Mannequin (29 page)

‘Tonnerre, monsieur, and quickly!' hissed St-Cyr. The key, idiot. Is he in?'

‘In?' bleated the man, quivering. ‘Yes. Yes, that one is in and has been for the past few days.'

Reluctantly he gave them the key, refusing to meet their eyes. ‘Drunk,' he said. ‘Noisy as usual and then the silence. Let him sleep it off.'

‘Drunk since when, exactly?' asked the Sûreté cautiously.

‘Since Monday late.'

‘It's now Thursday afternoon.'

‘I haven't disturbed him.'

‘Verdammt,
Louis!' Kohler snatched the key and took the stairs two at a time. The flat was nothing much. Two dingy rooms, one of which was used both as kitchen and bedroom …

Fully clothed and still in his overcoat and scarf as if he had just come back from the Château des belles fleurs bleues, Tonnerre lay on his back on the soiled bedspread with his head propped by pillows that long ago had lost their slips.

Above him, strapped to the peeling iron headboard by a dirty band of heavy elastic, was an empty two-litre bottle of ether.

A worn, red rubber tube led from this as a siphon to dangle its end just above his left shoulder. There was a stopcock, a thing of metal that had pinched off the flow. An empty bottle and a closed stopcock … Closed?

‘Maudit,
let's open the windows!'

‘Ah
nom de Dieu,
Hermann, are we to think he killed Joanne, then his friend and then himself?'

‘It's too easy. It isn't right. Why fake the suicide of another if you intend to kill yourself?'

‘Why close the stopcock when the bottle is empty?'

Caught by the rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel, Tonnerre had not been blinded in one eye like his friend but had, through some whim of Chance, lost both ears, part of his cheeks and nose, the lips and lower jaw and, probably, most of his tongue.

‘Two litres, Hermann. It's a lot if one is not accustomed to it and has found it hard to come by of late.'

‘So why is the stopcock closed,
mien lieber
Sûreté? If he passed out with that much in him, how the hell could he have closed it and why?'

‘Precisely,' breathed St-Cyr. Both hands would have been needed. Ether, like alcohol, could be consumed in quantity by the confirmed addict. Highly inflammable and volatile, it evaporated rapidly. Like alcohol, it, too, left little or no stain but would dissolve grease and was, indeed, used as an industrial solvent. ‘The pillows, Hermann. To the left of the head. A faint line of grease from the hair. The pomade of too little washing, dissolved quite recently and then redeposited on evaporation.'

St-Cyr traced the line out but Hermann was looking decidedly green. ‘Ah
merde,
go into the other room, idiot! Leave me with him.'

Kohler fled saying, ‘I'm going to talk to that concierge, Louis. I've got to get a breath of air!'

The door slammed. St-Cyr heard him hesitate in the corridor and knew he was leaning against a wall trying to still the panic. ‘It's been happening too much of late,' he said gravely to himself. ‘He desperately needs to get away from this business for a while.'

But could they ever do so? They were practically the only flying squad left in the Kripo and the Paris Sûreté, the only ones to handle things such as this. Common crime.

Tonnerre's hands were badly scarred but showed no signs of rope marks, of having strangled Joanne. None at all.

Both the index and the middle finger of the right hand were missing—lost to the shrapnel. In that instant of destruction, he had tried to shield his face. Had he groped for the friend he had deceived, the friend to whom he had given nude photos of his lover and written:
This is how she was and what she was really like—
Angèlique Desthieux, the mannequin they had each wanted in their own way, so much so, that this one had thrown acid into her face.

She had had a child by him. Marie-Claire de Brisson.

Wine, cognac and ether … Soup—endless soup and humiliation. The scorn and laughter of ordinary people who ought to have known better. Their turning away in horror. Had the daughter known of him? Had she ever seen and spoken to him?

They would have to find out.

St-Cyr let his eyes search for details and asked softly with a sigh, ‘But if the right hand is disabled, monsieur, why should the tubing not hang to the right of you so that your left hand might better operate the stopcock? Is this why some of the ether has spilled on the pillows? The remaining fingers of your right hand, were they not too clumsy, the mind deadened and long past any feeling of well-being?'

