Bellringer (21 page)

Ah, merde,
she’d been crying, had been startled by his sudden appearance, and was wary.

He didn’t come closer, this
sûreté,
Nora noticed with a wince. Instead, he stood and searched the pavilion’s floor where she had shovelled the windblown snow away, and when at last he found what he wanted, he crouched to examine the spot.

Then he pulled off a glove and ran a finger over the concrete.

‘Ashes, mademoiselle. What, please, did you burn?’

Ah, damn him, damn him! ‘
Une cigarette
.’

‘The butt, then, since you were in hock for weeks. The firewood purchase,
n’est-ce pas
?’

Shit!

‘First, mademoiselle, we now know that you were seen by Brother Étienne late on Friday afternoon, and shortly before Caroline Lacy was killed.’

Étienne must have had to tell him. ‘It was late. I was cold. I. . . I didn’t even wave.’

‘Who was with him?’

He would persist until he got the answer he wanted. ‘Caroline, I think.’

‘But Becky Torrence was nearer to them than you were?’

‘Was she? I didn’t notice.’

And lying again, was it? ‘Would Becky have followed Caroline from the Vittel-Palace?’

‘To kill her? Becky? You must be crazy. Inspector, I’d been out for hours. I
had
to get warm. The ground fog that hangs over the valley here had come in. Visibility was poor. Tree trunks were in the way. How was I to have seen anything?’

The lacrosse stick was now held lightly with its curved and open end just touching the floor at her feet, the ball in her left hand, the girl seemingly at comparative ease but poised like a coiled spring.

The short-cropped hair protruded from under the toque, giving its wisps of amber-to-blonde; the dark blue eyes assessed all possibilities and risks as the throat, beneath its woollen scarf, constricted.

‘A moment ago you were crying, mademoiselle. Even as you threw the ball.’

‘Am I not allowed to?’

‘
Bien sûr,
but were the tears from relief or despair?’

Over something Étienne had left for her—this was definitely what he was thinking. Beyond him, the footprints of the path he had trod showed plainly enough, but there wasn’t anyone else’s that she could see.

The note Étienne had left had burned in but a few seconds, the ash falling grey and crinkled and very fine, and she
had
tried to remove it and hide the evidence. The match had been buried in the snow she’d shovelled away, but if he wanted to he could find it.

And in the room early this morning he had asked if Mary-Lynn had been Jewish and was Jennifer, had said that neither he nor his partner would do a thing about it if true. He’d taken one hell of a chance with them, would have to be told something—he had that look about him, but could he be trusted? These days one never knew.

A brief grin would be best and then, ‘All right, you win. Early this morning the Marines and the Forty-Third Division took the Russell Islands in the Solomons. They’re going to build fighter aircraft landing fields there in but a few days so as to hit the Japs well before those people get to our boys and our ships.

‘Last Thursday, German U-boats intercepted a convoy in the North Atlantic sinking another fifteen merchant ships. In Tunisia, British and American forces are taking heavy losses because Rommel has a new tank against which nothing seems to work.
**
But last Tuesday. . . last Tuesday, the Russians reoccupied Kharkov and are now six hundred kilometres to the west of Stalingrad. Tears of joy, Inspector, and tears of grief.’

She bounced the ball and caught it, swung the stick out and pulled it back still with the ball. Again and again she did this. Easily, fluidly, teasingly, threateningly, silently saying, Are you now going to turn me in? If so, tell me and see what happens.

‘Is the brother of the FTP?’ St-Cyr asked, unruffled.

The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. ‘A devout Catholic, Inspector? One of the Pères Tranquilles? Aren’t the FTP communists?’

‘Some of them, but you’re well informed. Perhaps it is that you are also aware that the Vosges and this whole region are known for its partisans. The Franco-Prussian War, the Great War, Mademoiselle Arnarson, and now again, Alsace having changed hands once more.’

She shrugged. She took to throwing the ball against the wall. He would get no further with her on the matter, decided Nora, but he hadn’t mentioned that Étienne must be listening to the Free French broadcasts from London—a highly illegal act—and he would have mentioned it if of the enemy.

‘Two murders, mademoiselle, and now some answers, please. Apparently you frequently went through the Hôtel Grand not only in search of Caroline Lacy and Jennifer Hamilton but asking where those two had been and with whom they had talked. Did you suspect either of having stolen that good-luck penny your father sent?’

