To Vittel’s Parc Thermal there was but irony. Landscaped vistas of field, forest, and distant hillslope stretched to and beyond band shell, pavilion, and storybook chalet through the gathering ground fog of evening, offering nothing but a constant reminder of freedom denied. Shrouded in barbed wire, the two luxury hotels near its entrance—one of five storeys, the other of four—rose in a multitude of makeshift rusty stovepipes protruding this way and that from every window and trailing woodsmoke into the frost-hazed air.
It was 1522 hours Berlin Time, 20 February, 1943, a Saturday, and things were far from good, St-Cyr felt. The Kommandant who had summoned them from Paris with such urgency hadn’t bothered to stick around or leave a note or word of advice, his replacement being most notable for his own absence. True, they had been expected six days ago—another derailment by the Résistance, who were still learning their lessons and fortunately hadn’t put the whole train off the rails—but they were starting out here with virtually no information.
‘Gott im Himmel, Louis, what the hell have we been saddled with this time?’ said Kohler. ‘Something no one wants, eh? A nothing town in a nothing place!’
That could not go unchallenged. ‘An international resort. A spa, Hermann. The former playground of kings, queens, and tsars, the bourgeoisie aisée, especially.’
Almost due south of Nancy, due west of Colmar, and tucked away in a forgotten corner of southernmost Lorraine, the Parc Thermal faced the rounded summits of the Vosges to the east, and was well out of sight and mind for most.
‘Ein Internierungslager, Dummkopf,’ retorted Kohler. ‘Der Führer, who is always right, must have thought it a marvelous joke.’
An internment camp for foreign nationals. . . ‘Whose population, unless I am very mistaken, Hermann, is presently crowding those very windows to watch every move we make.’
The hotels in question were perhaps three hundred metres from them, across a Siberia of hard-trampled snow to which the day’s thin sheath of ice had come.
‘Nine hundred and ninety-one Americans, Louis, who failed to leave when the Führer thought to declare war on America on 11 December, 1941, yet neglected to lock them up until September of ’42.’
‘In the Hôtel Vittel-Palace, the four-storeyed one to the right and a little more distant from us,’ said St-Cyr.
‘And sixteen hundred and seventy-eight British in the Grand and locked up since September of 1940. Two Louis XIII, Renaissance-style henhouses side by side and packed solidly with women, most of whom have been starved for male company for years. They’ll tear us apart and you know it. What are we supposed to do, question each of them?’
Vittel’s population alone was less than 3,500, but Hermann often tended to jump to conclusions.
‘Or let them watch us work, Inspector?’ suggested St-Cyr.
And take note of their reactions. . . Kohler knew this was what his partner had implied. ‘You or me?’ he asked, turning his back on the hotels.
‘Me, I think,’ came the usual reply. Louis was always better at it. After nearly two and a half years of working together, one simply knew.
The signboard, in place since the day the camp had been established, gave notice in heavy black type: ACHTUNG: BETRETEN VERBOTEN. DÉFENCE D’ENTRER. ENTRY FORBIDDEN!
Built in 1923, the stable, Le Chalet des Ânes, had once held the half-dozen donkeys that the children of the wealthy would have ridden, but since the Defeat and Occupation of June 1940, the building had been empty. Suitably Alsatian and near enough to that new border of the Reich, its darkly timbered, white-plastered walls and solid oaken door made it look like a little place in a little forest of its own. There were even windowboxes with hearts cut into them.
‘A bit of Hansel and Gretel, Louis.’
‘Freud, or was it Krafft-Ebing, maintained that fable had deep sexual undertones.’
‘Jung. . . I’m sure it was him. Girls with girls, eh? But hard to gain access without being seen. Those trees might help, but the circular track beneath that snow and ice makes the view far too clear from far too many angles. Two thousand, six hundred and sixty-nine pairs of eyes out having a stroll just to catch a bit of fresh air and have a peek at what was happening.’
‘Or find a bit of kindling, Hermann.’
Kohler jabbed a forefinger at the padlock, a curiosity in itself. ‘How many of them saw this thing being opened, not picked, not out here in full view?’
It was a good question. ‘But was the stable then entered by one, or by two, and if the latter, was the former expecting that person?’
‘Or surprised by her or by someone else?’
The victim was fully clothed and lying flat on her back in the middle of the three stalls to their left. Light entering the diamond-shaped panes of the windows behind them gave a languidness to the settling dust. Long-dried dung and mouldy straw were strewn about. A froth of blood and oedematous fluid had erupted from the mouth. The eyes, perhaps a girl’s most treasured feature, were hazel but were staring unfeelingly up at a painted ceiling where swans, fairies, and wood nymphs frolicked.
Still in rigor mortis, one hand clutched at a wounded chest, though this had not been a last impulse. ‘First she slumped to her knees, Hermann, her back still being against that far wall.’
‘And only then was she tidied, that hand being placed where it now is?’
‘Be so good as to examine the weapon.’
‘Ach, I’m really all right.’
‘Of course, but I believe our killer wiped it clean. At least five of those tines must have. . . ’
‘The lungs, the heart. . . ’
‘The diaphragm, too, but especially the pericardium.’
The sac around the heart would rapidly have filled with blood as that thing had been yanked from her. ‘Anger, then, Louis. Hatred, jealousy, rage in any case.’
‘Impulse, Inspector? Let’s not forget that, since the chalet has been locked and placed out of bounds.’
‘And the killer couldn’t have known of the pitchfork. Silenced, then, Louis. Told to shut up or else.’
‘Perhaps, but then, Ah, merde alors, mon vieux, is it not too early to say?’
Of hardened steel, the tines, each five centimetres apart and a good thirty long, were curved in a gentle arc whose maximum depth was the same as the spacing and ended in exceedingly sharp points.
There were six of these and, as Louis had noted, each had been tidily wiped clean before the hayfork had been leaned upright against the wall behind the victim. Fingerprints would be out of the question. In this weather, gloves or mittens were mandatory—even spare socks in lieu of either—but did it really matter? There was never time to dust for fingerprints. Always it was blitzkrieg, blitzkrieg.
The handle, long and of oak, had been polished smooth by years of use, but irony of ironies, ‘The metal’s been stamped “Made in Austria,” Louis. Exported to America well before that other war, then brought back but branded “US First Army” on the handle.’
General Pershing and the 1914–18 war. An American, then, killed with an American-owned Austrian hayfork. Kept busy, Hermann seemed to have conquered his little problem. ‘There’s something else, mon ami. Our victim has at least three dozen of the Host in this coat pocket. God has been most generous and has given her a snack.’
And hadn’t that telephone call to Kommandant von Gross-Paris to urgently summon them here mentioned a ringer of bells? But that had been six days ago, of course, and by the look of this one. . .
Ah, bon, Hermann had finally realized. ‘She hasn’t been dead that long, has she, Chief?’ said Kohler lamely. ‘Even if we allow for the degrees of frost to defer and lengthen rigor while retarding putrefaction.’
‘Relax. You’re learning. Being with me has been good for you, but I’m going to have to take her temperature. Let’s concentrate.’
