Bellringer (42 page)

‘Barb Caldwell made the tea,’ said Jill, having calmed herself a little. ‘Dried, roasted carrot greens we stole from the vegetable plots of the Brits last autumn. Nora made us all snow ice cream, but Jen hadn’t had hers. That’s why Nora went for more. Where is she?’

‘Busy,’ said Herr Kohler.

‘Snow and condensed milk with sugar and chocolate,’ said Becky. ‘It’s a real treat.’

‘And the datura?’ he asked.

They glanced at one another.

‘I think you had best come this way, Inspector,’ said Eleanor Parker, adjusting her glasses. ‘First there was a terrible thirst water wouldn’t cure, if I understand things correctly. Then an excruciating migraine and pronounced feelings of faintness—the onset of vertigo, I suspect. The pupils dilating.’

‘She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, or even stand,’ said Marni. ‘It was pitiful.’

‘Her pulse was racing,’ said Becky. ‘She was quivering like a leaf and kept trying to tell me how worried she was about her flat in Paris.’

‘But couldn’t quite find all the words or string them together,’ said Marni. ‘You bitch!’ she shouted, turning on the woman.

‘Don’t!’ yelled Kohler.

‘Girls,
please
! Try to remain calm,’ said Eleanor Parker. ‘Apparently she muttered to herself as much as to anyone, Inspector, but was terribly disoriented, poor thing, and couldn’t seem to find her sense of balance.’

‘Was seeing things,’ said Becky, greatly distressed by it all. ‘Her face was flushed. She kept trying to grab something that simply wasn’t there.’

‘Kept falling asleep,’ said Jill. ‘Had pulled off all her clothes when we found her. Why
didn’t
she come to our room right away after having eaten?’

Had emptied herself. Barbara Caldwell was holding her upright while Candice Peters and Dorothy Stevens were trying to keep her feet in basins of water as they washed her off.

Asleep, right out of it, the girl constantly twitched and jerked her head while muttering things to herself in terror and opening and closing her hands as if still trying to grasp something illusive.

‘She said bats were crawling all over her,’ wept Becky, ‘and that her guts had spewed out and they were feeding on them. Bright orange and green lights were flashing, red ones were burning her eyes.’

‘Spiders were crawling inside her,’ said Barb. ‘I heard her saying that.’

‘Monsters,’ said Dorothy.

‘How long since she ate?’ asked Herr Kohler.

‘Two hours, maybe a little more,’ said Jill. ‘Ten minutes, fifteen. . . How long does it take before that stuff begins to hit someone? She ate and then she stayed here for maybe a half hour or more until Barb came to find her like this. Naked as a banshee and shitting herself.’

‘Jen!’ cried Lisa Banbridge, shaking her. ‘Jen, please wake up!’

There was no time to get Brother Étienne to help, no time to reach the camp’s hospital to get one of the damned doctors to do something useful like pump out her stomach. Even if they did, and the ingested seeds were evacuated, enough of the poison could still be left to kill.

‘She’s going to die, isn’t she?’ said Becky.

Holding the girl by the shoulders, Kohler stuck his fingers down her throat and bent her over, Jennifer panicking as she coughed and threw up and again evacuated herself.

‘Ah, no!’ cried Barb. ‘More water, someone! And another towel.’

It was only as he looked down that Herr Kohler saw the seeds and felt his heart sink, thought Jill. Maybe there were only fifty of them, more likely well over a hundred, but some had been hastily broken in that woman’s mortar. Madame de Vernon. . .

‘It isn’t good,’ said Herr Kohler, and she could see that he was really feeling it. ‘All you can do is try. At least two enemas, maybe three. Warm water, not hot. Add a little salt, if you have any. That can’t hurt, but I really don’t know.’

The food was there on the tiny kitchen counter where she’d had a hurried, stand-up meal, having heated the rest of the stew and eaten it right from the pot.

The pie was glazed and had lots of raisins that would have masked the datura’s bitterness.

The tea might also have helped. ‘Who made the cake?’ he asked, startling them.

In the shape of a small loaf, and heavy, it was dark brown and chock-full of raisins, prunes, apricots, and bits of apple, all of which would have been dried when received in Red Cross parcels.

‘It. . . it wasn’t here when we left to go to the other room,’ said Lisa. ‘Jen must have been given it.’

‘By whom?’

‘The Brits make it,’ said Jill. ‘It’s a favourite of theirs. Butter, sugar, and powdered crackers instead of flour.’

