“Monsieur Aubert, I bet your hands are probably your most valued possessions,” Schlegal said. “They do the beautiful woodwork everyone so admires, mm?”
Aubert, whose face was a bloody pulp, only moaned a bit.
“What would happen if you didn’t have your index fingers? Make it hard to cut wood, maybe?”
Voss snipped off Aubert’s entire right index finger as if it were the stem of a flower. It popped up in the air and landed on the floor. Blood gushed from his hand onto the floor as if it came from a garden hose. Aubert’s screams produced a nerve-rattling reverberation off the gray plaster walls.
Lischka grimaced. “We should pad these walls in here, to soak up the noise, don’t you think?”
Without any instruction, Voss snipped off the right middle finger, causing even greater screams of agony.
“Monsieur Aubert will probably want some souvenirs of his visit here,” Schlegal said.
“Of course, Colonel,” replied Voss as he picked up the severed digits from the floor. He scratched his head with one of them, producing torrents of laughter from everyone in the room, including Lischka. He then put both fingers in the side pocket of Aubert’s suit jacket and walked over to Schlegal.
“Let’s give Monsieur Aubert time to rest and think things over. We’ll meet again. After all, he has eight fingers left,” said Schlegal. He motioned to his officers. “Give him something to stop the bleeding. I don’t want him to die on us—and get all this blood cleaned off the floor.”
Lischka stood. “That was most impressive, Colonel,” he said, walking out of the room. “Carry on.”
Voss summoned two soldiers from the hallway, then yelled out, “Marie, you old bitch, get your mop and pail and get in here.”
The soldiers took Aubert by his arms and dragged him away like a sack of potatoes. A minute later, a haggard old woman in a wrinkled maroon dress shuffled in with a pail and knelt down to wipe up the blood with a rag. The officers watched in amusement.
“I’m truly sorry we made such a mess, Marie. It won’t happen again, I promise,” said Schlegal.
“You’re always saying that, Colonel, and always there’s a mess,” grumbled Marie.
“Marie, I didn’t realize you still had such a nice ass,” Voss said. “You must have been a hot number during the Franco-Prussian War.” The soldiers howled with laughter. Voss bent over and gave Marie a hard slap on her rear, but the old woman just squeezed out the blood from the wet rag in the pail and kept cleaning.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I was quite a beauty in the old days. One day, I’ll tell you about the time I fucked Kaiser Wilhelm I. He gave me the Iron Cross First Class.”
“Marie, my love, if only you were twenty-five years younger, I’d take you right here, right now on the floor,” said Schlegal, tossing some franc pieces in the pail of bloody water.
After the room emptied out, Marie slowly got up off her arthritic knees and went over to a desk in the corner of the room and shuffled through some papers. She read one sheet very closely, then picked up her pail and walked out of the interrogation room.
55
As he was going over a detail on the blueprints with Labrune, Lucien realized something was wrong.
The Paris Architect: A Novel
Charles Belfoure's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- The Inquisitor's Key
- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- The Long Way Home
- Death of a Stranger
- Seven Dials
- Anne Perry's Christmas Mysteries
- Funeral in Blue
- Defend and Betray
- Cain His Brother
- A Breach of Promise
- A Dangerous Mourning
- A Sudden Fearful Death
- Dark Places
- Angels Demons
- Digital Fortress
- A Pocket Full of Rye
- A Murder is Announced
- A Caribbean Mystery
- Ordeal by Innocence
- Lord Edgware Dies
- A Stranger in the Mirror
- Are You Afraid of the Dark
- Master of the Game
- Nothing Lasts Forever
- Rage of Angels