Out of the wind, behind the hotel, footprints in the snow led to the east and there seemed only the prospect of pitting themselves against a girl who, alone of all, would know how best to use the weather against them or anyone else. Bien sûr, she must have planned to wait here until Brother Étienne had come by to pick her up, but hadn’t.
‘Courage, ma fille,’ said Louis with evident admiration. ‘Merde, Hermann, the only thing that might stop her, and I emphasize the “might,” would be dogs.’
‘No one has mentioned them and we haven’t heard or seen any. Maybe they were needed in Russia.’
Beyond an open woodland of beech, etched against snow and sky, the forest thickened to spruce as it climbed the hills until becoming a forest, the Bois de la Voivre. She would have kept the ax, wouldn’t have even needed matches, would have made certain she had dressed warmly, but still, what had tipped her off, for she couldn’t have gone back to the room to pick up anything?
‘She would know exactly what she faced out there, Hermann,’ said Louis, indicating the forest. ‘Before you went to talk to him, Weber must have told someone to send her to him. Perhaps he waved that telex in front of one of his informants, or that one managed to read it.’
‘Or Nora was warned by someone who simply wanted to cover herself.’
‘Jennifer Hamilton?’
Who had left them outside Room 3-38 and had gone along the corridor alone to her own room. ‘Was Nora in there, having a look at Mary-Lynn’s things?’ asked Kohler.
It was only as he turned the cutter around that Angèle objected, tossing her head and snorting as she pawed at the snow.
‘She’s excited, Louis, is refusing to leave.’
A nearby alcove window had been broken in and a woollen toque had caught on a spine of glass.
‘Nora must have seen that there were two of us in the cutter and concluded that she couldn’t outrun Angèle,’ said Louis.
‘Yet she still had the presence of mind to try to lead us astray. The electricity will be off.’
‘And she’ll still have that ax and her Opinel.’
9
Luxury was draped in white sheeting and as the beam of the flashlight searched about the seeming vastness of the Hôtel de l’Ermitage’s foyer, it finally came to rest on a staircase of marble whose Art Deco railing curved gracefully upward.
The damp, the cold, the smell were penetrating, this last of mouldy wool mingled with long-spent cigar and other tobacco smoke, dust, and perfume, thought St-Cyr. Built in 1929, the hotel was in four sections, placed in a gentle zigzag. One wing faced onto the golf course, then there was the one he and Hermann were in, and then, end to end, two others facing the forest close in on either side. Nora Arnarson could delay them and then try to leave with Angèle and the cutter, and they both knew this.
‘Four storeys, Hermann. Two more in the attics for the help. One hundred and twenty-two rooms and suites for the guests, plus kitchens, dining room, lounge bar and café, front desk, and offices.’
‘And we’ve only one flashlight, which is likely to give out on us at any moment.’
Hermann didn’t always tend to worry and was simply in need of reassurance. ‘Weber will soon know where we are and come running.’
‘Maybe we should tell her that.’
All of the furnishings from the Vittel-Palace and probably from the Grand had been stored in the Ermitage. Narrow passages, often cluttered and dead-ended, threaded through the mountains they would have to negotiate if she refused to answer.
‘Mademoiselle,’ called Louis, only to have, if possible, the silence plunge even deeper until, through it, came the gusting sounds of the wind outside.
The alcove she had broken into was behind them, a once-pleasant and no doubt much-sought-after recess from which the comings and goings of the clientele in the foyer and at the front desk could have been watched while quietly perusing a newspaper.
Angèle snorted, the sleigh bells jingling their reminder. ‘Stay here, Hermann. Let me flush her to you.’
‘She’ll have already figured that out.’
‘Mademoiselle,’ called out Louis, ‘your best chance is with us. If guilty, we’ll insist on taking you to Paris; if not, and I must emphasize this, we will guarantee that Herr Weber doesn’t use you to cover up his own guilt.’
‘Louis, we can’t yet prove he’s guilty!’ hissed Hermann.
‘But she doesn’t know that. Mademoiselle, Herr Weber had reason enough to have killed your friend.’
Friend. . The echoes rebounded. ‘Inspectors, please let me go. I didn’t do anything.’
She was on the first landing of the main staircase, was briefly caught by the beam of their light.
Louis switched it off and indicated that they should spread out. ‘You left a knot in Angèle’s forelock,’ he called.
‘Brother Étienne always comes and goes this way,’ she blurted in despair. ‘He wouldn’t have stopped to tell me he knew I had escaped. I wouldn’t have ridden in the cutter. That would only have implicated him. Once in the woods, I’d have followed a stream. There’s a pair of skis waiting for me three kilometres from here, a deserted farm in the hills ten more and to the east of that over a rise, a woodcutter’s shack. I. . I was to have stayed there until he had arranged to send someone. Ah, merde, you won’t arrest him, will you?’
‘An accomplice, Louis.’
Silenced by that, she blinked when the beam of the light again briefly caught her.
‘That knot, mademoiselle,’ said Louis. ‘Even chief inspectors make mistakes. Had I but known. . ’
‘You would have let me go? Me, a key piece of that investigation of yours and now suspected of murder?’ They had moved and were by the heaped and cluttered front desk and a lot closer to her.
‘Please don’t do anything we would all regret,’ said Hermann. ‘Please just come down.’
‘Let’s discuss it-is that what you mean?’ The sûreté had kept the light off. The Kripo must now be at the foot of the stairs.
‘There isn’t much time, mademoiselle,’ said St-Cyr. ‘A few minutes at most.’
They wouldn’t know until it was too late. They couldn’t, Nora warned herself, and taking the stairs two and three at a time, went up through the pitch-darkness, leaving Herr Kohler far behind.
‘She’ll use that ax, Louis, or cut her wrists.’
‘But is guilty of what, Hermann?’
‘Admit it. That monk’s with the Résistance. Weber’s going to have a field day making mincemeat out of all of us.’
The first floor was crowded with furniture-beds taken apart and leaning with their mattresses against the corridor walls, rooms filled to overflowing. No order, just a jumble, and done in haste since the Grand had become vastly overcrowded and the Vittel-Palace urgently needed.
Nora listened. Nora tried to hear them, but they moved silently as a team. First one would go ahead, and then the other. Only then would the flashlight come on briefly and she would know for sure that it was but a matter of seconds until they found her.
They wouldn’t understand that she and Mary-Lynn hadn’t just argued about Cérès talking to the father Mary-Lynn had never known. They couldn’t know that Mary-Lynn had yelled, “You’re afraid of what Einar is going to say to you if Cérès does get through to him as she did with my dad. You didn’t let Einar have you, Nora. You told him to stop making love to you and buzz off. You stupidly shouted that if he really, really did love you he would have to wait!”
Einar had been blazing mad, had sworn at her, a thing he had never ever done before, and had run off to join up, and later she had agreed to come to France.
When the beam of the light found her, she blinked but didn’t lower the knife, could feel the blade already cutting into her throat.