Gypsy (20 page)

‘Not if he's up and died of strychnine poisoning.' An agony if true.

Flypapers, the half-metre long pull-out coils of sticky brown celluloid which were hung from kitchen ceilings in summer, offered the greedy, the calloused, the intransigent and the jilted lover a ready means to an end. Boiled in water until it was all but dry, their last few remaining droplets were deadly.

‘Let's ask Jacqmain,' said St-Cyr. Hermann banged on the door but of course, there could be no answer, not after such thoughts.

The
flic
on the beat was swift. They'd need the magistrate's order. Kohler flashed his Gestapo shield and was about to kick the door in when the butcher came huffing out with a spare key.

All others were prevented from entering. ‘We'll be certain to consult you,' soothed the Sûreté. ‘
Certain
!' He slammed the door and locked it.

Then they stood a moment in the entrance before the dished and hollowed steps of the staircase. Neither knew, really, what to expect.

‘The newspapers from Paris, Louis,' said Hermann as he started up. ‘News of the Gypsy, the Ritz, the safe of Hans-Albrecht Wehrle, diamond buyer for the Reich.'

‘Nana Thélème and Gabrielle … both have not confided everything in us.'

‘Since when would women ever do that?'

He was sitting in his study, had been looking fondly through a photo album but had set this carefully aside on top of the Paris papers. A much-used pair of field glasses, a water bottle, compass, loupe on its lanyard, sheath knife, match tin and cigarette case were also there.

It was Louis who said, ‘Hermann, please go into the salon and have a little look around. Take no more of that benzedrine – I've been warning you it's addictive and that your heart will pack it in when I need you most. You're not flying a nightfighter over Stalingrad.'

Always it was blitzkrieg for them, thought Kohler. ‘Why couldn't the son of a bitch have been tidier?'

St-Cyr could hear his partner throwing up into the kitchen sink. Hermann was just too tired of the sight of death. Afraid of it, haunted by it, the bodies of his two sons now frozen in the clay of Russia but still a constant nightmare.

The twin barrels of an old-fashioned Paradox elephant gun had discharged their number 4 calibre shots into the roof of Jacqmain's mouth after which the head had simply disintegrated.

The gun, which must weigh nearly ten kilos, had been propped against a partially opened upper drawer, Jacqmain holding the muzzle in his mouth.

Recoil had splintered the wood and had caused the gun to hit a framed wall map of the Congo, shattering its glass and breaking a lamp.

A single length of string was tied to the left trigger – Jacqmain had known from experience that cocking both hammers, though pulling only one trigger, would discharge the two. He must have run the string behind a front leg of the desk to give purchase.

Powder smoke would have filled the air, the sound deafening – had no one heard it?

Blood and brains had been sprayed across the wall behind the chair and on the ceiling too. An eagle, a honey guide, a francolin, stork and marabou all stared at the carnage through glass eyes.

A grey parrot roosted on a perch above the desk, a former camp-friend no doubt.

The soft-nosed slugs, each weighing more than a hundred grams, had embedded themselves in the ceiling timbers which were now exposed and freed of their centuries of plaster. There were patches of scalp whose short, iron-grey hair looked like some strange sort of fungal growth. There were teeth, bits of bone … The eye of the cinematographer in St-Cyr recorded everything. It helped. It gave distance. It fed that curiosity which was so necessary.

‘The Generalmajor Wehrle … his presence here, monsieur, it frightened you, did it not?' he asked aloud. Always he had found talking to the victim and to himself helped. ‘You had had the assurances not just of Mademoiselle Thélème but of Gabrielle Arcuri. Two beautiful women. Both chanteuses. What, please, did you do with the money the Generalmajor paid you? You could not have deposited it all at once. There would have been far too many raised eyebrows. Ah! the neighbours – one of them at least – watched your every move.'

It was now Wednesday the twentieth. The money had been paid out, and the diamonds collected, on Tuesday the twelfth.

‘850,000 francs,' he muttered. ‘About one-tenth of the value. Among them there were 657 carats of
Jagers
, Top Capes and Capes. “An excellent haul,” the Generalmajor said.'

The Paris papers were yesterday's, and he must have got them in the late afternoon or early evening.

