Bellringer (36 page)

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.’