Bellringer (40 page)

Hermann loved horses and would normally have used the mare’s name but it wasn’t a time to quibble. ‘Just tell him we’re not going anywhere until I have what we need.’

Weber hadn’t come in force but could have and should have if he had been wanting to make a big show of things. Instead, there was the baksheesh-taking Oberfeldwebel whom Louis had encountered at the wood depot and one very recent, teenage recruit who had awkwardly slung his Mauser and, having taken the loud-hailer back, was now nervously manning the floodlight.

It was blinding, and a forearm had to be thrown up to shield the eyes.

‘WHERE IS SHE, KOHLER?’

Maybe fifteen metres still separated them. Shoulder-high mountains of furniture were on either side, Louis and the girl now well behind, Weber just inside the front entrance, the Oberfeldwebel to his right, but that Schmeisser and the stance spoke of the Russian Front and absolutely no desire to return to it.

Reinecke had been his name, and even from here the shrapnel scars below the helmet were clear enough. Louis and the girl would be caught in the crossfire—was that really what Weber wanted, having drawn his
Polizei Pistole
? Dead they could give no answers and Berlin-Central wouldn’t give a damn. Indeed, they’d be pleased, and Weber must know it too.

‘Kohler. . . ’

‘
Ach,
there’s no problem, Untersturmführer. The little imp is with my partner.’

‘That slut is wanted, Kohler. Wanted!’

To duck would not be wise. ‘
Liebe Zeit,
Untersturmführer, admit that we saved you a hell of a lot of trouble. Those woods are probably infested with partisans who would only have welcomed her and smeared egg on your face in Berlin.’

Kohler still hadn’t moved. Beyond him, behind the front desk, St-Cyr and the girl were hurriedly searching for something. ‘
Komm’
here, Kohler. Now!’

A grin would be best. ‘I’ve twisted an ankle. You’ll have to be patient.’

‘Your gun, then. Toss it out.’

Weber would shoot Louis first—was that it? ‘
Ach,
my hands are full. Look, there’s really no problem.’

‘Where did she get that ax you’re holding?’

‘This? It’s a leftover from that other war and branded right on its handle. Probably the ax was rusty as hell when she found it but it’s been beautifully cleaned and is as sharp as a razor.’

‘That monk. . . He threw it over the wire to her, or one of the blacks sold it to her.’

Weber couldn’t have discovered that his safe had been broken into, or maybe he had and that was why he’d brought so few with him. ‘We’ll have to ask the brother and those boys, Untersturmführer, but didn’t you tell me you knew everything that was going on around this camp? Who was meeting who and where and why, and who would be attending that séance on the night of the thirteenth and where they’d go afterwards before they climbed that staircase. A bell ringer. . . wasn’t that what Colonel Kessler said over the telephone to the Kommandant von Gross-Paris? You did listen in, didn’t you?’

‘IT WAS A SUICIDE, KOHLER. A SELF-MURDER!’

‘You knew Nora Arnarson and Mary-Lynn Allan would be attending that séance with Colonel Kessler and you knew you had to pin something substantial on him. What better than the suicide of the young woman he’d made pregnant?’

‘She jumped, Kohler. He drove her to it, and that is among the charges Berlin-Central will be presenting at his court-martial.’

Louis had best be ready. ‘Then the key to that padlock must have been stolen from that board on the wall behind your desk.’

‘STOLEN RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY VERY EYES?’

‘If not, Untersturmführer, then who the hell opened it other than you?’

Weber and the others were coming for her, thought Nora, panicking. Herr Kohler hadn’t been able to stall them any longer. There was now no hope unless she could make a run for it, but how? Boxed in, she and the chief inspector were behind walls and walls, having gone beyond the front desk through crowded office after office frantically searching until, at last and on the floor at their feet, the beam of his light had settled on two dusty registers.

The fake marbling of their heavy covers sickened her but not just because of the time needed to look through them. Someone had stolen the leather jackets such books would always have. Shoe repairs? she wondered. Boots, gloves. . . would it really matter why the Senegalese had stripped them off or that they would have even been under guard? They’d been doing all the heavy labour and would have carried the registers in.

‘There are strongboxes, too, Inspector.’

The registers had been on top of them, and both of the two boxes had been broken into.

‘
Ah, merde,
’ swore St-Cyr, dismayed by the thought. ‘The house detectives,’ and flinging up the lid of each, he found the empty holsters that should have held two of the Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance 1873s just like his own.

