Bellringer Page 8

  ‘I seldom took part in such things. I was away from Paris a lot.’

  Hence the loss of the first wife who had run off with a door-to-door salesman or truck driver to marry a railway worker from Orléans.

  ‘I stood back and observed, Hermann. It’s what a detective does best.’

  And no mention yet of the sénégalais dockworkers in places like Marseille and Nice. ‘Oh for sure, but did any of them remember you?’

  ‘One, perhaps two. Ah, mon Dieu, the Santé and Fresnes prisons were second homes to them. The murder of a disobedient wife who was cleaning maid to the Marquise de Montreuil yet her secret lover; the robbery of the Crédit industriel et commercial at 66 rue de la Victoire that was so bungled, the manager, M. Olivet, who had opened the safe, was able to slam it shut and press the alarm button. If I hadn’t put them away for threatening to shoot him to death and giving him a heart attack, someone else would have.’

  ‘But are they apt to understand and forgive?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘That sack of golf balls came from somewhere.’

  ‘Merde, I was on the point of teasing that out of them!’

  ‘Now, don’t go on. Libby’s beans, hibiscus leaves, chocolate. . . ’

  ‘And night after night the juju woman!’

  They hit the main doors of the Hôtel Grand, crossed its massive, high-columned marble foyer and started up one of the twin staircases as the crowd poured from the dining room and surged to a stop.

  A sea of female faces looked up at them: round, thin, dimpled, pasty, hollow-eyed, or not—lipstick and rouge on some, and all startled.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ came the soft-spoken voice of a tiny bit of a thing. ‘Those doors are customarily locked at sundown. Men are not allowed in after dark.’

  ‘Police officers are.’

  ‘Hermann. . . ’

  ‘Louis, let me deal with this.’

  ‘As you shall, Inspector, for I have long awaited your visit. Now, if you gentlemen would be kind enough to come down and follow me to the Pavillon de Cérès, we can discuss the matter of these tragedies there while enjoying the peace to which I am accustomed when working.’

  ‘Cérès, Louis?’

  ‘The Roman goddess of agriculture.’

  ‘The mightiest of asteroids, Chief Inspector, as defined and discovered by the Italian astronomer, Giuseppe Piazzi, on New Year’s Day of 1801. She lies between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter and graciously guides us in our travels.’

  A flower in a garden of oft-broken, dried, and crowded stems, a belle both firm and clear, she entered the Pavillon de Cérès but couldn’t help but step to one side so as to catch and study their expressions.

  The room, projecting from the ground floor of the Grand and overlooking the Parc Thermal, was solarium, sunroom, and more, especially in winter and in spite of its drawn blackout drapes. Art Deco pillars geometrically rose like great golden, honey-coloured lances at some medieval yet modern jousting match, the light automatically stepping the gaze and heart aloft to a central lamp.

  ‘Is there a more godlike room, inspectors? Immediately one feels at peace and in communion.’

  The doors had been quietly closed behind them. Three wooden-slatted café chairs had been positioned under that light, two side by side and the other facing them.

  ‘Inspectors, be so good as to sit and close the eyes but for a moment in repose. Let the spirit cleanse itself as the problems of this world arrange themselves in trine, gracing harmony with utter unanimity. When at peace, I will answer truthfully every question you should choose to put to me.’

  They did as asked, noted Élizabeth, the Bavarian so much taller and bigger than the Frenchman, but it was in the hands that one felt the difference between the two. The fingers of both were hard and worn, the Frenchman’s no more sure, she felt, than those of the other, but in these last there was yet again a delicacy of touch that must surely have come from his having defused unexploded bombs and shells in the Great War. Recently he had suffered a terrible loss and then another. Two young sons in battle, and then a wife, a childhood sweetheart who, having a relative amongst the Nazi Bonzen, had been allowed a divorce in order to marry an indentured French farm labourer, a paysan from his partner’s country.

  And that one? she silently asked. That one has also suffered a terrible loss but bears the guilt of having received in the post the challenge of the Résistance, the little black pasteboard coffin reserved for collaborators that have been marked down for working with the Germans, and yet. . . and yet, being away from Paris on an investigation at the time, he had been unable to warn his new wife and little son of what those people and then the Paris Gestapo might well do and did. Leave the bomb the first had left.

