3

In a cul-de-sac of shattered mirrors and lantern light at the end of a corridor, Kohler felt just as alone as Renée Ekkehard must have. Worried too—terrified perhaps, poor thing—certainly far from happy and with the sounds of flapping canvas and the like coming at her, or had there been nothing at all but an ice-cold silence on that early Sunday morning? Had it been then that she hanged herself, or had it been later on in the day, the girl waiting it out, arguing with herself until no arguments remained­?

Trinitrophenol … Lieber Christus im Himmel, what had Louis and himself landed in? Rasche had, apparently, touched as little as possible here. He had even carried in a box to stand on as he’d cut her down, rather than use the chair that had been kicked away and was on its side, facing a corner.

A career soldier, nerves of steel too. Odd, though, that he should have been so calm, given that he must have been in shock and thinking only of his secretary, that ‘daughter to him.’

Louis didn’t know the half about the colonel; Louis couldn’t. That cosy little nest with Oberfeldwebel Lutze and Yvonne and Rasche’s leavings from that other war? Trust the salaud to think nothing of it and come back to use her again, if only as his housekeeper!

Lutze, like others at Vieil-Armand and elsewhere during the 1914–15 campaign, had known about the affair. Maybe­ he had simply had his colonel’s best interests at heart, maybe­ there had been a payoff, even love, for he’d married her. Certainly now Yvonne Lutze would have watched Renée Ekkehard and her former lover at their meals and listened in the night as well.

Yes, Louis didn’t know the half of it.

Finding an empty hook on one of the corridor walls, Kohler hung the lantern up and to hell with the blackout, to hell with laundry blueing. No one was going to notice one star down here when there were so many up there.

The rope was of dark brown hemp and had all the protruding hairs of such, but it wasn’t weathered, had been stored, probably in a tin trunk in one of the wagons. About sixty centimetres of it dangled from where it was doubly lapped over the cross-pole to form a loop through which the ends had been passed by a girl who had been determined not to fail, but had that really been the way it had happened?

The rope was of Manila hemp and common enough. Weatherproofed, it was flexible though still rough, and since when did a girl who wanted to hang herself not care about torn skin and rope burns too? Didn’t females who did this sort of thing invariably choose a silk stocking, though these days those were often too scarce. A lisle stocking, then, or slip, scarf or chemise—hadn’t he seen them all, especially the neckties of absent lovers. Whatever was at hand, but please make it soft.

The mirrors on either side of her must have showered their remaining glass as she had kicked out violently, and she must have done, for there was little of it left, but had her wrists been tied behind her back, or had she been able to grab the rope instinctively as she would have done?

Just why would a twenty-eight-year-old who had been out all night skiing hang herself?

‘There can only be one reason,’ he said, and felt it deeply, everything within him suddenly collapsing. Giselle and Oona … Gerda too, would be taken. Gabrielle and Louis as well. All would be rounded up if this thing was what he thought it might be and wasn’t handled properly.

‘She was afraid she’d be arrested,’ he managed. ‘She knew she would talk and didn’t want to.’

Or had her reasons been otherwise? Had she even killed herself?

Taking up the lantern, he stood on the box, was head and shoulders above the cross-pole and the walls, could now see over the rest of the House of Mirrors and the dark, if shattered maze of it. She hadn’t just stepped into any corridor, this secretary of the colonel’s. She had chosen one of the farthest from the entrance, had come in here as far as she could to hide her corpse for as long as possible, and that … why that could only mean she had wanted to give others in her Résistance group time to escape—was that how it had been?

Of medium height—she must have been—she had stood on that chair, but would still have had to stretch a little to flip the bend in the doubled rope over the pole. ‘She was left-handed,’ he said as if Louis was with him. ‘The bend is to the right of the pole. Instinctively the left hand tossed it up and over, then the right grabbed it while the left fed the two ends through and yanked down hard.’

The colonel’s knife had been razor sharp. Both ends of the rope had been cleanly cut as one, but was there anything else? he wondered. ‘Something,’ he muttered. ‘Some little thing to tell us it couldn’t have been a suicide, that Renée Ekkard hadn’t feared arrest, torture and decapitation.’

Because that was exactly what would have happened to her if she was mixed up in anything.

As the lid of the ‘coffin’ came away, the colonel gasped and quickly turned aside, the mirrors throwing the grimace he gave out of all proportion.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It’s just that, having not seen her in some time, I’d grown accustomed to remembering her as she’d been.’

Less than a week ago, said St-Cyr silently to the victim. The colonel won’t understand my talking to you, Fräulein, but you do see that he must have been with you at least twice on that Tuesday? Once to cut the rope which is still tightly around your neck, and once to lay you out like this. ‘Colonel, the coffin. Its carpenter … ’

‘Ach, I had to go to the Textile Works to get him.’

‘Was she left alone in your absence?’

‘I stopped in at the Polizeikommandantur and sent two of the special constables with orders not to disturb a thing. My detectives followed, but those idiots claimed it was a suicide, and don’t be thinking you and Kohler are going to question those two. Just leave them out of it. The Wehrmacht guard was arranged later.’

Ah, bon, Fräulein, the colonel knows I’ve realized that by not accepting the conclusions of his own men, he has not only shut his mind to what they might have had to tell him, he has pissed off the whole station. Whispers … were there those about the two of you? Lovers … is this what the staff at the Polizeikommandantur had all been saying? That Sophie Schrijen’s brother, Alain, didn’t know what he was getting into by showing even the slightest interest in you?

She had lain here since, hadn’t even been taken to the morgue, as she should have been. ‘The knot is to the left, Colonel, and has slipped from below to above the larynx, as is consistent with her having stepped off the chair.’

Her face, once sharply featured, was livid and swollen. Sprays of dark blood spots were just beneath the slate-grey skin of her forehead. There would be more of them under the beret, over the scalp and beneath the soft brown hair that had been bobbed, and would curl outward at its ends, giving bounce to every step.

Blood spots lay under the skin beneath her eyes. They were showered over the freckled bridge of her nose and cheeks. Those once lovely lips were a dark, plum purple in the flickering light, her tongue all but bitten through. Snot, blood, saliva and fluid from the lungs had erupted to drain from the nostrils and right corner of her mouth, spattering that shoulder and the front of her ski jacket.

