Beekeeper (31 page)

As cruel and ruthless as they come, Sepp Dietrich had commanded the Führer's SS bodyguard during the days of the Blood Purge, and since then had blossomed into a Colonel General in the Waffen SS.

Everyone's friend and one to be admired, snorted Kohler silently.

When still no answer had come from him, Schlacht continued. ‘We're realists, you and I, Kohler. The American landings in North Africa are only the beginning. We both know time is on the enemy's side and that the Reich has fewer than thirty thousand men here in France to keep order. Not more than two thousand five hundred of them, yourself included, are Gestapo.'
*

Paris's police force had damned near half as many
flics
as that 30,000, to say nothing of the
Milice
, the
Cagoule
and all the others but this was heresy coming from someone like Schlacht. ‘And
Endsieg
seems a far-off dream, is that it?'

Final victory … ‘The Führer is not always right, so let us agree it's wisest to take precautions.'

With the help of Swiss banks! ‘Are you making me an offer?'

‘I'm asking you to keep out of my life. Forget about this business of the wax and honey, forget about my candles. Concentrate instead on Madrid or Lisbon and travel papers for the Van der Lynn woman that won't be questioned.'

Such a tidy offer could only have been suggested by the SS of the avenue Foch. ‘And?'

Schlacht didn't let his gaze waver. ‘Five million francs; two hundred and fifty thousand marks, Kohler, and not the Occupation ones. Gold wafers if you prefer.'

‘Ten million, but let me have it in gold.'

‘Don't push. It isn't wise of you. I really will forget about Mariette Durand, and I'll get you the papers quietly.'

‘And in return?'

‘I'm sure the one you're looking for is a member of the Society Central. A jealous beekeeper, nothing more.'

‘And he poisoned de Bonnevies?'

‘He would have known exactly how to do it.'

‘But … but it might still have been an accident. We're not sure yet.'

‘Then let it be one. That's even better.'

‘And Madame de Bonnevies had nothing to do with it?'

Always the loose cannon, Kohler would know perfectly well the embarrassment he could cause if he went straight to the Kommandant von Schaumburg with what he already knew. ‘Juliette was merely an amusement my Uma and I have agreed must end.'

‘And the Hôtel Titania?'

‘I own and whose front desk Juliette helped to manage, so you see, Kohler, where my wife's misunderstanding lay. Of course …' Cigar ash was examined. ‘Of course I'll have to find a replacement, and for this …' He sighed heavily and looked up again. ‘I'm willing to make a trade.'

‘Giselle?'

‘Think about it. She'd be perfect.'

Kohler was sickened by the thought and at a loss for words. ‘A former prostitute,
mein Lieber.
Young, very beautiful – wise in such ways and everything a businessman such as myself could hope for in a prospective employee. The Durand girl will be left alone and your Oona sent to freedom with the gold. Take it or leave it and
don't
, please don't, ever mess with me again.'

Giselle … Kohler saw her as she'd been that first time in the waiting room with all the others at Madame Chabot's. Straight, jet-black hair, good shoulders and of a little more than medium height. He saw her turn to smile at him as her name was called, the
négligée
falling open, nothing on under it, the girl asking, ‘What, please, is it you desire, monsieur?'

‘Fate … it was fate,' he muttered sadly. Schlacht had left him cold, had flung that cigar of his aside, and was now gone from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the stab marks of his walking stick all too clear in the snow.

‘
Jésus, merde alors
, what the hell am I going to do?' he demanded angrily. He couldn't trust the Berliner and the SS to carry through with the papers. He mustn't even think of it! ‘But I want to,' he lamented. ‘
Mein Gott
, to see Oona safely in Spain would make it all worthwhile.'

But would it?

‘She'd only find out what I'd done and would never forgive me; Giselle neither, and certainly not Louis! Yet Oona could buy that little hotel on the Costa del Sol they'd all dreamed of, and not so little now either. She could set herself up really well and be ready and waiting for him and Giselle when …

The butt of Schlacht's cigar had gone out. With difficulty, Kohler leaned over – tried to keep his right foot out of the snow – and plucked the thing away.

