They were moving now as detectives should; they weren’t wasting time but all along the corridors of the Grand, crowds lined the walls and the shrillness, the shrieks, the jeers, and banging of pots and pans was deafening.
‘Léa Monnier, Hermann. Cérès knew of that Star of David,’ managed a visibly harried Louis, for several had tried to hit him.
More couldn’t be said until, at a shout from a clearly ruffled Brother Étienne who had ducked out of a doorway, the uproar died as suddenly as the nod from Léa had started it up.
Now the pots and pans were lowered and the rabble, dressed in separates often of the most incongruous kind, some sucking on their fags, others wishing they had one, fell to a watchful silence and then. . . then, as these two detectives hurried past, a whispered hiss, ‘None of us did it!’
‘We’re clean,’ said one whose breath alone claimed otherwise; another, ‘Caroline Lacy was the thief. Becky Torrence was seen going into the Chalet des Ânes after her.’
‘Nora Arnarson, inspectors. Ask Nora why she tried to grab but shoved Mary-Lynn.’
‘Her friend. . . Some friend.’
‘Ask Angèle,’ whispered another. ‘Ask that nag of Brother Étienne’s what Nora likes to share with her.’
‘Oh yes, to share when there is so little.’
‘Louis, what the hell are they talking about?’ asked Kohler.
‘Something so simple I should have seen it.’
Out on the terrace, the light of day had left and the shops were closed.
‘That sprig from a beech tree, Hermann, and three curls of the inner bark. Though mention of these implies Cérès knows what we found with Caroline Lacy, who else in the camp but Nora would think to nibble on them?’
‘Not Caroline?’
‘Not Jennifer either, nor Madame de Vernon or even Becky.’
‘Caroline wasn’t just going to tell the Kommandant who had pushed Mary-Lynn, Louis.’
‘Nora saw her being followed by Becky and must have thought Caroline would tell Colonel Jundt about that girl’s fiancé, but that Becky wasn’t strong enough to have dealt with her.’
‘And that’s why Becky came back the next morning to find out what had happened.’
‘Nora having told me that at first she had thought it out of character for Jennifer to have taken up with Caroline, and then opportunistic.’
‘Jennifer having been in love with our kleptomaniac, Louis, with Marguerite Lefèvre, Madame Chevreul’s maid, something Nora may well have known.’
Had Hermann really pinned the thief down? ‘The evidence?’
Kohler told him, Louis muttering, ‘C’est possible, mon vieux, but. . . ’
‘Gott im Himmel, why must you continually doubt the obvious? I caught her red-handed!’
‘And she made a visible impression on you.’
‘Deliberately?’
‘Hermann, how many times must I tell you not to be putty in the hands of the female sex? You share yourself with two women in Paris, can’t bring yourself to decide between them and they know this yet live together in harmony and have become fast friends.’
‘They’ve left me, and you know it. Giselle to become a mannequin, Oona to. . . ’
‘Yes, yes, but they’ll be back as soon as you are.’
‘And Marguerite Lefèvre?’
‘Could well have sized you up and seen right through you.’
‘No crystal ball needed?’
‘None.’
‘Then she was trying to shield Jennifer.’
‘Her former lover, Hermann? If still former, Madame having been kind enough to have warned me that Cérès has claimed Jennifer is in great danger.’
‘Since Madame had stopped her from seeing Marguerite until Caroline came along. Two days, Louis. That’s all Jundt and Weber are giving us, and one of them’s gone. If we don’t come up with answers today they’ll call in Berlin-Central and we both know what that means.’
Unlike the Grand, the Vittel-Palace was as silent as a tomb. All doors were closed, the smells still everywhere: ersatz perfume and pomanders but especially those of burning rutabaga steaks, boiling cabbage, and frying SPAM, or the smoke from innumerable stoves, some with the taint of refuse, others with that of the caramelized sweetness of toasting black bread, then too, the pungency of overheated electrical wires and the reminder, of course, that the damned place was nothing more than one hell of a fire trap.
A knock at Room 3–54 brought nothing, the room uninhabited, that of Room 3–38, the crowded waiting looks of apprehension. Clearly the two rooms had gotten together to discuss things.
Becky Torrence sat on her cot with Marni Huntington to one side and Jill Faber to the other. Dorothy Stevens, the tall, thin brunette from Ohio State with the uncooperative hair, was standing by the stove, where she had been eagerly licking a cone of what looked to be some sort of ice cream.
Candice Peters, the all-but-forty-year-old with the frizzy brown hair from North Carolina State, was sitting on Nora’s cot. Droplets from the newspaper-covered cone she held fell to her slippered feet.
Barbara Caldwell, the auburn-haired thirty-two- to thirty-six-year-old from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, was standing beside Marni’s cot on which sat Lisa Banbridge, the twenty-two-year-old brunette from Duke with the lovely hazel eyes and ponytail.
There was no sign of Nora, none either of Jennifer or of Madame de Vernon.
‘The washing, Louis. Diese Pariser.’
The condoms. Three of these hung limply from the curtain cord that had shut Caroline Lacy and Irène de Vernon off from the others.
‘It was just fun,’ confessed Jill with a shrug. ‘All we wanted was to be by ourselves for a little like it used to be when Mary-Lynn was with us.’
‘Une veillée, inspectors,’ offered Lisa. ‘For centuries such evening gatherings of women have been a tradition in France, a chance to talk things over, to recall the past while doing a little sewing or mending. Jill was telling us about Madison, Wisconsin, and the farmers’ markets she used to go to every Saturday morning as a student. The apples. . . ’
‘The McIntosh,’ said Marni, that chocolate thing of hers all but gone.
‘The Red Delicious—tart yet sweet,’ said Dorothy with longing.
‘The cheese,’ said Candice. ‘Muenster, Gruyère, caraway, brick, and Havarti, but best of all, the farmer’s. Little cubes on toothpicks were always given away, inspectors, slices of apple too, sometimes a whole one if a girl smiled and flashed her eyes the right way. It would be snatched up and quickly handed over to be tucked out of sight in a pocket or ravenously bitten, the farmer’s wife giving her husband the elbow.’
‘Maple syrup,’ sighed Becky, unable to stop herself from smiling and crying at the same time. ‘Mary-Lynn loved maple syrup.’
‘Popcorn,’ said Jill, giving her a tight hug. ‘She liked that, too.’
‘Pumpkins at Halloween,’ said Candice. ‘We used to fry the seeds in a little salt and butter and then eat them while they were hot. They were so delicious.’
‘Honey,’ said Marni, as if reliving the memories of a ten-year-old. ‘Clover, basswood, wildflower, buckwheat, and black locust, inspectors, the sweetest of all and softest of golden yellows. The beekeepers would let you have a sample. If you wanted to try any of them they’d dip one of the twigs they’d whittled into whatever jar you chose even if they knew you weren’t going to buy a thing.’