‘Rigor has left her, Colonel,’ said St-Cyr, watching him too closely. ‘She wasn’t tall, but a little taller than most. How far were the toes of her boots from the floor?’

St-Cyr had moved swiftly away from head to foot to look along the length of her at him. ‘Thirty centimetres at least. She dropped, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, yes, of course, but her neck wasn’t broken. Instead, the ligature slipped upward as it tightened, causing asphyxia. It took time, Colonel. Oh for sure, not much more than five or six seconds, but enough for her to have realized what was happening.’

‘She kicked out. Broken glass is caught in her socks and among the bootlaces. The chair … ’

‘Was in a corner, but could it have been deliberately placed there?’

‘I touched as little as possible.’

‘But your detectives must have and you are upset with me for mentioning it. Why, please, were you so certain her death could not have been a suicide?’

There must be no hesitation. ‘She had everything ahead of her, was happy and outgoing, believed firmly as many still do that the Reich would eventually win the war.’

‘But wears a beret which is very French and now illegal? The penalty, please, for doing such a thing?’

‘Look, I don’t know why the little fool should have—’

‘Colonel, this is a murder inquiry. Please simply answer.’

‘Six months of forced labour, or in the cells if too weak to work, and a fine of 150 marks.’

‘And within the former confines of the Reich?’

‘Its wearing is allowed, as it always has been.’

Only in Alsace, then, and Lorraine, had it been banned. ‘What was she really up to, Colonel, in spite of claiming faith in the Reich’s winning this war? Was she smuggling Wehrmacht deserters through to the Vosges so that they could be hidden in France with false papers or join the partisans? We both know the Russian front is no picnic and that desertion has become an ever-increasing problem. Ask Hermann. He’ll tell you the same thing.’

‘I’m sure he would.’

‘And the skis?’

‘She loved the forest, the quiet in winter, the sight of a fox, a hawk or even a few crows or ravens. “There are always three of those birds,” she used to say. It was something Celtic, she thought, something Gallic from a long time ago. They were always so silent. Suddenly they would be there watching her. Three goddesses of the supernatural who deliberately did terrible things to people, especially the innocent and the righteous. Silly of her to have believed in such rubbish. I told her some of the men used to shoot them for sport.’

‘And what was her response?’

‘That each facet of the Phantom Queen could and did take that form, and that to harm any was to harm all and bring down her wrath upon us.’

‘You’re a patient listener. You must have been, to have remembered it.’

‘When Werner told me her cross-country skis were missing, I knew this was where she must have come but did nothing. I waited too long. I know it, and freely admit it.’

So now we learn a little more, Fräulein Ekkehard, and are to be reassured that your colonel really did think well of you and that, though you both may or may not have been lovers, he did consider you as a daughter. But is it the truth, that business of his having done nothing? If a lover, or father figure, surely he would have come after you, especially if there were other reasons like your helping deserters to escape?

‘Colonel, why not set the lantern over there? If Hermann has finished with the location of the crime, he’ll be looking elsewhere. Leave him to it and go to the farmhouse where the guards are billeted. Warm yourself. We’ll find you when we need you. It may be a long night.’

Was this sympathy from a Sûreté? ‘The location of the crime … You believe it really was murder.’

‘It’s too early to say, but instinct tells me she wasn’t alone. Was she left-handed?’

‘Ach, the knot. Yes, but it never affected her work and no one thought anything of it.’

But must have if murdered. ‘That papier-mâché ball, Colonel. Why was it among the items on your desk?’

‘We’d been practising, the two of us, the last time we were here.’

‘When, please?’

And again a stickler for detail. ‘The Wednesday before she died—27 January. Among the throw-booths the committee were having restored, there was one that Renée was particularly pleased with. The village bailiff, schoolteacher, old maid, that sort of thing. Though not quite completed, she insisted she take out some of the figures and we try our luck to much laughter and good fun, and in the course of this, I must have forgotten it was in my overcoat pocket.’

A game of Jeu de massacre. ‘And the booth?’

‘Is stored in one of the other wagons. Three of the men I’d assigned to help were here on the Thursday and Friday, with their guards.’

A carpenter, glazier, assistant machinist, fabric designer and the chemist, Eugène Thomas. ‘Which three?’

‘The firm’s assistant machinist was finishing work on the chain-drive and other things, the carpenter and fabric designer busy with the booth and painting, I think. Their tasks varied so much, I … well, I saw no need to take note of them. It’s all written down in the duty roster they kept.’

‘Then for now that’s sufficient. A little of your splendid tobacco, though, if you can spare it.’

St-Cyr had already gone back to work, having moved the lantern to the other end of the coffin, but would he be asking himself why the knot had been tied that way?

Of course he would. He’d see that particles of sawdust and flecks of old paint and gilding from the lid had fallen and would wonder why her eyes hadn’t been closed, but would he understand the strength of will it had taken not to do so, the need that had driven him to return after the second suicide and remove the lid so as to be alone with her? To think, to decide, and finally to telex Gestapo Boemelburg in Paris for detective help.

Closing the door on Louis and the body, Rasche stepped away from the wagon. ‘Renée,’ he said, and finding his cigarette case, lit one and let the tobacco smoke and breath billow from him. So deep was he in thought, he didn’t look up at the stars or moon, Kohler noted from the shadows. Instead, the colonel concentrated on a wagon some twenty metres from the edge of the Kastenwald. By eye alone Rasche followed a trail of footprints to that very wagon—mine, Colonel? Its door isn’t closed, but what have I done with the lantern, eh? Doused it? Covered it with one of those mouldy costume dresses the Winterhilfswerk Committee must have gathered and rolled into bundles as if they hadn’t quite known what to do with them? A wagon they had then cleaned and fixed up as a field office, but when?

Kohler was nearby, felt Rasche, but wasn’t making a move and must think the worst. Would nothing remain sacrosanct? Would he and St-Cyr insist on going through her personal things? The lingerie that bastard Alain Schrijen had given her on Christmas Eve? The things she had brought back and kept from that damned party at Natzweiler-Struthof?

