‘Emmi Lammers hadn’t been the first of their house daughters, their maids, but the sixth,’ snorted Brother Étienne, giving a massive shrug.
‘And the colonel’s distress?’ asked the inspector, ignoring Étienne’s implication.
She would like to let this sûreté wait, thought Élizabeth, but had better not since the look Étienne had given her had as much as said, I’ve done what I can to save you from yourself. ‘Cérès. . Cérès was to ask her if she’d had any more visits since her last letter of 5 September of last year.’
‘Élizabeth. . ’
‘You can think what you will, Étienne, but I know Frau Kessler was questioned by the Gestapo, first in her own home and well before the Americans came here to stay with us, and that this had been greatly troubling him. Visitors at such a time? Had the Gestapo seen over the house? he had asked her. Had they spoken to Emmi, this new maid? Had either of them been taken for a drive in the country-a drive when petrol is so short and automobiles reserved only for those with special permits?
‘They had stopped for tea along the way, Inspector, and had spent two hours over it. Tea, at a time of such shortages?’
‘Herr Weber, Inspector. Colonel Kessler was convinced the Untersturmführer had been contacting Berlin behind his back and saying things he shouldn’t have.’
To the Reich Central Security Office. ‘And Emmi Lammers wasn’t the first,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Young and pretty and needing a father figure-isn’t that what you think, Inspector?’ asked Élizabeth tartly. ‘Alone, despondent, and vulnerable, is what I would say, just as was Mary-Lynn Allan.’
‘The father, was he?’
‘Absolument! That is why he insisted Étienne take care of it.’
‘Élizabeth, your choice of words is shameful, and while I must insist they are untrue, they can only lead you astray. Inspector, the colonel’s home was in Düsseldorf. Beate Kessler wanted to join her sister in Duisburg nearby, but he insisted she was far safer where she was.’
‘Then on 9 September of last year, Inspector, his words came back to haunt him.’
‘The RAF dropped the first of what have since become known, apparently, as “heavy incendiaries,”’ said Brother Étienne. ‘Fifteen-kilo bombs of solid or liquid phosphorous that do not explode on impacting the roofs of buildings but first penetrate below.’
‘The house was gutted, its walls all but collapsing,’ said Madame, seizing the moment with relish, which only caused the brother to raise his eyebrows in despair and say:
‘He went home on compassionate leave on 15 September to see where what had been left of them had been buried. Now, I really must get on with my patients.’
‘You told Mary-Lynn to eat parsley, Brother, and you brought her enough to do the job.’
‘He wasn’t the father, of this I’m certain.’
‘But that is not what you whispered to me, your confidante, Étienne.’
‘All right, he was! Does that satisfy you?’
Their voices had risen. ‘The parsley, Brother?’
Ah, merde, this was not going well. ‘I gave it to her because she couldn’t face having a child here and out of wedlock. It had been a mistake, she said, a moment of weakness brought on by despair. She pleaded with me for help and I. . May God forgive me, but I felt she could be suicidal.’
‘You couldn’t face up to the laws of the Church yourself, Étienne. Is this what you are admitting?’ asked Madame forcefully.
The plate, the knife and fork and napkin were pushed away, the look one of resignation.
‘The greater sin must always take precedence, Élizabeth. Please try to understand that to prevent the one, I had to help the other.’
She would reach out to him in comfort and forgiveness, she must! ‘As you now help me, mon chèr, whose only sin is to believe in both the God you serve unquestionably and the goddess whom I, alone, am able to reach.
‘Inspector, as the séances progressed, so did the questions. Colonel Kessler asked of the suitcase he had left in the cellars of their house. Had any of the visitors inquired of it? Beate Kessler told him one of them had looked the house over while the other had questioned her; Emmi Lammers, though, said that the suitcase, in spite of its having been seen, had not been lifted from its place on a top shelf and was now much safer.’
‘Under all the rubble of a burned-out house,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Oui.’
‘Élizabeth. . ’
‘Other currencies, Brother? Gold coins, family silver, and pieces of jewellery?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. He would certainly not have confided that.’
‘Especially since to hide such things from the Nazis and not declare them would have been against the law, but with memories of the mark at 4.2 to the American dollar in 1914 and at 4,420,000,000 to it at the close of 1923, a wise move, considering that the Reich was again caught up in a war that looked more and more as if it would also be lost.’
Sex and money, Hermann would have said, and always some salaud lurking in the shadows to take advantage. ‘You were treating him for what, Brother?’
‘Rheumatism. It had plagued his knees since that other war.’
As it had Hermann, to whom poultices of boiled, mashed horse chestnuts-a Russian remedy-had been applied by this partner of his when in search of a little peace of mind. ‘Madame, did Léa Monnier convey any of this Cérès dialogue to Herr Weber?’
‘Lea. .?’
‘Is one of his informants.’
‘Léa would do no such thing.’
‘But probably did, so now will you tell me when she left that séance the night Mary-Lynn was killed?’
Oh dear. . ‘Léa. . Léa’s sciatica had started up again. Though she was needed, I had excused her from attending.’
‘And when you returned to your rooms here?’
Before going downstairs again to try to reconnect with the goddess because of being worried about that girl’s safety, but one didn’t need to remind him of this. ‘She wasn’t in her bed. The toilets, I assumed.’
‘How long did you spend while trying to reconnect with the goddess?’
Had he believed her? ‘An hour, two hours-three, perhaps-how could I possibly know?’
Time enough, in any case. ‘Through self-hypnosis and breath control, Inspector, Madame Chevreul goes into a trance,’ said Brother Étienne.
‘While Léa Monnier is free to do as she had been ordered by Herr Weber, Brother?’
‘Ordered? But. . but surely the Untersturmführer wouldn’t have wanted that girl to fall to her death?’
The brother had been genuinely taken aback, Madame Chevreul’s knife and fork merely hesitating as if intrigued. ‘At the moment, it’s but one of several avenues since Madame Monnier has accused Nora Arnarson of having chased up the stairs after Mary-Lynn and, not realizing that the lift gate was open, of having tried to grab her only to have caused her to stumble forward and fall.’
‘That Arnarson girl, Inspector. I knew she disbelieved. I felt it right from the first-one always does. Time and again, at Colonel Kessler’s urging, I would try to reach Mary-Lynn’s father only to fail because of her friend.’
‘Yet you tolerated Nora’s presence?’
‘She had witnessed Colonel Kessler’s joy. I thought her doubts would have ceased.’
‘But in spite of this, finally had success.’
‘Profoundly so. At 0200 hours on the night of 26 September, 1918, the sky over that battlefield to the northwest of Verdun was filled with flame and the deafening roar of the American artillery barrage. Men who had never been in battle and were soaked to the skin and cold from having had to wait in the open in their trenches for more than a week soon found themselves advancing uphill through dense fog and machine-gun fire.’