‘You’re full of surprises. I hadn’t realized you could be so light-fingered.’
‘Then realize that under Garnier’s blotting pad there was a list of resistants, some of whom had ticks beside them and lines through them, and that under Quevillon’s photo of the boys, was one of Giselle as she left Oona yesterday.’
Ach, where was it all to end? wondered Kohler. The PPF had been funded by the Abwehr, the counterintelligence service of the Wehrmacht, and had supplied them with the names and locations of resistants and other ‘troublemakers’ the Occupier had wanted but with the defeat at Stalingrad, everyone had started having second thoughts and, as if that weren’t enough, that fanatic ex-chicken farmer and Head of the SS, the Reichsfuhrer Himmler, had all along been jealous of the Abwehr and had sought to undermine it, and submerge it entirely within the Sicherheitsdienst.
One happy family. And guess what? he silently asked as he found the main staircase of the house at Number 25 and followed Louis up it. Given the ever-shifting sands of Paris and the Occupation, the PPF had seen the light and gone over to the SS. The Agence Vidocq must now be supplying them with those names and locations, Judge Rouget sentencing those taken, Oberg seeing that they were either shot as hostages for some act of ‘terrorism’ or shipped east to one of the camps no one wanted to mention, though everyone knew of them, especially Hercule the Smasher.
Having anticipated his thoughts, Louis was waiting for him on the second storey’s landing to softly confide, ‘That’s not what worries me at the moment, mon vieux. If Oberg ordered the agence to take Giselle as bait for his Mausfalle and they failed to do so, is that not, perhaps, reason enough for rage in the killing of the passage de l’Hirondelle victim? To fail when working for such a one can’t sit easily.’
‘Giselle and two honest cops who’ve been getting in the way far too many times.’
‘And are to be made martyrs of, in the line of duty, Hermann.’
The French loved their martyrs. ‘The press will be adoring. Occupier and Occupied die in battle to clean up our streets and make them safe again.’
‘I can see the smile on your corpse. Now let’s deal with the Jourdan household and talk about it later. If Jeannot Raymond or anyone else from that agency has beaten us to it, he or they have either left the premises or been far quieter than ourselves.’
The tiny kitchen was a shambles. The single electric lightbulb that had hung above the plain deal table with its toppled cane chairs had been flung against the wall, its frayed cord and sliding weight yanked on.
Having escaped the prison of their overturned birdcage, the gerbils had vanished in fright, the girl having put it between herself and her assailant, but far more wood shavings had been scattered across the floor than even it would have held.
She had snatched up a knife and thrown it, then smashed the light. Under torchlight, two rabbits in the screened airing cupboard beyond the drainboard and sink, watched detective proceedings with evident alarm. The drawstring of the cloth bag Noelle Jourdan must have earlier filled with wood shavings, was loose, the throat wide open, the bag empty.
Among the dark, nutbrown to honey-brown shavings and bits of sawdust on the floor, there were pieces of brightly coloured porcelain: the curly-haired, ash-blonde, cap-wearing head of a pretty, blue-eyed peasant girl, the loose, knee-length pantaloons of the fisher boy she had come to meet.
‘Russian, Hermann. A pair of figurines from the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory.’
‘Things must have seemed okay at first, Louis, the visit perhaps a little late in the day.’
‘The girl in here on her own and getting tomorrow’s supper ready …’
‘The father in with whomever had come to see him.’
‘But then she must have heard something.’
‘That bag would have been hidden.’
‘Only to then be dragged out and opened by the visitor, the figurines removed.’
‘Stood side by side, the accusations given, but was she still hearing things from the other room? Was she, Louis?’
‘These date from about 1825 to 1850. The porcelain is exquisite.’
‘And once worth what? Ten thousand francs at least; five hundred Reichskassenscheine.’
‘Stay here and don’t pop any more of those Benzedrine pills. Let me see what has happened.’
That sympathetic, empathetic, old-soldier-understands tone of voice just couldn’t be tolerated anymore. ‘Confronted, Noelle made a run for it, Louis. Since the door to the flat was wide open and she wasn’t on the stairs, she may have escaped.’
‘Which leaves the father and what she must have heard. Now please … Ah, mon Dieu, be sensible. He’s a grand mutile. He’ll only bring back the memories.’
The poor bastard with the stumps and the dyed black moustache, the shrapnel scars and thinning black hair had snatched the vase de nuit from under the moth-eaten bed that was heaped with blankets. Somehow he had managed to get his trousers down but had collapsed on that one leg of his and had broken the chamber pot.
Christ, the constant diet of vegetables and fruit if one could get them. Ripe on the already ripe air, he had drawn that one knee up and in at a spasm and had emptied himself, had vomited as well, the reactions so swift, he hadn’t known what was happening to him and had died within what?
‘Less than five minutes,’ said Louis. ‘Remember, please, that I did warn you.’
Wearing a knitted blue toque, three pullovers, heavy cords and two socks on that one foot, Jourdan had been bundled up in bed when offered the drink and …
‘The last half of a litre of eau-de-vie de poire, Hermann.’
Uncorked, the bottle stood upright on the rickety night table and next to a spent tube of Veronal, but Jesus, merde alors, how could Louis remain so detached?
The glass tumbler the girl must have unwittingly handed to the visitor was still on the bedside table. Under torchlight, its dregs were not like water, the smell not sweet and pleasant but stingingly pungent.
‘Exposure to air and light darkens it …’ began Louis.
‘Nicotine, damn it?’
‘Usually such an eau-de-vie de poire is either clear or a very pale yellow. This is a dark yellowish brown …’
‘You heard me!’
‘An insecticide, a fumigant?’
‘Please don’t try to convince me you’re really serious about that little farm you keep saying you want to retire to. Worm powders also, idiot, and sheep dip. We once had to put down a neighbour’s Alsatian that wouldn’t stop chasing our flock and killing the lambs. Vati made me hold the dog while he gave it two drops. Only two.’
‘Three or four are sufficient for an adult human-less than sixty milligrams, but more has been used, I think. Though oily, nicotine is soluble in most liquids. The taste is violently acrid and instantly burns the tongue and stomach, but by then it has already struck the central nervous system and most especially the sympathetic and parasympathetic ganglia, where it stops the production of acetylcholine which the nerve endings would normally produce in an attempt to counteract the poison.’
End of lecture. ‘But who the hell in the agence uses sheep dip, if indeed that was what was used?’
‘Someone like yourself who has either worked on a farm or sheep ranch, or has used it simply as an insecticide but witnessed its potential.’