Would they discover that she hadn’t always worn the field-grey uniform of a Blitzmädel but had sometimes been allowed to cheer the office up with a gaily flowered frock, high heels too, the shoes purchased in Paris in the autumn of 1938 from the Galeries Lafayette and inexpensive because she had spent nearly all of her money on that wristwatch she’d found in Bréguet’s, at 28 place Vendôme. A fortune it had cost her and far more than needed for timing downhill runs or laps in the pool as she’d claimed.

And when, please, had those ladies of the Winterhilfswerk Committee first gotten the idea of fixing things up here, Kohler? Have you thought of that yet? Early September of last year, mein Lieber, but have you asked yourself why I would have agreed to allow such a thing? A wagon that becomes their campaign headquarters and a place for prisoners of war? Men who, through the camp’s Mundfunk (mouth radio), knew very well that terrible things were happening at Natzweiler-Struthof and not just things like hanging.

Abruptly Rasche parked his unfinished cigarette on the uppermost step of the wagon and started for the farmhouse.

Kohler watched him stride away without a moment’s hesitation, then went back to the wagon, closed the door, and relit the lantern. Louis would find him when he was good and ready.

The wagon had everything and must have been pure heaven to the POWs. There was a stove with a supply of wood—scraps from the coffin, sawn and broken-up branches from the Kastenwald, so a little foraging had also been allowed. There was even a cast-iron frying pan, a saucepan, kettle and saltshaker, knives, forks and spoons. Liebe Zeit, the paradise Rasche had sanctioned but why had he done such a thing?

Three chairs, similar to the one the girl had used, were around a table. Elsewhere, a drawing board gave plans and sketches of the booths the crew had been working on, a duty roster, the schedule and a completion date of 6 March, with ticks against those items that had been completed: a bottle-throw in which wooden hoops were tossed, a paper-mâché ball-throw, not yet the Jeu de massacre but one with can-can dancers which, if hit, would automatically lift their skirts to much laughter; a shooting gallery also, with squirrels, hares, roe deer and wild boar, all linked by a chain drive that would flip them back up into position after being hit. Pheasants too.

Days, weeks, months the repairs and refurbishing had taken those boys that had been borrowed from that textile works, not all of them at once, but while here having the time of their lives.

The roster listed only the first names. Eugène was three down and after Martin and Gérard, and before Henri and Raymond, these last two being singled out and responsible for the Wheel of Fortune.

Among his chores, Martin had been repairing popguns that fired Ping-Pong balls, but other such guns had been found and brought in and were leaning against a corner. ‘Six lever-action Winchester repeating air rifles,’ Kohler heard himself saying. BB guns that fired a copper pellet that was but a shade more than two millimetres in diameter. There were tins and tins of these pellets, found God only knew where, but most probably by Löwe Schrijen.

Target shooting had always been a favourite of such travelling fairs. Gerda and he had had a time of it, competing with each other. Had she been seventeen that first time?

‘Sentiment has no place in a detective’s life,’ he said.

Assorted tin trunks lay toward the far end of the wagon, with the bundles of mouse-eaten dresses, a pseudo-Florentine velvet being uppermost, but nothing of value, so why keep them? Scattered … Had they been scattered about the floor of this wagon?

Cigarette ashes filled one of those metal ashtrays that were often found in cheap restaurants but there were no cigarette butts, of course.

Shelves held rescued wooden hoops and darts—Sophie Schrijen, Victoria Bödicker and Renée Ekkehard must have spent hours scouring the place for artifacts. Brand-new, hand-rolled papier-mâché balls awaited painting but there were buckets of those that had been found and must have been stored somewhere dry, tent pegs too, and buttons in a fruit jar, lots and lots of those and an absolute fortune if taken inside the camp and sold to the other POWs. Scraps of tin too, and bits of string—even carpenter’s nails had been gathered to be wrapped, handful by handful, in bits of weathered canvas, each little bundle tied tightly, and so much for the searches by the guards at the gate of Arbeitslager 13 on return­. The nails and the buttons and such would have commanded­ a price and been desperately put to use. Hadn’t Louis found two rose-­coloured buttons among the dross in Eugène Thomas’s­ pockets? Of course he had.

There was even a beautifully honed, brand-new cutthroat razor parked discreetly behind a framed photo, sans glass, of a striptease artiste dans costume d’Ève, and ach, he’d best stop thinking in French. Nice, too, though, that photo, and well thumbed, but sacré nom de nom, just what had those boys been up to? To hide the razor and have it discovered by one of the guards would have meant certain death.

Beside this photo, there was an empty half-litre green bottle that had been drained of its marc or eau-de-vie. A toast? he had to ask. Had those committee members raised their glasses in salute to one another over what they had all but accomplished, or to something else, and had all of them been present? The three, thin-stemmed little glasses were of ice-clear Baccarat crystal and old, and obviously hadn’t been found anywhere near here, but stood in a row, shoulder to shoulder as if carefully replaced.

All were dry and smelled as if unused, but had they been washed and wiped clean, and if so, was that not why they’d been set in such a tidy row?

More and more this wasn’t looking good.

Threadbare, once brightly coloured carnival tapestries covered the makeshift tin-trunk bench Renée Ekkehard and the others had used for storage. Cigarette ashes had been dribbled on a far corner, but otherwise there was nothing to indicate that anyone had recently sat here, except for the smoothness of the covering, and, yes, someone in a hurry had tried to wipe those ashes away.

‘A suicide,’ he said, gingerly peeling back the covering and opening the trunk.

Coiled Manila hemp lay atop neatly folded canvas, the uppermost end of the rope having been yanked out so that its coils overlapped, and to the right of this, as if cast aside in a hurry, lay an open-bladed, worn-handled Opinel pocketknife, the French peasant’s constant companion. In just such little things were there answers. Trouble was, the colonel must have known all about it.

‘To be alone with the victim is always best for me, mademoiselle,’ said St-Cyr apologetically. ‘You see, patience is required and my partner often has little of it. Bien sûr, I tell myself the Occupier invariably demands the Blitzkrieg of us both, but still there are times when the careful step-by-step is essential. And Hermann, you ask? He’s improving. Working with me has been good for him, not that he always listens. A member of the Gestapo­? you ask. That’s not his fault, by the way, so please don’t blame him for it or worry.’

She didn’t respond. She just lay waiting in the soft and flickering light of the lantern. ‘I need to get to know you,’ he said, packing his pipe, a habit so ingrained he could do it without a glance, the colonel having parked his pouch of splendid tobacco on a corner of the coffin before leaving.

