J. Janes - Gypsy

Boemelburg had given himself distance and had taken Louis with him to hear the Surete’s side of the affair.

‘Jean-Louis doesn’t love me any more,’ said Gabrielle woodenly.

‘Now, now, it’s not like that.’

‘We’re all to be shot in any case so why, please, make such a crisis of it?’ snapped Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘Could we not both have shared him?’

Merde , what had happened to the women of France that they would even think of such a thing? Too few men, he said sadly to himself. Too few opportunities for a little happiness.

‘Well, Louis, tell me what went on here,’ asked Boemelburg, offering a cigarette to fingers so desperate they shook.

St-Cyr inhaled deeply and paused to hold the smoke in. Flames had reached the belfry. No attempt had been made to recover Tshaya’s body. ‘When they got here, De Vries saw the caravans and the littered rubbish of the kumpania and realized his companion had betrayed her family. For a time, I think, he said nothing, Walter. She danced for him and the other terrorists in the cellars. They slept and ate down there. Then at the height of a dance or at its conclusion, she was accused and taken up to the chapel. This, perhaps, was when he found out that Nana Theleme had not been the cause of his going to prison.’

‘Tshaya did not resist being hanged?’

‘The others must have been with him but left De Vries afterwards, perhaps to seek escape routes. They’ll see the fire or will be told of it. They won’t come back.’

‘So we’ve no hope of finding them?’

‘Not here. Not in Paris either. It will simply be too dangerous for them. No, I think they will head south, perhaps to the Camargue, to Les Baux and Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.’

A gathering ground and holy place of the nomades before the war. ‘Will there be others of their kind for them to take refuge with?’

‘This I really cannot say. I’ve no knowledge of how effective the deportations have been.’

Was St-Cyr simply guarding that tongue of his, or had he finally seen the light and would now no longer be so difficult? ‘What went on with the Spade?’

‘Tshaya lured him to the house on the rue Nollet. Together, she and De Vries murdered him.’

‘You’re certain of this?’

Had an autospy been done? Had they found something? he worried but would have to take the chance. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m certain of it.’

‘And the robberies?’

‘The loot will, I think, be totally recovered, the cyanide capsules as well.’

For a time they smoked their cigarettes in silence. The remains of the belfry’s roof were collapsing. The men were now watching the fire. The two women knelt beside the body of their friend, with Kohler standing near them, looking lost and alone. ‘Herr Max returns to Berlin with the diamonds, Louis. The Untersturmfuhrer and the rest of his Sonderkommando will go with him as security. The villa in Saint-Cloud will be occupied by others. It’s much-needed accommodation.’

‘And the banknotes?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘The jewellery, the sapphires …?’

‘Will go up in smoke. Tell Kohler to see that they are loaded into my car. Go with him to make certain none are stolen.’

‘And Nana Theleme?’

‘A small funeral, a quiet burial in the Pere-Lachaise. No members of the press. This matter is closed. See that your little songbird sings her heart out. Understand that even the Fuhrer listens to her when not attentive to his Wagner.’

Understand that this is a final warning.

They would walk in the Bois de Boulogne as they had before the problem of the Gypsy had begun. They would each in their own way try to find that moment to settle things between themselves but would Jean-Louis understand and forgive?

‘I could sleep like a dormouse,’ said Gabrielle sadly. ‘Never have I been so exhausted.’

In Provence, in the late fall of each year, the dormice come indoors to find themselves a hole in which to sleep until spring.

‘Nana’s death couldn’t have been helped,’ he said. ‘None of us, not you, not Hermann, nor I or Suzanne-Cecilia could have prevented it.’

‘Two shots. One in the left arm; the other in the abdomen.’

‘I’ve seen it happen too many times and so has Hermann.’

‘ We could have done something! We could have …’

Gabrielle burst into tears and he had to hold her tightly. ‘We couldn’t have done anything,’ he pleaded with her. ‘We were trapped ! Things simply happened too quickly.’

She bowed her head and tried to stop herself, blurted, ‘At first, when he arrived in Paris, the Gypsy led us to believe he was on our side and that he would pull off the robberies we had lined up for him. We would get the funds to the Resistance. We would see that he got safely back to the British, but then …’

‘He turned against you as he fully intended. He and Tshaya went out on their own determined to cause trouble and to take advantage of the situation.’

She took the proffered handkerchief. ‘We had to stop him before it was too late. We had to!’

‘He and Tshaya robbed the pay-train.’

‘It … it had all been looked over – arranged, you understand, well ahead of time. By then we thought it the end for us but later that day he and Tshaya paid Nana a visit. They wanted me to take them to the ruins. They … they wanted out of Paris.’

‘But Nana had prepared a little something for yourselves should things go wrong.’

Gabrielle ducked her head away. ‘She … she gave them each a glass of the eau de vie de cassis she had made herself from grain alcohol, saccharin, artificial blackcurrant flavouring and colour.’

Lots of people made such things these days. They were invariably dreadful and horribly sweet. ‘Strychnine is very bitter. How long did it take?’

He was so grim and sad. She wanted desperately for him to take her in his arms and to tell her things were well between them. ‘Seven minutes for Janwillem; ten for Tshaya. Nana … Nana did it on Wednesday at about two thirty in the afternoon. They … they had told her where they had left the loot.’

‘In the house on the rue Nollet.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who telephoned the Spade at the Avia Club Gym?’

‘I did.’

‘And he came running all by himself.’

‘Yes! We were desperate, Jean-Louis. Frantic. You and Hermann were not around. We felt you must have gone to Tours and then to Senlis, to the quarry. What, please , were we to have done?’

They had reached a copse of birch trees. Leading her among them, he asked, ‘Was it you who lit the match that set the Spade afire?’

She blinked her tears away. ‘Will you despise me now?’ she asked. ‘Will you turn your back on me if I tell you I did it?’

‘You pierced his eyes.’

Only Suzanne-Cecilia had been with her, but Ceci had already told him she hadn’t killed anyone, so it was no use avoiding the truth and she had best get it over with. ‘Yes, I did it. There, does that sanctify your self-righteousness, Monsieur l’lnspecteur principal? I am a resistant . We had each to make terrible sacrifices and we had, Ceci and I, drawn straws to see who would do it.’

When he said nothing but simply fiddled with a tiny shred of bark, she said, ‘We had to make it appear as though Tshaya had done it, otherwise those of the rue Lauriston and the Gestapo would have done the same to us or worse. Besides, he knew too much and we couldn’t have that.’

Was the war within France to become one of outright savagery? he wondered.

‘Later that night we … we robbed the villa in Saint-Cloud. We had to make it appear as if …’