Storage was under the beds and in armoires that had been scavenged and to which shelving had been added. A pantry, a little kitchen. .
‘That stove to the right of the window is French, Louis, a Godin. Asbestos paper has been stuffed around its pipe to seal it in and keep out the wind, but at night the blackout drapes would have to be helped when drawn.’
‘But of what date is the stove?’
Ach, must he! ‘Eighteen-ninety, I think.’
‘Try 1916 to 1919.’
‘And that other war?’
‘You’re learning. Didn’t I say you would? Vittel’s Parc Thermal and its hotels became a giant hospital camp for les Américains when the French cases were moved out in 1917, myself among them. Perhaps this indicates the origin of that football you noticed.’
The things one didn’t know. Louis had been wounded twice in that other war but had never said where he’d been sent for treatment.
A chipped, enamelled metal stew pot, something kept from the Reich’s inevitable scrap drives and left over from those doughboys, no doubt, sat atop a small, electric ring whose cord, by the look, was dangerously frayed. ‘Are they able to call in an electrician now and then, do you think?’
‘Perhaps but then. . The meal, Inspector?’
Steam was rising from the pot. Kohler started forward only to be held back. ‘There is no need. The aroma,’ said St-Cyr.
Louis would have separated that one smell from all the others that had been coming at them like those of tennis shoes no amount of washing could cure, given the sachets of lavender that had been tucked into them. ‘A rabbit stew, I think.’
‘Un garenne, mais bouilli à l’anglaise, and without its stuffing of veal, egg, lard, or fat and bread.’
Boiled wild rabbit, in the English way.
‘The flesh is firmer and has a better flavour, Hermann, than the domesticated. Perhaps that is why there are two string snares now washed and ready to be used again and waiting under one of the beds I was preparing to thoroughly scan.’
With the cameras of his mind, and the nearest of the two against one side wall, the same as had the game of solitaire, the dent, and the lacrosse stick. ‘A loner, is she? Those pelts have been cleaned and stretched.’
‘And there are two rabbits in that pot. Are moccasins in the offing?’
Since a pair of the same were already neatly side by side next to the latest Red Cross parcel whose string had been carefully coiled for use in other snares and such like. .
‘That curtain line next to the ceiling on your side, Hermann? Were the two who slept there accustomed to shutting themselves off from the others?’
And trust Louis to have noticed it first! ‘That vase of silk chrysanthemums, the arrangement of them, that portrait of Pétain. . A Tricolour pinned to the wall above a map of France which shows absolutely nothing to signify the country’s defeat and partition into a zone occupée, eh, and a zone non occupée?’
‘And the catches on the suitcase beneath that bed, Hermann? It’s from Goyard Aîné at 1233 rue Saint-Honoré.’
‘And the catches are considerably different in style than on those of the others.’
‘Ah, bon, mon vieux, you really are learning.’
European-style catches: a French occupant, then, and the Americans.
A pair of pink satin ballet slippers hung from a corner of the armoire between those two beds. ‘And right above our second victim’s,’ said Kohler. ‘And if I check the Red Cross parcel will I find chocolate bars and chewing gum absent but present in all the others?’
‘Or is it that the occupants of Room 3-38 pool such resources for the common good?’
That pantry and merde again! ‘Did they not always get along, the French one here and the Americans?’
‘Of those two beds, Hermann, is the one closest to the window that of our victim’s guardian?’
‘Was Caroline Lacy her ward?’
‘Was the girl the daughter of the woman’s benefactor, Hermann?’
Everyone knew that before this lousy war a lot of the French had been damned poor due to a constantly devalued franc until opportunity had come along from across the sea.
Whereas there were photographs of ballerinas and ballets of note that had been cut from magazines and pasted up on that wall, and one of a villa in Provence and a few of family members, above the other beds there were the brightly coloured, large-lettered pennants college students would madly wave at football matches: ‘Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Louis. Michigan Tech at Houghton, Michigan, the U of Wisconsin at Madison, and. . ’
‘St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota.’
A map of America had pins to locate both college and home. There were photos, too, of pet dogs, of fishing expeditions with father, grandfather, and brothers; of a fiancé, too, in uniform; a sister, an aunt and uncle. Candy floss and candy apples at a fair.
‘Louis, why the hell did they have to stick around and get caught up in this lousy Occupation?’
‘Perhaps they’ll tell us, but since each went to a university that was reasonably close to those of the others, is it that they met here quite by accident and sorted themselves out that way?’
A common bond. ‘Except for Madame Whatever-Her-Name-Is and our victim, Caroline Lacy.’
‘Who might, quite possibly, have been foisted upon them.’
‘They didn’t get along-is this what you’re saying?’
‘Madame’s sympathies are obviously not those of the others.’
That photo of Maréchal Pétain. Loyalty, then, even now when increasingly the country was turning against the Victor of Verdun; Pierre Laval, the premier, being in charge anyway.
‘Each has a little library, Louis. Detective novels, romances, historical fiction. . and most probably borrowed from the camp’s or hotel’s communal library.’
‘But textbooks in mineralogy, geology, biology, and zoology? Our moccasin maker values them.’
‘Houghton. . is there a school of mines at Michigan Tech?’
‘Or one of trapping.’
‘I still say it’s a tidy room,’ muttered Hermann.
‘And are there not degrees of tidiness? This is a utilitarian tidiness given of necessity. It is not that of our killer, who, unless I am very mistaken, is compulsive.’
The Americans were down in the cellars and there were a lot of them, Louis having stayed upstairs. Under the dim light from parsimoniously spaced forty-watt bulbs, the corridor was standing-room only and must have run the full length of the hotel. Others strained to look over or past still others, and not a one of them moved or made a sound.
Kohler was transfixed by the hush, the stillness, the watchfulness of the middle-aged, the young, the old, the tall, the short, the faces round, thin, angular, the hair straight, curled, waved, cut short, worn long, with and without colourful ribbons, some even in abandoned masses of curls like Shirley Temple in Curly Top. Others like Garbo in Grand Hotel, and wasn’t that a coincidence; others still, like Mae West in Klondike Annie or Ginger Rogers in A Fine Romance; and still others in the many, many hairstyles of America’s Sweetheart, Mary Pickford.
Curiosity was everywhere, interest evident, anxiety rampant, the fear that there was a killer among them, but also the hope that there wasn’t.
‘Inspektor, mein Name ist Mrs. Eleanor Parker, and I have been chosen to speak with you. If you like, I am house mother to them, though such a title was never sought nor has it ever been abused. From time to time a spokesperson is required to take matters to the Kommandant.’
They hadn’t chosen the oldest or the youngest, nor the most attractive or sophisticated. Instead, they had picked a real ramrod fluent in Deutsch and complete with heavy black horn-rimmed specs and a look that would defy the Führer himself.