Flykiller (70 page)

‘
Questions? Difficultés
? Sister, am I to be subjected to an interrogation?’

Ah, merde,
need she be so excitable?

The sister tried. ‘
Patience, ma chère Madame. Patience
. Please just listen to the Chief Inspector. He and his partner, Herr Kohler, must. . . ’

‘A German? A member of the Gestapo?’

‘A detective, madame. He and the Chief Inspector need all the help we can give them.’

‘He has questioned you already, has he?’

‘
Oui,
a little.’

‘And
what,
please, have you told him? That I controlled Caroline’s life with an iron fist? That she was rebelling and was terrified of me? Ah, I can see that this is what you have done. Crucified me while in your care. Well, just you wait!’

‘
Ah, bon,
madame,’ interjected St-Cyr. ‘It’s essential I establish a few simple details.’

The look was swift. ‘Simple? An innocent in my care is violently murdered? A dear, sweet life taken and you treat the matter as simple when I am left alone?
Alone,
I tell you!’

‘Chief Inspector, please be gentle. Gentle, you understand?’ Sister Jane implored.

‘Certainly, Sister. Certainly. Madame, let’s go back a week ago, to the night Mary-Lynn Allan fell.’

‘Of her own accord, is that not correct?’

‘Perhaps. It’s still under consideration.’

‘Is it? That girl and others in her room, and in ours,
encouraged
my Caroline and that. . . that Jennifer Hamilton of Room 3–54, the same as that first one’s room. Holding hands in the corridors and on the staircases? Flirting? Kissing when they thought others were not watching?’

Sister Jane gestured in despair and said, ‘Madame, you don’t know that.’

‘I do, I tell you! Brushing up against each other in the crowd for bread and soup. Making eyes? Writing notes? Wanting to attend one of that. . . that Chevreul woman’s séances? Wanting to talk to the dead? What dead, Inspector?’

‘You tell me.’

‘
Ah, Sainte Mère, Sainte Mère,
why must I be put to the fire like Jeanne d’Arc? Those others in that room of ours, that Jill Faber. They
thought
Caroline’s disobedience a cause for mirth and whispered asides, but wait until I tell you about them, then we will see who is laughing.

‘That Faber girl and the Senegalese, Inspector, that Marni Huntington and the guards; Becky Torrence, too, I tell you. It wouldn’t surprise me if they hadn’t arranged a little liaison for my Caroline just to teach the girl what sex with a man was really like to them and that she had absolutely no reason to be afraid of it, that everything I had told her was wrong, Inspector.
Everything!
’

Was this one about to have a heart attack? ‘Madame, let us hold the lightning and the thunder while we let the rain wash away the clouds.’

‘Intransigent. Capable of deceit. . . ’

‘Yes, yes, but please don’t start the typhoon up again. Mademoiselle Caroline had rebelled. She had finally, after many attempts, arranged to attend last night’s séance with Madame Chevreul.’

‘Only to have my Caroline not present.
Not present,
Inspector, because of her murder!’

‘Yes, yes, but whom did she wish to contact and what was so important?’

Merde,
had she let her tongue run away with her? ‘I don’t know, and now never will.
Never,
I tell you.’

But Jennifer Hamilton might—this was written clearly in Madame’s moistening eyes and she now realized that this
sûreté
had seen it.

‘De Vernon, madame? You were married to an American.’

It couldn’t be avoided. ‘A man who insisted I have an American passport so that he could take me to visit the mother who had all but disowned him. Now look what that passport has done: made me, who has always been a French citizen, a prisoner in my own country.’

‘But what city or town was he from?’

The head was tossed as if struck, suspicion instantly registering. ‘Why should that have any significance?’

‘Please just answer.’

‘Or you will have me arrested? A woman bereaved.
Une sainte
who did everything she could for that girl with little thanks, I tell you.’

‘Now, now, madame, please calm yourself,’ urged Sister Jane. ‘Your heart. You know what the doctors have said. You know it will only do harm if you get upset again.’

‘You said it, Sister. I did not!’

They waited as they should, Sister Jane with eyes downcast, the chief inspector silent. ‘Barre, Vermont. His family had made a fortune in granite and tombstones but he. . . well, he was simply not cut out for it. He was wounded at Cierges-sous-Montfaucon on 29 September, 1918, and died in 1920 leaving me without a sou. Now I have only the pension, but it never comes.’

