J. Janes - Beekeeper

Everything would pass to Danielle — she knew this, knew that Alexandre would have left her son nothing in his will. Nothing of hers. But it would take time to settle things, and there would have to be a funeral.

Knowing she couldn’t face one, she took a moment to steady herself, then blurted softly, ‘Maybe they will let you come home for it. Home , Étienne.’

Compassion? Had the Occupier any? she demanded bitterly, and using a corner of the sheet, dried her eyes.

In the study, she said nothing, only covered the corpse and then stood waiting patiently.

He’d let her wait, thought St-Cyr.

Every detail was there, she told herself, in that little book Alexandre insisted on keeping. The names, the clients, the people who kept bees for him too. The out-apiaries … The Inspector seemed glued to the precisely crisp, neat handwriting. He’d see that keeping the directory had begun long before the war. In October of 1921, Inspector? she silently demanded. The 31st to be precise. The day he brought me here to this house of his mother and its awful furniture that my father soon rectified.

He’d see that there were actors, doctors, lawyers, but among those less fortunate, Madame Roulleau, the concierge who kept bees for him on the roof of her apartment house and had done so for all those years and even some that had not been recorded. Mme de Longueville, too, and Monsieur Durand.

He’d see that there were socialites, politicians and businessmen, and now German generals and others of the Occupier, and that Alexandre had had access to the grand salons of the elite. He’d see that they had all trusted him with their little secrets.

‘Madame, you will forgive me, but I’m puzzled.’

‘Puzzled?’ she heard herself yelp.

‘Yes. Did you, perhaps, remove this little book from the desk and then replace it?’

How could he have guessed? ‘I …’

The woman swallowed. Flustered and defenceless, she fought to answer but couldn’t. ‘You see, madame, in spite of the need for haste to avoid the fumes, Préfet Talbotte should, by rights, have taken it. A first police procedure is to seize all such records in case they should yield the identity of the killer.’

‘I … I did remove it, yes, for safety’s sake, you understand. But-’

‘But felt it best to replace it after the préfet and sous-préfet had departed?’

She knew he was going to force her to answer yes, and wondered why it was so necessary for him to humiliate her like this. Her cheeks felt hot.

Abruptly pulling the white woollen robe more tightly about herself, Juliette folded her arms defiantly across her chest and answered, ‘One does things in the instant of such a discovery, Inspector, that one later feels differently about and rectifies.’

Instinct had driven her to protect something in the directory, but he’d not mention this, not yet, nor that she must have known of the danger and had ducked into and out of the study to get it. ‘Then can you tell me anything about these people?’

Anything at all, or nothing. ‘It’s been a long time …’ she hazarded. ‘He kept things to himself.’

‘You didn’t help him in his work? A wife …’

Had the crisis passed? she wondered and felt herself beginning to relax. Unfolding her arms, she said, ‘At first, yes, but then … why then Étienne came into this world and, with the house to look after and Madame de Bonnevies, I had little time to spare. She was ill and confined to her bed. I-’

‘You did not have une bonne à tout faire? ’ A maid of all work.

‘My husband and his mother thought it too expensive, too “ostentatious” of me.’

The Inspector would leave that titbit for now, she knew, but would come back to it like a vulture.

‘Did he like Amaretto?’

Was it safer ground? ‘Not that I knew, but what you mean to ask, Inspector, is did he go out of his way to buy that bottle or did someone give it to him?’

‘You’ve been thinking it over.’

Ah merde , he didn’t miss a thing! ‘The café on the rue Saint-Blaise is a possibility and just down from the church. He always went there for a marc or a glass or the vin ordinaire , but not on the no-alcohol days, of course. Sometimes an eau de vie de poir ou de pêche from one of the little orchards in Montreuil — he rented out hives to them and still does. Well, not any more, I guess. Perhaps that’s why there are so many in the apiary. He must have been overwintering some of them here and would have set them out again in the spring.’

And you really have thought things over, madame, he said to himself. You’ve planned your strategy and want, I think, to lead me away from too close a perusal of this little book.

‘A vineyard, an orchard — pear and peach brandies or the plain and rough,’ said the Inspector, and she heard herself saying yes too quickly, and felt her heart sink at being caught out so easily.

‘The vineyard is in Saint-Fargeau. It’s not far and … and is not very big, but before the war, the … the wine was exceptional, the brandy passable.’

Did the Inspector know it well? she wondered. Did he, perhaps, live nearby? Again her heart sank, then again and deeper as she heard him say, ‘The rue Laurence-Savart. My mother’s house also.’

‘Was she old and ill, too?’ she heard herself asking and knew he could be cruel for he did not answer.

‘Your partner …?’ she asked.

‘Has gone to interview one of the names on this list your husband had written for Friday’s deliveries and consultations.’

‘List … what list? I saw no …’ Ah SainteMère , he had got the better of her again!

‘It was in your husband’s jacket pocket,’ he confessed. ‘Now, if it’s not too much trouble, might we have a look at your son’s room?’

‘My son’s …? Inspector, you’ve no right. Étienne can’t have had anything to do with this. He doesn’t even know of it and won’t for weeks and weeks, if then!’

She had broken into tears and he hated himself for doing it to her but had had to. ‘Do letters take so long to reach him?’ he asked.

The hint of kindness in his voice only grated. ‘Months, sometimes. My son was being held at Stablack but then they moved him to Elsterhorst and now he’s at Oflag 17A. It’s … it’s somewhere in what was formerly Austria, I think.’

Officers’ Lager 17A. ‘Did your son help his father, madame?’

‘With the bees …?’

She had blanched and now realized this. Angrily she brushed the fringe from her brow and glared at him before stammering, ‘I … I don’t know why you should need to ask such a thing? I really don’t!’

‘Then let us take a look at his room. He can’t have had anything to do with this murder, of course, but let us make certain of it.’

Monstre ! she wanted to shriek, but found the will to softly say, ‘Then, if you will follow me, I will take you to it.’

Twenty-four avenue Raphaël was tucked against the Jardin du Ranelagh and not a stone’s throw from the Bois. Once the villa of François Coty, the perfumer, it had been requisitioned like so many others. Drawing that splendid front-wheel drive of Louis’s into the kerb and locking the Citroën’s doors, Kohler stood in darkness as the faint blue lights of workmen fretted feverishly over the lower stonework of the villa. White paint was being removed with wire brushes and cloths soaked in gasoline. There were large, dripping letters nearest to the windows … MORT AUX BOCHES … VICTOIRE! LIBERTÉ!

Death to the Germans … Victory! Liberty! Von Schaumburg would be in a rage. Not only had the Résistance done a job in the deepest darkness of the night, they had taught the sentries a damned good lesson: both could so easily have had their throats cut.