J. Janes - Tapestry

‘Madame Rouget also had her daughter Denise bring Lulu in to see us, Inspector. Twice, I think, or was it three times?’

‘Four. Poor Elene didn’t know what to do.’

But she did.

It wasn’t wise of her to leave the chief inspector alone in the outer office, Suzette told herself, but she absolutely had to get cleaned up. He would go through the papers on her desk. He’d see beyond a shadow of doubt that Madame Henriette Morel was being billed ten thousand francs each this month for the Barrault and Guillaumet investigations, as she’d been billed last month. He’d find M. Garnier’s files on Madame Barrault and Madame Guillaumet, files that were to have been locked up in the colonel’s office had that one come back from Chez Benedicte’s or not have left the door to his office locked as always when he was away, and sometimes even when he was here and in there with a particularly beautiful client.

The inspector would see that on her desk there was also the invoice she had typed for the parents of Captain Jean-Matthieu Guillaumet, who was in the officers’ POW camp at Elsterhorst. Twenty thousand francs they’d been billed this month alone for the agence ’s finding ‘conclusive evidence’ of Madame Guillaumet’s plans to commit adultery. The Ritz, no less!

‘And then?’ whispered Suzette to herself. ‘Then he will discover that the Scapini Commission in Berlin, the Service diplomatique de prisonniers de guerre, have requested an estimate of the cost of just such a “conclusive” investigation of her and that this estimate has been placed at between forty thousand and fifty thousand francs.’

It would do no good for her to stand here stupidly and cry. She must get back, but he would also find that that same commission, at the insistence of Madame Marie-Leon Barrault’s husband, who was in the camp for common soldiers at Stablack in Poland, had demanded that such an investigation of his wife be done. Cost: ten thousand francs a month, but that since Corporal Rene-Claude Barrault had no money of his own, Madame Henriette Morel had willingly volunteered to cover that cost as well. Thirty thousand francs then, this month alone to Madame Morel: ten for Madame Barrault, ten for Madame Guillaumet and ten for the Scapini’s request.

‘Un gogo,’ M. Hubert Quevillon had said of the woman. He had flashed some of the photos he used from time to time to convince prospective customers that their husbands were indeed fooling around behind their backs. Totally naked girls.

‘A sucker,’ she swallowed, glancing accusingly at herself in the mirror that was above the washbasin. Madame Morel was being billed twice for the Barrault investigation and once for the Guillaumet, whose in-laws were also forking over twenty thousand francs for that one, and soon it would be the Scapini Commission also, whose cost those same in-laws would gladly pay since the Scapini could recommend to the courts that charges be laid and a divorce granted.

A racket, that’s what it was. She knew the chief inspector would find out all of this from her desk alone-Madame de Brisac’s invoice was there too, the search for Lulu, a lost dog: no charge at all. Nothing. Absolument rien simply because that one was not only an old friend but had recommended the firm to Madame Rouget who in turn had recommended it to her daughter Denise and to Germaine de Brisac, the daughter of the other one. The things one did for business. But having scratched the surface, would the inspector not want more?

Hurriedly she took off her slip and underpants and, rolling them into a tight ball, tucked them into her bag. She would put on her overcoat to hide the skirt’s dampness, had best get ready to go home- oui, oui, that is what she’d do. Lock the door and lock him out of the office.

‘Inspector, I must close up now. Grand-mere, she will worry. Always it’s the same with her, you understand. She watches the clock, poor thing, and worries especially now with … with all of these terrible attacks.’

A lie, of course, but had he believed her? He gave no indication, hadn’t been standing anywhere near her desk, had been sitting-yes, sitting patiently by the door-and said, ‘ Ah, bon , mademoiselle. It’s best my partner and I come back in the morning.’

‘Sunday … It will be Sunday, Inspector. The agence will be closed.’

‘Ah! I’ve completely lost track of the days. Always the work, never the rest. Monday, then.’

Throwing on that overcoat, he took that fedora of his from her desk and said, ‘ Aprez vous, mademoiselle.’

‘I … I must switch off the lights, then put the lock on.’

‘Of course.’

As she did so, he didn’t take that gaze of his from her, but held the door, then watched as she pushed the little button in and let her go first, he pulling the door tightly closed behind them and testing it to make certain it was, indeed, locked.

‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry.’

No one was taking any notice of them. No one! Not M. Raymond and not M. Garnier … ‘Merci,’ she heard herself saying.

‘I’ll just walk you to the entrance of the metro. That way I’ll not worry either.’

Ah, merde! ‘There … there’s no need, Inspector. The flat’s just along the way.’

They reached the avenue, which was now in total darkness. The glow from occasional cigarettes was as if that from fireflies in the night and not yet a moon. ‘ Bonne nuit, mademoiselle.’

And never trust a police officer, said St-Cyr silently as he gave her time to lose herself in the crowd. That pin tumbler, mortised lock of the colonel’s, with its bevelled bolt and dead bolt above, allows you to ‘put the lock on’ the former but not the latter, which needs its key. Delaroche must always come by to put the dead bolt on, but with the other there are two little buttons mounted on the lock face just below the bolts. Pushing in the one as you did, activates the bevelled bolt, pushing in the other as I did, deactivates it.

The colonel, like any detective prive worth his salt, felt Kohler, had a table exactly where it should have been. Right at the back, tucked into a corner in full view of the coat check and entrance and with the whole club spread before him, including its tobacco-fogged horizon.

Bob sat on two of the chairs nearest to that master of his and watched the girls from this distance. He didn’t bark, seemed oblivious to the brassy racket from the orchestra and that from the crowd, was mesmerized apparently by the lights and the action.

Wehrmacht boys were everywhere, several with their petites amies . BOFs, too, and other black marketeers and collabos . Maybe a ratio of eight from home to two of the French, the club filling up fast and no different than any other in this regard.

‘Bob has impressive control, Colonel. You’ve trained him superbly.’

Just what was Kohler after and where the hell was that partner of his? wondered Delaroche, though he’d have to smile and affably say, ‘You’ve no idea how good Bob is for business. Prospective clients, especially the women, take one look at him and are not only reassured but convinced. The younger they are, the harder they fall-isn’t that right, mon vieux ?’

Bob agreed. Husbands would fool around; wives would demand answers, or vice versa. ‘A fortune, that it, Colonel?’

‘Hardly. A good living, though. Surely you must have thought of going into business for yourself?’ Delaroche turned to a waitress. ‘Angele, ma belle, would you be so good as to bring Herr Kohler a little something from Munich? The Spaten Dunkel. It’s fresh in today, Kohler.’

‘ Et pour vous, mon cher colonel?’ brown eyes asked.