‘He wouldn’t listen,’ said Élizabeth. ‘He said I was just like her.’
‘Grasping, like his wife, clinging to your family money?’ asked Hermann.
‘Madame Vernon hit him, I didn’t.’
‘Let’s ask the goddess,’ said Louis. ‘We’ll have her contact Caroline, since Jennifer was the first to tell us that girl was certain an empty champagne bottle had been used, not a full one which might well have exploded and injured his killer as well.’
‘Which was a curious thing for her to have said, Louis. I wonder where Caroline got such an idea?’
Reaching down, he took just such a cork from Bamba Duclos’s little basket.
A shrug would be best, thought Irène.
Élizabeth knew it would have to be said, that there was no other way of avoiding things. ‘There was an empty bottle, inspectors. A Moët et Chandon with its cork still there. It was very late, nearly 0400 hours. Few were about, and yet. . and yet Laurence wouldn’t leave me alone. I headed for the toilets, hoping to discourage him, but he followed. I ran. I passed a side table on which one of the waiters had left a tray and some glasses and that bottle. I pushed the door to that nearest room, then the one to the toilets, and was just able to go back to the first to slip in and gently close its door.’
‘There, what did I tell you, inspectors,’ said Irène.
‘Forgive me, ma chère Madame Vernon, but as God is my witness I heard that bottle break,’ said Élizabeth. ‘I knew Laurence had gone into the toilets first to look for me and then down to the wine cellar of that casino and that you had followed him. You told him what he had done to you. He laughed and told you exactement what he thought of you. The bottle was no longer on its tray when I left that room. Brandy, cognac, and liqueurs, n’est-ce pas? Lots of those, and all that was needed was a match which you had plenty of.’
‘But you didn’t come forward after the fire?’ asked Louis.
‘I couldn’t. I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed, not with that woman who would simply have accused me, as she has.’
‘You loaned him money he couldn’t repay,’ began Irène. ‘He demanded the return of that. . that thing he had given you. Everyone knew this. They had all overheard you.’
‘Madame Vernon,’ said Louis, ‘you will be charged with the murder of your husband and the destruction of the casino. The courts will be lenient-they always are to such. Extenuating circumstances, the loss of the villa you loved, the penury. . ’
‘Garce,’ said Irène bitterly to the woman, ‘I did what you had intended.’
Louis rang the bell.
Nora was the last to say good-bye and when she did, she pressed her good-luck penny into Louis’s hand. ‘I think you’ll both need it more than I do. When this war is over you can return it to me. Then I’ll know for sure you both survived and won’t worry anymore.’
Jennifer’s things had already been loaded into the car that would take them to the nearby train station. Colonel Kessler was on his way back to resume command of the camp. He’d have to deal with seeing that everything was settled properly, would no doubt be rather chagrined but glad of his reprieve and grateful that his old friend in Paris had sent them.
‘Keep your chin up,’ said Herr Kohler, as she hugged him dearly.
Louis shook her by the hand, the two of them lightly embracing, the girl giving him a peck on each cheek and a ‘Merci, mes amis, for all you’ve done.’
They would return Jennifer’s things to her flat in Paris and would inform Thérèse, her maid, of what had happened, but what would they really find when there? she wondered. A fortune’s worth of art and antiques?
It took two days for them to reach Paris and that flat, and then another four until the postcard arrived.
‘Are well.’ Blank, blank. ‘Have found employment.’ Blank, blank. ‘In wholesale-retail trade.’ Blank, blank.
The marché noir-Nora knew that’s what they meant. Paris, like everywhere else only more so, had a roaring black market. Gangsters fought to control it; so, too, did the German Army and others of the Occupier but the Résistance was also involved, as were lots and lots of others and just about every citizen.
‘Thérèse sends her love.’ Blank, blank. ‘And tells us.’ Blank, blank. ‘It was only a dream.’
Jen had never had anything much of value in that flat but had lived with the lie of it to hide what could well have been a big failure to her family’s business. Having been so worried that this would eventually come out, she had started stealing little things and, once started, had found she couldn’t resist the impulse.
Vittel’s internment camp, its Internierungslager, was one of those all-but-overlooked episodes of WWII. At the time in which Bellringer is set, the British and American internees were still not getting along, but they soon did, and quite well. The camp was appropriately liberated by the US Third Army on 4 August, 1944.
* The armée de l’armistice of 100,000 was disbanded on 21 November, 1942, after the Wehrmacht took over the zone libre on the eleventh of that month.
** The Mark VI.
*** Ground ham and chicken.
**** Later, about 300 were modified to carry up to the 9,979-kilogram (22,000 pound) “Earthquake” or “Grand Slam” bombs, the largest of the European war
***** From the King James version of the Bible: Job 4:15–16 and Job 5:1.