Carnival (11 page)

‘An arbour knot?'

‘
Oui, oui
, as is used by a fisherman,
bien sûr
. Single strand and very fast, both in the tying and the holding. Two loops, the first a little larger than the second, the working end being passed three times through the smaller, after which that loop is tightened by pulling on the side of the larger. A slip knot is then formed, which is, perhaps, as old if not older than the bowstring knot this girl must have known well how to have used but can't have, Hermann. Can't have.'

Callouses and feather marks were indicated.

‘We're going to have to tell him what he already must know, Louis, that it really was murder. If he so much as gets a hint of our not doing so, we'll never see Paris again.'

‘Then let's take our time. Let's flesh this killing out as much as possible.'

‘Was she drugged?'

‘That's what I want you to find out.'

‘Then maybe I should tell you that I've already found the glasses and the empty bottle.'

‘
Ah,
bon
, but look further. Leave me with her for a little longer.'

Caught by the mirrors, reflected, magnified, stretched or collapsed to a pinpoint, the lantern's flame gave many lights. And all around her from on high, the garishly painted masks grinned, laughed, cried, threatened or frowned at Hermann as he hesitated, and all around her were the murals of entrapment, terror, murder and then judgement, retribution and public execution with an ax.

It wasn't good, that cutthroat Hermann had found. It was terrible. They both knew it, Hermann lifting a tired hand to indicate that he would do as asked, even to softly closing the door behind himself.

None of the rest was good either, but why, really, would it not have been possible for the men behind that wire to have simply obtained the nails surreptitiously from the Schrijen Works?

Too many men, Renée Ekkehard seemed to say. Too closely watched and harshly punished. The risk from here would have had to be taken.

‘By all three of you on that committee, or only by yourself?' St-Cyr heard himself asking.

Were the bundles not clearly visible to your partner, Inspector? Is that not evidence enough if that was really what they were for?

‘Then perhaps you would tell me why you concerned yourselves with their welfare, given the terrible risk of your doing such a thing? Colonel Rasche found himself in a very difficult position, didn't he, mademoiselle? He had signed and stamped the pass that allowed you to come and go freely at the Works. After hours, during them—it didn't matter, did it? A blanket pass. You had planned to visit Strassburg this weekend and he had okayed that—he must have for you'd purchased the second-class return ticket I found in your rucksack, with your papers. A skiing party at Natzweiler-Struthof, Sophie Schrijen told my partner, a visit also with your parents. A personal matter, Colonel Rasche has said of this last, but where, please, does Sophie's brother Alain fit into things, a boy who is stationed at Natzweiler-Struthof and answerable to the Schutzhaftlagerführer Kramer?'

He gave it a moment. ‘Exactly
what
did you see that sickened you so much the Oberstleutnant Rudel believes it drove you to suicide? The deaths of innocent men, mademoiselle? Prisoners of war?
Résistants
?
N und Ns
?'

A drop-earring and a bowstring knot after a night of skiing …

‘A little earth is frozen to the soles of your boots. You skied but walked when necessary and were, I believe, as exhausted as the colonel has stated, when you returned here early on that Sunday morning.'

But did I go to the east? Was I really conducting Wehrmacht deserters through to France?

‘To the west, in the Vosges, the earth would have been buried under deep snow; to the east, over the Valley of the Rhine, which is far more populated, the snow is thinner, even in a winter such as this, the hills of the Black Forest excepted, of course.'

To the east, then, she seemed to sigh as if satisfied.

‘This watch, mademoiselle. Since when does a secretary, or even an outdoor's girl like yourself, carry a man's pocket watch? Oh for sure, it's nothing but the best, though not new and made in Switzerland before that other war. A Baume et Mercier, but a watch, mademoiselle, of the kind one is perhaps loaned while one's own timepiece is in for repairs? There are several of the notations watchmakers invariably inscribe inside the back, after each little visit. The number of a replacement part, sometimes the plus or minus of an adjustment so that it can be further modified …'

Did the colonel know of it, having gone through my pockets before you did? she seemed to ask.

‘He must have. Your rucksack also. There is something else.'

