Tapestry (28 page)

Background noise from the club above them filtered down. The colonel didn’t say a thing. Bob waited, watching the girls and hearing the babble of them as, in single file, a robe or some other flimsy bit of costume tossed over a shoulder, they came down the stairs ready to change for the next act but were momentarily more worried about taking a tumble and crashing into the others. Legs … beautiful legs …

Pungent on the air came the scent of talcum powder and cigarette smoke,
eau de Javel
and chlorine, too, for didn’t the Lido have a bathing pool up there? Of course it did, with nymphs
en costume d’Ève
who swung back and forth on swings above the audience before throwing their arms straight out or up to take the plunge.

Perfume, the cheap and the expensive, was on the air with body odours of all kinds, those of clogged drains, too, and of blocks of limestone, for these last made up the cellar walls. Garlic, Louis would have said. Onions,
mon vieux,
and the
vin d’ordinaire,
the
rouge, n’est-ce pas
? The sulphur of freshly struck matches as cigarettes are lit and quick drags taken.

‘Bob!’ shouted one. ‘
Ah, mon Dieu, mon petit brave
, you’ve come back to see us again.’

‘No more worries, eh, Bob?’ shouted another. ‘No more thoughts of Lulu?’

Bob didn’t bark. Bob didn’t wag his tail. Bob waited.

‘Come to Martine,’ urged one with open arms, bare breasts, bare everything. ‘Colonel, let him come. You know how he likes to see us. You’ve been keeping him away too long.’

A smile was given, not a grin, for a man like Delaroche never grinned. Bob’s lead was unclipped but still he stayed until the colonel softly said, ‘All right. Go and say hello.’

Still he didn’t bark or bay. Nose to the floor, he went into the lights, to mirrors upon mirrors and gowns and scattered or unscattered female underthings and lots and lots of loving.

Bob said hello to every one of the thirty or more that were crowded into the two long rooms. He didn’t play favourites. They laughed, whistled, clapped, called, cuddled, told each other not to be greedy and urged him to come to them, competing totally for his affection.

He didn’t run and knock the children over. He was careful. The baby, nestled in its bassinet and asleep after a quick snack, was given but the gentlest touch of his muzzle, not even a lick; the four-year-old who had constantly sucked her thumb, had to pull it out to timidly pet and then hug him dearly. A hero.

But then, puzzled, he looked around for someone else and couldn’t understand why they weren’t also present. He started to hunt, and no amount of the colonel’s calling him back, not even a muted curse, could stop him. He went out into the foyer at the base of that staircase. He sniffed at two or three of the steps, went right up them and came back. Satisfied, he hurried along the dimly lit corridor that led, probably, to one of the club’s many storage rooms, only to stop when he reached the wall telephone. Standing, he got a whiff of that too, then headed right back and into the dressing rooms to look about and try to decide what was still missing.

Under the chintz skirt of one of the dressing tables—bare knees had to be quickly swung aside—he worried over something, gave a throaty growl, angry at first, the hindquarters up and tail ready.

‘Lulu’s b …’ said one, only to stop herself as Bob dragged it out, worried at it with a paw, then laid it at his master’s feet.

An India rubber bone. Well chewed by the look and a constant comfort, but no comfort at all? wondered Kohler. Delaroche had thought it best to distract this Kripo with female flesh and keep him from going to the
agence
but was now thinking better of it.

Back Bob went for more, and when he had that item, he dragged it out by its handle and the one who had swung her legs aside blurted, ‘Élène’s case.’

No one moved. Not Bob, not any of the girls.

‘Where is she, Colonel?’ asked another. ‘What’s happened to her?’

Merde,
something would have to be said, thought Delaroche. ‘We’re working on it.’

‘That makes two of us, Colonel.’

‘Kohler, we’ll discuss it later.’

‘Of course, but I’m glad to know the
agence
is involved.’

All thirty-two or -six of them stopped whatever they’d been doing. They waited for answers. They damned well wanted them. ‘Well?’ said a forty-year-old with the stretch marks big babies invariably leave for one to hide.

Bob nudged the fitted case, pushing it across the cracked linoleum until it rested not at the colonel’s feet, but at those of this Kripo. Sorrowfully he looked up and waited, too, for an answer. A missing dog and a missing showgirl.

