J. Janes - Gypsy

Calming himself, Boemelburg indicated they should sit together on one of the couches. Cursing them silently, he gave them each some of the cognac. ‘Now tell me’, he breathed, ‘where Dr Vries and his woman are hiding. Do it, damn you, or I swear I will have you taken from this house and given over to those who would like nothing better than to strip you naked and beat you until the answers gurgle from your battered lips and punctured lungs.’

Ah Jesus … ‘If … if we knew …’ began Suzanne-Cecilia only to feel Gabrielle’s warning hand on her arm.

‘Nana …’ Gabrielle tried to find her voice. ‘When … when Janwillem left you in the spring of 1938 you had just discovered you were pregnant. Do you remember we met at the Cafe de la Paix? You were so upset, cherie . You thought Tshaya must have come back into his life and that he was staying with her father’s kumpania . A woods to the west of Paris, some ruins – I think you said it was at an old monastery, or what was left of one.’

Nana stared at her cognac and tilted the glass to let some of it run over her fingers, but if she thought the Vieille Reserve a deliberate reminder of the Spade’s murder, she gave no indication of this.

She bathed her lips and indicated Ceci should do the same.

‘That … that was all I knew at the time,’ she said. ‘A place the gypsies had been going to for centuries but one, yes, that the Deuxieme bureau des nomades knew nothing of.’

There, she would let this Gestapo pig digest the crumb she had given him.

His watery blue eyes sought her out. ‘Are we to search every woods to the west of the city?’ he asked blandly.

‘Only those with ruins,’ she countered swiftly. ‘I don’t like being hit, Sturmbannfuhrer, nor having my nightclothes ripped from me, nor do I like being nearly drowned when a few sensible questions calmly given are all that is necessary. Janwillem is not himself, not any more, but your people and the Norwegians before them kept him in prison so long he can only think of himself as a gypsy and therefore at complete odds with the rest of us. Get that into your head. You’re a Gajo; he’s now of the Rom completely.’

‘Versailles,’ hazarded Boemelburg only to see her vehemently shake her head and hear her acidly toss the words at him. ‘It’s too popular, too fashionable, particularly these days.’

‘Then try to think. Try to give us a little more.’

‘ So that the guillotine or the axe might fall on a neck whose head was empty ?’

He sighed. ‘That temper of yours is far too swift for your own good. If you and your friends are innocent, I will personally see that you are cleared of all charges. You have my word on it.’

Is it as good as your Fuhrer’s? she silently asked. Will you apologize for what you’ve done to us? ‘Agreed,’ she said but did not try to smile.

He gave her a moment. Gabrielle took her by the hand. ‘A monastery … You told me the gypsies always marked the way they had travelled by using special signs. You wanted us to look for Janwillem, Nana. You were certain that together we could find him.’

‘The patterans ,’ she said. ‘The trident, the cross – heaps of leaves or grass at a corner of a crossroads, branches piled up in winter.’

‘The swastika,’ said Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘I remember once reading of it. An ancient symbol from India which was adopted and used by the gypsies in their wanderings. The gypsies …’

‘Don’t you dare taunt me, madame. And as for you.’ He looked at Nana. ‘De Vries would not have marked his trail this time.’

‘Not unless he wanted other gypsies to follow and to gather,’ said Nana softly.

‘For what purpose?’ he asked.

She let him have it. ‘Sabotage, since the times are no longer ordinary and there are so few of their people left. He has everything he needs, hasn’t he?’

‘ Think , Nana,’ urged Gabrielle quickly interceding. ‘A conservatory – didn’t he once tell you of one?’

‘A house that had been fashionable in its day,’ added Suzanne-Cecilia, ‘but one which, on the death of its owner, had been left to a religious order.’

‘An arcade,’ said Nana. ‘An inner courtyard. Janwillem … I once overheard him saying to someone on the telephone that they should meet in the conservatory where … where the Prussian general had established his personal latrine during the war of 1870-71. The house is a former villa, Sturmbannfuhrer, within whose stairwells the ceilings are still decorated with the same paintings of swallows that were there in the fourteenth century. There is a chapel. A maze of corridors connect innumerable bedchambers, since cut up into the more recent cells of the monks who have now long departed. Above the rooms and corridors there are gaping holes in the roof.’

‘Would it be in or near the Foret de Marly-le-Roi, Nana?’ asked Gabrielle.

She didn’t look at any of them but said faintly, ‘Yes, that is where it is. L’Abbaye des freres bienveillants .’

The Abbey of the Benevolent Friars. ‘Were you ever there?’ asked Boemelburg.

Her gaze met his fully and she had to ask herself, Does he know of it after all? Has he suddenly remembered it?

‘Once and now … now I have given him to you and may my son and God Himself forgive me.’

In the pitch darkness before dawn, Hermann was silent. The rue Laurence-Savart had barely awakened. The Citroen was freezing. ‘Didn’t you sleep at all?’ asked St-Cyr.

‘A couple of hours.’

‘And Giselle, is she still determined to throw herself from the belfries of the Notre-Dame?’

‘ What …? Oh, Giselle. A false alarm. Cramps, all that sort of thing. Her cycle’s way out of tune, but she’s still determined to kill herself, though she says she’ll wait to see if we return.’

‘And Oona?’ asked St-Cyr sadly.

‘Still thinks she’ll drown herself but admits it will be difficult cutting a hole through the ice without an axe.’

‘ Bon ! That should slow her up. Now why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you? No baby on the way? I would have thought you’d be …’

‘ Celebrating ? Then read this. I got it from a friend of a friend at Gestapo Central but had to pay the lousy son of a bitch 10,000 for it.’

‘Francs?’

‘ Idiot! Reichskassenscheine . Suddenly nobody wants francs any more, not since von Paulus stopped being supplied. There’s a rumour he told the Fuhrer he was going to have to throw in the towel.’

Stalingrad … The Sixth Army … A hundred thousand men at least and had the pendulum finally begun to swing the other way? Berlin would be enraged.

The flimsy slip of paper was a copy of a telex from Himmler to Boemelburg and it had come in at 0530 hours, not ten minutes ago. SETTLE IT – that was all there was to the message, but the intended inference was Befehl ist Befehl , an order is an order.

‘Jacqmain blows his head off. The Spade is torched. Wehrle takes cyanide. Death follows on death but all Gestapo Paris-Central and the SS over in Saint-Cloud have to show for it is a shortage of at least 100,000,000 francs, an obvious absence of cyanide and explosives, and three women in their nightgowns, each of whom steadfastly claims her innocence! The Chief hasn’t any other choice. I’m telling you, Louis, it’s us or them. They’re terrorists.’

‘ We can’t turn them in!’ It was a cry .

‘Look, I know that. I just had to get it clear with you because now it’ll have to be the five of us against all of them.’

‘Snipers?’

‘Or grenades but, yes, it’s the thought of snipers that worries me the most. Killed while attempting to apprehend the Gypsy ! You, me, the three of them and it’s … why then it’s all settled and no one has to fuss about us any more. Hell, we only look after common crime. No one cares about that, not with all the really big crime that’s going on!’