And in any case, why close the stopcock on an empty bottle? No, it was not right.

Caught in the black bristles of poorly clipped whiskers that could never be properly shaven, were tiny, short white cotton fibres. ‘A pad … Ah
grâce à Dieu,
that is why the spill of ether. That is why the stopcock is tightly closed.'

When he heard the door open, he called out, ‘It's murder, Hermann, but like everything else about this case, things are not quite as perfect as they should have been.'

From four to five per cent of ether in air was required for anaesthesia, about 100 to 140 milligrams per 100 cubic centimetres of blood—far more of it than of chloroform. Perhaps four times as much. 160 to 170 milligrams of ether per 100 cubic centimetres of blood would cause respiration to cease. The victim would never know.

‘He hasn't struggled, Hermann. He came in, lay down here and got dead drunk, but if allowed to, would have slept it off.'

‘Whoever held that pad over his face knew exactly how much to use. Lots!'

‘Did the concierge say this one had had a visitor?'

‘No. He said there's a back door to the house and another
passage
leading to it!'

‘The visitor had come and gone. If they themselves could obtain the address from the association of
les baveux,
so could someone else. There'd been several changes of address over the years, nothing out of the ordinary for a badly disabled veteran, to the shame of the nation. Furniture and things that had been acquired before the Great War had had to be sold off bit by bit.

There were only a few changes of clothing, a few framed photographs—none of Angèlique Desthieux. A camera that had been smashed long ago lay in pieces in a cardboard box as if kept in hopes of repairs and to remind him of the past.

‘Torn-up prints, Louis, of her in the buff,' breathed Kohler crouching over the box. ‘Negatives of her playing around in that house. Every piece of furniture that was used in the later photos, a few of the same poses but none of the clothes or the jewellery since those came later.'

‘And none of the more recent photos?'

‘None. If he was in on it, Louis, why hasn't he got them? Why hasn't he been leering over them in his quiet moments between girls?'

Why indeed.

A well-thumbed passbook was fixed with a drawing-pin to the back of a bureau drawer. ‘Crédit Lyonnais, Hermann. Within easy walking distance, as is the Palais Royal. Pension cheques, the disabled veteran's allowance.'

‘Then why hide it?'

There was a grim nod of agreement. ‘Payments of from 3000 to 5000 francs from time to time.'

Kohler took the proffered passbook and, quickly glancing through it, frowned. ‘Tonnerre drove a car to the farm before the Defeat but he couldn't have had the money even then and must have had to borrow one.'

‘But from whom?'

Kohler indicated the passbook. ‘This thing only goes back to January 1939. We'll have to ask the bank to give us the records. We'll put it to Monsieur André-Philippe de Brisson that we absolutely have to know.'

‘Try last May,' hazarded St-Cyr. ‘It's just a hunch.'

‘The 6th, Louis. The day the body of that girl who had the acid dumped on her was found. The day after …'

‘After Marie-Claire de Brison last tried to kill herself, Hermann, and Denise St. Onge rescued her.'

‘A deposit of 5000 francs. Wednesday 6 May 1942.'

‘Now let's see if we can connect the deposits with any of the other girls.'

Try as they did, there was no apparent connection. Sometimes only a month would pass between deposits, sometimes two or even three months and once, only a matter of a week. ‘3000 francs both times,' breathed Kohler.

Tonnerre had obviously been getting money from someone but it had all started well before the kidnappings and the killings, before the Defeat.

‘Gaetan Vergès?' asked Hermann.

‘Or Madame de Brisson, our woman in the street?'

There was no sign of the jewellery Tonnerre had once tried to sell for his friends and fellow droolers. No list of clients, no bills of sale. Nothing, not even a photograph. ‘Denise St. Onge could just as easily have gone straight to the source,' offered Kohler, ‘but if so, then did this one tell her of it?'

‘Things of elegance and refinement for the shop, Hermann, because to forget is to survive.'

‘And the boss knows exactly what she wants.'

At 3.37 p.m. it was early yet for a woman of substance to view paintings at the Jeu de Paume. Denise St. Onge was not puzzled or particularly alarmed by the visit of two detectives to her flat on the boulevard de Beauséjour. She was simply bemused. The thick, dark brown hair that had been cut and waved was worn without pins or parting and a trifle impudently. The angular face that was quite beautiful was cocked to one side as she looked quizzically at them.

