Tapestry Read Free

diamonds. Guilt made her lovely eyes moisten, fear caused her lips to quiver. Like every other female in the place, she’d be thinking she could well have been a victim herself. The forty-year-old stud at her side wore the navy blue of a lieutenant in the Abwehr, the counterintelligence service, and didn’t she look like what some had come to hate and call les horizontales ?
    The place was packed. Several were dressed for an evening at the Opéra, though the performance would have ended early for those who needed the métro , and most here would simply stay the night unless they’d a pass allowing them to be out after curfew.
    Embarrassed by his continued scrutiny, she finally lowered her gaze. Twenty-two if that, thought Kohler. A gorgeous figure, beautiful lips …
    ‘The oyster bar is superb, Hermann. Belons , portugaises and marennes . Ah, mon Dieu, the bouillabaisse is magnificent, the filet de sole Drouant a bishop’s sin.’
    ‘You’ve eaten here?’
    ‘On my pay? People such as myself only hear about places like this. Monsieur …’
    The maître d’ had arrived to shrill, ‘Inspectors, why are you not keeping the streets safe? A mugging? A slashing? A groping? This homme sadique has ruined the dinners of everyone and has upset the chef and sous-chef, my waiters as well as myself most especially.’
    ‘Monsieur, just lead us to the victim,’ said Louis. It was a night for sighs.
    ‘Victims!’ cried Henri-Claude Patout. ‘The hysterics. The splashes of blood on the carpets—how are we to clean them? The oceans of tears and screams? The shameful clutching of a woman’s parties sensibles as the ring is torn from her finger and she has thought the virtue, it would have to be sacrificed or else the throat, it would be slashed? Yes, slashed! Monsieur Morel, he has been unable to defend her from this animal. Struck down, he has fallen into the gutter to ruin the tuxedo and has been robbed. ROBBED, DID YOU HEAR ME, of the wallet, the gold pocket watch of his wife’s father, the silver cigar case …’
    ‘Calm down, monsieur,’ snapped Louis, stopping him on a staircase whose wrought-iron balustrade curved up from ground-floor ears and eyes to sixteen private dining rooms.
    ‘WHY SHOULD I BE CALM WHEN YOU PEOPLE DON’T KNOW YOUR DUTY?’
    ‘They don’t appear to have stopped eating.’
    ‘THE ATMOSPHERE HAS BEEN PLUNGED, INSPECTOR. PLUNGED!’
    ‘Louis, let me.’
    ‘Hermann, a moment please, and then he is all yours to arrest for obstructing justice. Which of the rooms, monsieur? Come, come. Out with it.’
    ‘The Goncourt’s.’
    The Académie Goncourt had held their meetings here since 31 October 1914 to award the country’s most prestigious literary prize. ‘Take care of him, Hermann. Scrutinize the papers of every­one. Be sure to take down all the necessary details. One never knows when something useful might turn up. And make damned sure those who are allowed to leave have the necessary Ausweis and are not required to stay cooped up in this doss-house of the elite until five a.m!’
    Thank God Louis had got that off his chest.
    ‘Messieurs … Inspectors …’
    ‘It’s Chief Inspector St-Cyr and Detective Inspector Kohler of the Gestapo,’ said Louis.
    ‘It … it is this way, please.’
    And so much for not knowing their duty. ‘We’ll leave the papers for the moment,’ said Kohler, plucking at Patout’s sleeve and using his best Gestapo form. ‘Just see that a little something is sent up from the kitchens.’
    Not even an eye was batted, thereby revealing that the house was quite used to such.
    ‘Hermann, we haven’t time. Besides, you know the stomach, accustomed to those little grey pills that keep the Luftwaffe’s night-fighter pilots awake, will not sit well with such richness.’
    The Benzedrine, but still the stomach would like to try.
    M. Gaston Morel, victim number three, was not happy. Big in every sense below a blood-soaked bandage, he lifted lead grey eyes from