There had been no mention of their speaking Spanish, which they should have if from Honduras. ‘And you, Mademoiselle Faber, have you spoken to any of them?’
Shit! thought Jill. ‘I’ve spoken to some. It helps, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Everyone yearns for news here, Inspector,’ Marni interjected quickly, but he wasn’t to be distracted.
‘And do those people worry about being deported to the concentration camps in the east?’ he asked Jill.
Still she faced him; still she held her brassiere. ‘Oui, they’re terrified of it, poor things.’
‘What about Jennifer Hamilton?’
‘Is she Jewish-is this what you’re asking?’
‘You know it is, Mademoiselle Faber. Please understand that neither my partner nor I would do anything to see her arrested for such a thing.’
That was a very dangerous thing for him to have said, thought Jill, but under his scrutiny she was now blushing-she knew it, felt it, couldn’t understand it, and said weakly, ‘She couldn’t be a submarine, Inspector. Not living here. Things are far too close for anyone to hide something like that.’
The euphemism of a diver was also used by and for those who walked the streets but had gone into hiding with false papers or none at all. ‘Ah, bon, merci. Forget what I’ve asked, all of you. Just understand that if you want to help my partner and me, it would be best to keep it to yourselves. Now I must find this Jennifer Hamilton.’
‘But Nora hasn’t come back,’ objected Becky, distressed by the thought.
It was the Faber woman who quickly said, ‘It’s this way, Inspector. I’ll take you. It. . it might help.’
‘So that you can keep an eye on things?’
Jill swallowed hard and knew that he had noticed this. ‘Not at all. She and Caroline were more than friends. If I’m there, Jennifer won’t deny it, nor will the others try to protect her.’
‘Otherwise they will, Inspector,’ said Nora, her arms laden with wood. ‘We all do. Each room, each little enclave shrinks unto itself as in even the smallest school of minnows where there is still the thought that safety lies in numbers.’
And detectives are predators? thought St-Cyr, for given the lineups, she had returned far too quickly and had obviously bought the wood from one of the others and had been listening at the door.
‘Perhaps you had best come with us.’
‘Is it necessary?’ She winced.
‘You give me no choice.’
Room 3-54 was little different from Room 3-38, its frost-rimmed windows also facing away from the Parc Thermal. Film posters from home were on the walls to spice things up; photos, too, and maps and pennants: Duke University, North Carolina State, Ohio State, Rhodes College, Sweet Briar, and Massachusetts College of Art.
Clothing was still scattered, yet there was that same utilitarian tidiness if one allowed for the chaos of waking hours with but one exception.
Under the Sweet Briar pennant everything of Mary-Lynn Allan’s, except for the items on the wall, had been packed and set precisely in order on top of the cot. To the far left, the blankets had been perfectly folded and lay under sheets and the pillow. Closed, the suitcase was next in line, then her coats, the summer, that is, and the rain, all neatly folded. Two pairs of shoes and one of rope-soled sandals and two hats came next, and then a gathered few items in a Red Cross box, its top closed and folded in perfectly.
‘It isn’t much, is it?’ he said, for they had all stopped whatever they had been doing and were watching him closely. All five of them. Jill Faber and Nora Arnarson were still standing at his shoulders, one on either side.
‘Who did it, Inspector? Surely you have some idea,’ said the tall, thin brunette with the uncooperative hair who’d been fanning the firebox and silently cursing it. ‘The wood’s wet again,’ she went on. ‘We’ve no kerosene. At home my dad always added a splash. I’m Dotty. . Dorothy Stevens, Ohio State. That one. That one there.’
The cot next to the door and on his left.
‘Et vous, mademoiselle?’
Somehow the fair-haired one beside Dorothy found the will to smile. ‘I’m the week’s soup-and-bread carrier, Jennifer Hamilton. The Massachusetts College of Art. That one.’
The cot in the far left front corner.
‘It’s always cold on the feet being next to the window, but we drew lots and fair’s fair.’
‘And grief, mademoiselle?’
She didn’t hesitate but looked steadily at him.
‘Grief?’ she said and there was music to her Parisian French. ‘Grief is in all of us, Inspector, me especially, but we decided a brave front was what was needed.’
‘Jennifer’s right, Inspector,’ said the little brunette who had been putting her hair into a ponytail. ‘Tears only go so far. We’ve each day to overcome and, like you, need to know who did it and that you’ll find this person quickly before another of us is killed. I’m Lisa. Lisa Banbridge. Duke University. That one.’
The bed that was end to end with Jennifer Hamilton’s, the ages of these three varying from the thirty-six of the one who spoke of the fire as if still at home to the thirty perhaps of the buyer of antiques and paintings to the twenty-two of this last.
‘It’s impossible being locked up like this, Inspector,’ said Lisa. ‘We didn’t do anything. Zut, we aren’t killers. How could we be?’
‘And I’m Candice, Inspector. Candice Peters, North Carolina State at Raleigh and a long, long way from home.’
And with frizzy brown hair still in paper twists, a toothbrush in hand whose disreputable state she suddenly realized and quickly tucked out of sight. Age pushing forty, grief held back admirably, a cool, firm handshake and a ‘Welcome, Inspector. We’re all grateful you and Herr Kohler finally got here. Jen was just telling us that she had encountered him downstairs with Herr Weber.’
‘He’s a lot taller than you,’ said Jennifer. ‘Did he get that scar from fencing? Ah mon Dieu, he looks the type. I. . I was quite shy, I’m afraid. Herr Weber is overwhelming enough.’
‘Inspector, I’m Barbara Caldwell, Rhodes College, Tennessee. I expect you’ll want to know what we’re all doing here. I think we’d like to know that too.’
This one’s age was perhaps thirty-two or thirty-six, and her dark auburn hair fell naturally in waves to shoulders that were bravely squared under scrutiny, but in the dark olive-brown eyes there was doubt, hesitation, all manner of things. Had this Barbara Caldwell tidied Mary-Lynn’s last effects?
‘My bed’s that one,’ she said.
The one on the other side of the door.
‘I’m the week’s wood-getter. That’s why my bed’s not made yet.’
As if one needed to apologize for such a thing. ‘Ah, bon, mesdemoiselles, please go about whatever you were doing. Mademoiselle Hamilton, a few questions. Perhaps we could find a corner, the four of us.’
‘Jill, why have you come?’ urgently whispered Candice Peters in English.
‘Nora, what’s happened?’ whispered another, also in English.
‘I’m going to have to fess up if he asks, Barb. I can’t avoid it.’
‘Ah, merde, mesdemoiselles, have pity on a poor detective. Repeat to me en français, Mademoiselle Arnarson, exactly what was said.’
Did he think her guilty? wondered Nora. Desperately she looked at each of the others, even at Jill, then shrugged and said, ‘It wasn’t anything of consequence.’
‘Yet you all knew, mademoiselle, that of the two of us, only Hermann speaks your language and not very well at that. Your bush telegraph. . ’