‘You could have your whole breakfast or lunch that way just by going from stall to stall,’ said Becky, having regained her composure. ‘There would be the smells of freshly baked bread and buns from the bakers’ stalls—those of chestnuts, too, sometimes—and fudge or pull taffy from the candymaker’s. Certainly those of burning hickory and grilling sausages, and of the winter, spring, summer, or autumn. Maybe a little sharpness in the air or even falling snow but that wonderful, wonderful tingling feeling of just being outdoors and absolutely free to do whatever one wanted. No guards, no war, no internment.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Louis impatiently. ‘Where is Madame de Vernon?’
They looked at one another. It was Lisa who said, ‘Jill was telling us about the Red Gym—the Armoury Gymnasium that is on Langdon Street down by Lake Mendota and had been built in 1893. She used to have a beau in the Badgers Rowing Club and had taken to getting up at five to row with one of the girls’ crews just for a chance of seeing him. From its redbrick walls and heavy, oaken door you can look uphill to see the sun glistening on the beautiful big white dome of the State Capitol. It’s built of blocks of Bethel granite.’
‘From Vermont,’ confessed Jill.
‘And Madame, knowing of Barre, Vermont, and her former husband, was convinced you were taunting her, as indeed you were with those.’
The Kondoms. It would be best to shrug and to tell them, thought Jill. ‘Bango, she flew into another of her boiling rages. Oh, sorry. Bango means “right away.”’
‘And left us to ourselves,’ managed Becky. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, inspectors. I swear I didn’t. Gosh, all I ever wanted was to help Antoine.’
‘Her fiancé,’ said Marni, tightly gripping the girl’s right hand. If an arrest was to be made, it would have to be of all of them.
‘And Nora and Jennifer?’ asked Hermann.
‘Nora’s gone to get some more clean snow so that she can make us another of these glorious snow ice-cream cones her dad taught her how to make, though he liked the raspberry best, Nora the blueberry. Jen’s doing her laundry.’
‘We always have to make sacrifices,’ said Dorothy of Jennifer’s absence. ‘Everyone in this hotel tends to eat early because we’re hungry by four and positively ravenous by five.’
Which would mean, of course, that when Caroline Lacy was killed, all but a few had been in their rooms doing that after having, like Madame Chevreul and Léa Monnier, just watched Brother Étienne arrive.
Blue eyes, green, dark olive-brown, hazel, and dark grey impassively looked at St-Cyr and Kohler as if, when they eventually left the room, there would be a collective sigh of relief and they’d go right back to what they’d been doing, discussing the simple things that everyone had taken for granted before this war.
It was Jill who said ‘The laundry’s behind the kitchens and about as far from here as you can get. Sometimes at this hour there’s still a little hot water but it’ll be lukewarm at best. It always is.’
The room was cavernous but of electric lighting there was only that from two widely spaced forty-watt bulbs. Leaking bronze taps, above the rows of zinc-lined drain tables yielded the periodic patience of ice-cold droplets that would, in the early hours of a still-distant morning, freeze.
Oak-framed, truss-backed washboards hung above the tables. Only one of them was being used—a lone occupant—and from it came the irritable clash of buttons on rippled brass as invective was muttered. The smell of ivy leaves, stewed and drained in desperation to give a liquid hopeful of soap, was clear enough. Sand could be used, and there was evidence of it.
At regular intervals, cast-iron, rubber-roller clothes wringers were clamped to the tables, but of the washing machines and bench ironers of the interwar period there wasn’t a sign. All would have been removed and placed in storage. The Hôtel de l’Ermitage? wondered St-Cyr.
‘Curtis, Louis,’ said Hermann, giving the manufacturer’s name of the clothes wringers. ‘It’s like taking a step back in time.’
Those twenty-six and -seven years since the wounded of the First American Army had been in residence. ‘Soldiers everywhere have no need of the complicated, Hermann. In any case, the simple copper wash-boiler, a mere tub, didn’t come into general use in France until the late ’20s and early ’30s. Washing machines and other such labour-saving devices were but objects of curiosity in catalogues.’
Hand cranks turned the rollers and these were all but as long and heavy as tire irons, thought Kohler. Jennifer simply wasn’t present, only the small heap of wet underclothes that she had left on a distant drain table along with a bottle of what must be Brother Étienne’s lavender wash water.
The nearby wringer roller’s hand crank had also absented itself, a worry to be sure.
‘Madame de Vernon,’ said Louis to her back, ‘what have you done with that girl?’
She wouldn’t turn, thought Irène. She would concentrate on the scrubbing. ‘Me, Chief Inspector? Nothing, but why not ask that garce yourself? I arrived and she fled.’
‘Where to?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Madame, you hated that girl. She was terrified of you.’
‘Terrified? For raping the innocence of my Caroline? Bien sûr, I wasn’t happy with what she was doing to that child of mine but as to her being terrified of me, that I couldn’t say.’
‘Have you killed her?’
The scarf-swathed neck stiffened as the head was tossed. ‘You accuse without a shred of evidence? You arrest without the magistrate’s warrant? That door leads to the Hôtel Grand, the stairs nearby, to the cellars. Please take your choice.’
‘And leave you to your laundry?’
She had him now! ‘It’s Caroline’s. Are laundered clothes, freshly ironed not necessary when the dead are to be buried, or have such considerations been dispensed with, and if so, how, please, am I to inform that girl’s parents of such a desecration?’
Releasing the blouse, she hastily crossed herself, then rigidly waited for the proceedings to continue.
Hermann went to check the door and to leave it open, momentarily disappearing toward the Hôtel Grand. Such ease of alternate access had not been anticipated.
‘A mortised pin tumbler deadbolt, Louis, no doubt with a key Weber takes from that board of his every evening and hands to the designated guard.’
That one then leaving the door unlocked if paid enough; if not, the key itself having been purloined and perhaps even copied—Hermann didn’t need to say it, only, ‘She could be in the Grand.’
Since both doors had yet to be locked.
‘Madame. . . ’ began Louis.
These two from Paris hadn’t realized that such comings and goings had been possible and would now have to think about it. ‘As I’ve told you, Chief Inspector, I didn’t notice.’
‘The cellars, Hermann. Leave me to deal with this one.’
‘Why should I tell you anything? You both protect the Jews, isn’t that so? One snap of the fingers and Herr Weber learns of what you, a sûreté, said to the others in that room I must share. You asked, Chief Inspector, if any of them were Jewish and you said. . . ’
‘Yes, yes, that neither Hermann nor I would report them.’
She must keep the pressure up! ‘Even if Jennifer Hamilton were a Jewess, you would have kept silent? A submarine, I believe that Jill Faber said of such filth. Oh, please don’t look so dismayed. Gossip is everything in a place like this. Those bitches I have to live with whisper in English to each other, and me—I listen! Now, if you don’t mind. . . ’
‘Louis, bring her with us. Let her point the way.’
‘Je refuse catégoriquement!’
‘Filth, madame?’
