Flykiller

‘And recently, too,’ said Kohler, indicating the curtains. ‘Had we not been here, Secretaire, I wonder what might have happened to you? A big place like this and you here all on your own.’

‘And waterers of rabbits are killers, are they?’

He had a point. ‘Were no fingerprints taken after that visit?’ demanded St-Cyr.

‘Ah! don’t be so difficult. It was a crisis.’

‘And how, please, did you and the doctor find her carte d’identite?’

‘Why should it matter?’

‘Just answer, please,’ said Louis, keeping up the pressure.

‘On the bedside table, leaning up against that photograph of her husband.’

‘As a warning?’

‘As a reminder, perhaps, of our lost heroism. All right, it was deliberately left there for me, or so I felt at the time.’

‘Why you, Secretaire?’

‘I … I don’t really know.’

‘And Dr Menetrel?’

‘Felt the same, I’m certain.’

‘A visit that was done after the killing and that anticipated your coming here,’ said Louis. ‘And then another, which anticipated our own and yours again. It’s odd, is it not?’

‘Look, people come and go in this place at all hours up to and even beyond the curfew. Anyone could have slipped in and out if asked to – the killer too, of course. Old Rigaud, the concierge, was having a hell of a time keeping track of the residents and finally went on strike. They were driving him crazy simply for the fun of it, so we had to let him stay on.’

‘Please wait downstairs or in your car, Secretaire. Hermann and I won’t be long.’

‘Will there be fingerprints on those?’ He indicated the letters.

‘Other than the Marechal’s, Madame Dupuis’s and those of any number of postal clerks, since the letters were mailed? Not likely, but they’ll have to be dusted.’

‘Then don’t tell the doctor what you’ve found. Let him continue to worry about them. Learn that it’s always best to keep him in the dark and distracted.’

‘Merde, Louis, he’s really edgy,’ sighed Kohler when Bousquet had left them. ‘Does he think he’s the target?’

‘He must, but does the killer or the one who took her to the Hall have a room here, Hermann, or do both of them? And is this what our secretaire is now wondering since you so kindly pointed it out to him?’

‘Someone so close to each of them, he, she or they can come and go at will and all are targets.’

‘Petain and his right hand; Laval and his. And why, please, did Monsieur Bousquet not drag along the local flics, eh? Look for little things, Hermann. Things that will tell us not only who our victim really was but why the Secretaire General de Police should have such a lapse of duty.’

‘Things that may have been missed by our visitor or left on purpose, Dummkopf. Things we might never know the reason for their being here but others will.’

A Saint Louis crystal perfume bottle was still in its presentation box, tucked away at the back of her dressing table drawer. Right inside the lid, and probably never read by Petain, there was a note: Marechal, please accept this small token for your dear wife in recognition of our esteem and devotion to you both. It was signed M. Jean-Paul Brisset and Mme Marie-Louise of 32a bis rue Dupanloup, Orleans. Though their numbers had dwindled, Petain still regularly received such gifts from supporters all over the country. A bit of lacework from Normandy, a Sevres soup tureen or vase, silver tea and coffee services, paintings too, signed and sent by their artists, books by their authors. All such things ended up in storage rooms at the stately home, the maison de maitre, he had rented as a weekend retreat in the tiny village of Charmeil just six kilometres by road to the north-west of Vichy.

Celine Dupuis had obviously read the note and had carefully returned it to its place before shoving the box well out of sight.

Hermann was thumping a book he’d taken from the pile she’d been reading when time allowed …

‘La Cuisiniere Bourgeoise et Economique, Louis. Well thumbed, somewhat tattered and probably published in 1890.’

The charming housewife on the cover wore a long, striped white and red dress, with white apron and frilly cap, but was holding a bloodied butcher’s knife that was far more than needed to decapitate the chicken she’d just finished plucking for the steaming pot on the stove behind her.

‘But why learn to cook, Louis, unless you plan to leave here or at least to leave the profession you’re in?’

The wicker hamper at the woman’s feet had spilled a rush of vegetables on to the floor. Pots hung in the background; pots that now would have been commandeered for scrap metals!

‘Do you really need the reminder, eh? You know damned well people go to the films to watch the feasting, and that they read cookbooks that are centuries old just to taste the food they can only dream about.’