Flykiller

Head bowed in despair, Blanche clenched her fists at her sides. ‘Please, you must believe me. If Papa would have listened to us, Paul and I would have gone straight to him, but we knew he wouldn’t. When we first went to her, Edith had told us it would be useless to try.’

It was Herr Kohler who gently asked, ‘Could Mademoiselle Pascal have noticed you’d taken the earrings and come after them?’

‘To the Hotel d’Allier?’ blurted Blanche. ‘It’s … it’s possible, yes.’

‘And the love letters?’ demanded St-Cyr.

‘Were any of them taken?’ she asked, caught suddenly by surprise.

‘Please just answer.’

‘Then no! Edith … Edith would have noticed right away if we’d so much as touched them. She goes into that room every day to finger Mother’s things as if in doubt, in hope. I know she’s read those letters often, know she sleeps in Mother’s bed. Why … why does she do such things if not demented?’

‘The dress, mademoiselle, and the strand of sapphires?’ he asked.

‘Dress? Which dress, please?’

‘Left in Madame Dupuis’s room after the killing,’ said Louis gruffly, the sternness of his Surete gaze not leaving her. She tried hard to meet it and finally succeeded.

‘One that we would find and not Bousquet,’ said Kohler, watching her intently.

‘Who had earlier been left Celine’s identity card,’ breathed St-Cyr.

‘As a warning from the Resistance, Louis. A warning!’

‘Premier, although you’ve already given us a reason, why, please, did that telex you sent to Paris really use the name Flykiller?’ asked St-Cyr.

‘Those damned girlfriends were like flies,’ spat Laval. ‘Always buzzing about their men and threatening to spoil things for us. I was all but certain they were informants and have now been proven correct!’

They sat alone, those two detectives, in the Chante Clair Restaurant where the ladies, the creme de la creme of Vichy, wore fashion’s latest whim, the colourful turban. The wives were at afternoon tea and gossip, the sound of their voices suddenly rising to a shrillness that frightened before dropping to a whisper that only served to increase anxiety.

Sandrine Richard had curtly been given permission to join Madame Petain and Elisabeth de Fleury, their heads close in urgent conference. Blanche, alone and looking lost, sat at a table beneath the stained-glass lights of tall, streaked windows that overlooked the snow-dusted statuary of the inner courtyard. And I? mused Ines. I, instinctively not wishing to sit with Blanche, nor she with me, sit alone, having just learned that Albert has been released into his father’s recognizance.

St-Cyr had agreed to do this, perhaps out of kindness, but had he also wanted to see what would happen? she wondered.

Kohler, in defiance of the hour, the head chef and the kitchen staff, had loudly ordered pea soup with ham, sausages and sauerkraut, and ‘good German beer’; a pastis for his friend and partner. ‘A double.’

Since he sat with his back to her, she could only clearly see St-Cyr who, from time to time, an unlit pipe clenched between his teeth or in a fist, would look across the crowded dining room to see her sitting primly beneath one of the wall mirrors, her back to that very wall, knowing she couldn’t possibly overhear them now or see what lay before them. That tin-plated little post, Inspector? Laval au poteau? Had it been a coincidence, post and post? Would Monsieur le Premier wonder if it had meaning and make a hurried visit to his clairvoyant, Madame Ribot, of the Hotel Ruhl, at 15 boulevard de l’Hotel de Ville, to ask her advice?

Would he believe what the cards, the stars, the moon and conjunctions said?

‘Hermann, our sculptress is still without her precious valise. Just what the hell is she really doing here?’

‘Blanche asked the same thing.’

‘Ah oui. She makes Albert edgy and now she’s got me edgy too.’

The understatement of the year! ‘Relax. Eat up.’

‘And try to concentrate? Merde, I’ve no appetite. How can I when I know Herr Gessler must be watching the clock – our clock – and counting off the minutes? If he gets his hands on that one …’ he indicated the sculptress, ‘neither of us will be able to save her.’

Stripped naked, shrieked at constantly, her head shoved repeatedly under water in the bathtub those bastards were fond of using, she’d be strung up and further clubbed with rubber truncheons if she didn’t tell them what they wanted, or thrown to the swill-soaked floor to be kicked by hobnailed boots until dead.

‘Please don’t let us forget that, Hermann.’

‘You know I won’t. How could I? It applies also to Blanche and that brother of hers as well as to Albert and others, especially Olivier and his Edith.’

‘Olivier,’ said Louis, opening Noelle’s knife. Quickly arranging. the items and ignoring the food, he set the V for Victory beneath the knife; the earrings, laudanum bottle and billets doux to the left; the button-post to the right and isolated for the moment.