“Easy to say from hindsight,” Finn said mildly. “It wasn’t that clear-cut on the ground.”
But Eve was already moving to the next building, reaching the door and hammering on it. No one answered, and we moved on to the next house. It took four different tries and one failed interview with a housewife who knew nothing about the old restaurant, but at last we found an ancient Frenchwoman with a cigarette dangling from her first two fingers and bitter, bitter eyes.
“Le Lethe?” she answered Eve’s question. “Closed at the end of ’44, and good riddance.”
“Why good riddance?”
A curl of the woman’s lip. “The place was a nest for Germans. Every SS officer with a French whore on his arm went there on his nights off.”
“The owner allowed that?” Eve’s posture had changed, become softened and slump-shouldered, and her voice was conversational. She’d turned into someone else, the way I’d seen her do in a London pawnshop, and I hung back with Finn, letting her work her magic. “What was his name, the owner?”
“René du Malassis,” the old woman said, and spat. “A profiteer. Some people said he was in the pocket of the Milice, and it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Du Malassis. I filed the name away even as Eve asked, “What happened to Monsieur du Malassis?”
“Disappeared into the night, Christmas of ’44. He knew which way the wind was turning. Who knows where he went, but he hasn’t showed his face here since.” The old woman gave a slow, unpleasant smile. “If he did he’d get a short noose and a long struggle on a lamppost.”
“For collaboration?”
“There are collaborators, madame, and there are men like him. In ’43, you know what du Malassis did? He had a young sous-chef dragged out of those doors at the end of the night’s shift, announcing that the lad was a thief. Searched him right there in the street with everyone watching—the restaurant’s entire staff, passersby, neighbors like me who came running at the noise.”
I could see it: the nighttime mist rising off the river, the wide-eyed bystanders, a boy in a sous-chef’s apron trembling. Eve said nothing, listening so intently she’d turned to stone. The old woman went on.
“Du Malassis dragged a handful of silver out of the boy’s pockets, and said he’d telephone the police. Promised he’d have the boy arrested and shipped east. Who knows if he could have done it, but everyone knew du Malassis stacked up favors with the Nazis. The boy tried to run. Du Malassis had a pistol in that elegant jacket of his, and he shot the boy in the back before he’d gone ten steps.”
“Did he now,” Eve said softly. I shivered.
“He did.” The old woman was brusque. “And du Malassis just stood there cleaning his hands off with a handkerchief, grimacing at the smell of gunsmoke. Told his ma?tre d’ to telephone the authorities to have the mess cleaned up. Then turned his back on that boy’s body and went inside, cool as cream. That’s the kind of man he was. Not just a collaborator. An elegant killer.”
Finn spoke. “Did the Nazis make any protest?”
“Not that I ever heard. He must have called in favors to avoid arrest or censure, because his restaurant kept right on prospering. Oh, there’s plenty in Limoges who would have happily put a rope around that man’s neck, and he knew it. That’s why he ran, once it was clear the Germans would lose.” The old woman took a drag off her cigarette, looking at us sharply. “Why are you so curious? Is du Malassis any relation to you?”
“To the devil, maybe,” Eve said with soft venom, and the two women exchanged tight acid smiles. “Thank you for your time,” Eve said, and turned away. But I stepped forward, addressing the old woman in my slangy American French.
“Pardonnez-moi, madame. I am looking for a relation—someone who might have worked at Le Lethe. Not a collaborator,” I said hastily as the woman’s brows came together. “You might have noticed her. People tended to notice Rose. Young, blond, a laugh like a bell.” I brought out the worn photograph Rosie had sent me in one of her letters in ’43. The photo of her looking over her shoulder like a Betty Grable pinup, grinning. Before the old woman said a word, I knew she’d recognized Rose.
“Yes,” she said. “Pretty girl. You’d see those SS bastards pinching her on the hip when she brought their drinks, and she didn’t go batting her lashes like some of those sluts du Malassis hired. She’d find a way to spill a drink on them and then go oozing apologies sweet as pie. You could see it all the way across the terrace.”
That rocked me back on my heels. A new memory of Rose that wasn’t mine. Rose, spilling beer on German soldiers. My eyes prickled. It sounded like her.
“When did you last see her?” My voice came out hoarse, and I realized for the first time that Finn had taken my hand and gripped it tight.
“Before the restaurant closed. She must have stopped working there.” The woman spat on the ground again. “It wasn’t a place for decent girls.”
My heart sank. I’d so hoped Rose would be alive and here, living in Limoges. But I looked at the old woman and forced a smile. “Thank you for your help, madame.”
I wasn’t out of ideas yet.
Eve had another of her bad spells that night. She didn’t start screaming this time, she just woke me with a series of dull thuds against the wall between our bedrooms. I poked my head out into the hotel hall. No Finn. Just me.
I pulled a sweater over my slip and padded to Eve’s door, pressing my ear to the panels. Still that dull thwack, as though she was knocking something against the wall. Hopefully not her head, I thought, and rapped softly. “Eve?”
The thwacks kept going.
“Don’t aim that pistol at me. I’m coming in.”
Eve sat on the floor in the far corner, but she was clear-eyed this time, not mumbling in the grip of waking nightmares. She stared at the ceiling, the Luger in her hand, and she methodically banged its butt against the wall. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
I put my hands on my hips, glaring. “Must you?”
“Helps me think.” Thwack. Thwack.
“It’s midnight. Can’t you sleep instead of think?”
“Haven’t even tried. The nightmares’ll be waiting. I’ll wait it out till dawn.” Thwack. Thwack.
“Well, try to bang more quietly.” I turned to go, yawning. Eve’s voice called me back.
“Stay. I can use your hands.”
I looked over my shoulder. “For what?”
“Can you field-strip a Luger?”
“They didn’t teach that at Bennington, no.”
“And I thought all Americans were gun mad. Let me show you.”
I found myself sitting cross-legged opposite Eve as she pointed out the various bits of the pistol and I clumsily broke it apart. “The barrel . . . The side plate . . . The firing pin . . .”
“Why am I learning this?” I asked, and yelped as she hit me across the knuckles for pushing the receiver axle the wrong way.