‘Has he gone to the farmhouse as I said he should?’ asked St-Cyr, waving out the match. ‘Or has he gone to find Hermann? He hasn’t quite been telling us everything, has he? There has been no mention of Eugène Thomas’s anonymous letter, none either of trinitrophenol or of why its chemical formula should have been hastily written on the corner of a page in Victoria Bödicker’s school notebook.’

Still there was no response. ‘Ah, bon, then, mademoiselle, let’s begin with this rope. It’s curious only in that after the commencement of hostilities in September ’39 it would have become increasingly difficult to find. Perhaps the Fräulein Schrijen asked her father to obtain it, or the carnival owner or owners had wisely laid in a supply? I’m inclined to believe they must have, otherwise synthetic rope—rayon—from the factory would have been used. The choice, then, tells us little, except that something had to be readily available and of good enough quality. And never mind the roughness. My partner will have thought of that. It’s the knot that puzzles me. The origins of it go back through the centuries, don’t they? It’s one of the simplest and earliest of knots and yet … and yet where would history be without it?’

She seemed to relax, to know that at last she was in good hands. ‘Was archery not just a casual interest but a passion of yours the colonel has so far failed to mention? You see, mademoiselle, the inner part of the pads of your left middle three fingers bear such callouses. Repeated bouts of target practice aren’t easy on a girl’s fingers, even with the special glove that is usually worn. There are also feather cuts on the back of your right hand where the arrow has rested as you gripped the bow. A small sacrifice—it’s understandable. One also uses a knot like this, though, when fitting on a new bowstring. First the noose is pulled tightly, and then a stop knot is added to prevent its coming loose, but why did you double the rope? It made the knot so large your head would have been painfully forced aside and how, please, did you manage then to tie its stop knot? You would have had to grope awkwardly for the ends of the doubled line.’

Pipe smoke billowed and as he waved it away from her, he said, ‘This bowstring knot wasn’t tied while you were standing on that chair. It was prepared beforehand and was easy to feed through the rope’s loop once the doubled line had been thrown over the cross-pole above.’

She seemed not to want to respond, but to wait as if with breath held. ‘The noose was then placed over your head, mademoiselle, and tightened. Hermann may have concluded otherwise, but for now I have to tell you that I don’t think you were conscious of what was happening to you until suddenly awakening to it but even your beret, which would surely have been knocked askew, has been tidied, and why, please, would you not have worn a woollen ski cap on a night like that? The degrees of frost alone demanded it, and you were obviously an accomplished skier.’

She had kicked out. There were splinters of glass in the cable-knit grey woollen socks whose outer pair had been rolled down a little. Others were caught among the laces of her boots, just as the colonel had said.

Holding the lantern closer, St-Cyr searched among the shards. ‘Ah, Dieu merci, mademoiselle, something’s caught in the back of your left inner sock, at the top. As you were taken down in haste by the colonel, the outermost sock accidentally hid this little item.’

Chance, though rare, could often make all the difference.

Holding the drop earring up to the light, he marvelled at it, was curious, pleased, so many things. ‘A bit of costume jewellery one of the carnival’s performers must have worn. Had you been collecting these? The bezel setting is from the fin de siècle. A clear, sharp amethyst, mademoiselle, its brilliant well faceted. Nothing cheap, but still far cheaper than the real thing.’

Five equally spaced beads surrounded the setting, a beautifully worked rope of silver encompassed its bottom edge. ‘The stem’s expanding filigree is symmetrical and instantly focuses attention on the droplet but, please, had you found it, or did someone hand it to you in a last gesture? You see, as the rope tightened, so did the fist that held this.’

‘The knot, Louis. I have to see it.’

Harried, Hermann stood in the doorway with the falling snow behind him. ‘What is it?’

‘Trouble.’

Not taking time to explain, he pushed past to stand over the victim, grasping the edge of the coffin with one hand to steady himself and then flinging something down at her chest.

‘Verdammt, Louis … ’

Five neatly tied little canvas bundles now lay on her blood-spattered jacket.

‘Medicinal iron,’ he went on. ‘They must have been carting things behind the wire for those boys. Ach, that’s fine enough if one can get away with it, but are all of those knots the same as the one that’s around her neck?’

Hermann often jumped to conclusions. ‘None of those men were here on that weekend according to … ’

‘Ja, but who the hell was it who asked for two dumb Schweinebullen­ to dig him out of the shit? There’s a cutthroat parked behind a photo. Escape, Louis. Were those boys that committee had working for them planning a little something of their own?’

A cutthroat …

‘That scrap of paper … ’

The trinitrophenol.

‘Either this one tied those little bundles with the idea of smuggling them into the camp, or whoever did also hanged her.’

‘But used a different knot, Hermann. The chair … ’

‘Didn’t skid, but was carefully positioned so as to make it look like she had kicked it away. I went back to check after I found those little bundles. The son of a bitch was right-handed just as is a certain colonel who could well have tied knots like those in his sleep!’

‘Hermann, listen to me, please. Renée Ekkehard was hanged using a bowstring knot, Eugène Thomas with one that was exactly the same as are around those little bundles.’

‘An arbour knot?’

‘Oui, oui, as is used by a fisherman, bien sûr. Single strand and very fast, both in the tying and the holding. Two loops, the first a little larger than the second, the working end being passed three times through the smaller, after which that loop is tightened by pulling on the side of the larger. A slip knot is then formed, which is, perhaps, as old if not older than the bowstring knot this girl must have known well how to have used but can’t have, Hermann. Can’t have.’

Callouses and feather marks were indicated.

‘We’re going to have to tell him what he already must know, Louis, that it really was murder. If he so much as gets a hint of our not doing so, we’ll never see Paris again.’

‘Then let’s take our time. Let’s flesh this killing out as much as possible.’

‘Was she drugged?’

‘That’s what I want you to find out.’

‘Then maybe I should tell you that I’ve already found the glasses and the empty bottle.’

‘Ah, bon, but look further. Leave me with her for a little longer.’

Caught by the mirrors, reflected, magnified, stretched or collapsed to a pinpoint, the lantern’s flame gave many lights. And all around her from on high, the garishly painted masks grinned, laughed, cried, threatened or frowned at Hermann as he hesitated, and all around her were the murals of entrapment, terror, murder and then judgement, retribution and public execution with an ax.

