J. Janes - Beekeeper

Deciding that their brief encounter of today was more than sufficient to last her for the rest of her life, Madame Thibodeau hurried into the waiting room to hush the whispers.

‘Josiane and Georgette, that parasite from the Sûreté wishes to prolong his moment at the expense of the house. Take him up to the graveyard. Strip if you wish, but watch out with him. He’s a bloodsucker.’

‘It’s freezing up there. It’s always so cold,’ lamented Georgette.

‘Cold or not, ma petite , it is exactly what you will do. Now go. Hurry. Hurry ! Then get him out of here!’

No cat would venture down the courtyard to the smelter, no rat either, thought Kohler, for here they’d all been trapped and eaten. He was certain of it, was damned cold and tired of waiting in the building across the way. But at last Herr Schlacht left the smelter. Seen briefly through the grime of a broken, iron-barred window, the Berliner appeared even more of a pugilist, very sure of himself and satisfied with the latest of the day’s efforts. Business was booming, and all that really mattered to one such as this was business.

The chubby chin wore its midday shadow, not brown, not blue-black but something in between; the collar of the beige tweed, herringbone overcoat was tightly buttoned up under it. Pausing to relight the cigar stub, Schlacht then collected the shiny black attache case he had set on the paving stones at his feet. A man in his mid-fifties with beautifully polished, alligator-leather shoes — Italian? wondered Kohler. The case was hefted, the grey eyes passing swiftly over the window to come to rest on the canary in its cage.

Crossing the courtyard, Schlacht looked up at it through narrowed eyes and said, ‘ Meine Liebling , are you cold? As cold as those who put you in your cage? Forgive me but I had to send them away. They were taking too much notice of things and I couldn’t have that.’

Berliners, like Parisians, loved their birds, and this one, by his accent, was solidly of the Luisenstädter Kanal. Scrap metals, Kohler reminded himself. And, no doubt, crowded tenements near the Schlesischer Bahnhof in the Fiftieth Precinct.

‘The charge was over nothing, meine Liebling. A mere mistake on my part, but …’ Schlacht savoured his cigar as if searching for the right words. ‘But these days, little one, such mistakes once made cannot be retracted and unfortunately seem always to lead to far-reaching consequences. You should have warned them to move, or at least to take no notice of my comings and goings.’

He was gone then. Too soon he had reached the bend in the courtyard and had passed from view.

As Kohler stepped from the building, he realized Schlacht had seen his footprints in the snow. Louis, he said silently. Louis, I think we’ve got a problem.

The room with the gravestone was in the attic of the brothel. Like all such maisons de tolérance , the house catered to the special needs of as many of its regulars as possible. But here …

‘ Sacré nom de nom ,’ breathed St-Cyr softly as Josiane and her sister stepped aside. Floor-to-ceiling murals covered the walls, giving ersatz views of the Père Lachaise’s tree-lined boulevards. The tomb of Honoré de Balzac was in the near distance — was it really Balzac’s tomb?

The entrance to the Ossuary was a parody of Bartholomé’s magnificent high-relief sculpture. Instead of a naked couple standing hand in hand ready to step through the doorway into the pitch darkness of eternal peace, here each had a hand on the buttocks of the other.

‘My partner should see this,’ he said drolly. ‘Hermann is a student of all things French, especially its lupanars. ’

Its ‘rabbit hutches’.

‘This is the stone,’ said Georgette, picking her way down a narrow aisle between bits of sculpture and other stones. ‘Her name, as you can see, is beautifully inscribed.’

‘The stone is real, as are all the others,’ said Josiane quickly. The Inspector would immediately see that others must also have used the room to fulfil their fantasies or to view it in fun, but would he accept that Alexandre had never once complained of this, that to him the room had still been just as sacred a trust as when it had begun, secure and totally private?

A low, Louis XIV iron fence surrounded the plot where masses of silk flowers were forever in bloom. Verbena, fuchsia and hibiscus, thought St-Cyr. Chinese Bell Flower, too, and Mignonette, but not the dreary bunches of red and white carnations so typical of such places.

‘When Alexandre asked his sister to gather flowers for him,’ confessed Georgette, ‘he told her to take only the not-so-common.’

Carved into the grey granite was the name Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies , and then: Born 17 June 1897; taken in the flower of her youth, 20 August 1912 .

‘But … but she isn’t dead?’ he heard himself saying.

It was Josiane who, ever wary of his reactions, answered, ‘Ah no, Inspector, but she might just as well have been.’

‘Did de Bonnevies pay for this room?’ he asked and saw her start, heard her sister saying, ‘Everything, and for its continued maintenance. Inspector, none ever knew at whose stone the girl had been violated, so no other name was possible, isn’t that right? I would pretend to be gathering samples of these flowers, Josiane would be over there out of sight. The custodian had forgotten all about us and had locked the gates, so we were both a little nervous and would … would call to each other.’

‘Angèle-Marie, have you found any other flowers? Hurry. We must hurry,’ sang out Josiane softly and no longer seen.

Georgette was now on her knees, awkwardly reaching well over the fence to almost touch the foot of the stone …

‘I would say, “I’ve found some,” but so soft was my voice, the name of my friend could never be heard.’

‘They would come upon her,’ grated Josiane. ‘Two, maybe three of them — four sometimes. Young, not old. Boys, he thought but never really knew. I swear it. He … he always changed his mind about the number and … and the ages of them.’

‘First one and then another would take me, Inspector. My clothes would be torn from me, my legs forced apart, my head pushed down … down …’

‘Yes, yes. Enough! And this friend of Angèle-Marie?’ he asked grimly. ‘What of her, please?’

They didn’t say a thing, these two. Josiane made her way among the stones to help her sister tidy the flowers.

‘The friend cried out encouragement,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘Instead of watching in horror at what was happening, she egged them on and had probably agreed beforehand to set the whole thing up. Did he find out who this “friend” was? Please, you had best tell me now.’

Both shrugged and shook their heads. ‘Afterwards, as we would soothe him and ourselves,’ said Josiane, taking her sister by the hand to comfort her, ‘he would always speak of a settlement of accounts, Inspector. Things were to be done on the quiet, though.’

‘But at any price; at all costs,’ managed Georgette.

‘How many were there?’ he asked. ‘Come, come, you must have some idea.’

‘Four,’ confessed Georgette. ‘He had finally settled on four of the local boys.’

‘When?’

‘Last Thursday. After he had been to see his sister,’ said Josiane, ‘and … and before he was poisoned.’

With a flash, the last of the lead was oxidized and carried away by the strong jet of air from the blowpipe, leaving a white-hot bead of gold and silver in the bottom of the cupel. Kohler was entranced. ‘ Mein Gott ,’ he exclaimed, ‘bubbles are erupting from the surface. It’s like a tiny volcano.’

‘That is oxygen the silver has absorbed. It sprays the metal up.’