‘Tomorrow,’ he said, folding the thing once over on a cutting table. ‘I will personally see that it is delivered to your hotel by noontime.’
She shook out her auburn hair, showed no desire to dress-fingered fabrics like a schoolgirl in a candy shop. There were shelves and shelves of them, all colours, all patterns against the highly polished spiralling support posts of mahogany. Fantastic prints in silk and satin, cotton and linen too, a fortune these days. There was a dressmaker’s dummy in the corner nearest her-a cage of wicker over which only a blouse had been stretched so that the skirt of rods appeared as one of birch switches and obscene.
‘The petticoats will not cause a problem?’ she asked suddenly.
He didn’t object. ‘Frau Weidling, if you wish to try them on with the dress, please do. I’ve allowed for them. You can trust me.’
‘All the same, I would like to,’ she said demurely. Did she get a kick out of him helping her dress? wondered Kohler, still hidden from them but not, he felt, from the mirrors. Ah merde!
A shift-blouse was found-no neck or arms or buttons, just pretty bows of pink ribbon at the shoulders and lots of lace through which the corset could be seen to give that extra thrill.
The petticoats were of deeply pleated silk taffeta that rustled as she stepped into each of them. Not since he’d been a boy had Kohler seen a woman get dressed in such things, and then only in brief glimpses which had been ruthlessly punished.
‘This one has a sateen dust ruffle.’ Charlebois was all business. Nothing interfered, not even the nearness of her.
‘I like the feel of them,’ she said, smoothing her hands over hips and thighs to touch the pleats. ‘They are like a young woman’s skin, a girl’s, is that not right?’ He didn’t answer. For just a split second he stiffened. ‘So now, the dress again, Herr Charlebois, and then the hat,’ she said. ‘I must see it all once more.’
Ah nom de Dieu, what the hell were they up to?
‘Then you had best put on the stockings and the shoes,’ said the shopkeeper.
‘And the necklace,’ she answered.
Kohler saw him kneel to help her with the stockings. Was he going to stick his mitts up under all that stuff to fish about for garters and not get a hard-on?
‘The underwear pants …?’ she said. ‘Where are they?’
She got her hands up under everything and pulled her briefs off. He held drawers of silk trimmed with lace, into which she stepped. Perhaps he got them to her knees, perhaps a little farther before she took over. Did she have him in the palm of her hand? Was that it?
Would he kill her? Was he so cold and detached he was planning it even as he helped her, or had they been working together all along, yet she still did not know his true identity? A Salamander …
The stockings were of dark blue mesh and when he smoothed them over her calves, she let him. ‘Hook them,’ she said, and he saw Charlebois hesitate.
‘I will get Mademoiselle Decouglis, my shopgirl.’
‘Don’t be silly. There is no time. Besides, what harm could you possibly do me?’
He didn’t like it. As he stuck his hands up there, she held him by the back of the head. Charlebois stiffened. Her fingers began to rub firmly up and down the nape of his neck. ‘You will be at the concert?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course. Mademoiselle Charlebois is in the orchestra.’
‘Your little sister.’ Had she tasted the saying of it, had Claudine primed her?
‘Yes. Yes, my sister. She is always nervous before a concert.’
Frau Weidling didn’t let go of him. He was on the left leg now, at the back. ‘Isn’t she afraid the Salamander will strike again? My Johann says that the theatre is a perfect location and that, once started, such a fire would be very hard to stop.’
Ah merde!
Charlebois found the shoes for her but did not lace them all the way up. Straightening, he removed her hand from the back of his neck. ‘There will be no fire. The Salamander-if such a one even exists-would be foolish to try it, Frau Weidling. Your husband will be very thorough. I happen also to know that the men under the Obersturmfuhrer Barbie’s command have already placed the theatre under the strictest surveillance. Now, please, the necklace, I think, and then the hat.’
They were like two puppets going through their separate dances. Teasing, flirting in their desperate ways but numb to each other.
The hat matched the stockings and was like a small mushroom trimmed with rows of fluted braid and ribbons of satin taffeta into which three cock pheasant quills had been thrust. The height of fashion forty or fifty years ago, and as sure as that God of Louis’s had made little green apples, she’d been fucking around with Claudine in La Belle Epoque and wanted to play dress-up herself!
The necklace was of dark blue sapphires and diamonds, and when it was placed around her slender neck, she stood before the mirrors tilting her chin up this way and that, saying, ‘It’s perfect. It’s just as I imagined it, and just as you said it would be. This little concert first, so that the General Niehoff and the Obersturmbannfuhrer Knab will notice my husband and me together as the lights are dimmed. Then the New Year’s Eve concert at the Vienna Opera House with the Fuhrer and the Reichsmarschall Goering who will both have heard of the Hero of Lyon and will see that my Johann becomes not just a professor at the Fire Protection School in Eberswald, but Generaloberst der Feuerschutzpolizei for the Reich.’
Verdammt!
‘There are droplet ear-rings in my safe. I think you should consider them,’ said the shopkeeper.
Christ!
‘And the bracelet. Yes, it will not be too much.’
Every high-ranking Nazi in France-Sud must be attending the Lyon concert. A small fire just to keep them all happy, a handsome couple, a hero.
She was like a schoolgirl before her first ball; dressed like that, she was exactly like one of Madame Rachline’s girls. Was Charlebois merely the servant, the decorator of this little Christmas tree? Or had he another golden pear for her to hold in her hands when she was naked so that he could secretly photograph her and anonymously drop the print into Gestapo Lyon’s lap?
‘Johann says that Herr Robichaud has been placed in custody,’ she confided, turning sideways to examine herself.
‘That’s a mistake I would wish them not to to make, Frau Weidling. Over the years, Herr Robichaud has worked very closely with the theatre committee.’
‘Of which you are a member?’ she asked coyly. She could have knocked him over with a fan.
‘As was my grandfather before me,’ came the answer stiffly. ‘Julien knows the theatre intimately and could be of immense help. He and I and the other members of the committee have been over the building hundreds of times. If … if it is not impertinent of me, Frau Weidling, might I suggest you urge your husband to have him released?’
‘Does the theatre mean so much to you?’
‘It was my grandfather’s pride and joy.’
‘Then I shall ask Johann to request that the Obersturmfuhrer Barbie release him, and I shall do so in return for this.’ Delighted with the dress, she swirled around and grinned happily. ‘But I will pay you in cash, have no fear.’
Had they been feeling each other out? Had she everything to do with the fires or absolutely nothing?
And what of Charlebois? What really was his game, if anything?
It was dark now, and the wash of dim blue light inside the crowded tram-car made it hard to concentrate, though St-Cyr knew he must. Bathed in this horrible light, the passengers appeared sickly and from another, quite alien world. Suspicious of him, accusative-Why cannot you solve this thing, monsieur? they seemed to ask with silent lips and furtive looks. Beaten, yes. Afraid, yes. A Salamander, monsieur. A Salamander …