‘It’s called pound cake,’ said Dorothy.

‘Is that why Madame was gloating?’ he asked Jill.

They all looked at her but she had no answer, and he said, ‘OK, I’ll borrow it and the rest of the meal and take Madame along with me.’

Though he cared deeply, he would have to leave them to it now, felt Jill, but as he turned away, he paused and she saw that he was intently looking at Mary-Lynn’s things, which were still neatly piled on her bed.

‘Who tidied these again?’ he asked, and she could sense that he was deeply disappointed in himself, though she couldn’t know why.

The suitcase was now under the blankets; the shoes, placed side by side on top of the raincoat, the rest precisely positioned just as Louis had seen them.

‘Jen must have,’ said Barb. ‘Every once in a while she gets a tidying craze and goes at her own things, but then it passes and she’s just like the rest of us. Hit and miss and toss again.’

‘She ate and then she waited while she did that,’ said Dorothy. ‘Had she come to see us right away, we’d have got to her a whole lot sooner.’

Mary-Lynn Allan’s suitcase was not heavy and when opened, the meagre clothing that it still contained had been neatly arranged. A couple of blouses atop two sweaters and under them, a length of lace-fringed, bloodstained ribbon and a whole lot of other things, all precisely arranged in rows and protected by clothing both above and below.

Herr Kohler picked up a broken, blue Bakelite barrette, a bow. Replacing it, he chose a bent, hand-forged nail, then a string bracelet with knots in it, and finally an Indian Head penny.

‘She wasn’t,’ blurted Lisa. ‘She couldn’t have been. Not our Jen. Not with all of those beautiful things in her flat.’

‘Take care of her. Do your best.’ Louis would be looking for the hiding place, Jennifer having transferred everything here so that it would be sent away and she wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Jundt would have called the guards.

‘
Answers!
’ shrieked Jundt. ‘
Verfluchtes französisches Schwein,
why did you not report the shootings immediately to me? You and Kohler did nothing to stop them.
Nothing,
I tell you!’

Jundt had come in force; three harried Schmeissers and his own Mauser covered Louis and the girl and Brother Étienne, all of whom had their backs to the reception desk in the Hôtel Grand’s foyer.

‘Colonel, we couldn’t have done anything,’ said Louis calmly in
Deutsch
. ‘Herr Weber had demanded our guns and we had handed them over.’

‘
He knew you were up to something. He had caught you out!
’

‘Not at all. Sergeant Senghor—’

‘The blacks!’

‘Had stolen two revolvers we knew nothing of, Colonel, but the Untersturmführer most certainly should have and had them removed when the camp was first opened in March 1941. Those two men were bent on escaping. When Fräulein Arnarson and I overheard them chopping down that tree, I realized what was happening and alerted Herr Kohler and we immediately gave chase in spite of the need for us to attend to our investigation here.’

‘Another murder was in progress, Colonel,’ said Hermann.

‘
Ach,
Kohler, what is this one saying?’

‘That in spite of the urgency of our own concerns we caught the blacks on the run in deep snow, me then alerting the Untersturmführer. Unfortunately he was as unaware of their having armed themselves as we were and refused to believe they hadn’t raped and murdered Fräulein Lacy.’

‘That is why he insisted on taking them to the Chalet des Ânes,’ said St-Cyr.

‘You’re handcuffed to that girl.’

‘She’s a suspect, Colonel.’

‘And is that woman also a suspect, Kohler?’

‘I didn’t poison anyone, Herr Kommandant,’ insisted Irène Vernon shrilly. ‘I am innocent, I tell you.
Innocent!
It’s all a terrible mistake!’

‘Fräulein Jennifer Hamilton isn’t likely to live, Colonel,’ said Kohler. ‘Let us settle this business, then, as is my duty, I will gladly give you the report we will be submitting to my superior officers, the General von Schaumburg, Kommandant von Gross-Paris, and Gestapo Bömelburg.’

‘Berlin-Central will have to be notified.’

‘As will the High Command, Colonel. Perhaps for now, though, it would be best if you were to telex them an urgent request, asking that they immediately suspend your predecessor’s court-martial since new and important information has come to light.’

‘Suspend. . . ?’

‘Until the whole matter is cleared up and the planets are in conjunction,’ said St-Cyr.

They sat in silence and they waited, and all around them, felt Nora, the Pavillon de Cérès, with its blackout drapes drawn, was like being in a little Art Deco forest. Brother Étienne was chewing anise and gathering his thoughts beside her, Madame de Vernon to his left, Herr Kohler’s handcuffs around both of the woman’s wrists to keep her quiet.