  ‘Are we at peace, my brothers?’

  ‘Jésus, merde alors, Louis, what the hell is this?’

  ‘Zen, Hermann. Don’t blaspheme.’

  ‘Merci, mon cher Chief Inspector. The gods are present, the planets observe, and between two of them Cérès flies.’

  ‘Let’s start with Mary-Lynn Allan,’ said Louis.

  ‘I never discuss the outcome of a séance. I leave that to the sitters.’

  ‘Make an exception,’ said Hermann.

  ‘Really, Inspector Kohler, is it that you know so little of my work? I personally am not present except as in the physical sense. If the séance is to be successful, I must transcend the human state so as to be in clairaudience with the one who controls who I am to reach and what that person then has or has not to say, Cérès speaking through me to those whose hands have remained joined and whose eyes have remained closed.’

  And if that wasn’t a dressing down, what was? ‘Not all séances are successful, Hermann.’

  ‘Ah, bon, Chief Inspector, you do have some experience. I thought so!’

  ‘Hermann, if not all the sitters have reached that state of peace. . . ’

  ‘In trine, Inspector.’

  ‘The result can be either a total or partial failure.’

  She would have to keep the pressure up, decided Élizabeth. ‘All must be united, inspectors. Only then will they receive, measure for measure, what they have given.’

  Madame Chevreul’s accent was definitely of les hautes and well educated, too, thought Kohler, but was there not something a touch off? ‘OK, so what about that late-night session of last Saturday, early Sunday?’

  Herr Kohler was clearly not a believer, nor did he seem to have the self-control to transcend the practical. ‘Once again I must stress, Inspector, that I have no knowledge of what went on, only that the séance was a great success. Colonel Kessler, our former Kommandant, was most appreciative, as was Mary-Lynn Allan, whose tears were those of joy. I did worry about the aura the girl exuded, for it was especially pronounced and vibrant. I did decide to warn her to take great care, and insisted on this more than once. As a result, Colonel Kessler offered to escort her and Nora Arnarson home, as a gentleman should, and right to the door of their hotel.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Herr Kohler, still looking as though feeling definitely out of things.

  ‘Sleep would not come. Usually when I retire from a séance, sleep overtakes me immediately—one is utterly exhausted—but on that terrible night, I tossed and turned.’

  ‘And came back down to this room,’ said Louis.

  ‘Chief Inspector, I did! I tried to reach Cérès. I cried out to her. I begged her to watch over all, not just Mary-Lynn Allan, but Cérès can be difficult. She. . . she had gone behind the clouds.’

  And lost herself amongst the planets! ‘Conveniently, eh?’ snorted Kohler. ‘And the word was out, wasn’t it, that Mary-Lynn was sure to run into trouble and did!’

  With the consequent increase in reputation, thought St-Cyr, and so much for not being able to recall things, but. . . ‘Hermann. . . ’

  ‘Louis, this is going to take all night, and unless I’m very wrong, we’ll be none the wiser.’

  It wou
ld be best to be firm. ‘Inspectors, a datura seed capsule is missing, and you wonder, too, if Nora Arnarson and Mary-Lynn Allan were drunk on home brew or had taken a tisane of that herb Brother Étienne had prescribed for Caroline Lacy.’

  They waited as they should for her to continue. Bien sûr, Herr Kohler was now telling himself that she must have connections everywhere, whereas St-Cyr was but quietly impressed. Though they couldn’t yet know to whom her connections were: guards to guards, inmate to inmate or guard, or even to the Untersturmführer Weber, who considered himself to be the font of all knowledge. Nor did they yet quite know with what they were dealing, for to be able to reach the gods was to be uniquely gifted, and mere mortal men, being accustomed to dominating women, were reticent and oft-unwilling to accept such a challenge or even to recognize it.

  ‘We always place a lovely cut-glass bowl of water in the centre of our circle, inspectors, and from this I fill my chalice before lifting it to the goddess. Those who wish may dip the fingers to brush the Sign of the Cross over the brow. The water of life is always that which flows from La Grande Source. We do not even use that of La Source Salée, and of course not those of the Marie or Demoiselles, which have all but ceased their issue.’

