Flykiller

‘The old one was perfectly suitable. Adjacent to the Hotel Ruhl and only needing a small amount of upgrading. We should have left it at that. Instead, what did our chairman do but plunge the bank’s resources into the most up-to-date exchange outside of Paris? A new PTT, new building, new everything, including far more employees than were ever needed. And where did he insist on putting it? In what had always been the Auvergne’s loveliest of covered markets on the rue du Marche and avenue du President Doumer. A meeting place, yes, yes, of course, for all our citizens but one we loved not for the chance to queue up and listen in to the telephone conversations of others, but for itself!’

‘But … but in 1933 he had long since resigned from the bank.’

‘Having sowed the seeds of its demise!’

The new Poste, Telegraphe et Telephone hadn’t been opened until 1928, or was it 1930? wondered St-Cyr, deciding on the latter. The old PTT had been left empty for a time, due to the Depression, but would surely have now been put to use.

Feed was scattered, Hebert going from cage to cage by interconnecting side doors. Ring-necked pheasants, partridges, even a covey of ruffed grouse from Canada and two pair of snow-white ptarmigan were all spoken to, the custodian frequently getting down on his knees to coax the birds to eat from his hand.

‘They are God’s creatures,’ he said, looking sideways up through the wire. ‘Celine and Albert often shared this little task. The girl loved to help him. Never the harsh word from her if he was clumsy or did something he then tried to hide. In turn, he adored her and had, I’m certain – yes, certain – all those confused feelings of guilt and apprehension a young man has for a girl he secretly wants. When she told him she was using quills to write postcards to her daughter, Albert plucked tail feathers for her until I had to tell him to stop!’

Rock doves were cradled; captured finches perched on the brim of his hat.

‘Albert wouldn’t have hurt any of those girls, Inspector. No matter what you hear from others, understand that my grand-nephew is incapable of such a thing. Certainly he has uncontrollable rages when things seem not to be going the way he believes they should be, and certainly he has sworn to protect and help the Marechal in the best way he can, but a killer …? Ah no, it’s impossible.’

A master of deceit and trickery, a prude, and now the rages? ‘Olivier, monsieur. Would he be aware his children are in Vichy?’

‘Aware? Not likely. Edith wouldn’t have told him, and neither would those two. That father of theirs does not forgive easily, Inspector. Disinheriting them? Blaming them as much as myself for the suicide of their mother? Claiming they wanted her to leave him for Petain, for the father of her unborn child and that they, too, weren’t even his own? His own! The man was insane and still is. A recluse who hides from his community and former associates? A man who hates!’

‘A killer?’

One could not gesture with the hands full but could toss the head. ‘It’s possible. Weren’t the victims marriage smashers? Hadn’t one of them a husband who’d gone off to war only to discover from behind barbed wire that his wife had been playing around in his prolonged absence?’

‘Camille Lefebvre.’ The birds, chickens of several varieties – white, russet, big, small – were making a hell of a racket!

‘And what of the rest of the cabaret group Celine was a part of, Inspector? Aurelienne Tavernier also has a husband who is a prisoner of war, as do Carole Navaud and Nathalie Benoist. Your killer uses Noelle’s knife on Celine who wears his dead wife’s earrings to a liaison with the man who had made him a cuckold? Wears even the perfume that wife was so fond of because Henri Philippe had bought it for her? What more evidence do you need?’

‘A dress was left in Celine’s room …’

‘Dress …? What dress? Come, come, you must tell me.’

‘A halter-neck …’

‘Silvery, with see-through panels?’

‘High heels to match.’

Flustered – sickened – his mind so obviously in a turmoil that he felt betrayed, Hebert turned swiftly away. ‘Monsieur, that dress, do you know of it?’ demanded St-Cyr.

‘Know of it?’ Hebert sucked in a breath, held one of the hens too tightly, then released it. ‘Who wouldn’t among those of us who’d seen her in it? Noelle … Noelle wore it to the party I threw here in the late summer of 1924 to celebrate the Victor of Verdun’s return to Vichy.’

Then why can’t you turn to face me? wondered St-Cyr. The chickens crowded round the custodian who, oblivious to their commotion, knelt among them, forgetting entirely that they were now greedily ravaging his bowls of feed.

Merde, who the hell had put that dress in Celine’s room for St-Cyr and that partner of his to find? wondered Hebert. Had it been Auguste or … or Edith? Could it have been them? How could it? Had they learned of the earrings and the knife?