Bellringer (38 page)

‘Hermann, I’ll find her.’

‘You’ll need my scarf.’

And a flashlight. ‘Try to pry some answers out of Herr Weber. Let’s meet in the foyer here.’

‘What if he’s opened that. . . ’

‘Safe of his? Better the gamble now, Hermann, than later.’

And wasn’t the office in the casino?

‘Find Nora, inspectors. Please find her,’ said Becky, unable now to look at either of them, simply twisting her hands in despair. ‘I don’t know what we would do without her. Madame de Vernon hasn’t come back either.’

Jennifer Hamilton had wrung her laundry out by hand and had climbed the stairs with Louis and him but had gone on alone to her room. ‘Maybe we’d best stay together,’ said Hermann.

It was almost 1800 hours Sunday, 21 February, 1943, and they had been here since the day before at 1522 hours. ‘Weber,
mon vieux,
and I out there.’

‘The curfew for us internees is at six in winter, inspectors,’ said Jill. ‘The entrance doors will be locked in a few minutes. Nora. . . ’

She left the thought dangling, couldn’t bring herself to say it: a night outdoors in weather like this.

The wind from the northwest was punishing, thought St-Cyr. Caught in the Valley of the Petit-Vair, with the Butte de Sion to the north, Vittel and its internment camp had the Haute-Saône and the Vosges Mountains to the south and the east, and not that far. Simply put, it was damned freezing and dangerous, for it blew in such unforgivable gusts, he was in fear of becoming lost.

‘
Merde alors,
mademoiselle, where the hell are you?’

She wasn’t in the stables, but he did find the leftovers from some sprigs of beech. Each stem had been clean cut with a knife that was very sharp. ‘An Opinel,’ he muttered. ‘The peasant’s constant companion. Wooden-handled and cheap.’

Rubbing the mare behind the ears and caressing her, he discovered that the forelock had been gently tied and patiently undid the knot.

Things weren’t good—indeed, Nora’s absence was terrible. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he sang out, wishing the wind wouldn’t pluck his voice away even inside the stable.

She wasn’t in the first of the fencing pavilions, nor in the second, though why she should have been in either at this time made no sense. Recent footprints hadn’t been encountered, but would they have all been quickly filled in?

Something must have happened to her.

In spite of the concern, he had to ask himself, Why does a nonbeliever bother to make a Ouija board? There had been one under her bed when Hermann and he had first had a look around that room.

When and why had she come to France and why hadn’t she got out before it had become too late for her?

She
had
been looking for the thief and had been following Caroline’s and Jennifer’s steps or retracing them, and had been asking questions: whom the two had spoken to and where they had gone.

Had she finally found the hiding place? he wondered. She did know the camp like no other, and had doubted Jennifer’s sincerity with Caroline, had felt her opportunistic—must have known of the previous affair between Marguerite Lefèvre and that girl, would have spoken to the former, yet had so far said nothing of it.

And as for the
Datura stramonium,
only Brother Étienne had been as knowledgeable of the hazard.

Had even lied to this
sûreté
, had chased up those stairs after Mary-Lynn Allan, who had been in tears because of what her friend had been yelling at her. Derision.

Was being used by Brother Étienne to relay news of the war. Had seen Caroline go into the Chalet des Ânes and had known Becky had followed the girl.

‘
Sacré nom de nom,
this investigation!’ he cursed and, turning his back to the wind, pulled up the collar of his overcoat, having returned to the stable.

‘Is she out on her trap line?’ he asked Angèle. ‘Has she fallen and become lost?’

Outside again, the intermittent visibility was terrible. ‘
Pour l’amour du ciel,
mademoiselle, how many metres of fence line have you forced this poor detective to walk in such weather? What am I going to find when I come across you?’

Had she become so desperate she had gone over the wire? Had she tried to leave a message for Brother Étienne, had that been why the mare’s forelock had been tied?

‘Even now I can’t ask myself if she’s been murdered but she always did wonder if she would be next and if she had been the intended victim on the night her friend had fallen.’

A fortune’s worth of cigarette butts was heaped in the ashtray, the Untersturmführer with hands folded in front of him.

‘That Arnarson girl, Kohler. What do you make of her?’

Clearly Weber was on to something. ‘A loner.’