She was sitting in one of the deep, soft cream armchairs of her salon that overlooked the Bois de Boulogne, had drawn up her long, black-stockinged legs, her gorgeous legs, and had wrapped her arms about them. The black silk gloves extended well above her elbows, the dress, of black silk, was bare at the shoulders and neck and held by two thin and fragile-looking spaghetti straps.

There was a lace-fringed slip around splendid thighs. There were black briefs and garters—she wanted to be disconcerting. Again St-Cyr swept his eyes over those long legs, again the black, high-heeled shoes and the lower part of the dress, a very fine crêpe de Chine that, in this light, had a silvery look to it.

A gold necklace of thin, triangular plaques held turquoise scarabs. There were small gold ear-rings to match. A bracelet too.

A very beautiful and self-possessed woman of twenty-seven years of age, now pouting with indecision.

At last she said, ‘Inspectors, what you ask is confidential. Marie-Claire is both valued friend and employee. She couldn't possibly have known who her natural father was. Those things are kept secret, aren't they, with the nuns, the Mother Superior …?'

‘Yes, quite secret,' said St-Cyr. ‘It was just a thought, mademoiselle. In cases such as this, all avenues must be explored.'

‘But this … this Monsieur Tonnerre couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the robbery of her father's bank?'

‘That's a question we have to settle,' went on Louis gravely. ‘You see, mademoiselle, a young girl was kidnapped at the same time. My partner and I are, unfortunately, faced with the two problems.'

‘Eighteen million and the disappearance of a girl …? How old, please?'

‘Eighteen. One million, mademoiselle, for every year of her life.'

‘But … but you haven't found her? She … she's not dead, is she?'

The knees were hugged. Louis tossed his head back and shrugged. ‘The matter is still in God's hands but we're working on it.'

They fell to silence, the two of them. The Bavarian, who had come to see her previously, had the better view of her legs and could see more deeply up them when he wanted, which was constantly. A bold man, one bent on unsettling her. The one from the Sûreté had hit his hand rather badly—in a fight? she wondered. The skin over the knuckles was tight and swollen, the hue decidedly yellow but red also and throbbing still. He really did look tough, and wasn't that a gun bulging beneath his dinner-jacket?

‘Mademoiselle de Brisson …' began the Sûreté as if still in doubt as to how best to proceed, ‘could your friend have told anyone about the shipment of such a large sum to the bank of her father?'

She would swing her legs out and, putting her elbows on her knees, rest her chin in her hands and look at them both but only for a moment. ‘Marie-Claire …? Ah! you can't know her. She hardly speaks to her father, Inspectors. They're estranged. Oh
bien sûr,
she lives above their house. It's because of the rent. The bank pays for the house so the rent, it is modest.'

‘Someone learned of that shipment, mademoiselle,' said Louis.

‘Someone who knew that car you borrow would be ready and waiting,' said the one called Kohler, reminding her of his previous visit when he had most emphatically said the same thing.

‘Marie-Claire wouldn't have told anyone of that shipment, Inspectors. She would simply not have known of it. Her father isn't one to reveal such confidential information.'

‘Ah, the father,' said St-Cyr. ‘Is it that you know him well, mademoiselle?'

Was this how it was to be between them? she wondered. The one asking and then the other, both keeping up the pressure? ‘Not well,' she said of de Brisson. Had the one called St-Cyr the eyes of a priest?

‘Where were you when the robbery took place?' asked Kohler.

The Bavarian had started to look around the salon, letting his eyes drift from her body. ‘Me? I was in the back of the shop with … with Marie-Claire, of course. A conference. She wanted to discuss several things.'

‘Such as?' asked St-Cyr quietly.

‘The lingerie, the lipstick, the perfumes—we don't make our own, Inspector, but a shop I know of on place Vendôme, it … it has such a marvellous scent.
Très dangereux,
isn't that correct?'

‘Mirage,' he acknowledged, curtly nodding at her. ‘What else did you discuss?'