Flykiller

There were 25,000 francs in the Paris handbag – more than a year’s wages for a girl like this – all in brand-new notes with Vichy’s Labourage et paturage sont les deux namelles de la France on the reverse. Ploughing and grazing are the two udders of France. ‘Merde alors, some ploughing, some grazing, eh?’ And no thought of theft on the part of her killer or killers, just as with their next victim.

An embossed, gold-lettered card allowed entrance to the Cercle Europeen, that supper club of the elite on the Champs-Elysees, which was owned and operated by Edouard Chaux of Lido fame.

Anyone who was anyone sought membership to the Cercle but only a select few gained it.

‘And vans from the Bank of France were hauling things other than banknotes. Gaetan Deschambeault’s vans.’

A gold cigarette case from Cartier, at 23 place Vendome, held only Chesterfields, the case filled in preparation for the trip. No megot tin accompanied it – either she would have had no reason to scrounge while in Paris, or hadn’t wanted others to see her doing so.

The tin was in her day-to-day hangbag and had once contained small, pearl-shaped bonbons, Anis de l’Abbaye de Flavigny; the illustration on its lid was of a shepherd and his girl at a well.

‘Dijon,’ he said, and taking out his own tin, which was far more worn than hers and one of several he used, confided, ‘We share this love, mademoiselle. A tin that harkens back to a quieter, gentler time.’

Humbled by the coincidence, he prised off the lid of her tin to reveal six half-smoked cigarettes. ‘A Balto, two Gauloises bleues, and three Wills Gold Flake – British,’ he muttered. ‘But why, please, did the girl you were talking to smoke only half of each of the last three cigarettes? Nervous … was she nervous? Was it yourself and Friday night here in your room and alone? Alone, I think, with your thoughts.’

The lipstick on the cigarette butts had been thickly applied. When touched, a little of it remained on his fingertip, a sure indication of how cheap and ersatz things were these days. ‘But you wear none, mademoiselle, and would not have applied it so heavily, not if about to kiss a lover who demanded discretion.’

Turning from her, he began again to look about the room, saw the records she had brought from Paris on previous trips. One sleeve was empty. No portable gramophone was in evidence, but a cleared space, square and empty, had remained.

‘“Sans Toi”,’ he muttered as he read the sleeve’s label and, looking uncertainly at the door, said, ‘Ah mon Dieu, Hermann, be careful. I heard that song being played as I came up here.’

There were sixty-seven rooms in the bloody hotel, five of them kept as spares in case needed by visiting secretaries, accountants, pimps, card-sharks, assorted bagmen and hangers-on. Of the sixty-two registered residents, fully half had been here since the Defeat.

It would be a detective’s nightmare to sort it all out, but as if this was not enough, the conservatory had been and still was used as a general overflow and dosshouse. Beds everywhere under the blue-washed, sticking-papered glass, clothing here and there, scant food on makeshift shelves, in trunks, on suitcases and in boxes. Hotplates warm, thin soup in a pot. A crust of the grey National, a half-eaten clove of garlic.

‘And not one of these unregistered visitors,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Have they all vanished?’

The ‘room’ smelled of sweat, no wash-water and mould.

‘Three males, two females,’ he said, ‘and the hotel, having learned by its bush telegraph of the murder and the presence of two decidedly interested detectives, has emptied itself.’

Ach! what was he to do? Go back up to Louis who would still be ‘talking’ to that poor thing, or try to find someone?

Rigaud was reading Proust! Closeted in his loge, the concierge was taking time out in a tattered club chair.

‘Run the lift up and down for me,’ said Kohler. ‘Create a diversion. Do it twice.’

‘The electricity … The shortages, monsieur.’

‘Fuck the shortages. Just do it or I’ll have Herr Gessler and his boys turn the hotel upside down and tumble everyone out in the cold.’

‘It’s freezing in here anyways. Besides, most are away at work. Only the entertainers, the hat-check girls, night waiters, croupiers, telephone and telegraph operators and the sick are in their rooms, or were. After all, isn’t the flu season upon us?’

A wise one to whom the offer of a cigarette, had he any to give, would only have been accepted but ‘for later’.

The Gestapo is harried, thought Rigaud, but heard the voice of his mother saying, Daniel, have courage. This one and his kind are living like God in France, therefore you must show the muscle! Only then will he and his little Surete collabo gumshoe realize that the hotel is indeed empty except for the corpse they have found.