Mannequin (19 page)

‘The poor kid.'

‘A mannequin with chestnut hair and deep brown eyes,' said St-Cyr of Angèlique Desthieux, ‘whose career ended abruptly when someone threw acid into her face. She had a business agent, one Albert Luc Tonnerre who fell in love with her in spite of her betrothal to Gaetan Vergès.'

‘Did the drooler know him?'

‘Most probably.'

Then that's one more reason for us to visit the Château,' breathed Kohler, lost to old memories of that other war, to unparalleled suffering and what it had done to decent men. Changed their whole personalities, made some men hate so much they would …

‘There is another reason,' said St-Cyr. ‘Monsieur Vergès senior had a number of paintings in that house. Were they stolen and is this not why the house was emptied so quickly?'

‘The auction … the invitation to the Jeu de Paume and the Ritz.'

‘And afterwards, on the morning of the 1st, the banker's daughter quietly leaves Paris for Dijon and the home of the drooler's ex-fiancée.'

They had both avoided one thing, and Kohler knew he would have to mention it. He started the car—he'd give it a moment to warm up. Christ! It was nearly eight o'clock. ‘One of the victims died of acid burns, Louis.'

‘Ah yes, but the acid was deliberately not thrown in her face. It was poured on the rest of her. That's what puzzles me.'

Silenced by the thought, they drove slowly to the Palais Royal and round past the Bank of France to leave the car in the rue de Valois which was even darker than the Champs-Élysées.

Louis would talk to Madame Lemaire and her maid, leaving the Gestapo half of their partnership to speak to the neighbours on the other side of that empty house, then they would both have a few quiet words with the banker and his daughter.

‘Inspector—Madame, she is still at her supper. Could you …?'

‘Come back a little later?' asked St-Cyr. ‘Ah, no, Mademoiselle Nanette. Murder seldom allows the luxury of such lapses and it is, I fear, your murder I'm worried about.'

‘Mine? Ah no. No!'

He slid into the vestibule, into that tired remnant of a once proud house and touched a finger to his lips as she sat on the little bench Madame Lemaire used when putting on her over-boots or simply resting after coming in from the street. ‘Please, it's best we talk and that you give me straight answers.'

Moisture made her large blue eyes all the clearer, reminding him again and poignandy of Marianne, his dead wife. ‘Nanette, why didn't you tell me that on the night the furniture was taken from next door, you went outside to see whose firm it was? You couldn't have seen this from the windows above the street.'

The darkness … the black-out. He would pry the answers from her now and she would have to tell him. Then he would despise her and not ask his friends if they could find a position for her in their shop when Madame passed away. ‘The noises, Inspector, I … I was worried so I …'

‘When you heard those lorries, you took your life into your hands. Did you not realize how dangerous it was to go out there?'

Her eyes were wiped with her fingers. ‘No one saw me. I … I was careful.'

‘Were there really four men and were they all French?'

‘Yes.'

‘No women?'

‘No. Ah … Perhaps. I … I can't really say. Forgive me, but I can't.'

‘Did they say anything to each other? Come, come, there is very little time.'

‘Only that they must be careful not to make much noise, that they must look as if they were simply doing a job. They … they had papers to … to prove who they were and why they were there. One of them said this to the others and warned them to let him do the talking if the police or the Germans came by.'

More forgeries … the papers would have been taken from the firm's warehouse in Saint-Denis. St-Cyr drew in an impatient breath. The girl must be made to realize he wasn't happy with her answers. ‘Did that one have a name?'

She shook her head. ‘They said so little and I … I was afraid to stay too close to them.'

He would have to let it be but had to ask, ‘Has Madame ever mentioned the name of that firm?'

There was a startled look he would not forget. ‘They … they …'

‘Well, what is it?'

‘Dallaire and Sons used to do all the moving business for the houses of the Palais Royal. Madame, she has told me that when Monsieur de Brisson and his wife and daughter moved in ten years ago, it … it was they who did the moving.'

