Bellringer sak-13 Page 12

  The bed that was end to end with Jennifer Hamilton’s, the ages of these three varying from the thirty-six of the one who spoke of the fire as if still at home to the thirty perhaps of the buyer of antiques and paintings to the twenty-two of this last.

  ‘It’s impossible being locked up like this, Inspector,’ said Lisa. ‘We didn’t do anything. Zut, we aren’t killers. How could we be?’

  ‘And I’m Candice, Inspector. Candice Peters, North Carolina State at Raleigh and a long, long way from home.’

  And with frizzy brown hair still in paper twists, a toothbrush in hand whose disreputable state she suddenly realized and quickly tucked out of sight. Age pushing forty, grief held back admirably, a cool, firm handshake and a ‘Welcome, Inspector. We’re all grateful you and Herr Kohler finally got here. Jen was just telling us that she had encountered him downstairs with Herr Weber.’

  ‘He’s a lot taller than you,’ said Jennifer. ‘Did he get that scar from fencing? Ah mon Dieu, he looks the type. I. . I was quite shy, I’m afraid. Herr Weber is overwhelming enough.’

  ‘Inspector, I’m Barbara Caldwell, Rhodes College, Tennessee. I expect you’ll want to know what we’re all doing here. I think we’d like to know that too.’

  This one’s age was perhaps thirty-two or thirty-six, and her dark auburn hair fell naturally in waves to shoulders that were bravely squared under scrutiny, but in the dark olive-brown eyes there was doubt, hesitation, all manner of things. Had this Barbara Caldwell tidied Mary-Lynn’s last effects?

  ‘My bed’s that one,’ she said.

  The one on the other side of the door.

  ‘I’m the week’s wood-getter. That’s why my bed’s not made yet.’

  As if one needed to apologize for such a thing. ‘Ah, bon, mesdemoiselles, please go about whatever you were doing. Mademoiselle Hamilton, a few questions. Perhaps we could find a corner, the four of us.’

  ‘Jill, why have you come?’ urgently whispered Candice Peters in English.

  ‘Nora, what’s happened?’ whispered another, also in English.

  ‘I’m going to have to fess up if he asks, Barb. I can’t avoid it.’

  ‘Ah, merde, mesdemoiselles, have pity on a poor detective. Repeat to me en français, Mademoiselle Arnarson, exactly what was said.’

  Did he think her guilty? wondered Nora. Desperately she looked at each of the others, even at Jill, then shrugged and said, ‘It wasn’t anything of consequence.’

  ‘Yet you all knew, mademoiselle, that of the two of us, only Hermann speaks your language and not very well at that. Your bush telegraph. . ’

  Nora knew she couldn’t help but smile. ‘It’s pretty good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Please just do as I asked.’

  Jill gave her a nod, a comforting hand on a shoulder. Repeating everything, Nora warned herself not to avoid eye contact even for a moment. As with the Boche, so with this sûreté. He was standing so close to her anyway it would have been doubly noticed had she lowered her eyes. She could smell the wet wool of his shabby overcoat, the lingering of stale pipe smoke too, and as with so many of the French, that of the anise confections they loved.

  ‘When Mary-Lynn and I were at the séance, Inspector, only Jennifer and Caroline were here in this room. The others. . ’

  ‘Were playing poker,’ said Jill. ‘Me as well, and Marni Huntington. Becky hadn’t been feeling well. Her period again. Every Saturday night a gang of us get together in what used to be the hotel’s two smoking rooms. They’re on the ground floor, near to the main staircase and have a folding partition between them that can be opened to make one big room. We light a fire in the grate, each contributing what she can-snacks, too, if possible, and then. . then we play. Twenty tables, twenty-five, whatever suits and Five-card Stud, High-Low, Shotgun, Spit in the Ocean, or Cincinnati. Dealer’s choice.’

  ‘Cigarettes are used instead of chips or money. Well, actually, they are the money,’ said Dorothy Stevens, the brunette by the stove. ‘Sometimes one of us will bankroll another. Becky gave me two packs of twenty up front. If I’d won, I would have covered her first and then split the rest fifty-fifty.’

  Had the stove-lighter said it to distract him? wondered St-Cyr. ‘Mademoiselle Arnarson, the firewood you went to get. Is it that you paid for it?’

