Flykiller

‘Greasepaint, heavy lipstick, mascara and the eyelashes,’ grunted Kohler. ‘Did she come straight from the club or theatre? If so, that “lover” of hers forgot to tell us.’

‘Was she told by de Fleury to throw the nightgown on over her costume because they were late, or is this what was wanted?’

Two costumes. The first revealing the bad girl, the second for bed. ‘Did he have the nightgown with him, or did she have it in her dressing room, wherever that is?’

Questions … there were always those. ‘Leave me with her now, Hermann. Please. I’ll be sure to tell you what you need to know.’

‘Okay, Chief, she’s all yours.’

Hermann could be heard vomiting. He’d be thinking of the victim’s daughter, an orphan now. He’d be wondering if he’d have to be the one to tell her what had happened.

He’d be thinking of the grandparents, too. Would they put the child into a convent school as a boarder or do the proper thing and watch over her day and night?

He’d be wondering if Giselle and Oona could help out. He was like that.

‘Dead certainly for more than twenty-four hours,’ sang out St-Cyr. ‘Probably at about 10 p.m. Tuesday evening but the coroner can, perhaps, elaborate. A knife, I think, but must …’

‘That goddamned tap above her feet is dripping, idiot! It’s the only one in this buvette that is, so her killer must have cracked it open to wash off his hands and the knife.’

Looking like death itself in a greatcoat, Hermann held up the spluttering lantern. A Fritz-haired* giant under a battered grey fedora, with sagging pouches beneath pale blue eyes that seldom revealed emotion but were now filled with tears – those of rage at what he had to face; those, too, of loss. ‘Easy, mon vieux,’ breathed St-Cyr, deeply concerned about him. Too much Benzedrine to keep him going, too little sleep, alcohol whenever he could get it and tobacco!

The stormtrooper-like lower jaw and cheeks that needed a shave carried shrapnel scars from that other war, the brow the fresh scar of a recent bullet graze, and, from the left eye to the chin, the duelling scar of a rawhide whip the SS had used on him early last December for his insisting on the truth. Another case.

‘Here, have one of these,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Our Secretaire was so worried he forgot to take the packet back.’

The big, raw-boned hands that had defused booby-traps and 500-kilo bombs shook as the lighter was lit. Disloyal, a lousy Gestapo to his confreres and a lampooner of the Fuhrer and of Nazi doctrines, Hermann had become a citizen of the world long before Paris had polished him.

‘A cabaret dancer, Louis. Painted fingernails, good, nice legs – was she playing at being in the seedy nightclubs of Berlin in the twenties and about to do a striptease for the Marechal?’

‘Or was she first to have sung for him, since he’s known to love operettas and other such simple pleasures?’

‘“Patrie. Suivez-moi! Gardez votre confiance en la France eternelle,”’ quoted Kohler, imitating the high, reedy voice of Petain. Follow me. Keep your confidence in eternal France.

‘“Think upon these maxims: Pleasure lowers, joy elevates; pleasure weakens, joy gives strength.” But was she to have given him pleasure, Hermann, or joy?’

‘We’ll have to ask him.’

‘Or Dr Menetrel who, unless I’m mistaken, initiated the little visit and put our Inspecteur des Finances in such a spot that his pension was threatened and he found he couldn’t refuse.’

Menetrel vetted nearly everything the Marechal did or said, and thus wielded enormous power. ‘Or once did,’ snorted Kohler, ‘seeing as Vichy no longer has the zone libre to govern, no longer a navy, an Army of the Armistice, her African colonies or anything else but this town and the day-to-day civil service stuff.’

‘And France is now united, those in the zone occupee no longer envying those in the zone libre.’

The north and the south. ‘And no longer believing in the Marechal. Her fingers really are those of a piano player, Louis. She even wears her wedding ring like a good girl should, even though a widow.’

‘I’m going to have to move her hand, Hermann.’

‘The lace of the nightgown will only hide the wound, that of the teddy too.’

‘Bear with me. Turn away if need be.’

Overly loud in the imagination, the breaking of rigor’s stiffness at the wrist and elbow would sicken Hermann. ‘There,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘Forgive me, madame, but it was necessary. Hermann, have a look at these.’

Two parallel scars marred the right wrist. ‘Not aspirins, then,’ grunted Kohler, ‘and Bousquet must have known it. There are ashes, too, Louis, from a cigar, I think, though can’t be sure. Spilled down her front either before she was stabbed or during the killing. Either at the theatre or club, then, or here.’