‘Untermenschen—is this not what les Allemands call such people?’
Subhumans. Inadvertently she had revealed that she also knew how to speak Deutsch.
‘Me, I repeatedly told Caroline exactly what they were like. Taking the jobs from others, charging far too much for things, cheating at every chance.’
Hermann had gone down into the cellars. ‘Ah, bon, madame, let’s discuss the matter, but before we do you’ll tell me why you didn’t want that girl asking questions of the husband who had taken you to the cleaners in 1910 and died in 1920.’
‘Laurence? In a place like this, where gossip is but food for regurgitating vultures? As was my right, I demanded that she obey me but that. . . that salope, Jennifer Hamilton, told her otherwise and now. . . now look at what has happened. My Caroline taken from me and everyone whispering that I thought to kill the child but pushed, I tell you, the wrong person? I who was asleep. Asleep!’
‘Having hidden the datura cigarettes she would desperately need.’
Ah, merde, this had gone too far, but there was no turning back. ‘I did not hide them, as those bitches are saying. I simply set them out in a more convenient place since there had been trouble with the electric lights.’
‘That girl refused to leave Room 3–54 and Jennifer Hamilton, madame. She had slammed the door in your face and yet now you claim you were asleep?’
‘Lies. . . it is all lies. Oh for sure I tried to put a stop to Caroline’s attending one of those séances of Madame Chevreul’s. I begged that woman to reject her. I offered far more than the usual fee but even that was refused. Why? I ask you. Why was I to have had my most private affairs aired in front of a gang of so-called sitters, I who have given everything for that child?’
‘You threatened Madame Chevreul. Even Léa Monnier was afraid of what you might do.’
‘Bon! She should be!’
‘Laurence Vernon, madame. Let’s dispense with the prefix of les hautes that you must have added.’
‘Why should I not have done? Everyone else here dreams of something and lives it. My father was of the de Marignanes of Aix, the same as the daughter the great orator and writer Mirabeau took to wife in 1772.’
After having scandalously deflowered Marie Emilie, her unhappy father then cutting off the couple’s allowance, Mirabeau plunging them into debt with equal scandal. ‘The fire, madame?’
This sûreté wasn’t going to leave it. ‘Did you think I didn’t know what those bitches were trying to prove? The casino here, arson on the night of Saturday, 17 July, 1920, a corpse charred but not beyond recognition, I tell you, and one missing adulterous husband who had stolen everything from me including one of the villas of the de Marignanes? How else was I to have put a stop to such maliciousness? Was I to have let Caroline, in all her innocence, have that. . . that charlatan of a woman ask a goddess about my Laurence?’
‘How did he die?’
‘I wasn’t here. I was in Paris. Caroline. . . Caroline knew this, but that. . . that bitch Jennifer Hamilton wouldn’t leave well enough alone.’
Kohler didn’t really know what he’d find in the cellars, but a third murder, especially that of a lead informant, would definitely be to Weber’s advantage, since the son-of-a-bitch could then claim them incompetent and put a call in to Berlin.
Louis and he couldn’t withstand another run-in with the SS. Vouvray in early December had been bad enough, Paris often far worse—Lyon, too, and Vichy more recently. A legacy then of hatred: two honest cops who were stupid enough never to look the other way when pointing the finger of truth.
Had Madame de Vernon crushed that girl’s skull? Was that informant of Weber’s lying in some darkened storeroom, blood all over the stone floor but freeing up a flat full of valuable antiques and paintings?
The main breaker box was at the foot of the stairs and handy to anyone who could have ducked in that side door. By simply pulling the breaker, whatever lights were on would suddenly go off and no one else the wiser, especially as the damned thing had a padlock on it, another Harvard six-lever, long-shackled relic.
Liebe Zeit, but the First American Army had sure left a lot of stuff. Weber knew of the séance that Mary-Lynn and Nora would be attending with Colonel Kessler. Perhaps he had even known or suspected Kessler would escort them to the front entrance afterward. He’d have known of the Saturday-night poker sessions but not if those two would then drop in or when they’d actually climb that far staircase to Rooms 3–54 and 3–38.
But with Mary-Lynn’s ‘suicide,’ the threat of Kessler’s sending him to the Russian Front would have been over.
Then why that Star of David in the Chalet des Ânes, unless Caroline had also intended to tell the new Kommandant about Becky and by so doing, admit that she knew who had been stealing things?
Jennifer or, better still, Marguerite Lefèvre.
Overloaded, the electrical wiring tended to dim and then to blink the intermittent lights, and in every room or corridor upstairs that same on and off would be happening. Weber would have had no need to touch the breaker box. He could simply have let himself in that door and come down here to make his way through to that wing before climbing the staircase to then open the lift gate and wait on the way up to the attic.
The girl wasn’t in any of the nearest storerooms, all of which were empty. She wasn’t in the immediate corridor, and when he turned on to the main one, there was still no sign of her. Verdammt!
Doors were open, others closed, and at each of the latter he had the feeling he’d find her behind it. Not having a flashlight was a problem. Strings dangling from the ceiling would, when pulled, have turned on each light, but all had lost their bulbs, the Americans having a better use for those in their rooms, the string as well.
When he reached the foot of the main staircase, he couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Parker and all 990 of them waiting in silence, there having been not one, as originally thought, but two murders.
All would have known the cellars well enough, and hadn’t Nora Arnarson made apricot brandy down here somewhere?
‘Arson, Madame Vernon.’
Was the chief inspector afraid she might torch the hotel with everyone in it? wondered Irène. Certainly he was still suspicious of her having been in Paris at the time of the casino fire, and certainly Herr Kohler had yet to return from the cellars, and now this one was beginning to also believe that the worst had happened to that girl, a filthy lesbian who hadn’t been able to keep herself from stealing Caroline’s heart and innocence.
‘Early in October 1920 I was notified of the fire by two detectives from the Sûreté Nationale. Their names and the exact date or day escape me, of course. The lack of vitamins here, the memory loss that happens because of such a thing. Many others are afflicted and forget even to whom they’ve just been speaking. Perhaps the chief inspector’s name was Lafarge, perhaps Lafleur. Perhaps it was in the third or fourth week of September instead, a Wednesday. I’m certain it was midweek, but me—I simply can’t remember after so many years. But I do know that they came to my flat—I was living in a single room on the rue Moncey at the time. After telling me what had happened, they asked me to pack a bag and to accompany them.’
Two detectives, a senior one at that, and a long and tedious journey by train to the provinces—she could see him thinking this and concluding that they must have had good reason, especially as the corpse had been kept on ice for so long and they must have had difficulty locating her, the address given being in Pigalle, she well down on her luck and moving unannounced every time the rent came due.
‘Laurence had lost an arm, the left, to shrapnel. When we got to the morgue in Vittel, the corpse I was shown was the same but only in that regard. I thought him taller, bigger across the shoulders but they. . . they said the fire could well have shrunk him.’
‘He’d been gambling, had he?’