‘Guilty of causing the death of the mistress of Colonel Kessler?’

Was the bastard about to back off on claiming it a suicide?

‘Well?’ he demanded, his voice rising.

‘We don’t know that yet, Untersturmführer.’

Still on his feet in front of the desk, this disloyal Kripo, this doubter and ‘partner’ of a Frenchman who would think to manhandle an SS, was now to learn the hard way. ‘Colonel Kessler’s court-martial is in three days. I was hoping. . . ’

‘His
what
?’

‘Yes, yes, Kohler. I assumed you knew. Since you didn’t, perhaps you had best look at this.’

A chair was indicated. Berlin-Central had responded to Weber’s latest query and had sent the Untersturmführer a telex, but would he now think to file it in that safe of his only to discover certain items were missing, or was he already aware of that?

Arnarson, Nora Ingibjorg, born 24 February, 1917, Clearwater Lake, Wisconsin, U.S.A. Entered Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, September 1935; graduated with honours in Geology, May 1939; postgraduate studies in Biology, Chemistry, and Extractive Metallurgy, September 1940 to May 1941. Entered Vichy France via Marseilles 13 September, 1941, on a six-month student visa.

In June 1940 the French Government had moved from Paris to Vichy, but then on 11 December, 1941, the Führer and the Italians had declared war on America. Until then Vichy had been courting the Americans, who had been sending much-needed quantities of food and other supplies to France through the British naval blockade. This had all been stopped, of course, but Nora must have arrived on one of those ships, though would since have had to have that visa extended only to have been finally rounded up in September of last year with other Americans.

‘Why, please, does a young American student—a girl, no less—travel to France at such a time?’ asked Weber.

‘There’s no mention of Paris. Did she stay in the unoccupied zone?’

The Free Zone, which the Reich had overrun on 11 November of last year, the American embassy, then in Vichy, having been immediately closed. ‘Berlin-Central are most interested. At their request, I have just sent Paris and Lyon a photo of her.’

Thoughts of promotion must be dancing in this pseudo-schoolmaster’s head. A forefinger tapped the side of that nose just as his Kommandant would have done.

‘My experience as a cell leader in the Party tells me she is not what she claims, Kohler. Apparently no one here has yet been told by her why she really came to France. Instead, she has said “to study Roman and more recent ruins.” A girl who had, on two occasions, requested of Colonel Kessler that a microscope be found so that the lectures she has been giving others might be better illustrated?’

‘Brother Étienne seems to get along with her well enough, as do her roommates, except for Madame de Vernon.’

And you have just dug yourself an even deeper hole,
mein Lieber
. ‘We’ll get to the Frenchwoman soon enough. That monk, Kohler. There can be no radios in this camp, but lies from the BBC Free French and Voice of America broadcasts are being whispered. Kharkov is another disastrous defeat for our glorious armies? The Führer likens it to Stalingrad, from which the Soviets are now six hundred kilometres to the west and unstoppable?’

On 3 February the Battle for Stalingrad had ended, on the sixteenth, that of Kharkov. Along the Eastern Front, which stretched for more than 2,400 kilometres, the Wehrmacht apparently was either in a holding pattern or in retreat. The supply lines were simply far too long, the winter the harshest in the past fifty years, the Luftwaffe busy defending Berlin and other cities and towns in the Reich and losing far too many aircraft.

‘There is no rout, Kohler, no defeat, and there will be no more of these whispers. If it is found that the monk was involved, as I suspect he was, he’ll be shot. As will the person to whom he gave such lies.’

Was the warning clear enough? wondered Weber. ‘Find the killer or killers. You have, I believe, until tomorrow before I call in experienced detectives from Berlin-Central.’

‘Frightened, are you, of what Louis and I might find?’

‘
Ach,
you’ve not even found the thief—a kleptomaniac who now possesses a deadly poison?’

‘We’re not certain of that.’

‘But still fail to register such a concern with this head of security, one who has his finger constantly on the pulse of this internment camp?’

‘We’re working on it.’

‘Do you still persist in claiming the thief must have stolen the key to that gate’s padlock from this board of mine?’

A hand was flung up and behind to point at it.