Digging a hand into the latter, St-Cyr drew out the carefully folded pages of Kolmar's
Morgenseitung
of Friday, 29 January, in which she had wrapped the lunch she had then taken with her on the following day. ‘Several sandwiches. Dried, smoked sausage, mustard and Munster, mademoiselle, the absence of all of which Frau Lutze must have been well aware of yet has so far said nothing­. A vacuum flask of lentil soup as well, and enough for two.'

My killer and myself—is this what you are now thinking? she asked. If so, Inspector, then why, please, would a man I had helped guide to freedom kill me? Admit it. If my death really is murder, you are looking for someone else, someone who, if I was really smuggling deserters out of the Reich, must have found out about it and then had to put a stop to it, but silently. No arrest, no accusations, nothing like those. Simply a ‘suicide' because of ‘something I had seen.'

‘Sophie Schrijen believed it would have been herself had she come out here on that Saturday afternoon.'

But is this person, if he even exists, now planning to deal with her and with Victoria, and if so, Inspector, then why did Eugène also have to die, or was his death simply a suicide, and if so, why then did he have that scrap of paper in his pocket?

The farmhouse's
Stube
was warm, humid and stuffy. Wehrmacht laundry, grey and hanging over horizontal poles that had been strung from the ceiling timbers, all but hid the
Kachelofen
, noted St-Cyr. Two of the dogs stirred but were told to lie still by the colonel who, closeted at a bare plank table in boots, trousers, shirtsleeves and suspenders, looked grey and old and as if waiting for the inevitable.

‘An autopsy,' muttered Rasche at news he had known he would have to hear.

The off-duty men had gone to bed. The two of them were alone and perhaps deliberately so, yet still the voice had best be kept low. ‘Traces of a sedative will be difficult enough to find, Colonel. She's been here for just over a week now. We don't even know if one was used, but if one was, there would have to have been sufficient to have made her very drowsy, but beyond that, we have little to go on.'

Rasche laid his empty pipe aside, ‘It'll have to be done quietly and that is, unfortunately, something I can't guarantee.'

The rheumy dark blue eyes were not evasive. ‘At lunch, Colonel­, you mentioned the university in Strassburg …'

The dark grey eyebrows arched. ‘You don't know, do you? You can't,' he said and, reaching out to one of the dogs, began to gently stroke its muzzle and scratch behind its ears.

‘The library is famous, Colonel. Some of the earliest of medieval Germanic manuscripts, the very origins of Alsace and Alsatian …'

The big hands had spread themselves flat on the table. ‘Manuscripts?
Ach
, don't talk such
Quatsch, mein Lieber
. Those books were all taken to Clermont-Ferrand during the
Sitzkrieg
when many of the professors and their students fled to shared facilities at the university there. Now the idiots cause trouble instead of lying quietly. They even refuse to return those damned books and as a result, the Gestapo in France want desperately to put an end to them.'

‘And at the University of Strassburg?'

‘There is now a new and approved staff.'

‘And the autopsies you told us were constantly being done there?'

‘Are being done on orders from Berlin.'

‘A cautious answer, Colonel. Is it that you really must go through the
Konzentrationslager
office to request one?'

Rasche pointed to his tobacco pouch and snapped his fingers for its return. He'd take a moment to pack his pipe. Maybe then this
Sûreté
would understand. ‘Certainly one can be fitted into the schedule at the university, but there will definitely be talk and that would not, I think, be conducive to your investigation. Schutzhaftlagerführer Kramer is, as I have indicated, difficult at best. That goes with the job, of course, but he could, as is his prerogative, demand that the four who are left from those I delegated to help out here be taken to the quarry for questioning.'

‘And the Fräulein Bödicker?'

‘Could also be taken.'

‘But not the Fräulein Schrijen?'

Was this infernal partner of Kohler's finally beginning to understand? ‘One must proceed carefully, Chief Inspector. Leave the autopsy for now. Do all you can and then I'll see what can be arranged. Renée's parents will, of course, have to be notified and will object most strenuously. After all, the fewer questions asked, the less the attention that will be directed at those closest to the victim.'

And at those who questioned her ‘suicide' in the first place!

