The passage cloute’s white marker studs were all but hidden, his fingers cold and stiff. Her street was next and when they came to the rue La Boetie, he didn’t hesitate.
‘Hubert will have left the lock off the flat,’ he said. ‘Since you haven’t your handbag, I presume he didn’t give it at thought.’
Ah, merde, her papers …
‘The fifth, at the back. I’ll just come up to make certain everything is all right.’
Did he know the building that well?
Hole for hole, laddered run for run, the warm-up stockings were compared, Hermann deliberately letting Bob smell them. Slightly built and in his mid-thirties, with small, slim hands, closely trimmed nails and no bite marks that could be seen even on the wrists, Hubert Quevillon stood looking down at him while Flavien Garnier, in his late fifties and also lacking these but with big enough hands for the Trinite assault, watched his subordinate with a grim wariness that implied he’d had to do so constantly.
‘Good, Bob. There’s my soldier,’ said Hermann, seemingly ignoring everyone as he folded the stockings and placed them in Elene Artur’s fitted case.
He scratched Bob behind the ears and under the chin. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he went on. ‘Bien sur, I’ve known a lot of dogs and loved every one of them, but never a prince like yourself. I’m envious, Colonel.’
As his hand dropped, he looked up at Hubert Quevillon, let that emptiness his partner knew only too well fill his gaze and give warning of its own. ‘So how is it, my fine one, that you had that stocking in your desk?’
‘Kohler …’
‘Colonel, let him answer.’
To smirk would infuriate this Kripo the SS had marked for life, thought Quevillon, so he would do that and then tell him how it was. ‘I’m constantly gathering things that might be useful.’
A smart aleck-was that it, eh? The hair was dark brown and carelessly parted so that a hank of it fell rakishly over the brow. The dark-blue eyes were hooded, the expression at once intense and looking always for signs of the mischief his words might cause, the perpetual evening shadow something the girls might or might not like, but a regular at any number of brothels so that he could make his choice and do as he liked. ‘And is it that you simply stole it while that girl was hurrying to get dressed because you had told her to?’
Hermann, urged St-Cyr silently. Don’t accuse any of them yet. Wait! ‘The time, please, Agent Quevillon?’
Please … ? What the hell was this? ‘Louis, you leave him to me.’
‘Hermann, there’s likely a plausible answer. Colonel, from time to time I have to remind my partner that the blitzkrieg our friends demand must still have its little pauses.’
Though taken aback, Hermann was still ready to charge blindly forward and could not be warned of what had been discovered in that desk, nor on it or under it, nor could he be told yet of what had been on and in Flavien Garnier’s. For now this information, especially the sawdust and wood shavings that must have been emptied from the turn-ups of Quevillon’s trousers, would have to be kept from him, since these last were identical to those encountered in the Jourdan household and the gerbils would have loved them.
These two, they were nothing but trouble, thought Delaroche. ‘The time, Hubert. As close as you can give it.’
‘Nine. Maybe nine ten. Elene and the other girls were hurrying to get back on stage. One of her butterfly wings wouldn’t stay up so I had to help by tightening its wires.’
‘Ja, ja, mein Lieber. And the stockings?’ persisted Hermann.
‘Kohler, Kohler,’ interjected Delaroche. ‘The girl had other such stockings that were much better. Why should it matter if Hubert, thinking it was long past its useful life, should borrow one? Why not tell us where and how you found her?’
‘I thought you knew.’
‘How could I possibly? Chief Inspector, please inform this colleague of yours that the Agence Vidocq is not, and never has been, engaged in murder.’
‘Was she murdered, Colonel?’ asked Hermann.
‘If not, how then did you come by her wedding ring?’
These two would go at it now if a companionable gesture wasn’t given. ‘Colonel,’ said St-Cyr, ‘just tell us why Agent Quevillon was in the Lido’s dressing room at 2110 hours or thereabouts last Thursday.’
‘Yes, please tell us. It would help, I think.’
Had Kohler been mollified by his partner and if so, why the need if not the contents of that damned desk of Quevillon’s? wondered Delaroche. ‘I had asked Hubert to check if any of them had heard or seen anything that might help us find Lulu. Madame de Brissac-Catherine-Elizabeth-has not long to live but the telephone is there beside her, you understand, and she was constantly using it to call me.’
‘And now you’re going to have to tell her what’s happened,’ breathed Hermann, his patience all but gone.
Delaroche studied the glowing end of his cigar. ‘What did you find in the Parc Monceau? It was there, wasn’t it? You must have found something of Lulu’s-why else your chasing after me to Chez Benedicte’s?’
Bob barked. Bob got all excited and had to be calmed. Louis told them the remains were in the Citroen’s boot and that Elene must have wanted to bury what she could where Lulu’s spirit would be most content and as close to her mistress as possible.
‘You’ll let me have them, won’t you?’ asked Delaroche, ignoring the fiction of an indochinoise superstition-was it really fiction, wondered Kohler, and did Delaroche really feel so duty-bound? Flavien Garnier didn’t seem to give a damn. He simply budgeted his cigarette as if still mired in the trenches and waiting for the tempest of fire to start up all over again.
‘At 2313 hours Thursday, Colonel,’ went on Louis, ‘Elene Artur was forced to telephone the Commissariat of the quartier du Faubourg de Roule to alert them to the killing at the Ecole des Officiers de la Gendamerie Nationale. Hermann and myself didn’t get there until 0511 hours Friday but believe the young man, still unidentified, must have been killed at between 2000 and 2130 hours the previous evening.’
And right when Quevillon was supposed to have been helping Elene with her wings, thought Kohler, but if Garnier considered any of this important, he didn’t let on. Was the expression always so grim? he wondered. A blunt man, made blunter by the blotched bald dome of his head, the greying brown fringe above and behind the ears, the heavy, dark horn-rims with the big lenses and the Hitler soup strainer. Prominent jowls reinforced the grimness, deep creases the rarely parted lips. A man of few words, was that it, eh, or one who simply knew too much and felt it best to say little? ‘She had, we understand, Colonel, first been forced to let the press in on things. Bob, as you know, went straight to that telephone.’
Kohler was definitely the one who had found her. ‘But of course Bob would have. All of those girls use it, as they do that staircase. The scent was old. Maybe she made a telephone call, maybe she didn’t. How could any of us possibly know?’
And stubborn to the last, eh? ‘Your agency was tailing three of the victims Louis and I had to encounter that evening, Colonel. Madame Guillaumet was the first, and voila, what did we later find but that the press had been in to photograph her at the Hotel-Dieu?’
Ah, merde, Hermann, go easy, said St-Cyr to himself. ‘Colonel, we’re not accusing anyone, merely trying to get at the facts.’ There was a knock. ‘Ah bon, I’m famished.’
Louis had said it as if relieved.
‘A little wine?’ asked Delaroche. Relieved too, was he? wondered Kohler.
‘If you have it, that would be perfect,’ said St-Cyr, gesturing appreciatively with pipe in hand. Jeannot Raymond had still not returned from escorting Suzette Dunand home. ‘The flat is just along the way,’ the girl had earlier said. Then why the delay? he had to ask himself, but would have to be patient.