  He hadn’t moved. She couldn’t lie, thought Nora, but could she find the will to weakly smile at being caught out? ‘I had to offer four packs and will be bankrupt for weeks and weeks.’

  It was Jill Faber who quickly said, ‘Nora really is afraid, Inspector. That’s why she had to listen. What happened to Mary-Lynn Allan could well have been meant to happen to her, or to both of them.’

  ‘But why, mademoiselle? What had either or both done to warrant being murdered?’

  The others didn’t stir. All looked at him as if searching for the answer until he was forced to say, ‘Ah, bon, let’s get the times down. This poker session on the night of thirteenth, fourteenth. . when precisely did it break up?’

  He’d find the truth, felt Jill. He had that look and wouldn’t budge until he had. ‘The time? At about two usually.’

  But long before that, felt Kohler, Mary-Lynn had fallen and the echo of her scream would have caused them all to run to find out what had happened. ‘Where were you when she fell?’

  ‘Marni and me, we. . Merde, I hate to use the term, Inspector, but we had lucked out at around twelve fifteen and were back in our own room by twelve thirty, I guess. Becky couldn’t sleep. Caroline. . Caroline had come back to the room but was having. . ’

  ‘A moment, please. Caroline Lacy?’

  This, too, couldn’t be avoided, Jennifer told herself. There simply wasn’t a way out. Jill and Nora had come with him to make sure she told him. ‘Caroline was here with me, Inspector, until about midnight. Her chest was bothering her. The poor thing could hardly breathe. She went home to beg Madame de Vernon to forgive her and let her have one of her cigarettes. Madame could well have denied her. Caroline was terrified the woman might hide them or put them somewhere else other than usual just for spite. I said I’d come with her, but. . but she said that would only make things worse.’

  Even though gasping for air. ‘So by then Jill, Marni, and Becky were also in Room 3-38, you alone here in 3-54. That leaves. . ’

  He had turned to face her and Nora knew exactly what he was going to ask.

  ‘That hour and a half, Mademoiselle Arnarson, from the time you left Madame Chevreul’s séance in the Hôtel Grand until you and Mary-Lynn Allan started to climb the stairs in this wing of the Vittel-Palace at close on 0100 hours?’

  How could she avoid telling him the truth without being absolutely sure each of the others would back her up? wondered Nora. ‘The apricots we get in our parcels have a yeast on them. I. . I’ve a still in the cellars which I use from time to time if the Senegalese will let me have enough wood and we share up. Everyone contributes, but I’m the one who looks after it. We had only a half a jug left, which I’d hidden at the back of the room, but I’d told everyone we were out until another batch was ready. I have to do that; otherwise the Senegalese will make their demands.’

  ‘The blacks, Nora,’ said one of the others, but which one he couldn’t tell.

  ‘And you and Mary-Lynn sampled it?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘She needed something. She believed Madame Chevreul had really made contact with her dad. Never have I seen a person so happy. I. . I thought the eau-de-vie a little off, but its flavour was a bit strong anyway. Mary-Lynn said I was crazy, that it was perfect. “Let’s get drunk,” she said.’

  ‘Then you really were drunk when you climbed those stairs.’

  ‘Oui. That’s. . that’s what made me dump the rest after what happened. This morning, actually. First thing before any of the others were up, not even the lousy cooks that boil that soup while their officers dole out the bread.’

  ‘Caroline thought she was the intended victim, Inspector,’ said Jennifer, still from across the room, for
no one had yet moved.

  It was Candice Peters of the frizzy brown hair who said, ‘We all agreed that Jen and Caroline needed a little privacy. Girl with girl was OK by us. Life here is lonely enough. So what if they held each other? It did no harm and made them happy.’

  ‘Caroline blossomed,’ said Barbara Caldwell, the one who had graduated from Rhodes College. ‘Living here has taught us all a lot, Inspector. We know it’s illegal and that whatever church one goes to would consider it evil, but it does happen here. Ah, mon Dieu, at any time of the day or night you can come upon a couple or hear them. Jennifer and Caroline weren’t alone in that. Bien sûr, Madame de Vernon hated the thought. She demanded that Caroline break it off with Jen, was fiercely jealous, and if you ask me, violently possessive. Some women can be like that, can’t they?’

