Read Online Carnival by J. Robert Janes - Free Book Online

‘boys’ the French girls in Paris and elsewhere were having such a time with.
    â€˜He’s not from here, so don’t even bother trying to attach a name to him.’
    The candle having burned down, the victim was again seen only in electric light. Shadows, cast by the lath and potatoes, fell on him.
    â€˜You won’t mind, will you, if I take a look at these?’ asked St-Cyr, gesturing companionably with pipe in hand. ‘Please don’t think it an invasion of your privacy and detective meddling. Think of it as a necessity if we are to get at the truth.’
    On the earthen floor at his feet were the last effects, taken from the pockets. Like soldiers everywhere, Eugène André Thomas had carried snapshots of his loved ones: the wife as a girl of twenty at Paris’s Lutetia Pool, then as a bride and as the radiant mother of a brand-new baby boy. One of little Paul at the age of six months, another at a year and a half, Madame Paulette Thomas holding him by the hand and delighted by his timid steps.
    â€˜Radiant still,’ he said. ‘But last Friday night, monsieur, you ripped her photo apart, though taking care to save your son from such a fate. Had she betrayed you?’
    As always these ‘discussions’ were as if with the living, and everything that could be was used. ‘Betrayal, mon ami . Certainly what has happened to her photos cries this out. Wayward wives are sadly becoming an ever-increasing problem at home, especially in the larger cities and towns where food is scarce and prices astronomical. Your rank was that of a private, though as a chemist you could have been an NCO, and I must ask, were you a bit of a rebel?’
    There was no answer. ‘Had Madame Paulette taken to the streets to feed herself and your son?’
    Again nothing was forthcoming. Perhaps some common ground would be useful. ‘Look, I know such a thought is hard, and that it takes time for one to adjust if true. Before she and our little Philippe were tragically killed early last December by a bomb that was meant for me, my second wife, my Marianne, had carried on a torrid affair with one of the Boche. Although I forgave her immediately, and was able to convey this to her, if only on one occasion, I do know what it feels like to be a cuckold. The long absences, the loneliness she had had to deal with—it was all my fault, and I readily admit it. And the bomb, you ask? TheRésistancekeep putting me on some of their hit lists. The Gestapo found the bomb and left it in place. Apparently neither side is content. The former think I’m a collaborator because I have to work with Hermann; the latter hate our guts for always pointing the finger of truth. Let’s face it, these days no one is happy except for those who are swimming in the gravy.’
    There were no photos of the parents, none of a brother or sister or in-law. The couple, it appeared, had had only themselves. ‘You weren’t from Lille or any of the other textile cities and towns in the northeast, as the colonel stated. You lived in Paris, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, an industrial suburb in the southwest of the city. Chemicals, leather, bronze, copper and aluminium, the National tobacco factory that employs 3,000 to make the crap they ration. The giant Renault Works is also nearby, in Boulogne-Billancourt on the Île Seguin. It’s the one that makes things for the Wehrmacht, like a lot of other such concerns.’
    A flat on the suburb’s avenue de la Paix, at numéro 43, wouldn’t be up-market, but was within a short walk of the old Fort d’Issy and the school on the rue du Fort. A good choice, one would think. Oh for sure, things hadn’t been easy in the thirties for chemists like this and millions of others. They had picked up in ’38, possibly a little before that, but the couple would have married in hard times, the baby coming right away, so in late ’37 probably. There