‘Had arranged for whom, exactly, to do the job, eh? Frau Hillebrand?’
‘I didn’t!’ cried Käthe. I couldn’t! I … I went there, yes, to the house in the afternoon but … but didn’t even ring the front bell!’
‘We’ll see then, won’t we, but it’s good of you to have let us know you were there on the day he died. Now which of you knows anything about Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose?’
‘The leaves, the stems and roots are poisonous,’ said Father Michel. ‘But why, please, do you wish me to say this?’
They listened, Juliette swallowing hard but saying nothing. ‘Violent inflammation of the skin where the plant has touched it. Vomiting and purging that can’t be stopped — the bowels ache to pass waste and constrict but can’t void a thing because you’re totally empty. Severe abdominal cramps and numbness — one of its ingredients, helleborin, is a narcotic; another, helleborein, is a cardiac poison. There is copious sweating — you constantly drool, but can’t figure out what the hell is happening to you. Your heartbeat is very rapid but so faint you can hardly feel it. Consciousness remains until about ten minutes before death, but you drift into and out of it until, at last, the nerve centres that control the heart finally become paralysed. Your daughter, madame, intends to kill herself.’
The driver’s side door was yanked open. Breathlessly Louis crammed himself behind the steering wheel and jammed the key into the ignition. The tyres screeched. He made a sharp U-turn on the boulevard Maillot and they shot eastwards towards Charonne. There were a few bicycles and bicycle-taxis, a gazogene lorry … Tiny blue-blinkered red brake lights, a pedestrian crossing, a traffic cop …
The horn was leaned on and they were through.
‘The grandmother paid up, Hermann. Étienne de Bonnevies has come home and Danielle will try to reach him before we do or the SS take her. There’s also a gun, the service revolver belonging to Captain Henri-Alphonse Vallée, madame. A Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance.’
A gun … Ah Scheisse! ‘The black-powder cartridges, Louis?’
They might be damp because of their age. ‘Perhaps, since Vallése is definitely of the old school, but if not the 1873, Hermann, then the 1892 and the 8mm smokeless. Madame, where is it hidden?’
‘I … I don’t know. How could I? Alexandre …’
‘Come, come, madame, we’ve no time to lose. Please understand that if the SS or anyone else should arrest your daughter and find that on her, there will be nothing my partner and I can do to save her.’
9
At 8:10 they gathered in the kitchen of the beekeeper’s house. The gun was gone; the girl was gone. Louis held the oilcloth the Lebel had been wrapped in while hidden under the floorboards of the honey-house.
A broken-open packet of 11mm cartridges revealed that a handful had been hastily pocketed. The suit, stockings, sweater, blouse and shoes the girl had worn to the meeting had lain in a crumpled heap on the floor of her bedroom. She had dressed warmly in her khaki trousers, and no doubt a flannel shirt, two sweaters, woollen knee-socks and hiking boots, and had taken her rucksack, with what food, matches, blankets and money she could grab.
The Terrot bicycle was also absent.
‘An hour’s start, at most, Hermann, but it’s a good fifty kilometres to Soisy-sur-Seine. The road follows the river for some distance to Villeneuve-Saint Georges, then moves inland and doesn’t return to it until south of Draveil. There are short cuts she will know of and use. The Forêt de Sénart also presents a problem, since it will offer easy retreat should she and her half-brother feel it necessary.’
An hour in this weather … Ten kilometres, fifteen at the most since she was used to winter cycling, thought Kohler. ‘But the snow … Louis, she might have to ditch the bike. If so, we’ll never find her.’
‘Inspectors, sometimes I would find the two of them at a hunters’ hide near the Carrefour du Chêne-Prieur. My husband always thought the worst; I knew the truth but could not bring myself to tell him for fear of his hurting the boy.’
The Crossroads of the Prior’s Oak … ‘Your son must havecome into the city, and finding that bottle, added the poison, madame,’ said Kohler. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but that’s how it appears.’
‘And Danielle, who loves him dearly and understands him totally, has finally realized this and is trying to save him — is this what you mean?’
‘You know it is.’
‘Sacré nom de nom, why couldn’t Madame de Trouvelot have told me she had secured his release? I could have spoken to him, calmed him. He’d have listened to me.’
‘Madame, would your daughter have written to your son about how terrible things were for you at home?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Yes, and often, I think.’
‘And did you tell Herr Schlacht of the country house?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Louis, that SS major will have let our Bonze know the kid’s on the loose.’
‘And that waiter at Maxim’s, Hermann, would have contacted him as soon as Madame de Trouvelot had paid the first fifty thousand.’
‘Schlacht knows the boy has come home, then,’ sighed Kohler, ‘and exactly where the girl will run.’
‘But do the SS?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Has he told them of the house?’
‘Drive, damn it! Drive! We’ve still got to get Oona.’
‘Calm down. Have courage, Hermann. Courage!’
‘Louis … Louis, why the hell would Schlacht have to get to Danielle before we do?’
It was a good question to which Frau Hillebrand offered no answer, and neither did Honoré de Saussine. Only Father Michel had anything to say as they raced out of the city. ‘I was afraid of this tragedy. When we first spoke, Chief Inspector, I feared the boy had come home and that Juliette had not yet learned of it, but that Danielle not only knew her half-brother had returned but that her father would have him arrested. I knew I couldn’t let it happen and begged God to intervene.’
‘And did God listen, Father, or merely guide your hand?’ demanded Louis, negotiating a difficult bend in the road.
‘God doesn’t choose to notify the messengers of His will, Inspector. Men like myself are simply here to pick up the pieces and salvage what we can.’
‘As you did with Héloïse Debré and with the rapists of Angèle-Marie?’ asked Louis sharply.
‘Héloïse was being punished and so were the others. My position has always been not to interfere but to counsel patience, hear confessions, and beg all to make their peace with God and those they have wronged.’
‘That custodian wants you dead.’
‘He’s a weak man, and I have known for years of his disregard for me.’
‘Then don’t go into the catacombs, Father, or he’ll do what he tried to do to me!’
Just south of Saint-Mandé, they cut through the Bois de Vincennes and then crossed the Marne before returning to the Seine. There was so little traffic, the road was like a blind, dark tunnel across which the falling snow tried only to obscure everything. Left to themselves, the three in the back seat had clammed up. Frau Hillebrand went to offer Hermann a cigarette from her case only to find it empty. ‘My purse, Herr Kohler,’ she said, trying to reach for it. ‘It’s on the floor at your feet.’
‘Let me,’ interjected St-Cyr. ‘I have to get out anyway to remove the black-out tape from the headlamps. A moment, please.’
The purse was heavy, and as he handed it to the woman, she held her breath, and he had to wonder if she’d a gun of her own.
To the south of Choisy-le-Roi there were railway freight yards. Here they were stopped at a control and their papers demanded, and it was all Herr Kohler could do to keep them from having to get out of the car, thought Käthe. But then they were on their way again. Forty … fifty kilometres an hour, often less. St-Cyr knew the roads and was an excellent driver. They were so different, these two, and yet … and yet that same intuitiveness existed between them. When Kohler, impatient at their progress, drummed his fingers on the dashboard, St-Cyr was ready and calmly said, ‘Oona will be all right, mon vieux. Schlacht won’t touch her, not after Oberg has said she’s to go to Spain.’