Flykiller

‘The girl would almost certainly have screamed,’ said Kohler. ‘There would have been a scuffle. Others would have been awakened and, if not, the Marechal is still surprisingly fit.’

‘He exercises. I do the best I can,’ muttered Menetrel testily. ‘If neither of you let it out, who did?’

It was Laval who, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the one he’d been smoking, calmly said, ‘Why not ask the switchboard operator, Bernard? You know as well as I do that the Marechal always rings downstairs first thing in the morning to ask if there have been any calls.’

‘Sacre, that bitch! I’ll see she’s dismissed. Just let me get my hands on her. Passing classified information. Breaking our strict rules about secrecy …’

‘See to it, Bernard. We can’t have that happening, can we?’ urged the Premier, as the doctor bolted from the table to make his way across the room. ‘Red-faced and in a rage,’ chuckled Laval, delighted by the result, but then, taking a deep drag and exhaling smoke through his nostrils, he returned to business. ‘There’s more to this, isn’t there? Inspectors, you can and must speak freely. Secretaire General Bousquet and I are as one, and we both need to know.’

Bousquet remained watchfully silent, his cigarette still.

‘A man and a woman,’ said Louis levelly. ‘The first to encounter the victim and then to take her to the Hall, the second to lie in wait there.’

‘Two assailants … A team, is that it, eh?’ demanded Bousquet, sickened by the thought.

‘A vengeance killing?’ asked Laval. ‘Assuming, of course, that the Marechal really was the intended victim and that this Madame Dupuis had simply to be silenced.’

‘As of now the matter is still open to question,’ confessed Louis and, finding that pipe of his and a too-thin tobacco pouch, frowned at necessity’s need but decided it would have to be satisfied.

‘He takes for ever to pack that thing,’ quipped Kohler. ‘It helps him think.’

And there is still more to this, isn’t there? thought Laval. That is why this partner and friend of yours is so carefully giving me the once over. He sees the hank of straight jet-black hair that always seems to fall over the right half of my brow to all but touch that eye. He sees not so much the swiftness of my glance as the glint of constant suspicion. He notes my dark olive skin, bad teeth, the nicotine stains, the full and thick moustache, double chin, the squat and all but non-existent neck and the white tie that has been so much a part of me since my earliest days as a trade-union lawyer and socialist candidate in Aubervilliers. He says to himself that tie really does make me stand out for any would-be assassins but readily admits I will never be persuaded to change it.

But does he hate me too? Does he call me, as so many do, le Maquignon, or is his interest simply that of detachment, the detective in him a student of life out of necessity?

St-Cyr returned the questioning gaze. Tough … mon Dieu, this one was that and much more. Premier from January 1931 to February 1932, Foreign Minister from May of ’32 until June ’35, Premier again until January ’36, after which he’d been out of office until September ’39 but always there behind the scenes, and back as Premier from July ’40 until his arrest on 13 December of that first year of the Occupation and now, since April ’42, Premier again.

‘A self-made man, Inspector,’ acknowledged Laval. ‘The youngest son of a butcher, cafe owner, innkeeper and postman – Father had a lot of irons in the fire and a wife and four children to feed. Chateldon is less than twenty kilometres to the south and a tiny place, but it’s home, you understand, and my house is the one on the hill.’

The chateau Laval had been bought in 1932 after that first term as Premier. He’d left the village when still a schoolboy, had insisted on taking his baccalaureat, then a degree in Zoology, then Law and, to finance himself, had taken a position as a pion, a supervisor of secondary schools in Lyons, Saint Etienne, Dijon …

He had bought into and then come to own several newspapers, Radio-Lyons and printing presses – the one in Clermont-Ferrand did all of Vichy’s printing and had done so since July 1940, even after his arrest by the Garde Mobile. One of his companies bottled a mineral water – La Sergentale – which was reputed to be a cure for impotence and had been sold on railways and oceanic liners before the war (now only on the trains, of course). Farming, too, was among his business interests, wine also.