A large and similarly coated bouquet, in a raffia-covered jardinière, sat on the floor between the chairs keeping lover from lover, husband from wife, friend from friend, or total stranger from stranger.
‘Messieurs …’
‘Ah!’ began St-Cyr, touching Hermann’s arm to silence him. ‘Mademoiselle, please do not be alarmed. We are here to see the madame and her son.’
The girl was no more than seventeen, a maid of all work and receptionist also, the uniform changing with the passing of the hours. ‘But … but Madame, she sleeps, and Monsieur Julien, he … he has not returned and has stayed elsewhere overnight because of the curfew.’
‘Where?’ demanded Hermann, flashing his badge.
Her large brown eyes began to moisten at the sight of that thing. ‘I … I do not know, monsieur. He … he seldom tells me.’
She looked like death and why not? Gestapo … Gestapo … But there was no sense in stopping. ‘Which one, eh?’ he asked and snorted lustily.
She gave a quick, instinctive shrug and blurted tearfully, ‘He has many. They … they all find him hard to resist. These days a young man like that, he can have any woman he wants, and Monsieur Julien, he … he has the appetite.’ Dear Jesus save her now, she begged. Madame would be furious. ‘He … he meets them at the … the life-drawing classes where he is a mannequin. There and … and at other places, of course. The Lutétia Pool as well.’ Oh God.
Well-endowed, is he? snorted Kohler inwardly. ‘Has he an overcoat?’
‘A cape, made out of a horse blanket.’
‘Is it black, as in coal black?’
‘Yes … Yes, it is black and coarse.’
‘Good. Switch on the lights and tell Madame we’re here for an early-morning reading of her son’s future.’
‘Hermann, must you?’ hissed St-Cyr when the girl had fled.
‘A horse blanket-isn’t that enough? Hey, I’ll just find the woman’s ledger, Chief, and scan it for names, visits and times.’
‘You do that.’
‘Then you look for other things, eh? Hey, that’s an order.’
A tall and translucent trifold screen allowed those who waited to see those beyond it but only as blurred shadows, the viewer hearing every word of prophecy except for the whispered confidences and, at the completion of the session, seeing the results as the client then came back around it towards them.
St-Cyr was intrigued by the screen. Two young lovers, dressed in the finery of the late 1800s, embraced in secret on the middle panel before tumultous thunderclouds at dusk, while up in the sky the sun’s last rays revealed among those same threatening clouds the shadowy face of the girl in multiple images. Now grave and wondering about her lover, now coy, now lecherous, the mask of old age removed and held away as the young girl laughed at life and fate and mischievously touched the back of her front teeth with her tongue.
Flowers embraced the central panel, cream-coloured roses climbing through gold to branch out and blossom next the cloud-faces that included the girl’s skull.
It was magnificent, and he knew the work had been adapted from a painting by the Viennese artist Gustav Klimt.
Behind the screen, draped cream brocade with silk tassels formed a puffed and pleated backdrop to the bouquet of dried hydrangeas and roses that all but dwarfed the lace-covered table Madame Rébé used for the lesser readings. Zodiac signs were scattered throughout the lace, whose centrepiece was a deck of Tarot cards spread to reveal the Queen of Wands, the King of Pentacles and the Fool.
The straight-backed chairs were uncomfortable-looking, and he gave credit where due. Fifteen minutes in one would seem an hour to most, especially as they had already been kept waiting in a similar chair.
From here, more screens channelled the select client into the inner sanctum of a small private sitting room where the more serious readings and the séances were held. Louis XVI settees in pistachio green and gilt, still with their original, now threadbare fabrics, mingled with armchairs covered in the same material. Silk orchids were everywhere-a tall pale, off-white and pink-fringed cymbidium, a deep pink cattleya and the butterfly gold-to-white and reddish amber of a paphiopedilum were reflected in the crystal ball that sat on a three-pronged stand of bronze cobras that were poised to strike the unwary.
‘Louis, take a look at this.’ Kohler waved the appointments book. ‘Madame Vernet has been coming at least three times a week for the past four and a half months. Usually at three p.m. and staying until four or later. Five sometimes, even six p.m.’
‘But others have their fortunes told while she waits.’
‘Or does she wait at all?’
‘The tiepin,’ breathed Louis. ‘Did she step on it here?’
They moved into the corridor beyond and from there went quickly through to the bedrooms. Madame Rébéls door was closed, but when they found the son’s cold unrumpled bed, they found the clutchback of the pin among the clutter of cheap cufflinks, assorted male jewellery and female ear-rings, garters, safety pins, and miscellany in the plain pine box on his commode.
It was enough.
Returning to the anteroom, they dutifully waited for the maid until Madame Rébé was at last ready to receive them in the grand salon, which was, of course, off limits to clients and reserved only for those most special, most private of guests.
‘Messieurs, it’s so good of you to be patient. One has to dress. One simply cannot snap the fingers or wave the wand.’
She was reclining nonchalantly in a gilded Louis XVI arm-chair whose slim arms and high, rounded back were covered with a flowered tapestry of soft faded gold that matched exactly the gown she wore. The fine silk crepe de Chine was from the twenties, from the designer Fortuny, the sleeves pushed up a little to give the effect of a slight carelessness, the shoulders all but bare.
Her right arm lay along the arm of the chair so that her long slim fingers dangled over its end, while the fingertips of the left hand delicately touched a naked collarbone. Only two rings were worn and they were identical. One on the third finger of each hand, of diamonds.
The jet-black hair was piled up so that the carefully arranged wisps fell to fringes that all but touched her dark eyes and framed an animated, smiling face whose strong brows and long lashes had been further strengthened by pencil and mascara. The chin was determined, the nose was long. Diamond pendants dangled from half-hidden ears.
Ah! it was such a scrutiny they gave her, these two detectives from Paris-Central, but it was, yes, nothing to the scrutiny she returned and they knew it. The big one fiddled self-consciously with his fedora-had his lover ever come to her for consultations? Giselle … was the girl’s name Giselle le Roy? Of course it was. Kohler the lover; Kohler the husband-to-be-was it possible? The stars, they had strongly advised against it, but the girl, she had not wanted to hear such a thing. ‘He loves me,’ she had said. ‘Ah, I think he might. I must come back again for another reading-yes, yes, madame. Would this be possible?’
The other one, the Sûreté, was bemused perhaps but curious, and she did not like the look of either of them, but for different reasons. ‘Inspectors, you flatter me with the urgency of your desire for a consultation, but, please, how may I help? So often I have prayed the police would come. I see things. I have powers.’ She shrugged, but just the right amount … ‘It’s a gift one treasures, isn’t that so? But one always worries that some day such a gift, it will vanish.’
The fringe over the brow was given just the lightest of touches. The head was turned but a little.