It was now nearly 11.00 p.m. The métro would soon stop, as would the city’s much diminished bus service. Céline could know nothing of what had happened to Madame Morelle or that Violette had run from the house.
‘What was the child wearing?’ he asked and she could see how very concerned he was that Nénette might freeze to death.
‘The overcoat that is padded with leaves. The sealskin boots and mittens. A tea cosy for a hat. She found her things in the larger of the kitchen stoves, where Sister Céline had placed them to burn but had been distracted by your telephone call.’
‘Then the child must have hidden in the kitchens until the sister had left the convent?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am afraid that is how it must have been. Céline will be looking for her; Nénette will be trying desperately not to be found, but the sisters, Inspector, they have been searching so much for her, they have come to know well the places in which the child might attempt to hide.’
‘The cemetery, the synagogue, the Bois, the Jardin and the Villa Vernet.’
Flames, verdammt! thought Kohler. ‘We’re going to have to check out that tenement on the quai du Président Paul Doumer, Louis. The concierge can identify Debauve as the one who came to collect Madame Morelle. Our priest will be only too aware of this.’
‘Gloves … I no longer have a pair of gloves.’
‘Mittens,’ said one of the sisters. ‘We’ve been knitting mittens and sweaters, Inspector. Take some. Bundle up. Please don’t freeze.’
‘There are socks, too, warm socks.’
‘A thermos, someone. Quickly. Quickly.’
‘No laudanum. No laudanum, please.’ Ah merde, Sister Céline …? Had she drunk her tea? Had that yawn she had given over the telephone been but a sign of things to come?
High above the synagogue, the moon split the clouds that had come to blot out the stars. As the curfew descended on the city, the night threw up the singularity of its sounds. Everything seemed simply to stop running, to be replaced by a silence so penetrating each footfall was heard, each intake of breath. Though both of them instinctively listened for the feint and ominous drone of distant bombers, each knew the weather had interfered to give a night of peace to cities on both sides of this lousy war.
Louis would go inside the synagogue to flush them out, if they were in there; he, himself, would watch the exits, particularly that of the lift from the furnace room. ‘Take care, mon vieux. Shout if you need me.’
‘You also.’
And then he was gone-had vanished inside, into what? wondered Kohler, saying, Ah damn, damn, why does it always have to be us?
When it began to snow quite hard, he knew that God of Louis’s wasn’t treating them very well.
The cellars would be freezing. They’d be damp-that icy dampness that clings and penetrates even two layers of heavy woollen undergarments, socks and sweaters. The river of ice on the crowded, cluttered floor would be slippery. ‘Let’s face it,’ said Kohler, aloud to himself. ‘I hate like hell waiting for things to happen.’
In the furnace room, St-Cyr let the beam of his torch dance uncertainly over the maze of pipes, grey-white beneath their dustings of soot. Now the words NÉNETTE … ANDRÉE … appeared, now ARE WE ALL TO DIE? and then … then LILINE with hardly time for her to finish printing the E.
The firebox door of the furnace had been wired shut. He could swear it hadn’t been like that. Closed, yes, but not secured. Whoever had done it had twisted the wire several times. Was the child in there, then? Had she scrawled in to hide, only to find herself trapped?
Again he shone the torch around the room. Again he had to be certain he was alone. Hermann … Hermann, he began.
Setting the torch down on the overturned bucket the child had used as a stool, he tried to untwist the wire, saying softly. ‘Nénette … Nénette, it’s me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté.’ Had the Sandman killed her?
The wire had been snipped off with wire cutters. It had been twisted tightly with pliers. Whoever had done this had come prepared.
He cut his fingers. They very nearly froze to the wire. Leaning down, he caught at his sleeve and used it to slide the draught plate open and shone the torch inside.
The firebox was huge, the many-toothed bars of the grate, sturdy. A nest had been built in there of leaves last fall and it would have been big enough for those two girls to have used but had been set afire some hours ago. Now there were only its ashes, grey and light against the deeper, older, more solid ash and clinkers.
There was no sign of the child.
This is the way out and the way in, said Kohler to himself as he stood with his back against the wall in moon-shadow watching the lift, waiting, hoping, remembering the footprints they had found down there, those of a woman. Violette, he wondered, or Céline?
‘It’s been jammed,’ hissed Louis furiously from below. ‘Whoever did it knew the child hid out here. That person may have been waiting for her, Hermann. The child may already have been taken.’
Verdammt! Whatever footprints there were looked old and were being rapidly obliterated by the cursed snow. ‘The cemetery,’ sighed Kohler, not liking it at all. ‘The vaults, Louis. The crypts, that mausoleum where the kid bedded down.’
And wrote in the fine dust of spilled cremation ashes, Andrée, you must forgive me. Liline is also dead. I went to the place where she was and I saw them taking her out.
Steps led up to the mausoleum, but the bronze doors, with their shattered stained-glass panels, had been wired tightly shut. Kohler shone his torch inside only to find that the words the child had written had been rubbed out. ‘Debauve,’ he said. ‘A man’s handprint, Louis. I’m certain of it.’
The silk flowers still rested in another mausoleum among the broken coffins and scattered bones, but here, too, the doors had been wired tightly shut.
In every place she could have run, steps had been taken to thwart her escape. The snow hid all tracks. It was impossible to find any. It beat against the face and stung the eyes. It said, Give up. Let it be. There is nothing you can do.
While they had been at the house on the rue Chabanais, Debauve must have been searching for the child, but had he finally caught her? Had he? It was not pleasant hunting for her corpse among the rows of tombstones, some broken, others pushed over. Behind the mausoleums among scattered bushes there were places she could have hidden had she got away, places she could have been caught and killed, but she wasn’t there. And as for looking in the rest of the cemetery, there simply wasn’t time.
When they got to the tenement house on the quai du Président Paul Doumer, it was to find the door haphazardly repaired after Hermann’s splintering of it. Pounding did no good, so he broke it in again, using one good kick and the flat of his shoe.
Yvette Grégoire, the concierge, lay at the foot of the stairs to the cellars. Her false teeth had popped out when her head hit the stone floor. The faded blue eyes were bloodshot and glazed, the hairy lips split.
Hastily St-Cyr crossed himself and said, ‘Dead for several hours. Why has no one reported it?’
‘Too afraid, probably. Each waiting for someone else to speak up, all thinking that tomorrow would be best. They’ll have seen and heard nothing. An accident, eh, but what else could be expected since the stair runners are so old and torn?’
When they got to the Villa Vernet there wasn’t a sign of the child. Not in the folly, not in her room or anywhere else. Madame Vernet paced the floor, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the watchful eyes of a severe, grey-suited young woman with a pistol. Vernet brooded in his study.