Flykiller

Kripo bracelets came out to be clapped round Normand’s wrists, the doctor slumping into the wicker chair.

‘A glass of the Chomel for this one, ladies, and then the hydrotherapie sauvage and a few shots of the electrotherapie. Book him, Louis. Complicity to murder, and forgery. This son of a bitch must have known those girls were to be killed. He tried to lay the blame on these ladies.’

‘For Menetrel?’

‘And the husbands, this one’s in particular!’

Gaetan-Baptiste Deschambeault. ‘Perhaps, Hermann, or Charles-Frederic Hebert, but …’

‘No buts, Louis.’

‘The Hotel Ruhl, Inspectors. Room 3-17,’ said Ines faintly from the doorway, sickened by the prospect of what was to come. ‘Then you will have seen everything, I think.’

They sat a moment in the car, these two detectives, outside the Hotel Ruhl. The boulevard de l’Hotel de Ville, the town, the river and the hills would be in darkness, Ines knew, though she couldn’t see a thing. St-Cyr had withdrawn into his thoughts, Kohler too. Both knew that word would get out of what had happened at the clinic. Menetrel would be bound to hear of it and soon, too soon. Menetrel.

St-Cyr had taken the negatives that Madame Deschambeault and the others had hidden in one of the tubular posts of her bed. Kohler had entrusted Dr Normand to Madame Petain and had given her the key to his handcuffs. And Blanche? Ines asked herself. Blanche had been so distressed at not being allowed to accompany them that tears had wet her pale cheeks. ‘Paul couldn’t have taken that knife from Mother’s room,’ she had sworn. ‘He’d not have done something like that without telling me!’

‘Not even to buy his freedom from the STO?’ St-Cyr had demanded, not sparing her.

‘Edith,’ she had blurted. ‘Edith did it. She despises the Marechal and blames him for everything. She hates women who betray their soldier husbands and their country, as Camille did, those who get pregnant like Lucie did, and Mother, too. Celine … Celine played the cabaret, Mother also. Albert … Albert can and does do anything Edith wants.’

‘Such as trying to kill this one?’ Herr Kohler had asked, indicating Ines.

‘Such as putting things in Celine’s room for you to find. Things only Edith could have given him.’

‘And the attempt on Mademoiselle Charpentier?’ he had asked.

Blanche had hesitated. ‘Yes, but … but Albert is also impulsive and often can’t see the consequences of what he does.’

‘Like walking Celine to the Hall des Sources and then holding its doors shut on her?’ Herr Kohler had said.

‘A game,’ Blanche had wept. ‘Albert would have thought it a game!’

They had demanded to know how Mademoiselle Pascal could possibly have known Celine was to have gone to Petain’s room and at what time, but Blanche had had no answer for this. ‘Her brother took the knife, Hermann,’ St Cyr had flatly said, ‘but what I want to know are her thoughts on Charles-Frederic Hebert. Isn’t he the one you’re really so afraid of, Mademoiselle Blanche?’

‘Yes. Yes, he is.’

‘St-Cyr’s a patriot,’ Monsieur Olivier had confided when he’d met her at that cafe near the railway station, Ines told herself. ‘Kohler’s a conscientious doubter of Nazi invincibility, but you must never forget that he’s one of them, one of les autres.’ The others.

Sickened by what she knew of the rats that had been left in Lucie’s bed, Ines asked herself again if she should tell St-Cyr and Kohler of it. Could she break the vow she’d made to herself?

A match was struck, she taking in a sharp breath as the flame burst before her, causing her to blink hard in panic only to realize the two detectives were sharing a cigarette.

‘Hermann, Mademoiselle Charpentier had best be left with the concierge.’

The words were out before she could stop herself. ‘Please don’t! Please take me up to that room. My eyes will be fine if there are lights on in there.’

‘Your eyes … What is this, please?’ asked St-Cyr. Had he turned to look at her?

‘Night blindness,’ she confessed.

They didn’t say a thing. The cigarette was passed over, looks exchanged most probably, but still she couldn’t see them and they must now know of this.

‘Louis, leave her with me, then,’ sighed Kohler.

‘And Monsieur Olivier, mademoiselle?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Does he, too, suffer from this little affliction of yours?’

‘Monsieur Olivier …’ What was this he was saying? ‘I … I wouldn’t know, Inspector. How could I possibly?’

It was his turn to sigh and he did so deeply and with evident regret. ‘Then why, please, has he claimed it and why have you kept it from us?’

Olivier, she said to herself. Olivier lied about it! ‘Shame … Fear. Have you never walked the streets of Paris after dark and not been able to see, Inspector? One is jostled, one constantly bumps into people and is shoved away or sworn at, handled, too, once the person realizes you’re a woman, and not just by the men! My handbag, my papers, I …’ Ah Sainte Mere, Sainte Mere!