That answer was not long in coming. It couldn’t be, if only partially given. Reaching into a jacket pocket, Kohler took out the girl’s wedding ring—
Ach
, he’d wrapped it in a pair of white pongee step-ins he must have taken from the judge’s flat, but had no memory of having done or even of where, precisely, among those rooms he’d found them, but … ‘This is it, eh, Bob?’ he heard himself asking, heard the collective gasp, saw lips part, despair enter the gazes of some, tears those of others.

‘Élène’s,’ said one. ‘I knew she was for it. I had a feeling.’

‘Kohler, where the hell did you find that?’ hissed Delaroche.

‘Maybe Bob had best tell us, Colonel, or is it that you already know?’

Not a feather moved. Cigarette smoke trailed.

‘Would I even be asking if I did?’ asked Delaroche.

‘Lulu’s gone and Bob’s no longer worried about her, Colonel,’ said one to break the impasse.

‘They had a fight. Bob’s ear was badly torn,’ said another.

They looked at each other, these girls, and nodded at one of their number.

‘Élène took her, Colonel,’ said the forty-year-old den mother. ‘We knew Madame de Brisac had hired you to find Lulu. We weren’t going to tell you but now … now that Élène hasn’t come to work, we’d best, since that one has her ring.’

‘Lulu was causing Élène lots and lots of trouble,’ said another. ‘Madame Rouget
would
insist on bringing that damned dog of her friend’s down here to see us.’

‘And do the same when we were up onstage.’

‘Now wait a minute,’ said Kohler. ‘Was Madame Rouget asked to do this by Madame de Brisac?’

The girls threw glances at one another. ‘It’s possible,’ said one, ‘but not likely.’

‘It wasn’t Élène’s fault, Inspector. You are a cop, aren’t you?’

‘I am.’

‘I thought so.’

‘I did too.’ ‘So did I …’
‘Et moi aussi,’
came the chorus. ‘One can always tell with those.’

Heads were nodded.

‘Lulu wasn’t a regular like Bob, Inspector. Oh for sure, she was friendly enough but she hated
Monsieur le Juge
who had savagely kicked her in the park last October.’

‘The Parc Monceau?’

‘How is it that you know this, please?’ asked the den mother suspiciously.

‘Never mind, but why did Élène Artur ask to meet the judge there? That’s not the usual sort of place for a girl like that, is it?’

They all shrugged. Some looked away, others stared right back at him. Pregnant, wasn’t she? he wanted to ask but didn’t need to and had best not since the colonel was taking a decided interest in things. ‘Continue.’

‘
Ah, bon
, since you ask it of me. Lulu could be very friendly with Élène, too, you understand, but hated
Monsieur le Juge,
and when Lulu smelled him on the girl after those two had been together during the
cinq à sept
or even earlier in the day, she just went crazy even though the judge was no longer present.’

‘Angry,’ said one.

‘A real hothead,’ yet another.

‘Would bite and bark and sometimes even tear at Élène’s coat or dress when she came in.’

‘Irish terriers are good with most people but can be …’

‘Bitchy,’ said another, ‘especially with big dogs like Bob who was only trying to defend Élène from attack.’

‘Madame Rouget also had her daughter Denise bring Lulu in to see us, Inspector. Twice, I think, or was it three times?’

‘Four. Poor Élène didn’t know what to do.’

But she did.

It wasn’t wise of her to leave the chief inspector alone in the outer office, Suzette told herself, but she absolutely had to get cleaned up. He would go through the papers on her desk. He’d see beyond a shadow of doubt that Madame Henriette Morel was being billed ten thousand francs each this month for the Barrault and Guillaumet investigations, as she’d been billed last month. He’d find M. Garnier’s files on Madame Barrault and Madame Guillaumet, files that were to have been locked up in the colonel’s office had that one come back from Chez Bénédicte’s or not have left the door to his office locked as always when he was away, and sometimes even when he was here and in there with a particularly beautiful client.

The inspector would see that on her desk there was also the invoice she had typed for the parents of Captain Jean-Matthieu Guillaumet, who was in the officers’ POW camp at Elsterhorst. Twenty thousand francs they’d been billed this month alone for the
agence
’s finding ‘conclusive evidence’ of Madame Guillaumet’s plans to commit adultery. The Ritz, no less!