And now you've trapped yourself, thought St-Cyr, because,
ma chère
Nanette, you didn't ask this of your employer until
after
that house had been emptied. ‘What made you ask her? Come, come, you saw something else. I know you did. Was it then or earlier? Much earlier? People coming and going, a girl …'

She gave a nod and took a deep breath. ‘The cat. I … The cat came to the window-doors of my room. I … I let it in.'

‘When?'

‘Late last spring.'

‘The cat of Madame de Brisson?'

‘Oui.
It wanders. I …'

How pale she was and so preoccupied she didn't even hear Madame Lemaire asking for her. ‘You were lonely and frightened,' he said. Her eyes were downcast, the lashes long and damp. ‘You took the cat in for a little company, Nanette, and Mademoiselle de Brisson came for it.'

‘She had seen me looking out my windows while holding it. She demanded that I return it. I did so.'

‘
And?
'

‘And she told me never again to step out on to the balcony to retrieve it or anything else. She … she has said she would report me to the authorities if I ever went out there again, and … and that she would tell them I was illegally in the city.
Illegally
when I have worked for Madame these past five years and am a
good
girl!'

There was a sudden rush of tears that made him want to comfort her but he must not do so.

‘Could Mademoiselle de Brisson have felt you had seen something you shouldn't have in the house next door?'

The apron was used to blow her nose and wipe her eyes, making him ask himself, Why must God remind him of how unhappy Marianne had been? The long absences, the loneliness of the house at 3 Laurence-Savart. The feeling of still being a foreigner trapped in the big city never knowing if he would return alive from yet another murder case or robbery.

‘Well?' he asked harshly. ‘Nanette, tell me what she thought you must have seen.'

‘There … there was a gap in the curtains—just a little one. A girl with … with her hair in tufts.
Naked
and … and chained by the wrists and ankles so that she …' The girl broke down. ‘She was stretched out, Inspector.
Stretched!
Reaching for the ceiling and … and leaning well forward over the lamp with … with her legs spread widely and her ankles tied to … to the floor.'

‘The lamp?'

The girl dragged in a breath. ‘Painted blue and without its shade. Its
shade!
'

‘When?
'

Would he arrest her? ‘Late last spring. She … she had fainted. She … she looked as though she had fallen asleep but was still chained up like that with … with a rag stuffed into her mouth and … and her eyes blindfolded.'

‘Yet you said nothing to anyone?
Nothing?
'

The girl was frantic. ‘I
couldn'!
I would have been arrested and sent home!'

Was there more? he wondered. The sound of crying, this one awake at night listening to it and
knowing
what was going on!

He must be firm. ‘Did you see anyone else in that room?'

She shook her head as if her life depended on it, was so ashamed.

‘Who did you see on the balcony, Nanette? Was it only Mademoiselle de Brisson or was there someone else?'

The girl bolted and ran from him. He heard her on the stairs, heard her fling herself on to her bed, heard weeping as if she herself was one of the victims.

She lay with her face buried in the pillows. Madame Lemaire was now shouting at the top of her ancient lungs and banging her cane. A decanter fell …

‘M … Monsieur de Brisson,' blurted the girl.
‘De Brisson!
He watched at my windows for the longest time and … and finally he went away.'

‘You didn't draw the curtains?'

‘I was waiting to see if anyone would come to the house next door. I was sitting in a far corner of my room, in darkness. It was not so very late. Perhaps only eleven o'clock.'

You fool! he said but to himself. Again he asked when this had happened and again she said. ‘In the late spring. Just a few days after Mademoiselle de Brisson found me with their cat.'

‘Did Monsieur de Brisson go into the house next door? Come, come, Nanette, now is not the time to hesitate or hide the truth.'

‘He
must
have! He went that way, Inspector, and not back towards his house. For the longest time I waited, but then the telephone rang and Madame … I was so afraid it would awaken her but … but when I answered it, they hung up.'

There were the usual things in the bedroom of a girl such as this. A heavy white flannel nightgown was folded over the back of a chair. There were no slippers. Like so many these days, she would wear two or even three pairs of woollen socks to bed.