It wasn’t good, that cutthroat Hermann had found. It was terrible. They both knew it, Hermann lifting a tired hand to indicate that he would do as asked, even to softly closing the door behind himself.

None of the rest was good either, but why, really, would it not have been possible for the men behind that wire to have simply obtained the nails surreptitiously from the Schrijen Works?

Too many men, Renée Ekkehard seemed to say. Too closely watched and harshly punished. The risk from here would have had to be taken.

‘By all three of you on that committee, or only by yourself?’ St-Cyr heard himself asking.

Were the bundles not clearly visible to your partner, Inspector? Is that not evidence enough if that was really what they were for?

‘Then perhaps you would tell me why you concerned yourselves with their welfare, given the terrible risk of your doing such a thing? Colonel Rasche found himself in a very difficult position, didn’t he, mademoiselle? He had signed and stamped the pass that allowed you to come and go freely at the Works. After hours, during them—it didn’t matter, did it? A blanket pass. You had planned to visit Strassburg this weekend and he had okayed that—he must have for you’d purchased the second-class return ticket I found in your rucksack, with your papers. A skiing party at Natzweiler-Struthof, Sophie Schrijen told my partner, a visit also with your parents. A personal matter, Colonel Rasche has said of this last, but where, please, does Sophie’s brother Alain fit into things, a boy who is stationed at Natzweiler-Struthof and answerable to the Schutzhaftlagerführer Kramer?’

He gave it a moment. ‘Exactly what did you see that sickened you so much the Oberstleutnant Rudel believes it drove you to suicide? The deaths of innocent men, mademoiselle? Prisoners of war? Résistants? N und Ns?’

A drop-earring and a bowstring knot after a night of skiing …

‘A little earth is frozen to the soles of your boots. You skied but walked when necessary and were, I believe, as exhausted as the colonel has stated, when you returned here early on that Sunday morning.’

But did I go to the east? Was I really conducting Wehrmacht deserters through to France?

‘To the west, in the Vosges, the earth would have been buried under deep snow; to the east, over the Valley of the Rhine, which is far more populated, the snow is thinner, even in a winter such as this, the hills of the Black Forest excepted, of course.’

To the east, then, she seemed to sigh as if satisfied.

‘This watch, mademoiselle. Since when does a secretary, or even an outdoor’s girl like yourself, carry a man’s pocket watch? Oh for sure, it’s nothing but the best, though not new and made in Switzerland before that other war. A Baume et Mercier, but a watch, mademoiselle, of the kind one is perhaps loaned while one’s own timepiece is in for repairs? There are several of the notations watchmakers invariably inscribe inside the back, after each little visit. The number of a replacement part, sometimes the plus or minus of an adjustment so that it can be further modified …’

Did the colonel know of it, having gone through my pockets before you did? she seemed to ask.

‘He must have. Your rucksack also. There is something else.’

Digging a hand into the latter, St-Cyr drew out the carefully folded pages of Kolmar’s Morgenseitung of Friday, 29 January, in which she had wrapped the lunch she had then taken with her on the following day. ‘Several sandwiches. Dried, smoked sausage, mustard and Munster, mademoiselle, the absence of all of which Frau Lutze must have been well aware of yet has so far said nothing­. A vacuum flask of lentil soup as well, and enough for two.’

My killer and myself—is this what you are now thinking? she asked. If so, Inspector, then why, please, would a man I had helped guide to freedom kill me? Admit it. If my death really is murder, you are looking for someone else, someone who, if I was really smuggling deserters out of the Reich, must have found out about it and then had to put a stop to it, but silently. No arrest, no accusations, nothing like those. Simply a ‘suicide’ because of ‘something I had seen.’

‘Sophie Schrijen believed it would have been herself had she come out here on that Saturday afternoon.’

But is this person, if he even exists, now planning to deal with her and with Victoria, and if so, Inspector, then why did Eugène also have to die, or was his death simply a suicide, and if so, why then did he have that scrap of paper in his pocket?

The farmhouse’s Stube was warm, humid and stuffy. Wehrmacht laundry, grey and hanging over horizontal poles that had been strung from the ceiling timbers, all but hid the Kachelofen, noted St-Cyr. Two of the dogs stirred but were told to lie still by the colonel who, closeted at a bare plank table in boots, trousers, shirtsleeves and suspenders, looked grey and old and as if waiting for the inevitable.

‘An autopsy,’ muttered Rasche at news he had known he would have to hear.

The off-duty men had gone to bed. The two of them were alone and perhaps deliberately so, yet still the voice had best be kept low. ‘Traces of a sedative will be difficult enough to find, Colonel. She’s been here for just over a week now. We don’t even know if one was used, but if one was, there would have to have been sufficient to have made her very drowsy, but beyond that, we have little to go on.’

Rasche laid his empty pipe aside, ‘It’ll have to be done quietly and that is, unfortunately, something I can’t guarantee.’

The rheumy dark blue eyes were not evasive. ‘At lunch, Colonel­, you mentioned the university in Strassburg …’

The dark grey eyebrows arched. ‘You don’t know, do you? You can’t,’ he said and, reaching out to one of the dogs, began to gently stroke its muzzle and scratch behind its ears.

‘The library is famous, Colonel. Some of the earliest of medieval Germanic manuscripts, the very origins of Alsace and Alsatian …’

The big hands had spread themselves flat on the table. ‘Manuscripts? Ach, don’t talk such Quatsch, mein Lieber. Those books were all taken to Clermont-Ferrand during the Sitzkrieg when many of the professors and their students fled to shared facilities at the university there. Now the idiots cause trouble instead of lying quietly. They even refuse to return those damned books and as a result, the Gestapo in France want desperately to put an end to them.’

‘And at the University of Strassburg?’

‘There is now a new and approved staff.’

‘And the autopsies you told us were constantly being done there?’

‘Are being done on orders from Berlin.’

‘A cautious answer, Colonel. Is it that you really must go through the Konzentrationslager office to request one?’

