Carnival (32 page)

A floor-to-ceiling curtain shielded the dispensary from the audience and this he quickly drew, knowing also, of course, that now those waiting would begin to imagine what must be going on behind it. There would be talk, and talk was not good these days.

‘
Evipan
,' he said, his voice kept deliberately low.

‘You're one of the detectives Colonel Rasche requested. When I heard that you were actually in Kolmar, I …'

He touched her lips. Fondly he let that hand stray to her left cheek, and she heard him saying, ‘I've wanted to see you ever since that bastard Lutze came and took me away.'

Under arrest and dragged from bed, but a lie, of course, for in all those years since there had never once been a letter, not even a postcard. He had been a skirt-chaser—she had seen that right away. A breaker of hearts. Even then, she had had the sense not to try to fool herself when he'd come to her 21 February 1915, a Sunday, at 10.02 in the morning.
Papa
had been at church, she at her studies, the shop closed as Hermann had banged on the door and then had collapsed into her arms. Had God sent him to her? she had foolishly wondered.
Liebe Zeit
, he had been handsome, still was, but now …

‘What can I do for you this time?'

He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, laid it on the counter and unfolded it to reveal a 10cc ampoule, some two and a half centimetres long from base to tip.

‘Just tell me if taken orally in alcohol or straight up, would one or two be enough.'

‘To cause death—with no other drug in the system? But … but I thought Renée … the Fräulein Ekkehard had hanged herself.'

‘You knew her?'

‘Of course. Most come to the shop.' Had it been murder after all as some were whispering? Why else would he have come?

Holding the ampoule under a light, she ran a thumb over its label and fine print. ‘One gram of Evipan dissolved in ten cubic centimetres of distilled water is a lot to down, even if needed, Hermann. Usually for intravenous injections before surgery, much less is used. From one-quarter to three-quarters of a cc of such a solution—maybe even as much as one and a half ccs, sometimes, but this …' She closed her fingers about it. ‘If taken orally, it would, I think, not cause death but certainly sleep would come and it would be profoundly comatose. As to someone's orally taking two of these, I don't know what would happen. A lot depends on the age of the person, their state of health. Many factors.'

‘And intravenously?'

‘Surely no one with any sort of training would think to do such a thing unless the patient was …'

‘Death?'

‘Even then with the one gram, I doubt it, but … but with Evipan the rapidity of injection is, perhaps, the determinant.'

‘The more rapid the injection, the harder and faster the hit.'

How could the young man she had known, if but briefly, speak of such things in such a way? Had all innocence been lost?

As they went toward the front of the shop, they passed the litre bottles of Vittel and Hermann, he could not help but notice them and had to ask and harshly too, ‘How did you come by those?'

A mineral water from the springs at Vittel that was taken orally for the relief of gout, hepatic colic and other ailments of the liver, arthritis too. A still water with tiny amounts of bicarbonates and sulphates. ‘Victoria Bödicker always brings me some when she visits her mother at the end of each month. The bottles are only for show, of course, since everyone brings their own containers. I have four of the milk cans from a farm. She fills them for me.'

‘Get rid of it. Deny ever having it.'

‘And my customers? What of those who know I stock it for them? Victoria can't have done anything. How could she?'

‘Don't ask. You're not involved. You know nothing of what she was up to. Deny it.'

There was frost on the windows and as they hurried by outside, people seldom bothered to glance in. It was always best these days to appear busy and bent on one's destination.

At the kerb, though, a Wehrmacht Citroën sat idling. ‘Who is that?' she asked.

Kohler felt her take him by the hand, felt the nervousness in her. ‘My partner.'

‘I meant the woman in the back.'

‘Lucie, forget I was even here. Remember always that for those of us in my line of work, friends are the hardest thing to come by. You're one of them and I won't rest until I've done all I can.'

Then Hermann was gone from her again, just like that, she standing out on the pavement. Gone this time, right out of her life? wondered Lucie, but knew she would simply have to wait and see.

One thing was certain. Renée Ekkehard had come back from a skiing party early in December wanting to ask what few unmarried girls like to ask but need to know. And as for Hermann, were he and his ‘partner' on their way to Natzweiler-Struthof, and if so, why please, were they taking Victoria Bödicker with them?

