Flykiller

‘Ah, Dieu merci, it’s you, Capitaine Ferbrave, and your men,’ said Violette Ribot as they gathered in front of her desk. Durs, she swore silently, pointing those guns of theirs at her. Gars whose mothers hadn’t suckled them enough! ‘These are the palm prints of Monsieur Auguste-Alphonse Olivier, and these, of Charles-Frederic Hebert.’

‘She’s lying, Henri. The phone’s been left off the hook.’

‘But … but he has only just telephoned, monsieur,’ she exclaimed, not touching the thing, not replacing it.

A half-empty wine bottle was to the woman’s left, her glass brimful. The cigarette clinging to her lower lip, she stood facing them, a tartan blanket draped over her shoulders, but would they kill her? wondered Kohler. Would he have to jab his pistol against Ferbrave’s head to stop it from happening?

Round and outwardly bowed, the vase on the desk before her was of sapphire-blue glass on which, as if from the health-giving depths of a sunlit pool, voluptuous sirenes playfully grappled, some hugging the knees of others as they rose to the surface.

Ferbrave and the rest looked at the girls. They had to, and she’d damned well known they would!

Two sets of palm prints on tracing paper lay on either side of the Lalique vase turned crystal ball whose flame gave the lie of motion to the bathers and flickering shadows to its time-ravaged owner.

‘Here are the names,’ she said. ‘Always I must write them in at the bottom of each print.’

If she had noticed that he, too, was in the room and now close behind them and armed, thought Kohler, she wasn’t about to let on.

‘Are there others?’ hazarded Henri-Claude, indicating the prints with a nudge from his Luger.

‘Ah oui, here in these file folders I have taken from the cabinets. Two sets, always I make two, Captain. Both are identified. See for yourself. The folders are dated, the one from before the Great War and the other during it, the exact times of the visits … You must excuse the memory. Always now I have to check, but is it that you require both sets, or only the one?’

Menetrel must have warned them to go easy with her.

‘Both,’ grunted Ferbrave.

‘Then it is as Monsieur le Premier has said. Uncertainty still exists. And the detectives, messieurs? Monsieur Laval did say that they, too, would pay me the little visit, but the wiring in this old place … The electricity has gone off again and they have not yet arrived, so I have purposely left the door off the latch.’

Some of the boys were beginning to look up at the charts on the wall behind her.

‘Your maid, where is she?’ demanded Ferbrave.

‘Lisette Aubin? Gone to her mother’s. A bad cold I did not wish to catch, not at my age. The chest, never good, has got worse.’

She coughed deeply and did so again, swallowing phlegm. ‘The flu … Merde,’ she swore, ‘I can feel it coming on!’

Even so, one of them thought to down her glass of the red, but she was swift to respond and laid a hand on his. ‘Would you deny an old woman what the Premier has so kindly given?’

‘Leave it,’ said Ferbrave. ‘We’re here to help the two from Paris.’

‘And the terrorists?’ she asked, releasing the hand. ‘Is it true that they might invade the hotel, messieurs? Monsieur Laval, he was most concerned and has said there might be the threat of this. You will be careful? Please put the lock on when you leave. Ah! the receipt. I have forgotten. Please sign here, Captain. Read it first, if you wish.’

Silently Ines continued to count off the seconds and minutes. By now here eyes should have adjusted, but still she couldn’t make out a thing. St-Cyr, she knew, would be looking up to the floor above, listening hard, each sound coming to them, some faint, others but slightly louder. It wouldn’t take Henri-Claude Ferbrave long to discover they were trapped in the lift. He’d want the palm prints St-Cyr had, would want the negatives and the files on Julienne Deschambeault, but did Herr Kohler still have the latter?

They did not know, were forced to wait, to agonize, herself especially, since she knew things she should have revealed.

‘Inspec-’

St-Cyr put a finger to her lips, then pointed to the floor above by simultaneously touching both her chin and the tip of her nose.

As always now, the smell of bitter almonds permeated the air about them and why, please, had Albert had to go into her valise to spill that oil and all but drain its little bottle?

Why, dear God? The smell would now give her away.

No sound was heard, no light from a torch passed over the shaft above – St-Cyr would have seen it, wouldn’t he? she wondered.

His overcoat collar was up. Her forehead touched his fedora. At last her lips found his right ear. ‘Olivier,’ she whispered. ‘He butchered those rats. He has a pocket knife like that.’

An Opinel.

He gave no response. He remained so still, she wanted to shriek, Inspector, believe me, I know who killed them!