‘Say nothing of this, mademoiselle.
Nothing,
do you understand?’

Nora knew she had to nod but that his mind must be in a turmoil, for if the Senegalese had stolen them, and they must have, it could only have been for one reason.

The register he handed her was thick and heavy. There were pages and pages of names, dates, room numbers, signatures, amounts paid, and far too little time.

Shoulder-to-shoulder, they began.

‘Saturday 17 July, 1920,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Madame Élizabeth Chevreul, the Château de Mon Plaisir near Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy.’

Nora had the Vittel-Palace’s register, he the Grand’s, he having set the flashlight between the two books so that it shone toward each of them and both would have as much light as possible. If worse came to worst, she knew he would douse the light, push her to the floor, and draw his weapon.

Built in 1899, the Vittel-Palace had opened in 1900 for the season on 1 June. Page after page had to be turned just to find the right year. Nora knew she couldn’t do it fast enough. Often pages stuck together, whole clumps of them. The dampness. . . A gap. Page after page of nothing but empty spaces and blue lines. In 1915 the French Army had turned Vittel and its Parc Thermal into a huge hospital for their wounded. In July 1917, the first trains of American wounded had arrived, the French having decided to turn it over to them. By August 1918 there had been more than 1,300,000 doughboys in France.

Her heart sank. There was no Madame Chevreul, not in the Vittel-Palace’s register. Not that she could find in the weeks prior to 17 July, 1920, and right after it; nor was there in that of the Grand. She could have stayed in any other of the hotels in town.

Instead, there was a Mademoiselle Élizabeth Beacham who, having arrived on 1 July to “take the three-week cure,” and having paid fully for it, had stayed at the Grand in a suite of rooms on its top floor only to have left in a hurry on the morning of the eighteenth.

She had used her British passport.

‘Vernon, mademoiselle. A Laurence Vernon. Please hurry.’

Floodlight bathed the jumble of things that had been shoved and heaved aside nearest to a door that had somehow been hastily shut. Louis was in there with the girl. Louis. . .

Had it all come down to this? wondered Kohler. The years of working together, him out here with Weber’s pistol at his back and the Oberfeldwebel about to let off a burst from that Schmeisser?

Nora could hear them clearly, as could the chief inspector whose hand had gently but firmly come to rest on her left shoulder, his flashlight having been extinguished.

‘
Tell them to come out, Kohler!
’ shrieked Weber.

‘So that you can have them shot for resisting arrest?’ yelled Kohler angrily.

A silence intruded, Nora’s heart hammering, the chief inspector catching a breath.

‘
Ach,
Untersturmführer,’ said Herr Kohler, ‘since there are two keys to each of those padlocks on that board of yours and no one could have borrowed one without your knowledge, or so you have repeatedly claimed, who did you give one to the Chalet des Ânes to, or did you open it yourself like you must have the other one?’

‘I didn’t open anything!’

Abruptly Weber fired twice into the ceiling above, showering plaster chips and dust as the sound reverberated and the smell of cordite came.

‘
Hermann
. . . ’ blurted the chief inspector from behind the still-unopened door, his voice a torn whisper. ‘
Ah, mon Dieu, mon vieux,
why didn’t you let me know how serious things were?’

Nora felt him shudder at the thought of what must have happened, but then he dragged out his revolver and she heard its hammer click once on the half-cock and then on the full, sounds she had known since childhood.

‘You to the floor at my feet, mademoiselle. Me to deal with them, but please don’t try to run. Give life every moment you can.’

Kohler could see that the kid with the floodlight had pissed himself, but the Oberfeldwebel had anticipated that, with one good shove from him, the kid would have dropped the light, so there was nothing for it. ‘Was it Jennifer Hamilton you gave that key to?’ he demanded of Weber.

‘
Jennifer would never have killed Caroline, Inspector,
’ whispered Nora.

‘She was desperate, mademoiselle. Alone and terrified,’ said St-Cyr, ‘but we still don’t know that he actually gave her that key.’

‘Kohler. . . ’ began Herr Weber.

‘Jennifer told you everything, didn’t she, about Colonel Kessler and her roommate Mary-Lynn Allan?’ shouted Hermann. ‘Where the couple had been or were going, who they had been with or would be, and what he had given her.’

