Carousel, page 34
‘Suitcases … suitcases,’ seethed Henri Lafont.
‘Silence, you punk! Please do not interrupt two officers of the law in their duty.’
The old priest was shaken, but not so much by the outburst. ‘Charles went into the church. When … when I caught up with him, he asked me to hide the suitcases temporarily for him.’
‘Which you did?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘He was a man much wronged by life and I could not turn my back on him.’
‘That is fair enough, Father, but was there not the exchange of a little something to tide you and the church over difficult times?’
‘A parish priest’s life is not easy, Inspector. Many burdens must be carried.’
‘Yes … yes, but the murder of that other girl, Father? Mila Zavitz,’ urged Louis.
It was as if there were only the two of them and that God of Louis’ had suspended the animals of the carousel in final judgement.
‘Mademoiselle Jeanne had passed Captain Dupuis in the street, Father. She had noticed there was blood on his shirt,’ prompted St-Cyr.
‘Yes … yes. She had been to confession and had started for home only to return to tell me of the murder. By then Monsieur Charles was waiting for me in the sacristy with the suitcases.’
‘No, Father. The suitcases were still in that courtyard but had been broken open. You had seen at a glance what had happened: the girl Mila Zavitz had come upon a thief and had been killed. You lived in fear of discovery, isn’t that so? Monsieur Charles was a man so changed by life he could kill to protect what was rightfully his. He had a friend, a gangster, Réjean Tourmel.’
St-Cyr stabbed the air with his pipestem. ‘You saw what those suitcases contained, Father, and you panicked, but …’ he paused. ‘But Charles Audit could not have killed Mila Zavitz because, Father, you had followed him into the church.’
‘He … he could have left the sacristy unobserved.’
‘No, Father, because if he had killed her, Charles Audit would not have left the suitcases behind, nor would he have stuck around a moment longer.’
‘The girl had been strangled. Roland – ’
A keening wail startled everyone. ‘My son … Ah no, Father. Not my Roland!’ cried Madame Minou.
‘Hermann, get Madame Van der Lynn to calm that woman! Roland, Father? He was hiding in that draper’s shop and you knew this, but did not think he had realized you’d seen him.’
Ah damn the Sûretée! ‘Yes … yes, that is correct and here are my thirty pieces of silver.’
Thirty of the gold coins – real ones taken from the suitcases by the priest. Otto Brandl took a step forward. St-Cyr looked up from them and into the old priest’s eyes, ignoring the Nazi. ‘No, Father, that is not enough. The girl was Jewish, so she would not have come to you for help, not to an anti-Semite. The girl had been raped.’
Was there nothing one could do? Would God forgive? ‘Alphonse, I cannot keep your secret any longer.’
Stung by the accusation, Captain Dupuis pushed his crutches aside and tried to reach the guns on the floor. ‘You call yourself a man of God, Father!’ he shrilled.
He was very nimble and when the bullet from the old priest’s gun smashed into his skull, he flung wild eyes up at the crowd and then collapsed.
‘May God forgive me,’ gasped Father Eugène.
St-Cyr snatched the Luger from him and in two quick steps jammed it into Henri Lafont’s stomach, but looked at Bonny. ‘Please do not do anything, Pierre. My patience, it has evaporated.’
‘Then who killed Schraum?’ asked Lafont, breathing fiercely with barely controlled fury.
‘The Schmeisser first and then the razor. Hurry, hurry … in the dust or the mud, but far enough from us. Hermann, would you see to disarming the others, please? Yes, yes, my friends, the fewer the guns, the better.’
Again they waited, again they stood around just as the animals did.
Kohler crouched over the body of Captain Dupuis. A rapist of the dead, first the girl Mila Zavitz and then Christabelle Audit, their corpses still warm.
The Gestapo looked up sadly at the old priest. ‘Father, you killed the Corporal. Please don’t deny it. The General von Schaumburg will only release the hostages if you confess.’
Hermann would have made a priest himself, such was the anguish of his look.
‘Roland Minou knew all about the coins in those suitcases, Louis, though he must have kept it to himself, since he had killed Mila Zavitz. He followed Christabelle even into the Villa Audit. He gave the dragonfly to Schraum, but soon got too greedy for his own good.’
