J. Janes - Gypsy

Tshaya had worked in a brothel in Tours and would have seen or heard of such a thing. ‘Yes. Yes, they still do it but now, of course, rabbits are so very hard to come by.’

‘But do they taste better?’

‘Did she tell the Spade she was doing it for the sake of the rats?’

‘ You know that’s what she’d have said !’

‘Go downstairs, Hermann. Immediately! Tell Boemelburg we’ve got a murder on our hands and that I will have to go over this place thoroughly.’

‘She did it, Louis. Don’t get to thinking otherwise. We haven’t time.’

‘Of course, but then … ah mais alors, alors, mon vieux , the cognac.’

‘ What the hell’s the matter with the cognac ?’

‘Nothing. It must have been superb. A Bisquit Vieille Reserve , VVSOP and fifty or more years in the cask for the youngest of its crus , the youngest , Hermann.’

‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘Tshaya. Wouldn’t any marc have done as well? Why choose something so fine and rare? Why not use something cheap and rough and easily obtainable, since it would burn just as well and for just as long?’

‘Are you trying to tell me Tshaya had expensive tastes?’

‘No. I am simply saying that not everything is as one would think it should be.’

The last of the papier-mache balls went into the kitchen stove. Alone, cold and deeply troubled – afraid, yes – St-Cyr brought the lighted taper to the bowl of his pipe, but chopped blotting paper, sun-dried herbs, sawdust, carrot tops and beet greens were no substitute for tobacco.

‘ Diable !’ he cried, and spitting furiously several times, cleaned out the pipe and laid it on the table, another failed experiment in what the Occupation had produced, a nation of experimenters.

The house, he had to admit, was lonely without the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper who could, in moments, bubble with laughter or play the imp only to become serious. A terrorist, a resistant .

Suddenly he remembered the book he had taken from her shelf and cursed himself for having carried it all this time. Page by page he burned it, watching the flames but seeing her standing between the cages of poisonous snakes, ready to kill herself.

Three women, all very intelligent and resourceful but desperate and driven to extremes – each asking what they could possibly do to save themselves when … when, really, nothing could be possible.

That business in the house on the rue Nollet was not right. Oh for sure Tshaya would hate the Spade and would want to kill him but would she have taken such a risk as to notify Je suis partout ahead of time, knowing only he would come and not with others? At the least, she would have requested a private meeting there ahead of time and would have notified the paper later. And where, please, had the Gypsy been? In hiding, in a forest somewhere, among old ruins and in an encampment known only to other gypsies who were now with him, or in Paris at the killing with Tshaya? It must have taken at least two persons to have forced Doucette to lie on the floor like that and then to have tied him to the ringbolts. A gun would have been necessary also.

The leather binding of La Cryptographie Nouvelle refused to burn – the fire was simply not hot enough. The gilded letters on the spine remained, a damning indictment should they be found.

Cutting them off the charred leather, he ate them – it was the only thing to do. The ground outside was frozen solid, the drains could be opened and searched …

‘We were in Tours,’ he said so silently no Gestapo bug could have picked it up. ‘On Wednesday the twentieth we were away from Paris and on Thursday also, until 0500 hours Friday.’

Early on that Wednesday, before the curfew had ended, the Gypsy and Tshaya had robbed the pay-train at the Gare de l’Est. Then on the night of that same Wednesday or early on the Thursday they had cleaned out the wall safe of Nana’s former villa.

After the Gare de l’Est robbery, Tshaya and the Gypsy could have lain up in the house on the rue Nollet but search as he had, there had been no conclusive evidence of this.

Fighting sleep, he sat down at the table to strip the leather from the boards and to cut it into digestible shreds. ‘I can’t be the cause of her arrest,’ he said, but wondered how she had hidden the wireless set so well, no one had been able to find it.

And what of Gabrielle? he asked. A handkerchief had been dropped in the powder magazine at the quarry but this could just as easily have been done by accident on the first visit, on the thirteenth. On Thursday, the twenty-first, she had been returned to Paris by the Gypsy and the resistants who had taken her car and had immediately informed the police of what had happened. As much as twelve flasks of nitroglycerine and at least two cases of dynamite were missing but how much had been taken on her first visit with Nana? One flask and a few sticks, or all the rest as well?

The Gypsy had run out of nitro by the time they had encountered him at the house on the rue Poliveau. Nitro was far more portable and therefore preferred but now … did he have all he needed or had she lied to the police? Had there never been a second trip? Had they simply held back on the explosives, storing them for De Vries? Hermann and he had seen no tyre tracks, no evidence of that second visit, but, yes, the Gypsy could easily have come and gone. Then why had he not left a surprise for them, especially since he had been trying to kill them?

And what of Nana? he asked. Nana had had one of the revolvers from the Gare Saint-Lazare in her purse but had claimed she’d not been given a chance to tell Herr Max about it. Another good citizen unjustly wronged, but where, please, were the other two Lebels that had been taken during that robbery?

None of them had confided much. Indeed, the lies and half-lies had been piling up to screen the whole thing. Henri Doucette would have been a threat to them. He’d have held back from letting Herr Max know everything. Tshaya could well have told the Spade things Nana and the others couldn’t have him repeating.

Certainly the murder implicated Tshaya. Certainly it would send a definite message to the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and to all such types. It would say exactly how great had become the hatred of them. But had it been Tshaya who had killed him?

Still deeply disturbed by the murder and by the horror of it, he sadly shook his head but spoke aloud and softly. ‘Tshaya must have obtained the cognac during the villa robbery while with De Vries. The SS always drink the most expensive stuff since they don’t have to pay for it.’

From the rue Nollet to Saint-Cloud was half-way and some across the city, easy enough if the Gypsy had had a car and had been able to hide it safely. But in her statement to the police Gabrielle had sworn that just after curfew on Thursday morning she had been forced to drive De Vries to the quarry. They had used her car. Tshaya had had the flu and had not been able to go with them.

Only the coroner could give a reliable estimate of the time of the Spade’s murder, but had Doucette been killed when Hermann and himself had been in Tours on Wednesday?

By then Nana had come face to face with Doucette not only at the Avia Club but at the party in her former villa on the eleventh. She had also talked to the Spade’s latest pigeon who must have been at the party too.

Tshaya had been at that affair. The cognac could have been taken then, her mind set in its intention to kill.

He knew he was arguing with himself, knew also that Boemelburg would have his own suspicions. Walter would have sensed doubt in him. Walter would have begun to question the murder.