One couldn’t help but feel triumphant, felt Weber. ‘One teases, Kohler. One offers a little reward and then withdraws it. Fräulein Hamilton was so afraid I would renege on my promise to let her go home to that flat of hers in Paris, she begged me to use her. Begged, Kohler, and often went down on her knees.’

The son of a bitch! ‘You had to find out how close Colonel Kessler was to Mary-Lynn. He’d a history of such affairs, so you made damned certain you planted a
Spitzel
in her room.’

And the room not far from those attic stairs and elevator-gate—was this what was now going through Kohler’s mind? wondered Weber. ‘Kessler was an arrogant fool and insufferable.
Mein Gott,
he wouldn’t listen to a thing I said and thought he knew everything there was to run a place like this and that he could do as he pleased. Play golf when he wanted, shoot clay pigeons or go for a ride on one of his horses—horses that were needed on the Russian Front, Kohler—and afterwards, ah yes!—dine with that slut in town or stroll with her here in the Parc Thermal while talking to her as one would to a friend. One of the enemy?’

‘Admit it. He knew you had been going on and on about him behind his back to Berlin-Central so he recommended you for the Russian Front. You had to get rid of him. What better way than to blame him for the suicide of that girl and make sure it happened?’

Had Kohler been into the safe?

‘Afterwards you must have wanted to know what she had said through Cérès in that séance, Untersturmführer. Was it Léa who told you, or Marguerite Lefèvre?’

‘The crystal-ball gazer. Is it that you fancy her? Let me tell you, she thinks you must and is willing.’

‘Even though she may still be in love with Jennifer Hamilton?’

‘
Is she, Inspector?
’ asked Nora softly. ‘
If so, then Marguerite must have hated Caroline
.’

‘
Hermann, please don’t push your luck. Go easy,
’ whispered St-Cyr.

‘Love. . . is that what you would call it, Kohler?’ shouted Weber. ‘Oberfeldwebel Reinecke. . . ’

‘Wait!’ cried Herr Kohler. ‘
Ach,
think about it, Untersturmführer. Von Schaumburg, the Kommandant von Gross-Paris, is asked for our help by an old and much valued
Kamerad
from that other war, a former schoolmate as well, but a man you’re now intent on putting up before the firing squad. . . or is it the piano wire you want them to use? A man who would have left us a directive on what must have happened to Mary-Lynn Allan, you then realizing you’d best destroy it.
Mein Gott, Dummkopf,
isn’t von Schaumburg bound to demand a full enquiry should anything happen to Louis and me? It won’t just be you who’s grilled, SS or not. Reinecke, here, will come in for his full share, as will that boy.’

The light dipped, the light flew up. ‘I’m not a boy! I’m a soldier!’

‘Call them out now, Kohler. Now!’ yelled Weber.

Reinecke had heard enough and had swung the Schmeisser round and jammed it into his back. ‘OK, OK, Oberfeldwebel.’ Damned if that door Louis was behind hadn’t a calendar pinned to it: 15 September, 1939, and circled; an end to the season as usual but the start of yet another war.

‘Louis, he’s got my gun.’

Though muffled, that voice soon replied. ‘
Zut,
Hermann, I wish you wouldn’t keep losing it. A moment, please, Untersturmführer. We were looking for an essential piece of evidence when you interrupted us.’

Nora tried to focus on the pages as the flashlight was switched back on and his revolver slid away.

‘Hurry, mademoiselle,’ he whispered. ‘We need it.’

Down page after page her forefinger fled. There was nothing. It seemed all such a waste but then. . . then, ‘The Vittel-Palace, Room 3–15,’ she heard herself whispering. ‘Arrived 3 July, 1920, but couldn’t have left or paid his bill.’

But had lost another fortune at the tables, thought St-Cyr. There wasn’t any need for Nora to search for Madame Irène Vernon’s name. The woman wouldn’t have tried to renew old vows or have stayed in any of the hotels, couldn’t have afforded a room here in any case or wanted to.

She would have watched him from a distance, picked him out from among the crowd, seen who he was with and who was interested in him, and even heard his voice and laughter, having sat in that alcove whose window Nora had broken.

‘The Chalet des Ânes, Hermann,’ he called out. ‘Please inform the Untersturmführer that it is necessary we search it now.’

‘That can’t be where the hiding place is, Inspector,’ whispered Nora earnestly. ‘It’s far too open to view.’