And so much for his first name, the years between 1910 and 1918, and for remaining married to him. ‘Were his wounds treated here in Vittel?’

Did this
sûreté
actually
think
he was on to something? ‘Surely, Inspector, you shouldn’t need to ask, or is it that you spent the years of that war in Paris?’

He didn’t answer, but felt for his pipe and tobacco pouch, and seeing that the latter was indeed empty, put it away but held the pipe for comfort.

‘On the night of Saturday to Sunday, the thirteenth and fourteenth, madame, were you awakened by the screams and tears of the others? Mademoiselle Lacy must have been terribly upset.’

Ah, bon,
how perfect of him. ‘Awakened, yes. One of the others was with her.’

‘Becky Torrence, the blonde?’

‘
Oui
. They spoke rapidly. The Torrence girl said that Caroline must be mistaken, that no one would have pushed Mademoiselle Allan, but Caroline, she. . . she wouldn’t listen and said she had seen someone push the girl. A shadow, she said, and that she herself had been grabbed by the wrist and had then been pulled back from the brink by Mademoiselle Torrence.’

This he readily swallowed as a
sûreté
should. ‘Inspector, that girl of mine couldn’t have seen a thing. The room light had been on. Caroline had been unable to find her cigarettes in the dark. The corridor light was off, then on, then off mostly and had been like that for days. When stepping from a lighted room into darkness it would take her a good ten minutes for the eyes to have adjusted enough for her to have seen anything. We were planning to grow more alfalfa shoots to give her the necessary Vitamin A.’

‘And what about you? Where were you, exactly?’

And said like a compiler of notes but one who had written nothing down. ‘I had been asleep, had I not? Jill Faber, the one who is friendly with the Senegalese, finally found the cigarettes for her where I had left them out on that. . . that thing they call a table. Caroline went into the corridor, the Torrence girl turning off the light and closing the door after following her out. Jill. . . that Jill girl is also friendly with the guards, Inspector. She and the others put things together and she takes them to trade, though that is forbidden. She also places barter notices on the board in the empty dining room so that all in the lineups will see them. Chocolate for a needed box of matches, chewing gum. . . ’

‘Spearmint?’

‘
Oui
. They receive that in their parcels, but I don’t care for it. Mostly when not trying to obtain paper from the guards for the toilets, extra firewood, or more and better vegetables—an onion perhaps—she tries to pry news from them, but the guards are very hesitant with that for it, too, is
verboten
.’

‘She speaks German?’

Why should he be so anxious? ‘A little. I really don’t know how much.’

‘Are extra favours then offered?’

How polite of him to shield the sister’s ears. ‘By some perhaps.’

‘But not by Jill Faber?’

One must be firm with this one. ‘That I didn’t say, Inspector. That one did, however, speak of the Senegalese in terms that would burn the ears of a saint. She doesn’t wonder what sexual intercourse with such would be like. She describes it in vivid detail for the others. Caroline and I, from behind our screen, would often hear them whispering and tittering at night, especially after someone down the corridor had cried out in ecstasy or begged for more. The things I have been forced to overhear and accidentally witness. . . ’

‘Yes, yes, so when Caroline took up with Jennifer Hamilton of Room 3–54 you were upset.’

‘Wouldn’t you have been had you the responsibility of keeping that child safe and pure? Wicked is what I think of such behaviour. Wicked, I tell you.’

‘But you were asleep. The light was off.’

‘At first, yes. Earlier the Faber girl had been flashing around in the nude with her towel, having just come from the bath. Mocking me. Warming her
cul
at the stove and then her
nénés
and her
chatte
. Telling the others that she was going to ask that. . . that Parker woman to request the Kommandant to have the swimming pool filled this coming summer. “Oh
là, là,
” she said, snapping the towel away. “No bathing suits, eh?” Their French is terrible, Inspector. Every day and night the ears are assaulted.’

‘When they weren’t speaking English?’

‘
Oui
. I understand it too, just as well as they.’

‘And they know this?’

