That one then leaving the door unlocked if paid enough; if not, the key itself having been purloined and perhaps even copied-Hermann didn’t need to say it, only, ‘She could be in the Grand.’
Since both doors had yet to be locked.
‘Madame. . ’ began Louis.
These two from Paris hadn’t realized that such comings and goings had been possible and would now have to think about it. ‘As I’ve told you, Chief Inspector, I didn’t notice.’
‘The cellars, Hermann. Leave me to deal with this one.’
‘Why should I tell you anything? You both protect the Jews, isn’t that so? One snap of the fingers and Herr Weber learns of what you, a sûreté, said to the others in that room I must share. You asked, Chief Inspector, if any of them were Jewish and you said. . ’
‘Yes, yes, that neither Hermann nor I would report them.’
She must keep the pressure up! ‘Even if Jennifer Hamilton were a Jewess, you would have kept silent? A submarine, I believe that Jill Faber said of such filth. Oh, please don’t look so dismayed. Gossip is everything in a place like this. Those bitches I have to live with whisper in English to each other, and me-I listen! Now, if you don’t mind. . ’
‘Louis, bring her with us. Let her point the way.’
‘Je refuse catégoriquement!’
‘Filth, madame?’
‘Untermenschen-is this not what les Allemands call such people?’
Subhumans. Inadvertently she had revealed that she also knew how to speak Deutsch.
‘Me, I repeatedly told Caroline exactly what they were like. Taking the jobs from others, charging far too much for things, cheating at every chance.’
Hermann had gone down into the cellars. ‘Ah, bon, madame, let’s discuss the matter, but before we do you’ll tell me why you didn’t want that girl asking questions of the husband who had taken you to the cleaners in 1910 and died in 1920.’
‘Laurence? In a place like this, where gossip is but food for regurgitating vultures? As was my right, I demanded that she obey me but that. . that salope, Jennifer Hamilton, told her otherwise and now. . now look at what has happened. My Caroline taken from me and everyone whispering that I thought to kill the child but pushed, I tell you, the wrong person? I who was asleep. Asleep!’
‘Having hidden the datura cigarettes she would desperately need.’
Ah, merde, this had gone too far, but there was no turning back. ‘I did not hide them, as those bitches are saying. I simply set them out in a more convenient place since there had been trouble with the electric lights.’
‘That girl refused to leave Room 3-54 and Jennifer Hamilton, madame. She had slammed the door in your face and yet now you claim you were asleep?’
‘Lies. . it is all lies. Oh for sure I tried to put a stop to Caroline’s attending one of those séances of Madame Chevreul’s. I begged that woman to reject her. I offered far more than the usual fee but even that was refused. Why? I ask you. Why was I to have had my most private affairs aired in front of a gang of so-called sitters, I who have given everything for that child?’
‘You threatened Madame Chevreul. Even Léa Monnier was afraid of what you might do.’
‘Bon! She should be!’
‘Laurence Vernon, madame. Let’s dispense with the prefix of les hautes that you must have added.’
‘Why should I not have done? Everyone else here dreams of something and lives it. My father was of the de Marignanes of Aix, the same as the daughter the great orator and writer Mirabeau took to wife in 1772.’
After having scandalously deflowered Marie Emilie, her unhappy father then cutting off the couple’s allowance, Mirabeau plunging them into debt with equal scandal. ‘The fire, madame?’
This sûreté wasn’t going to leave it. ‘Did you think I didn’t know what those bitches were trying to prove? The casino here, arson on the night of Saturday, 17 July, 1920, a corpse charred but not beyond recognition, I tell you, and one missing adulterous husband who had stolen everything from me including one of the villas of the de Marignanes? How else was I to have put a stop to such maliciousness? Was I to have let Caroline, in all her innocence, have that. . that charlatan of a woman ask a goddess about my Laurence?’
‘How did he die?’
‘I wasn’t here. I was in Paris. Caroline. . Caroline knew this, but that. . that bitch Jennifer Hamilton wouldn’t leave well enough alone.’
Kohler didn’t really know what he’d find in the cellars, but a third murder, especially that of a lead informant, would definitely be to Weber’s advantage, since the son-of-a-bitch could then claim them incompetent and put a call in to Berlin.
Louis and he couldn’t withstand another run-in with the SS. Vouvray in early December had been bad enough, Paris often far worse-Lyon, too, and Vichy more recently. A legacy then of hatred: two honest cops who were stupid enough never to look the other way when pointing the finger of truth.
Had Madame de Vernon crushed that girl’s skull? Was that informant of Weber’s lying in some darkened storeroom, blood all over the stone floor but freeing up a flat full of valuable antiques and paintings?
The main breaker box was at the foot of the stairs and handy to anyone who could have ducked in that side door. By simply pulling the breaker, whatever lights were on would suddenly go off and no one else the wiser, especially as the damned thing had a padlock on it, another Harvard six-lever, long-shackled relic.
Liebe Zeit, but the First American Army had sure left a lot of stuff. Weber knew of the séance that Mary-Lynn and Nora would be attending with Colonel Kessler. Perhaps he had even known or suspected Kessler would escort them to the front entrance afterward. He’d have known of the Saturday-night poker sessions but not if those two would then drop in or when they’d actually climb that far staircase to Rooms 3-54 and 3-38.
But with Mary-Lynn’s ‘suicide,’ the threat of Kessler’s sending him to the Russian Front would have been over.
Then why that Star of David in the Chalet des Ânes, unless Caroline had also intended to tell the new Kommandant about Becky and by so doing, admit that she knew who had been stealing things?
Jennifer or, better still, Marguerite Lefèvre.
Overloaded, the electrical wiring tended to dim and then to blink the intermittent lights, and in every room or corridor upstairs that same on and off would be happening. Weber would have had no need to touch the breaker box. He could simply have let himself in that door and come down here to make his way through to that wing before climbing the staircase to then open the lift gate and wait on the way up to the attic.
The girl wasn’t in any of the nearest storerooms, all of which were empty. She wasn’t in the immediate corridor, and when he turned on to the main one, there was still no sign of her. Verdammt!
Doors were open, others closed, and at each of the latter he had the feeling he’d find her behind it. Not having a flashlight was a problem. Strings dangling from the ceiling would, when pulled, have turned on each light, but all had lost their bulbs, the Americans having a better use for those in their rooms, the string as well.
When he reached the foot of the main staircase, he couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Parker and all 990 of them waiting in silence, there having been not one, as originally thought, but two murders.
All would have known the cellars well enough, and hadn’t Nora Arnarson made apricot brandy down here somewhere?
‘Arson, Madame Vernon.’
Was the chief inspector afraid she might torch the hotel with everyone in it? wondered Irène. Certainly he was still suspicious of her having been in Paris at the time of the casino fire, and certainly Herr Kohler had yet to return from the cellars, and now this one was beginning to also believe that the worst had happened to that girl, a filthy lesbian who hadn’t been able to keep herself from stealing Caroline’s heart and innocence.