Tapestry Read Free Page B

some pâté and bread—nothing ersatz there either. The former debutante poured. The night’s victims three and four refused nourishment, Madame Barrault first lowering her gaze out of despair or shame, and then stealing a glance at the petits fours as if guilt and pride had been tempered with … what? wondered Kohler. Need, for sure, but not for herself.
    ‘The wallet, monsieur,’ said Louis brusquely. ‘A few details. They’ll not be of much use, but threads we must have if we are to clothe the attack better.’
    Was this Sûreté a tailor? ‘Bought in Algiers, in a bazaar in 1938 and with me ever since.’
    ‘The leather the usual?’ asked the inspector, meaning the Arabic design, Henriette Morel told herself with a curt nod as she waited for the rest.
    ‘Of a soft morocco,’ went on Gaston, ignoring her as usual, ‘and one I will miss. Loaded with fifty big ones simply because they’re easier to carry.’
    With 250,000 francs, the leather as soft as a lecher’s extended organ, Gaston? Henriette wanted desperately to say but couldn’t—the detectives would find out soon enough.
    ‘Any Reichskassenscheine ?’ asked St-Cyr.
    The Occupation mark at twenty francs to one. ‘Ten thousand.’
    ‘Your papers?’
    Again Morel lifted his gaze from the glass and bottle. ‘Those I keep elsewhere. He’ll be disappointed.’
    Everyone knew there was a roaring trade in false and stolen papers. ‘Your place of business?’ asked Louis.
    ‘It has no bearing whatsoever on what happened. You might as well ask me about the opera I had to endure.’
    ‘Very well, what was it?’
    ‘La Bohème,’ gushed Madame Morel. ‘It was magnificent, wasn’t it, Denise?’
    The husband didn’t give the former debutante a chance. ‘Fucking Italians. A sick whore and a pawnbroker? Duels with coal shovels and fire tongs?’ He tossed a fist. ‘One hell of a lot of caterwauling I had to pay good money for, Henriette.’
    ‘You were constantly grumbling, Gaston. Several noticed.’
    Again the companion rested a sympathetic hand on that of the wife but this time the other victim stole a longing glance at the petits fours and the pâté and bread. Her coat, like the dress that had been pinned up, had been made over. The early thirties, felt Kohler. No silk stockings like the other two would be wearing, but probably none of the leg paint either and brand-new button earrings of enamel from the Bon Marché’s bargain bin.
    ‘Place of business?’ demanded Louis with more force.
    ‘ Cimenterie Morel ,’ came the grunt. ‘The company I acquired in ’31, and which supplies the Organization Todt.’
    Cement hadn’t always been good, not in the depths of the Great Depression, but with the Todt’s building of the submarine pens at Lorient and elsewhere in 1940 and now the massive fortifications of the Atlantic Wall, it must be a great comfort.
    Leaving Louis to it, Kohler pulled coffee and cognac towards him and went to sit down with victim number four. ‘Why not tell me what you can, madame? You’ve a son or daughter and are understandably anxious to get home.’
    Much taller than the other one, he’d a terrible scar, Marie-Léon noted, others too. Those of the shrapnel from that other war, but far more recent nicks and cuts as if from flying glass, also the crease of a bullet across the brow like his partner, she wondered, but a little more recent than that one’s?
    There was a warmth though, to his pale-blue eyes. They couldn’t be those of a Gestapo, and yet … and yet he was one of them. ‘I can tell you little, Inspector. One minute the monsieur was crying out, the next, I was yanked from the car …’ She glanced at her wounded arm and hand, felt so ashamed, could not stop the tears. ‘Please, I … People like me never come to places like this. A night out? A little break from the endless days of never knowing when my husband will come home or if he will still feel the way he once did about me?’
    Not well off,