‘Ah, mon Dieu, what did that monk tell you? That my Laurence had been here with his latest floozy? That his family had finally overlooked his squandering his life away on drink and women and gambling and had let him inherit 356,750 American dollars from the estate of his mother, not a franc of which would then be left for me?’
Beyond taking out his pipe and tobacco pouch, then searching for his matches, the sûreté gave no indication of interest in what she had just said.
‘As a boy of fifteen, Inspector, Brother Étienne had been here among the curious on the morning after that fire. Monsieur le Père, the abbot of that order he serves, had been summoned to give the last rites, but ever since then that boy, now a man, has tried, unsuccessfully, I must add, to find out why anyone at all should have perished when the inquest itself could find no possible reason other than an accidental fall brought on by far too much drink in an attempt to forget the losses at the tables.’
Ah, bon, there’s flesh on the cinder—she could see him thinking this, but better that she tell him than that monk.
‘A gossipmonger, that is what Brother Étienne is! Whispering insidiously of things he can know nothing of, but doing so to curry favour especially with that. . . that Madame Chevreul. A woman, I would not be surprised if you were to discover, who had poisoned her blind husband just to be free of him and get her hands on his money.’
‘And then come to Vittel in July of 1920 to take the cure?’
Ah, merde! ‘That. . . that I couldn’t say, but if the one is wrongly thought, why not the other? Here everything is blown out of all proportion and the truth forgotten.’
Jennifer was down here in the cellars somewhere. Kohler knew it, felt it, yet couldn’t find her. Frost clung to the stone walls, dampness hugged the air and through the dim and distant ceiling light of a lone electric bulb, fog hung and with it came the stench of the drains and the sounds of scurrying little feet.
Lighted matches, now running short, had revealed that Nora Arnarson didn’t just trap rabbits. There was still no sign of Jennifer. Louis would have said, It’s curious you should be thinking of Nora at such a time, but the silence did suggest the trapper and she could easily have come down here to check on her traps. She would have been outside getting fresh snow for her ice-cream cones, would have come in by that side door to the laundry and seen what was going on or sensed what must have happened. No Jennifer present, but Caroline’s things also in a heap waiting to be washed. Had she heard Jennifer crying out or come down here only to catch sight of Madame bludgeoning the hell out of that girl?
The door was ajar, the room beyond it dark, and he knew that he had at last found her.
‘Madame Vernon,’ said the sûreté as if he suspected the worst and would persist until he had what he wanted, ‘I will ask one more time. What did you do to that girl?’
‘Beat her to death with that clothes wringer’s armature—is this what you think?’
‘You know it is.’
Bien sûr, the soggy little heap of laundry the girl had left did look neglected, thought Irène, but if she were to stand her own ground firmly, the chief inspector could never prove a thing. Fingerprints? she asked herself. Blood spatters on her slippers? Ah, merde, he had ducked those eyes of his to them and was now searching upward. Her woollen socks, the hem of her skirt—was there blood on those, she could see him asking himself.
‘They taunted you,’ he said, watching her closely now, too closely. ‘On the night of the thirteenth, fourteenth, when you stormed down the corridor to Room 3–54, the door was closed but not locked, was it? You entered, n’est-ce pas? You flung on the overhead light and found them together. Kissing, madame. Fondling. Did you yank the covers from them?’
‘Salaud, they were arguing as I have already told you! My Caroline was in tears and very upset. I begged her to come back to the room but she. . . she shrieked and flung her fists at me. À moi! She pushed me out into the corridor, slammed that door in my face, and held it shut, I tell you. Shut, against me!’
Ah, bon, her blood pressure had rocketed. ‘And from then on, the shouting only became more vehement. Others, in the nearby rooms, must have heard you.’
‘Imbécile, it wasn’t the first time! They had heard Caroline and me yelling many times. Soon they were all telling me to shut up, all shouting, “Oh, for God’s sake, let her decide for herself!” To them I was nothing but a stupid, interfering old woman who was so insanely possessive I would destroy Caroline’s happiness!’
She caught a breath, glanced hurriedly about for something with which to defend herself and, realizing that nothing was close to hand and that he had swiftly moved in on her, swallowed hard, relaxed her clenched fists, and said more moderately, ‘What was I to have done? Let that bitch Jennifer Hamilton patch up the affair? I had to put a stop to it. She didn’t love my Caroline. Having stolen whatever else she could from me and everyone else to gain power over us as Brother Étienne insists such a thief would do, she had to steal the ultimate, the heart of an innocent child, the one and only treasure I have always held above all others. Always.’
For some time, felt Jennifer, and she was certain it must be Madame de Vernon, there had been no further sound of the woman’s lighting a match before cautiously stepping into each storeroom to see if she was there, but now. . . now there was nowhere left to hide. Now Madame would find her. Madame had killed her husband—Caroline hadn’t known this for sure but had become convinced of it, convinced too that Laurence Vernon had been in Vittel at the casino and had again taken up with another woman. Vivacious, witty, intelligent, and wealthy—recently a widow perhaps, but not grieving. A girl out for a good time: the spa, the relaxation from all cares but those of pleasure, the casino and its theatre, the dancing too, and the meals. . . such meals. He had just inherited a bundle and would have been boasting of it, but unfortunately for him, Madame had learned of it from his family in America, and had come here from Paris to confront him.
Caroline had been certain of this too, certain that if Cérès was to be asked, the truth would come out and everyone in the camp would know exactly what Madame was like and why she could no longer stay in the same room with the woman.
Laurence Vernon must have died in the casino fire of 17 July, 1920. He had often been ‘under the empire of alcohol,’ as the French were fond of calling alcoholism, and before Madame could stop things from happening, had lost a second fortune.
She’s going to kill me, thought Jennifer, bracing herself, having backed right into a corner. If she’s not stopped, she’ll grab me by the throat, is far too strong. Caroline had always warned that Madame’s temper could flash to violence, that too often she, herself, had been the victim. Gentle, timid, hesitant, naively innocent Caroline, whose awakening had been so sudden and complete. Caroline who had asked that a meeting be arranged in a place no others would think of, Herr Weber then demanding of her that he know everything ahead of time. Just everything.
Caroline, who had held her hand so tightly when sitting on trial before that medium’s tent of Madame Chevreul’s. ‘Have either of you been stealing things?’ that woman had asked of them from behind the screen.
Caroline had lost her ‘shooter’ marble to this. . . this thief of theirs and had been found with a Star of David. A sprig from a beech tree and three curls of the inner bark had been in that stall, a tidied corpse. Why tidied? Why laid out like that? She would have known the shame such a thief would have felt when exposed to the stares of everyone else in the camp. The shunning that would follow, the total silence of everyone spoken to, their looking away not just for a day or two but forever.
Caroline, who had wanted to tell Kommandant Jundt not just who had shoved Mary-Lynn Allan, or even that Becky Torrence had helped her fiancé to escape to the free zone, but that she had inadvertently discovered who the thief was.