‘Before we find out who the original victim was and where that one’s being kept?’
‘Patience, Inspector. Patience. Sometimes it’s necessary.’
The grey, silk-lined woollen overcoat was stylish, having a broad, sensible collar and two prewar pockets with generous flaps, all unheard of attributes if made these days since they, and a lot of other such things, had become illegal. The style was not American, though, but British.
‘From Barclay’s at 18–20 Avenue de l’Opéra, Hermann, but in ’39 or before.’
And since then, the shop’s Paris signboard would have been torn down and replaced with something more suitable. ‘The scarf is Hermès.’ Louis had left that for him to find, but accidentally fingers had touched cold, soft, opaque, and waxy skin. . .
‘L’Heure Bleue, Hermann,’ came the urgent interruption. ‘This little box is from Guerlain—the silver sprays of an Art-Deco fountain as its logo, n’est-ce pas? The bottle’s from Baccarat and long empty, since it was made as a presentation for the close of the 1925 Exposition.’
‘But she can’t be any more than twenty, can she?’
‘Are you really all right? I ask simply because. . . ’
‘Jésus, merde alors, I’m fine. It’s just that the young ones. . . ’
Hermann swiftly turned away to do the unforgivable for a fifty-five-year-old former captain in the artillery and a Detektivinspektor der Kriminalpolizei. Once, twice, three times he emptied himself of what one could only guess, for they’d eaten so little since leaving Paris, the memory of a last meal was still with them. Well, with one half of the partnership.
‘Ach, I thought I was over it.’
A hand went out to steady him. ‘You are! It was only a momentary lapse. You do that pocket. Let’s see what we can find, since her papers seem to be missing.’
Relieved to be busy, Kohler slid a hand quickly in, only to yank it out with a ‘Verdammte nettles! The dried leaves, stems, and roots, tied with twine of the same.’
‘Urtica dioica. It’s curious, isn’t it?’
‘Since she couldn’t have gathered them at this time of year in a place like this.’
Very quickly, though, two Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars were found and then a small, white cardboard box of Cracker Jack Nut Candy Popcorn and a packet of Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum—six sticks in all and still tightly wrapped.
‘Beechnut oil,’ said St-Cyr, of a little amber-coloured bar of soap. ‘Definitely not the National.’
Which was of grey slaked lime, ground horse chestnuts, sand, and wood ashes, and cast into cubes heavier than a brick but no bigger than a die, and one for every month of the year, not that a lot of the French bothered too much with bathing, but a bar of Lifebuoy Soap was retrieved from the pocket the sûreté was avidly mining, and then a rain of shiny, yellowish-brown seeds.
‘Alfalfa,’ said Kohler, glad to be of help.
There was a sigh. ‘Sprouts if sown indoors, Hermann. A much needed source of vitamins and minerals, but also a hopeful abortifacient.’
SCHEISSE, must Louis mention it at a time like this?
Hermann’s stomach rumbled but a paisley sewing pouch was quickly found. He set it aside with everything else in a tidy row beside a tidy victim. They were working now as they should, thought St-Cyr. Two detectives, one from each side of this lousy war and Occupation, the first, it must be admitted, a chief inspector of the Sûreté Nationale; the second of a lower rank but from the Gestapo, since all such had been placed under that roof whether they liked it or not, and of course the Germans always had to be the overseers since the French had to be kept out of trouble and working hard for them, but then, too, this one just happened to have had the good sense to have learned a proper language as a prisoner of war in that other war—the one the Germans had lost.
Kohler found an oval seashell, maybe three centimetres long by two in width—a porcellaneous, creamy white-to-yellow thing with a row of coarse teeth on each side of its top-to-bottom aperture: something the victim had found or been given and had probably kept for the memories it would have brought.
A sachet of herbs smelled of lavender. A small cough syrup bottle held honey, but when one of those yellow cloth stars with a J on it was retrieved, he knew he couldn’t help but swallow hard. ‘Louis. . . ’
It dangled from capable fingers, bringing its own memories of Hermann’s Oona, the woman he had rescued from just such things and still lived with when in Paris. Well, one of the women. There were two of them.
‘It’s been removed from someone’s overcoat. The needle holes. . . ’
‘Are clear enough, but why keep it, Louis?’
Since doing so could but bring its terrible punishment. ‘Are there Jewish citizens in this camp?’ said St-Cyr.
‘Ach, why ask me? Ask yourself. Though the Wehrmacht run the camp, Vichy suggested its being set up here and gave their OK, didn’t they?’
The government of Maréchal Pétain, in the town of Vichy and another international spa, one they’d left not so very long ago, that investigation settled.
‘But was that star crammed into her pocket in haste?’ Or carefully hidden?
‘Crammed.’
‘Then perhaps she was given it during an argument, or after death.’
And this murder was now looking more and more challenging.
‘There was also this,’ said St-Cyr. A thin, white pasteboard card held its little message in a script of blue-black ink whose many flourishes held no pauses. ‘It’s in English, Hermann, a language I unfortunately have little knowledge of.’
‘And what memories I have of it,’ said Kohler, ‘are just about as rusty as those stovepipes.’
In the mid-1930s, Hermann had been sent to London on a police course and had earnestly worked at the language so as to enjoy himself and make the best of it instead of spying for the Reich.
Bit by bit it came out: ‘You have been chosen and are cordially invited to attend. Please bring what you have.’
‘That Shield of David?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Then tell me why the party-throwers would want it?’
‘Assuming that the invitation was to such a gathering.’
As always, there were no easy answers. Seed packets gave carrots, peas, lettuces, and even pumpkins, each with an artist’s rendition of the same. ‘And all sent from home in Red Cross parcels, Hermann, but was she intending to sell them?’
A much-worn packet of Craven A cigarettes held a logo: a faded black cat on a red background. Tobacco being in such short supply, Kohler thought they’d best try one. ‘It’ll help us think,’ he said, but when he had one of the hand-rolled fags between his lips, he had to spit it out. ‘Thorn apple!’
‘Angel’s trumpet. Datura stramonium.’
‘Was she accustomed to getting high on it only to be thrown into an agony, eh, whose sole memory would be just that?’
‘The dried leaves are sometimes smoked to treat asthma. . . ’
‘If so, then she’s one dead herbal.’
‘Who couldn’t have become one without a little help,’ muttered St-Cyr.
‘Our bell ringer? There was also this.’
Hermann was very good at finding such things. Having carefully felt the underside of the coat collar, he’d come up with a hidden pocket. The note, written in a far different hand, was in French first and then in German: ‘Please tell the Kommandant that was no accident. I saw it happen and know who did it. Miss Caroline Lacy, Room 3–38 Vittel-Palace.’
But by signing it, had she then signed her own death warrant?
‘At least now we know who she was,’ said St-Cyr.
‘And have a motive. She must have been about to meet one of the guards. Two chocolate bars, the chewing gum if necessary, then the bar of Lifebuoy Soap as a last resort. Such a big payoff implies considerable risk.’
‘Only someone got to her.’
‘And left that star.’