‘Stolen like Houdini, Kohler, while I was sitting right here interviewing her, one of my informants? That partner of yours asks the occupants of Rooms 3–38 and 3–54, I tell you, if there is a
Jude
among them? Is it that you also think I wouldn’t have been aware of such a thing?’

‘
Liebe Zeit,
Untersturmführer, it’s
Jüdin
. You’ve been listening to Madame de Vernon.’

‘
Jude oder Jüdin,
they’re all the same. Berlin-Central are going to hear of what she has to say. Shall I put in a call to them? It’ll take a few minutes. There may be a bombing raid in progress. One never knows now, does one, what with the Americans by day and the British by night.’

‘Lies and then the truth, Untersturmführer?’

‘
Ach,
maybe now you’ll see exactly where that so-called partner of yours stands, but please don’t bother to tell me you’ll talk to him. Colonel Jundt and I will discuss the matter over supper. I take it you’ll be dining with us, or has the thought upset your stomach?’

Between the gusts there were lulls, pauses through which, on the cold, clear air, came the distinctive, if distant, rhythm of an ax that did not falter.

Puzzled—alarmed—St-Cyr was torn by what to do, for if the sound entailed what he thought it must, the trapper was bent on only one thing. The distance from the casino and the main gate beyond it would have been taken into consideration by her—perhaps two-and-a-half kilometres. The windchill alone and relief in the evening meal would also have offered possibilities of preoccupying most of the guards of whom there were few enough because of the demands of the Russian Front, but still it was a terrible gamble.

Infuriatingly, another gust drowned out all sounds of the ax, but then, as the wind tailed off, the unmistakable falling of a tree came, and with it the sound of its hitting the fence and bouncing from the ground.

‘
Ah, merde,
’ he managed, ‘what has made you so desperate?’

Angèle was cooperative, but harnessing her to the cutter took needed time, finding Hermann all the more. ‘
Vite, vite, mon vieux
. An emergency!’

‘Inspector, what is going on?’

‘Stay put,
mon frère,
and that is an order!’

It didn’t take long to locate the tree. Its stump was beyond the rose arbours and the tennis courts, was beyond even the snow-covered vegetable plots of the British that had been raided and torn up by the Americans last autumn in retaliation, but wasn’t far enough from the perimeter wire that overlooked, through the night’s darkness, what had once been the racecourse but was now the ‘football’ field.

She had gauged the wind and had taken another desperate gamble by timing its lulls so as to have the immediate help of a final gust.

The once-healthy spruce, perhaps fifteen metres in its former height, had become her ladder to freedom.

‘We’ve got a problem, Louis.’

‘Which we will now have to settle.’

Fortunately, the lone guard on the gate, having heard the approaching sleigh bells, was already opening the barrier.

‘Domjulien is this way, Hermann. It’s the road Brother Étienne would have taken.’

‘The Hôtel de l’Ermitage, Louis. The source of those
verdammte
golf balls and that wallpaper.’

Out of the wind, behind the hotel, footprints in the snow led to the east and there seemed only the prospect of pitting themselves against a girl who, alone of all, would know how best to use the weather against them or anyone else.
Bien sûr,
she must have planned to wait here until Brother Étienne had come by to pick her up, but hadn’t.

‘
Courage, ma fille,
’ said Louis with evident admiration. ‘
Merde,
Hermann, the only thing that might stop her, and I emphasize the “might,” would be dogs.’

‘No one has mentioned them and we haven’t heard or seen any. Maybe they were needed in Russia.’

Beyond an open woodland of beech, etched against snow and sky, the forest thickened to spruce as it climbed the hills until becoming a forest, the Bois de la Voivre. She would have kept the ax, wouldn’t have even needed matches, would have made certain she had dressed warmly, but still, what had tipped her off, for she couldn’t have gone back to the room to pick up anything?

‘She would know exactly what she faced out there, Hermann,’ said Louis, indicating the forest. ‘Before you went to talk to him, Weber must have told someone to send her to him. Perhaps he waved that telex in front of one of his informants, or that one managed to read it.’

‘Or Nora was warned by someone who simply wanted to cover herself.’

‘Jennifer Hamilton?’

Who had left them outside Room 3–38 and had gone along the corridor alone to her own room. ‘Was Nora in there, having a look at Mary-Lynn’s things?’ asked Kohler.