‘The McIntosh,’ said Marni, that chocolate thing of hers all but gone.
‘The Red Delicious-tart yet sweet,’ said Dorothy with longing.
‘The cheese,’ said Candice. ‘Muenster, Gruyère, caraway, brick, and Havarti, but best of all, the farmer’s. Little cubes on toothpicks were always given away, inspectors, slices of apple too, sometimes a whole one if a girl smiled and flashed her eyes the right way. It would be snatched up and quickly handed over to be tucked out of sight in a pocket or ravenously bitten, the farmer’s wife giving her husband the elbow.’
‘Maple syrup,’ sighed Becky, unable to stop herself from smiling and crying at the same time. ‘Mary-Lynn loved maple syrup.’
‘Popcorn,’ said Jill, giving her a tight hug. ‘She liked that, too.’
‘Pumpkins at Halloween,’ said Candice. ‘We used to fry the seeds in a little salt and butter and then eat them while they were hot. They were so delicious.’
‘Honey,’ said Marni, as if reliving the memories of a ten-year-old. ‘Clover, basswood, wildflower, buckwheat, and black locust, inspectors, the sweetest of all and softest of golden yellows. The beekeepers would let you have a sample. If you wanted to try any of them they’d dip one of the twigs they’d whittled into whatever jar you chose even if they knew you weren’t going to buy a thing.’
‘You could have your whole breakfast or lunch that way just by going from stall to stall,’ said Becky, having regained her composure. ‘There would be the smells of freshly baked bread and buns from the bakers’ stalls-those of chestnuts, too, sometimes-and fudge or pull taffy from the candymaker’s. Certainly those of burning hickory and grilling sausages, and of the winter, spring, summer, or autumn. Maybe a little sharpness in the air or even falling snow but that wonderful, wonderful tingling feeling of just being outdoors and absolutely free to do whatever one wanted. No guards, no war, no internment.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Louis impatiently. ‘Where is Madame de Vernon?’
They looked at one another. It was Lisa who said, ‘Jill was telling us about the Red Gym-the Armoury Gymnasium that is on Langdon Street down by Lake Mendota and had been built in 1893. She used to have a beau in the Badgers Rowing Club and had taken to getting up at five to row with one of the girls’ crews just for a chance of seeing him. From its redbrick walls and heavy, oaken door you can look uphill to see the sun glistening on the beautiful big white dome of the State Capitol. It’s built of blocks of Bethel granite.’
‘From Vermont,’ confessed Jill.
‘And Madame, knowing of Barre, Vermont, and her former husband, was convinced you were taunting her, as indeed you were with those.’
The Kondoms. It would be best to shrug and to tell them, thought Jill. ‘Bango, she flew into another of her boiling rages. Oh, sorry. Bango means “right away.”’
‘And left us to ourselves,’ managed Becky. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, inspectors. I swear I didn’t. Gosh, all I ever wanted was to help Antoine.’
‘Her fiancé,’ said Marni, tightly gripping the girl’s right hand. If an arrest was to be made, it would have to be of all of them.
‘And Nora and Jennifer?’ asked Hermann.
‘Nora’s gone to get some more clean snow so that she can make us another of these glorious snow ice-cream cones her dad taught her how to make, though he liked the raspberry best, Nora the blueberry. Jen’s doing her laundry.’
‘We always have to make sacrifices,’ said Dorothy of Jennifer’s absence. ‘Everyone in this hotel tends to eat early because we’re hungry by four and positively ravenous by five.’
Which would mean, of course, that when Caroline Lacy was killed, all but a few had been in their rooms doing that after having, like Madame Chevreul and Léa Monnier, just watched Brother Étienne arrive.
Blue eyes, green, dark olive-brown, hazel, and dark grey impassively looked at St-Cyr and Kohler as if, when they eventually left the room, there would be a collective sigh of relief and they’d go right back to what they’d been doing, discussing the simple things that everyone had taken for granted before this war.
It was Jill who said ‘The laundry’s behind the kitchens and about as far from here as you can get. Sometimes at this hour there’s still a little hot water but it’ll be lukewarm at best. It always is.’
The room was cavernous but of electric lighting there was only that from two widely spaced forty-watt bulbs. Leaking bronze taps, above the rows of zinc-lined drain tables yielded the periodic patience of ice-cold droplets that would, in the early hours of a still-distant morning, freeze.
Oak-framed, truss-backed washboards hung above the tables. Only one of them was being used-a lone occupant-and from it came the irritable clash of buttons on rippled brass as invective was muttered. The smell of ivy leaves, stewed and drained in desperation to give a liquid hopeful of soap, was clear enough. Sand could be used, and there was evidence of it.
At regular intervals, cast-iron, rubber-roller clothes wringers were clamped to the tables, but of the washing machines and bench ironers of the interwar period there wasn’t a sign. All would have been removed and placed in storage. The Hôtel de l’Ermitage? wondered St-Cyr.
‘Curtis, Louis,’ said Hermann, giving the manufacturer’s name of the clothes wringers. ‘It’s like taking a step back in time.’
Those twenty-six and — seven years since the wounded of the First American Army had been in residence. ‘Soldiers everywhere have no need of the complicated, Hermann. In any case, the simple copper wash-boiler, a mere tub, didn’t come into general use in France until the late ’20s and early ’30s. Washing machines and other such labour-saving devices were but objects of curiosity in catalogues.’
Hand cranks turned the rollers and these were all but as long and heavy as tire irons, thought Kohler. Jennifer simply wasn’t present, only the small heap of wet underclothes that she had left on a distant drain table along with a bottle of what must be Brother Étienne’s lavender wash water.
The nearby wringer roller’s hand crank had also absented itself, a worry to be sure.
‘Madame de Vernon,’ said Louis to her back, ‘what have you done with that girl?’
She wouldn’t turn, thought Irène. She would concentrate on the scrubbing. ‘Me, Chief Inspector? Nothing, but why not ask that garce yourself? I arrived and she fled.’
‘Where to?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Madame, you hated that girl. She was terrified of you.’
‘Terrified? For raping the innocence of my Caroline? Bien sûr, I wasn’t happy with what she was doing to that child of mine but as to her being terrified of me, that I couldn’t say.’
‘Have you killed her?’
The scarf-swathed neck stiffened as the head was tossed. ‘You accuse without a shred of evidence? You arrest without the magistrate’s warrant? That door leads to the Hôtel Grand, the stairs nearby, to the cellars. Please take your choice.’
‘And leave you to your laundry?’
She had him now! ‘It’s Caroline’s. Are laundered clothes, freshly ironed not necessary when the dead are to be buried, or have such considerations been dispensed with, and if so, how, please, am I to inform that girl’s parents of such a desecration?’
Releasing the blouse, she hastily crossed herself, then rigidly waited for the proceedings to continue.
Hermann went to check the door and to leave it open, momentarily disappearing toward the Hôtel Grand. Such ease of alternate access had not been anticipated.
‘A mortised pin tumbler deadbolt, Louis, no doubt with a key Weber takes from that board of his every evening and hands to the designated guard.’