Letting himself out on to the balcony, St-Cyr made his way next door to peer into that empty house and test its lock and door handle.

How was access gained? Had Monsieur Vergès left a key with someone? The banker? A notary—this would be the most logical—but how had he kept the Germans from requisitioning the house?

Kempf? he asked. Had Kempf seized on the use of the house and made certain no one in authority would interfere?

If so, then the Sonderführer and Denise St. Onge most probably had visited Mademoiselle de Brisson in her attic
pied-à-terre
as early as September of 1940, and it was then that the possibility of using the house had been conceived.

‘Access could simply have been a matter of breaking in and replacing the glass, he muttered to himself.' Once a spare key was found in the house, they could come and go at will, or perhaps they changed the locks.'

Through the darkness all he could discern was the line of the rooftops across the garden and more dimly beyond them, those of the houses on the rue de Montpensier. Leaving the girl with a warning to say nothing to anyone, he went downstairs and outside, to enter the house from the street.

Empty, it had its own feeling as if the walls, the voices of those girls, cried out to him.

Shining his pocket torch briefly on the ceiling, he found where the ringbolts had been—the holes had been plastered over and painted but this had been done in haste and the plaster not allowed to dry.

The holes in the floor had simply been filled with sawdust and wax.

If only Madame Lemaire's maid had spoken up. How many would have been saved? Two—would it have been two or three?

But he couldn't find it within himself to blame the girl. He understood only too well how fragile her position was even after five years of service.

As far as he could determine, the attic window-doors hadn't been forced nor had a pane of glass been broken and replaced. They had had a key, then, right from the start. A key …

Hermann was waiting for him beside the Citroën. ‘Nothing, Louis. A bookseller and his assistant in the attic flat who claims he is nearly deaf and that the assistant doesn't stay the night. Homosexuals who won't say a thing for fear of drawing attention to themselves and getting a one-way ticket to nowhere. A medical doctor, his wife and son in the flat below who must be out having supper, then the owner of a department store who says he saw and heard nothing. Absolutely nothing!'

‘Good. That makes life easier for us. I've just cracked a bank and must transfer my accounts to another.'

‘Monsieur de Brisson?'

‘The same.'

*  *  *

The descendants of the Kings of Prussia ate in uniform—blue, grey and black or the business suits of the mighty—amid the sumptuously warm glitter of the restaurant. Gilded, trifold, mirrored screens reflected the gaiety of bejewelled mistresses and wealthy friends. A banker, the owner of a racing stable, a judge—all sat before framed tapestries of barefooted, docile girls, a lamplighter, a gatherer of grapes.

‘Sliced testicles of water buffalo in sauce lyonnaise,' seethed the Sûreté as they followed the maître d' among the tables. ‘Braised anaconda steaks in cream with poached cobra eyes! Hermann,
mon vieux,
you must leave this one to me, eh? Let me have the son of a bitch on little wedges of toast!'

‘Be my guest!' grinned the Bavarian. ‘Remember I've got the only shooter.'

‘His is between his legs!'

Oh-oh, the Frog was really hopping.

Louis pushed the maître d' aside so as to make the introductions himself. ‘Monsieur de Brisson? Madame, mademoiselle, please forgive this slight intrusion into what I know must be a private family supper.'

‘Georges, what is the meaning of this?' demanded de Brisson of the head waiter.

‘Don't fuss,' hissed St-Cyr. ‘It's not his fault. Tip him generously and see that he finds us two chairs before the embarrassment of our visit causes you grief.'

The chairs were brought. The
truite aux amandes pochée au vin blanc—
the poached trout with almonds—looked superb. Cooked in white wine first, then dipped in egg yolk, rolled in thinly sliced almonds and lightly browned in butter and olive oil, the meal made a poor detective sweat with desire. Where had they managed to get all the ingredients?

Kohler lifted a bottle to examine the label. ‘The dregs of a Romanée-Conti 1915, Louis.
Jésus, merde alors,
where were we then, eh? Cleaning the dust and shit from the shelling out of our eyes and ears, or was it the remains of some poor bastard's guts?'