Beekeeper (7 page)

People came and went or milled about in their thousands, or joined seemingly endless queues at the controls which solidly blocked the traffic up. Some had burlap sacks of onions – firewood even – on tired, worried shoulders. Others lugged suitcases – the better dressed, their briefcases. A crate of carrots, one of cabbages – artichokes in a hamper that was stuffed to the limit. Sacks empty, on occasion, and oh,
bien sûr
, it was a city and a nation on the scrounge and most here had been out foraging the countryside or were on their way to it. And those returning with the spoils had to face the lottery of the controls.

Paris had become a city of police and nowhere did one see this better than in places like this. The
flics
in their dark blue capes and képis patrolled endlessly looking for trouble or just being damned officious to show that they still had some power. The Feldgendarmen, the military police, in field-grey greatcoats and with badges of office that looked like miniature breastplates dangling from the neck, were here in force. The
Kettenhunde
, they were called behind their backs: the chained dogs. They, too, carried black leatherclad, lead-weighted truncheons.

Gestapo … there were lots of those and invariably they carried thin briefcases and looked like down-at-the-heel undertakers who'd had a bad year. But the Wehrmacht had its plain-clothed secret police, too: the GFPs, the Geheime Feldpolizei, on the hunt primarily for deserters.

And wasn't this matter of the mites a question for the railway police? he asked himself and said, Go carefully. Remember that these days there has to be a system for every commodity.

The Reichsbahn supervised the railways, so he'd have to go to them. But in France they didn't wear the becoming light blue-grey they did at home. Here they wore coal black with silver piping on their tunics. Swastikas and eagles also, of course.

Where … where the hell to start? Soldier-boys were everywhere, arriving and departing, laughing, shouting, crying, too, as they kissed their girls goodbye. There were boys from the Kreigsmarine and also from the Luftwaffe, for Paris was Mecca to all and probably the closest one could get to how things had been before the war – no bombing; well, hardly any. Rest and recupe' and this really was the Führer's little showcase of how the Occupied should behave.

Good luck then,
mein
Führer, he snorted inwardly at the thought of what wasn't so easily seen, that vast undercurrent of dissent and deceit that would one day erupt into outright hatred.

When he found the appropriate office, a burly Bahnschutzpolizei corporal from
Schwaben
was standing guard over a bench filled with kids. Some were young, others older, but all had dutifully crossed their knees. Books were open on each of their laps – one, two, three, four, five in all. Scruffy shoes needed mending, mismatched kneesocks drooped, and all were obviously from the same family, for a mismatched sock found its mate well down the line …

Would a sweet voice help? ‘
Guten Morgen
, Herr Offizier. A moment,
bitte.
I seem to be lost.'

Suspicious blue eyes raked him savagely. ‘Lost? Don't give me that crap!
Gott im Himmel, mein Schweinebulle
, since when was a cop ever lost?'

Was he really that easy to spot? wondered Kohler, somewhat taken aback. ‘Okay, I'm looking for something.' Affably he grinned and offered a cigarette as a token of peace.

The packet was taken in expectation of more to come. The kids didn't look up. A page was turned and then another and on down the line.

It would be best to get it out and over with. ‘A railway truck in from Russia recently. Honey or beeswax.' He gave a futile shrug. ‘My boss wants to know.'

‘Your boss,' sighed the corporal.

‘Sturmbannführer Boemelburg.'

‘That's better.'

Reluctantly Kohler dragged out a wad of bills. Cursing the constant need to pay for information that should rightly be shared, he peeled off five hundred
Reichskassenscheine
, the Occupation marks and equivalent to ten thousand francs at the official rate.

‘It's important,' grunted the corporal. ‘Your boss must really want to know.'

Another five hundred were found. A page was turned, another and another and on down the line.

‘Try Shed fourteen, line twenty. Enjoy yourself.'

‘
Danke.
' Kohler started to leave but curiosity got the better of him. ‘So, why are the kids being held?'

‘Why do you think,
mein lieber Detektiv
?'

Knees were uncrossed and recrossed and this continued on down the line. A thin skirt was primly tugged into place beneath its book. Trousers were tugged … Another skirt …

‘Your sergeant has arrested their mother,' sighed Kohler.

