Carnival (37 page)

‘He couldn't,' said St-Cyr. ‘To protect her, he had to remain silent.'

Meyer would find that out too, thought Alain. ‘And with the cutthroat?'

‘Both your father and sister would be at the Works early on the morning of the sixth. For your father to do anything else would be out of character and out of the question.'

‘And from there, they would leave for the fête at about 0830 hours, Louis.'

‘Eugène Thomas must have known of this, Hermann, and had confided it to the others.'

‘The cutthroat was then stolen.'

‘By Thomas, Hermann. He was, I think, the only one who could have crossed to the firm's garage to take it, having gauged when best to do so.'

‘But it had to be kept somewhere safe, otherwise Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche would have found it.'

‘And was hidden at the carnival until needed, Thomas no doubt hoping that it would stay there and not be used.'

‘But when he refused to go along with their killing Sophie,' said Victoria, ‘they—'

‘Sentenced him to death,' said Kohler.

‘Not realizing then that one of the
Postzensuren
might well have had him sent an anonymous letter, Hermann.'

‘But that's only a part of what Meyer's going to find out, isn't it?' He would turn to face Schrijen now, thought Kohler. He would try to get that gun from him. ‘Once Meyer gets at those boys in
Straf
, he's going to discover that they knew what your sister and Renée Ekkehard and this one were really up to and that those boys also had plans of their own.'

‘The trinitrophenol, Hermann.'

‘The guncotton, Louis.'

They were following the lorries now. Soon they would be in the outskirts of Kolmar, soon at the Works, Victoria knew. The Obersturmführer would beat the truth out of Martin and Gérard and the others, and then would start in on her. Everything would come out. She'd not be able to stop herself. ‘Chief Inspector,' she heard herself saying quite calmly, turning so as to face him, ‘how is it that you realized I must have something fragile in my pocket?'

‘You constantly favoured your left side. Whenever I was behind the wheel, you crowded Hermann; myself as at present.'

‘You killed Renée, Victoria,' said Alain, having realized the significance of the explosives. ‘You went out to the carnival on that Sunday morning. Haven't you two thought to ask her where she was?'

On the last Sunday of January. ‘I was at church.'

‘You weren't. I checked.'

‘I was seeing to Claudette's cat.'

‘Her door was locked and when I rang the bell, you didn't answer.'

‘Untersturmführer, a moment, please,' said St-Cyr. ‘How is it that you knew to try at Frau Oberkircher's residence?'

Hermann sighed as only he could. ‘Sophie was with him, Louis.'

‘Had you taken the bus out to the carnival, mademoiselle?' asked St-Cyr. ‘It would have dropped you off at the side of the road.'

‘We found her footprints in the snow, Inspector,' said Alain.

‘At what time, please?'

St-Cyr had again taken hold of her right arm and would move quickly to stop her from crushing the ampoules. Herr Kohler would also try to stop her.

‘At close to 1200 hours,' said Alain. ‘My train didn't leave until 1730. My sister said she had to see if Renée had come back.'

‘ “Come back,” Untersturmführer?' asked Louis.

‘I'd been there on the Saturday, hadn't I?' said Alain sarcastically.

‘I only wanted to hear it from yourself, monsieur.'

These two couldn't be allowed to live, not now, thought Schrijen. ‘We saw her footprints next to Renée's ski tracks up by that wagon they used as a field office, but when we went inside it, neither of them were there. That's when we went to the House of Mirrors and found her body.'

‘But didn't search elsewhere, did you, Alain, because Sophie knew where to look,' said Victoria. ‘She led you to her. She showed you what you'd driven Renée to do that morning, at 10.00 perhaps, or closer to 11.00. That is as close to the time as I can get, Inspectors. Renée knew he couldn't let her live, that that father of his had told him what to do.'

‘Invite her to a party. Tell her of the experiments. Drug her to confuse her. Beat the truth out of her and all the rest of it, and when she comes to the next morning, force her to witness an execution,' sighed Kohler. ‘What did she cry out before you raped her?'

‘That the sluts were moving deserters through from the Reich.'