Did he never forget anything one said? ‘In a place like this, superstition thrives, Inspector. People believe others can contact the dead and learn all kinds of secrets from them or simply get words of endearment and reassurance. Others seek to find out when the next shipment of Red Cross parcels will arrive, or if a parcel from home will come or a letter or postcard from a prisoner-of-war husband or fiancé.’

‘While still others believe they are prima donnas of the gods?’

Madame Chevreul. The ball had best be kept bouncing. At least then she wouldn’t have to look at him. ‘Lots of us are playing roles of one kind or another. How else are we to survive?’

‘But dream? Is yours that of the trapper?’

She swung the stick.

‘The loner? Even in a cage like this, I’ve found ways of being by myself.’

The ball hit the upper left corner of the goal. ‘And what, please, have you learned that is enough for someone to want to kill you? Come, come, mademoiselle, put that stick down and talk to me. This little presentation box of Guerlain’s was stolen from Madame Chevreul and found in Caroline Lacy’s pockets. Was Jennifer Hamilton the thief?’

She would stop. She would have to, decided Nora, but had they found the Star of David? ‘Wouldn’t a kleptomaniac have kept it all to herself?’

‘Was Caroline the thief, then?’

Throw the ball again,
she told herself.
Again!
‘Or neither of them, Inspector? As far as I and the others know, Madame Chevreul gave that little box to Caroline to tell her everything was fine and that she could count on being a sitter at the séance that was to be held last night and wasn’t even cancelled because of her death. Caroline couldn’t resist showing it to us. Madame de Vernon came into the room and tried to snatch it from her. There was a scene. The girl was slapped several times and took to shrieking, which only made Madame angrier until the four of us parted them and faced up to her and she cursed us and gave it back to Caroline but with a warning to us. The Kommandant was going to hear about it and what we had all been up to, but that is why Caroline had it with her. She
knew
Madame de Vernon would smash it or throw it in the stove.’

And not stolen at all?

The ball was stopped. He must long for his pipe and tobacco, thought Nora, for he took them out as one would from compulsive habit, only to quickly tuck them away as he spoke his thoughts aloud: ‘My partner was informed otherwise, mademoiselle, and we will have to deal with it when time allows, but with Madame de Vernon we have a woman whose husband had stolen everything and left her to eke out a living playing the piano in a ballet studio.’

Had Madame Chevreul told his partner that or had Étienne? wondered Nora. ‘Where she met and saw a chance to get a meal ticket and maybe enough for her retirement? All Caroline ever wanted was to dance, and being the youngest of a very wealthy family, she went to work on her daddy, as girls will, until he agreed to let her study in Paris and let that woman be her guardian and mentor.’

‘But it never happened, the dancing career.’

‘Not with Poland in September of 1939 and the Blitzkrieg in 1940. The villa in Provence must have looked pretty good then, it being in the
zone non occupée
.’

‘Was it empty?’

Had he experience of such? ‘It was but they couldn’t stay there. Even though the caretaker knew her from before, he wouldn’t let them, so they found a place in the village until the call went out for Americans and someone turned them in for the reward.’

Again she began to throw the ball. ‘What really happened to the husband?’ he asked.

She would put it into the lower right corner. ‘All Caroline really knew was that he had come from a very wealthy family in Barre, Vermont.’

‘Tombstones and polished granite slabs for monuments and buildings.’

‘Maybe his is in one of the graveyards in town—Caroline did wonder, and taking a chance, even asked some of the women who came in to do laundry in the afternoons and offered to pay them if they’d find out for her. If you ask me, Caroline thought he wasn’t any good, Inspector—that he had run off to Paris as a young man, to the girls, the fun, the booze, and the drugs. Too much money, too little sense. It happens all the time. You must have seen it lots.’

‘And the gambling, mademoiselle?’ he asked as the ball hit the floor and went into the upper-left corner.

‘She thought that too, since after he had sold the villa, he must have then lost the whole bundle. He did join up in 1917 and was wounded on 29 September, 1918, and sent here to recover—that much Caroline was pretty sure of.’

‘Only to die in 1920 in a fire, mademoiselle?’

On 17 July of that year. ‘Caroline didn’t know but wanted to find out, I think.’

‘And you have been trying to piece it together.’

‘Wouldn’t you if you were bored out of your skull in a place like this? All the records were lost. The debts, the names. I’ll bet arson was suspected, but I don’t know. Caroline might have whispered that to Jennifer, since she confided everything to her. I’m sure of it.’