Caroline, who had been pensive when facing Marguerite. . . who had played the imp before gazing deeply into the last of her crystal balls as only she could, the clear. . .
Caroline, who had been so upset and had felt so betrayed.
Kohler waited. He could hear someone softly, tensely breathing. When he nudged the door, whoever it was held her breath and he wondered, was she waiting with that armature wound up and ready to kill him?
Ach, there was only one way to find out. Sacrificing the last seven matches in the box, he flung them one by one into the room.
They fell like star shells over a battlefield, thought Jennifer, each arcing through the darkness only to finally go out and leave her biting back the tears.
When he lifted her chin and took the armature away, Jennifer knew that Herr Kohler had found her, not Madame. Not yet.
Louis wasn’t going to spare the girl, even after what she’d just been through. They couldn’t—Kohler knew this, yet it saddened him to see her so stressed and going to pieces in front of them.
‘My apartment,’ she blurted. ‘If I don’t get back to Paris, what’s to happen to all of those precious things I bought for my father’s clients? An oil on panel by Lucas Cranach the Elder, inspectors. It’s magnificent. I would sit for hours in front of it and never tire of feasting my eyes. There’s a sketch by Jan van Eyck for his St. Barbara. The folds of her gown cast such shadows they set off the whole piece—its mood, its purpose, its divine purity and poise—and I just know it was done in charcoal first and then in pen and brown ink, for the shadows tell me this as much as does the fine detail. She has an illuminated breviary in her lap but is not reading—she knows it all by heart and one can see this in her peace of mind as those beloved words come silently to her. There’s another sketch by Delacroix—Ah, mon Dieu, words fail me. It’s a preparatory for his Descent from the Cross, after Peter Paul Rubens. It, too, is in pen and brown ink on paper. I’m certain the ink was made from oak galls—that’s one of the first things we question when examining such works, for forgeries are everywhere in the art world. I acquired it for the Levy family in Boston.’
She paused. It seemed to calm her to tell others of these things, thought Kohler. Even Louis was listening attentively and perhaps had begun to realize just why the poor kid was so concerned.
‘There’s a collection of snuffboxes that I had spent nearly a year building for Mrs. Anna Blumenfeld Senior. German gold and enamel, by Daniel Baudesson, circa 1765: a countess at her toilette with ladies in waiting. She’s just come from the bath and though it is in miniature, you can see how pink her skin is and feel how hot the scented water must have been. Another German box is of gold and bloodstone, with a stag on the run and being set upon by ferocious hounds. Why must men who hunt be so unforgivably cruel? The box is circa 1750, but though exquisite, is not a favourite of mine.’
‘You’ve exceptional taste,’ murmured Louis, somewhat mollified.
She brightened. ‘I’ve Swiss boxes with enamelled silver birds that spread their wings and sing when the boxes are opened. Naturally they’re favourites, and I know I will feel a terrible sense of loss when they’ve finally been shipped home but’—she shrugged—‘one has to learn to bear such feelings if one is to be a dealer.’
‘And your favourite of favourites among the snuffboxes?’ asked Louis, as if they had all day and night.
Those soft brown eyes took him in, strands of the fair hair being tidied, for they’d fallen over a still deeply furrowed brow. ‘A gold and semiprecious stone box by Johann Christian Neuber that is inset with 107 stones and is from Dresden, circa 1780. I paid 2,500 francs for it but know it’s worth at least thirty times as much.’
Twenty-five American dollars on the black bourse becomes $750.00 at home. ‘A bargain,’ muttered Louis who had yet to even find that pipe and tobacco pouch of his.
‘Please don’t think me opportunistic, Chief Inspector. With that 2,500, the Meyerhof family of four made it to the zone libre. I know this because, in their gratitude, they sent me a postcard. They had “found employment.” There was “plenty of food.” These brief words filled in places among those the censors had blacked out and they told me that the family had reached Marseille as planned and were about to board a ship. To Tangier, I think.’
‘And the card, mademoiselle?’
Was it proof he wanted? ‘It. . . it was unfortunately stolen—taken.’
‘Like others, Hermann,’ Louis said with a sigh as if totally absorbed in the tale or resting up to gather steam, especially as she hadn’t bothered to mention the card before.
Again she found the will to uncertainly smile at him, thought Kohler, but then grew serious. ‘Each piece bears a certificate, Chief Inspector, with the letterhead of my father’s shop in Boston. Each gives details of the piece, the date purchased, the price negotiated, the name of the seller and to whom the item is to be delivered. My father, I know, would be very proud of me and would say to my mother and to my uncles who are partners of his, “Hasn’t our Jenny the eye?” Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been among such things.’
And Weber knew it—Kohler could see Louis thinking this but all that sûreté said was, ‘There’s a bench of sorts near the boiler, Hermann. Let’s sit a moment.’
‘Sometimes it’s still a little warm at this time of day,’ Jennifer managed.
Madame had fled, and they were both worried about what that woman might now do, thought Jennifer, but the one from the Kripo, the criminal police, took out his cigarettes, the other a pipe and tobacco pouch and they shared a match, she accepting a cigarette though shaking still.
‘Merci,’ she said softly. They would push her now. They wouldn’t let up until they were satisfied she had told them everything.
Was the vulnerability but a subterfuge? wondered St-Cyr. She wasn’t beautiful but perfectly capable of using the charm of her eyes and faintness of a smile to plead innocence and overcome whatever doubts Hermann might have.
With him, he suspected, she knew that no such ploys would work. The tobacco did, however, calm her a little. ‘Mademoiselle, you were billeted with the British when you and the others first arrived at the camp. Things must have been chaotic.’
Merde, he was even watching the way she smoked her cigarette! ‘Ah, mon Dieu, those first few weeks were so overcrowded we were constantly tripping over one another. One couldn’t have the briefest of washes in privacy or even share a bath without several looking in to say hello, ask for something, or tell a person to hurry up and make sure they didn’t leave a ring but scrubbed it out, nor was there much to eat.’
‘The British had to share their parcels with them, Louis.’
‘Fights broke out, animosities grew so deep they still fester.’
She’d been grateful for Hermann’s interjection about the parcels, had seized on it, but would now have to face the truth. ‘Things went missing, did they?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘A bar of expensive soap, a tube of toothpaste, slippers, socks, and underwear—all such things unless kept well hidden or guarded. Shoes, even, but in October we were moved here. It. . . it was then that the theft of little things was first noticed.’
‘But they’d been going on while you were in the Grand?’ asked the sûreté, gesturing companionably with that pipe of his.
‘Oui, I think, but how were we to have known? The British now say they hadn’t lost a thing before we arrived but. . . but as to its being the work of a kleptomaniac, I. . . ’
She shrugged, had mastered the art of that gesture perfectly, her gaze falling fully on Hermann, of course.
Concern had best flood his eyes, thought Kohler. Warmth, too. ‘Photos, postcards, letters from home, Louis, and bits of ribbon.’
