‘But not on that Friday, not when Caroline was killed. Stopped about here, did you, before turning back to those shops?’
Would he miss nothing? wondered Becky. They were still among the trees, had yet to reach the circular clearing the donkeys would have trod. ‘Here, I think. Yes, here. A bit of the bark had been torn off this beech tree. Look, someone’s been at it again.’
‘Fire starter?’ he asked.
Nora had been the one to tell them that the inner bark could be eaten, but she would just nod and say, ‘We’re always in need of it.’
‘Nervous was she, this most recent bark puller?’
‘All right, it was me.’
Duclos, Senghor, Weber, and Louis were now at the chalet, the two guards opening its doors, the stretcher being carried in. A last glance from Louis said, Don’t be long but don’t spare her even though she’s young and vulnerable.
‘Who opened that padlock? You must have arranged for that as well.’
‘I didn’t know! All I was asked to do was to get someone to meet her in that. . that place, that Caroline had something she absolutely had to tell the new Kommandant, and that. . ’
‘Something, mademoiselle? Wasn’t it that she was certain Mary-Lynn had been pushed?’
‘Yes, oh yes!’
‘And the padlock?’
‘I. . I think Jill must have arranged it with one of the guards. He was to unlock it, but leave it hooked through the hasp as if still locked. Duclos would then duck in and wait for Caroline who didn’t at first know whom she would be meeting. French or German, until I told her Corporal Duclos had agreed.’
‘So at the last moment she did know whom she would be meeting?’
‘Yes, but. . but she must have seen Sergeant Senghor and the corporal walk away with the bike towards the wood compound.’
‘And Brother Étienne?’
‘Did he duck into the chalet?’
‘Or did you follow her in and deal with her? You had every reason, mademoiselle. More, no doubt, than anyone else.’
‘Even the killer of Mary-Lynn?’
‘Especially that one, if both are the same.’
They started out again and only then did Herr Kohler say, ‘Before Louis and I got here from Paris yesterday, you must have gone to have another look. After all, Caroline hadn’t returned to the room on Friday evening, had she? Madame de Vernon would have been beside herself with worry.’
A little of the hard, crystalline snow blew from the chalet’s roof. Underfoot, it had been trampled. ‘At first Madame thought that Caroline was with Jennifer, but when Jen was found, that. . that wasn’t so.’
‘Out with it, please. Better here than in there with Weber.’
She nodded but could no longer face him. ‘I. . I went out early Saturday morning, as soon as we could leave the hotel. The doors to the chalet were closed, the padlock hooked through the eye of the hasp, but open and probably just as it had been left. I waited. I picked at the bark of that tree. I dreaded what I would have to do. No one was about, not even Nora.’
‘And then? Come, come, mademoiselle.’
‘I ducked inside, but. . but it was too dark to see anything. I whispered her name and. . and when my foot touched hers, I stumbled.’
‘And?’
He wasn’t going to believe her, but she would have to try. ‘I ran. I got back to the Vittel-Palace and went down into the cellars, then up into the laundry, where I’d left the things I had told the others I was going to wash. I didn’t tell anyone about Caroline. I couldn’t. I. . I hid that because I knew I would be blamed if I didn’t.’
But would she, as the killer, have returned at all? wondered Kohler. Louis would have said it’s possible, but then. . Yet that Star of David had been crammed into Caroline’s pocket as though in anger. The hurried use of the only weapon available had been there, the impulse of it, the fierce determination of that moment-didn’t all of these seem to say she had done it?
‘Nora didn’t know I’d arranged for Caroline to meet Bamba, Inspector, nor did Marni or even Jill. Earlier Caroline had asked me to find someone and knew that I would because before Bamba told me my fortune that last time, she had caught me taking things from our pantry to pay him for it.’
Weber having then singled out those very items, which had to mean that he either had been told of them by Duclos after the fact, or by someone else, yet the others in Room 3-38 had genuinely expressed surprise when Becky had said she’d gone back for a third reading all by herself. Jennifer Hamilton, then-she must have told Weber, Caroline having let her know.
‘Somehow I would have explained to the others that I’d taken those things, Inspector, that they’d not been stolen as they’d thought. Somehow I’d have paid them back, but Caroline, she. . she didn’t blackmail me into asking Bamba to meet with her. She didn’t even know who would until just before it happened.’
But if Weber had known beforehand of the meeting, what would he have done?
Louis was waiting for them, the corpse laid out as before. Weber, the collar of his greatcoat up, stood in the aisle in front of that middle stall, having impatiently lighted a cigarette.
Duclos and Senghor kept their distance as much as possible but obviously didn’t like being there. Neither of them dared to look toward the victim, nor did they look directly at Becky or anyone else.
Nudging the girl forward, Kohler laid a steadying hand on her right arm.
To gasp in shock and turn away was normal, to want to be sick too, thought Becky. There were livid blotches on the lower parts of Caroline’s face and neck. Blood had run from a corner of the lips but had since been frozen.
‘Mademoiselle,’ said Chief Inspector St-Cyr.
There was a tearful nod, a faintly blurted, ‘Yes, it’s Caroline.’
‘She spent time getting herself ready for the meeting,’ said Louis, not sparing her. ‘You must have watched.’
A moment had to be given.
‘Caroline. . Caroline had wanted to look her best in case she’d be taken straight to the new Kommandant. Yes, I watched her, as did Madame, who kept asking her why she had to go outside at such an hour. “A cold. . you are coming down with another,” she said. “That chest of yours is far too weak and you know it!”
‘Caroline answered, “It’s not what you think. You’ll find out soon enough.”’
‘She was raped, wasn’t she?’ seethed Weber, flinging his cigarette down at the foot of Senghor and Duclos. ‘You and those others from Room 3-38 set it all up. This one held her, while this one went at her, then they took turns.’
As implied earlier by Madame de Vernon, thought Kohler, but lieber Gott, he was serious! For all his life since the age of ten, Weber must have dreamt of just such a moment.
Becky Torrence was now a wreck.
It was Louis who said, ‘Raped and then tidied afterwards, Untersturmführer?’ A sûreté’s hand was held up to silence the sergeant and his corporal.
Contemptuously Weber said, ‘It’s of no consequence. Someone else must have done that. These two are guilty. One look at them is enough.’
‘We didn’t touch her, Boss,’ said Senghor to Kohler but evasively flicking a glance at St-Cyr. ‘Corporal Duclos told me what he had agreed to do but, as he was under my orders, I advised against it. We took the brother’s bike to the shed and repaired its flat.’
‘But first you made use of her,’ said Weber. ‘A white girl, a virgin.’
‘There was no evidence of a struggle, Untersturmführer,’ said Louis, giving Senghor a look that said Don’t ever lie to me again. ‘Though she’s been tidied as before, it’s common practice for us to take a victim’s temperature so as to estimate the time of death. When I did that, I checked for semen. I am also certain that whoever does the autopsy will find she was still a virgin.’
This cursed, interfering Frenchman would say anything. ‘Then whoever tidied her must have interrupted these two.’