‘Perhaps, but then. . . ’
A fist was clenched. ‘Verdammt, that’s how it happened. Don’t keep hedging!’
‘Take the easy route, Hermann?’
‘It might help—have you ever thought of that?’
‘And have you, Inspector, paused to even consider why that note was written in two languages?’
Ah sacré nom de nom! ‘The français can’t have been for one of the guards, can it? Do they have French doctors in the camp?’
‘Or Tirailleurs sénégalais, Hermann? The ones we caught a glimpse of. Former skirmishers from a defeated army who are now here as prisoners of war doing the bidding of their masters, namely the heavy work.’
Again Kohler asked what they were dealing with.
‘The usual. Now go and find our acting Kommandant but please don’t enlighten him about that note and the invitation. Let him find out when necessary.’
‘And our first victim?’ To whom the note must have referred.
‘We’ll get to her soon enough.’
‘Enjoy yourself then. I’ll see if I can find us a place to stay.’
‘In town. It’s very provincial and hardworking but insular, Hermann. As with Les Francs-Comtois in the province just to the south, they tend to keep to themselves, especially at times of defeat like this, as in the Franco-Prussian War. So you may need to use your Gestapo clout. We’d never get any sleep in either of those hotels knowing what we do now.’
But where, please, were her papers? wondered St-Cyr. And why, really, had she been tidied? She was of a little more than medium height and slender, and her legs had been placed side by side as if for burial, her right arm bent and lain precisely across the chest. All down the length of her there wasn’t a thing out of place. The saddle shoes—very American—were scuffed and worn, but here, too, the thought was that a moment had been taken to clean them of their straw and dried dung; and yes, the soles were all but gone. After two and a half years of shortages in France, neither leather nor rubber could be found except perhaps by the privileged few.
‘Were you a ballet dancer or still a student?’ he asked her and himself. ‘You have the build, the look—all such things. A real stage presence, n’est-ce pas?’
Her French would have been perfect. Her ash-blond hair, beneath its knitted, soft grey toque, was in a tightly pinned chignon, but here, too, things had been tidied. Some strands, having come loose over the brow, had been smoothed back into place.
‘Please, I must,’ he said and, turning her onto her side, hiked up coat, skirt, and slip to pull the underpants down and gently ease the thermometer into her. ‘Hermann can’t stand me doing this, but it’s necessary if we are to have some idea of when this happened. Given the frost, the night, the shelter here, and the fact that you were fully dressed and wearing your overcoat and must have been terrified—all such things—perhaps a fall of one-and-a-quarter degrees Celsius per hour. If outside, it would have been more—two degrees per hour. One has always to wait when taking such readings, and Hermann has neither the patience nor the stomach for it.
‘Ah, bon, 7.2 degrees Celsius, with a drop of 30 degrees, giving us somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1600 hours yesterday. Were many of you still out and about?’
She would have been terribly embarrassed by what he had just done and would need to be distracted. Tidying her, he removed one of the woollen mittens. ‘Since none of the Host wafers have been eaten, we can assume that you must have met our bell ringer, if that one really is a priest, at quite close to the time of death. Bien sûr, I realize such people can murder just like any other, but was he your herbalist?’
The wafers, in themselves, didn’t mean a sacrilege, for in better days, churches, monasteries, and nunneries had often sold the scraps and even half-kilos of the whole, and these had only been of the latter.
‘Mademoiselle, your skin was very dry, but did he prepare this lotion for you? Chamomile with lavender, but rose and neroli also, on a base of honey and almond oil. I’m sure of it.’
There were dried, finely chopped lavender flowers in the sachet, but also dried chamomile flowers and orris root, to which droplets of oil of lavender had been added. ‘Has this Occupation of ours put us all back into the Middle Ages?’ he asked. ‘The smells in that hotel, the stench at times? Were they so bad you and the others had taken to carrying these little sachets for their moments of hurried relief?’
She had done her lips with what appeared to be a lipstick of beeswax, henna, and almond oil. Far softer and gentler on the skin than what was usually available these days, it had produced the necessary effect. ‘Chamomile,’ he went on. ‘You’ve applied it as a rinse to lighten your hair. You took your time in getting yourself ready for this meeting. More and more you are telling me that my partner and I had best talk to this bell ringer.’
The face was thin but finely boned, the forehead high and smooth, the nose sharply defined. The eye shadow would perhaps have been made of kaolin clay, talc, cornstarch, and, for darkening, iron oxide. Mascara had firmed the eyelashes. Again the hand cream had been used on the face as a base, but a blush of henna had been added to brighten an otherwise winter pallor.
She had been caught unawares, had been forced back against that wall, the pitchfork having been snatched up by the killer. ‘Did you plead you wouldn’t tell a soul? Was pressure then released, your thinking it a reprieve?’
The star was not something to be carried or taken lightly. ‘Did you snatch it from your pocket and thrust it towards your assailant? Did the two of you argue vehemently? There are no frozen tears, but were these wiped away and the makeup smoothed over their traces by your tidier, or was the star not hers at all but yours?’
To have remained hidden among so many would have been a terrible ordeal.
‘Were you still alive when that fork was withdrawn? Did you see the look in your killer’s eyes? Did that person then angrily stuff the star back into your pocket, and if so, why?’
Already there were no easy answers. ‘You were then carefully laid out. We do know you had come to meet someone who was either French-speaking or German, but as so few of the latter speak our language, I have to wonder about the former. Had this person agreed beforehand to the meeting place? You couldn’t have been the one to have arranged it, otherwise you’d have known what language that person spoke.
‘But did you unwittingly ask your killer to speak to him on your behalf, and what, please, was the invitation to, and what, of course, were you to have brought? This Shield of David?’
A careful survey of the stall found only an overturned water pail; a small, sharply cut-off sprig from a beech tree; and three curls from the inner bark of the same. These last items had probably been dropped either by the assailant or the victim and were halfway inside the stall.
A sadness came, and he couldn’t help it. ‘Spring,’ he said. ‘Were you thinking of it as you felt each tiny, spear-shaped bud or merely planning to chew them and the bark for a little nourishment, as did the Iroquois and other North American tribes?’
From every window Kohler knew he was being watched. They would be whispering to each other, asking, What did they find? Is that why he’s trying to hurry on that ice? Was she naked? Was she cold? Did they realize Caroline wasn’t the only one who had died?
The camp offices were in the casino, and as he turned away, he knew how disappointed they would be at losing sight of him. Attached to the southwest corner of the Hôtel Grand, the casino would, he knew, have direct access, but here the main entrance was, of course, close to the camp’s gate and directly across from the Gothic spire of a church-cum-chapel in its own little forest. Prayers, then, in the old days before entry or upon leaving if bankrupt or in clover, but now. . . why, now, if one had gained the necessary pass and safe-conduct to leave for something better like one’s flat or house, that was OK, but if being sent on to somewhere else, well, definitely not.
Even here the threat of deportation to a concentration camp would always be present.
Four staff cars lined the road out front, any of which would do nicely for Louis and himself. All had been requisitioned from the Occupied and painted with the regulation Wehrmacht camouflage so as to let folks know who was behind the wheel.
