Bellringer (16 page)

Had he questioned her sincerity? wondered Jennifer. ‘Léa Monnier made the rules. Although Caroline desperately wanted me to be present, I was told I would have to wait outside the Pavillon de Cérès, where a chair would be left for me.’

‘And the fee that was to be paid?’

‘Five hundred greenbacks—oh, sorry. US dollars, a cheque. Caroline didn’t mind. She would have paid five thousand. Anything, I think.’

Had it been clever of her to have suggested this? ‘For Madame to ask Cérès to talk to whom?’

‘She never said.’

‘Come, come, Mademoiselle Hamilton, we haven’t time for this!’

To flash a grin wouldn’t be wise, felt Jennifer. He wanted the answer and would have to be given it. ‘Madame de Vernon’s husband. Caroline had a photo she’d taken from Madame’s suitcase but was terrified Madame would discover it was missing before she could put it back.’

‘And the photo?’

‘It was of the villa Madame had once owned in Provence. I. . . well, I burned it in the stove after Caroline was killed. I didn’t want Madame finding it here.’

‘Because she would have blamed you for encouraging Caroline?’

‘That is correct. Inspector, Madame de Vernon hated me for having freed Caroline from her grasp.
Merde alors,
all I’d done, and everyone will agree, was to let Caroline decide to have a life of her own for once.’

‘Yet the two of you quarreled on the night Mary-Lynn Allan fell?’

Madame de Vernon must have told him this. ‘It was nothing. A simple misunderstanding. We embraced and. . . and made up.’

‘Then there was no thought of her breaking off the affair?’

‘None whatsoever.’

And determined about it too. ‘This photo, mademoiselle, was the husband in it?’

She would shake her head and watch him closely, felt Jennifer, the others all intent. ‘He was the one who took the photos, for Caroline had said there were others. Madame didn’t find the prints until after he had left her. Always, though, when in Paris or anywhere else with Caroline, she kept them in her purse, but when they got here to their room, she. . . she put one on the wall beside her pillow.’

And kept the others safely in her suitcase but had this one known the whereabouts of that spare key Madame had hidden to that very suitcase since Caroline Lacy must have? ‘For now, mesdemoiselles, that is all. You’ve been most helpful. I must find my partner.’

‘Inspector. . . ’

It was Nora. ‘
Oui?
’

‘Those missing datura seeds. . . ’

‘Ah, like you I wish I knew where they were, which brings us to a parting question: Have any or all of you had anything stolen? Some small, insignificant item, of little or no use beyond sentiment and the memories it might have brought?’

Quickly they glanced from one to another, then Jennifer Hamilton said, ‘All of us have lost things, Inspector. Some of us more than once.’

‘There hasn’t just been a rash of these thefts, but a plague of them,’ said Lisa, the little twenty-two-year-old brunette from Duke University with the hazel eyes and ponytail. ‘Whoever does it is really, really fast.’

‘Like Houdini,’ said Jennifer.

‘Me, I’ve lost things too,’ said Nora, ‘but the best was the Indian Head penny my dad sent me for good luck. It was dated 1907 but he had found it on the day I was born. At least. . . well, at least that’s what he always told me. The second luckiest day in his life.’

‘And the first?’

‘The day he met my mom.’

Each of the others wholly believed this pathos, their concern for her loss all too evident, but was there only one way to deal with this lot: divide and conquer? ‘
Ah, bon, mes amies, merci
. For now, let me leave you to get on with things. Mademoiselle Arnarson, be so good as to show me your still.’

He didn’t wait until they were there, but once out of sight of the others and alone on the cellar stairs, he stopped her.

She had to face him. ‘Mademoiselle, upstairs you said Mary-Lynn Allan had had more of the home brew than you.’

‘She. . . she felt sick and had run on ahead.’

‘
Ah, oui, oui,
but earlier, when interviewed by my partner, Jill Faber said you weren’t as drunk as Mary-Lynn. But you, however, claimed you were the drunker and that you had been hallucinating.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Perhaps, but it doesn’t add up, does it?’

‘I. . . I really was feeling dizzy.’

‘
Bien sûr,
but given everything, including the presence of
Datura stramonium,
a known hallucinogenic, you then deliberately destroy valuable evidence not after Mary-Lynn is killed but after Caroline Lacy, and with two investigating officers on your doorstep?’