‘You bastard,' he said as he scattered the tobacco in the wind, rather than tuck the butt into his
mégot
tin. ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand marks in gold.
Ausweise
and papers no one would fool with …' And hadn't Giselle helped him and Louis out before? Hadn't she been plucked from the street and taken to the avenue Foch to Oberg who had made her stand before him as he'd stared up at her through his bottle-thick glasses? Hadn't she been beaten up by the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston?

‘I can't ask her to help us,' he said. ‘I mustn't.'

Even so, temptation clawed. All the way back to the pond, he thought about it – tried to figure a way out. Let Schlacht get the papers for Oona. Agree to go along with him, and then … then …

Louis … where the hell was Louis when needed most and not in sight?

‘I can't tell him a thing. If I do, Oona will be killed.'

Danielle de Bonnevies stood looking down at one of the Society's hives, some twenty or so of which were wintering among espaliered fruit trees, and when the detective from the Sûreté caught sight of her, she felt herself automatically flinch, but worse than this, knew he had seen her do so.

The flock of sparrows that had been feeding on the crumbled vitaminic biscuits she had scattered in the snow at her feet fled, leaving the yellowish stain of the biscuits and the two of them starkly alone. He'd know all about where she'd got those biscuits – from the J-threes to whom they'd been distributed at school. He'd know she sold them to others, the very best pigeon bait there was. ‘Inspector …' she heard herself bleat. ‘Why … why are you here?'

‘Me? I was just enjoying the few moments of peace the investigation seems to have allowed.'

A lie … What he'd said was an absolute lie! ‘I … I've come for the meeting but … but am a little early.'

And not at home in mourning. ‘The Society. Yes, of course. I'd forgotten.'

Another of his lies. He wouldn't have missed a thing like that. Not when
papa
had been about to tell the world what was happening to Russia's bees. Not when she'd told the Sûreté one of the Society could so easily have been the poisoner.

‘Cowards,' she muttered under her breath but loudly enough. ‘
Papa
called them cowards because they were afraid of being arrested.'

‘Some of them didn't want him to speak out, did they?' she heard the Sûreté saying as he came closer, too close, and she could, though not daring to face him yet, see the white breath of his words as they fell on her.

‘No, they didn't,' she said defeatedly, but then, as if in anger, she turned and said accusingly, ‘I saw Herr Schlacht telling the tall one with the crutches something he did not want to hear.'

The girl must have spotted them as she'd come along the promenade between the plane trees. ‘Hermann and he are having a little heart-to-heart of their own, mademoiselle, but it's interesting that you should know of Herr Schlacht.'

‘I … I don't know him well.
Maman
has … has only spoken of him once. Just once.'

‘And yet you could identify him so easily?'

‘He …
Maman
… They …'

‘They secretly met at a hotel in the Eighteenth.'

‘Yes.'

Hastily she dragged off a mitten and wiped her eyes – tried to find composure and took to staring bleakly down at the beehive in front of her. Snow capped its flat roof. ‘Brood chamber below and honey super above,' she said hollowly of the two-tiered boxes. ‘Six to ten frames of comb in the brood chamber should tide the colony over, but here there are extras in the upper chamber so that the worker bees can place the honey and pollen where they feel it best and the wintering cluster can move slowly about the hive as it wishes.
Papa
always put a super like this on top of the brood chamber and then a square of heavy tarpaper to shed the rain and snow melt.'

‘He loved his bees, didn't he?'

‘As a husband ought to love a wife, only in his heart there wasn't room for one.'

‘Did your mother go willingly to the Hotel Titania on the boulevard Ornano?'

‘You're simply trying to get me to tell you she had another reason.'

‘And did she?'

Étienne … was he wondering about Étienne? ‘I wouldn't know, would I, Inspector? We seldom spoke.'

‘Yet surely you knew of her repeated attempts to free your brother?'

‘My half-brother.'

‘Father Michel refused to find three willing workers to be sent to the Reich in exchange for her son. Maxim's, mademoiselle. Isn't Maxim's the reason your mother went to that hotel?'

