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Oui, that one,’ said Dédé. ‘After your train came back from Vichy and you had to leave for Colmar, she came from the station to stand outside the house of your mother, Monsieur l’inspecteur principal . She didn’t cry, though I thought she was going to.’
    Louis’s mother had passed away fifteen years ago yet the house was still considered hers.
    ‘She didn’t think you and Herr Kohler would ever come back from inside the Reich.’
    ‘Nor did the other two who came to stand with her,’ said Guy, watching them closely.
    ‘Giselle and Oona?’ asked Hermann of his two ladyloves and saw the boys nod.
    ‘The blackout rapes, Inspectors. Are you working on them?’ asked Antoine.
    ‘The handbag snatching, too?’ hazarded another.
    ‘ Oui, especially those if done in daylight,’ said yet another.
    ‘All last night and now here just for dry clothing,’ lamented Louis. ‘Antoine, be so good as to ask your mother to do what she can with what I’m still wearing, but please tell her not to alleviate the dampness by burning any more of my books. Give her the message after school, eh? Now get going. If there’s trouble, tell your teacher that you were delayed because we had to question you about the safety of the streets at night.’
    ‘But … but you haven’t done that?’ blurted Dédé. ‘ Grand-mère , she is saying things can only get worse and that you both should be worrying about your girlfriends.’
    ‘They’ll be found bound, violated, murdered and robbed, she says!’ swore Hervé, ignoring his runny nose. ‘Their handbags snatched!’
    ‘We’ve already found one corpse,’ muttered Kohler, not liking what the boys had just said but wishing he had ersatz chewing gum to hand out. ‘You haven’t any cigarettes to sell, have you?’
    In unison heads were swiftly shaken and, without another word, the army turned away and headed up the street.
    ‘Has the lawlessness of the black market reached such depths of innocence?’ bleated Louis.
    ‘Don’t be so naive. I should have asked for underwear and silk stockings.’
    * * *
    Long after the detectives had left the house at number 3, Jeanne Courbet continued to stare across the street at it through the lace of the bedroom’s curtain. She knew she didn’t have the time to loiter, that one had to be out and about very early if one was to get anything from the shops. Yet I can’t move, she silently said. Is it that I’ve offended God with my gossip about that house and the troubles the chief inspector has had with the first wife who left him and the dead one, too, the one who made the grand cuckold of him, even though he forgave her?
    Word was that they had all laughed at him behind his back at the rue des Saussaies. Word was that he and his partner were hated so much for pointing the finger of truth, they would never leave the city alive this time.
    Word was … But would either of them help her now? Antoine hadn’t just been up to mischief but to a crime so serious it jeopardized the whole family. A dirty stub of blackboard chalk had been in one of his pockets—was that not évidence enough of scribbled slogans on the walls: Laval aux poteau —Premier Laval up against the post; La guillotine pour Pétain —the Maréchal and Head of State; the V for Victory of Monsieur Winston Churchill; the cross of Lorraine, that symbol of the Résistance and Jeanne d’Arc? Victoire, eh? Liberté ! Antoine knew nothing of such things. He was only ten years old, but that chalk had started her doing something she had vowed never to do in this room of his older brothers. The neighbours wouldn’t laugh if the family was arrested. They would sadly shake their heads and later whisper, ‘That mouth of hers. That gossip, she got what she deserved,’ but one arrest would lead to another and the families of all four would be taken. Didn’t that knave Desrochers operate his vélo-taxi out of place de l’Opéra? Wasn’t the stand directly across from the