‘And that she was deeply in love with your sister, Alain. Wasn't that as much the reason you did what you did to her? You couldn't stand to have one of those in your family. A lesbian? Sophie has always had to fill two pairs of shoes, Inspectors. Those of her mother and of herself. Always she has had to be proper, to never do anything that wasn't totally acceptable to that father of hers, to always be on hand for receptions and dinner guests, always to smile and look her best, but never to be herself. She's terrified of you, Alain. She knew you would tell your father about her and Renée.'

There wasn't time for him to respond. They had entered the gates, the wire closing behind them. Now steam billowed from the boilers and the smell of rotten eggs intruded.

Unbidden, Victoria crossed herself and saw that the chief inspector also did, Herr Kohler simply staring at the tarpaulin-covered back of the closest lorry. All too soon, though, Meyer and several of the armed SS were rushing them up a steep and narrow staircase where, through the dimly lit haze of each freezing floor, hundreds of men, some of them clad only in grey underclothes, silently watched her. Old men, young men, gaunt, haggard, hollow-eyed and with longing in their gazes, lust too, and fear. ‘A girl …' ‘A woman …' ‘Beaten … she's already been beaten,' they murmured, the hush of their whispers travelling, she not knowing their languages, yet knowing what they said and thought as their fingers, with dirty, blackened, broken nails, clung to the closely meshed wire that kept them in and kept them so crowded they could longer remember how it had been to live decently.

Under the cobwebbed, soot-blackened roof timbers of another century, the
Straf
cells waited. One, a box so tightly constructed its occupant could only stand, not turn, was flung open and she was taken, pulled, dragged away from St-Cyr and Kohler toward it until Herr Kohler yelled, ‘
Halt!
' and then said more calmly, ‘That's enough, Obersturmführer­. She's a suspect in a murder case and until that's been settled, she's with us.'

‘Questions … there are questions,' stammered Meyer, obviously stricken by the continued insubordination.

‘You'll have to be patient.'

‘
Patient!
' he shrieked.

‘Why not start with the men you came to interrogate?'

There was no one being held in
Straf
and Hermann had sensed this but there was now, St-Cyr realized, no sign of Alain Schrijen either.

‘He's gone to talk to his father, Louis,' said Kohler, having taken Victoria Bödicker's hand in his.

No cell had room in which to move more than two paces, no furniture beyond three planks.

‘The head office, I think,' said Kohler. Only then, as Meyer and the others momentarily stopped, did they realize that beyond the constant sound of thousands and thousands of shuttles, there was the silence of the barracks block, for none below them moved. They only listened hard, all eyes lifted to them.

‘Inspectors,' wept Victoria, the three of them standing a little apart from the others. ‘Inspectors, please forgive me.'

‘For being brave?' asked Louis. ‘Mademoiselle, you humble me.'

‘But still will seek the truth?'

‘We have no other choice,' confided Kohler. ‘We hadn't when we began this thing, and haven't now.'

‘His colonel made certain of it,' said St-Cyr.

‘Alain Schrijen murdered Renée Ekkehard, Louis. It's what Rasche has always wanted.'

‘Because he, too, has had no other choice, Hermann. None at all.'

With the blackout, the darkness of the Works was often all but complete at ground level.

‘Louis,' said Herr Kohler softly. ‘Louis, take a look above us. You too, mademoiselle.'

Beyond the billowing, grey-white pillar of ever-expanding smoke that poured from the tall brick chimney of the first of the steam plants, the stars were incredibly beautiful. Pistons throbbed, gearwheels meshed, shuttles endlessly went back and forth, but above them, all seemed as if totally at peace.

St-Cyr and Kohler couldn't know what Löwe Schrijen had forced Martin and the others to reveal, nor what he had done with them or even if they had also planned to set off explosions here during their escape, but they would have to have answers before being confronted when they reached the office.

St-Cyr was looking at her, not at the stars. ‘Mademoiselle,' he said, and she felt a shudder go through her.

‘When Alain was with us in the car, Chief Inspector, and accused us of it, I didn't deny that we had been moving people through Alsace. There would have been no point in my doing so, but we weren't just moving deserters. Escaped prisoners of war came to us, also politicals and others on the run. We did what we could because we felt we had to.'