She mustn’t flinch, thought Jennifer, though having had to sit in front of Herr Weber’s desk so many times, she knew well enough the ribbon to which he was referring. ‘Buttons, but only those that wouldn’t have easily been recognized had an attempt been made to use them.’
‘With whom were you billeted?’ asked Herr Kohler.
Cold now, was he to her? wondered Jennifer. ‘With Léa, Hortense, and Marguerite Lefèvre. Madame Chevreul said that it was the least she could do, given the circumstances. Everyone must double up, except for her, of course.’
Herr Kohler flicked a glance at his partner, then said to her, ‘That spare room with the crystal balls and such. . . Was it emptied out and taken over?’
He’d been in it, then. ‘They. . . they kept it locked but we all knew of it soon enough and that the British had been reading palms and the Ouija board and holding séances in there at ten and twenty francs per person—less perhaps, or the equivalent—and for some time.’
And one hell of a lot cheaper than for the Americans! ‘But not in the Pavillon de Cérès?’
First Herr Kohler would go at her and then the other. ‘The Pavillon. . . Not while we were billeted in the Grand. It was simply far too crowded. I slept on the floor beside Marguerite’s cot. There were so many things we had to learn—she helped me a lot, let me tell you, would lend me things, a towel, a pair of slacks. In turn, I shared my toothpaste, perfume, lipstick, and hand-soap with her, for they hadn’t had anything so good in ages.’
‘You got to know her well, then,’ said Herr Kohler.
How well, was what he wanted, the sûreté simply sucking in on that pipe of his, the tobacco mixture sweet yet spicy, its aroma reminding her of Colonel Kessler but also of home, her father, and the shop. ‘Wouldn’t anyone who had slept beside you for weeks?’
‘Were you lovers?’ asked Herr Kohler.
Again she would shrug. ‘Such things happen, especially in places like this. We were afraid, confused, lost, lonely. . . Ah, so many things, I. . . ’
This time the shrug was defiant, thought St-Cyr.
‘Really, inspectors, my private life, such as it is in a place like this, has nothing to do with what has happened.’
‘Or everything,’ he said, watching her even more closely now.
She would stub out her cigarette, but with infinite care so as not to waste a grain of unburned tobacco. ‘We saw each other daily even after I moved here.’
‘Until?’ he persisted.
It would have to be said quite simply. ‘Until one day, early in December, Marguerite broke things off and wouldn’t even look at or speak to me, but I. . . I think Madame Chevreul had told her she had better break it off or else. I. . . ’ Ah, merde, she would have to tell them. ‘I was suspected of stealing things. My feelings were hurt, of course. Terribly, but. . . but Madame, she wouldn’t listen. I was to be banished. Marguerite was to. . . to find another but hasn’t. Not yet, not that I know of.’
They were making her angry and she couldn’t have that, she mustn’t, felt Jennifer. Anger would only play right into their hands, but her cheeks were already warm and inadvertently she had clutched the cigarette butt she had been going to return to Herr Kohler for his little tin and it had crumbled to dust.
‘Caroline Lacy, mademoiselle,’ said the sûreté.
‘Caroline. . . Because I had roomed with Marguerite and the others, she. . . she wanted me to help her to become a sitter. At first Madame Chevreul refused, but Léa. . . Léa finally spoke on our behalf.’
‘Things were still being stolen,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Oui, but Caroline and me, we passed the severest of tests. Madame was satisfied.’
‘But then came the loss of her gris-gris, Louis.’
‘Only now have Hermann, Madame Chevreul, Léa Monnier, and everyone else, it seems, in the Hôtel Grand become convinced Caroline Lacy was the thief.’
‘But. . . but Caroline was to have become a sitter, inspectors?’
‘At a séance, mademoiselle, which for her just never happened.’
‘I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t! Caroline was convinced that Cérès would reveal Madame de Vernon had hit her husband with an empty champagne bottle, a Moët et Chandon. Not a full one, for otherwise it. . . it might have exploded and sent flying glass into her eyes and Madame, she. . . she would have known this could happen.’
‘And then set fire to the casino here?’ asked Herr Kohler.
‘Oui.’ Jennifer nodded. ‘We. . . we spoke of it often. It was all just supposition but. . . but the more she thought about it, the more my Caroline believed, and me, I. . . I joined in because it pleased her.’
Were the tears real? wondered St-Cyr. ‘But you did have a falling out with her on the night Mary-Lynn died. Caroline was very upset and had a severe asthma attack as a result.’
The eyes were wiped. ‘We. . . we patched things up, as I’ve told you.’
‘But you did tell Herr Weber that Caroline desperately wanted to arrange a meeting with someone so as to let the new Kommandant know what she’d seen, and prior to this, you did tell him the future Corporal Duclos had predicted for Mary-Lynn Allan.’
Ashen now, Jennifer knew she couldn’t look at either of them and was in danger of stammering. ‘He told me that if I didn’t tell him things and find out everything he asked me to, he’d see that I never left Vittel. He doesn’t like me, inspectors. Indeed, he hates what I’ve become and ridicules me, while I. . . I have to sit in front of that desk of his and must not look anywhere else but straight at him. He. . . he enjoys humiliating people like me, but says he has to make allowances, as he does with Brother Étienne, until the Führer orders otherwise.’
‘Louis. . . ’
‘Hermann, we’ll deal with Herr Weber later. Mademoiselle, who arranged the meeting at the chalet?’
‘Becky, but she. . . she has already told you this. Jill. . . Jill didn’t get one of the guards to open that padlock. Caroline. . . ’
She couldn’t face them now, thought Jennifer, but would have to say, ‘Ah, mon Dieu, inspectors, I know she must have found someone who had a key.’
‘Louis. . . ’
‘Not yet, Hermann. Had Caroline found out who the kleptomaniac was, Mademoiselle?’
A nod was given. ‘She must have, but. . . but why didn’t she tell me, inspectors? I would have gone with her. Together we could have stopped whoever did that to her.’
‘A fanatical tidier, Louis.’
‘One who visits back and forth, Hermann, just like everyone else.’
‘But also goes for long, long walks in the Parc, in the freezing cold, inspectors, all by herself. Who else has the capability of hiding things every day in a place no one else would find or even think of? Caroline really did see something the night Mary-Lynn fell, but she wouldn’t tell me. She was afraid that if I knew, it would then put me in danger.’
Already the Ouija boards, the cards, and such were out in the Vittel-Palace, and in nearly every room of this giant dormitory it was as if each occupant was secretly wondering if she would get through another night. So muted were the conversations, thought Kohler, he and Louis could hear a throat being cleared several doors away. Lots read in bed, all bundled up and knowing that one by one the stoves would go out and the temperature plunge. Some thought they could already see their breath and would look for it as a page was turned. Those who had gloves wore them. Others clutched mugs of hot water, and of course all the hot plates were fully on, and what lights there were already blinking.