Rasche pointed to his tobacco pouch and snapped his fingers for its return. He’d take a moment to pack his pipe. Maybe then this Sûreté would understand. ‘Certainly one can be fitted into the schedule at the university, but there will definitely be talk and that would not, I think, be conducive to your investigation. Schutzhaftlagerführer Kramer is, as I have indicated, difficult at best. That goes with the job, of course, but he could, as is his prerogative, demand that the four who are left from those I delegated to help out here be taken to the quarry for questioning.’

‘And the Fräulein Bödicker?’

‘Could also be taken.’

‘But not the Fräulein Schrijen?’

Was this infernal partner of Kohler’s finally beginning to understand? ‘One must proceed carefully, Chief Inspector. Leave the autopsy for now. Do all you can and then I’ll see what can be arranged. Renée’s parents will, of course, have to be notified and will object most strenuously. After all, the fewer questions asked, the less the attention that will be directed at those closest to the victim.’

And at those who questioned her ‘suicide’ in the first place!

As the colonel watched, detective shoes were yanked off, wet socks wrung of their meltwater to be flipped over one of the crowded poles, the shoes placed upside down on the stove’s Kunscht, the little stone bench that was used for keeping things warm, even babies, so gentle was its radiant heat.

In bare feet, his overcoat, scarf and fedora hung up to dry if possible, St-Cyr rolled up his trouser legs. ‘A few questions, then, Colonel.’

Paris had also warned of this.

‘You’ve stated emphatically that we are not to question your two detectives, but could they have removed anything and not told you of it?’

Anything like a syringe or an ampoule—was that it, eh? Deliberately St-Cyr had made no mention of the Baccarat liqueur glasses and the empty bottle of marc Kohler would have found.

‘Did they go over everything thoroughly, Colonel, and if so, will Hermann, who is still out there looking, find nothing?’

‘They wouldn’t have looked beyond the Lach Tempel. For them, it was fitting enough that the girl had chosen such a place.’

The Temple of Laughter, the House of Mirrors.

‘The one is far too close to the SS,’ said Rasche, drawing on his pipe. ‘He constantly informs them of what I do, and they, of course, are a direct pipeline to Natzweiler-Struthof. The other helps him but augments his wages by taking money on the side. These days some things are best overlooked. It’s enough to know of them.’

‘Then who drove that girl out here? Who knew her well enough to get that close?’

Renée had a blanket pass to the Schrijen Works, and St-Cyr would have found it in her rucksack. ‘Löwe Schrijen’s daughter often telephoned my office. I would then hear Renée and Sophie discussing their little project. Perhaps a ride was organized, since Sophie found she was unable to come herself. Werner and Yvonne may have something when we get back to the house.’

A Schrijen lorry, would that be perfect, Colonel, wondered St-Cyr, especially since Sophie Schrijen believed firmly she could well have been the intended victim? ‘We’ll want passes to the Works, will want to question everyone deemed necessary.’

‘You’ll have them. As to your questioning …’

‘Colonel, you asked for us. You could just as easily have let the decision of your own detectives stand.’

‘I have my reasons.’

‘And I have no jurisdiction here.’

‘But Kohler has.’

‘Is it that you counted on his being tractable?’

‘Kohler? Ach, what are you saying? I needed someone totally free of influences here, someone who had been a POW himself. If one is murder, is not the other? Now go and find that partner of yours. It’s long past my bedtime!’

‘Hermann will find us. Besides, my shoes, my feet … A basin of hot water. Some soap, I think, and a cigarette, if you have any.’

And refuse to part with more pipe tobacco! ‘There’s no soap and I’m out of cigarettes, but Herr Goebbels, who smokes as many as sixty a day, assures us that pine needles are every bit as good as soap and also help with the rheumatism. Add a handful. It costs nothing. There’s a bowl of them in the kitchen by the stove.’

All of the tin trunks in the office wagon had been opened and gone through. ‘Nothing. Not a damned thing,’ swore Kohler.

Flea-market gleanings lay tangled in a biscuit tin, deep in the trunk that was farthest from the entrance to the wagon. Imitation pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds—all had been cleaned. Paste, most of them, but Marcasite too, and zircons: brooches, bracelets, rings and necklaces, the garish and not-so-garish, but had her killer found that drop-earring in this box and was that why Renée Ekkehard had had it in her hand?

Setting the lantern close, he dug deeply, yelped as blood rushed from the end of the middle finger of his right hand. ‘Ah, Christ!’ he panicked. ‘Sepsis?’ Puncture wounds were always the worst. A high fever, then delirium and no way of stopping it. Sulfa … would he need sulfa? Would it be of any use?

Biting hard, he sucked at the wound, found irony in the thought that after all he’d been through with Louis, and before that too, something so small could well kill him.

Spreading a piece of new canvas on the floor, he upended the tin and quickly sorted through the contents. There wasn’t a match for the earring Louis had found, but the fragment of glass that had knifed him had blood on its spine and had gone in at least three millimetres. It was cylindrical and nothing like any of the shards from the mirrors. Perhaps two millimetres in diameter and maybe three-quarters of a centimetre in length, including the spine, it was of clear, medical glass.

Looking up to the shelves above, to that little row of Baccarat and the empty marc bottle, he said, ‘Danke, you son of a bitch. We’re going to get you.’

On cold, clear nights Yvonne Lutze knew sounds travelled, but now with so little traffic, they came from even farther. Just when Otto turned off the main road, she wasn’t sure, though soon he accelerated a little. Listening, freezing, she tried not to remember how it used to be, how as a girl she had often stood outdoors like this even in winter but upstairs, on her very own balcony, listening for her father who would be returning from the railway station, having been to Berlin, München, Hamburg or Brussels, Paris too. Vati who sold the wine of others not because he had to, he had claimed, but because it was among the finest, though unrecognized as such until introduced properly.

Vati who had loved her dearly and would not have approved of her marrying Werner. Otto would have been much better, mein kleiner Liebling, he’d have said, but Colonel Hans Otto Rasche had already been married, that lie and fact still staying with her for he’d not just been handsome and gracious but all those other things she had admired and wanted then as a girl of nineteen when young men of her own age had been dying like flies and soon none would be left. Vati too.

And the child Otto had left her with? she asked and answered as always, was God’s gift as her half of the bargain. Geneviève who had been a student at the university in September 1939, Geneviève who had been so serious about her studies: ‘A biologiste, maman. I want to study biology and chemistry. Women do study such things. There are two of us girls in my class. Two, maman! I’m French, not Alsatian, not German.’ She would never really appreciate how generations of her mother’s family had come to live in this house. Werner had seen to that. Werner.