Ah, damn it, did he forget nothing? ‘All right. There wasn’t any
eau-de-vie
. Mary-Lynn insisted we drop in to the poker game to tell them all the news, that Cérès had said her dad had at last made contact and had forgiven her for having had a love affair with a German and that she wasn’t to worry anymore but simply to take great care, that it was really he who was worried about her. It was all a pack of lies, Inspector. Fog. . . the stench of mustard gas. Compasses whose bearings would make them lose their way? Machine-gun fire and grenades, her dad crying out to the daughter who had never known him but through Cérès from a battlefield to the north of here twenty-five years ago? The poor thing was so relieved, yet it was absolute rubbish and damned cruel of Madame Chevreul to have taken advantage of her. The cost alone was horrendous, given what most of us have to spare. She was all but broke. I’d loaned her that last fifty. . . ’

‘A cheque?’

‘Yes, of course. Who has any cash?’

‘And Madame Chevreul knew of your feelings?’

‘That’s just the rub. I think so, then I think not, then I think it again when not worrying over Caroline and Madame de Vernon and that damned datura.’

‘With which you were never hallucinating, nor was Mary-Lynn.’

‘Look, I’m sorry. I. . . I thought maybe I was doing the right thing by alerting you to the possibility of its having been used.’

And the others, letting her lie to a police officer about the
eau-de-vie
so as to cover for her.
Merde
! ‘A believer and a disbeliever, a set of stairs, an argument, hurt feelings, the one not really sick but running up the stairs in tears ahead of the other.’

‘A Kommandant who is a confirmed believer and is very close to her, Inspector. Too close maybe. We really don’t know, because Mary-Lynn, though afraid herself, and a close friend of mine, would never tell any of us who the father was.’

‘And a medium who charges whatever can be taken from the sitter even if exorbitant.’

‘Mary-Lynn was pushed, Inspector, but was I the one who should have been?’

From what he’d seen so far, thought Kohler, the English camp was better organized than the American, but bedlam still. They ate in shifts, all 1,678 of them, the dining room of the Hôtel Grand deafening: constant gossip in two languages, recipes, makeovers, hairdos and don’ts, the hair up in curlers, pins, bandanas, or turbans—this last the latest Paris fashion—housecoats on some, overcoats on others, and fingerless gloves. In all, it was the rule of the vulgar and the loud, and God help those who were refined or timid or simply wanted a little privacy.

Lines of tables, placed end to end, ran parallel and between rows of those same Pavillon de Cérès honey-coloured marble columns that were nearly two storeys high. Cherubs with armorial shields were up there on the ceiling, a leftover from earlier days; chandeliers dripping crystal on Kentia palms in dark-blue Art Deco jardinières, the whole perhaps looking of the Otherworld or at least making the interned seem damned out of place.

To the soup and bread, lumps of what appeared to be boiled mutton had been doled out, each table, each group left to fight over the division. Inevitably squabbles had broken out and rose above the general discourse, rocketing into fiercely slapped faces, savagely yanked hair, shrieks, and swearing not only coarse but equally in French and English.

Bartering was everywhere. Since this was the only meal served by the Occupier, a daily ritual at 0700 hours Berlin Time, items from Red Cross parcels augmented the fare: luncheon meat and paste, milk powder, crackers, margarine, jam, marmalade. . .

‘Inspector,’ someone called out, ‘are Saint-Nazaire and Lorient in ruins? My daughters. . . ’

‘Don’t answer!’ snapped Weber. ‘The British bombed the hell out of those towns last night.’

Because of the U-boat pens that would have remained virtually unharmed, but how had that woman known to ask unless one of the guards had told her?

Weber knew the inmates who counted most for him as informants and would find out soon enough, but didn’t speak to any. Instead, he insisted on walking the narrow aisles between the chairs, and as he passed each back-to-back pair, these were immediately shunted closer to their respective tables.

‘It’s like this, Kohler,’ he said in
Deutsch
. ‘I can point a finger at any one of them or tap a shoulder, and that one must immediately get to her feet and leave the dining room to wait for me outside my office in the casino.’

To illustrate, he began to pick and choose, sending at random fifteen, leaving soup to chill with opened tins or packets as the noise momentarily abated to muttered curses and warnings of ‘Don’t you dare steal my things.’

‘
Meine Spitzel
are many,’ he said of his informants, ‘but none of the others know exactly who they are, since I always send out more than needed.’

