Bellringer (8 page)

‘
Oui
.’

Just what the hell was this trapper of theirs hiding? ‘And did he bring her enough last Saturday?’

Uh-oh, Herr Kohler did have a way about him, and the others would already have noticed it, thought Nora, especially Jill who, like everyone else in the room, had known of the parsley.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Late in the afternoon. He’d been delayed. A flat tire.’

‘His
petrolette,
Inspector,’ said Jill. ‘Our former Kommandant allowed him a small weekly ration of gasoline.’

‘So that he could make it from where to here and back?’

‘Domjulien. It’s about eight or ten kilometres if the road is OK.’ said Jill. ‘If not, he uses the cutter, a small, one-horse sleigh.’

‘The former Kommandant OK’d that too,’ offered Becky, having at last found her voice again. ‘The one who had to leave right after Mary-Lynn fell.’

‘The one who left us with that little Hitler who now runs the camp,’ said Nora.

The blonde had dried her eyes, the cigarette and the back rub having helped to steady her nerves.

‘And now another murder,’ she managed under his scrutiny. ‘What’s happening to us, Inspector? We’re the forgotten of this war, but has God also deserted us?’

‘Becky, you were out in the corridor,’ said Marni. ‘You had gone after Caroline.’

‘Me? Not likely. I’d have let her wheeze.’

‘But you didn’t let her,’ said Nora gently. ‘The corridor light was blinking on and off. She couldn’t see a blessed thing at first because it was pitch-dark. You know that as well as the rest of us. She was trying to get at one of her cigarettes when that damned light came back on. You had grabbed her by the wrist to steady her hand.’

‘Darkness. . . ’ began Herr Kohler.

‘Night blindness,’ said Jill. ‘Caroline had been having a terrible attack of asthma.’

‘She was in tears, Jill,’ said Becky, ‘was very upset and madly searching for those damned cigarettes Madame had hidden on her and you then found. You did, Jill. Please don’t deny it. I got out of bed and turned the room light on and tried to calm her.’

‘Of course I found them, but then you went out into the corridor after her.’

‘Jill, you don’t know what you’re saying,’ said Becky with a wince. ‘We were nowhere near Mary-Lynn and Nora. Sure, we heard the scream and then. . . ’

‘Then what?’ asked Herr Kohler, reaching for her cigarette to take a few drags himself.

He was looking at her now, but what did he really see? wondered Becky. The weakest link? ‘I. . . I grabbed Caroline. She had started to run toward the elevator shaft when we. . . we heard Mary-Lynn hit the bottom. The
bottom
!’

She went all to pieces. Nora moved; Jill did too. Both sat at her side and tried to comfort her. The cot sagged.

‘You held her, Becky,’ said Nora gently. ‘When I managed to get up the stairs, I saw the two of you. You saved Caroline. She would have died as well. I’m certain of it. She’d have chanced a look and, in her state and still trying to get her sight back, would have tried to get a breath and fallen.’

Yet hadn’t.

‘I lit one of her cigarettes,’ managed Becky. ‘I did get her to take a couple of drags. That’s all she really needed. Right away there was a change for the better. She even gave me a weak smile, only to again burst into tears.’

‘By then the rest of the floor were out in the corridor, Inspector,’ said Jill, ‘and others, too. Mrs. Parker soon came up and somehow got everyone calmed down, then closed the gate but couldn’t put the lock back on where it should have been.’

‘Caroline was upset, that it?’ he asked Becky.

‘We all were.’

‘But before that, before Mary-Lynn Allan fell?’

‘Yes. Then too.’

‘And was anyone else on the staircase when you went up it at 0100 hours or thereabouts?’ he asked Nora.

Herr Kohler wasn’t one to fool with. ‘Inspector, I was so dizzy, I really wouldn’t have known. I was drunk and seeing things. Worms crawling all over me, bats tearing at my hair. I. . . I can’t remember a thing.’

Yet had remembered enough. ‘And during all of this, where was Madame de Vernon, your other roommate?’

Thank God, he had finally asked, thought Marni, but one ought to be careful, otherwise he would think she’d been pleased with the question. ‘In bed, where else?’

‘Yet Mademoiselle Caroline was having a severe attack?’

The poor man now looked so helpless, it would be best to tell him, but first her hands would be placed on her thighs and moved to her knees as if wanting him. ‘Madame de Vernon claimed it was all in the girl’s mind and that Caroline need never have the attacks if she would stop being so emotional and just stay calm and tell herself not to gasp for air.’

