The brother didn’t answer. Ignoring her, he tried to find a cigarette but finally gave it up. ‘You’re not going to take those, are you?’ he demanded spitefully.
‘These?’ Herr Kohler indicated the shoes. ‘No. They’re all yours for now.’ And coming round to her side of the bed, took to examining the wooden soles of her shoes, then those of the others and of her boots. In summer it would be so hot in that bed, so cold in winter – was this what he was thinking, that they must hold each other, comfort each other, see and touch each other when naked? Satisfy each other?
‘I think you both know that early on Saturday morning she was murdered in that room of hers,’ he said. ‘I think the whole damned hotel knows by now, but what I want are answers.’
‘Murdered?’ bleated Paul, throwing her a glance of alarm, not being able to stop himself, poor darling.
‘Here,’ said the Detektiv, and then … then, on noticing above the baseboard the hole in the plaster that she had plugged, ‘You don’t have a problem with rats in this hotel, do you? You ought to, from what I’ve seen of it.’
‘
‘Albert.’
‘That is so,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He’s very good at it and studies each problem thoroughly before setting his snares …’
In a rush, Kohler left them. Louis wasn’t in any of the corridors or on any of the staircases, nor was he still in Lucie Trudel’s room, which was locked.
He was with the concierge deep in the cellars, was jammed head and shoulders between two ceiling joists and the floor above, and bent double over the top of a stone wall, his feet no longer touching the backless chair he had used to get up there.
‘I heard you talking in that room, Hermann,’ he managed. ‘I knew then that you were all right. Earth,’ he grunted, his voice still muffled. ‘Very fine earth has been mixed with the powdered white sugar that’s been dusted over the tripwire and noose. I’m certain it’s sugar and not potassium cyanide.’
‘Rats,’ confided Rigaud, cradling the Surete’s overcoat and fedora, the Lebel also and suit jacket. ‘He’s curious about how ours are caught.’
‘And butchered,’ came the tunneller’s voice. ‘Butchered and sorted as to their sex, then saved.’
The metal doors to the service lift from the furnace room opened on to the pavement outside the Hotel du Parc. Still smoking, the ashes and clinkers overflowed their metal drums, carrying the acrid stench of sulphur. A waiting
‘Inspectors,’ said the elder Grenier cautiously, ‘my son always sorts them. So many males, so many females. It does no harm, and helps him to keep track of how much he should charge each client.’
Louis crowded him, putting his back to one of the assistant groundsmen. ‘And the livers?’ he asked, hands jammed deeply into those overcoat pockets of his, collar up, breath billowing and fedora yanked down. Frost on the thick and bushy brown moustache too. ‘They were, I believe, absent from the little corpses we found.’
‘The livers,’ murmured Grenier, only to hear the Surete breathe, ‘Mystery meat?’
‘Albert sells them, yes, to … to others.’
‘Restaurants?’
‘Sometimes. The meat is … is as good as chicken, Inspector. When boiled for ten minutes and marinated in a little wine with herbs and a little salt, one can’t tell …’
‘Yes, yes. These days especially. The British have even issued such instructions to their aircrews in case of their being shot down. The cellars, I think. You and I. Hermann, please ask the concierge for the keys to our vehicle.’
Following the elder Grenier, Louis stepped off the pavement to take the service lift slowly down into the cellar. As it descended, those same hands were still crammed deeply into the pockets of that shabby overcoat, the shoulders still squared. ‘He may look grim but he’s happy,’ confided Kohler to an assistant groundsman. ‘We’re making progress. Where are the rats kept after they’re taken?’
‘In the shed behind the Grenier house. Now that it’s winter, Albert can dress them when he has the time, though he usually sees to this right away.’
‘Ten francs apiece – that’s what they’re asking for crows in Paris.’
‘The rats are evidently much tastier. Albert does quite well with them but only charges five for those he traps; ten if the client wishes to keep them, as some do. The rest he sells for twenty. There are always buyers.’
Down in the furnace room, the elder Grenier pulled off his asbestos gauntlet gloves and said, ‘Some coffee, Chief Inspector? A little something to warm us up?’
‘A cognac? Ah,