And so much for his thinking none of those present would understand a word of
Deutsch
.

‘Is there anyone in particular you’d like to question?’ asked Weber.

‘Léa Monnier.’

‘An excellent choice. You must tell me what she reveals, then we’ll compare notes.’

And if that wasn’t an uh-oh, what was?

‘There’s little I don’t know, Kohler, and well in advance.’

Even two murders?

‘Inspector,’ sang out someone nearby, ‘you want to watch our Léa. She has it in for that partner of yours.’

‘He can’t be saying things about her past in France like that,’ said her neighbour, mutton dribbling grease on pudgy fingers, tired brown hair in curlers and faded pink housecoat over cardigan-padded shoulders. ‘She had to run from the coppers, did our Léa, when she left the Old Blighty for Paris.’

‘The Old Bailey?’

‘Blighty. London, for God’s sake!’ shouted the woman. ‘The prison came first, same as for the one she serves, apart from herself.’

‘The one who talks to the asteroid?’ he asked, startled.

They’d teach Léa to lord it over everyone, thought Blanche Gilberte, formerly Blanche Whitehead from Surrey. ‘I’d watch that one too, if I were you, Inspector.’

Cold corned beef was accidentally scattered as she gestured for emphasis. ‘Madame Chevreul?’ he yelled.

‘She’s not the one who led the mob,’ said a tablemate, shaking her head.

‘Which mob?’ asked Kohler. ‘The one my partner and I encountered yesterday or. . . ’

‘Another, Inspector? Another they’d best forget?’ asked Blanche.

‘No one crosses our Léa,’ said the tablemate.

‘Inspector. . . Inspector,’ someone called out, only to have everyone get to their feet as the sound of ‘God Save the King’ started up in English from the other end of the room, defiantly growing louder and louder until Weber shrieked, ‘
Ruhe! Alles hinsetzen!
’

Silence. All sit. ‘Their stupid, stupid patriotism is the only recourse they have, Kohler, but they know I’ll cut off their hot water, their food, and even their parcels.’

Yet who but Léa Monnier had ordered them all to get up and sing to stop a few from having it in for her? The Old Bailey and a mob, she and Madame Chevreul then having to leave the Old Blighty for the Continent.

‘Inspector. . . Inspector,’ came the urgent call again, ‘are they still serving
le canard pressé
at the Tour d’Argent?’ The woman had even dressed up for the morning’s dish-out.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ said Kohler with a grin. ‘It’s all the same for those with the money and connections, even the pressed duck.’

‘
Paris,
’ she said with longing, the accent perfect and of
les hautes
.

‘Have you people
Wunderwaffen
?’ asked another.

The V-1s and V-2s, the Führer’s miracle weapons.

Weber pointed at the woman and immediately she got to her feet in tears and left the room, knowing she would have to tell him which of the guards had said such a thing.

An urgent voice rose up from four tables away, the woman in her late sixties and standing now in despair. ‘
Monsieur le ministre de l’éducation nationale, un moment, s’il vous plaît
. Someone has stolen my stamp.’

Not my soup. Murmurs fled from chair to chair and table to table as Weber led the way from aisle to aisle.

‘Postage?’ asked Kohler, mystified by the illustrious title she’d given him.

Puzzled, the woman began to tremble with indignation. ‘What is it you’re saying,
Monsieur le ministre
?’

Would an understanding smile help? ‘A stamp for that letter you’ve been writing?’

‘It is not a letter. It is my date stamp, the one that I put at the top of every page in my exercise book. This is the ink pad for which Brother Étienne brings me the ink. Where is my rubber stamp?’

‘Kohler, leave it. She must be crazy.’

‘Isn’t having that ink pad illegal?’

Weber went to snatch it away and it was passed from hand to hand until he backed off and shrieked, ‘You see how slack our former Kommandant was? Letting them keep things like that from which the stamps for false papers could be inked?’

Devastated by the loss, the woman wept. ‘All the girls are being noisy and bad this morning,
Monsieur le ministre
. The Reverend Mother is going to be very angry with us, but if I had been allowed to start my page, she would have seen that I’ve been busy doing my catechism and not making trouble for her. Now. . . oh now. . . ’

‘She must think she’s in school, Kohler. School! Colonel Kessler had to be replaced. This is just one more incidence of his slackness.’