Rigor had set in, and from the presence of the newspapers, it was clear enough Jacqmain had been dead for less than twenty-four hours. ‘Last night, then. A small supper, a glass of wine. Perhaps a brandy or two afterwards,' he muttered, but Dutch courage would not have been needed. Many times you had faced the charging lion or tiger, the elephant too.'

Yet he had been afraid of arrest.

The money … a good portion of it … had still to be in the house, but where? Neither Nana Thélème nor Gabrielle could have taken it, could they? since the Generalmajor had come at 7 p.m. and at so late a time, he had been forced to spend the night in a hotel room, he'd said.

But, had Gabrielle returned? Vouvray was near; the château of her mother-in-law, the Countess Thériault, a little closer. She could have come back easily, and would at least have called in to see René Yvon-Paul, her son.

But had she come back here to take the money into safekeeping for Monsieur Jacqmain, and why, please, would he have entrusted it to her? Had he known her that well?

Questions … there were always questions. Hermann could help with the search. ‘But I cannot ask him to enter this room again.'

The figurine in the bell jar was of a classical nude, seated not on a stone bench but on some sort of creature, half lion, half hound. She was gazing questioningly to her left and rested that elbow on the creature's head whose fangs were bared so that the snarl it gave was directed at the viewer.

Executed in a fine, white alabaster, and perhaps in 1810, the piece was not valuable as such but curious only in that Monsieur Jacqmain had quite obviously admired it.

The thing was on the satinwood writing-table in his bedroom and beneath a portrait of his mother. This young woman's auburn hair was fashioned into a diadem from which silken wisps escaped. Her dress was of the
belle époque
. The ruffled neckline was low, the expression introspective, she was seated in a straight-backed chair that was all but hidden by the soft pink folds of her dress.

There were other sketches, all of women, all clothed. Indeed, even with the figurine, Jacqmain's bedroom could well have been that of his mother, of a woman of refinement. There was a dressing screen decorated with needlepoint vines and tropical birds on a black matt background. There was a sewing basket … no cosmetics, a hand mirror, no necklaces, rings or pins – Ah! he had not liked to dress up as his mother or as any other woman. There was nothing to suggest it.

And still there was no sign of the money.

There had been nothing in his bank book to record even a modest deposit. Simply the biweekly withdrawals of 350 francs in cash, a frugal life. Nor would the cash have been placed in a safe-deposit box – that would have been far too risky and by law, such a sum would have had to have been declared.

Jacqmain had kept the diamonds in the house and must simply have put the money in the same place.

When Hermann called down from the attic, St-Cyr went up with him to find those two rooms jammed with the still crated kit of a prospector whose safaris had been ended by the war.

‘Ah
merde
, where did he hide that money?'

‘Maybe he never had it, Louis. Maybe our Generalmajor promised to pay it but conveniently forgot, though he told us otherwise.'

‘Herr Max was a witness to what he said. Have you forgotten this?'

‘Not for a moment. Something's not right. This thing is beginning to smell even worse than we thought.'

‘Happy hunting then.'

‘We'll be here all night, have you thought of that?'

‘Of course. It's all in a day's work. When one finds the indicator minerals, one must search for the diamonds, isn't that so?'

‘Piss off. Go on back to his bedroom but
don't
take too long!'

In a bedside table drawer there were two small albums of photographs. The first was of Nana Thélème as chanteuse and dance instructress or caught on the street with a friend or in some café, and it was obvious Jacqmain had been infatuated by her, for the album had been well thumbed. The second was far newer and of Tshaya, of Madame Lucie-Marie Doucette, wife of the Spade. All of the photographs revealed her without a stitch. Back and front, but there were more shots of the back. They were brutal photographs in the coldness of their portrayal which she had fiercely defied when facing the camera.

‘The house on the rue de la Bourde,' breathed Kohler, having given up the search.

‘You go. I'll continue looking.'

‘Not at those. Gabi might not like it.'

‘Then take them with you. They might help loosen a tongue since they could not have been taken without the madam of that place having agreed.'

‘And for payment, eh?'

‘Surely not 850,000 francs!'

When he found a bullwhip made out of the grey and plaited hide from the belly of a ‘white' rhino, St-Cyr began to think he understood the prospector's secret desires.

