Cold Winter in Bordeaux (2 page)

‘Very well, if that’s how you wish it, superintendent. Here are the keys. Naturally I locked up the apartment, which is on the first floor right. I know how to behave in these circumstances, even though it goes without saying that we’ve never had this sort of thing here before, not in my time. You’ll understand that this is a very respectable building; my tenants are all good people. As for Madame Peniel, it’s hard to take it in, such a distinguished lady she was. A bit reserved, but always polite and well-spoken.’

It was an apartment with high ceilings. Someone, presumably the maid, had opened the shutters and pulled back the curtains to let the grey morning light in.

The salon was furnished in the style of the Belle Époque and there were three cases of stuffed birds. There was a smell of stale cigar smoke and an empty bottle of champagne stood with two glasses on an occasional table beside a grand piano, a Bechstein. The body was in the bedroom. It lay on the floor. The woman was wearing only knickers, which had been pulled down to her knees. As the concierge had told them, she had been strangled with one of her silk stockings – a suspender belt lay on the floor beside her. A bottle of scent – Chanel No. 5 – was there too, with its top off, as if it had fallen from the dressing-table. Some of it had spilt and the air was heavy with the perfume. The woman’s face was swollen and it was impossible to say if it registered any expression.

Moncerre, entering, said good morning to them, took in the scene quickly, and smiled.

‘Looks pretty straightforward, don’t it? Nice pre-war crime of passion. All we have to do is identify the bastard.’

‘Certainly what we are supposed to think,’ Lannes said.

‘Can’t see how it could be different. They split a bottle of fizz. She goes through to the bedroom for a spot of how’s your father, sits at her dressing-table to tart up. He comes up behind her, puts his hands lovingly on her shoulders, whips the stocking round her neck and goodbye lady-love. She tips over backwards. Bet you a hundred francs that Dr Paulhan finds a bump on the back of her head, and that the technical boys find no sign of forced entry but fingerprints everywhere.’

‘Yes, that’s what it looks like,’ Lannes said.

‘So, cheer up. This is a murder we’ll be allowed to solve. Makes a change. A nice change, in my opinion.’

He looked at Lannes and smiled.

‘All right then, chief, what don’t you like about it?’

Lannes lit a cigarette.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like it at all. Let’s wait to see what the technical boys find. Have you noticed,’ he said, ‘there are three photographs on the dressing table and another by her bed, all of the same woman? I think it’s herself, though you can’t tell with her face the way it is, but I’m sure nevertheless. No other photographs. What sort of woman surrounds herself with her own photographs?’

‘A vain one, obviously,’ Moncerre said.

‘A vain one, and I would guess, a cold one.’

‘I noticed two others in the salon,’ René Martin said.

‘So what do you have for me, Jean?’ Dr Paulhan as usual spoke without removing the Boyard cigarette from the corner of his mouth. He laid down his medical bag to shake hands first with Lannes, then with Moncerre and finally with young René Martin. He knelt beside the body.

‘Looks straightforward,’ he said. ‘I can tell you she wasn’t killed this morning. Probably yesterday, but you’ll have guessed that for yourselves. Cause of death obvious. Do you know anything about her?’

‘Nothing yet. The concierge says she was a distinguished lady.’

‘Nothing distinguished about the way she died,’ Moncerre said.

‘Well, when the technical boys have finished, send her over to me. I’ll cut her up, but I doubt if I’ll be able to tell you more than your own eyes can.’

‘You can tell us if she’d just had sex,’ Moncerre said.

‘Oh yes, I’ll be able to tell you that, which will help you only if you find the man.’

‘If it was a man,’ Lannes said.

‘Any reason to think it wasn’t?’

‘Just keeping an open mind.’

‘Let’s hope it’s not one of our Kraut friends,’ Moncerre said.

‘No reason to think it might be. Right, I’ll have a word with the maid. Moncerre, you see if you can get anything more from the concierge, and René, start looking through her desk, will you? Set aside anything that’s of interest.’

* * *

Marie was a thin pale girl with lank hair and rabbit teeth. She was still shivering, and when she spoke her words came sometimes hesitatingly, sometimes tumbling over each other. She had worked for Madame Peniel for nine months and been glad of the job, because her father was a prisoner-of-war in Germany, her elder brother too, and her mother was in and out of hospital, she didn’t know why. No, she knew nothing about Madame Peniel’s private life.

