‘Why didn’t Andrée take that train to Chamonix, Inspectors?’ she pleaded. ‘That child was supposed to. Antoine had arranged everything.’
Those faded, empty blue eyes passed slowly over her. They took in her satin-covered thighs, her knees and slippers, then returned to the shawl she clutched.
‘Don’t mind him, madame,’ quipped Kohler gently. ‘Louis just gets huffy when he’s being told lies and half-lies.’
‘I want the truth, madame,’ hissed the Sûreté, flinging himself from the windows to place both hands flat on the table beside her chair and rattle its cup and saucer. ‘There’s a child out there alive and waiting for that truth to be revealed so she can return. The Sandman may yet kill her, madame. Kill her, if we can’t convince her it is safe for her to come in. You were carrying on an affair with Julien Rébé-oh, bien sûr, it was perfect. Exquisite!’ He tossed a hand. ‘A lout, a boy with a history of petty theft. A gigolo.’
‘A shoveller of horseshit!’ said Kohler.
‘A part-time mannequin, madame. What more fitting and excruciating an embarrassment, since, if discovered, the affair would never allow your husband to hold his head up again. Revenge. You wanted revenge! You were going to lose everything.’
‘He was going to divorce you, wasn’t he?’ shouted Kohler. ‘He was going to marry Mademoiselle Chambert!’
Ah no, how had they learned of this?
‘But,’ breathed Kohler, seeing her trying to get a grip on herself, ‘the boy had to be stupid and dependent, madame, so as to do your every bidding.’
Again the Sûreté gestured emphatically. ‘This boy needs protection from the lists that are being prepared for the S.T.O., madame, the conscription into forced labour in the Reich. It’s to begin in February, so there is some urgency.’
‘You promised to see that Julien Rébé’s name did not appear on any of those lists,’ said Kohler. ‘Instead, you must have agreed to place it among those your husband had designated as far too important to be taken.’
‘Those lists would have been among your husband’s papers-he would never notice. But what, please, did Rébé do for you in exchange?’
‘His mother also, Louis. We mustn’t forget the clairvoyant.’
‘Nor what Madame Rébé says the stars and Tarot cards are telling her.’
‘Two hundred francs a session,’ breathed Kohler, letting his eyes settle on the base of her throat where the blade of the guillotine might pass. ‘Sometimes three hundred if extended. You like your back massaged both before and afterwards, madame. Your seat, too, I gather. That son of hers had to smother your cries of joy lest the grands frissons you so enjoyed disturbed his mother’s clients.’
The great shudders, the orgasmes … Moisture rushed into her dark brown eyes, anger, too, and she felt these, felt so desperate. ‘How dare you speak to me like that? What affair, please? You’ve no proof of this. No proof at all!’
The fists in her lap were doubled. ‘Oh, but we have ample proof,’ sighed the Sûreté sadly. ‘If pressed for answers, that clairvoyant of yours will be only too willing to swear to it.’
Ah damn them! Damn Julien and that mother of his! ‘What if I am pregnant? It’s my body, my life, and since when do the Sûreté and the Kripo go around telling people whom they can have sex with-yes, sex, damn you-and whom they can’t enjoy? He was a far, far better lover than my husband could ever have been and yes! he was good while it lasted, but it’s over.’
Her chest quickly rose and fell as she waited for them to say something.
Very well, I will, breathed Kohler to himself, dragging out the page he had torn from Madame Rébé’s register. ‘Over perhaps, but not as of last Thursday, madame. “The Vernet woman. Two hours. Two hundred francs. From two-thirty p.m. until four-thirty. A good session.” ’
Ah no …
He tossed a look at Louis and saw him give a nod indicating, Let her have it. ‘You knew Liline Chambert was pregnant and that your husband planned to divorce you and marry her, madame, and that you would lose everything-this house, all the money, the factories-but no one here knew you were also pregnant.’
‘I have nothing more to say. I have done nothing illegal. I am totally innocent.’
‘Then why, please,’ asked Louis, ‘is that dog of yours hanging out there?’
‘I DON’T KNOW, DAMN YOU! I DON’T! I DON’T!’
What had begun in anger and rage had now turned into a disaster for Madame Vernet-St-Cyr was all but certain of this-but had that child really known who the Sandman was, and if so, why had she not left a name for them?
The bedroom felt so strongly of her it was as if he could hear her crying out, I wanted to tell the préfet. I wanted to be alone with him just for a moment but was refused.
She would have been afraid to tell anyone else but Andrée that she herself was in danger. She must have overheard something in the garden, in the folly perhaps at night, Madame Vernet out with the dog. ‘Kill her,’ he whispered, using words the woman might have said to Rébé. ‘Make it look as though the Sandman did it. I’ll take care of Liline. The girl will listen to me. She’ll have to. She’ll be no problem.’
A triangle. The mistake in the cage of doves, the abortion, and the child still alive and free.
Hermann was downstairs questioning the staff. For himself there was now that rare moment of reflection, a time too often denied.
The press were demanding answers. Vernet was not a name or man to be trifled with, but in so many ways he typified the industrialist.
Exactly four weeks after the armistice of July 1940 the Caudron-Renault Works had applied to the Ministry of Aviation to build hundreds of trainers for the Luftwaffe. To be fair, had they not stayed in business, their works would simply have been taken over and run by others.
In August of that same year, the nation’s largest aero-engine plant, Gnome-et-Rhône, offered to supply engines and spare parts to the Luftwaffe. Orders for bomb components were filled by the Schneider-Creusot Works. The list was endless, and they, too-all of them-really could not have refused, but such eagerness. It was a tragedy and someday there would be a terrible reckoning.
But for now, where was that child and what, really, did she know?
He sat down at her desk and, taking the things from his pockets, carefully arranged them before the map of the city with its press clippings and locations of the murders.
‘She knew of the house on the rue Chabanais,’ he said, thinking of the coins from Occupied Europe and the used condom. ‘She knew Violette Belanger was the sister of Céline, whom the girls of her class all hated with a passion. “Father” Eugène Debauve thus knows of the child. He has a history of interference with young girls and, through the escort service he runs, must also know of Herr Hasse and that one’s problems, but is either of them the Sandman?’
They had so little to go on. The giraffe is stolen during the first week of November, well before the murders. None of the schoolgirls will own up to it, thus tormenting Sister Céline even more. Are her visits to Violette increased?’ he wondered. ‘Later, on a dare no doubt, Andrée exhibits her courage by stealing the baby elephant. It is proof that they are “blood sisters”.
‘A note is left in the Arizona book. They’ll visit the library after they have proven beyond doubt that Nénette was the target. She knew it was a gamble. She knew of Madame Rébé and of her aunt’s extended visits to the clairvoyant. The Tarot cards gave meaning, the tiepin its proof. The clear crystal of quartz, bought in the shop next door and perhaps with the cards, must have been her crystal ball.’