The redhead named Marni had lovely green eyes but the offer of the rest, though enjoyable no doubt, had best be ignored for now. ‘Well-liked, was she, this Madame de Vernon?’

Had he seen right through her? wondered Marni, disappointed by the thought but glad he had finally asked. ‘Hated, more likely. Nothing was ever right. The food, the lack of it, the room, the heat, the cold, the smell, the constant comings and goings in the corridor.’

‘Yes, but was the curtain drawn in front of those two beds?’

‘Every night.’

‘Then she might or might not have been in bed—that it, eh?’

The others were all holding their breath and intently watching him. ‘Yes. I. . . I guess so.’

There was even a collective sigh. ‘OK, for now, enjoy your supper. I’d better find my partner.’

‘Is he
un lèche-cul
?’ asked Jill.

An arse-licker, a toady. ‘Hardly, but I’ll be sure to tell him to interview each of you, then you’ll know for sure.’

As with the Chalet des Ânes, the padlock was distinctive and similar: a Harvard long-shackled six-lever, with a twenty-three-centimetre nickel-plated chain that had somehow absented itself by having fallen to the bottom of the elevator shaft.

‘Nervous was she, our lock opener?’ asked Kohler. No third-storey eyes were watching, but nearby ears behind closed doors would be straining.

‘And opened with its key, Hermann?’ whispered Louis. ‘We would have had no problem picking this, but others might, given the closeness of the nearby rooms and the threat of traffic.’

‘We’ll have to ask them but is it yet another example of French frugality? Luxury hotels. . . ’

‘
Ah, mon Dieu,
why must I continually have to defend the
Troisième République
? This lock and the other one are American.’

And left over from the Great War. ‘But if opened with its key, who the hell is supposed to be keeping an eye on those, and where are they being kept?’

‘Perhaps the new Kommandant will be good enough to tell us.’

‘Jundt won’t want to ask, since the answer might reflect on Wehrmacht Command stupidity.’

That, too, was a problem, but Louis wasn’t yet prepared to leave, even though suppertime had run out. Pacing off the distance to Room 3–38, he turned and followed Caroline Lacy’s and Becky Torrence’s steps, pausing as if for the one to catch up with the other, the forty-watt overhead blinking on and off, the hotel’s wiring still heavily overloaded. ‘Is it that Room 3–54’s door was left open for Mary-Lynn Allan’s return?’ he asked.

Kohler shrugged. Louis tossed a disparaging hand at a question that should have been asked of the inmates had opportunity allowed, which it hadn’t.

‘
Ach,
you don’t yet know what they’re like,’ confided Kohler. ‘Just wait until they get
you
between them!’

From the top of the far stairs to the elevator’s gate and shaft was but a step or two, but where had her killer been waiting?

The staircase to the attic?
indicated Louis. It was just along the corridor and right at the far end of the wing. Step by step they went up it, silently cursing the single overhead light yet searching, too, for some sign. Anything.

‘
Ah, bon,
’ sighed the
sûreté,
having run a hand under the railing.

Chewing gum. ‘Dried?’ whispered Kohler. ‘Don’t forget the cold and the dampness.’

Which would have slowed the drying. ‘Spearmint, and fresh enough, though a week old if left by the killer.’

With his pocketknife Hermann gently pried it off. ‘Our killer was nervous,’ he said. ‘The gum was to calm herself. Becky Torrence was the most nervous. Really keyed up. Terrified I’d find out something.’

‘Even though she stated she was out in the corridor with Caroline Lacy?’

‘At first she denied it but then Nora said she’d seen the two of them together.’

‘But only after that one had reached their floor.’

Time. . . Had there been time for Becky to have done something else? ‘Becky did say she and Caroline heard the scream and then the bump.’

‘But Caroline Lacy, our second victim, can’t confirm this, can she?’

‘And Madame de Vernon, her guardian, could well have left her bed earlier and none of them in that room would have known.’

They went on up the stairs to the attic only to find its door solidly locked and its rooms closed off for the duration. ‘But here we would have had a problem, Hermann, for it’s a pin tumbler that would, in a hurry, definitely need a key.’

‘But did our murderess have one?’

‘For the moment we’ll disregard your concluding the sex, but was the killer waiting on this attic staircase for Nora Arnarson and Mary-Lynn Allan to return from that séance in the Hôtel Grand?’