*

The
chambre de divertissements détachés
of the house of the hesitant touch held a carpet and a well-padded, ancient armchair. An ashtray and champagne bucket were provided, as were a few cushions should the viewer need them to glue himself better to the eyepiece in the wall.

A
Défense de parler
notice warned the client or clients to control any such urges. Kohler had seen it elsewhere on numerous occasions. A student of the
maisons de tolérance
, he looked only for what was unique.

Madame de Bonnevies … ‘Madame Charlotte' to her girls … was not happy. This perfumed battleship of fortitude was in trouble and knew it. She had broken the law on two counts and he'd told her this straight off so as to level the playing field and save time.

‘Monsieur l'inspecteur,' she huffed and whispered, teasing dyed red curls. ‘Lucie-Marie Doucette – this “Tshaya” you speak of – was intransigent and known to us by another name and with good papers.
Mon Dieu
, what was a poor, delicate creature such as myself to do with that one? She was rebellious, moody, deceitful, silent, wicked, cunning and utterly uncontrollable. Many times she had to be held down or tied so that the client could have the little moment he had paid for and not suffer the indignities of rejection and her fingernails.'

‘Or her teeth,' breathed Kohler softly, causing Madame de Bonnevies to jerk her head as if struck.

The ruby lips were pursed in defiance. Rouge rained from quivering cheeks. ‘The teeth, of course.'

She was superb! Big, tough, all business and not in the least about to back down even if in trouble. ‘So Tshaya came to you in the summer of 1941 and on the run from deportation?'

It had been and still was a criminal offence to hide such people. ‘In late August, or was it in the first week of September?' she asked herself. ‘I … I did not know she was on the run. Her papers were perfect. Her name was …'

‘Yes, yes, but you saw profit in her ass.'

Must he be so crude? ‘I saw profit in her body, yes.'

‘And Monsieur Jacqmain … we'll get to why you allowed him into a
lupanar
that was reserved for the Reich, so don't hold your breath. What was his reaction?'

Even with the need to whisper this one was formidable. The scar down the left cheek from eye to chin was the mark of a duelling foil, or was it, perhaps, that of a rawhide whip? ‘All men have their
bêtes noires
, is that not so?'

Their pet hates. ‘Mine's not women who I feel need to be whipped.'

‘He … he liked to watch. He … he always said the scars, they … they relieved him of the agonies he felt towards his mother.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Ah! Inspector, is it that you also have visited such foreign parts and have become accustomed to tastes a mother would not wish to hear of her son?'

She was roasting him now with those swift brown eyes of hers. ‘Explain yourself,' he managed.

She would shrug and say, ‘It was nothing to me, you understand, but Madam Jacqmain had disowned her son for living in sin with the blacks and the coffee-coloureds. That poor man had pleaded with her for forgiveness in his letters home. He said he had scourged the girls most completely but … but then had succumbed to base desires and had had his way with them.'

Verdammt
! ‘So you let Jacqmain come in here even though the house was off-limits, and
nur für Deutsche
?'

And only for Germans.

‘Well?' he demanded, startling her for he'd raised his voice.

‘I … I had known him from before the Defeat. A regular, you understand. From time to time, after the war had ended for us, he would inquire if we had anyone suitable and if I would let him in but this … this was not possible.'

Kohler waited while she fingered her lace blouse in thought. ‘Then this … this Lucie-Marie arrived and I … I knew at once how relieved Monsieur Jacqmain would be. The stress in a man, you cannot imagine.… I let him watch her.'

‘And broke the rules.'

‘Was it such a crime? He did not touch her or any of the other girls. He only watched. One night a week … Two nights occasionally, when things were very bad with him. He paid well and it … it was good for business.'

‘But you worried about it. There could be problems. She was intransigent – you've said so yourself. Her papers might have been good enough to let her walk freely about town but her skin was too dark, right? yet she hungered for a little freedom. Oh
bien sûr
, you had paid off the
préfet
and probably even the Kommandant but it couldn't last, so you informed the authorities in Paris. There was the reward of 100,000 francs to consider, eh? And they, realizing what you had, came at once to put her to use.'