“Burgos was blackmailing me,” he said finally. “If you have asked about Paul Manet’s younger brother in Paris, it will all come out.” He looked up at me. “Yes, I was at the pawn shop that night. Yes, Burgos saw me. Yes, I have been posing as my brother for twenty-six years. I am Fernand Manet, the younger brother of Paul, and Eugene Marais did know me.”
He clasped his hands between his legs until the knuckles cracked. He touched the soft cloth of his pale blue trousers, the perfect crease. He touched the cloth almost lovingly.
“If you had been there in Paris at the end of the war, you would understand,” Manet said. “The confusion, the deaths, the disappearances, the miraculous escapes. In a way it was so simple to become Paul.”
He looked at me. “I was only a year younger than Paul. I could have joined the Resistance. My mother said that one son was enough for France. I let her think that I wanted to join the Resistance like Paul, but that she had convinced me not to for her sake. But that was a lie. I didn’t want to join, I was never brave. I could never have faced the Gestapo.”
“Not many could,” I said. “Not many did.”
He ignored me. “The war was almost over. The heroes would get the respect, the cheers, the rewards. We had heard from Paul’s comrades that he had been arrested in early 1945. He had been sent to Germany. Perhaps to Dachau or Belsen. No one survived Dachau or Belsen.”
His eyes flinched again, remembered those days. “The last week of the war, the Germans rounded up all the men left on my street. They shot my mother. My grand-father was already dead. We had no father. They took me with hundreds of others to a place outside Paris. There were only a few Germans. The Americans were very close. The German officers saw their men melting away, trying to escape into Germany, deserting. One day the officers told their men to shoot us all, en masse. But they couldn’t shoot us all. There were hundreds and more of us, too few of them, many of us escaped. I was one of the lucky. I hid for days in an old cistern. At last the Americans came. Alone, my papers lost the day they shot us, I walked to Paris.”
The wild confusion of Paris liberated was in Manet’s face. “Some Maquis patrol stopped me far from my section. They were suspicious of a man without papers, but one of them stared at me, asked my name. I told them-Manet. The one man became excited. I realized that he thought I was Paul! He told the others. They were pleased, eager. All at once I was Paul, the returned hero.
“That one Maquis knew Paul by sight, by reputation, by background. He didn’t really know Paul. I had a beard, was in rags and filthy, and Paul and I did look much alike-the same height, hair, eyes, build. They questioned me, of course, but I knew Paul’s life as well as my own. Convinced, they passed me safely on to Free French troops who knew Paul only by his exploits.”
His eyes were bright. “I was a hero. Admired. I liked it. At first I planned to disappear fairly soon, become myself again. But then I found out that Paul’s whole cell had been arrested with him. No one seemed to doubt me. There were many who had known Paul a little who obviously believed I was him. Our whole family was dead. Paul was certainly dead. Why not be Paul? If he did come back some day, I would tell him the truth.
“So I became Paul. I was careful. I never went back to our old street. I avoided anyone who might have known Paul more than to say hello to. Finally, my real papers were found near some of those shot the day I escaped. I made my final step-I identified an unclaimed body as myself: Fernand Manet. So Fernand Manet, a nobody, was dead. Paul Manet, a hero, was alive.”
He stopped. I gave him a cigarette. He lit it. “Paul never came back. There are no records of what happened to him. I was a hero; admired and honored. Jewish companies who knew what Paul had done at Vel d’Hiv gave me good jobs. At last I hit on my present work-the hero representative abroad. No one would know Paul abroad. I do my work well. I earn my rewards.”
There was a faint hint of the fake aristocratic pride he had learned so well over the years. Perhaps his work was based on a lie, but he had done it well. He had his pride.
“But Eugene Marais did know you,” I said. “Not Paul Manet. He knew Fernand Manet.”
Manet nodded. “Yes, he guessed. We talked. I denied it, but there are small scars, a birthmark on my neck, some mannerisms I barely knew I have but Eugene remembered. He wasn’t absolutely sure, and I denied it, but what if he decided to raise the question back in France? A doubt would be enough to ruin me. I tried to pay him. He refused. I sensed that he was trying to decide what he should do. So I made the appointment to meet him that night. I took a gun. I might have killed him, I don’t know. But I didn’t kill him. When I got to the shop, the door was unlocked. He was in the back room in the chair, dead!”
“What time was it when you say you got there?”
“About midnight. A little after. I can’t be sure.”
“What did you do?”
“I… I panicked.” He licked at his lips again. “I mean, I might have gone to kill him. I had a gun. I was there, he was dead, and I had a gun! Maybe it was guilt in me, but I was in that shop alone with a gun and a dead man and I panicked. What if I had been seen? What if someone knew I had reason to want Marais dead? I decided to make it look like robbery. I grabbed objects at random, packed them in a suitcase. I left. I took the suitcase to that Salvation Army mission. Then I came home here.”
Now his ravaged eyes looked up. “Ten minutes after I got home, that Charlie Burgos called me. He had seen me. He had found Eugene dead in the shop. He knew who I was from Danielle earlier. I paid him a thousand dollars, three more thousand since. What else could I do? I would be accused of murder!”
I let him sit there in silence, sweating under that beautiful suit. Danielle was sitting on the raised step in the entrance archway to the sunken living room. Jules Rosenthal’s room, a man grateful for a hero’s help to the Jews. Down the corridor outside, the elevator stopped at the floor.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think Eugene Marais would ever have exposed you. Not in the end. A kind man.”
“How could I know?” Manet said. “But I didn’t kill him.”
“Sure,” I said.
I heard them in the corridor just before the doorbell rang. Danielle opened the door. Lieutenant Marx and his two men came in. I waited for them standing over Manet.
“I figured you’d be here,” Marx said. “We found Charlie Burgos. What about Manet?”
“He didn’t kill Charlie, but he’s a fake, and I figure he killed Eugene Marais.”
I told him all Manet had told me. Marx listened while his men inspected the lush apartment, whistling with awe over it. When I finished, Marx looked down at Manet.
“He was dead when you got to the shop around midnight, maybe twelve-fifteen? You faked the robbery?”
Manet nodded. “I panicked, but he was dead.”
“How long had he been dead, would you say?”
“Not very long. He was… warm.”
“Did you see a package in the back room? Maybe took it?”
“I saw no package. There wasn’t a package, I’m sure.”
Marx nodded slowly. I swore.
“Damn it, he’s lying,” I said. “He has to be. He had the motive, he was there, he was paying Charlie Burgos. He killed Eugene Marais.”
“No!” Manet cried, stood up, swayed.
“No,” Lieutenant Marx said. “I believe him. We picked up the killer of Charlie Burgos ten minutes ago, Dan, and I figure the same killer for Eugene Marais.”
25
I said, “Who?”
“We identified the knife, Dan,” Marx said. “You never pulled it out, right? Touch nothing?”
“Damn it, Marx, who?”
“Claude Marais,” Marx said. “We knew he killed his brother. But with you, Kandinsky and the French making noise, and no direct evidence against him, we decided to let him go, give him rope, and watch him. We don’t
