Flykiller

Blanche Varollier was watching her, too, but Monsieur Hebert had now quickly averted his eyes. Again Ines heard St-Cyr ask his question – the letters that Lucie had carried to Paris for Celine, had they been posted to the studio on the rue du Douanier? To her studio.

One must either lie or confess, said Ines to herself, but to lie skilfully, one must impart elements of truth.

Mentally she crossed herself, kissed her fingertips as if the rosary was in her hands, and said silently, Bless me, Father, for I am afraid.

‘Celine and I grew up together, Inspectors. She in that fine house of her parents on place Lucien-Herr and the rue Lhomond, myself with my uncle and aunt in a fourth-floor flat on the rue Tournefort. We met one day quite by … Well, it wasn’t by accident.’ Could she manage a faint smile of memory? she asked herself and, more confidently when that was done, said, ‘I’d planned to have my path cross hers, she mine, as it turned out, so when we bumped into each other, it was as if by accident, yet both of us knew we would.’

‘You were lonely,’ said Herr Kohler – was he always so sensitive? she wondered. ‘You’d lost your father and then your mother. It was as if they’d abandoned you.’

‘Yes … Yes, that’s exactly how I felt as a child. Was it so wrong of me?’

‘Mademoiselle,’ said St-Cyr harshly, ‘you are attempting to conceal things we need to know! Did you receive letters from Celine Dupuis that had been illegally carried across the Demarcation Line by Lucie Trudel?’

For which the penalty would be prison or transportation into forced labour. ‘Yes. Yes, I did, Monsieur l’Inspecteur Principal. Celine was afraid.’

‘Of what?’ asked Herr Kohler, the sensitivity still there.

Blanche and Sandrine were again intently watching her, Hebert chancing a glance, Albert so still that she could feel the continued pressure and warmth of his leg. ‘Of being killed – what else?’ she heard herself hotly demand. ‘I … I don’t know what she and the other victims were involved in. Really, I don’t. She … she did say she had to do things for les Allemands that she didn’t want to, and that …’ Now calm yourself, ma chere, she warned herself. Look at each of them as they sit around this lovely old table. ‘That someone important had found out about what they’d had to do and, not liking it, had … had then had each of them killed – “removed” was the word she used. But I haven’t got the letters, so can’t prove this, since they made their little fires in my studio stove as soon as they’d been read.’

Herr Kohler scribbled something on a page of his notebook and thrust it across the table to that partner of his. Panic made the creamy skin of Blanche’s cheeks become paler as the blood drained, but what had the Hauptmann Detektiv Inspektor Kohler just written to cause the girl such distress? wondered Ines. Was it: They were all informants, Louis, but did Menetrel order their removal? Menetrel, Mademoiselle Blanche Olivier? An eminence grise and confident of the Marechal’s? A hater of les Allemands and lover of Vichy?

Blanche had gripped the edge of the table with both hands but, unlike Monsieur Hebert and Sandrine Richard or even Albert, hadn’t noticed she’d done this.

St-Cyr had noticed, Ines told herself. He quickly wrote something in return and shoved it back across boards scratched and gouged through centuries – gouges, Mademoiselle Blanche, like the one in your brother Paul’s wooden-soled shoe? she asked silently.

Blanche waited, knowing only too well the gouges in the table had been a reminder to the detectives, though none had been needed, but did she say, Paul! to herself, or, Paul, my darling, beware?

But what did St-Cyr write? wondered Ines. Hermann, Blanche purchased a Choix Supreme on Saturday, 30 January at 4.45 p.m. the very day Lucie was killed and three days before Celine – was that what he had jotted down? Or was it: Paul Varollier must have taken Celine to his sister who waited in the Hall des Sources?

The answer, if such it was, came with the Chief Inspector’s next question. A shiver ran through her – Ines tried not to let Albert feel how nervous she was, but he couldn’t have missed it.

‘Mademoiselle, were those letters from anyone else?’

From Capitaine Auguste-Alphonse Olivier, Inspector? From the compagnon d’armes and dearest friend of my father, Lieutenant Pierre-Thomas Charpentier, who was put before the firing squad on orders from General Petain, orders that Auguste-Alphonse had then to carry out?