As the colonel watched, detective shoes were yanked off, wet socks wrung of their meltwater to be flipped over one of the crowded poles, the shoes placed upside down on the stove's
Kunscht
, the little stone bench that was used for keeping things warm, even babies, so gentle was its radiant heat.

In bare feet, his overcoat, scarf and fedora hung up to dry if possible, St-Cyr rolled up his trouser legs. ‘A few questions, then, Colonel.'

Paris had also warned of this.

‘You've stated emphatically that we are not to question your two detectives, but could they have removed anything and not told you of it?'

Anything like a syringe or an ampoule—was that it, eh? Deliberately St-Cyr had made no mention of the Baccarat liqueur glasses and the empty bottle of marc Kohler would have found.

‘Did they go over everything thoroughly, Colonel, and if so, will Hermann, who is still out there looking, find nothing?'

‘They wouldn't have looked beyond the
Lach Tempel
. For them, it was fitting enough that the girl had chosen such a place.'

The Temple of Laughter, the House of Mirrors.

‘The one is far too close to the SS,' said Rasche, drawing on his pipe. ‘He constantly informs them of what I do, and they, of course, are a direct pipeline to Natzweiler-Struthof. The other helps him but augments his wages by taking money on the side. These days some things are best overlooked. It's enough to know of them.'

‘Then who drove that girl out here? Who knew her well enough to get that close?'

Renée had a blanket pass to the Schrijen Works, and St-Cyr would have found it in her rucksack. ‘Löwe Schrijen's daughter often telephoned my office. I would then hear Renée and Sophie discussing their little project. Perhaps a ride was organized, since Sophie found she was unable to come herself. Werner and Yvonne may have something when we get back to the house.'

A Schrijen lorry, would that be perfect, Colonel, wondered St-Cyr, especially since Sophie Schrijen believed firmly she could well have been the intended victim? ‘We'll want passes to the Works, will want to question everyone deemed necessary.'

‘You'll have them. As to your questioning …'

‘Colonel, you asked for us. You could just as easily have let the decision of your own detectives stand.'

‘I have my reasons.'

‘And I have no jurisdiction here.'

‘But Kohler has.'

‘Is it that you counted on his being tractable?'

‘Kohler?
Ach
, what are you saying? I needed someone totally free of influences here, someone who had been a POW himself. If one is murder, is not the other? Now go and find that partner of yours. It's long past my bedtime!'

‘Hermann will find us. Besides, my shoes, my feet … A basin of hot water. Some soap, I think, and a cigarette, if you have any.'

And refuse to part with more pipe tobacco! ‘There's no soap and I'm out of cigarettes, but Herr Goebbels, who smokes as many as sixty a day, assures us that pine needles are every bit as good as soap and also help with the rheumatism. Add a handful. It costs nothing. There's a bowl of them in the kitchen by the stove.'

All of the tin trunks in the office wagon had been opened and gone through. ‘Nothing. Not a damned thing,' swore Kohler.

Flea-market gleanings lay tangled in a biscuit tin, deep in the trunk that was farthest from the entrance to the wagon. Imitation pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds—all had been cleaned. Paste, most of them, but Marcasite too, and zircons: brooches, bracelets, rings and necklaces, the garish and not-so-garish, but had her killer found that drop-earring in this box and was that why Renée Ekkehard had had it in her hand?

Setting the lantern close, he dug deeply, yelped as blood rushed from the end of the middle finger of his right hand. ‘Ah, Christ!' he panicked. ‘Sepsis?' Puncture wounds were always the worst. A high fever, then delirium and no way of stopping it. Sulfa … would he need sulfa? Would it be of any use?

Biting hard, he sucked at the wound, found irony in the thought that after all he'd been through with Louis, and before that too, something so small could well kill him.

Spreading a piece of new canvas on the floor, he upended the tin and quickly sorted through the contents. There wasn't a match for the earring Louis had found, but the fragment of glass that had knifed him had blood on its spine and had gone in at least three millimetres. It was cylindrical and nothing like any of the shards from the mirrors. Perhaps two millimetres in diameter and maybe three-quarters of a centimetre in length, including the spine, it was of clear, medical glass.