  ‘We. . we didn’t think she’d do anything other than object,’ said Jennifer, ‘but. . but now I’m not so sure, Inspector. Am I to be next?’

  Merde, thought St-Cyr. The room was crowded enough, himself the lone male, they all watching his every move like a herd of wildebeest who would form a circle round the defenceless as the jackals prepare to rush in.

  ‘Madame Chevreul. . ’ he began.

  ‘Ah, oui,’ said Jennifer, brushing her fair hair back off her brow. ‘Caroline and I had been to see her time and again, trying to get permission to become sitters at one of her sessions. At. . at last we had succeeded only to then. . Forgive me, I can’t say it. I’m sorry.’

  Where, really, wondered St-Cyr, did this one sit in things since there had been no mention yet of Caroline Lacy’s having been emotionally upset and in tears before she had returned to her own room on the night Mary-Lynn Allan had fallen? Bien sûr this buyer of antiques, Old Masters, and other paintings for her family’s business in Boston seemed independent of mind, exuding strength and forthrightness in the face of grief, but she had been the lover of one of the victims and a roommate of the other, and was now suggesting that she, too, might be in danger. Had it all been a performance? ‘And were you to have attended last evening’s séance as well?’

  Had he questioned her sincerity? wondered Jennifer. ‘Léa Monnier made the rules. Although Caroline desperately wanted me to be present, I was told I would have to wait outside the Pavillon de Cérès, where a chair would be left for me.’

  ‘And the fee that was to be paid?’

  ‘Five hundred greenbacks-oh, sorry. US dollars, a cheque. Caroline didn’t mind. She would have paid five thousand. Anything, I think.’

  Had it been clever of her to have suggested this? ‘For Madame to ask Cérès to talk to whom?’

  ‘She never said.’

  ‘Come, come, Mademoiselle Hamilton, we haven’t time for this!’

  To flash a grin wouldn’t be wise, felt Jennifer. He wanted the answer and would have to be given it. ‘Madame de Vernon’s husband. Caroline had a photo she’d taken from Madame’s suitcase but was terrified Madame would discover it was missing before she could put it back.’

  ‘And the photo?’

  ‘It was of the villa Madame had once owned in Provence. I. . well, I burned it in the stove after Caroline was killed. I didn’t want Madame finding it here.’

  ‘Because she would have blamed you for encouraging Caroline?’

  ‘That is correct. Inspector, Madame de Vernon hated me for having freed Caroline from her grasp. Merde alors, all I’d done, and everyone will agree, was to let Caroline decide to have a life of her own for once.’

  ‘Yet the two of you quarreled on the night Mary-Lynn Allan fell?’

  Madame de Vernon must have told him this. ‘It was nothing. A simple misunderstanding. We embraced and. . and made up.’

  ‘Then there was no thought of her breaking off the affair?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  And determined about it too. ‘This photo, mademoiselle, was the husband in it?’

  She would shake her head and watch him closely, felt Jennifer, the others all intent. ‘He was the one who took the photos, for Caroline had said there were others. Madame didn’t find the prints until after he had left her. Always, though, when in Paris or anywhere else with Caroline, she kept them in her purse, but when they got here to their room, she. . she put one on the wall beside her pillow.’

  And kept the others safely in her suitcase but had this one known the whereabouts of that spare key Madame had hidden to that very suitcase since Caroline Lacy must have? ‘For now, mesdemoiselles, that is all. You’ve been most helpful. I must find my partner.’

  ‘Inspector. . ’

  It was Nora. ‘Oui?’

  ‘Those missing datura seeds. . ’

  ‘Ah, like you I wish I knew where they were, which brings us to a parting question: Have any or all of you had anything stolen? Some small, insignificant item, of little or no use beyond sentiment and the memories it might have brought?’

  Quickly they glanced from one to another, then Jennifer Hamilton said, ‘All of us have lost things, Inspector. Some of us more than once.’

  ‘There hasn’t just been a rash of these thefts, but a plague of them,’ said Lisa, the little twenty-two-year-old brunette from Duke University with the hazel eyes and ponytail. ‘Whoever does it is really, really fast.’

  ‘Like Houdini,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘Me, I’ve lost things too,’ said Nora, ‘but the best was the Indian Head penny my dad sent me for good luck. It was dated 1907 but he had found it on the day I was born. At least. . well, at least that’s what he always told me. The second luckiest day in his life.’