Ah, bon,
she had struck a nerve. ‘They are still uncertain. Me, I never speak it to them, nor did Caroline. We were in France, therefore we spoke a civilized language. Jill was always leaving her laundry under that cot of hers for days, Inspector. Days. The smell.

‘Farting. . . Enjoying the sound of it, knowing she would cause me to cringe and shout at her. Never enough food. Always taking more than allowed. Borrowing things without asking. I tell you, I have lived in hell. No privacy. Always someone watching. No peace, no quiet, no pause in the corridor traffic or exploration of the room, the overt, shameful promiscuity of girls with girls. . . ’

‘Yes, yes, the laundry. Mademoiselle Caroline’s brassiere. Ah, I have it here.’

Merde!
‘She. . . she had left it in Room 3–54, Inspector. I. . . I made her wash it.’

‘Yes, but who returned it and when?’

‘On Friday early. The. . . the Hamilton girl. Jennifer.’

‘And how long had it been missing? Come, come, madame, it’s necessary that you answer.’

It would have to be said. ‘Since. . . since a week ago last night.’

‘
Ah, bon,
so on the evening of Mary-Lynn Allan’s death, Caroline Lacy was not in Room 3–38 but with Jennifer Hamilton in Room 3–54—is this what you are saying?’

Some things must choose their time and place. ‘
Oui
.’

‘Until when, exactly?’

‘That I don’t know. I had gone to bed. At my age. . . ’

‘Madame, she had disobeyed you?’

‘And had slammed the door of that room in my face, Inspector. My face!’

‘You weren’t asleep, were you?’

‘I was, and that is the truth. I was emotionally exhausted.’

‘Her heart, Inspector,’ managed Sister Jane.

‘Later I did hear Caroline struggling for breath but she had done it so often, I. . . All right, I let her search for the cigarettes and matches that I had left out for her.’

‘But not in their usual place?’

‘The room light was finally turned on.’

The screen would have been drawn, but in her panic, the girl might not have realized Madame’s bed could well have been empty, and neither would any of the others. ‘The datura, madame. The others have said that you insisted the girl’s asthma was but a state of mind yet you demanded that Brother Étienne give you not only the dried leaves and stems, which are usually quite sufficient, but far more of the seeds than he felt prudent.’

The little box was found in a pocket and placed on the bed before her.

She would snap her fingers, thought Irène. She would demand what was necessary as was her right. ‘The warrant, Inspector. Even here we are still under French law, and to have searched that suitcase of mine or that of Caroline, you must first consult the magistrate who reviews the evidence and only then decides if such a document is necessary.’

‘Hermann gave me the OK.’

‘The Gestapo?’

‘That is correct. Now, please, the datura.’

‘Perhaps it is that you had best ask the brother, since not only was he treating my Caroline but Jennifer Hamilton, though not for the same condition.’

Were the seeds to have then taken care of that one? he wondered. Not only had there been Caroline’s outright disobedience, there must have been hatred and jealousy.

‘And on the afternoon of Caroline’s death, madame?’

‘The touch of a cold. One has to be careful at my age. The girl wished to take the air and I. . . I foolishly agreed to let her and must blame myself.’

‘Yes, but had she arranged to meet someone?’

‘That Jennifer Hamilton, is this what you have discovered, that my Caroline had been going to meet her to end their affair?’

‘Why would she have done that?’

‘Because on the night the other one died, she and that. . . that Hamilton girl had been arguing. My Caroline had been very upset and in tears.’

‘Yet she had slammed the door in your face?’

‘That is correct.’

‘Only to then come back to Room 3–38 in tears before the mademoiselle Mary-Lynn Allan fell?’

‘
Oui
.’

‘Jennifer and Caroline having had much more than a simple lover’s tiff?’

‘
Oui
. Both were. . . were in tears. I’m sure of it. Why else would she have killed my Caroline?’

‘And before your ward left the room on Friday?’

‘I asked, as was my duty. She said, “It’s not what you think,” and I. . . why, I left it at that.’

‘But must have known her coat pockets were full of things to trade.’

‘I needed aspirins. None had come in our latest parcels. My headaches. . . The neuralgia, the migraines. . . Caroline said she would see what she could do. A breath of her former kindness and love for me. I was encouraged. It is a memory that will stay with me.’

Yet Jill Faber was the room’s trader. ‘One of the Senegalese?’