Not until Goxwiller, just to the south of Obernai and in the shadow of Mont Sainte-Odile, did Herr Kohler, having floored the car nearly all the way, pull off the road. They were perhaps some forty kilometres to the north of Kolmar, felt Victoria, and there was now no longer any doubt in her mind as to where they were taking her.

St-Cyr had dozed off; Herr Kohler had said so little, it had been and still was all too evident that he dreaded their destination, but in spite of this he had been kind. He
had
asked if she was warm enough and, though tobacco was obviously in extremely short supply, had found, lit and passed back to her his only cigarette.

Now he broke out the lunch Yvonne Lutze had hastily thrown together for them. A vacuum flask of lentil soup; sandwiches for more than two, and of dried, smoked sausage, mustard and Munster wrapped, of course, in newspaper. Had Yvonne done it to remind her of what Renée had taken from the Lutze kitchen? If so, she silently asked, how is it that I could possibly have known of its contents?

St-Cyr had found her in Renée's room, the ampoules in hand. He had suspected she might well try to take her own life and had deliberately left them with her, only to then suddenly intervene. ‘You will give up all your secrets,' he had gently said as he had taken those from her. ‘Willingly you will betray your friends—please don't think it cowardly of yourself, or hateful of me to state it. One holds out for as long as possible to give others a chance to learn of the arrest and to then escape—that's an unwritten rule of the Résistance, but the Gestapo's interrogators have their ways and like as not, they'll be Alsatian, as in France they are invariably
gestapistes français
. It helps to know with whom one is dealing,
n'est-ce pas
, and what better way than to question a suspect by using a countryman or woman?'

And now? she asked. Now both he and Herr Kohler had turned to look at her as she cradled the vacuum flask's cap of soup for warmth and let its aroma rise.

‘Louis, she isn't going to cooperate.'

‘Mademoiselle, we're not torturers, nor would we turn you over to such people, but by taking you into protective custody—and, please, it was necessary, as I'm sure you understand—we endanger not only ourselves. There are others at home, in Paris.'

‘I can't help you. I know nothing.'

‘No one else need hear,' offered Herr Kohler. The engine had been switched off, the silence was intrusive. Freezing, the wind found every little crack, but from the snow-covered vineyards, the perfume of burning vine cuttings came. Iron barrows, with little fires in them, were being pushed between the rows by men whose
bleus de travail
stood out sharply. Beyond them, and perhaps no more than three kilometres away, the forested hills of the Vosges quickly climbed. Mont Sainte-Odile was some six kilometres almost due west; the convent clearly seen atop its rampart cliff. Beyond it, and a little to the south, was Neuntelstein, some eleven kilometres from them and at an elevation of 971 metres. Superb views of the Champ du Feu, Mont Sainte-Odile and the Haut-Koenigsbourg could be had from there, also on a clear day from the Champ du Feu, at 110 metres, the Black Forest. Blaise Oberkircher and she had stood there many times. Blaise …

Beyond Neuntelstein, a further six or so kilometres—a total of seventeen as the crow flies from here—were the quarries, at an elevation of about 800 to 1,000 metres. Bare and windswept, utterly cold and absolutely cruel.

‘She isn't going to answer, Louis.'

The sound of church bells came. A wedding? she asked herself. A christening? It wasn't Sunday. Not yet. It was Wednesday, 10 February 1943, and she would never have children.

‘Renée was despondent, Inspectors. Eugène … I still can't believe he took his own life.'

‘Your notebook,' muttered St-Cyr, and turning from her, set his sandwich amid the dust and clutter next to the front windscreen that was rapidly fogging. ‘It's a puzzle,' he said, dragging the notebook out. ‘Frau Lutze …'

‘I realized Yvonne had taken it.'

‘Yet you didn't demand its return?'

‘Werner Lutze must have known exactly where it was being kept. As our air-raid warden, he had had opportunity enough to have found it, and that could only mean he had felt his colonel had best see it and that Colonel Rasche had probably wanted a look at my background. The comments of the school inspectors and each of my directors.'