This one was tougher than even she, herself, believed. ‘Then all along you've known Renée Ekkehard must have told him?'

‘She must have, mustn't she? I didn't know for sure, since Renée always maintained she had been so drugged and terrified, she couldn't remember.'

‘But the thought was clear enough?'

‘Afterward, yes. In the weeks following that … that “party.”'

‘And the Fräulein Schrijen, did she also know of it?'

‘That brother of hers and her father would have made her abundantly aware of it as they found out everything they possibly could. Why else would Sophie now deny we were close friends, Renée especially?'

‘And yet you still maintain that Renée Ekkehard's death was a suicide?'

How could it possibly matter to him now in these last few moments? ‘That is for you and Herr Kohler to decide.'

Still he didn't look up at the stars. ‘That wasn't what I asked,' he said, and she knew he was impatient with her.

‘Then
oui, oui, Monsieur l'Inspecteur premier. Un suicide, n'est-ce pas? Très tragique et très regrettable
.'

‘Louis, don't be so hard on her. Think about those men. Planning to escape from a place like this under cover of darkness is one thing, in broad daylight another. Oh for sure they would have taken one of the cars—the tourer—but …'

‘Not the other car,' sighed the chief inspector, now turning away at last to look up at the stars.

‘They couldn't have,' said his partner. ‘If Schrijen didn't show up at the fête, the whole thing would have been off. They had to let him leave in that sedan of his and believe emphatically that his daughter was following right behind him.'

‘Two cars, Hermann, when petrol is rationed and in such short supply?'

‘Inspectors, Sophie wouldn't have gone with her father. She had to avoid his questions and would have found any excuse to follow him. The need to stay all day at the fête, the need to drop by the Lutze house first to collect Renée …'

‘Then those boys must have been planning to take one of the lorries, Louis.'

‘There were two of them in the garage for servicing when I was there, Hermann.'

‘And they'd have had the schedule at that garage pinned down, but though they'd been harvesting solder and dyeing scraps of cloth, they couldn't have made uniforms for all twelve of that combine. At most, only two of them would have been in uniform and even with those, the greatcoats they'd fashioned or stolen, the caps, the trousers and boots, would have been enough.'

‘Eugène and Raymond,' said Victoria sadly. ‘Eugène as an officer.'

‘Maillotte would have driven the lorry, Louis. Thomas would have gotten into the tourer with Sophie.'

‘Who wouldn't have helped them, Inspectors. Once Sophie had realized what was going on, she would have thought only of Renée and of what must happen to her if they succeeded.'

‘Thomas would have had the cutthroat, Louis. Timing would have been everything. Schrijen would have to catch a glimpse of that daughter of his in his rearview as the gates were being opened.'

‘He'd see the “officer” beside her,' said St-Cyr.

‘And think it Karl Rudel perhaps, though Sophie would have been in a fluster and trying to figure out what to do,' said Kohler.

‘Löwe Schrijen would also see the lorry, Hermann.'

‘It would probably have had to slow momentarily outside the
Lagerküche
so that the others could scramble into the back and pull the tarp back down. Maybe there would have been two brief pauses before the gates. One thing's for sure, those boys would have had it all figured out.'

‘And?' asked St-Cyr.

‘They'd not have detonated anything here.'

‘Because they couldn't have, Hermann, not without jeopardizing the rest.'

‘The assassinations, mademoiselle,' sighed Herr Kohler. ‘Those they planned to hit at that fête you three had dreamed up.'

‘Löwe Schrijen having invited the Gauleiter and others; Colonel Rasche also,' said St-Cyr.

Then everything needed—at least some of it, felt Victoria—must now be at the carnival. If only she would be taken there, if only she could reach that one wagon before anyone else did: the
Jeu de massacre
. ‘Eugène and the others must have discovered we were bringing people through, Inspectors, and that Sophie would then take them to the farm in her brother's tourer. On the day of the fête's opening she would have had to turn to the northwest, off the main road into town in order to get to Kaysersberg. Her father would no longer have been able to catch glimpses of the tourer behind him.'