The brass of an antique cage held a finch that sang, startling him for it must have been singing all along.
The canary was quiet. Soft and as golden yellow as a canary he remembered from another case, it lay on its side with the little door open.
She had had only enough time to kill the one. It being winter, she would not have released them, but would she have thought of this? Would she, in all her haste?
Trembling, he could not keep his hand still enough to get it inside the cage and had to calm himself. The canary felt cold but, then, little birds that die lose their body heat very rapidly.
No drawer had been untouched by himself, no door to either of the two magnificent armoires, and he knew then that he had been so frantic to find the phosphorus, his mind hadn’t bothered to record if any of them had been partially closed.
There were condoms in a lowermost drawer of her dressing table-a loose handful, thrown down perhaps. In the waste-basket there was a pessary that, when held to the light, revealed the sabotage of a pin. Not once but several times.
Sadly he recalled another case, long distant from this lousy war. A girl in tears. A pessary with similar holes and a brother who had done the damage to a sister who had loved another.
A pair of forgotten ballet shoes in pink satin hung from the back of her door. Only a pair of shoes. Only their reminder of the dance, of hope and prayers and things one would like to be.
There were scent bottles on her dressing table and among them one containing Etranger. Gorgeous bits of glass and gold and silver. The photograph of a young man. ‘Max.’ Nothing else. Not, From Max, with all my love, my liebchen, or anything else. A German boy.
Though he must not feel sympathy for her, a sudden sadness would not leave him.
There was no sign of the sapphire bracelet he’d seen in the salon the other night. He was certain it had been a gift from the brother; certain, too, that it had been rejected by her. Pins and ear-rings and brooches-one superb pink topaz necklace with a rope of silver and a diamond-encrusted clasp from which finely braided tassels of silver hung. An emerald ring, an opal, a cameo-all of it was from the belle epoque, that age of refinement before the guns of war had come.
The sister had known only too well that life is to be lived on borrowed time with borrowed things. Even the contents of her jewel case would come and go as circumstance dictated.
Gaps in the leather-bound books on her shelves revealed a missing Baudelaire and a volume of Proust. Had Claudine Bertrand given her that vial of perfume in exchange for the loan of the books? Probably.
She played the cello and this, a fine old instrument from some estate sale, leaned against a chair in a far corner beside a music stand. Handel’s Water Music, Mozart’s The Magic Flute-she wasn’t among the first cellists but among the seconds. Notations, in a tight, neat hand, were marked on the scores. ‘Andante, Martine; fortissimo, cherie. Don’t be so nervous here. It’s all right. You’ll do it.’
Flipping through one of the exercise books on her desk, he compared the handwriting. She’d done them both and had probably written the anonymous letters the prefet had given him. Yes, yes, she had.
Henri Charlebois’s bedroom was every bit as immaculate. Two very fine Empire-style beds, with beautiful mahogany head- and footboards and inlaid ebony posts, had been pushed together. A single antique spread of pure white damask covered them. There were pillows enough for two. A superb Renaissance tapestry hung on the wall above the bed. A cathedral, a wedding … Beside it, and to the right, there was a large painting of a young woman who modestly covered her eyes with the crook of an upthrown arm while the viewer ravaged her splendid breasts and wished the flimsy skirt of transparent gauze would slip from the soft swell of her hips.
It was of the belle epoque and joyously marvellous, but a skylight in the painting, behind and to the left of the woman, let in the only light and this set her off starkly, as if to say, This is what you will get, monsieur, when you pay the price a young virgin commands.
In the bottom of an armoire he found the ledgers. They dated back to that period of time. La Belle Epoque had done very nicely over the years. Had Henri Charlebois been afraid to own it completely or merely astute in selling shares to others? Astute. He had to grant him that.
Claudine Bertrand had indeed come to work there ten years ago, when the handwriting changed dramatically to a more martial stiffness that indicated Ange-Marie Rachline had first fought with her new employment.
But had Claudine not had a history prior to this and had not Ange-Marie Rachline and Henri Charlebois known of it?
There was a cold purity to the room he could not understand. Certainly things would come and go, and the brother had an eye for interior decorating as well as for his purchases. And certainly the semi-nude was suggestive of carnal thoughts, but had there really been any? Had the brother really coveted his sister?
The sterility of the twin beds suggested each kept to their own room as was befitting. But was that same coldness not their best defence against discovery of the forbidden?
Only Ange-Marie Rachline could answer him. The sister would never confess it to another now. The brother would never confide it even to the bishop.
Henri Charlebois was too astute, too knowing of his position in life. Both servant and master to the needs of others, to their desires for beautiful things and for all the sins of the flesh.
When he lifted the pillows, he found a pair of plain white cotton underpants with excellent needlework. They were not of today but of the past. They were those of a girl of ten or twelve perhaps but not, he thought, those of the sister.
Though he could not prove it, and perhaps would never be able to, intuitively he understood they had once been Claudine Bertrand’s. He heard the sea in his imagination; he felt the wind among the dunes as it blew the grains of sand and made them silently roll. He saw a young girl spying on her brother and two others; saw a pair of underpants lying cast aside and forgotten.
The cotton was not harsh but soft from frequent laundering. Had the sister recently put them here to remind the brother of those days and what he’d done, or had he kept them all that time?
She had put them here, as a last gesture. He knew she had.
Frau Weidling had not, in so far as Kohler could determine, known Henri Charlebois from before, from Lubeck, Heidelberg and Koln.
The woman didn’t even seem to know of him in any other context than that of a shopkeeper of antiques, period costumes, shoes, boots, fine fabrics and ebony godemiches. Ah yes.
Puzzled, Kohler held his breath. Frau Weidling was being fitted for a shimmering sky-blue silk dress, something old, something from an estate. Charlebois was methodically fixing pins around the hem. The shoes … the ‘boots’ she would wear were the same as those he’d seen before.
When the hem was done, and she faced one of the dressing mirrors, Charlebois adjusted the puffed shoulders, took a tuck in each of the long sleeves and then one in the back to tighten things up a little.
She passed a smoothing hand over her bosom, lifting a breast and then proudly tilting up her chin. ‘Yes. Yes,’ she murmured softly in German. ‘That is good.’
‘It ought to be. It’s eight thousand, seven hundred francs with the alterations.’
Charlebois’s German was really very good, thought Kohler and heard him saying, ‘You can take it off now, I think.’
She did so, stepping out of it to stand in a white undershift beneath the corset that was laced up the front in the French style and hung with garters. He took the dress from her without a second glance at that statuesque bit of pulchritude which was bulging out of the top of the corset.