To prostitute herself. To let Herr Schlacht paw her naked body and rape her, yes rape her in return for his paying the necessary 50,000 francs down. ‘I … I really wouldn't know, Inspector. Étienne was someone she and I never discussed.'

‘Even though she was so worried about him and had done everything she could to secure his release?'

The girl didn't answer. Cramming her mittened hands deeper into the pockets of her overcoat, she waited in silence. And what was it Hermann had said Frau Schlacht had told him about the half-sister and half-brother? That the beekeeper had complained to her that Danielle's one mistake was to blindly trust Étienne and to encourage his every endeavour.

‘You posed for your brother, mademoiselle. You were the best of comrades. He made sketches of you and at least one superb bronze we know of.'

‘Did I pose naked for him – is this what she told you?'

‘She?'

‘Mother, of course. She hated my being close to her son. Étienne and I used to tease each other about it. Jealous … she was so jealous, I'm not surprised she told you I was naked when I posed.'

‘And were you?'

‘What do you think, Inspector? Do I look the type?'

Wryly she tossed her head at his silence and said, ‘When I was three or four I did when bribed with the whole of a peach flan, but not since then.'

Yet that father of yours believed you had done so right up to when the boy went off to war, thought St-Cyr and heard himself ask harshly, ‘Was Étienne de Bonnevies' release arranged and paid for by Herr Oskar Schlacht?'

‘Did Étienne poison my father – is this what you're wondering? If so, then the answer is no, Inspector. Étienne couldn't kill anything. Not in this war we lost and not before it either. “All who are born have a right to life,” he'd always say and leave the job, if absolutely necessary, to me. To
me
, Inspector. Me, the fumigator
par excellence
of my father's hives. You'll not have forgotten that, I think!'

‘When questioned in your father's study, mademoiselle, you tried to keep me from the microscope he'd been using and denied having been told why he felt a disaster was so certain.'

‘Acarine mites in Caucasians from Russia. All right, I knew that Herr Schlacht was causing diseased hives to be brought into France. Does that satisfy you now?'

‘How long has it been going on?'

‘How long did
papa
and I know of it? Since early last summer. We knew it had to be stopped. Things like that can be so easily spread – in one season half the hives can be wiped out in any apiary, sometimes all of them.'

‘So when Frau Schlacht wanted honey for facial masks and bee stings for her arthritis, your father was only too willing to supply them?'

‘She'd been a client right from September of 1940.'

‘And the candle-making has been going on since when?'

‘The … the fall of last year, I think. Earlier perhaps.'

‘The fall of 1941?'

‘Yes … yes, perhaps.'

‘And where is the factory located?'

‘The factory …? I … We …
Papa
and I tried to find out, but then I … I told him that it was best if we … we left the matter alone.'

‘Why? Because you knew that fifty thousand francs had been paid?'

‘And Étienne had come home yet mother didn't know of it? I'd have told her if I'd known such a thing, Inspector. Believe me, I'd have gladly ended the little hell I've had to endure with her. Going out in search of food – peddling my merchandise and constantly running the controls, so much so my nerves are all but shot?
Shot
, do you understand? Only to come home to nothing but silence and disapproval from her? You saw the way she slapped me when I asked if she'd put the oil of mirbane into that … that bottle of Amaretto. You and your partner questioned her thoroughly, didn't you? Well, didn't you? You saw how she feels about me, the “accident”, the “tragedy” her womb committed, its betrayal – God, why couldn't she have drowned me at birth? I … Ah
nom de Dieu
, forgive me. You see the state I'm in.'

But had the outburst been deliberate? wondered St-Cyr, forcing himself to question, as Hermann did, if the girl might well be guilty.

Thinking it best to give pause to his questions, or perhaps wanting to better plan his little campaign, the Inspector indicated that they should walk towards the promenade that would lead them to the terraces and his partner. He wouldn't leave her alone now, but would keep on asking things, felt Danielle, and she would have to answer with sufficient truth to counter disbelief.