Flykiller

The chapel would have held forty, if crowded, thought Kohler. Two iron rings and an inscription marked a tomb in the floor of the sanctuary. ‘Honore Hebert’, he read aloud. ‘From 1480 to 1527, Chevalier de Charmeil et de Vichy, Compagnon d’Armes des Ducs de Bourbon. Sans peur et sans reproche.’ Without fear and without reproach.

‘It’s one of the coolest places in summer,’ said Blanche, who had nervously stayed just inside the entrance.

Dear God, where was Albert? wondered Ines. She had the feeling that coming here wouldn’t be good for her, that it was the beginning of the end.

‘Did couples use this for their lovemaking?’ she asked. Wrong of them if true, of course, but then so little was right about this place Celine had found herself in.

It was Blanche who said, ‘Is that what she confided in those letters of hers?’

‘We … we didn’t discuss things like that.’

‘Menetrel … did she mention him?’ demanded Blanche.

Ines told herself not to answer. Blanche would get angrier then – that had been anxiety in her voice, hadn’t it?

‘Celine told you Menetrel would let her go home to Paris but only if she first went to Petain. Menetrel controls everything. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in thrall to the doctor. Surely she confided that?’

‘Did you take care of her for him? Did he order you to kill her?’ asked Ines fiercely from behind the altar. ‘She’d been an informant. She’d given away state secrets she’d overheard.’

‘I … I did no such thing,’ retorted Blanche, flustered.

These two, thought Kohler. Had Celine told the one about the other?

‘You bought a Choix Supreme the afternoon of Lucie’s murder,’ he interjected.

‘For Nathalie Benoist, one of the cabaret dancers!’

‘But she prefers the El Rey del Mundo Demi-Tasse.’

‘I … I made a mistake, that’s all.’

‘A five-hundred-franc one?’ he taunted.

‘Not when Nathalie provided the cash.’

‘A woman with two little boys she boards at a nearby farm?’

‘She pays the price, but gets it back later.’

‘In here?’ asked Herr Kohler, still baiting her.

‘Sometimes. In summer, of course.’

‘Nackttanze auch?’

Nude dancing also. ‘Sometimes,’ countered Blanche hotly.

‘And Albert?’ asked Ines. ‘Did he watch from … from in there?’ She indicated the sacristy whose stained-glass window let in a little light. One had to duck one’s head to enter. ‘There’s a smell,’ she said.

‘Rancid oil,’ said Herr Kohler, brushing past her to stand, stooped, in the enclosure, for people hadn’t been nearly so tall when this place had been built.

Blanche did not enter.

A large, coloured poster of the Marechal in uniform stared at them, the seven stars on his sleeve, with the phrase Je fais a la France le don de ma personne pour attenuer son malheur, under it. I make to France the gifts of my person to lessen her misfortune.

Upturned snail shells were on the table, the altar Albert had built. There was still oil in some of them, their wicks blackened, the shells placed in rows that pointed to the poster. Cigar bands had been pressed flat and these lay alongside the little lamps. There was a plaster bust of Petain – one of the thousands and thousands that were still sold in shops or found in family shrines all over France. A mug bore his benevolent countenance; flags and coins, the image of the Francisque. A medallion of him hung on a tricolour ribbon. Printed cards gave quotes, pamphlets bits of his speeches. The Lord’s Prayer had even been rewritten under Menetrel’s guidance, with Petain as God on earth.

A wire – a length of the thin and flexible wire Albert used for his snares – was there as if in dedication.

A knife – a Laguiole, open so that its blade and softly curving haft lay between the rows of snail shells and cigar bands – was also there. ‘But … but it has a corkscrew,’ Ines heard herself saying, aghast at what they’d found and at what Albert had done. ‘He’s kept Noelle Olivier’s knife and has left another.’

And now you’re gut-sick, thought Kohler. ‘It’s a man’s, and nothing fancy. The usual for the Auvergnat shepherd or peasant. This one’s seen a good fifty years of use but is still razor sharp.’

‘But why did he leave it?’ she bleated. Would Albert cut her throat? Would he knife her in the chest?

‘Probably he thought you wouldn’t even notice the substitution, Inspector,’ snorted Blanche on joining them, her voice grating. ‘Albert’s often like that. If he can fool you, he will, but sometimes he doesn’t quite think it through.’