Nora Arnarson had still not returned to Room 3–38.
‘She’s probably gone to check on Angèle,’ said Jill Faber, somewhat subdued. ‘Nora’s very conscious of that mare and loves her almost as much as does Brother Étienne. He’ll be wanting to get away soon. Nora usually likes to say good-bye to him.’
‘As a young girl, she loved to ride the plow horses they used when hauling logs out of the bush,’ said the redhead, Marni Huntington, trying to smile at the thought. ‘Her brothers would dare her to ride bareback and even to stand on her hands.’
‘She has two brothers in the services, inspectors,’ said Becky. ‘One’s in the USAF, the other in the Navy. P-51 Mustangs and antisubmarine patrols on a destroyer, but she hasn’t heard from either in well over three months and is afraid both have been killed as well.’
‘As whom, mademoiselle?’ asked Louis.
‘As her fiancé, Einar. He was in the Marines and was killed in action on Makin Island in the Gilberts, 17 August of last year.’
‘Hermann, I’ll find her.’
‘You’ll need my scarf.’
And a flashlight. ‘Try to pry some answers out of Herr Weber. Let’s meet in the foyer here.’
‘What if he’s opened that. . . ’
‘Safe of his? Better the gamble now, Hermann, than later.’
And wasn’t the office in the casino?
‘Find Nora, inspectors. Please find her,’ said Becky, unable now to look at either of them, simply twisting her hands in despair. ‘I don’t know what we would do without her. Madame de Vernon hasn’t come back either.’
Jennifer Hamilton had wrung her laundry out by hand and had climbed the stairs with Louis and him but had gone on alone to her room. ‘Maybe we’d best stay together,’ said Hermann.
It was almost 1800 hours Sunday, 21 February, 1943, and they had been here since the day before at 1522 hours. ‘Weber, mon vieux, and I out there.’
‘The curfew for us internees is at six in winter, inspectors,’ said Jill. ‘The entrance doors will be locked in a few minutes. Nora. . . ’
She left the thought dangling, couldn’t bring herself to say it: a night outdoors in weather like this.
The wind from the northwest was punishing, thought St-Cyr. Caught in the Valley of the Petit-Vair, with the Butte de Sion to the north, Vittel and its internment camp had the Haute-Saône and the Vosges Mountains to the south and the east, and not that far. Simply put, it was damned freezing and dangerous, for it blew in such unforgivable gusts, he was in fear of becoming lost.
‘Merde alors, mademoiselle, where the hell are you?’
She wasn’t in the stables, but he did find the leftovers from some sprigs of beech. Each stem had been clean cut with a knife that was very sharp. ‘An Opinel,’ he muttered. ‘The peasant’s constant companion. Wooden-handled and cheap.’
Rubbing the mare behind the ears and caressing her, he discovered that the forelock had been gently tied and patiently undid the knot.
Things weren’t good—indeed, Nora’s absence was terrible. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he sang out, wishing the wind wouldn’t pluck his voice away even inside the stable.
She wasn’t in the first of the fencing pavilions, nor in the second, though why she should have been in either at this time made no sense. Recent footprints hadn’t been encountered, but would they have all been quickly filled in?
Something must have happened to her.
In spite of the concern, he had to ask himself, Why does a nonbeliever bother to make a Ouija board? There had been one under her bed when Hermann and he had first had a look around that room.
When and why had she come to France and why hadn’t she got out before it had become too late for her?
She had been looking for the thief and had been following Caroline’s and Jennifer’s steps or retracing them, and had been asking questions: whom the two had spoken to and where they had gone.
Had she finally found the hiding place? he wondered. She did know the camp like no other, and had doubted Jennifer’s sincerity with Caroline, had felt her opportunistic—must have known of the previous affair between Marguerite Lefèvre and that girl, would have spoken to the former, yet had so far said nothing of it.
And as for the Datura stramonium, only Brother Étienne had been as knowledgeable of the hazard.
Had even lied to this sûreté, had chased up those stairs after Mary-Lynn Allan, who had been in tears because of what her friend had been yelling at her. Derision.
Was being used by Brother Étienne to relay news of the war. Had seen Caroline go into the Chalet des Ânes and had known Becky had followed the girl.
‘Sacré nom de nom, this investigation!’ he cursed and, turning his back to the wind, pulled up the collar of his overcoat, having returned to the stable.
‘Is she out on her trap line?’ he asked Angèle. ‘Has she fallen and become lost?’
Outside again, the intermittent visibility was terrible. ‘Pour l’amour du ciel, mademoiselle, how many metres of fence line have you forced this poor detective to walk in such weather? What am I going to find when I come across you?’
Had she become so desperate she had gone over the wire? Had she tried to leave a message for Brother Étienne, had that been why the mare’s forelock had been tied?
‘Even now I can’t ask myself if she’s been murdered but she always did wonder if she would be next and if she had been the intended victim on the night her friend had fallen.’
A fortune’s worth of cigarette butts was heaped in the ashtray, the Untersturmführer with hands folded in front of him.
‘That Arnarson girl, Kohler. What do you make of her?’
Clearly Weber was on to something. ‘A loner.’
‘Guilty of causing the death of the mistress of Colonel Kessler?’
Was the bastard about to back off on claiming it a suicide?
‘Well?’ he demanded, his voice rising.
‘We don’t know that yet, Untersturmführer.’
Still on his feet in front of the desk, this disloyal Kripo, this doubter and ‘partner’ of a Frenchman who would think to manhandle an SS, was now to learn the hard way. ‘Colonel Kessler’s court-martial is in three days. I was hoping. . . ’
‘His what?’
‘Yes, yes, Kohler. I assumed you knew. Since you didn’t, perhaps you had best look at this.’
A chair was indicated. Berlin-Central had responded to Weber’s latest query and had sent the Untersturmführer a telex, but would he now think to file it in that safe of his only to discover certain items were missing, or was he already aware of that?
Arnarson, Nora Ingibjorg, born 24 February, 1917, Clearwater Lake, Wisconsin, U.S.A. Entered Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, September 1935; graduated with honours in Geology, May 1939; postgraduate studies in Biology, Chemistry, and Extractive Metallurgy, September 1940 to May 1941. Entered Vichy France via Marseilles 13 September, 1941, on a six-month student visa.
In June 1940 the French Government had moved from Paris to Vichy, but then on 11 December, 1941, the Führer and the Italians had declared war on America. Until then Vichy had been courting the Americans, who had been sending much-needed quantities of food and other supplies to France through the British naval blockade. This had all been stopped, of course, but Nora must have arrived on one of those ships, though would since have had to have that visa extended only to have been finally rounded up in September of last year with other Americans.
‘Why, please, does a young American student—a girl, no less—travel to France at such a time?’ asked Weber.
‘There’s no mention of Paris. Did she stay in the unoccupied zone?’
The Free Zone, which the Reich had overrun on 11 November of last year, the American embassy, then in Vichy, having been immediately closed. ‘Berlin-Central are most interested. At their request, I have just sent Paris and Lyon a photo of her.’