Two large white-domed, circular rooms anchored what would once have been the Salle des Fêtes, the reception hall, but before he got there, steps led up to a broad terrace and then an Art Deco door, with an etched glass fountain just like the one Louis had been on about. Yet another female watcher opened the door, but this one was a BDM, one of the Federation of German Milch Cows, the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of the same. Earnest girls from home doing their duty in uniforms so grey the French had taken to calling them les souris grises—the grey mice.
A lisle-stockinged, tight-skirted leg was lifted as a black brogue was stamped and the regulation salute and Heil Hitler given. Even a smile wouldn’t work, though he’d try.
Ach, thought Dorett Lühr, no return salute had been received from this one, and the faded blue eyes that might at times be full of mirth seemed only to be mocking her. Shrapnel scars from that other war were there, but so too was that of a more recent slash from the left eye to chin. A duelling scar? she wondered, trembling at the thought, for he was still handsome, if in a rough and incredibly virile way. ‘Bitte, Herr Detektivinspektor, you are to follow me.’
‘Actually, Herr Hauptmann und Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter would be better if you want to use my rank from that war we lost, or simply Herr Detektivinspektor der Kriminalpolizei—i.e., der Kripo, ja? Der Geheime Staatspolizei.’
The Gestapo. . . That did it. She shuddered nicely, thought Kohler, and would no longer give trouble. There wasn’t a sign of a roulette wheel, baccarat table, or any other such temptation. So puritan was the casino, the Salle des Fêtes, of gymnasium size, was barren of everything but a huge swastika, ein Hakenkreuz, that was draped above the regulation portrait of the Führer.
Here the internees on arrival would have had to line up in front of the one suitcase each had been allowed to bring, this being laid open and the contents spread out for inspection under all eyes, especially those of their fellow inmates. And wasn’t it a marvel how utterly thoughtless the Wehrmacht could be?
Right behind the Salle des Fêtes, there was the Grand Hall, and here Red Cross parcels were being counted, ticked off, and piled to the ceiling: American to the left, British to the right. At desks nearby, NCOs busied themselves lest they experience life on the Russian Front. BDMs hustled files or typed as though their lives depended on it. Always it was papers, papers with Berlin, and always he had to ask himself: With a war on, who the hell had the time to read them?
A corridor, totally barren but for its hurrying BDMs, led first to the censor’s offices—letters and postcards being pored over in there and blacked out, of course—and then to one of the former smoking rooms where leather club chairs would once have offered solid comfort, brandy, and cigars but now held the Spartan desk and armless chairs of the local Himmler, the camp’s acting Kommandant, Col. Löthar Jundt of Mannheim, Baden-Württemburg.
Not a moment was lost in pleasantries.
‘Kohler, it’s about time! They are terrified another of them will be killed. Ach, they don’t express it in so many words, but one can sense it. They duck back into their rooms in the Vittel-Palace, exchange rapidly downcast glances when passing one another in the corridors or on the staircases, and when I encounter a babbling group in one of their rooms, they all shut up well before I am even seen. Verdammte Amerikanische Kaninchen, die Schlampen have lookouts posted. I’m certain of it!’
Damned American rabbits, the sluts. And trust the Wehrmacht brass to overlook the simple fact that the sound of jackboots on marble floors might have been overheard. ‘And when they’re all together, Colonel?’
A fist was clenched. ‘They’re never all together. They refuse to eat in their dining room. “It’s too cold. It’s pathetic,” they yell at me. I ask you, Kohler, what is the matter with those people? Declaring war on us, their friends? I’ve a second cousin in New Jersey, an aunt in Dayton, Ohio, who is married to a banker, a sister to an officer in that Navy of theirs? Have the Jews got at them and destroyed a once fine nation?’
Uh-oh. ‘And the British internees, Colonel?’
‘A world of difference. They come out of their rooms to speak to me in a language I cannot understand, of course, but one can tell.’
The side of a nose that must be accustomed to it was tapped with a stiffened forefinger that was now being wagged for emphasis.
‘They gather in their dining room for meals, and the noise, it is unbelievable. Such joy, such laughter.’
‘Until you enter that room?’
Kohler. . . What was it he had been told about him? Insubordination? A former member of a Himmelfahrtskommando that had dealt with unexploded bombs and shells in that other war, one of the trip-to-heaven boys, the assignment earned through having absented himself from duty. A girl. . . An affair of the heart. Over just such a thing had he disobeyed his orders, young though he must have been at the time. A swollen testicle, was it, the girl playing nursemaid to him, a fever as well and fear of Army surgeons? But there had been other infractions since, far too many of them, especially that ‘duelling’ scar an SS rawhide whip had given him for he and that partner of his having pointed the finger of truth.
‘The British, Colonel?’ came the reminder.
‘Naturally they, too, are worried, but so far the deaths haven’t been one of theirs. I want this matter settled. Berlin. . . Need I say more?’
A cigarette had been left to waste its life in the ashtray. ‘Colonel, your predecessor mentioned a bell ringer. . . ’
The head was tossed.
‘A nothing monk, a stroller about town in cloth. He comes and goes, and my predecessor let him, since he apparently has a calming effect on them. They love him, those women, if I can use that word with such as him. They are happiest in his presence, and he, I must say, adores them. Lieber Gott, he’s like a fat little dog! His is but to serve and lick, and theirs but to receive. I’m sure he knows them all by name. Both the Americans, who seem to favour him most with presents, and the British who worship him.’
This was getting deeper and deeper. ‘An herbalist?’
Kohler had yet to sit down, so gut, ja gut. Kept on his feet would be best.
‘You might call him that. If not making the order’s Host then it’s the soap those people sell on the schwarzer Markt—I know they do!’
The marché noir, the black market. . .
‘And if not those, his herbs, potions, and honey. The hands, the feet, the face, the skin. Frankly, I have no use for him or for the French. They still encourage such people. When the Führer has time, I am certain even that matter will be settled.’
And uh-oh again. ‘A warm brother, Colonel?’
‘That is putting it politely. Ein Arschficker, Kohler. I’m certain of it.’
The thought to ask, ‘How certain?’ was there but had best be left. ‘And he comes and goes?’
This time a hand was tossed. ‘His kind are apparently harmless, though we shall see.’
‘But are there others who come and go?’
The eyes were lowered to the cigarette, then took their time in lifting. ‘This latest death was not of an outside origin, Kohler. Women, cooped up together month by month and year by year, can be every bit as aggressive as men, if not more violent. My predecessor, if you can believe it, allowed them to discipline themselves and look where it has led. They are accustomed to being locked into their hotels each night, but are free to stay up and move about for as long as they wish, though only if the blackout drapes are tightly drawn.’
So as not to send a signal to the RAF, who might be passing overhead on their way to a bombing run in the Reich. ‘Those stovepipes, Colonel. . . ’
‘Certainly they have had their little fires, or so I have been told, but someone always smells the smoke or sees the flames.’
‘And are they allowed to visit from hotel to hotel?’
