Hermann indicated silence. Both began to search, and when they found the microphone placed behind a framed print of a Vittel demoiselle taking the waters circa 1894, they left it exactly where it was.
‘In the morning, Louis, I’d best fill Untersturmführer Weber in on things. We’re going to need all the help he can give us.’
‘But for now let’s get some sleep. Mon Dieu, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.’
Pillows were thumped, a mattress sighed. A cork was pulled, glasses were clinked, a match struck, and an appreciative sigh given as Louis went over to the blackout drapes and, indicating that this partner of his should switch off the light, opened them and silently felt about until he had what he wanted.
Together, bundled against the night and with bottle, glasses, and cigarettes in hand, they slipped out onto the porch to softly close the doors behind them.
‘There are fifteen of these villas, Hermann. All but a few were built in 1930 along the same chalet lines, though this one is larger and earlier, 1899 if I remember it clearly. Terraces, sunrooms, and porches forced the curiste, during his twenty-one-day course of treatment to take the infrequent sun.’
‘When not busy chasing his mistress or downing that damned water with her?’
Cigarettes were enjoyed, the glasses given more than a splash while above them the stars were out, and were it not for the degrees of frost, the night would have been fine.
‘You or me, Louis?’
‘Me, I think.’
‘Agreed.’
‘An elevator gate that must have been closed in September 1939 and padlocked late in ’42 when the Americans were moved in, is unlocked and left open and yet only Caroline Lacy claims it wasn’t an accident? She insists that she saw what happened yet suffers from night blindness and a shortage of breath that has made her panic.’
‘And claims that she was to have been the intended victim.’
‘Only to be silenced a week later, Hermann. Surely all others in the Vittel-Palace must have known it was no accident?’
‘Were they afraid to say it was murder, Louis? Mrs. Parker did come up to calm them. Even she stated it was an accident.’
‘But did they agree to say that, and if so, was it out of fear of making life far more difficult for themselves?’
‘Since Weber would have turned the place upside down and found someone to accuse, even if the wrong person.’
‘Ah, bon, it’s possible they all felt it was murder, Hermann, yet were afraid to state this, except for Caroline who might just have been obstinate.’
‘But who then made an even bigger nuisance of herself only to become a corpse that was then tidied.’
‘Which brings us to Madame Chevreul, who wishes us to concentrate our efforts on Jennifer Hamilton, roommate of Mary-Lynn Allan and close friend of Caroline Lacy.’
‘While Mrs. Parker, patently forgetting about Jennifer, suggests we look elsewhere, namely the Grand, since Caroline had few if any friends in the Vittel-Palace and had been shunned.’
The cognac was infinitely smooth, the two of them leaning on the railing to look out over the darkened polo grounds and racetrack.
‘The one lives the dream of being the mouthpiece of Cérès, Hermann.’
‘And unless I’m mistaken, the other fancies herself as having come from the family that make the world’s foremost fountain pens.’
‘Caroline Lacy lived the dream of being a prima donna and badgered everyone about it who would listen.’
‘While her governess, Louis, dreamt and still dreams of what?’
‘A dog-eared photo from 1910 of a villa in Provence, better ones in her suitcase but none from beyond that date.’
There had also been a photo of Pétain on that wall above her bed and a map of France that hadn’t even recognized the Defeat. ‘A governess who thought that girl’s asthma was nothing more than a state of mind,’ said Hermann, who, as a former prisoner of war, instinctively cupped his cigarette in hand to hide even that tiny glow.
‘Yet insisted Brother Étienne, the visiting monk, provide an overabundance of datura seeds, from which she dutifully ground a little powder to mix with the dried and shredded leaves and stems.’
‘Before rolling them into the cigarettes that girl could not have done without. Roommate Becky Torrence claims Caroline was very upset and in tears when she came back to their room and began to search for her cigarettes, Louis. Becky turned on the light and tried to calm her while Jill Faber found them. Though she at first avoided admitting it, Becky followed Caroline out into the corridor to help her. Oh for sure, both heard Mary-Lynn fall, but was Becky really the friend in distress? And where, please, was Madame de Vernon while all of this was going on?’
‘Two victims, Hermann, the one claiming she was the intended and that the first killing definitely wasn’t an accident.’
‘Even getting someone to arrange a meeting for her with one of the sénégalais. It has to have been one of those boys, Louis. A note in French and then in Deutsch.’
‘But not translated by Mary-Lynn, who spoke German so fluently the former Kommandant had offered to help make her life a little easier, and perhaps that too of Jennifer Hamilton.’
Whose flat in Paris was full of client antiques and artwork, and whose maid was looking after things and visited her when allowed. ‘But did the killer make a mistake, Louis, and compound it with the second killing?’
‘Madame Chevreul having warned that first victim to take great care.’
‘And having enhanced her reputation by that one’s death, she then sends an invitation to the second, telling her to bring what she had but not telling us a damned thing more.’
Their glasses were refreshed. Another cigarette was found and shared. Louis would be longing for a little pipe tobacco. ‘That juju woman has power well beyond her celestial orbit. Those skirmishers of yours were afraid of her and you know it.’
‘Wallpaper, Hermann. Why use that to light a stove when collabo newsprint from Paris is clearly available?’
‘And whatever Léa wants, Léa gets.’
‘But not golf balls, which must have come from over there. Beyond the racetrack, there’s a golf course and beside it, the Hôtel de l’Ermitage that was built in 1929 to offer luxury in excess even to that of the Grand, only to find the Great Depression on its doorstep and then, after but a few years, this war and Occupation.’
‘Mothballed, is it?’
‘Certainly it is well on the other side of the wire that encircles the landscaped parts of the Parc Thermal that are open to the inmates, and that has to mean it’s out of bounds for them but not necessarily to our Senegalese, since Colonel Kessler must have gone there with one or two of them to get his golf balls.’
Again they paused, both warming their cognac by cupping the glass in hand, Hermann even blowing cigarette smoke into his.
‘A truck driver from Limehouse, Louis.’
‘Madame Léa Monnier wearing jewellery as if she was a safe deposit box.’
‘She’d have spent time at Besançon.’
Where, on December sixth, 1940, the British females, almost four thousand of them who had been rounded up by the French police, had been housed in the old brick military barracks that had been vacated but a few days before by a division of the Army of the Armistice, who had mistakenly thought the Wehrmacht were to be moving in and had wrecked the place.*
No heat, no window glass, and no plumbing, to say nothing of the absence of food and water in the first few days. Latrine trenches, then. . there had only been three of them, and in winter who could have dug others? And that, why, that had left the courtyard to be used even during the blizzards that would have hit the plateau.
‘The old, the young, the very young, Hermann. It’s a cross we all have to bear, not just me.’