J. Janes - Mannequin

The labyrinth of missing persons was discouraging. To all those who had been listed because of suspected or proven crimes, were added those who had simply walked away without telling anyone. Then there were the thousands who had died or become separated from their loved ones during the blitzkrieg, when the roads had had to be ‘cleared’ of refugees for the advancing Panzers and the boys in their Messerschmitts and Stukas had had a field day.

Emile Turcotte was lord and master here, a hawk-eyed, miserly little bastard with no sense of humour, the rake of a guardsman’s moustache and, too often, the defiant gaze of a wounded librarian. They’d got through all the usual refusals far too quickly. The prefet had tipped him off and had told him to co-operate or else, so as to bleed this Gestapo of information.

Well, that was fair enough, though Turcotte was not a servant of the prefet but one of their own and ought to have known better.

‘Shall we spin the wheel again?’ quipped the librarian.

Kohler snorted and sadly shook his head. It had taken them nearly an hour to find this one. For now he had enough on what must have happened to the other girls.

And Joanne? he wondered. Would there yet be time to save her and if so, what would they find?

‘Look, I need a bit on that robbery. For a start, give me what you have on the manager of the main Paris branch of Credit Lyonnais.’

This, too, the prefet had warned of. ‘That is not possible.’

‘It had better be. I’m not used to threatening my fellow workers but if I have to …’

The acid seethed. ‘The last time you … you tried to steal my tobacco tin for Louis!’

That had been about a month ago. ‘Then this time I’ll simply requisition it.’

The dark olive eyes flicked away in uncertainty. Kohler was trouble. ‘A moment,’ grumbled Turcotte. The prefet, he … he wouldn’t like it but …

‘No moments,’ grinned Kohler, clapping a hand firmly on a thin shoulder. ‘Hey, mon fin, I think I’d better come with you in case you run into an accident.’

Such records were in another section, and even that God of Louis’s could never have found them, but Turcotte had a nose for it and the memory.

When he pulled the file, right away the banker’s name came up: Andre-Philippe de Brisson, the address: 35 rue de Montpensier, almost directly across the garden of the Palais Royal from the house.

‘Eighteen million, Inspector,’ muttered the old woman abstractedly. ‘Poor Monsieur de Brisson will be beside himself and will forget absolutely to tell his daughter to let the cat in. It is the toughs these days, the police.’

‘Ah no, madame, surely not the police,’ urged St-Cyr. One had to speak loudly.

‘Yes, yes, the police.’ She would purse her lips and glare at him. She would have to dismiss the girl. One could not have one’s days interrupted by the Surete. How shameful.

The maid had let him into the house which was next door to the house of Monsieur Verges. The hour of the aperitif had come and gone with two glasses of well-watered port he had not been given a chance to share.

Little had been accomplished. The bank manager’s house was across the garden. ‘The daughter, Madame Lemaire?’ he hazarded. ‘Does Mademoiselle de Brisson let the cat in through one of the attic windows perhaps?’

‘The cat …? What cat?’

‘The robbery, madame. You were only just saying …’

The thin shoulders beneath the mound of sweaters and shawls quivered with indignation. ‘Please do not interrupt me, Inspector. I know perfectly well what I was saying.’

The woman drifted off into silence and left him waiting, though not purposely. Fortune had passed by, leaving faded, once plush, wine-purple armchairs with holes in their arms and loose threads trailing to the floor to join frayed tassels.

There were two of these armchairs, one on each side of a smoke-blackened grey marble chimneypiece; no fire, no fuel tonight. A cross, a small ormolu clock, a photo in its frame, two plates of dubious value and a vase from someplace occupied the mantelpiece beneath a gilded Louis-Philippe mirror that had lost the top left corner of its carving. An accident years ago.

A pair of flanking, gilded sconces, mounted on the cracked, pale yellow walls, held stubs of candles in each of their three holders. He felt the stubs had been left for propriety’s sake though the thought of melding all six together would have presented a dilemma whenever it registered.

Impatient at the continued delay but telling himself to go easy, he cleared his throat and said, ‘The robbery, madame?’ But now the grey eyes that had only this past moment been so fiercely defiant, drifted into memory at the thought of food as she touched the faded menu at her side.

‘The ninety-ninth day of the siege, 25 December 1870,’ she said, wistfully reading it.

The Franco-Prussian War. The winter of 1870-71. How old had she been? he wondered. Fifteen or twenty, no more …

‘“Hors-d’oeuvre: Langue de keabau en gelee ecarlate. Cervelle d’elephant. Animelles de zebre a la creme sur canapes. ”’

Jellied water buffalo tongue, elephant brains, and zebra testicles sliced, in cream, and on little wedges of toast.

The city had been ringed by the Prussians. Napoleon III had been taken prisoner. No food could enter Paris … ‘Madame …’

‘Please do not interrupt me, Inspector. I read this every day to remind myself of the brave and to beg God to let them return since men such as yourself have not stopped the Boches.’

A puree of emu with croutons, a consomme of kangaroo thickened with tapioca, garnished with dried royale and sprinkled with chervil, no doubt. On the ninety-ninth day of the siege, the Paris zoo had been emptied and the contents shared.

The menu was perhaps from the restaurant Le Grand Vefour that was off the north-western corner of the garden with an entrance on the rue de Beaujolais. It had been founded in 1760, was still open and still much the same. A classic. Balzac had eaten there.

Duchess potato croquettes dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and fried in very hot, deep fat … Camel stew, braised shank of antelope … ‘Madame, an important investigation. A girl is missing. To prevent a tragedy it is imperative that we …’

A girl … ‘She is waiting in the doorway. Nanette, please show the inspector out.’

Baked mongoose, stuffed lemur with truffles … As a young woman, madame would perhaps have had the second service and have sipped a Romanee Conti 1856 by candle-light while the city, besieged, prayed for the brave to defend its honour.

‘She’s like that always now, Inspector. My mistress is really a very dear lady who has been extremely kind to me. She doesn’t mean to be difficult.’

Marianne, his dead wife had been a Breton, thought St-Cyr. This one, too, had the fair cheeks and china-blue eyes, the blonde hair that was like silk and the warm if hesitant manner.

‘What will you do when she passes away?’ he asked as they paused by the door to the outer hall and stairs. ‘Please, I know it’s a matter you’ve told yourself many times you must face.’

The girl’s eyes were downcast. Moisture gathered rapidly in them.

‘I … I don’t know, Inspector. Madame, she has no one but me. No one any more. They’re all dead, don’t you see?’

He nodded gravely and said, ‘Permit me, then, to give you my card. Please, I’ll see what I can do to help.’

‘But me? Why me? Why should you do such a thing?’

She had instantly thought the worst. ‘Because I know what the alternatives are, mademoiselle, and can perhaps find a suitable situation for you with two dear friends who may just be looking for a little help. It’s not impossible. Both are older women of great experience and understanding. They have a shop on the place Vendome. Look, I must visit them soon and will broach the subject so that when the worst should happen, we will have a little preparation.’