J. Janes - Carousel

Was there nothing one could do? Would God forgive? ‘Alphonse, I cannot keep your secret any longer.’

Stung by the accusation, Captain Dupuis pushed his crutches aside and tried to reach the guns on the floor. ‘You call yourself a man of God, Father!’ he shrilled.

He was very nimble and when the bullet from the old priest’s gun smashed into his skull, he flung wild eyes up at the crowd and then collapsed.

‘May God forgive me,’ gasped Father Eugene.

St-Cyr snatched the Luger from him and in two quick steps jammed it into Henri Lafont’s stomach, but looked at Bonny. ‘Please do not do anything, Pierre. My patience, it has evaporated.’

‘Then who killed Schraum?’ asked Lafont, breathing fiercely with barely controlled fury.

‘The Schmeisser first and then the razor. Hurry, hurry … in the dust or the mud, but far enough from us. Hermann, would you see to disarming the others, please? Yes, yes, my friends, the fewer the guns, the better.’

Again they waited, again they stood around just as the animals did.

Kohler crouched over the body of Captain Dupuis. A rapist of the dead, first the girl Mila Zavitz and then Christabelle Audit, their corpses still warm.

The Gestapo looked up sadly at the old priest. ‘Father, you killed the Corporal. Please don’t deny it. The General von Schaumburg will only release the hostages if you confess.’

Hermann would have made a priest himself, such was the anguish of his look.

‘Roland Minou knew all about the coins in those suitcases, Louis, though he must have kept it to himself, since he had killed Mila Zavitz. He followed Christabelle even into the Villa Audit. He gave the dragonfly to Schraum, but soon got too greedy for his own good.’

St-Cyr sought out the industrialist. ‘Roland went to you, Monsieur Antoine. A little deal on the side, eh? He told you what you had begun to suspect yourself. Revenge, my friend. A game of revenge.’

‘So who killed Victor Morande, Inspector?’ asked Nicole de Rainvelle wickedly. ‘The rue Lauriston or the Bureau Otto?’

‘Or Monsieur Antoine Audit?’

The truffle-hunter collapsed. He didn’t cry out as some would, or try to escape, but merely sat down heavily on the edge of the carousel.

St-Cyr stood over him. ‘You tried to make it look like a gangland slaying, monsieur – something your brother’s friend might do. But Rejean is not so foolish as to bother with such decorations. He and your brother Charles had no reason to kill Morande or Corporal Schraum. Indeed, they had every reason to let them live.’

‘The note was left on purpose by Antoine Audit, Louis, as an alibi.’

‘Ah, Hermann, I wish that were so. At first I, too, thought the same. A warning – “Christabelle, leave the hotel immediately. Do not go up to the room.” But you see, Antoine Audit could not have killed her. Others would quite possibly kill him, the Resistance most particularly, but then, too, the rue Lauriston or the Bureau Otto. He wanted the return of the coins, Hermann. He needed them. Her safety, in that last hour, became of paramount importance to him because without the coins, he was as good as dead, so too his family and everything he possessed.’

St-Cyr tapped out the pipe and put it safely away in a pocket. ‘Your game was revenge, Monsieur Charles, the destruction and ruin of the brother who had robbed you of so much including, and I stress this, the granddaughter for whom you had saved the emeralds and diamonds, the gold bullion and more recently, the gold coins.’

Again Otto Brandl took a step nearer. Again he was ignored by the Surete. ‘She reminded you so much of Michele-Louise Prevost, Monsieur Charles. You were very jealous and possessive of her, but she was an artist’s model. Her removing her clothes in front of your brother was a small sacrifice if, in the end, it would give you the revenge you so desired.’

He’d let them all have a moment. He’d let the truth take its course. ‘There was an elastic band, Monsieur Charles, around the canary you had mounted for your granddaughter. I have asked myself why she would have put it there. Was it to remind her of something? Your love, your friendship – how much she owed you for all you’d done for her? She was used to stroking that little bird, perhaps remembering how things used to be here at the carousel …’

‘She twisted it like a harlot!’ seethed Charles Audit, tugging at the handcuffs. ‘He made her – ’

‘Your brother could not stand to gaze at her nakedness any more, knowing she was conspiring against him, Monsieur Charles. When did Antoine tell you exactly what had been going on in that room?’

‘On that Thursday. I … I received a note from him at the flat. It said he’d be meeting Christabelle again that night at nine, but of course I already knew this. He … he told me Christabelle would be only too willing to go down on her knees between his filthy legs because she had done it often enough before.’

‘Ah yes. The elastic band is used by prostitutes to increase ecstasy during the male orgasm, yet she was a virgin until after the moment of her death.’

‘I did not rape her. I would never have done that.’

‘Of course not, but you did kill her, Monsieur Charles. You could not bear to have your brother take Christabelle away from you, or bear to have her act like Michele-Louise.’

‘Yes … yes, I did it. She did not wish to undress in front of me, but didn’t resist when I ordered her to. The wire, Rejean. I … I had to use the wire. She coughed. She struggled … My little one could not believe that I would …’

St-Cyr tossed a hand. ‘So, it’s finished. Please allow Clement Cueillard, who has the skill and patience for such a task, to open those animals in which the coins et cetera are hidden.’

‘Do you want a demonstration first, Inspector?’

A last run of the thing, even though it was now so badly damaged. ‘Those animals which rise a little more heavily or have a slight hesitation, those are the ones you want.’

‘So, Jean-Louis, there are only the two of us and we meet, as we did that last time, at the end of a case.’

The iridescent sky-blue sheath with its vertical rows of tiny seed pearls fitted her body like a glove.

‘Look, you’re a very understanding man, Jean-Louis, but I greatly fear you are absolutely hopeless at love. Why won’t you come and stay at my place? Separate rooms, separate beds. The Nazis can’t touch you now. You gave them the coins and the emeralds – emeralds like I’ve never seen before – and river diamonds, ancient gold. A split between the Wehrmacht and the SS, the Bureau Otto and the rue Lauriston, a show of mutual cooperation for the Fuhrer.’

‘It was wise of you to have suggested it.’

‘Wise, too, I think, to have told you how best to hide things by leaving them right out in the open.’

‘But disguised.’ Ah Mon Dieu, she was so beautiful. ‘Why me, why not …? You could have anyone, Gabrielle.’

‘Hey, listen. Do you think I want a Nazi lover? Me, who has lost a husband to them? No.’ She tossed her head and reached for her cigarette case. ‘I want a man who understands that a woman must decide things for herself. I have decided on you.’

In the Name of Jesus, decisions, must there always be decisions? ‘Christmas, then, and a few days with your son.’

‘ Merci. We … we will be expecting you.’

‘Good!’ He got up to leave. She stood blocking his way. ‘Hermann’s living with two women, Jean-Louis. One to wash his socks and the other to …’

‘It won’t work. It can’t. Not for a detective.’

‘It’s too dangerous for me, is that it?’

‘You know it is. At any moment my German masters can turn on me. Hermann … he’s not had an easy time of it.’