‘Inspector, please! You don’t know what you’re doing to him. All I’ve worked so hard for may well be lost. Lost, do you understand?’
She was finally in tears, not sitting now but standing in front of Hasse, prepared to keep them from taking him.
Several seconds passed. The detectives wanted to find the Sandman before another young girl was raped-yes, raped-and then killed. ‘He’s … he’s incapable,’ she said. ‘I … I’ve tried. He … he simply cannot do it.’
‘Do what?’ breathed Kohler.
‘Idiot! Have sex, damn you! Sex in any way, shape or form. There, now are you satisfied? Are you?’
It was Louis who did the sighing. ‘Then please inform him that he was seen following the child this afternoon in the Jardin d’Acclimatation and that it was there, not near the Hippodrome, that Nénette Vernet got into his car.’
‘Seen by whom?’ she cried.
‘That is not for you to know. For now, it’s confidential.’
‘Ah, damn you, damn you. Flics, that’s all you are. Lousy flics!’
Louis reached for the telephone. Sadly he watched the two of them. Was he convinced? wondered Kohler. Was he now prepared to call Old Shatter Hand and request that an arrest be made? Sometimes it was so hard to tell with Louis. There’d be a thousand questions in his mind and he’d have to go over every one of them before deciding on the truth, nothing but the truth. He hadn’t been wrong yet, well once perhaps and not really. Not in the nearly two and a half years they’d been working together.
‘Inspector,’ she pleaded, hastily wiping her eyes and cursing her tears. ‘We knew of his association with Mademoiselle Chambert and thought it a good thing. We encouraged it, yes. If he could get those two young girls to accept him as he was, we felt it would make such a difference.’
‘There were others he paid to go up to that flat of his,’ said Kohler harshly.
‘Others?’ She was sickened by the news and turned quickly away.
St-Cyr got through to the convent instead of the Kommandantur. It took several rings before a harried voice, just awakened, asked who it was and told him Nénette Vernet was asleep. ‘I’ve only just left her, Inspector. The poor child is safe at last.’ A yawn was heard. ‘You need have no more fears. She had a bowl of warm milk with bread dipped in it. A few drops of laudanum were felt best.’
A tincture of opium … Ah merde, merde! ‘Are the doors secured between the convent and the church?’ he asked and heard her say, ‘Of course.’
‘Then please have three sisters watching over the child at all times. Please do not let her out of your sight.’
They ran. They tried to make it to the convent before it was too late. Banging on the heavy oak door did no good. Pulling on the bell chain produced only an utter refusal to answer.
Against the loneliness of distant stars, the frozen sickle of a new moon stood as if grinning in judgment.
‘Debauve and Violette!’ cursed Louis. ‘Madame Vernet figured it all out from the trash in that child’s coat pockets. She knew who the Sandman was.’
‘A crucifix and a Number Four knitting needle in the child’s desk,’ swore Hermann. ‘A map of the Sandman’s murders. “This one is next”.’
‘A used condom in her change purse.’
‘From the coffee can of a whore.’
Kohler gave the door a last kick. They’d have to get the army to batter the thing in. ‘Idiot! You would warn them. Now they’re so darned scared they won’t let even us in!’
The nuns weren’t just scared, they were desperately afraid, and when at last, after much deliberation within, entry was allowed, nearly all were on their knees crowded into the infirmary, gathered around the child’s bed. Nearly all were in tears and praying.
The bed was empty, the child was gone.
‘She left us, Inspectors,’ seethed the Reverend Mother, yanking the pillows away to reveal the soggy stains of milk and mush of uneaten bread. ‘She dumped the laudanum into the sisters’ mugs of tea. Look at the two of them. Just look!’
Sister Dominique, her mouth wide open, slept the sleep of dreams in a nearby chair; Sister Edith, under whose care the infirmary lay, that of nightmares perhaps.
‘And Sister Céline?’ he asked hesitating. ‘Was she the one I spoke to on the telephone?’
Anxiety, pain and grief-ah, so many things filled the deep blue eyes of the Reverend Mother. ‘Céline, Inspector? You see, she, too, has left us.’
‘Was she out this afternoon?’
‘In the Jardin d’Acclimatation?’
‘Searching for that child-Reverend Mother, you know this is what I mean.’
‘Céline … Céline thinks all girls of that age have the devil in their bodies, Inspector. She doesn’t really mean to say such things. It’s her past, that father of hers. It’s Violette and … and the life that one insists on leading. The constant shame of it, the ridicule of our girls, the whispers, the secretly passed notes with filth written on them. Shameful things the girls themselves cannot possibly understand.’
‘Let us go into your office, Reverend Mother. Let us take a moment.’
She would have to tell them and beg God’s forgiveness for doing so. ‘Céline Belanger has … has very bad thoughts, Inspectors. They come and go. There are times when she is quite calm, times when very upset and agitated. She is constantly visiting Violette not only because she feels it is her duty as an older sister but also because she secretly blames herself. I’m certain of it, certain, too, that she knows very well what their father did to Violette because he’d done the same things to her. Oh yes, this, too, I am certain of, but each visit seems only to reinforce the hateful thoughts. They are like the migraines. They come on suddenly and stay for days.’
He must go gently. ‘Does the sister think bad thoughts of your girls, Reverend Mother?’
‘She sees flames.’
‘Flames, but …?’
‘Yes. I know the milieu are fond of saying that when they see the police but Céline’s flames, they are different. They are of girls of Nénette’s age letting men do filthy things to them. Wanton things. Things they themselves don’t anticipate but have secretly encouraged simply by a smile, a desire to feel wanted, a need to get attention. To Céline their unawareness of the danger is just a lie hiding base desires to know and experience everything about sex even though desperately afraid and ignorant of it. She … she has tried many times to suppress all such thoughts. We have prayed constantly for God’s help but you see, recently our girls, they only made it worse. They sensed Céline did not just dislike them but felt them guilty of such things. They became convinced she wanted to punish them.’
The age of innocence shattered by a nun. ‘Did she try to find Nénette this afternoon? Was she following that child only to have her turn up here?’
‘Céline’s cloak was torn. Her face was scratched-a branch perhaps, or a briar. Sister Dominique came back early in great distress to tell me Céline had deliberately left her.’
‘Where will she go, if she finds Nénette?’
To the Notre-Dame, was that what he was thinking? To Suresnes or Aubervilliers, to some run-down tenement? Or was it to les Halles and empty stalls where no food is brought for sale because there is so little of it getting into the city? ‘She will try to find Nénette, Inspector, to save her from what Violette and that … that “priest” of hers would do to the child. She will take her to the house on the rue Chabanais because only then can she confront the child and Violette with the truth.’