St-Cyr sought out the industrialist. ‘Roland went to you, Monsieur Antoine. A little deal on the side, eh? He told you what you had begun to suspect yourself. Revenge, my friend. A game of revenge.’
‘So who killed Victor Morande, Inspector?’ asked Nicole de Rainvelle wickedly. ‘The rue Lauriston or the Bureau Otto?’
‘Or Monsieur Antoine Audit?’
The truffle-hunter collapsed. He didn’t cry out as some would, or try to escape, but merely sat down heavily on the edge of the carousel.
St-Cyr stood over him. ‘You tried to make it look like a gangland slaying, monsieur – something your brother’s friend might do. But Réjean is not so foolish as to bother with such decorations. He and your brother Charles had no reason to kill Morande or Corporal Schraum. Indeed, they had every reason to let them live.’
‘The note was left on purpose by Antoine Audit, Louis, as an alibi.’
‘Ah, Hermann, I wish that were so. At first I, too, thought the same. A warning – “Christabelle, leave the hotel immediately. Do not go up to the room.” But you see, Antoine Audit could not have killed her. Others would quite possibly kill him, the Resistance most particularly, but then, too, the rue Lauriston or the Bureau Otto. He wanted the return of the coins, Hermann. He needed them. Her safety, in that last hour, became of paramount importance to him because without the coins, he was as good as dead, so too his family and everything he possessed.’
St-Cyr tapped out the pipe and put it safely away in a pocket. ‘Your game was revenge, Monsieur Charles, the destruction and ruin of the brother who had robbed you of so much including, and I stress this, the granddaughter for whom you had saved the emeralds and diamonds, the gold bullion and more recently, the gold coins.’
Again Otto Brandl took a step nearer. Again he was ignored by the Sûreté. ‘She reminded you so much of Michèle-Louise Prévost, Monsieur Charles. You were very jealous and possessive of her, but she was an artist’s model. Her removing her clothes in front of your brother was a small sacrifice if, in the end, it would give you the revenge you so desired.’
He’d let them all have a moment. He’d let the truth take its course. ‘There was an elastic band, Monsieur Charles, around the canary you had mounted for your granddaughter. I have asked myself why she would have put it there. Was it to remind her of something? Your love, your friendship – how much she owed you for all you’d done for her? She was used to stroking that little bird, perhaps remembering how things used to be here at the carousel …’
‘She twisted it like a harlot!’ seethed Charles Audit, tugging at the handcuffs. ‘He made her – ’
‘Your brother could not stand to gaze at her nakedness any more, knowing she was conspiring against him, Monsieur Charles. When did Antoine tell you exactly what had been going on in that room?’
‘On that Thursday. I … I received a note from him at the flat. It said he’d be meeting Christabelle again that night at nine, but of course I already knew this. He … he told me Christabelle would be only too willing to go down on her knees between his filthy legs because she had done it often enough before.’
‘Ah yes. The elastic band is used by prostitutes to increase ecstasy during the male orgasm, yet she was a virgin until after the moment of her death.’
‘I did not rape her. I would never have done that.’
‘Of course not, but you did kill her, Monsieur Charles. You could not bear to have your brother take Christabelle away from you, or bear to have her act like Michèle-Louise.’
‘Yes … yes, I did it. She did not wish to undress in front of me, but didn’t resist when I ordered her to. The wire, Réjean. I … I had to use the wire. She coughed. She struggled … My little one could not believe that I would …’
St-Cyr tossed a hand. ‘So, it’s finished. Please allow Clément Cueillard, who has the skill and patience for such a task, to open those animals in which the coins et cetera are hidden.’
‘Do you want a demonstration first, Inspector?’
A last run of the thing, even though it was now so badly damaged. ‘Those animals which rise a little more heavily or have a slight hesitation, those are the ones you want.’
‘So, Jean-Louis, there are only the two of us and we meet, as we did that last time, at the end of a case.’
The iridescent sky-blue sheath with its vertical rows of tiny seed pearls fitted her body like a glove.