Whatever else might be said of him, Werner really did take care of things.

Otto knew where Geneviève was and fortunately perhaps the child had gone with the other students when the university had moved to Clermont-Ferrand, the letters frequent until the capitulation of June 1940, the postcards since never many and always heavily censored, and now far fewer of them.

‘She’s fine. She’s still at her studies,’ Otto had said, having made discreet enquiries, ‘Don’t worry.’ But mothers always do.

When the little car rolled to a silent stop, Otto cleared his throat and even though his voice was hushed, she heard him gruffly say, ‘Kohler, don’t forget the house will be fast asleep.’

Two suicides, two murders? she silently asked. Have they seen enough, those two detectives you asked for? The soup, the sausage, cheese and bread that girl took with her—they can’t help but realize you must have known where she got them and that I had said nothing of it, not even to yourself, though you never once thought to ask me.

Renée Ekkehard, Otto. Something happened between the two of you last August. A brief moment, a mistake on your part perhaps, but whatever it was, and I’m certain of this, it left you vulnerable to that ‘secretary’ of yours. She never once had to force the issue, did she? She simply asked for your help with the Karneval and knew you would agree. A pretty girl whose shy and self-effacing modesty gave you a memory of myself perhaps, though I was nearly ten years younger than her. And now what are we to do? Wait for the inevitable? Tough it out, as Werner would? Use caution always?

Why didn’t Sophie Schrijen go in her stead as she was supposed to? Löwe Schrijen and that son of his are bound to ask questions of their own privately and you know it too. They’ve people who do this for them. That’s why you had to call Paris. I know it was!

And Victoria Bödicker, Otto? Why did she look at me the way she did when I asked her where Renée might have gone, asked at your insistence?

She was afraid. That business of her having to go into the bookshop to take care of a customer was simply a means of her getting away from me for a moment to give herself time. There was no one in the shop. No bell had sounded above that door, though when she came back, she did say that it worked sometimes and not at others, and that a replacement would be impossible to find.

She had realized I had taken that school notebook of hers, one you desperately needed and had asked me to get. It hadn’t quite been hidden by my overcoat which was lying on a chair, but she said nothing of this. Nothing! Otto. And when I got ready to leave, she turned away to gather up the cat, making it easy for me to steal from her. Me, Otto. Me! who had never stolen a thing in her life.

Those three girls were up to something that has jeopardized us all. Why can’t you admit this? Why can’t you talk to me about it? I know you will want me to look through the detectives’ things. I know they will ask me how Renée got to the carnival and that I will have to tell them you—yes, you—arranged for a lorry to take her. A lorry, Otto. You knew where she had gone.

In single file they crossed the catwalk, the river ice pale under moonlight, she looking down at them. Softly letting herself back into the house, she stood a moment between the heavy blackout drapes and the closed door, listening still until Werner turned over in his sleep.

Out of long habit and no matter what, he could drop off so easily when needed and sleep as soundly as a babe.

Mein Mann, Otto. Your Oberfeldwebel.

In the quiet of a house where sounds would echo, Louis laid out on one of the beds the collected bits and pieces from his pockets, and as a conjurer in a Karneval, passed the wave of a silent hand over them.

The two rose-coloured buttons taken from Eugène Thomas’s pockets were nothing like those that had been carved by one of the POWs and left on Rasche’s desk for them to find.

Carefully Kohler set the spine of medical glass next to the former.

The earring’s amethystine brilliant caught the lamplight, the papier-mâché ball looking out of place and seeming to mock them, as did the tightly rolled wad of 471 Lagermark, the bobbins with thread still wound, the swatch of blue cloth, and the poor bastard’s tin wedding ring, the original no doubt having been taken from him on capture.

‘This investigation, Hermann,’ came the whisper. ‘First there is Frau Oberkircher talking her head off to you on the train, only now we find she is known to the Fräulein Bödicker and sometimes is called in to take care of that one’s bookshop.’

‘Frau Bödicker having been locked up in the camp for British and American women at Vittel.’

‘Victoria being a decidedly British name.’

A hot box tells us there are partisans.’

‘Feldgendarmen and plain-clothes Gestapo make a hunting ground of Belfort’s railway station.’

‘Looking for deserters.’

‘N und Ns are heading for Natzweiler-Struthof.’

‘A quarry, Louis, but also with well-known ski slopes nearby.’

‘And a girl, a secretary and committee member, who is invited to a party there.’

‘Only to witness something that could well have driven her to kill herself if we were to have believed it.’

‘A cutthroat, a bowstring knot and then an arbour knot which is also used to tie neat little bundles of medicinal iron.’

Eugène Thomas’s nail and stone, left on the floor of that office toilet, were silently pointed out, Hermann then tapping a forefinger against the copy of Schöne Mädchen in der Natur and then at the magazine photo of a lone, buck-naked, grinning German soldier.

Unnoticed until now perhaps, the boy’s carefully folded uniform was on the ground at his feet, but only a corner of this showed.

‘SS,’ whispered Hermann. ‘I didn’t want to point it out to you.’

‘A postcard,’ breathed Louis. ‘A lonely, loving wife who could well have been desperate for money.’

‘A Postzensuren up to mischief.’

‘Perhaps but for now … ah, mais alors, alors, mon vieux …’

‘A Karneval to raise substantially more cash than last year since Gauleiter Wagner can be very demanding.’

‘Months and months those men have been at it, Hermann, but why, please, would your former commanding officer have agreed to such a thing?’

‘Since by doing so the son of a bitch left himself vulnerable.’

‘And others too, others like Frau Lutz and that husband of hers.’

‘Lies, lies and more of them, Louis; half-truths or none at all.’

‘And only after the death of Eugène Thomas at around midnight Friday does he then decide to seek help elsewhere.’

‘Knowing the chemical formula for trinitrophenol has been scribbled on a scrap of notebook paper and that he definitely can’t trust his own detectives to keep quiet about it.’

‘Since they’ve been watching him and are a direct pipeline through to Natzweiler-Struthof, knowing also, though, that it was torn from Victoria Bödicker’s school notebook and that Löwe Schrijen, chairman and owner of the Textilfabrikschrijen, gives his daughter everything she needs for her Karneval.’

