Clash by Night (43 page)

“Well?” she said.

 
Brigitte sighed. “She’s alive.”

“Thank God,” Laura breathed.

“But just barely. She’s being transfused with whole blood and the next few hours should tell the story.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it might already be too late. The cells can only survive a certain amount of time without oxygen, nourishment, and she was partially exsanguinated when you found her.”

“Exsanguinated? What the hell is that?”

“Bled out. Blood is mostly water and iron and a few chemicals, and the dehydration that sets in can’t be reversed past a certain point. The electrolyte balance...”
 

“Please, Brigitte, no biology lectures now,” Laura said irritably. “From what they told you do you think she’s going to make it, or not?”

“I can’t say,” Brigitte replied maddeningly. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“You’ve been hanging around doctors so long you’re starting to sound like them,” Laura observed nastily.

Brigitte put her hand on Laura’s shoulder. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down?” she said, steering her toward the staff lounge.

Laura shrugged her off. “I don’t need to sit down. I need to see Lysette. I’m going back to the emergency room.”

“Don’t make a nuisance of yourself there, Laura. You won’t be helping her that way.”

Laura exhaled sharply and pushed her hair back from her face. “Brigitte, I’m sorry. I do appreciate your calling for me and I promise I’ll behave. It’s just that this has been such a shock. I never guessed she was so unhappy; in fact, she seemed just the opposite the last couple of years. Quiet as always, but content. I can’t understand this.”

Brigitte shrugged. “Who really knows what’s going on in another person’s mind?” she asked softly.

Laura nodded slowly, lost in thought. Then looked around her alertly, as if coming back to reality. “Thanks again,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.” She hurried off down the corridor as Brigitte looked after her.

An hour later Kurt Hesse found an excuse to visit Brigitte’s ward as she was taking lunch alone. He slipped into the lounge and said, embracing her quickly, “What’s the matter with your sister-in-law? I just saw her in the hall and she looked terrible.”

“Oh, a friend of hers was brought into the emergency room this morning. She tried to kill herself and Laura found her.”

“Jesus,” Hesse said. “Is she all right?”

“It’s touch and go right now. Laura was pretty upset. They worked together a long while at the school and she’s fond of her.”
 

“At the school?” Hesse said sharply.

“Yes,” Brigitte said, looking at him. “Why?”

“Another teacher?”

“The librarian, Lysette Remy.”

Hesse looked away from her, his brow furrowed.

“Kurt, what’s wrong? Tell me.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. When do you get off today?”

“At three, same as always. When are you leaving?” Brigitte asked.

“Not until tomorrow. I’m needed at the office. I’m putting together a final work detail for Colonel Becker.”

“Work detail?” she said carefully.

“Yes,” he said shortly. He looked past her through the glass top of the door into the hall. Another soldier named Kessel, whom Brigitte knew slightly from his acquaintance with Kurt, was walking by them.
 

“I have to talk to him,” Kurt told Brigitte. He pulled open the door and called after Kessel to wait. Kessel halted, turning.

“I’ll see you later,” Kurt said, looking back at her, and left quickly.

“All right,” she replied. She noted the urgency of his manner and after a moment she decided to follow him.

He and Kessel had ducked into a small office once used by the Colonel’s supply officer, now empty. She paused outside it, listening. The German was rapid and colloquial but she had become very fluent.

“We have to blow the bridges on our way out to slow the Allied advance,” Kurt was telling Kessel. “I’m putting together the demolition squads right now. I want you to take care of Chaumont. I’m assigning Brecht to Vitry and Hauptmann to Saint-Dizier. I’ll be with Becker until we pull out tomorrow so if there is any problem you can reach me in his office.”

Brigitte repeated the locations to herself, registering with relief that Kurt was not going on the named expeditions. He went on to outline the procedures and the men involved to Kessel, but Brigitte turned away.
 

She had to relay the information so that Vipère could be waiting for the detachments when they arrived. She had to see Curel.

* * *

Hesse tried to think of how to tell Becker about the Remy woman as he walked back to the Colonel’s office, but there was no way to break such news gently. It was better that the Commandant find out from his aide than in some other fashion. Or worse, leave France without discovering his lover’s fate at all. Hesse was aware enough of his superior’s relationship with the Frenchwoman to be sure that Becker would want to know.

The Colonel was on the telephone to Gestapo headquarters in Lyons when Hesse arrived. Becker gestured through the partially open door for Hesse to enter and then said into the receiver, “So what time may I expect Standartenführer Kleinschmitt to arrive?”

He listened for a moment and then said, “Very good.” He made a note on a pad in front of him as he hung up and said to Hesse, “The
Standartenführer
will be with us tomorrow morning. Faithful to the end, Hesse, just like my shepherd back home in Carlsbad.” He sat back in his chair and toyed with his latest communiqué, indicating it to Hesse. “This says that de Gaulle is back in France and getting ready to form a new government to take over as soon as we leave,” he announced. “The Gestapo have Pétain under house arrest in Vichy. ‘Sic semper tyrannis’, Hesse.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hesse, who didn’t know what the Latin meant. Becker wasn’t being a snob; he frequently talked to himself under the guise of addressing his aide. “Why is Standartenführer Kleinschmitt coming here now?”

“Overseeing the departure, I suppose. He’s stopping off on his way to Lyons. Who really knows? I have given up trying to fathom the mysterious motives of the SS.”

Hesse shifted his feet and looked at a point on the wall behind Becker’s head. He waited.

“What is on your mind, boy?” Becker asked, raising his brows.

“Sir,” Hesse said hesitantly. “There’s something you should know.”