‘Look, you’re a very understanding man, Jean-Louis, but I greatly fear you are absolutely hopeless at love. Why won’t you come and stay at my place? Separate rooms, separate beds. The Nazis can’t touch you now. You gave them the coins and the emeralds – emeralds like I’ve never seen before – and river diamonds, ancient gold. A split between the Wehrmacht and the SS, the Bureau Otto and the rue Lauriston, a show of mutual cooperation for the Führer.’
‘It was wise of you to have suggested it.’
‘Wise, too, I think, to have told you how best to hide things by leaving them right out in the open.’
‘But disguised.’ Ah Mon Dieu, she was so beautiful. ‘Why me, why not …? You could have anyone, Gabrielle.’
‘Hey, listen. Do you think I want a Nazi lover? Me, who has lost a husband to them? No.’ She tossed her head and reached for her cigarette case. ‘I want a man who understands that a woman must decide things for herself. I have decided on you.’
In the Name of Jesus, decisions, must there always be decisions? ‘Christmas, then, and a few days with your son.’
‘Merci. We … we will be expecting you.’
‘Good!’ He got up to leave. She stood blocking his way. ‘Hermann’s living with two women, Jean-Louis. One to wash his socks and the other to …’
‘It won’t work. It can’t. Not for a detective.’
‘It’s too dangerous for me, is that it?’
‘You know it is. At any moment my German masters can turn on me. Hermann … he’s not had an easy time of it.’
‘Will you have to choose between him and France some day?’
‘He’ll have to choose between me and the Third Reich. I could never shoot him, not after what the two of us have been through.’
‘What about the hostages?’ she asked.
‘Rerouted to the South, to Périgord. It was the best we could do under the circumstances. Hermann fixed it using two of Antoine Audit’s trucks. I got the baker Georges and his girlfriend to go along with them.’
‘So, it’s only the two of us and it won’t work.’
‘You’re much taller than me.’
‘Another excuse?’
‘There are eight hundred German servicemen out there and any one of them would give an arm or a leg for what you have just offered but me …’
‘Yes, yes, I know, Jean-Louis. War is dangerous and so is being a detective when no one really wants one, but we need you to help us in the Resistance cell I’ve formed, so there is an end to it, and I have laid my life in your hands.’
‘You’re a very determined woman.’
‘One doesn’t get anywhere without determination.’
Her arms went about him, her lips … the feel of her. Ah Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu … the coal-black stallion, the shower of emeralds and gold coins …
Paris … Paris under the Occupation. A carousel …
‘Louis … Louis, I hate to break things up, but the Chief wants to see us right away.’
‘Another murder?’ Ah no …
‘Provence. Some little place in the hills. He thinks it still might be a good idea if we got out of town for a while.’
Turn the page to continue reading from the St-Cyr and Kohler Series
1
The wind was bitter, the night like ink. Ruefully St-Cyr mopped his stinging eyes. Ah Mon Dieu, he ached like hell – eighteen hours on the train from Paris. Eighteen instead of four! With Hermann bitching for the past twenty and the cause of the delays … well, the Boches and their wretched controls, of course, but then some flywheel in the fledgeling Resistance had placed a pocket-bomb on one of the tracks. A minor derailment outside Lyon. A few more hours …
Hermann gave a savage grunt. ‘Heave, Louis, before I get a hernia!’
They were pushing their taxi uphill. They – two officers of the law! One a Chief Inspector of the Sûreté Nationale; the other … well, one from the Gestapo with the rank of a Haupsturmführer. Merely an Inspector, but those guys, they had their chiefs elsewhere. Ah yes. In Paris where it was comfortable. And those chiefs did the ordering these days. Never mind that one was absolutely exhausted from a case and had only just escaped from death with a left hand that was stitched across the back and sore as hell! Never mind that Christmas was only seven days away and that one had not had the benefit of a holiday or a day off in years. Never mind that the wife and little son had only recently been tragically killed or that someone new had miraculously come along to soothe an aching heart. Never mind …
A sharp stone caused St-Cyr to cry out in pain as he went down. The gazogène, a converted hearse someone had left outside Chalons-sur-Marne during the invasion of June 1940, began to roll backwards.