‘And Madame de Vernon is aware of this?’ he asked, she having stopped the ball only to throw it again and again.

‘Probably.’

‘Then Jennifer Hamilton is also a target—is this what you think?’

The ball couldn’t be stopped now. ‘I haven’t had a chance to talk to her. Things have been happening too quickly.’

‘But it’s possible?’

‘Yes!’

‘Did the couple have a falling out?’

‘Caroline was upset after Mary-Lynn fell, but then so were the rest of us. . . and still are.’

A cautious answer. ‘Is Jennifer the thief, mademoiselle?’

‘Jen? If she thought I felt that way she would be here now, facing right up to me.’

‘Perhaps, but you are also hiding too much. Is Herr Weber aware of this?’

The ball was
missed
! ‘That
Nazihund,
that bastard? He’s pointed me out three times in the lineups we have, chooses one here, another there, then I’ve had to wait for hours outside that damned office of his. Twice while Caroline was in there being grilled—the poor thing coming out in tears. Once while Jen was in there, then he showed me a spread of the anonymous letters he had received about me. My name was misspelled. Some of them couldn’t even get their grammar straight, never mind the spelling.’

‘British?’

The ball was returned to the net. ‘Mostly, but not all unfortunately.’

‘And what were they denouncing?’

‘My independence, my loneliness, my long hikes even in the bitterest of weather.’

She stopped to look out over the golf course, to the Hôtel de l’Ermitage and the forest beyond, and as the tears came again, she said, ‘It’s a perfect day for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing especially. Every time it’s like this, I think of being with my dad. I was five when he first took me with him. Five years old, Inspector. We had to camp out. The blizzard lasted for four days. Never have I felt so close to someone before or since. I loved him with a passion that was crazy.’

‘Did they complain about your trapping rabbits?’

She mustn’t look at him now. ‘Everyone knew of it soon enough, and forgive me for wanting to take the Lord’s name in vain, but the others come into our room as if they own it. They stare at you even if they’ve nothing to say, or ask the dumbest of questions. If you’re at all different in this life, watch out, and the closer the community, the tighter the grip the others have on you. Beware of
les originaux ou originales,
Inspector, and I am definitely one of them.’

The odd ones. She retrieved the ball, deftly picking it up off the snow as if both stick and ball were parts of her. ‘Did they object to your looking after Angèle?’

‘Here the aspergillum doesn’t just sprinkle holy water but kindness. Brother Étienne is a saint and everyone knows it and knows what would happen to them should they speak out or point the finger at him. Granted, he’s like a hairdresser at times and some idiots will tell him the most scandalous of things while others seek his advice and reveal far too much.’

‘Does he gossip?’

‘Is he an informant—isn’t that what you really want to ask? A man who risks his life time and again to bring a little happiness and sometimes, as today, food that is desperately needed and hasn’t been tasted in years?’

When he gave no answer, Nora found she still couldn’t stop throwing the ball, because it really did help not to have to face him. ‘
Chacun pour soi,
Inspector? Is that what you still think?’

Everyone for him- or herself.

The lower-left corner of the net received five direct hits.

‘It’s the catechism of the times, isn’t it,’ Nora continued, ‘so why shouldn’t it be even worse in here behind that bloody wire? Lying, cheating, stealing—did you know we had a terrible bout of underwear theft from the laundry lines and had to post guards? Can you imagine waiting while the damned laundry
dried
in a place like this? But now it’s only the little things.’

Wanting that pipe and tobacco of his, he again took out the one and clenched its stem between his teeth for comfort.

‘Which brings us right back to Jennifer Hamilton and Caroline Lacy,’ he said, gesturing with the pipe.

Ah, damn! ‘All right, I
was
suspicious of Jen but really only because of her relationship with Caroline. It was out of character, I felt at first, and then opportunistic because Caroline’s family has a whopping lot of money. Jen had tried and tried to get Mary-Lynn to speak to Colonel Kessler about her flat in Paris. She needed to get there—everyone agreed that she did, and exceptions here are being made every now and then. Some do buy their way out or have it paid by someone else.
Bien sûr,
Jen could have sold some of the things in her flat if she had been able to get there. The prices are fabulously high now for Old Masters and antiques, especially if the latter were originally from the Third Reich.’