‘Jen!’ cried Lisa Banbridge, shaking her. ‘Jen, please wake up!’
There was no time to get Brother Étienne to help, no time to reach the camp’s hospital to get one of the damned doctors to do something useful like pump out her stomach. Even if they did, and the ingested seeds were evacuated, enough of the poison could still be left to kill.
‘She’s going to die, isn’t she?’ said Becky.
Holding the girl by the shoulders, Kohler stuck his fingers down her throat and bent her over, Jennifer panicking as she coughed and threw up and again evacuated herself.
‘Ah, no!’ cried Barb. ‘More water, someone! And another towel.’
It was only as he looked down that Herr Kohler saw the seeds and felt his heart sink, thought Jill. Maybe there were only fifty of them, more likely well over a hundred, but some had been hastily broken in that woman’s mortar. Madame de Vernon. .
‘It isn’t good,’ said Herr Kohler, and she could see that he was really feeling it. ‘All you can do is try. At least two enemas, maybe three. Warm water, not hot. Add a little salt, if you have any. That can’t hurt, but I really don’t know.’
The food was there on the tiny kitchen counter where she’d had a hurried, stand-up meal, having heated the rest of the stew and eaten it right from the pot.
The pie was glazed and had lots of raisins that would have masked the datura’s bitterness.
The tea might also have helped. ‘Who made the cake?’ he asked, startling them.
In the shape of a small loaf, and heavy, it was dark brown and chock-full of raisins, prunes, apricots, and bits of apple, all of which would have been dried when received in Red Cross parcels.
‘It. . it wasn’t here when we left to go to the other room,’ said Lisa. ‘Jen must have been given it.’
‘By whom?’
‘The Brits make it,’ said Jill. ‘It’s a favourite of theirs. Butter, sugar, and powdered crackers instead of flour.’
‘It’s called pound cake,’ said Dorothy.
‘Is that why Madame was gloating?’ he asked Jill.
They all looked at her but she had no answer, and he said, ‘OK, I’ll borrow it and the rest of the meal and take Madame along with me.’
Though he cared deeply, he would have to leave them to it now, felt Jill, but as he turned away, he paused and she saw that he was intently looking at Mary-Lynn’s things, which were still neatly piled on her bed.
‘Who tidied these again?’ he asked, and she could sense that he was deeply disappointed in himself, though she couldn’t know why.
The suitcase was now under the blankets; the shoes, placed side by side on top of the raincoat, the rest precisely positioned just as Louis had seen them.
‘Jen must have,’ said Barb. ‘Every once in a while she gets a tidying craze and goes at her own things, but then it passes and she’s just like the rest of us. Hit and miss and toss again.’
‘She ate and then she waited while she did that,’ said Dorothy. ‘Had she come to see us right away, we’d have got to her a whole lot sooner.’
Mary-Lynn Allan’s suitcase was not heavy and when opened, the meagre clothing that it still contained had been neatly arranged. A couple of blouses atop two sweaters and under them, a length of lace-fringed, bloodstained ribbon and a whole lot of other things, all precisely arranged in rows and protected by clothing both above and below.
Herr Kohler picked up a broken, blue Bakelite barrette, a bow. Replacing it, he chose a bent, hand-forged nail, then a string bracelet with knots in it, and finally an Indian Head penny.
‘She wasn’t,’ blurted Lisa. ‘She couldn’t have been. Not our Jen. Not with all of those beautiful things in her flat.’
‘Take care of her. Do your best.’ Louis would be looking for the hiding place, Jennifer having transferred everything here so that it would be sent away and she wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Jundt would have called the guards.
‘Answers!’ shrieked Jundt. ‘Verfluchtes französisches Schwein, why did you not report the shootings immediately to me? You and Kohler did nothing to stop them. Nothing, I tell you!’
Jundt had come in force; three harried Schmeissers and his own Mauser covered Louis and the girl and Brother Étienne, all of whom had their backs to the reception desk in the Hôtel Grand’s foyer.
‘Colonel, we couldn’t have done anything,’ said Louis calmly in Deutsch. ‘Herr Weber had demanded our guns and we had handed them over.’
