Flykiller

‘You were at Verdun, Chief Inspector. You were wounded twice. Like yourself I, too, saw the Marechal in action. Instead of deciding to attack in an all-out suicidal charge, he practised two defensive lines, the second to still the panic of the first, and, in defiance of Foch and the other generals, he alone had the courage to say materiel kills men. The noria he introduced to quickly relieve men at the front was a godsend I greatly admired. He was my hero. That’s how he met my Noelle when he came here in 1924 to stay as a guest in this very house. I, who thought I knew men, had my life taken from me. So, yes, I have good reason to want him dead.’

Olivier had led him to this point, even to having Hermann removed from the room. In one hand he held the earrings, in the other, the sapphires.

‘You know what it’s like to be made a cuckold, Inspector, but Paris is not Vichy. In a big city one can easily hide. Here things are so close the walls come tumbling down and you stand naked before the very people you once served and who once respected you. Your second wife and little son were killed on their way home to you, I gather, and for that I am deeply sorry, but it was, in so far as I can determine, a tragic mistake.’

Improbable as it seemed, knowing the attitudes of les hauts as he did, St-Cyr had to wonder if Olivier was of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. ‘A Resistance bomb that Gestapo Paris-Central’s Watchers left in place for me took them instead.’

‘War is never easy, is it? Dr Menetrel knows all about that little affair of hers and the films the Watchers made of the couple and enjoyed. Naked and fornicating, that wife of yours crying out in ecstasy to another while you … you have had to bear the shame of it and the laughter.’

Olivier had even tried to provoke him but a calm front would be best. ‘Hermann had the films destroyed. The Hauptmann Steiner was sent, by his uncle, the Kommandant von Gross-Paris, to Russia where he was killed in action.’

‘And the chanteuse Gabrielle Arcuri, whose superb voice is regularly broadcast to the Boche and avidly listened to also by the Allies, came to know you.’

Then it was true. He was of the FTP. ‘Hermann is aware she’s involved with the Resistance.’

A cold, flat answer. So, good. Yes, that was good! ‘I just had to hear it from you yourself.’

This upstairs corridor to the bedrooms had always seemed so long, thought Edith. A journey and a half that never ended because Auguste would never let it end. Herr Kohler was right behind her and she knew he had realized love had yet to be consummated but that she would wait for ever if necessary.

‘They always had separate rooms,’ she heard herself saying tartly. Would caution not stop her tongue? she wondered. ‘Auguste rose early, his wife often late. In those days he had the duties of mayor as well as chairman of the bank. Madame Olivier should have understood he had only so much time to spare. Like so many, he went away to war in 1914 and we seldom saw him for four years but still, a wife waits, does she not?’

‘Some do, some don’t,’ she heard Herr Kohler saying. ‘Did she fool around?’

And before the Marechal?’ ‘She had two little children. Perhaps they occupied her totally, perhaps not.’

‘But she liked older men?’

‘Her father felt she needed one and Auguste fitted that mould perfectly. He was thirty-six years of age and very successful, she not quite twenty. Guidance, n’est-ce pas, as if one could ever have guided that filly. Is not the key to a girl’s heart that to the strongbox? I’m sure that father of hers thought this.’

Many are the ways to a girl’s happiness, Hermann, Louis would have said, but the surest is the foresight of the father. Les hauts had a host of such expressions. ‘But Olivier loved her.’

‘Passionately. It’s what every woman prays for but it wasn’t sufficient. Married 13 June 1911, miscarried 27 October of that year when she fell off her horse, gave birth to twins 5 March 1913, and then lost Auguste to the war as so many did. I don’t excuse her; I excuse his not realizing that in his absence she had not had the benefit of that precious guidance and was no longer the young girl he had married.’

‘And her maiden name? It’s just routine.’

Did he know the twins were in Vichy? Did he? wondered Edith. ‘Varollier. An old family in Paris, once very wealthy and with connections to several banks including ours, but all of that was lost in the Depression. Oh for sure one could say, as many later did, that in marrying her Auguste was merely completing a business transaction and that she felt this terribly but it wasn’t so. She was beautiful, was everything a man like him could desire, was tender when needed, vivacious, shapely, voluptueuse, and yet … and yet …’

Ah merde, had Herr Kohler somehow provoked her into speaking her mind or were things so close now she’d had to?