‘Madame, a few small questions. Nothing difficult.’
‘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.’