‘He knew you were up to something. He had caught you out!’
‘Not at all. Sergeant Senghor-’
‘The blacks!’
‘Had stolen two revolvers we knew nothing of, Colonel, but the Untersturmführer most certainly should have and had them removed when the camp was first opened in March 1941. Those two men were bent on escaping. When Fräulein Arnarson and I overheard them chopping down that tree, I realized what was happening and alerted Herr Kohler and we immediately gave chase in spite of the need for us to attend to our investigation here.’
‘Another murder was in progress, Colonel,’ said Hermann.
‘Ach, Kohler, what is this one saying?’
‘That in spite of the urgency of our own concerns we caught the blacks on the run in deep snow, me then alerting the Untersturmführer. Unfortunately he was as unaware of their having armed themselves as we were and refused to believe they hadn’t raped and murdered Fräulein Lacy.’
‘That is why he insisted on taking them to the Chalet des Ânes,’ said St-Cyr.
‘You’re handcuffed to that girl.’
‘She’s a suspect, Colonel.’
‘And is that woman also a suspect, Kohler?’
‘I didn’t poison anyone, Herr Kommandant,’ insisted Irène Vernon shrilly. ‘I am innocent, I tell you. Innocent! It’s all a terrible mistake!’
‘Fräulein Jennifer Hamilton isn’t likely to live, Colonel,’ said Kohler. ‘Let us settle this business, then, as is my duty, I will gladly give you the report we will be submitting to my superior officers, the General von Schaumburg, Kommandant von Gross-Paris, and Gestapo Bömelburg.’
‘Berlin-Central will have to be notified.’
‘As will the High Command, Colonel. Perhaps for now, though, it would be best if you were to telex them an urgent request, asking that they immediately suspend your predecessor’s court-martial since new and important information has come to light.’
‘Suspend. .?’
‘Until the whole matter is cleared up and the planets are in conjunction,’ said St-Cyr.
They sat in silence and they waited, and all around them, felt Nora, the Pavillon de Cérès, with its blackout drapes drawn, was like being in a little Art Deco forest. Brother Étienne was chewing anise and gathering his thoughts beside her, Madame de Vernon to his left, Herr Kohler’s handcuffs around both of the woman’s wrists to keep her quiet.
Together, the one his pipe in hand, the other a cigarette, the chief inspector and Herr Kohler sat apart from them in hushed and urgent consultation. Jen had been poisoned by Madame-Nora was certain of it, though couldn’t help but feel for Barb and Lisa, Candice, and Dorothy. A kleptomaniac right in their midst, a roommate and friend they had trusted absolutely. Still, all would sympathize, none would want Jen to die. All would miss her even now, and even though Herr Weber had been forcing Jen to spy on them.
St-Cyr’s handcuffs were around both of her own wrists and for herself she had to wonder what the future held yet couldn’t thank them enough for what they’d done: gambled that Kommandant Jundt hadn’t been told by anyone that it had been she who had tried to escape and that he wouldn’t immediately check for tracks in the snow.
Cautiously she opened a clenched fist and, nudging Brother Étienne, showed him the Indian Head penny Herr Kohler had returned.
The Boche wouldn’t be satisfied with just Senghor and Duclos, thought Étienne. Others would be blamed. Berlin-Central would rush to incessantly hound everyone. None would escape. All would be questioned hour after hour, Nora tortured-she would be, and he, too. Would he be able to withstand it and not give anything away, a healer of healers, a dreamer of dreams, and brother to a maquis of twenty-seven? Some were but students on the run like the others, but in total fifteen of whom were mere boys of eighteen and twenty from Paris and other cities and towns. Bien sûr, when they had first come, and most of them alone, they had been merely wanting to hide out from the STO, the Service du Travail Obligatoire, as the forced labour draft for the Reich was now called, les Pères Tranquilles sheltering them in the woods and not all in one locale. The internment camp here was to have been a listening post from which to keep an eye on the Boche, though it also became a place for him to have lived that dream. Colonel Kessler, having suspected nothing, had come to welcome the visits. Colonel Jundt would be but a disaster.