‘But does so to please Gauleiter Wagner. He must, Louis. We’re in the Reich and the Oberbonzen call all the shots. There’s also a target date of Saturday, 6 March.’

And to hold anything in public, even a Karneval, the Gauleiter’s permission would have had to have been given. Rasche had also warned them never to underestimate Löwe Schrijen, but had only reluctantly revealed that the son, Alain Fernand, had been engaged to Renée Ekkehard, his secretary who had been like a ‘daughter’ to him.

‘A girl who skis all night, Louis.’

‘Only to then be distracted by a piece of costume jewellery.’

‘While being drugged.’

They hadn’t bothered to unpack their grip, those two detectives. They had so little in any case, thought Yvonne. A sliver of prewar hand-soap smelled faintly of lilacs and just as faintly bore the impress of the Crillon, a luxury hotel on place de la Concord. The Bavarian had probably pocketed it while on an investigation in late 1940, for the Wehrmacht and the SS had taken over many of the hotels, or so Otto had said after that first visit of his. They had even built a makeshift wooden walkway above the rue Royale between that hotel and the former Ministry of the Marine, and so much for culture and architectural beauty in a city of them.

Begging herself to remain calm, she set the grip on the bed Herr Kohler had used and emptied it item by item. ‘One spare hand towel,’ she whispered. ‘Socks with holes in them. Limited changes of underwear. Two spare shirts, an extra necktie, three handkerchiefs—St-Cyr’s?’ she asked, for they had been carefully pressed as if by a man, and he probably used them for collecting some of the things he did.

Two handguns were wrapped in the woollen pullover Herr Kohler had brought and laid on the very bottom of the grip. One of them looked like the pistol Alain Schrijen had laughingly shown Werner when the boy had come to escort Renée to his father’s house on Christmas Eve.

Mat-black, clean, sleek, much worn and therefore used, this one had a P38 incised a little in front and above the trigger, a Walther too, the soft curve of the maker’s name, the lie of what was now in her hand.

Well oiled, it fitted easily, the brown, crosshatched wooden grip perfect, but for a moment she couldn’t move, could only stand with this thing pressed to a thigh in defeat, her shoulders slumped. Was she going to go to pieces?

‘I can’t! I mustn’t! Geneviève,’ she whispered. ‘Darling, please be careful. Please don’t become involved in anything no matter how strongly you feel about the way things are, just hide while you study.’

The other gun was a Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, the old 1873, heavy, ugly, brutal, a six-shot revolver bearing the inscription of the Saint-Étienne Arsenal. It too had a crosshatched brown grip. Some sort of very hard wood—tropical perhaps, or was it of dyed bone?

The barrel, indeed the whole of this thing in her hand, was scratched, nicked, banged up but well oiled. Spare bullets were in a packet and heavy. Eleven-millimetre black-powder cartridges, but why should the Frenchman have such an antique when his partner had only the most modern?

Clips for the Walther pistol held eight 9mm Parabellum cartridges, and there were four spares and a full packet as well, gun oil too, and the cleaning rags, those that he had wrapped the guns in before using the pullover to hide them.

St-Cyr had slept in the box bed, he being the shorter; Herr Kohler the four poster with canopy which, like the other bed in its alcove, like the whole of this room and house, was now drawing in the light of day to glow warmly and securely from its panelled walls. Walls that showed off the lovely grain and knots of the wood and made one think always of a forest and of belonging.

Quickly, deftly, Yvonne made the beds and smoothed their quilted, chequered Kelsch-covered duvets and pillows, pausing at the foot of Herr Kohler’s bed, the warmers now clutched. ‘Cherry pits,’ she had heard him mutter late last night, their light out at last. ‘They radiate the heat even better than bricks, Louis, and are a hell of a lot softer.’

And then, as if he had longed for home, ‘Meine Oma taught us how to make them. The pits are gently dried in the sun. My brother and I used to turn them for her. You let the flat of your hand move lightly over them so as not to pile them up. The seed shrinks inside the stone and leaves an air space that holds the heat in longer. They’re cosy too. My Gerda used to pack bags just like these.’

His grandmother and then his ex-wife … St-Cyr had tersely muttered something about Saarbrücken and a farm there and knowing all about it. ‘Tomorrow, Hermann.’

‘Ach, don’t get fussed. I only thought it might help if you felt the warmth would last the rest of the night.’

Tomorrow, today. They had left the house, had overslept and taken only one cup of coffee each and black—had refused the milk she had offered, had said, ‘We’re no longer used to it,’ and she had understood that to request such a thing in Paris would have been to tell others one hadn’t been in France for very long and definitely draw attention to oneself.

Otto had already left by then, having taken Werner with him. Otto had known she was afraid the detectives would go through Renée’s things before leaving the house, but they hadn’t. Renée had used Geneviève’s bedroom which was on the floor below and across the staircase landing from his. In the autumn of 1940 the girl had come from Strassburg, hadn’t known anyone in Kolmar and had needed a place to stay. What else could one have done—told Otto that it wasn’t a good idea, that the arrangement was contrary to army rules? Kommandant and secretary living opposite each other, their doors opening in the middle of the night. ‘They had, Otto,’ she murmured as if he were there beside her. ‘Moonlight fills that room in summer when the blackout drapes are open as Renée had liked and had lain there all but naked, her nightdress rucked up, the white gauze of the mosquito netting you’d found for us her only defence as you stood watching her sleep, listening to her every breath. Did you see me in her, Otto, the girl I once was? Just what made you stand there so long and at other times?’

St-Cyr had left to interview Victoria Bödicker. Kohler, having taken two thick slices of bread and some Munster, had gone to the Schrijen Works in the repainted, grey-green French Army Citroën front-wheel drive that had been found for them. What remained of their presence in this room was so little, their absence filled her with despair.

‘That notebook, Inspector. That page from which a corner had been …’

Downstairs, down, down their steepness, the front door opened, but she hadn’t heard anyone cross the catwalk, hadn’t heard a knock or the pull of the bell-chain. ‘Inspector … ?’ she managed from the foot of the stairs.

‘My tobacco pouch,’ said St-Cyr, affably gesturing an apology. ‘I seem to have forgotten it.’

Though empty.