Henri Charlebois, Claudine and Ange-Marie had experienced something so profound among the sands at Concarneau, it had come back to haunt them but would Madame Rachline tell him?
The car rumbled on toward another stop as though blind, for all the windows had been painted blue to shut in the light. Concentrating hard, he tried to stay awake. Concarneau, he said and heard the wind in from the sea.
Again he dozed off. Again he was awakened-ah maudit! The chasing around in that school, the warmth of the Charlebois apartment … When a seat became available, he threw himself into it and slept. Dreamed of flames and of their warmth, of Gabrielle and a few days of holiday, then of the fires and only then of Hermann, whom he saw from high up in the second balcony of the Theatre des Celestins. Hermann was dwarfed by the magnificent vault of the ceiling and the glow from the stage curtains. Alone among the rows of empty plush-red seats the Gestapo’s Bavarian nuisance was slumped dead centre in a front-row seat. Snoring up into the gods, melodiously and uncaring, his long legs stretched out so as to ease himself in the crotch. That left testicle … ah merde, was it bothering him again? During the last war Hermann had caught a cold in that most unfortunate of places and had ever since been proud of it as one would an appendix scar or a torn ligament!
The snoring continued. The house lights were dimmed. From high in the flies, Frau Kaethe Weidling watched with Martine Charlebois and her brother … her brother … and the ghost of Claudine Bertrand. Ange-Marie Rachline was there also, and Leiter Weidling-yes, yes, even Robichaud and his Elaine, and someone else, someone wearing the finery of La Belle Epoque perhaps. Someone into whose face those of all the others dissolved until the mask was empty, the Salamander had disappeared again, and the house lights had been extinguished.
When the tram-car reached Perrache and the end of its loop, he was rudely awakened and told to get off.
‘The rue Grenette,’ he muttered, digging into a pocket for the notecase his mother had given him so many years ago, it was seedy and all but falling apart at the seams and had been mended many times with fishing line. ‘I must cross the pont Alphonse Juin and make my way to a seamstress off the rue de la Baleine,’ he said, still half asleep.
The conductor snorted as he took the fare. ‘A seamstress … he talks of seamstresses, Arthur,’ the man shouted to the driver. ‘He’s not drunk on methylated spirits, perfume or shaving lotion.’
‘Then let him sleep if he pays.’
‘Until curfew?’ asked the conductor, thinking the worst, that they’d have a corpse on their hands, dead from the cold.
‘Ah no, not until then,’ said the detective. ‘Please awaken me when we get to my stop.’
A tip of five francs was handed over. Another was demanded. ‘For the driver. He’s the one who has to strain the eyes to watch for ice build-up on the tracks. Me, I am the one who must chop it out.’
‘Then take two more and be sure to awaken me unless you want the city to burn. I’m a Chief Inspector from the Surete who has not slept in over two days.’
‘Without transport?’
Ah nom de Jesus-Christ! were they to argue? Numbly he shook his head. ‘With adequate transport suitable to the condition of your streets. Please see that you do as I have asked and please do not stop suddenly. Let the baby sleep or I will personally fire all six rounds from my revolver into your rheostat and call it self-defence.’
Having returned to the Theatre des Celetins and nodded off, Kohler awoke to find the house lights out. Verdammt, what was the trouble now?
Easing himself upright in the pitch darkness, he listened hard. Weidling and Robichaud had been arguing off in some distant room. Fists raised like their voices. Something about there not being enough extinguisher globes-the lightbulb-shaped glass globes filled with red-coloured retardant that were to be tossed like hand grenades at the base of a fire-front. Weidling had wanted more of them mounted on the corridor walls and in the stairwells, no matter if they spoiled the decor and to hell with consulting the theatre committee; Robichaud had maintained that the globes would not be of much use anyway, because if the fire became that bad, then God help them.
But now there was not a sound. Seven fifteen p.m. and about two and a half hours of sleep.
Yawning, he got to his feet and tried to get his bearings. He was at the front of the theatre, right in the middle and just before the orchestra pit. Exits at the corners led to the stairwells and around to the foyer and backstage areas. Robichaud? he asked again, not liking the thought. Had someone got to the fire chief? They’d never stop the Salamander in this place without him. Ah merde!
Feeling his way, he made it to the exit in the far right corner and slipped behind and through its hidden entrance. Now there were the stairs up to the balconies but these would still be some distance ahead of him.
When he came to the corridor that led backstage, he went along it, feeling his way. Then down the long ramp deep into the cellars, to a warren of storerooms and dressing rooms, to smells of greasepaint, face powder, mothballs, sweat, laundry soap, stale tobacco smoke and stale perfume.
He struck a match. Oh mein Gott, the corridor had narrowed to a tunnel. The ceiling was now so low, his head all but touched it. Waving out the match, he struck another and another-cursed the French for their lousy matches-said, Robichaud, where are you? but said it silently. Did not look for a light switch, not yet. Ah no. There was something … a feeling. A sixth sense that troubled.
The dressing room had a toilet in a far corner, no privacy wall or screen and Turkish, a hole in the floor with a pan around it. Shadows were flung about from the flame of the match in his hand.
There was a narrow counter with a mirror and an inadequate sink, walls that were scratched with the graffiti of lesser artists. Playbills that advertised Das Rheingold, Tristan und Isolde, Madam Butterfly, Tannhauser, Falstaff, Carmen, Die Meistersinger, Don Giovanni, Faust, Salome, La Traviata and others. Faded, curled-up photographs of the singers, all of the greats he supposed, though he could not think of any but Caruso and envisioned that great tenor squatting in the far corner before racing up on stage to sing an aria from Puccini.
Notices advertised rooms to let, with and without meals. One in large block letters, read: DON’T TRY TO FLUSH THE TOILET UNLESS YOU’RE READY TO RUN!
There was greasepaint on the wire cage of the gas mantle that was used to heat it and probably to fry eggs or melt cheese if needed. There was a buzzer nearby. There were coathooks on one wall, a few cheap, wooden chairs, a steamer trunk with a broken lock, everywhere the calling cards of barbers, hairdressers, dressmakers, wigmakers, boarding houses, whorehouses and economical wine merchants.
There was not a sign of Robichaud in this or in any of the dressing rooms and he knew now, positively, that the main electrical switches had been pulled and that he’d run out of matches.
It was a bitch having to get about the city on foot when transport was so desperately needed. Breathless and half-frozen, St-Cyr banged on the door of the house behind La Belle Epoque. Not a light showed. Like a tomb, the passage to the courtyard closed in on him and he wondered if he’d been right to come here, if he was not already too late.
Again the pounding echoed. ‘Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, my fist!’ he shouted. ‘Open up at once. Gestapo! Raus! Raus!’ Get out! Get out!
No light showed even when the door was opened, but this was usual these days so one must not panic.