Had Kohler come upon something already? ‘Only during the day unless permission has been granted, as on last Christmas night, when the British entertained the Americans.’
‘And no nighttime sleepovers?’
‘Liebe Zeit! If they should choose to stay to pursue such filthy practices, that is currently their concern, though we shall soon be putting a stop to it and they have little time to spare for such activities during the day.’
‘Chores keep them busy?’
‘There is no daily Appell as yet, though that is going to change.’
No lining up at dawn and counting of heads.
‘They have to queue up for bread, soup, their parcels and mail, Kohler. Hauling water or firewood, doing their laundry—all such things keep them occupied, but the question you must ask and answer quickly for me, is will there be another murder or suicide?’
And uh-oh yet again. ‘Not if my partner and I can help it.’
The cigarette’s little life was abruptly ended.
‘Not if you can help it, mein Lieber. I’ve arranged for you to stay in the hospital. Four of the doctors there are French, as are the nursing sisters, but the one who is in charge of those is English, and there is another doctor—a Scotsman best left alone. I can’t make apologies for their presence. That is how I found things. The patients go to them, in any case. Dr. Schlieffen oversees and looks after us, but has his surgery and rooms in one of the other villas.’
‘We’d prefer to live in town, Colonel. A bed-sitter.’
And defiance already? ‘That is not possible. Transport simply isn’t available. You are on call at all times and will take your meals with us in the canteen, and you will not discuss the war with the internees or with those damned doctors and nurses. To all such enquiries—and there will be many—you will simply say, Verboten. For them, they are here to enjoy the safety and goodwill the Führer provides and that is all there is to it.’
Day to day, hour by hour, and with no news of when their little stay might end.
‘As soon as you have settled the two who have died, they will be buried side by side but not in this park, am I understood?’
‘Definitely.’ And wasn’t this one just their luck? A real Mitläufer, a fellow traveller of the Nazis, if not a dyed-in-the-wool Eingefleischter, the hypnotized. ‘My partner and I will do what we can, Colonel.’
‘Correction. You will do as you’ve been ordered. Now, I really must get on with things. Supper is at 1830 hours—no later, no earlier—and it will not be dragged out as the French invariably do with their meals.’
Louis definitely wasn’t going to like that, either. ‘And the first victim, Colonel? Where might we find her?’
‘At the bottom of one of the elevator shafts in that hotel of theirs. Don’t ask me how she got there or why that verdammte gate was open. That is for you to find out.’
It fluttered down, and as they looked up from the foyer of the Hôtel Vittel-Palace, the brassiere, the tiniest thing possible, floated lazily in some up-draught, only to trail one strap as it finally took the plunge.
The railing, three storeys above, was now completely clear of laundry, as were the staircase railings on either side of it. Trapped, the makeshift garment lay on the Art-Deco mosaic of the marble floor at their feet, where Neptune, in all his glory, was being enticed by golden-haired mermaids to take the waters.
‘Hermann, allow me.’
Two lace-trimmed handkerchiefs had been refashioned. Repeated gentle washing, with water of stewed ivy leaves and then that of pine needles, had given it a scent both halfway between and all its own. The straps, however, were of cotton scavenged from a shirt-blouse. Instead of the usual clasp, a safety pin would have been used but such a valuable item had absented itself either through need or safekeeping.
There wasn’t a sound, and how was it that nine hundred and whatever people could make themselves so scarce that not a one of them could be seen or heard? Had they climbed to attic garrets, gone into the cellars, or both? And if so, who had such a power over them that one’s orders were completely obeyed?
Carefully folding the garment in half, Louis started out, their overboots left just inside the door as a sign of trust, perhaps, and a gamble at that.
Room 3–38 was no different from the others they had been able to glance into as they’d passed by open doors. It, too, was devoid of occupants but otherwise crowded.
‘Hermann, a moment.’
Ach, the cinematographer!
‘You start from the left, I from the right,” said St-Cyr. ‘Give the room the careful once-over.’
Commit the ‘film’ of it to memory, then make the traverse in reverse. Photos, cutouts, maps, and such covered whatever wall space had been free. There was a lacrosse stick, two tennis rackets, an American football, quite worn and obviously used by male hands and boots, but. . . ‘Mein Gott, the room’s tidy. What more do we need?’
That, too, could not be allowed to pass. ‘What did the years in Munich and Berlin teach you? To concentrate only on the obvious and ignore the significant?’
‘Temper, temper. Don’t let all those missing girls unsettle you.’
‘Ah, mon Dieu, is it not evident I want us to use the opportunity they have unwittingly provided? It’s curious, isn’t it, that only one of the occupants was sitting on her bed just prior to their leaving?’
The beds were ex–French Army portable iron cots with straw mattresses, and there was a dent in the one Louis had noted. A game of solitaire had been in progress there, the cards laid out with a precision that defied reason.
‘An evident reason, Hermann, for this one couldn’t have been watching at any of the windows in use, could she?’
Since the windows here wouldn’t overlook those sections of the park they’d had to cross. ‘These ones face north and northeast.’
‘Ah, bon, Inspector. You’ve already learned something significant.’
‘And since she once played lacrosse, no one, and I mean no one, has dared to cut away any of that stick’s leather webbing no matter the need, or to borrow the hard rubber ball that is nestled in its crotch.’
Two of the beds, one on either side of the door, were against that innermost wall. End to end, sets of two others occupied opposing walls, the area immediately in front of the floor-to-ceiling French windows being left as a sort of common space, replete with three fold-up, portable wooden-slatted café chairs and an upturned half-barrel as a table and reminder of what they’d once been allowed to partake of with pleasure.
French and German magazines and newspapers were there—collaborationist and Nazi and obviously weeks and weeks old and cartoon-decorated in ridicule; an ashtray, too, but no cigarette butts.
Storage was under the beds and in armoires that had been scavenged and to which shelving had been added. A pantry, a little kitchen. . .
‘That stove to the right of the window is French, Louis, a Godin. Asbestos paper has been stuffed around its pipe to seal it in and keep out the wind, but at night the blackout drapes would have to be helped when drawn.’
‘But of what date is the stove?’
Ach, must he! ‘Eighteen-ninety, I think.’
‘Try 1916 to 1919.’
‘And that other war?’
‘You’re learning. Didn’t I say you would? Vittel’s Parc Thermal and its hotels became a giant hospital camp for les Américains when the French cases were moved out in 1917, myself among them. Perhaps this indicates the origin of that football you noticed.’
The things one didn’t know. Louis had been wounded twice in that other war but had never said where he’d been sent for treatment.
A chipped, enamelled metal stew pot, something kept from the Reich’s inevitable scrap drives and left over from those doughboys, no doubt, sat atop a small, electric ring whose cord, by the look, was dangerously frayed. ‘Are they able to call in an electrician now and then, do you think?’
‘Perhaps but then. . . The meal, Inspector?’
Steam was rising from the pot. Kohler started forward only to be held back. ‘There is no need. The aroma,’ said St-Cyr.
