Bellringer sak-13 Page 6

  ‘She liked older men, Inspector. She felt more at ease with them,’ said one of the others-which one, Kohler wasn’t sure.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Nora, she wanted a father figure,’ said Marni.

  Springtime in Paris, thought Kohler, but one of the SS, which meant, of course, the avenue Foch and Karl Albrecht Oberg, the Höherer-SS und Polizeiführer of France, an acquaintance Louis and he wished they’d never had to meet. ‘Couldn’t the Sturmbannführer have lifted a finger to stop her from being sent here?’

  ‘He refused,’ said Jill flatly. ‘There were plenty of très chic Parisiennes to take her place.’

  ‘Begged him to do something, did she?’ asked Herr Kohler.

  Again that rush of warmth came and though she wanted it to continue, Jill fought it down, yet he had the nicest of smiles. Soft and warm, kind and considerate-boyish, too.

  ‘Well?’ she heard him ask, and had to smile softly in return and say, ‘That and other things like offering to marry him.’

  A sigh would be best and then another smile, thought Kohler. ‘But he was already married and had kept that little secret from her?’

  Ah mon Dieu, that look of his! ‘And now you know why she despised herself.’

  The timing had been perfect, but had Jill caught him off guard? wondered Marni.

  ‘That why the séance attempts to contact her father?’ he asked.

  Even with that terrible scar from the left eye to the chin, he was adorable, thought Marni. Shrapnel? she asked herself. A fencing sword? but that couldn’t be possible with one such as this. He was far too down-to-earth and would be accustomed to bullets. ‘The attempts, Inspector. There were more than one of them. Five actually.’

  The others hadn’t moved. ‘At fifty American dollars a crack?’

  He was making her flash a grin, thought Marni, knowing the others would be thinking the very same thing, especially Jill-that to be alone with Herr Kohler, to feel those hands of his, would be to live that dream. ‘At two hundred and fifty, one-fifty, one hundred, and then fifty. Madame Chevreul offered to continue on an installment plan. Mary-Lynn blamed herself for the séance failures and had become convinced her dad must have known all about her affair with the Sturmbannführer.’

  ‘Even the most intimate of details,’ interjected Jill, watching for the effect of her words.

  ‘And definitely not approved of,’ said Marni, tensely watching him now, the tip of her tongue touching the crowns of her teeth.

  ‘The dead looking down on the living-that it?’ asked Herr Kohler.

  ‘Love, yes, as I used to know it,’ said Jill.

  Louis should have heard her! ‘And she was feeling sick the night she died?’

  It couldn’t be avoided, thought Jill, and certainly Herr Kohler would know all about such things anyway. ‘I had found her being sick one morning about a month ago.’

  ‘OK, so every young lady needs a bit of company now and then and the Sturmbannführer couldn’t have done it by mail. Did he pay her an extended visit?’

  It would be best to be harsh. ‘We don’t know who the father was,’ said Jill, ‘only that it definitely couldn’t have been him. She wouldn’t tell us.’

  ‘She was afraid to,’ said Nora. ‘You knew she was, Jill, and so did I. Sure, she was looking for a father figure. That’s why she was friendly with Colonel Kessler, the former Kommandant. She had never known her own dad, Inspector, and had always regretted this.’

  ‘Brother Étienne said he would find something for her,’ added Jill quickly.

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘We were never told,’ said Jill.

  ‘Holy bitter, Indian brandy, juniper or yew leaves. . ’

  And Marni again, thought Kohler.

  ‘But also aloes and canella bark,’ she went on. ‘Rhubarb and nitrous ether; an emmenagogue in the hope the uterus will contract and get rid of the problem.’

  Becky was looking positively ill, but what the hell had they agreed to hide? wondered Kohler.

  ‘Ignis sancti Antonii perhaps,’ offered Jill, again intently gazing at him.

  St. Anthony’s Fire and an ecbolic if ever there was one. The deadly ergot fungus from rye flour or bread made from the same.

  ‘Apiol, Inspector,’ said Nora. ‘Petrosilium crispum or common parsley. Large doses of the leaves and stems, or the oil if distilled out, the apiol stimulating blood flow to the uterus, but apiol and the rest of the oil can cause polyneuritis and gastrointestinal haemorrhages if one’s luck has run out. Brother Étienne told her not to worry, that “The Grace of God invariably was on the side of the grazer,” and that if it didn’t work, he’d increase the dose.’

  They had put the run on him to see if they could take the heat off themselves, thought Kohler. It was either that or to cover up for one of them. ‘Parsley?’ he asked.

  ‘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.’

&nb
sp; 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 nes, 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, t
he 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.’