsieur, time is something we do not have.’
The chin was gripped and favoured in doubt. Loyalty … the years of service flicked past on the screen of memory. ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois came to ask about her brother, monsieur. The car was not here, you see, and she … she wondered where he had gone so late in the day. His supper … she had yet to get it ready, had not had time. She was frantic and could not understand why he would leave without telling her.’