Louis would have separated that one smell from all the others that had been coming at them like those of tennis shoes no amount of washing could cure, given the sachets of lavender that had been tucked into them. ‘A rabbit stew, I think.’
‘Un garenne, mais bouilli à l’anglaise, and without its stuffing of veal, egg, lard, or fat and bread.’
Boiled wild rabbit, in the English way.
‘The flesh is firmer and has a better flavour, Hermann, than the domesticated. Perhaps that is why there are two string snares now washed and ready to be used again and waiting under one of the beds I was preparing to thoroughly scan.’
With the cameras of his mind, and the nearest of the two against one side wall, the same as had the game of solitaire, the dent, and the lacrosse stick. ‘A loner, is she? Those pelts have been cleaned and stretched.’
‘And there are two rabbits in that pot. Are moccasins in the offing?’
Since a pair of the same were already neatly side by side next to the latest Red Cross parcel whose string had been carefully coiled for use in other snares and such like. . .
‘That curtain line next to the ceiling on your side, Hermann? Were the two who slept there accustomed to shutting themselves off from the others?’
And trust Louis to have noticed it first! ‘That vase of silk chrysanthemums, the arrangement of them, that portrait of Pétain. . . A Tricolour pinned to the wall above a map of France which shows absolutely nothing to signify the country’s defeat and partition into a zone occupée, eh, and a zone non occupée?’
‘And the catches on the suitcase beneath that bed, Hermann? It’s from Goyard Aîné at 1233 rue Saint-Honoré.’
‘And the catches are considerably different in style than on those of the others.’
‘Ah, bon, mon vieux, you really are learning.’
European-style catches: a French occupant, then, and the Americans.
A pair of pink satin ballet slippers hung from a corner of the armoire between those two beds. ‘And right above our second victim’s,’ said Kohler. ‘And if I check the Red Cross parcel will I find chocolate bars and chewing gum absent but present in all the others?’
‘Or is it that the occupants of Room 3–38 pool such resources for the common good?’
That pantry and merde again! ‘Did they not always get along, the French one here and the Americans?’
‘Of those two beds, Hermann, is the one closest to the window that of our victim’s guardian?’
‘Was Caroline Lacy her ward?’
‘Was the girl the daughter of the woman’s benefactor, Hermann?’
Everyone knew that before this lousy war a lot of the French had been damned poor due to a constantly devalued franc until opportunity had come along from across the sea.
Whereas there were photographs of ballerinas and ballets of note that had been cut from magazines and pasted up on that wall, and one of a villa in Provence and a few of family members, above the other beds there were the brightly coloured, large-lettered pennants college students would madly wave at football matches: ‘Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Louis. Michigan Tech at Houghton, Michigan, the U of Wisconsin at Madison, and. . . ’
‘St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota.’
A map of America had pins to locate both college and home. There were photos, too, of pet dogs, of fishing expeditions with father, grandfather, and brothers; of a fiancé, too, in uniform; a sister, an aunt and uncle. Candy floss and candy apples at a fair.
‘Louis, why the hell did they have to stick around and get caught up in this lousy Occupation?’
‘Perhaps they’ll tell us, but since each went to a university that was reasonably close to those of the others, is it that they met here quite by accident and sorted themselves out that way?’
A common bond. ‘Except for Madame Whatever-Her-Name-Is and our victim, Caroline Lacy.’
‘Who might, quite possibly, have been foisted upon them.’
‘They didn’t get along—is this what you’re saying?’
‘Madame’s sympathies are obviously not those of the others.’
That photo of Maréchal Pétain. Loyalty, then, even now when increasingly the country was turning against the Victor of Verdun; Pierre Laval, the premier, being in charge anyway.
‘Each has a little library, Louis. Detective novels, romances, historical fiction. . . and most probably borrowed from the camp’s or hotel’s communal library.’
‘But textbooks in mineralogy, geology, biology, and zoology? Our moccasin maker values them.’
‘Houghton. . . is there a school of mines at Michigan Tech?’
‘Or one of trapping.’
‘I still say it’s a tidy room,’ muttered Hermann.
‘And are there not degrees of tidiness? This is a utilitarian tidiness given of necessity. It is not that of our killer, who, unless I am very mistaken, is compulsive.’
The Americans were down in the cellars and there were a lot of them, Louis having stayed upstairs. Under the dim light from parsimoniously spaced forty-watt bulbs, the corridor was standing-room only and must have run the full length of the hotel. Others strained to look over or past still others, and not a one of them moved or made a sound.
Kohler was transfixed by the hush, the stillness, the watchfulness of the middle-aged, the young, the old, the tall, the short, the faces round, thin, angular, the hair straight, curled, waved, cut short, worn long, with and without colourful ribbons, some even in abandoned masses of curls like Shirley Temple in Curly Top. Others like Garbo in Grand Hotel, and wasn’t that a coincidence; others still, like Mae West in Klondike Annie or Ginger Rogers in A Fine Romance; and still others in the many, many hairstyles of America’s Sweetheart, Mary Pickford.
Curiosity was everywhere, interest evident, anxiety rampant, the fear that there was a killer among them, but also the hope that there wasn’t.
‘Inspektor, mein Name ist Mrs. Eleanor Parker, and I have been chosen to speak with you. If you like, I am house mother to them, though such a title was never sought nor has it ever been abused. From time to time a spokesperson is required to take matters to the Kommandant.’
They hadn’t chosen the oldest or the youngest, nor the most attractive or sophisticated. Instead, they had picked a real ramrod fluent in Deutsch and complete with heavy black horn-rimmed specs and a look that would defy the Führer himself.
‘And now?’ asked Kohler.
That was better, thought Eleanor. ‘I think you will find that some ground rules had best be established. This unfortunate incident. . . ’
‘There were two of them.’
Ach, a Bavarian, and wasn’t it typical of them! ‘Please have the courtesy not to interrupt me. This unfortunate incident has made everyone nervous. That, in itself, is understandable, but clearly there is no cause in house for such alarm. The girl in question. . . ’
The flat of a firm right hand was held up to stop further interruption.
‘As I was saying, Inspector, the girl in question suffered from a terrible delusion and had few, if any, friends here. Certainly others amongst us have delusions but that guardian of hers, that governess. . . The poor child dreamt of becoming a prima donna. She would dance with Serge Lifar? Boris Kniaseff was to feature her in his Triomphe de Neptune? I urged patience on the part of the others, caution, understanding—after all, she was very young and her career had been nipped in the bud. I told them all that ridicule was something that would not help the collective psyche, shunning not being any way to treat another no matter how difficult.’
‘But it did no good?’
‘She simply sought out others who encouraged her, and it is amongst those that I am certain you will find her killer.’
The British of the Hôtel Grand. ‘Shunning. . . ?’
‘When two or more are talking and another comes along, the first keep on as if that person doesn’t even exist, or immediately cease all conversation.’
‘And break up with but a knowing glance or nod to each other?’
‘Inspector, if you persist in interrupting me, your investigation won’t even get off the ground!’
‘Ach, du liebe Zeit, forgive me.’