Together, the one his pipe in hand, the other a cigarette, the chief inspector and Herr Kohler sat apart from them in hushed and urgent consultation. Jen had been poisoned by Madame—Nora was certain of it, though couldn’t help but feel for Barb and Lisa, Candice, and Dorothy. A kleptomaniac right in their midst, a roommate and friend they had trusted absolutely. Still, all would sympathize, none would want Jen to die. All would miss her even now, and even though Herr Weber had been forcing Jen to spy on them.

St-Cyr’s handcuffs were around both of her own wrists and for herself she had to wonder what the future held yet couldn’t thank them enough for what they’d done: gambled that Kommandant Jundt hadn’t been told by anyone that it had been she who had tried to escape and that he wouldn’t immediately check for tracks in the snow.

Cautiously she opened a clenched fist and, nudging Brother Étienne, showed him the Indian Head penny Herr Kohler had returned.

The Boche wouldn’t be satisfied with just Senghor and Duclos, thought Étienne. Others would be blamed. Berlin-Central would rush to incessantly hound everyone. None would escape. All would be questioned hour after hour, Nora tortured—she would be, and he, too. Would he be able to withstand it and not give anything away, a healer of healers, a dreamer of dreams, and brother to a maquis of twenty-seven? Some were but students on the run like the others, but in total fifteen of whom were mere boys of eighteen and twenty from Paris and other cities and towns.
Bien sûr,
when they had first come, and most of them alone, they had been merely wanting to hide out from the STO, the Service du Travail Obligatoire, as the forced labour draft for the Reich was now called, les Pères Tranquilles sheltering them in the woods and not all in one locale. The internment camp here was to have been a listening post from which to keep an eye on the Boche, though it also became a place for him to have lived that dream. Colonel Kessler, having suspected nothing, had come to welcome the visits. Colonel Jundt would be but a disaster.

Nora didn’t know any of this but must suspect some of it—hadn’t that been why she had summoned the courage to confide in him and beg his help? Hadn’t that been why he had readily agreed, even without having first consulted the others, the brother abbot among them?

Gently he wrapped a hand about hers and, feeling her tremble, closed her fingers over the penny. ‘Irène might see it,’ he said.

They could prove nothing, thought Irène, but to handcuff her like this was to have her tell the new Kommandant everything she knew about them. They’d soon see. They’d suffer for what they were doing to her, these two from Paris. Detectives—is that what they called themselves? Cérès. . . was it that they were planning to get the Chevreul woman to call upon the goddess for answers? Was that why they had kept the bracelets on the other one? Caroline really had seen something the night the other one had fallen. Never had the girl been so convinced of anything, other than her life as a ballet dancer. Though she, herself, had tried to caution the child to hold her tongue and stay out of trouble, that slut she had taken up with had encouraged her not only to speak out but to demand to see the new Kommandant.

But it couldn’t have been just for that reason Caroline had been silenced. A yellow star had been found in one of her pockets. A star. . .

Leaving his chair, Herr Kohler came over to her and, taking out his cigarettes, placed one between her lips and lit it. ‘They’ll be here soon,’ he said.

They were going to ask that Chevreul woman to contact Laurence and from him find out exactly how he had died in that fire when no one should have.

They were going to ask the goddess about that Jennifer Hamilton, for by now that one must surely have died. Hadn’t Brother Étienne given warnings enough of those seeds, even to having accused her of having stolen them and lied about it?

‘Louis, are you sure this is going to work?’ said Kohler.

‘
Ah, mon Dieu,
Hermann, must you continue to doubt the powers of clairvoyance? Thanks to Jennifer Hamilton we have what is needed. Let’s leave the rest up to the goddess.’

Pensively Nora remembered other séances, other times. To the mirror of the cut-glass bowl of water there were now, again, but tiny ripples, to the circle of sitters, but the flickering of the three oil lamps from whose reservoirs braided wicks of Red Cross parcel string protruded, the Pavillon de Cérès being otherwise darkened.

Marguerite Lefèvre tended the lamps and the censers as a priestess would before taking her place among the sitters. Everywhere the balsamic aroma of smouldering St. John’s wort fought to overcome that of the fish-oil margarine in the lamps, the
herba Sancti Ioannis
being perhaps the herbalist’s most useful plant. Effective for treating wounds, bruises, and burns, it was also a sedative and remedy for colds, coughs, and fevers.