‘And then?’ whispered Suzette to herself. ‘Then he will discover that the Scapini Commission in Berlin, the Service diplomatique de prisonniers de guerre, have requested an estimate of the cost of just such a “conclusive” investigation of her and that this estimate has been placed at between forty thousand and fifty thousand francs.’

It would do no good for her to stand here stupidly and cry. She must get back, but he would also find that that same commission, at the insistence of Madame Marie-Léon Barrault’s husband, who was in the camp for common soldiers at Stablack in Poland, had demanded that such an investigation of his wife be done. Cost: ten thousand francs a month, but that since Corporal René-Claude Barrault had no money of his own, Madame Henriette Morel had willingly volunteered to cover that cost as well. Thirty thousand francs then, this month alone to Madame Morel: ten for Madame Barrault, ten for Madame Guillaumet and ten for the Scapini’s request.

‘Un gogo,’
M. Hubert Quevillon had said of the woman. He had flashed some of the photos he used from time to time to convince prospective customers that their husbands were indeed fooling around behind their backs. Totally naked girls.

‘A sucker,’ she swallowed, glancing accusingly at herself in the mirror that was above the washbasin. Madame Morel was being billed
twice
for the Barrault investigation and once for the Guillaumet, whose in-laws were also forking over twenty thousand francs for that one, and soon it would be the Scapini Commission also, whose cost those same in-laws would gladly pay since the Scapini could recommend to the courts that charges be laid and a divorce granted.

A racket, that’s what it was. She knew the chief inspector would find out all of this from her desk alone—Madame de Brisac’s invoice was there too, the search for Lulu, a lost dog: no charge at all. Nothing.
Absolument rien
simply because that one was not only an old friend but had recommended the firm to Madame Rouget who in turn had recommended it to her daughter Denise and to Germaine de Brisac, the daughter of the other one. The things one did for business. But having scratched the surface, would the inspector not want more?

Hurriedly she took off her slip and underpants and, rolling them into a tight ball, tucked them into her bag. She would put on her overcoat to hide the skirt’s dampness, had best get ready to go home—
oui, oui,
that is what she’d do. Lock the door and lock him out of the office.

‘Inspector, I must close up now.
Grand-mère,
she will worry. Always it’s the same with her, you understand. She watches the clock, poor thing, and worries especially now with … with all of these terrible attacks.’

A lie, of course, but had he believed her? He gave no indication, hadn’t been standing anywhere near her desk, had been sitting—yes, sitting patiently by the door—and said, ‘
Ah, bon
, mademoiselle. It’s best my partner and I come back in the morning.’

‘Sunday … It will be Sunday, Inspector. The
agence
will be closed.’

‘Ah! I’ve completely lost track of the days. Always the work, never the rest. Monday, then.’

Throwing on that overcoat, he took that fedora of his from her desk and said, ‘
Aprèz vous,
mademoiselle.’

‘I … I must switch off the lights, then put the lock on.’

‘Of course.’

As she did so, he didn’t take that gaze of his from her, but held the door, then watched as she pushed the little button in and let her go first, he pulling the door tightly closed behind them and testing it to make certain it was, indeed, locked.

‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry.’

No one was taking any notice of them. No one! Not M. Raymond and not M. Garnier …
‘Merci,’
she heard herself saying.

‘I’ll just walk you to the entrance of the métro. That way I’ll not worry either.’

Ah, merde!
‘There … there’s no need, Inspector. The flat’s just along the way.’

They reached the avenue, which was now in total darkness. The glow from occasional cigarettes was as if that from fireflies in the night and not yet a moon. ‘
Bonne nuit,
mademoiselle.’

And never trust a police officer, said St-Cyr silently as he gave her time to lose herself in the crowd. That pin tumbler, mortised lock of the colonel’s, with its bevelled bolt and dead bolt above, allows you to ‘put the lock on’ the former but not the latter, which needs its key. Delaroche must always come by to put the dead bolt on, but with the other there are two little buttons mounted on the lock face just below the bolts. Pushing in the one as you did, activates the bevelled bolt, pushing in the other as I did, deactivates it.

The colonel, like any
détective privé
worth his salt, felt Kohler, had a table exactly where it should have been. Right at the back, tucked into a corner in full view of the coat check and entrance and with the whole club spread before him, including its tobacco-fogged horizon.