Gott im Himmel, she was a treasure, just like Benedicte Mailloux, but a conspiratorial tone had best be used. ‘What, exactly, happened to her mother?’
‘Ah! who knows? Who can blame her for straying from such a man? The screams in the night, the agony of the shelling relived at the slightest bump and hour by hour. Mine was made of better stuff perhaps. Who’s to say? One day she had a fall and so did my Henri. Two places. The first in that house at Number 25, the second here in the stable out back and a little later. An accident, both of them.’
‘And the boy?’
‘Finally has a good job that pays well and has a future. The colonel saw to it. My husband’s colonel. Things are better now that les Allemands are here, of course, yourself included.’
Two further Gauloises bleues were laid on the slim oak counter of the loge she had ‘inherited’ from Henri, who’d been fucking Madame Mariette Jourdan up in that stable’s loft. Everyone had known of it. Everyone. Noelle least of all.
‘Your son, madame. When do you think he’ll be back?’
‘Not for a few days. He’s often away on a job.’
‘A pickup, you said?’
‘Did I?’
‘Zut alors, I’m only trying to fill things in. My partner will ask. He’s a stickler for details.’
A partner … ‘Furniture and other household items. It’s a furniture company, isn’t it?’
‘Which one?’
‘The Levitan. Very classy, you understand, very expensive in the old days, but a little something for everyone. Business must still be good.’
‘Furniture?’
‘That is just what I said, is it not?’
The Levitan store was in the Faubourg Saint-Martin, in the Tenth, huge and with several warehouses and shops like carpentry ones, ah yes! ‘It was good of your son to come by and let you know he’d be away. Parents always worry, don’t they? Oh for sure, a mother most of all, but fathers too. I know I did.’
Did … ‘You have children?’
‘Had. Two boys, Jurgen and Hans, but … but they were both killed at Stalingrad.’
Hurriedly Nina crossed herself and kissed her fingertips but did this one with the terrible slash and the faded, warm blue eyes want more from her? ‘The boy didn’t come by. Always he is told at work if he is to be away, and I never hear of it until he’s back and worry just as you’ve said, but …’
He waited, this one. Gently he held D’Artagnan under the chin to look at him and then scratched him behind the ears as a cat lover does. ‘But Colonel Delaroche was passing by and thought to come in to tell me.’
‘Today?’
Why should it matter? ‘On Thursday afternoon. This last Thursday.’
Noelle would have been at work. ‘That was good of him. Colonels are usually a bitch to put up with where I come from. Mine certainly were.’
He’d a nice smile, this inspector. Had he still a wife back home in that country of his? Was he lonely for her like so many of them were?
‘Merci, madame. You’ve been most helpful. I’d leave you some of my matches but am nearly out.’
‘And don’t have a lighter?’
‘You wouldn’t know where I could get one, would you?’
‘For a price, yes.’
‘And full of good fluid, not that black-market crap that singes the eyebrows and torches the clouds?’
‘Oui.’
‘How much?’
There would be no sense in this one’s haggling and he obviously knew the system well enough not to bother, but was offering to purchase, not threatening to steal. And weren’t friends needed, especially at such times as these?
Max wouldn’t mind, not really. Max would find her another. ‘Five hundred, I think.’
It was from Cartier’s, was easily worth thirty or forty times that and she knew it too, or knew something of it. ‘Here, take a thousand just to be on the safe side.’
Lost in thought, Louis fingered the lighter as they shared a cigarette in the Citroen, the darkness of place des Vosges all around them. The flics were taking their time in getting here and most probably were checking in with their headquarters at the Prefecture de Paris who would then check in with the rue des Saussaies, who would then do so with the avenue Foch, who would then notify the Hoherer SS Oberg and maybe wake him up.
‘Did you tell her about her son, Hermann?’
‘I couldn’t. She deserves better, has had a hard life.’
‘Yes, yes, but …’
‘Verdammt, we needed information not tears. And as for her having earlier heard that shot of yours, forget it. That one would only have shrugged if asked, and sucked on her fag. You know as well as I that these days everyone clams up and no one admits to having heard a thing.’
‘Or seen anything.’
‘Why kill him if he was working for them?’
‘Them being the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg, Hermann.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘The Aktion-M squads? One of those furniture squads that go around the city and the country raiding the houses of its citizens?’
‘And clearing them out, even of their Jewish toothbrushes and long-handled shovels, this last if not borrowed from that stable? All right, I admit he must have broken the rules and could no longer be trusted, but why kill him in such a fashion and then let the press know of it?’
Hermann was far from being naive and knew the answer well enough but was blaming himself for the sins of his confreres and desperately needed support. ‘To set an example for others, especially as the Agence Vidocq must use part-timers, but still, you’re right. To have killed him in such a rage begs answer just as it did with the passage de l’Hirondelle victim.’
‘Max Auger took the stamps, Louis, and must have shown them to Noelle Jourdan.’
‘Who then took them to Felix Picard of Au Philateliste Savant.’
‘Having first sized up the shop.’
‘Which can only mean that the girl was working with Max as his partner and fence, Hermann. If not the shop, then Ma Tante, but gradually so as not to arouse suspicion.’
‘Except that someone went looking for the collection and noticed that the stamps were no longer in the Levitan’s former furniture store.’
‘Where the Aktion-M squads deposit the furnishings of countless homes for further sorting, packing, repairs, if necessary, and shipment.’
‘To the Reich, to party officials who’ve been bombed out or to others of them who are setting up house in the eastern territories.’
The first such shipment had been made in April of 1941, the second in October of that year, but in July of 1940, the Marechal Petain and his government in Vichy had passed a law allowing the sale of such confiscated property after six months had passed. All proceeds were then to have gone to the Secours National, which, in spite of continued protests from Petain and others, hadn’t yet received a sou, nor would it. But Hermann would never taunt his partner with such complicity and collaboration on the part of this country’s government. Hermann was just too conscious of his partner’s feelings, especially at times like this.
‘We have to face it, Louis. The Agence Vidocq aren’t just working for themselves and Oberg, but also for the ERR.’
‘As are others, each supplying the ERR with targets.’
‘As well as giving the SS the names and locations of resistants.’
‘Business must be really good.’
‘And we’ve stepped right into it.’
A late supper was in progress, the Tour d’Argent that epitome of culinary majesty. Ach, mein Gott, how the other half lives, thought Kohler, taking it all in from behind the grill of the patron’s cash desk and head waiter’s stand. Uniforms everywhere, beautiful Parisiennes too. BOFs, of course, in suits and ties, and Bonzen sporting their Nazi Party pins and gongs. Paris-based administrative types too … Dr. Karl Epting of the Deutsche Institut no less, with wife Alice, a Swiss, the legendary hostess entertaining another crowd of writers, artists and musicians: the latest going-away exchange group that would tour the Reich in the name of Kultur, not forced labour or worse, and no ration tickets needed here. Absolutely none. Would Epting even have heard that one of his part-time teachers had been savagely raped and beaten?