‘So you let Frau Lutze steal it?'

‘Yes.'

‘It was that or let the local Gestapo get their hands on it,' said Herr Kohler.

The best of a bad bargain, was this what he thought? wondered Victoria.

‘Frau Oberkircher's death has fingered you, mademoiselle,' said St-Cyr. ‘Those two—Deiss and Paulus—won't let it lie. They can't. You ran from them and you now know exactly what they did. They'll have to put it out that you were involved in something.'

‘Book selling, that is all.'

They'd get nowhere with her, Kohler told himself. Too proud, too loyal, too …

‘Patriotic,' said Louis, having realized his partner's trend of thought.

‘Stubborn,' said Kohler. ‘Brave, of course, Louis, and oh for sure, there's always a time for that but this isn't one of them.'

‘Mademoiselle, we have reason to believe that Renée Ekkehard discovered that the two who needed guidance and were to have been brought to the carnival by their courier hadn't arrived.'

‘Others then came looking,' said Herr Kohler. ‘First there was Alain Schrijen and then Werner Lutze.'

‘To avoid one or the other or both she skied into the woods and stayed out all night.'

‘Headed east, Louis, to Neuf-Brisach, either skiing, walking or catching one of the local trains, buses or a lift, and then went on to Alt-Breisach which is just across the Rhine.'

‘And from there, Hermann, went to the northeast and into the Kaiserstuhl, that little range of volcanic hills whose lower slopes are covered with vineyards, the woods above.'

‘And?'

‘To the Totenkopf, and a gamekeeper's hut, after which she then returned, but having found out what?

‘Answers … we are always needing answers, mademoiselle,' continued St-Cyr. ‘It was perfect, wasn't it? Messages hidden in the personals columns of the daily newspapers, a resident repairer of watches as a go-between along with his gamekeeper brother, the carnival as a way-stop on the route through to France and one that Colonel Rasche had repeatedly and unwittingly sanctioned.'

‘Even to allowing you to make trips to Vittel to visit your mother,' said Kohler, ‘thereby allowing contact with the
Francs-Tireurs
et Partisans
on that side of the frontier and in the Vosges but what none of you realized was that while the three of you were busy, so were the men you had convinced the colonel to let help you.'

‘They had a plan of their own, mademoiselle.'

The chief inspector reached out to take the vacuum flask's cap from her. ‘But Eugène Thomas wouldn't go along with what they wanted him to do—and I think this must have been how it was, Hermann, for of all of them he was the closest to Sophie Schrijen.'

‘So they sentenced him to death, mademoiselle, and
voilà
, die he did.'

‘Murdered? Eugène? But … but why? He …'

They left her then to think it over. They knew they had already told her far more than they should. Taking the rest of the soup and sandwiches, they slammed the doors on her, slammed her in.

‘She didn't know those boys were planning to escape, Louis.'

‘Nor did Sophie Schrijen.'

Lunch in hand, the wind tugging at its newspaper wrapping, they moved away from the car so as not to let her overhear, thought Victoria. Backs to the wind, and to her, they began to talk, St-Cyr gesturing with a sandwich at which he frowned perhaps, for one did not spoil Munster with mustard, and both Renée and Yvonne had done that.

‘All things are of interest, Hermann. Frau Lutze is far too good a cook to have done such a thing unless intentionally.'

‘And that can only mean one thing, can't it?'

‘She feels that the one behind us here could well offer answers but will refuse.'

‘Rasche wants us to go for the son. He and Löwe Schrijen have been at each other's throats over this little venture of Sophie's, and all along we've been dumb enough to have stepped between them.'

‘But neither will now want the men of that combine to be sent to Natzweiler-Struthof for reinforced interrogation.'

‘Because each is afraid of what will come out of that should Kramer and the rest of the SS hear of it,' sighed Kohler. ‘Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche will do his damnedest to prise what he can from them—he'll have to. Karl Rudel will insist on it, but Schrijen won't let Dorsche use the machinery of the Works to terrify those poor bastards, not while they're being held in
Straf
, and the colonel knows it. Both he and Schrijen will want us to question those boys alone, if anyone does.'