‘Jeannot Raymond … Did he go back to the agence to get it, while we were both in with the colonel and the others?’
‘Earlier I didn’t have time to look in his office. It might not even have been there.’
‘And the pear brandy?’
‘Enjoys it as I do on occasion, but perhaps more often. Noelle Jourdan is of the same age and looks a lot like Giselle, Hermann. Please remember that if we find her, it may not be Giselle. Let me be the one to look closely, not yourself.’
Duels, eyes pierced and poisons, place des Vosges had seen them all and too often. Number 24 had been de Vitry’s hotel particulier in 1617 when he’d assassinated Concino Concini, the Florentine, on the whispered orders of a sixteen-year-old boy, King Louis XIII. Concini had, of course, been his mother’s probable lover and definite favourite, Marie de Medici who’d been queen of France for ten years and had been married to Henry IV, that ‘chicken-in-every-peasant’s-pot-every-Sunday’ king who’d been stabbed to death in 1610, and certainly Concini, made marechal de France and marquis d’Ancre by her, had been too greedy and had used his spies too often, but to behead that one’s wife, Leonora Galigai, for sorcery and then to burn her at the stake?
Christ, the French; Christ, this place. Louis would be feeling it. Louis had brought him here in the autumn of 1940 and had taken him from house to house as that grandmother of his must have done. ‘To understand Paris and its crime,’ he had said, ‘is to understand its history. Wealthy or poor, it binds each citizen, even those whose families have more lately adopted the city as their own. Though all might seem oblivious to this history, they breathe it in every day whether you think they do or not.
‘Know the city like your hand, Hermann. Know its moods, its quiet places, its intricate avenues of fast retreat.’
Wise words. The courtyard of Number 2 was paved with cobblestones that had felt the centuries. Beyond it there was the stable Noelle Jourdan must have run to, for she’d found that car of theirs and not thrown away the stained white apron she’d been wearing, but had dragged it off and hung it out as a flag for them under one of the colonnaded arches. Louis had found it and had softly said, ‘This way, mon vieux.’
‘Just tell me why the one or ones who are after her also left it out for us?’
Up from the cobblestones came the mist, down from the heavens that first sprinkling of the usual.
The stable door was open, the stench of horse piss as present as the centuries of it.
‘Are you okay?’ whispered Louis.
‘I’ll just go up its ladder. I won’t be a minute.’
‘Giselle, Hermann. Remember, please, that Noelle Jourdan really does look a lot like her.’
Made of poles, hammered together with hand-forged spikes, the ladder’s rungs were worn and slivered in places, and on one of these the girl had caught her skirt and had pulled a thread.
On another, she had caught the heavy, cable-stitched pullover she must have been wearing, but of course detectives can’t climb such a ladder with gun and torch in hand. It’s either the one or the other.
‘Hermann … ?’
‘Louis …’
He had reached the loft and had swung himself up on to it, the beam of that torch of his cutting a quick swath across time-darkened roof timbers.
The light was gone-Hermann knew its brightness would only destroy his night vision when needed and had switched it off. Back pressed to one of the timbered uprights, St-Cyr waited. Merde, it was dark. Leaking, the roof let water piddle on the stones of the floor, increasing the stench of the years.
‘Louis …’
It wasn’t a cry, wasn’t even a gasp, seemed only to embody despair. ‘I’m coming, Hermann. Please hold on. Watch out, too, eh? We’re not alone. He …’
Time had no meaning. Time had suddenly evaporated. One moved only when absolutely necessary and then solely by feel. One didn’t dare to show a light.
Hermann called out, ‘Louis!’ once again and louder. No answer was possible because none could be given. The stalls were not empty but cluttered with the parsimonious hoarding of the stable’s owner or past owners, the building no longer kept under lock and key, and yet things that could have found use had been left in place. Wooden water buckets, a scythe … Had one of the gardeners once stored things here? Frayed rope, a shovel, another and another-the police academy killing? St-Cyr had to ask-a rake, an axe and the instant relief of having found it first.
Had the owner a son? he wondered. Though Matron Aurore Aumont had stated that she hadn’t known if the girl had had any friends, Noelle Jourdan had obviously known of the stable.
A side door gave out on to a slender passage, but did this lead to another courtyard, another house and then to the rue de Birague?
A breath was taken … Ah, sacre nom de nom, Hermann, our killer is standing in this passage, not a metre from me.
Down on his hands and knees in the loft, Kohler tried to steady himself. The blood was still hot and rushing from the throat, the wound from ear to ear. He knew her eyes would be open in shock, felt her nose, her lips. Giselle? he had to ask, for her hair had been worn short, worn just like this one’s, the shoulders were just as fine, the back, the seat, that gentle mound, all still clothed, the girl lying face down in a puddle of her draining.
I’m sorry, he tried to say but knew he mustn’t. Louis hadn’t answered him. Louis …
Softly St-Cyr drew back the Lebel’s hammer to full cock, knowing that this would be heard by the killer, knowing too that he had but one chance.
Plank by plank, he traced out the boards from that door to where he and the killer were standing, only the wall between them. Had the killer come alone? Had a Surete the right to shoot without first giving the challenge?
A breath came and he heard it, but it was closer now, much closer, and with it came another sound but …
‘IT WASN’T A CUTTHROAT, LOUIS!’
The hammer fell on a damp, dead cartridge. The hammer had to come back and fall again. The flash of fire momentarily blinded as boards splintered, the sound of the shot rolling away …
‘LOUIS!’ cried out Kohler.
The acrid stench of spent black powder filled the air. ‘I missed him, Hermann. He realized he’d been given a reprieve and took it. Those cartridges you got me from stores …’
Up in the loft, Louis took one look at her under torchlight and said, ‘You’re right, that was no cutthroat. Blood has shot a good metre from the end of that knife as he swung it away. Has he slaughtered sheep? She was on her hands and knees and trying to scramble away, was taken from behind, grabbed by the hair, the head yanked back as the throat was cut, and then … then was held down, clamped firmly between his knees as if on a farm or ranch until all motion had stopped.’
All quivering even. ‘Otherwise she might still have run for a little.’
Good for Hermann. Such a thing was definitely possible. ‘But she would never have made it down that ladder.’
‘Could well have pitched off the edge of the loft.’
‘He wanted us separated and realized that if she had fallen to the floor below, we wouldn’t have been.’
‘He’s trouble, Louis.’
‘Most definitely.’
‘And now?’
‘We must find him, but first the Jourdan flat again.’
‘He might have gone back there …’
‘Having anticipated that we would realize we had to.’
Ah, merde, trust Louis to have seen it: ‘If we are ever to find out how that girl came by the things she did.’
‘And what, exactly, that father of hers has been stating in his letters to former compagnons d’armes. Jourdan praised the girl for having let the press in to photograph Madame Guillaumet and cursed the hospital staff for admitting such women. He was all too ready to blame them for betraying their husbands.’