  ‘And the first?’

  ‘The day he met my mom.’

  Each of the others wholly believed this pathos, their concern for her loss all too evident, but was there only one way to deal with this lot: divide and conquer? ‘Ah, bon, mes amies, merci. For now, let me leave you to get on with things. Mademoiselle Arnarson, be so good as to show me your still.’

  He didn’t wait until they were there, but once out of sight of the others and alone on the cellar stairs, he stopped her.

  She had to face him. ‘Mademoiselle, upstairs you said Mary-Lynn Allan had had more of the home brew than you.’

  ‘She. . she felt sick and had run on ahead.’

  ‘Ah, oui, oui, but earlier, when interviewed by my partner, Jill Faber said you weren’t as drunk as Mary-Lynn. But you, however, claimed you were the drunker and that you had been hallucinating.’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Perhaps, but it doesn’t add up, does it?’

  ‘I. . I really was feeling dizzy.’

  ‘Bien sûr, but given everything, including the presence of Datura stramonium, a known hallucinogenic, you then deliberately destroy valuable evidence not after Mary-Lynn is killed but after Caroline Lacy, and with two investigating officers on your doorstep?’

  Ah, damn it, did he forget nothing? ‘All right. There wasn’t any eau-de-vie. Mary-Lynn insisted we drop in to the poker game to tell them all the news, that Cérès had said her dad had at last made contact and had forgiven her for having had a love affair with a German and that she wasn’t to worry anymore but simply to take great care, that it was really he who was worried about her. It was all a pack of lies, Inspector. Fog. . the stench of mustard gas. Compasses whose bearings would make them lose their way? Machine-gun fire and grenades, her dad crying out to the daughter who had never known him but through Cérès from a battlefield to the north of here twenty-five years ago? The poor thing was so relieved, yet it was absolute rubbish and damned cruel of Madame Chevreul to have taken advantage of her. The cost alone was horrendous, given what most of us have to spare. She was all but broke. I’d loaned her that last fifty. . ’

  ‘A cheque?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Who has any cash?’

  ‘And Madame Chevreul knew of your feelings?’

  ‘That’s just the rub. I think so, then I think not, then I think it again when not worrying over Caroline and Madame de Vernon and that damned da
tura.’

  ‘With which you were never hallucinating, nor was Mary-Lynn.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I. . I thought maybe I was doing the right thing by alerting you to the possibility of its having been used.’

  And the others, letting her lie to a police officer about the eau-de-vie so as to cover for her. Merde! ‘A believer and a disbeliever, a set of stairs, an argument, hurt feelings, the one not really sick but running up the stairs in tears ahead of the other.’

  ‘A Kommandant who is a confirmed believer and is very close to her, Inspector. Too close maybe. We really don’t know, because Mary-Lynn, though afraid herself, and a close friend of mine, would never tell any of us who the father was.’

  ‘And a medium who charges whatever can be taken from the sitter even if exorbitant.’

  ‘Mary-Lynn was pushed, Inspector, but was I the one who should have been?’

  From what he’d seen so far, thought Kohler, the English camp was better organized than the American, but bedlam still. They ate in shifts, all 1,678 of them, the dining room of the Hôtel Grand deafening: constant gossip in two languages, recipes, makeovers, hairdos and don’ts, the hair up in curlers, pins, bandanas, or turbans-this last the latest Paris fashion-housecoats on some, overcoats on others, and fingerless gloves. In all, it was the rule of the vulgar and the loud, and God help those who were refined or timid or simply wanted a little privacy.

  Lines of tables, placed end to end, ran parallel and between rows of those same Pavillon de Cérès honey-coloured marble columns that were nearly two storeys high. Cherubs with armorial shields were up there on the ceiling, a leftover from earlier days; chandeliers dripping crystal on Kentia palms in dark-blue Art Deco jardinières, the whole perhaps looking of the Otherworld or at least making the interned seem damned out of place.

  To the soup and bread, lumps of what appeared to be boiled mutton had been doled out, each table, each group left to fight over the division. Inevitably squabbles had broken out and rose above the general discourse, rocketing into fiercely slapped faces, savagely yanked hair, shrieks, and swearing not only coarse but equally in French and English.