 
Becker sighed. “Something else?” he said wearily, glancing around the room. “Some other piece of bad news I have not already heard?”

“Yes, sir. It concerns Madame Remy.”

 
Becker’s eyes flashed to his face. “What about her?” he demanded sharply.

“She is here in the hospital,” Hesse said painfully.

Becker sat up. “What?” he said softly.

“She was brought in this morning. She...”

“Tell me,” Becker said.

“She tried to kill herself.”
 

Becker’s olive skin went white. He dropped his eyes from Hesse’s face and stared at his desk. His only other reaction was a tightening of the fingers around the pen he still held.

“She is alive?” he said huskily.

“Yes, sir. But I think very ill. Madame Duclos found her and brought her in to the emergency room.”

“Laura Duclos?”

“Yes, sir.”

Becker nodded and stood, having recovered his powers of locomotion. “Was it poison?” he asked. “What?”

“She cut her wrists.”

Becker closed his eyes. “How very odd,” he whispered, opening them again. “She’s so neat. She hates a mess.” He put his hand out to grasp the edge of his desk and Hesse rushed to his side.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked anxiously.

Becker straightened purposefully. “No, I’m all right. It’s just that I can’t stand to think of her that way... all that blood... She would hate for anyone to see her in such a condition.”

Hesse waited tensely for Becker to stop rambling; it wasn’t until that moment that he really understood how much the little librarian meant to his commander.

Becker blinked. “The emergency room, you said.”
 

“Yes, sir. I imagine she’s been taken to a ward by now.”

“I’ll go and see her,” Becker said, heading for the door. “Stay here while I’m gone.”

“Yes, sir.” Hesse watched the distracted Colonel go through the door, wondering what else could happen before they finally, blessedly, left France forever.

Becker found Lysette on the first floor female ward with Laura seated next to her. Laura jumped up when she spotted him, wondering what was coming, but her alarmed expression changed when he brushed past her and stood immobile at Lysette’s bedside, looking down at the unconscious woman. Everything he felt was written on his face, and recent events fell into place in Laura’s mind like the locking teeth of intermeshing gears. My God, she thought, realization washing over her like a wave. He’s the reason Lysette did this. He’s the reason for her changed nature, her unexplained absences, her perplexing behavior when we discussed the end of the occupation. She’s in love with him. He was leaving without her and she simply couldn’t bear it.

 
Laura took a step closer to the bed. Lysette was lying on her back with her arms at her sides, her eyes closed, the sheet pulled up to her chin. Blood ran through a tube into her concealed arm from a glass bottle suspended on a stand. Her skin was so pale it appeared almost translucent. Her blonde hair was in a tangled spill on the pillow, her lips dry and chalky. She was so still it was hard to detect the slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
 

Becker turned abruptly and strode into the hall.

“I want this woman removed to a private room,” Laura heard him say to an orderly. “And send the admitting doctor to me immediately.”

The attendant, who seemed a little unsure about obeying a man who would be gone and no longer in charge the next day, nevertheless decided to err on the side of caution and do as he was told. Becker looked like he would turn violent if he refused.

Becker returned to Lysette’s bedside and said to Laura, “I understand that you found her and brought her here.”

“That’s right,” she answered.

“Then you saved her life.” Before Laura grasped what he was doing he had taken her hand and held it to his lips. He bowed from the waist and clicked his heels.

“I am forever in your debt, Madame Duclos,” he said, as Laura watched him, taken aback. For a moment she saw him through Lysette’s eyes. Laura realized that, under circumstances other than those she had been forced to share with him, he could be a very attractive man.

“I didn’t do it by myself,” Laura replied, withdrawing her hand. “Some of your men helped me.”

But Becker was not listening. His obligation discharged, he turned from her, his attention once again focused on Lysette.

“Would you like to be alone with her?” Laura asked gently. She would not have thought it possible an hour ago but she felt sorry for him.

“Please,” he answered, his dark gaze flickering to her briefly, then back to Lysette.

Laura left quietly to wait a distance away. As she turned to give him privacy she saw Becker slip to his knees beside the bed and bend his head.

Becker looked down at Lysette’s prone form, so small and slight, and felt the unmistakable, distantly remembered salt sting of tears. He closed his eyes to hold them back. He had never anticipated that this would happen; he had done her a grave disservice by underestimating the depth of her feelings. He’d been so caught up in his own nobility, his self sacrifice in leaving her that it hadn’t occurred to him she might care every bit as much as he did. But she didn’t have his strength. She had simply been unable to live without him. Who, in his whole life, had ever loved him that much?

He brushed his wet eyes with the back of his hand. When was the last time he had cried? At his father’s funeral, he remembered. He’d crossed the line of demarcation into manhood that day and thought never to shed tears again.
 

He touched Lysette’s waxen cheek. It felt cold. The bandages on her wrists were covered by the bed linen but he could see the bulk they made beneath the sheet. He thought of her dragging a knife across those slender wrists, as fragile as pipestems, and put his hand to his mouth. How could he have let this happen?

Two orderlies arrived with a gurney to transfer Lysette to the private room at the end of the ward, near the nurse’s station. Becker watched as they lifted her and then followed the wheeled cart down the hall. He passed Laura but didn’t seem to notice her.

Laura saw the doctor enter the room behind them, and then emerge a few minutes later. She waylaid him in the hall.

“How is she?” Laura asked.

“You brought her in, didn’t you?” he said.

Laura nodded.

“I think she’s going to make it,” the doctor replied. “The transfusion’s taking hold, her color’s better. We stitched her up and she’s under sedation but she should be awake in about eight hours.”