‘Detained her.'

‘For how long now?'

A lifelessness entered the corporal's gaze. ‘Long enough.'

‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central,
mein
Herr. I'm sorry but I'd better check into it.'

‘He won't like it.'

‘Nor will I.'

The door was locked. The kids had all stopped reading. People came and went constantly. None looked up. None were curious.

When a woman who couldn't possibly be old enough to be the mother of those kids came out to urgent banging and cries of ‘Gestapo!
Raus
!
Raus
!' she was carrying two big and obviously freshly emptied old suitcases. There were tears in her wounded brown eyes, those of rage and those of humiliation and despair. Her overcoat was unbuttoned, the little pillbox hat with its bit of veiling askew. Blouse and sweater were also unbuttoned.

‘Get out of my Way,' she said fiercely to Kohler.

So few of the Occupier spoke French, he knew his use of it would startle her. ‘A moment, madame. Hey, let me settle this properly, eh? Just wait here. I won't be long.'

Louis wasn't going to like it. They had enough trouble as it was but what the hell. Chance was everything these days. One could go through a control and nothing would happen or there'd be an absolute disaster, but this one's misfortune could have its silver lining.

Stepping into the office, he closed the door and locked it behind him. Out in the station they'd be waiting, the kids not turning a page, the woman trying to button her things and finding her fingers were shaking too much.

The beret and earmuffs were dark brown, the belted brown suede, three-quarter-length jacket and grey woollen gloves old. As St-Cyr watched her from inside the honey-house, Danielle de Bonnevies hesitated. The girl had entered the garden from the Impasse de champ de parc de Charonne, and now stood just inside the tall wooden carriage doors through which she had come.

The once dark blue Terrot bicycle was caked with dirt and badly scratched, its mudguards dented, the glass of its blue-blinkered lamp cracked. A torn bit of towelling padded the seat. Wires secured the tyres to their rims – a bike no one would want to steal or requisition, but it was the load she had brought that begged closer scrutiny. The front carrier basket held a large, worn brown leather suitcase, tied round with old rope; on the rear carrier rack there was a wooden cage that held two worried rabbits beneath an oft-mended burlap sack that bulged.

Above the hiking boots, coarse grey woollen socks hid the turn-ups of the heavy khaki trousers she had made over for herself. Originally from quartermasters' stores, the trousers had been left on the beaches at Dunkirk in early June of 1940 like thousands of other pairs, boots, shirts, et cetera, as the Allies had fled to Britain. Such garments had been rarely worn at first, but now in the third winter of the Occupation, were increasingly being seen, and with the defeat at Stalingrad, would be even more in demand.

The girl's breath came hesitantly, as she sensed that things were not right but couldn't put her finger on the cause. The police photographer had been and gone, the corpse would be in the morgue, yet not one of the neighbours had thought to stop her in the street to tell her. Not one.

Cautiously she wheeled the bike towards the honey-house. Noting the footprints of others trampled in the snow, she held her breath, looked questioningly over a shoulder towards the house – searched its windows on the first floor, one in particular. That of the brother, he thought. Then she looked towards the gate in the wall at the back of the garden.

A girl of eighteen, with pale, silky auburn hair that didn't quite reach her shoulders. The large, wary eyes were gaunt and darkly shadowed by fatigue under finely curving brows. The forehead was furrowed with anxiety and chalky, the nose that of the father, although in her it made the face appear narrower than it was, giving height to the brow but a fine, soft curve to the chin. The lips, unreddened by anything but the cold, and slightly parted in apprehension, were not thin like the father's, but more those of the mother. Good kissing lips, Hermann would have said. The cheeks, though rosy, were frost-bitten under that same chalky whiteness as the brow. Was she ill?

When she opened the door to the honey-house and saw him waiting for her, Danielle sucked in a breath and blanched.

Quivering, she waited for him to … to arrest her? wondered St-Cyr and sighed inwardly as he told her who he was.

Alarm filled her grey eyes. Faintly she found her voice. ‘What … what has happened? The Sûreté …?' she managed.

