J. Janes - Tapestry

‘The usual.’

‘ Un double de Byrrh. Is that not correct?’

Jesus, merde alors , those bedroom eyes of hers would have melted butter.

‘Bob, give Angele her little gift. Now don’t be stingy.’

A five-hundred-franc bill was gently teased from a bankroll that would have impressed even the wealthiest, the girl taking it between her teeth, too, as she set her tray down to mother Bob, modestly tidy her halter straps and tuck the bill between her breasts.

‘It pays to keep them happy, Kohler. You’ve no idea the things girls like that can tell you.’

Cigarettes were offered and why not accept a couple? A light too.

Kohler blew smoke towards the ceiling and sat back to enjoy the show as if a regular without a care in the world but surely Boemelburg had let him know the Gestapo and the SS employed the agence from time to time and had been very satisfied with the results?

Oberg must have told the agency to work with Sonja Remer and to tail Giselle, thought Kohler, but had they found her, or had this one simply vented his rage in the passage de l’Hirondelle because they hadn’t? ‘Tell me about Lulu, Colonel.’

There was still no sign of St-Cyr. ‘Catherine-Elizabeth de Brisac is an old and much valued friend. Her husband, Paul, and I were at Gallipoli. The Corps expeditionnaire d’Orient. Kum Kale on the Asian shore, April twenty-fifth, 1915, a diversion that, though the only successful venture of that whole campaign, fooled no one. We then withdrew and went to assist the Australians and New Zealanders on the Peninsula. Brave boys, all of them, but a debacle. An absolute cockup. The damned British High Command let us down as they then did in 1940. One simply can’t trust the bastards. Pigheaded, incompetent, arrogant and dishonest. Undermanned and under-supplied, the Turks were savage, Mustapha Kemal Pasha absolutely brilliant. Paul de Brisac didn’t come home. I caught him as he fell.’

Their drinks came. ‘Salut,’ said Delaroche, raising his glass. ‘Byrrh had become our national aperitif even before that other war, Kohler, but do you know why?’

‘The colonies. The malaria and a need for quinine to be sweetened, else it wouldn’t be taken. Hence a dry, vermouth-style drink that caught on. Let’s cut the crap and the old soldier bit, Colonel. Elene Artur kidnapped Lulu.’

‘Such things happen all the time these days, don’t they? Leave one’s pet off the lead for a moment, or let the cat out, and voila, it has vanished into the oven or the stew pot of another.’

‘Or the soup pot, given her indochinoise background and that of her mother, Colonel, but didn’t you realize Elene had taken her?’

Kohler had yet to mention the judge. ‘I didn’t. I did know of the trouble Lulu had been causing. Bob wasn’t the only dog to have suffered defending that girl and certainly Lulu could have benefitted a great deal from further training. Spoiled, oh la, la, but … Ah! what is one to do when asked by a friend of long standing who is in great distress? I immediately offered help. The Agence Vidocq was, as I have already stated, working on it.’

‘But not too hard. Elene must have kept Lulu alive until very recently. Maybe a guilty conscience, maybe she sincerely felt the dog was desperately needed by its owner.’

‘We haven’t charged Madame de Brissac a sou, nor will we. I had kept Bob away from the girls because of the fight he’d had down there with Lulu. Damn it, Kohler, Lulu had challenged Elene and had bitten the girl twice at least. Bob simply leaped in to defend her as he would have done for any of them.’

A real ladies’ dog but at other times, at least some of them, Elene, must have got on quite well with Lulu. ‘Now what are you going to tell Madame de Brissac?’

‘Nothing until it is absolutely clear to me.’

‘Lulu hated Judge Rouget, Colonel. Vivienne Rouget hired you to tail that husband of hers and not only find out who her Hercule was fucking but how serious things were.’

‘Where did you find that girl’s wedding ring?’

It couldn’t hurt to tell him, might even help to shake the son of a bitch. ‘Under a radiator.’

Out in the Arcade de Champs-Elysees the shoppers took their time, as Germans on leave would, while others hurried homeward, using the arcade as a short cut. Alone in the agence , St-Cyr waited beside Suzette Dunand’s desk. He had been about to switch on her lamp, had heard something against the foot traffic …

Ah! there it was again. Ever so gently the door was being tried. The bevelled bolt had come free … yes, yes, that lock had been successfully picked but now … now whoever it was discovered that the dead bolt had been engaged and since Colonel Delaroche had not returned to lock up, that could only mean the agence ’s security was in the act of being breached.

There wouldn’t be time to do what had to be done, but there had to be something more than the agence just sharking the clients. Whoever it was might leave. There’d been no cries for a flic to come running, no pronouncements of a robbery in progress, simply a waiting for himself to try to slip away, but was there more than one of them out there?

Retreating, he felt his way through the pitch-darkness until he got to the corridor the girl had taken to the washroom, was hurrying now, found gold-rimmed porcelain cups and saucers and a coffeepot-Sevres? he wondered-under the light switch. Everywhere he looked in this room he’d entered, there was a tidiness that troubled, a decor that didn’t fit the usual image of detectives prives but was clean of line, the furnishings very of the nouveau riche . A large desk with Lalique pen-and-ink stand, bronze figurines from the twenties. Several oil paintings hung on the walls-landscapes but also family portraits, some dating back more than a century. Surely these weren’t of relatives of M. Flavien Garnier or of M. Hubert Quevillon, whose names in bronze were apparent?

Everything spoke of money. There was none of what one would have expected, none of the stale tobacco smoke from endless Gauloises bleues, none of the sweat of the unwashed, the garlic, the cheap toilet water or cologne such individuals were wont to splash on themselves when in the urgency of plotting to seduce some suspecting or unsuspecting female client.

Conclusion: The office was seldom used and then but briefly and really for show, since those passing by on the way to the washroom would be bound to notice, especially if this one’s door was left open. Messieurs Garnier and Quevillon were foot soldiers kept on the move by the colonel.

Garnier was also a veteran of that other war, a member of the sometimes ultraconservative UNC, the Union Nationale des Combattants. A former sergeant, wounded at Verdun, but one with ties or leanings to Action francaise? he had to ask. Fascist anyway, and definitely pro-German and collabo.

The in-tray held requests, notes, thin file folders on investigations one of the others must have handed over to Garnier but not yet collected to be stuffed into jacket pockets on the run; the out-tray, the dossiers of Adrienne Guillaumet and Marie-Leon Barrault.

Suzette Dunand had typed up the following for the Scapini Commission and must surely have been worried this Surete would find it:

Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, wife of prisoner-of-war Captain Jean-Matthieu … et cetera.

Thursday, 11 February 1943: Subject leaves residence at 131 rue Saint-Dominique on foot at 1410 hours. Couple’s children are left alone, but Concierge Ouellette reluctantly reveals that she checks on them from time to time and that this is not the only such occasion but one of many .