And after the killing had the killer then departed in the confusion? Kohler knew this was what Louis was asking.

‘And was Mary-Lynn really the intended victim, Hermann? That, too, must be asked.’

‘Or Nora?’

‘Or Caroline Lacy, who claimed she was and has since been taken care of?’

They went down the staircase to the ground floor and the cellars. Step-by-step, they patiently searched, but even the leavings of spent chewing gum were absent.

‘Everyone must need it, Louis, to seal up holes in their shoes and boots. It works, but only for so long.’

And said like a former prisoner of war.

The barracks, the luxury thirty-suite Hôtel Continental that had been built in 1899, was just to the other side of the casino, with an entrance on the avenue Bouloumié and not hard to find, given the gates to the camp and the barbed wire.

Irritably having an after-dinner cigarette and fussing by the moment, Jundt sat stiffly alone at the head of an otherwise abandoned dining room. Towering pseudo–Gallo Roman columns, after the Emperor Caracalla, were behind him. The modernized update of Art Deco urns was incongruous, their two-metre Kentias looking downright thirsty.

‘Kohler, did I not tell you eighteen thirty hours?’

Must everything be
auf nazitisch
with this one? ‘Colonel, investigating murder doesn’t run on meal times.’

‘Cooks do, and from now on you will damn well obey me.’

Had he dreams of becoming another Caracalla? The roast pork was cold, the sauerkraut, too, and the boiled potatoes. The soup, though tepid, was thin until the rest of the meal had been hastily added to that
sûreté
bowl by Louis, along with the one allowed slice of bread.

‘There is no wine?’ he asked facetiously.

‘Kohler, who the hell is that?’

It would be best not to say, The one who caused the delay. . . ‘My partner. He’s senior to me.’

‘A Frenchman? Get him out of here. He can eat in the cellars with the blacks.’

‘Colonel. . . ’

‘Hermann,
einen Moment, bitte
? It’s a good idea, isn’t it?’ said St-Cyr.

‘Two of them may still be in the kitchens, Kohler, where they’re supposed to be doing up the pots and pans and cleaning the ovens. Those
verdammten
layabouts are probably smoking tobacco they’ve stolen. They’ll be using that gibberish of theirs no one can understand.’

Discreetly gathering up his soup plate and spoon, Louis tucked the half-round remains of the bread under an arm and departed.

‘
Ach,
’ continued Jundt, flattening his big hands on the table, ‘I can’t stand the French. Little better than the eastern labourers, Kohler. The horsewhip and a damned good thrashing are what they need. Ten of the best and the boot! Now, what have you for me?’

Thank God, Louis hadn’t heard him. ‘Two possible murders, a terminated pregnancy, a kleptomaniac, a medium who overcharges, and one datura capsule that contains from two to four hundred seeds and has gone missing.’

‘Datura. . . ?’

Instant suspicion had registered, but perhaps it would be wise not to tell him the whole truth. ‘Some kind of herb, Colonel.’

‘You’d better ask the monk. A kleptomaniac?’

Berlin was going to hear of this last—Jundt had that look about him. ‘A compulsive thief, Colonel. Little things of no use or consequence.’

‘Or reason for murder?
Das Motiv,
Kohler? Isn’t that one of the first things an experienced detective looks for? You
are
experienced, aren’t you?’

‘We’re working on it.’

‘Are you indeed? I give you two days. If you don’t come up with something solid, Untersturmführer Weber will be given the order he wants: others, Kohler; others from Berlin who will soon sort this matter out. Colonel Kessler was wrong to have asked the Kommandant von Gross-Paris for help. Paris-Central should have known better than to have sent you and that other one.’

‘Afraid of what Weber and the boys from Berlin might do, was he, this Colonel Kessler?’

Kohler had earned that gash down his face from the SS during a murder investigation near Vouvray in December, and understood the whip better than most yet had still chosen to remain defiant of authority. ‘The Untersturmführer is in charge of security. Colonel Kessler should by rights have left the entire matter in his capable hands.’

A second lieutenant in the SS and wouldn’t you know it! ‘Your predecessor, Colonel. . . We understand that he availed himself of Madame Chevreul’s séances.’

‘You want them stopped?’

Must this one be suspicious of everything? ‘Not yet. Better to let them continue.’

Jundt tapped that Wehrmacht nose of his with a cautioning forefinger. ‘But you think they’re involved. I can tell.’