Thoughts of promotion must be dancing in this pseudo-schoolmaster’s head. A forefinger tapped the side of that nose just as his Kommandant would have done.
‘My experience as a cell leader in the Party tells me she is not what she claims, Kohler. Apparently no one here has yet been told by her why she really came to France. Instead, she has said “to study Roman and more recent ruins.” A girl who had, on two occasions, requested of Colonel Kessler that a microscope be found so that the lectures she has been giving others might be better illustrated?’
‘Brother Étienne seems to get along with her well enough, as do her roommates, except for Madame de Vernon.’
And you have just dug yourself an even deeper hole, mein Lieber. ‘We’ll get to the Frenchwoman soon enough. That monk, Kohler. There can be no radios in this camp, but lies from the BBC Free French and Voice of America broadcasts are being whispered. Kharkov is another disastrous defeat for our glorious armies? The Führer likens it to Stalingrad, from which the Soviets are now six hundred kilometres to the west and unstoppable?’
On 3 February the Battle for Stalingrad had ended, on the sixteenth, that of Kharkov. Along the Eastern Front, which stretched for more than 2,400 kilometres, the Wehrmacht apparently was either in a holding pattern or in retreat. The supply lines were simply far too long, the winter the harshest in the past fifty years, the Luftwaffe busy defending Berlin and other cities and towns in the Reich and losing far too many aircraft.
‘There is no rout, Kohler, no defeat, and there will be no more of these whispers. If it is found that the monk was involved, as I suspect he was, he’ll be shot. As will the person to whom he gave such lies.’
Was the warning clear enough? wondered Weber. ‘Find the killer or killers. You have, I believe, until tomorrow before I call in experienced detectives from Berlin-Central.’
‘Frightened, are you, of what Louis and I might find?’
‘Ach, you’ve not even found the thief—a kleptomaniac who now possesses a deadly poison?’
‘We’re not certain of that.’
‘But still fail to register such a concern with this head of security, one who has his finger constantly on the pulse of this internment camp?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Do you still persist in claiming the thief must have stolen the key to that gate’s padlock from this board of mine?’
A hand was flung up and behind to point at it.
‘Stolen like Houdini, Kohler, while I was sitting right here interviewing her, one of my informants? That partner of yours asks the occupants of Rooms 3–38 and 3–54, I tell you, if there is a Jude among them? Is it that you also think I wouldn’t have been aware of such a thing?’
‘Liebe Zeit, Untersturmführer, it’s Jüdin. You’ve been listening to Madame de Vernon.’
‘Jude oder Jüdin, they’re all the same. Berlin-Central are going to hear of what she has to say. Shall I put in a call to them? It’ll take a few minutes. There may be a bombing raid in progress. One never knows now, does one, what with the Americans by day and the British by night.’
‘Lies and then the truth, Untersturmführer?’
‘Ach, maybe now you’ll see exactly where that so-called partner of yours stands, but please don’t bother to tell me you’ll talk to him. Colonel Jundt and I will discuss the matter over supper. I take it you’ll be dining with us, or has the thought upset your stomach?’
Between the gusts there were lulls, pauses through which, on the cold, clear air, came the distinctive, if distant, rhythm of an ax that did not falter.
Puzzled—alarmed—St-Cyr was torn by what to do, for if the sound entailed what he thought it must, the trapper was bent on only one thing. The distance from the casino and the main gate beyond it would have been taken into consideration by her—perhaps two-and-a-half kilometres. The windchill alone and relief in the evening meal would also have offered possibilities of preoccupying most of the guards of whom there were few enough because of the demands of the Russian Front, but still it was a terrible gamble.
Infuriatingly, another gust drowned out all sounds of the ax, but then, as the wind tailed off, the unmistakable falling of a tree came, and with it the sound of its hitting the fence and bouncing from the ground.
‘Ah, merde,’ he managed, ‘what has made you so desperate?’
Angèle was cooperative, but harnessing her to the cutter took needed time, finding Hermann all the more. ‘Vite, vite, mon vieux. An emergency!’
‘Inspector, what is going on?’
‘Stay put, mon frère, and that is an order!’
It didn’t take long to locate the tree. Its stump was beyond the rose arbours and the tennis courts, was beyond even the snow-covered vegetable plots of the British that had been raided and torn up by the Americans last autumn in retaliation, but wasn’t far enough from the perimeter wire that overlooked, through the night’s darkness, what had once been the racecourse but was now the ‘football’ field.
She had gauged the wind and had taken another desperate gamble by timing its lulls so as to have the immediate help of a final gust.
The once-healthy spruce, perhaps fifteen metres in its former height, had become her ladder to freedom.
‘We’ve got a problem, Louis.’
‘Which we will now have to settle.’
Fortunately, the lone guard on the gate, having heard the approaching sleigh bells, was already opening the barrier.
‘Domjulien is this way, Hermann. It’s the road Brother Étienne would have taken.’
‘The Hôtel de l’Ermitage, Louis. The source of those verdammte golf balls and that wallpaper.’
Out of the wind, behind the hotel, footprints in the snow led to the east and there seemed only the prospect of pitting themselves against a girl who, alone of all, would know how best to use the weather against them or anyone else. Bien sûr, she must have planned to wait here until Brother Étienne had come by to pick her up, but hadn’t.
‘Courage, ma fille,’ said Louis with evident admiration. ‘Merde, Hermann, the only thing that might stop her, and I emphasize the “might,” would be dogs.’
‘No one has mentioned them and we haven’t heard or seen any. Maybe they were needed in Russia.’
Beyond an open woodland of beech, etched against snow and sky, the forest thickened to spruce as it climbed the hills until becoming a forest, the Bois de la Voivre. She would have kept the ax, wouldn’t have even needed matches, would have made certain she had dressed warmly, but still, what had tipped her off, for she couldn’t have gone back to the room to pick up anything?
‘She would know exactly what she faced out there, Hermann,’ said Louis, indicating the forest. ‘Before you went to talk to him, Weber must have told someone to send her to him. Perhaps he waved that telex in front of one of his informants, or that one managed to read it.’
‘Or Nora was warned by someone who simply wanted to cover herself.’
‘Jennifer Hamilton?’
Who had left them outside Room 3–38 and had gone along the corridor alone to her own room. ‘Was Nora in there, having a look at Mary-Lynn’s things?’ asked Kohler.
It was only as he turned the cutter around that Angèle objected, tossing her head and snorting as she pawed at the snow.
‘She’s excited, Louis, is refusing to leave.’
A nearby alcove window had been broken in and a woollen toque had caught on a spine of glass.
‘Nora must have seen that there were two of us in the cutter and concluded that she couldn’t outrun Angèle,’ said Louis.
‘Yet she still had the presence of mind to try to lead us astray. The electricity will be off.’
‘And she’ll still have that ax and her Opinel.’