Bellringer (34 page)

‘The east bank of the Aire River and just to the east of the Forêt d’Argonne, Inspector,’ said Brother Étienne. ‘The First American Army, Thirty-Fifth Division. Mary-Lynn Allan’s father was killed on the twenty-sixth, Madame de Vernon’s husband wounded on the twenty-ninth but at Cierges-sous-Montfaucon, which is about five kilometres to the northwest of that hill, the advance of the twenty-sixth having been against Montfaucon itself, on which stood a heavily defended barracks.’

‘Their luminescent compasses failed,’ continued Madame Chevreul. ‘There was so much buried metal in that old Verdun battlefield it threw them off. When she spoke to Captain Edward Bruce Allan, Cérès said he had told her he lies buried beneath the tank he had destroyed. A knoll was to his right, Inspector, another to his left, the true bearing on a line of sight of 42 degrees to the south, southwest or 222 degrees from north. He and his men had been advancing up the defile between those knolls when the mustard gas was encountered, causing the men to panic further, but then. . . then out of the fog and not ten steps away, the muzzle of that German tank appeared, it immediately firing at them, the shell exploding in a cloud of shrapnel which cut the air, instantly killing his sergeant and two others, he seizing their grenades even as they fell, Sergeant Davies crying out to him, “Don’t, Cap,” but it was of no use.’

‘Élizabeth. . . Élizabeth,’ began Brother Étienne, gesturing at the impossibility of reasoning with her, only to be ignored.

‘He lies about three kilometres to the south-southwest of Montfaucon, Inspector, near the foundation of a ruined barn. The defile is, of course, much overgrown. Bracken covers the knolls, but there are two cedars on the one and a young oak on the other, each with the strength of many. Armour plate and tank treads cover him and these are to be found beneath a metre of thrown-up earth. A digging machine will have to be used. Mere pick and shovel will not suffice.’

And never mind the use of a compass! thought St-Cyr. ‘Any unexploded gas shells?’

‘A danger to be sure, but Cérès didn’t say.
Ah, pardonnez-moi
. He didn’t say to Cérès.’

‘Nor tell you, madame, that the tank would have been American, for the Wehrmacht, throughout that war had so few, they had had to use captured ones when available, though not, I think, in that battle, and as for the poisoned gas you say was used, it was the Americans who fired it at the Germans then, not the other way round.’

‘The confusion of battle is always terrible.’

‘But as a nurse and an ambulance driver, you and Léa Monnier would have heard plenty of what the front was like and would have driven over past positions of it many times, and certainly after that war, the bereaved sought solace in spiritualism right through the ’20s and well into the ’30s.’

Millions had died, so many of them between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. ‘Comfort, Inspector. News of loved ones, a word or two. Those are what I bring. Colonel Kessler was convinced I possessed that rarest of gifts.’

‘Whereas Bamba Duclos, though he doesn’t appear to often contact those who have passed over, will do so if pressed as he reads the fortunes of present lives and is a charlatan?’

‘That black told Mary-Lynn that I would
never
be able to get Cérès to reach her father or find where he lay buried, that only if she believed totally in his powers—his!—could he read her future in that little basket of rubbish.’

‘But he did read it?’

‘And kept it from her because he saw her falling down a deep, dark well but couldn’t understand this because there were no such wells that he knew of in the camp.’

‘How is it, please, that you knew of this, madame?’ Brother Étienne had taken to folding his napkin again and didn’t look at either of them, having done all he could to protect her from herself.

‘Léa told me,’ she said.

‘Léa who is so loyal she would find out for you?’

‘
Oui.
’

To shout for Louis would do no good, felt Kohler, to try to back away and through the medium’s cabinet to reach him but a bad gamble. Léa Monnier didn’t just fill the corridor doorway to this room of rooms; behind her, a mob had silently gathered. Broomsticks, mallets, pots, ladles, and knives were in hand, hair in the eyes of some, chewing gum in the mouths of others, fags clenched between the lips of still others.

Hortense, the cook, was immediately to his left, having stealthily taken a few steps to get into position, the maid, Marguerite, to the right and still over by the Ouija board, that one watchful to the point of being intensely so, the tip of her tongue caught between the whitest of teeth, her breath short and fast, her pulse racing as if just after having stolen something.

‘
Couillon,
’ said Léa softly, ‘you have no right to be in here. We didn’t kill either of those bitches.’

