Flykiller

‘As Petain did in the Hall des Sources when he gave Maman the final brush-off!’ spat Blanche, only to apparently regret having reacted so vehemently. ‘That … that I really don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘Edith Pascal told my brother and me this, of how the Marechal had then left his cigar on one of the counters and how deserted the Hall had been at that time of year, the season all but ended. She … she was always telling us things about Maman when Paul and I went to the house. How the Marechal and Charles-Frederic were to blame for everything and had conspired to allow Petain to seduce Maman. How they had joked about how easy it would be, that Mother … She had wanted to be set free and had had many lovers.’

‘Edith would kill for Auguste-Alphonse, Inspector,’ hazarded Hebert, as he warmed his hands at one of the kitchen stoves. ‘That one has never looked at another man.’

They’d come in from the feeding to find Hermann and the others not back, and Sandrine Richard still sitting alone, nervously smoking the last of her cigarettes, the packet tightly crushed in a fist.

‘Kill?’ said St-Cyr. ‘Isn’t that a little harsh?’ One had to keep the custodian talking now that he’d recovered a little from the news that the dress, the sapphires and the billets doux had been left in Celine Dupuis’s room for Hermann and his partner to find.

‘Not at all. Many times, when I was chairman and manager of the bank, I would see her at her desk secretly fingering a photograph of him in uniform. A cut-out from a larger photo of the directors. She knew all about Noelle’s infidelities and was incensed not just that a wife should betray a valiant husband but that she did so openly. Always the caution, though, when Noelle visited the bank to make a withdrawal that I personally attended to. Always the little birthday gifts for Blanche and Paul who were in awe of her but laughed at her behind her back, a thing that, when she found out about it, enraged her. A woman, Inspector, who, if what Blanche has told me is correct, has kept the dead woman’s bedroom as some sort of shrine and exactly as Noelle left it. Why, please, would she do such a thing unless deranged?’

Hebert had to be grasping at straws to take the heat off himself! ‘A motive, monsieur. Even if the assailant is mad, one is demanded.’

‘Protection. Ah! I’m only suggesting this, but what if Edith felt those girls had discovered something Auguste-Alphonse couldn’t have them repeating?’

‘Such as?’

How swift the Inspector was to be cautious and suspicious. ‘That those solitary walks of his are not so solitary as many have come to believe. That he has ways of finding things out and knows ahead of time what others are planning?’

L’Humanite and its list and a certain detective’s name, was that it, eh? The leader of the FTP? Did Hebert really know of Olivier’s position in it or did he simply suspect it?

In either case, things were not good – bien sur this Surete was a supporter of the Resistance – but must one submit to such blackmail?

Sandrine Richard took a last drag at her cigarette and, with sharp jabs, stubbed it out in the overflowing saucer she’d used as an ashtray. ‘Perhaps, Inspector, you should ask him how well he and Edith Pascal got on at that bank when Monsieur Olivier was defending his country at Verdun and other places. Edith noticed irregularities in the transfer of funds and took him to task.’

‘Small transfers! It was nothing, I assure you, Inspector. That virginal puritan mistakenly thought she’d caught me out only to find everything had been returned with interest!’

‘He’s lying. Ask him what she did.’

‘All right, all right, I’ll tell him, shall I?’ shouted Hebert. ‘She notified Auguste-Alphonse – yes, yes, Madame Richard. That woman went right through the chain of command to Petain himself! Petain, madame!’

‘Olivier returned, Inspector, ostensibly on leave, and for the last year of war, Edith, a mere secretary from the wrong side of the tracks, had the right to challenge every transfer this one made and to sanction it only if correct and honest.’

‘Jesus, merde alors, you bitches certainly talk!’ snorted Hebert, tossing his smock and fedora into a chair. ‘Did that lantern-jawed witch, Madame la Marechale, tell you all of this?’

‘And more, monsieur. Much more. How you, yourself, during his absence had seduced Noelle Olivier, your friend and business partner’s wife. How you had wanted her to leave him for yourself. Many times you had had her out to this place, to parties just as wild and licentious as the ones you now hold for your friends and business partners. How, when she refused to leave her husband for you, you then continually introduced her to other men who made their attempts and sometimes succeeded!’

‘Trou de cul, the dried-up wife has really been stung, hasn’t she?’