‘Certainly, but only if you will listen. A week ago there was a terrible accident. One of our girls fell, and her body has still not been removed, but ever since then our ballerina has claimed it was no accident and that she, herself, was the intended victim. Given her habit of persistently badgering any who would listen about her career, is it any wonder none would?’
‘Yet someone must have, and that someone, in turn, felt threatened.’
‘Precisely! Now, if you have any further questions you will bring them first to myself, who will then be present at all times when you interview any of the others. Is that understood?’
Mein Gott, had she Prussian ancestors? ‘Perfectly, Frau. . . ’
‘Mrs. Parker, if you please! It’s tragic enough that you people have chosen to crowd us all into such a hovel behind barbed wire. What on earth were you thinking? These girls, these women. . . of what danger to the Reich or to anyone else could they possibly have been?’
‘And yet. . . ’
‘That is not what I meant. Hers is a special case. No doubt, when the current state of emotional devastation has passed, Madame de Vernon will vehemently accuse those who were forced to share Room 3–38 with her and her ward and will then, at random, target others amongst us, myself especially.’
‘French, is this guardian?’
‘She claims a lineage to the Sun King, but if you ask me, her family was nothing more than of les hobereaux.’
The country squires, and the ultimate put-down—the lesser aristocracy, the little hawks the Paris Establishment had always derided. And hadn’t there been a well-thumbed photo of a villa on that one’s bit of wall space? ‘Another dreamer was she?’
Had she broken through at last? wondered Eleanor. Detectives could be so difficult. ‘The more we speak, the more I come to see that we understand each other. Now, may I tell the others they can return to their rooms and their tasks?’
‘Parker. . . I seem to have heard that name before.’
‘The fountain pens. My father. . . The family. . . ’
She was actually blushing over the recognition! ‘Single out the other occupants of Room 3–38. Keep Madame de Vernon here and three of the others, but send the one from Michigan Tech up to talk to my partner, Louis. The others can stay here as well until I’m satisfied.’
Had she not succeeded with him at all? ‘Madame de Vernon is in the hospital under sedation.’
‘Good. Simply hold back the three and send on the other.’
‘Then I shall have to go with her.’
‘Unless you want to stay down here with me.’
To be singled out and sent upstairs alone was not good. Nora knew she had done everything she could to have stopped it from happening. In alarm, she had made eye contact with Mrs. Parker, who, knowing full well the implications of being singled out, had simply shrugged, having had to make a decision of her own.
Surely though, even a Nazi detective would know how difficult life could then become for that person? Had this Kohler and his French partner wanted this to happen, and if so, why? Had they realized that she had wanted to remain alone in the room while the others had rushed away to crowd the windows and watch them?
The urge to scan her bed for the reason was resisted, she remaining in the doorway and unseen as yet, for the one called “Louis,” having gone through everything he could easily search, had taken to fingering things in Madame de Vernon’s suitcase. Letters, money—jewellery—were they so blatantly dishonest they would rob defenceless women who had little enough?
Quickly he emptied a thin envelope of its photos and, holding one up next to that of Madame’s former villa in Provence, muttered to himself, ‘The year 1910, madame. It’s curious, n’est-ce pas? Firstly, because there is no more recent photo and, secondly, why keep a dog-eared photo from the past pasted to the wall beside your pillow when you have similar and far better ones tucked away? Was it so that each night before sleep you would be reminded not just of the house but of something else?’
While saying her prayers, Inspector, thought Nora. While begging God to forgive and release her from this place, but do you always speak to an empty room as if the person were right there beside you?
He still hadn’t sensed her presence, was not nearly as tall as the Bavarian, was of medium height but as broad across the shoulders and with the hands, the fists, and lightness on his feet of a former boxeur.
He moved easily, fluidly, thoroughly and carefully. Fifty. . . fifty-two. . . Was he three years younger than that ‘partner’ of his?
There was a wedding ring, though the shabby overcoat showed no sign of such a one’s attention. It being open, buttons hung by their threads or bits of string, and the right pocket, crammed with the things he’d already found and taken, was torn.
One strap of Caroline’s spare brassiere dangled from that very pocket. The grey fedora he wore was pushed well back of what must be a broad forehead. Had he a mustache? He looked the type—would smoke a pipe, too, when he could get fuel for that little furnace.
Quickly he replaced the photos. Now he felt along the back edge of the suitcase and when he had what he wanted, drew that little cedar box out and held it up by its tie of braided parcel string.
But instead of opening it, he set it down and, turning his attention to Caroline’s shelf, ran a forefinger quickly over the little bottles with their labels. ‘Borage,’ he said en français. ‘Marshmallow, thyme, and the ground, dried leaves and stems of the Datura stramonium, the thorn apple, though being une Américaine, Mademoiselle Lacy wouldn’t have known it by that name, would she?’
Ah, merde! ‘She suffered terribly from asthma, Inspector. Night after night she’d be up, wheezing, trying to catch a breath while Madame patted her on the back, as if that would have done her any good! “Steam,” I would hiss at them. “Boil a little water.”’
‘And?’
He had taken the datura bottle from that shelf and pocketed it. ‘Brother Étienne reluctantly prescribed the jimsonweed. We call it that because the settlers who first found it in America lived near Jamestown, Virginia. The name then became a contraction of that. It can, of course, cause terrible highs. Everyone knows of this and has been warned of it by him.’
He reached for the little white porcelain mortar and pestle Madame had also kept in her suitcase, and brought it up to a nose that was full and robust, his dark brown ox-eyes never once leaving her. He did have a mustache, full and thick and dark brown, but didn’t look so frightening after all, which could only cause her to worry all the more.
‘Madame,’ said Nora, ‘would grind a few of the seeds and then add them to the shredded, dried leaves and stems to make a batch of Caroline’s cigarettes. Maybe five at a time. This place. . . the ever-present. . . ’
‘Dampness. The walls have mould on them, the windows their hoar frost. Nothing ever really dries, does it? Not with so many of you indoors most of the time. Did smoking those cigarettes help her?’
‘A lot. Brother Étienne said that for centuries the Nubians had been using the dried leaves like that to treat asthma. It opens the bronchioles.’
This herbalist, this bell ringer, was getting more interesting by the moment. ‘And the nettles?’
‘The alfalfa seeds, as well. Both are sources of vitamins and minerals, particularly Vitamin A.’
‘Did Caroline Lacy also suffer from night blindness?’
That lack of Vitamin A. ‘It often took her ten minutes to get back her sight when going from a lighted room into darkness.’
‘But here the corridor lights, though infrequent and of low wattage, are left on all night?’
He was on to things already. ‘Unless the Boche turn them off as a punishment or simply to show us who les gros légumes really are.’
The big vegetables, the big bosses, the Oberbonzen, and of course the Bonzen. ‘Your name, mademoiselle?’
‘Nora Arnarson. Well, actually it’s Arnora Arnarsonsdottír, but my grandparents simplified the matter.’
‘Icelandic?’
Few would have known this. ‘On my father’s side. Mom’s French Canadian—a Métis.’
‘Half-and-half French Canadian and native North American Indian, but you’re American?’
