‘Yes, yes, but did they go to the cinema first?’
‘The cinema?’ asked the boy. ‘But why, monsieur? It was too late. It was already nine thirty or ten and Mademoiselle Claudine had lost a shoe.’
‘Then did your mother know Mademoiselle Claudine had been to that cinema?’
They glanced at each other and kept silent. ‘Look, you’ve already said you overheard the prefet telling your mother Mademoiselle Claudine and Madame Bertrand had been murdered. Your mother was the last to see them alive, but me, I do not think she killed them.’
‘Then she could not have been the last to see them alive,’ said the girl with wisdom beyond her years.
St-Cyr curtly nodded agreement. ‘Someone must have followed them and gained entry when the concierge was absent.’
‘Absent …’ muttered the boy, hunting for something on the work table. ‘Paulette, the big shears, they … they are gone.’
‘The shears?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Mother was up here when Aunt Martine came to see her. It was here that they argued.’
Ah merde! A pair of shears with blades perhaps twenty centimetres in length. ‘Take me to the telephone at once,’ he said. ‘Hurry!’
From somewhere distant in the darkness of the theatre, the sound of a telephone came. His pulse hammering, Kohler listened for it. Ja, ja, it was up over there at the back, beyond the first balcony, in the manager’s office probably. No, no, it was in front here, down below him along the corridor to the dressing rooms in a little booth whose door must now be closed. Extensions? he asked.
Gott im Himmel, he was getting too old for this! The telephone rang and rang-jangling forlornly until suddenly it was answered at the half-ring and listened to.
Shit! Retreating, he found the stairs quite by chance and almost fell down them-had to grab the curtains to steady himself. Oops! Verdammt!
Counterweights would be swinging somewhere. Ropes wound around belaying pins would be straining.
There had been no sign of Robichaud or of Leiter Weidling for that matter or of any of Barbie’s Gestapo watchers.
Keeping to one side, he went down the steps and when he came to the wig room, he ducked in there. Felt again the dyed horsehair under the hand, the stiffness of it, then that of a human. Much softer, much silkier … Perfume … was that perfume?
The head was round … Bald-was it bald beneath the wig?
It sat so still and at first he thought-ah, what did he think? That … that whoever it was had been sitting there for some time. A woman …
Plaster met his fingers as they explored the featureless face and neck of the wigmaker’s dummy. Etranger? he asked. The scent was so strong now.
From chair to chair he went, feeling always-always ready to dodge aside, drop down, feint to the left or right.
Robichaud was not here-indeed, there was no one else but himself, but had there been someone?
Hesitating, he finally decided to go back up on stage and walk loudly across it just for spite. At once there were the curtains, heavy, cloying and, opposite them, why nothing but the floor-backdrops over there, then. Yes, yes, and directly ahead of him, the electrical switchboard and the pin-rails with their coiled ropes and belaying pins for lowering and raising scenery flies from the gridiron above the stage.
The smell of the place, of chalk dust and mould, greasepaint and powder, sour wine, old garlic and scenery paint. Mice probably and rats-that fetid, close smell of their dens, sour with their urine.
In the darkness, he could not touch the switchboard for fear of electrocuting himself. Everything in him wanted to cry out, I’m here, damn you! Yet there’d been no sign of Robichaud, and the fire chief was his responsibility. Ah merde.
Something moved. Stiffening, Kohler heard it again and then again, a gentle see-sawing. When he looked up into the inky blackness, he felt a droplet hit him on the forehead.
Crouching, he ran his fingers delicately over the floorboards, tracing out the gaps between them as he did so.
Again he heard the see-sawing high above him and when he found the pin-rails with their ropes, he found one rope that was much tighter than the others.
Unwinding it, he eased the heavy object down and down and down until it touched the stage. Then he let it collapse, and he waited.
Her perfume was stronger now and at first he thought she was standing so near he could but reach out to touch her. He remembered the belfry of the Basilica, the shoes that had been left for him to find, the gasoline. He remembered standing among the columns of the Palais de Justice and in the rue des Trois Maries.
Louis, he said. Louis, we’re in trouble. He knew it was a body he’d lowered, knew that if he crouched over it, the killer might well strike again. But had the Salamander any need now, having removed the one man they needed most?
He did not need to touch the body to know that it was Robichaud. A sadness entered. Elaine Gauthier would never leave the Hotel Terminus alive, he knew that now. The couple had gone to the cinema to meet with Resistance leaders among the railway workers, or simply to see a film, La Bete humaine, and to be with each other. She wouldn’t be able to tell Barbie much. Robichaud would have made certain of that for her own safety.
There was no knife or other sharp instrument sticking out of the throat or chest, yet there was blood, lots of blood and it soaked the sweater and had seeped right down to fill the shoes.
Kohler wiped his fingers on a trouserleg. He wished he’d been able to find the weapon but knew only that it had been removed.
Multiple stab-wounds then, an act of frenzy or one so clever, it had been made to look like that.
A Salamander …
Listening hard, he cautiously straightened up and waited, willing his mind to reach out into the darkness, but to where … where …?
Close … so close, he could feel the distance between them and yet … and yet …
‘Shears … a pair of dressmaker’s shears, idiots!’ shouted St-Cyr desperately in German to the Gestapo watchers sitting warm and cosy in their car. ‘Can you not get it into your thick skulls that the Salamander is already inside that theatre? My partner …’
He gave up. Furious with them, he banged a fist against the roof of the car and stared futilely at the blue wash of paint which all but hid the lamplight and gave the vague outline of the place des Celestins.
Somewhere high over the city a lone aircraft had lost its way perhaps. From the corner of the rue Andre came the tramp of the patrol which constantly circled the theatre.
‘Please, I … oh for sure I know I’m begging, my friends, and that you have no orders to enter the theatre with me, but …’ He shrugged expansively, throwing his hands out in futility towards the frost-covered windows, one of which had been rolled down a centimetre. Dark … it was so dark within the car, except for the glow of their cigarettes. ‘But I have tried everywhere else. Leiter Weidling left the theatre some time ago. Hermann-’
‘Robichaud and Kohler have not yet come out,’ grunted their driver.
‘Yes! At last you being to under-’
‘No one else has gone inside. No one could have got past us. Everything’s locked up tighter than a termite’s ass.’
Ah merde, the idiots! Had they not thought others might have keys? ‘Then have you a key to one of the entrances?’ he asked.
They had, and this was dangled through a gap of no more than ten centimetres. ‘Enjoy yourself.’
‘Enjoy myself …? But-’
‘Obersturmfuhrer Barbie says that if you want so badly to find out where your partner is, you had better go in there yourself.’
‘Does he not want to stop the Salamander?’
‘Not until tomorrow night.’