Flykiller

‘The organizer of these little escapades sleeps through them? Come, come, monsieur, we haven’t time for this. You saw, you watched – you probably even participated or at least encouraged couples to have their little moments and were as caught by surprise as the others. If Celine Dupuis was the chosen one, and she was chosen for his patient, surely he’d have had a look at her?’

A rabbit was released, the poor creature zigzagging around the enclosure until its piercing shrieks signalled it had been taken.

‘Your former bedroom, monsieur. My partner and I can, and will, rip that stuffed menagerie apart for its hidden eyes, its chambre de divertissements detaches!’ Its hidden little room.

‘Menetrel secretly watched her, yes, but some weeks later and at another party. He said he had to see what Henri Philippe was getting. Later, in town, he even confronted her and … and insisted on giving her a thorough check-up. Honore left him to it.’

‘And wouldn’t listen to her outrage?’

‘That is correct.’

‘Then you all weren’t just pimping, were you, but had, in effect, made sex slaves of those girls.’

‘She agreed to visit the Marechal.’

‘She was forced to agree. Let us not forget that!’

Trapped in the passage – pinned to the wall by the beam of Herr Kohler’s torch and realizing he’d overheard everything they’d said – Mademoiselle Blanche’s dark blue eyes were moist and filled with apprehension. ‘Paul didn’t take Celine to the Hall! I wasn’t waiting there to kill her! Please, you must believe me! All we did was take Mother’s earrings and a little of her perfume from her room for Menetrel. Menetrel!’

‘Then why the Hall des Sources?’ asked Kohler.

‘Yes, why?’ asked Ines.

‘Petain … The Marechal met Maman in the Hall the day she took her life. He’d … he’d posted a last letter earlier from Paris but she had begged to see him again and he agreed. It … it was there that he told her in no uncertain terms to take whatever cure she wished but that, as far as he and his lawyers were concerned, their affair was over. Tout fini. Absolument!’

‘Does Hebert know of this?’ asked Herr Kohler.

‘As he knows everything,’ cried Blanche. ‘He … he hates my father and still blames him for the loss of fortune and the loss of this place which, if you question him closely, I’m sure you will find he desperately wants returned. Why else the parties and the constant attempts to ingratiate himself with the doctor? Why else his involvement with the vans and the money it brings?’

‘And Albert and that knife?’ asked Kohler.

Blanche sucked in a breath. ‘Albert listens to what his grand-uncle tells him and does exactly as he’s told!’

‘Albert knows who killed Celine, Inspector. I’m certain of it,’ said Ines. ‘You see, when we were at the Jockey Club, I overheard Monsieur Deschambeault tell his son that Henri-Claude Ferbrave had better find out everything he could from Albert before taking care of him. “We can’t have the rat-catcher coughing up our blood to those two from Paris.”’

‘Yet when stopped in that corridor after we’d pulled Albert and Henri-Claude from the roof, you told my partner you had overheard nothing.’

‘Yes. Yes, I did, and for this I apologize. I … I wanted to think about it first.’

‘And Henri-Claude?’ asked Herr Kohler harshly. ‘What else did those attentive ears of yours pick up?’

She must face him and not waver, thought Ines. She must try to recover lost ground. ‘That the use of the bank’s vans had to stop. That Monsieur Deschambeault would not submit to blackmail from Henri-Claude or anyone else and that if Henri-Claude didn’t listen, he’d go straight to Herr Gessler to tell him things the Garde Mobile would rather not have the Gestapo hear!’

Like who really killed those four girls and had probably been paid to do so! ‘What else?’ demanded Kohler.

‘That … that Menetrel is on good terms with Dr Normand who treats Madame Deschambeault at his clinic, and that he is kept informed of everything she says.’

‘You’re a fund of information, aren’t you?’

‘I want to help. Is that not what you wish me to do?’

‘Albert watches those portable toilets in the Parc, Inspector,’ interjected Blanche to save herself perhaps, thought Ines. ‘He’ll have figured out who took that knife into one of them and then threw up and dropped it.’

‘But didn’t leave the cigar,’ said Ines quickly, too quickly. ‘A Choix Supreme, was it not? A brand the Marechal favours.’