  Vittel’s spa waters, but what was it about her, wondered St-Cyr, beyond that deliberate yet carefully contrived evasiveness? ‘The water is cold and flat, Hermann. Eleven and a half degrees Celsius and flows at a rate of just over 5,300 litres an hour.’

  How good of him to have remembered, thought Élizabeth. ‘And with .6039 grams per litre of calcium sulphite, inspectors, and .2393 of magnesium sulphite.’

  And a healthy dose of the trots! She could see Herr Kohler thinking this, but his partner quickly covered for him by saying, ‘Vittel’s waters are odourless and colourless, Hermann, and all are very fresh-tasting.’

  ‘You were here when wounded, Chief Inspector. Your memory is. . . ’

  ‘Matched only by my curiosity, madame. Your husband, please?’

  He hadn’t even questioned her about how she had known such a thing of him. ‘Ah, the name Chevreul. Like so many, the war drew me to Paris as soon as the call went out. I had had little enough experience as a registered nurse compared to what I was soon forced to learn. The Marne, of course, and the horrible stalemate that followed its battle. Verdun later on, for the French needed me too, and I could speak the language. Later still, the Somme, of course, and then a ward I will remember for the rest of my life here on earth and will carry to those who have passed over. I paused on its threshold. I knew, inspectors; love is sometimes like that, is it not? André had lost his sight—that terrible gas—but he and I. . . how can I say it? He would touch my face and I would know we belonged to each other, but it was not to last, yet I think in no small part he held on for those brief two years of married bliss entirely due to the love we bore each other.’

  And so much for financial security—was that it? wondered Kohler. Blond, blue-eyed, petite, and still quite handsome, she was a woman to be reckoned with.

  ‘Chevreul. . . ’ began Louis.

  Suspicion would be paramount with these two, but no matter. ‘It’s an old family name. I was left with the Château de Mon Plaisir in the forested hills near Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy. That is how the house and grounds were always known to my husband and me, and I lived quietly there tending his grave and those of his family until. . . well, until I was forced to remember that I still possessed my British passport. The Occupier, of course, wished the use of the house and stables, and the horses we bred, and of course I have been trying ever since to make them see sense and let me return, yet know I have found a calling here that transcends all others. Now, please, there are questions to which you need both direction and answer. Let me be but your guide and willing servant.’

  ‘Things have been stolen,’ said Louis.

  ‘Caroline Lacy had an invitation in her pocket,’ said Herr Kohler, snapping his fingers until his partner, digging deeply, retrieved it from a pocket though there was no need.

  ‘The ballet dancer came often to my chambers, inspectors. She seemed sincere. If at first one doesn’t succeed, does one not try again and again, and is that not a sign of artistic determination? Léa. . . Madame Monnier finally asked if I could fit the girl in and I, in turn, said to set a date and I would write and send that card you have, which I did. Was her death unpleasant—please, you must spare me the details. I can see the answer already in your expressions.’

  ‘Ah, bon,’ said Louis, ‘you mentioned setting a date, but there is none on the card.’

  Of the two, was he the stickler for details? If so, she had best keep it in mind. ‘A date, you ask? None was necessary. It was to have been for tonight at 2200 hours sharp.’

  ‘But death intervened,’ grumbled Hermann, not believing a word of it.

  ‘Precisely, Inspector, and I shall, in tonight’s séance, be asking Cérès to contact that poor child so that she can speak through the goddess to me.’

  ‘And reveal who her killer was or what she wanted to tell the new Kommandant?’

  ‘Hermann. . . ’

  ‘No, please, Chief Inspector, let me answer. Caroline was convinced Mary-Lynn Allan’s death was not an accident. Things had been stolen. . . little things; seemingly worthless things. When women have so little, even the smallest, most insignificant item to male eyes could well be the most treasured: the essence of a cherished memory, the feel, the touch, the smell of an object, a bit of cloth, a seashell perhaps—all such things can have their intense value to a woman, no matter how coarse or common she might appear to you men.’

  A seashell. . . ‘Caroline was asked to bring what she had,’ said Kohler. ‘Be so good as to tell us what that was?’

