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men they service!
    ‘Men!’ she spat. ‘They give you the clap and the chancres because they’ve been careless and horny. “Seized by the moment,” eh? “Unable to control themselves?” ’
    For the married ones, the occasional lapse was considered both natural and at times necessary and healthful; for the married woman, the gravest of sins and punishable by prison and a fine of from five to twenty thousand francs. Adultery was, it had to be said, a two-faced affair when viewed by the State whose laws were, of course, entirely set by men. Women could, and occasionally did, have husbands arrested but far from being severe, the courts were always lenient. Boys will be boys.
    But would these sadists everyone worried about find interest in the advertisement and answer it? If so, those two women of Herr Kohler’s would come no more to stand in the street and stare at that house of his partner and friend.
    As that one’s new girlfriend had done, the wife and little son not dead even three months—Marianne and Philippe St-Cyr—and oh for sure war and this Occupation speeded up such things, ‘But honour to a dead wife is honour to one’s life, chastity the bankroll of memory and Heaven’s cash on deposit.’
    Kohler winced when he saw the Trinité victim in the Hôtel-Dieu . It wasn’t that her nose had been broken, or that the once smooth brow had been repeatedly slammed against the back of the vélo-taxi ’s seat. It wasn’t even that her throat had been clenched so tightly there were plum-purple bruises or that, early on in the attack, she had been struck repeatedly.
    It was the look in her bruised and deep brown eyes. He’d seen it before—Louis had, too, though he was busy elsewhere.
    She was going to kill herself. The disgrace, the neighbourhood gossip, the threat of venereal disease or worse, that of an unwanted child. The shame. The husband a POW in the Reich.
    Out of the fug of all such hospital rooms, the hesitant voice of the interne who’d been delegated to deal with him started up only to hesitate. Though absolutely nothing would be made of it, he had to wonder if the boy was but one among the many from all walks of life with false papers, a false military discharge circa 1939 or early 1940, or simply suspected of having these?
    Such was the undercurrent of bitterness that even battle-hardened veterans from the 1914–1918 war had banded together to demand that only those who had actually fought in this one should be considered as veterans. Not the million or half-­million or whatever who, through no fault of their own, had seen no fighting at all but had simply been overrun and rounded up along with those who had actually fought during the blitzkrieg.
    ‘The left shoulder and wrist, Inspector …’ began Dr. Paul-Émile Mailloux. ‘They are badly sprained but fortunately not broken. He must have wrenched the arm behind her back as he … Well, you know.’
    If the Trinité victim thought anything of this, she gave no indication.
    ‘Scratches?’ asked Kohler.
    ‘Of course, but mainly between the shoulders and on the buttocks and hips. The assailant tore a fingernail. We found it lodged in …’
    ‘We?’
    It would have to be said. ‘Dr. Rheal Lachance is the senior physician who oversees such cases. This woman isn’t the only one we’ve had to admit. She’s number thirty.’
    Lachance, but ach mein Gott , so many? ‘In how long?’
    Had the detective been away from the city or had the matter simply been hushed up even within police circles, the authorities too afraid to admit that such things were happening? ‘In the past four months, Inspector. Three so far this week, two last weekend.’
    And there were twenty-four hospitals in Paris.
    ‘She’s one of the worst,’ said Mailloux, ‘though we only get the serious cases, of course.’
    ‘Have the attacks been escalating?’
    ‘It’s possible.’
    ‘ Verdammt, either you think it or you don’t!’
    ‘Then, yes, especially since