Not the
flics
, not the Gestapo either, or the
Milice.
Although it would be best to put the jump on her and find out what he could, he told himself he would have to be kind. ‘An accident, I think.'

‘An accident,' she repeated.

‘Your father, mademoiselle. I regret the news I must impart, but …'

‘Dead?' she asked emptily. ‘
Dead?
'

‘Please go into the house, mademoiselle. Take as long as you need. A few questions, nothing difficult …'

‘An
accident
, you said.'

‘Well, perhaps it was attempted murder.'

‘
She did it. He always said she would. Maman
!' she cried in anguish and began to run towards the house only to be caught by an arm and pulled back.

Vehemently shaking her head, she stammered, ‘I … I shouldn't have said that. I … I told him she would never do it.
Never
, do you understand?
Maman
only threatened to because she … she was so unhappy. Murder was never in either of their hearts, Inspector. How could it have been?' ‘

The urge to say, That is what we must determine, was suppressed. St-Cyr released his hold on her, the girl instantly dropping her eyes and pressing a fist hard against her lips to stop herself from crying.

Turning away, she began to pluck at the ropes that bound the cage and sack to her carrier. Breaking a fingernail, she tore off the offending shred with her teeth. ‘Bacon …' she wept. ‘Some sausage … The last of the late pears, wrapped in newspaper … Butter. I managed a kilo this time. Cheese, too, and eggs – enough for an omelette.'

Taking her by the shoulders, St-Cyr stood behind her saying, ‘Cry, mademoiselle. Go on, please. You're exhausted and now in shock and deeply distressed. Things will sort themselves out in time. Leave the unloading and the rabbits to me. They're to go under the kitchen stove, isn't that so?' he asked and saw her nod.

‘The cage there is bigger. I … I made it for them. He … he really would have been pleased. I know he would.'

It was a cry of despair.

Turning from her, he began to untie the ropes that bound the suitcase to her front carrier. Danielle knew he would open it – that he'd see both what she'd brought back and what she hadn't been able to barter or had hung on to by never giving in and always sticking to her price.

She knew he'd see her for what she had become – a travelling stall-keeper, a peddlar – and that the crucible of her very being was in those things, and that the bike was not nearly so beat-up as it appeared. The sack bulged where those of others did not; the rabbits were not two males as others often discovered, but a buck and a doe whose mating had been performed before her as proof positive and at her insistence.

But would he find in that stained and slag-encrusted crucible, the button of gold at the bottom of its white-hot melt?

‘Excuse me, then, Inspector. I … I'm not myself, I'm afraid.
Papa … papa
and I, we were the best of friends. I understood him, you see. I alone appreciated what he did and what he had worked so hard to become.'

St-Cyr watched and, as he had felt she would, the girl turned to look back at the honey-house before entering the study to pick her way through it and wonder what really had happened there.

A little thread, some buttons on cards, a few safety pins and hairpins met his eyes as he opened the suitcase. Carpenter's nails were like gold and she had them in several sizes and neat little bundles, and had hung on to them in the hope of a better deal. Shoelaces, string, glue – what else had she carried in trade?

Unlike most, she hadn't taken small valuables from the house but had built up a stock of necessities and simple luxuries. Toothbrushes were extremely rare and she had them, elastic bands, too. Hairbrushes, hair-combs, pencils, playing cards, dice, lipsticks, cigarette lighters, small tins of black-market lighter fuel but watch out, it's gasoline!

Matches, too, but from the Reich, not French. Cigarettes – Russian, these. Pipe tobacco – Dutch. How had she come by it?

Chocolate – real chocolate!

Balls of wool – blue-grey, black and white – recovered from unravelled sweaters. Some reasonably good perfume, face powder and compacts. Tins of tuna fish. A christening dress for a baby, a bonnet, too. Three brassieres and several pairs of underwear, both male and female, not new, of course, but well laundered and with, yes, that same clean, white sand …

Jammed into the suitcase were the spoils of bartering: a small sack of chicken manure to be mixed with wood ash if possible, and used to fertilize the soil under the forty or so inverted glass bell jars, the
cloches
beneath which the girl would soon start growing Belgian endive, green onions, radishes, lettuces, et cetera, in the garden.