  Had she said too much, gone too far? wondered Élizabeth. ‘Always, for every sitter, the invitation says the same thing: They are to bring something—anything—that will form a bridge to what they most desperately want to know. Cérès needs such items upon which to focus, but as a result of these continual thefts, a degree of bitterness and viciousness far beyond the measure of each loss has entered our community, our two houses, if you like.’

  ‘And the thefts?’ asked Louis.

  ‘They happen in an instant. None are planned—I’m sure of this. The thefts are random and governed totally by impulse, and I am certain too, that whoever is doing this, that poor soul is in torment and unable to resist the impulse yet exceedingly clever at accomplishing it and hiding her identity.’

  ‘And her hiding place?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Though there are those who search, no one, insofar as I have been told, has ever found it.’

  ‘Hence Madame Monnier’s suggesting, Hermann, that if we were to discover who it was, we were to tell the thief that Madame Chevreul would keep on asking even if we didn’t confide that information and that soon Cérès would give her the answer.’

  ‘Léa has her uses, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘But has Cérès been more forthcoming?’ he asked.

  ‘Chief Inspector, surely you are as aware as I that there are those who steal and those who attempt to.’

  ‘And those who will accuse without sufficient evidence while demanding their anonymity.’

  ‘Precisely! And how, please, am I to differentiate?’

  Had she led them into admitting that the séances might well have their uses? wondered St-Cyr. ‘If not by placing a suspect and her accuser before you and asking Cérès enough questions to settle the matter.’

  ‘But Cérès only speaks with the voices of those who have passed over and I have no knowledge of what is said through me.’

  ‘But Léa Monnier does?’ he asked.

  ‘As do others of my staff.’

  ‘Are the sitters always different?’

  ‘There are the regulars, there are those who have been summoned, those with special needs and requests, and those, as in the cases of Colonel Kessler and Mary-Lynn Allan, who were initiates passing through to becomin
g regulars. Each séance needs its core of believers. They give the whole process backbone, but even then, many sessions fail because of a doubter. Unfortunately I cannot always weed these out beforehand. Nora Arnarson had her doubts but came, and was allowed to sit, since her dear friend Mary-Lynn required her presence and was uneasy without it. Failure after failure until at last a breakthrough.’

  And then a death. ‘And the home brew, their state of inebriation?’

  Must Herr Kohler continue to be such a doubter? ‘I think, if I were you, Inspector, I would ask myself where Nora and Mary-Lynn went after Colonel Kessler left them at the door to that hotel of theirs. Mary-Lynn was happy. Tears of joy had filled her eyes. Answers, though I know them not, had been received, having flowed from Cérès through me to her.’

  ‘And to the ears of the other sitters, Louis, not just to Colonel Kessler.’

  ‘Who had grown ever more close to her, Inspector,’ she continued.

  ‘Too close?’ he asked.

  The pregnancy. ‘That I wouldn’t know.’

  But probably did. ‘Madame,’ said St-Cyr, ‘when precisely did the séance end?’

  Grâce à Dieu, he had asked, but she would give things a moment, would wait, yes, until the urgency of knowing made Herr Kohler fidget. ‘At 2330 hours.’

  Had he given the sigh of the defeated?

  ‘And one and a half hours before the first killing, Louis,’ he said.

  ‘Did Nora not inform you of this, inspectors?’

  Ach, how sweet of this celestial dreamer! snorted Kohler inwardly. ‘It must have slipped her mind.’

  ‘Did she accompany Mary-Lynn on each of the previous séances that one had paid for?’ asked Louis.

  ‘No one pays me, Chief Inspector. The service I provide is absolutely free and freely given.’

  ‘A yes, then, to the question,’ said Kohler, ‘but if one wishes to leave a little gift, one can. That it, eh?’

  ‘Hermann, leave it for now.’

  ‘Louis, this one’s been raking it in.’

  Herr Kohler would have to be given an answer. ‘Nora accompanied Mary-Lynn to each séance that one attended and sat always on her right as instructed by me. Colonel Kessler sat on the girl’s left. Beforehand, the couple would exchange pleasantries, the Colonel always asking after her well-being and that of her friends, and if there was anything they needed.’