‘Well, I wouldn’t, would I?’ she said. ‘To tell you the truth, monsieur, I was scared of her, I don’t know why, because she never raised a hand to me, or her voice indeed, but I was.’

As for this morning, well, she had never seen anything like it. Naturally she hadn’t. Her family might be poor, but they were decent law-abiding people. That was how she had been brought up. Seeing Madame like that, her always so well-dressed, had given her quite a turn.

‘But I knew something wasn’t right soon as I drew the curtains in the salon. It wasn’t how she would leave it, and I’ve never known her drink champagne. And the cigar smoke, well, I’ve never smelled tobacco there either. I’m surprised she allowed it. And to pull down her knickers like that, well, that’s disgusting, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘I agree with you there. Did she have many visitors, do you know?’

‘Only her pupils, she taught piano, see. Only to girls, though, and only in the afternoons.’

* * *

‘I didn’t even bother to ask the usual question,’ Lannes said. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill her? The poor child knew nothing; that was obvious.’

‘The concierge wasn’t much help either,’ Moncerre said. ‘Madame Peniel was “always correct”, but “not one to talk”. However, she is sure, insists really, that she didn’t open the door to any stranger over the weekend. Which must mean that the dead woman brought her murderer home with her. Assuming the concierge is speaking the truth, of course, which there’s no reason to suppose she isn’t.’

‘What about the pupils?’

‘Well-turned-out girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen, more or less. That’s what she says, anyway. Can’t see one of them wrapping a stocking round her neck.’

They had repaired, as so often, to Fernand’s brasserie, and as usual there were more German officers there than Bordelais. Their mood and demeanour had changed. They were still ‘correct’ as instructed, but there was a difference, an edge to them, and one sensed their awareness that they were fortunate to be stationed here in France, while their Sixth Army was engaged in Stalingrad, and were uncertain how long their luck would hold. Lannes knew little of how that battle was going, nothing indeed for certain, but, since he had started listening surreptitiously to the BBC, he had begun to hope that Hitler had, as Fernand said, ‘bitten off more than he can swallow’. Moncerre on the other hand was still sure that ‘the Russkies will crack’. It was in his nature to expect the worst. Not that they talked much about the war, or indulged in speculation. What was the point? It was out of their hands.

Fernand’s son Jacques brought them their dish of calf’s liver and pommes lyonnaises.

‘You’re fortunate,’ he said. ‘That’s the last of the liver.’

Even Fernand, who was on good terms with the men who ran the black market and had, moreover, farmer-friends who kept him supplied, was experiencing difficulties. Fortunately his cellar was still well-stocked and the St-Emilion he had recommended went happily with the liver.

Lannes could see that young René was eager to discuss the case, even though he had found nothing of interest among the dead woman’s papers, only a list of her piano pupils and a timetable of their lessons.

‘That helps us a lot,’ Moncerre said.

‘Their parents may be able to tell us something about the dead woman,’ Lannes said. ‘Anyway, that’s the first thing we have to find out. What sort of person she was.’

It was always the same. Except for a killing in the course of a botched robbery, it was more often than not what you learnt of the victim that opened up a case.

‘It’s odd, though,’ Moncerre said, ‘the concierge is sure she never had a lover. I asked about men visitors and she said “certainly not”; only an elderly man, might be an uncle, she said. It’s the sort of thing concierges usually know.’

‘Usually,’ Lannes said, ‘but we’ve known them to be mistaken – and to tell lies. All the same the little maid was clear on one point. I mean about the champagne and cigar.’

‘You get black market Havanas for the Alsatian, don’t you?’ Moncerre said. ‘So let’s put the boss in the frame.’

Lannes studied the list of pupils’ names René had passed him. He put his finger on one.

‘I’ll deal with this girl,’ he said. ‘Divide up the others between the two of you and make a start this afternoon.’

‘What about the uncle?’

‘We’ll have to find out who he was, if indeed he was her uncle. You got a description from the concierge?’

‘A description, for what it’s worth, but no name.’

‘I’ll have a word later with her myself.’

‘Do you think the technical boys can tell us what brand of cigar it was?’ René said.

‘They’ve got to be good for something,’ Moncerre said, ‘but we won’t solve the case by going round all the tabacs in the city. We should be so lucky.’

