The onset of blindness was an even greater blow than it might have been for some people; Annette had been a talented amateur artist who drew portraits in charcoal, and this too she put behind her as she adjusted to her new life. But in a folder she kept the collection of portrait sketches she had made during the war from memory. Among the collection were two lifelike portraits of the Leopard.
Annette Devaud had endured another tragedy. Against her will, her daughter Lucie had insisted on becoming one of her couriers, and during her time with the Resistance the nineteen-year-old girl had taken as a lover an ex- accountant called Albert Camors. Out of the liaison a child had been born only six months before the Leopard drove Lucie Devaud into the river. Taking its mother's name, the child was called Lucie. Camors survived the war but quarrelled violently with the strong-willed Annette Devaud and he refused to let her have anything to do with the child. Prospering in peacetime-he became a Paris stockbroker-Camors brought up the child himself and never married.
A solitary but strong-willed child-reproducing in some ways the character of her grandmother, Annette, whom she never saw-Lucie grew up in a bachelor household and developed an obsession about the mother she couldn't remember. From her father she heard about the Leopard, about how her mother had died. Then, when she was almost thirty, Camors expired in the arms of his latest mistress and Lucie inherited his fortune and an apartment in the Place des Vosges. And for the first time she visited her blind grandmother.
The two women took to each other immediately and one day Annette, talking about the war, showed her grand-daughter the folder of sketches, including the two of the Leopard. Lucie instantly recognized the portraits, but in her secretive way she said nothing to the blind woman. Using the names of people who had belonged to the Resistance group-which Annette had mentioned-she began checking. With her father's money to finance the investigation, she employed a shrewd lawyer called Max Rosenthal to dig into the Leopard's background. And without saying anything to Annette, she removed the two portrait sketches from the folder and took them back to her Paris apartment.
It was Max Rosenthal who traced Gaston Martin, the Leopard's wartime deputy, to Guiana where he was on the verge of being released from prison. Lucie Devaud wrote a careful letter to the man Annette had mentioned, hinting to Martin that the Leopard had become an important political figure in France, and then waited for a reply. The letter reached Martin shortly after he had been released from prison and he took his time about replying to her.
It was during the opening of a Paris fashion show that Lucie played the macabre trick which finally convinced her she had uncovered the real identity of the Leopard. She had seen the animal in a rue de Rivoli shop which specialized in exotic presents costing a great deal of money. Purchasing the animal, she kept it in her apartment and then obtained a ticket for the fashion show in the rue Cambon. In a newspaper she had read that President Florian would be attending the show with his wife, Lise.
When Guy Florian arrived escorting Lise-he was attending the show to dispel rumours that they were no longer on speaking terms-the show had already started, models were parading, and Lucie Devaud was sitting in a front-row seat with her draped overcoat concealing the underneath of her chair. Florian and his wife sat down almost opposite her. The show was almost over when Lucie tugged at the chain she held in her hand and which led underneath her draped chair. A model had just walked past when the leopard cub emerged from under the chair, stood on the carpet with its legs braced and bared its teeth.
It was over in a moment. An armed plain-clothes security man, one of several sent to the show by Marc Grelle, caught the expression on the president's face, grabbed the chain out of Lucie's hand, tugged the animal and led it out of the salon, followed by its owner with her coat draped over her arm. Florian recovered quickly, made an off-hand gesture and cracked a joke. 'I have had nothing to drink and yet there are spots in front of my eyes!'
Outside in the foyer Lucie took the chain from the detective without a word and left the building. The salon owner had been amused when she arrived with a leopard cub. 'How chic,' he had remarked to his directrice. 'We should have one of the models parading with that animal…' Getting into her car, parking the leopard cub on the front seat beside her, Lucie drove back to the Place des Vosges. On the following day she returned the animal to the shop, which accepted it back at a much-reduced price.
So often a woman takes a decision on feminine instinct; so often she is right. Lucie Devaud was now certain Guy Florian was the Leopard. She had seen a certain expression in his eyes before he recovered, a sudden wariness and alarm as he stared back at her-as though when he saw the look in her own eyes he had understood. 'Who the hell are you? You have found me out…' She knew there was no way she could be traced: she had paid for the leopard cub in cash and had applied for the salon ticket in a false name. It was while she was driving back to her apartment that she decided she would kill Guy Florian. The following morning the letter from Gaston Martin arrived.
Martin replied to her letter with an equally guarded communication. He said that he was interested in her theory and told her that he was returning soon by ship from Guiana. Could they meet when he arrived in Paris? Lucie Devaud wrote back immediately, suggesting that they met at a small Left Bank hotel called Cecile in the rue de Bac. Presumably she was not too keen on inviting an ex-convict to her luxurious apartment in the Place des Vosges-or possibly she was still displaying the secretiveness which was so much a part of her life.
On the night before Wednesday, 8 December, she wrote out a complete account of her activities and sealed the report in a package which also contained the two sketches of the Leopard produced more than thirty years before by her grandmother, Annette Devaud. Across the package she wrote in her own hand, To be delivered to the police prefect of Path in the event of my death. In the morning she delivered the package to her lawyer, Max Rosenthal, with strict instructions that it must remain unopened. Reading in the paper about Florian's nightly walk from the Elysee to the Place Beauvau she had decided not to wait for Gaston Martin-even though the Frenchman was on the eve of arriving back in France. On Wednesday evening, waiting outside the fur shop in the Faubourg St Honore, she produced her 9-mm Bayard pistol. But it was Marc Grelle who fired two shots.
The letter Lucie Devaud had written and deposited with her lawyer, Max Rosenthal, was not delivered to the police prefect of Paris. An extravagant man, who spent vast sums on gambling, Rosenthal was not prepared to gamble his career. When he heard of his client's attempt to kill the president he became frightened that delivery of the package might involve him. Lucie had always come to see him and given only verbal instructions; no written correspondence had passed between them; and she had paid his bills in cash-which he had not declared to the tax man. Confident that there was no discoverable link between them, he locked the package away inside a deed-box where it stayed until a year later when he died unexpectedly.
One of Lucie Devaud's more benevolent actions before she died as a would-be assassin was to persuade her blind grandmother to see an eye specialist. Perhaps medical technique had advanced in the intervening thirty years, or maybe the trauma which had induced the affliction had run its course. Annette Devaud was operated on during September-three months before Guy Florian was due to fly to Russia-and recovered her sight completely. She went straight back to Woodcutter's Farm from the hospital and started reading and drawing avidly, resuming her old solitary way of life but now blessed with the return of her sight. When she was told about the death of her grand- daughter by the man who brought her supplies she flatly refused to accept the circumstances surrounding Lucie's death. 'It's all a ghastly mistake,' she said firmly. 'They must have mistaken her for someone else.' This was the old woman the Soviet Commando was now on its way to kill.
CHAPTER TWO
Ignoring the downpour, Vanek drove at high speed along the deserted road from Strasbourg to Saverne. Beside him Lansky sat in silence as he chewed at the sandwiches they had bought at Strasbourg airport and drank from a bottle of red wine. Once he pointed out to Vanek that he was exceeding the speed limit. 'Get on with your lunch,' the Czech told him. `We have only one final visit to make before we start back for home. And there is a limit to how long time is on our side. With a bit of luck it will turn out that the Devaud woman died years ago,' he added.
Imperceptibly-because he decided that Lansky was right, Vanek reduced speed, but Lansky, who was watching the speedometer needle, observed what was happening and smiled to himself as he finished the sandwich. To some extent Brunner had acted as a buffer between the two egotists, and Lansky, who was intelligent, decided not to make any more provocative comments. They still had a job to do. have to check on the