‘Streetfighter, mob leader, and defender of the realm, is that it?’ he asked.

Her grin was huge. ‘I broke a few heads, if that’s what you mean, and crushed the balls of others.’

‘They must have enjoyed having you all to themselves in the Old Bailey.’

‘And now, what now?’ she said, letting him see the pearl-headed hatpin in her palm.

Ach, du lieber Gott,
the damned thing was at least twelve centimetres long. The maid sucked in a breath at the thought, her gaze flicking anxiously from Léa to him, to Hortense and the table that lay between him and the cook, ah yes.

The crystal ball was hefted, the girl fighting down the urge to step forward and cry out in alarm, a hesitant hand being extended only to resignedly drop.

Hefting the ball, he set it not on its little brass stand but on the damask tablecloth that was embroidered in a circle round with the symbols of the zodiac. ‘Month by month,’ he said. ‘A Libra, a Scorpio—which are you?’ he asked of Léa, the ball rolling a little until at last it had come to a tentative stop.

‘Please don’t,’ managed Marguerite.

‘Then start talking.’

‘Not here, and not without Madame,’ swore Léa softly, and she meant it too.

‘Things have gone missing, haven’t they? Little things. Jennifer Hamilton pays visit after visit and becomes a suspect only to cease coming and then show up again but with Caroline Lacy.’

‘Madame interviewed the couple time and again,’ said Léa.

‘And was finally satisfied that neither was the thief, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Caroline was to have become a sitter while Jennifer was to wait for her outside the Pavillon de Cérès—is that right?’

It was. ‘All alone?’ he asked.

Herr Kohler had moved and in so doing had carelessly jostled the table and rumpled the cloth. ‘I. . . I did ask Madame if I could wait with her,’ said Marguerite, ‘but was told that would not be allowed.’

‘Why not?’

The ball was again beginning to roll, but he hadn’t noticed this yet, had taken out his cigarettes and was placing two of them on the cloth facing Léa. ‘My partner borrowed those,’ he said. ‘Now I’m returning them, but without interest.’

‘My ball. . . ’ managed Marguerite. ‘Please don’t let it fall.’

‘Like Mary-Lynn, eh?’ he asked, and, reaching out, snatched up the ball as it left the table. ‘Now, you start talking like I said.’

‘Marguerite, I’m warning you,’ whispered Léa, her octagonal glasses catching the light.

‘Jennifer. . . ’ began the girl.

‘You were lovers,’ he said with a finality that hurt and, setting the ball down, paused to light himself a cigarette and to drop the spent match on a cloth that had taken her months and months to embroider.

Still she didn’t leap forward. She mustn’t. Ashes soon fell.

‘Why did you break up? Come on, mademoiselle. If lovers, why the sudden split?’

‘Madame—’

‘Thought Jennifer might have been stealing things?’

‘Yes!’

‘And after you, Jennifer then takes up with Caroline. That must have been hard, or was it merely a necessity since Jennifer was then able to come here again?’

‘Those American bitches with their Ivy League crap,’ grunted Léa.

‘Alpha Beta Theta bullshit!’ shouted someone out in the corridor.

‘Pi Beta Phi!’ said another.

‘Sororities?’ he asked.

Léa let him have it with a laugh. ‘If that’s what they’re called, we’ve got the biggest of them!’

The ball began again to roll, Marguerite Lefèvre to hesitate with fingernails to her lips and eyes rapidly moistening, yet still she didn’t step forward—couldn’t, wouldn’t, Léa having given her a scathing look.

‘Please,’ she wept. ‘Herr Kohler, I beg you.’

‘Smoky quartz, wasn’t that what you started Jennifer on?’

‘Yes! Then the rose and. . . and then the clear.’

‘And in between sessions, the simply being together.’

Again he caught the ball, snatching it up in midair, but this time he placed it securely in her trembling hands and she. . . why, she could only let him see her tears and hear her gratefully whispering, ‘
Merci
.’

He stepped away from her, began to close the gap between himself and Léa, said, ‘I think I’ve seen enough for now,’ but turned at the last, as Léa and the others began to make way for him, Herr Kohler to catch sight of her frantically examining the cloth and brushing the ashes away to fastidiously tidy it before passing a final smoothing hand lovingly over it, only to then pause as he continued to look at her, she now steadily at him.

Then he was gone and Léa was saying, ‘You little fool. Wait until Madame hears of this.’

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.