‘Madame Morelle doesn’t want to see you. She has asked us to keep you away.’
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté. Please step aside.’
Oh-oh. ‘Louis …’
The burly Feldgendarm broke the rules by switching on an unblinkered torch to flood their faces, distracting no one but himself. Louis took a step back. There was a crack, a sigh, a burst of wind. The torch flew up, the lead-weighted baton clattered. A cry of pain was stifled as the knuckles of a left hand were cradled.
The Feldgendarm crumpled to the street. The roar of others descended on them. ‘Who’s next? Well, who is it to be?’ hissed the Sûreté in fluent Deutsch. A tiger.
‘A revolver … he’s got a revolver,’ managed Kohler, a lie. ‘He’s come to make an arrest.’
Arrest … arrest … the word fled down the line, pillaring the Feldgendarmen into indecision while the wise among the clientele sought greener pastures.
‘What arrest?’
‘Please don’t be difficult,’ winced the Sûreté breathlessly. ‘If you want answers, ask the Kommandant von Gross-Paris.’
‘We’re under his order,’ managed Kohler. ‘Orders!’ he shouted.
This they could understand, but it was with regret that they let them pass, for one could never predict the future, and the job of policing the Wehrmacht’s largest brothel had carried certain privileges.
They hoped it wouldn’t be Madame Morelle. They had heard no police vans turn into the street, so knew it was not a raid.
The place was crowded, full of tobacco smoke and ripe with the stench, and through this boozy haze, and seen against the overflowing, bulging pulchritude, the voluminous black lace of Madame Morelle circulated. To her, arrest was the furthest thing from her mind. These two could prove nothing. Ignoring them, she sat down and spoke softly to an SS major, offering pleasures he could not find in one of the two houses the Generalmajor und Höherer-SS Oberg had reserved for his kind.
‘Ah!’ she said, as the two of them strode into the waiting room where the girls waited, too, until enlivened by this little interlude. The din from the staircase only grew louder.
‘Madame Morelle?’ began the Sûreté, using the voice of Judgement.
Her pudgy, be-ringed left hand lingered on an SS-trousered thigh to get the feel of it, then patted the knee sharply as if to say, Leave this to me. ‘Brigitte, please take the Major up to Violence’s room. Ask her to let him watch. It’s all been arranged. If he likes what he sees, he is to enjoy himself and we will discuss things further.’
A schoolgirl, was that what the smirking son of a bitch was after, wondered Kohler, or was he a reminder sent to them from the avenue Foch via the escort service on the Champs-Élysées and an urgent plea for help from Debauve? Ah merde, that must be it. ‘Just a minute. No one visits Violette.’
‘What’s she done?’ hissed Madame Morelle, raking them with kohl-rimmed eyes. She wet her ruby lips. ‘Well, eh? Come, come, my fine messieurs,’ she shrilled. ‘I demand an answer. I have a right to see the magistrate’s order, and please do not tell me you haven’t one!’
Snap, snap went her fingers.
‘Look, we only want to talk to her about a missing child,’ sighed Kohler.
‘Talk!’ shrilled the woman. Her hands were tossed, her shoulders shrugged. ‘Who has time to talk to such as you in a place like this? Violette was here all day and all last night. She has not left the premises. Not for one minute. This I will swear on my father’s grave.’
‘But not on your mother’s,’ sighed the Sûreté, forgetting his sore knuckles at last to run his eyes over her. ‘Madame Berthe Morelle … Berthe Lefebvre of the rue Saint-Denis and les Halles. The jet-black hair, it is a wig needed due to recurring bouts of la syphilis; the cheeks, they are fleshy and deeply rouged to hide the sugar scars of displeased maquereaux. Gone are the days of your youth. Please let me see your licence, madame, so as to remind myself and refresh your memory.’
Ah no … ‘The rue Saint-Denis?’ she bleated, still slow to tumble to it.
‘And an arrest that was made more than thirty years ago in a house on the corner of the rue des Precheurs [the street of the Preachers]. A prostitute you helped. A friend, you said, and like a sister to you-wasn’t that it, eh? An unwanted child she had refused to bear-ah, of course nothing could be proven. You had arrived too late to caution the girl and could not hold the abortionist for the gendarmes you yourself had summoned because that one, she had vanished. Others swore to it. There was little we could do, since you willingly slept and did other things with the presiding magistrate, who had a taste for whores that were cheap. You’ve changed. You’ve grown older. One would have hoped, wiser.’
St-Cyr … St-Cyr …? A blue cape and képi then and no moustache but boots and a persistent air that could not be bought off. Ah, why had Madame Rébé not forewarned her of this one at their last reading? ‘You’ve changed yourself,’ she said tartly. ‘Violette has done nothing. She was here all day and last night, and others will swear to this.’
‘Swearing’s in your blood,’ he snorted lustily. ‘We’ll ask them, of course, but first, madame, please take us to the room and leave that one here unless he wants trouble. We will question the two of you upstairs where you belong.’
She tossed her head as if wounded. ‘There is no need to be offensive. The past is over. The legs, they are closed, and the door to heaven, it is shut. We’ve both come up in the world.’
‘Good! I’ll bring you down, then, shall I? You’re wanted on the charge of abortion and causing the death by it of Liline Chambert. Please save your breath for the stairs.’
He’d make it stick, she knew he would. ‘Abortion?’ she snorted. ‘I did no such thing. Pah! the years have addled your brain, my fine Sûreté. Why would I indulge in such an illegal practice when I have all this raking in so much more?’
‘That is just what we’d like to ask you. Now move.’
‘Louis …’
‘Not now, Hermann. Get her upstairs.’
‘But-’
‘No buts. Just do as I say.’
‘Okay, Chief, you’re the boss but that one’s SS.’
‘Idiot! did you think I hadn’t noticed?’
They were on the stairs and moving. They were on the first floor and heading up five flights. Big men, little men, some with grins, stood on each step of the way. Whores came down, whores went up. Peignoirs were open, some wore none at all … One said, ‘Ooh, they are in such a rush, those two, madame. You haven’t lost your charm. The older the sweeter, eh, my fine messieurs?’
‘And both at once!’ hooted another. ‘Give her port and advocaat, the half-and-half, messieurs. By midnight she’ll be opening all the doors and you can enter where you please!’
‘But not both in the same place!’ tossed the other one over her shoulder as Louis tripped and piled into a brunette, grabbing her bony hips for support.
‘Have you paid?’ she hooted, her face overly made-up, the lipstick smeared, the hair dyed a violent red.
By now the Wehrmacht’s finest had got the message and all were shouting, ‘Get them. Stop them. Throw the bastards out.
‘OUT! OUT! RAUS! RAUS! RAUS!’
They stamped their boots each time they said it. They pushed, they shoved, they heaved on the line, and the ripple of their pent-up dislike of the police raced on and up … up.
Madame Morelle burst on to a landing, threw out her black, lace-clad arms and went down in a welter of other legs, arms, breasts and bare buttocks. Now everyone was laughing and shouting, ‘Grab them. Hoist them. Pick them up and pitch them out.’