‘We’ve got to start somewhere,’ René said. ‘It was only a suggestion. If it’s an expensive cigar, that tells us something surely. And the champagne, Krug ’28. There’s not many people can afford to drink wine of that quality. What’s wrong, chief? You think I’m barking up the wrong tree?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lannes said. ‘It’s just that there’s something about it I don’t like. It was all a bit obvious, a stage set, pointing us in the direction the killer wants us to go in. And what the concierge said about the absence of men in the dead woman’s life and the maid’s evidence about the champagne and the cigar, it all worries me. That’s why I want you to start with the names on the list. Find out as much as you can about Madame Peniel.’

‘You do like to make things complicated,’ Moncerre said. ‘You always do, chief. It still looks simple to me, crime of passion, good old crime of passion. And what about the name you’ve reserved for yourself?’

‘That’s someone I know,’ Lannes said.

III

Nevertheless, Lannes went first to Henri’s bookshop in the rue des Remparts. The shop itself was closed, as it often was now, because since the boy Léon had left the previous summer with Alain and their friend Jérôme to try to join the Free French, Henri could rarely bring himself to attend to business. He was one of Lannes’ oldest and closest friends, and at least he was no longer drinking himself into a stupor almost every day as he had for the year after his twin brother Gaston’s murder.

They embraced – Henri was the only man Lannes greeted in this manner. The little French bulldog, Toto, sniffed his ankles, and then, satisfied, withdrew to curl up on a cushion.

‘Is there any news of the boys?’

‘None, I’m afraid.’

‘I suppose there can’t be. I miss Léon, you know. So of course does Miriam. I always deplored poor Gaston’s perversion, as I suppose it was, but I came to understand why he loved the boy. Would you like coffee? It’s not very good coffee, I’m afraid.’

‘One of the minor penalties of defeat,’ Lannes said. ‘All the same, I’ll say yes.’

‘I came to think of him almost as the son I’ve never had, you know. Do you think they’ve reached England?’

‘I don’t know. We’ve had no word.’

It was the answer he had given Henri every time he put the question as indeed he did every time Lannes called on him. It was almost a routine now, a barren one.

‘And Miriam?’ Lannes said.

Henri passed him the coffee cup.

‘I’ll tell her you’re here.’

It was six months since the publication of an order requiring all Jews to wear a yellow star, an order which followed other restrictions on Jewish businesses and on their free circulation in the city. Miriam had succeeded in transferring the licence for what had been her father’s tabac to Henri, but, since the first deportation of Jews from Bordeaux, at this time only those categorised as foreign ones, they had thought it better to put a manager in the tabac and for Miriam to take refuge in Henri’s attic. She had been unwilling to do so at first, but, after the death in September of her sister, Léon’s mother, from cancer, she had given way to Henri’s plea which Lannes had supported.

Now, entering the room, she looked like an old woman. Two years previously, when they had first met – at the time of Gaston’s murder when he was also investigating the anonymous letters sent to her husband, the old count, himself now dead, Lannes – had wanted to make love to her, and had been restrained only by his reluctance to deceive or cheat on Marguerite, and by Miriam’s own good sense. Today he felt only pity, and admiration for her refusal to submit to despair. She had lost at least a dozen kilos, her face was deeply lined, and she moved with none of her former confidence.

‘It’s because I can’t sleep,’ she said, extending her cheek to him as she had only recently started to do. ‘There’s no word, I suppose.’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘It’s terrible that Léon doesn’t even know that his mother is dead. And Alain? You must be as anxious as I am.’

‘I’m anxious, yes, but there’s nothing one can do.’

And really there was nothing to say. This was the terrible thing, that conversations all over France went round in circles, and said nothing. Of course there were those on the other side, as he had come to think of it, for whom that wasn’t true, those who believed – who still believed – in Vichy and its National Revolution. But that ‘other side’ included Dominique and his friend Maurice who was, as it happened, Miriam’s step-grandson and whom she had described to him at their first meeting as ‘a sweet boy’, which indeed he was. Dominique and he were both sweet boys – Alain had once said, ‘Of course I realise that Dominique is nicer than I am which is why Maman loves him more.’ He had denied only the second part of the sentence, and hadn’t replied that it was Alain’s dark side and capacity for discontent and anger that made him his favourite son. This was anyway something no father should admit to.