‘Louis!’ shouted Kohler, straining.
‘A moment, my old one. A moment.’ Nom de Jésus-Christ but things were getting off to a bad start! Another murder. Provence this time – Friday 18 December 1942, to be exact! Somewhere up in the hills behind Cagnes-sur-Mer, half-way to the other side of the moon!
‘She is just ahead,’ shouted their driver, the voice one of encouragement, the accent harsh. ‘Shot as I have told you, Inspectors, with …’
‘Ja, ja,’ grumbled Kohler, ‘a crossbow.’
‘An antique,’ went on their driver. ‘Right in the heart, messieurs. Right where the virgin sings best on her wedding night. It went through to lodge in the spine, from sixty metres, no more. The hard, solid thunk! She was trying to pull that thing out of her as she fell. The hooks, they are most certainly barbed and have bent her fractured spine.’
An expert, eh? Angrily St-Cyr threw his shoulder against the rear of the hearse and together, he and Hermann managed to roll it up on to a level spot, a hairpin bend in the road perhaps. It was far too dark to tell.
Hermann jammed a boulder behind the left wheel and impatiently ordered him to do the same.
‘Don’t get fussy,’ swore St-Cyr. ‘Me, I hope you do obtain the hernia, my friend, since it will give your latest little pigeon a much needed recuperation and will leave me in peace!’
‘To get on with the detective work?’ snorted Kohler derisively, as if the French were useless at such things. ‘Jesus, Louis, what’s with this wind?’
‘Nothing. It is just the mistral. It comes and goes. It blows steadily for days, then instantly is gone, so,’ he paused, ‘why don’t we stop discussing the weather and get on with the investigation, eh? Me, I would really like to spend Christmas with Gabrielle in a warm bed.’
‘How’s the knee?’
‘A bitch. That stone …’
‘The left knee?’
‘Of course. Always it is the left side that receives the injury. Blood is now presumably ruining my new trousers that have already been ruined by that last investigation!’
‘Then try not to limp too much. It won’t look good to these mountain people.’
These peasants – St-Cyr knew that was what Hermann meant. He was impressed, for not only had the Bavarian correctly assessed their character, he had also couched his words in most acceptable terms so that their driver would take note and pride in what the Gestapo’s detective had said. These mountain people …
‘Louis, what about a fag? I seem to have lost mine.’
‘Or run out! Try lighting one in this wind, eh? Besides, I have only my pipe and a small ration left.’
‘Cheapskate. I’ll remember next time you run out of fuel for that thing in your pocket.’
The Lebel or the pipe? wondered St-Cyr but was too tired to ask. Always there was this problem of the gun, always the need to ask for the permission to shoot or carry, even in situations too dangerous to mention. Ah merde! Why had God seen fit to dump all this on him?
Hermann was a big man, big in the shoulders, a giant with sagging jowls, a storm-trooper’s jaw, brutal nose and sad pouches under faded pale blue eyes that so often saw things but seldom let on.
One with the heart and mind of a small-time hustler who both cushioned the Gestapo’s blows and kept his little Frog out of trouble. Well, sometimes. ‘Forgive me,’ said St-Cyr, allowing a touch of servility to enter his voice since their driver was still within earshot. ‘Here, Inspector. Please accept my tobacco-pouch and pipe. If I were you, I would not try to roll the cigarette in this wind, no matter how desperate the craving.’
Kohler grunted, ‘Piss off!’ and they both followed the lantern which, as their driver had now left the road, began to jig and toss itself above the slabby grey rocks and boulders. Immediately there were stunted clumps of sage and mountain thyme, of juniper too, and goat droppings, and though the wind was far too strong to let their individual aromas perfume the air, it carried the mingled pungency of the hills as St-Cyr remembered it.
Though he had to walk with care, still he let himself dwell momentarily on the little farm he had always wanted, the quiet brook with its life-giving spring that would be so absolutely necessary during the long summer droughts. To retire in peace from all the slime, to till the soil and milk the goats … What soil? his other self demanded, only to hear, Ah, never mind. Mere trifles. Pah! No more crime, no more agonizing over charred little children or girls that have been savagely murdered and then raped.