‘As are my parents and grandparents on my father’s side. You can go back three generations in his family, if you like. Gimli, Manitoba, in Canada first, and then Houghton, Michigan.’
She had a fierce way of saying it, as if to say, Don’t you damn well challenge me or I’ll take my lacrosse stick to you. Her hair was light auburn with streaks of still lighter blond. It was cut short, worn well off the shoulders in a style reminiscent of the ’20s, parted high on the left and feathered back to curl behind the ears, framing a sharpness whose nose and slightly parted lips matched the instant alertness of dark blue eyes. Hermann would have said, Don’t be so hard on her. Even in a heavy turtleneck and cords, she’s a catch.
‘I’ll be twenty-six years old next Wednesday, Inspector. I’m not married and don’t even have a fiancé anymore. My life is in suspension, and I have no money, since our government, unlike the British, doesn’t send us any and I’ve none myself, and I happen to think you people who collaborate with the Boche are just as bad as them and a lousy bunch of sons of bitches. You’re both going to lose this war and when you do, we’re going to beat the shit out of you.’
‘Ah, bon, we understand each other. It’s always best. Now, please, this cedar box of Madame’s. All the while we’ve been talking, you’ve been giving it hesitant glances.’
Shit! ‘Brother Étienne told Madame to keep it safely locked away, which means of course, Inspector, that you have somehow unlocked her suitcase.’
Her chin was sharp, the throat tight, and again that defiant fierceness had leapt into her eyes.
‘Would you be good enough, then, to open the box for me?’ he asked, and she knew that she couldn’t refuse, that to do so would be to confess.
‘Listen, you. We all knew of it.’
‘But that is not what I asked.’
Salaud! her look seemed to say. Crossing the room, she undid the string and opened the lid but caught a breath. ‘There. . . there were three of the dried seed capsules lying side by side. They all but filled the box.’
Wincing at having instantly betrayed herself, she glanced sickeningly from him to the remaining two capsules whose prickly brown casings had opened to expose the flattened, oval- to kidney-shaped seeds that were black to dark brown and each from two to three millimetres in size. Then she looked at him more steadily. ‘Madame. . . ’ she began.
‘Kept a key to this suitcase on her at all times, but its spare hidden in the room in case the other was lost or stolen. Did you find it as I did?’
‘No! I’d. . . I’d never think of. . . ’
‘Mademoiselle Arnarson, please, let’s not waste time. The seeds. . . ’
‘And the fruit are the most poisonous parts of the plant and contain from zero point two to zero point four percent hyoscine and hyoscyamine, which means atropine and scopolamine also. Brother Étienne didn’t want to give those capsules to Madame. There were far too many seeds, maybe six hundred in total, maybe as much as twelve hundred, but Madame. . . ’
‘Can be very forceful?’
He was standing so close to her now she could feel the presence of him. ‘Caroline’s family are stateside—in America, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. We’ll win this war because of people like them, not just our boys.’
‘Iron and steel.’
‘And money, Inspector. Caroline’s family is loaded.’
‘Yet their daughter was left behind to end up here.’
‘Their youngest daughter, but perhaps you’d best ask Madame why that happened.’
Even though one of the enemy to her, and tarred with that and the Gestapo’s brush, Hermann would somehow have gotten through her armour. He’d have smiled at her, encouraged those little nuances of male-female jockeying, would have asked of her home, her family, her state of well-being—anything so as to show that he really did empathize and would eventually have broken down that barrier of hatred and caution, but time and patience sometimes didn’t allow for such things, and Hermann was a sucker for any female and could easily become putty in the hands of such a one as this.
‘Tell me about the first victim, mademoiselle. Tell me if you think she, too, was murdered.’
He was pocketing the little box of datura, wasn’t going to leave it in Madame’s suitcase, but had he sensed that she, herself, had been involved in that first tragedy? If so, how could she make him understand? ‘In the beginning, like everyone else but Caroline, I thought it an accident, but now. . . ’
‘Since the death of Mademoiselle Lacy.’
‘Oui. Inspect—”
It was Hermann.
‘Louis, you’d best leave that and come with me.’
Wielding brooms, canes, billiard cues, knives, boards—anything they could have laid hand to—they were crammed into the foyer and crowding the corridor that led to the steps to the cellars, and in a rage. Having rushed the doors en masse, they shrieked, yelled, jeered, and bellowed at the Americans in French and in English. ‘ESPÈCES DE SALOPE! ROULEUSES! VIPÈRES!’ Fucking bitches, sluts, serpents. . . ‘COME UP AND TAKE WHAT WE’RE GOING TO GIVE YOU!’
As one, wearing hats, scarves, overcoats of every description, the colours faded by the years of use, the ‘delegation’ ceased its racket at a shout from its leader, and collectively turned to look up.
A ripple of what must be happening ran down into the cellars to silence the Americans.
‘Who the hell are you, luv?’ called the woman in English, the throaty yell of it echoing.
‘I think she means you, Louis.’
‘You’re mistaken, Hermann.’
‘But you’re the chief inspector, aren’t you?’
‘Sacré nom de nom, Hermann, elle est la plus formidable! Madame,’ St-Cyr called down en français. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’
In French she answered, ‘Those bitches are trying to put the blame on us. If they want to kill each other, that’s their business, but we had nothing to do with it!’
Foolishly Louis held up a hand to intercede. One could have heard a pin drop were it not for the sounds of collective breathing and the smell that arose from the assembled.
‘THEY’LL NEVER GROW A GODDAMNED THING IN THEIR GARDENS THIS SUMMER, MISTER!’ shrieked someone in English.
‘WE’LL TEAR TH’ FUCKING THINGS UP!’ shouted another.
‘WE’LL MAKE THEM EAT THE SHIT THEY’LL SECRETLY SPREAD IN HOPES OF GETTING BIGGER SQUASH AND TATERS THAN OURS!’
‘Taters? Ah, merde, what on earth are they?’
‘Potatoes, Louis. Last autumn the Americans raided the British vegetable gardens in retaliation for the way they’d been treated. When they first got here, they were billeted with them.’
A sigh would have to be given. ‘Things didn’t work out to everyone’s satisfaction.’
‘Food had to be shared and they had none to contribute since they hadn’t Red Cross parcels of their own. A lot of them also had to double up and sleep on the floors between the beds of their hosts. The drains packed it in because of the traffic. The bathtubs and washbasins were never cleaned. Hand soap was stolen from the Americans, what there was of it. Cigarettes, perfume, costume jewellery, lipsticks too, and cash. . . ’
‘The two hotels, being side by side, they are Allies elsewhere but enemies here—is that how it is?’
‘Don’t get huffy. The new Kommandant did indicate the British had invited the Americans to a party they’d put on last Christmas.’
‘To make amends?’
‘Perhaps. Now, deal with it, will you? Mrs. Parker and that one faced off on the stairs and guess who won?’
‘That why you’re looking so rattled?’
‘They’ve got my gun.’
‘Ah, bon, a difficult assignment. If I don’t get it back, I’ll be blamed.’
‘And if you do, they’ll be eating out of our hands.’