others in uniform, weren’t supposed to take women to their rooms, but who the hell was going to police such a thing in a place like this? Had her lover been one of Von Schaumburg’s men? Had he got up and gone out there to hire that taxi for her and chosen Take Me simply because he had known that’s what she wanted or had already let him have?
A child’s birthday cake, Hermann, Louis would have cautioned. The flour, the sugar …
‘MONSIEUR, I MUST INSIST THAT YOU DO NOT WANDER ABOUT AMONG THE TABLES GETTING IN THE ROAD. PLEASE OBEY THE NOTICE AND WAIT IN LINE TO BE SEATED!’
Lieber Christus im Himmel, what the hell was this and from a mere waiter? ‘Gestapo, mon fin . Kripo, Paris-Central. A few small questions. Nothing difficult unless you want to make it that way. Clear a table. Ja, that one will do, and bring me a café noir avec un pousse-café .’
A black coffee with a liqueur. Louis would have loved it. His partner playing Gestapo, but only when absolutely necessary. ‘Spit in them and I’ll not just see you arrested but shot.’
4
Number 25 place des Vosges was little different from the rest of the thirty-six arcaded pavilions whose steeply pitched roofs with dormers were sometimes bull’s-eye-windowed. Loose slates gave momentarily trapped cascades. Broken, once-painted shutters were open.
‘From a swamp to a palace to a horse market, to this,’ said St-Cyr sadly to himself. Grand-maman had said that to him once, that good woman having dragged him here at the age of six to learn a little history.
He’d been particularly bad, had stolen from her handbag. Just a few centimes … Well, five actually. Always, though, the memory would come rushing at him when here, no matter how desperate the circumstance. ‘A sliver, Jean-Louis,’ she had said. ‘A splinter from the lance of his opponent. Who would have thought such a thing possible? A king? Henry II and a bout of jousting? Oh for sure, they didn’t have carousels whose operators demanded cash. They were far too busy, but a little fun all the same, eh? A careless impulse? A tournament whose spine of heartwood found the visor slit of his armour to pierce the eye and brain!’
She had given him a moment to think about a life of crime and then had said, ‘He died in agony, screaming for his mother.’
Beyond the high iron fence that surrounded the park where duels had once been fought, the ruins of last summer’s community vegetable plots made their graveyards among the severely pollarded plane trees. Lonely on his stone steed, Louis XIII ignored the wet snow that struck him and indicated the plots as if mystified to find them here.
The house at Number 25 was crowded but the presence of a police officer had rapidly filtered on ahead. Gingerly he went up the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as possible. From somewhere distant came the impatient pause-by-pause thumping of wood on wood, but soon that ceased. Even the concierge had broken the law and shut her loge , failing entirely to respond to his earnest knock. He’d read the ‘flat’ number from the decaying list she had posted in 1935, having crossed out names and added others since.
With frozen laundry to his left and a mildewed wall to the right, he came to the room or rooms of the Jourdan father and daughter, the mother having died probably some time ago, Hermann had said.
There was no doorknob, no latch, no lock—nothing but a dirty bit of string to be tied to a nail, no nameplate either, its bronze frame having been unscrewed and sold.
The distant sound of pigeons came, the scrabbling, too, of caged guinea pigs and other livestock. Nudging the door open would be easy, the string having been left to dangle. Knocking with the muzzle of the Lebel would be best.
‘Entrez,’ came the gruff response, exuding, though, both strength and determination, its owner having been forewarned by the bush telegraph. A corridor connected open room to open room, its floor bare but catching
A child’s birthday cake, Hermann, Louis would have cautioned. The flour, the sugar …
‘MONSIEUR, I MUST INSIST THAT YOU DO NOT WANDER ABOUT AMONG THE TABLES GETTING IN THE ROAD. PLEASE OBEY THE NOTICE AND WAIT IN LINE TO BE SEATED!’
Lieber Christus im Himmel, what the hell was this and from a mere waiter? ‘Gestapo, mon fin . Kripo, Paris-Central. A few small questions. Nothing difficult unless you want to make it that way. Clear a table. Ja, that one will do, and bring me a café noir avec un pousse-café .’
A black coffee with a liqueur. Louis would have loved it. His partner playing Gestapo, but only when absolutely necessary. ‘Spit in them and I’ll not just see you arrested but shot.’
4
Number 25 place des Vosges was little different from the rest of the thirty-six arcaded pavilions whose steeply pitched roofs with dormers were sometimes bull’s-eye-windowed. Loose slates gave momentarily trapped cascades. Broken, once-painted shutters were open.
‘From a swamp to a palace to a horse market, to this,’ said St-Cyr sadly to himself. Grand-maman had said that to him once, that good woman having dragged him here at the age of six to learn a little history.
He’d been particularly bad, had stolen from her handbag. Just a few centimes … Well, five actually. Always, though, the memory would come rushing at him when here, no matter how desperate the circumstance. ‘A sliver, Jean-Louis,’ she had said. ‘A splinter from the lance of his opponent. Who would have thought such a thing possible? A king? Henry II and a bout of jousting? Oh for sure, they didn’t have carousels whose operators demanded cash. They were far too busy, but a little fun all the same, eh? A careless impulse? A tournament whose spine of heartwood found the visor slit of his armour to pierce the eye and brain!’
She had given him a moment to think about a life of crime and then had said, ‘He died in agony, screaming for his mother.’
Beyond the high iron fence that surrounded the park where duels had once been fought, the ruins of last summer’s community vegetable plots made their graveyards among the severely pollarded plane trees. Lonely on his stone steed, Louis XIII ignored the wet snow that struck him and indicated the plots as if mystified to find them here.
The house at Number 25 was crowded but the presence of a police officer had rapidly filtered on ahead. Gingerly he went up the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as possible. From somewhere distant came the impatient pause-by-pause thumping of wood on wood, but soon that ceased. Even the concierge had broken the law and shut her loge , failing entirely to respond to his earnest knock. He’d read the ‘flat’ number from the decaying list she had posted in 1935, having crossed out names and added others since.
With frozen laundry to his left and a mildewed wall to the right, he came to the room or rooms of the Jourdan father and daughter, the mother having died probably some time ago, Hermann had said.
There was no doorknob, no latch, no lock—nothing but a dirty bit of string to be tied to a nail, no nameplate either, its bronze frame having been unscrewed and sold.
The distant sound of pigeons came, the scrabbling, too, of caged guinea pigs and other livestock. Nudging the door open would be easy, the string having been left to dangle. Knocking with the muzzle of the Lebel would be best.
‘Entrez,’ came the gruff response, exuding, though, both strength and determination, its owner having been forewarned by the bush telegraph. A corridor connected open room to open room, its floor bare but catching
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