Flykiller

‘Louis has to see the room,’ he muttered. ‘Louis is always better at this.’

Books – novels – a photo album were also on the table. Laying the latter on the bed, Kohler quickly flipped through it, could hear Edith Pascal saying something downstairs, had little time now, must hurry … Hurry.

There were snapshots of men on leave behind the lines of that other war, none of the boys actually in the trenches, of course. No, wait, there was one, and to send such things home, if one could get them past the censors, had been definitely against the rules, yet here it was. Two men in uniform, wearing open trench coats and officers’ caps, were sitting face to face with a board between them on their knees. Mud and pools of water around their boots, ammo boxes strewn about and barbed wire – skeins and skeins of that fucking stuff – up above them, the timbers shattered and not, tin mugs of coffee and cognac to hand, the one man not much older than the other, if at all.

Rain, too, and the ruined remains of a canvas fly strung above them to sag and piddle its constant stream. 15 April 1917. Chemin des Dames.

‘Ah Christ,’ he said as he read the rest of the pencilled note on the back. Playing chess in the warmth and comfort of the Hotel des belles tranchees, our Lieutenant Charpentier and Captain Olivier await the game of war.

Charpentier.

‘Louis … Louis …,’ he croaked and, feeling moisture welling up in his eyes, cursed himself, for detectives should never get sentimental. Never!

Blurred, the light from the little lamp that was cupped in his hand was reflected in the mirrors of her dressing table and he saw himself first in one, then another and another, old now and beaten. ‘I was there, too,’ he said of that other war, ‘and so was Louis, but he took part in that battle, I didn’t.’

Dreading what he’d found, for that lieutenant had to have been Ines Charpentier’s father, he pocketed the snapshot, closed the album, then reopened it to the back, to more recent snapshots of Noelle Olivier on horseback, a goddamned grey gelding, a stable … ‘And as a cabaret dancer. A chateau, a party …’

These last two photos joined the first but Edith Pascal would be certain to realize he’d taken them. The pungently sweet and heady smell of burning perfume was now everywhere.

Quickly crossing to the dressing table, Kohler wet a tissue with the perfume, tucked it away for Louis and replaced the stopper. Quipped guiltily when the woman sucked in a breath, ‘Oh, sorry. I had to have light and had run out of matches.’

Louis was right behind her. ‘Hermann, please have Mademoiselle Pascal show us where the jewellery was kept. Check the window catches for signs of forcible entry. The usual, mon vieux. Spare nothing, even if it takes us all night.’

These two were hateful, Edith told herself. They pried into everything, but unlike the one called Kohler, St-Cyr had infinite patience. For hours it had seemed, while she’d shown the other one the drawer in which the jewellery had been kept, St-Cyr had stood in front of the dressing table, unable to take his gaze from it.

‘I remember this,’ he had said, marvelling at it and the thought. ‘It was in one of the room exhibits at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Hermann. Paris, summer, 1925.’

Had he now memorized the position, style and use of everything on that table? He hadn’t touched the clear, fluted crystal flacon a parfum his partner had half emptied, hadn’t even said anything about its distinctive fan-shaped sapphire-blue stopper, but must have known it was Shalimar.

For some moments Herr Kohler had deliberately distracted her. St-Cyr, she was positive, had opened the top drawer of the table – he’d have seen the billets doux, would have noted the soft blue envelopes, the handwriting, would have surmised that not all of them were there.

Perhaps he’d asked himself why Auguste had not burned the Marechal’s love letters to Madame Noelle; perhaps he understood that Auguste had locked the room after her death and hadn’t since set foot in it.

But had St-Cyr noticed what had been lying among the garters and pins in her little porcelain box? Had he taken that cork that once came from a bottle of Bollinger Cuvee Speciale, the 1925 Madame Noelle and the Marechal had drunk?

He had, she thought when next she was able to glance his way, not touched a thing, or so it seemed. His hand still cupped that cold and empty pipe of his …

‘Her hair,’ he said.

‘Jet black and bobbed, Louis,’ Herr Kohler muttered, still engrossed in searching through jewellery that hadn’t been taken but should have been if robbery had been the motive.