Flykiller

‘A little. I’d have been a fool not to have. She was a teacher – it’s all in the report. Her husband, a captain, is a guest of our friends. She missed him terribly, this I know, for she’d often say his name when we made love. I think she needed to be held. The old man, her father, was always bitching about his son-in-law’s cowardice, always complaining that the boy had taken his daughter away from him and then had shirked his duty. Herr Gessler has his gestapiste’s eye on him. One can’t go around this town continually griping about cowardice in the face of our friends. It doesn’t do any of us any good.’

‘A teacher,’ said St-Cyr of the victim. One had to bring Bousquet back on track.

‘Nervous – she greedily smoked cigarettes when she could get them, which lately was often enough because I always took her some and the old man was always asking her how she’d come by them.’

Women weren’t allowed the tobacco ration which, if available, had been cut in half from two packets, each of twenty, and one of loose tobacco a month. Resented when caught smoking, they had to suffer the censure of most men and so tended to smoke in private or among trusted friends and relatives.

‘That father of hers caught her often,’ muttered Bousquet. ‘“He thinks I’m selling myself for tobacco,” she once said and laughed at the idiocy of it.’

The secretaire was taking things harder than had been expected. ‘Did she know either of the others?’

‘Madame Dupuis taught ballet, but whether or not at Camille’s school I simply don’t know. But I will quietly make inquiries. They weren’t friends. At least, Camille never mentioned her. Perhaps just casual acquaintances – the usual sort of thing one finds among the staff of such institutions. Madame Dupuis would only have been there part-time in any case, so it’s possible but not probable they were friends.’

‘And the other victim? A nurse, you said.’

‘Mademoiselle Mailloux worked part-time at a private clinic, but I don’t think any dancers went to its doctor simply because the cures he offers must be the usual for this place.’

Tired livers, flagging libidos, et cetera. ‘But the school …? Would she have done part-time nursing there?’

‘Links … you look for links when the only one is that all were killed as another was about to die?’

‘Yet all three of these attempted assassinations failed and you’ve yet to tell me how Mademoiselle Mailloux was drowned. Was she sharing a bath with the Minister of Supplies and Rationing? Did he, too, avoid the scandal and simply bugger off?’

‘Don’t. Please don’t. It’s painful enough that you’ve forced me to see them, Camille especially.’

A cigarette was found and, once lighted, was passed to Bousquet. The pipe was packed, the pouch emptied to its last grain.

‘I’ll tell Ministre Richard that he has to be completely open with you, Jean-Louis. That little affair of his had been going on for some time and he’d not been as discreet as one would have liked. Marie-Jacqueline would come to his office when she was out on a call and it was near to lunch or the cinq a sept. Everyone knew he was fucking her. One saw it in the looks they exchanged and in the lightness of her step, the mischief in her candid dark eyes, the toss of her head – ah! so many signals. That one was a real filly and didn’t give a damn if everyone knew what was going on. Indeed, I think she revelled in it. After all, he’s quite well off and powerful. A real catch.’

‘They shared a bath?’

‘They drank champagne.’

‘The water was quite hot? A private cubicle, a “discreet” attendant, money in a palm and the couple left alone?’ Five to seven were the usual hours for such little liaisons.

‘The autopsy will show that she had consumed at least three-fifths of the bottle of Bollinger Cuvee Speciale that was found with her. The lights went out. Richard went to see what was the matter – another of the power failures we’re all plagued with these days. He called out to the attendant – at least, he will swear to this but isn’t sure how far along the corridor he went. Then he felt his way back to the tub, thinking nothing more of her silence than that she must simply be wanting to relax. They touched hands. The toes of her right foot came between his thighs to play with him. He was certain she was alive until the lights finally came on again.’

‘But was he the target? Come, come, Secretaire, if what you have just said is true, he wasn’t.’

‘But he must have been.’

Alone, St-Cyr replaced the shrouds, gently tucking each under a chin. ‘Forgive me, please, for uncovering you all like that. I had to shock the Secretaire into yielding more than he wanted, but have failed. Now I need your hopes and desires, your strengths and weaknesses – everything including fast friends and enemies, and yet … and yet we have so little time.’